Chapter Text
Edwin is oddly disappointed when he sees that Charles has not only clearly labeled which brownies are quote-unquote special, but has baked extra, presumably drug-free brownies and labeled them carefully as well. It's extremely thoughtful, of course, and Edwin is deeply resentful for one specific reason: it removes any plausible deniability.
Furthermore, the special brownies are cut into quarters, a move which Edwin suspects was intended to make him feel better about how completely out of his mind he'd been after a single brownie last time. Which it does, a bit, but – well, there goes that plausible deniability again.
Edwin doesn't realize how long he's been staring at the brownies until Niko's shoulder bumps against his. "Thinking of finally joining us this year?" she says, grinning at him.
"No," Edwin says hurriedly, because he is not. Although he might, under other circumstances, be willing to consider partaking, and no matter how much he considers Crystal and Niko to be among his closest friends, the thought of being so – so seen makes his skin crawl.
Well. Seen by anyone other than Charles, of course, which is its own entire set of complexities.
Niko just plucks a special brownie off the platter and gives Edwin a pointed shrug. "You know you're allowed to relax, too, right?" she tells him.
"Of course I do."
This is a lie, because Edwin is not, in fact, allowed to relax. Not only because of the various traumas he now associates with insufficient vigilance, such as the time he was almost burned to death by his peers, but also because he has now shown himself to be untrustworthy under the influence.
It also covers another lie, because Edwin has not been forthcoming with Niko about what happened when he inadvertently ate one of the special brownies last week. She knows that Charles partook with him in an effort to allay some of Edwin's anxieties, but what she does not know is that Edwin shamelessly took advantage of Charles and engaged in vicious mouth-on-mouth activity.
At least, so far as he remembers. The specifics are somewhat...blurry. Or, more precisely, they are staccato: vivid flashes strung together without any intervening context. Most of them involve his lips.
Charles has been gracious enough to pretend it never happened, which Edwin is immensely thankful for. Honestly, the entire affair would be much less embarrassing if Edwin had any earthly idea why he did it.
He swallows heavily, dragging himself back to the moment, and tells Niko, "I find watching over the three of you to be incredibly relaxing."
Sinking her teeth into the brownie, Niko narrows her eyes at him with suspicion. But she lets it go, which is the important thing.
The flat's layout is fairly straightforward: one enters into the living room, with a short hallway leading to the bedrooms off to one side and the bulk of the actual seating space to the other. Beyond the living room is the kitchen, which is tiny. Edwin and Charles made the best of their space, collecting a couch and two armchairs that they arranged around a thrifted coffee table. The television, because Charles got a bit carried away with this part, is mounted on the wall and framed by excellent – albeit secondhand – speakers that Charles found in the same thrift shop as the coffee table.
They arrange themselves in their usual configuration in the living room. When they have nights like these, Charles and the girls tend to get a bit...touchy, or perhaps cuddly. Edwin has no objections to that, but he does have significant ongoing objections to being unexpectedly touched, so he takes one of the armchairs. Charles settles on the couch, leaning on the armchair closest to Edwin, and Niko pillows her head on the other armchair. Crystal sits in the last armchair, the one across from Edwin, in a fashion that no chair was ever designed to be sat in. The word "perpendicular" comes to mind, and Edwin thinks it cannot possibly be comfortable, even if it has her facing (without shoulder support) the television.
"Everyone got what they need?" Charles checks. The brownies, at Charles's insistence, stay on the kitchen counter, but various beverages and snacks have been set out on the coffee table, from a selection of exotically-flavored popcorns (how on Earth is Himalayan pink salt any different from the normal kind?) to bright-pink-iced confetti cupcakes, courtesy of Niko.
The pre-show commentary begins, and Edwin lets it wash over him. He does not, as it so happens, give a damn about Eurovision. But he enjoys spending time with his friends, even Crystal, and they enjoy Eurovision. Admittedly, he finds it fascinating as a means of tracking the geopolitical mood in Europe, but he keeps that commentary to himself because it tends to be most relevant at the very end of the show, when Charles, Crystal, and Niko are most potently, to quote Niko, blazed.
But he halfheartedly tracks the commentary on the commentary, which gets steadily less comprehensible. Edwin does find it rewarding to watch over the three of them, and in moments like this he is reminded of why: as Niko's giggles grow more persistent, as Crystal's smiles come more easily, as Charles sinks happily into the couch. They all have fun together, quite frequently, but nights like tonight are when he gets to see them become truly carefree – without the concerns about homework or essays or parental visits or whatnot.
