Work Text:
Loving You
“Charles, are you harmed?” Edwin calls out, his eyes wide with concern. They had driven out the malicious spirit, but Charles still was lying in the corner of the now mostly demolished interior of Wilson’s Good Vibes record shop. Rapidly maneuvering through the debris, Edwin squats down to examine him more closely.
“Mate, that wasn’t a very good vibe,” Charles sardonically groans, sounding just a little too groggy for Edwin’s liking. Laid out flat on the chipped floorboards and pile of wreckage of the Oldies section, he faces the ceiling with a blank stare as Edwin looks him over.
“No, Charles. It certainly was not,” Edwin answers quietly as he clears some vinyl fragments strewn over his partner. He carefully removes a large wedge of a vinyl record caught in Charles’ coat pocket and holds it aloft, letting out a little amused huff at the album’s title: Loving You – Elvis Presley.
///
‘Charles, I’m in love with you.’ Edwin still finds himself a little caught off guard when certain things trigger his memory of that day on the steps of Hell. If he’s being honest, he doesn’t mind it. Something will transport him to that time when he decided he couldn’t possibly risk never being able to tell Charles. The moment comes, queued up like one of those ‘reels’ that Crystal is obsessed with showing Charles all the time. And Edwin wants to press the play button. In fact, it’s not really unpleasant at all. He seldom thinks about any aspect of his second time in Hell... except for Charles being there.
Not that he could block the whole twisted misadventure. He remembers everything, but he’s never had any flashbacks of the spider, the running, hiding, the killing, or the other people suffering there. Sometimes he thinks about meeting Simon, and feels a pit of guilt that he was too concerned with himself and Charles to convince him to leave.
But mostly, when recalling his latest time in Hell, he thinks of Charles.
It was so different from his first seven decades in Hell. All the pain, misery, fear, despair, and suffering… it all just seemed to ‘belong’ there. The pain made its own sick sense, and he never expected to find anything else.
But when he was taken back, Edwin felt different. In some ways, it was far worse than before. This time, he wasn’t a scared 16-year-old who thought Hell was where people like him went when they died. This time he knew better. He had a real life—well... afterlife and good work to do with real friends. He had Charles. But those thoughts were interrupted as soon as the 70 years of hard-earned instinct had his legs scrambling towards the hiding places he was sure he had forgotten. It was all there, just as it had been on the day he escaped, and his mind was thrown into a jumbled mix of regret and base regression to the shell he had become in the pit the first time.
But to find Charles standing in that wretched abyss, with a smile on his face that would rival every sunrise the Earth ever enjoyed, was simultaneously the best and most ridiculous thing he’d ever seen. There was something different. There was something that very clearly didn’t belong in Hell: Charles. Charles’ smile. Charles’ concern. Charles’ relief. Charles’ bravery. Charles’ love... love like that didn’t belong in Hell any more than his absolutely fucking stupid willingness to sacrifice his whole existence to save him. God, how he loved him for it.
So Edwin had decided he didn’t mind when his memory is whisked back to finding Charles in Hell. In fact, he never wants to forget it. It’s enshrined in his mind like a holy site, and he’ll visit it when he feels he needs it. Seeing Charles smile like that, in that place, to Edwin, was a kind of consecration of the memory.
Against all odds, Edwin is happy to be transported to that memory of Hell. To that moment he first knew, beyond any reasonable doubt, just how deeply he was loved by the best person he’d ever met. He knows Charles can’t be in love with him, but when he thinks of that smile, his champion, his best friend, bravely holding that same blessed lantern Edwin first held for him in his own darkest hour, he invokes a sacred warmth in his soul that melts away any fleeting sting of rejection. If someone as amazing and remarkable as Charles loves him so much that he’d go to Hell for him, and would also skip out on Heaven just so they can stay together— he actually feels rather guilty to possibly want more… or something new, rather. How greedy, he thinks! He already has so much.
After all, Charles told him that he is the most important person in the world to him. In that most secret chamber of his soul, where there is no fear of embarrassment or pretense, being the most important person to Charles makes Edwin feel like the most important person in the world. Sometimes, Charles will smile at something—he does smile a lot— and that little flash of Heaven he saw while crumpled on the floor of Hell is projected straight into his ghostly eyes. How could he possibly...
