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The sun is shining on the day Thomas’ life goes to shit.
Well, technically it's his fourth life, but who's counting, really?
“Whiskers? You ‘round, mate?”
As he leaps down from the perch he had climbed in an effort to reach a particularly enticing sunbeam streaming in through the high cannery windows, the Cat King can hear the better half of the undead duo huff in that adorably prim-and-proper way of his. “Of course he is, Charles!” The monarch imagines enchanting emerald eyes being rolled with a pleased flick of his tail. “He's never missed one of our audiences before, and I sincerely doubt he would start now.”
An audience seems like a piss-poor description of whatever the fuck it is the three of them have been doing these past few months, but it's not like Thomas really knows how to define it either, so he lets it slide. Because while an old dog can't learn new tricks, an archaic feline can apparently still manage to be surprised from time to time. From alleyway cheek-kisses to impromptu consultation gigs on cases to a strange sort of old-fashioned courtship, Edwin Payne has made a naughty habit of uncovering new and inventive ways to keep the Cat King of Port Townsend on his toes.
The curly-haired menace that's attached to his hip is just a…begrudging bonus. Like the dinky plastic toy at the bottom of a cereal box, or the “free” part of a buy-one-get-one-free bargain.
But somewhere between Edwin’s “allowing Charles time to figure it out” and “you should really give him a chance, you know,” the monarch has actually started to see the guy-linered, doe-eyed appeal of the punk ghost detective. Turns out he's not entirely immune to reckless heroism and sunshine smiles and stupid polos after all, which almost makes it all the worse when he lays eyes on the pair and realizes that the day he's not-so-secretly been dreading has finally arrived.
Clasped hands, flushed cheeks, twin grins — all hallmarks of a happy ending to a decades-long love story, with him as a colorful little footnote. In a flash of purple, the Cat King sheds his sleek black fur for something equally dark and slinky. And if it's more “Spirit Halloween slut at a funeral” than “Princess Di revenge dress,” well, he'll chalk it up to being caught on his back paw.
Forgive him if he's feeling rather mournful all of a sudden.
“Well, well, well,” Thomas drawls, letting his golden gaze rake over his favorite phantoms, more bitter than sweet. “Should I break out the champagne and poppers? It seems like some long-overdue congratulations are in order!”
They both blink at him owlishly, so in-sync it almost makes him want to hack up a hair ball about it.
“What?” the Cat King simpers, brows shooting up unbidden. “It’s not like it takes a dead boy detective to see what's going on here.” He can hardly even stand to look at them — at the way their fingers intertwine so seamlessly — so he takes to examining his own claws with feigned interest.
“So you…know why we're here, then?” Edwin asks carefully, trying and failing to catch his eye.
Thomas snorts. “Sure do. So, like. Congrats, I guess. I'd offer to bake a cake, if it weren't for your ghostly taste-buds.”
Edwin and Charles exchange one of their patented looks, the kind that haunts the more self-flagellating of Thomas’ daydreams — the fun and less-fun ones alike. His soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend clears his throat. “Thomas,” Edwin begins, so gentle, so pitying, “what on Earth are you going on about?”
It raises the Cat King’s hackles, the way these two seem to make him feel more prey than predator these days. “Why are you acting so surprised?” he snarks right back. “We always knew our little fling had an expiration date, alright? I just didn't anticipate today to be the day of reckoning.”
Thomas has no right to sound so scorned, he knows. It's not like Edwin ever made secret the fact that he was waiting for Charles to get his shit together. And it's certainly not like Thomas ever discouraged them. How could he possibly? He's a hopeless romantic — emphasis on hopeless — and what is more romantic than risking your entire afterlife by going to literal Hell for another?
“Oi!” Charles exclaims, his brows furrowing in an almost endearing confusion. “I think you got the wrong idea here, mate.”
“Oh?” the Cat King can't help but taunt with a cunty tilt of his head, one that matches the hand he places on his hip. “You didn't just confess your undying love to your bowtied bestie?”
Charles’ sigh is exasperated as he takes a step towards Thomas. He even drops Edwin’s hand to reach out for him, which is so wrong Thomas wants to scream. “I mean, yeah, but—”
“Exactly! So why don't you just—”
“That’s quite enough!”
