Work Text:
If confession leads to something real / It's not a moment in time for the way I feel
From Charles Rowland Untitled EP 2025
─────
Flight announcements are a background hubbub of white noise, and Charles feels a headache brewing between his eyebrows.
Edwin, it looks like, is already there. He sits weary beside Charles, hunched into the telling posture of migraine, fingers digging into his temples. Crystal’s foot taps to the beat of whatever is blasting through her large purple headphones, all to drown out Mariah’s All I Want For Christmas Is You playing overhead. Niko, in her own right, is a textbook narration of anxiety.
Together, the four paint an eccentric landscape, dressed in baggy sweats and hoods pulled low over their heads to not be recognised. Charles and Crystal, at least. Niko is free game, but Edwin is dancing on thin ice with his face out in the open.
Edwin’s internet popularity (holding steady) is starting to make Charles go a little funny in the head. Right now, he wants to crawl into Edwin’s lap, snap a sleep mask over his eyes and growl at anyone who looks for too long.
Perhaps the most embarrassing; he wants to reach across the armrest and align his palm with Edwin’s, feel the warmth of his skin, and lace their fingers together. Maybe tug Edwin’s hand over to press his knuckles against Charles’ lips, just a little.
This problem with his manager being White Boy of The Month (or, more so, the problem with being somewhat involved with said manager who is White Boy of The Month) is the recently developed phenomenon where fans who approach Charles on the street will also request Edwin be included in the photo, should they happen to be out together.
Which, incidentally, is often.
It started the day Charles dragged Edwin into the group photo. A thrill curled hot in his belly over the heated glare Edwin immediately shot at him, and he couldn’t resist. The two of them flushed and sweaty from a run, Edwin’s baggy shirt sticking to Charles’ thin frame, Charles beaming smile and Edwin’s begrudgingly stiff grin – it is immortalised forever on the internet.
It is beginning to cause traction.
He wants to google about it. Crystal strongly encourages him not to google about it, but Charles knows it will creep up on him eventually. That he’s managed to evade anything on the topic for this long is an achievement in and of itself. Fans can be funny like that. After all, he and Crystal still dodge relationship allegations on the daily, and he knows bouncing from one label to the other, joint metaphorically at the hip, is not helping.
An airport announcer interrupts Charles’ runaway thoughts and Mariah’s ear splitting whistle notes:
“Good evening passengers. This is the pre-boarding announcement for flight 89B to Tokyo. We are now inviting passengers with small children, and any passengers requiring special assistance. Please have your boarding pass and identification ready. Regular boarding will begin in approximately ten minutes time. Thank you.”
“Oh my gosh!” Niko clutches the handle of her suitcase and turns a bit green. Crystal pulls one large headphone away from her ear. “That’s us!”
By complete happenstance, the four of them, split into duos with Crystal and Niko jetting off to Tokyo and Charles and Edwin flying to London, have flights leaving within an hour of each other. Charles aches with jealousy over the girls’ direct flight. He and Edwin have a one hour layover in Dublin – an abysmal interim breaking up the twelve hours Charles has to exist beside Edwin in a metal tube, not allowed to touch him.
The first class seating arrangement Edwin insisted on will give him some space to kind of maintain a clear head. Finger and toes crossed, of course.
Crystal slaps her knees, rising out of the chair. “Well, boys. It’s been real,” she says. Niko turns greener, and Edwin makes a pained noise, rubbing his temples.
As Niko clings to Edwin and demands he text her every day and send approximately five hundred photos of France, Crystal does to same with Charles. Or is it Charles clinging to her? Details.
“Make good choices,” Crystal says.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Charles returns.
Crystal squeezes him, rocking a little. “Don’t join the mile high club. Or do. I don’t care, just don’t tell me about it.”
Charles’ face burns, and he casts a panicked glance at Edwin. “Crystal—!”
“Oh, relax,” she says, “Mr Unity can’t hear us.”
Sure enough, Niko is still anxiously blubbering into Edwin’s coat, while he presses his cheek to her silky hair and smiles fondly. Charles sighs. Crystal, of course, knows about him and Edwin. Charles has never been able to keep a secret from her and harbours no delusions that he ever will.