///
“-win? Oi, Edwin?” Charles says with some urgency, pulling him back to reality.
“Hmm?” Edwin quickly responds, cursing himself because he knows Charles is going to ask...
“Where did you go there, mate?” Charles asks softly, now sitting up on the floor propped up on one arm, his free hand holding his friend’s forearm. When did that happen? Edwin wonders, as Charles adds with a worried tone “I didn’t see anything hit you. Are you okay?” He scans over Edwin who is still squatting on the floor next to him.
“That’s because you leapt in front of me when Wilson started his gramophone barrage!” Edwin hollers with a bit more heat than intended.
///
While it’s hard to accept, part of Edwin knows Charles will always put himself in the way of danger to protect him. They had a long discussion... well more of a desperate argument about it a few months ago following a particularly violent exorcism in the miserable old attic of a long-closed asylum.
It was a complete mess. Not one, but three demons had crawled out of the possessed boy as Edwin carried out the ritual. He still curses his folly of not knowing that there were multiple demons present. The binding canvas Charles held down over the boy’s bed successfully captured one of them, but it was simply too small for a legion of three, and the two loose and irate demons knew exactly how to hurt ghosts.
The bastards did nothing at all to help the other demon. ‘So typical,’ Edwin recalled thinking with disdain at the time. Demons, as he knows all too well, have nothing but malice and violence in them. They hate anyone who still has hope for the good they once and forever rejected, and want nothing more than to destroy anyone who reminds them of what they lost. With no body to inhabit, the demons took smokey forms of tall, gangly men. ‘Living shadows’ as Edwin liked to describe them. One of the loose demons manifested an all-too-real jagged iron spear, and the other held some kind of flaming vat of molten ore.
When the spearman lunged at Edwin, who was still facing the bed, he and the demons both looked on with equally shocked faces as Charles filled the air between Edwin and the spear, which then pierced his gut with a hideous silence and pinned him to the floor with a grunt. Edwin noted how genuinely aghast they appeared not out of fear— but total bewilderment to see someone willing to sacrifice himself like that. Their hideous and shadowy faces went black as pitch and contorted into a gruesome look of total disgust. Edwin cursed himself, because in the presence of someone as good as Charles, he had been completely forgotten by their assailants.
Edwin shuddered recalling how Charles’ scream had filled that attic as the other demon began pouring the molten iron into his already black and wounded abdomen. But their rage and malice towards Charles upended their own attack. They lost their diabolical smarts because they had no thought in them other than destruction. As Charles’ ghostly form dissolved around the smelted iron, there was nothing left to pin him to the floor and he phased through the floorboards. With Charles at a safe distance at last, and no innocent possessed person to use as a shield, Edwin was able to invoke a hellfire incantation which destroyed their forms on the mortal plane.
Charles had been in searing pain, and it took several days for him to recover, even with the assistance of Edwin’s skills in ghost healing and every salve and potion he could get his hands on. While they had both been through worse over the years, the way Charles played this melee off as ‘nothing’ was unacceptable. After Port Townsend, they had agreed it would be better to talk, rather than having one of them worrying about what was really going on in the other’s mind. After Charles’ recovery, they engaged in the first major test of the agreement.
Initially, Charles had seemed completely unflappable, as if it was the most obvious and casual thing in the world to get hurt so that Edwin wouldn’t. He kept saying it was ‘his job to take the hits’, or it ‘wasn’t that bad’, or that he knew Edwin would figure it out if he just bought him some time. It was only when Edwin had some kind of embarrassing panic attack amid the argument (which shouldn’t even be possible for ghosts) that Charles started to really listen to him.
Edwin had lost awareness of where he was for a short time, only to find himself crumpled on their floor, sobbing quietly with his head low by his knees— much like how Charles had found him on the floor of the dollhouse in Hell. His proper suit phased away, leaving him just in his undergarments again. Looking up, Charles had already been right in front of him, kneeling on the floor.
