Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The last thing Edwin remembers is magic, swirling bright and painful in the corner of his vision. Hands, desperate, shoving at him, slipping off his back. An impact, a crack, pain worse than anything he could have ever comprehended. Then nothing, the endless dark.

He comes to with the taste of dirt in his mouth and his vision blurred. His body aches, there is a strange taste on his tongue, and somebody is clinging to him to the point of creaking bones. Something tacky sticks to him everywhere. There is the feeling of sand between his teeth.

There are sobs being smothered into his shoulder, hands fluttering back and forth between his back and shoulders. A grief so profound lodges itself in his chest—for what, he can’t quite place. The hands on him feel like something he once would have given anything for. He knows there once was feeling, something that is swallowed up by the endless dark.

Edwin doesn’t remember why, but he knows that he should not be alive.

The person clinging to him is familiar, but it takes Edwin a while to remember a name. He remembers laughter, a void so deep he thinks he might fall and disappear back down into nothing. There is supposed to be something, he can taste it on the tip of his tongue. He is missing something that once made him all he was, he just knows it.

The name finally crystalises itself. “Charles?” 

His voice is barely there, a croaking thing that does little to cut through the sobs. All the same, Charles grows still before rearing back and reaching up to cup Edwin’s face. His hands feel tacky against Edwin’s cheeks. His hold is a little too tight, digging in enough to make Edwin remember where his edges are. His nose brushes Edwin’s and Edwin’s heart remembers an emotion that Edwin can no longer place. His pulse thumps loudly and the world blurs. Charles’s forehead touches his.

“Yeah,” Charles sobs, “yeah, I’m right here. You’re okay.” 

Edwin knows that isn’t true. 

He pulls away as far as Charles lets him, takes in the shaking boy. The fingers on his jaw feel wet, there is dirt smudged across almost any part of Charles, clothes and skin stained much like Edwin feels he himself is. His face is swollen, his eyes bloodshot and puffy. There are tear tracks in the sheen of dust on his cheeks.

Edwin can’t remember, but there is a strange feeling inside of his chest. Charles’s fingers slip on his chin. Edwin doesn’t remember enough for this picture to make sense. “Charles, what did you do?” 

Charles presses closer again, his thumbs brushing beneath Edwin’s eyes. He is trying to smile, but it keeps slipping whenever he takes a shuddering breath. Edwin doesn’t follow the urge to reach out and adjust his collar. He thinks he would have, before—well, before whatever brought them here. 

“I dug you up, and Mick- there was a spell, I bought it, and it brought you back.” Charles’s voice cracks, but he pushes past it. “You’re okay now, I’ve got you, yeah? I brought you back.” He sounds desperate, like he is trying to convince Edwin of a truth he has denied without even opening his mouth.

Edwin looks to his side, and stares down at the hole in the ground. Slowly, things slide into place inside of his mind. The images are blurred, nothing comes into focus, but he remembers distinctly when something sharp and long had punctured his chest before being torn back out without care.

He reaches up and finds the torn edges of the hole still in his chest. Charles hiccups another sob. “No don’t, don’t touch, please, we gotta stitch you up, don’t-”

“What did you do?” The question is out before he can finish thinking it, spilling out of his mouth with remnants of grave dirt.

Charles’s face breaks apart. “I couldn’t just leave you down there, could I? You hate small spaces, I couldn’t live with myself. I promised I’d always come for you, remember?” His hands shake where they rest against Edwin’s jaw. Blood trickles down his lips. Edwin isn’t sure when Charles started bleeding. “So I brought you back. You’ve gotta believe me.” His voice grows desperate, his plea tumbling off his tongue like it couldn’t get out fast enough. “Please. The magic can’t- You have to believe me, Mick said it’s important that you believe me.” 

Edwin knows magic, knows its strange oddities and whims, has fought with them for every hard-earned spell sparking at his fingertips. Faith had always been the biggest hurdle, always the one the spells refused to bend to his will on. He’d learned to bend himself instead, but now he’s aching and so very tired and he knows he should not be alive. He died.

