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The first time Crystal Palace met Edwin was, in no uncertain terms, a disaster.
Charles insists the disaster was half his fault. Truthfully, Crystal agrees, because what the fuck dude, if you own a cat who is famous in your friend group for mauling anyone who touches him without his permission fucking warn a girl.
In Charles’ defense, he does usually warn people. Crystal has now had the chance to hear him give his “Introduction to my fucking cat” speech more than a dozen times.
(When he gives it, he leaves out the “fucking” part. When Charles gives the speech, he starts it with before we go inside let me tell you about Edwin and you can just see the fucking stars in his eyes as he says the stupid feline’s name. But when Crystal gives the speech – which she has now had to do twice – she starts it “okay first here are the rules for dealing with my flatmate’s fucking cat.”)
Anyway the point is, Charles does have a whole canned speech that he gives about his cat. Which Crystal did not get, because he spent the whole bus ride back to his place and subsequent climb up to his third-floor flat trying to reassure her that there was no way David was going to track her down at his place. That if he did, he would regret it, because Charles keeps a cricket bat by the door and is happy to use it on guys who don’t understand that “no” means “no”, and that “I’m leaving you” means “don’t follow me.”
Crystal could kiss him, for that. She did, actually, on one very memorable occasion, before having nightmares about him for the next three nights and deciding that maybe jumping straight into a relationship with the guy who saved her from her last relationship wasn’t her best idea.
Anyway, circumstances being what they were, Crystal had walked into Charles’ flat without getting the cat talk. She'd never had a cat before, didn't know much about them aside from that they were cute and fuzzy and popular in internet memes. So when Edwin had come padding out to say hi to Charles...
She knows, now, that it’s not wise to try to grab a strange cat. Especially when you're balancing a massive duffle bag and still sort-of crying over the fact that your life has turned upside down in just under 12 hours, and literally just met the cat’s owner an hour ago. But she’d had a hell of a day, and she’d never really been around cats growing up, and she’d just seen his elegant little face and soft fur and all she’d thought was that she wanted to sink her hands into it.
Charles had washed out the cuts with stinging antiseptic, and covered them with bandaids, and sheepishly apologized for not warning her about Edwin, and cautioned her not to try to look for him. Crystal had gotten the memo. Steer clear of the cat if you want to live.
Unfortunately, steering clear of Edwin wasn’t really an option in Charles’ flat.
In fact calling it “Charles’ flat” almost felt like a misnomer. It was Edwin's flat. Edwin was everywhere in the space, even when he wasn't present. Cat-trees and empty high shelves from which to survey his domain, enclosed hiding spaces for him to lurk in and erupt without warning. It made Crystal uneasy the first few weeks. She could feel Edwin’s dislike of her, ever since that first day. She’d spent half her time looking over her shoulder, wondering if he was watching her from some high perch.
She’d talked to one of her old friends about it - one of the few she was still in touch with, after the whole blow-up with David. One of the few who had believed her when she said David was a monster. Vanessa had asked, gently, if Crystal could maybe get Charles to restrict Edwin to one room, at least until Crystal was more comfortable in the flat.
Crystal had outright laughed.
“Sorry,” she’d said, when she managed to get her mild hysteria under control. “I get what you’re saying. It’s just... if I asked Charles to pick between me and the cat I don’t think I’d get the question out before he picked the cat, y’know? He’s like... weirdly codependent about it. And I really don’t have anywhere else to go right now, so...”
Vanessa had nodded, and the question was dropped. But Crystal still remembers that moment of blinding clarity, that visceral certainty that this was Edwin’s home, and she was there on sufferance.
Eventually, with no other options, Crystal and Edwin had come to something of a truce. Crystal had taken to avoiding him as much as possible - keeping her hands to herself, walking wide around him whenever she can see him. She got used to hiding in the bathroom on the days when the feeling of something watching her from the upper shelf made her skin crawl.
Edwin, for his part, ignored her - as if once she'd stopped bothering him she was no longer worth his attention. He hadn’t clawed her since that first night, only lunging or hissing at her when she walked too close to him before realizing where he was.
