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“Here’s the disguises, as promised. There’s two of them and they’ll make you completely visible to the living. And all of the living, not just the traumatized ones who normally see us.” That’s what the client had told them as he handed Edwin two pairs of glasses.
All in all, the case hadn’t been too hard. It had been far from their easiest, but Charles supposed that was fair, given they were being paid much better than usual. Charles had never heard of something that allowed ghosts to become visible to the living. And due to Edwin’s questions and insistence that the client demonstrate one of them, he hadn’t either.
The disguise hadn’t looked anything like the client, but they knew it was visible to the living because Edwin insisted the client show them, and plenty of people definitely noticed him bump into them as he walked down the street of London with the disguise.
The disguise had made the client look like a white man who Charles would guess was in his 60s or so. The client’s clothes didn’t stay the same when he put the disguise on, however the glasses that turned it on (or however it worked, Charles wasn’t totally clear on that) were still visible on his face.
Edwin left to go to the shop, they had used up their entire supply of multiple different ingredients for this case and he needed to replenish them. This left Charles back at their office.
Normally Charles could control himself perfectly fine when alone in the office (no matter how much Edwin might say he disagrees), but the disguises were set on Edwin’s desk, and Charles was so curious. They’d seen one of the disguises, an older white man who the client had said was Edwin’s disguise. So now Charles was incredibly curious what his own disguise would look like. He wondered if his would look like an older version of himself, like how Edwin’s could’ve been an older version of him.
He and Edwin had agreed to try on the disguises together, but he didn’t see the harm in taking a quick look at the one that’d be his. He picked up the other pair of glasses, would’ve taken a deep breath if it was possible, and put them on.
He remembered pretty quickly once the glasses were on, that they didn’t have a mirror in the office. They’d never had a need for one before since ghosts can’t see their reflections. Charles glanced around the office before settling on trying to see his reflection in the glass of their window. Hopefully it’d be clear enough to give him a decent idea of how the disguise looked.
The window *did* provide a visible enough reflection, but when Charles saw what the reflection was, he decided he definitely would’ve preferred if it hadn’t.
The disguise for Edwin had been a man, but when Charles looked back at his reflection for the first time in years, it was a woman around the same age as Edwin’s disguise.
Charles quickly took the glasses off, and did something between setting them and throwing them down on Edwin’s desk. He tossed himself onto the couch and pulled the blanket Edwin had made a while ago over himself. He adjusted for a few moments until he was curled up on his side, with the blanket folded to be layered twice over him.
Once he was curled up, thoughts started swirling quickly through his head.
He didn’t know their client had done it on purpose, maybe these were just the only two disguises he’d had, and they couldn’t be changed, and Charles just happened to get the one that was a woman. But at the same time, he felt stupid for feeling optimistic. He felt stupid for thinking their clients would always see him as a boy, he’d gotten too used to Edwin kindly going along with it. He should’ve remembered that not everyone would kindly let him go around as a boy like Edwin did. He should’ve payed more attention to the things the client did that’d seemed a bit off. Like the way the client always called him ‘Charlie’. Never ‘Charles’ like Edwin always called him. Specifically ’Charlie’, which Charles now felt was some insistence on calling him something that could be deemed feminine, not just a choice to use a nickname.
He wondered if ‘Charles’ counted as a nickname. It didn’t *feel* like a nickname, it felt very real when Edwin called him it, like that’s what it was supposed to be. But it definitely wasn’t on his birth certificate or his gravestone. Did he even have a gravestone? He might not, he didn’t even know if the school gave his body back to his parents after they told them he died in a ‘tragic accident’. Even if they had, his father might not have even wanted to get him a grave stone, they’d never gotten along well at all. Charles could still remember how furious his father had been when he’d cut his hair short just a month or two before he’d died. He remembered pleading that he could make it better, but it wasn’t like he actually could fix it in his father’s eyes, hair cut from halfway down his back to not quite reaching his ears wouldn’t exactly grow back overnight. Maybe Charles’ father would’ve insisted he be dumped in an unmarked grave and forgotten as much as possible.