Charles’s grip slips down to his shoulders. “Edwin!” His face fills up Edwin’s vision. There is something new on his face, behind the tears and pleading eyes. Edwin takes a breath ready to talk Charles through how to bend, how to lock faith out of the magic long enough to let it settle. Edwin isn’t sure he’s aware enough for his belief to be enough. 

And then Charles’s nose slides against his, and he is kissing him. His hands wrap around Edwin’s neck, his knees bump against Edwin’s hip. He kisses Edwin like he might die if he pulls away, pushing so close that everything else falls away except the hot line of Charles against his chest, against his lips.

Edwin, with sudden clarity, knows he’d been hoping against hope for something just like this. He remembers a life of gently falling in love, of turning his head with every one of Charles’s steps—like a flower seeking the sun. He remembers a confession, Charles’s confused, yet forever kind, response. Softened time passing with Charles still smiling, still touching, still orbiting him like Edwin remains the centre of his universe no matter what feelings nest in Edwin’s heart. Then pain, something long and sharp through his lungs and ribs. Darkness. 

Charles pulls back. Edwin doesn’t chase him, but finds that his hands curled around Charles’s elbows at some point. “You can’t die on me before I get to figure it out,” Charles says, begs before kissing him again. 

Edwin thinks there’s something he is missing. There still is the hole, the emptiness yawning within him like a monstrous mouth. But Charles is warm, and Edwin suddenly has never been colder before in his life. Finally, his body moves, pushes close. His hands find Charles’s shoulders, his neck, his jaw. Charles sobs into his mouth and holds on tighter. The taste of copper and soil fill both mouths, but Charles doesn’t seem to care.

Edwin doesn’t think he has to breathe, but Charles gasps when they separate, bloodied saliva connecting their mouths. Edwin isn’t sure whose blood it is, and he thinks that would have worried him, before. 

Charles is now tugging a jacket over him, warm but not warm enough. He buttons it up, smooths it down, then kisses Edwin again. He’s stopped crying. Edwin thinks that’s a good sign, or it should be. 

“Let’s get you home, yeah?” Charles says, deceptively light. “Got needle and all ready, you’ll be good as new. Promise.” 

Edwin stumbles when Charles helps him to his feet. The world behind Charles seems muted, quieter, greyer. Charles is brilliant as ever. “I love you,” Edwin says, throat dry and itching. Charles smiles and hugs him until Edwin think he might be trying to climb into his chest through the wound now hidden beneath his jacket.

“I love you,” Charles whispers into his neck. “Don’t leave me behind.” 

Edwin thinks that even if he tried, Charles won’t let him. There is an unknown spell and grave dirt beneath his fingers to prove it, determination drawn into the way he holds onto the back of Edwin’s jacket. It might not be a good thing, but Edwin won’t say that out loud. His chest aches, and he is tired. Charles intertwines their hands and leads him home.

Chapter Text

Not for the first time in the past hour, Edwin feels stupid, needing to be picked up like a homesick kid at a sleepover. It’s frankly humiliating, especially after he insisted to Charles that he would be fine without him. It was Crystal’s party, and yes, he and Crystal sometimes got into it with each other, but he trusts her, so of course he had thought that nothing could go wrong. It seemed the perfect set-up to get himself to socialise, to prove to his friends and himself that he could do it. And it had been fine. 

Sure, Edwin’s heart is still sitting on his tongue after the scare with the dolls, but it feels silly now, standing on the curb outside of Crystal’s house. It's just a Halloween party with creepy decorations. It’s just a stupid party. 

A stupid party that Edwin can’t bear to step back inside of. Everyone is so loud, so uninhibited. Niko will be sad she missed his exit, but he can’t make himself turn around. If he turns around, he will just open himself up to another panic attack when he inevitably finds the damned dolls again. So here he is, standing alone and resolutely not swaying to the music, ignoring the laughter of all those people he doesn’t know anyway. He considers walking to the other end of the street, but that feels like an even worse admission of weakness, so he lingers on the curb, staring straight ahead into the garden of Crystal’s neighbours with their appalling collection of oddly shaped hedges. 

