Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Now

It’s Crystal who finds them the case.

“I overheard her in a cafe,” she says, hands on her hips and an expression of thinly-veiled excitement on her face. “And get this, her wife inherited a haunted house! She said it has like, doors slamming on their own, paintings flying off the wall, all that shit. She was talking to a friend, I think, who literally stormed out and called her crazy! It was intense.”

Edwin is already frowning. “That sounds a bit excessive.”

It’s a testament to how well they’re adapting to the new set-up - or, perhaps, in an offhand way, a testament to Niko - because, where back in Port Townend, Edwin’s words might well have pitched them into a proper argument, now it barely dampens the excitement on Crystal’s face.

“I don’t think she was lying,” she says. “If that’s what you’re worried about. She was pretty emotional about it, actually.”

“You talked to her?”

Charles can’t hold back a grin. Edwin sounds far more scandalized by the idea of speaking to a potential client than he ever does with things that Charles thinks should give him more pause. Things like the Ancient Aramaic spell he’d practiced for weeks before he bothered to share that a mispronunciation could result in the loss of multiple limbs.

“Of course I don’t know which ones, Charles! That hardly matters.”

“You’ll stop learning it, then?” He’d asked, not bothering to hide his relief.

“No,” Edwin sniffed, as if the very idea was preposterous. “I simply shall not make any mistakes.”

And at this point, Charles figures it’s about time for him to stop following the conversation back and forth like an uninteresting cricket match. “I think it’s aces, Crystal. I’m sure Edwin is chuffed that you’re taking initiative. Right, mate?”

He pushes himself up from the corner of the desk where he’s been perched long enough that a living body would complain. He’s spent all of the day, not to mention most of the previous one, leaning over Edwin’s shoulder to watch him sketch out a map of London’s old sewer system for a particularly convoluted case of Charlie’s.

And Charles is fairly certain that the map has something to do with the way Edwin is still frowning down at Crystal, a small ‘v’ between his eyebrows that's closer to concern than anger.

Edwin is easy enough to read, once you know what to look for, and Charles thinks he might know that better than anyone ever has, alive or dead. Sometimes, the thought makes him sad for the boy Edwin was before they met. Other times, it makes him feel warm in a confusing, selfish sort of way that he does his best to ignore.

“Obviously, I talked to her!” Crystal shoots Charles a look. “How else was I supposed to take the case?”

“Did you tell her about us?” Charles asks, out of genuine interest, more than any sort of self-preservation.

Crystal shakes her head. “No. I just told her I could help. She seemed relieved, honestly. She kind of thought she was going insane.”

She glances away then, down to the toes of her boots on the office floor, and Charles feels a pang in his long-emtpy chest for the Crystal they’d met all those weeks ago.

“Course we’ll help,” Charles starts to reassure her at the same time as Edwin chimes in with, “I’m afraid we’re rather busy with a map at the moment.”

It’s Crystal’s turn to frown. “Really, Edwin? You’re going to prioritize a fucking map over these people’s safety?”

Charles raises a hand before Edwin can properly clap back and they both look at him. It’s not quite tense, but it’s not quite anything else either.

He looks at Edwin first. “We could probably use a break from this, mate. I know I could. We’ve been at it for days now and it only seems to be getting more complicated.”

Edwin turns his shoulder to Crystal, which is at least an improvement from the way he’d been leaning over her with his arms crossed a moment before. He reaches across the desk and drags his notebook over. The carefully drawn lines of his map stare back, taunting.

“I’m not certain we can.” He’s quiet. The words fall somewhere in the pages of the notebook, lost amidst the carefully organized chaos of his notes.

Charles catches a confused look from Crystal before he takes a step closer.

“It’s only our second case for the Night Nurse,” Edwin continues. His finger traces a pathway, runs into a dead-end at the book’s spine. “Surely it would seem unprofessional to take another case so soon.”

And at that, Charles can’t quite stop himself from flipping the sodding thing closed. Edwin extracts his finger with a small huff, caught somewhere between humour and annoyance.

“She can’t expect you guys to work yourselves to death over this!” Crystal says “Well,” she amends, “Second death.”

On the desk, Edwin’s hand clenches into a fist that looks small and vulnerable without his gloves.

“I think you will find she can do whatever she wants, Crystal.”

When he glances back at Charles, his expression is blank in the way it sometimes gets, when something comes close enough to the things Edwin likes to hide. Behind the wall of upper class pandering, perfect posture, and snide comments.

He’s long since stopped putting it up around Chalres, but he still catches it occasionally, when anything touches on the things Charles has now seen firsthand: tunnels of pale green light, high pitched giggles, and the crunch of flesh giving way to bone

All of a sudden, Charles can’t think of anything he wants less than for Edwin to spend another night tracing over maze-like tunnels beneath the city in search of something horrible.

“She’s just as stuck with us as we are with her.” Edwin’s eyes lose a little of that blankness when Charles claps him on the shoulder. “I’m sure Charlie won’t even notice if we take a night off, will she? And if she does, it’s not like she’s about to go trampling through the sewer herself, right?”

“I really only need you guys there to consult,” Crystal chimes in. “And to deal with any, um ghost stuff. I don’t think either of them will be able to see you.”

Edwin spares the notebook one final glance as he seems to make a decision. He straightens his shoulders, and walks around to his chair to retrieve his jacket, draped over the back.

“I suppose ghost stuff is our specialty.”

Crystal smiles, then, and all Charles feels is relief.

The house is a bit of a walk from Hereford station, where Charles can practically feel Edwin holding back a complaint or two about how much slower the train is than mirror travel. But when he bumps their shoulders together, the look Edwin gives him in response is almost a smile. Charles figures the distraction will be good for him.

“I didn’t learn much more than that,” Crystal is saying, a couple paces ahead. “She seemed worried about her wife, obviously. Her dad died recently. Anyway, I’ll get them to tell the whole story and you guys can hear it for yourselves.”

Edwin is already perking up at the delivery of details.

“It’s likely the father’s ghost, then,” he says. “If it was a recent death. But we can’t know for certain until we investigate.”

“Seems easy enough.” Charles can’t help but appreciate the potential of a simple case.

It’s been longer than either of them would admit, since they had anything close to an easy win, job well jobbed, et cetera. Everything since Port Townsend has felt heavy, with the weight of someone’s existence always hanging in the balance: hell and Esther Finch and Niko.

They could all use this, Charles thinks. A distraction, a boost. Anything, really, to get Edwin out of the office and away from the things putting shadows under his eyes. Here, at least, it might be something Charles can hit.

The house seems normal enough from the outside, some chipped paint and an overgrown front walk, but nothing Charles clocks as out of the ordinary. Crystal leads the way up to the front step and knocks.

It’s opened almost immediately, as if the woman has been standing behind it waiting to greet them. Either a little odd, or a little desperate.

“Hi,” Crystal says, her voice echoing Charles’ confusion for only a moment before she snaps back into something like professionalism. “I’m Crystal Palace. I talked to Annie yesterday about, well, your house?”

Immediately, the woman’s eyes soften and she cracks the door wider.

“Oh, yes, Crystal!” When she smiles, her whole face changes. “Wow, you’re so young! I didn’t know what to expect when Annie said she’d met a psychic. Honestly, this is all a lot to take in.”

“I understand.” Crystal nods. “My first experience with the supernatural was a lot, to say the least.”

“I can only imagine!” The woman steps aside and ushers with an arm that Charles can now see is covered in a cast up to the elbow. “Please, come in.”

She introduces herself as Clair. And as they follow Crystal past her, Charles can see that she’s around 60, with long blond hair pulled back into a ponytail at the base of her neck. She’s pretty, if a bit rough around the edges at present, with her arm in a cast and crinkles of worry at the corners of her eyes. But there are laughter lines too, and the creases of a smile around her lips. He likes her already.

The house, on the other hand, is in a fucking state.

Charles isn’t one to judge anyone else’s organizational habits. In fact, Edwin is always quick to remind him about his own lack of them, when he misfiles a document or messes up the cataloging system for their books. But Edwin also never complains if Charles leaves a football on the couch or a game of Cluedo out for two nights in a row. It’s the gentle sort of give and take that Charles has always loved between them.

The living room that Claire ushers Crystal into goes far beyond an accidental misfiling. There are boxes upon boxes crowded into each corner, dusty glass display cabinets filled with the most random assortment of items Charles has ever seen, and he’s been in Mick’s store more than a few times.

