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I. Right-left-left
He hasn't looked at the lines in a long time.
He hasn't really needed to; everything was long ago recreated and transcribed and annotated into his notebook, down to the last letter and sketch and memory. And thank every god for that; Charles never would have been able to find him in Hell otherwise.
Rolling up his sleeve, Edwin examines the lines winding up his right forearm. These were the very first — a multi-cornered path, Right-left-left. They are not those first jagged bloody gashes scored into flesh with a stylus made of shards of bone or rusted metal. He long ago refined them into something more visually palatable, tucked among other lines and patterns. But he can pick out those first lines unerringly every time. He knows what they are.
The first step toward escape. The fear that he will be dragged back.
The way out.
II. 639,400 hours
The lines have always been hidden from Charles — easily done, given Edwin's usual mode of dress and with the aid of an occasional small glamour. Sometimes Edwin was even able to — not forget they are there, never that — but to think of them less often. Never mind that he can never forget the initial pain of gaining them, for all that it was a pain so minor compared to the heights of agony he experienced in Hell as to be like the merest brush of fingers on skin. Never mind that every line and mark is etched behind his eyes, within his memory, just as surely and completely as they cut across his skin, earned through a thousand repetitions. A thousand endings and beginnings.
He read somewhere the supposition that ten thousand hours of practice makes one an expert. Sometimes he wonders what seventy-three years adds up to. 639,400 hours. Certainly something beyond mere expertise.
It occurs to him that he might be the singular extant expert on the subject of escaping Hell, by virtue of being the only one to do so. Twice, no less.
He sets a hand over his sternum, above the lines of a glass-paned set of doors beneath an inverted exit sign. Knowing what he does now of the workings of the afterlife, he hopes with vindictive spite that his escapes caused some demonic entity an eternity of reprimand and bureaucratic paperwork. He finds the thought more amusing than perhaps he should.
He wonders whether the Night Nurse would find out for him, if he asks nicely.
III. Burnished
He's never entirely sure why it is he can manipulate the lines on his skin. It is somehow both similar and not similar at all to how he can manifest and change the details of his clothing. It took him time to master and refine the skill, but the initial doing of it was almost innate, even from the very start when he tumbled out of the mouth of Hell into the basement of St. Hilarion’s.
The lines no longer hurt once he is free of Hell's grip, pain no longer felt by ghostly nerves. But he can feel them, if he concentrates. Can sense the fine knifeblade lines of the magic scoring across the surface of the energy he is made of, wherever they cross over his skin. If he closes his eyes, he can even still envision the patterns otherwise unseen on his spine, his shoulder blades, the small of his back, clearer in his mind's eye than he ever saw them in any cracked and tarnished mirror in Hell.
It's not the first thing he does when free of Hell. No, the very first thing he did when he found himself in a heap on the floor of the basement where six boys sacrificed him was drag his battered body as far away from that dark place as he could. He got as far as the attic of the school building, not exactly an achievement.
He had no real way of marking time while he hid there tense and wary, waiting for the illusion of safety to dissolve and the demon spider to appear again to drag him away, tear him apart. But huddled in a corner behind shelves and crates and boxes, in an attic empty of everything save dust, he slowly came to understand that he was out.
Eventually, hours or days later, he notices the lines on his arms — runes and secret paths and reminders — are no longer scored deep and red, rough and scarred, but rather flat sepia-brown lines burnished over his skin. He traces them curiously with his fingertips, familiar pathways up forearms and biceps, symbols and landmarks across his chest, corridors and doorways and warnings mapped across his back.
The lines are crooked and misshapen for all they are no longer scars and wounds. But they shift subtly beneath his questing fingers, never disappearing, but changing and reforming, just a little, into lines with less ragged edges.
Then there is a sound from across the recesses of the attic, stifled gasping breaths, stumbling footsteps.
Edwin no sooner thinks that he cannot let the lines be seen, that he cannot be seen so vulnerable dressed only in blood and tattered underclothes, than he realizes old familiar wool and linen have covered him fully in the memory of his old uniform. Blazer and short pants, sweater and shirt, socks and boots, collar and bowtie. Armour between himself and everything else; between what he is now, and what he was in Hell, and who he used to be.
And then there is a boy, and a lantern. Quiet stories, quiet smiles. A slow, quick, endless, instant decline.
