Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

O camerado close! O wholesome pleasure,
O one more desirer and lover!
O you and me at last, and us two only.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law.
Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

— Walt Whitman

St. Hilarion’s School for Boys was just how Edwin remembered it — that being, not very nice at all. It was a welcome respite from the gruelling months at the trenches, but an own hell in itself — none of his brothers in arms were quite this cruel.

He cast a quick glance at Simon (who, for an unfathomable reason, was terribly embarrassed by his surname and went exclusively by his Christian name) and his cronies, huddling together in a sea of dark coats like a murder of crows. One of them — Moore, he believed — caught his eye and gave him a shark-like grin, mean and hard and full of teeth.

Joining this shadowy brigade was a bright-eyed newcomer who he’d observed silently throughout these first two weeks, hair wind-mussed from dashing through the door. Charles Rowland. His skin was pale brown, and the texture of his hair was curiously coiled — features that set him decidedly apart from the rest; his shoulders were slightly slouched, which gave him an eternal look of slight bashfulness. But most memorable was his face: sharp, wickedly handsome, yet touched with an unexpected delicacy. He’d fit in seamlessly with the rest of the cricket group, which now took to calling him increasingly obscure references to a hair oil brand¹, and the decidedly less playful Maharaja², which could not have been comfortable for the poor fellow, though he seemed to take it in stride. The school, surprisingly, took easily to him, though his middle-class accent and hue of skin grated on some. 

Edwin, for one, felt little else apart from indifference towards him. He looked terribly kind, and terribly dashing, but looks were no good indicator on the true nature of oneself.

Their Latin professor — a stout old man who seemed to have caught a perpetual cold — strode into the room, and the students rushed to get into their seats. The class and professor exchanged their usual monotone greetings. As they sat once more, Edwin realised, with dismay, that Rowland had filled in the usually empty seat next to him. His general aura of dandyism, reclusiveness, and slight insanity had rendered him an unsuitable seatmate by most of the class. 

Rowland stuck out a hand. “Charles Rowland.”

I know. “Payne,” he said, and returned the handshake.

“And I don’t suppose public school boys have a first name?”

“Edwin,” he said, reluctantly. He did not like saying his Christian name — it was like giving a part of himself away. “And you are a public school boy, too, now.”

“I know! It’s mad, isn’t it?” Rowland — Charles — grinned, and suddenly, all previous animosity was swept away — there was such a warmth to his smile, such charm, the playfulness of that roguish tilt; Edwin understood, then, why Charles was so immediately well received, for he felt a little breathless himself, as if hypnotised; unbidden, he felt an hatchling of a smile creep up is face.

“An athletic scholarship, I believe, for your aptitude in cricket.”

Charles laughed. “Lord, how do you know that?”

“I observe; word has been going around about you.”

“What else do you know about me?” 

“I knew your name before you had even introduced yourself; I know you're in Lower Sixth³ and House Isis, like I; I know you’ve made firm friends with the cricket team, and they call you odd names relating to hair oil; and I know most of the school like you very much, and the rest like you well enough.”

“You’re awfully observant. I’m afraid I know nothing about you.”

Keep it that way , he thought. “It’s one of my only good traits, though it tends to put people off.”

“It’s lucky for you, then, that it just charms me further. Isis. Odd name for a house — though the others don’t seem very in theme with Egyptian mythology.”

“It’s not about Egyptian mythology, really; they’re named after rivers in Oxford and Cambridge: Cam, Grants, Isis, Cherwell.”

“That makes a load more sense,” Charles said.

“Indeed.” Edwin looked over at Charles’ copy of Metamorphoses, which was currently closed. “Book ten. Orpheus and Eurydice.”

“Right-o.” He scrambled for the right page. “The good ol’ O n’ E. Terrific couple, the two of them.”

Edwin circled the word nāiadum, and with a connecting arrow wrote neatly in the margins: third declension, genitive plural. “That story ended tragically. I’d be concerned if that was your perception of love.”

Charles blinked; Edwin found it made him look oddly puppy-like. “I never finished the story, mate — Latin was never really my sort of thing. I’d always thought they lived happily ever after, like a proper fairytale; they were awfully in love.”

He does not read ahead. He does not like Latin. He probably believes Romeo and Juliet is a love story, Edwin thought, distantly horrified by the rapidly growing fondness in his chest. “I’d hardly call Metamorphoses a fairytale.”

“I think you can find a fairytale in anything,” Charles said, and he grinned winningly yet again; Edwin found that his mind had gone soft and warm around the edges once more, and offered no rebuttal. They worked together in companionable silence.

