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Within the labyrinth's depths the Minotaur, Slain by the sword she gave, lay stark and dead, And with his finger following her thread He issued forth to see the heavens once more.
- Theseus and Ariadne, Edward Robeson Taylor
~
No, please, keep reading. I like your voice.
The words are etched in nice, looping, albeit somewhat hurried letters, right above his heart.
“It’s a sign of good fortune,” his mother says when he’s five, just learning to read and desperately trying to show off for his parents by reading the words on his chest in the mirror. They say the position of the words indicates your feelings for your soulmate. Edwin must be one of the lucky ones, she says — one of those who get to fall in love with their soulmate.
Back then, she still smiled easily. She’d taken him on her lap and explained that he’d have to work hard in school, read a lot, because the girl he’d grow up to marry would really like it when he read to her.
Back then, Edwin hadn’t yet learned the necessity of schooling his face into neutrality, to be certain he could be what his parents wanted of him: a blank canvas to become the polite, well-read son for his mother’s friends, or the smart, accomplished scholar for his father’s business acquaintances. Mostly, he was just some pretty wallpaper for his parents to point out and then ignore.
But back then, he’d pouted. “I do not want to marry girls.”
His mother had laughed — a tinkling sound. “You will when you’re a little older.”
He’d learned about the marks from a kind teacher at school. They were called soulwords, marking you out for the person destined to live in your heart — but only about half the population had them. Only the half that was destined to outlive their other half.
The words were supposed to be the last ones one would hear their soulmate say. Like a present wrapped in a curse. Like a rose with thorns.
Thus, Edwin grows up, and reads, and when his brother is sent to the front and dies a month into his service — and his mother and father ignore it in favor of not speaking to each other — he thinks that it doesn’t truly matter who his soulmate is. Not if he will not know her until she is dead anyway, and meanwhile will likely be trapped in a loveless, consuming marriage, like fire in the way it leaves everything in its path in ashes. Like his parents.
Besides, he never did come around to liking girls.
It’s only when he’s dragged down to Hell because of a foolish clerical error that he comes to appreciate the existence of his soulmate.
The words on his heart aren’t just from an imaginary person anymore; they become a guideline.
Because, he realizes one time, when the spider takes a little longer than usual to catch up to him—rip him open, devour him, remake him—he’s supposed to be there to hear his soulmate’s last words. And knowing now there’s a life after death, he understands there’s a chance he could get out of here, even if it takes a thousand years.
So, he memorizes the pathway he’s just run through, the corner of the room he’s hiding in, and raises his head determinedly.
From then on, they’re not just words anymore. They’re a thread out of a maze, and Edwin gladly grabs it with both hands; he knows there is someone out there who is holding on to the other end.
He doesn’t truly realize it’s been seventy years of trying to outrun his own minotaur until he’s actually out and sees the date on the board in one of the classrooms of an unsurprisingly still very much the same St. Hilarion. Right up to the group of boys bullying someone different from them.
Although, back when he was the boy with his arms raised over his head in protection, there wasn’t anyone running in to save him.
(Turns out it doesn’t take him as long to find the end of his thread once he’s out of the maze.)
“I think I’d miss kissing,” the boy — Charles — says, rubbing at the black stain on the inside of his palm, and it makes Edwin feel a little bit of relief. Maybe this boy won’t have to die a gruesome, cold death if he still has to see someone else die. Right?
And then all his hopes are crushed at once, when Charles — lying under a pile of blankets they found somewhere in the attic, which are doing absolutely nothing to properly warm him — jerks at him closing the book he’d chosen to read aloud. Carrados, the Blind Detective, of whom he’d always been a little curious to find out how he’d fare. But he closes the book and asks if he should stop — if Charles wants to try to sleep instead.
Charles shakes his head and murmurs, “No, please, keep reading.” And then he smiles, damningly genuine, despite the shiver that runs violently through him, not realizing the heart in Edwin’s chest drops all the way back to Hell. “I like your voice.”
“Of course,” Edwin says, ignoring the way his voice stumbles over that last word. His eyes desperately try to find the last line he read, so he won’t have to see Charles’ eyes close for the last time.