The clutter doesn’t feel anything like the well-loved relics he and Edwin have collected over the past decades, payment for cases or surprising discoveries or sometimes just little things that make them smile, like the cursed abacus he’d caught Edwin eyeing so many times in the shop of a hedge witch that Charles had gone back and traded a few things from his backpack for it. The look on Edwin’s face when he’d handed it over - careful not to get his fingers stuck between the rows of beads - had been more than worth it.

This, however, felt different.

“I’ll just tell Annie you’re here,” Claire said, as Crystal perched gingerly on the edge of a dusty, off-white armchair. “And I’ll make us some tea! Won’t be a moment.”

The second she’s out of the room, Crystal pivots to stare into the face of what appears to be a lamp directly behind her. It’s shaped like a strange, warped dog, its tail wrapped awkwardly around the front legs and its tongue lolling out. It might have been painted once, but the whole thing has since faded to an unappealing grey-green.

“This had better be haunted,” she mutters, into the dog’s face. “There’s no other reason for it to be so fucking scary.”

Edwin, who beelined for the cabinets as soon as he phased through the wall, turns to study the dog himself. He touches it with a finger and the bare lightbulb at the dog’s head blinks for a moment, but otherwise doesn’t react.

“Just a lamp, I’m afraid,” he says. “But I agree, horrifying all the same.”

Charles pokes at the nearest box with one toe and hears the contents inside rattle, like it’s full of - fuck knows, something that rattles.

“My dad would kill me if I left the house like this,” Charles says, mostly to himself, but Edwin and Crystal are both watching him when he looks back. “Not that he’d leave his house to me, anyway. Cause, you know,” he motions down at himself. “Dead.”

And maybe a few other reasons besides.

“It is a proper mess,” Edwin agrees, after a moment of silence passes between them. “Does all this stuff belong to the couple, you think?”

Charles shrugs, but doesn’t have time to reply before the door opens again and Claire comes in with a tea tray and another woman, Annie, he assumes, at her heels who smiles, a little less brightly, when she spots Crystal.

“Oh thank God,” she says. “I was honestly worried you might have been pulling a prank.”

Crystal shakes her head. “No, I promise you, if the rest of the house is as scary as this dog, this is without a doubt a real haunting.”

“Crystal,” Edwin snaps, and he starts to say something else, likely another form of scolding, when Annie bursts out laughing.

“You’re so right!” She wheezes, when she finally takes a breath. “I hate that thing so much. You said he’s had it forever, right darling?”

Claire is grinning too, as she hands Crystal her tea in a chipped mug, faded and floral.

“God yes, I was absolutely terrified of it as a kid!” She sits on the couch, across from Crystal and Annie takes the place beside her, not quite hovering, but close enough that Claire clearly can still feel her there. It’s endearing to watch them look out for each other like that. It’s not something Charles ever saw his own parents do. They never had that kind of relationship, as far as he knows.

“Ask them for the details,” Charles suggests.

He abandons the boxes, as he can’t very well go snooping through them in front of Claire and Annie, and comes to perch on the back of Crystal’s armchair. Edwin stands beside him, notebook at the ready.

The situation, it turns out, is more complicated than they thought.

Claire inherited the house two months past, after what sounds like a bit of uncomfortable finagling around her dad’s will and some nebulous final wishes.

When Crystal offers an apology for the recent loss, Claire accepts it gracefully enough, but shrugs a little as she says, “I appreciate it, but it wasn’t as big of a shock as you think. We hadn’t been close for a long time.”

Annie is decidedly less delicate. “It’s a final ‘fuck you’, this place. I swear he did all this just to torment us.”

Charles leans in, unconsciously, but the way he ignores the look Crystal shoots him is entirely deliberate.

Claire squeezes her eyes closed for a moment.

“That’s not what it is,” she says, mostly directed at Annie, who busies herself with taking a very long drink of tea. “And anyway, the mess is my - our - problem, this young lady is here to deal with,” she falter slightly, “the other thing.”

“The supernatural occurrences you mentioned?” Crystal asks, and Annie comes up from her tea again to nod. “What’s happening, exactly?”

“And for how long?” Edwin prompts, from beside her. Crystal relays his question with only a slight tensing of her jaw to indicate the interruption. She really is aces at the whole medium thing.

It goes like this:

Three months ago, Clair’s father dies. Edwin adds a neat little note, Estranged? In the margins of his notebook.

Two months ago, the man’s most recent, but unnotarized, will is declared legally invalid, and all of his remaining assets go to his only living relative, his daughter Calire. Said assets, Annie shares, included not only a falling down house crammed to the brim with hoarder shit, but also a grand £94 in debt.

“It was a parking fine!” She says. “From 2008! You literally could not make this up.”

Claire quiets her with a hand on her knee and continues.

They don’t live in London anymore, and after trying and failing to enlist the help of a cleaning company or their few remaining friends in the area, the two finally took it upon themselves to come down and “deal with” the place in person.

It’s been nearly 30 years since Claire last set foot in the house, and Annie has never been before this - “And I hope I never will again!”

Claire shakes her head, fond.

They’re hoping to sell the place, once it’s rid of all the junk. Or they were, at least, until two days into the grand cleanup operation, when everything went to shit.

It started with the doors, Claire says. They’d slam upstairs when the two were in the kitchen, or creak open of their own accord. They thought it was just drafty. Then, it got worse.

Things flew off shelves - and if the living room was anything to go off, there were quite a lot of things to fly around. A whole mirror shattered off the wall in the bathroom. A few days ago, Clarire broke her arm.

“You broke your arm because of the house?” Crystal asks.

Annie’s eyes have gone dark, and Claire isn’t smiling anymore.

“It was a door,” she says, now, staring down into her mostly empty cup. “I, um, was alone in the office and something pushed me into the doorway. I couldn’t move when it slammed shut.”

“I think we should go.” Annie frowns. “But she won’t listen.”

Charles glances over to find Edwin already watching him.

“Stubborn,” Charles mouths, with what he figures is a good enough approximation of a smile, and, thankfully, Edwin seems to take the teasing at face value because he just rolls his eyes and turns back to his notes.

“What am I supposed to do?” Claire asks. “Run away and keep paying council tax on the thing until it falls down?”

Charles figures she has a point.

He and Edwin start to prompt Crystal with questions, the result of which leave him, if anything, more confused than he started.

Clarie’s dad didn’t die in the house, but in a hospital 10 miles away.

She grew up here, but has never experienced anything supernatural in the place before. The haunting isn’t constant, as they can plainly see, but when it does happen, it’s sudden, random, and violent. Charles doesn’t like the sound of that one bit.

Eventually, he can’t sit still any longer, something to do with the vague prickling sensation of watchful eyes on the back of his neck. It’s likely just a result of the conversation, but Charles takes to examining the perimeter of the room all the same. He’s on edge in a way that’s far too familiar for his liking.

“Why had it been so long since you were here?” Crystal asks, her voice delicate as she leans forward to set her empty tea cup back on the tray. “If that’s not too personal.”

It’s Annie who answers. “Because he hated me.”

Charles turns away from the old clock he’s been studying - coated with a thick layer of dust and stopped on some long ago 2:38.

“He didn’t hate you.” Claire sighs. Clearly, this is an old conversation. “He never met Annie and I never wanted him to. My parents were never very…open minded about things.”

Crystal nods sympathetically.

“How did you two meet?” she asks, after a moment of quiet.

It’s a good shout to lighten the mood, Charles thinks. Claire and Annie glance at each other for a moment, and Claire breaks away first with a half-concealed snort of laughter.

Annie, who Charles can already tell is the more subdued of the two, rolls her eyes. “You don’t want to know.”

Beside him, Edwin’s pencil pauses, waiting.

Claire swats Annie on the arm. “You make it sound so scandalous! It’s nothing too exciting, I promise. We met at a gig.”

Crystal nods along, politely.

“What was the band?”

“Honestly, I don’t remember,” Claire says, with a little laugh. “I didn’t actually spend any time listening to them. Some creep tried to spike my drink and Annie saw him do it and threw it in his face. We spent the rest of the night smoking and complaining out back, it was lovely.”

Crystal is smiling now and Charles can’t help but admire Annie’s direct problem solving approach himself.

“It was at the, uh, what’s the place called?” Claire glances at her wife, snapping the fingers of her good hand a few times. “I don’t remember.”

“The Queue,” Annie says. She’s smiling too now, and she seems embarrassed by it.

“That’s in Brixton,” Charles says, automatic, and he hears the scratch of Edwin’s pencil, dutifully noting down the information.

“In Brixton?” Crystal repeats. Charles feels a surge of pride at how good she’s getting with this sort of thing, picking up little details from the two of them and relaying them to the living with barely a sideways glance.

“That’s the one!” Claire points at her.

