Chapter Text
Don’t You Want Me
charles and edwin have been known to operate in sync, one knowing what the other wants almost automatically in most situations. however, ever since certain untraversed feelings have been applied to the dynamic, knowing what they each want, and what the other wants, has become a precarious guessing game. overrun with assumptions and interpretations, it’s only a matter of time, and a matter of circumstances, before confrontation becomes eminent– for better or for worse.
Part 1 | The Situation
Charles
When Crystal had asked him to talk, the anxiety that followed bore through his soul like an ice pick lobotomy. No– not anxiety– dread.
It’s not like anything had been particularly problematic between them as of late; in fact, quite the opposite. Ever since returning to London, and managing to retrieve a now-incorporeal Niko (it’s a long story), things had calmed down enough to where Crystal could address her pre-memory loss altercations one day at a time, and Charles… Well, he wasn’t intentionally doing anything differently than he was before, but naturally, because his friends were together and safe, and the cases kept rolling in as they had the last three decades, he felt more content than he had in a while. Maintaining that contentedness, however, means avoiding all feelings, memories, confrontations, and so on, that could cause any kind of discomfort. While Crystal takes an active role in addressing her own issues, despite the inevitable feelings of guilt, or self loathing, or resentment– Charles, automatically, stays stagnant.
That’s what he’s used to, after all. That’s what he’s done for thirty-something years– and it’s more or less worked out for him. What he fails to acknowledge in using this logic is that, unlike during the bulk of those thirty-something years, his world isn’t confined to himself, his best mate, and the cases that come about anymore. For starters, there are others now. Even if the “others” primarily consist of only two people, as complex as people can be, it makes a world of difference. There’s no longer one single dynamic to operate under, and the new kinds of relationships that he’s formed and that continue to develop, metamorphosize, and deepen are wonderful, mostly, but also complicate what used to be so, so simple.
The second pillar of his new, ever-shifting reality is that even his rock, the one dependable constant in his afterlife, the baseline for how all things should be– is different, feels different. Edwin is still Edwin, and Charles is still Charles, but what “Edwin and Charles” is, at this point, is unclear. What Charles, himself, wants it to be, is even more unclear. Logically, he knows that he has the time and space to consider the possibilities and identify his feelings, but he’s found that it never really feels like there’s time. The tension is there, and it’s there to stay until he figures something out. He can’t retreat into their old ways, no matter how hard he tries (and Lord, he tries). The knowingness affects every single interaction;
Is he checking me out, or just looking at me?
Is he flirting with me, or is he being sarcastic and witty as he’s always been?
Is this impressive? Am I impressing him
I wonder how he’d react if I changed up my outfit a little.
I wonder if he thinks about kissing me.
I wonder what it’d feel like to kiss him.
I wonder what he’d be like in bed–
So maybe he’s not as chill and content as he wants to think he is. He can try his best to look it, but his thoughts betray him, and seemingly more and more every day, his impulses betray him even worse. Half the time he doesn’t even know it. Confusingly, it doesn’t feel bad, exactly– not as it stands right now. At times it feels like their companionship is better than ever; but the lurking insecurity and confoundedness in Charles’ head, and perhaps heart, never let the feeling last untainted. He subconsciously vows to keep shoving those feelings back down his throat and pretending they don’t exist as long as he can stomach it.
Or, as long as it takes for something, or someone, to come along and make the first, tiny hairline fracture in his hulking emotional dam.
Crystal is sitting on the ledge of the rooftop when he finally drags himself up to meet her, legs dangling, unfazed by the distance to the ground. He doesn’t announce himself, but Crystal notices him in virtually no time anyway. It’s breezy and overcast, as it is most days, and her hair is tied into a messy bun to compensate. It looks good– she always looks good.
When she looks at him, she gestures vaguely with her head for him to come over and sit with her, almost rolling her eyes at his obvious hesitation. For someone he’s only known a few months, she’s already gotten a pretty ironclad hold on his personality and tendencies. It’s equal parts heartwarming and terrifying. Charles does what’s expected of him, though in doing so it feels as if he’s putting in a conscious effort to move each of his legs, one at a time, puppetting his own body in her direction. Eventually he pulls up a nondescript crate and sits, ungracefully, and she swivels around to face him, looking at him with an extremely familiar expression of slight, non-malicious condescension. A Crystal Palace Surname Von Hoverkraft classic.
