Chapter Text
Charles had always been a touchy-feely kind of person when he was alive. He got very good, very quickly, at telling where other people’s limits for it were, and managed to balance those limits with his own need for touch very well. He could always have gone for more touch than he got, but he got enough that he didn’t go twitchy about it.
And then he’d gone and died.
Edwin was brills, the best friend Charles had ever had. Kind, thoughtful, just the right amount of bitchy to be fun. But one thing Edwin was absolutely not was touchy-feely. Going from just enough touch to nearly none at all had been an adjustment for Charles, to say the least. He’d gone a bit twitchy that first year, after every trick he’d learned to sneak touch from the world around him had failed.
Bumping into strangers on the street didn’t help when they went right through him. Squeezing into too-small clothes didn’t work when he couldn’t feel them, and burrito-ing himself in blankets had the same failure point. Spreading the touch out among everyone he knew didn’t work when he only knew one person whose touch he could actually properly feel, and that person seemed just as touch-averse as he was touch-starved.
Eventually, Charles went numb to the itch under his skin. It flared up on every single one of the rare occasions Edwin allowed more than a casual brush of the hand or bump of the shoulder, but he learned to suppress it. The few times they hugged, it nagged at him for weeks afterward, but died down again in the face of his resolute denial.
It took him thirty five years to figure out what trick worked with Edwin, and it was actually, genuinely, an accident, at least on Charles’s part. They were on a case at the time - a very recently deceased woman named Jules had come to the Dead Boy Detectives to ask them to save her cat, Molly.
“Won’t someone take her in after they find you?” Charles asked. He was perched on the edge of the desk, and Edwin was seated formally in his chair. “Why d’you need us?”
“First, they’d have to find us,” Jules answered, counting on her fingers. “Second, because she’s what killed me.”
Edwin and Charles exchanged a worried look before Edwin asked, “Are you saying that you died because of Molly, or are you saying that Molly herself killed you?”
“The second one,” Jules said quickly. “Here, might be easier to show you.” She took a deep breath, relaxed her shoulders, and manifested her death mask - four parallel scratches appeared on her cheek, followed by black veins branching out from the scratches across her face and down her neck to disappear under her shirt. Blood pooled in her eyes and trickled out of her nose, mouth, and ears. Then she blinked, and it all disappeared. “Did that look like a normal cat scratch to either of you?”
“Absolutely not,” Edwin answered, leaning away in prim horror, as Charles shuddered. “What led up to this, exactly?”
“Well, a few days before, I’d noticed she was glowing, which is definitely not normal,” she said as her shoulders tensed back up by degrees. “I got her an appointment at the vet for it, and in between, she kept doing more and more weird things. I was trying to get her into her carrier to go to the vet, but she wasn’t having it and got me. The rest happened pretty quick after that.” She hugged herself loosely.
“That does sound decidedly supernatural in nature,” Edwin said, leaning back slightly as he considered. “We would need to do some research to determine whether this is a curse or some kind of parasite.”
“So you’ll help Molly?” Jules said hopefully. Her shoulders eased a fraction.
“We will consider it,” Edwin said, a little more harshly than necessary.
“Really, mate?” Charles challenged, sitting more fully on the edge of the desk to face Edwin, who raised an eyebrow at him. “Sounds like Molly’s dangerous if someone doesn’t step in, and who better than us?”
“Need I remind you what cat scratches do to ghosts?” Edwin rebutted. He folded his arms over his chest. “And this particular cat’s scratches appear to be nastier than a garden variety moggy’s.”
“So we’ll be more careful than usual,” Charles argued. He leaned in and added, “The living won’t even know what they’re dealing with, and more people will probably die. Molly, too, if whatever’s wrong with her doesn’t kill her first.”
“And I can pay,” Jules added, gesturing in what might have been the direction of her flat. “My mum was really into occult stuff for a while, and I saved a bunch of her books from the bin when she lost interest. You can take your pick from what’s in my flat.”
Edwin sighed and dropped his shoulders a touch. “Alright. We will take your case.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Jules said, her own shoulders relaxing the rest of the way. “She’s still in my flat. Should have plenty of food and water, they were both full when I died, but the litter box may be a bit of a problem. I’ll give you the address.”