“Whoa, Edwin, mate, hey, hey, I’m sorry. It’s OK…slow breaths, remember?” Charles looked at Edwin with very round and concerned eyes as he knelt before him. “I know you’re mad at me, and upset I got hurt, but—please, mate…C’mere.”
Charles spoke quickly and softly, taking his left hand up to Edwin’s shoulder. “You have to tell me what’s really wrong. I’m okay, and so are you. We’re here together, yeah? We get in some trouble, you and me, s’kind of the business, innit?”
He huffed out a little ironic laugh and took Edwin’s other shoulder and looked straight into his eyes while speaking much slower and deliberately, “But you saved me, Edwin. Remember? Just like I knew you would. Done blasted those tossers back to the shithole they came from.” Smiling sadly, he added earnestly, “and you saved that boy too. You’re a proper hero, Edwin, you always are.”
For a moment, Edwin held Charles’ gaze as he registered what he said, but then his head went back down to his knees and they sat silently for a moment.
“But I didn’t save you,” Edwin had said simply, barely above a whisper. Lifting his head, he saw a genuinely confused Charles staring back at him, squinting and shaking his head. Sitting back a bit, he let go of Edwin shoulders and quickly tapped his abdomen twice over his now dark red polo.
“Oi! Fighting fit I is what I am,” Charles had said with a grin, “cause you mopped the floor with those demons- I and feel great now by the way, thanks to you. Ready to go ten rounds with anyone who gets in your…”
“No!” Edwin had said with full volume, catching Charles off guard, whose grin had melted into a thin straight line.
“Fuck. That.” Edwin enunciated with the kind of terrifying diction reserved for when he is seriously mad; though he had to force himself to swallow his immediate regret for making Charles wince as if he was preparing for another blow. Having faltered for what he hoped was an imperceptible moment, Edwin felt a sudden need to create some distance from Charles’ worried eyes.
Standing upright in a flash, Edwin, now clad in his trousers and usual white shirt, looked down at his baffled friend, still sat on the floor. “Charles, as long as you think all you are good for is taking fucking hits, I... I can’t stand it. We simply cannot continue on together if I am unable to trust that you will care for yourself too!”
Charles scrambled to his feet to meet Edwin’s eyes, clearly trying to come up with something to say in response, which Edwin was in no mood to wait for. “As you say, we get into ‘some trouble’ you and I,” Edwin blasted as he whipped up his hands to make angry air-quotes. “I simply refuse to accept your cavalier attitude towards yourself when you’re faced with entities which would gleefully erase your existence or at least cause you the greatest possible pain, and then say ‘oh it didn’t matter’ and act like you’re eager for the next fucking round!”
In the deafening silence which followed the echo of Edwin’s shout, Charles’ posture shifted uncomfortably as he looked down at his feet. When he had finally lifted his head again, he initially appeared resolute. But when he met Edwin’s eyes, any certainly he had seemed to drain from him, and his face was replete with worry. He looked scared. Edwin felt himself break.
“Don’t you think you’ve taken enough hits?” Edwin said more quietly, now with traitorous tears pouring down from his face to the floor. Briefly looking up at nothing, he resolved to just come out with it, and let Charles see this small, very hidden part of himself, and uncover the heart of his fear, because his impending embarrassment would be a small price to pay if Charles understood him.
“I love you, Charles, so very much, but sometimes I fear it just isn’t enough,” Edwin said plainly as Charles’ unreadable expression softened considerably.
“I love you too, Edwin. And God knows I know you love me. You made that very clear,” Charles said as he moved slightly closer to Edwin on instinct before catching himself, as if he was unsure whether he should keep his distance. Still torn, Edwin didn’t turn away, so Charles stepped closer and dared a weak smile. “Edwin, it’s the best thing anyone has ever told me, how can that ever somehow not be ‘enough’ for...” He paused briefly, unsure of how to finish. “Enough for what exactly?”
Edwin felt his non-existent blood go cold. This was supposed to be about Charles, his safety, his self-worth. And Edwin was about to make it about himself. Doubts aside, he looked at the cautiously smiling ghost before him and decided to trust him again. He carefully took hold of Charles’ shoulders and guided them to sit on their sofa together.