“Well that only took like, forever.”
Charles slouches further into his sitting crate and quirks a brow, mirroring her sardonicism.
“Oh, in a hurry, are you?”
“You never know,” Crystal finally cracks a smile, letting him indulge in a meager crumb of relief, “you can chill out, you know. I’m not gonna lecture you or anything.”
“You never know,” Charles quips, half-serious.
She scoffs, but gradually softens until the condescension has almost entirely dissipated. She looks off to the side, idly observing the surrounding buildings and the fog that the evening has begun to deposit around them. As anxious and uncertain as he is, Charles doesn’t feel any kind of malice or disappointment radiating off of her; instead, she looks relatively serene, introspective.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but…” she starts cautiously, and Charles tries not to openly wince– that’s never a good way to start a sentence, “I thought, a couple months back, that once I got some of my shit together, and things got a little less chaotic, I’d be super eager to start seeing someone again, and that when I did, I’d really, really want that someone to be you. So, since things have actually started to calm down, I’ve just kinda been waiting, and waiting for that eagerness to hit me, and it just… hasn’t. And at this point, I don’t think it’s going to.”
Crystal turns her gaze back toward him, a guilty, but not regretful air in the way her eyebrows perse, and her lips form something akin to a smile, but distinctly not one. The quickly dimming, cool, near-evening light turns the purple in her hair to a deep indigo. Her shoulders are relaxed, underneath her big canvas coat, unguarded. She’s clearly given it a lot of thought, preparing to let him down the easiest she can. Charles doesn’t know it, but this kind of thoughtfulness has not been a staple of Crystal’s rejections and breakups, historically. To say the very least.
“You’re a catch, Rowland, so don’t go thinking there’s anything wrong with you, or you aren’t good enough– I just think dating would do more harm than good to the relationship we have now, you know? I like what we have now,” she appears torn between confidence and pity, and puts as much warmth into her voice as possible, “I hope you feel the same–“
“Oh, thank God” Charles cuts her off out of sheer relief, the tension in his body releasing with a sigh that makes it seem like he’d been holding his breath since he’d gotten up to the roof. He is a disruptive deflating balloon. Her eyebrow quirks. Simultaneously he realizes what he’s done.
“Wait– sorry, fuck, I didn’t mean it like, you know– “thank God I don’t have to date you” or anything, I mean–“
Charles fumbles his words and desperately tries to amalgamate them into something that makes sense, and keeps doing so until he realizes that she’s started to laugh. Quiet, at first, restrained as to let him flounder and watch the show for a bit– but she doesn’t last long, breaking into full-on cackling when his expression goes from blank bewilderment to lighthearted annoyance. He rolls his eyes, unable to keep a smile off his face, unable to stop himself from chuckling with her, almost giddy, or buzzed from the relief.
“Oi, I just– I was worried you were gonna take this in the other direction, and I’d have to feel like shit turning you down,” Charles admits with a dash of bashfulness, taking a deep breath to steady himself and reset from the laughing, “being friends feels right– feels aces– God, this takes load off. I can really talk to you now, can’t I?”
He sounds and looks more than a bit excited; the prospect of bonding with her, telling her things, going places, all without the vague, unnecessary pressure of an unsure romance lurking in the backdrop is, genuinely, invigorating. Both of them pick up on the irony of the whole thing– a mutual rejection resulting in celebration. Both of them wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Yeah, I get it,” she sighs out, her hands on the ledge on either side of her, her legs kicking idly, then looks up with sudden smugness, “so, you got your eye on someone else yet, then?”
Charles panics.
“Me? Nah, not really,” his words are casual enough, but his infliction is far too startled and squeaky. Something something, ‘subtlety is not one of your strong suits’, something something…
“That wasn’t convincing.”
Her legs cross, her arms cross, and she stares him down with a look that says “give it up, Rowland”. She doesn’t need to say it out loud.
“Lay off, I’ve got nothing going on and you know it, yeah?” he scoffs and bats a hand at her, chuckling weakly, looking off to the side at a dark, unseeable skyline– making the uncomfortable into a joke is the Charles Rowland Special, after all, “who would I even be looking at?”
Mistake.