~
No sooner did she lower from him her incandescent eyes
than she conceived throughout her body a flame,
and totally, to the center of her bones, she burned.
- Poem 64, Catullus
~
Charles grows up with a soulmark printed in big, bold letters, with no other words than his name in all caps. Like a scream for help.
It’s not very hard to imagine what will happen, then. With Charles’ luck, he’ll have to watch his soulmate die in a way he could probably prevent, if he were just a little bit better. But instead, he will fail to save them. He won’t be good enough, fast enough, smart enough.
He’s got a recurring nightmare of someone falling down a cliff, while he fails time and time again to get there in time. Seems like the right kind of stuff out of stories, doesn’t it? But, well.
He’s failed to protect his mom. He’s failed to be good enough for his dad. Feels right he’ll fail his proper soulmate too.
His failure is burned into the inside of his palm. Growing up, he developed the habit of clenching his hand closed, nails biting into his skin — first to hide the phantom ache they provided, then to hide his failure from the outside world. Then it feels only natural that he starts using them.
He knows it’s a vain effort, but the first time he uses his clenched fist in protection of a kid being pushed around by older schoolmates, it feels right. Like some sick kind of penance.
He goes home with a black eye, but the boy he protected is overall unharmed, and that feels like a win. It feels like it should make his dad’s belt hurt less, but it doesn’t.
It feels right that when he dies, it too is a consequence of failing to protect someone.
(For a moment, a very short moment, he feels relief. He won’t have to watch his biggest mistake happen; the universe was wrong after all. But then he looks at Edwin — the boy who climbed his way up from Hell, and the first thing he did with his well-earned freedom was to bring Charles a lantern. To keep him warm for a little longer.
And he thinks, well. Here is someone who does not belong in Hell. Here is someone who deserves to stay on Earth, and who deserves to be fought for. And Charles thinks, well, he can do that for him. Can protect him from anything Hell sends for him.
By now, he’s used to dealing with bullies anyway.
And if he’ll get hurt trying to protect someone as admirable as Edwin — well, that feels right too.)
~
Pretend that Bacchus in the true old way, A dream, advised him sternly not to stay.
- Bacchus and Ariadne, Leigh Hunt
~
It’s not that Edwin is ever truly surprised that Charles is his soulmate. In fact, it kind of makes sense.
It explains the way he felt so uncomfortable being set up and having to dance politely with the daughters of his parents’ friends at their social functions. He and Enora Clark had been playmates as kids; they might even have been friends — the kind of friends you only become when neither of your parents truly pays attention to you. You feel an immediate kinship with someone you’ve never met before, sense their inherent loneliness, the kind that comes from being a child alone surrounded by coldness and fool’s gold. The kind of feeling you’ve been carrying your whole life but couldn’t put a name to — until you see it mirror your own.
(If it weren’t for the way their parents started looking at them once they grew older — that calculating way that said they were planning out your whole life for you, and you wouldn’t like what they had in mind — maybe they would have stayed friends.)
It explains the way Edwin had always been uncomfortable with his classmates, especially once they started talking dirty about the girls from St. Hilarion’s sister school. Edwin quickly fell out of the group, but he didn’t truly mind.
It explains the way he’d felt so uncomfortable when boys like Simon paid him attention — though in a different way than every other discomfort he’d felt before, in a way he was afraid to explore.
And it’s not that he doesn’t like Charles either. Maybe it’s the fact that the first human being he sees after escaping the darkest pits of Hell, after seventy horrifying years, is a boy who got bullied to the point of death by his very own classmates. Something had immediately pulled in Edwin’s chest, a kinship in situation if not in heart, making him unable to leave the boy there, cold and alone.
Because Charles is like fire — with a smile that either brightens the whole room or, when they grow closer, burns intimately and softly like a candle for Edwin. And he tries to hide it, but Edwin can see the way Charles gladly burns himself up for others, giving them a bit of light, uncaring if it might destroy him in the process, because that would be better than destroying anything else. But when he does lose control of that fire, it’s always in protection of Edwin. And he’s always so, so careful not to let Edwin get hurt.
He makes something in Edwin feel warm, when all he’s felt for the past decades is a bone-deep coldness.
