#and even when crystal and niko came to save edwin

[mysweetoddbird]

i think we shouldve gotten a shot of Charles when Edwin was calling out to him in the finale because like god. can you imagine. hes just gone to hell to drag Edwin back out and now Edwin's calling out to him and clearly expecting him to come for him and all Charles can do is sit there. fuck

[tititilani]

I can't stop thinking about if Simon had taken Edwin's offer

Like Charles finds Edwin in the hallway as ever but this time there's another boy there too, cowering against the wall next to him. Maybe the dollhead spider doesn't care about Simon, too busy focusing on its favorite target, so Charles is left standing in the hallway with Simon when Edwin is taken.

They get out of hell, but Edwin doesn't confess due to Simon hovering behind his elbow. He doesn't want to confess his emotions in front of his killer, who he probably hasn't even properly figured out how he's feeling towards yet.

The Night Nurse is pissed they came out with an extra soul but Niko's same loophole still applies and Simon stays.

"This is Simon," Edwin says when it's all said and done, finally introducing the boy that's been hiding behind him since the door closed. "He was a...classmate of mine."

"He saved me," Simon says, looking up at Edwin moony-eyed and Charles knows that look and something settles heavy in his stomach.

"Glad to have ya, mate," he tells him even though the words taste sour. This other boy knew Edwin when he was alive, the thought is slightly terrifying to him.

Simon settles in fine with the agency even if the agency feels a little crowded now with five people in it but he continues to moon over Edwin and Edwin just...never tells anyone how they actually knew each other. He reasons it just doesn't matter, that he can't find the right time, whatever.

Charles never really warms up to him, though he tries to hide it, but he sees the looks Simon gives Edwin, a soppy smitten look that is somehow worse than anything Monty or the Cat King ever tried with Edwin because of all of them, Simon arguably knows the most about like Edwardian courting. That, like Edwin, Simon has also survived hell. Charles hates the idea that someone could potentially understand Edwin more than he does.

He hates it so much that nothing further happens between him and Crystal because the idea of Edwin being left alone with Simon bothers him so much. He sees Simon adjusting Edwin's collar one (1) time and it makes him feel sick.

And then there's the fortune-teller.

They only go to her sometimes for cases because she never fails to freak Charles out but her prophecies tend to be accurate like 60% of the time which is pretty good for a fortune teller. She looks at the two of them at the end, because it is just the two of them for once, and then looks just at Edwin.

"How kind you are," she says, the words a compliment but the tone snide. "To house your killer. Pray tell it doesn't come back to you."

"What." Charles says. "The fuck."

Charles is furious, of course, and it takes Edwin a long time to talk him out of smashing Simon's face in with the new cricket bat.

"He's like me," he insists in that quiet but firm voice. Charles wants to scream that Simon is nothing like Edwin - that he doesn't have a fraction of Edwin's kindness or pissiness, that his blue eyes are not nearly as beautiful as Edwin's green - but before he can even open his mouth, Edwin continues. "He...He likes boys, Charles. He likes me."

Oh. Oh.

Charles stares at Edwin who is looking back at him, trying and failing to hide the fact he's terrified, and Charles doesn't give one shit that Edwin likes boys because he's his best mate forever. He's still pissed that Simon is apparently staying but he has to hug Edwin at that. "I'm still pissed you didn't tell me about him," is all he says, swallowing back the other words he wants to say.

Charles grows even more paranoid about Simon being around, who has to get used to the fact that Charles takes to swinging his cricket bat ominously every time he comes within ten feet of Edwin. He finds out that adjusting clothing was an Edwardian courting thing and wants to break something. The very idea the very person who killed his best mate is now trying to put the moves on said best mate pisses him off.

It also makes him think of numerous times Edwin had readjusted his collar or jacket in the past and it makes his non-existent stomach flip.

Eventually, Simon decides he's ready to move on to his after-life and Charles keeps his hands from fisting when he looks at Edwin with that same soppy look. He knows Edwin has forgiven Simon by now but Charles has always been better at holding a grudge and he knows what is going to come out of Simon's mouth before he even asks. He knows that if Edwin says yes, he won't stop him.

Charles also knows that if Edwin does, there is no way he is going to find any kind of his own afterlife.

"You could come with me," Simon says hopefully and the moment after is the longest in Charles' life.

"Thank you, Simon," Edwin says kindly and Charles has to keep himself from crying. "But I have no interest in going anywhere without Charles."

He steps back - away from Simon and back towards Charles. Ears suspiciously pink, Edwin links their hands and they watch as Simon follows the Night Nurse.

