Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

We’ve got literally forever to figure out what the rest means.

Apparently, forever meant exactly one month and eight days since Edwin's confession.

Charles is perched on the edge of the desk, flicking through some comic he’d scooped up whilst on their last job, against Edwin’s fervent advice that he should very well put it back. He pauses his flipping to look down, about to ask Edwin if he’s ever heard of zombies roaming in “hoards”, when the question dies on his lips as quickly as it’d formed.

Because Edwin is studying one of his newer books and his brows are furrowed together, slender fingers running along the page he’s reading. When he pulls his lower lip between his teeth absentmindedly, Charles doesn’t even notice the comic slipping from his hands and onto the desk with a soft plop.

It’s an innocuous thing, really. Just a bite of his lip, a simple movement done by Edwin subconsciously, but it strikes Charles so profoundly that he thinks he can feel his still heart start to beat again, faintly.

You don’t have to feel the same way. I just need you to know.

How could he not feel the same way? In what universe, what timeline, what world, could he not love Edwin in every sense of the word?

“Charles, are you alright?”

Blinking, Charles tries to regain his balance.

“Yeah, mate. You were right, this comic is... I should’ve left it behind, I mean.”

Edwin rolls his eyes, but there’s affection there that Charles wants to take hold of - wants to grab it tightly between both hands and never let it go.

“You know I'm not above saying I told you so,” Edwin reminds him. His lips quirk up at the corners.

“Never have been, have you?” Charles tosses back.

I love you. I'm in love with you. We’re spending eternity together and I'm not sure how I didn't know until now that it’s you. That it’s always been you. I died by your side and I joined you in the afterlife. I evaded Death just to walk this plane with you and I couldn't imagine walking it with anyone else. If our hearts could still beat, they would in tandem.

It sounds right. It sounds wrong. It's everything Charles wants to say and it’s also nothing at all, nothing in comparison to the phantom feelings blossoming and expanding in his hollow chest.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Edwin asks again, the question tinged with more concern than before.

“Always,” Charles says, without even having to think, before adding, just as thoughtlessly, “I love you.”

It’s not at all what he wanted to say. Edwin doesn’t seem to notice Charles’ face visibly crumpling at his own words - he just smiles up at Charles like the sun.

“And I love you,” Edwin tells him easily, thoughtless in his own right. “Why do you look like you’re ill? You cannot get ill, Charles. It’s just a dramatized commentary on the undead. Though I suppose zombies are traditionally depicted in a rather grotesque manner in popular culture.”

Right. Zombies. Charles is feeling deeply unwell about the undead, not about his failure to show the love of his life that his feelings are reciprocated in a timely manner.

Has he waited too long? Should it have taken Charles a month and some change to realize he felt the same way? To voice it? If he does so now, would it serve to push them forward, or would it pull them ten paces backward?

Charles has never been at such a loss. Is true love always this hard?

“How did you know?” Charles finds himself asking, the question leaving his lips and hanging in the air before he can snatch it back and stuff it back inside his mouth where it belongs.

Edwin's eyebrows come together again, and he tilts his head to the side. “I do more than research and investigation, Charles. I'm aware that popular media depicts the undead in violent and disturbing ways to elicit fear from the viewer.”

“No, not- I’m not asking about the comic, Edwin,” Charles tries to clarify, but Edwin only appears to be more perplexed than he was before. “I mean, how did you...”

He knows he’s being a coward, but Charles can’t bring himself to finish his question either way.

“Forget it, yeah? I don't even know what I'm trying to ask.” Charles’ dismissive laugh falls flat even to his own ears.

Edwin frowns, standing up and circling the desk until he’s right in front of Charles, arms folded across his chest.

“If something is troubling you, just tell me what it is. I'm sure we can figure it out together. When have you and I not been able to find a solution for even the most persistent of problems?”

Only, it’s not a problem, Charles thinks. Not the thing itself, anyway. Loving Edwin could never be anything short of a blessing.

The problem is that Charles is afraid. He's afraid he’s taken too long to come to this conclusion - that their moment has passed. That Charles will only hurt him, his best mate, the only person he’d spend eternity fleeing Death with if it meant he’d get to stay by his side.

“How did you know that you’re in love with me?” Charles asks, finally.

Edwin's mouth pops open in surprise. He seems to stumble for his words, now looking as lost as Charles feels.

“I… it is as I said,” Edwin starts, staring steadfast at the floor, “Monty brought… feelings forth within me. It became clear to me through my conversation with him that those feelings were not for him, but for you. I did not intend for it to be that way, but nevertheless, it is.”