“God, that place was a shithole.” Annie sounds fond. “Never go there.”

i. then

They’re not bands Charles knows, a local Birxton gig in a hole of a place where one of Charles’ mates from school knows a guy who knows a guy who lets in anyone who looks old enough when he squints. Charles doesn’t know the bands, but that doesn’t matter one bit, not after a few pints and a girl with a puffy blonde fringe and a skirt that keeps riding further up her thighs who pulls him onto the dance floor.

Not after a snog in the toilets and the small white pill she pops under his tongue.

And a while later, after he’s lost both the blond and the people he came with, Charles doesn’t know the band but he thinks he might like to as he pushes his way up to the front of the crowd, pulled vaguely by the thrum of bass through the sticky floor beneath his loafers.

He makes a few friends who aren’t quite friends along the way: the girl who compliments the patches on his jacket, the man who stumbles into Charles and then shouts an apology into his ear and when Charles grins back to show him no hard feelings, pulls him into a circle of people who might know each other, or might be equally fleeting connections. They dance for a while, all hands and faces and pulsing lights and to Charles, it feels like they become one living thing, connected by invisible waves of music and by the thing that swells in his chest, elated and joyful, each time one of them glances his way.

This, Charles thinks, is living, plain and bloody simple.

He makes his way up to the stage just as the guitarist hits a solo. And maybe it’s not the most perfect thing, but Charles is sure as hell no one to expect perfection. He feels the thing again, where his chest swells and all the pain in the world kind of vaguens into the background. And then he feels it a whole lot more when the guitarist glances down into the crowd and catches Charles watching.

He grins and rotates his whole body towards Charles like maybe he feels it too, the pull and the swell and the pulse, and for a moment, it’s like each note is just for Charles, each chord and each quick, sure movement of the guitarist’s fingers on the frets. Charles is transfixed. He feels like he’s cupped between those big palms himself, a part of the music, a part of the crowd and the very connection between things.

He stays by the stage until the set ends, and then wanders out back, thinking it might be nice to get some air. He pushes through a throng of sweaty bodies, shakes his head apologetically when a few people ask him for a fag. He’s nearly made it to the end of the alley when a voice calls out.

“Oi, you!” Charles looks around. “Yeah, you, with the smile.”

As if on cue, Charles smiles, an automatic reaction, and when he catches sight of the guitarist, one shoulder propped against the stage door and one of those big, steady hands raised in greeting, it widens into a grin.

“Oh, hello.” Charles takes a few steps towards him. “You with the guitar.”

The man raises his eyebrows in a look that Charles is well familiar with, like he’s charmed and trying his hardest not to show it. It always, without fail, makes Charles want to push a little bit harder.

“Must have been a hard crowd, if I was the only one smiling.” Charles tips his head back against the cold metal wall behind him, watches out of the corner of his eye.

Now, the man does laugh.

“Don’t give me that, you must know,” he says, and it’s Charles’ turn to raise his eyebrows. “You’re like the fucking sun, right there in the middle of the pit in the worst venue in the world.”

“It’s not so bad.” The man gives him an unimpressed look. “Ok, it’s a shithole,” Charles concedes. “But I always have a good night.”

“I’m pretty sure you could have a good night in an active minefield, mate.”

Charles snorts out a laugh himself, and a moment later the man joins him. The sound of it echoes around the makeshift alleyway, quiet and boisterous.

“I’m Adam,” the guitarist says, when they quiet.

“Aces. I’m Charles.”

Adam has taken a bag of tobacco out of his pocket, and begins the convoluted-looking process of rolling a cigarette on his own knee with one foot propped against the wall. He looks up a moment later, and catches Charles watching, but he doesn’t seem to mind the scrutiny.

A tick later, Adam motions towards the side of his face with a newly-lit cigarette. “Nice one.”

“What’s that?” Charles lifts his head back up and mirrors the movement reflexively, prodding his own cheekbone, then the side of his - “Oh, right.”

The skin around his left eye is puffy beneath his fingertips, the bruise itself a few days old by now, faded enough that Chalres has honestly forgotten, until he reignited the ache by jamming a finger into it, that is. He’s been blissfully distracted from anything so immediate over the course of the night, all thrumming bass and stale beer and the softening of the edges of things, after the blond girl and the molly. He feels a bit floaty, vague in all the right places.

“What happened?” Adam asks now.

He’s slumped back against the grimy wall, his collar popped up around his chin. The loose corner of a forgotten band poster flutters in the wind beside his face. Charles thinks he looks brills, and also kind of unbearably cool, like this - in the soft glow of his cigarette with all of late night London spread out before him.

“Got in a fight, didn’t I?” Charles says and it’s not really even a lie because he’s been in some fights before, it’s just that this particular black eye isn’t a product of one. It’s a minor detail, all things considered.

And clearly, it’s the right not-really-a-lie to pull out because Adam is smiling at him again, half of his mouth cocked up in a little, private grin just for Charles. It’s different, Charles thinks, to the smile he wore on stage.

“The sun burns, hm? Cool,” Adam says, punctuating the final word with a drag of his cigarette. He blows smoke over one shoulder, and it hovers there for a moment, a shimmering cloud of nothing, before it dissipates into the night wind.

Charles can’t help but smile back then, because he finds all of a sudden that he wants nothing more than for Adam to call him cool again.

Chapter Text

Now

“I feel bad about this,” Charles admits, as he tears open the third box. “After she went on so much about packing up the place.”

He reaches in, tosses a few volumes of an out-of-date encyclopedia onto the slowly growing pile beside him.

They didn’t have much time to discuss after the initial interview. At least, not with Claire and Annie out of earshot, and since Crystal wasn’t particularly keen on their new clients overhearing her talking to herself, they’d settled for a quick and admittedly one-sided plan.

Edwin was fairly convinced already that the cause lay somewhere in the house itself. It made sense in the way that Edwin’s careful, methodical logic always did, that one of the horrible collections of antique bullshit that littered the place might include something with a curse strong enough to break glass and bones.

Crystal had left with Claire for the hospital, where they were currently poking around the dad’s medical records. Any signs from his physical and mental condition would be helpful, if only to identify exactly how long the haunting had been going on.

Charles didn’t envy her the job, and when Edwin suggested that the two of them stay behind and take the time to investigate the empty house more thoroughly, Charles had happily agreed to leave Crystal to it. Not without a grin and a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

Hospitals could be risky for them, anyway. It was far more likely that people there would be able to see them and the number of ghosts that lived in the place to begin with is already giving Charles the memory of a headache.

Besides, Crystal is more than capable.

“I agree, it does seem a bit counterintuitive.” Edwin straightens, giving up on a box of his own. “At the very least the house is already haunted, so we should not have to worry about alerting them to our presence with this part of the investigation.”

“That doesn’t really help, does it?”

Edwin ignores him in favour of cutting the next box open with a neat little flick of his wrist. He’s using an antique letter opener (possibly cursed) that Charles pulled out of a corner of his bag a few hours earlier. Edwin had smiled when Charles offered it over, a surprised uptick at the corner of his lips that anyone less familiar with the intricacies of Edwin Payne’s expressions - the ones he allowed beyond that carefully constructed wall of decorum - might have missed.

Charles had started out using a pen knife himself, but quickly found that ripping the boxes open was both faster and lent at least a hint of excitement to the monotony of the task.

He reaches the bottom of the encyclopedia box with nothing more incriminating than a half-page of notes about elephants in somewhat shaky handwriting. Nothing that looks remotely like the cause of poltergeist-based haunting.

He’s about to say as much when,

“Better luck with - Oh, good heavens!” Edwin cuts himself off with a stifled sort of exclamation that makes him sound so much like a pensioner that Charles can’t help but laugh in response. He dumps out the last few encyclopedias.

Edwin has fallen quiet again, and nothing about his tone - calm and half-under his breath as it was - suggests actual distress.

“Deep breaths, mate,” Charles jokes, around a grin. Edwin likely found porn, magazines or videos, or maybe one of Claire’s particularly spicy childhood love notes. Which would be hilarious, now that he thinks of it. “Anything good?”

“I cannot,” Edwin says, then, still calm, so quiet Charles barely hears him.

“Can’t what?” He asks, distracted.

“I cannot seem to,” Edwin’s voice breaks, a small hitch between the words and Charles is already on his feet. “Breathe. I can’t breathe.”

He drops to his knees beside Edwin, who is crouched before a half-open box, staring into the depths of it with a look that somehow manages to be both vague and wild at the same time. It looks like he’s seeing something else entirely.

