Chapter Text
BEATRICE PAYNE: Anything? Xx
ME: Not yet gonna try the woods
BEATRICE PAYNE: Charles Rowland, you are not entering the woods by yourself! Wait for me, I shall be there in twenty minutes. Xx
Charles reads Beatrice’s last message and considers how insane he might go if he has to wait twenty whole minutes for Beatrice to arrive. Nah, fuck that. He pockets his mobile and pulls his glove back on. He feels like utter shit; the sickness that kept him off school today has only got worse from wandering around in the fucking freezing October night air. His body feels like it’s gone fifty rounds with a cricket bat (or a couple of hours with his Dad’s fists), he’s sweating beneath all his layers even though he cannot stop shivering, and his head is pounding. Another reason why Charles cannot wait for Beatrice. If she catches on to that he’s feeling even worse, she’ll force him back home and he can’t… he can’t just…
He can’t sit around at home when Edwin could be in trouble, could be scared, could be hurt.
(Fuck, what was the last thing he said to Edwin on the phone this morning? What was the last thing Edwin said to him?)
Charles pulls out his little torch. It’s small but the light is pretty bloody powerful and it brings the dense collection of trees into greater focus. He runs towards the woods.
“Edwin!” He shouts, his throat protesting at the volume, his voice cracking. “Edwin! Sweetheart, can you hear me?”
Nothing. The same nothing that Charles has been hearing since Beatrice stood on his doorstep hours ago, face falling because Edwin wasn’t with Charles. Where he should have been.
He stumbles deeper into the trees, his breath ghosts in front of him. It’s so bloody freezing. God, wherever Edwin is, Charles hopes he’s keeping warm.
(He’ll be okay, of course he will. It’s Edwin. Everyone mistakes him for weak or fragile just because he’s a little effeminate, mistaking all his mint little hand gestures as something other than Edwin’s dramatic flair, when Edwin’s unflappable, got nerves and a spine of steel. He’ll probably be confused as to what all the fuss was about. Yeah, yeah.)
“Edwin!” Charles’ breath catches in his throat, making him cough so hard that tears gather in his eyes. Both Edwin and Beatrice are going to be furious with him if he continues at this rate.
“Baby?” Charles tries again. “Are you here?”
God, this is ridiculous. There’s no way that Edwin would come to the woods. As if Edwin has ever demonstrated any desire to sit in nature. He’s probably reading somewhere, completely lost track of time.
Still. Charles presses further.
He swings the torch around and the light snags on a shape on the ground. Charles frowns, drawing closer. The shape slowly transforms into a figure.
(Turn around, a voice tells him, going forward will only bring you the most excruciating pain you have ever felt.)
It is a body.
(In the future, Charles will look back on this second and think about how it was the last time he knew peace.)
It is a body. The body of a young man in school uniform, his leg lying at an unnatural angle, a dark stain across his stomach and beneath his head, his perfect and beautiful eyes staring up at the canopy of leaves above him…
Charles drops to his knees. “Edwin?” He chokes. “Edwin, love?”
Edwin does not answer, does not react to Charles’ presence in any way. Edwin has never failed to react to Charles.
Charles reaches out to take Edwin’s hand. It is cold and unyielding.
Charles is no stranger to pain. Where some kids had an invisible friend, Charles carried around bruises and an intimate knowledge of what it was to hurt. Charles has been kicked, punched, pushed down the stairs, had glowing cigarette butts pushed against skin, his head smacked into the floor so hard that he had to go to A&E and, once, was pushed beneath bath water so his lungs screamed out in hot pain.
None of that comes close to the agony that explodes in his chest like a supernova.
“Edwin,” he crawls forward, sobbing, he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe. Charles grabs Edwin’s face in his hands. “Edwin p-please… Edwin, baby, talk to me come on…”
Edwin’s gorgeous slack face says nothing. “Please…” Charles pleads. “Come back to me, baby… please. You c-can’t… leave me, Edwin.”
(He can.)
(He’d have never left of his own choice.)
(They were supposed to be forever.)
Charles howls. He’s never known tears to hurt so bad. Crying’s supposed to soothe, right? Crying is a valve being turned on a pressure-cooker of emotion… crying is not supposed to feel like his insides are being scraped out of his body with white-hot knives, crying is not supposed to feel like a sustained scream.
Charles tries to call out Edwin’s name but his mouth can’t cooperate.
(It doesn’t matter, Edwin can’t answer anymore.)
Charles pulls Edwin into a sitting position, it feels like trying to move lead but he buries his nose into the crook of Edwin’s neck and sobs, breathing in Edwin one last time; the musky, warm smell of his pomade, the lavender oil he dabs at his neck, the loose-leaf tea he favours…
Fuck, he’s so cold. So so cold. He doesn’t even have a coat on, Charles realises. He has to take him home. Edwin wouldn't want to stay in the woods, he’d want to get warm.
It takes him a few minutes to pull Edwin into his arms. He’s so unbelievably heavy. Charles almost drops him. His vision, blurry with tears, doesn’t help matters either.
Charles stumbles out of the woods, lurching to the side, as he carries Edwin home. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever done.
He sees a life; cheering over their exam results, spending long evenings on the phone in their respective universities, making each other mugs of tea in a small kitchen, Edwin wrapped around Charles as they huddle beneath a duvet, Charles proposing, the two stood beside each other in a church as they kiss to the start of a new life, Christmases spent at the Paynes with Charles’ mother (if she’s allowed), them growing grey hairs and laughter lines, aged hands holding aged hands. Content in a lifetime of joy, of knowing they loved each other more than anyone’s ever been loved.
Edwin was plan A, plan B, plan C, plans D through to Z…
Charles sees a life, gone.