And then there is a ghost, and a blue light, and they are running.
And then there is everything, and so much more.
IV. Edwin Payne
His name is hidden in the lines twining over and around his left forearm. Edwin Payne. Angular, desperately slashed letters then; tidy scrolling script tucked within curling patterns now, not unlike his own precise cursive when he takes the time to form his letters properly under the memory of repetitive practice and rulers rapping upon knuckles for every error.
He forgot, for a while. Lost his name, his self, to the pain and the demons and the fear and the endless maze filled with empty-eyed porcelain faces. When he remembered Edwin Payne, he drove the blade deep to carve it into his very being. He refused to forget himself that way again.
After that, after the next time he was torn apart and remade, the lines remained. Right-left-left-right-narrow doorway-left-right-broken gate. Wrath. Edwin Payne. Lust. Bones scattered in a corner. And each time after that, he carried the lines forward, needing only to draw new additions rather than carve the memories into his skin anew each time.
Again, again, again. Each attempt he made it one step, one room, one door farther, he added to the lines and carried them all. Each time he made a mistake, made too much noise, turned the wrong way, those lines he added, too.
He's never been sure what changed in him that the lines began to stay from body to body. He can only be grateful, that he could carry the map with him in his skin instead of only in his mind, because in the depths of the pain and the fear and the terror and the chase, his mind could not always be trusted. But when his mind was broken, his body remembered the way.
Again, and again, and again.
V. Notebook
When Edwin first acquires the endless notebook — a gift from Charles, obtained in a trade the nature of which he refused to share, and given on the occasion of Edwin's 25th birthday — he has no idea what to use it for. He is accustomed to memorizing information — case details, incantations — not writing it down, a skill hard-won through both an unforgiving boarding school and the labyrinthine hallways of the Dollhouse. He's never been one to keep a journal, nor to write fanciful stories or poetry.
But the notebook is from Charles, and Edwin would value it endlessly even without the terribly clever, complex enchantments imbued between its covers and which he spent many a pleasant evening studying the intricate threads of until he understood it in its entirety. And he is determined to make proper use of it; to do otherwise would be wasteful and ungrateful both.
So he begins to record case notes when they are out and about investigating, and keeps it tucked away in his breast pocket when not in use. Tidy notes on clues, suspects, red herrings, eventual resolutions. He begins to add pages devoted to things of a more frivolous nature, such as a list of the strange modern slang Charles uses, and his thoughts on the shows they watch at the cinema.
And then there is too close a call, nearly caught by Death at the end of a case, and the surge of fear and helplessness leaves Edwin tense and skittish and repeating the lines to himself over and over. He spends hours sitting at the desk, ostensibly reading so that Charles will leave him be, but in reality he is focused entirely on the thin magic-burnt lines on his body, tracing them in his mind's eye, refining them with clear sharp edges and reminding himself of every detail, every option for success or failure.
If Charles notices Edwin turns not a single page, he doesn't say anything.
At some point his half-unseeing gaze drifts to the corner of the desk, and his notebook resting there. With slow hands he pulls it close, picks up his pen and a straightedge, opens to a blank page, and starts to draw.
His hand is unpracticed at first, but between the straightedge and a small spell to invoke one of the notebook's embedded abilities, soon enough the sketches are complex and precise and detailed, reproducing every line on his body onto page after page until all of it lives on paper as well as on his skin. The halls and doors, the lurking creatures, the many, many places he failed, the wrong turns, the warnings, and the centerpiece of it all, the successful path.
It may not make any difference, in the end, should Hell and its demons come for him. But knowing that the lines of his escape now exist somewhere more than only with him nevertheless sets his mind at ease. Enough, at any rate, that he can tidy away his drawing supplies, tuck the notebook safely away in the pocket above his unbeating heart, and ask Charles for an opinion on their next case.
The book held close in his pocket feels a little bit like carrying hope.
VI. Dandelion
Niko sees the lines once. They sit side by side on her bed, watching one of her endless selection of colourful cartoons. She is in sleepwear printed with stars, and is enveloped by a soft oversized sweater. It seemed only polite to adjust his own appearance, down to shirt and cardigan, bowtie loosened and sleeves rolled to his elbows. He is relaxed and quietly happy, a twice-blessed rarity.
