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It begins with a case they take from the ghost of an old houndsman, who has recently felt something in the night stalking him. He promises a bag of ghost dog teeth as payment, which are especially good ingredients for tracking potions, and the Dead Boy Detectives accept the case with little delay.
They set a trap for whatever beast has set its sights on the houndsman that night: a binding circle combined with a spell to reveal any invisible beings, placed just outside the kennels the houndsman prefers to haunt. Then they wait, Edwin sitting with his legs and arms crossed, Charles orbiting around him and switching between occupying himself with his bag of tricks and pacing the perimeter with his spyglass held to his eye.
A little after midnight, the wails of ghostly hounds begin to fill the air. No wonder this property sits abandoned—any living owner would think the place the stuff of nightmares. Charles and Edwin wait, phantom breaths held, as the howls and barks grow in agitation and a sudden flash illuminates the kennels—the trap triggering.
“Gotcha!” Charles whoops, as they abandon their stakeout and jog to the kennels. Inside, the ghost dogs are still going quite mad, barking and running around their cages, but inside the binding circle is a thrashing, fleshy, furry figure that Edwin immediately recognizes by the way it makes his insides flash cold and his feet ache to run.
“Hellhound,” he chokes out, fighting that eternal impulse to stay quiet, stay quiet. “Charles, Demonic Maladies and Magic?” he requests, holding out a hand that only doesn’t shake by virtue of his faith in Charles’ binding runes. No hellish being, hound or other, will be escaping a circle drawn by Charles Rowland.
“Got it, mate,” Charles says, fishing around in his bag for said volume. He hands it over and then fishes out his cricket bat while Edwin flips to the correct page. As Edwin starts to recite the passage he knows will banish the hellhound from this plane, Charles stands protectively in front of him, eyes trained on the snarling ball of teeth throwing itself against the barrier of the circle.
All is going exactly to plan, and Edwin dares to think about how they might spend the rest of the night as soon as they get back to the office—perhaps they shall have time to finish that new game Charles acquired for his handheld gaming system, the one where the attorneys with very sharp hair present their evidence in court.
And then, of course, because Fate rarely smiles on Edwin Payne, one of the ghost dogs slips its cage somehow, runs straight at them, and ends up treading right over the painted rune that keeps the hellhound in a singular form. “Bollocks!” Charles yells, backing up and forcing Edwin to back up too with a hand thrown over his chest. “How much longer?”
Edwin doesn’t reply, because otherwise he’ll have to start the exorcism over. Luckily it’s only three more short phrases—he pays every bit of attention he has to ensuring his enunciation is perfect, his eyes skating over the Latin words like a paper glider cutting smoothly through the air. Charles is goading the hellhound to go for him, not Edwin, and Edwin’s heart is in his throat but he can’t speed up, he can’t risk having to start over. There’s a growl, a yelp, and a thud in quick succession—Edwin looks up from his tome as he says the last word and sees both Charles and the body of the hellhound collapsed on the floor.
“Charles!” he yells, throwing himself to his knees at his best friend’s side. Out of the corner of his eye, the hellhound dissolves into ash as if it were never there at all. Edwin reaches out and shakes Charles’ shoulder, rewarded with those deep brown eyes fluttering open and a whine slipping from his mouth. “Are you alright?”
Instead of answering, Charles turns his body and buries his face in Edwin’s lap, throwing his arms around Edwin. He must have had quite a scare. Edwin shushes him and, somewhat awkwardly, rubs a hand down the back of his neck and shoulder blades. “Let us return to the office, hmm?”
Charles expresses no desire to play through more of his detective game while Edwin watches, which is fine with Edwin—with all the recent advancements in technology, Charles spends too much time as is with his eyes glued to pixels on a screen. Instead, Edwin reads aloud to him while Charles curls up on the sofa next to him, seemingly content to lie there all night.
In the morning, the houndsman returns to the agency as instructed, and Edwin must regretfully untangle himself from beneath Charles’ bulk to answer the door. He lets the houndsman in, slightly delayed by small talk of weather and polite inquiries as to how the man’s dogs are doing, and goes to sit behind his desk to discuss the handling of payment and case-closing paperwork, only to stop dead in his tracks.