“Edwin, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t breathe,” Edwin says, again, and, fuck, he starts rambling - not to be confused with ranting - which Edwin only does when something really upsets him. “I know I don’t need to, but it won’t stop. I can’t -”

Edwin’s hand comes up to tug at his bowtie. He’s shaking, Charles realizes, as Edwin clenches his fist, crumpling the starched white material of his collar. Charles bites back his own mounting concern, does his best to keep his voice calm.

“Easy, mate. You’re fine. Everything’s fine. Look at me?”

Edwin doesn’t. His eyes are still locked on something behind the flap of the box’s lid that Charles can’t make out and it strikes him suddenly that maybe Edwin has found the artifact or something else dangerous enough to be relevant. He doesn’t hesitate when he rips the lid away and then finds, for one of the only times in his life, that he wishes he had.

“Bloody hell!”

It’s full of dolls, a collection of old, dark-eyed things, crammed haphazardly into the cardboard. They stare back blankly.

He kicks the box away and it topples onto its side, which presents its own problem, but that’s one for future Charles.

He turns back, takes Edwin’s wrist, and tugs at it until he releases the death grip he has on his collar.

“Edwin,” he says, and this time, Edwin’s eyes latch onto him, wide and wild, desperate for something like safety. “I know you don’t need to breathe, but I think it might help. With me, yeah?”

Edwin starts to say something else, but he only gets as far as another stutter of a breath that cuts off when Charles pulls Edwin’s hand forward and flattens it against his own chest, over the place where his heart used to beat. He takes a couple of exaggerated breaths himself, ribcage expanding and Edwin’s hand moving slowly up and back down again where it rests.

Edwin stills. His first inhale is shaky, but he takes another, and then another, along with Charles, until his breaths even out and, finally, drop away all together.

His fingers have clenched into the front of Charles’ polo and Charles can feel, as much as he feels anything, the pressure of each fingertip on his sternum.

After a moment of quiet, Charles stops breathing too. “Alright?”

Edwin isn’t looking at him anymore and Charles watches as he squeezes his eyes closed. From here Charles can see the tightness in the set of his jaw, can make out each one of his dark eyelashes as they flutter over his cheekbones.

“I’m right here,” Charles says, gentle as he can be. “Just you and me, mate. Take your time.”

When Edwin’s eyes open, the mask is back, all the panic and the wildness and the fear forced beneath the smooth lines of practicality. There’s still that tightness in his jaw, though. Likely, his pulse would still be racing beneath Charles’ fingers, if he had one. Edwin tugs his hand away and straightens his shoulders in one smooth motion.

“Apologies, Charles.” His voice is a little thin, but otherwise sounds dry as usual. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Mate,” Charles starts, unconvinced. He glances over his shoulder at the box. “Nothing to be sorry for, is there?”

Edwin shrugs, a sharp up and down movement that reminds Charles of the flick of an antique letter opener.

“Certainly there is,” Edwin sniffs. “I cannot expect to solve any cases if I go around getting distracted by the very suggestion of, well.”

He leaves the word hanging unsaid between them and Charles feels it, heavy and physical, like a blow that never quite lands.

“I get it,” he says, carefully. “You only just got -”

“Charles,” Edwin cuts him off with a tone that suggests a lot more than the word itself. There’s pleading there, too, a quiet desperation carried on Charles’ own name that he picks up on even before Edwin adds, “Can we focus on the case for now? Please?”

And when has he ever been able to deny Edwin anything?

Charles nods.

“Course,” he says, easy as always. He offers Edwin a smile. “Why don’t you let me take this one though, hm?” He indicates the doll box again with a jut of his chin.

Edwin pauses in straightening his bowtie with small, precise movements to smile back. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Thank you, Charles. That might be for the best.”

Elephants, the page reads, are just as likely to engage in affectionate behaviour with members of the same sex as the opposite. These gestures, which include intertwining trunks and collaborative grooming, are also indicative of sexual attraction…

Charles shoves the paper into his pocket when Edwin’s head pops through the wall.

“I believe I have found something.”

He follows Edwin and reappears in a bedroom. The door to the wardrobe is propped open and Edwin has made careful piles of the contents on the floor around him. It’s mostly old clothes, some shoes, a frankly alarming number of identical white socks. Charles kicks aside a coiled belt as he makes his around way to lean over Edwin’s shoulder. The buckle clicks softly in response.

“Look at this.” Edwin is holding what appears to be an old photo album. “It was stuck in the back here, behind a pile of shirts.”

“You think he was trying to hide it?”

Charles taps the crinkled plastic page with one finger. The girl in the photo is clearly a childhood version of Claire. She has chubby little cheeks and is wearing a pink sweater and although her expression is a bit more serious than Charles saw it an hour ago, the sparkle in her blue eyes is recognizable.

“It does seem to be the obvious conclusion,” Edwin says, as Charles reaches over him again to flip the page. “What I am not sure of is why. Nothing about this seems particularly nefarious. And from what we know, the man lived alone.”

“It was buried in the wardrobe,” Charles thinks aloud. “Who would he need to hide it from?”

“It is where I used to hide things sometimes.” Edwin has glanced down, away from the photos, a touch embarrassed, Charles can tell.

He smiles. “What on earth did you have to hide, mate?”

“Quite a lot, it turns out.”

And fuck, that’s a turn Charles hasn’t intended for the conversation to take. Edwin doesn’t seem bothered by it though. He’s not even nervous, like when he’d stumbled over his words with uncharacteristic hesitation when he told Charles about Monte. It’s not like his confession in hell either, filled with pain and a desperation so pointed that it had hooked Charles in like a fish. But that wasn’t anything new with the two of them, really. He’d always been connected to Edwin, reeled in by his steadiness and his stubbornness and his own hardheaded desire to keep the both of them safe at any cost.

It doesn’t escape his notice that this time, Edwin has brought up these feelings between them with nothing more than a sideways glance.

“Hey,” Charles starts, but Edwin suddenly seems to be in a rush to continue.

“It was mostly novels. Comics, sometimes. Detective stories. Things I assumed my parents would find…frivolous.”

“Little rebel, you.”

“I was nothing of the sort.” But Edwin is smiling, despite himself, the harsh edges of his face softened, even as he rolls his eyes. Charles will never stop feeling proud when he puts that expression there.

On the next page of the album, Claire is older, a teenager now. Maybe around Charles’ age. Or rather, the age his body and brain will always be, no matter how many years he hangs around. That is, the part of his brain that kicks into gear when a fit psychic barges headfirst into his life, or the part that short circuits when he thinks about Edwin saying the word “handjob.”

She’s standing next to a boy in the photo, about her age, their arms around each other in a way that’s clearly romantic. His fingers splayed on her waist and one of her hands resetting on his chest. She looks happier here.

Even if the bloke’s haircut does make him look like the biggest tosser Charles has ever seen.

“Are these all…” He trails off as Edwin flips through a few more pages, clearly after an answer to the same question.

“Photographs of Claire, yes. It does appear to be.” He’s frowning slightly, the way he does when he’s thinking through a problem.

Charles turns around to study the rest of the room while Edwin’s brain does what it’s best at and brains away. The bed is neatly made, but clearly untouched for a while, which fits with the timeline of Claire’s story. The whole room has a dull, stuffy feel to it that makes Charles want to crack open the door, even if that wouldn’t do much to help the clients’ already haunted house.

“Why would he hide pictures of his own daughter?” Charles circles back around. “Sure, they didn’t speak, but that’s not something anyone would find suspicious enough to be a big secret, is it?”

“One would think not,” Edwin agrees.

Charles wonders, for a moment, if his dad ever kept pictures of him around.

His mum had, in the beginning. It was still sat on the shelf in the corner of the living room. At least, that was the last place he’d spotted it during one of his check ins. And once he’d spotted it, he also had to notice the way she never once glanced that direction herself, like it was enough a part of the scenery that no one bothered anymore.

Which was good, at least. Charles always hated seeing her cry.

There’s nothing interesting in the nightstand drawers, just a few old tissues (gross) and a bible (also gross and mostly all lies, if Charles’ own 50 plus years of experience with the afterlife are anything to go on).

A door slams downstairs, startling Chalres out of his crouch by the nightstand and he stumbles back on his heels.

“Crystal and Claire must have returned,” Edwin says. He closes the photo album a little primly and sets it down on the foot of the bed. “Hopefully her side of the investigation has been more fruitful than ours.”

Charles nods toward the wall as Edwin breezes past him.

“After you, mate.” He motions with one hand in a little wave of little mock formality that makes Edwin shoot him an unimpressed look before he disappears into the hall. Something about it lightens the stifling feeling caught in the neatly pressed sheets and between the pages of the photo album.

