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If the case so far was anything to go by, Edwin figured they might be in the woods all night long. Thus far the creatures, whatever they might have been, had eluded them. As Edwin grew tired, Charles seemed only spurred on further. Edwin hoped Charles remember the way out, for behind them every tree and copse seemed indistinguishable.
"Oi! Quit slacking, Edwin," Charles called light-heartedly. "We've only got another 10 miles of forest before we're at the other side."
In the middle of a small clearing, Charles stopped, turning on his heels to look at Edwin in the pale moonlight. Above them, a gentle breeze caused the branches to shake.
“Come on.”
Charles beckoned him forth with a nod of the head and an outstretched hand. His feet felt unsteady, as if were he not careful he might quickly fall among the vines and roots snaking below.
Far off, there was scurrying amongst the bushes. It might have been the creature they sought, or a lonely hare, or a fox. But Edwin hardly noticed, instead he could only focus on the tremble of his hands and the way his stomach churned. Ghosts were not prone to sickness, yet he felt closer to it than he had in 90 years.
It was an ailment that had risen in Edwin for days, had overtaken him. An ailment he daren’t name.
As he took Charles' hand, soft and ethereal as it was, he thought he sensed the slightest tension, an urge to pull away. It was the catalyst of the impulse that had grown and grown inside him; he felt his head might tremble and explode if he did not say it. Or that saying it might be the catalyst. He didn't know, Edwin didn't know what was for the best, and it was killing him.
Just as Charles turned to lead them on, the first syllables broke from Edwin’s mouth.
"Charles, look," Edwin began, then stopped, unable to best form the words. “Wait a moment, won’t you?”
Casually, unsuspecting, Edwin turned to him. That smile, that knowing, eternal look – Edwin knew he would never decipher it. There was no one who knew him better in the whole universe and yet Charles' face was so often untranslatable. A lost text; Charles himself often was so lost in his gallantry that he could not see was hidden beneath the surface.
With tentative fingers, Edwin pressed his free hand to Charles' cheek. Staring into the abyss as if it might come to mean something.
"What's the matter, Edwin?"
Staring into the abyss knowing it looked back into the abyss of your own. Not always understanding it all, but trying, wanting, so earnestly wanting to understand too.
They had taken this case alone; the small lane down which they had come was deserted. Edwin was glad that no one would distract them – and so wished someone would so he might not have to say it.
All seemed to stop in anticipation. There wasn’t a bird nor a leaf that dared break the silence. As though it were marble, hand-carved for some lonely god, Charles’ face did not change at all. Yet beneath his feeble hand, Edwin could have sworn he felt the machinations of every emotion working itself free. Despite how he wished to delay it, Edwin could not bear Charles to suffer at his expense.
"Charles, wouldn't it be easier if I were a girl?"
He had meant it to come out light, unserious, yet the words stuck to his throat. His voice sounds wretched. He realised the trouble with voicing it – the possibility of being answered as he suspected. The possibility that he might have been right all along.
But it was too late.
"What?" It might have been the moan that comes after a punch as it left Charles’ throat.
Charles' brow danced through a multitude of expressions before landing, furrowed and confused. His face seemed tight, wounded, and Edwin could not help but think he had picked a wound which Charles had already identified. There was nothing left but to rip the plaster off, take the scab with it. If it bled, at least it would be known.
"All of this – if only I were a girl, it would never need to be as complicated as it is. It would just be...” He felt the tears well as he spoke but blinked them back. “It would be simple. You would not have to put up with anything for my sake. I don't want you to- to feel forced into something you are –”
The scab did not just come free. From the horror upon Charles' face, it were as if Edwin's nails had dug into the worried flesh.
"Stop," Charles said kindly, pained. "Stop it."
Immediately, Edwin quieted. Tilting his head downwards, he looked to his feet, embarrassed. In the small gap between them, he watched as Charles' boot moved a step closer and felt the small change in pressure against his cheek as Charles mirrored his own action.