“Enough for you to see in yourself what I see.” Edwin said with new resolve and through fresh tears. “To trust me. To believe that I am right! That every hit you took was never your job, never who you are. Far from it. Only true monsters could seek to hurt someone so immeasurably beautiful, with such an enormous heart… and they dare not claim the privilege of defining in any way someone who is infinitely beyond their meaningless comprehension.”
Charles suddenly had to look at anything but Edwin. He stared briefly at the rug, scanned over to their desk, the knickknacks Niko placed all over it, and his bat propped up against his sitting area. Having realized that Edwin was waiting for him, he forced himself to look back into Edwin’s eyes.
“Every hit, Charles,” Edwin explained, “was an abomination to the wonder you are. In life, you took hits from people who were supposed to love you, as a friend... as a son.” Edwin’s breath hitched, but he continued, “One of the first things you ever told me is how you didn’t want to change how you lived your life. I know you were speaking about the way you died protecting that unfortunate boy, but I need you to know that’s not all you are. Charles, you are everything to me. You are the hero, you are my hero. I think I knew that from the moment we met above the Chapel. Loving you is the most easy and natural thing for me, but it is also the most serious and important part of my existence.”
“-dwin, I...” Charles barely managed to squeak out. Not bothering to wipe away the tears on his face, he had closed the little distance between them and took Edwin’s hands in his, and rested them in his lap, seeming quite clueless how to respond. Fortunately, Edwin wasn’t interested in hearing his non-existent response.
“Saving people…caring about people is what you do, Charles. It’s never been the hits you take… it’s your heart that makes you who you are. It’s your heart that’s worth saving, more than any I’ve ever known. And although it frightens me sometimes, I could never truly want you to be anyone else— someone unwilling to love until it hurts. But I need to trust that you’ll also love and protect that dearest heart of yours… and that you know that I will do the very same for you, anytime it would be needed.” Edwin halted, taking a shuddering breath and added at last, “To Hell, and back again.”
Charles tensed a bit at the words, but Edwin continued before he could interrupt. “I need you to know how much you deserve protection, that it’s certainly not your job alone to take hits, and that when you do, they hurt me just as much. It has to work both ways, or I’d feel as if I failed to correct this wretched injustice the world has enjoined on you.”
Edwin’s somewhat steady composition suddenly unraveled. “Cha..” he got out and then started sobbing openly. Swallowing hard, he forced himself to continue because he needed to say it.
“When you took that spear for me... you shocked them, the demons, I mean. They could see you, and only you. They had to destroy you, because they can’t stand to be in the presence of someone as good as you. I’ve never seen such hate in my seventy…”
Looking as if Edwin’s words had just slapped him in the face, Charles tightened his hands over Edwin’s and shook his head. “Edwin, you can’t...”
“Charles!” Edwin interrupted with unexpected force, and after a short moment concluded,
“If Hell can see it, how can you not?”
Silence. Edwin felt too spent to even look directly at Charles at first. But after a few seconds, he focused and recognized a familiar look in his friend’s rather damp eyes, the one that he gets when he is absolutely determined to do something.
“Edwin.” Charles quivered and paused to take few deep breaths of his own. Making sure his eyes were locked with Edwin’s, Charles spoke solemnly, like he was pronouncing a religious vow.
“Edwin, if you can see that in me, how could I not?”
Edwin looked down for a moment, then back to his friend, and offered a small “mm” in response, which Charles took as an acknowledgment to go on.
“Edwin, I love you so bloody much. You know that, right? Because before I say anything else, I really need to know that you know that.”
A quiet “Mmhmm” is all Edwin could manage, with a nod of his head. “Good.” Charles pronounced with a tired smile, his own tears having cleared up a little. Appearing more confident, he began cautiously rubbing small circles on Edwin’s hands with his thumbs. “I don’t give a toss what those demons could see, cause if they missed seeing you there, they are fucking stupid blind assholes. Edwin, they were after you! I didn’t stop them because I thought I deserved to get spiked or something, it’s because they were gonna hurt the best person I know, the center of my fucking existence, doing what you always do—trying to save and help people”.
