Work Text:
"O gods of this world, placed below the earth, to which, all, who are created mortal, descend; if you allow me, and it is lawful, to set aside the fictions of idle tongues, and speak the truth, I have not come here to see dark Tartarus, nor to bind Cerberus, Medusa’s child, with his three necks, and snaky hair. My wife is the cause of my journey. A viper, she trod on, diffused its venom into her body, and robbed her of her best years. I longed to be able to accept it, and I do not say I have not tried: Love won." - Ovid, Metamorphoses
It all starts with Crystal.
She’d been studying up on her powers now that she’s got access to all of the boys’ supernatural connections, and there was one ability in particular that she’d had her eye on ever since she started expanding her skillset: reading ghosts.
Ghosts have always been… slippery. It’s not that she can’t read them at all, just that the images are even more blurred and vague than usual, and often she forgets them seconds after she takes the reading as if the memories, like their source, have passed on to some strange world that she’s not supposed to be a part of.
Now, though? With her ancestors helping her and more information about her gift than ever before, she’s convinced she can do it. All she has to do is convince Charles and Edwin to be her test subjects.
Easy, right?
----
“This is a terrible idea.”
“Oh, come on, mate.” Charles nudges Edwin with his shoulders, prompting a withering look from his partner. “It’ll be fun! Besides, ‘s not like Crystal would put us in danger.”
“Not intentionally,” Edwin mutters, folding his arms.
“Your faith in me is touching,” Crystal says dryly.
“Forgive me if I am not particularly comforted by your assurances considering we are your first subjects.”
“Look, what’s the worst that could happen?” Charles interrupts before Edwin and Crystal can get into it. He regrets his question as soon as Edwin fixes him with an unimpressed stare. “Alright, so maybe it could get a bit dicey, but it’ll be nothin’ we can’t handle together.”
He gives Edwin the hopeful smile he knows always breaks through his reservations.
Edwin purses his lips before he sighs. “Fine.”
“That’s it, mate,” Charles says with a grin and turns to Crystal, clapping his hands together. “Time for some ghost reading, yeah?”
“Great, just give me your hands, and we can give this a shot.”
They both hold a hand out, Edwin reluctantly and Charles with a bouncing eagerness.
Crystal takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, lays her hand on top of his, and Charles remembers.
----
“-arles. Charles!”
He jolts awake with a sharp gasp, nearly smashing right into the person hovering above him as he sits up, a formless panic slamming in his chest as he staggers to his feet.
Where is she? No. He? Charles clutches at his head as thoughts crash against each other, images of a woman then a man then neither then a man again and on and on, blurring together until he can see nothing else.
He tries to shake the confusion because he is needed— that he is certain of more than anything else. There is someone who needs him, and life will be worth nothing if he cannot get to them.
Someone grabs his arm, and when he spins to face them he is met with a young woman whose eyes are filled with panic, concern, and the beginnings of tears. A distant part of him knows that her panic and concern are on his behalf though he can’t grasp why. He doesn’t know her… does he?
“Charles, talk to me. What the fuck is happening?” she says.
Charles… the name tastes strange, but it’s definitely his. He is Charles.
With that certainty comes a flood of clarity.
Oh, God. Edwin.
“Edwin,” he gasps as soon as he can manage, hands darting out to latch onto Crystal— yes, Crystal. He is Charles, she is Crystal, and he must find Edwin . “Where’s–what is–where is he? Where is Edwin?”
“He’s still asleep. Do ghosts do that? Is that-is that even possible? I don’t—”
He doesn’t bother listening to the rest, too busy pushing her aside to finally catch sight of the man crumpled on the floor a few feet from them.
Charles lunges for him and gathers him into his arms, one hand coming to cradle his face.
“Hey, hey, you’re okay. I’m here.” The words start tumbling out of his mouth as memories of a dozen other limp bodies clutched in desperate hands threaten to overwhelm him.
The happiest night of his life bisected by the smoke of an unlit torch. The pitying looks born of an ill omen. Stubborn denial in the face of destiny. Love. A woman reaching up to him, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth, a sluggishly bleeding wound just above her ankle.
A holy lyre. An unholy grief given form in broken voice and verse. A second chance. A long, winding path of terrible things not meant for mortal eyes barely hidden by unnatural fog. Love. Turning, stretching out his arms to hold her and be held, finding nothing but the receding air.