Thomas might be more embarrassed about jumping at the sound of Edwin’s voice if Charles hadn't done the same exact thing. They are both cursed with a shared affliction, after all, the same irrational fondness for bright, bitchy, beautiful Edwin Payne. Still, he's grateful that his subjects tend to make themselves scarce during these so-called phantom audiences.
At least one shred of his dignity will be maintained.
“If you are going to insist on engaging in such spectacle,” Edwin scathes, “I implore you to take us somewhere more private.”
How many times has Edwin made that same request, his crisp accent curling around the shell of Thomas’ ear? Maybe he's planning on an improper farewell, a grand send-off of sorts while his new beau watches. It's a shame, then, that he'll never get to see for himself how pretty they look together. He wonders if he asks really nicely if they'd let him—
“Today, if you please.”
With a half-hearted grumble and a lickity-quick snap, the Cat King brings them all to his chambers in a flash. He doesn't bother to make sure they made the trip in one piece, too busy throwing himself face-down onto the bed in a huff.
“Whiskers!” Charles laughs incredulously. The little shit even has the audacity to plop down right beside him. “What's this tantrum about, huh? You don't even know what we're gonna say!” After an awkward pause, he hedges, “Or…maybe you do? S'that it?”
The Cat King groans into his mattress in an unfortunately unsexy way. “Of course I do!” he whines, all bratty petulance.
The bed dips on the other side of him, Edwin’s form both warm and solid within the cocoon of his realm. “And what, pray tell, do you think we're here to say?”
It feels cruel to make Thomas be the one to say it aloud, which is strange. Because of all of the horrible, wonderful things Edwin Payne is, cruel has never been one of them. The feline decides to take his time with it, pushing himself upright and tucking his legs protectively to his chest. “What do you want me to say?” he sighs, eyes cast down. “You're obviously here in some misguided attempt to let me down gently now that you have each other. I, like, get it, but it doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.”
They're doing it again, having one of those freaky fucking eye contact-only conversations right over his fucking head. The Cat King almost bitches about it until Charles outright laughs — brash and loud and, quite frankly, baffling.
“Charles!” Edwin chastises, though the corner of his traitorous mouth twitches upward in a poorly concealed smirk.
Thomas barrels so far past offended that he lands somewhere closer to confused. “What in the ever-living fuck is so funny?”
It must be the sheer patheticness dripping from his tone that makes Charles finally take pity on him. “We didn’t come here to break up with you, mate! We came here to…” Fascinatingly, the little punk seems to flounder, an adorable pink coloring his ghostly cheeks.
“To, well…to woo you, if you must know,” Edwin concludes.
Thomas is, admittedly, pretty fucking skeptical about that. “Woo me?” he scoffs, raising a single brow.
“We had rather hoped for that effect, yes.” And while the proud tilt of Edwin's chin and the earnestness of his tone seem to point toward sincerity, the idea that these ghosties could possibly be here to woo him is too ridiculous to even fathom. “In fact, let us prove it to you.”
And, well. You know what they say about cats and curiosity. “How do you intend to do that, sweetness?” Thomas asks with a guarded slant to his sardonic lilt.
For a moment, the monarch is struck by just how absurdly handsome his partner is when he's being a bitch, from his glimmering green eyes to his knowing smirk. Edwin teases, “You have no qualms about administering a little truth spell, do you?”
He should have known.
The first time Thomas pulled this cheeky trick on Edwin, he had had to be quick. The detective was a flighty thing back then, and the Cat King had been given precious little time to leave a lasting impression. Now, he takes his time leaning in close, his black-painted clawed nail hovering over the lips he now knows like the back of his own paw. “Are you sure?” he murmurs, surprised when Edwin’s nod is instantaneous.
With a quick flick of his wrist, a golden scratch blooms across Edwin’s petal-pink mouth. This close, Thomas can see him shiver as the magic courses through him. It's hard not to stare. “I do believe Charles is growing restless, darling,” the ghost purrs in a sultry rumble, putting everything he's learned in the Cat King’s bedroom to good use.
When Thomas turns his head to catch a glimpse of the cricket-bat-wielding charmer, he finds himself once again enraptured. Charles’ inky eyes are pupil-blown and his lips are parted invitingly. And while the Cat King has certainly wondered what it would be like to take this pretty little boy toy for a spin, right now he downright craves it.
“C'mon, Whiskers,” Charles rasps playfully. “Don't bite, do I?”
Thomas applies the spell in an ungraceful flash, afraid that if he doesn't strike while the metaphorical iron is hot he will be tempted to do something irrevocably stupid, like kiss his boyfriend's soulmate senseless.