Perhaps he was too relaxed, too comfortable, or too intrigued by the strange and silly animated people. But she makes a curious sound, and when he looks to her she is studying his forearms — and the lines visible there, stark against pale skin. In the atmosphere of safety here, apparently he’s dropped the glamour.
Thankfully the rest of the lines remain hidden beneath his clothing; while he’s neatened the designs over the years, his first reaction is still that the colour reminds him of old blood and he is glad she cannot see it all.
Her eyes are wide and she is so curious she nearly bounces with it, but his discomfort must show on his face because with a very deep breath she refrains from asking him the questions clearly burning. He says quietly, politely, that he does not wish to speak of it; what he means is thank you for not asking, what he means is apologies for not telling.
He replaces the glamour, but rolls his sleeves back down regardless. Buttons the cuffs tightly and folds his hands in his lap, eyes firmly on the laptop screen.
Niko smiles, and shifts a little closer, and tucks her hand around his elbow, fingertips just touching the place where his name is hidden in the lines. He cannot feel her touch, not really, but it is very warm all the same.
After she dies, he adds a small design to the lines over his wrist, the first new lines in nearly a decade; a dandelion puff, delicate but resilient, over the place where his pulse once beat.
(When she comes back, he cries.
The dandelion puff gains a second, half-opened bloom.)
VII. Third Eye
Much, much later, he learns that Crystal always knew about the lines. His glamour doesn’t work against psychics, either. Apparently.
VIII. Lanterns
Charles is the last to learn of the lines, and he is not the first to see them. Edwin struggles in the admission to explain the contradictions. That he hides them from everyone, not just Charles. That speaking of Hell is acceptable, but the idea of Charles seeing the visual, visceral signs of Hell on Edwin’s body is anathema to everything he is.
Then he has to explain what ‘anathema’ means. And then he has to convince Charles that he does not and never has thought Charles would be disgusted with Edwin; it is that he knew that seeing the proof of Hell, the ugly painful evidence of the hurts Edwin experienced, would only cause Charles pain over things he cannot change.
It’s an exhausting two hours fraught with far too much emotion for Edwin’s preference, but he supposes at the other end they have come out the better for it. As they always do.
He doesn’t show Charles all of them. That would be somehow too much and not enough at all, in a way Edwin can’t quite articulate. So he reveals only his forearms and enough of the skin beneath his collarbones and over the back of one bared shoulder, glimpsed beneath a few undone buttons, for Charles to understand the extent of the lines. How much of Edwin they cover.
Edwin was correct in his assessment of Charles’ reaction; some thirty-odd years of close companionship will offer that insight. He watches with some trepidation as those usually-kind brown eyes go hard and angry at the lines showing the unmistakable shape of the dollspider lurking within the pattern of corridors across Edwin’s shoulder blade.
But Edwin also sees with quiet joy the way those same eyes soften again at the discovery of the lantern — their lantern — etched into his chest above his heart.
And for the second time, Edwin realizes that perhaps the lines that he has cut and drawn and refined are almost beautiful; that they are not only the evidence of his tortures in Hell, but evidence that he escaped. Twice, even.
When Charles finds out who saw the lines first — all the lines, laid bare — he’s not best pleased. (He gets over it. Eventually.)
IX. Cat ’s Eyes
“Why, Edwin Payne. You are just full of surprises, aren’t you.”
The words, warm with appreciation and delight, come purring from behind Edwin. He is seated on the edge of the bed, facing demurely away from the Cat King, slow fingers undoing the last of the buttons on his shirt — and this time, his underclothes, too. Despite their many hours spent together, in bed and out, Edwin’s desire has yet to entirely win out over the conditioned reluctance to be naked in front of another, even a lover, even in the throes of passion. Whether it is shyness, or the need for his armour, or the refusal, the inability, to be so vulnerable, or some other unspoken thing.
And his considerate, consensual, creative lover has been more than willing to work within the restrictions Edwin set — indeed, in some ways his curious cat seems to delight in the exploration of new ways to set Edwin alight without removing more layers, literally or figuratively, than Edwin allows. On some days, his king is aroused to the point of desperation by the things he wants and cannot have and will not take when Edwin has not offered it. His darling cat has tried to explain what exactly he finds ‘so kinky about it’ but Edwin doesn’t entirely understand. The Cat King’s outfits are designed to tempt, attract, seduce in ways to which Edwin’s plain linen and wool cannot possibly compare, and much as Edwin loves to look upon said outfits he generally cannot get his king naked fast enough. Still, they both enjoy whatever game it is they play with Edwin’s layers, so it’s fine and more than fine.
