The first of my two contributions to the Reverse Big Bang by @deadbangdetectives is here, featuring this beautiful art by @meips-battteries-are-low! You can read the first scene below, or the whole thing here on AO3.
Relationships: Edwin/Charles; minor Crystal/Niko; past Edwin/Simon
Rating: M
Warnings: major character injury; past unhealthy relationships (not between Payneland); miscommunication
Summary: Three years after the fight that ended their friendship, Charles gets a call that Edwin has been hit by a car and is in the hospital with a badly broken leg and a concussion. With no one else to take care of Edwin during his recovery, Charles has no choice but to step up. In the days that follow, old feelings come bubbling to the surface, and it turns out neither of them are as ready to let go as they thought.
***
When the shrill ring of his phone cuts through his flat, Charles is still half-asleep, lazing in bed with his face buried in his pillow. He snuggles deeper under the covers, waiting for the ringing to stop, because he can’t think of a single person who should be calling him right now. Crystal and Niko know not to call him before noon in the mornings after he works late at the pub. He just talked to his mum the other day, and she usually calls at night, well after his dad is in bed. It’s probably someone trying to sell him something or a wrong number, and Charles isn’t getting out of bed for that. The phone stops ringing and Charles enjoys a moment of quiet before the answering machine kicks on.
“Hello,” a woman’s crisp voice says. “My name is Vera and I’m calling from St. Vincent’s Hospital—”
Charles rockets out of bed, kicking away the sheets that tangle around his legs. The woman is still talking, but he can’t hear what she’s saying over the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears. Stumbling into his kitchen, he snatches the phone off the wall in a white-knuckled grip. “Hello?”
“Charles Rowland?” She sounds perfectly calm, like she isn’t calling from the bloody hospital of all places.
“That’s me,” Charles manages to say, even though he feels like his heart is lodged in his throat. His mum promised that things were better with his dad since he retired, that Paul Rowland is a changed man now, but Charles never really believed it. But if his dad has finally landed her in the hospital, Charles… well, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. He can’t make her leave the old cunt; he’s tried and failed more times than he can count.
“I’m calling from St. Vincent’s Hospital on behalf of Edwin Payne,” Vera says. “He gave your name as his emergency contact.”
Charles’s half-asleep brain can’t quite comprehend the words, confusion overtaking the previous terror. For a moment, he wonders if he’s dreaming, if his sleeping mind thinks it’s 1993 and that he and Edwin are still best mates. “Edwin? Edwin Payne? Brown hair, green eyes, mole on his chin?”
“Dimples,” he doesn't add. “And beautiful hands and a smile that makes you want to do anything to get another one out of him.”
He can practically feel Vera’s judgment over the line. “Edwin Anthony Payne,” she says slowly. “Date of birth January 18th, 1973.”
Charles remembers Edwin’s twentieth birthday, the last one they celebrated together three and a half years ago. Edwin and Simon had just broken up for what really seemed like the last time, and Charles had been trying to hide how thrilled he was, because Edwin seemed properly miserable. Charles, Crystal, and Niko surprised him with a nice dinner and a lopsided cake that Charles and Niko made from scratch. It’d been a good night and by the end of it, Edwin was smiling, leaning back in his chair with a glass of wine, cheeks flushed and eyes bright.
And then…
Well, it didn’t matter, did it? Apparently, it had never mattered. Edwin and Simon got back together a month later and not long after that, Charles and Edwin had the blowup that ended over five years of friendship in one horrible night.
“He was admitted here this morning.” Vera’s voice cuts through his reverie. “He’s asked for you.”
Finally, it sinks in that it’s a hospital that’s calling about Edwin. Edwin is in the bloody hospital. “What happened?” Charles demands.
“I’m afraid I can’t share many details over the phone,” Vera says. “But there's been an accident and he’s in surgery now.”
An accident. Surgery.Bloody hell, Edwin hates hospitals. He hates fluorescent lights, loud noises, and people he doesn’t know touching him, and all three of those things are unavoidable in hospitals. The thought of him alone there makes Charles’s heart hurt. And he must be alone, because there’s no way he would have asked them to call Charles otherwise.
Maybe he hit his head. Maybe he’s delirious. Maybe he’ll be furious when he gets out of surgery and finds Charles waiting for him. Maybe Charles should tell Vera sorry and hang up, because this isn’t really his problem. Edwin doesn’t want it to be Charles’s problem. But Edwin asked for Charles, and even if he didn’t really mean it, Charles has never been able to say no to him, not since their first day back at St. Hil’s.
