“It is not my preferred activity for revelry,” Edwin said, dry as the desert.

“Do you have a preferred ‘activity for revelry’?” Crystal asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I think it’s wonderful,” Niko interrupted them to add. “It’s like an iconic teenager experience. I’m happy for you guys.”

Edwin frowned faintly in Niko’s direction, but held his tongue like Charles expected. Edwin was incapable of saying anything even vaguely not nice to Niko.

“Thanks, Niko,” Charles grinned, throwing himself onto the couch, even though there was definitely not room for him on the tiny loveseat. He ended up mostly sprawled across the girls’ laps, Crystal groaning and slapping his arms away and Niko humming happily and resting her bubble tea on his stomach.

“We’ve had a standing invitation for years, but this one,” Charles gestured at Edwin, who huffed and put his nose in the air, “has never been open to going.”

“Oh? Why the sudden change?” Crystal asked Edwin, her tone a little arch but mostly curious.

Edwin sighed and fiddled with the papers again. “No particular reason,” he mumbled, unusual for him but maybe he disliked all the attention.

Charles didn’t want Edwin to get self-conscious about agreeing to go to the party and change his mind, so he quickly changed the subject. “It’s like the biggest ghost event of the year! It’s super fun.”

“I didn’t realize ghosts had a social calendar,” Crystal said with a raised eyebrow.

“There are certain days of the year when spectral energy waxes and the veil that separates the living and the dead thin,” Edwin explained in what Charles thought of as his professor voice. If he was professor-ing at them, then Charles’ distraction must have worked, and he was back to feeling comfortable. “Both Samhain and Beltane mark days when the balance between light and dark, summer and winter, are perfectly balanced. This makes them ideal days for rituals regarding the dead.”

“He means that Aleister Crowley enchants a whole house every year and throws a crazy rager in it where ghosts can actually interact with the living and get drunk and all that,” Charles adds with a grin to the two girls.

“I suppose, if you want to be crass, you could explain it like that,” Edwin said crossly.

“Aleister Crowley is a ghost?” Crystal asked with big eyes “A ghost that throws Halloween parties?” she added, sounding even more surprised.

“He’s completely off his chump,” Edwin snapped, “A fake in all but the most rudimentary of magicks,” he added with a curl of his lip.

“We don’t like him, as a rule,” Charles said with an apologetic look at Edwin. Edwin was too busy scowling down at the surface of the desk to notice. “He called Edwin a, uh, what was it, a poodle something?”

“Poodle-faker,” Edwin spit, then winced, like just saying the word left a bad taste in his mouth.

“Yeah, that,” Charles sighed.

“I’m sorry, but what does that mean? Poodle-faker? Off his chump?” Niko asked quietly.

Edwin made a face like he’d rather chew on a shoe than explain what those words meant, so Charles quickly answered, “Off his chump is like, he’s totally nuts, off his rocker like. Poodle-faker is like an old timey insult that means you hang out with women too much,” Charles added that last explanation carefully, hoping that his tone got across how stupid of an insult he thought it was. He didn’t totally understand what it meant or why that was an insult, but he knew that Edwin had been in a properly awful state for days after that casual insult, so it must have meant a lot to him.

“So, he’s a monumental dick,” Crystal said dryly.

“Yes,” Edwin agreed enthusiastically.

“Why do you want to go to a party thrown by someone who’s a monumental dick?” Niko asked as sincerely as she asked every other question that ever escaped her perfect pink lips.

“Because I’ll be there to kick his spectral ass,” Crystal said with a grin that showed the sharp points of her teeth.

“No way!” Charles exclaimed, sitting up fast enough that Niko’s tea almost spilled, though her quick reflexes saved it from toppling off of Charles’ stomach and all over the girls’ laps. “You guys can’t come,” he said frantically.

“Why not?” Crystal asked, her eyebrows communicating that she was two seconds away from wanting to fight him about it.

“Because any party thrown by Aleister Crowley is a dangerous place for the living to be,” Edwin said darkly, giving Crystal a severe look. “He has no respect for anyone, but he especially does not respect the living. Or women,” he added with a troubled frown.

