Work Text:
June, 2028
“Beautiful day for it.”
The sunlight dances off the Thames, and they’re in the part of Chelsea that just seems to be made up of flower gardens, little bridges and summer mornings.
“Mm.”
Charles glances over at Edwin. “Cheer up. It might never happen.”
Edwin puts his espresso cup down on the saucer with a morose little click. “It already has,” he says glumly. “A whole day? Are you quite certain?”
“‘Fraid so.” Charles leans back in his chair and grins at him. “A whole day of hanging out with your mates, helping them prepare for the happiest day of their lives.”
“Ugh.”
“Knew you’d be pleased.”
Under the canopy of gently-waving wisteria, Edwin looks a little tired. He’s fresh off a three day event in Norfolk, poor bloke; Charles only picked him up from Liverpool Street an hour ago. They’re cutting it fine to get to the shop but Edwin had dug his heels in and flatly refused to go a step further without decent coffee.
What’s bloody ridiculous, right, is how good he looks. Three days at the showground, followed by a two and a half hour journey across East Anglia, and Edwin still manages to look delicious. He has one long leg kicked out to the side of the table and that blue shirt is showing off his summer tan a treat. If they didn’t have to be presentable in public sharpish, Charles would absolutely drag him off somewhere for a quickie.
The more things change, eh?
Edwin drains the rest of his espresso and sighs. “I suppose there is no putting this off any longer.”
Charles gets to his feet and picks up Edwin’s bag. “Come on. It’s for Niko, yeah?”
“And only for Niko.” Edwin draws himself up like he’s off to face the firing squad. “I shall pay the bill, then we’ll go.”
*
Outside the discreet bridal boutique, Charles stops Edwin with a hand on his chest. “Remember what we talked about, yeah?” he says.
Edwin rolls his eyes. “Charles, I’m quite capable of—”
“When she says how do I look, you’ve got three options.”
“We have discussed this extensively, you needn’t worry that I’m going to embarrass you—”
Charles holds up three fingers. “One, you look beautiful. Simple, classic, can’t go wrong. Two, I think I’m gonna cry. Don’t overdo it, though, or it’s gonna sound like you’re being sarky. Three, more champagne for the bride, but you’ve got to read the room there.”
Edwin looks pained. “Understood,” he says. “Shall we?”
Charles presses the buzzer, and after a long moment, the door opens a crack to reveal a narrow sliver of a face.
“Yes?”
Charles puts on his best smile and elbows Edwin in the ribs. “Charles Rowland and Edwin Payne, here to meet Niko Sasaki.”
“One moment, please.”
The door closes again.
Edwin opens his mouth but Charles cuts his eyes at him before he can say anything. “Don’t you start.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Edwin murmurs out of the corner of his mouth. “I was merely going to observe that the exorbitant fees they charge clearly don’t go towards customer service.”
Charles snickers. “Well, they’re posh like you, ain’t they? Posh people don’t got no manners.”
“Oh really.” Edwin takes a step forward into Charles’ space, looking down his long nose at Charles’ mouth.
“Mm.” Charles sways towards him like a magnet, mouth first. “Taken me four years to get you housetrained.”
Edwin lets out a little huff of a laugh, and they’re a breath away from a quick snog when the door snaps open again and they spring apart.
“Mr. Rowland, Mr. Payne, I’m so sorry for the wait.” An immaculately tailored and coiffured blonde woman beckons them past her into the hall. She’s wearing a headset microphone, and Charles can’t help but think there’s something of the presidential bodyguard about her. “Please do come up – mind your heads, the ceiling dips at the top.”
Edwin and Charles head up a narrow staircase, obediently ducking under the beam at the top of the stairs. At the top is an airy attic room, flooded with natural light from the floor-to-ceiling windows and crowded with fresh flowers, but Charles barely gets a glimpse of it before Niko is throwing herself into Edwin’s arms with a shriek of excitement.
“Hello, Niko,” says Edwin, sounding slightly strangled by the force of the hug.
“You came!” she cries, disentangling herself from Edwin and moving onto Charles.