Edwin doesn't wake.
“No. No, no, no, no, please—” Charles begs. “I did it this time. I brought you back. We were together.”
He tucks his head into Edwin's chest, tears burning his cheeks, and then, with a voice far older than this shape… he sings.
The song is old and familiar, and—like the songs his mother used to sing, quiet and careful, in a language his father had never allowed him to learn—Charles doesn't mind that he doesn't understand the words.
Crystal tries to talk to him. It's no use. Charles can hardly hear his own thoughts much less her pleading, no matter how frantic. At least she knows better than to try and pull him away.
As he sings, he remembers that he did this the first time, too. At the river's edge, he clung to the robes of creatures endless and unyielding, but they were unmoved by his grief.
Sitting there by the shore. Eating nothing but sorrow, troubled thought, and tears.
Just as Charles is about to resign himself to another life without her, the body in his arms takes a rattling breath.
----
As soon as Crystal touches Edwin's hand and black overcomes his vision, he ceases to be Edwin at all—or, perhaps, it is better to say that he is not only Edwin.
And, in all the mess and commotion, it is certainly not Edwin who is pulled from the darkness by the call of her lover’s song.
No, it is Eurydice who opens her eyes.
The man above her looks nothing like her husband, but she knows with absolute certainty that it is him in all the ways that matter. This is the man she loves, the man who loves her, the man she lost.
His voice is just as tragically beautiful as it has always been, even if it has a new sort of rough, untrained sound.
“Orpheus,” she cries out, and her voice is even stranger than his but there is no time to dwell on it, not when she can pull him into her arms and clutch at his form.
He meets her with passion and tears, his song crumbling into a chant of her name.
“You found me,” she says, with awe even if she had never truly doubted him.
“Always,” he swears, pressing a kiss to her hair. “I will always come for you.”
She pulls away just far enough to cradle his face in her hands, inspecting every detail of this new body her love has found himself in.
“You are different,” she says, thumb gliding over the expanse of his skin. It's lighter than it was, though no less beautiful. His eyes, too, have changed, the threads of amber and brown more distinct than she remembers.
He laughs. “Darling, have you not noticed the changes in your own form?”
At that she takes a moment to feel the body she now occupies and—
Oh. Gods above.
Her eyes widen and she shifts, feeling all at once strange and comfortable as she recognizes the body of a man.
Orpheus smiles, all teeth and good nature, and she wishes to scowl at him and kiss the look right off his face, but she is far too busy being quite shocked.
“Worry not, my love,” Orpheus says, “for you are no less beautiful, and I am no less enraptured.”
“But I-I am—”
He cuts her off with a gentle kiss, pressing their lips together just as tenderly as he did on the day of their wedding, full of adoration and faith.
“You are perfect,” he says against her lips, “and you are mine.”
Before she can share her devotion in return, a strangled voice interrupts them both.
“Okay, what the fuck is going on?”
As one, Eurydice and Orpheus turn to face the interrupter.
It is a beautiful young woman. Her full hair and blazen eyes remind Eurydice of herself, in many ways, and it softens whatever part of her heart wishes to throw out this intruder who had dared get between Eurydice and the man who had gone to Hades for her.
“Since when do the two of you kiss?” the woman says, incredulously. “And why the fuck are you calling each other Orpheus and Eurydice?”
Eurydice tilts her head. “Are those not our names?”
“No!” the woman shouts. “No, you—” she says, pointing at them, “—are Charles fucking Rowland and Edwin goddamn Payne, founders of the Dead Boy Detective Agency, and, like, I get the parallels given Charles dragging you out of Hell or whatever, but you are not some ancient Greek myth.”
Charles Rowland and Edwin Payne. Founders of the Dead Boy Detective Agency.
She has never heard those names in her life and yet… they feel like a perfect fit. The body she is in yearns for them, clinging to their shape like a babe to its mother's breast.
Beside her, Orpheus has gone still, and she knows he, too, is sensing the heavy weight of this knowledge.
The more she dwells, the more something awakens in her, a voice and a memory that knows these words and world and body and fire-eyed young woman.
She can feel herself fading away, Orpheus’ grip on her feeling more like an echo. It frightens her, but the voice murmurs that this is right and good, that she is not dying, merely sleeping, and she will wake again, Orpheus by her side.
“...Crystal?”