“So were you!” Edwin quickly answered, still hanging on to the thought of being the center of Charles’ existence.
“Damn right I was.” Charles said with pride and beaming a toothy smile before continuing. “Right where I belonged, with the best part of my life, or afterlife, or whatever... doing our thing, trying to save people. That’s what we do,” He paused briefly. “That’s what you did for me, Edwin. You know that, yeah?”
Edwin looked on calmly, inviting Charles to go on. “Nobody has ever cared for me like you have Edwin, it’s not even close. I didn’t even really get it at the time, but after I died— something told me to follow you because you were good… all kind and gentle with me when I was hurting. You’re who I wanted to be like, when I was alive.” With a breathy shudder, he went on, “What I wanted my friends...my family... to be. You are what I wanted the world to be like, mate. I had no idea how long you’d put up with me, but somehow it felt that being with you is what home was supposed to be like.”
Edwin, who was now shedding some new tears, offered a floppy smile and said, “It so happens, that I’d rather like to put up with you forever.”
“And ever.” Charles answered with a little smile and squeeze of Edwin’s hands, but his face turned suddenly serious. “Edwin, you were wrong... really wrong, about one thing.” Edwin looked back with a slightly concerned and annoyed look. To Edwin’s surprise, it looked as if Charles was pleased by his reaction.
“You were wrong when you said you ‘didn’t save me’.” Edwin considered defending himself, but he could tell that Charles had rhetorical point to make, and he was eager to hear it, so he waited for him to continue.
“All that shit, about me taking the hits and all... its…,” Charles paused and swallowed because his voice had gone raspy. “Edwin, you saved me from ever thinking it was all bloody worthless. Before you, part of me used to sit and wonder at night what made me such a bad guy. That no matter what I’d try, I’d fail at it. I’d piss my dad off over something, fuck up something at school, which would piss my dad off more. But then the kindest, bravest, smartest and best person I ever met decided to love me. To want me.”
He stopped, taking a few more soothing breaths, and looking overwhelmed with affection, and took Edwin’s hands and brought them up for a gentle kiss on his knuckles. “I hope you know how much it means to be wanted by the likes of you, Edwin Payne. You’re my hero, forever. You save me, every day. Every minute we spend together. Every time I think of what you’ve been through, and how kind and loving you still were, and are...how a fucking angel could crawl out of Hell just to help the first poor bastard he meets. Where do you get off being so damn amazing?”
“Charles...” Taking every ounce of strength and poise he could summon, his friend’s name was the only word Edwin could manage. Inspired by Charles’ gesture, he decided to take their still joined hands from Charles’ lap and elevated them briefly to his own lips. “You are a marvel to me, Charles. Rest assured, you always have been. You weren’t the first poor...person... I saw after Hell. You were the best person I saw, surrounded by the same cruelty I’d just escaped.”
Charles knowingly grinned at the boy before him; looking at him with such adoration—as if he truly was his hero, his savior. “Believe me Edwin, if I ever have any dark thoughts from those days, or any other time, all I have to do is remember that Edwin Payne, the Saint who’d break Hell twice over, found me, loves me, and wants me in his life”.
“You are my life, Charles.” Edwin responds easily, suddenly a little bashful as he looks down from Charles’ eyes as if that wasn’t the best thing he’d ever heard.
“Edwin, mate... I... I believe you.” Charles intoned as if it were a prayer. “I believe you. You have to know I believe you. And that’s exactly why I’ll fight to save you, every fucking time. It’s not about me thinking I’m meant to be the universe’s punching bag or some shit, it’s because you’re the best part of me. Edwin, if I save you, I am protecting myself.”
He paused for a few seconds and looked to make sure that Edwin understood him. Having appeared satisfied, Charles says lightly, “No breaking us up, is there?” His easy smile then darkened considerably, to Edwin’s concern.