“Wouldn’t’ve missed it for the world, love,” he says, giving her a squeeze as Edwin goes to greet Niko’s mum with a bow. The blonde woman who let them in presses champagne flutes into their hands, and Niko and her mum fall back into the argument they were having before Charles and Edwin arrived. Niko’s obaachan has already been invoked three times, which is saying something, as Charles knows for a fact that Niko’s obaachan is dead.
“She thinks it should be fancier,” says Niko, picking her way over to the full length mirror. She looks unearthly, with her long white hair and the long white sheath dress, but then she rolls her eyes and ruins the effect. “It’s not supposed to be fancy, it’s going to have the shiromuku over it for the ceremony anyway—”
Ayano says something dismal in Japanese that makes Niko huff as she turns away from the mirror. Charles grins, bending down to kiss Niko’s mum on the cheek. “Alright?”
“Hello, Charles.” Ayano rolls her eyes just like Niko and throws up her hands. “The dress is so plain! And look at her hair!”
“She looks stunning,” Charles says loyally, giving Niko a discreet thumbs up behind Ayano’s back. Niko bleached her hair for a stunt with a Tokyo fashion house last summer, and liked it so much she kept it that way. “Right, Edwin?”
He watches Edwin take a sip out of his champagne flute and pull a face when he thinks nobody’s looking. “Ugh—I mean, yes. Niko, you look terribly chic. Elegantly understated, which I guarantee Crystal will not be.”
Crystal is having her fitting done with her society girlfriends in another boutique across town. Edwin and Charles weren’t invited, which is no skin off Charles’ nose. Those girls scare the shit out of him, and besides, as Crystal said, what the fuck do Charles and Edwin know about couture? Charles likes to think he’s a pretty sharp dresser, but frocks aren’t really his area of expertise.
Charles and Edwin make themselves comfortable on the low velvet sofa with their glasses and watch as a small swarm of women gather around Niko, who’s still bickering with her mother, and start making minute adjustments to the dress, tweaking it here, putting in a pin there.
Edwin leans into him to mutter, “Prosecco, I ask you. You can’t tell me this place couldn’t afford proper champagne.”
“Behave,” Charles hisses. Edwin purses his lips, but at least he shuts up, and they watch as Niko is pinned and tucked.
“Okay!” she says, brightly. “What do you think?” She gives them a little twirl, arms held out to keep them away from the pins. Crystal was right: Charles doesn’t know the first thing about couture, but Niko looks so happy she might burst, and that’s more than enough for him.
“Bloody gorgeous, love,” he says. “That Crystal’s a lucky woman.” He glances over at Edwin and gives him a warning look. “Edwin? What do you think?”
“You look beautiful,” says Edwin, sincerely, and then, because he always comes through when it matters, “I think I’m going to cry.”
Niko looks triumphant and Ayano resigned. They pick up the thread of their argument again, but everyone can see who’s won.
Edwin throws back the rest of his glass and gives Charles a conspiratorial look. “You know,” he whispers, “this isn’t actually half bad.”
*
Charles steps out through the French windows onto the balcony garden, shaking out his hands and his nerves. Ayano’s speech is burning a hole in his jacket pocket where he’s keeping it like a talisman, even though he knows the whole thing off by heart and backwards by now.
He leans over the stone balcony and looks down at the traffic beetling along Park Lane below, taking a few deep breaths through his nose. He has the same feeling he used to get at the top of a vert as he flirted with dropping in.
“Beautiful occasion,” says a woman, half-hidden behind an enormous fern, and Charles almost jumps out of his skin.
“Bloody hell! Isn’t it just,” he says, pressing a hand to his chest. His heart’s going like the clappers. Now he’s recovered from the shock, he does his best to hoist a smile up onto his face. “Not like it would have been anything else, would it? Those girls know what they’re doing.”
The woman manages to struggle out from behind the pot plant, and Charles catches sight of the PRESS badge on her chest. He recognises her as one of the small, exclusive set of magazines who have been allowed in for the reception. Tatler, he reckons.
“Yes,” she says. She gives him a long look. “I’m so sorry, I know we’ve met, I just can’t remember where. Remind me?”