“Ew,” Niko said quietly before sucking her drink loudly through her straw.

“We can all go to Miss Ava Gardner’s party on Beltane,” Edwin said with a nod, like it was already decided. “She is a consummate host and a lovely woman. You’ll be safe as houses there.”

That set them off on a completely different tangent, with Crystal and Niko asking Edwin and Charles how many dead movie stars they knew and how many lived in London and what Crystal and Niko could possibly do to earn a polite introduction.

They never quite circled back to why exactly Edwin wanted to go to Crowley’s Halloween party. Charles was happy that Edwin wanted to go, he had been trying to get him to agree to go for literal decades after all, but the lack of explanation was concerning. Crowley was shite, but the party was fun and it was a huge get together for all of undead London. Charles had been a ton of times, though it was a lot less fun without Edwin there.

Charles tried to push his concerns down. Edwin had agreed to go. Charles didn’t have to be let in on every little twist and turn of his best friend’s thoughts, he could just be happy that they were together.

---

The night of the party, Charles was a mess of nerves. Edwin seemed nervous as well, though Charles expected that had more to do with his anxiety over running into the host and less to do with the party itself. Charles got the impression that Edwin had never been comfortable around people when he was alive, based on the stories that Edwin told. But, Charles had never seen Edwin act anything other than confident and self-possessed in person. Still, Charles wanted the night to go well so badly that he could almost feel his stomach doing flips below his ribcage.

The girls had decided to aggressively have fun without them. They were both decked out in beautiful creative costumes. Charles definitely appreciated all the bare skin and glitter and makeup and Edwin seemed to be fascinated with the pageantry of it all.

Crystal was dressed in huge curling demon horns, red glitter, and a series of sinfully suggestive black leather body harnesses under a tiny halter top and distressed shorts and huge platform boots that looked like they were built with curb stomping as the one and only activity in mind. Niko looked like a dream in pastels and holographic fabric, every movement she made shining and glittering back in prismatic halos of color.

“I’m an angel alien. I think,” she said, adjusting a headband with pink pompoms on bouncing springs on top of her head. The pompoms bounced cutely every time she moved.

Charles barked out a laugh. “Hell yeah you are,” he agreed with a grin.

Edwin curiously fingered her plastic holographic skirt, watching the play of the warm orange light of the office lamps play across it. “You look enchanting. I can barely bring myself to look away from you,” Edwin said with a smile that Niko shyly returned.

“Am I enchanting?” Crystal asked with a teasing smile.

“You’re terrifying,” Edwin said, straightening from examining Niko’s outfit and trying to suppress of a smile of his own.

“And hot,” Charles added with a wink.

“Perfect,” Crystal declared, “Just as I intended.” She flicked a curl over her shoulder while Niko giggled.

Not much later, they were all off. The girls had an impressive itinerary of clubs and bars and parties planned out, but the boys had only one location in mind.

Every year Crowley’s Halloween party was held in a different location. That year it was being held in the Ragged School turned museum down in the East End.

By the time that Charles and Edwin got there, just as the sun set below the skyline, ghosts from all over the city were flowing into the building. The lights were on inside, making every old broken down window shine out into the near darkness of the crisp autumn night like a beacon. Music poured out of the open front door, an odd mix of music from all manner of eras and time frames. The nearby canal gave the chill a humid tinge, making the air around them feel even colder than it really was.

“It feels morbid, doesn’t it?” Edwin asked, frowning up at the squat square facade of the school. It wasn’t grand or beautiful like some of the old buildings left behind from Edwin’s time. Charles thought he might have read somewhere that the building was a warehouse before it was converted into a school for the city’s poorest children sometime around the end of the 1800s.

“Suppose it’s just because we’re school boys, init?” Charles asked. The building did look a little ominous, even with the bright lights and music and all the ghosts slowly making their way inside.

“You ready?” Charles asked with a smile, thinking it was probably better to move inside rather than linger and wonder about times past.

Edwin took a deep breath and visibly straightened himself, his chin tilting up, his shoulders pulling back.

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I think,” he said doubtfully, despite his stiff posture.