This brief peace between them was interrupted by a sharp rap at Charles’ desk. Risley, who had bottle green eyes and a bark of a laugh beckoned Charles closer, though he spoke loudly enough for Edwin to hear, which was either a callous move on his part or a moment of carelessness. 

“Rowland. On the count of three, we’re all going to slam our books on the desk.”

Edwin watched in disgust as Risley’s bits of spittle found purchase on their desk. A part of him was growing tense and anxious with the news of the whole book-slamming ordeal, having experienced it once in French before. It was, decidedly, not a pleasant experience (for a moment, he was back at the front, lashes sprayed with bits of brains and someone else’s blood down his uniform).

“Why?”

“Payne. Because of his whole shell-shock matter, we realised he gets awfully squirmy with loud noises.”

“What? Shell-shock? And why would we want that?”

“It’ll be terribly funny — it’s a prank, Rowland, don’t you want to give a coward a good scare?”

This is it, Edwin thought miserably. No more kindnesses from sweet, forgiving Charles, no more smiles, just a never ending torment of book slamming and disdainful jeers and spitting on boots—

“No,” Charles said.

Risley looked as shocked as Edwin felt. “What?”

“Look, I’ve got no idea about the… correlation between Edwin and shell-shock, but it does seem like an awful thing to do to someone, doesn’t it?”

They must be heralding an angel, was the only thing Edwin’s brain could conjure, or some sort of saint. He could find no explanation for the pure, unselfish kindness Charles had extended towards him — not once in his years in St. Hilarion’s had any student voluntarily extended a helping hand, and none a hand as warm and lovely as Charles’. 

“Tell the others not to do it too,” Charles said. “It’s not right.”

Risley stared at him, wide eyed, before turning back. 

“Thank you,” said Edwin. “That was terribly kind. I don’t believe I can ever repay you.”

Charles shrugged. “It really is nothing.”

“If you would believe it, you are possibly one of the only people in the school who would oppose that.”

“I mean, it wasn’t right, what they were going to do — and utterly unfounded, too! You’re a capital chap, A1; you don’t deserve a bit of it.”

Not right . Edwin’s moral compass was lost in the trenches somewhere between the time he killed his first man, and the rest of the boys seemed to have buried theirs somewhere irretrievable. Charles, he realised, was truly, deeply, good.

“It was a rare kindness.”

“Rot. If that was a rare kindness, I shudder to think what your life is like.” He patted Edwin on the shoulder. “I’ll sit with you every lesson, if you’d like — keep the lads in check, and all.”

“Really?” Edwin tried his best to keep the hopeful lilt out of his voice.

“Really. Cross my heart and everything.”

Edwin felt a smile spread across his face, which seemed to mollify Charles greatly; Edwin was rewarded with a smile back. The lesson passed on hitch-free, interspersed by pleasant conversation; soon enough, it drew to a close. Upon the end of the lesson Simon strode towards them and tapped Charles rather roughly by the shoulder.

There was a bitter, mocking slant to his voice, badly concealed as mirth. “Come on, rajah, we’ve got to get to our dorm.”

Edwin noticed the stiffening of Charles’ shoulders as he shoved his things ungracefully into his bag. “Comin’.” He looked at Edwin, and waved cheerily. “It was great meeting you. I wish we had languages class together, but I’m doing Italian, while I suppose you’re off doing French or German—”

“French.”

“Lovely. You seem like a French sort of lad, really—”

“Rowland. Sir Macassar Oil. We’ve got to go,” Simon said loudly.

“Right!” Charles jogged up to Simon. At the last moment, he turned his head, curls bouncing in the sunlight, and cried gaily, "Your blue cap⁴ is really smart, by the way!”

Edwin’s cheeks warmed. Simon turned too, and shot Edwin an indescribable look — intense and angry and mixed together with something altogether foreign.

Edwin looked away and set to methodically arranging his notes within his folder.

***

“Lord, you lot are really like a flock of birds, aren’t you?” Simon had finally released him from his rather claw-like grip, and he tried his best to discreetly shake his arm for circulation.

The cricket team — well, only them six ‘golden boys’, the cream of the crop, as their captain called them — had flocked together in a way that seemed to melt into each other. “They should call us the goldfinches instead,” said Aubrey Finch, who Charles found altogether amiable with an easy smile, and with a curiously slight, birdlike build. He was, coincidentally, an excellent backward-point fielder.