Charles is quick to follow.

ii. then

They end up at a house party of someone Charles doesn’t know, but the girl by the door grins when she sees Adam and a guy with an eyebrow ring offers Charles a beer when they pass through the kitchen.

“Cheers, mate.” Eyebrow Ring clinks his bottle against Charles’. The beer is bad and a little bit warm, but Charles savours it like he’s been handed the keys to heaven itself.

“Come on.” Adam’s voice is in his ear suddenly. “I might actually die if I don’t change the music soon.”

Charles snorts out a laugh and dutifully turns to follow, giving Eyebrow Ring a final grin of thanks over his shoulder.

The music is a bit shit, now that he notices it, something rough and croony that might be Belinda Carlisle. The warm, contented feeling sparked by the equally warm beer grows at Adam’s outrage. They push through the crowd together. A few people call after them or clap Adam on the shoulder as they pass, but Adam doesn’t stop until he reaches an open door at the end of the hall.

He ducks inside and Charles follows him into what seems to be the hastily cleared up bedroom of one of the party’s hosts. The leg of a pair of jeans pokes out from beneath the half-made bed and the dresser across the room is piled high with cassette tapes, some in their cases, others tossed aside without them.

Charles has learned to be better at hiding things in his own room. His preferred spot, underneath his mattress, had worked well, until his dad discovered it a few months ago.

Adam beelines for the boombox and turns the volume down with an expression of such righteous hatred on his face that Charles can’t help but laugh.

“Hey, this isn’t funny.” Adam has his back turned, running his finger down the spines of the tapes.

“I’m not laughing at you, mate. Promise.” Charles navigates around another shoved aside pile of clothes and comes to stand beside him. “You’re like a hero or something, saving us from the horrors of a mediocre soundtrack.”

Adam’s eyes flick to him briefly and Charles catches the quirk of his lips and the glint of amusement in his face.

“There are no worse horrors,” Adam says, seriously.

“Why don’t I help you?” Charles turns his attention away from Adam’s not-quite-smile and pushes a few tapes aside to set his beer down. “Since this is a noble quest and all.”

“What an honour.” The words are dry, but Charles can hear the smile in them all the same. The thing in his chest glows a bit brighter.

He sorts through the tapes, occasionally holding up one for Adam’s judgment, and each time Adam considers and then shakes his head. He doesn’t seem to be having much luck himself either, because he’s still making his way through the stacks on his corner. That, or he’s just too picky for his own good.

Charles spots a familiar label and slides it over with an inquiring hm? which he buries in the neck of his beer.

“Oh,” Adam pauses, finally, to pick up the tape. “Yes?”

“That a yes for Yes, then?”

Charles grins at the flat look it gets him and sets the beer back down, mostly empty now, as Adam pops open the tape’s case.

“It’s a no for that joke is what it is.”

And Charles must be more drunk than he thought because one moment he’s laughing and the next, Adam has turned to face him and they’re much closer now, only a breath of space between them. He can make out each one of Adam’s eyelashes and the smudges in his eyeliner. His lips are close too, just a moment away from a smile. Charles can’t seem to tear his eyes from them.

And then Adam is leaning in and the breath of space becomes no space at all and the warmth is glowing in Charles’ chest, but still he can’t help-

He stumbles back, brings a hand up between Adam’s chest and his own.

“Oi, hold on.” His hand is touching Adam’s jacket, not quite holding the lapel. “I’m not like that, mate. Sorry.”

He is genuinely a bit sorry. That surprises him more than it seems to surprise Adam, who is already nodding with something like enthusiasm.

“Yeah, course,” he says. If his voice is a little breathless, Charles ignores it. “Neither am I, obviously. Not a poof or anything. It’s just a bit of fun, you know? Between mates.”

Charles takes a moment to consider. In that moment, his hand closes properly around the zipper of Adam’s jacket. He doesn’t need to think about it too long. The logic tracks for Charles easily enough: it doesn’t mean anything. He likes kissing and there’s someone here to kiss.

“Just between mates, yeah?”

Adam nods again, and, this time, it’s Charles who moves first, closing the space between them and pressing his lips to Adam’s with a single enthusiastic push.

Adam’s mouth opens beneath his, warm and wet and when Adam’s tongue flicks against Charles’ bottom lip, he can’t help pressing himself closer. Adam catches him up, his hands against Charles’s waist and when Charles backs him against the dresser, one of the tedious stacks of tapes topples over with a small crash.

Charles grins into the kiss, Adam’s hand tightens and neither of them bother to break apart to investigate

Chapter Text

Now

“Well,” says Crystal, the moment Clarie shuts the front door behind her. “That was useless.” 

Charles catches the look Edwin shoots him, an outwardly annoyed little frown that hints at something a bit darker beneath. There’s a certain tightness at the corners of his eyes that Charles recognizes from when he gets deep enough into a tedious, days-long research hole that he starts rereading the same paragraph over and over again. 

That’s usually when Charles decides it’s time for both of them to take a break and head to the roof. Edwin always protests and Charles always gives him a look where he does this thing with his eyebrows he knows Edwin can’t resist, and Edwin usually gives in. 

It might be time for the look now, Charles thinks, with a day full of nothing but stale air and blank doll faces to show for their efforts. A day full of hidden photos and the clink of a belt buckle underfoot and the looming weight of something like expectation. Charles doesn’t quite have it in him. 

“Useless how?” Edwin asks. 

“You mean the NHS record keeping or the investigation?” Charles’ attempt at humour falls flat as Crystal and Edwin fix him with twin looks of unimpressed annoyance. They really are scarily similar when it comes right down to it. 

“We found nothing on the dad, no dirt or anything,” Crystal says. “He didn’t seem unstable or unwell in any way that suggested something supernatural. Just old, and everything that comes with it.” 

“Did you speak to any of the staff?” Edwin asks. 

“Yes.” Crystal’s tone hardens. “Obviously we did. I know how to do a basic fucking investigation.” 

“That is not what I was implying.” Edwin’s hands have clasped together, the knuckles of his brown gloves taught with the strength of his grip. “I was merely hoping for a single ounce of progress. In this place that you brought us to, might I add!” 

“Also.” She turns to fix Charles with a little glare. “Everyone talks about how much better your healthcare system is here, but from what I saw today it’s hanging by a literal thread.” 

“I don’t know why you’re complaining to us about that. It was nationalized in 1948, well after my death!” 

Right. Edwin was 30 years into Hell, at that point. About as far away from a hospital as he could get. 

Edwin takes a short, sharp breath through his nose, his knuckles still pressed against each other at his waist. He looks at Charles too, then, just a little bit pleading, beneath the usual careful professionalism. 

Charles decides it’s time to intervene. 

“We didn’t have much luck here either,” he admits. 

“What?” Crystal sounds a little bit crestfallen, the performative annoyance slipping from her tone along with the slight stoop of her shoulders. “You found nothing?” 

“Just a lot of rubbish, mostly,” Charles says. 

“An album of photographs,” Edwin chimes in. 

“A box full of -” He glances at Edwin, who raises an eyebrow ever-so-slightly in response. “Like I said, mostly rubbish.”

“You didn't see anything else like, uh, that dog lamp did you?” She asks, after a slight pause. 

“There was loads of creepy shit, Crystal. You'll have to be more specific.”

“No more canine monstrosities or odd lamps,” Edwin clarifies.

She nods, a little thoughtful. 

“Have you made some sort of deduction?” Edwin asks, a little stiffly. 

It's a bit sweet, honestly, to watch Edwin warm up to someone like this. Charles supposes he's seen it before himself, over the course of the last three decades, but he was so properly in it, just caught up in enjoying Edwin's company day after day, night after night that he never stopped to think about it properly. No more than he ever does.

“No,” Crystal says. “Not really. I was just wondering.” 

Edwin adjusts the lapels of his jacket a little, considering before he speaks. 

“Alright. It appears we need to do more research and perhaps approach this from a different angle. I will be able to access the plans for the house easily enough. Crystal, what can you learn about the clients from your internet?”

Crystal, who is in the process of tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, looks up at him. “For the last time, Edwin, it’s not my internet.” 

“Yeah, mate.” Charles, of course, pays attention to these things. Proper keeping up with the times, he is. “She said it’s basically just a cable at the bottom of the ocean. Didn’t you, Crystal?” 

“What?” Edwin’s voice takes on an edge of alarm. “That sounds highly unstable! Am I given to understand that the entirety of modern society rests on the safety of this…cable?” 

