Work Text:
Well, this was not optimal. It was supposed to be a simple case of a mad churchyard grim, which turned out not to be a grim at all. Rather, it was a Hellhound, one that took a single whiff of Edwin’s damned soul and charged. It had tossed Charles aside like a doll and then threw him into the church’s iron gates, impaling his shoulder on a rusty iron spike. It proceeded to gnaw on his leg, pulling him down and tearing a wider and wider hole in his arm.
No worse than Hell, no worse than hell, he chanted in his head. Maybe if he said it enough times, he would believe it.
“Oi!” Charles shouted. “Don’t you fucking touch him!” The cricket bat connected with the Hellhound’s head with a brutal crack. A water balloon full of holy water finished it off, leaving them with this rather awkward problem.
“Oh shit, let me get you off o’ that,” Charles said frantically, reaching for the gate.
He would not be allowing Charles to touch that gate. “Charles, I need you to brace my feet,” he said, blindly kicking Charles's hands away before his friend could burn himself. “I will lever myself up and off the spike.”
“What? No, Edwin. I’ll get you down. Just give me a sec.”
“I would rather we not argue, as this is rather uncomfortable. Just do as I ask,” he snapped, and then regretted it when Charles went quiet for a moment.
“Okay, sorry,” Charles said.
He felt the weight of Charles’s shoulders under his feet. Bracing against them, he pushed up on the bar across the top of the gate using his hands. Smoke rose from his palms as the iron rod moved through his chest. And then he was free and falling off the gate. Still corporeal, the landing jarred him to his very ectoplasmic bones.
“Edwin! Edwin!” Charles’s hands explored his body, feeling out his wounds. “Are you okay? I mean, you’re not, but—“
Edwin took his hand. “I will be fine.” He hoped. His leg still burned like fire, and his shoulder was not much better. “Would you be so kind as to rinse out my leg with holy water? It will clean out any residual corruption.”
“Right, right, of course,” Charles replied, digging through his backpack. He pulled out a vial from a nearby Catholic Church and opened the stopper. “So, I just dump it out?”
“Try to get as much of it in the wound as possible.”
“Yeah, got it.” He poured it into Edwin’s leg, making the wound sting like a swarm of angry bees.
Edwin hissed, which made Charles stop. “No, no, keep going. A little sting is better than demonic poisoning.”
Charles gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze, though whether it was to reassure Edwin or himself, Edwin wasn’t sure. “Alright, and then we’ll take a look at your shoulder, yeah? That was a nasty wound.”
Edwin laid his head back on the grass, wishing he could feel it, like when he was a child stargazing on summer nights. The stars were pretty, at least. Though there were fewer in the sky than when he was a boy, they were still a comfort. After all, if he could see the sky, he knew he wasn’t in hell, even if he just had a brush with it once more.
“What’cha thinking about?” Charles asked.
“That the stars are pretty tonight,” he replied. Now that the stinging had subsided, the relief had given him an odd, floaty feeling, like he was having an out of body experience despite the fact that he was eternally outside of his body.
“Yeah?” His best friend chuckled and flopped down beside him. “How’s the shoulder?”
“Healing.”
Charles took his hand, examining the burns on his palm. Usually, Edwin flinched at touch, but Charles was different. He was safe. “How about we stargaze in the meantime, alright? I was always shit at spotting constellations, but I bet you’re aces at it.”
“It’s different from when I was alive, but Orion is still there. It’s the easiest one to spot.” He pointed up to the three stars forming the belt.
“That was the hunter, right?”
“Yes. In many versions, he lost a battle with a giant scorpion and the gods put them both in the sky to commemorate it.”
“Kinda weird to put both up in the sky. Like putting me and a pond up there,” Charles said and winced as though expecting a reprimand for joking about the manner of his death.
“Quite. Or me and Sa’al,” Edwin replied, smirking. He pointed up to the star at the end of the Little Dipper, the base of Ursa Minor’s tail. “That is the North Star. No matter where you are in the northern hemisphere, you can use it to gain your bearings and find your way home.”
“Bit hard to do, mate,” Charles said, propping himself up.
“Why is that?” Edwin asked, amused.
“Because you’re my home. Don’t exactly have a star to guide me directly to you. Doesn’t matter, though.”
Why are ghosts capable of blushing? “Whyever not?”
“Because no matter what, I’ll always be by your side.”
“I suppose the same can be said of me too.” Edwin met Charles’s beautiful brown eyes. Much like the night sky, he could spend hours staring into them. The fluttering in his incorporeal chest was unbearable. Edwin sat up abruptly, ignoring the way his still-healing shoulder protested. “I am feeling much better now. We should probably let our client know that the cemetery is safe again.”
“Right,” Charles said, getting to his feet and then helping Edwin up. He sounded oddly disappointed, though Edwin wasn’t sure why. Charles smiled easily again and said, “Well, job officially jobbed.”