[tipsyscone]

for the dbd ask game: 2, 14, 21 ♡

2 - fave episode

Oh boy, probably episode 7! It has so many interesting character beats to me, and I get too distracted watching it when I have Dead Boys going in the background. To start with, I love Crystal's storyline starting with her being so adamant to also go to hell to save Edwin. We all know that their relationship has gotten off to a rocky start and I feel this really solidifies her care for Edwin and shows they have their own friendship outside of Charles. She is so worried about not knowing who she is that I feel she has failed to noticed she has already made her own found family.

The scenes with Niko and the Night Nurse really showcases Niko missing her dad and is another of great addition to the episode. For me it's the only explanation of why the group didn't wonder why Niko wasnt a ghost- she obviously passed on to be with her father, right? (Truly heartbreaking to me that they don't even know to look for her at this point.)

George Rexstrew's performance this whole episode is superb imo. The scene with Simon is so heartbreaking (shout out to Gabriel Drake!) and really hit me in the queer feels. I feel like many queer people have had that feeling when we are younger of being wrong, and to have these two boys help each other to move on healed something in me. Follow this up with THE STAIRCASE- the way Edwin's breath catches as he confesses and the fragile look on his face; the collar bone touch from Charles gets me every time. And I'm so thankful for Charles response. Payneland until I die, but it is perhaps the only pair I ship that if it stayed a QPR I would still be okay with it.

14 - plotline you would put into S2/any future season

I really want to see more Edwin and Crystal friendship and for them to pair up on a case together next season! I think it was an unappreciated duo and I would love to get to see them be mean girls together. I think they would be iconic verbally ripping apart a rude client.

I also need Monty to return asap. That poor little crow boy deserves another chance and I'm heartbroken that they just left him in that house. I hope he somehow becomes besties with Jenny- a crow and a goth together at last. I would also love if somehow Monty and the Cat King both came to London as a duo if we are to get cameos. It could work so well for them to have bonded in the absence of the other characters and now they need the dbda to take a case for them.

It would make my little heart so happy for Monty to get any happy ending but I hope he gets a boyfriend please and thank you.

21 - something in the show that made you happy

I really appreciate that the show made women fully fleshed out characters. It would have been easy for them to have Niko be the positive attitude character, but I think we can all relate to her a lot more knowing she struggles with fitting in and is dealing with the loss of a loved one. Jenny could have been all about the pithy oneliners, but instead we found out about her having to learn a business that was left to her by her father and her struggles to find people to connect to. Even the Night Nurse goes on a journey to learn empathy for humans. Truly a shout out to all the woman writers, actors and crew on this show for having such nuanced characters when other supernatural shows in the past haven't bothered.

Also I really love Kingham and Litty and I hope they stick around for awhile next season so I can enjoy more of their savagery. And maybe they can learn to not be dicks ❤️

Thanks for thinking of me @plutosheaven! I'm usually just the one screaming in the reblogs of everyone else's posts, but I want all of the artist and writers in the fandom to know I appreciate you and you're amazing!

[im-not-corrupted]

A short DBD fic about grief and mourning and dealing with loss after Niko's death.

------

He’s never had to grieve, not for anybody other than himself.

Even when it came to himself, he didn’t have much chance to do so. He was alive and then he died and then he was in Hell. There wasn’t much room for grief in Hell; there was only pain and terror that found its roots so deep he sometimes thinks he’ll never rid himself of it. Each time they close a case, aid some other ghost into taking Death’s hand, that fear takes him again.

I don’t want to go back, Edwin thinks each time, desperate to get as far away as he can. Who he pleads to, he doesn’t know. Death herself, perhaps, or some other force of the universe. Don’t send me back.

The fear has been easier to manage these days. Mostly, this is a product of Charles’s presence in his life. He will not go back because he will evade Death’s eyes and Charles will evade her too, and they are together.

They will be together. Will be for the rest of their afterlives, as Charles says to him.

It helps. He still gets that fear, that instinctual reaction that grips him when the air shifts and he can hear the beating of wings, distant but coming steadily closer. But then Charles is there and they are running and it is enough to shake that fear away.

But he has never had to grieve, is the point. When he was alive, his family were wealthy and did not have to deal with the horrors of his day as those who were…less well off had. His family were healthy, and then he was dead and his only friend after spending seventy three years in hell was Charles, and Charles has been dead since they met. (And when he realised he would be unable to return to the life he had after escaping Hell, well, it didn’t matter. He never had the greatest relationship with his family, and he found Charles almost immediately. It soothed whatever grief he felt to know he had somebody, that he was no longer alone.)