“You never have to apologize for it,” Charles says automatically, and when Edwin gives him a soft smile in return, he knows he needs to say more, but he can’t find the words.

“Well, I don’t quite know what’s gotten into you, but I should-”

“I'm in love with you, Edwin. Like, disastrously in love and I should've known sooner, I should've… I don't know. I should’ve known it’d always be you, and maybe I’m too late, maybe this is all way too late, but I just- I didn’t want to realize it and not say it,” Charles blurts, a stilted rush of words that pour out of him like a broken faucet.

For several achingly long moments, Edwin doesn’t speak, or even move, really. He just stands motionlessly before Charles, arms still folded tightly across his chest.

And then, “too late? What on Earth do you mean, too late?”

Charles opens his mouth to speak, but Edwin barrels on, “‘we have literally forever’, that’s what you said, is it not? And I agreed with you, did I not? So, what could possibly lead you to believe that a mere handful of days could change that?”

“I’m just-”

“You’re being stupid, is what,” Edwin snaps, before softening upon hearing his own harsh tone. “I'm sorry. I just do not wish for you to believe, under any circumstances, that any amount of time could change the feelings I harbor for you. I have loved you for as long as I have known you, and look at how long it took me, coming to my own realizations decades later. We are not on a finite timeline, Charles. Please do not worry that time is slipping through our fingers. It is stretching before us endlessly, and no matter what, we will navigate it together.”

The world tilts. Charles meets Edwin's gaze and the ground shifts beneath his feet. He tries to find his footing again by pushing himself off the desk to stand, but all that does is fling him directly into Edwin's orbit.

“I guess I was worried the moment had passed. That our moment had come and gone, and maybe by saying this now, it’d muck everything up," Charles confesses.

Edwin takes a hesitant step closer, his hands twitching by his sides as though he’d like to reach out, but he doesn’t do more than clasp those hands behind his back.

“That would be… rather impossible, I'm afraid.”

Charles gives Edwin a lopsided smile. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, exactly. Edwin is so close, nearly touching him, but he can’t decipher if this conversation is meant to lead to the next step, or if it’s just a door opening to future possibilities.

He started the conversation, certainly, but that doesn’t mean he necessarily knew what he was talking about or where he was planning on going with it.

“May I ask how you came to this realization?” Edwin inquires.

“I saw you,” Charles begins, wincing when Edwin arches a brow, as if to say really?, “I didn't mean for that to sound so… you know. What I'm trying to say is, I can’t say I've known I felt like this for a while, or anything like that. But today, I looked down and I saw you. Nose buried in your book, completely lost in the pages, your mind a thousand kilometers away. And I guess, in a way, it brought my own feelings to the surface.”

“You watched me read a book, and suddenly you knew you were in love with me?” Edwin repeats, slowly, and Charles groans.

“It's not that I watched you read a book. It’s that I saw you- oh, bloody hell. You looked very cute and for the first time I found myself really looking and I just- suddenly I couldn’t imagine not being in love with you. I don't know if that's always been there - been within me - but it's here now, and it's here to stay."

As Edwin considers his words, Charles notices how his eyes have started to flicker back and forth between staring at him head-on, and staring at his mouth.

“You thought I looked cute?” Edwin asks. He attempts, poorly, to hide the softening of his eyes and the pleased smile trying to spread across his face.

Charles takes a step closer to Edwin, close enough now that they could feel the rise and fall of each other’s chests, had they been of the living kind. It doesn’t matter that they’re not. Charles can feel the thundering of his own heart regardless, despite it remaining quiet and still in his chest.

“You’re wearing the emerald jumper again, and you do this... thing with your eyebrows when you read something that you don’t understand right away.” Charles smiles down at his feet as he speaks. “‘S cute, yeah.”

“Well I- I’ll have to wear this one more often, I suppose,” Edwin tells him, plucking at the soft fabric of his jumper. Charles wants to reach out and feel the fabric for himself, but the fear of making the wrong move grips him unexpectedly.

For someone who has experienced dying, death, and quite a bit of what there is that lies beyond, Charles has never felt more afraid than he does right now. Because he doesn’t know what to do now that he knows how he feels, now that he’s told Edwin as much.

Now, he feels like they are standing at the mouth of a giant cavern, and the only thing left to do is jump.

Is Edwin ready to jump? Is Charles? Does it seem like too far a leap?

“It’s a bit… confusing, yes?” Edwin asks, his voice quiet, contemplative. “For all our realizations, all our confessions… what the next step is, I do not know.”