The problem lies in Edwin having no idea that Crystal knows about him and Edwin. Charles should tell him, but a selfish part of him fears that Edwin will call it all off the moment he finds out. Charles trusts Crystal with every fibre of his being to keep her knowledge of their thing to herself, and so Charles keeps quiet for now.
Niko and Edwin separate upon the boarding announcement for Charles and Edwin’s flight, and Crystal peeks over Charles’ shoulder and smirks.
“Your man’s waiting for you.”
Charles begins, “Can you please—he’s not—” cut off by Niko launching herself at him, her red puffer-sleeved arms squeezing him tight. They finish saying their goodbyes, Edwin and Crystal exchanging a satirically formal handshake and Niko clinging to Charles much the same as Edwin, demanding photos of his cousin’s home in Dover as well. Finally, the group splits in two, Mariah serenating them on the way to their respective gates.
⊹
Charles learns two things quickly.
The first is that it really does not matter if he is cramped in economy or lusciously splayed out in first class, Charles cannot sleep on a plane.
The second is Edwin does not like flying.
The cabin is dark, and Charles curls into the plush leather seat with headphones and the glow of the flight map to keep him company. Expected turbulence the stewards announced before take-off. Windy conditions make for a bumpy ride. Charles doesn’t mind much. If he were able to sleep, the constant bumps and jostling of the airplane might have made for a restless, irritated slumber, but he isn’t frightened. Their cabins are arranged into a pseudo-suite, fitting two seats in one area, able to be pulled out for sleeping. Charles slumped into the window seat whereas Edwin converted his into a bed almost immediately. This is where he has remained since; a tight ball facing away from Charles, blankets pulled up to his ears.
Charles’ mind flashes back to Edwin pumping two aspirins and draining half a water bottle with a pinched expression. It followed him through boarding and into the current balled-up state, and now. Eventually, over the rumble of turbulence and Kurt Cobain’s voice in Charles’ ears, the tight ball that is Edwin Payne makes a sound.
“Mate?” Charles whispers into the darkness of the cabin. When Edwin stills but does not answer, Charles reaches across to jostle his shoulder. “Edwin. What’s wrong?”
Edwin sits up and turns in his seat, blankets pulled tight around his shoulders. He does not look at Charles, but shoots a particularly severe glare at the flight map. They are barely four hours into their journey.
“Are you feeling ill?”
Edwin shakes his head. The plane rattles harder than before. Edwin makes the noise once again, eyes squeezing tight, and Charles understands.
Gently, he says, “Don’t like planes, do you?”
“Humans are not meant to exist more than a hundred metres off the ground,” Edwin says in a rushed, furious grumble. “It’s preposterous.”
“Tell that to the blokes up in the space station, yeah?”
“Well. That is why they are astronauts and I’m a fucking music manager,” Edwin spits.
“That you are, mate,” Charles says, “And a bloody great one, too.”
Edwin lets the bait sink. Charles sighs.
“Can I do anything to help? I can distract you.” Edwin’s gaze finally breaks away from the screen to issue Charles with a dubious side eye, and Charles flushes. Crystal’s words about mile high clubs ring in his ears. “No. Didn’t mean like that, I just … I can’t sleep anyway, so if you want we can fuck around. Again, not like that. I’ve still got Clue downloaded on my phone! Or you can borrow a headphone. We can watch stupid shit. Whatever you want, Edwin.”
Edwin does not answer, nor does he make any attempt to move, and Charles is about to give up and let him be when shadowy movement to the left startles him, and he glances up to find Edwin standing over him with his blanket. Charles stares, dumbfounded, until his brain kicks into gear.
Shuffling to make room, Edwin crawls into the bed beside him.
In a small voice, Edwin asks, “Is this alright?”
He is so soft and sweet in Charles’ arms, humming into his chest, his arm encircling his waist. His cologne holds notes of citrus and bergamot, and his hair is soft and loose. The dark locks curl over Edwin's forehead in waves that tickle Charles’ top lip.