“Brills,” Charles smiled. “Let’s head in.”

The inside of the Ragged School was absolutely packed with an eclectic mix of people both living and dead with the odd scattering of other kinds of supernatural creatures. The museum itself was pretty sparsely decorated, from what Charles could see through the press of the crowd. It definitely looked like a school, with glimpses of old wooden desks in big empty classrooms and a nice open staircase in the front hall with a polished wooden balustrade. It was obvious that the bits near the front entrance had all recently been repainted and polished up. Charles wondered if it would continue to look that way through the whole school.

Charles and Edwin didn’t have much of a chance to investigate, as they were quickly recognized by a knot of ghosts lingering near the front door.

“The Dead Boy Detectives themselves!” a pretty young man with curly hair and mutton chops said with a cheer.

“You’re both here!” a young woman with her dark hair shaved close to her head exclaimed in surprise. She was hanging from the neck of the young man who had spoken first, her dress so tiny that Charles would have blushed if he was able to.

“Are you on a case?” an older woman with a mischievous smile asked from their other side.

Charles recognized most of them from previous cases, though it was hard to remember while he was trying not to look at all the soft dark skin the young woman had on display. He thought that the guy with the mutton chops might have been haunted by a devil dog or something twenty years ago.

“Not tonight,” Edwin said shortly, nodding to them all.

“Yeah, just here for a bit of fun,” Charles said, winking at the older woman, even though it was the young couple who laughed.

“If you want to avoid Crowley, stick to the first floor,” the older woman said to Edwin with a knowing smile. “He thinks he’s holding court up there, but really he’s just making it easy for rest of us to avoid him.”

Edwin perked up a bit at that, some of the tension leeching out of his shoulders. “Thank you for the tip. I will do that.”

And then they were being buffeted through the crowd, bouncing from one group of ghosts to another. It was almost like a who’s who of spirits that the dead boys had helped or talked to or bargained with in the past thirty years. Everyone seemed happily surprised to see them and everyone was eager to talk. It was times like this that Charles was reminded of how deeply they had ingrained themselves into the supernatural tapestry of London.

Charles felt a little bit like he understood why girls fantasized about being the prettiest girl at the ball, because that night Charles certainly felt like one.

At some point, someone pressed a red solo cup into each of their hands. With a laugh, the ghost had explained, “It’s enchanted!” which made Edwin frown and Charles smile.

Edwin opened his mouth, probably to ask for the exact specifics of what kind of enchantment was on the cup, but Charles was already knocking it back.

It bubbled across his tongue in a familiar tang of sour and hops that Charles recognized from the bottles of bitter he and his friends used to sneak behind the school gymnasium after games. The taste of nostalgia was so strong it almost brought tears to his eyes. He had almost forgotten what it had tasted like, but that was it exactly.

“Charles,” Edwin sighed in exasperation. “Really. You should not drink things handed to you by a stranger.”

“I’m not a stranger,” the stranger said. “You boys saved my pet goldfish from a hungry selkie three years ago. I owe you one.”

“See?” Charles said, elbowing Edwin gently with what he knew as a cheeky smile. “He’s an past client. We can trust him. Try it!”

Edwin looked doubtfully at the liquid in the cup. It looked like nothing more spectacular than tap water, but Charles knew that it wouldn’t taste like it.

After taking a bracing breath, Edwin tipped the cup up and took a sizable swallow. When he brought the cup back down, his eyebrows were raised in surprise.

“Oh,” he said faintly. “That tastes just like the wine tonic my mother used to make me take as a child.” He turned to Charles in surprise.

“To me, it tastes like the beer me and my pals used to sneak after school,” Charles said.

“And to me, it tastes like Jack Daniels and tears,” the strange man said mournfully. “Cheers, boys. Enjoy the party,” he said and then wandered off, sipping from his own red solo cup.

The party got noticeably more blurry after that.

Charles and Edwin kept their cups in hand and kept drinking from them. No matter how much they drank, the cups never seemed to empty, so they never had to wonder where they could get more and didn’t keep much track of how much they had drank. At least, Charles certainly didn’t. He couldn’t speak for Edwin, but it felt like he was keeping pace with Charles.

