#typical charles

[countingstars-17]

Charles: "I'm sorry I'm in really big rush. I lost myself on the road unfortunately so I'm late for the meeting" (cr: 10newsfirst on TikTok)

[trashno0dle]

"you ever think, what if death did catch us? she'd force us to go to the afterlife and split up."

"i will make sure that never happens."

not even 10 minuets in to this series and already these guys are SO gay i love them oh my god

[pinklemonslices]

please hear me out on edwin calling charles “my soul.” send tweet.

[slythereen]

Hello there!

I’m new to f1 and Lestappen.

Is there a Charles and Max master post somewhere with their history? I keep hearing about the social media unfollowing and podium walk off and want all the tea and timelines.

Basically all I know about is the inchident.

Many thanks!

hello and welcome!! my scholarship (read: obsessively reblogging things or bookmarking them thinking i'll actually find them again later) tends to be VERY chaotic, but i know there are definitely compilations out there. i've read some great ones.

nini (@scuderiafemboy) has a LOT of lore content on tumblr and twitter & does a lot of translating of dutch interviews/manages to unearth old interviews all the time. the twitter thread of threads covers 2018 through june 2023! she also compiled some of the database on tumblr here.

@chibrary archives interviews, articles, etc., in glorious fashion. this is charles centric but naturally charles' history intersects with max's so there are some good pieces in there, like this 2015 article on the lestappen rivalry in karting. the #driver:max tag provides a lot of golden content (such as extended lore on the inchident!).

moments™

marginally related, but dani (lecstappens on twitter) once posted the video of max and charles being scolded and warned to behave themselves during the race following the inchident. one of my favorite pieces of lestappen info frankly... demon children. (also on posted by @il-predestinato on tumblr here. who, btw, is a gold mine of lestappen content.)

well, as long as i'm adding some favorite gems while i try to find the specific post i'm looking for... the lestappen singapore flag moment is my roman empire. i am also haunted by the awkward weather convo video. which i know is out there, but i am going crazy trying to find it.

i decided to just commit to the moments list, so here is charles drinking red bull gate 2023 (courtesy of @countingstars-17)

charles asking the tifosi to stop booing max at monza this year (@il-predestinato seriously has so much content)

this excerpt of max's manager talking about charles (@blueballsracing)

if i don't stop myself i will be here all year

more mini compilations !!

@hyacinthsdiamonds once produced a nice list of the ridiculous lore around lestappen that sounds made up

some 2021 specific "best moments" compiled by @coconutshygame

there is one post i am thinking of that touched on their wild lore/destined f1 rivalry etc. but i can't find it now so stay tuned ��

also, for some theorizing on the most recent lestappen debacles and what it all means with ferrari/rbr and a potential charles to rbr (ot charles to more power at ferrari) move:

@tsarinablogs is a Scholar™ with lovely essays

@valyrfia has an addition to the marketing mayhem

i recently compiled my unhinged #rbr-ferrari sticker war content to advocate for rbr charles here, which was added to by this anon with banger points

personally i use #rbr charles for the theorizing and delulu hours, but i think #lestappen rbr and #lestappen gate 2023 are also prime hunting ground for rbr specific lore

anyone who has info to share pls do ❤️ i know i'm missing loads of scholarship that is lost in the pits of my unorganized blog

[leclercskiesahead]

The way Oscar is taller than both ferrari guys is hilarious to me

[minusninelives]

Not me thinking about how Carlos’ hand was wrapped around Charles’ wrist in the track preview.

[sailing-with-100-ships]

I just wanted to talk about the Charlos pictures we have been getting till now. And them in general.

So we know it is the last season together as teammates. And one of the few logical things would be to try and distance yourself bit by bit so it does not hurt too bad. It is something a normal or a sane person will think of doing.

But there comes the heart. It is all about making irrational decisions, not thinking and just doing things. To get a sense of happiness. No matter how things will turn out, you are happy in this moment and that is what matters.

This is something I am seeing with these two.

You can say that these are professional drivers and they very well know what they are doing. Which is something neither of us deny. But the fundamentals still exist with these drivers. They are as human as we are and they will feel that pain of being separated like we all do.

They will be in the same paddock, but we will not see Carlos leaning outside the room of Charles or them watching football together laying on the floor. These moments will come to an end.

And these pictures feel like it is the beginning of an end. These moments will only increase as time goes by, and they will get more intense. And all of this will come crashing down in Abu Dhabi when the bandaid is ripped off and them as well as us all will be confronted with the truth: this is it.