So it’s not that he’s a boy. It’s not that it’s Charles. How could it ever be, when he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to Edwin?
It’s the fact that when Charles lets his fingers relax, for once, Edwin sees the black letters burning on the inside of his right palm.
Because Edwin had been dead long before Charles was even born. And while being able to live on as ghosts gives a whole new dimension to the concept of soulmates — half of the ghosts haunting Earth seem to be waiting for their other half, whom they never got to love in life but might have a new chance to in death — he knows for a fact it’s impossible to die twice.
The first book in his collection was one on soulmates, because the arcane turned out to have quite a better grasp on the concept than most of the living did, back in his time. Although — Charles had told him afterwards — in the past seventy years, research on the topic has apparently come a long way, and now soulmates are a proper field of study, rather than a God-given mystery that humans can never truly understand, lest they try to reach too high and the sun melts their wings.
Sometimes, Edwin’s research concludes, people die without ever hearing the words waiting on their skin. Some even have someone in their life whose soulmark matches their own last words, leading human researchers to suggest that some people are unlucky enough not to be their soulmate’s soulmate in return.
Edwin knows better, of course — he’s seen multiple ghosts reunite with their loved ones after death, after waiting years to hear their soulwords echoed back.
But it seems to be the only explanation for the black on Charles’ skin — black that would otherwise be impossible to otherwise stroke with the words over Edwin’s heart.
He asks about it only once. Tentatively refers to it.
There’s a pull at Charles’ mouth in return—a flash of something like anger, or despair. It lasts only a second, and then Charles schools his face into a laugh again, making Edwin almost think he imagined it.
Charles chuckles and says, “Oi, we’re dead, mate. It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?”
The next day, Charles starts wearing black leather gloves.
And Edwin is okay with Charles being his soulmate. He’s okay with not being Charles’ in return.
But he’s never been as good at hiding his feelings as he’s always had to pretend to be. So he feels himself reaching out — pulling Charles’ collar straight, pretending his feelings are nothing more than friendship.
He never takes his shirt off where Charles can see, and never tells him what’s written on his chest.
For all that Edwin loves Charles, almost too quickly and hard he’s fallen, he loves him too much to keep him bound to him. Away from his own, true soulmate.
And so, Edwin reasons, what Charles doesn’t know can’t hurt him.
If he has to let go of what he loves, he’s learned it’s better not to hold it in the first place.
~
I would not have left you, even for mirth. Not in the best and safest place on earth.
- Bacchus and Ariadne, Leigh Hunt
~
Charles loves the way Edwin pronounces his name.
Edwin grew up in a different time than he did, Charles knows that. Especially in the beginning, it was difficult to get through the distance Edwin maybe didn’t even realize he was putting up. Charles gets it. The guy just spent seventy fucking years in Hell. I mean, he doesn’t really get it, of course, but you know what he means.
And that’s why, when Edwin says his name, it feels like he’s getting closer somehow.
In the beginning, it’s easy. Edwin mostly says his name to get him to stop doing stuff — like icebearing when Edwin’s trying to read, or experimenting with his cool new ghost powers. Then Edwin’s all sighs and annoyed Charles’s and then closes his book so Charles can convince him to do something else. See, he’s very good at getting under people’s skin, and for some reason, he wants nothing more than to get under Edwin’s.
Then, when Edwin starts getting more comfortable, it changes. Not fully, of course — Charles doesn’t stop trying to annoy Edwin into trying new things — but it becomes almost obvious when there’s a shift from Charles just being there to Charles being there for Edwin.
It’s like when they’re setting up their brand-new detective agency, and Charles starts packing things he knows Edwin uses a lot — because Edwin forgets himself, since he hasn’t needed anything for so long. So when Edwin says “Charles,” like it’s the start of a question, Charles is already there with a pen, or a book, or, one time, a spray bottle of holy water.
It’s like they’re on the same wavelength, the way he usually knows what Edwin needs. And when Edwin smiles in response, Charles’ heart skips a beat. He does love being useful.
It changes again when their agency takes off, and the cases get more dangerous.
