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So they've talked about Charles having a sister, yeah?

Imagine scenario:

Clem was a 3-4 yo when Charles died. She was to young to get to know him as a person, but she does remember having a sunshine of an older brother, once upon a time.

In 2020 our sweet 30-something Clementine makes a nasty run with the COVID-19 and ALMOST dies. It's 2024 when she stumbles upon a ghost boy who looks exactly as a photograph of her late teenage brother.

Now if you ask me what's the point of all of it, I'll tell you: the point is they'll be a fucking disaster, 'cause I'm 100% sure they BOTH will see themselves as an older responsible sibling, who needs to take care of a squishy cinnamon bun of a younger one. You see, Charles IS the older one. He remembers Clementine being an infant, for fuck's sake. He existed longer than her! She is and always will be his sweet little sister for him to protect!

And Clementine? She is a grown ass woman in her mid to late 30-ties. And Charles is her dead teenage brother. Who still looks and pretty much acts like a teenager. Of course SHE is a responsible adult out the two of them!

Wouldn't that be the most adorable mess? They'd drive the rest of the gang insane.

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DBD True Crime AU

Charles and Edwin's bodys are burried together.

Someone is investigating Charles' death, eventually it gets enough steam that they get permission to escivate his grave... except there's two bodys there.

No DNA match, but its way older than Charles' body, from around the time another boy disappeared... so they track down the Payne family and see if they can match the DNA.

Of course, it does.

This, of course, spurrs a massive conspiracy that the school snuck the other boys remains in Charles's casket to cover up Edwin's death.

The Payne family pays for a proper burial for Edwin, but Charles, liking that he and his best mate have been together forever literally, moves the body back, much to everyone's confusion and shock.

Que a series of more bizarre ways people try to keep Edwin's bones in place, and the boys (to Niko's amusement , and Crystal's headache) keep moving them back. Sometimes they lay the bones next to eachother, sometimes they're high fiving. Charles likes wrapping his arm around Edwin's shoulder.

On one memorable occasion, Charles was so annoyed they kept being separated, he jumbled their bones around.

Now the bones are in the British museum on display with a few words about each of the boys, (there's an excerpt from one of Edwin's journals from when he was alive. There's a quote from one of the boys who attacked Charles about what a good mate he was.)

Charles and Edwin go and visit the bones sometimes, rearranging them again and again. They eventually leave the bones behind after having them hold hands.

(Edwin defacing museum property bc 'that is embarrassing, Charles. I hardly thought anyone would ever read that.' He also obviously crosses out what Charles's "friend" had to say.)

(There's one podcaster who is convinced the two met time travel style and fell in love, and they can't even be separated in death. She's practically laughed off her show, but Niko loves the show.)

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For the @dreamlingbingo adoptable prompt: sleeping in, and the @monsterfucktoberbingo square: vampire

—

Hob knocks once, twice, and then smiles at the muffled sound of protest coming from inside.

“Dream, it’s after midnight,” he says, lifting up the lid of the coffin. Dream hisses at him, but it’s a lazy hiss. He barely bothers to flash his fangs.

“Don’t give me that,” Hob says. “You’re sleeping the night away.”

Dream mumbles something indistinct and turns onto his other side, away from Hob, hauling the enormous batwing shawl Hob personally knit for him to sleep in over his head.

Since meeting Dream at a Halloween party nearly a year ago, Hob’s since met other vampires and discovered that most of them are perfectly normal people. He would fall for a weird one.

Probably, in fairness, because he is weird.

“Pardon?”

“Cold,” Dream pronounces more clearly. He shivers. Hob’s fairly sure that’s for effect. He’s also reasonably sure that temperature is a non-issue for vampires, and while the weather outside is more than a little nippy, the flat is perfectly comfortable. He’s wearing a t-shirt.

“Is it?” he asks, lips twitching. He knows what Dream wants, but a little teasing won’t hurt him.

“Yes,” Dream says, uncovering his face just enough to look Hob in the eyes. He wouldn’t hypnotise him, Hob’s fairly sure, but it does help his resolve that he can’t.

Hob is, it turns out, absolutely non-magical. Not a drop of magic anywhere in him. So none of it—the glamour, the hypnosis, the psychic paralysis—works on him. He can still picture the way Dream wrinkled his nose at first when he had to resort to tying Hob up with actual rope.