"Sure,” Charles whispered. “Maybe I didn't expect it, but that doesn't mean I don't want it or that I'm being forced. Bloody hell, you know me better than that."
"It's just..." Even as he whispered it, he felt a fool. "I thought you only liked girls, you only ever have before."
With the smallest amount of pressure, Charles' thumb beckoned Edwin's face up by the chin. He didn't quite meet Charles' gaze but found his eyes flickering between the glint of his earring in the light, the curled corner of his lip, the pretty mole above his left brow.
"If you were a girl, Edwin, then you would be someone different. Different things would have happened in your life, we wouldn't have met when we did - well, probably not at all. Then we might not have become best mates.. Or become this. Would you want that?”
The ache of his own self-doubt pressed into every crevice, conniving against each nerve so that he might be reminded. It was not so much the words but the soft lilt of Charles’ voice as he spoke them, the gentle gaze that never left Edwin even as he struggled to return it.
"No, of course not,” Edwin desperately replied. “I just - It would be, I don’t know, easier."
That voice might never be silenced – it was not repression that saved him from it now, but merely the realisation that he had a choice. He could decide not to listen, decide that it was wrong.
"What's "easy" worth to me, mate?" Charles said. "I'd go to Hell again for you, that's not easy. I'd save the world for you, or tear it apart to save you. I don't care about easy; I care about you."
"Charles."
Edwin did not know what he was asking, he just knew that after all he was the one with the scab upon him. Across his heart. Or rather, a wound that had long healed with a bandage he refused to move lest its removal work free the old wound once again.
"Edwin Paine, you. You. Just as you are, right now. I would take no other version."
Edwin felt himself quiver, figured himself the fool. It took all his strength to meet Charles' gaze, yet he knew he must.
In Charles' eyes there was nothing different to what had always been there. For Edwin realised, even when he had denied it to his core, it had never been Charles with the doubts. It had been him. Never about Charles, never about the feelings he felt, but about himself. About whether he was enough. For Charles deserved the world, and every good thing within it. And was he good, was a boy like him truly good?
"I've... It's just… I've never known a more wonderful person, Charles. In fact, I did not know such a person might exist until you came along."
"Don't you think it's the same for me?" Charles countered. "Do you think I don't imagine that day, when I died, and what it could have been like if I'd had to do it on my own?"
"I never would have left you on your own for that, Charles."
"Yeah, exactly, even at the risk of being dragged back down to Hell, you stayed all that time, so you can think what you want, mate, but I know who you are," Charles stated, nodding his head slightly. "And I know exactly how I feel about you."
"Oh, Charles."
There were not words that could give life to everything he wanted to say, everything he felt he must explain. For all the years of study and practice, language failed him now, became flat and useless upon his tongue.
His eyes took in one last time that mole and then he moved to kissed it, and each of the others that stippled Charles' face. Always, Edwin had meant to tell him how fond he was of those small beauty marks, yet his soft lips said it better in action than any words that might have passed them. Finally his lips found Charles'; with not a breath between them, Edwin whispered into the cold air.
"Forgive me, Charles."
Their foreheads pressed together, arm against arm, hands intertwined, Edwin knew that any movement, any touch might set off his tears again. Yet he welcomed it; for they left him only in relief, only in joy that warmed his long-cold heart.
"As if anything could need forgiving, silly, as if anything could make me love you less."
As Charles broke the distance, small as it was, Edwin waited a moment before closing his eyes and watched the gentle flutter of Charles' eyelids, the way his lashes rested softly upon his cheeks. He was, undeniably, beautiful. As if in shock, Edwin’s eyes remained open even as Charles kissed him – it was not the first time and yet it felt as electric as ever.
After a moment, Edwin let his eyes fall closed, let himself feel the moment rather than just watch it. Charles’ bottom lip was soft and tender, and when Edwin softly sucked at it, the answering sigh tantalised him. He moved his hand up to Charles’ face, stroking softly at his cheek, his ear, his hair. Their tongues lapped briefly, tentatively, before returning. Edwin wanted more; Edwin was scared of taking too much all at once.