Strained, Charles replies, “Aces.”
Suddenly the flight isn’t nearly long enough.
“Hey,” Charles begins, throat dry, “tell me about your family. Where’re you staying?”
The plane trembles before Edwin can answer, turbulence rattling the cabin. Charles pops an earphone in his ear and puts a Fleetwood Mac album on low. He’s seen a few records peeking out in Edwin’s collection, so he concludes it’s a safe bet. Charles counts Edwin’s breaths until it returns to normal.
“My great-aunt Béatrice,” Edwin says.
Charles remembers the name. “In Marseille, right?”
Edwin takes a second to answer, fidgeting in Charles’ arms. His knee nudges Charles’ thigh until he opens up for Edwin to slip his leg comfortably over Charles’. “Usually, yes. We will be in Béthune for Christmas, however. My great-uncle’s home. God forbid we stray too far from the homeland. But anyway—Béatrice.”
Edwin sighs her name like just speaking it tires him. Charles feels it against his chest.
“She’s been hounding my mother and me to come visit for the last six months or so. She will be utterly impossible about it. It’ll be all—” Edwin pitches his voice and assumes a thick French accent “—Oh! It has been so long I have forgotten what you both look like! Shall I have to wait until next Christmas to see you again? I might have died by then!”
When an irate “Shh!” from the sectional behind hits them in the back of the head, Charles turns to stifle the rest of his laughter into Edwin’s shoulder.
“Anyway,” Edwin continues when they’ve settled down. “She’s actually not so bad. My cousin Henry, on the other hand, is an absolute wanker. I don’t see the twins very much. Lilia graces me with her presence at least twice a year. She travels for work, you see. I think I’m most excited to see Alex again.”
Charles doesn’t realise he’s been rubbing circles into Edwin’s shoulder until Edwin shifts again.
“Which one’s Alex?”
“My younger cousin. Officially.”
Charles parrots, “Officially?”
“Well. He’s my mother’s half-brother, which technically makes him my uncle. But he has just turned eighteen.”
“Oh, that’s …” Charles thinks for a second, trying to connect the dots. The white noise of the plane and the smell of Edwin’s fading cologne abolish all proper thought. “How?”
“My grandfather is fond of marriage and younger women in equal measure.”
Charles makes a grossed-out noise, which Edwin mimics. The Fleetwood Mac album comes to a close, and after several more rounds of turbulence, Charles begins to doze off watching the foam cup wobble closer to the edge of the pull-out table. Edwin’s voice in his ear jolts him awake.
“Are you asleep?”
Edwin’s voice is low in the quiet and rough from the late hour. Charles loathes to check what time it actually is.
“Oh,” Edwin says, voice lowering to a whisper. “You were. I’m sorry, Charles, I can go back to my seat if you would like to—”
“Not asleep,” Charles insists, straightening up. “No no. I don’t sleep on planes, me. Never’ve been able to. Did the album end?”
“Some time ago. But you know that, of course, since you weren’t asleep.”
Charles detests the teasing drawl, but it tugs at something in his chest.
“That’s right! Love me some—” Unfamiliar with the twangy vocals in his ear, Charles squints at his phone with blurry vision. He really should have removed his contacts before take-off. “Dixie Blue and the Mountain Boys. Mate. Their first album’s proper mint, let me tell you.”
“Is it, now?”
Charles wriggles around to stretch. He wonders when Edwin shifted to sit more upright and pulled Charles into his side, arm wound loosely around his middle. He is watching Charles, lips a tantalising curve, dimple faintly visible in the darkness. Charles wants to maybe press his tongue to it.
“Oh yeah,” Charles says, rolling with the bluff. Reaching for the foam cup sitting precariously on the edge of the table, he takes a sip of water, not before replying, “Big Nick is Coming to the Hoedown is a massive hit back at our house this time of year.”
Innocently, Edwin asks, “Does it, perchance, go off like a Christmas tree?” and the water ends up sprayed across the flight map.
Irritated shuffling and mumbling at their backs. Charles rushes to dab at the spilt water with his shirt and Edwin curls over himself, hand over his mouth and shoulders quaking with silent laughter.