Edwin turns his head and glances curiously over his bared shoulder, shirt hanging loose from the crook of his elbows. “What?” He raises an eyebrow pointedly. “You asked if I would remove my shirts today, and I agreed; I was bound to, eventually. It can’t be that much of a surprise.
“What?” The Cat King cocks his head with the flat look he adopts when he thinks Edwin’s being deliberately pedantic — which Edwin will own up to, when that’s actually what he’s doing.
Edwin rolls his eyes and returns to the last of his buttons. “Don’t look at me as though I were the one speaking nonsense.”
The Cat King rolls his eyes even harder than Edwin did. “I’m not surprised you’re taking off your shirts, you little tart. Of course I knew you’d want to give me some more skin one of these days. I’m talking about how you’ve been hiding fucking gorgeous ink under your six and a half layers.” His eyes have dropped to trace what he can see of Edwin’s chest and arms, back and shoulders. “I never in nine lifetimes would’ve expected this from you.”
Edwin follows the Cat King’s gaze — and realizes the lines are visible in their entirety across his skin, thin black linework and sepia brown shading. He lowers his hands with the half-folded shirts into his lap. The patterns on his arms stand out sharply against the pale linen. Right-left-left. Edwin Payne. Angles and curves that he knows to mean walls, doors, skylights, hidden corners. Successes and so many, many failures.
The truth of all those years laid out across his skin. No longer hidden.
“Oh, bollocks.” He sets a hand to his sternum over the final doors, the spiraling staircase over his diaphragm. Cranes his head around to see over his shoulders as best he can, and yes, every last wretched line is visible. “What’s happened to the glamour.”
The Cat King cocks his head curiously, eyes greedily taking their fill of Edwin’s skin. He shrugs. “Wouldn’t have worked on me, anyway.” He taps his cheekbone beneath one bright golden eye. “Cat’s eyes.”
Edwin closes his own eyes in exasperation, mostly directed at himself. Such a foolish oversight; it never once occurred to him that his lover would be able to see through his glamour, and it really ought to have done. He knows most magics don’t work on the Cat King, and that the Cat King’s power extends throughout the cannery and his little time-bent realm. “Damn.”
He feels the shift of the bed as the Cat King sits up, the heat of him as he leans close with a curious hum. But it is only when a warm hand strokes along the lines of the path through Lust — sharp left around the butcher counter, straight diagonal to the door — that Edwin flinches away.
“I apologize for my carelessness,” he mutters, stilted and heartsore and refusing to look at the man behind him. He straightens his posture defensively, begins to unfold his shirt with stiff hands. “Give me a moment and you need not continue to see them.” He fumbles the fabric, tangled folds trapping his fingers. Tries again but cannot find the front placket, nor the armholes. Tries again—
A careful hand comes to rest on on Edwin’s wrist, stilling his agitated movements. The Cat King leans over and down, into the edge of Edwin’s sightline, golden eyes wide with something other than desire. Edwin is afraid to look properly and discover pity; prefers instead to imagine it is understanding he will find.
“Edwin? It’s fine. I wasn’t expecting to see you tatted up within an inch of your life, but like I said, it’s gorgeous work. I like it, really.”
Edwin cracks out a small, broken laugh. Within an inch of his life, indeed. But the rest of the Cat King’s words— “No. You can’t.” He stops, watches without looking as the Cat King blinks encouragingly. Finds the words he means. “You shouldn’t. They are…wretched things.”
The Cat King hums softly, voice free of judgment. “Okay. Do you want to tell me why?”
“Not particularly.” Except before he has even finished the words, he realizes perhaps that is a lie. That after nearly a century, he wants someone to know.
The Cat King waits patiently, thumb rubbing soothing circles against the bones in Edwin’s wrist.
“They are—” How does he even explain. He has never had to put into words just what the lines are, what they are to him, what they represent. “The lines are Hell, my Hell. I put them there, to help myself remember.” He turns his right forearm beneath the Cat King’s golden gaze. “These were the first. Turn right, then left, left. Then it caught me, but I’d made it farther than any time before.” He tenses his left arm, precise script curling along tendons and the memory of veins. “These were later. I forgot my name for a long time. When I remembered, I refused to forget again.”