“We will also need to go over Molly’s symptoms in more detail,” Edwin said, taking out his notebook and beginning to write. “Once we determine the nature of her affliction, we can determine how to cure it. Then, once she is cured, a living associate of ours can call in a tip to the authorities and ensure the both of you are found.”
Crystal made it to the office after school let out in time to find Charles and Edwin poring over the same disgusting book they’d used to help Niko back in Port Townsend. This particular volume, like most of Edwin’s books, dealt primarily with human victims of supernatural phenomena, but did include some notes on how symptoms might differ - or not - in animals.
“Do I want to know what disgusting thing we’re dealing with?” she asked, setting her school bag down on the couch and hanging her jacket on the coat stand she’d bought specifically so Edwin would stop scolding her for leaving things on the floor.
“You are not dealing with anything this time,” Edwin said without looking at her, frowning at the book. “Not until we’ve neutralized whatever it is.”
“Are we really going through this again?” Crystal said, folding her arms over her chest. “Charles, back me up here.”
“Sorry, Crystal,” Charles said, looking up. “I’m with Edwin on this one. It’s already killed someone, we don’t need the body count getting any higher.” He looked apologetic, at least.
Crystal sighed and dropped her arms. “Fine. What even is it that has you both so spooked you don’t want me coming along?”
“A housecat with some kind of parasite that makes its scratches lethal,” Edwin answered as he flipped to another page. “She killed her owner, who hired us to save her.”
“Ruled out a curse based on symptoms, mainly,” Charles added. He looked back down at the book and winced. “Too many secretions, not enough magic shit.”
“Any ideas what specific parasite yet?” Crystal asked, half tempted to lean over and read along with them, half remembering the few pages she’d seen back in Port Townsend and not wanting more nightmare fuel.
“I am fairly confident it is one of two things,” Edwin said, flipping between a couple of pages to make sure. “One is an invertebrate called a ‘homemaker worm’ that essentially remodels its host into its ideal habitat via a combination of toxins and magic. The host will secrete the toxins as a defense mechanism for the worm. Without the magic, the toxins prove fatal.”
“Cute name, nasty buggers,” Charles said, shuddering. “Dealt with them once, a few years back, Case of the Gruesome Geriatrics. There was an outbreak in an old folks’ home. Absolutely disgusting, that one was.”
“Quite,” Edwin agreed. His tone was so carefully level that even Crystal could tell he was underselling it. “If it is the homemaker worm, poor Molly is probably done for, even if we can get it out of her.”
“And what if it’s not? You said there were two options,” Crystal said. She decided to risk leaning over to look, and nearly gagged. The illustrations of the homemaker worm’s handiwork were vivid, detailed, and more unpleasant than she’d bargained for.
“The other is a parasitic relative of the ghost fungus,” Edwin said as he flipped back to the other page. The illustrations were no less nauseating. “It consumes the life energy of its host and causes it to secrete powerful supernatural toxins. When inhaled or absorbed through the skin in small doses, these toxins will weaken or subdue other living beings, making it easier for the fungus to infect new hosts. A larger dose directly to the bloodstream is usually fatal, however.”
“How will you be able to tell which one you’re dealing with?” Crystal asked, leaning away again and hugging herself unconsciously.
“A creature infected with a homemaker worm will be withdrawn,” Edwin answered, mercifully closing the book and checking his notes instead, “in part to protect the worm. The worm perpetuates itself via a winged larval stage, so contact with others is unnecessary. The fungus will result in behavior somewhat similar to a combination of the prodromal and excitative stages of rabies - in an animal, it may look to be seeking out human attention, only to very quickly turn violent.”
“All assuming we’ve got the right two suspects,” Charles said. He grabbed his backpack from off the floor and tucked the book inside. “If we’re lucky, it’s the fungus, and we just need to get Molly to eat some purple stuff. If we’re not lucky, we need to dissolve a worm from inside an unhappy cat and hope it hasn’t done too much remodeling yet. And if we’re really not lucky, it’s back to square one.”
“Doing homework and keeping the lights on for you is sounding better by the minute,” Crystal said with a shudder. “Anything I can do while you’re gone?”
“We’ll need you to call in a tip to the authorities when we get back,” Edwin said, sliding the paper on which he’d written Jules’s address across the desk toward Crystal. “Our client’s body has not yet been found, and Molly will not be able to be rehomed if no one knows to look. Try to come up with something convincing to tell them.”