Which in turn makes it easier for Edwin to feel carefree about those same things. Particularly because his friends are ridiculous and distracting and ridiculously distracting.
The opening ceremony begins, a kaleidoscopic medley of various previous Eurovision acts of varying levels of quality. There are ballads and high-energy dance numbers and something that Edwin doesn't quite know how to describe.
"Is the wolf a euphemism?" Edwin asks, staring at the screen. "The banana must be."
"That's definitely gotta be, like, the singer's kink or something," Charles says, staring at the yellow wolf heads in sunglasses.
After a moment, Niko says, "So you see a yellow wolf head and the first thing you think of is...?"
"Is it that part of the night?" Crystal asks, her face split in a crooked and worrisome grin. "Where we're high and revealing things about ourselves?"
"Oh good lord," Edwin mutters to himself.
"Because though our fling burned hot but fast," Crystal continues, folding her arms under herself to pin Charles in a look, "I can say some stuff about – "
"Crystal!" Charles yelps, but Crystal is undeterred.
" - long sleeves and short shorts," she finishes.
Edwin blinks. "That's all?"
Charles grabs a throw pillow from the couch and begins to make halfhearted gestures towards smothering himself.
"Oh," Crystal says, with a wicked grin, "he really likes it."
Emerging from the throw pillow, Charles says, "It's the just the whole – y'know, like – " He lifts a hand vaguely in front of himself and swirls it as though he's cleaning an invisible window. "Skin, but then – " and now he raises the hand, cleaning slightly higher on the window – "not skin. You don't normally see it is all!"
"Okay, yeah, sure," Crystal agrees, an exaggeratedly thoughtful purse to her lips. "So where do the high socks come into it...?"
Edwin has never seen Charles turn quite this shade of red.
Or – perhaps he has. The memory strikes him suddenly, stronger than the flashes he's had so far: the hollow at the back of Charles's skull, where it meets his neck, gentled by the layer of muscle and skin. Bristles of his hair, buzzed short this close to the hairline, against Edwin's lips, and the way the proximity echoes Edwin's breath back to brush his own face.
And a circle of wet heat against his throat, the soft flick of tongue, suction and teeth -
It's visceral in a way that Edwin has, until now, completely sidestepped. A memory so strong it's halfway to feeling. The press of the outside of Charles's thighs against the inside of Edwin's and the humid warmth caught between their bodies and the flush on Charles's face and neck that crept all the way around the back of his head, to the spot that Edwin had just been kissing.
Edwin is shielded from most scrutiny by virtue of being seated in the armchair, and on top of that his companions are all, at this point, quite inebriated. This is a very good thing, because he completely loses the plot for longer than he would care to admit, and he very carefully does not adjust his position in the chair for fear of drawing attention to himself and, more specifically, his lap.
It isn't that he hasn't thought about the incident since it happened. For the first few days he thought of very little else, gauging Charles's reactions when they went out for a too-spicy curry (which Charles insisted was in fact mild and laughed quite hard at Edwin's response), when they puttered about the apartment working on homework, when they divvied up chore duties at the end of the night and rock-paper-scissored for who would wash the dishes and who would dry. Everything seemed fine – which is to say, nothing felt as though it had changed. Certainly that was the best Edwin could hope for, after his appalling behavior.
And perhaps most appallingly of all, he thinks he would do it again, if given the chance. If Charles wanted.
But that, of course, is the sticking point. Why would Charles want him? And how can Edwin even know if he does indeed want Charles?
Well – yes, all right, he evidently wants Charles, at least in some very specific circumstances a week ago, but after a life of shoving aside his own desires, it seems damnably plausible that his mind has blended two into one, deciding that his affection for Charles and his inclinations towards men must both point in the same direction.
And it isn't as though Edwin has a surplus of friendships in his past to use as a guideline to differentiate his feelings. Perhaps this is simply what happens when one has a dear friendship with someone attractive. It's exactly what happened with Charles and Crystal, after all: a flare of sexual interest, like burning off gunpowder, and what was left afterwards was just friendship.
Edwin, though, does not possess Crystal's stalwart ability to brute-force her way through uncomfortable interactions with natural charisma, and Edwin would rather get tied down to another table and set on fire than risk his friendship with Charles.