“You know, because I’m such a humble and enlightened person now, I’m gonna show you mercy and not answer that,” Crystal hops down off of her stoop, her petit stature suddenly apparent as she stands directly in front of him and takes his gaze hostage, “for now.”
She pokes him in the chest. He sways backwards, then forwards– like a scarecrow, or one of those inflatable tube men outside of car dealerships.
Ah, there it is again.
Dread.
“What are you doing.”
“Dancing, duh– totally brills I found this 45; I haven’t heard it in, like, literally decades!”
Dancing in the Moonlight, King Harvest, 1972. Cliché? Maybe. A little. Charles doesn’t care. He vaguely remembers snatching this record from a yard sale in the 90’s, but it’d been buried under random junk and agency paperwork since then. When he hears it, it takes him back to a time when he was very young, his family was at least somewhat functional, and records would play in the living room while his mom cooked dinner. It feels nice to remember a piece of his childhood that isn’t tainted by suffering. It helps that the particular song is upbeat and danceable.
Edwin had walked in soon after Charles had managed to mess with the miniature record player enough to get it to function. Unsurprisingly, he’d walked in with a book in hand, reading as he went, up until nearly colliding with his especially lively partner footloose-ing it up in the middle of the office.
“Why is it so… small?” Edwin squints at the small record player and its corresponding small vinyl disc, almost as if suspicious of it, and then turns his attention back towards Charles– who very clearly wants his attention, “and you look silly.”
“Oh, come on, mate– dance with me,” Charles pleads and takes the hand not holding a book to pull Edwin in, sealing his fate, “you can’t dance and stay uptight–“
Edwin rolls his eyes at the convenient lyric, but the slightest hint of a smile graces the corner of his lips. Charles takes that as a win.
“I don’t dance; not like that anywa– Charles!”
Charles strikes in the midst of his sentence, right when his willful partner least expects it. He snatches the book out of Edwin’s hand and sets it down somewhere– he’s not really paying attention to where, but he gives himself credit for not tossing it on the ground; Edwin would throw a fit if he did. Edwin acts like he isn’t a fan of this, scandalized by the thievery, but Charles knows him well enough to sense that he’s not really upset, and his defenses are getting weaker by the second.
This is one of those moments where Charles acts purely on impulse, for better or for worse. Essentially, whatever his body feels like doing, or his mouth feels like saying, is what goes. Risky. He takes one of Edwin’s hands and laces it with his own, and takes the other and places it on his own shoulder, and as he predicted, Edwin doesn’t fight it. He does, however, jolt a little when the position is completed by Charles’ hand on his waist; simultaneously his face gets a couple shades redder.
For a ghost, who is, to the living, fundamentally cold, the mellow orange lamplight bathing the office emphasizes the warmth spreading across Edwin’s fair skin rather overtly. Charles doesn’t know he’s thinking it, but the word his mind assigns to such a sight– to Edwin, himself– is ”pretty”.
“C’mon, I see the way you walk, the way you spin on your heel whenever you turn around– you know how to move, you just gotta let yourself,” Charles reassures and guides him as they start to sway to the rhythm.
“I… I really don't know how,” Edwin claims, anxiously, his hand tightening on Charles’ as if he’s relying on it to stay standing. He can’t keep eye contact for more than a second or two at a time, lest he get even more obviously flustered. Charles didn’t have a plan, but if he did, this would be all according to it.
“Sure you do, what d’you think you’re doing right now?”
“Swaying,” Edwin states, bluntly.
Charles’ soft, warm eyes brighten to a blaze with some kind of devilishness. Impulse control has long since been incinerated.
”Not enough for you, is it? Well, let’s work on that, then, yeah?”
”You know that’s not what I– Goodness, Charles!”
His breath is stolen from him in a sharp gasp as his footing is lost, and the sensation of falling takes him by surprise. It’s brief, the sensation, and when it abruptly halts, he notices Charles’ arm is bracing his back, holding him safe and sound in a dip. With the love of his life holding him like this, and gazing at him from above like there’s no place he’d rather be, as much as Edwin would like to be annoyed, he can’t be. How could he be?
“You’re unbelievable,” Edwin means it as a complaint, but accompanied by his breathlessness, charmed smile, and starry, thoroughly besotted eyes, it scarcely comes off that way.