He has a point, Charles thinks. Surely there are a lot of sharks down there, that and whatever else might crawl out of the dark depths; kaijus and krakens and those fish with the weird lights on their heads. He pushes the thought away with a slight shake of his own head, feels his earring ping lightly against his cheek; he doesn’t like imagining himself sinking down into any bodies of water, much less the biggest, scariest one of them all. 

Crystal, meanwhile, throws her arms in the air. “It’s a lot more complicated than that!”  

They look at each other for a moment. Charles cracks a smile first, then Crystal starts giggling, and eventually Edwin lets out a breath that Charles didn’t realize he was holding; his shoulders relax a little beneath the straight lines of his jacket. 

Charles lets himself sit in the rightness of the moment, just a little longer than he should, that warm, shared-smiles, side-stepping the messiness of 100 years of difference to just laugh at the absurdity of things.

“Right,” he says. “Let’s go back to the office first, yeah? We can go over the evidence and make a new plan of attack.” Not that the plan was likely to involve any actual attacking yet, which Charles was still a little put out about. 

It’s always easier and, somehow, a little less daunting, when he can deal with things by swinging a cricket bat at them. Especially when the things in question involve a nice, understandably frazzled woman stuck in her shitty dad’s house with a broken arm. 

It’s familiar enough to put him on edge, which is why he does his best usually not to look at things too closely when they crowd at the edges of his mind with a sound like slow, heavy footsteps overhead. 

“- a good idea, Charles,” Edwin is saying, when he tunes back in. “We are certainly getting nowhere standing on the front path for -” 

His words cut short when an audible scream comes from inside the house, only a little muffled by the thin walls and closed door. 

Charles already has one arm through the door when Edwin catches up to him. 

“Crystal,” Edwin says, distracted. “You wait here.” 

“No way, this is my case! I’m not waiting outside.” 

“How are you going to explain your sudden change in deductive strategy to them, then?” 

“I’ll climb through a window, I don’t know!” 

And while this is probably an important thing to consider, Charles hasn’t been alive for over 50 years and he just heard a scream and he is very much not in the mood to wait for Edwin and Crystal to reach a consensus. 

Inside, the entrance hallway is growing dark with long afternoon shadows. Edwin bumps his shoulder slightly as he passes, and a glance over his shoulder tells him that Edwin has already disappeared up the stairs. Good, Charles thinks. He should go that way himself. The scream can’t have come from anywhere else. But something inside of him is screaming too, crying out for a long-forgotten caution. A heart-in-his-throat, long lost, blood pounding in his veins sort of feeling that his body hasn’t stopped holding onto, no matter how many years pass between life and afterlife. 

Charles looks down the little hall instead, and, almost as if it’s looking back. one of the doors to his left opens so forcefully that the knob crashes into the wall with a loud bang. Charles steels himself against an instinctual flinch. 

He feels, all of a sudden, the way he gets before a fight, buzzing somewhere between excitement and nerves. 

Charles bounces lightly on the balls of his feet. He hefts his backpack further up his shoulder, in easy reach just in case things go south. Then, he walks down the hall to the newly opened door, quickly and quietly as he can. 

He crouches down a little as he draws close, on instinct, more than anything else, and maneuvers himself around the door to peer inside. What he finds is. Well. It’s weird, innit? 

Because Charles might not know much. He’s not the brains of this operation, not by a long shot. But there are a few things he knows very, very well - not including Viv Richards’ batting average or the entire discography of far too many bands, that is. He knows the layout of a council house like the back of his hand, an outer London suburbs one to boot. He knows the short ground floor hallway with the kitchen at the end and a living room opposite the stairs. 

He knows too that the likelihood of this particular house, passed from Claire’s dad down to her, having the exact same renovations as his own parents’, all those miles and years away, is very very slim. 

Charles reaches into the backpack and draws out his cricket bat. 

His feet won’t go when he tells them to, which is right fucking weird, because Charles usually has the opposite problem, where he can’t stop himself from doing anything, once he’s started running headlong into it. He usually has Edwin there to do it for him. 

Beyond the door is a little staircase, not quite long enough to be called one; all it lets him look down into the room from up high, watching. Charles blinks and, for a moment, he can see posters on the walls, corners curling in towards the floor as if pulled down by some invisible magnetic force that makes everything in its presence go to absolute shit. 

He’s not used to seeing it from this angle, at the top of the stairs rather than below. He feels like he’s watching a VHS rewind in slow motion, on the wrong side of things. 

His fingers tighten around the bat’s handle, a compulsive little moment. When he blinks again, the posters are gone, but the room remains, the stairs leading down to a shadowed space below. He can just make out the corner of what looks like a cabinet. No bed or posters or old, useless trophies. Charles isn’t thick enough to see his own bedroom in someone else’s house. He’s not. 

He lefts the bat a little higher and then nearly swings it into the bannister at the sudden clatter of footsteps behind him. 

“Charles? What are you doing?” 

Charles takes a deep breath, does his best to steel his face into something relatively normal before turning back on the top step. 

“Oh, you found a way in. Aces!” 

“Yeah, no thanks to you two,” Crystal mutters. “It would have taken, what, two seconds to unlock the door for me?” 

Charles grimaces slightly and lowers the bat. She does have a point. 

“Sorry,” he says. “Just sounded a bit urgent, is all, and we thought we better - “ 

“Urgent?” Crystal’s beside him, now, and she stands on tip-toe to peer around his arm into the room beyond.Charles has to tamp down on the sudden urge to block her view again. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s down here.”

She’s right. Charles knows, even without investigating further, that this particular staircase, which leads down to its strange little room, tucked away out of sight, has nothing to do with the shout that brought them back inside. Edwin clearly knew it too. 

“Hey,” Crystal’s voice snaps him back into it. “Are you okay?” 

He looks down at her and she’s frowning a little, the way she had at the lighthouse that day; the way she had when she told him that she and Edwin were walking on eggshells around him. It’s a sensation Charles knows well enough to take the words like a slap in the face. Even now, when they’ve sorted things between them. 

So, he nods, flashes her a little smile. 

“Yeah, aces. Just a thought I should check this out. Edwin’s got things covered up there.” 

Well, he assumes, at least. Edwin is more than able to deal with anything thrown their way. And Charles is busy doing…well, he’s staring into an empty room clutching his cricket bat like a bloody lifeline while Crystal frowns up at him with an expression he hates. Like maybe she can see straight through him into the scared, beaten core, right into the hollow place between his ribs that aches for something he can never give it. 

Her hand lands on his arm. 

“It’s fine if you’re not,” she says, slowly. “I know we haven’t really talked about stuff since, you know, everything. But even I have to admit this case is starting to feel a bit…” Familiar , Charles’ brain supplies, unhelpfully. “Weird.” 

Charles shrugs a bit, but he does let the attempt at a smile slip away. He owes Crystal that much, at least. 

“It just, uh, reminded me of something, s’all. Got distracted. Seriously, don’t worry about it.” 

“That doesn’t sound very convincing,” she mutters, and the smile he gives her then is a little more genuine; the amusement is, at least. 

“Let’s go check in upstairs, yeah? This can wait.” 

This , a staircase bridging the gap between hallway and darkness, will wait patiently, as it always has. 

Charles taps his cricket bat against the top step, once, twice, in what he hopes serves as a kind of warning. 

He nudges Crystal with his arm as he moves past, turning them both down the hall. The voices upstairs are subdued now, and there have been no more sounds of panic to distract him. Edwin hasn’t come barreling through the wall to find him either, so everything’s aces. Probably. 

iii. then

Charles lounges against a stranger’s pillow with his head tipped back against a bright orange poster and his braces loose around his waist. The tape has played through to the end of its side and Adam is once again acting as his musical saviour. He crosses the room to flip it and then pushes it back in with a small click. 

He presses play and saunters over to perch on the edge of the bed. 

Adam looks good like this, Charles has no issue admitting, especially now, while his thoughts feel slow and warm and syrupy. While he can count the purple marks he kissed onto Adam’s collarbone only a few songs ago. His hair is messy and his lips are swollen and the thing in Charles’ chest (probably molly, but he doesn’t much care at the moment) glows happily. 

The colours in what he can now make out as a Soft Boys poster swirl above his head and he looks away from the thin frame of Adam’s chest to study them. Orange, yellow, and a small trail of bees, mingled together into something else entirely. It’s strangely mesmerizing, and Charles nearly startles when Adam speaks again.

“I assume you lost.”

“What?” 

“The fight,” he says. “I assume you lost.” 

Adam reaches across the small gulf of space between them and takes Charles’ hand. Well, takes makes it sound like a thing it isn’t, he pulls vaguely at Charles’ wrist until the arm is raised up between them like a strange floppy trophy. The sight of it almost makes Charles giggle until Adam says, 

“You didn’t fight back.” 