He takes a harsh breath, in and out. Again. “The lines didn’t look like this when I first scored them into my flesh. My tools were crude, and so were the lines they made. I have—” He doesn’t need air, but feels a little like he is suffocating all the same. “I have tried to make them look less… Hellish. But changing how they look doesn’t change what they are, and I— I can’t think they are anything but grotesque.”
Because they are grotesque, the designs not only holding the maze of corridors and doorways, but also the monsters and demons and sinners that Edwin faced and fought and ran from a thousand times and more.
The Cat King doesn’t appear convinced, but doesn’t outright object either. Instead, he looks over what parts of Edwin he can see, thoughtfully, before settling his fingertips unerringly upon the dandelion puff on Edwin’s wrist. “This doesn’t look like something from Hell.”
Edwin is reluctantly impressed; leave it to his perceptive lover to hone right in on that particular design. “No. I added that one for Niko, after… Well, after.”
Fingers trailing and tracing until they reach the lines of an old-fashioned lantern etched over the left side of Edwin’s chest, above where his heart would beat did he still have one to do so, the Cat King taps gently. “What about this?”
Resigned to the point the Cat King is making, Edwin sighs. “Obviously that is for Charles.” He directs an annoyed slant of brows and lips at his lover. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
An unconcerned shrug and slow-blinking golden eyes. “Gonna try and stop me?”
Edwin looks away.
The Cat King gently tugs the tangled shirt from Edwin’s hands and drops it to the floor. He leans close, slowly, giving Edwin time to move away or protest. When he doesn’t, the Cat King presses a slow open-mouthed kiss to the lines curving over the ball of Edwin’s shoulder. The scrape of teeth and the hot swipe of a rough tongue pass over the image of the desk bell in Limbo surrounded by amorphously-human figures semi-disguised by parallel pillars and stairs.
He pulls back and rests his forehead there, speaking quietly into Edwin’s skin. “I’m not gonna lie to you and tell you that how and why you got them doesn’t matter. That what they mean to you doesn’t matter. Of course that shit matters.” He flattens his palm over the lines of the lantern, so very warm, and Edwin closes his eyes against the touch. Imagines that the heat of the Cat King’s palm is the light of the lantern come to lead him home.
“You didn’t deserve any of it. It happened anyway.” He kisses Edwin’s shoulder again. “That kind of shit doesn’t just go away, whether or not it leaves marks on your skin.” Edwin recognizes, distantly, that the Cat King is nuzzling gently with the corner of his lips that bears a scar that followed him from the last life into this one; he wonders, now, whether that small mark has followed the Cat King for much longer than a single resurrection.
“If you needed to mark yourself to remember, to protect yourself, to succeed? Then every single one of these is beautiful to me. They’re more than just evidence of your tortures, my brave ghost. They’re the proof that you survived.”
Edwin’s eyes are still closed, and he leans ever so slightly into the pressure of the hand on his chest, the forehead against his shoulder. Tips his own head to rest on the Cat King’s soft curls. He cannot bring himself to speak above a low murmur. “But Hell is so, so horrible. Why would anyone want to see the images of it? How could you bring yourself to look at them every time you look at me?”
“If you hate them so much, why not get rid of them?” the Cat King counters, lifting his head to meet Edwin’s eyes. “You put them there in the first place. You’re able to change them.” He touches the lines of the lantern with teasing taps of his fingers. “You could get rid of all of them, anytime, if you wanted to.”
Edwin sits frozen at the thought. Somehow it never occurred to him to simply remove them. To not carry the path from ruin with him intimately, always, endlessly — what might that be like? These lines have been part of him for so long that the thought of having them gone is one he cannot even imagine.
And he realizes the reason—what was perhaps always the reason, from the very first time the lines stayed between bodies, from the first days out of Hell when he saw the lines still remained—is that he wanted them to stay.
“Oh,” he says with quiet surprise, picking through new thoughts. He traces those first lines on his arm with wondering fingers, seeing them for the first time a new way. “I don’t hate them, nor do I wish them gone. These lines are how I got myself out. These lines set me free.” He finally lifts his gaze to the Cat King’s, and sees only love and pride. “They are important and I want to keep them.”