No more giggling together, no more gazing into each other's eyes like they have all the answers.

I know I have accepted them not being teammates for the next year, but have they?

[buck-yyyy]

an introductory description of the greek club except it’s narrated like the meet the plastics scene in mean girls

[heavenlymorals]

I absolutely NEED to hear your thoughts on Bill liking Kieran your writing is so good

@escapingsin

Thank you so much ❤️❤️

I am but a servant of the people and I have been put on God's green earth to serve (cunt)- so of course!

Let's start off with the basics- Bill is gay. Though it hasn't been officially confirmed by Rockstar, it doesn't take a genius to see that that man is gay. He's the only male gang member with no female relationship or mention of a female relationship and his sexuality is implied multiple times by gang dialogue: "Arthur and Martha, or Bill and Phil." "Is he about to kiss that guy or punch him."

Oh and the hair pomade request. That was a lubricant back in the day and Bill is balding- doesn't mean he can't use pomade to slick back what he does have, but let's put two in two together, babes. He's messy, stinky (Dutch: "You could try washing"), and doesn't really take care of himself. I doubt he wants pomade for the sake of styling his hair, let's just get that cleared up.

And there is also his reaction to Arthur getting r**** in the swamp. I won't go too deep into it in this post but I have made a post all about it here :

But the main point of that post is that Bill is trying to test the waters to see if Arthur is also gay because I doubt Sonny would tell him what actually happened.

So yes: Bill is gay.

He's also gay in 1899 America, where homosexuality and homosexual acts can be met with jail time or even death. It wasn't a kind time period to gay people and Bill represents this by his general attitude. He's isolated and angry because of men. He hates them and he is attracted to them and that makes him act flustered and violent many times throughout the story. He can't properly express how he feels either about men because even in the gang, it wasn't accepted of him to be gay and it was treated as an out of sight, out of mind sort of thing.

So what does this have to do with Kieran?

Well, Bill likes Kieran, but what makes their dynamic interesting is that while the rest of the gang members, bar Dutch, Hosea, and maybe Arthur as the old guard, have the same status, Kieran doesn't. He is below them because of his former status as an O'Driscoll and any mess up or disrespect can very much end with him getting killed or punished in some way- the amount of characters threatening to castrate him is insane.

Kieran doesn't have the same protection as the other gang members, nor the respect, so Bill can get "close" to him without any real pushback because no one would stop him. And given the frustrations that Bill already has + the homophobia of the 1800s + the opportunity to hop on some "fresh meat", he wouldn't know how to express his interest in Kieran besides aggression and overly friendly aggression.

Like there is the scene where he tries to give Kieran a drink out of kindness. He starts off friendly, but when Kieran declines, he becomes aggressive, and Kieran being terrified for his safety, takes the drink and runs away, with Bill begging for him to come back, confused at the whole situation. He can only do that because of his seniority status over Kieran. Remember the reaction Bill has to Arthur being SA'd? He is playful, not aggressive, and doesn't get aggressive because Arthur, even though he aggressively tells him to get lost, has a higher rank than him.

And of course, you have Charles and Arthur talking about how Bill likes no one and then Charles says that he likes Kieran with both him and Arthur then laughing at it because of what it implies.

Bill likes Kieran but because of the life he lives and the attitudes of society and the gang in regards to homosexuality and just him in general, he can't bring himself to act normally with Kieran to express his attraction to him, which leads to poor Kieran getting terrorized the way he is.

Poor, poor Kieran.

[33-16]

the norris fans calling charles a 'soulless, pr board'. seriously, focus on your own driver and leave charles alone. that man has more soul than the entire norris fanbase combined.

[countingstars-17]

"I don't know what is a bucket hat!"

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

[that-ineffable-devil]

So, in Ep 5 we hear Edwin remark out loud "remarkably low compatability between Taurus and Aries" with interest before getting shocked by the two Dead Dragons.

I thought that was curious, because Edwin establishes immediately that he doesn't believe in astrology. And Monty establishes immediately that Edwin is a Capricorn. So, he's not looking for himself. It should be noted that this is right after Charles sends him out of the room after Crystal woke up screaming from a nightmare. It's not unlikely he's thinking of them.

So I went looking for Charles' and Crystal's birthdays--to no avail. Our Charles' birthday is definitively different from the Comic Charles, because our Charles died in 1989 and in the comics he wasn't born until January 1, 2000. I couldn't even find a DOB for even Comic Crystal.

