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The iron rebar ran through Edwin’s abdomen and embedded itself into the wall behind him with a sickening thud. The pain was all-encompassing and Edwin knew that it would be enough to discorporate a lesser ghost. For Edwin it wasn’t nearly enough to do that, but it did hurt something horrible. An agonizing kind of burn that went all the way through him and reminded him of being torn in two—a comparison he could unfortunately make with confidence.
The rebar pinned him to the steel wall of the room, making it impossible for Edwin to phase through the wall or rebar and effectively pinning him there as nothing else quite had since his escape from Edith Finch.
The pain was acute, but Edwin forced himself to breathe and focus on what else was happening. Crystal was unconscious, having been flung against the far wall earlier in the fight. It was mildly worrying that she hadn’t yet stirred, but neither boy had yet had time to check on her. Charles had been flung away at the same time, careening into a bookshelf, knocking it over and writhing when it turned out to be made of iron. This whole bloody box of a building seemed to be made of iron or steel. Perhaps they ought to have taken more time for reconnaissance before rushing in.
Edwin had managed to grab ahold of a beam during the blast, and thus had stayed close to the witch who was their assailant. The beam smarted against his hands, but the thick layer of paint made it at least manageable enough for Edwin to get his feet back under him and begin chanting the binding charm. If he’d been able to finish it, perhaps they’d actually be able to sit down and have a chat with this witch. See if she could be reasoned with at the very least.
The rebar she’d driven through his abdomen had rather cut off that particular plan.
Edwin gasped against the pain that threatened to overtake his other senses. The witch smirked and reached for another piece of rebar front he pile leaned up against the wall.
One piece of rebar was bad enough, Edwin wasn’t at all sure that he could withstand two. Of course he could. He must.
Then Charles charged the Witch with his cricket bat.
Edwin could see how it would play out before it did. Charles yelled as he charged, cricket bat wound up over one shoulder. The Witch was already turning toward the sound, the rebar extended in front of her. Charles would impale himself from his momentum, if the witch didn’t beat him to it.
Edwin didn’t have time to think. He gripped the rebar disappearing into his body and pulled with all his strength. The pain was very nearly blinding. The ribs of the rebar felt like the serrated edges of a knife where they dragged against his insides and bit into his hands. White edged into his peripheral vision.
The rebar came free and Edwin charged forward, knocking the witch out of Charles’ way and driving the rebar straight ahead. Straight ahead happened to be right through the woman’s stomach.
There was less resistance than Edwin might have expected. Entering in through one side under her ribs and coming out on the other, presumably perforating quite a few of her internal organs. She bellowed in pain. The rebar stuck in the other side of the corrugated iron room’s wall, pinned as securely as Edwin had been, albeit at a different angle. The blood that seeped out of the entrance and exit wounds looked maroon-black in the dim lighting. Almost immediately it began to drip down the wall and her body, pooling around her feet.
Edwin felt his chest heaving despite not actually needing to breathe. Distantly, he felt Charles’ hand rest on his shoulder. Across the room, a dazed Crystal rolled over to stare at the gory tableau.
The witch seemed to be beyond words and reason. She clawed at the pole inside her, but couldn’t seem to grip it well enough to rip it free of the wall as Edwin had.
“Time to go,” Charles said suddenly, taking Edwin by the elbow and towing him toward the door.
Charles hooked one arm beneath Crystal’s armpits and half-carried her out the door (that she opened as it was also solid steel). The three of them limped away from the structure (had it once been a shipping container?) and toward the place where Crystal had left her rented vehicle. Edwin couldn’t seem to move his hand from where it was clutched over his middle. He could feel the wound smarting as it struggled to close. Perhaps some iron filings had gotten stuck inside him?
Charles got behind the wheel even though they had previously established that a car moving by itself was bound to garner unwanted attention and that Charles was not an overly accomplished driver. Crystal, however, looked in no shape to drive and collapsed gratefully into the passenger seat. Edwin (who did not know how to drive an automobile, nor did he wish to learn, thank you very much) lay down in the back, tucking his knees up to his chest and trying desperately to stay lucid.