The flat itself was as neat as could be expected, given that a cat had been alone inside it for more than a day - Jules clearly knew how to cat-proof a living space. Charles and Edwin emerged from a mirror in the bedroom, which was small but cozy, with a dresser, a bed, and a decently-sized cat tree. The bed was still made, but the bedspread was a bit rumpled, and there were a number of cat toys strewn about.
“Is playing with toys a point for worm or fungus?” Charles asked quietly, nudging a fuzzy mouse toy with his shoe.
“Fungus,” Edwin answered, equally quiet. He was tense, his shoulders ever so slightly higher than usual, fists clenched at his sides. “The worm is generally painful for its host, which would drive an animal to isolate and conserve energy. The fungus is less obtrusive, most obviously manifesting in secretions and the glow Jules noticed.” He made his way to the closet, which was standing partly open. Molly’s litter box, which looked to be badly in need of cleaning, was inside, but Molly herself was not.
“Have I ever mentioned that I hate parasite cases?” Charles said as casually as he could, crouching down to check under the bed. There were boxes and cat toys and dust bunnies galore, but no Molly.
“It might have come up a time or two over the decades,” Edwin artfully understated. In truth, it had come up nearly every time they dealt with a supernatural parasite. He made his way from the closet to the dresser, and opened the top left drawer. Jules had mentioned keeping a bag of treats there, which Edwin retrieved in case they needed something to lure Molly out with.
“Well, it’s true,” Charles said as he stood up. He paused and tilted his head to one side, thinking. “Hang on, do demon possessions count as parasite cases? ‘Cause they’re inside people and all?”
Edwin stopped in his tracks, looking off to the side as he considered the question. “I suppose, by a certain definition, they do,” he conceded. “I will continue to count them as separate categories, however, due to their respective rates of incidence. We deal with far more demonic possessions than other types of supernatural parasites.” He sighed and eased his shoulders down, clearing his mind. “Now, if you will please focus on the task at hand?” He gestured toward the bedroom door, which stood ajar.
“Right, sorry,” Charles said, snapping out of his thoughts and heading out into the hall. He turned toward the living room as Edwin ducked into the bathroom for a quick look.
They found Jules’s body sprawled on the living room floor, early stages of decomposition making her injuries appear far more gruesome than her death mask. Charles and Edwin were both relieved to see that Molly hadn’t resorted to eating her yet. The cat was sleeping soundly on the couch, and there was a greenish blue glow emanating from her skin, lending an eerie cast to her sandy brown fur. Around her on the upholstery were several sickly-looking black smudges that resembled outlines of sleeping cats.
“Definitely the fungus,” Edwin whispered, staring intently at Molly and keeping himself as still as possible. “Did you bring the portable apothecary kit?”
“Got it in my backpack,” Charles replied, as quietly as he could manage. He lifted the shoulder the bag was on for emphasis.
“Excellent,” Edwin whispered emphatically. Charles preened a little under the praise as Edwin held up the bag of treats. “Enough fungicide to coat one of these should do the trick without hurting Molly.”
On hearing her name, Molly opened her eyes and looked directly at them. The glow was in her irises as well, making her gaze seem penetrating and severe. She watched them for a moment, pupils wide and round, then yawned and stretched and hopped down off the couch, heading towards Charles and Edwin.
“Do we leg it? Hold still? What’s the move?” Charles asked, tensing up, unwilling to take his eyes off of the glowing cat to look to Edwin for cues.
“Keep still, and avoid sudden movements,” Edwin said as calmly as he could manage. His posture was carefully relaxed, though he, too, kept his gaze strictly on Molly. “We can set the apothecary kit up in the kitchen once she gets where she’s going.”
Unsettlingly, Molly seemed not to understand them as she jumped over Jules’s body. She made directly for them, tail curving up like a question mark, eyes focused and alert. She made to rub up against Edwin’s legs, and that’s where things went wrong, really.
Instinctively, Charles slid his leg into Molly’s path, blurting, “Oi, none of that, thank you!” Like flipping a switch, Molly hissed, her pupils narrowing to slits, and she lashed out, raking her claws down the offending limb. Before he had time to feel the burning pain, Charles felt Edwin pull him in the direction of the bathroom. Mercifully, Molly stayed where she was, back arched, fur fluffed up, eyes glowing dangerously, hissing.