So, I thought, let's look at some stereotypical Taurus and Aries traits, yeah?

Preface: My knowledge of astrology is limited, and I don't have time right now to do a deep dive, so this is gonna be surface readings only right now.

Taurus is an earth sign. They're flirty, patient, dependable, loyal, hardworking, and trustworthy. They're also prone to anger, jealous, and stubborn.

Aries is a fire sign, they're confident leaders, passionate, brave, and independent. They're also competitive, desire-driven, and impulsive.

Now, the thing about astrological descriptors is that they're usually pretty broad and there's often overlap. People are complex, multifaceted creatures. But we're looking at characters, written and acted with specific ideas and goals in mind.

With that in mind, we could reasonably argue that Charles is a Taurus--we see him displaying all the Taurus traits above. We could also argue that Crystal is an Aries--between pre- and post-amnesia Crystal, we also see her display all the Aries traits above.

So I wonder...was Edwin seeking solace in comparing the astrological likelihood of Charles and Crystal becoming a real couple?

[petit-papillion]

Charles and Alex 🌞🌞

Mexico | 29 Oct 23; Spa-Francorchamps | 30 July 2023; Spielberg | 2 July 2023; Bahrain | 5 March 2023

📸 Dan Istitene, Jakub Porzycki, Peter Fox

[wordingg]

I'll See You In Hell

Summary: The third time Edwin ends up in hell, Charles is there with him.

AN: Written for Dead Boy Ween Day 10, prompt: hell.

This is a little dark, though it does have a happy ending. If there's interest, I'd be down to write a follow-up oneshot about the fallout that happens afterward. Just let me know if you're interested.

Edwin thought that he was done worrying about hell after Port Townsend. Charles had proved he could rescue Edwin even from the bowels of hell, which was a balm for one of the oldest and deepest fears Edwin carried with him. Even more importantly than that, he was now directly in the employ of the Lost & Found department of the afterlife, which he felt meant a certain kind of safety from hell and those there who might still want him.

That was why he didn’t think twice before accepting a job to remove a demon living in and tormenting the inhabitants of an old run down apartment building. He was confident that he and Charles and Crystal were more than a match for the kind of tiny creeping pests that sometimes crawled up from the depths of hell to cause the kind of small horrors that could sustain their kind of paltry evil. It would be barely a day’s work to rid the world of the awful thing and they could pat themselves on the back and consider it a job well done. Or, a job jobbed, as Charles would often say.

Edwin hadn’t considered that the crack the demon had crawled out of might still be open underneath the tons and tons of concrete and rebar that made up the apartment building. He hadn’t considered that something might reach out from the crack and snatch him up as if he was nothing more than a naughty kitten wandering too close to a hawk. And, he certainly hadn’t considered that Charles would be pulled in with him.

He could still remember the look of panic on Charles’ face, as he lunged for Edwin, his strong fingers tangling in the fabric of Edwin’s coat, his teeth bared as he held on and didn’t let go even as they were both yanked backward and downward and into burning flames. After that, Edwin couldn’t remember anything but screaming, his and Charles’ screams mixed together in a horrible cacophony as they were pulled down, down, down, seemingly forever.

When the burning finally stopped, they were both in the dollhouse. Edwin was back in his underclothes and so was Charles. Edwin didn’t understand by what mechanism hell had decided that Charles deserved to be dressed similarly to Edwin, but he hated it in a visceral way he wasn’t altogether familiar with. Charles was dressed in soft flannel sleep pants and a t-shirt with the faded decal of what looked like a children’s cartoon on the front. The t-shirt was so thin and soft it looked like it would rip if someone pulled on it even slightly. The sight of Charles looking at him with terrified eyes, in his pajamas, on the floor of the dollhouse, broke something in Edwin.

He suspected he cried. He suspected he cried rather a lot and rather loudly, considering his only real memories of the next bit of time were Charles shushing him and dragging him along as they began to flee the spider demon that was already hunting them.

Edwin’s memory was a bit funny for a while. He felt the familiar heaviness of his body in hell, something he suspected was a construct that his soul was trapped inside of so long as he resided there, something flesh and blood with nerves and feeling that could only exist within hell itself. But, the feelings of his old hell body felt far away. His fingers tingled, his breath came fast and burning in the tightness of his chest, his legs pumped and his bare feet slapped the dirty concrete floor. But, it didn’t quite feel like it was happening to him.