“Likewise,” Charles chirps, self-satisfied.
He pulls his exasperated partner back up on his feet, and finds that when their eyes meet, all they can do is laugh. Not at anything in particular, but rather as a product of shared affection and enjoyment. Before completely reinstating the position from before, Charles pauses, and decides on something else, letting his body lead, and his mind follow. He reconfigures their arrangement; unlaces their hands, draws Edwin’s arms up to rest over his shoulders, then places his own hands gently, but securely on Edwin’s waist. Before Edwin can react, he goes a step further and uses his new hold to pull the two of them together, nearly chest to chest, all the while continuing to sway and step, sway and step, sway and step…
The expression on Edwin’s pretty, porcelain features is something enchanting; still flushed and tentative, but his rigidity thawing with every gentle movement, his eyes meeting Charles’ in more than just seconds-long increments. Edwin gazes at his partner like he’s the sole lantern in a dark, hellish maze, or a damp attic in the dead of night. Charles can’t help but let his eyes drift to look him up and down, as he’s only in a white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and plain, well-fitted trousers– practically the most exposed Edwin ever gets. He wonders how being a couple might change that, and how much Edwin would offer of himself if he were completely comfortable and willing…
There’s that knowingness again; that feeling that something between them is very different. Charles is starting to realize, and maybe even accept, that it’s not a bad kind of different. Not even close.
“Your hands are drifting,” Edwin notes, melodic, soft spoken. Charles genuinely hadn’t noticed, but his hands had, in fact, drifted– they’ve sunken past his partner’s waist and landed closer to his hips. His grip loosens, expecting to lift them to a more comfortable level for Edwin’s sake.
“Oh, sorry, I–”
“I didn’t tell you to stop,” Edwin says in a near-whisper, head slightly downturned with bashfulness. The almost-smile from earlier has blossomed into a real, sweet, delicate smile. Charles’ hands return to the slender curve of his partner’s hips and use the placement to keep the two close. Close enough to feel the spectral energy building in the narrow space between them, like their auras are so flush that there’s a kind of friction to them.
Edwin’s lips look soft and picturesque, like they’ve been thoughtfully painted onto his face. Charles can’t stop his gaze from continuously gravitating towards them. Only inches apart, it’d take only the slightest movement to just–
“So, I tried to find that super specific ink you were looking for, but– woah.”
Crystal opens the door the way she normally does, but to the two boys holding each other intimately in the middle of the office, it feels like she may as well have busted it down with a battering ram. To Crystal, it feels like she’s walked in on an infatuated newlywed couple in their honeymoon suite, seconds away from consummating their marriage. They stare, equally shocked, equally embarrassed.
Well, maybe not equally embarrassed. Edwin is red to his ears and is the first of the three to become unparalyzed, simply so that he can yank his hands back to his sides and remove himself from Charles’ grasp. It’s an automatic response; the Edwardian-era fear of being “caught” never totally disappeared, and likely never will. The first of the three to say anything, on the other hand, is Crystal, whose eyes are locked on Charles, specifically, with enough conviction that he practically feels it burning through his skin.
“Charles. Can I talk to you for a moment?” she asks as if it’s a question, but the way her eyes are narrowed and laser focused makes it clear that it’s a command, “Alone.”
Before Charles makes any moves to either comply with her, or address Edwin in some way, he notices a subtle, dynamic change in Edwin’s expression. There’s a brief, but distinct drop in his features before they return to a state of flustered stoicism. The closest thing Charles can amount it to is something between suspicion and dread. But it’s so quick, he can’t trust such an evaluation in the slightest. It could’ve been nothing.
Edwin says nothing, and in what seems to be a split second, he’s back at his desk, head down, eyes on whatever book or document happens to be in front of him.
Charles figures this to be a strange, but feasible way of dealing with embarrassment, or maybe even Catholic shame, and takes one last concerned, somewhat wistful glance at him before turning to Crystal again, a hand anxiously threading through his hair.
“Uh– yeah, sure. No problem…”
“So,” Crystal starts, thermos of tea steaming between her hands.
Charles isn’t sure why she decided it best to talk outside, when it’s near freezing this time of night– let alone somewhere further from the office than, say, the roof. But here they are– at the park around the corner, bundled up in scarves, side by side on a simple stone bench. It is, admittedly, quite serene. The trees are mostly bare, but the small creek that runs through the park still babbles as it does year-round. Maybe he does understand her decision, on second thought.
