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St. Hilarion’s became co-ed, sometime between 1916 and 1989.
Charlotte Rowland died in St. Hils’s uniform skirt, which she loathed with all her being, because it was too short and showed off her cover-up shorts any time she did anything. (And that was when she was lucky enough to be wearing the shorts; the staff didn’t much approve of them.)
After she threw her fists at the boys by the lake - boys she’d always wanted to be friends with, but they were never gonna be friends with a girl - they shoved her over and laughed and hooted when it kicked her skirt up and her underwear was left in full view to all of them. The last full sentence she heard as a living person from a living person was “Hah, look, guess Charlie is a girl, after all!” before they chased her into the lake and the skirt was water-logged, then, dragging around her thighs as she ran to the attic.
When she rose from the floor and left her body behind, she left the skirt with it. Stood in front of Edwin in a tank top and slacks, and ran from Death in clothes that felt better on her skin even as she could barely feel her skin at all.
Edwin taught her to control her clothing, and she made herself a jacket like she’d always wanted to wear, would never have dared, even her mum would have said it made her look too dykey and her dad. Well.
But Edwin told her the jacket looked sharp, and helped her collect buttons and patches for it, and straightened the collar for her, and didn’t comment when the necklace she picked was a gold chain from the men’s side and not the one from the women’s side. Didn’t comment on how her hair seemed to get shorter every year.
When she first made the disguises, she made an old woman in a dress and an old man in a suit, because that was what they needed, and she tried to reach for the woman’s glasses but her hand stopped, halfway there, and she couldn’t bring herself to grab them.
She was still frozen a few seconds later when Edwin’s hand swooped past hers to grab the woman’s glasses, and Edwin slipped them on, and looked down at himself with a smile, and turned on a heel to twirl his skirt. “How do I look?”
“Absolutely aces, mate,” Charlotte said, and grabbed the man’s glasses.
They didn’t ever talk about it, but after that, Charlotte always took the man’s disguise, and Edwin always took the woman’s, and Charlotte got the feeling that both of them liked it a little more than they should but she pushed that thought very, very far down.
And none of it really changed much. They were the Dead End Detective Agency, and they saved people and helped people on their paths. And sometimes Edwin kicked people out or cut them down to size for commenting on Charlotte’s eccentricities and sometimes Charlotte kicked people out or in the head for commenting on Edwin’s and that all worked out pretty much fine, really.
But then it was 2024, and she’d met some people, and she’d thought about some things, because there were new ideas out there, now. Ideas people weren’t that happy about but that couldn’t be hidden, any longer. And she was going to tell Edwin about it, she was, when there was a case with a demon and Crystal and then they were in Port Townsend and something was going on with Edwin and Charlie wasn’t gonna distract from all that with her thing, it had waited over fifty years and it could wait a couple more weeks.
But then - but then there was the Devlin House. And they found a package to one of the kids from a binder-sharing group, with the binder tossed roughly on the floor, and the things that Mr. Devlin said as he swung the axe don’t bear repeating, and Charlie said more to Crystal than she meant to. But she made Crystal promise not to say anything to Edwin, and Crystal kept her promise, about that part, anyway.
But then there was the Night Nurse and all those memories in Charlie’s head and they looked different now, now that they knew some things, and they screamed some stuff at Edwin on that cliff that Edwin maybe didn’t quite understand but got just enough of the shape of to try to ask about it later, and Charlie blew it off as best they could but -
But then there was Brad and Hunter, and Charlie kinda lost it, a little, afterwards, because those were the boys he realized he’d always wanted to be, or he’d thought they were, anyway, and what did it say about him that that’s what he wanted, to be a bully, a bad guy?
And… and maybe he said enough, that time, that Edwin understood.
Because Edwin reached out, and straightened his collar. And said “You, Charles Rowland, are the best person I know.” And something in Charles settled, with the collar, put together under Edwin’s hands and Edwin’s words, something felt right in a way it never had before, in fifty years.
Charles looked down at himself, and his shirt wasn’t black, anymore, was red like he’d always tried to pretend his pink clothes were when he was alive, and - and it didn’t bump forward at the chest, either.
And Edwin looked down, too, and Charles caught a flicker of something in his eyes, but he didn’t think for a moment that it was bad, because the delighted gasp Edwin made and the hug he pulled Charles into made that pretty clear.
Edwin didn’t say anything particularly unusual to him, on the steps of Hell. Yelled at him for being reckless and stupid, and apologized afterwards, but that was it. But -
When they got back to London, they put a new sign up on their door. The Dead Boy Detective Agency. (And a sign under it, saying “and Psychic Aid”.) And Edwin looked up at it, with almost as much of a grin as Charles, and then turned to Charles.
“I have wanted to tell you, but I needed to wait to make sure you wouldn’t take my words the wrong way. I love you, Charles. As - as more than a friend, I’m afraid. I’m in love with you. And I don’t want you to think it’s because I believe you to be a woman. It’s - it’s rather the opposite, actually. I have found in myself that I experience certain… predilections. A preference. One that was unspeakable in my time, as this was in yours. And I felt something, every time you wore a disguise, but I didn’t realize what it meant, until I saw you for the first time in your own skin, like - like this.” He gestured to Charles, to Charles’s flat chest and narrow hips and sharp jaw. “And you looked so happy, even though you’d just been crying, and it looked - right.”
Edwin shifted his body, looked away and back, and Charles just stood there, silently.
“I love you, Charles Rowland. As - as a man loves another man. You don’t have to feel the same way. I just needed you to know.”
And Charles wasn’t on the steps of Hell, wasn’t running from a demon, was standing next to a sign that said “Dead Boys” on it that Edwin had suggested they make and he realized he didn’t need any time to figure this out, at all, actually.
“Love you too, Edwin. As, uh. As a man loves another man.” The words felt silly and old-fashioned in his mouth, but so, so right, at the same time. He tilted his head to the side, like Edwin does, and grinned. “Wanna kiss about it?”
And they did.