Charles’ hand was warm in his own, the feeling of him, of the bones in hands shifting when Edwin squeezed them, of his short fingernails digging into the backs of Edwin’s hand, felt like the only real thing in the world for a while.

Until Charles grabbed him hard by the shoulders and shook him, his eyes big and scared, his normally warm brown skin tone washed out to pale gray.

“Edwin, where is the exit?” Charles hissed, the words the first to filter through whatever strange dissociative state he had fallen into.

Edwin shook himself and looked around. So much of the dollhouse looked the same that he couldn’t tell where they were from just the hallway they were currently standing in. It was Edwin’s turn to take Charles’ hand and begin dragging him around corners and creaking doors as he tried to get his bearings. Edwin was confident that once knew where they were in the maze, he could navigate them out. He had spent so long mapping the maze that even thirty years later he could probably do it in his sleep.

But, the more turns he made, the more doors he sneaked through, the more Edwin realized that he had no idea where they were. Hallways that should have turned left, instead turned right or didn’t turn at all. Grime covered windows that were meant to lead him to a different hallway instead left him in cramped closets or empty rooms. Nothing looked the way it was meant to or took him to the place it was meant to take him.

Finally, gasping for breaths that felt like drowning, Edwin had to stop at a crossroads. He turned to Charles, tears already gathering at the corners of his eyes that he didn’t care enough to dash away.

“I don’t know where we are,” he admitted in a faint voice.

“What do you mean?” Charles asked. He reached out with the hand that wasn’t held tightly in Edwin’s to clutch at Edwin’s shirt. Edwin could feel the back of his knuckles against his heaving stomach.

“The maze is different,” Edwin said, the tears starting to fall. “I don’t know where to go. I don’t know-”

“It’s okay,” Charles said, though his eyes were huge and glassy, his fingers trembling where they were still trapped in Edwin’s sweaty hand. “You found the way out of here last time. You’ll do it again.” Charles smiled, but his mouth wobbled and the sight of it only made Edwin gasp harder, his tears falling faster.

“That took seventy years, Charles,” Edwin said, his own voice breaking and falling apart. He could feel his legs shaking. He wasn’t sure if he could run anymore.

“That was then. We’re together this time,” Charles said and his smile solidified. He squeezed Edwin’s fingers in his. “Together, we can do anything.”

Edwin sobbed. Charles was so kind and sweet, his words almost hurt as they sank into the broken glass that it felt the rest of his chest was made of.

“Charles,” he gasped.

He wasn’t sure what he was going to say and they never did find out, because the spider found them then and all they could do was scream for the next few minutes.

---

After the spider got them the first time, it seemed the gloves were off. Edwin wasn’t sure if it was intelligent enough to let them run until they realized there was no escape, but the timing seemed too perfect to mean anything else.

They were caught in the hallway crossroads and torn limb from limb, both he and Charles crushed and killed quickly, only to come back gasping and quaking in each others arms just a few feet away.

Clutching at each other’s hands, they got up and ran away, but they didn’t get far.

They died over and over, crushed, dragged, bitten, and ripped apart, but always together. The spider seemed to realize fairly quickly that if it caught one of them, the other wouldn’t stray far and risk getting separated. It started grabbing one of them and taking its time making its prey scream and beg until it could find the other and repeat the process. For a while, Edwin and Charles got stuck in a loop of one of them dying slowly and regenerating just in time to listen as the other did the same, neither of them free long enough to run and not willing to leave the other behind to save themselves.

It was brutal. Edwin wasn’t sure if being in hell with Charles was better or worse than being there by himself. At least when he was by himself, he didn’t have to listen to the person he loved most in the world suffer and die over and over. But, in between deaths, the comfort and the sensation of touch was such a boon that it almost made up for it.

After what might have been days of dying over and over without respite, Edwin and Charles started to get better at losing the spider in the maze. Edwin was getting the hang of the new maze, muscle memory that had atrophied after years without use coming back in a rush. He dragged Charles around corners and into hiding places just in time to evade their pursuer, but they couldn’t linger anywhere long enough to risk it doubling back and being found. Even if the maze had changed, the spider itself seemed to be he same, and Edwin could anticipate the movements of the horrible thing better than he could those of his own body.

