Work Text:
“what to call you who i’ve slept beside through so many apocalypses
the kind that occur nightly in this late stage of the collapsing west
boyfriend was fine even though we are neither boys nor men but love
how it makes us sudden infants in the eyes of any listener—how
it brings us back to some childhood we never got to live…”- Selection from "My Hole. My Whole." by Sam Sax
It all starts with another one of Crystal's dreadful jokes.
"Not that I'd expect some repressed Victorian virgin to understand—"
"I am not," Edwin cuts in before he can think it through.
"Victorian? Yeah, I know," Crystal says. "I just don't care."
"A virgin," he clarifies. She stares.
"No way," she declares. "You're fucking with me. Niko said the Night Nurse's file on you literally said you were a virgin sacrifice, and I know you haven't scored as a ghost. Charles would have told me."
Edwin narrows his eyes.
"Yes. I was a virgin sacrifice. To Hell."
When no comprehension dawns behind her eyes, he nearly screams.
"Crystal. What do you think Hell does to virgin sacrifices? Display them like trophies? No, I'm afraid the plane designed to be an afterlife of torture is a bit more hands on than that."
That knocks Crystal's annoyed expression right off her face, replacing it with blank shock and the beginnings of horror.
Edwin is already exhausted by the emotions the look implies.
"Christ, Edwin, they—" she starts, but Edwin barrels over what is likely to be a well-intentioned but painfully unnecessary declaration of pity.
"Suffice to say," he says scathingly, "I guarantee I have far more experience than your measly 16 years could possibly provide in all the exceptionally creative ways one can get fucked. Do try to remember that, despite my appearance, I am a century too old to be your peer."
Crystal doesn't rise to the bait, shaking her head.
"Fuck that," she says, a glint of determination resigning Edwin to hearing her out. "What happened to you was awful and fucked up, but rape is not sex. It's violence."
"I assure you," Edwin says, resisting the urge to tug at the suddenly oppressive tightness of his clothes, "the mechanics were the same."
She shakes her head again, stepping forward and placing her hands on the desk, prompting Edwin to lean back in his chair to avoid her piercing gaze.
"Sex—actual, consensual sex—is nothing like what they did to you down there. It's good. Kinda awkward and messy sometimes," she admits, "but it doesn't matter because you're doing it with someone you trust or someone you love, and you know that they would never hurt you. I—" she hesitates, an uncharacteristic vulnerability coloring her tone. "Just, trust me, alright? It feels different."
The edge of Edwin's discomfort and displeasure eases as the implication of her words dawns. Suddenly, he feels wrong-footed. The idea that she could, in some small way, understand…
He stares at her for a moment. "I'm sorry," he offers eventually, and she gives a half-hearted shrug.
"Getting roofied is basically a right of passage in the circles I used to fuck with," she says with a bitter smile. "It was bound to happen eventually."
"Roofied?"
"Drugged," she clarified. "Like, when shit guys put something in a girl's drink and then—" she stops, letting Edwin put the pieces together.
He opens his mouth before closing it again. He wishes Charles were here. Edwin never knows what to say to comfort anyone much less someone as confusing as Crystal.
"Look," she says, "you don't have to say anything. Just, I get it, okay? And I don't care about the fucked up shit that happened to you in Hell. You're still a repressed Victorian virgin in my book."
The tension shatters as Edwin makes a noise of indignation, and Crystal laughs.
"I am not—"
"Yeah, you are," she says with a grin. "Come back when you've had actual sex and maybe I'll entertain your opinion about who I want to sleep with."
Edwin huffs and snatches a book from his desk, giving her a pointed look before opening it to a random page and beginning to read.
Crystal laughs again, but she clearly gets the message as she tosses a goodbye behind her as she walks out the office.
Good riddance.
----
He can't get the conversation out of his head.
Is it really that different?
Edwin had been utterly disinterested in sex since his emergence from Hell. He'd had plenty of it in the circle of Lust, and he wasn't keen to repeat any of those experiences.
...had he been too hasty in his assessment?
It itches at him for weeks: the idea that he is ignorant of such a large category of sensation.