Ever since he died, Charles had agreed with himself that he didn’t care if he did have a gravestone. Really he just hoped his mum hadn’t gotten in a fight with his father over what happened to his body; it wasn’t worth it. Charles was dead anyway, but she was still alive and having to deal with that man, so he hoped she just went with whatever his father wanted done with his corpse and focused on protecting herself. Charles couldn’t have decided that for her when it happened though, and even after he started checking in on them, he still didn’t know what happened to his body.
Didn’t matter though, did it? He’d never liked that body anyway.
When Charles thought about how Edwin must’ve thought of it when Edwin found out the way Charles was, he came to a few conclusions:
He was almost positive Edwin knew about people disliking aspects of their bodies in his time, but Charles would’ve bet his entire (admittedly small) life savings at the time that he’d died, that Edwin had not heard of people viscerally disliking their body, and everything it was supposed to mean for them and their life the way Charles did. He was pretty sure the way he was must’ve been confusing as fuck to Edwin. People when he himself was alive didn’t get it, and Edwin had died 73 years before, so how would he get it? And yet he acted as if he did.
Charles hadn’t even really meant to tell Edwin, he’d introduced himself without really realizing Edwin was real. Come on, a bloke who’s proper fit, claims to be dead, and is being all sweet to him while he dies? How was Charles supposed to believe that absolute vision was real? So he introduced himself as Charles. Because if you can’t introduce yourself as a bloke to some hallucination while you die, who can you introduce yourself as a bloke to?
Edwin had simply given him a brief look of confusion before moving on. He didn’t ask about it until days after Charles had died, which Charles figured was a much appreciated effort to not upset him while he was already literally dying on an attic floor.
Edwin had asked a few days after, but that was fairly brief too; Edwin had asked, Charles had nervously provided the simplest explanation possible and braced himself to be hurt, Edwin had seemed confused but basically just told him “Well, *Charles*, I don’t see why that would be any of my business to have a problem with.”
And that was all the spoken acknowledgment of it.
Although a couple weeks later, Charles had seen Edwin reading a book that looked rather gay and distinctly like someone had homemade it. Charles was rather confident he was the reason Edwin had gone looking for that book, and he found that rather brills, especially since it couldn’t’ve been that easy to find. Edwin was always sweet to him like that. No one else had ever been sweet like that to him.
But just because Edwin was sweet to him, didn’t mean he could just ask Edwin to use the other disguise or something. If anything, it was yet another reason he *shouldn’t*. Edwin was sweet to him, and Charles wasn’t gonna be some bastard who’d take advantage of that. He’d done the whole ‘girl’ thing for 16 fuckin years, he could handle having to briefly do it again from time to time for their cases. Just because he’d spent the past few years getting to happily run around with Edwin, didn’t mean he could just be happy and comfortable forever.
Charles wasn’t sure exactly when he started to cry, or when Edwin got back to the office. All he knew was Edwin’s hand was now placed tentatively on his shoulder and he heard the other boy asking if he was ok.
Charles didn’t know what to say; he was fine, wasn’t he? But at the same time, he was crying in a ball on their couch for the first time in about a year, and the absolute first time Edwin’d caught him. Without him consciously making the decision, his mouth answered with the words: “Yeah, mate. I’m brills”, as if Edwin would believe that.
As he could’ve guessed, Edwin did *not* believe that. “Charles, you appear to be sobbing on our office couch. I would consider that to be quite far from ‘brills’, as you called it.” Edwin said the word ‘brills’ as if he’d never before made that collection of sounds in life or death, which Charles supposed he hadn’t. It sounded odd enough that it got Charles to give a small laugh. “First time you said that before, innit?” Charles asked, a small smile now on his face, in contrast to the tears still in his eyes and dripping down his face. “You are correct, Charles. I have not said that before. And while I am glad it seems to have provided you with joy to hear, you very clearly were not honest with me. What is the problem? It must be something to have reduced you to tears.”
Charles weakly tried to dissuade Edwin from worrying, although was not particularly successful at it. “It’s stupid, innit? Nothin to be botherin’ you over.”
“Regardless of if the issue is ‘stupid’ or not, it clearly is an issue, and therefore should be addressed. Although it cannot be addressed if you do not inform me of the problem.” Edwin’s statement was rather blunt, but it felt oddly warm to Charles. Edwin basically told him, in his little Edwiny way, that even if it wasn’t a good reason, it bothered Charles, so Edwin wanted to help.