Charles, for his part, got better at staying quiet, at watching the tells of Edwin’s body for sudden turns or stops. It was hard to look at him sometimes, as he got quieter and his clothes dirtier and bloodier, the life draining out of his eyes with every death and near miss. But, Edwin couldn’t focus on that, only on trying to keep them alive for as long as he could. If they could get very good at evading the spider, he could start mapping out the maze again, if only mentally.

While they were hiding, they clung to each other. Edwin suspected that Charles drew as much comfort from their newfound physicality as himself.

As ghosts, they could feel each other more so than they could their physical surroundings or other living people. Ghosts gave off energy and they usually had strong memories or feelings about what they felt like, what their clothing and hair felt like, and some of that could be communicated to other ghosts through touch. Edwin had thought that he had been able to touch Charles before, but being in hell together made him think that he must have forgotten what touching another person felt like.

When Edwin dug his fingers into Charles’ back, crushing him against his chest, he could feel Charles’ shoulder blades flexing beneath his fingertips with each gasping breath. He could feel the humidity of Charles breathing against his neck. He could feel the warmth of his skin where his forehead pressed against his shoulder.

“You smell good,” Charles had whispered to him during one of their short breaks where they could hide, and hold each other, and shake.

Edwin was confused by the statement for a moment. There were smells in the dollhouse, but they were mostly awful. The stench of rotting bodies, of damp concrete, of dusty broken shards of ceramic. He pressed his nose into Charles’ hair and inhaled and he smelled all those things, but there was another smell too. Something warm and alive and human, something that must have been Charles’ smell, the confluence of his skin and sweat and blood coming together into something that belonged only to him.

He had to suppress a sob, the clicking of ceramic doll heads outside their hiding place loud enough to indicate the spider was only a hall or two away, still searching for them.

“You too,” he breathed against Charles’ hair. Charles clutched him tighter. Edwin tried to hold onto that moment, to that memory of some new aspect of Charles discovered only in the pit of despair.

---

Time is strange in hell. Edwin had little to no grasp of time his first time there. He knew he had been in hell a long time, but if he had been pressed to make a guess, he probably would have said that he was there a few years, maybe five at most. Finding out that actually he had been in hell for seventy years had been a shock, one he still wasn’t sure he totally had absorbed. He said it often: seventy years, seventy years, seventy years in hell, in the vain hope that if he said it aloud enough he would start to believe it, let alone understand it.

The second time Edwin was in hell felt much longer. The dollhouse had been the same, but either he had forgotten how to run from the demon chasing him, or the demon was just much more bloodthirsty and enjoyed the chase less, or maybe Edwin just wasn’t trying very hard to get away.

He had died a lot. There had been many times that he had died, woken up in a new body, and then sat crying and shaking until the demon finished with his old body and began to take apart his new one. It had been hard to work up the effort to run, to try and hope for escape after living so long on the surface and being so happy. He thought about how incredibly long seventy years was and about how long he could realistically expect Charles to wait for him. Maybe seventy years for a ghost wasn’t as long as it was for a living human, but Edwin still didn’t really understand why Charles had remained behind with him in the first place. Maybe with Edwin gone, Charles would have no reason to stay on the earthy plane. Maybe in seventy years when Edwin finally crawled out of hell for a second time, Charles would be long gone.

Without Charles to hope for, Edwin found it hard to work up the effort to try and escape. As a result, he died a lot.

His second stint in hell felt like seventy years, even if Edwin realistically knew that it wasn’t that long. Still, he would have guessed he had spent a year, at the least, running and dying and crying. To hear that it had only been hours at the most had been another hard thing to accept.

Edwin tried not to think about hell, once he was out again. Thinking about it only made his waking nightmares worse, which made Charles and Crystal worry about him more. So, it was better not to ponder the experience.

Still, when the office was quiet and Charles and Crystal were away, sometimes he would think about it and wonder about how time in hell passed. Did it really fluctuate wildly between too fast and too slow? Or was it that his own perception became untenable after only a short time under so much stress and pain and with no outside indications of the passage of time? It wasn’t like he could count the days by the rising and falling of the sun. If you could separate the horror of it all from the question itself, it was quite interesting.

This third time, he would have guessed they were there for months. He based that on nothing more than his own gut feeling and the slow deterioration of Charles’ usually optimistic personality to something more brittle and quiet. In reality, it was only three days.

After three days in hell, the spider changed its behavior. Edwin could tell immediately that something was different. He and Charles were running, their slapping footsteps loud in the empty echoing halls, the screeching laughter of the demon behind them drowning out their own loud gasping breaths. It should have caught them many times over. It had an opportunity to smash Charles there, a chance to throw Edwin into the wall at another point, but it didn’t take them.