“So…” he repeats, avoiding eye contact; he knows what this is about, but part of him wishes he didn’t. Another part understands that not knowing would, most likely, be worse.
She takes a sip of her tea, breath visible in the night air. Right away, she doesn’t seem quite as intense as she did upon first running into… whatever she ran into. But she’s still Crystal, after all, and Crystal is not reserved or afraid when it comes to speaking her mind– especially now that the potential-romance barrier has been dismantled.
“What the hell was that?” She asks, turning her head to face her friend, somewhat incredulous, but mostly genuine.
Charles stares straight ahead, eyes blank.
“Gonna be honest, I don’t know how to answer that,” Charles would seem nonchalant enough to be avoidant if not for the fact that there’s no sign of deception to be found. He genuinely doesn’t know what to say so such a broad and complicated question.
“Okay, let’s try again– what’s going on with you and Edwin?” She clarifies, making the question more straightforward, but still not easy to answer; let alone in any simple, concise way.
Charles sucks in a harsh breath through his teeth and looks at the cobblestones beneath his shoes. If he were in this situation back in his own time, as a living boy, he’d undoubtedly be lighting a cigarette right about now.
“It’s complicated.”
“Wrong answer, try again,” she snaps, well-meaning, but impatient when it comes to his known avoidant tendencies. She knows damn well that “it’s complicated” is a cop out.
He groans and puts his face in his hands. He really could use that cigarette.
“He loves me.”
“Water is wet.”
“No, I mean…” Charles raises his head a bit, dragging his hands down his agonized face in the process, “he’s in love with me. He confessed, uh… a while ago.”
“A while ago?” Crystal’s eyebrows furrow, again, incredulous, “Charles, when were you gonna tell the rest of us that you’re together?”
“We’re not,” he corrects, a bit stunned and flustered by the assumption.
“So you don’t feel the same way?”
That particular question seems to break something in him.
“No, I– I mean I don’t not feel– like– I can’t say that I–” Charles stumbles over his words horribly, neurotically, like verbally falling down a staircase. The emotional dam is compromised, and leaks spring from slowly growing cracks at random, all at once. He only comes to a halt when he feels a tender, grounding hand on his shoulder.
“Slow down,” she says, and soon feels his shoulder start to marginally untense, “you don’t need to rush to get your words out, I’m not going anywhere. Just breathe and let yourself think, alright?”
He gives her a slow nod. Breathes in, and out, and thinks about what’s most important to put into words. What makes the most sense to begin to explain the situation. He settles on the most truthful statement he can possibly give:
“I don’t know.”
“Is it, like… a sexuality thing?”
Charles shrugs. He’s always so caught up in the big question that he fails to address that part. There certainly are some issues in that territory that he has to deal with at some point, but Edwin is such a unique case that his sexuality is secondary. Figuring out if he’s into guys on a larger scale is one thing, but figuring out if he’s into Edwin, specifically, is another much more important thing.
”Only a little,” he decides to go with.
He repeats her advice to himself in his head. Keeps breathing, no matter how obsolete it may appear to be in a spectral body. Allows himself some contemplative quiet. The flowing of the creek helps far more than he would’ve expected in keeping him grounded and relatively calm.
“I love him. Of course I love him– but figuring out if I’m in love with him… that’s what’s really bloody difficult,” Charles explains, hands idly fidgeting in his lap, “it’s like– I want something, I want more, but I don’t know what “more” means, do I?”
He feels her hand rest comfortingly on his thigh, just above the knee. She’s more than aware that putting this amount of emotion out in the open– in a healthy, non-combative way, no less– is a rarity for Charles; a deeply heartening mark of his trust in her, and, in a sense, of his care for Edwin. And because she’s aware of this, she does everything in her power to be as receptive and unthreatening as she can. There’s no way to know when he’ll shut down, or when he’ll open up again if he does.
“You know…” she starts, contemplative, and takes another life-bringing sip of her tea before setting it back down snugly between her legs, “most people don’t jump straight from friendship– even close friendship– to declaring they’re “in love” right away. Edwin’s built different, I guess, and I’m not even gonna try to understand how his mind works– but going off the standards of pretty much any relatively normal person, of course you’re still figuring it out. That’s the entire reason dating is a thing, right?”