It is not the same now. Now, they know people who are alive.

At least, they know Crystal. And they knew Niko, who is no longer alive.

Hence the grief.

Edwin has not had somebody die in defence of him before. He never even considered the idea that somebody would go to such lengths for him; never wanted it. This didn’t matter, for Niko still died attempting to save him from the witch’s torture device, and now she is gone.

And without her, he is left feeling…hollow. There are feelings there, sorrow at the loss and anger at the circumstances, but they seem to be locked away.

He only really feels them when he considers finding Niko so she might expose him to more modern-day pop culture, or so they might simply spend time in one another’s company. Truthfully, he never considered the idea that he might enjoy the company of somebody who is alive—he and Crystal did not get along well initially, though Edwin is wise enough to be able to admit that this was due to no fault of here but rather a product of his aversion to change—but those moments spent with Niko were precious to him.

They remain so now, treasured memories he stores away so he does not have to look at them too closely. Yet they continue to haunt him and sometimes, when his mind drifts, he forgets, and it aches.

This is one of those moments. He stands, triumph making his day just that little bit brighter after solving a particularly difficult case, and he says, “I shall go and find N—“

And then he freezes. Her name is on the tip of his tongue but he holds it back with barely-there self control and thinks that if he had a body capable of sustaining injury then there would be an open wound over his chest and he would bleed out all over the lovely wooden floors of the Dead Boy Detectives Agency.

There is no blood. Of course there is not. He is dead, and ghosts do not bleed. They do not even have bodies, not in the real sense of the world.

As it turns out, being unable to feel the pages of another book between his fingers as he researches for one of their cases, of being unable to feel the warmth of Charles’s palms when he places them upon Edwin’s shoulders, does not make it impossible for him to feel the way the unfinished sentence stabs into his chest. It freezes him in place and his eyes sting with what suspiciously feels like tears, and he clenches his hands into fists in an effort to keep it at bay.

Before him, Charles’s lips draw tight. His eyes shine with sorrow of his own. Edwin wishes suddenly that he had not slipped up and made such an awful, easy mistake, if only because it hurts a part of him to see his friend in such pain.

“I miss her,” Charles says. The words are terribly soft. It buries the knife in his chest only deeper. “It’s okay if you do too.”

Charles has only ever been kind with him, despite Edwin’s own reticence and tendency to take charge, and he appreciates that a great deal more than he believes himself capable of expressing out loud. Here and now, though, he wishes that tenderness was not there. It makes it too easy to notice the absence that seems to follow them around that should fit Niko, to notice the tide rising up inside him, ready to drown him.

He does miss her. He misses being able to walk into her room above Jenny’s butcher shop and having her show him TV shows she enjoyed. It was never about what they did together, he simply…enjoyed being in her company, in a way he cannot recall having with anybody but Charles.

It was different than that, but similar enough. He enjoyed her company. He wishes their friendship was not so brutally cut short.

Edwin has always believed silence speaks for itself and this theory proves true now, for Charles rises from the chair he sits in and places a hand on his shoulder. They are ghosts and cannot feel such touches, but sometimes he fools himself into believing he can feel the warmth of his friend’s hand through his blazer and shirt.

Wishful thinking, always. But it does not hurt, and so he makes no effort to stop himself, not as he does with the other far more dangerous things he tends to imagine when his brain wanders more than he would typically allow. (His feelings for Charles are out in the open now, yet still he fears them sometimes. They have yet to talk about it properly, and the questioning is…driving him a little bit insane, but he won’t push. It is a miracle Charles continues to tolerate him now that he knows.)

“You don’t have to talk about it now,” his oldest, dearest friend tells him. It is honest, and Edwin is glad for it. “But I’m here if you ever want to.”

He nods stiffly, the best he can manage. There’s a tangle of feelings in his chest and they seem far too difficult to make sense of, and talking of them seems impossible, like tearing open barely healed wounds to bleed out all over again.

“I will…keep that in mind,” he says, and hopes his tone conveys his appreciation even if his words do not. “Thank you, Charles.”

“Anytime, mate. I mean that.”

The truth of those words ache. Charles went to Hell for him. There is very little he would not do, and that Edwin believes wholeheartedly. He does not know what to do with it all.

So for now, he does not. There is nothing he can do here and now, anyway.

He steps from Charles’s reach, immediately missing the phantom warmth. “I will find something to read,” he declares, and Charles nods.

He misses Niko. She would know what to say about this, or would help him somehow.

He has not had to miss somebody before, not like this. He hopes, perhaps foolishly, that it will get easier with time.