Eventually, when they’ve settled again and Charles retreats further into his hoodie, Edwin asks in a soft, attentive voice, “Will you tell me about your family now?” and Charles obliges happily.
A whole The Wrecks album starts and ends while Charles tells Edwin about his cousin Cynthia and her family, with whom he will be staying, and the holiday house in Dover. Charles talks, and Edwin is a pillar of warmth pressed against his side, until his tongue feels heavy.
Charles doesn’t realise he’s fallen asleep until he is woken by the sound of the flight attendant pushing the breakfast trolley, alerting them that they are due to land in Dublin in just over an hour. Charles groans and rubs weary eyes, cracking his neck and stretching his arms above his head. The smiley flight attendant hands Charles a cup of orange juice and a comically small bottle of water, and asks what he’ll have for breakfast. It’s not until she’s left that Charles realises he is alone in the recliner.
Sometime in the night the turbulence cleared, and Edwin moved back to his seat.
⊹
For the two hours between Dublin and London to go smoothly, Charles opts to be as annoying as humanly possible. All to distract Edwin from his fear of flying. Cuddling is no longer a viable option given that it’s daylight, attendants and passengers mill about the cabin excessively, and the very real possibility that Charles will start vibrating at a frequency strong enough to shatter glass if Edwin nuzzles into his neck again.
Regardless of all that, Edwin does not touch him at all.
There is a brief hiccup where they stumble into each other to and from the bathroom. Edwin’s warm palm lands on Charles’ hip, and he thinks about it for the final duration of the flight. Nearing the end, when Charles signs an autograph for a blushing flight attendant, Edwin waits silently at the end of the aisle with both of their carry-on luggage in hand and an air of eagerness to be reunited with solid ground. His expression is otherwise neutral. Their fingers brush when Edwin hands Charles is luggage, leaning close in the intimate space, and Edwin whispers, “I’m starving.”
Charles can relate.
In line for an overpriced airport sandwich, feeling bulky with all of their luggage, Charles rummages in his coat pockets and retrieves a handful of pounds and a napkin with a phone number written in neat handwriting. The flight attendant. Charles stares at it, dumbfounded. The name has a heart dotted sweetly over the i, and Charles is very aware of Edwin’s eyes on him.
He makes a show of throwing it in the bin on their way out.
Twenty minutes later, Edwin is polishing off the last of his sandwich, and Charles restrains himself from bouncing in place. “Mum’s ETA is ten minutes,” Charles says. “She said the traffic is, and I quote, fucking barmy.”
God, he misses her so much. Talking on the phone every day and facetiming isn’t enough, he needs to fold her tiny frame into his arms, feel the scratch of her woollen jumper against his cheek and smell her floral perfume.
Check her over. Make sure there are no bruises hidden under rictus and woollen jumpers.
“Mine has gone into radio silence,” Edwin supplies, tossing the neatly folded sandwich wrapping into the bin. “All well and good, really, and just as typical.”
When Charles decides he wants sugar and Edwin declares he needs at least two shots of caffeine before reuniting with his mother, he explains in a mild tone, “She wants to meet and catch the Eurostar to Paris together. God knows why. It’s not as if we won’t just bury our heads in books and communicate in non-lexical grunts for the whole trip. Heaven forbid we engage in small talk.”
Charles asks, “Would that be so bad, though?” and Edwin shoots him a look that screams Don’t be daft. All he knows about Edwin’s mum is that she travels the world as a cellist for the London Symphony and that she and Edwin didn’t get along when he was growing up. Their relationship has significantly improved, which he learnt from the mouth of the horse itself, but apparently there is still much to be desired.
For an insane moment, Charles contemplates inviting Edwin to lunch with him and his mum before squashing the thought, mid-formation. Edwin is due to leave soon and his mum’s live updates on the traffic are becoming less pissed off and more excitable. He has no idea what his mum would even say if she were to see him and Edwin together, but the idea is panic inducing enough. The woman has a built in sonic radar detection device, and Charles has never really been able to hide much from her. She will take one look at Charles and know absolutely everything.
