payneland neighbors AU
(a.k.a. one of my million WIPs that may actually be seeing the light of day)
edwin is an Alive Boy, who has had a near-death experience being bullied while he was at school, so he can now see ghosts.
charles is a Dead Boy, who is starting a detective agency out of his new flat, which happens to be next door to edwin's.
edwin does not realize charles is a ghost at first.
they are mutually down bad and trying hard (and failing) to be normal about it.
pining and shenanigans ensue.
should be able to get this posted to Ao3 sometime later today as chapter 1/? of who knows how many because apparently payneland has made me that person with multiple multichapter WIPs, lmao
~*~*~
Edwin does not think about his new neighbor across the hall.
(Said new neighbor's name, it will turn out, is Charles.
And Edwin most certainly does not fixate on the compelling glint of Charles' single earring in the sun, or the curve of his smile so easily offered.)
The story of it is this: Edwin had held the door to their building for him one fine spring day. Simple politeness, and moreover basic human decency, both dictated this was the proper thing to do for someone carrying such an absurd quantity of unwieldy parcels.
He had not expected the stranger to look so taken aback.
(He had an honest-to-goodness crystal ball propped precariously atop a stack of antique-looking books; and those teetered on top of several cardboard boxes near buckling under the weight of whatever they held within. A cricket bat protruded from the pin-encrusted rucksack slung over his shoulder. People did insist on having such incongruous pastimes, Edwin thought; and, apparently, atrocious packing habits to go along with them.
But the titles of the volumes Edwin managed to glimpse were as intriguing as the crystal ball was misguided—and he'd found himself rather helplessly curious.
"Cheers, mate!" the person he will soon know to be Charles had said, sounding obscenely grateful as he manouevred his way inside, and had flashed Edwin a grin so radiant and wide it hurt Edwin's cheeks in sympathy just to look at it.
Still, Edwin tried to think no more on him; nor on how surprised he'd appeared to be at Edwin's tiny show of kindness—at Edwin's perceiving him at all, even. Tried being the operative word.)
He'd been aware Jenny was letting the rooms across the hall, because she asked him several weeks ago if he might know any potential tenants. Edwin had informed her he did not. His last neighbor had listened to ungraciously-loud electropop at all hours of the night and harbored a seemingly endless stream of stray cats despite Jenny's very clear policy against animals.
Edwin would far prefer the space to stay blessedly vacant and blissfully quiet for as long a stretch as possible. He deserved some sort of a reprieve, he'd thought.
it seems he is not about to get one.
Edwin is reading when he hears a muffled string of colorful swearing, the lugging of things, the scraping of furniture across hardwood floors. While he may be able to studiously avoid thinking about the beautiful boy he'd met downstairs, Edwin cannot escape the inevitable and inconvenient fact that they will now be living in proximity. The telltale commotion that can only be made by someone moving in comes right to his proverbial stoop.
Who else could it be but him?
Edwin sighs. The only thing for it, he supposes, is to go over and introduce himself.
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