“Sure I did.” 

He presses a thumb to the knuckle of Charles’ index finger and Charles has to sit there blinking for a moment until it hits him like a blow upside the head. The skin of his knuckles is smooth, unbruised and all too obvious. 

And oh . He’s got a point there. Charles has never been very good at thinking his excuses all the way through. They just tend to tumble out of him the moment they cross his brain, case in point of what led to the not-really-a-fight in the first place. 

“Not a big deal.” Charles tugs his hand back. “You know how it is.” 

He has no way of knowing if Adam knows about it or anything else. He’s not even sure himself what he’s referring to, but something about the scrutiny makes him squirm. He leans over the side of the bed, ignoring the way the room spins around him at the change in perspective, scoops his polo off the floor and pulls it over his head, tugs up one strap of his braces, then the other. 

Adam is watching him with an unreadably blank look on his face that Charles prefers a lot more than the vague concern a moment before. 

“Look, I should go.” 

“I didn’t mean to, you know -” 

Charles waves off the apology before it can manifest. “It’s aces. Just I left my friends at Queue. I should get back to them.” 

Adam has his own shirt back on now and is pulling on his jacket with jerky motions.

It’s not even much of a lie, in the end. He does need to get back after basically disappearing. He’s not even sure how long it’s been - approximately the length of a Yes album. Charles has never been great with maths. 

“Wait, Charles.” Adam pauses. “It is Charles, yeah? That’s not like, too formal after we’ve just…” 

Charles feels himself break into another small smile. 

“Nah, s’fine. My rugby mates call me Chaz sometimes, but -” He breaks off when Adam makes a face. “Yeah, maybe not setting the right mood here, is it?” 

That doesn’t seem to be what Adam’s getting at though. 

“Rugby?” He asks, a slight tilt to his eyebrows. “Didn’t realize you were such a sports lad.” 

Charles shrugs. “I’ve always been pretty good at it, running and that.” Nevermind that it was one of the only things he seemed to be good at sometimes, and it never hurt to have something in his back pocket when he needed to get into his dad’s good books. It didn’t usually work, but that didn’t stop him from trying. “Besides, it’s fun.” 

It’s Adam’s turn to shrug. 

“I suppose it would be, yeah. I just never really,” his gaze drops to the floor, and Charles takes a few aborted steps around the bed towards him. “Fit in with that crowd, you know? They made it clear that wasn’t the place for people like me a long time ago and I dunno. This scene’s better anyway.” 

Charles comes to a stop right in front of him, and sets both hands on Adam’s shoulders. He squeezes once, then again, until Adam looks up at him. 

“They don’t know what they’re missing, do they?” He says, quietly, a little embarrassed himself by the sincerity of it. And Adam must clock it too, because he raises his eyebrows in a skeptical little expression that’s undercut entirely when he grabs Charles’ collar and pulls him down into a kiss. 

And they end up with Charles between Adam’s legs, crowding him back against the bed, Adam’s arms around his waist. When they break apart, they’re breathing in heavy mirrored pants. 

Charles frees one of his hands to rub the back of his own neck. 

“Look, I really do need to go, but, uh, you don’t want to come with, do you?” And he’s not asking to make the whole evening into a thing it’s not. He has a better, cooler reason buried somewhere in the depths of his fuzzy brain. What Charles certainly isn’t is desperate. For connection. For softness. For someone to notice the lack of bruises on his knuckles. 

He takes a step back and shoves his unbrused hand into his pocket, cocks his head in Adam’s direction: casual, questioning. If the offer catches Adam off guard at all, he doesn’t show it. He merely shrugs and digs into his own pocket. 

“Sure,” he says. “Could go for a fag.” 

Now

Edwin nabs them before they make it all the way up the stairs. He looks pointedly at Crystal, presses a finger to his lips, and, unexpectedly, grabs Charles’ wrist to steer him bodily into the office. The boxes are still in the disarray they left them hours ago. Charles congratulates himself on at least remembering to shove the dolls back into the one at the far corner. 

“What’s going on?” Crystal asks. 

“What about Claire and Annie?” Charles chimes in. He feels a bit guilty about abandoning Edwin to deal with the thing. 

“They are busy cleaning,” Edwin says, nonsensically. “I thought it best to discuss out of earshot.” 

“What do you mean cleaning?” Crystal asks. 

“I understand that the scream was in response to a mirror that shattered off the wall unexpectedly. I made sure they were both unhurt, but Annie was in a,” Edwin paused, a faint blush painting the tops of his cheekbones. “State of undress.” 

Charles coughs a little, to hold back an unexpected snort of laughter. 

Crystal, however, has no such qualms. “Oh my God, Edwin. Was she just in the shower or something?” 

Edwin turns away, and begins to pointedly study the closest bookshelf. 

“I believe so, yes.” 

“Look,” Charles starts, when he’s regained enough composure to talk without bursting out laughing. “Why don’t -” 

Crystal holds up a hand. “Charles, don’t start. I will go check on them and figure out what happened. You two, I don’t know, look around for anything that might have changed when the mirror broke, okay?”

Charles gives her a little two fingered salute. 

“How are you going to explain that you are trespassing in their house?” Edwin asks, from the bookshelf. 

“I don’t know.” Crystal flaps the hand that’s still up in the air between them. “I’ll figure it out.” 

Charles starts to say something in support of the plan, which mirrors most of the plans he’s made in his life and afterlife combined. He more than approves of the ‘figure it out as we go’ strategy, even though he knows Edwin won’t. But before he can get the words out properly, Edwin jumps back as something clatters to the floor from the top shelf. 

“Shit,” Crystal mutters, effectively breaking the tension. “The horrors of falling books.” 

Edwin has crouched down to retrieve the book from the floor, his back ramrod straight, a perfect bend at his hips. Charles blinks a bit, looks away. 

It takes him a moment to clock that Edwin hasn’t said anything. In fact, he hasn’t even moved from the floor. He’s just holding the book in both hands, staring at the faded, olive green cover with a vacant sort of expression, like he’s not seeing anything so immediate. 

The expression isn’t unfamiliar, and it’s not quite the look he used to get in the early days when something startled him. Like one time they heard a baby crying in Hyde Park and Edwin froze up beside him so completely that Charles hadn’t been able to get him to talk again for hours. It’s not that kind of expression, thank God, but it’s similar enough that it makes Charles step towards him. 

He’s probably just thinking about accidentally walking in on a woman in the shower, but it doesn’t hurt to make sure. 

“Anything useful?” Charles prompts. 

There’s a poignant sort of pause. Edwin turns his attention from the book with a motion that looks heavy, as if it’s carrying a real sort of weight, a physical drag on his spectral form. 

“Not particularly.” Edwin straightens up slowly, the book clutched in his hands tightly enough that his knuckles have gone white. Charles takes the opportunity to up beside him, leans a bit closer, casual as he can be. 

“Everything alright, mate?” 

“Yes.” Edwin sniffs. “Obviously.” 

“Just you seemed a little, uh, lost there for a moment.” 

“I was not lost.” 

“Edwin.” Charles isn’t quite sure where he means to go with the thing, except that Edwin’s eyes have gone a little bit wide, dark and deep with that little furrow between his dark brows that means he’s thinking - read: overthinking. 

But it’s the flash of vulnerability that gets him, the faint hint of pleading that crosses Edwin’s face even as he turns away. He’s buttoning up again, pulling himself back from an edge that Charles has spent 30 long years getting him to so much as toe the line of. He reaches out and snags Edwin’s elbow before he can get too far. 

“Do you want to come look at the mirror first?” Crystal asks from the doorway. 

“Just give us a tick, yeah?” 

Charles tries not to feel warmth in his chest at the fact that Edwin hasn’t tugged his arm away yet. 

To her credit, Crystal merely shrugs and disappears into the hall without questioning it. The door closes behind her with a small click. 

“Right.” Edwin does move now, and his arm slides through Charles’ fingers. He closes his hand around air. “What is that book, then?” 

“It’s nothing important, Charles. There was no need to send Crystal away.” 

“I didn’t send her away, yeah? I’m just checking in.” 

“Well there is no need to. I apologize if my…lapse concerned you. I’m fine, and more than capable of continuing the investigation.” 

Charles holds back a sigh with considerable effort. 

“Alright, easy. I didn’t mean it like that.” 

He can tell Edwin’s on edge. The book is clenched tightly in his hands, held almost protectively against his chest. And Charles understands. Really, he does. He keeps imagining the creak of the top step of that bloody staircase beneath his loafers. He hadn’t even been focused enough on his physical form to have footsteps. 