“Marking the group name with yours, Finch?” Horace Moore clapped him on the back just a pinch too hard. Finch’s lithe frame and Moore’s wrestler-esque build was not a good match. Charles still did not quite understand why they were so insistent on calling each other by their last names, and had immediately insisted with the most graciousness he could muster for them to call him by his first, and tried his best to extend the same courtesy, though they were rather unreceptive to it. Midway through the first week, he had given up and called them by their last names (save for Simon, who only went by his Christian name).

“You know me,” Finch said. “I’m terribly vain.”

Simon seemed to have more pressing matters than the semantics of their group name. He turned. “Rowland, what was that book-slamming business all about?”

Charles felt himself bristle. “What about it?”

“The way you stopped us!” Claude Risley cried. “We were just having a bit of fun, why’d you have to ruin it, all serious-like?”

“Well, it didn’t seem very fun to me,” Charles said uncomfortably. “There’s hardly any fun in distressing some poor, innocent lad. It’s unfounded.”

“Innocent?” Simon let out a bitter laugh. “Rowland, he’s an invert.”

Charles tensed. “Says who?”

“Says everyone. Look at the way he walks, all that sashaying… it’s— it’s effeminate, it is.”

Charles did not take much notice of the way Edwin walked. “I mean, it’s just walking. That’s hardly a crime.”

“Not just walking,” said Lloyd Wilkins. He looked ghostly, with his white pallor and dark, dark features. Charles did not feel the most comfortable around him, but it was most likely because he was still much of a stranger to him (and the endless skulking about did not hurt that impression). His pale lips twisted up into a smile. “Tell him about the war, Simon.”

“Right!” Simon and Wilkins’ eyes lit up at the same time. Simon seemed to derive a pleasure in saying terrible things about Edwin; Wilkins seemed to derive a pleasure from watching Simon do so. When Payne was fifteen, he enlisted underage⁵. Which was all fine and good, and everyone’s opinions of him were fairly positive — bravery and patriotism and all that — for a while, until he got sent back home.”

“The war? He must be terrifically brave.” If they were trying to get him to dislike Edwin, they were doing a terrible job at it — his only thought was that this boy must be some sort of superhero or a modern day Hercules.

“ Brave? He’s a coward. And a mad one, at that — positively loony. He got sent back seven months later — somewhere near the end of last year — because of ‘shell-shock’, which we all really know is another word for cowardice. He wouldn’t say a word when he was back, at first — shamefulness, probably — and he’d mutter to himself in the hallways, like some sort of lunatic.”

“And that’s not it,” said Moore. “You know how he’s in our House and our Form, but he isn’t in the Isis dorm, right? Don’t you find that odd?”

“I suppose,” said Charles, though in truth that thought had scarcely crossed his mind at all.

“He used to be, but he had these horrible night terrors, waking up, making up an awful racket, crying out names; poor Risley tried to play a prank on him, and he got a good punch in the nose once Payne shot up.”

“Well, the war’s got to be hard on the mind. And he was just fifteen. It’s a miracle he’s got his head on right today,” Charles said.

Moore scoffed, and Simon followed suit.

“You’re too kind,” Risley said. “I can hardly believe you can bear talking all pleasant-like to him. He’s terribly unpatriotic. He tried debating against the war during the school debate — he was articulate, but blind to German atrocities. He lost by a landslide. Pity — for all his pansy-ness, he used to be a rather good debater.”

“I mean,” Charles said, painfully aware of the controversial status of his next sentence, “War isn’t the best. Seems like an awful lot of loss, on both sides, doesn’t it? I mean, things could definitely be solved better, no?”

There was a shocked silence. 

“Rowland,” Risley said slowly. “Please tell me you don’t mean that. Load of tosh, that is.”

Moore was less gracious. “I thought you were a proper Englishman. But it makes sense, with you, I suppose.” He cast his eyes, surveying him in one judging sweep. Charles felt prickly and desperately aware of his heritage.

“Of— of course not. I— I didn’t mean that—”

“We’re all tired, aren’t we?” Finch said suddenly. “And when we’re tired, we say strange things. We should get to the dorms, put our things down. Clear our heads.”

“Right.” Charles shrunk in on himself. “I’m— I’m awfully sorry, I don’t know what came over me—”

“Things happen,” Wilkins said quietly, and laid a cold hand on his shoulder, propelling him forward with surprising force. “Fatigue is the mother of oddities.”

 “Which poem is that from, Wilkins?” said Finch.

“It is a Lloyd Wilkins special,” said Wilkins. “From the esteemed pages of my diary.”