He manages to stumble through the rest of the party with a minimum of distraction, or at least what can be considered a minimum under the circumstances. Someone wins – Edwin isn't invested enough to care who – and the choice makes Niko and Charles hoot with delight while Crystal laments.
Eventually, inevitably, the party ends, and Edwin finds himself making sure Crystal and Niko get into their rideshare safely and gathering up the few remaining cupcakes. (Which were, although he would never admit it to anyone but Niko, actually quite good.) They have an unspoken agreement for this sort of thing: Charles does whatever is required to prepare for the party, being the one who is more aware of the various needs and desires of their friend group, and Edwin does the cleanup, being the one who excels at clearly-defined repetitive tasks. This means that Charles remains lying across the couch, scrolling on his phone.
But when Edwin has the plate of brownies – special brownies, that is – in his hand, ready to transfer the few remaining into a container, he hesitates.
He can remember, in general and somehow smeared terms, what it felt like. The thoughtlessness - the effortlessness of it, as if it took him out of his own way. Edwin has always been a neatly-tied knot of contradictory impulses, desires, and self-regulation, but it would not be inaccurate to say that that night he felt not like the knot, but like the rope.
He wouldn't be opposed to feeling that way again.
And the girls, after all, are gone. It's just him and Charles again.
Charles.
In Edwin's recollection, Charles – reciprocated. At least a bit. For a moment. Perhaps now, with Charles in the living room letting his mind clear – with their altered states out-of-step, as it were, Edwin would not have to worry about Charles being unable to say no. Not that Charles said no the first time, but it's all so bloody complicated.
But it doesn't have to be.
Edwin stuffs an entire brownie – admittedly one a quarter of the size of the last brownie – into his mouth.
He finishes tidying up, of course. He's no monster, and it would hardly be fair. There will be a delay, he knows now, between his moment of action and the wildness setting in.
But when there are no crumbs left to sweep away and no more excuses ready to hand, Edwin returns to the living room.
"All done?" Charles says, and shoves himself up to make room on the couch, though in practice he more slumps himself over the armrest rather than sits up straight. They sit on the couch together, when the girls are away; Edwin doesn't know if Crystal and Niko know or not.
Edwin sits next to him and folds his hands neatly in his lap. "I've been doing quite a bit of thinking," Edwin says, "and I've decided I don't want to."
Charles frowns at him, a hazy tip to his head. "Don't want to what?"
"Think."
The frown deepens. "What's that mean?"
"It means," Edwin says, twisting his hands now, "that I ate one of the leftover brownies."
Charles sits bolt upright. "Oh shit, seriously? Wait, hang on – did you wait for the girls to leave first?"
Heat rises to Edwin's cheeks, but he ignores the blush. "Please allow me a bit of privacy for my tomfoolery."
"Not judging!" Charles says hastily, raising his hands in the universal sign for surrender. "I just – you didn't feel like you had to, did you? Like, since you did it the one time?"
"No," Edwin says firmly. "I didn't feel pressured in any way. I simply...dislike whenever you go somewhere without me, I suppose."
"I'm right here, though?" Charles's voice lilts upward at the end, as though he has momentary doubts about if he is, in fact, here.
"I suppose it's a metaphor. What I mean to say is simply that it – it didn't feel right, for you to be as you are, and me not to be."
Charles grins lazily. "You can say high, you know. It's what you're about to be."
Edwin sighs. "Yes, I know. I suppose I still have some...reservations. Or hangups, perhaps? Intellectually, I simply don't care whether anyone chooses to intoxicate themselves in any way. It strikes me that there are millions of things in the world that are more worthy of my attention. But when it comes to me, I still feel as though I ought...not."
Pressing his lips together in thought, Charles lets out a slow hum. "Why not?"
In all honesty, it's because Edwin feels, for some reason even he cannot articulate, as though he was born in moral debt to the world, with some terrible sin to make up for. He felt this way before his hospitalization, too, so it isn't any lingering neurological symptom; he simply approached it differently, quarantining himself in case whatever tarnished him was contagious.
The thought of saying any of that to Charles rakes across his soul like nails on a chalkboard, so he hedges. "It feels as though I am breaking some sort of rule out there that says that I, specifically, am not allowed to engage in this sort of behavior."
