Work Text:
1991
Christmas is coming up. Charles is beginning to think he might not be entirely happy about the whole being dead thing.
He can’t talk to Edwin about it. That sends a strange feeling swooping through Charles’ non-existent stomach, because he’s spent the last two years yammering on at Edwin non-stop about basically everything that goes through his mind, with no need to stop for sleep or even breath. But he can’t, because he knows if he so much as hints that he’s unhappy, Edwin’s eyes will get all sad and worried, and he’ll start sort of gently suggesting that maybe Charles ought to think about going along with Death, the next time they run into Her, same as he does whenever Charles is a bit too impulsive on a case and gets himself banged up. And he especially can’t talk to Edwin about it now, when their last client was dragged to Hell screaming, and Edwin’s been sort of quiet and distant ever since.
There’s this taunt look on his face that’s less frightened and more remembering, and it gets under Charles’ skin, the fact that Edwin knows exactly what that red light means. That Edwin can be a bit awkward around people, sometimes, because all the social norms have changed now, haven’t they, and as far as Charles can tell he spent seven bloody decades without a single soul to talk to. Whenever Charles thinks about it too much, he sort of wishes he could grow an extra set of arms, so he could hold Edwin tight and hit something very hard with his cricket bat simultaneously. It’s even worse when Death comes, maybe. When Edwin explains to their client that it’s all right, that they’re going to a wonderful place designed just for them, and he’s— Edwin’s sort of wonderful, in those moments, calm and clear and never patronising. And then they’ll duck round a corner, or something, and Charles will look at Edwin’s face, bathed in blue, and there’s always something ever so slightly brittle about his expression.
So of course Charles can’t go. He doesn’t want any part in an afterlife that won’t have Edwin. And he doesn’t want to leave Edwin alone, either, not when Edwin does seem to like having him around at least a bit and Charles can fend off anything that comes at him with a cricket bat. It’s their second Christmas together— third, really, but the first one had been so soon after Charles’ death that they’d missed it, too caught up in running round the grounds of St. Hil’s, trying to get their ghostly bodies to interact with the sudden fall of snow. Edwin had looked sort of put out about that, when they’d finally caught a train to London and realised what the date was, but, well. They’ve got infinite Christmases together to look forward to, haven’t they? When you don’t sleep or eat or any of the rest of it, there’s a lot of— time. And mostly they keep busy, and it’s great.
They’ve got the new agency, which is brills. They’re decorating the office, too, slowly but surely finding bits and pieces to fill it up. It’s nice helping people, actually making a difference. Each case is different, and exciting, and though Charles is no match for Edwin and his books, he’s shaping up to be a half decent detective. All the facts of the case coalesce in his head, the way that schoolwork had always refused to. He likes the downtime between cases, too. It’s not a patch on reading to someone to keep them happy while they die, obviously, but Charles quite likes catching Edwin up on all the stuff he’d missed since 1916. He gives him some probably wildly inaccurate history lessons, arms waving, and Edwin never laughs at him, even when Charles himself is pretty sure he’s talking bollocks. He just watches intently, brow furrowed and green eyes very bright. If anything snags Edwin’s interest he’ll normally nab a book from the library to follow up on it, and then ask Charles, all sincere, as if Charles might actually know any worthwhile answers.
And Edwin’s missed all of Agatha Christie, hasn’t he, so they’re working through those together. Or sometimes they’ll huddle together and flick through the detective comics that Charles had liked, growing up. And they play Cluedo, because Charles likes watching Edwin be all detective-y with none of the stakes or tension of a real case. He teaches Edwin every two-person card game he can think of, and Edwin teaches him chess. Scrabble’s slightly less successful, mainly because whenever Edwin starts losing he suddenly decides that words in, like, medieval Welsh are acceptable, or he’ll start using Edwardian slang Charles is always half-convinced he’s making up. But the resulting arguments are always so stupid that they’re their own sort of fun, no heat behind them.
So it’s aces, really. Definitely better than whatever Edwin-less afterlife Death could come up with. Even if Charles’ last lot of friends hadn’t ended up murdering him, Edwin would still be the best friend he’s ever had.
It’s just.