There’s a sorceress pointing her scepter at Edwin, and Edwin’s distracted, but Charles sees red. Before he knows it, he’s running and jumps, and Edwin screams. It wasn’t much — the blast only hits Charles in the side of the ribs — and if anything, it breaks the scepter, which was the goal all along. But later, Edwin is frowning in anger when Charles is spread out on the couch in their office and winces trying to get comfortable, and he mutters something as he rifles through the potions cupboard.
“You’re so unbelievably stupid sometimes, Charles,” Edwin grumbles as he practically manhandles Charles’ shirt up to get to the wound. Then, without thinking, he straddles Charles’ hips to get better leverage, placing the jar coldly above Charles’s belly button — Charles doesn’t mind the cold, per se; his skin feels like it’s glowing hot — so Edwin has both hands free to apply the gelatinous substance.
But Charles thinks about the way Edwin screamed his name when he jumped, and how he doesn’t mind Edwin holding him down and forcing medicine on him, because it means Edwin is safe.
Even later, when the anger at Charles’, admittedly careless, actions has subsided, and in its place only a latent fear remains, Charles comes up to the desk where Edwin’s distracting himself with paperwork, hands clearly trembling a little. Edwin pulls him into a hug and buries his head in Charles’ neck. Charles hands act on autopilot, like they’ve never wanted to be anywhere else, and they grip Edwin’s back tightly without thinking.
“Don’t do that again, Charles,” Edwin says.
And Charles thinks — though he’s smart enough not to say it out loud — that if this is the treatment he gets for protecting Edwin, on top of the general reward of Edwin being safe, he’s definitely doing that again.
So yes, he likes it when Edwin says his name — because it makes the ache in his hands feel less overwhelming.
Most times, he forgets the way his own name haunted him while he was alive, because of what it meant, the weight it carried. But with Edwin, his name holds a whole different meaning: it means he’s useful instead of useless, protective instead of failing, and — dare he say it — even loved.
And then they’re in Port Townsend. The Night Nurse has agreed to let them stay together, and everything seems fine, if not perfect.
Then Hell catches up with them, and Edwin screams his name in a way that Charles can feel in his bones.
The hopelessness overwhelms him for a second, but there’s an itch in his hands that makes his fists ball automatically. And, well, he’s never stopped feeling the urge to use them in protection of others, and there’s never been anyone he’s wanted to fight for more.
So he knows, even without looking at the Night Nurse, that he’s going to get Edwin back.
Even if he has to punch a doorway to Hell himself.
~
Dying a second time, now, there was no complaint to her husband (what, then, could she complain of, except that she had been loved?).
- Orpheus and Eurydice, Ovid
~
Nothing has really changed since his confession.
He’d been worried about it, secretly. He’d tried so hard for years not to pressure Charles into something he didn’t want — didn’t want Charles to feel guilty for something that wasn’t even his doing. But Charles had come all the way to Hell for him, and Edwin couldn’t let them leave without opening up everything he was. If he was to leave Hell a second time, he’d leave his secrecy with the previous versions of himself. And, being forced to shed his skin and bones like a cloak, he was determined to make this new one better. Charles deserved that, at the very least.
He’d put his hand on his heart and told him he loved him, and Charles had looked like he understood. Had taken Edwin’s face in both hands and told him he didn’t know if he was in love with him yet — but that he did love Edwin more than anyone in the world.
And that could be enough for him.
So they’d gone back up the stairs, and back through the door, and back to London, eventually. And nothing had really changed.
Except, of course, that Charles had been looking at him more often, with a considering look on his face.
At least when he wasn’t touching Edwin in some way — and if Edwin were honest with himself, he’d admit it was a lot more than it used to be. Like Charles wanted to feel he was still there. Like Edwin was still real.
Sometimes he’d lean in close and tease. He’d pout at Crystal’s eyes rolling skyward, then smirk and lean into Edwin’s space. “Well, Edwin thinks I’m charming, right, Edwin?” And he’d send him such a blinding smile that it took Edwin every ounce of self-control to only roll his eyes in response — and not take Charles’ face in both hands and kiss the bloody daylights out of him.