“I see,” Hob says, nodding. “That must be awful. Poor you.”

“You are warm,” Dream says, as though Hob’s hogging all of the world’s supply of heat and not just naturally warm-blooded and possessed of a metabolism that goes slightly faster than the average glacier.

“I’m quite comfortable, actually.”

“Hob,” Dream says. It’s probably meant to sound authoritative, commanding, something along those lines. The actual result is that of a toddler not getting his way.

Hob loves Dream so, so much. Which is just as well for him, really.

“All right, all right,” he says, climbing into the coffin. Dream wraps his arms and legs around him so faster than Hob can follow with his eyes, squeezing him like a huge, multi-limbed boa constrictor. He laughs.

“All right,” he repeats, pressing a kiss to Dream’s hair and reaching up for the coffin lid. “S’pose a lie-in won’t kill you.”

Dream hums, already on his way back to sleep. The lid closes with the softest sound, sealing them both away in the dark.

There are air holes, for this sort of situation. Hob had put them in personally.

“On account of you already being dead,” he says.

“I can and will bite you,” Dream mumbles against Hob’s neck.

“Later,” Hob promises. “Go back to sleep.”

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I’m sitting here hurting my own feelings today, thinking about retired!Dream feeling more and more afraid that’s he’s not going to be able to cut it, and Hob knowing this but not knowing what to do.

Just, how wildly alien life as a human is, like the wall of sensory overwhelm that people who are suddenly immersed in a new country feel but magnified by several thousand orders of magnitude. Dream knows he has to push through it, but he doesn’t know how. And Hob knows that he’s not enough, that Dream can’t do it for him, for Hob, as much as they both wish he could. He has to do it for himself.

Hob’s taken to waking in the night and going to ferret Dream out in whatever corner of the flat he’s burrowed (usually curled up on the floor behind the couch, staring out the window into whatever he can see of the night sky…occasionally the bathroom…once-memorably- the closet.) Hob sits quietly and waits patiently, until Dream comes back from wherever his mind is attempting to go. And Hob asks him, “So, old stranger. Do you still wish to live?”

At first, he gets no response. He doesn’t really expect one, but he tries not to feel how crushing it still is. Feels it anyway.

He keeps asking. Every day, he asks.

He asks the day Dream leaves the flat for the first time, wrapped in a borrowed sweater (it stays indefinitely borrowed) and a human-contact-repelling glare.

He asks the day Dream finally speaks three (rasping, stilted, but real) sentences in a row, which Hob declared the new record to beat and insists is a cause for celebratory pizza.

He asks the day he finds Dream standing in the kitchen, transfixed, reaching out for the heat and flicker of the little candle left burning in the colored glass holder on the counter. (He stares at Hob the same way as he hovers over him in the bathroom, smearing burn gel on Dream’s burnt fingertip.)

He asks again the day Dream actually asks to eat, for the first time.

He asks again, the day Dream tells him that he’s added ‘being alone in the night’ to his tally of things he hates.

He would have asked, he knows, the day that he wakes to find Dream plastered against him in his bed, wearing that expression again, as though Hob were a fire being seen by eyes that had never really seen a flame. He would have asked that day, but Dream is already there, whispering “Ask me” against his forehead. Too quick by half, this one.

“H-hullo, old Stranger,” he whispers back, like a secret. “Do you still wish to live?” And Dream smiles.

“Death’s a mug’s game,” he says, and kisses him.

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Despite having lived up and down each other for thirty years, for some reason, they never seem to have talked about where they came from. Sure, Charles filled him in on the current time period. Did his best to get Edwin up to snuff on the current time and 70 years of history, albeit Edwin probably did a better job himself but to digress back to the point. Charles never spoke of his home and neither did Edwin. Which means that Charles has never been faced with the question of whether Edwin misses his own times.

It’s a sinking horror. To realize that your best mate might have been harboring a deep seated loss that you had just never noticed. Had Edwin ever given an indication that he missed his own time? He needs to find Edwin.

All of this is swirling along in his head so he does not realize Crystal has been talking the entire time.

“Charles, we do not trust Annabelle!”

“We don’t?”