“Charles, the apothecary kit, quickly,” Edwin demanded as he closed the bathroom door between them and the now-angry cat.
Charles leaned back against the sink and dug in his backpack, pulling the kit out and handing it to Edwin. As soon as it was out of his hands, he attempted to assess the leg Molly had scratched. When he tried to put weight on it, it spasmed, and he crumpled to the side, landing in a graceless heap in the bathtub, legs hanging over the side, eyes squeezed shut in a grimace. From knee to ankle, his leg felt like someone had poured molten iron into his veins. He whimpered quietly, and was grateful his blood wasn’t moving anymore, wasn’t carrying that sensation through to the rest of him.
Eventually, Charles was distantly aware of the sound of the bathroom door opening and closing in quick succession, and forced his eyes open. Edwin had his head phased through door and was gripping the handle tightly. After a few moments, Edwin relaxed and pulled his head back into the bathroom. “She ate it. That should be the end of the fungus.”
“Brills,” Charles choked out, shutting his eyes again and squeezing his leg just above the knee, hoping it would work like cutting off circulation and deaden the nerves a bit. It didn’t. “We might have a bigger problem.”
Edwin finally turned to look at Charles, tensing up again. “I thought she’d missed,” he said, fear edging into his voice.
“Not that lucky, mate,” Charles said with another whimper, dropping his head against the wall with a thunk.
“There was a recipe for an antidote in the book, did you bring it?” Edwin sized up the mirror above the sink, trying to judge if he could fit through it to get to the office in case the book wasn’t easily to hand.
Charles let go of his leg and hissed - the squeezing had actually worked a bit, the pain was just getting worse, throbbing to full effect as soon as the pressure was gone. He did his best to ignore it and dug through his backpack, trying to remember where he’d put the disturbing pink book. He found it just as a particularly intense wave of pain gripped him, and he sobbed, his whole body clenching involuntarily until it passed. He handed the book over to Edwin and slumped down in the bathtub.
Edwin worked as quickly as he could without mucking up the recipe, relieved that he had all the ingredients in the apothecary kit. The final mixture was a kind of golden color, shimmering and fizzing. He went to his knees next to the tub and looked at Charles, who was breathing shallowly, a soft, pained noise accompanying each exhale.
“The antidote needs to be applied directly to the wound to work,” Edwin said, setting the vial aside for the moment. “I shall try to be quick. My apologies for any additional pain.” As he spoke, he cradled Charles’s ankle in one hand and used the other to push the leg of his trousers up and out of the way. There were two sets of four parallel scratches, one right on the shin, the other towards the meat of Charles’s calf, black veins creeping sluggishly out from them. Edwin retrieved the vial and carefully dripped the contents onto the scratches, wincing sympathetically as Charles hissed in pain.
The antidote worked more quickly than Charles had thought it would, the pain subsiding in a wave of relief, the spasming in his muscles relaxing away. It took an extra few moments for him to realize why, and what, exactly, he was feeling: Edwin was massaging his leg, physically working the antidote out from the wounds to reach the last of the toxin, pushing his sock down to get it all. As his nerves sorted themselves out between pain and gentle touch, Charles slumped even further down. He felt a little dizzy, like he’d had a headache for so long he’d stopped feeling it, only for it to suddenly resolve.
When the last of the blackness had disappeared from Charles’s leg, Edwin carefully tugged his trouser leg and sock into place and sat back. “How are you feeling?” he asked, carefully neutral.
Charles took a few moments to just breathe before even attempting to answer. “Aces, now,” he finally said, sounding a bit winded. He started trying to sort himself out enough to stand, but his leg felt a bit like jelly and wouldn’t cooperate. “Might need a tick to be back on my feet, though.”
“Will you be alright if I go to check on Molly?” Edwin asked, standing up.
“Just be more careful than me,” Charles said. Once he was alone in the bathroom, he grabbed onto the edge of the tub and pulled himself up to sit on it. He felt a familiar itch under his skin, concentrated on his leg, on the memory of Edwin’s hands massaging that sweet relief where it needed to go. He tried to mirror the motions, but it wasn’t the same, didn’t quell the need screaming in his long-dead nerves for more.