The Cat King doesn’t say anything, just smiles and tugs gently to encourage Edwin into his embrace. Edwin resists a little, awkward and a bit overwhelmed at the sudden feel of so much skin on skin and silk. He also recognizes in himself a reluctance to allow the lines to touch the Cat King. It is an irrational fear; the lines cannot transfer or do anything untoward to another. The only magic in them is whatever makes them part of Edwin’s manifestation.
But slowly Edwin relaxes into the embrace, because the Cat King is so warm and his affection given without demand or judgment. It really does feel so lovely, and he’s rather glad he finally decided to strip off a few more of his layers if this is what the result feels like. He sort of wants to say he wishes he’d done this sooner, but he wasn’t ready then and he is now. Even if it came along with other uncomfortable revelations.
But eventually the discomfort of knowing the lines and their disturbing imagery are pressed against the Cat King’s skin makes Edwin jittery and anxious, and he gently pushes out of the embrace. He doesn’t go far, leaving one hand resting on the Cat King’s chest.
The Cat King’s thumb comes up to smooth the pinch in Edwin’s brow. “Still okay?”
Edwin’s lips press together, but it seems that now the proverbial cat is out of the bag, the words won’t stay inside, either. “It’s a foolish worry, but. Even if I want to keep them. If you knew what all these lines mean, what they depict, I fear it will change the way you think of me.”
“Mm, doubtful,” the Cat King says, but he’s not making light of Edwin’s worries. Edwin’s cat has been perceptive from the very beginning and while he likes to toy, he understands what he shouldn’t tease about. “But I know you. You need to see things for yourself. So we can do that.”
“How do you mean?” Even the thought makes Edwin hesitant, yet while the reluctance he expects is still there, it is faint. It’s not that he wants to…to test his lover’s regard, either; it is mostly the draw of being seen.
“Show me everything. Tell me all about them. Let me decide how I feel about them, and you.” The Cat King watches him steadily, patient. Waiting for Edwin to think it through, to decide.
“I’ve never spoken of them before, never tried.” The uncertainty pushes at him; he doesn’t know how that would go. “I don’t know whether I’ll even…be able to.”
The Cat King gives a faux-casual shrug that does little to hide his care. “You don’t have to. I’m not gonna force you to talk. I like all your secret parts, even the ones that stay secret.”
And there is only one question, really, at the forefront of Edwin’s secret thoughts. “Will speaking of it…make it better?” Speaking of Hell. Of the lines, the memories. Will tearing it all out of himself make it stop?
“I don’t know,” the Cat King sighs. Sympathetic, but honest. “It might. It’ll probably hurt. But—“
“But it already hurts,” Edwin whispers. Not physically, perhaps, given his ghostly nature. But there are other kinds of hurt, he knows perfectly well.
Edwin nods his acquiescence and the Cat King gives him a soft kiss, then shifts around to sit behind him, tugging Edwin further onto the bed and between his legs. Edwin pulls his knees up, wraps his arms around them, unable to resist the instinctive effort to obscure at least some of the lines, for now. But his back and shoulders are bared to the Cat King’s gaze and touch, and he feels the heat of both tracing over him.
Running his fingers along the lines of the Dollhouse map that stretches along Edwin’s shoulders and spine, the Cat King says, “Tell me about this.”
And Edwin talks. It is difficult at first, his words sparse and whispered into folded arms as he speaks of endless hallways, endless running, of the terror and demons and the inevitable failure rending him limb from limb. The Cat King touches another place, and another, and each time Edwin tells a different tale that ends the same.
He doesn’t need to be able to see the lines to know each one that his lover touches, because every line burns within his memory.
But as he speaks, he begins to tell of the ways he’s changed the lines, too. From their rough beginnings to the stylized and much more palatable designs he now has. How their form has changed, if not their content, and in explaining he feels — not better, not yet — but as though a little of their weight has gone. Enough that he is able to lift his head from his knees, at least.
The Cat King rewards him with a little biting kiss to the top of his spine for that, then slips his arms around Edwin’s waist. He flips them both around easily, quick but careful, to spread Edwin on his back across the pillows. Edwin’s little gasp of surprise at the sudden shift is caught by the Cat King’s warm lips in a lingering kiss before he sits back on his knees between Edwin’s legs, staring down with bright golden eyes, focused and intent.