Charles chuckles at the sensation, his phantom fingers hovering over his lips. His nails are painted the same jet black as Thomas’. “Oi, kinda tingles, don't it?”
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“Quite,” Edwin agrees, his smile so achingly fond Thomas almost has to excuse himself, though whether for a drink or a wank he can’t be certain. The detective folds his hands together in his lap expectantly. “Well?”
“Hold on a tick!” Charles interjects with a pout. “S’only fair if Whiskers gets charmed too, innit?”
Before they can begin their practiced little double act of infuriatingly endearing banter, Thomas snorts. “No need, sweet cheeks. I’m a Cat King! I couldn't lie even if I wanted to.”
Edwin blinks, surprised. “Truly?”
Thomas shrugs, aiming for coy and missing by a mile. Who knows what Edwin is remembering, the feline’s past words now painted in a new light? “Guess you'll just have to trust me, hot stuff.” It's endlessly satisfying, being able to make Edwin Payne smile with his teeth.
If Thomas has any doubts of the truth spell’s potency, they vanish the second Charles blurts, “Y’know, it used to drive me up a wall when you two flirted like mad right in front of me, but now I just think it’s hot, yeah?” He clamps his hand over his big mouth, but it's too late — Thomas’ heart has already skipped a beat. The magic cat scratch pulses a bright, buttery yellow from between Charles’ fingers, and Thomas wonders vaguely if he tastes of sunshine.
“Oh, now this is fun!” Thomas grins wide enough to bare his fangs. “Tell me, Edwin, inquiring minds would like to know — how is Mr. Tall, Lanky, and Handsome in bed?”
Edwin rolls his eyes at the antics, no doubt seeing through the smoke and mirrors of the monarch’s crippling insecurity and blatant deflection all the way down to his hollowed-out core. Still, he indulges Thomas by answering, “I wouldn't know. We were waiting for you.”
The words punch the air right out of his lungs, because he certainly was not expecting that.
“We did do some snogging,” Charles supplies most helpfully, “and it was absolutely brills!”
“Yes. Well.” Edwin’s lips quirk up, the golden light of the truth spell flickering with a whimsical sort of charm. “I'm sure Thomas will forgive us our eagerness.”
Thomas shrugs, the very picture of nonchalance if he does say so himself. “I don't own you, Edwin. There is nothing to forgive.”
He's not just talking about some snogging.
“Go on, then,” Edwin murmurs anyway, because of course he knows that. “Ask us.”
And the Cat King could play dumb, or maybe even coy. They’re in his realm, after all, and he is a king. It is well within his right to play whatever part he'd like. But playing pretend in this moment would be to ignore all of the ways that keeping the company of dead boys has made him want to stop pretending altogether. A few months shouldn't amount to much in the grand scheme of his lengthy existence, but Edwin and Charles don't seem to care much for what the universe dictates is or isn't possible, do they?
So Thomas takes a deep, steadying breath. “Why are you two here? Really?” He's not exactly proud of the way his voice wobbles, but hey, it is what it is.
“Because we want you, Thomas. We want to be with you,” Edwin exclaims with utter sincerity, his slender fingers encircling Thomas’ wrist when he instinctively tries to pull away.
“Both of us,” Charles is eager to add. “In case that wasn't, like, totally obvious.”
For a brief moment, the Cat King almost feels bad about his little hissy fit. But then again, these boys knew exactly who they came to the cannery to woo, didn’t they? And they did manage to get him into bed, after all, in a slinky little dress no less.
“Oh yeah?” Thomas scoffs, breezy and breathless and maybe just a tad nervous as he directs his attention to Charles. “Then why don't you come over here prove it?”
The afternoon light catches on the gold of Charles’ earring as he leans in, deliciously enthusiastic — like maybe the only thing that was holding him back from diving right in was waiting on Thomas’ invitation. But when both of them instinctively turn to Edwin, fighting against the want-warm, gravitational-like pull drawing them together, it occurs to Thomas that maybe they actually need a different kind of permission entirely.
Edwin’s normally light eyes are nearly black with heavy, heady want. His tongue darts out to wet his lips absently before he says, “Do not stop on my account.” The not-quite-gentle squeeze he gives Thomas’ wrist before releasing it must flip a switch in the tomcat, because before he fully knows what he's doing, he's surging forward across his bed to capture Charles' lips with his own.