"I don't think federal law specifies you, mate. Although I'm not the one who's pre-law, so what do I know."
"Not that sort of rule. The sort of rule that tells me what I ought to be. That I ought to be proper and poised and in control at all times."
After a long moment, Charles says, "That sounds exhausting."
"It is."
"Do I ever make you feel like that?"
"No. You make me feel quite the opposite." He gives Charles a quick ghost of a smile. "And that terrifies me."
Charles hums again. "Well – I'm not sorry, you know. Love being a bad influence, me. We'll get you wearing pins and piercing your ears and riding motorcycles in no time."
Edwin snorts. "I certainly shan't ride a motorcycle. Do you remember how many of our fellow rehab patients were there because of motorcycle accidents?"
"Yeah," Charles says, unrepentant, "and they were all cool as, weren't they? Remember when Maizie taught me how to pick locks?"
With a sigh, Edwin admits, "It does come in handy whenever we lock ourselves out."
"See? Proper useful, me." Before Edwin can object to the idea that Charles must somehow be useful, Charles is grabbing the remote control. "Got another documentary about plagiarism for us to watch, then?"
"Perhaps," Edwin says slowly, although he's dreading the concession even as he tees himself up to give it, "you could pick something for us? Not Eurovision again," he adds hurriedly. "I'm not sure I could take it twice in one day, and particularly not in – this state."
Charles gives him an easy grin. "Fair enough. How about something we've already seen a million times? What do you feel like – moody Scandi-noir or something cozier? Could be fun to do Broadchurch, see if the lack of foreshadowing the killer drives you less mental when you're high."
It won't, but Edwin decides to let it slide. "I ask you to pick something and you immediately jump to murder mysteries," Edwin murmurs, letting himself sink a bit into the couch cushions. "You know me so well."
"We could always do something else – no skin off my nose. Just shouldn't be anything we actually want to pay attention to. Could do like...old episodes of QI or Taskmaster or something." Edwin doesn't deliberately move, but Charles points at him. "QI it is – I saw you go all attentive, like a dog hearing a whistle."
"Should I be offended at the comparison?" Edwin asks mildly, even ask Charles starts navigating the television to the quiz show in question.
"Course not! You know I'm a dog person."
"It seems like that should offend me more."
But Charles just gives him a fond look, without Edwin having to specify that he's joking. Something dangerous in Edwin takes note, and Edwin can't tell if he hopes or dreads its release.
Edwin expects to better be able to track the brownie taking effect, now that he knows what to look for, but instead he finds himself second-guessing. Is this how the pads of his fingers have always felt against the skin of his palms, as he sits with his hands balled into fists and resting on his thighs? Has his posture changed? Is he about to kiss Charles?
They're only a few minutes into an episode when Charles says, "I sort of feel like I should tell you something, too."
Edwin's entire being clenches. "What do you mean?"
Charles lolls his head in Edwin's direction. "Well, y'know. Because you said what you said. About feeling like there were rules for you. Feels a bit lopsided, for you to say that and me not to share anything."
"Oh." Edwin frowns. "But what would you share? You're hardly ruled by restrictive impulses at every turn, to say the least."
"True," Charles admits, with a faint flash of a smile. "You can say you're jealous of my free spirit, go on."
"Your free spirit is going to give me an ulcer one of these days," Edwin grumbles. This is mainly to hide his sudden horrifying realization that he absolutely is jealous of Charles's free spirit. He's so jealous of it, he covets it and craves it so much that he went and stole one of Charles's cannabis brownies just to get a taste of it.
"I keep it pretty in check!" Charles protests. "I mean, you take literature classes. You really telling me I'm the biggest stoner you've ever met?"
That isn't what Edwin meant, but it's difficult not to concede the point. "No. You don't do too much of it, honestly." He lifts his hand, staring at it to see if it feels any different – which isn't logical, but not in a particularly inebriated way, he doesn't think. He thinks he might have done this the first time, too, because he remembers feeling a bit unoriginal, but the memory exists as a popped bubble in his mind. "If you feel the need to tell me something, then perhaps – only if you want to, you understand. I find myself a bit curious as to...why."
After a second, Charles seems to realize that's the end of that sentence. "Why what?"
"Why you..." Edwin gestures at Charles, still reluctant to say it.
"You still can't say 'high'?" Charles asks, incredulous. "Seriously? If we're asking whys, then why that, mate?"