“We had forever to figure it out, technically,” Charles reminds him, his warm smile returning. Maybe it isn't so scary, to do this together. “Still do. ‘S not like eternity has faded away, yeah?”

Edwin mirrors Charles’ gentle smile. But it fades quickly, and Charles can see the visible shift in Edwin's posture, the tension that is now growing there.

“I think- I think a kiss would be a natural beginning,” Edwin offers, despite his entire disposition indicating that he’d like to bolt in the opposite direction.

Charles' mind falls silent, the joy and the fear and the worry crumbling away until all that's left is Edwin, standing before Charles as he asks, in his own way, to take the next step. Charles is ready to make that leap with him, he decides, shuffling closer, and-

“I actually- I must go for a walk!”

Edwin's words are nothing more than a squeak before he’s fleeing the room, leaving Charles standing in front of the desk with his mouth hanging open.

And, okay, so that was not entirely unexpected. What was initially just a concept to Edwin has just been rooted in reality, and Charles probably should’ve expected nothing less than panicked overthinking.

Charles sags back against the desk, trying to not feel too disappointed. They’d covered quite a bit of ground just now, and Charles hadn’t even anticipated kissing Edwin in the first place. It should be a relief, in a way, that this all doesn’t have to happen at such rapid speed.

But the idea was put out there, and now Charles can’t stop thinking about it. About what kissing Edwin would be like, if there would be some semblance of sensation, being that they’re both ghosts and could perhaps draw more from each other than they could from a living person.

He wonders if it’d feel like pieces falling into place, like all the books and movies talk about.

Even the comic he’d snagged, all about dramatized zombies and gore and death, had love laced throughout. People realizing and acting upon their feelings, whether it be because they face imminent death, or because they simply desire to walk the wasteland of the Earth for the remainder of their time on it with someone by their side.

Regardless of the reasoning, it’s all made to seem very simple - a confession, then a kiss, and finally an official relationship - when, in fact, reality is far more complicated.

Charles picks up the comic and flips through it listlessly, once again at a loss with what to do with himself.

Edwin bursts back through the wall a moment later, hands perched resolutely on his hips.

“No, no. This is not how we are going to do this," Edwin says, rushed and breathless. “I will not allow my fears to guide me. You are aware that recently, my inexperience has been made clear to me. In the most glaring manner, in fact. And I must confess that I- Charles, I do not know what I am doing. Or how to do the things that I think about.”

“Mate, I've only ever kissed two people. One of which was decades ago. I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing either, but," Charles pauses, re-entering Edwin's orbit so they can stand face to face once again. “But, we figure it out together. As we do.”

“As we do,” Edwin repeats. He releases a shaky breath that he didn’t need to take in the first place.

“What things do you think about?” Charles asks suddenly, the full weight of Edwin's words sinking in.

“I…" Edwin fidgets again, though his eyes stay locked on Charles’. “You. I think of you, and how I loved you the moment I saw you, but also how it grew into this wonderful and beautiful thing after all this time. I think about what it would be like to be held by you. To be kissed.”

Charles probably would’ve passed out if he were alive. He stumbles closer, hand brushing Edwin's, and it has to be his mind playing tricks, because electricity crackles along his palm, setting every dead nerve alight.

It can’t be his mind, however, because Edwin can clearly feel it, too. He's looking down at their hands, his eyes wide with wonder.

Edwin's eyes are drawn back to Charles’. “Oh. Oh my.”

They’re no more than a few short inches apart, and Charles feels like the world is going to spin off its axis. Edwin glances at Charles’ mouth, his own parting in what Charles is certain is anticipation.

Finally, finally.

Charles tilts his head, leans closer and-

Edwin flinches. Charles freezes, his eyes widening. Had he… was he wrong? Was this not what Edwin was searching for? Has Charles just made the wrong move? Has he made a horrible, irreparable mistake?

“Oh- shit, Edwin, I’m-”

Edwin shakes his head, reaching out to grab Charles’ hand before he can step back.

“Please do not mistake my reaction for further hesitation,” Edwin tells him, his voice soft. “I merely… it’s just that the moment I saw you, in Hell, I had… for all intents and purposes, I wanted to run into your arms. To kiss you, like in those ridiculous movies of yours, even though I didn't know how. But then…”

“But then the demon snatched you away,” Charles finishes for him, squeezing his hand. The revelation hits him like a ton of bricks, sinking to the pit of his stomach. “I understand. But there are no demons here, and if any show up, they’ll have to answer to me first. Just like they did then.”

“Technically, I did get torn apart several times before that. But I take your point,” Edwin concedes, his lips twitching.