Edwin had been so distracted by the sudden change in its behavior, that he looked over his shoulder while he ran, trying to find some visual clue as to what it was doing. A rookie mistake, one he was ashamed of making as soon as he felt a doll head crack to splinters under his bare foot and send him crashing to the hard stone floor.

Charles had been running hard enough that Edwin’s hand was ripped out of his when he fell. Charles barely had time to scream his name before the spider was on him.

But, there was another break from routine. Instead of crushing Edwin’s back beneath one of its awful feet or tearing into his flesh with its sharp teeth, it snatched him up, folding its cold arachnoid leg around his back and pressing him tight against his belly while he screamed and struggled to get free. Sometimes, the demon would drag them back to a certain area to kill them, but usually it wasn’t so careful not to hurt them. It could eat them just as easily with a missing leg or a crushed pelvis as not. Something was wrong.

“Charles! Run! Get away!” Edwin screamed, arching his back to try and see his friend.

Charles was hesitating in the center of the hallway, his arms halfway up, his hands clenching around air, likely wishing for his cricket bat more than anything.

“I can’t! Edwin!” Charles shouted.

Then, it was too late. The demon snatched up Charles, tossing him like a rag doll against it’s own body in a hard crack of flesh against porcelain. Charles was pressed roughly against Edwin’s side and then both of them were trapped again with one of the demon’s awful legs pressed like a bar across their back. It held them tight enough that it was hard to catch their breath between the pressure and the jostling of the demon’s running.

“What’s happening?” Charles gasped. So, he noticed the odd behavior too. Clever, as always.

Edwin fisted his free hand in the shoulder of Charles’ shirt and held on tight.

“I don’t know,” he said. He kicked and struggled against the demon, but only managed to cut himself on the sharp edges of the broken porcelain that made up its body.

They didn’t have long to wonder. After only a few seconds of running down the hallways of the dollhouse, the demon passed through wide wooden double doors that Edwin had never seen before and then unceremoniously dropped Edwin and Charles to the floor.

“Thank you. You are dismissed,” an unfamiliar voice said from in front of them. While Edwin gasped for breath against a dusty dirty rug, he heard the click of the demon’s many legs retreating behind him and the bang of the doors swinging shut.

Edwin forced himself to look up and take in his surroundings. He and Charles were in a room he had never seen before. The room had dusty warped wooden floors and wood paneled walls that weren’t in much better condition. There were decorations around the room that would have been at home in his own time, marble busts and heavy carved wooden furniture, but it was all aged and damaged and coated in as much dust as the threadbare stained carpet he was currently laying on. Charles was still face down, shaking and gasping into the old rug. Edwin put a hand between his shoulder blades in a move that was quickly becoming habitual and felt his friend struggle to control his breathing.

Standing over the two of them was an androgynous person dressed in all white that Edwin didn’t recognize. They looked down at him like he was a nasty cockroach they would very much like to crush beneath their boot. The other person in the room was the Night Nurse, looking as coiffed and perfect as usual, though her brow was wrinkled as she looked down at the two boys cowering on the floor at their feet.

“And, here are your two dead boys,” the androgynous person said with a lazy wave toward Charles and Edwin.

Night Nurse dragged her eyes away from them, turning toward the other person with her chin tilted up, a frown still making a little furrow between her eyebrows. “We appreciate your cooperation,” she said curtly.

Turning back to Charles and Edwin, she began to flap her hand at them. “Come, boys. Let’s go,” she said briskly, gesturing behind her.

It was only then that Edwin noticed the pure black rectangle in the shape of a doorway sitting strangely in the center of the room. Hope throbbed to life in him like a stab wound in his chest.

Stumbling, Edwin climbed to his feet, dragging Charles along with him. “Yes,” he breathed, “Thank you.” He held Charles by his hip and upper arm and hustled him toward the door. He didn’t dare glance at the mysterious person in white, though he could feel their eyes on him like a physical touch as he stumbled across the room and through the door.

The second he stepped across the threshold, it was like a film was peeled off his skin. He felt lighter, he felt less. Charles still hung from his arms, but he couldn’t feel his weight, or the warmth of his skin, or the texture of his clothing. Looking at Charles, the answer as to why that was quickly became evident. Gone were the soft pajamas coated in grime. Charles as back in the school uniform he had died in. Looking down, Edwin saw that the same was true for him.