He rethinks every time he's been flustered in the last 30 years. He rethinks the Cat King.
He rethinks Charles.
In the past, it had seemed near blasphemous to associate Charles with the overwhelming, unpleasant, and often painful experience of sex he had grown used to. Now, he considers something else, something more like the romantic drivel he'd read in passing.
He thinks about Charles kissing him slowly, thinks about tangling his fingers in Charles' hair, thinks about what Charles might look like beneath him in the throes of pleasure.
The fantasy seems comically foolish. Every ounce of Edwin's experience shouts that there is no such thing as the gentleness he's picturing. Sex is a wild, aggressive thing driven by passion that boils over into the sort of need that doesn't care who it hurts along the way.
But what if it's not? A voice that sounds painfully like Niko whispers in the back of his mind.
It doesn't matter.
Even if Crystal is correct, Edwin will never know. There is no one he would trust with such a thing other than Charles, and Charles does not like him that way.
----
Except, apparently, Charles does like Edwin that way, and it's both a dream come true and the most terrifying thing Edwin has ever faced.
Those weeks he had spent considering what intimacy might be like with Charles were no longer simple fantasies.
It rattles him enough that Charles can certainly tell something is wrong, but Edwin isn't sure he's ready to explain just how broken Hell left him.
But, as appears to be tradition in Edwin's life, fate makes the choice for him.
They are tracking what Edwin believes to be a run-of-the-mill shapeshifter that has been terrorizing the local clubs and leaving a string of victims either dead or comatose.
When they catch up to the perpetrator, he realizes quickly that he has made a mistake.
It's an incubus.
Edwin is familiar with them, of course. Intimately so. He has not had the misfortune of running into one since he got out of Hell, but it seems his luck has run out.
"Oh," it purrs as soon as it catches sight of Edwin. "What do we have here?"
Charles steps between them, already lifting his cricket bat, but Edwin catches his shoulder.
"Charles, wait," he says, eyes locked on the demon. "It is a demon. We will need more than your cricket bat to triumph."
His partner gives a sharp nod. "What do you need, mate?"
"Yeah, ghostie," the incubus says with a lazy smile, "let Charles give you what you need. A spirit like yours has got to be aching for it."
"What—"
"Ignore it," Edwin snaps.
The demon's smile sharpens. "Surely your little boyfriend knows just how tainted you are. Is that why he won't fuck you?" it taunts with faux innocence.
Charles bristles. "Oi, you don't know shit—"
"I said leave it, Charles," Edwin hisses.
"I'm not gonna let him talk to you like that," Charles says, narrowing his eyes at the creature.
"If you want it gone, make yourself useful and get the second volume of Daemonology out of your bag before it gets away," he snaps.
Charles shoots him a frown but starts digging through his bag anyway.
The incubus laughs. "Before I get away? Darling, who's running? It would be a tragedy to leave a meal like you behind. All those messy contradictions," it groans. "Such an innocent mind tangled with an absolutely filthy soul... I'm getting hard just thinking about taking you apart."
"Shut the fuck up," Charles growls.
"Focus," Edwin reminds him. "I'm fine. The words of a half-rate demon cannot harm me."
The demon's sly expression flickers with anger and it hisses. "Half-rate? I'll show you half-fuckin-rate."
Edwin hardly has time to bite out a curse before the demon has disappeared. He spins around, scanning the remote alley they'd found themselves in.
"Any moment now, Charles."
"Sorry, love. Almost got it," Charles says, shoving his hand even deeper into the bag. He yanks out the book with a triumphant grin, but before he can give it to Edwin a clawed hand wraps around Edwin's arm and yanks him back.
Charles scrambles to his feet as the demon traps Edwin against his chest, its claws dangerously close to Edwin's throat.
They wouldn't kill him, but they would hurt, and Edwin can see Charles' determination to protect him burning in his eyes.
"Maybe if you're a good boy," the incubus says, voice so close to his ear it makes him flinch, "I might even wear your boytoy's cute face while I do it."
"Alright, fuck this," Charles says. He reaches his hand and pulls out something far smaller than Edwin had expected.
Before he can identify what Charles is holding, his partner points it at the both of them and there's a deafening bang!