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so, canonically in the comics, i'm pretty sure (i've not read all of them), what happens to crystal is

she just grows up

she grows up and she has a life outside of the boys and eventually she just moves on and can't see ghosts anymore

and i think that is absolutely tragic

and i fully believe that crystal from the @netflix show wouldn't just stop talking the boys fully. i think they'll keep in touch. but one day charles and edwin will no longer be a big part of crystal's life. they'll be friends she brings up at parties -when i was a teenager, i met the weirdest british guys, oh i hope they're doing well now- and that she reminisces on from time to time but they will not be the main characters in her life anymore

to me, that is the true tragedy in anything involving immortality. as those who have seen doctor who can attest, an immortal and a human can never truly love for long. time or love will tear you apart.

crystal isn't immortal. she's alive and sixteen and she won't always be sixteen

and yeah. i think that's maybe the true tragedy of it all

BUT ALSO (yes there's more) that is the POINT. the THESIS of 'dead boy detectives' is letting go. that it is okay to love someone and let go, that it is okay to hate someone and let go, that you cannot carry this weight forever. that you absolutely can never let go of the ones you love not ever not ever and sometimes they are taken from you anyway.

one day crystal palace von whatever the fuck will let go of charles and edwin. and it will be tragic. and they will all carry that loss. and they will all carry on.

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Normal. Ghost Normal.

“Are they always like this?” Jenny asks, leaning on the counter of the kitchenette. Crystal pauses in her coffee-making to turn and see what Jenny’s staring at.

Edwin’s sitting in the armchair, looking as stiff as he often does. That’s completely normal, as far as ghosts occupying Crystal’s furniture go. Charles is sitting on the arm of the same freaking chair, his legs draped over Edwin’s lap so he can wedge his stocking feet into the gap between the other armrest and the seat cushion. That’s completely normal as far as Charles and Edwin go.

“Yeah,” Crystal sighs, turning back to the bag of coffee grounds. “When I walked into the office last week, Charles was on his belly making chainmail under a magnifier while Edwin used the small of his back as a pillow so he could read a detective novel out loud to Charles. That’s just how they are.”

It’s nice having Jenny here, nice to hear the way she laughs dryly and quietly in person instead of over the phone. Crystal had been nervous, having her first guest in her own place, but it’s been going well so far.

“I guess thirty years of not sleeping leaves a lot of time to become weird friends. They must be exhausting.” Jenny’s only teasing, but she’s a little right. It’s not that Crystal wants to date Charles anymore, but sometimes while she’s working with them she feel like she needs a cowbell to get their attention because they’re still not entirely used to working with a living person. Actually, she puts a pin in that idea because it has merit.

“You have no idea.” Crystal opens the cupboard and grabs her favorite mug. Niko gave this to her and it is violently, iridescently pink with silver flowers around the rim. She thinks of Niko every time she drinks from it and it makes her smile. “Pick a mug?”

Jenny peruses the eclectic selection and then chooses the mug Crystal was desperately hoping she’d choose. It’s shaped like an incredibly rotund bat and the little stubby wings are the handles.

“Niko and I took them out last night,” Crystal explains. “There’s a gay bar down past the theater. We just wanted a night out, you know and we didn’t have a case so we invited the boys to come.” Edwin needs to be out in the gay ghost community, Niko thinks, and Charles loves music. It seemed like it would be a good idea. “No one can see if they dance badly and it’s still fun for Charles especially to go out. Niko and I left them for like five minutes when we went to get drinks and by the time we got back, Edwin was sat up on a barstool in the corner with Charles stood between his knees, head ducked down to hear him over the music. A whole bar and they still gravitate to one chair.”

Jenny gives her an unimpressed look and Crystal feels so seen. “I’m sure Niko is in raptures about it but it’s a little ridiculous, huh?”

“Even Niko thinks it’s ridiculous,” Crystal gossips quietly, stirring the sugar into her tea. “She’ll be over later and she can explain how she’s tried getting them to get the hint with her manga recommendations. We love them and also sometimes we want to just lock them in a closet until they figure out that this is not best friend behavior.” She doesn’t know if Charles knows he’s in love with Edwin and is repressing it or if this is some other kind denial.