Nine days. Nine days in England for Christmas.
Nine days away from work, the studio, his best friend and … Edwin.
Edwin, who shocks Charles with a goodbye kiss by pulling him in behind a post. He tastes like coffee and spearmint, lips just slightly chapped, tugging at Charles’ hood to bring him closer. Charles just barely manages to keep the desperate moan locked tight in his throat, chasing his mouth when they part.
Then Edwin is pulling away with a smile that shouldn’t feel too much like a promise, but fuck it does, telling Charles to have a Merry Christmas. He disappears into the crowd before Charles can even think to say it back.
⊹
Mary appears around the corner of baggage claim, almost swallowed up by the throng of bodies and her great big cardigan crocheted with every colour imaginable, her hair an unkempt donut atop her head.
Charles doesn’t cry in her arms but it is a near thing, lifting her into a hug as she laughs wetly and exclaims, “Oh, my baby! My baby boy!”
Her face is bare of makeup and clear of any bruising, and Charles checks the rest of her under the guise of tight, squeezing hugs. Lunch is an abysmally quick affair, Mary having to rush back to work, and they spend the hour with their arms linked and chewing pastries while she asks him a million questions about the flight, America, and when was the last time he ate? Was he warm enough on the plane? Has he drunk enough water? “Oh, beta, you look so tired! Make sure you rest properly at the house.”
For the duration of the visit, Charles will be staying at a cousin’s house surrounded by family members who aren’t his dad, granted that promise is kept. Although given how Cynthia and her mum, Charles’ aunt Mildred, despise his dad almost as much as he does, he’s feeling pretty good about it.
“Don’t hunch, Charles, you’re far too handsome for bad posture.”
Charles sighs and straightens his spine, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. She tsks at him and has another bite of pavlova at his instance. Charles snaps a photo of her whipped cream moustache as she bats at him, and then takes a photo of his lunch and sends it to Edwin because he thinks he might like to see it. Probably. It’s not like he’s missed the way Edwin tends to perk up when he knows Charles is eating.
Pushing the thought away, Charles asks his mum about her art until the hour finally ticks over and she has to leave. They take a quick selfie, beaming up at the camera with copy-pasted grins. He sends this to Edwin as well, because why not.
Mary collects her handbag and tosses her bright purple scarf over her shoulder. It’s the one Charles bought for her birthday last year, hand knitted with recycled wool sold at a market stall in Surrey, when Charles had not so subtly implied she should move there. Her divorcing his father was a thick, suffocating subtext that lingered the whole trip back.
He gets it, of course, but he doesn’t. The two have been separated since Charles left school – a marriage turned into a glorified toxic roommate scenario. Culture and tradition and shame keep them married on paper, and Charles wants to tear it up and eat it. He wants to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until some sense falls out.
“Cynthia says she has the spare room all ready for you,” she says. Her nose is red.
Charles nods and grips his luggage tightly, fiddling with the little yellow ribbon Niko tied around one of the zips before they left for the airport, matching her own. He doesn’t tell his mum how he loves Cynthia, yeah, she and Euan are great and Delly is by far the coolest seven-year-old in the world, but what he wants more than anything is to stay with her. To take her across London somewhere where she can dress up all fancy, wear her bright colours without worry she is being too much, to laugh as loud as she wants and eat as much as she wants without being told she will get fat.
Charles feels his nails dig into the skin of his palm, and across the café, the eyes of a man about his age, hunched in front of a laptop, widen dramatically. Charles retreats further into his hood, tugging his coat tighter across his chest, and hurries Mary onto the street.
She is still talking: “The new house is—oh! It’s so lovely, Charles. Large, but I guess they can afford it. I worry about all the cleaning, of course. Oh, and Adelaide is getting so big!”
Charles is shown a video of Delly jumping on her bed, singing “Uncle Charles! Uncle Charles!” that almost brings him to tears.
He asks, “So you’ll only be over for Christmas?”
It comes out a hair more rigid than intended. She hears it.