And sometimes, when Edwin was discussing a clue with Crystal, or immersed in a spell book Charles had found for him, or smiling at Niko’s rant about Jenny’s upcoming move to London, he’d feel like he’s being watched — a feeling he’d unfortunately honed during his stay in Hell. And when he looked up, Charles would be watching him, head slightly tilted, biting his own lip. If Edwin had any blood left in him, he knows he would feel his face heat up at the indecent thoughts that sight brought up, like a dam broken down since he crossed the halls of sin for the second time in his non-life.
Charles would always just smile softly when caught, and turn back to whatever he was doing. Like he didn’t even realise what he was doing to Edwin.
Right now, the whole Dead Boy Detective Agency had gathered—Charlie unwillingly included—for their weekly team meeting. “It’s important for a team to have aligned goals,” Niko had argued a few weeks after Port Town’s End, and Charlie had narrowed her eyes when Niko had pulled out her notes to properly support her argument — with sources and all. Edwin had been so enormously proud of her.
Edwin was relaying the outcome of their last case for their unwilling babysit’s records, with Crystal perched on the desk in front of him and Niko standing beside him, both annoyingly interrupting with their own commentary and thoughts on the case.
“I do not know why I have to be here for this,” the Night Nurse groaned at the eleventh-or-so interruption — Niko correcting the exact translation of the guillotined French noble’s supposed curse. “If you cannot handle a case as simple as this, perhaps we should simply review your contract with the Lost & Found Department.”
Crystal narrowed her eyes. “We don’t even have a contract.”
Niko nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, if we did have a contract, we should get paid too. Otherwise, employment law would probably declare the contract void.”
“What they mean to say is —” Edwin held up a hand for silence, “— we thought you’d appreciate a comprehensive summary of the intricacies of this case, as it seems difficult to judge the, hm, further placement of our client otherwise, no?”
“Also,” he added with a satisfied smile, looking the Night Nurse straight in the eyes, “maybe we should indeed start discussing our payment. Right, Charles?”
Charles — who had, most unlike him for many reasons, spent the entire meeting sprawled on the small couch, one arm tucked behind his head, eyes never leaving Edwin’s face — jerked up. “Hm?”
He blinked at Edwin, as if coming out of a trance, and then at the others. Then he smiled easily. “Oh, yeah. Of course we should.”
Edwin turned back to the Night Nurse, triumphant. She sighed deeply and muttered something under her breath.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,” Edwin said gleefully. He could feel Charles’ eyes glued back to him, and it made him feel ever so slightly keyed up.
The Night Nurse glared. “If that’s everything, I will return to my actual job,” she said, reaching for the door that transformed into a portal to her office with every arrival. Crystal had once suggested it might be easier if she just built a permanent portal between their offices. Charlie had looked so utterly disgusted at the idea of them being able to reach her whenever they wanted that it had turned right back around to hilarious.
“Oh, wait,” Charles suddenly sat up before she could reach the handle. “I have a question.”
The Night Nurse sighed long-suffering. “What is it?”
Charles tilted his head. “What do you lot at the afterlife administration define dying as?”
“I’m leaving.”
“No, wait.” Charles stood up, actually reaching out to her as if to physically stop her. Edwin narrowed his eyes. This didn’t seem like one of Charles’ usual schemes to annoy Charlie.
“I’m serious,” he continued. “Because, Edwin and I are dead, right, but we’re still on Earth — just invisible and intangible. Yeah? But like, Niko is also dead, technically, but she’s still here and people can see and touch her.”
Next to Edwin, Niko lit up at the mention. She had changed surprisingly little since becoming what is in popular terms so crudely termed a zombie. The Night Nurse narrowed her eyes even more, if that was possible.
Edwin tilted his head, catching Charles’ gaze. He had no idea where his partner was going with this.
“So like,” Charles went on, gesturing broadly now, “is death only when we move on to whatever’s next? So right now we’re not truly dead? Or do we count as dead once we no longer have a body to command?”
The Night Nurse sighed again, as if loathe to answer something so obvious.
“I suppose death is the point where you make the transition to your afterlife. So, normally, when you pass to Hell or the Sunless Lands.”
“Or a secret third thing, like stay on Earth,” Crystal added.
“You children are incredibly annoying. But yes. Or that,” the Night Nurse said, clearly disgusted by the idea of staying behind.
“But like,” Charles pressed, “Edwin went to Hell twice, so does that mean he died twice?”