The demon screeches in surprise and stumbles back, clutching at its now bleeding hand.
Edwin takes the moment to shove away and sprint back to Charles side, scooping up the tome Charles had abandoned on the ground.
He doesn't bother to reckon with what, exactly, Charles just did, instead flipping through the book until he can start chanting the banishment.
"What the fuck?" the incubus screeches. "Did you just fucking shoot me?"
Charles grins, waving what Edwin now realizes is a bloody handgun of all things at the demon.
"Yup!" he says. "Kinda brills, innit? Picked it up from a mate in the States. Not a lick of iron in those bullets so it passes right through us ghosts. Demons who fuck with my boyfriend aren't quite as lucky."
"You're wasting your time," it sneers. "That thing can't kill me."
"No," Charles agrees, "but he can."
The demon's eyes snap to Edwin who is smugly rattling off the final few lines of the incantation.
It doesn't even get a chance to scream in rage before it's dragged back to Hell where it belongs.
Edwin takes a moment to breathe before spinning to face Charles.
"Since when do you have a bloody gun?" he demands, incredulous.
"Oh, it's not mine," Charles says with a shrug "Tragic Mick asked me to take to a friend of his in London. Lucky I still had it, huh?"
Edwin stares at him in exasperated amazement as he turns it over in his hands thoughtfully.
"That was pretty aces, tho. Maybe I should get one."
"You will not," Edwin decrees, aghast.
Charles laughs. "Alright, alright. Cricket bat's more fun anyway."
They share a small smile for a job well done as Edwin brushes off his coat.
"Well, I suppose we ought to inform the client that their mysterious killer has been both identified and dealt with."
Charles hums his agreement and swings his bag over his shoulder. As they walk back, Edwin almost believes Charles has forgotten all about the strange words of the incubus.
Almost.
----
"So, we gonna talk about what happened back there?"
Edwin considers maintaining an air of indifference and hoping Charles will let it go, but... well, this has been some time coming and it wouldn't be proper for Edwin to avoid it when it's being all but set in his lap.
"Yes," he agrees softly, "we should."
Charles blinks, clearly surprised, and Edwin rolls his eyes.
"I do know how to talk about my emotions, regardless of what Crystal says."
Charles holds his hands up in faux surrender. "Right, let's talk then, yeah?"
He plops down on the couch, tapping the other end with his foot until Edwin sighs and sits across from him.
"What is it you would like to discuss?"
"First off," Charles starts, "how the hell did you know that bastard was a demon right away?"
"I encountered several of his particular kind in Hell," Edwin says. "They have a... distinctive aura, for lack of a better term."
Charles nods slowly. "And all the shit he was sayin’ about your soul? It sounded kinda, uh, sexual? I guess?"
Edwin purses his lips. "It was. Colloquial folklore would call that creature an incubus. A sex demon, if you will."
"Alright, but why did he care about you?"
Edwin stares into Charles' hesitant, confused eyes and wishes he didn’t have to tell him this, wishes he didn’t have to crush that stubborn bit of hope clinging to his voice. Neither his life nor his afterlife have ever been so kind.
"What you saw in Hell when you came to rescue me was the place where I spent most of my time during my period of damnation," Edwin begins, tugging at his fingers and staring at the air just past Charles head, "but the Doll House was not the only prison I was condemned to. There were several prior. The one we shall discuss today was my first."
"Edwin, we don't have to—"
"I want to," he insists, eyes flicking to Charles for a brief moment of reassurance. "You should know."
Charles inspects his expression for a moment before nodding. "If you want to stop, we stop."
"Of course. Thank you, Charles." Edwin clears his throat. "As you are aware, I was sent to Hell as a sacrifice. In particular, a virgin sacrifice. Such sacrifices are quite valuable in Hell, and as soon as the demon who took me had the chance he pawned me off to a demon from—" he falters and clears his throat again and forces the words past the block in his throat, "—from the circle of Lust."
Charles sucks in a sharp breath. Edwin cannot bear to look at him and see the devastation.