That didn't mean she liked him, or vice versa. Charles, of course, insisted Edwin liked her just fine. Charles claimed Edwin was a sweetheart deep down, that he was just defensive of his space with strangers and would warm up to her in time. Crystal wasn’t so sure.
It was easy enough for Charles to talk about Edwin being a sweetheart. Edwin adored Charles – meowing excitedly when he got home from work, curling up on his lap and purring loud enough to wake the dead. When Charles was home, Edwin was never far away, following him around the flat and watching whatever he was doing, climbing up onto his shoulder or lap for a better view. When Charles went to another room, Edwin went too, finding a spot near Charles, or overlooking the room so he could keep an eye on things.
Crystal… Crystal was a different matter. Sure, Edwin didn't hide from her anymore. But he didn't exactly seek her out either. Not that she wanted him to, but it was hard to buy that he was warming up to her when he mostly just sat nearby and pretended she didn't exist.
She couldn't blame him for liking Charles better than her. Hell Crystal liked Charles better than she liked herself. It was hard not to like a guy who offered you a place to crash less than 10 minutes after meeting you, just because he saw you crying in a coffee shop because you had nowhere to go. It got even harder when he offered to kill your shitty ex for you. Or when he turned out to be unfailingly patient, and have an infectious sense of humour, and not flinch from even the worst of the venom that spilled out of Crystal's mouth when she was upset. Even his penchant for truly terrible pickup lines hadn't been enough to make her like him less.
The point is... there really was a reason she’d stuck around, despite the cat who despised her having the unquestioned run of the flat, and despite the fact that she was going on a month now of sleeping on Charles’ shitty couch. She'd felt safe there. It was the first place she'd felt safe in a long time. She hadn’t realized how much she’d gotten used to being scared shitless, until suddenly she wasn’t anymore. How long it had been since she'd been able to take a deep breath - since the first time David pinned her to the wall and asked if she wanted to die, and she knew, in her bones, that he wasn’t kidding.
Charles had done that for her. Charles had made her feel safe in her own skin again.
She really, really wishes Charles were here now.
“Crystal!!!” David’s raised voice echoes through the stairwell outside Charles’ flat. He hammers on the door, shaking the entire flat with the force of it, and Crystal flinches with every blow as she huddles in a ball in the far corner of Charles’ living room, pressed as far into it as Edwin’s stupid cat tree will allow.
“Crystal I know you’re in there!” David shouts. “Did you really think you could hide from me? I am not someone to be fucked with. I’m gonna make you regret this you stupid bitch. Just you wait.”
Distantly, some part of Crystal's frozen mind observes that threatening someone while trying to get them to take you back is probably a tactical error.
The larger part of her mind is occupied with visions of what’s going to happen if he succeeds in breaking down the door, which is rattling in truly worrying fashion.
How sure is he that she's in here? There's no way Charles would have told him, would he? No, Charles doesn't even have a way of contacting him. Could Vanessa have let something slip? But Crystal had been careful. She hadn't had anyone over to the flat, hadn't given even her closest friends the address, too aware of how easy it was to let something slip in a thoughtless moment.
Had he spotted her somewhere? Followed her back here? Hacked into some CCTV to track her movements?
He hits the door again, hard. Crystal jumps nearly out of her skin, and has to press her hand hard against her mouth to muffle the little squeak of terror that tried to escape her throat.
He’ll leave, she tells herself desperately.He’ll decide you’re not here, and he’ll leave.
It's an empty promise. She knows better. David won’t give up.
She remembers the first time she’d thought about leaving. How he’d... fucking sensed it somehow, and he’d dragged her through every relationship she’d blown up in the past year, every friend she wasn’t on speaking terms with anymore, every friend they still had who was more his friend than hers, and would never believe her. Reminded her how her parents had cut her off, and he’d promised her it would be fine, because he had money. Reminded her how much embarrassing or dubiously legal shit she’d done at his urging “for fun” that he had evidence of. God, she’d been so fucking stupid.
As if in answer to her thoughts, she hears him growl through the door. “I’m not going anywhere, Crystal. You have to come out some time. And when you do, I will be waiting for you. I’m not letting you go that easily.”