It’s not as though Christmas had ever been a particularly nice time in the Rowland household. Charles’s dad would drink too much, and his mum would bury herself in the kitchen, and Charles would normally muck things up one way or the other. He’d always been terrible at buying presents for his dad. But he thinks about his mum putting the same shitty baubles on the tree as every year, scratched and dented with age, and he thinks about the smallness of it all, the house with just his mum and dad in it, and that gives him this strange lurching feeling. He’d been out of the house a lot, of course. Off at boarding school or making a concerted effort to sneak off to gigs and parties. But Christmas was the one time of year when he’d always be home, like clockwork. Nothing else to do, was there?
And he’d always liked the end of term, how things started to wind down before the holidays. It’d always been a decent excuse to doss around. Christmas parties were good, a santa hat jammed jauntily on his curls and supermarket mulled wine spiked with vodka and terrible pick-up lines about mistletoe. The hungover scolding from the headmaster the next day, which Charles always found difficult to take up very seriously right up to the point where he’d say anything about telling their parents. Charles thinks about his mates— his murderers— carrying on same as before, not even registering his absence, and it makes the lurching feeling worse. And next year— well, there’d be no Christmas party at St. Hil’s next year, or not one involving his old mates, anyway, because they’d be off to uni. All grown up.
And Charles would still be 16, and still be dead.
Edwin is— well, he’s a bit miffed about the whole being sent to Hell for seven decades thing, which is fair, because it makes Charles go absolutely apoplectic whenever he thinks about it. He’s sarcastic, and he can deliver a cutting remark like nobody’s business, and he’s got the art of throwing a hissy fit about minor inconveniences down to a T. But when it comes to the big stuff, Edwin doesn’t really seem to dwell on it all that much. Gets a bit panicky sometimes, maybe, but mostly he just— gets on with things. Puts on a stiff upper lip.
And, well, the seven decades in Hell thing does tend to make all Charles’ problems look a bit small, in comparison.
So he doesn’t say anything. At least not at first.
They go walking to see the Christmas lights at Covent Garden. Edwin gets sort of enraptured by the electric spectacle of it all, and Charles likes that it’s easy to forget, in the bustle of the crowd, that no-one can see them. He keeps himself firmly corporeal, and the odd jostle against his arm might just as well be Londoners being Londoners. The heaving mass of people in the city centre, the last-minute shopping— it’s almost the polar opposite of the stifling family Christmases Charles used to have.
So, as Edwin clasps his arms behind his back and looks up at an improbably large Christmas tree, there’s really no good reason that this should be the moment Charles finally blurts out:
“D’you ever wonder— I mean, do you ever think about what it might’ve been like? If you hadn’t died?”
Edwin wheels round to face him.
“I— can’t say that I’ve given the matter much thought, really,” he says, blinking very hard even though he doesn’t need to, which is about as close as Edwin ever gets to looking rattled. “All things considered, I don’t think it would’ve changed much. I imagine I probably would have died in the trenches. I can’t think I’d have made a very good soldier.”
He gives Charles a twitchy, tight-lipped little smile, and Charles awkwardly ducks his head and kicks at the pavement. Perks of being dead— unscuffable shoes.
“Oh,” he says. “Well, that’s miserable.”
Edwin makes a little humming noise in the back of his throat. Charles lifts his head again.
“But if you had, though,” he says. “Lived through the war.”
Edwin stares at him intently.
“Charles,“ he says, slowly and carefully. “Do you think about it often? About if you’d lived?”
“Um,” says Charles, self-conscious all of a sudden. “Well, I do a bit. Sometimes.”
Edwin’s face begins to take on a familiar sort of nervous slant, and Charles could kick himself for bringing the whole thing up in the first place. He gears himself up for their approximately three millionth argument about him trotting off to his afterlife like a good boy, and folds his arms across his chest.
Edwin’s face crumples.
“Charles,” he says, “I am so desperately sorry.”
“What?” says Charles, blindsided. Edwin looks miserable. The crowded street suddenly feels much too exposed, and Charles sort of wants to bundle him into the nearest mirror and leg it back to the office. He wonders if the shiny baubles on the tree would do it.
Edwin wrings his gloved hands together.
“I’ve been too much of a coward to bring it up, I must admit. But I knew it must have occurred to you, and— well, I still don’t know how your modern ambulances work, to be perfectly honest, but I could have caught someone’s attention, or dragged them up there, or—”
“Mate, what on earth are you on about?”
