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It was a quieter day.
Ed was back from work, tired but not exhausted. No big cases, no big breakthroughs, just a lot of grunt work and shuffling of papers. He and Oswald had sat together by the windows and shared another Chinese takeout, laughing and joking over their meals. They broke out into a couple of familiar songs. It was always fun to see which songs they both knew, what they shared in common. There was a delight in finding that moment where the other's eyes lit up, a finger was pointed, and suddenly the two of them would break out in song, just at the right part. Edward kept the beat with his chopsticks while Oswald leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile, head tipped back as he sang.
Ed cleaned up after the meal was done, at his insistence; despite Oswald's rapid recovery, Edward still pushed him to rest at any opportunity. Oswald didn’t much complain about Edward's request, happy to return to bed and watch Ed work from the comfort of his pillow. It was when things had been cleaned up and they were both ready for sleep that Edward slipped away into the bathroom for his nightly shower.
They had a routine. After a few too many nights of Edward awkwardly crumpled and curled into strange positions on the couch, Oswald had decided it was only right to invite the host to his own bed. He had anticipated a moment of hesitation at the idea of sharing a bed with another man, but the thought didn’t seem to enter Edward’s mind; his hesitation stemmed only from his desire to let Oswald rest as best he could.
“I’ll take too much space,” Edward had said.
“It’s a big bed,” Oswald had countered, and eventually they got into the pleasant rhythm of sleeping on their respective sides of the bed. There had, admittedly, been a few moments of bumped knees and tangled legs, but Oswald could never bring himself to mind.
While Ed was away, Oswald nosily perused the contents of his apartment from where he sat in the bed. There was a strange collection of essential oils lined up on Ed’s nightstand, an array of reading materials that often leaned towards the macabre on the nearest bookshelf, and the looming figure of an anatomically correct skeleton model dangling from its stand by Edward’s side of the bed. The sight of the thing had often startled Oswald during the night, but when he had eventually complained of its presence, Edward had only laughed.
“He’s not so scary.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Don’t you find it a little comforting?” Ed had jangled one of the skeleton’s hands, letting it fall down with a clatter against the model’s plastic femur.
Oswald had been so baffled he had no idea what to say, other than a simple, surly, “No.”
“To each their own, I guess!” Ed had said, shrugging with a smile.
Ed was definitely stranger than most Oswald had met in his life, but the strangeness came with a warmth that was difficult to turn away from.
After a few moments, Edward emerged from the bathroom with a suddenness that startled Oswald, the bathroom door swinging open fast enough to clunk against the wall.
“Sorry, sorry,” Ed said frantically. “I forgot my pyjamas.”
And his robe, too, apparently—Ed was naked but for the towel wrapped around his waist, which he was gripping so tightly that it seemed it might rip, and another over his shoulders. His spindly body rushed through the bedroom in search of his pyjamas, which Oswald belatedly realised were draped over the back of Edward’s desk chair. The muted brown towel on Ed’s shoulders caught the stray droplets from his wet hair as his head swivelled in his search.
When Edward noticed the pyjamas, he leaned forward to grab them. The towel around his shoulders slipped, revealing a silvery line, surprisingly jagged and thick, that swept across his shoulder blade from his nape to his ribs. Now that Oswald had the opportunity to look, there were more lines, faded and criss-crossing over one another along the skin of Edward’s back, concentrated between his shoulder blades and stretched in their width, as though they had been forced to grow with his body over time. Oswald’s voice caught in his throat, and he uselessly gestured as Edward turned around innocently, pyjamas in hand.
“Oh good! You found them,” Oswald exclaimed.
Seeming to grow aware of how exposed he was, Edward gave a nervous chuckle and reached up to pull the towel more securely around his shoulders like a shawl, positioning the bundle of pyjamas like a shield over his chest.
“Yes. Well. I’ll be going now,” he said, overly formal, as though he wasn’t just going back into the bathroom.
With that, he scampered off. Oswald purposely didn't watch him go, for fear of catching another glance at the scars. His mind was blank and too full at the same time, and he didn’t quite know what to do. By the time Edward came out of the bathroom, fully dressed in his plaid, greyish-brown pyjamas, Oswald had burrowed beneath the covers, turning his back to the bathroom door and breathing deeply to feign sleep.
He was good at faking sleep because he was good at faking a lot of things: emotions, camaraderie, innocence—but he couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t seen what he saw, no matter how much it would benefit Edward for him to do so. Upon seeing Oswald’s “asleep” form, Edward stilled and crept about the room, turning off the lights with an unnerving silence. It was strange knowing that someone was in the room, and yet being completely unable to hear them beyond the careful, slow clicks of the light switches.
Oswald could now see in his mind’s eye the memory of how carefully Edward tended to click off the lights when he meant to be quiet, how he’d keep the pad of his thumb on the surface of the switch and slowly turn it at just the right pace to keep from making a noise. He wondered what age Edward had been when he learned to do things so quietly.
As the room dimmed into darkness, Edward finally approached the bed. Oswald felt the covers lift as Ed eased himself in gently to avoid disturbing Oswald’s feigned sleep. When Edward lay down, he avoided his usual, politely turned-away position facing away from Oswald. Instead, he settled on his back, then faced Oswald, then away for a moment, then on his back again, like he couldn’t decide what felt right. Eventually, he settled onto his back and slept.
Oswald wished to do the same, but try as he might, true sleep never came.
The night stretched on endlessly. In the dark, with the pale, barely-there moonlight easing into the room, Oswald eventually opened his eyes. Edward had turned in his sleep, his back to Oswald. Oswald took in the way the fabric of his patterned pyjamas stretched over his back, strained by the inward-curled position he’d adopted in the night, the jut of a shoulder blade almost visible by the seam of his sleeve. Oswald brought his hand up into the space between them, the tips of his fingers just barely tracing the air over Edward’s back, as faint as the moonlight.
Ed startled awake, whipping around and up onto his elbows. His expression was startlingly cold. They stared at one another, Ed’s neck twisted to look over his shoulder, Oswald’s fingers still suspended in the air. Oswald’s heart beat. He waited for Ed to return to his odd, dothery warmth, for the moment to melt with an awkward chuckle or an abashed smile, but Ed just turned and lay down without a word.
Oswald lowered his hand, returning it to his chest. The back of his neck burned. He tucked his head deeper into the pillow. Both their breaths were too audible in the dark room.
Oswald didn’t sleep that night. He feared, from that moment forward, that Edward didn’t either.