Jenny flicks her eyes up in warning. Crystal turns, full mug in hand, to see Edwin standing at the edge of the kitchen. He and Charles are dressed down today, almost mimicking weather-appropriate wear. It’s nice to see them so comfortable, even if she can’t understand why Charles is always an inch behind and to the left of Edwin. Does he know he looks like Edwin’s lapdog?

“We have an announcement,” Edwin says, something nearly resembling a smile on his lips.

“Oh?” Jenny says, picking up her little bat wings and taking a sip of her coffee. “Big news?”

“We’re getting married,” Charles announces exuberantly. He's bouncing with delight actually.

Jenny fully aspirates her coffee at the announcement. She coughs wretchedly into the sink while Crystal ineffectually pats her back. She finally turns back, eyes watering, and says, “What?”

“Well, we realized we’ve been common law partners for decades,” Edwin explains, looking vaguely concerned when Jenny wheezes again. “Since Charles figured out that he is indeed in love with me—“

“What?” Crystal blurts out. “When?”

“Last night at the club,” Charles says sheepishly. He throws a fond look at Edwin as he says, “I mean it look me long enough, but I figure that once you know you love someone, why wait? I got the rings this morning and we want you all to be there.” He slides his arm around Edwin’s waist and Edwin leans into him like it’s second nature.

“Is there a…ghost priest who marries people?” Crystal asks faintly. This is stupid, mostly because she does not need to plan a ghost wedding for two idiot boys.

Edwin laughs. “Don’t be ridiculous, Crystal. This will be a secular commitment ceremony. We can’t exactly register at city hall, thirty years after Charles died.”

“Oh of course,” Crystal says. “There couldn’t possibly be a ghost priest for the gay ghost wedding.”

“Bisexual actually,” Charles corrects cheerfully, grinning.

“The wedding is gay, still,” Edwin says thoughtfully. “Since I am entirely unattracted to women and I really have only wanted one man for the last thirty years.” His left hand is crossed over his waist now to hold Charles’s hand on his right hip.

Jenny sighs loudly and wearily. “I am…a certified officiant.” She shrugs, staring anywhere but the ghost boys whose mouths have fallen open. “I could, you know…officiate.”

“Jenny,” Edwin says, voice thick, “that’s very generous.”

“Would you really?” Charles asks her, stars in his eyes.

“I mean, who am I to stand in the way of a proper gay ghost wedding?” She sighs again. “But I’m not doing that shit today. I’m still jet-lagged, and you haven’t told Niko. Go sort yourself out and then we’ll make a plan while I’m here for the week.”

“You’re just aces, Jen,” Charles gushes, still very much cuddling with Edwin. “We’ll go tell her right now.”

They practically skip off together, joined at the hip.

“Softy,” Crystal accuses Jenny teasingly.

“I’d say don’t tell anyone, Crystal,” Jenny says snippily, “but go ahead and spread it around that you’re going to a ghost wedding. People won’t think I’m the crazy one.”

Crystal laughs. “I missed you.”

Jenny looks at her sideways and then throws an arm over her shoulder. “I missed you too, kid.”

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“I’m with Edwin on this one. Why do you need… a beach towel and an electric toothbrush?”

“As a cover!” He exclaims with all the gusto of a mad scientist.

“Is Agatha a dress or a shorts person?” Edwin stops mid retort to take a moment to mule it over.

“I suppose she’s a dress person. When was the last time a cover demanded a dress?” He goes back to his packing, which now involves a very large harpoon.

"Noted.”

“Wait wait wait. Who’s Agatha?” Charles and Edwin both stop what they are doing to look at one another.

“Yeah, I guess you were pretty out of it. With you being possessed by a demon and all.” Without being asked, Edwin wipes out a pair of glasses, and In his place sits a middle aged woman.

Charles spent thirty years crafting the disguises. Imbuing them with as much detail and history as he could. Sometimes his imagination might have drifted further than what was strictly necessary. Aka: Charles has put a lot of thought into the backstories of his disguises, it might or might not be him dealing with never being allowed to grow old.

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Tw smoking

Dbda drabble

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"Job officially jobbed, good work, guys!" Charles smiled at his companions, coat still covered in green slime from the evil plant they had just killed.

It hadn't been a difficult case, comparatively, but hunting through the forest for a cursed bush and then losing the bottle of weed killer had made it significantly more difficult than intended.