Charles grins. He’s met too many journalists to fall for that old chestnut. She knows who he is and he knows she knows it, but this is Crystal and Niko’s day, not his. He doesn’t ask her name, because if he does then she’ll have a chance to ask for his. “Sorry,” he says, instead. “Think I’ve just got one of those faces.”
“That must be it,” Ms. Tatler says, graciously, and shakes her head when he offers her a smoke. “I’m working, thanks. Are you enjoying yourself?”
“Everyone loves a wedding, don’t they?” he says, easily, spinning a cigarette between his fingers. He barely smokes these days and he doesn’t want to go back in smelling of fags, but having something to do with his hands is calming his nerves.
“Mm. They’re some of the better events I cover. At least we normally get fed and watered. What about you, are there any wedding bells in your future?”
Charles actually laughs at that. “No comment,” he says, and he gets a sharp-edged smile for his trouble. She’s so onto him.
“Well,” she says. “Maybe one day.”
Mercifully, Charles is spared from having to answer by Edwin emerging from the ballroom. He looks fit as in a dove-grey morning suit with a lilac bow-tie and buttonhole to match Crystal’s dress.
“Charles?” he says. No comment indeed, thinks Charles, as his heart turns over in his chest. “The coordinator sent me to find you, they want to start the speeches.” He clocks the journalist then, and frowns. “Oh. Hello. I recognise you.”
“Come on, mate,” says Charles. He tucks the cigarette back into his pocket and jogs over to the French doors to catch Edwin by the arm.
“Enjoy your evening!” Ms. Tatler calls behind him as they return to the party.
“Yeah, you too,” Charles says, dry-mouthed, straightening his jacket.
*
The relief of the speech going off without a hitch goes to Charles’ head way quicker than booze, and he’d already had a glass or two of champagne to wet his whistle. Crystal’s crying, Niko’s crying, Ayano’s crying, and Charles is crying as he watches them spin each other around the dancefloor. Ayano envelopes Crystal in a hug and Niko, towering over both of them in a new outfit and four-inch rhinestoned go-go boots, squeezes them both tight. All three women disappear under the foamy lilac clouds of Crystal’s dress.
“Fuckin’ hell,” Charles mutters, dabbing at his eyes with a napkin. That’s his eyeliner fucked.
“Well done, Charles,” Edwin murmurs behind him, one hand going to the small of his back, which is about as close to PDA as the bloke gets. “You did brilliantly.”
“Cheers. God, my knees are still shaking.”
“Fortunately, I know a good cure for shaking knees,” Edwin’s hand moves from his back to curl around his wrist. “Come and dance with me.”
Charles snorts. “Since when do you dance? Who are you and what have you done with Edwin?”
“I have been known to dance,” Edwin says primly, drawing Charles out onto the dancefloor. Crystal spots them both and hollers. “When the occasion calls for it.”
Charles eyes him. “How much champagne have you had?”
“About a bottle and a half. Shall we?”
*
It’s after midnight when Charles manages to pour Edwin into the back of an Uber and get them on their way to Victoria. The last train to Brighton isn’t for an hour or so, but Charles reckons he’s too old to be kipping on a station platform.
“He better not puke in my car,” says the Uber driver, eyeing Edwin in the rearview mirror.
“He’s not gonna puke,” Charles says, tucking Edwin’s legs out of the way and squeezing into the back seat next to him. “And if he does, I’ll give you two hundred quid. How about that?”
If anything, they’re past the puking stage and into the cuddly and catatonic stage. Edwin is mostly asleep, but he keeps listing across the car to lean against Charles, like he can’t bear their bodies to be apart for more than a second.
“Daft sod,” Charles mutters fondly. “You’re gonna feel like bloody murder tomorrow.”
Crystal and Niko had offered to fork out for a hotel room, but Charles and Edwin had decided to make it home instead. The dogs can be left with a sitter but it’s trickier to sort out the horses. Plus, with both of them away so much of the time, Charles always prefers to sleep in his own bed when he gets the chance.
Edwin mumbles something and shoves his face into Charles’ shoulder. He’s snoring, very quietly.
“I’ll tell you what, you’d better not be like this at our wedding,” Charles says and then freezes. He’s been keeping that daydream under lock and key for the last few months, only letting it out to look at it when he’s sure he’s not going to do anything stupid.