Edwin twitches a little beneath the hot hands trailing over his hips, and down, to hook behind his knees and tug Edwin closer, legs draped open over the Cat King’s thighs. He hides his eyes with one forearm, but it does little to stop him from feeling that burning golden gaze.
“Let me see the rest, Edwin,” the Cat King murmurs, fingers toying with the wool of Edwin’s trousers. He doesn’t push, doesn’t demand. Merely waits, patient. With a deep breath, Edwin focuses on his remaining clothing and feels the subtle change in sensation as his trousers, socks, and underclothes dissipate and he is left naked against the heat of his lover.
The Cat King makes a pleased little purr as his hands press against skin rather than manifested wool. “Well, that’s one way.”
“Rather than losing my nerve,” Edwin mutters. He hides a little deeper beneath his arm as the Cat King drags his touch back up over Edwin’s hipbones. It’s a curious reversal of their usual roles, with Edwin bare and the Cat King above him still clothed, draped in loose silk shirt and pants.
He knows it’s not the nakedness of his body making him ache with vulnerability, but the baring of the lines across his chest and stomach and upper thighs, and the rawness of the Cat King’s gentle fingertips tracing each and every one.
The touches pause over Edwin’s sternum and the lines of the spiraling staircase there. “Tell me about this one.”
And Edwin does, words spilling out from behind his teeth, the dam broken and washed away in the flood. With every touch and request, Tell me, he pours out all the horrors and hurts that each line represents, words thick and heavy on his tongue but going on and on until suddenly there are none left. He is left breathless though he doesn’t breathe, aching as though he’s been torn apart again, with tears on his cheeks, and he feels—
He just feels.
The quiet absence of his words is filled with the low, soothing purr of the Cat King, rumbling and rising and falling with every breath. A warm palm settles on the arm still covering Edwin’s eyes, right over the lines of his name.
“Edwin Payne,” the Cat King whispers, leaning close to replace his hand with a kiss, two, three, along the curling letters. “You didn’t deserve any of that. It happened to you anyway. You escaped, all by yourself.” Fingers curl around Edwin’s wrist, pulling gently to uncover his face still damp with tears. And Edwin is afraid to see what his words have changed in the Cat King’s eyes, but he can’t hide from it forever.
So he looks up and meets green-gold cat’s eyes — and sees nothing but the love that’s always been there.
The Cat King smiles, crooked and oh so real. “Everything about you is a miracle. And none of these,” he gestures to the lines, “will ever make me feel otherwise.”
Choking on a sob, Edwin presses up and throws his arms around the Cat King’s shoulders, clutching tight. Strong arms return the hold, and the Cat King hauls them both upright until Edwin is settled in his lap, chest to chest. Beating to unbeating heart.
And for some time Edwin is simply lost to it all. Good and bad, the burning hurt and the aching embrace. He cannot tell if he is crying, or speaking, or entirely silent. He cannot tell how long it lasts.
But all storms eventually run their course, and this one is no different.
When Edwin finally calms, and has waited long enough to be sure the storm will not return, he sits back enough that he can see the Cat King’s concerned face. Warm fingers run through Edwin’s mussed hair. “Feel better? Emotional crisis over for now?”
Wiping his eyes, Edwin casts the Cat King a halfhearted glare, but he is more than willing to accept the shift in tone to something less emotionally fraught. “It would appear so, for the moment.”
The Cat King lets out a huge relieved breath, and lets a grin break across his face. “Thank god, because you are so fucking sexy with all this ink and I am so done with being wise and mature no matter how good at it I am.”
Edwin lets out a wet laugh and swats the Cat King’s arm in pretend annoyance. But he’s smiling too, just a little, and closes his eyes on a slow, soothing exhale, letting the worst of the tension fade.
He opens his eyes as the Cat King begins following lines with fingertips again. He’s met with the look of heated, focused curiosity his cat gets when he really likes something and decides to indulge in winnowing out all the secrets it holds. Edwin has been the focus of that particular attention more than a few times, and it’s always exhilarating.
It isn’t sexual, at the moment, for all that Edwin is naked in his lover’s lap. Or rather, it is sexual, but in that effortless instinctive way that is simply the core of the Cat King’s nature. Where the moment could turn to sex, but does not necessarily need to do so. One word from Edwin would see him flat on his back again in a haze of pleasure, if that is what he wants.