The woman, Crystal he now knows, looks as if she might cry. She nods frantically, finally dropping to her knees and pulling the both of them in for a bruising hug.
We are ghosts, he thinks. We cannot bruise.
He's not sure how he knows that or whether it is true at all, but for now he simply accepts the embrace.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” she says wetly into his shoulder before finally pulling away, scrubbing at her eyes. “Please tell me you’re back and you're actually you.”
He isn't sure what to say to that. He certainly feels like him, and yet…
“...Edwin?” The person beside him says.
In an instant, his head has turned and his eyes are on the soul who had been holding him so tightly all this time.
The sight is like a shock to his spirit.
Suddenly, Edwin is drowning. He knows this soul better than anyone, and yet he cannot even summon to mind their name. Instead of a simple collection of sounds there is a deafening overlapping of a dozen names in a dozen languages, some with syllables he’s not certain he could even pronounce in this body with this tongue.
It is awful, and he wants to panic, but his heart cannot manage anything but a staggering relief.
They are here, his heart insists, that is enough.
But it isn’t enough.
Edwin did not spend the last 30 years becoming a detective to settle for nameless, certainly not when said nameless being is, perhaps, the most essential creation in all the universe.
So, Edwin Payne does not slip into the throws of contented satisfaction. He sets his jaw and tells his heart that it will never be enough. Not if it’s about Charles.
He sucks in a sharp breath.
“Oh,” he says softly, hardly more than a whisper. He clutches the man in his arms tighter. “Oh, Charles.”
Charles, Charles, Charles, Charles—
He cannot tell if he is repeating the name aloud or only in his mind, but he does not think it matters. Each repetition brings with it another glimpse of their life together, another echo of his voice in Edwin’s ears.
Stubborn—
“Well, I’m aces with people.”
—excitable—
“Reckon you could put some kind of spell on this? A magic cricket bat sounds wicked.”
—strong—
“Like, you’re the brains, yeah? And I’m the brawn. A proper team.”
—kind—
“You’re my best mate, Edwin.”
—passionate—
“Please, don’t go where I can’t follow.”
—caring—
“I love you, mate.”
—protective—
“It would really make me feel better if one of these decades you learned to defend yourself.”
—devoted—
“No version of this where I don’t come get you, yeah?”
Charles.
He pulls back just enough to hold Charles' face in his hands.
“I understand now,” he says, brushing Charles’ cheek with his thumb. “I know who we are. Your name is Charles Rowland. You are a ghost and an excellent detective. I am your partner Edwin Payne. We have been together in this afterlife for over 30 years. I love you.”
He looks deep into Charles’ wide eyes, speaking softly. “Do you understand now?”
“I–” Charles starts, stopping with a look of confused distress. Edwin aches to soothe the tension across his face but knows this is a journey Charles must take in full. “I'm… Charles.” He says hesitantly.
“Yes,” Edwin confirms, solid and safe in the way he knows Charles needs him to be.
“But my head.”
Unfortunately, Edwin understands exactly what Charles means by that. He nods.
“Yes,” he says again, “and that is you, as well, but those lives are over Charles. They have had their time, and now their stories are at an end. There is only one story yet to conclude: ours.”
“Okay,” Charles whispers, but with a fierce devotion Edwin has never seen in another. “Okay. I trust you. I don't think I really get it yet, but if you say I am Charles and you are Edwin, then I know it's true.”
“Thank you,” Edwin says.
He holds Charles face tighter for a moment before letting go and turning to Crystal. A wry, exhausted smile tugs at his lips.
“While it may not have been quite what was intended,” he says, “I dare say your experiment was a resounding success.”
The look of indignation that eclipses Crystal’s panic and guilt makes Edwin's spirit settle.
“You dick!” She shrieks. “I thought I had fucking killed you both—again. What the fuck was that?
“If it makes you feel any better,” Edwin says, “I am fairly certain your technique would be quite standard and boring on most other specters. It is simply poor luck that you happened to try it on Charles and I first. We are… a special sort.”
“Of course you are. Why am I not surprised?” Crystal scowls, but her relief takes all the bite out of it. “You gonna give me more than that or keep being a cryptic bastard.”
“Apparently,” he begins, “this life—and subsequent afterlife—is not the first Charles and I have experienced. We are… old souls, one might say. Your tugging on our spirits seems to have wrenched loose a great many of the memories of these past lives which resulted in our following disorientation.”