So sure, maybe he’s a little on edge too, because his next words come out harsher than he really means them, “We said we wouldn’t do this anymore, remember?” 

Edwin stiffens. “I am not doing anything.”

“Stop it, mate. Please.”

The line of Edwin’s shoulders is rigid and he’s making a show of staring at the line of books in front of him, unseeing, but maybe Charles sounds more pathetic than he thought, because Edwin sounds more hesitant than angry when he speaks again, “We agreed we would do our best to talk more, yes. But I have told you everything there is to know about this. It is a book. I have read it. I have read a great many books.” 

Charles nods, a little too relieved by the concession than he should be. “I know this isn't really the time for a proper sit down, but you can tell me. You know, if you want to.” 

Edwin turns on his heel, frowning. “What do you want me to tell you?’

“I don't know!” Charles has started pacing, at some point, back and forth between the door and the desk, weaving his way through a trail of boxes. “That's the bloody point. Maybe if I knew I could help. That's what we agreed, innit? That we’d try and do this even when it's rough?” Especially then, maybe. 

He can feel Edwin’s eyes on him even before he turns, and when he does, Charles sees that his hands are down to his sides, one balled into a little fist, the other still clutching onto the book. 

Charles swallows, once. Then,  “I thought I saw my childhood bedroom,” he blurts. 

“What?”

“I didn’t really. Just some scarily similar bad design choices. I only imagined it. It was like, God, I don't know. I was looking down at myself, yeah? It's stupid.” 

Edwin has crossed the room too, as he spoke, and when Charles looks up again, he’s just a few steps away. Close enough that he could reach out and touch, if he wanted. 

“If you noticed something,” Edwin says, slowly. “It might be relevant to the case.”

“Nah.” Charles attempts an off-hand smile. “Nah, nothing like that. It was just my brain mucking shit up like always. Kind of like you and the dolls earlier, just without the actual reasons. No 70 years of torture is it?”

“Charles, I certainly don't think you should compare -”

“Let's leave it, yeah?”

This is another thing they've instilled in the flimsy system. If one of them asks to leave off, they do it. Whoever is the one talking decides when they've had enough. Only sometimes the system wears a bit thin, like earlier with the box of dolls. Sometimes, Charles wants to take Edwin by the shoulders and shake him gently until some tangled thing inside comes loose and he tells Charles properly how to take care of him so things like that stop happening. He'll capture every bloody spider in the Greater London Area and store them in a jar in the farthest corner of his backpack if it means Edwin will stop looking over his shoulder for shadows at the bottom of a spiral staircase. 

Sometimes, it scares him just how much he feels it, that he would do absolutely anything for Edwin and the little crinkles of amusement at the corners of his eyes when he smiles.

“It wasn't a big deal, honestly. You know how I can get.” Edwin does, he supposes, after Port Townsend and everything.

Edwin nods then, frowning slightly. Charles taps the edge of the desk with one fingernail, a dull sound muffled by the piles of paper stacked on top. It occurs to him, vaguely, that Edwin hasn’t actually told him to stop pushing, he’s just skittered a bit on the edge of the thing, nervous and doing his best to protect himself the only way he knows how. 

Charles meets his eyes again, steady. “What about that book, then?” 

“It really is nothing,” Edwin says. “The book is a collection of Catullus’ poetry, published well after my time. It contains a certain one that had only just been discovered, back in my school days. It was rather…scandalous.”

“Mate.” Charles can’t help the spark of amusement in his tone.  “Your Latin poetry was scandalous?”

Edwin gives him another tight nod. 

“Let's have a look.” 

Edwin cocks an eyebrow. “Your Latin is abysmal.” 

“That’s what I have you for isn’t it?” He’s careful to keep the teasing gentle. They haven’t quite stepped out of the raw space yet: that hesitant, awkward fumble through the things that make Edwin’s eyes go vague and Charles’ own dead pulse race in his veins like adrenaline. 

Edwin’s shoulders are still a bit tense, but the look of soft exasperation Charles gets as he sets the book down on the desk is more of a reassurance than anything could be. 

Edwin opens the book carefully, cradling the dusty pages in his long, delicate fingers with the kind of reverence he saves for things like this: books and puzzles and, once, a cursed fountain pen. If he’d still been alive, Charles is pretty sure that watching the process would have made the tips of his ears warm. Maybe it still does. 

“Alright,” Edwin is saying. “Do stop me if you already know any of this.” 

As if Charles would do anything to stop the gentle cadence of Edwin’s voice as he reads. 

“Catullus is a poet. Roman, from the late Republic era. He is most well-known for a series dubbed the ‘Lesbia cycle’. You may have studied him in school?” Edwin pauses here, shoots a questioning look at Charles, who just shrugs and waves for him to continue. “Those never spoke to me much, in all honesty. I didn’t enjoy love poetry back then.” He pauses, flips a page. 

“Catullus has been an integral part of the grammar school canon for, oh, I don’t know exactly how long. But a couple of years before my death a new poem of his was discovered.” 

“What, like, he released a new album?” Charles asks, just to see the way Edwin rolls his eyes in response. 

“Shockingly, no. It was an existing poem, written about by many other Roman authors through the years. It was exceptional because of its content, its language. It defied a sort of censorship, I believe. It came back into the cultural consciousness, in England, at least, around 1914.” 

“Did you read it in school then?” 

Edwin scoffs. “No. Nothing like that. I’m not sure it was the kind of thing St Hilarion’s would have wanted its students exposed to. My father certainly would not have approved. I only heard of it through rumours and the like. I did read it, eventually.” 

He’s talking in circles around the thing, Charles can tell. Fitting together background details to form half of a picture that Charles isn’t sure he’s going to like the shape of. 

He decides it’s best to push directly to the point. “Right. So, what’s the poem?” 

“Carmen 16.” Edwin has the page open now. He points towards it. “I wouldn’t bother reading it. As I said, it was rather scandalous at the time. It provided language for…” there’s a hesitation in his words, uncharacteristic when it comes to Latin and Linguistics and the intricacies of things that make Charles’ head spin to consider. 

“It provided Latin words for acts committed.” A deliberate recalculating, “Acts done between men. It’s a rather petty piece, all things considered, a rebuttal to some of his critics. Very crude. It was also an awakening to certain possibilities, written of in such candour. There was no gross indecency at that time, I suppose, it was simply another use for language.” 

There’s a moment of silence when he stops talking. Edwin fingers the pages of the book, a soft crinkling that draws Charles’ attention back to the thing at hand. 

“Hey,” he says, softly, risks a hand on Edwin’s elbow, and, when he doesn’t draw away, moves his palm to rest between Edwin’s shoulder blades. “That’s a lot, mate. Was it a good poem, at least?” 

Edwin shrugs. The brown wool of his coat moves a little beneath Charles’ fingers. 

“I couldn’t say, honestly. I hadn’t put much thought to it, til now. I’m not  even sure why this particular book reminded me so strongly. It couldn’t have been published in my lifetime. Actually…” Edwin takes a moment to flick the pages back, runs a finger down the one he lands on until he finds what he’s looking for. “There. Published in 1994, well after my time. I can’t say why it affected me like this.” His free hand curls into a little fist on the desk beside the book. “I just can’t stop…remembering.” 

Charles fingers flex in the back of Edwin’s coat, automatic, like a reflex. If Edwin notices, he has the good grace not to say anything. 

“That’s what it was like!” He says, with all the excitement of sudden realisation, and Edwin glances over at him, likely startled by the change in tone. “With the staircase, mate. It was so real for a moment, I just couldn’t do anything but bloody stand there and think. And you know I hate thinking.” 

“You really are clever, Charles. When you allow yourself to notice it.” Edwin’s tone has gone even quieter than before, slightly breathy around the edges. 

And for a good few ticks, all Charles can do is blink, caught off-guard, before pushing himself a little closer against Edwin’s side. 

“And I do think you’ve just found our first lead,” Edwin continues. He closes the book with a satisfying thump. “It’s quite a lot to be a coincidence.” 

“Well,” Charles has unclenched his fingers, and now rubs an absent little circle on Edwin’s back. “There’s one way to find out for sure.” 

“Which is?” Edwin asks, suspicion creeping into the corners of his words. 

“Get Crystal to read it.” 

Immediately, Edwin backpedals. “Not this one. She can do the staircase or the,” he glances back over his shoulder, in the direction of the box of dolls. 

“Let’s just ask her first, yeah?” 

He can see Edwin warring with himself over it. 

“Fine.” 

Charles shoots him a grin before grabbing onto him again and he drags them both straight through the floor into the living room below