Charles’s red car turns onto the street and Edwin finally takes his first real breath since he’d stumbled upon the twisted baby doll. Even with the humiliation of having to call Charles to be picked up, he can only feel relief as Charles parks right in front of him. He barely manages to wait until the car stops to stumble the rest of the way towards it.

“You okay mate?” Charles asks through the rolled-down passenger window. He reaches over to unlatch the door and push it open for Edwin, who folds into the passenger seat like a marionette with its strings cut. Immediately, shame curls hotly in his throat. He knows it’s silly, just like he knows this whole situation is silly. Charles told him to let him know if he needed an out, he told him. And Edwin knows Charles would rather eat his own hand than ever make Edwin feel ashamed. 

“You didn’t have to come,” he mumbles into his collar, all the same. He feels the childish urge to hide behind his hands, as though that would somehow make Charles lose sight of him. 

“Hey, none of that, yeah?” Charles’s voice is soft, but frank. “I’ll always come pick you up when you need.” He says it with such conviction, like it is the only truth of the universe. Edwin feels warm all over, looking over at Charles who looks back with that beautifully fond smile of his. Edwin wants to crawl into his lap and kiss him. 

Instead he presses his balled fists against each other and sighs. “But you were at work.” 

It had been a massive point of contention within their group. When Niko and Crystal had heard that Mick had requested Charles stay in for Halloween, they had very nearly thrown a fit. But Mick had been resolute—apparently, last Halloween there had been several attempted break-ins, along with some curious hauntings of his less-average stock. And despite Niko’s sad look whenever it got brought up, Mick wasn’t getting any younger. So of course, Charles had agreed to monitor the shop with him despite Crystal’s party. And of course, Charles had only rolled his eyes at Niko’s hesitant suggestion of having the party a day early instead. “It’s a Halloween party, it’s gotta be on Halloween.” 

Back in the present, Charles reaches over and drops his warm hand down on Edwin’s fists and squeezes them. “It’s not that late yet, Mick could do without me for a few minutes. You come first, I told you.” 

“Thank you,” Edwin whispers around the sudden lump in his throat. After years of exposure, he’s gotten used to Charles’s many words and acts of affection. Normally, he can breathe his way through them, let himself think of kissing the life out of him in thanks before returning to business as normal. Tonight, he can’t quite get himself up to business speed. Charles’s thumb draws a circle into the spot where Edwin’s hands meet. Turned suddenly bold in the cover of night, Edwin opens one to turn his palm to meet Charles’s. 

When his eyes dart up to check on his best friend, Charles is smiling at him. “Where to, Eds?” 

Brain finally jumping into motion, Edwin doesn’t have to think long. He still makes a show of it. “I wouldn’t mind checking out Mick’s new arrivals.” He bites down on the disappointment when Charles withdraws his hand, but is quickly soothed by Charles laughing. 

“One day I’m gonna get in so much trouble for letting you into the back.” 

“Mick loves me,” Edwin replies primly and Charles giggles as he turns the key in the ignition. 

“Course he does mate.” There is nothing but brilliant sincerity in his voice as the car stutters to life. “You’re properly lovable.” 

Edwin spends most of the ride turning those words over in his head, flushed and happy. He also is far too aware of the way Charles’s hand brushes his thigh whenever he shifts gear. Strangely enough, the boldness he felt earlier doesn’t dissipate, and so he doesn’t make an effort to shift away from the touch. Instead, he allows himself to bask in the curious sense of intimacy spreading through the limited space between them, allows his thoughts to be hopeful and curious about what it would be like to reach over and put his hand on Charles’s thigh.