Edwin blinked as all eyes turned to him. The Night Nurse sneered. “I suppose it might mean that, yes.”
Charles caught his eyes, and he smiled so blindingly at him like the Night Nurse’s answer had shed a light on everything he’d ever been in doubt about, and Edwin couldn’t help but smile back, albeit a little confusedly. Dying once had been enough for him, truly, he didn’t need to put a name on it the second time.
“Now. Is that all?” the Night Nurse asked, not waiting for an answer before vanishing into the portal.
“What was that all about?” Edwin asks Charles once they’re alone in their office, both Crystal and Niko having left for their shared apartment.
“What was what, mate?” asks Charles innocently. Edwin has stood up, leaning against his desk, arms crossed.
“You,” he says, “being slightly more weird than usual.”
Charles throws him a teasing smile as he walks right past Edwin, stopping only for a second to lean in close. “Aw, but you still love me, don’t you?”
Edwin rolls his eyes fondly. “You know I do.” He smiles. How can he not? “But — Charles. What are you doing?”
Because Charles is rooting inside Edwin’s demon-summoning box, which they’ve fortunately had no use for in the past few years — which is, unfortunately, because most demons just showed up to bother them without an invitation. But Edwin has no clue what in that box Charles could possibly need right now, especially when he’s trying to have a serious conversation with his partner.
Charles makes a victorious sound as he evidently finds what he was looking for, then turns around with a smirk — but even in the twilight of their office, Edwin can see his eyes are soft as molten chocolate. “I had to make sure, didn’t I?” he says cryptically. And the thing is, Charles is usually an open book — or at least in a language Edwin has learned to read fluently over the past few decades. But when he's secretive about something, Edwin knows it pertains to something important.
“Had to make sure I was really dead, was it?” Edwin throws him an unimpressed look, which Charles answers with a smile that somehow becomes even broader.
He grabs his backpack and swings it over his shoulder, wincing when the leftover strap hits one of the crystals on their shelf and swipes it to the ground, chipping one of its edges. Edwin looks unimpressed, but Charles just shrugs it off. Instead, he steps right into Edwin’s space, until no more than a few inches separate them, and Edwin promptly forgets the destruction of one of their ‘arcane gadgets’, as Crystal calls them.
His phantom heart starts beating even harder when Charles’s smirk turns soft, and he takes Edwin’s hands in his, biting his bottom lip in concentration as he slowly pulls Edwin’s worn leather gloves off his fingers. There’s an embarrassing squeak he can’t stop from jumping out of his mouth when Charles bares his fingers and — so quick Edwin doesn’t know if he’s imagined it — presses his lips to Edwin’s fingertips before reaching for the opposite hand.
It’s a good thing he’s dead and doesn’t truly need to breathe, because somewhere in the back of his head, Edwin realises he’s been holding his breath this whole time.
“Charles,” he says again, feeling lightheaded anyway. “What are you doing?”
“Come with me,” Charles murmurs, and it’s not until he intertwines his fingers with Edwin’s that Edwin realises he’s taken off his own gloves, and that he can feel Charles’s skin against his own. He barely has time to process the sensation when Charles pulls him by the hand toward the standing mirror in the corner of their office.
He recognizes Crystal’s old room in Port Town’s End almost immediately, with only a small delay he fully attributes to the haziness in his body as a result of Charles’s closeness and the warmth of his fingers between his own.
Charles leaves him standing in the middle of the room, letting go of his hands, and Edwin immediately folds his own hands together to keep them warm. He watches as Charles drops his backpack in the middle of the room and kneels next to it, reaching deep inside until he comes back with about four candles and a flint. Edwin watches in confusion as Charles sets three of them up on the windowsill and lights them, then bites his lip in thought as he adjusts them into a proper line, and finally places the last candle on the ironing board that had made up Edwin’s desk only a few weeks ago.
The candles would probably do more to light up the room if it wasn’t still the middle of the day, here in the Americas.
“Why are we here, Charles?” Edwin raises one eyebrow, half suspicion, half confusion. They hadn’t returned to this town since he’d finally lost the bracelet keeping him trapped here, and to be truly honest, he didn’t have the best memories of this place.