Mary’s face slackens, and at once Charles sees long, burnt embers of a fight flicker in her eyes. “I will try.”
“What do you mean try?”
“Charles.” She says his name like a sigh, like the gravity of it leans too heavy on her back. “You know how things are with your father.”
There it is. Always.
“Fucking hell, mum. Why are we still doing this?”
“Language, Charles. Please.” Mary’s eyebrows pinch. “And I wish you wouldn’t swear so much in your music. You have such a lovely voice—yes, okay. Not my place, I know.”
Charles tries to keep the frustrated groan out of his voice. He isn’t sure he succeeds. “Mum. Don’t change the subject. He’s stopping you from seeing your own family now, isn’t he?”
The app says the taxi is three streets away, stalled at a pair of lights, and Mary pulls at the cuff of her colourful cardigan. The one she’ll have to remove at home. “It is his family, too.”
Charles imagines Cynthia's knee-jerk reaction to that statement would be to throw up in a bush, but Charles bites his tongue on sharing that opinion.
Mary continues, “And it’s not—Charles. He doesn’t stop me from seeing anyone.”
“But he is!” Charles insists. “He’s doing it right now! I haven’t seen you in months and you’re telling me we’ll only have time together at Christmas? If he lets you come, that is.”
“Charlie—”
“Please.” Charles buries his face in his hands, fingers pressing on his eyes until he sees stars. “Please don’t call me that.”
They’re quiet for a minute. Charles speaks again when the roaring in his head gives way to the regular roar of London.
“So he doesn’t stop you seeing anyone, okay. Sure. But it can only be on lunch breaks in between shifts, where you have to sneak around and rush across London to make it work.” She opens her mouth to argue, but Charles talks over her. His cheeks burn a little over it, but he quickly smothers the emotion down. “Cynthia said you haven’t been over to maasi’s in months, and that you won’t let anyone come to the house. I’m not stupid, mum.”
“No, no, of course not. My sweet boy.” Her mouth presses into a juddering line, and the app alerts them that the taxi is fast approaching. Suddenly, Charles is too jetlagged for this conversation. “It’s just difficult sometimes, you know that. You father …”
Charles frowns. “My father what?”
“He hasn’t been well.”
Charles stares. “Bad case of the sniffles?”
Mary makes a face as she reaches out to smooth her hands down the front of Charles’ coat, gently squeezing his biceps. Her grip is lax and weak. When he was a child, her fingers would dig into his little shoulders when she slipped a jumper over his head, tucked him into bed, or when his dad was shouting too much at the football match in the next room.
Strong and firm. Grounding. He thought she was the strongest person in the world.
“Charles, please. There’s some niggling pain in his legs, and his back hasn’t … Well. The doctors said it’s nothing serious, but the way he carries on sometimes. It’s hard to leave him.”
Charles presses his mouth and stares at the traffic light across the street, and says nothing.
Mary gives his shoulders a squeeze and promises, “I will come by for Christmas.”
“Dump him at his sister’s,” Charles offers, voice mild. “She can deal with him while he drinks all her beer and swears at footie reruns.”
Mary says nothing.
The taxi pulls up. Charles opens the door for Mary to slip inside. “I’ll call you tonight when I’ve settled in,” he says, and closes the door before she can respond. It disappears fast amongst the throng of London traffic, and Charles tastes sweetness and petrichor when he breathes in. The clouds part overhead to make room for the sun, and turns everything wet into a mirror that hurts his eyes.
In the car, Charles’ phone vibrates against his thigh. He expects a reply from Cynthia about his ETA, or maybe even something from his mum, but instead it is Edwin’s name that sits neat and tidy at the bottom of his notifications. A reaction to the selfie of Charles and his mum – a small heart in a bubble just above Charles’ head.
He puts his phone away with a quiet smile and watches the grey concrete of London fade into green countryside and rolling hills.
His lips tingle. The memory of Edwin’s lips is engraved there, as is the warmth of his hands cupping Charles’ face, thumbs brushing the curve of his jaw.
Nine days. Just enough time for Charles to get his shit together.
Maybe.
⊹