Reluctantly, Charles got up from the couch, shrugging Edwin’s hand off of his shoulder where it’d been resting since Edwin got back, and went over to the desk. He grabbed the glasses, and all but shoved them into Edwin’s hand when he returned. “Tried them on, didn’t I? Never was much good at patience and all that.” Edwin looked down at the glasses now in his hand with a bit of a confused expression before looking back up at Charles. “While it does not particularly shock me that you tried the other disguise, I fail to see why it has reduced you to crying so hard that our couch is nearly soaked through.” That got another small laugh out of Charles. “Mate, I might be crying like a fuckin baby, but we’re dead, aren’t we? Not like ghost tears’ll damage the precious couch.” Edwin in turn gave him a small smile. “I do believe you know I was being hyperbolic. But again, that is far from the point. What is wrong with this disguise? We know the other one worked, did you find this one to be broken?”
Charles wasn’t quite sure what to say. It wasn’t exactly *broken*, it worked as intended. He just hated how it was intended. “Well, nah. Works all technically, don’t it? Just uh, not a fan of the look. Nothin’ serious, I’m overreacting. Always do, really.” He was brushing it off, just as he always did. It bothered him a lot, but he wasn’t going to burden Edwin with that. Edwin however seemed almost deadset on being burdened with it.
Edwin looked critically down at the glasses for a moment before putting them on. They worked immediately and where Edwin had been, was the woman whose reflection Charles had caught a glimpse of in the window before throwing off the glasses. Charles watched as the woman- no, as Edwin looked down at himself in the disguise, seeming to register the problem after a moment. At that point, he took the glasses off, folded them gently, and set them on the table. “The issue for you is the femininity of the disguise,”
Charles wasn’t entirely sure if Edwin was asking or just saying it as a statement, but he gave a small nod. “Yeah, not like we can change it or anythin’ though. It’s fine, I’ll get used to it. Just don’t worry bout it, mate.” Edwin shook his head almost immediately. “I don’t believe you will. In approximately 16 years of being informed this type of thing is what you should do and be, you did not simply ‘get used to it’, you found that you prefer things to be this way. I see no reason to believe that occasionally using a disguise would cause you to accept this more than everything throughout your entire time alive could.”
That made Charles start to cry again. Edwin was definitely right, but it was much easier to accept the reality of that being the disguise if he pretended he’d get used to it and it wouldn’t just always bother him. “No Charles, do not cry. That is not what I intended,” Edwin tried to tell him quickly. “I’m- Sorry, mate” Charles muttered, trying to force himself to stop, he didn’t want to upset Edwin. “Do not apologize, Charles. You are *allowed* to cry, I simply didn’t intended to cause you to cry.” Edwin told him before continuing with the question “Does the other disguise appeal to you more?”
“Yeah, ‘course it does.” Charles sighed, “Not like we can go ‘round changing them though. They are what they are, aren’t they? Just gotta deal with it.”
Edwin gave Charles a contemplating look for a moment before saying something that definitely surprised Charles. “This clearly bothers you quite a bit. Now I don’t have any particular *interest* in using the female disguise, both disguises may be a bit more… distinct than I’d have personally have designed them as, but the premise of using the female disguise does not emotionally devastate me as it clearly does for you. Which disguise I get is truly quite neutral to me, which one you get clearly matters to you. So I will simply take this one, you will use the one intended for me, and it will work much better.”
Charles looked up at Edwin questioningly. Did Edwin actually mean it, or should Charles tell him again that it was fine? He ended up just quietly asking “Really?” Edwin didn’t pause before giving him a nod. “Yes, I do not mind.” Edwin reassured him, before adding a bit of a teasing joke, “Besides, I doubt our agency will be affective at solving cases if one of our detectives frequently dissolves into tears whenever undercover work is required.” This time, Charles gave a proper laugh. “If you’re real sure. Suppose we could always switch back, but-” Edwin cut him off. “Charles, I am quite sure. You will use the other disguise, I will use this one. I do not mind, it may even be an interesting new experience. It is not an inconvenience to me at all. Although even if it was, you are worth quite a lot of inconvenience to me.”
Charles looked up at him with a warm smile. “Love you, Edwin” is what he wanted to say, but instead he simply said “Thanks, mate. You’re brills. Best ghost I know.”