He squirms a bit, conflicted.
“I guess. But it feels like we already do the things people who’re dating do. And it’s not like we need to get to know each other…”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Crystal interjects, pointedly, “yeah, dating means going places together, being around each other a lot, getting to know one another’s likes and dislikes and all that– but if dating only involved those things, what’d make it any different from a friendship? Friends don’t typically kiss each other on the lips, they don’t typically hit on one another and call each other pet names, they don’t– well, except with certain arrangements– sleep together.”
“What’s your point?” he interjects, impatient and starting to get visibly flushed.
“I don’t know, maybe that you should talk to him about trying out a casual relationship and seeing where that goes?”
Charles groans and puts his head down again in frustration; not with her– but with the situation as a whole; with how much more complicated things are between himself and Edwin than the average, living couple. Absolutely more so than the average teenage couple.
“I don’t want to “try” something that I could fuck up and fail at, ‘cause I couldn’t stand it if I hurt him,” Charles grimaces at the concept, gesturing vaguely in front of him with increasing intensity, “what if I try and it turns out I don’t want that kind of relationship? Or, I try, and find out that I’m not really into blokes like that? Or–“
“Charles, that’s called catastrophizing. You’re only focusing on the worst possible outcomes. What if you try and it’s amazing? What if you try and it’s the best decision you ever make?” she smoothly counters his arguments one at a time, attempting to reason, “and this is Edwin we’re talking about– you know, the guy who’s been through literal hell. I think he’s strong enough to handle going back to your original weird, intense, platonic, eternally soul-bonded relationship if he has to. You know for damn sure he’d never react by leaving you.”
“It’ll still never be the same. If I “try” something, there’ll be no going back.”
“So what’s your plan, then?” Crystal snaps at him out of frustration with his stubbornness and dramatics. She instantly regrets it, remembering her goal to be receptive, but what else is she supposed to say? He’s backed her into a corner.
Charles goes quiet. His mouth is closed, but it’s still apparent that he’s gritting his teeth, his jaw clenched tight. For a few tense moments Crystal worries he’s shutting down, or worse, that he’s angry. But he doesn’t, and he isn’t. His stiff form suddenly, thankfully loosens with a long sigh– not as if he’s relaxing, more like he’s giving up. Resigning to something.
“I’m gonna keep doing what I’m doing, and eventually something’ll feel right,” he concludes, and there’s a finality to his statement that makes it apparent that he’s not looking for any more alternatives, and he’s not going to budge, “it’s not like anything’s been bad lately, and I don’t see why I should label something before I know for sure what label’s right.”
Crystal wants to take his shoulders, shake him around, and reprimand him for being avoidant, but she doesn’t. She figures she deserves an award.
“If you say so,” she takes a sip from her tea and sighs, casual with a hint of exasperated, letting the steam billow from her lips, “just don’t be surprised if he gets tired of being strung along one day and seeks out other options.”
“He wouldn’t,” Charles states, dark eyes locking with hers, deathly serious.
“You never know.”
All at once, the mood drops. She’s struck a nerve.
Charles stands up abruptly, with surprising force, tearing Crystal’s hand away from his leg in the process and creating distance between them– emotionally and physically. The way he stands is defensive, arms at his sides, fists clenched, braced for whatever tries to break through his guard. The way he glares makes Crystal feel like if he looks at her too long, and keeps up this level of scorching intensity, he’ll burn a hole through her coat. Now he’s agitated.
“I do know. I know him better than anyone,” he snaps, something of a a growl hiding underneath his low, cutting tone, “definitely better than you.”
Before Crystal can so much as try to get a word in, he’s pivoting and storming off. It shakes her, leaving her sitting with a blank stare; not just because the outburst took her by surprise, or even because of her less-than-savory experiences with aggressive men– it’s the fact that he left her there alone. It takes alot to turn off, or drown out Charles’ protective instincts, such as the ones that would typically obligate him to walk Crystal back at this time of night. What force within him could be powerful enough to supersede protectiveness?
Crystal feels a cold wave of dread wash over her.
Jealousy.
It doesn’t take a psychic to see a trainwreck waiting to happen.