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i was watching some of the videos made by 'innocent' russians after the recent Ukrainian drone strikes and listened to all them wail how 'regular people are not involved and shouldn't be suffering', 'i'm so far from politics and am not involved into this war so why am i suffering'
so i decided to sit down and think about how this war that russia started to destroy Ukraine affected me besides the obvious things like suffering from air strikes daily or being force to relocate abroad. so here's the list
- my home town of Kherson was occupied and is now under constant bombings and citizens are suffering from the human safari that russians do for fun and love of suffering
- the theater where i performed and visited as a child - was hiе by a bomb
- the maternity hospital where i was born was hit by a bomb
- a relative of mine was killed by rocket strike
- my uncle's family had to escape their village because russians were coming for them since he was a former military and all military people and their families were primary targets for russians to interrogate, torture and kill
- my godmother's and another uncle's family had to do the same for the same reason
- both of those villages are still occupied to this day
- multiple houses in my neighborhood including my own house one way or another were damaged by shelling or explosions
so yeah, when they say 'i'm not in any way connected to this war' - think again. somebody you know, your family, your relatives, you friends, your colleagues, their families, their friends - someone is one way or another is involved with this war. military operations and supporting infrastructures are not operated by empty rooms or faceless ghosts, or putin's clones. they are all living breathing human beings that KNOW what they are doing. they made a conscious choice to do it and they've been doing it since day one with no remorse. that's why i'm not sorry for them and they are not innocent. and i will never forgive them
the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be apart of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.
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It is so funny to me how most people in Dead Boy Detectives are just “let me tell you about my backstory.”
Edwin repeatedly brings up Hell, like he wants to add “so there, nyah” but he’s too proper. Charles says Edwin has told him loads of stories about his time there too.
Tragic “I was once a mighty walrus” Mick.
Esther tells teenage kids currently foiling her plans that she made a deal with a primordial goddess. Also, the snake thing. She doesn’t question how Crystal learned about Esther’s cheating husband—how well known is that story?
Nico tells someone she just met about her dad dying, dropping out of school, not being able to read her mother’s letters.
Crystal doesn’t even remember her past, but she’ll vent about her asshole ex-boyfriend and getting out of a bad relationship with her landlord she’s known for a day.
She’s using the “treat my trauma like a joke so I don’t have to actually deal” method, but Jenny does bring up her alcoholic father.
Aisha the gift shop owner only has a few minutes of screen time but still manages to mention she does acid and paints primordial goddesses.
The three most secretive people are Monty (and you know he’d be chattering about his actual past instead of his made up one if he could), the Cat King, and Charles.
Which is even funnier, because Cat King and Charles are so alike here! They are both saying “look at me, pay attention to me, no not like that.” And they would absolutely hate having that in common.
It is so funny to me how most people in Dead Boy Detectives are just “let me tell you about my backstory.”
Edwin repeatedly brings up Hell, like he wants to add “so there, nyah” but he’s too proper. Charles says Edwin has told him loads of stories about his time there too.
Tragic “I was once a mighty walrus” Mick.
Esther tells teenage kids currently foiling her plans that she made a deal with a primordial goddess. Also, the snake thing. She doesn’t question how Crystal learned about Esther’s cheating husband—how well known is that story?
Nico tells someone she just met about her dad dying, dropping out of school, not being able to read her mother’s letters.
Crystal doesn’t even remember her past, but she’ll vent about her asshole ex-boyfriend and getting out of a bad relationship with her landlord she’s known for a day.
She’s using the “treat my trauma like a joke so I don’t have to actually deal” method, but Jenny does bring up her alcoholic father.
Aisha the gift shop owner only has a few minutes of screen time but still manages to mention she does acid and paints primordial goddesses.
The three most secretive people are Monty (and you know he’d be chattering about his actual past instead of his made up one if he could), the Cat King, and Charles.
Which is even funnier, because Cat King and Charles are so alike here! They are both saying “look at me, pay attention to me, no not like that.” And they would absolutely hate having that in common.
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The thing is, in order to have a healthy and robust fandom, a piece of media NEEDS to leave some questions unanswered. Some relations unshipped. Some plot holes unfilled. Some backstories unwritten. Some lore unexplained. You need possibilities that will keep people up at night. The beautiful thing about an empty lot in a neighborhood is what people make in it
i feel like the youth should be reminded that the point of shipping is not for a ship to become canon. the point of shipping is to collect all the canon crumbs like starved mice, run away cackling and make some fun little scenarios with them just for the hell of it.
"Overnight, russia carried out one of the largest terrorist attacks on Kyiv with around 600 drones, many dozens of ballistic, air-ballistic, and cruise missiles, and a dummy IRBM. Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Kropyvnytskyi, Odesa, Poltava, Sumy, and Zhytomyr regions were also under attack. Multiple shopping centers, apartment blocks and residential areas destroyed. Also, a reported use of Oreshnik on Bila Tserkva near Kyiv, The casualty count is just beginning to trickle in."
"National museum of Chornobyl in the historical building has been destroyed during the one of the biggest russian attack on the Kyiv."
These russian scumbags are always spreading terror and death everywhere. They just launch hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles to kill innocent people and destroy cultural monuments because they are incapable of anything else. It's just that people somewhere out there often forget who russians are, so look at these shots and always keep them in mind.
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