Edwin rolls his eyes. "I suppose it simply sounds much more extreme than how it actually happens. Saying that you're high makes you sound like a, a – a reprobate, a ne'er-do-well, a no-goodnik, when you're just giggly."
Charles's entire expression shakes, as though it's indecisive about which emotion to settle on – or perhaps that he's suffering from information overload. "Sorry, hang on, a reprobrate? Repro – you know what I mean. And no-goodnik, Edwin, honestly – "
"You know what I mean!" Edwin sighs, trying not to get testy. "It feels as though it has considerable value judgments attached, and I dislike even the implication that anyone might be judging you, especially me."
"Nobody judges someone for getting drunk," Charles points out.
"Plenty of people do, actually."
"Okay, getting tipsy, or buzzed, not fully shitfaced, and – well, I was gonna ask why you ate that brownie if you're so judgy about it, but I guess you already told me that."
"Yes," Edwin says, grasping on to the conversational escape rope. "So what about you? Why the brownies?"
Now Charles sighs. "Well, it's just – nice, innit, every now and then. To relax a bit. And Crystal and Niko like it, too, so it's not like I'm sitting alone in my room getting high to avoid feeling anything."
Edwin flinches at sheer bleakness.
Charles, of course, catches the motion. "Hey, I said I'm not doing that, yeah? So everything's fine." But Edwin keeps on looking at him, and he rolls his eyes. "I guess it just, like, makes it a little easier to feel happy?"
"Easier to feel...happy?" Edwin says, dread welling up in him.
It's not quite a face that Charles makes, but there's a widening of his eyes, just for a moment, like he suddenly realized he said too much. But then he's back to smiling. "Course I am! Keep spirits up, don't I? Just, you know, sometimes there's all the other shit. And I'm not saying it's just weed that does it, right, because it's hanging out with the three of you and just relaxing. It's easier sometimes. That's all."
"Right," Edwin says slowly, and as Sandi Toksvig makes some jokes about being Scandinavian, they both, by mutual if silent agreement, turn their attention back to the telly. It's a typical viewing from there. They've watched a lot of quiz shows over the years, and this one hits the right balance of absurdism (Charles) and intellectual curiosity (Edwin) to serve them both. The rampant homosexuality of the hosts also has its appeal for Edwin, admittedly, since his own sexuality was something that he put quite a lot of thought into for a very long time. Watching it be effortless feels like a revelation.
Also, Charles laughs at literally every blue whale joke.
The brownie begins taking effect eventually; perhaps inevitably. Edwin realizes he's started to go a bit hazy and unsteady, but in a fun way – the way he always expected champagne would, but it never did.
He thinks of Charles's hands. He felt them last time, as they skimmed up beneath his shirt. Or Charles's fingertips, at least. Edwin wonders vaguely what Charles's palms would feel like flattened against his ribs, or cradling the back of his head, or pressing open his thighs.
Cannabis, Edwin is beginning to realize, makes him feel differently. Not in the colloquial sense of the what that he feels being different, but the mechanism shifts. His body becomes a thing he inhabits, rather than an instrument between his mind and the world. He can barely keep his eyes open – not because they are heavy or gritty, but because closed is what they yearn to be, a comfortable resting state. He isn't used to have a comfortable resting state, except in Charles's presence, but his body certainly hasn't been something he would call either comfortable nor restful.
"You feeling it yet?" Charles asks, and Edwin tips his head towards him. The question took him by surprise last time, or at least he thinks it did, from the scraps of memory he retains.
But this time, either because he now has some experience or because of the relative diminution of the brownie portion, he feels much more in control, so he says, "Yes, I rather think I am."
"Yeah? How are you feeling?" Charles asks, and Edwin thinks of poets standing before the wilderness, Gothic romanticists capturing the raw, ragged beauty of the sea, Mary Shelley watching black clouds spew lightning across Lake Geneva, and he thinks of the force of nature that is Charles Rowland. He feels – worshipful, in a way church never made him. He has his answer now: it is indeed Charles that he wants, with a knifepoint specificity.
"Sublime," Edwin says.
After a half-beat, Charles says, "...the band?"
"The what?"
Charles shakes his head with a chuckle. "We gotta get you listening to more ska, mate."
"Oh," Edwin says, and wrinkles his nose. "No, thank you."