Edwin just makes a kind of snuffling noise and burrows closer.
“Ah, you’re not gonna remember this anyway,” Charles says quietly, slinging an arm around his shoulder and watching the lights of Central London go by.
*
Even if Charles’ body understood the concept of a lie-in, the dogs certainly don’t. Smithy starts the day at seven by slanging off a squirrel in the garden, which reminds Ollie that he’s due his breakfast. Charles heads downstairs to feed them and let them out, then turns on the kitchen TV while he waits for the kettle to boil.
His old mate Seán’s competing in Australia, winding up for LA later in the summer. It aches—it always does, like Charles’ metal bones when there’s a storm coming in—but it doesn’t hurt like he thought he would. He’s got Edwin, and the dogs, and he’s an awful surfer and a worse skier but he’s getting better all the time, and he picks up more than enough commentating work to keep him out of trouble. Niko should be out there with Seán, cutting through the competition like machine gun fire even at the ripe old age of twenty-two, but she smashed her right kneecap to powder back in November and her surgeon threatened to break the other one if she so much looked at a skateboard without his say-so.
The kettle clicks off. He pours water into his favourite mug and leaves his tea to brew while he putters around the kitchen, grabbing the tomato juice from the fridge and the Stoli from the drinks cabinet.
Yeah, he thinks, as he lets the dogs back in and watches Smithy mow Ollie down in his excitement to get back upstairs. This is it. Full send, and he’s stuck the landing.
Upstairs, Edwin is still asleep. Smithy leaps up onto the bed, landing squarely on Edwin’s stomach like a bowling ball, and Edwin folds up like a deckchair with a startled hurk. Charles reaches down to give Ollie a boost up—he’s twelve now, and getting pretty creaky—with a murmured, “There you go, mate.”
“Mmph.” Edwin tries to sit up and fails, on account of the sixteen kilos of excited staffie now draped over him like a bag of wet cement. “Good morning,” he croaks.
“Morning, sunshine.” Charles puts the bloody Mary down on Edwin’s bedside table, and Edwin groans, throwing a hand over his eyes.
“Is that for me? My hero.”
“It’s been said. How are you feeling?”
Edwin grimaces and takes a fortifying gulp of bloody Mary. “I am feeling,” he says, with dignity, “like it was perhaps a mistake to knock back quite so much Moët when I was planning to take Peaches out today.”
“Fresh air, innit? Bounce around a bit on the back of a horse and you’ll be right as rain in no time,” Charles says bracingly and laughs when Edwin goes a bit green. “Come on, you can’t think I wasn’t gonna milk this.”
“I’ve changed my mind. You’re ghastly. I hope one of the dogs shits in your shoes again. I’m not blaming you, of course, darling,” Edwin tells Ollie, who has tucked himself right up against Edwin’s body, his greying muzzle resting on Edwin’s knee.
Me and Ollie, thinks Charles.
“Well, day’s wasting. I’m gonna take the boys out for a run. Alright, Smiff?”
Smithy tumbles off the bed with a peal of delighted snorts and almost takes Charles out at the knees when he barrels past him down the stairs.
“Olls. Let’s go, mate.”
Ollie looks at him with those big, brown spaniel eyes and doesn’t budge.
Edwin smiles. “I think Ollie and I shall greet the morning in a more decorous manner.”
“Fair enough.” Charles stretches and watches Edwin’s eyes zero in on the stretch of tummy bared by his shirt. “Don’t expect this kind of treatment every time you come home hungover.”
“Very well.” Edwin settles himself back against the pillows and reaches for the bloody Mary, scratching Ollie absent-mindedly behind the ears.
Charles looks at them for a moment, then turns to go. Smithy’s probably trying to phase through the front door. Charles is halfway down to the hall and wondering what in the name of arse Smithy’s done with his other shoe when Edwin’s voice catches up with him.
“Oh, Charles?”
“Yeah, love?”
“You needn’t worry. I won’t be like that at ours.”
Charles nearly falls down the fucking stairs, but he pulls himself together, grinning like an idiot. “Steady on,” he calls back. “I ain’t asked you yet, have I?”