Charles is standing by the bookshelf, trying to cram a desiccated zombie hand inside of his mouth. “…Charles?” Edwin asks, because he cannot possibly think of anything else to say, utterly baffled.
“Your partner doing alright there?” the houndsman murmurs, peering over Edwin’s shoulder.
Upon being caught, Charles drops the zombie hand to the floor, where it lands with an innocuous thump and rolls underneath the desk. “What?” he says innocently. “Need something?”
“…Is there a reason you decided to gnaw on our zombie hand? Are you feeling quite alright?” He crosses the room, intent on pulling Charles into the light and examining him for anything he must have missed last night, but Charles meets him halfway, burying his face in Edwin’s neck.
“Sorry, sorry, please don’t be angry,” he pleads. “I didn’t mean to. Sorry.”
…This is even more concerning than Charles deciding their zombie hand made for a suitable snack. “I’m not angry with you,” Edwin reassures him. “I’ve already put it out of my mind.” Perhaps Charles’ behavior isn’t that strange. After all, there have been many times when Charles’ natural impulsiveness manifested in him putting things in his mouth that do not belong there. During his life, Edwin never could have predicted the amount of times he would end up saying magically resonant crystals are not edible, even by ghosts in his afterlife, but reality is never the same as expectations, is it?
Edwin clears his throat and gently removes Charles from his embrace. “Why don’t we see about handling our business with Mr. Owens.”
Closing the case doesn’t take any longer than usual—teeth exchange hands, Mr. Owens bids them goodbye, and then Edwin pulls out his fountain pen to complete their case notes. He’s interrupted, however, by Charles’ leg bouncing quite vigorously next to his own. He doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s jostling Edwin, making it quite impossible to maintain proper penmanship.
“Charles,” Edwin mutters, and when that has no effect, “Charles.”
“Sorry,” Charles says quickly, launching himself off the desk. “Let’s go out.”
“But I haven’t filed the case yet. You love naming cases.”
“We can do that later, come on, let’s go out, it’s all boring and stuffy in here,” Charles urges him, tugging Edwin by the hand until he acquiesces to standing and putting his coat on. Edwin supposes it’s no surprise that Charles is antsy—they did spend all night waiting on a stakeout, then returned to the office to read until morning.
Charles seems hard-pressed to keep pace with Edwin today—where normally he would match Edwin stride-for-stride, now he keeps pulling ahead in his eagerness only to remember Edwin and fall back, repeating the process every few seconds.
“Lord, one would think I’d kept you cooped up for a week,” Edwin says fondly. “The park, then?” It’s one of Charles’ favorite spots whenever he gets this sort of itch.
It’s sort of a grey, drizzly day out, so there aren’t many of the living about. Edwin sits on a bench, pulls out his notebook, and spends some time sketching, first the scenery around him and then trying to capture Charles in motion, quick strokes that don’t quite match the same energy. Well, this is why Edwin prefers himself a writer over an artist.
Meanwhile, Charles has apparently been tormenting—or perhaps being tormented by—a stray cat. Londoners of the feline variety can be quite difficult. Charles is standing beneath a tree, teeth bared, fists clenched. Above him, a tortoiseshell clings to a branch and growls quite fiercely.
“Both of you, stop that,” Edwin chides, striding over. “Whatever disagreement you are having, we can resolve it like civilized beings.” He grabs one of Charles’ fists, intent on relaxing it with his own grip, and is shocked to hear that Charles is also growling, low and under his breath.
It takes a lot for Charles to display his anger so openly—whatever this cat said must have been truly foul.
“Oi, I’m the victim here! Get this fucking madman away from me, or the Cat Queen will hear about it!” the cat yowls, then turns tail and scarpers further up into the tree. Edwin sighs. Feline dramatics.
“Come on, leave her be. Her poor manners are nothing to get your feathers ruffled about,” Edwin says, dusting invisible lint off of Charles’ shoulders. It does do some measure of good, as the tense line of them relaxes and the growl dies in his throat.