“Wait, so when you were calling eachother Orpheus and Eurydice…” Crystal says, eyes wide.
“Yes,” Edwin replies with a smile. “It appears that not only were the famed lovers quite real, Charles and I played the original roles.”
“Not as fun as it sounds.”
Both Edwin and Crystal's heads snap toward the sound of Charles' voice.
He looks completely drained, but there's a perfectly Charles-esc smile on his face that banishes any doubt that the ghost has managed to get his mind settled.
“Back with us?” Edwin asks, squeezing Charles’ hand gently.
“Mostly.” Charles grimaces, rubbing at his head. “Gonna have a right fucked headache for a bit though. But yeah, I'm sorted. Point is, bein' Orpheus might sound posh and all, but the story of Orpheus and Eurydice is a tragedy, yeah? It wasn't exactly fun to live through.”
“No,” Edwin agrees. “I suppose not.”
“Besides,” Charles complains, “No one ever gets the story right.”
Edwin hums. “If my memory of assigned school readings can be trusted—and I assure you, it can be—Ovid was perhaps the closest.”
“You think so?”
“‘Dying a second time, now, there was no complaint to her husband (what, then, could she complain of, except that she had been loved?)’” Edwin quotes softly, looking over to Charles as he does. “Many authors have assumed that I–that Eurydice–would be bitter or sorrowful when Orpheus turned. Only Ovid truly grasped that she was none of those things. How can one be bitter when one is loved?”
It only takes a moment more of eye contact before Charles has taken Edwin’s face in his hands and kissed him gently. By the time he pulls away, Edwin feels as though he has been healed.
“Damn. You guys really are, like, soulmates, huh?”
Crystal’s voice cuts through the haze of devotion shared between the pair, and Edwin sighs. Charles doesn’t seem to share his annoyance, shooting Crystal a bright smile.
“Yeah,” he says, “we really are.”
“Oh, hush you,” Edwin chides. “There is no evidence that a phenomenon such as ‘soulmates’ is even possible, let alone cooperative with theories of reincarnation—”
Charles kisses him again.
“Edwin,” he says, once he has used his wicked seduction to dash all of Edwin’s thoughts against the stones, “I love you, but shut up. We’re definitely fuckin’ soulmates. Got it?”
“...I suppose, given the evidence, it is not a terrible hypothesis,” Edwin admits.
Charles claps him on the shoulder. “That’s more like it. Y’know, one of these lives I’ll make a proper romantic out of you.”
“I sincerely doubt it.”
It takes several more interruptions from Crystal before she finally gives up and leaves the pair alone, shouting something about not having sex in her flat.
Charles, Edwin thinks as he is laid back against the floor, either didn't hear her or, perhaps more likely, is far too in love to care.
BONUS SCENE THAT I COULDN'T FIT ANYWHERE:
“It has been quite some time since I have been a man,” Edwin says eventually, still staring out across the city.
Charles hums. “Reckon that’s why you always wanted your disguises to be women? It’s familiar, innit.” He pauses for a moment. “Do you like it?”
“Like what?”
“Being a man,” he clarifies. “I’ve been a bloke for ages. Can’t really remember what it’s like on the other side.”
Edwin’s brow furrows in a delightful twist of concentration.
“It is… not quite so simple as like or dislike,” he begins, shooting Charles a reproachful look when he sighs at Edwin’s noncommittal response. “I am me. Being a boy feels good and right, but not because it is what I, in the grand scheme of things, prefer. It is more that… this life is meant for a boy, and I am happy to be living it as such.”
“Yeah, alright,” Charles says. “‘suppose that’s fair enough, but it doesn’t really answer the question, does it?”
The look Edwin gives him is asking for trouble. Charles returns it with a grin.
“It is certainly easier,” Edwin says, with all the bitchiness Charles loves so much.
“Oi!” he protests, though he knows better than to actually mean it. “It’s not all sunshine and rainbows being a lad. It can be proper tough sometimes.”
“Is that so?” Edwin drawls. “By all means, tell me of your manly woes.”
That's all it takes for Charles to crack, laughter bubbling up until it's overtaken the both of them.
As soon as he's able, Charles gives Edwin his most brilliant smile.
“I love you.”
Edwin blinks, an unbearable softness crossing his expression.
“And I you, Charles. Always.”
“Always,” he agrees.