He compromises, letting his hand drift over Charles’s the next time he shifted gear. Charles lets out a soft hum. When he lets go of the shift, his hand settles on Edwin’s knee. Taking a deep breath, Edwin reaches for his hand and twines their fingers together.

It’s quiet, safe for the sounds of the car and the world passing them by. Quiet, but comfortable like they always have been. Charles doesn’t stop smiling all the way to Mick’s shop. Edwin doesn’t, either.

Chapter Text

To be quite frank, the letter was a silly, sentimental move born out of desperation that shames Edwin now that he has had time to come to terms with the situation. He had been an emotional wreck, terrified out of his mind—which, to give himself the smallest amount of grace feels warranted given that he was kidnapped out of his bed and transported to what, at least from the small room he is now trapped in, looks like an abandoned church out in the middle of nowhere. He knows that fear can make people do stupid things, like how the gardener at their estate smashed his own leg to pieces when the draft papers came in. He knows he wasn’t in his right mind when he wrote the letter, his wrists still raw with rope burn and the room far too inhospitable for it to be anything but a prison. 

Still, it had been foolish to waste his one opportunity to send word of his location on someone who he hasn’t seen in four years, someone who had made it quite clear that he wanted nothing less than to be near Edwin when they parted. Truly, he doesn’t think he has ever made a worse decision, writing a near-illegible letter to a man who he isn’t sure even still lives where he sent the strange carrier crow—and wasn’t that something, a crow with a little letter tube, sitting in his barred window and cawing until he gave it something to carry? A crow that had, of all the impossible and strange things that have happened recently in Edwin’s life, nodded when he asked it to fly to London.

But well, he had been terrified. It has been two days of absolutely nothing happening since then. Edwin has had time to reflect, to be mortified at the way he had begged in the letter, to reassure himself with the high likelihood that the letter would not find its recipient anyhow. It is high time for him to figure out what on earth he is even doing here. 

Attempting to ambush the man who opened the door just enough to slide a tray of food his way once a day turns out to be another foolish mistake. Now Edwin is terrified again, breath coming far too sharply for his crushed throat. Now there is tacky blood, dripping down from his hairline. Now he is curled up beneath the window, still none the wiser as to why his captors grabbed him, though their choice of location is starting to make him feel like a pinned butterfly—trapped, on display with everything out in the open. They know, a despairing little voice whispers to him as he digs his fingers into his legs, they know. You will die here, because they know.

Edwin hides his face in his knees and doesn’t swallow down the tears burning in his eyes. There is no use in stoicism, not when there is nobody around to pounce on the weakness, nobody to be proper for. So Edwin, feeling his blood stick to cotton, cries until exhaustion dries him out.

The sun hangs low when he hears a distant rumble, a painfully familiar rattle that almost makes his heart jump up and out of his throat. He is too tired to talk himself out of the stupidly eager hope, too desperate to remind himself that the sound could mean a number of things and was unlikely to be good news for him. All he can do is let his foolish heart beat something fierce, and cling to the bars of the window until his hands ache. All he can do is watch the road and whisper pleas out into the darkening sky.

A quickly moving shape winds its way down the road. The rattle grows loud, the same stuttering thump that used to drive Edwin wild now sounding like an angel’s song to his ears. He can’t stop himself from smiling, even when it brings a new sting to the wound on his head. Against all odds, against all better judgment, his desperate hopes had been right.

The unmistakable silhouette of one Charles Rowland rushes towards the church, riding on that terribly unsafe Brooklands Special that he had always doted on like it was the most darling thing in the whole world. Familiar curls and a familiar coat whip around in the wind of his approach. Edwin can’t stop an odd, choked giggle from slipping between his lips. Of course Charles would have held onto this awful death trap, all these years.

A new voice, softer than that of despair, worms its way into his ears. Of course Charles would come.

Charles disappears from Edwin’s view not long before the sound of the motorbike cuts off. There is a dull thud, the sound of a chain clattering to the floor, and then the muffled noise of Charles calling his name, voice rough but steady. 