Edwin had stuck close to Charles since they entered the party, but the drunker they got, the closer they became. First, they started leaning on each other, then Edwin looped Charles’ hand around his elbow when he started stumbling, until eventually they were mutually clinging to each others’ arms to stay upright.

The happiness that Charles had felt when they first entered the party just kept building. He felt warm and comfortable, even more so when his own enjoyment was mirrored in Edwin’s face. Everyone was so happy to see them, they laughed when the boys stumbled and helped right them again, pretty men and women kept touching Charles’ sleeve hair and older women carefully fixed Edwin’s hair or righted his bow tie.

Charles felt like he was on top of the world. So, when he heard one of his favorite songs come on over the speakers set throughout the house, he didn’t hesitate.

“Come dance with me!” Charles insisted, already dragging Edwin into the middle of a nearby classroom that had been repurposed into a dance floor. The desks had all been pushed into the wall, a small knot of people already swaying in the center.

Edwin stumbled, his hair falling over his forehead for the thousandth time that night.

“Charles,” he mumbled, “I can’t dance.”

“It’s okay. It’s not that kind of song,” Charles assured him, pulling him into the knot of other dancers.

England Belongs to Me by Cock Sparrer was blaring over the speakers and people were jumping and banging their heads, but Charles wasn’t paying attention to anyone but Edwin. Edwin looked uncertain and ungainly, his long legs becoming so much less certain as they both became more and more drunk. But, his eyes were stuck on Charles, watching him, waiting for him, and it made Charles feel like he was at the center of the universe.

“It’s easy!” Charles shouted over the music. “Just bounce up and down!” Charles said, grabbing both of Edwin’s hands in his and popping up and down on the balls of his feet to the rhythm of the music.

Edwin tried to follow his instructions, but he looked self conscious. He squeezed Charles’ hands in his and looked down at their shoes which was just not the thing, was it? Charles let go of Edwin’s hands after the second verse and instead wrapped his arms around his waist and pulled him close.

“Just move with me,” Charles said with a grin and a squeeze. Edwin still looked completely lost, but now he also looked a little flustered which was perfect in Charles’ opinion. Charles kept bouncing, but now he also swayed side to side. After only briefly hesitating, Edwin put his arms around Charles shoulders and let him move him.

And then the song changes and Pure by The Lightning Seeds came on. The crowd around them was laughing and dissolving and then coming back together as new people took to the floor. Charles and Edwin stayed where they were, swaying, pressed together.

Charles looked into Edwin’s eyes and they were so intense and pretty in that moment. Edwin was a pretty boy, Charles thought, in a different way that people sometimes called Charles a pretty boy. People called Charles pretty because he had an earring and he styled his hair. Charles thought Edwin would look pretty no matter what he wore or what he did with his hair.

They swayed together, looking into each other’s eyes for longer than either of them would have been capable of doing sober. Charles remembered the song that was playing, the way he used to listen to it on loop the month before he died. The guy who was on the cover of the cassette, Ian Broudie, was cute in a way that Charles hadn’t let himself think about back then. But, when he would lay on his bed and close his eyes he would imagine that the singer was there in his room with him, singing him a love song with soft lips and softer looking hair and big glasses that made him look sweet and inviting.

Before Charles noticed it, Edwin’s lips were on his, soft as the Charles back then had imagined the boy in the song’s might be, sweeter than any kiss he’d had before then.

Charles barely got a chance to kiss back, before Edwin was pulling away. His brow was crumpled and his eyes were afraid. Charles tought that Edwin shouldn’t look so afraid, especially not right after kissing him.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t,” Edwin swallowed and his throat clicked, his adam’s apple bobbed against his collar. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“I liked it,” Charles said. He heard the slur on his voice, so he repeated himself just in case. “I liked it,” he grinned and leaned in. “Do it again?”

Edwin met him halfway and they were kissing and swaying and music was playing. Someone whistled and clapped and Charles had enough thought to take a hand off of Edwin’s shoulder and point his middle finger in the general direction of the whistler to the raucous laughter of the crowd.

