ALT

Happy Birthday Bones!

Little fanart for the historical AU @readwritethrive has been playing with on discord, featuring Crystal and Charles running a molly house in the 1800s

“Soft-Charles’ smile turns cheeky at the corners, earning him a fond eye roll from soft-Edwin. “Is that so?” he murmurs in that crisp, posh little accent of his, the gray-green gaze Charles knows so well flicking downward to soft-Charles’ parted lips. And as easy as can be, the two boys close the distance between them in a slow, savoring kiss.”

from we are born to die (and we all die to live) by @artemisadore for the DBDA Mini Bang!

Main art piece here

The client meets the smile with one of his own, his posture already loosening in response to Charles’ charm. “There’s an old lady who haunts the candy shop a few streets down from where I li-” he breaks off, smile fading. “Where I used to live. I told her I had a mystery I was trying to sort out, and she pointed me your way.”

Charles grins. “Good old Lizzie,” he says. “Not to worry mate. We’re aces with mysteries.”

A routine case looking into mysterious industrial ‘accidents’ goes sideways, resulting in Edwin leaning on his hell-forged pain tolerance to get them both out safely. Charles is less than thrilled about it.

Charles misses being alive.

Crystal is bright and brave, and beautiful, and Charles can imagine what they could have been if he’d met her while he was alive, if they hadn’t been born thirty years apart, if he hadn’t been murdered by a bunch of racist pricks before he could graduate.

But Crystal has a life to live. And if he’d been offered the choice of trading in the last thirty years of mysteries solved and adventures had, the sight of Edwin safe and sound in their office and looking at him like he hung the moon, for another chance at life… he doesn’t think he’d take it.

“Hell still has its claim on me. It can take me back if-”

“Well I’m not gonna let that happen, am I?” Charles snapped. “Because my claim on you comes first. Hell will just have to get in line.”

“Your claim? Charles, I-”

“Because I love you,” said Charles desperately. “Maybe not the way you love me, but that’s gotta count for something, doesn’t it? You’re my best mate, Edwin. You’re my whole world and I am never letting those bastards get their hands on you again. You’re not going anywhere without me.”

ALT

“How much power do you think the everbloom gave Philomena?”

“Quite a bit, I’d imagine. But whatever you’re thinking, it won’t work.”

“Enough to kill a demon?”

–

Fanart for An Amateur’s Guide to Auction Theory by the incredible @e-vasong. This fic is brilliant - an intense pre-canon casefic, creepy, angsty, incredibly satisfying and well-constructed, and has been living rent-free in my head since I read the first chapter.