“Should I call 999?” Crystal asked once they’d gotten a fair distance away.
Neither Charles nor Edwin answered. Edwin didn’t much like the idea of killing someone. Then again, the witch had been more than willing to end Edwin’s existence with little to no provocation. Charles’ too, for that matter. Then again, the witch’s death didn’t necessarily eliminate her as a threat if she chose to linger as a ghost.
Nobody attempted to call. When they got onto a major roadway, Charles pulled a disguise from his backpack and put on the glasses so that it did not appear that an unmanned vehicle was careening down the highway, even if it did have trouble staying in the lanes. They were able to reach Crystal’s hotel without incident roughly half an hour later. If the witch had become a ghost, she hadn’t been able to track them right away. Edwin’s abdomen was still smarting and while Crystal prepared for bed, Edwin began the agonizing process of rooting around inside himself for bits of iron.
There were only three, which he dropped into the waste paper basket unceremoniously. Charles hovered nearby, brandishing a set of pure copper tweezers they’d acquired a few years back. They were hard to use if you couldn’t see the iron in question, but Edwin appreciated the thought.
When it was done, Edwin just lay down. He vaguely hoped that he wasn’t dirting Crystal’s bed, but quite frankly, he didn’t think she’d mind overly much. He felt exhausted. A bone-deep type of exhaustion that he had grown accustomed to in Hell, but was unwelcome and unprecedented in his existence as a ghost.
“Edwin?” Charles asked at last.
“Hmm?” Edwin answered.
He’d closed his eyes at some point. When had he done that? He forced them open again and turned his head to the side to face Charles, who was kneeling by the bedside.
“Thank you,” Charles said at last, after an unusual length of hesitation.
“What for?” Edwin asked, tempted to let his eyes droop shut again, but sensing that there was more that Charles wished to say.
“That witch,” Charles began, “If she’d skewered me, I don’t— I don’t know if I would have made it. I don’t know how you even did that, Edwin. Not just staying in one piece, but ripping it out again. I—”
Then Charles did something truly alarming. He buried his face in Edwin’s shoulder and started crying. Not angry tears either, but loud, heart wrenching sobs against Edwin’s coat.
Edwin still didn’t have enough energy to really move as much as the situation demanded, but he whimpered audibly and stretched out his arms.
Charles apparently took that as the invitation it was and crawled up onto the bed beside Edwin. Edwin stayed on his back, one arm wrapped around Charles’ shoulders and the other resting lightly where his own abdomen still felt tender. Charles curled up like a single parentheses, head pillowed on Edwin’s shoulder and knees curled up to bump against Edwin’s hip. Charles’ hands gripped at Edwin’s jacket as if he might float away otherwise.
They were quiet for a while like that. Just listening to the ambient sounds of the hotel, the buzz of the air conditioning system, the falling water from Crystal’s shower and the occasional sniffle from Charles.
“I’m sorry,” Charles said thickly.
“Whatever for?”
“You’re the one who’s hurting, and I’m making it all about me,” Charles said, attempting to put a little laugh into the sentence and failing miserably.
Edwin hummed, considering the words and ultimately disagreeing with them.
“It was a… frightening series of events. I think I’m simply too exhausted to truly process them at the moment. Fear is a reasonable reaction to the circumstances, not an inherent weakness.”
Edwin had taken a long time to realize that. He wondered if Charles had fully accepted that fact yet.
“Besides, this is nice,” he continued. “It’s good to be able to feel you near while also being able to rest.”
Only then did it occur to Edwin that their position was an exceedingly intimate one and might be making Charles uncomfortable.
“Though you needn't stay on my account,” Edwin added quickly.
There. Good. That covered his bases and didn’t require Edwin to actually pull away. Or move. He really didn’t want to move.
“I like this too,” Charles said quietly.
One of Charles’ hands curled a little more securely into Edwin’s jacket. Edwin let his eyes droop closed again and just enjoyed the closeness.