He rattles the door again, trying to twist the knob. Crystal had triple-locked it – knob, deadbolt, and chain – after Charles left for work that morning. She always does. She’s never been more grateful for that paranoid habit than she is right now.
He can’t get in,she tells herself.He can’t get in. He can’t-
There’s a momentary silence from outside. She wishes she could believe that he'd actually left, but she knows better, knows he's just planning his next move.
In the brief stretch of quiet she hears a soft sound from off to her left.
Charles’ godforsaken fucking cat has emerged from wherever he was napping to come and investigate the thunderstorm apparently happening in the hallway outside the flat. Crystal bites her lip and tries to wave him back. The last thing she needs is for David to drive Edwin into some kind of frenzy.
There’s another ear-splitting bang as David apparently body-slams the door with all his weight. Crystal flinches, curling into a ball and wrapping her hands over her head.
The next thing she hears is an unearthly yowl, and then 7 and a half pounds of angry feline charges into the door like a heat seeking missile.
Edwin slams into the door seemingly almost as hard as David, despite being a fraction of his size. He bounces off and hits the floor, and for a moment Crystal is terrified that she’s gotten the damn creature killed.
But Edwin is back on his feet in an instant, yowling like a horde of demons. He scratches and scrabbles at the door like a tiny, angry whirlwind, trying to find a way around or under it so he can get his tiny razor-sharp claws into his enemy’s soft flesh. He is rage incarnate, incandescent in his fury.
David had cursed and retreated to the far side of the landing at the first thump. Now she hears him approach the door again, only to swear and jump back as Edwin lets out a particularly piercing shriek and rakes his claws across the metal at the base of the door.
But it only takes a few seconds for David to get over his shock and start shaking the door handle again.
“Crystal!” he shouts. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on in there, but I am going to get through this door, and when I do you are going to regret making me come after you!”
He hammers his fist against the door again, and Crystal jerks back. Edwin doesn’t. He leaps at the door in renewed fury, scratching long furrows into the wood.
Maybe David backs off, because for a few seconds there is quiet. Edwin paces back and forth in front of the door, like a guard on patrol.
Crystal watches him, her heart in her throat.
Maybe David has left. Maybe-
There’s another crash, louder than any of the ones before, and the entire front wall rattles. Edwin screams and lashes out at the door again. There’s another momentary silence, and then a few hammering steps and another crash, and this time Crystal hears the sound of splintering wood as the door frame – cheaper and less solid than the door, starts to crack.
David is battering the door down.
In an instant she can see the whole thing. David crashing through the door, storming towards her, that destructive light in his eyes like the time he’d broken her car window when she refused to get out and talk to him. Only that time she’d been able to drive away, and this time she’s trapped, nothing between her and David but one stupid suicidal cat.
There’s another enormous crash, and a louder splintering sound from the door frame. David is yelling threats and demands and calling her every name in the book, and Edwin is shrieking like a banshee and shredding his claws against the wood of Charles’ door, and Crystal has hit her fucking limit.
She bolts, running for Charles’ bathroom, bursting through the door and slamming it behind her, locking it in a single motion. She doesn’t have anything to barricade it with, but she shoves all the towels she can find around the door, hoping that whatever minimal friction they can provide might help. Her hands shake as she fumbles for her phone. It’s only as she opens the app and starts to dial 999 that she realizes she’s left Edwin outside.
Fuck.
God, she’s a monster. That stupid cat went after David for her without a second’s hesitation, and Crystal just locked him out of the only safe place in the flat. If David hurts him Charles will never forgive her.
If David hurts him, she’ll never forgive herself.
Nightmares play out before her mind’s eye. David breaking through the door, Edwin’s tiny feline body flung across the room...
She can still feel the walls shaking with David's bodyslams against the door. Or maybe that’s her imagination. Maybe it’s just her that’s shaking. She can hear Edwin screaming up a storm from his place by the door.
She ought to go back out there, try to get the stupid cat somewhere safe.
She ought to. But she can’t. She can’t make herself move.