With the feeling of being dunked into freezing water, Edwin remembers that he is not alone in this church. Somewhere out there with an unsuspecting Charles, a man eager for violence roams the halls. 

Before he has time to open his mouth, to yell a warning, a gunshot cuts through Charles’s voice. Edwin’s world grinds to a halt. His thoughts move like molasses, his feet stay rooted to the floor. Distantly, he hears the sounds of a struggle, of grunts and wheezes. His eyes sting with fresh tears. 

Suddenly, the door flies open. Edwin flinches back, before his eyes can register that it is not a captor standing in the frame. His heart stutters, stumbles, his hands feel numb. 

“Edwin!” 

Before the world can right itself, before he can blink and dismiss the ravings of his terrified mind, a winded but alive Charles Rowland hauls him into a bone-crushing hug. Edwin falls apart. He clings to the damp back of Charles’s jacket, buries his face in the crook of his neck despite the throbbing of his forehead, and sobs.

“Hey, hey, shh, it’s okay, mate. I’ve got you.” Charles’s voice has changed since their teenage years, but not enough for it to be unfamiliar. He sounds like home. The thought only makes him sob harder, push himself closer until he might as well break Charles’s ribs with the force of his hold. Charles doesn’t stop him, his words a steady stream. “We’re getting you out of here.” 

After what feels like hours, yet like nothing at all, Edwin manages to collect himself enough to remember his fear. He pulls back, searching Charles’s face. “There was- the man, did he-”

Charles winces. “Gave me a right scare, that one, but it’s all good. He’s taking a nap in the pews right now.” His face drops, his eyes landing just above Edwin’s own. Rough hands come up to cradle Edwin’s jaw. “Your head.” Anger sparks in Charles’s eyes, a sight so similar to the last time they saw each other that Edwin’s stomach twists with nausea. 

“My letter,” he starts, then stops. He swallows. Charles’s face twists into something Edwin cannot understand. He starts again. “I apologise. You did not have to come all this way.” 

Charles’s mouth drops open. “What? Of course I had to come!” His hands slip down from Edwin’s face to his shoulders. “Edwin, you told me you were kidnapped, what else was I gonna go and do, hm?” 

Charles had always rushed to Edwin’s defence in a manner that could only be described as over-eager. He had collected bruises for Edwin’s honour like it was the normal thing to do, knocking the teeth out of any perceived threat no matter how unfitting a response the surroundings might have made it. Edwin knows that’s why his first thought of rescue had been Charles, not his parents. Even after years of missing him, the instinct remained, never truly wiped away by their last night together.

Edwin remembers blood, remembers Charles’s tears; he remembers Charles’s scream when Edwin tried to reach out and touch him, the corpse between them splitting their friendship like a mountain chasm. “You left,” is all he can respond. 

Charles’s fingers still against his neck. His face crumbles. “I killed someone, Edwin.” He sounds just like the kid he was back then. Edwin reaches up to cover Charles’s hand with his own, holding onto him like he’d tried to that night. 

“It was self defense.” His voice cracks around the words, but he’s never believed anything more. Charles had not killed in cold blood, but out of fear, a desperate wish for them not to be separated, not to be locked up. Edwin could not fault him for it, even back then when fear overwrote everything else.

“It didn’t feel like it, though, did it?” Charles breathes in, then out. The smell of spearmint fans out across Edwin’s skin. Edwin could cry all over again. “I was scared.” 

Edwin squeezes Charles’s hand. “As was I.” 

“Let’s go, yeah?” Charles says with a huff, the glimmer of tears nearly invisible in the dimming light of dusk. “We can sit down for a proper chat when we are very, very far away from this place. Catch up, and all.” 

Edwin smiles, something heavy lifting off of his chest. “Okay.” 

When Charles drops his hands down from his shoulders, Edwin doesn’t let go. Charles returns his smile, brilliant as the morning sun, and leads him out into the night, fingers interlocked.