A thought bubbled up from somewhere deep in Charles’s mind: Edwin hadn’t hesitated to touch him when he was hurt. It stood to reason that maybe, if he got hurt again…
Charles was still trying to wrestle that thought back to where it had come from when the bathroom door opened. He looked up and saw Molly sitting in the doorway, looking at him, and he almost fell back into the tub before he realized she wasn’t glowing anymore. Edwin was standing behind her, smiling.
“Alright, then?” Charles asked hesitantly.
“Quite,” Molly answered, curling her tail around herself. “And I do apologize for hurting you. I wasn’t in my right mind.”
“All good, mate,” Charles said slowly. He grabbed the sink and carefully pulled himself to his feet, testing his leg - it didn’t buckle, at least. “No lasting harm done, I think. To me, anyway.”
Molly turned her head in the direction of the living room and pinned her ears back against her head. “I didn’t mean to. She’d gotten a new plant for the window, and it smelled nice, so I had a nibble, and I didn’t feel right after that.”
“If you can point out which plant it was, we can destroy the fungus on it and ensure no one else is hurt,” Edwin said gently. He followed Molly back to the living room.
Charles stayed back again, nominally to pack away the apothecary kit and book, on the rationale that Edwin had made more than enough of the purple stuff to take care of the plant, and no one else had been poisoned, so they wouldn’t need more antidote. In reality, that thought wouldn’t stay down, and he wanted some time to himself to try to think something through for once.
Edwin was willing to touch him if he was hurt - more than willing, he’d done it unprompted! The knowledge felt dangerous, easy to misuse. The last thing Charles wanted was to take advantage of Edwin in any way, especially for something this selfish. He’d managed just fine for three and a half decades, after all, he could reasonably manage forever. Probably. It would take a while for the itch to settle down again, the way it always did after one of the rare hugs Edwin allowed, but Charles could handle that.
On the other hand, Edwin wouldn’t want him to suffer needlessly, and would probably scold him for not saying anything if he found out. His excuse of Edwin being freshly out of Hell and clearly not partial to touch himself felt a little flimsy in retrospect, but thirty five years of doubling down on that again and again made it hard to discard. He couldn’t just ask, point blank, for Edwin to be something he wasn’t.
Eventually, Charles decided he’d stalled long enough, and left the bathroom to check on Edwin and Molly, still no closer to an answer.
By the time they made it back to the office, three reclaimed books on the occult richer, Charles was still lost in thought, chasing an endpoint that felt miles away. Consequently, he didn’t notice the look of deep concern on Crystal’s face when she caught sight of him.
“Why are you limping?” she asked, abandoning her homework to watch him lurch unevenly away from the mirror. She’d spread her things out on the couch to work, and cleared a space for him to sit, since he clearly needed to.
“What?” Charles asked, blinking at her like he was coming out of a daze, as he dropped onto the couch.
“You were limping,” Crystal repeated. She leaned forward to get a better look at him.
“Oh,” Charles said, stretching out his injured leg. It felt like it had fallen severely asleep, and he couldn’t tell if the stretching was helping or not. “Cat got me. Edwin mixed up an antidote that took care of the worst of it, but my leg’s still kind of wobbly. Magic poison on top of a cat scratch and all.”
“He should be good as new in another hour or so,” Edwin added as he sat at the desk to get a head start on the paperwork the Night Nurse insisted they complete after every case now. “Have you thought of something to tell the authorities?”
“Yeah, I think I’ve got something good,” she said, and started to explain her plan.
Charles wasn’t listening. Or, he was trying to listen, but he was also trying to remember what he did whenever he’d gotten a cramp or pulled a muscle when he’d been alive, to see if that would help his leg get back to normal faster. His mind kept wandering back to Edwin’s hands massaging his leg. The memory of the sensation kept fluttering over his skin, chased by the itch he’d almost managed to push out of his mind.
Right on the heels of the itch was that thought, tempting him. It didn’t need to be so bad, really. This could have been a fluke - maybe Edwin wouldn’t do it every time, or maybe he’d catch on and put a stop to the ridiculous plan right away. Charles would have to test just how badly he’d need to get hurt to get Edwin to help like that. Maybe, if he was careful and didn’t go overboard with it, he’d be able to strike a balance.
His leg was improving quickly, and maybe that clouded his judgment a little, but he decided to keep an eye out for an opportunity to test his discovery.