“Edwin, back in Port Townsend, when that... thing… took you through the wall… I ... couldn’t handle it. I was already worried I was losing you somehow because I knew you were upset or hurt or something and couldn’t tell me—”
A thousand words flooded Edwin’s mind in defense of his friend, but before he could protest, Charles put his finger to Edwin’s lips, which caused him to briefly look down at his nose cross-eyed and then back up to Charles with wide, irritated, and incredulous eyes. Apparently amused by Edwin’s contortions, Charles’ mouth twisted into a S-shape, and then burst open with a raucous giggle.
“Charles!” Edwin yelped, fully put off by the inopportune series of gestures when speaking about something so serious.
“Mate, you...” he said, holding back further giggles and still smiling widely. With his eyes briefly fixated on Edwin’s nose, it almost looked as if he was contemplating doing… something to it. Edwin was relieved when Charles settled on some light humor, “No poker face on this one, eh, I can read you like a book”.
“You may not be as mysterious as you think either, Charles,” Edwin clapped back.
“Nah! I’m a master of disguise, a proper man of mystery, I am,” Charles responded with a very smug and wide grin.
“Then I’ll have the great master know that his shirt turned bright red a moment ago when I said ‘you are my life, Charles,’” Edwin said with a look reeking of satisfaction.
“Wha?” With eyes just as wide as Edwin’s were a moment ago, Charles looked down and saw that his shirt had indeed gone as red as it’s ever had been in life or death.
“Guess I got a tell, don’t I?” Charles admitted, sounding quite comfortable in his defeat, as if he didn’t mind so long as it was Edwin who knew what he was thinking. “Just, promise me that you believe me about why I could never stand by and let anything happen to you. I’ll always protect you, Edwin. And I know you will do the same for me.” Edwin simply nodded, feeling tired from the whole emotional roller coaster of the evening, and offered Charles’ hands a final squeeze. He was sure that they had both forgotten they were still holding each other.
They were leaning back against the sofa facing forward, but Edwin could see a smirk start to spread over Charles’ face through the corner of his eye. Here it comes, he thought, just as Charles decided to break their brief comfortable silence: “You have, as a matter of fact.”
“I have what?”
“Done the same for me. Saved me. Came to my rescue.” Charles drawled out playfully. Edwin turned and stared at Charles, awaiting the punch line. “You remember, with Esther. She tried to take Crystal and I did my thing, and she sent me flying and smoldering across her garden.”
“Yes. I remember. All too well. She walloped you with an iron cane, as I recall,” Edwin said wistfully.
“Yeah, but at least I had my cricket bat, but you totally freaked out and charged her, unarmed!” Holding back a laugh, he added, “To save the poor damsel in distress!”
“Are you talking about yourself or Crystal?” Edwin quipped, offering a toothy smile which he almost always reserved for Charles alone.
“Oi! Enough of that, thank you!” Charles said embarrassed, just as the other “damsel” candidate decided to come into their office. Their eyes both went wide as they exchanged a peculiar glance with each other and looked back at Crystal.
Arriving at a dead stop in front of the sofa, Crystal looked them over and finally uttered a now frequently heard greeting: “Seriously. It’s too early for this shit, and I haven’t had coffee yet”.
///
“Thought we’ve been over this, mate.” Charles says lightly, slamming Edwin back to the reality of the wreck of the music shop. Edwin takes Charles’ elbows and helps lift them both to their feet.
“Charles, I’m sorry, I know you were just...”
“Nobody says gramophone, Edwin. Not for like a million years”.
“Quite.” Edwin says with enormous relief that he got away with not opening the can of worms instigated by his memory.
Pausing for a moment, Charles looked into Edwin’s eyes and reverently says “We’re okay, Edwin, yeah?”
Damn. How did he always know what was going on in his mind. Sometimes he believed Charles really could read him like a book.
“Yes, Charles. Thank you. Shall we depart? There's a mirror still intact near the register.”
“In a tick, mate. Come check out the rest of these records.” Charles says with a smile, looking over the various titles. “Edwin, these are aces!” He continues as he starts flipping through the stacks. Edwin’s heart warms as he sees his best friend vibrating with excitement—just as a new idea enters his mind of how to make their forever a little more fun for Charles.
:)