"I am not sure how long I spent there. Time is... difficult in Hell," he says quietly, "but it was plenty long enough for them to ruin me quite completely. What the demon we met tonight was sensing was the defilement wrought upon me by its fellow incubi."
"They didn't ruin shit."
The sharpness in Charles' words startles Edwin into looking at his partner. His eyes are wet with tears, much to Edwin's dismay, but they also burn with the righteous fire Edwin knows so well.
"And that tosh the demon said about it bein' the reason I don't, y'know, get physical with you is fuckin' bullshit," Charles continues, reaching out to grab one of Edwin's hands tightly. "You know that right? There is nothing wrong with you."
"Then why don't you?" Edwin blurts.
Charles seems a bit surprised that Edwin asked, but he recovers swiftly.
"Cause it makes you uncomfortable, don't it. I don't want to do shit if it wouldn't make you happy, love."
"I..." Edwin struggles to put this messy complicated wanting that he's been feeling into words. Perhaps, if he explains what led him to this conflict, Charles will understand. "Crystal said it isn't the same."
Charles blinks at the change of subject. "That what isn't the same?"
"What they did to me in-in Hell and what we would do if we did engage in... intimacy," Edwin explains. "She said that it wasn't sex, what they did."
"It wasn't." Charles squeezes his hand once. "I swear it's not like that. It's nothing like that."
"I never thought that it could be... good," he admits. "Pleasurable, maybe. There were times in Hell when—" he stops and shakes his head. "But I suppose I always thought the descriptions in literature and poetry were wishful thinking at best. It seemed impossible that what had been so terrible to me could be so idyllic to others."
"Well, don't know that I'd say idyllic," Charles says with a smile, "but it can be pretty damn brills." The smile fades. "I'm sorry you didn't get a chance to know that."
“...but what if I want to?” Edwin asks, perhaps more earnestly than he intended. “What if I am tired of my only memories of intimacy being those which were forced upon me? What if, for once in my afterlife, I want to choose? What if—” He cuts off with wide eyes as Charles yanks his hand up and presses it to his face, guiding Edwin until he’s cupping his partner’s jaw. “Charles, what are you…?”
Charles tips his head into Edwin’s palm. “So choose,” he says.
“What?” Edwin says, bewildered.
“If you want this,” Charles says, eyes burning into Edwin’s, “then bloody do it, Edwin. I’m here.”
“I…” The word comes out of him in a distant breath. “I don’t know how—”
“No one does the first time,” his partner says with a soft if somewhat teasing smile.
Slowly, Edwin presses his hand more firmly to Charles’ face, his thumb drifting up to brush across his cheekbone. Charles hums appreciatively, emboldening Edwin to bring his other hand up to cup the other cheek, cradling his face. Charles breathes out a hint of a sigh, eyes closing for a moment, and all at once Edwin knows that if he does not kiss him right this moment he may very well cease to exist.
And so he does.
It’s barely a kiss at all, really, more of a faint brush of lips against lips. A whisper.
Charles fingers wrap around his forearms in an unspoken attempt to tell him to stay stay stay.
What was a whisper grows into a low conversational tone, the conspiratorial musings of an unwelcome pair at a busy dinner table.
Edwin hadn’t known mouths could say so much without making so much as a sound.
Further still, the conversational tone becomes a joyed greeting and then a shout of excitement filled with the satisfaction of a mystery solved and a boy loved.
They kiss and they kiss until Edwin forgets what it is to whisper at all, consumed by the deafening sound of I love you; I want you! And an even more ecstatic: You love me; you want me!
Eventually, they pull away, and Edwin looks into Charles’ dark eyes and wishes to be swallowed by them.
“That was incredible,” he says instead, and Charles’ grin is blinding.
“It was, wasn’t it?” Charles agrees, expression just smug enough to make a happy huff jump out of Edwin’s mouth.
“Thank you.”
Charles’ grin softens, and he pulls Edwin in for another gentle kiss. “Thank you,” he says, just as earnest and sincere as he was the day Edwin met him.
They don’t go any further after that, even the depths of Edwin’s curiosity unable to completely override years of programmed discomfort. Frustratingly, he knows it will take time, but today has given him hope that maybe—just maybe —Crystal was right.