But he is content instead to sit quietly and indulge the Cat King’s curiosity. To wallow in his attention. It’s not exactly a hardship, with warm touches and praise purred low, so gorgeous, so pretty, how’d you come up with this design, I want to lick all of these, I know this is probably a mushroom but it kinda looks like a cock—
“It does not!” Edwin gasps in affront, pulled from his quiet drifting by the crude words. “It looks nothing of the sort!” He punctuates the words with another annoyed swat in reprimand.
The Cat King snickers, the rude creature, and grins up at Edwin with satisfaction. “There’s my bitchy ghost.” Edwin pretends exasperation with a flat look and heavy sigh, but inside he appreciates the tease for distraction it is. All he gets is another toothy grin in response.
“Cock-mushrooms aside,” the Cat King winks, accepting another withering glare from Edwin with delighted amusement, “I’m no art expert, but your style looks a little Art Nouveau to me. Have I got it right?”
“Mm, inspired by might be more accurate.” Edwin tilts his head in acknowledgment. “The style was quite popular when I was young. I’ve always liked it.”
“Well you did a fabulous job.” The Cat King looks terribly pleased with himself for guessing correctly, blatant appreciation and admiration for the designs in his voice.
“Thank you,” Edwin says. It’s thanks for more than the compliments on the way he remade the lines; right now, at least, the rest of it doesn’t need to be said.
They fall quiet again as the Cat King continues to explore the lines on Edwin’s torso, but he has the look on his face that Edwin recognizes as wanting to say something but being unsure how it will be received. Edwin waits, and after a few minutes his patience is rewarded.
“You know, you’re not in danger of Hell anymore,” the Cat King points out gently. “You’re out, and you’re not alone. You’ve got people who literally went to Hell to save you last time, you’ve got friends in very high, trans-dimensional places. And I’m not gonna make you do anything, if you need these I will never try and tell you that you don’t. But.” He hesitates, touching the image of the lantern. “If I know you, then you’ve got all of these written down somewhere else, somewhere safe. Probably in that fancy little magical notebook of yours. Am I right?”
Edwin nods slowly.
The Cat King echoes the nod. “So maybe it’s okay for these, the ones on you, to show more of the good stories, too.”
Instinctively Edwin wants to protest, refuse, but makes himself pause and consider it properly. In the same way he’s never thought to remove them, he’s never given much thought to significantly changing them either. He’s never done more than shift and refine their appearance, and added the two small marks for Charles and Niko.
There’s no reason he couldn’t do a little more of the same.
He knows he might never feel safe without the mapped corridors of the Dollhouse, and the path through, saved upon his skin. But— He raises his hand to the shoulder the Cat King kissed before, curving his palm over the lines there. The desk bell from Limbo…that, Edwin thinks he can do without.
Having made the decision, he feels…light. With an impish glance at the Cat King from beneath his lashes, he turns his attention to his upper arm and shoulder.
He doesn’t need to touch his skin to change the lines, but something about doing this under the Cat King’s focused curiosity makes Edwin want to draw it out, let him see the new lines as they happen. Particularly the ones Edwin has in mind.
Concentrating on the lines with an image of what he wants bright in his thoughts, he shifts them beneath his thumb and fingers, as though he were smearing paint. From his elbow up his bicep to his shoulder, the lines move and change under his touch. When he finally lifts his hand away to reveal the finished image and looks up, it’s to see the Cat King’s eyes wide and soft and wondrously awed.
“Edwin…” Gentle fingers follow the new lines. A lithe black cat done in sinuous curves climbs up the length of Edwin’s arm, tail curled just above his elbow, paws and body stretched along his bicep. The cat’s head, haloed with a crown, lies across Edwin’s shoulder, angled just so, as though it is looking up at Edwin’s face with tiny golden eyes.
“The good stories, right?” Edwin smiles, and coyly tilts his head down to touch his raised shoulder, in a way that looks as though the little cat is kissing his cheek.
And then Edwin’s arms are full of a purring Cat King and he’s being kissed to within an inch of his afterlife, with a possessive hand covering the new cat on his shoulder and clutching him close.
X. New Lines
He never does get rid of the map of the Dollhouse, but that’s all right. He balances it out.
A cricket bat. Patches and pins. A magnifying glass. Books and runes. Glowing white eyes, the slender spreading branches of a tree. Constellations and a small black crow. Dandelions and lilies. References to, memories of, cases old and new.
There are so very many good stories.