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“You can’t laugh. Promise.”
“Charles, it cannot possibly be that bad—”
“Don’t laugh. I know it’s rubbish.”
“It’s not rubbish! You only need more practice, that’s all.”
Charles sighed and lowered the sketchbook to his lap, burying his head in his hands. Edwin tried not to follow the sketchbook with his eyes, but it was hard to look away from what he would have to be very generous to call a portrait of himself.
Edwin’s own rendition of Charles in charcoal stayed forgotten in Edwin’s hands. They’d decided to draw each other in this downtime between cases, since they could no longer catch sight of their reflections in mirrors or windows or still bodies of water. It was Charles’ idea, and Edwin had relished rediscovering the muscle memory of drawing that he had long forgotten in the interminable decades between childhood and the present.
“It’s really not as bad as you think,” Edwin said, sitting down beside Charles on the sofa. He brushed a thumb across what he thought was meant to be his chin, careful that his ghostly fingers didn’t smudge the charcoal. “Look, you’ve done a wonderful job with the brow.”
“Nah, the eyebrows are too thin. You got some real caterpillars up here,” Charles said, finally unearthing that beautiful face Edwin had spent the last forty minutes studying. He poked at Edwin’s eyebrows, Edwin having to duck closer to Charles to dodge it.
“Charles!” Edwin pulled away laughing. “I’ve been told I have a difficult face before,” he admitted. “The portraits my mother would commission of us as children would always vex the painters when it came to my turn to sit.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. ‘Stop scowling if you please, Master Payne,’ and they wouldn’t accept my best attempts to explain that it was simply my neutral expression.” Edwin said it like a joke, but he could still remember how frustrating those sessions were. It left him with an overall distaste, when he could very well have spent those hours reading books or playing dolls with little Evangeline. “I daresay they would find you just as difficult to paint.”
Though Edwin doubted they would ever find an expression that could be called a scowl on Charles Rowland’s face. What had most vexed Edwin was finding a way to capture the delicate beauty his features held, feeling like every rough stroke of charcoal was too heavy and simultaneously not enough. He flipped his paper round to show Charles, who took it and simply stared for several long moments.
“I suppose mine needs improvement as well. Your eyes do shine in a way that doesn’t translate well to paper,” Edwin said nervously, waiting for Charles’ judgement. With every wordless second that passed, Edwin only grew more anxious, though he wasn’t sure what for. Charles would never be cruel, so what was Edwin even worried about?
“Mate, this is amazing,” Charles said, delicately tracing the shell of his own charcoal ear. “I don’t think it needs anything at all. Is this really…” He bit his lip and trailed off. “Is this really what I look like? To you?”
“Yes,” Edwin said hesitantly. “Do you remember what you look like? I do not, of course, but perhaps you…?”
“No,” Charles said, shaking his head. “I mean, general shapes, yeah, but this is…” he trailed off again, seemingly without the words to describe what he felt.
Edwin had the sinking feeling he had tried too hard, put too much of himself into it, when the original reason for the exercise was silly. That unchangeable otherness he’d carried since he was a child, that everyone except him seemed to clock immediately, had shown itself once again, embarrassingly. His fingers itched with the urge to snatch it back and burn it to cinders.
He couldn’t do that without raising questions, and so he talked to distract from it. “I drew inspiration from the style of Fayum mummy portraits. You are of course familiar with them—recall the Case of the Troubled Tabernarius? You have a similar Roman beauty about you.”
Charles’ eyes were wet. “Careful. Anyone would think you’ll be writing love letters next,” he joked. “I’m not all that. Ugliest one on the cricket team, I was.”
“Your inability to accept a compliment has no bearing on the truth. And besides, I’ll thank you not to speak so poorly of my best friend,” Edwin sniffed.
“Yeah? Well I know your best friend,” Charles laughed. “He’s a bit of a knob, isn’t he?”
“Only when he insists on being stubborn.” Edwin stayed very still as Charles carefully set the drawing to the side, then turned and pulled him into a hug.
“I love it, Edwin. And I swear, I’m gonna keep drawing you until I can do it properly,” Charles promised.
“There’s no need—”
“’Course there is. You gave me this, now let me show you what you look like to me, alright?”
“Very well,” Edwin agreed, if only because it would give him the chance to stare greedily at Charles’ face some more. Charles pulled back, and Edwin immediately missed his embrace. “I shall procure more charcoal tomorrow, and perhaps the implements to experiment with other media as well. You would look good in oil pastels, I should think.”
“Flatterer.” Charles gathered up both drawings, pinning them carefully by their corners to the top of their case board, taking care not to fold or puncture them. “There. Almost as good as magnets on a fridge, yeah?”
“Better,” Edwin said decisively.