"We should head back to the office." Edwin replied, still scratching notes into his book as he led the walk back to the bus stop.

After a few minutes crystal began digging in her bag, retrieving a small paper box and a lighter. Pulling one of the thin sticks from the box, putting it to her lips, she ignited the end, inhaling deeply.

"You smoke?" Charles asked incredulously.

"Is that uncommon now?" Edwin chimed in, a confused look on his face.

"It's frowned upon, but plenty of people still do it." Crystal answered, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air. In her months with the agency, she had grown accustomed to Edwin's cultural questions, no longer being overly sarcastic in response to his genuine confusion over time period differences.

Edwin hummed thoughtfully, watching the grey plumes curl in the air before being swept away by the wind.

"Did you ever smoke, Charles?" He asked after a moment.

"Occasionally. When the lads had a carton or I was at a party." Charles answered simply, leaving out the risk coming home smelling of cigs posed to 16yr old him and his fathers impact on his lack of typical teen rebellion. "You?" He asked, mainly to be polite. Charles knew Edwin had a sheltered childhood, as most childhoods seemed to be during his era, but he had grown fond of their usual back and forth routine.

"Me? Oh yes, quite frequently." He answered, earning duel shocked expressions from his companions.

"You smoke?" Crystal asked, disbelief coloring her voice.

"Well it has been over a century..." He corrected snarkily, "but yes. It was common place when I was alive for boys as young as 10 to get their first cigarette case and begin smoking. It was a right of passage of sorts, i suppose." He shrugged.

"Next you're gonna tell us you were shooting whiskey and doing lines of coke." Crystal retorted, earning a chuckle from Charles, who despite being well aware of his best mate's rebellious nature, simply couldn't imagine him getting drunk and doing drugs like some rockstar Charles had on his bedroom wall as a child.

"'A gentleman does not shoot whiskey, he sips it'" Edwin quoted, allowing Charles for a moment to envision what Edwins father had sounded like, "and cocaine was a very powerful and frequently prescribed medicine. It was a main ingredient in cough syrup." He informed his stunned counterparts.

Charles tried to press back the images flashing in his mind of Edwin drunk, cheeks pink, smoke swirling around him as a cigarette balanced carelessly between his fingers.

"Can ghosts smoke?" Crystal asked unprompted. "Like have you tried?"

"I can't say I have," he said, "though there were moments in Hell where I thought I could have killed for a cigarette and a drink." He added, laughing the way he usually did when speaking of Hell. Casual but with a faint tightness to it, not quite forced but not quite natural either.

Crystal dug the cardboard pack out from her bag again, offering one to Edwin. He gave his usual resigned sigh and took one, rolling the white stick between his long fingers, inspecting it, before bringing it to his mouth. Charles breath caught in his throat. Crystal flicked the lighter and Edwin leaned in to inhale through the flame. The smoke plumed around his face as his eyes fluttered shut in memory.

He exhaled a small cloud and looked at the expectant faces around him. "I can't exactly taste it, but it is rather pleasant." He answered their unasked question, taking another drag. If Charles could blush, he would be the same color as his shirt. "My apologies, would you like to try?" Edwin asked, holding the lit cigarette out to Charles who had spent the majority of this time staring at him in stunned awe.

Charles looked from the offending item to his partners expectant face and back again before sliding the cigarette from Edwin's thin pianists fingers and placing it in his own mouth. He tried not to think too hard about the fact it had also been in Edwin's mouth just moments ago. He inhaled, smoke filling his chest, the usual subtle burn missing as it flowed down his windpipe and back out again. Edwin had been right, he could almost taste it. The usual flavor dulled by death, instead a faint earthy flavor filled his senses. It was familiar enough to recognize as tobacco but lacked the overpowering taste.

Blowing out the smoke, he smiled at Edwin's expectant face. "That's brills." He said, returning the cigarette to his partner.

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fuck you Netflix stop cancelling shows

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on the one hand it's very very cute to think of edwin learning to knit because he has a genuine interest in it, on the other hand it is very very funny to think of him learning knitting specifically for the purposes of his old-lady costume. tactical knitting.