The boys all laughed; immediately the attention was diverted away from Charles and the conversation turned to Wilkins’ future as a poet. 

There was a terrible feeling in Charles’ gut, tight and uncomfortable, and he felt compelled to somehow defend Edwin’s honour; then his eyes caught on Simon’s face, laughing at Risley’s impression of Lord Byron, and he hastily reassured himself this was just another aspect of boyhood, ultimately harmless. 

As long as he was there to mediate their wilder escapades, all would be fine; and if talk turned to the colour of his skin, it was to be expected in this day and age. These reassurances he vowed to hold close to his chest, and to remember when he felt doubt — for what harm did a bit of fun do?

***

Edwin shut the windows of his room tightly. The sky was beginning to grey, the rumbling underbelly of an awakening beast. Edwin never liked storms, and he liked it even less after the trenches — they reminded him of the shells, a memory which never led to anything pleasant. On nights like these, these ghosts from battle would rise up within the mist and haunt his mind, clearer and more potent with the onslaught of cold and rain.

Thankfully, he had a room to himself (though the circumstances in which he achieved that were rather embarrassing), and he was glad to not have a dozen other pairs of eyes on himself. Edwin walked to the desk, rearranged the things on it, then again, stacking his books and pens by colour, then type, then shape. This was an ordeal that took about thirty minutes. He moved on to his bow ties, matching it hue-for-hue, then pattern-for-pattern. It was calming, and let that ever-steady thrum of anxiety in his mind fade to a background hum. He’d done this every day at the front, re-packing everything in his suitcase in a multitude of different ways in the middle of the night. It was a way to stay sane.

Leaving already, Edwin? his brother had said to him, seeing him roll up a muffler in the middle of the night; his voice, Edwin keenly remembered, was warm and deep, with a teasing lilt. Thought you’d last a bit longer.

Those were his last words to him, unless you counted the incoherent gurgle of blood his brother had made, staring into his eyes, a bullet through his neck. True to his word, Edwin did not step foot in trenches after that day.

Edwin decided that his bow ties were ineffective in quelling his anxiety.

His next conquest was his journal. He flipped through, quickly, of the seven months worth of entries at the front, making sure his eyes caught on the signs of wear and blood at the corners like a twisted form of self-flagellation. He flipped to a fresh page, and detailed his mind-numbingly boring day — his meals, his lessons, his homework, the sparrow near the window. 

At the bottom, he wrote what he really wanted to write all along: I met Charles Rowland today. Even writing the words caused a smile to spread on his face. Then, quickly (before God could witness the act) he added: He is unbearably kind. I am already fond of him. 

Edwin did not write about how Charles was possibly the last good thing in this school — no, this country, this war-torn version of England — how he was possibly a saint in disguise. How Edwin was a cynic, given one last thing to believe in. Writing it out made him seem all too desperate. As polite society decreed: nothing was a sin if you did it quietly enough.

Thunder sounded; Edwin flinched, and exploding shells flashed before his eyes. 

He would do his English Lit homework, if not for the fact that Macbeth’s running theme of blood was enough to induce nausea; he resolved to finish it by the weekend. Even the anxiety of seven months of catching up (coupled with his personal ineptitude at understanding metaphorical language) was not able to overpower the destruction that seemed to burn behind his eyelids whenever he closed his eyes.

Keep the mind busy, was what his brother would say. Edwin still needed to draft out debate notes, though they weren’t due in two weeks; he took out his second-finest eyedropper pen, and the notebook he reserved specially for debate. As lightning shot like a scar across the sky, hell-bound, he was very sure he would not be getting a wink of sleep today.

_____________________

1. Rowland's Macassar Oil was a popular hair oil brand in the Edwardian era. ^{[ ▲ ]}
2. Meaning "Indian prince"; typically used as an insult. ^{[ ▲ ]}
3. Lower Sixth is for sixteen to seventeen-year-olds. The naming of years in St. Hilarion's (and many other Edwardian public schools) goes as such: Shell, Remove, Hundreds, Lower Sixth, and Upper Sixth. ^{[ ▲ ]}
4. In the Edwardian Era, one would not wear caps indoors, especially in classrooms; it was seen as impolite. However, in the world of fiction, plot often takes precedence over atmosphere. ^{[ ▲ ]}
5. As long as one could lie convincingly enough and look old enough, it was fairly easy for children to join the army in WWI. Edwin, being played by an actor decidedly over nineteen (the minimum age of enlisting), has a mature face. ^{[ ▲ ]}