“I should have saved you, that night in the attic,” Edwin says. “I at least ought to have tried. Instead I just sat there, for hours, and then I deprived you of your afterlife, too, and—”
“Hang on,” Charles says. “Me dying isn’t your fault, is it? You didn’t shove me in that lake. Or throw those rocks at me.”
“But I didn’t do a bloody thing to prevent it, either,” says Edwin, and Charles shoots him a sideways glance. He must be really upset, if he’s resorting to profanity.
“I doubt you could have,” Charles says. “I could see you, couldn’t I, so I must’ve already been pretty far along. And I liked that you stayed with me. Kept me calm.”
“Oh,” Edwin says, slightly shakily. “Well. If you’re sure.”
“Course I’m sure,” Charles says, giving Edwin an awkward pat on the shoulder. “And you’re not depriving me of anything. Don’t want to go to my afterlife, do I?”
“But you are unhappy,” Edwin says softly. “Particularly in the last few days, I’ve noticed, I— it wouldn’t be the same as if you’d never died, and I am sorry about that, but please don’t feel obligated to stay on my behalf. I wouldn’t mind.” He looks up at Charles for that last part, eyes steely and determined.
Right. Charles kicks at the pavement again, feeling a bit like a toddler throwing a strop. He’s pretty sure Edwin’s lying, because he’s spent just over two years watching Edwin’s every facial expression non-stop, but it still stings a bit.
“But I like it here, with you,” he says. ”I mean, you can tell me to bugger off, if you’re sick of me.”
He lets that hang, just for a second. Just in case.
“I don’t want you to bugger off,” Edwin says, short and clipped. It sounds out of place in his posh accent, and that gets a small smile out of Charles.
“Well, then,” he says. “I want to stay. Honest.”
They stand in silence for a moment.
“If you’d died in the war,” Charles says, “you wouldn’t have gone to Hell.”
Edwin goes very still.
“I suppose,” he says quietly.
“It’s not that things could be better. It’s just— it’s not fair, is it?”
He feels very young, suddenly. Frozen at sixteen.
“No,” Edwin says. “I suppose it isn’t.”
Edwin goes back to staring at the tree for a bit. He doesn’t look as into it as he had before, which Charles feels a bit bad about.
“It might bring you— peace,” Edwin says, not looking at Charles, because he’s a stubborn bloody bastard like that.
“If I’m being honest, mate,” Charles says, a bit short, “I think peace or Heaven or whatever sounds dead boring. And if they don’t have the sense to let you in, then I doubt it’s all it’s cracked up to be, anyway. Just drop it, all right?”
Edwin inclines his head, but doesn’t speak. They walk a bit further down the street.
“I was very lonely,” Edwin says eventually. “All of my life. Most of my death, too. And if I’d lived— I wouldn’t have gone to Hell, but I do think I would have stayed lonely.” He fidgets with his gloves. “I know it’s different for you— you’re so outgoing, and so charming, and I—”
“Not that charming,” Charles says wryly. “Last lot of friends killed me, remember?” He sighs. “I think that’s the problem, maybe. I know my life was a bit naff, but I do still sort of wish I’d gotten to live it.”
Edwin gives an assenting little hum. He’s still sort of got his pinched afterlife-pitch face on, though, so Charles quickly tacks on:
“But none of that’s your fault, is it, on account of how you didn’t murder me, and ‘cause I’m having a wonderful time with you, aren’t I? It’s all just—”
“Unfair,” Edwin finishes. “Quite.”
Charles leans over and jostles Edwin’s shoulder gently.
“You’re my best mate, you know. I’m dead chuffed I met you. And this is the best death I could’ve asked for.”
Edwin turns to face him, eyes wide, and backlit by the glow of the Christmas lights he really does look sort of beautiful.
“You are the dearest friend I’ve ever had,” he says, haltingly. “And I am— happier than I ever thought possible.”
There’s a lump in Charles’s throat.
“Aw, mate,” he gets out, and then doesn’t quite know what else to say, so he flings his arms around Edwin instead, halting them in the middle of the street. Edwin doesn’t even tense up, like he did in the early days, and after a moment he tentatively moves his hands to rest them on Charles’ back. Charles just pulls him in closer.
“This is the happiest I’ve ever been, too” he says into Edwin’s shoulder.
And it really is. And somewhere, in some horrible hollow part of him, that fact makes him quietly miserable. But as long as he holds Edwin a bit tighter, he can almost sort of put that to one side.
By next Christmas, he’s sure he’ll have gotten a handle on it.