Charles can’t even begin to formulate a response, for all at once he is reminded that he really, really wants to kiss him.

Seeming to read the question on Charles’ face, Edwin nods, pulling him in by his hand.

Charles' hands come to rest on Edwin's waist, and there’s warmth there - more electricity, more sparks. Edwin's eyes fall shut, a soft sigh escaping his lips before Charles closes the remaining distance and presses their mouths together, his own eyes slipping shut.

Colors burst behind his eyelids. If he had a heartbeat, it’d be audible in the quiet of the room. Edwin's hands flutter uselessly in the air before coming to rest on Charles’ shoulders, his fingers squeezing tightly. He doesn’t exactly kiss back, hesitating like he’s trying to work out the how fully in his mind.

“Am I doing this correctly?” Edwin asks, with his lips still pressed fully against Charles’.

Charles can’t help but smile, a laugh tumbling out of him and it doesn’t take long for him to feel Edwin smiling back.

“You just do what feels right,” Charles explains after pulling back a little, skimming his hands along Edwin's sides - eliciting a soft gasp - before settling them back at his waist. “Like this.”

Charles swoops back in, capturing Edwin's lips again, this time guiding them both in the right direction. He slides one hand from Edwin's waist to the back of his neck, fingers curling into the short hairs resting there.

Edwin, while seeming to enjoy Charles’ handiwork, still presses into the kiss hesitantly, like he fears one wrong move will have Charles shoving him away and never speaking to him again.

And that just won’t do.

With his own confidence growing, Charles pulls Edwin closer - impossibly so - and nips gently at his bottom lip.

Before Edwin has the chance to yelp and leap away, Charles sucks on the stinging mark, and Edwin's knees almost go out from under him. His mouth opens in the shape of a gasp, and Charles licks into it, wanting to map every inch of him.

Edwin follows the lazy stroke of Charles’ tongue, their lips moving together easily now as Edwin relaxes into the kiss and lets his body take over.

Charles feels like he’s on fire. He doesn’t know how, or why, but the moment he started touching Edwin, he could feel it. Really feel it.

The heat of his body, the pressure of his lips, that fucking tongue and hell, even those soft hairs at the nape of his neck. Charles drinks it all in greedily, every pull of their lips sending jolts of energy down his spine.

Edwin is a quick study, always has been. He learns how to move with Charles in sync in no time at all, discovering what makes Charles go weak almost immediately, and commits himself to it fully. Edwin's kisses are soft and gentle while also being all-consuming, and Charles never wants to let him go, but he can practically feel the questions building inside Edwin.

“I feel you,” Edwin says when Charles pulls away, their thoughts echoing each other’s. Edwin looks utterly debauched, and Charles wishes, viscerally almost, that he could see the flush that would’ve normally been staining Edwin's cheeks. “But it’s… fading now.”

Charles can feel it too. That warmth, the pressure, all of it starting to slip away. With their lips now separated, all those tingling sensations start to fade.

Only it doesn’t exactly feel like it’s fully gone. Not when Edwin is still grabbing onto Charles’ shoulders, looking at him with sparkling green eyes and parted lips and promise.

“It could be an enchantment of some sort, if I could just check my notes...”

Charles can’t help but laugh, shaking his head. He kisses Edwin again, soft and gentle and all the ways he could’ve and should’ve been doing for the last 30-something years.

“We haven't been cursed, Edwin. And even if we have, I'd like to find whoever did it and thank them, not look for ways to make it stop.”

“I never said cursed,” Edwin corrects with a huff, but his expression is soft. Fond. “But I… agree. I'd prefer for things to stay as they are, despite any natural urgency I may feel to investigate and understand further.”

Charles gives him a dopey smile, unable to stop replaying the kiss in his mind. “You taste like cherries. Or at least, I think it’s cherries. It's been a while since I've had one.”

Edwin reaches into his pocket, pulling out a tube of chapstick and handing it to Charles.

“I don't need it, obviously. But I think it looks nice,” Edwin explains, gesturing to his lips.

“Tastes nice, too.”

Charles rotates the tube absentmindedly, eyeing the cherries on the label. Edwin is fidgeting again, and Charles steps back, gesturing for Edwin to get back to his desk and search for the answers he so desperately craves.

Edwin presses a quick kiss to Charles’ cheek before darting to the desk, and Charles feels it down to the bone.

“I could feel you before the kiss, and then even more during it. The sensations lingered even as we parted…” Edwin falters as he opens his notebook, looking over at Charles before raising a hand to his lips, the pad of his thumb running over them thoughtfully. “You felt that too, did you not?”