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i met one of my aunt's archaeologist friends/colleagues earlier today & he was telling me about legends that not too far from here there's the ghosts of a roman legion that people see walking up the cliff towards the edge of the sea and then off the edge of the cliff and onwards, because the coastline has receded so much since roman times that the 'land' they're used to walking on goes on far past the point it falls into the sea today. and like. OUGH. I don't even strictly believe in that type of ghost but I'm Obsessed with this image of them still interacting with landscape that has crumbled into the sea & completely disappeared over the thousands of years since they were alive. ghost landscapes Real

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So this is not meant to reflect anything about the actor's body type cause they are both adults, but my headcanon about the boys is that Charles is actually a bit of a late bloomer, at least compared to Edwin.

At the age of 16, Edwin is already fully shaving and looks pretty much exactly as he would as a young adult. His schoolboy clothes already look kinda out of place on him. I'm sure if he made it home for the summer that year instead of dying, he would be immediately taken to the tailor for a proper adult suit.

On the other hand, Charles is pretty much baby faced, and has that posture of a still-growing teenage boy. To me he looks like he just about out-grown the scrawny stage when it doesn't matter how many push-ups he can do, he's still all lanky arms and long legs. I think that when he died, he was just starting to actually bulk up.

So I think when he seems kind of offended when someone doubts his status as "the brawn", it's because he genuinely always was the strong, athletic type, it's just residual self-consciousness over how once his class hit puberty, he just couldn't get his body to reflect that. And he never got to fully out-grow it.

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Consider! Charles finds a camera that has been enchanted to make ghosts show up on film and is absolutely thrilled about it! They’ve got plenty of pics of the girls up and about the office, but it would be good to have some of the founding members, right? Edwin is not quite as enthused about the whole prospect as Charles, as photographs were quite the long, drawn out process back when he was alive. Also, although he does not mention this bit, after a hundred years without seeing it, he’s grown somewhat disconnected from his physical form as something that is his.

Charles is pretty convincing, though, and Edwin is far too willing to allow himself to be convinced when it comes to his friend. They rope in Crystal and she lines up the shot, Charles and Edwin with their arms around each other as they beam at the lens, and then she takes the photo and the flash goes off and when she blinks, the boys are both gone. Crystal calls out for them, but the office is small and it isn’t like there’s much space to hide. She considers that they both sunk through the floor and are fucking with her, but before she can give that particular option too much thought, the camera prints out a small picture.

As it develops, Crystal finds that it did manage to capture the boys’ likenesses, as well as their ghostly essences. The photo is frozen at the moment she took the picture as they both grin at the camera, but when she Reads it she can feel their fear and desperation as they are trapped in the film.

Now, it’s down to Crystal to figure out how to undo this curse and break them out!

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the dbd crew absolutely lacks the ability to understand money. like edwin and charles haven't had to buy anything non-magical in 30+ years, crystal was the kind of rich to buy designer toothpaste if she felt like it, and niko was born and raised in japan with a very different currency than the states. needless to say, local father-figure-by-default jenny has her work cut out for her.

jenny: ok, just off the top of your head, how much would you pay for a carton of milk?

edwin: 15 pence

charles: i dunno, a 'buck 50?

crystal (confidently): 12 dollars

niko: *doing math*

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charles' disguises always work.

they always work, not only because they are dreadfully normal, plain and unassuming; they also (wordlessly) speak of years of experience, both professional and personal. these are the people who have lived half a life and found themselves in their golden age; they've finally reached past the turbulence of youth and settled into humanity without putting up much of a performance.

everything about them is secure: their comfortable, utilitarian clothes with hints of personality peeking through, the accessories like glasses— a matter of making the world more accessible to them. their set-up of a man and a woman, a couple more likely to be assumed married than platonic, especially since they're always sharing space, it's clear there would be no case-solving with them being apart. and the cases are not about them, anyway, but the disguises are woven into the living world in a way that corresponds to how charles views the value of life. nothing grand, groundbreaking. simple.

there's something infinitely precious and surprisingly mature about charles, a died-at-sixteen year old boy, a detective: choosing to present as a person with a stable job, a partner in crime, and one that is genuinely happy to be there.

it also might be the fact he's had 30 years of the afterlife now, and the years catch up similarly to how growth catches up to someone entering a different stage of life, past his 20s, 30s, 40s and so on.

they always work— they're useful, yes, but they work for charles and edwin specifically, and i think that could use more attention.