“I’ve actually been thinking…” Charles continued, then trailed off.
“Always a good practice,” Edwin prompted.
Charles snorted out a kind of half-laugh. That was good. Edwin loved it when Charled laughed. It meant that he was happy. Usually. Edwin didn’t know anyone other than Charles and Crystal who had sad laughs, but Edwin had become familiar with those too.
“About the stuff you said when we were running out of Hell.”
Under any other circumstances, Edwin would have tensed. Right now, he simply didn’t have the energy. He felt his heart sink regardless. They were so comfortable just now. He selfishly wished that Charles had waited to clarify the platonic nature of their partnership until morning.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever known what being in love looks like,” Charles kept going and Edwin kept listening, even if he didn’t open his eyes. “If my parents were in love it was a pretty fucked up form of love. My friends and I had only really had crushes and weird little obsessions, nothing like real love love.”
Perhaps that was true. Would Charles classify Edwin’s feeling as a “crush?” It didn't feel like a crush. Not the way Charles had described them. Edwin’s love for Charles felt as deep as the sea, intertwined with the very core of him.
“I think that’s why I didn’t know,” Charles continued. “I didn’t know what the feelings I have about you were. They were just the-feelings-I-have-for-Edwin, you know? It’s like you're the other half of me that I never knew I was missing.”
Edwin nodded. Yes. That was exactly it.
“Plato tells of a Greek myth that humans were originally made with four arms, four legs, two heads, etcetera,” Edwin explained, eyes still closed. “Zeus punished mankind for daring to question him by splitting us in half so that we are doomed to wander the earth forever searching for our other half.”
“Do you think we’re like that?” Charles asked.
Edwin felt like he might crack in two all of the sudden. Did he think that they were soulmates? Did he even believe in such a thing? If he did, would he be able to admit aloud that he felt like Charles had been cleaved from his very flesh and that only together were they whole once more?
“It’s just a story, Charles,” he said and felt the other boy sort of deflate against his shoulder. “I think that humans are fully whole individuals. But cannot deny that I never felt quite so in life. It is only once I met you in that attic that I began to feel like… like I could be myself. And spending time with you… There is nothing in the world that I value more than time spent with you.”
“I think that’s love, Edwin,” Charles said quietly.
“Yes,” Edwin agreed. “I rather think it is.”
He kept his eyes closed, somehow not brave enough to inspect Charles’ expression just now.
“But I suppose you already know how I feel,” Edwin said with a self-deprecating smile.
Edwin felt a feather-light touch to his jaw and let it turn his face toward Charles’. Edwin opened his eyes and was surprised to find them watery and stinging. Charles was looking at him intently. Edwin couldn’t interpret it, but he also couldn’t seem to look away.
Slowly, Charles stretched his neck upwards and tilted his nose to the side so that he could gently bump their lips together.
Logically, Edwin knew that he didn’t have saliva, but he found himself swallowing anyway.
Charles shifted up a bit so that they were nose to nose. Then he leaned in again and kissed Edwin again. His lips were surprisingly plush and soft. Edwin hadn’t really had time to think much when Monty kissed him. It had all been so quick and unexpected. This kiss, in contrast felt like the slow drip of honey running steaks of golden sunlight through his veins. He thought that if he wasn’t so exhausted, he might be reacting more now. But just now, everything felt perfect. Charles was a warm weight against his side and his lips were flashes of heat and pressure that lit his mind and body up with little sparks of pleasure. Edwin remembered the first time that he’d bought a chocolate bar with his pocket money and savored the treat in a park beneath the wide green leaves of an old tree. Pleasure and contentment had settled in his breast in a similar way to this.
“I’m in love with you, Edwin Payne,” Charles whispered against Edwin’s lips.
Later, Edwin would feel the full implications of those words. Later he would grasp Charles and cling to him like a limpet. Later he would lecture Charles on timing and Charles would roll his eyes and point out the hypocrisy of Edwin’s objections.
But for now, Edwin just rolled onto his side and wrapped his arms around Charles. For tonight, they simply held each other and kissed.