As they parted, Charles smiled widely; in his eyes, Edwin felt he saw the same eager trepidation.
“Let’s go, these demon rabbits have got to be around here somewhere.”
Edwin nodded in agreement, letting himself be taken further into the forest by Charles’ soft, guiding hand.
"Now, tell me more about this Were-Rabbit," Edwin asked, trudging carefully over the brambles ahead. "Is it part wolf, or simply takes on the traits of a wolf while remaining rabbit-sized. Do you think ghosts would be susceptible to its bite as humans?”
"Mate, it's from a film."
"What?" Edwin stopped. "But you and Niko talked about it at such length, I thought you knew Wallace yourself."
Charles let out a loud laugh which would have scared off any living creature; Edwin might have reprimanded him for had he not so loved to hear it.
"It's an animation. His dog can literally fly planes."
"Well that sounds ridiculous."
"It's a kid's film, come on,” Charles said, playfully tugging at Edwin’s arm. “Isn’t it fun to be a bit daft now and then?”
"I don't think you're asking the right person that question," Edwin huffed, using his free hand to straighten his jacket.
"Oh no, Edwin, I know you better than anyone else ever has or ever will."
If he could have, Edwin knew his cheeks would have coloured. Not from embarrassment, but from the implication of forever. From the quiet burst of joy that the prospect gave him.
"I think," Charles continued. "You, more than anyone wants to be silly, you just don't know how."
With a sudden speed, Charles pulled them to the next clearing. His hand fell free from Edwin’s and his hands, as well as the rest of him, began moving in strange robotic fashion. The hum of strange tunes felt familiar to Edwin; he was certain he had heard them before, but only like this in the unsteady pitch of Charles’ voice.
“What on Earth are you doing?” Edwin asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Dancing!” He continued to hum and move more quickly, his legs bent awkwardly and yet he retained his pace.
“That is not dancing.”
As Charles continued to move and extend his arms up and down about his body, Edwin could not help but smile at him. Silly, he was so silly. And Edwin was too, or at least wanted to be. The carefree way in which Charles smiled at him, all while knowing he looked the fool. It made Edwin step towards him; it made Edwin want to kiss the smile upon his face.
“In my day, you would usually take a partner, and it would be a little less… jaunty than that.”
Even as he quipped, Edwin stepped closer still. Into Charles’ waiting arms. He took Charles’ hands and let him move them both awkwardly about the space. For a while, they simply spun and stepped about with no concern for the tunes which Charles was making.
“Jaunty? You know, if you lined up everyone in the whole world and asked them to describe hip-hop, nobody, at all, would say jaunty,” Charles joked softly. “Except for you.”
No longer did they hold hands, for their hands moved so they could caress against their arms, their backs, so they could pull each other closer in the darkness. Cold as it was, perpetually cold as they were, they seemed to warm in each other’s presence.
Edwin thought about himself, about his foolishness, about the wound within him. He had healed it, on his own, or might have done eventually. But it was Charles who had redressed it, kept it clean, given him what he needed for the scar to form without infection. His body seemed to hold in place, suspended in the moment. Until finally, Edwin allowed himself to lay his head upon Charles’ shoulder, sink into the touch as Charles’ hand came up to stroke him.
"Let's just...” Edwin murmured. “Just stay here, for a moment."
“A moment? We’ve got all the time in the world.”
The tune from Charles' lips distorted until it was slow, but not without a sweetness that made Edwin sink closer to him in. The beats were non-existent, except for their swaying and slow rotation. As earth and moon turning forever in pattern, they too felt no distinct need to part. No concern for the passage of time except that it must still be passing even in the uninhabited darkness around them.
In the pale moonlight, two souls danced. So dark was it, so close they were, that at times one was indistinguishable from the other.
Perhaps it was the howl of a bird or the rustle of the trees, or simply their preoccupation with the case that finally urged them apart. But when Charles took Edwin's hand again, and hurried them further into the woods, it was only the ghost of warmth, tenderness, fulfilment that Edwin could feel between his fingers.