They kissed and danced and the music kept changing. It felt a bit like the room was spinning, but Edwin felt solid and perfect, so Charles just held onto him and kept kissing him until long after a living boy’s lips would have gone numb.

---

At some point, Charles and Edwin ended up on a couch.

“This does not seem historically accurate,” Edwin had muttered into the couch cushion, but by that point Charles was too invested in kissing every square centimeter of Edwin’s long beautiful throat to bother engaging in talk about Edwardian furniture.

“Perhaps you boys should get a room,” a feminine voice laughed from somewhere nearby. Long acrylic nails glided through Charles’ hair, scratching his scalp. “I think you’re scandalizing some of the geezers.”

“Don’t care. Fuck off,” Charles grumbled, waving a hand to banish the heavenly nails. Whoever she was, she laughed and removed her hand. Charles fumbled around until he found Edwin’s hand on his waist and slapped it onto his head instead. Edwin seemed to get the message and started scratching his short nails through Charles’ hair.

Edwin was laid out on a hideous plaid couch, his long limbs splayed out, his bow tie long gone, his shirt unbuttoned. His hair was a mess and his lips were wet with Charles’ spit. Charles had no idea how they had gotten to the couch or even a vague idea of where they were in the building, but he was glad to whatever drunken stumble or nice friend had gotten them there. They must have been at the edge of the party. There were a few people talking or necking in the room with them, but it was a lot wherever they were than it had been earlier.

Charles was cradled in the basket of Edwin’s legs, his strong thighs squeezing Charles’ hips every time he did something especially clever with his mouth. Somewhere in the back of Charles addled brain he knew he was hard and that Edwin was hard and that he had been rocking himself into Edwin for however long it had been that they’d been making out.

A small voice was starting to panic somewhere in the soupy mess of his brain. Edwin loved him. Charles had told Edwin that he didn’t love him like that. And now Charles was grinding Edwin into a dusty couch in the back of a house party while they were both drunk off their asses. That was not a respectful way to treat a friend.

Charles reached over the edge of the couch and grabbed his solo cup, tipping a huge swallow down his throat. His thoughts became pleasantly unfocused again.

Pushing himself up Edwin’s body in an indecent drag, Charles mouthed at Edwin’s ear. “You feel so good,” he groaned, thrusting down hard. Edwin gasped and moaned, thrusting up to meet Charles, the hand not buried in Charles’ hair reaching down to grab Charles’ ass and pull him against him harder.

“Oh-kay. Everyone out,” the woman’s voice from before called out through the room.

There was grumbling and laughing as ghosts and creatures started to slowly trickle out of the little back room.

“Who gave them solo cups?” someone asked in exasperation as they walked by. “They’re practically babies.”

“Jerry,” someone said with a snort.

“Jerry!” a number of people chorused their discontent with poor Jerry, but Charles didn’t want to hear that. He didn’t want to think about the cup, he just needed every thought that wasn’t about Edwin and how to make him make that sound again to go away.

Charles reached over and fumbled for his cup again, almost knocking it over. He tipped it back, his throat working to swallow and swallow and swallow until his stomach rebelled at the thought of swallowing more. Then, he passed the cup to Edwin, who wobbled his way up onto his elbows so that he could do the same.

Whatever happened after that was indistinct. Charles remembered more moaning, from both of them but especially from Edwin. He remembered the taste of Edwin’s skin and the feel of his soft hair between his fingers. He remembered pleasure singing up and down his spine and burning low in his gut.

He remembered that they clung to each other afterward and whispered sweet words against each other’s lips and nuzzled together so tenderly. No one had ever touched Charles as gently as Edwin did, but Charles would never be able to remember the words they whispered to each other as they did so.

And, even though ghosts don’t sleep, something like it must have stolen over them eventually, because Charles couldn’t remember anything after that.

---

If Charles had felt like a princess during the party, he felt like the scum of the earth the next morning.

It didn’t seem fair for ghosts to be able to get hang overs, but Charles couldn’t come up with any other explanation for why his head was pounding like it was. Even when he was alive, he had never gotten a hangover before, but he supposed enchanted endless solo cups were probably stronger than the cheap beer that his mates would steal from their parents.