Charles rubs the spot on his cheek where Edwin had kissed him, nodding even as the sparks fade once again.

“I did,” Charles confirms, and Edwin snaps his notebook shut swiftly.

“Would you believe me if I said I do not wish to investigate this further and would simply like to believe my own truth?” Edwin asks.

“Absolutely not,” Charles laughs, then sobers at the sight of Edwin's searching look. “I guess it depends. What’s the truth you want to believe?”

“That we are of the same kind, and because we are bound so closely and feel so… deeply for one another, we have the ability to feel it. To feel each other. Perhaps something or someone has granted us this ability, or perhaps this is just a facet of our nature that has not yet been written.”

“Or it has been written, but maybe it felt like useless information to you until now?” Charles suggests.

That seems to land correctly, and Edwin gives him another small smile. “Yes, that is possible as well. I cannot say I've been particularly interested in the intricacies of ghost relationships until recently, so it falls within the realm of reason that I skimmed past those particular details during my studies.”

Charles shares that small smile with Edwin. “Maybe it’s written, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. But we’ve got literally forever, remember? We can just… figure it out ourselves as we go. If you believe your truth, then it’s our truth, and I believe it too. Who needs a book to tell us what’s what?”

“Right, exactly,” Edwin agrees, but he’s distracted, fiddling with his notebook as he lingers behind the desk, still standing. “Why are you so far away?”

“You wanted to look through your notes. I, however, have no notes to look through.”

“Well- find some.”

Charles arches a brow at Edwin, who arches one right back. He crosses the space between them a moment later, cupping Edwin's face between his hands and kissing him sweetly. Edwin sighs into it, his own hands moving to cover Charles’.

Kissing Edwin feels like being alive again. It's one thing - the only thing - that Charles can say he’s been missing since his death. He was truthful in saying that dying felt quite similar to being alive, that there wasn’t much that he’d miss about it, but this? Now that Charles has it, he’s not certain he could ever exist, in any state, without it.

Maybe he could if it were anyone else. But this isn’t anyone else, this is Edwin. And there is no forgetting - much less existing without - the touch of Edwin Payne.

Charles presses another kiss to the corner of Edwin's mouth, and another to the tip of his nose, before stepping back and ruffling Edwin's hair.

Edwin scowls, combing his meticulous hair back into place, but there’s no heat to it. He still has that heart-shaped look in his eyes, the same look that’s likely in Charles’.

“Look at that, you found your notes."

Charles laughs, loud and bright, leaning in to press their foreheads together.

“Are you asking me to study you, Edwin?”

One of Edwin's hands drops to Charles’ necklace, and his fingers play with the chain. His fingertips graze the soft skin of Charles’ neck, every touch scorching.

“I…"

Edwin doesn’t get a chance to finish his thought, because the door is slamming open a moment later, Crystal stomping in with a book tucked beneath her arm.

“You guys seriously will not believe what I just found out about ghost sex-” Crystal starts to ramble, then pauses as she takes in their current state. “Woah. Wait, were you two about to have ghost sex?”

Edwin runs into the wall behind him with how quickly he backs up, but Charles just pulls him back in, rolling his eyes.

“No, we were not about to have ghost sex. We’ve just managed kissing, ghost sex is a long way away,” Charles says, and with Edwin’s deer-in-headlights expression, quickly adds, “or it’s something we never do. That’s also perfectly fine.”

“I never said anything of the sort!” Edwin exclaims, looking put-out by the suggestion that ghost sex could be completely off the table.

“Alright, so we probably will have ghost sex-”

“For research purposes,” Edwin interjects.

“For… seriously? For research purposes?” Charles gives Edwin an incredulous look, but Edwin just squirms out of Charles’ grasp, slowly walking around the desk and giving Crystal an assessing look. Charles follows him closely, taking up his usual spot by Edwin's side.

“Well, out with it. What did you discover?” Edwin questions (or demands, rather, but what else is new).

Crystal looks positively gleeful, pulling the book out from under her arm and shoving it in Edwin’s face. Charles can’t make out the title, trying to get a peek after seeing Edwin's eyebrows fly up, but Edwin tucks the book against his chest.

“So? What are your investigative thoughts?” Crystal asks, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“I haven't had a chance to read it.”

“But you saw the title.”

“Yes, Crystal, I saw the title.”

Charles throws his hands up, exasperated. “Would you two mind filling me in?”

Edwin glances at him, those green eyes sparkling once again. He clutches the book even tighter to his chest, though he lets one hand drop so they can tangle their fingers together.

“Charles… what do you know about soulmates?”