“Fine,” Charles says sullenly, letting Edwin pull him away from the tree and back to the office.
They’re almost home when Charles, previously occupied by telling Edwin all about the squirrel he chased around the park, suddenly falls silent. Edwin, who admittedly had tuned Charles out as they entered minute twenty of squirrel talk, refocuses just in time to see Charles dart out into the street in pursuit of a cab flying past them.
Without thinking, Edwin follows, his long legs eating up the pavement as he catches up and then overtakes Charles. He has no idea what Charles is doing, nor does Charles have the time or breath to explain, but whatever reason he has for chasing down this cab must be good. He must have seen something Edwin didn’t.
Another few seconds has Edwin catching up to the cab, and then, with no idea of what Charles wants with it, he uses all his strength to bump into the side of it, causing a wobble that will surely upset the driver enough to pull over. Inside the cab, Edwin can see the driver curse, flip on his hazards, and then slow as he pulls to the side of the road. Charles catches up as the cabbie pulls to a stop, his hands on his knees, and Edwin waits for him to act.
When he finally catches his breath, he stands up straight, patting Edwin companionably on the shoulder. “Nice job, mate.”
Then he turns back in the direction of the office, leaving the thoroughly confused cabbie behind. Edwin follows, turning the strange behavior over in his mind, but unable to articulate a proper question, as any good detective should. It’s a matter of trust, Edwin supposes—Charles trusted him to handle whatever issue he spotted, and now it’s Edwin’s turn to trust that he did actually handle the issue, and Charles doesn’t see the need to discuss it. It’s the simplest, most logical option.
“So the squirrel, right, that bloody bastard, I wasn’t gonna let him get away…” Charles continues as Edwin pulls even with him, as if nothing ever happened.
Edwin forgets all about his doubts as soon as they return to the office. Charles lies down for a nap, as he sometimes does, and Edwin settles in for some light reading on psychic disturbances and how they affect ley lines. Charles would inevitably be bored by the subject, so it’s best for Edwin to conduct this research during his moments of solitude.
He gets a few chapters in, simultaneously annotating passages in his notebook, before Charles starts to stir. “Good afternoon,” Edwin says, putting his book aside and laying a hand on Charles’ ankle. “Sleep well?”
“Mhm,” Charles says, yawning. Then, almost lazily, he rolls off the sofa and collapses at Edwin’s feet, resting his chin on Edwin’s knee. “I like you.”
“I like you too,” Edwin replies, bemused. “But what brings on such a declaration?”
Charles shrugs. He shuffles himself ever closer, until he’s practically plastered to Edwin’s calf, then sighs in contentment and closes his eyes. Edwin feels a strange swell of fondness, not at all uncomfortable with Charles’ closeness, as new as it is for him to display it this way.
Edwin picks up his book again, content to let Charles pin him in place for the time being, and returns to his reading, but before long a steady, rhythmic movement of Charles’ body pierces his concentration. He’s rocking himself back and forth, an alternating pressure against Edwin’s shin, there and then gone. There’s something hard meeting the thin skin that covers bone, rubbing up against the thick cotton of his socks, almost like—
“Charles!” Edwin yelps, slamming the book shut. “Are you—do you need a moment of privacy?” he hisses.
Charles is clearly pleasuring himself against Edwin’s leg, and now that Edwin’s looking for it he can see the tip of Charles’ pink tongue poking out from between his teeth, the slight furrow to his brow and the heavier breaths. Edwin breathes in deeply and casts his gaze to the ceiling.
…He’s not not amenable to the prospect. Truthfully, the sight of Charles losing himself to bliss because of Edwin’s own body is having a not-unnoticeable effect on certain parts of his anatomy that see little action. He only supposed that such activities would never occur between them, or if they did, it would be after lengthy discussion.
Charles, it seems, has decided that actions speak better than words, which is fitting for him, Edwin thinks. However, Edwin is loath to interrupt him, but simultaneously unwilling to… ah… participate until he has talked about it with Charles. And perhaps also found a fire bucket in which to douse his burning face.