Charles pried his eyes open to blink at the sunlight bright room and saw Edwin blinking tiredly at him from about two inches away. Charles screeched, lurched backward, and fell painfully onto the dirty floor beside the couch.

“Charles?” Edwin asked sleepily, leaning over the side of the couch and looking at Charles with concern.

But, Charles couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t look at his pale throat still plainly visible against his open collar, or his mussed hair that had felt so soft between Charles’ fingers, or his frowning mouth that had gasped and moaned just the night before.

“I know what he sounds like when he cums,” Charles thought wildly, before shooting to his feet in a burst of adrenaline as that thought seared itself into the inside of his skull, something he could never unthink or undo or bury.

“Are you alright?” Edwin asked, looking distinctly more concerned.

“Yeah! Brills! Perfect!” Charles shouted, his voice strangled and awful even to his own ears. Edwin’s face was folding into a more severe frown. Charles had to do something to salvage the situation. “My head is killing me, though. Can’t remember a thing about last night,” Charles laughed, wincing and pressing a hand to his forehead. Luckily, his head was actually killing him, so he didn’t even have to pretend to wince.

Edwin’s face went startlingly blank, the frown and the furrowed brow dropping off like they’d never been there. Charles held his breath and felt like the world did too.

After what felt like an eternity, Edwin faintly said. “Yes. Me too.” He looked away and swallowed and very briefly a pained look flitted across his face that cut Charles to the quick.

“No no no,” Charles thought. “That was wrong. That was the wrong answer! Fuck!”

Edwin sighed and began doing up the buttons of his shirt in sharp yanks and twists of his elegant fingers. “You really should listen to me, Charles. I told you it was foolish to accept mysterious drinks from strangers. Now we might as well have not come to the party at all.”

“Ah, well. I mean. It wasn’t that bad,” Charles stumbled. His heart was pounding in his chest and Edwin wasn’t looking at him. “It was a lot of fun before we started drinking, yeah?”

Edwin ignored him, running a hand through his hair to try and neaten it, though the effort was wasted. His hair was too mussed to be fixed by a little bit of finger combing.

Climbing to his feet, Edwin began to pull his clothing straight. But, it still looked rumpled, even to Charles’ untrained eye. He wondered why Edwin didn’t just imagine his clothing neatened like he usually did. He wondered if Edwin was as flustered as he was.

“We ought to be getting back to the office. The girls are likely wondering where we are,” Edwin said stiffly, opening the old wooden door out to the corridor and striding out. The school looked different in the daylight. The glass was old and dirty in the unfinished part of the museum, making the early autumn light look strange and anemic on the peeling paint and scuffed wood.

“Wait, Edwin,” Charles hurried after him, but Edwin didn’t slow down. His long legs ate up the distance down the corridor toward the general direction of the front hall. “I said wait!” Charles grabbed Edwin’s wrist.

Edwin stopped suddenly, twisting his head to the side to pin Charles with a venomous look.

“Do you have something you want to talk about, Charles?” he snapped.

Charles felt pinned to the spot, like Edwin had pinned him to a piece of corkboard like a bug. “Well,” Charles mumbled. He hesitated. He knew what he should say. He knew he should come clean and admit that he did remember what had happened, but there was a rock in his stomach and his tongue felt too numb to get the words out. “Well, no, I guess-”

“If you have nothing to say to me, then let’s get on with business as usual. Shall we?” Edwin asked.

He looked brittle in that moment, like he had spun himself up a facade made of glass and if Charles so much as touched him the wrong way he would shatter. Charles had done that to him, to his best friend in the world.

Charles let go of Edwin’s wrist. He felt small and pathetic and that he likely deserved much worse than Edwin snapping at him.

“Yeah. Okay,” Charles croaked.

Edwin looked at him for a long time, but eventually he nodded and turned back around. He started walking again, this time at a more reasonable pace. Charles walked just a step behind him and tried to force down all the feelings swelling up in his chest with nowhere to go.