Besides, if she did go back out there, what would she do? Charles is the only person who can pick up Edwin with impunity. Maybe she could scare him off, make him to hide somewhere safe...
But if he hasn’t run from David, she doesn’t know what she could possibly do to make him stand down.
Silent tears drip down her cheeks, and she finds herself resorting to pleading with the universe to keep that dumbass little cat safe.
At some point, she realizes the flat has gone quiet. She can’t hear David hammering on the door anymore. She can’t hear Edwin yowling by the door either. She hopes that means he’s gone. She hopes Edwin's alright. He has to be, right? He has to be because if David had gotten inside, he’d be at the bathroom door next.
She looks down at her phone, two 9s already punched in. She’d never gotten around to hitting the third. She’s such a fucking idiot.
She doesn’t hit the last number. She doesn’t leave the bathroom either. After a while the tears stop, and the silence starts to close in around her like cotton wool: stifling. Safe.
God, she’s so tired.
She doesn’t know how long it’s been when she hears the click of the front door opening – unlocked, not battered down. Charles must be home.
Sure enough, there’s an excited meow of greeting. But it’s not followed, as it usually is, by Edwin enthusiastically climbing into Charles’ arms to purr like a tiny kitty motorcycle. Instead there’s a series of urgent meows as Edwin leads Charles to the bathroom and Crystal hears him bump his head gently against the door.
A soft, careful knock comes next, and then Charles’ voice.
“Crystal?" he says gently. "It’s alright – David’s gone. You can come out.”
Crystal takes a long, shuddering breath as the last of her terror leaves her.
She’s not sure she wants to come out. Part of her wants to stay locked in this bathroom until the heat death of the universe.
Instead she scrubs her eyes and splashes some cold water on her face until she looks human again, and unlocks the door.
Charles practically sags with relief when she swings the door open. She’s not really looking at him though. Her eyes are drawn to the stupid cat he's scooped into his arms, the piercing green eyes and pricked little ears. He looks alright – she runs her eyes over his fur. It looks fine. She doesn't see any blood or missing fur. He looks exactly like he always does. Cool. Distant. Likely to take her hand off at the wrist if she tries to pet him.
She wants to anyway. Wants to reassure herself that he’s alright, that David didn’t hurt him, that he didn’t hurt himself hitting the door, or-
“You alright?” Charles asks softly.
Crystal jerks her eyes away from the cat, and up to meet his gaze, his warm brown eyes all worried reassurance.
“I’m fine,” she says. “Edwin, is he-” she swallows, suddenly feeling a lump in her throat. “He tried to fight him off,” she says. “He hit the door pretty hard. He should get checked out.”
“He’s fine,” says Charles. “I’ll take him to Jenny tomorrow to make sure, but he’s moving alright, and I looked him over when I got home. He'll be okay. He's tougher than he looks.”
He leads her into the living room and starts making tea. Crystal would rather have coffee, but she's learned that trying to stop an English person from making tea when someone is upset and rattled is a lost cause, so she leaves him to it. He’s probably upset and rattled too. She stares at the splintered doorframe, a few bits of broken plaster on Charles’ floor from where the force of David’s efforts had cracked the cheap interior wall.
He’d been so close to breaking through. How many more tries would it have taken for him to crack through the wood and make it into the flat?
“Don’t mind that,” says Charles, following her gaze. “I’ll call the landlord and get it sorted. Take this.”
She looks down to find him pressing a cup of hot tea, thick with cream and sugar, into her hands. He leads her to the couch and sits her down on it. He perches on the arm of the couch, one leg tucked up under himself. It’s not good for the furniture, but what the hell, it’s his couch. He can break it if he wants.
She can see the nervous energy running through him, the way his eyes roam between her, and the door, and the closet where he keeps his cricket bat.
The tea is too sweet, and the earthy flavour isn’t her favourite. She likes the bitterness of coffee. Clears the cobwebs out of her mouth and her head. But it’s not bad. She takes another sip.
“Sorry about your door,” she mumbles.
“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t you apologize for what he did. This isn’t on you.”
She stares down into her cup. Tears prickle in her eyes, again, and logically she knows it’s just the adrenaline, that coming down from a panic like that makes people weepy, but she’s so fucking tired of crying about this.