And then Crystal was throwing her arms around both of their necks, crying and burrowing into their shoulders and Charles was throwing his arms around her waist and dissolving into sobs, his tears hidden in her soft brown curls.

Edwin put a hand each on both their backs, because it seemed like the thing to do, but he felt a million miles away. He turned to look back at the doorway they had just walked through, but it was already closing, Night Nurse latching it shut with a decisive click.

She turned to look at him and her face softened, which seemed like something her face shouldn’t be able to do. Edwin stared back at her while his friends cried in his arms. He felt hollowed out and empty. He felt that probably the normal thing to do would be to cry with them, but he was having trouble feeling much of anything at the moment and being a ghost again probably wasn’t helping.

Feeling the eye contact with Night Nurse had become uncomfortable, he turned his head and buried his face into the place where Crystal and Charles’ curls mixed. He breathed them in with lungs that didn’t exist. He pretended he could smell them both, the human smell of them. He tried to imagine what Crystal’s warm butter scent would smell like mixed with Charles’ scent, which he only had memories of because he had been dragged to hell.

He tried to press the thought of their smells into his heart, into its deepest most secret place, to remember if he ever needed it. And, he felt quite certain then that he would one day need it.

[themalhambird]

Aaaaaand now, for a little post-bar-late-night-chit-chat between the boys....

It should be bliss. The bed is soft, the flat is warm, and for the first time in what feels like a decade or three Charles Whiteman can go to sleep with the absolute certainty that he’s not going to wake up bombed to pieces. But he can’t sleep, because he keeps straining for the tell-tale hum of the sodding luftwaffe. He’s still bracing for the sirens to start blaring, and the streetlights fading softly through the curtains are making his chest tighten, convincing him that right now, this street is thrusting its arm up in the air yelling pick me- actively volunteering to be Hitler’s prime target. He stares up at the ceiling for another ten minutes then gives up, rolling out of bed and making for the sitting room. This television thing is smashing- stuffed to the brim with rubbish that has no right to be so mindlessly entertaining and of course, a whole lot of good looking women in short skirts. Some really short skirts. Whiteman wonders-

The thought drops dead when he takes one step through the sitting room door, going for the lightswitch before he clocks Hillinghead. The man’s sitting in the armchair nearest the window, curtains open (that damned street light) but otherwise  in complete darkness. Reading. “No wonder you need glasses,” Whiteman says. 

“Whiteman. Can you not sleep either?” 

Whiteman drops his hand from the lightswitch without flicking it on. “Too quiet,” he says. Hillinghead does that hum-snort-scoff thing of his that Whiteman figures is amusement. 

“Too loud,” he counters, turning the page. 

“Mind if I get the lamp?” It’s not escaped Whiteman’s notice that the other man finds electric lights uncomfortable, even more than they make him feel. It makes sense, Whiteman guesses. They’re bright by his standards- he doesn’t know if Hillinghead even has electric lights in his home. 

“By all means.”  

Whiteman crosses to the right hand corner of the room and grabs the metal stem of the standing lamp. It comes on with touch. Fascinating. He throws himself on to the sofa and stretches out, angling himself so that he’s looking at Hillinghead. “Do you sleep in your suits?” he says. The man is, no kidding, wearing a tie at four o’clock in the morning. 

“No, I just- get dressed if I’m leaving the bedroom.” Hilinghead closes his book and stands. For a second Whiteman thinks he’s chased the guy off, but he just says

“Tea? Coffee?”

Whiteman hides a smirk. Electric lights might get on his nerves, but electric kettles, Hillinghead really seems to like. And the abundance of tea and coffee is something that they both appreciate: for Whiteman, a combination of rationing and supply problems can make tea in particular tricky to get hold of; for Hillinghead, coffee in particular was a rarely-consumed  luxury. And, Whiteman was convinced, the man just really likes using the kettle. A bit of a weird quirk, but everything about this situation is weird. “Sure,” he says, “Whatever you’re having.” 

Hillinghead nods and leaves the room. Whiteman gets up to pilfer his book and throws himself back down, studying the cover. Lady Audley’s Secret, the front cover declares- flipping to the title page, Whiteman sees that it was first published in 1862. When Hillinghead comes back five minutes later with two mugs of steaming black tea, Whiteman waves it at him “Reminds you of home?” he asked. 