Charles finally turns back to him, looking soft in the way he only ever truly looks when he’s alone with Edwin, the flames of the candles lighting up gold flecks in his eyes, and Edwin wants nothing more than to reach out and touch him. As if feeling the same, Charles takes a step closer to Edwin. “I thought this would be a good place to do this,” he says, still smiling.
“To do what?” Edwin raises his other eyebrow now, the question fully formed, because Charles is being so obtuse — and he probably doesn’t even know what he’s doing to Edwin.
He’s making this all feel so romantic, but that can’t be it. Right?
Charles takes a step closer, and reaches for Edwin’s hand again. As if by reflex, Edwin’s fingers immediately curl around Charles’s.
“Remember how you told me you were in love with me, and I told you I didn’t know if I was in love with you back yet?”
“How could I possibly forget,” Edwin replies dryly.
Charles shoots him a quick grin. “Right,” he says, then seems to gather his breath to go on. “I know I haven’t always been the most open about it, but I wanted to show you something.”
He places his left hand on top of Edwin’s right and interlaces their fingers, bringing them to the inside of his own palm. Edwin automatically looks down at the hand now open to him—and the word he is now able to read properly: Charles, in letters big enough to take up most of his palm. Edwin feels the urgency in them. The despair, almost. He traces the edge of the letters with his fingertips and finally understands why Charles—who’s always jumped in front of the slightest danger for Edwin — had been afraid to be open about this part of himself in particular.
“I do still love you, you know,” he says instead, because he never wants Charles to feel he’s not good enough, and he loathes that this is something he’s overlooked for too many years.
Charles smiles. “I know. I love you too.” He takes his free hand — keeping the one with his soulwords still intertwined with Edwin’s — and cups Edwin’s cheek. “The thing is,” he says, eyes roaming over Edwin’s face like he’s committing this moment to memory, and Edwin’s breath catches a little at that thought. “I don’t actually need any words to tell me you’re my soulmate, because I already know there’s no one in the entire universe I could love as I do you. No one else I’d go to Hell for, yeah?”
His thumb caresses Edwin’s cheekbone, and if he weren’t doing his level best to restrain himself from moving, Edwin would lean into Charles’s touch. But— “I’m afraid I don’t fully know where you’re going with this, Charles.”
Charles smiles even brighter when he takes his other hand to fully envelop Edwin’s face and brings their foreheads together. “I’m in love with you back, Edwin Payne.”
Edwin feels his breath hitch.
“And I’m sorry I didn’t say it before,” Charles goes on, still with that dopey smile on his face. “Truth is, I was a little confused at the time, because I always figured my words couldn’t be yours, could they — you being already dead and all that. And even if they were, it’d be more logical for you to have my words on your hands, wouldn’t it?” He grins cheekily at that. “But, well, that doesn’t really matter now, yeah? I didn’t want to keep you waiting so long, and I figured — since this is where I found proof that you’re the other half of my soul, and it’s close enough to where you told me you were in love with me — I figured it’d be kind of symbolic to do it here. And I also kind of really want to kiss you now, okay?”
Edwin sees the dark of Charles’s palm from the corner of his eye and remembers how he screamed for Charles when he was dragged right back down to Hell by his former tormentor. He remembers how Charles had so closely pestered the Night Nurse for the exact definition of dying, and how he’d been stealing looks at him for the past few weeks.
“I do have your words,” Edwin says instead, feeling like he’s almost pushing through a haze.
Charles pulls back a little, smile faltering. “What?”
“I do have your words,” Edwin repeats, only realising he’s gripped Charles’s elbows when he lets go with one hand and reflexively covers the place where the words are written over his heart. He looks away as he sees Charles following his movements. “I told you I knew you were dying, back then.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Charles breathes out, tilting his head to catch Edwin’s eyes again. He doesn’t seem mad — only curious.
“I—,” Edwin falters, eyebrows pulling in thought, because it had seemed a good enough reason at the time. “I did not want you to have to choose. I knew you would not want to hurt me.”
He tries to look away again, but Charles still holds his face in both hands and keeps him in place. He’s smiling even more broadly, somehow. “You’re a right bastard,” he says, and kisses him.