“I’m gonna have to move,” she says miserably.
“No you’re not,” says Charles firmly. He says it as though it’s decided, as though there’s no doubt at all that things are going to be okay.
She stares at him.
“I mean you can, if you want,” he says. “But he’d just try to find you there too, wouldn’t he? And you’ve got friends here. Not just me either. Eden, in number 6, said if we needed help teaching him a lesson to let her and her wife know. Said they’ve got lots of practice makin’ people wish they’d minded their own.”
She can’t help laughing at that. She’s only caught glimpses of the couple that lives in the flat across from Charles’, but one of them is built like a brick shithouse. Crystal wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of her.
“You’ll be alright,” says Charles. “We’ll call the landlord, and we’ll make a police report. Eden was the one who came home and found him in the hall, and saw him off – she’ll be able to give a statement. And the CCTV outside will have caught him coming and going. And there’s the door as proof he was trying to break in. That piece of shit isn’t gonna drive you out of your home. I won’t be havin’ it.”
The vehemence in his tone takes her by surprise. Crystal knows that Charles likes her. But well, there’s liking someone, and then there’s being fine with it when their toxic ex tries to break into your home. Lots of Crystal’s friends wouldn’t have stood for that. Most of them wouldn’t have.
Your home, he’d said. Like she wasn’t just crashing on his couch because she has nowhere else. Like she belongs here.
She hasn’t really felt like she belonged anywhere in a long time. Not with her parents, or in the flat they’d rented for her so she could go to school while they jetted around the world putting on shows. Not with most of her old friend group, who had mostly tolerated her because she knew the right people to get them into the best clubs.
David had made her feel that way at first. Like she was somebody important in her own right. Special.
That had gone sour quickly enough.
“Are you asking me to move in with you?” she asks.
Charles coughs, and blushes. “I was gonna be a little smoother about it, I guess. But I figured... well, you livin’ here has gone alright the last month, hasn’t it? You wouldn’t have to start payin' rent or anything, at least not right away, but I thought...might be a good thing for all of us.”
Edwin had vanished at some point between getting to the living room and Charles’ offer. Now he reappears, jumps up onto the couch and rubs his head against Charles’ knee. Charles scratches him behind the ears.
“Finished checking the perimeter, mate?” he asks. Edwin makes a soft sound, and bumps his head against Charles again, but he doesn’t climb up into Charles’ lap like Crystal expects. Instead he turns around and deliberately walks over to her, steps carefully up onto her legs, and curls up in her lap. A second later she hears that little rumbling purr, and feels his ribs vibrating against her legs.
Crystal hardly dares to breathe.
Edwin is sitting in her lap. On purpose. Edwin is sitting in her lap and purring.
She looks up at at Charles, mostly to confirm that she's not hallucinating. He grins at her.
She turns her attention back to the cat. He's puddled in a little C shape, his tail curled around his back feet. The warm solid weight of him on her lap is bizarrely comforting. At the same time, she can’t help being viscerally of how small he is. She can feel the sharp edges of his jaw where his chin rests on her knee, the narrow bones of his legs.
She doesn’t run a hand down his back to feel the faint ridge of his spine, the little cage of his ribs under the fur.
She never imagined that something so small would leap to her defense like that.
Charles must read the direction of her thoughts, because he says softly, “He was still keeping watch when I got home, you know. Hissed at me when I grabbed the door to unlock it. He was so ready for a fight, 'til he saw it was me. Even then, he wouldn’t let me sit down till I came to check on you.”
“I just don’t understand,” Crystal says. She looks down at the little creature in her lap, his striped gray-brown fur rippling faintly with his small movements. Her voice breaks, a little. “He doesn’t even like me.”
Even that is an understatement. Edwin hates her. He hates her, right? He has to. Because Crystal hasn’t interacted with him even one time since he clawed her hand to ribbons for trying to pick him up. The most he’s done is watch her from on high, or disdainfully turn his back on her when she’s sitting in the living room.
Edwin loves Charles. Edwin sits on Charles’ shoulders and winds around his feet and nudges under his hand while he’s trying to play video games, and sleeps on his lap. He’s never done any of that with Crystal.