“My wife- before we were married, we were…fifteen , I believe. Her mother said she wasn’t old enough to read it so she asked me to buy her a copy and to read it to her while she sat with my mother on a Tuesday afternoon.”

“Your mum didn’t mind?”

“My mother was ill, by that time, she would be asleep on the sofa twenty minutes after Charlotte arrived, more often than not,” he pauses. “She died before we could finish the book. We both did finish it, but separately - I read it myself and then I took off the cover and rebound it with-” he breaks off abruptly, and takes a long sip of his tea, avoiding Whiteman’s eye.

“What,” Whiteman prods. “What did you do? Cut a novel sized hole in the Bible and shove it in?”

“No.”  Hillinghead takes another long sip of tea and then confesses, sounding a little embarrassed: “...it was a collection of Hymns, Psalms, and other Spiritual Poetry.” Whiteman starts to laugh. “When my father found out he whipped me so hard I still had the bruises a month later,” Hillinghead adds. “It was his book, I shouldn’t have taken it.”

“Still,” Whiteman says. “Neat trick.” There’s genuine fondness in Hillinghead’s voice when he speaks about Mrs Hillinghead. Whiteman wants to ask more about this “Arthur” Hillinghead mentioned in the pub that afternoon, but without that 21st century daylight, and without Hasan’s and Maplewood’ casual acceptance, it feels like a topic too dangerous to be broached. Whiteman doesn’t care, per say- he’s always been one to turn a blind eye, or even shoot off a quiet  warning to the odd blokes not quite being discreet enough with the eyes they’re  making at each other. But it’s not something you openly talk about, not for him and certainly not for Hillinghead. So instead he sips his own tea and says,

“When I was a nipper, my dad caught me eating the biscuits my mum had made to take to this meeting, her and her friends got together once a week and they took turns bringing the cake or whatnot.”

“Oh? What happened?”

“He helped me finish them off, then we figured out how to make more.” Whiteman grins. Hillinghead actually laughs. “We got away with it, too,” Whiteman says. “Mum said she couldn’t figure out what she’d done differently that time to make them taste so good,” Hillinghead’s laughter grows. “If I can get the stuff together, I should make them for Esther when I get back.” His good mood dims a little. “If I get back. If she’s alright when I get back. I gave her a couple of people to go to, if - if I went out one night and didn’t come back. The bombings…y’know. Rabbi Goldstein. Inspector Calloway. Either of them would look out for her- but only if she goes. It’s been hard enough convincing her to do what I say when I am around.”

“I am sorry,” Hillinghead says quietly. “If nothing else, from what you’ve said the child sounds like she has a knack for survival.”

Whiteman snorts. “She does that.” 

They both turn their attention to their tea, each  sinking into their own thoughts. But it’s a companionable kind of silence, the knowledge that the other man knows at least a little something of how he’s feeling is a comfort to each. Whiteman hasn’t told Inspector Hillinghead that his daughter’s name’s a household one in his time, that Vera Lynn, Charlie Chaplin, and Polly Hillinghead keep Britain marching on, and he wonders if he should. He wants so badly to know about Esther. But Maplewood has said they need to limit their knowledge of the future as much as possible, or their knowledge of the immediate future of their own times, at any rate, and Hasan had agreed - citing the authority of “science fiction” in general and “Doctor Who” in particular. So mum’s the word- he hasn’t even told Maplewood or Hasan. And much as he wants to, he isn’t going to attempt to try and  trace Esther. Right now, he can just about convince himself that she’s out there somewhere, an absolute rogue of an old lady with an army of  grandchildren, like his mum had always wanted to have. He’ll take Esther to meet his mum, when this is over. If he presents a sort-of grandkid, she might stop nagging him about a daughter in law. Well, a man can dream, can’t he?

…but he doesn’t, not for the rest of that night: the first he knows about falling asleep is Maplewood yanking the blanket off him. “Oi!” he complains, and then: “...where did that even come from?”

“Budge up, I want to eat my cereal and you’re hogging all the sofa space. You didn’t grab the blanket?”

“Nope.” They both look over to the armchair. Hillinghead has nodded off, a blanket of his own and his still open book held limply on his lap. “Soft touch.” Whitehead mutters affectionately. 

“Don’t wake him up!” Maplewood whisper-hisses. 

“Hey- you woke me up, yelling about your bleeding cereal,” Whiteman counters, but he makes room for her on the sofa as he says it. “So,” he says. “What’s the plan, for today?”