Lost in his embarrassment, Edwin doesn’t notice when Charles finishes, only that at some point his motions slow and then stop as he sinks even further against Edwin in satisfaction. Edwin is sure that the redness of his complexion must be visible from the heavens.
Clearing his throat, he decides that the only way to battle his own awkwardness is to bully his way past it. “Shall we name our most recent case now? How do you feel about The Case of the Hounded Houndsman?”
“Bit repetitive,” Charles says, wrinkling his nose, and sounding as if it were a normal Tuesday. “What about The Case of the Bound Hounds?”
“Much better,” Edwin agrees, and gently extricates his leg from Charles’ grip so that he can appropriately label and file the report.
Edwin ponders over how to broach the subject of negotiating intimate relations with Charles for the following week, coming up empty each time he turns it over in his head. Somewhat perversely, he’s afraid of ruining everything they have by coming on too strong, but what could be a stronger opener than—than— that ?
Still, every time Edwin gathers his strength to begin an uncomfortable conversation, fear stills his tongue, and he stalls long enough that some other topic comes up and the idea falls to the back of his mind again, ready for another cycle.
In fact, he’s gathering his strength for a fifth try when suddenly, the smell of sulfur fills the street they’re walking along. A deep rumbling shakes his bones, and an awful sense of premonition strikes him just as the pavement of the road cracks open and reveals a gaping maw, lit by the unmistakable light of hellfire and echoing with the cackles of the damned.
They don’t have any supplies, no ready-made demon traps, no holy water, no holy fire Molotov cocktails. There’s also no clear reason for why a hellmouth has suddenly opened in the middle of bloody Chelsea. They could run, but if Edwin is the reason why a red-skinned demon with flames for eyes is currently clambering out of Hell, then there’s little hope of escaping.
He stands, frozen, as the crack grows bigger and Charles forces himself in front of Edwin, planting his feet squarely and baring his teeth in a snarl. “Get back!” he yells, and Edwin can’t tell if he’s talking to him or to the demon, who has yanked the tip of its long tail free from the gaping void and is now drawing itself up to full height.
“Whoo, what a climb that is,” the demon says, cracking its back. Edwin hears what he inexplicably knows to be seventy-four distinct vertebrae clicking into alignment. “No wonder the fourth circle down never come up here.”
Edwin tries to peek around Charles, but every time he moves, Charles blocks his view, as if he could protect Edwin by his presence alone.
“Humans!” the demon cries, apparently upon spotting them. “Lucifer, that’ll be a lot of paperwork. This area was supposed to be empty.” It sniffs, and the flames in its eyes glow a little redder. “Oh, just ghosts. Carry on then, gentlemen… Hang on, is that you, Furry?” The demon sniffs again. “Oh, get out of him, that’s just nasty.”
Edwin is utterly lost by this conversation. The demon doesn’t seem to be concerned with him at all, despite Edwin assuming that all of Hell would be under orders to return its wayward escaped soul. Instead, it seems more concerned with Charles, but is calling him… furry?
“Come on, drop it, get out,” the demon says, striding toward them on the lizard legs it possesses. Edwin scrambles backward, both of his own accord and because Charles is backing away as well, pushing him back with his body.
“You can’t have him!” Charles growls. “He’s mine, get away!”
“I didn’t come for him,” the demon explains, more patiently than Edwin thought demons were capable of. “Why do you think… oh, I see. Is that little Edwin Payne I spy? Oh, good job, Furry, well done, using that big nose of yours.” The demon steps closer, hand outstretched to… pat Charles on the head?
Charles lunges up and bites, his teeth meeting only air. “Alright, testy,” the demon says. “Now come on, grab the boy and let’s go back home. I’ve got a fresh batch of CEOs in, and I know how you love to gnaw on them.”
“No!” Charles yells, and turns and wraps himself around Edwin like an octopus.
“Furcifer,” the demon says, its voice dropping several registers and tinged with the threat of brimstone. “Heel.”