But he is, very clearly, curled up in her lap right now with no immediate intention of leaving.
“Nah,” says Charles softly, affection flowing through his voice like warm honey. “He’s just picky about who he lets touch him, isn't he? And he's got a right to be, after everything.”
He extends a gentle finger to stroke the top of Edwin’s head. Edwin purrs louder and digs his chin deeper into Crystal’s thigh.
“I ever tell you how Edwin and I met?” he asks.
She shakes her head.
He smiles fondly at the cat. “It was when I was at school,” he says. “A bunch of the lads on the cricket team got it into their heads to kick the shit outta one of the other Asian boys at the school. Callin’ him... well. I won’t repeat it.”
Crystal could imagine. She’d gotten her own share of that. Money couldn’t insulate her completely, no matter what her dad thought.
“Anyway,” Charles goes on, “I figured I’d stop ‘em, yeah? Charged in and pulled them off. They didn’t take that too well. He got away, at least. But after that it was four on one and James and Mickey just standing there watching. Guess I can’t blame them for that, can I? They’d seen what trying to help got me.”
He shakes himself as if he can shake off the memory, though he still looks haunted.
"They threw me in the lake," he says. "It was November, and by the time I managed to get away it was already dark. I was cold, and sore, and had some pretty bad internal bleeding according to the doctors. I’d curled up in a corner of an attic when Edwin found me. He kept me company, tried to warm me up a bit. When he left I thought... well that’s the end of that. Only he came back. Brought help. He’s the reason I made it.”
Crystal looks down at the little ball of fur in her lap.
“He’s the reason I got out of my house, too,” says Charles. “Growin’ up my dad was... well he wasn’t the nicest guy. Bit like your ex, actually. Only my mum-” he breaks off again. The darkness in his eyes is heavier now. “Anyway. I taught Edwin to keep hidden, while I was living with them. Didn’t want my dad gettin’ his hands on him, right? Only I slipped up, let him out when I shouldn’t’ve, and...”
He breaks off. Crystal can fill in the gaps. She’s spent most of the day imagining what would happen if David got his hands on a tiny helpless animal that he knew she cared about.
“But you got out,” she says. “And Edwin too. You’re both alright.” She says the words like a prayer, like a lifeline, even though she knows this was years ago and she has the proof that they’re both safe and sound in front of her.
Charles gives a soft, slightly teary chuckle. “Yeah,” he says. “We got out. I promised Edwin, when he came back after my dad tossed him out, that I’d give him somewhere safe. Somewhere he didn’t have to hide. And I think I’ve done alright.”
Crystal thinks of Charles, who looks at Edwin like he hung the moon and makes him cat food from scratch with boneless meat and carefully measured out supplements and fiercely defends his right to claw anyone who doesn’t respect his space. Imagines him in some horrible cramped flat with parents who make him feel small and afraid and threaten the one tiny thing that he’s dared to let himself love.
She doesn’t know Charles’ parents. In her mind’s eye his father is a monster of a man, vicious and angry and looming over him. His mum, like Crystal's parents, too caught up in her own business to worry about what’s happening to her kid.
The image makes her want to rip him out of there, carry him away somewhere safe. It’s a stupid thought. He’s not there anymore, and he’s the one who saved her, not the other way around. Still...
“I’m glad you had him,” she says. “I’m glad I had him today. Stupid cat really had my back.”
On her lap, Edwin lifts his head and looks over at her. Maybe it’s her imagination, but she thinks he looks offended. He doesn’t get up and leave, though, just shifts his weight and kneads at her leg a little with his paws before settling back down.
“So what do you think?” asks Charles. “About staying here, I mean.”
Crystal looks down at the little monster who had hated her from the moment she walked in here, the one she’d resented for the last month for how much space he took up in this tiny shoebox of a flat, and how nervous he made her feel. Listens to the soft rumble and feels the low vibration of his purring against her skin.
Edwin doesn’t like anyone but Charles. And now, maybe? Crystal.
“Sure,” she says. “Sure I’ll stay.”