That gets an outright laugh from Charles, and Edwin basks in it. It isn't not the sort of exchange they would have under normal circumstances, but there would be a moment of pause as Edwin reminds himself that he can say this to Charles, that it's safe. Now it comes effortlessly.
Much as kissing Charles had been. It had been the easiest thing in the world, putting his lips to Charles's, his skin to Charles's, his lips to Charles's. This time, and again Edwin doesn't know which reason is to blame, Edwin finds himself...not quite hesitating, but he simply doesn't have the same lack of inhibition that he had last time.
How wretchedly unfair.
"How are you feeling?" Edwin finds himself saying, his eyes on Charles's lips. He watches as Charles's tongue slips out to wet them, and realizes that he can taste his own tongue in his mouth. Which is a shame, as he'd much rather taste Charles's.
"Think I'm coming down, honestly," Charles says ruefully. "We're like two ships passing in the night."
"Two canna-ships," Edwin says, and giggles. He didn't mean to do either, but he doesn't stop himself when he realizes he's doing it. Nor does he pull himself back from the edge he can feel himself dancing on, acting with thinking.
A single moment of courage is all it will take. A single moment for his body to outrace his mind. Once he's done it, it will always have been done, and he'll have the memory. Whatever shook loose last time will fall and shatter and it will be the new state of things, finally moving past Edwin's hesitant teetering.
"Canna-ships," Charles repeats, and gives a genuine laugh. "That's a good one."
Edwin had somewhat forgotten he had said it. His entire self has been reoriented away from his usual thoughts and puzzles. His attention to intellectual questions has been ruthlessly shoved aside by visceral matters of the flesh. Where he has previously allowed himself to think only of Charles's friendship and companionship, now he finds himself thinking, quite relentlessly, about Charles's body.
"Why d'you think there are so many quiz shows back home," Charles asks idly, his attention back on the telly, "and none here in America?"
Edwin hums, and Charles takes it as encouragement, expounding upon his chosen topic.
But Edwin is distracted.
He has never been a creature of moderation, and the gap between "person he cares about" and "person he doesn't" is huge, with very few people successfully making it across. There are some who have managed to somehow begin in the former category – i.e., Niko – and only one has really managed to go from one side to the other – i.e., Crystal.
Charles, meanwhile – if there's a gaping arctic crevasse between those two categories of people, then Charles is in an entirely different topography. He's in the bloody sky, he's celestial; asking if he is a person Edwin cares about is like asking if two and two equals apples. It's nonsensical, or transcendent, or...or something else that Edwin can't think of at the moment. Nobody has ever mattered to Edwin as much as Charles, to the point where Edwin knows, with unshakeable certainty, that there is some vital part of himself that only ever exists when Charles is near him, and without it, Edwin is utterly incomplete.
Now, sitting on the couch, Edwin is utterly incomplete.
And yet he still cannot make himself move.
He can't tell, sometimes, whether he is all the ill-fitting, shameful parts he holds back, or if he is the parts of himself doing the holding. This, he supposes, is his answer.
"Charles," he says, interrupting speculation that maybe all American comics secretly hate each other and that's why there are no quiz shows. Charles stops talking immediately, waiting for Edwin to speak as though there's nothing he'd rather be doing.
When Edwin does not speak immediately, Charles says, "Yeah, mate?"
Apparently that is all the encouragement Edwin needed for whatever words are circumventing his better judgment. "You are extraordinarily important to me. Did you know that? It's – important to me. That you know that."
Charles looks back at him, his expression like a dam barely holding back a flood of fondness. "I know that. I do. And, hey, you're important to me, too."
"Not like that," Edwin says, and here he is again, at a cliffside, on a gangplank, at the end of a gun barrel. "You are the most important person to me."
The fondness doesn't leave Charles's expression, but it abates, leaving room for a more serious countenance that both frightens and comforts Edwin. "Exactly like that. You're the most important person to me, too, Edwin."
And he resettles himself so he can reach an arm out and drape it over Edwin's shoulders, gently curling them in towards each other, and he presses a cheek to the crown of Edwin's head. It isn't a hello-hug or even a joyous-hug; it is a physical reassurance that Charles, too, wants these two beings, these two bodies, to stay in proximity to one another.
Edwin finds himself whispering, "I don't know what to do about it."
Charles pulls him in tighter. "Me neither, mate."