As if controlled by a puppet, Charles jerkily unwinds himself from Edwin and stumbles back to stand by the demon’s side, head hanging. The demon tangles its claws in the collar of Charles’ jacket, which is perhaps the worst sight Edwin has ever been forced to see, all seventy-three years of Hell included. “Terribly sorry about this,” the demon apologizes to Edwin. “She got loose when some idiot decided to summon me right out of the middle of a walk. I hope she was the good kind of trouble?”
“What are you talking about?” Edwin yells, perhaps a touch hysterically.
“Oh, come now, no need to shout. You’ll have your boy back in just a minute, hold on a tick,” the demon says crossly. “Or, rather, I guess you won’t, because you’ll also need to come back with us. You never did a stint in Avarice, did you? You’ll like it there, much nicer than that awful Doll House.”
Charles growls again, stopping when the demon shakes him. “What’s gotten into you? It’s that boy, isn’t it. Alright, enough of this.” The demon, still gripping Charles by the collar of his jacket, takes its other hand and plunges it into Charles’ chest, burying it up to the wrist.
Edwin screams, and Charles probably screams as well, and there’s a third noise, an unearthly howl that echoes through the air, and as Edwin watches Charles seems to split, the boy-shape stumbling forward out of the demon’s grip as the other shape—a tornado of fur and teeth—stays firmly caught.
It’s the hellhound they thought they banished last week, and suddenly a lot of things make more sense. Unfortunately, Edwin is too busy gathering Charles up off the ground so they can run to care.
“Oi, stop running! Get back here!” the demon calls after them, but appears too busy trying to wrangle Furcifer to chase after them. “Oh, Lucifer’s buggered arse.”
Edwin dives into a car’s rearview mirror, trusting Charles to follow, and they hop between several continents in a row, ending up somewhere in the Vatican by the end of their flight. Hopefully it’s far enough and consecrated enough to dissuade any immediate attempts to track them down. Edwin stands with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath, while Charles sits with his back leaning against Edwin’s shins, similarly panting.
He recovers first, and tilts his head back to look up at Edwin, leant half over him. “Mate,” he says, and that’s all he really has to say, doesn’t he.
“I’m very sorry I didn’t realize that you were possessed by a hellhound,” Edwin says miserably.
“Edwin. The cat. The bloody zombie hand. Humping your leg?!” Charles says. “Mate.”
“I’m sorry!” Edwin wails, the ridiculousness of the situation fully hitting him. He doesn’t know whether to collapse in laughter or tears. “In my defense, you’ve behaved in that way multiple times in the past.”
“Never in my life— in my afterlife— have I ever wanted to chew on a desiccated zombie hand.” But he pauses. “Alright, I’ll give you the cat, and maybe chasing the car as well.” He bites his lip, then cracks a smile. “Possessed by a hellhound, bloody hell. And you charmed it, you bloody marvel, you.”
“I certainly did not intend to. Had I known, I would have had an exorcism ready within moments.” Privately, Edwin is rather certain that Charles’ own feelings had more to do with it than anything Edwin did. In certain cases, it’s not uncommon for the feelings of the possessed to influence their possessor’s behaviors.
“Lucky you didn’t. She really didn’t want to go, might have ripped me apart trying to stay,” Charles says. “Is it weird that I’m sort of bummed about it? She wasn’t so bad, really.”
Edwin feels a pang of regret for Furcifer, who will probably spend several centuries back in Avarice under her owner’s watchful eye. Perhaps she and him could be considered kindred spirits, in a way. Both seeking escape, both unreasonably attached to a ghost by the name of Charles Rowland.
“All the same, I’d rather have you back,” Edwin replies. “Do you think it safe to return to the office? I’d like to strengthen the wards.”
Charles glances around, noting the visible lack of any attempted demonic intrusions nearby. “Yeah, probably. I reckon ol’ Mammon probably has his hands full with Furry. Could slip in, renew the wards, put the word out on the street to keep an eye out for any demonic activity nearby.”
It’s as solid a plan as any. Edwin nods, straightens, and holds a hand out to pull Charles to his feet.
“And then we can talk about how you definitely liked me rubbing off on you.”
“Charles!”