And oh, it's so much better than Thomas anticipated. Not skillful, per se, but good — all giddy excitement and clumsy, teenage-dream newness. “Finally,” Charles groans into his mouth, his phantom fingers curling around Thomas’ jaw.
“Seems like you’ve given this some thought, sweetheart,” the feline chuckles, nuzzling his way down to nip at the bronze column of Charles’ neck playfully as he drags him closer.
Charles, now straddling Thomas’ lap with those days-long legs of his, hums in agreement. “Thought about this loads, haven't I?” he rasps right in his ear. The simmering goldenrod sparks of the truth magic against his skin makes Thomas shiver all the way down to his toes.
“Oh, don’t worry, babes, there will be plenty—”
“If you ruin this for me by making an asinine comment about loads,” Edwin scathes from beside them, “I will not hesitate in divesting you of the remainder of your lives. Am I understood?”
God, Thomas wants him so badly he could chew his own arm off.
But despite being a creature of want and pleasure — and despite the tempting little morsel currently writhing in his lap and pressing open-mouthed kisses to his jawline — the Cat King deigns to show a truly admirable amount of restraint.
He crooks a finger under Charles' chin and catches his molten, lust-drunk gaze. “Tell you what,” Thomas purrs, tracing the enchanted scratch with the pad of his thumb until Charles’ unnecessary breath hitches. “You've been waiting to have Edwin much longer than you've been waiting on little ol’ me. And luckily for you,” he chuckles when Charles' eyes lock in on his smirk-bared fangs, “I can tell you exactly how to do it.”
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For a moment, he thinks the little ghosty might refuse, if the grip he has on the back Thomas’ neck is anything to go by. But with one glance at Edwin, whose striking features are warmed by the faint yellow light radiating from his truth mark, Charles is scrambling off of the Cat King’s lap and into Edwin's, the weight of Charles' spectral body being flung pressing Edwin down into the mattress. And really, Charles is a natural at this, instinctively pinning his best mate's hands above his head before Edwin can even try to sit up.
“Good boy,” Thomas croons, reveling in the way the praise make Charles preen. The little punk goes to lean down, but he stills in something resembling obedience when Thomas clicks his tongue. “No, no, no. I know it's tempting to dive right in, believe me! It’s almost unfair, really — I mean, those pretty lips of his are just begging to be kissed, aren't they?” He may not have Charles' gaze on him, but from the low whine that escapes his throat, he clearly has his attention. “But if you really want to get our boy all good and riled, you need to make him work for it.”
“Work for it, huh?” Charles sounds half-wrecked already, poor thing. That may have something to do with Edwin rolling his hips up insistingly against him, chasing any taste of friction he can manage from his supine position. “How d’you reckon I should—ah—make him work for it, love?”
It's such a burden, honestly, being in such close proximity to such fascinating beings with such charming British accents.
When Edwin realizes he’s outnumbered, his nostrils flare in a delightful combination of frustration and arousal. “Need I remind you that I confessed my affection for you on the steps of fucking Hell. I feel I have put in my share of work, thank you very much.”
Thomas whistles. “Low blow, beautiful.” He drops his voice to a conspiratorial hush, feigning a whisper behind his hand as he says to Charles, “That swan neck of his? Super sensitive. Drives him absolutely wild.”
Charles’ lips curl decadently around a toothy grin. “S'that so?”
Edwin’s huff of annoyance melts into a heady moan when Charles ducks his head to give him a cheeky love bite. And while Charles doesn't exactly make Edwin work for much of anything, the way the two of them give and take and intertwine on some sort of cosmic level is nothing short of electric — and not just from the sparks that fly when their truth marks connect in filthy, drawn-out kisses. Clothing is shed rapidly, exposing expanses of bronze and ivory skin that make Thomas’ mouth water. On their own, Edwin and Charles are both objectively beautiful creatures.
Together, they are down-right divine.
But just as the Cat King settles back against his pillows to allow his hand to a little between-the-legs pilgrimage, Edwin shoots him a patented glare from over Charles’ bare shoulder. “Hands off,” he snipes, his blunt nails carving a multitude of parallel paths down the length of Charles’ back. “If you insist on waiting your turn, then wait you shall.”
So Thomas waits — and whimpers and whines and writhes — while he watches his boys lose themselves in a frenzied, glorious frottage that sets him on fire by sight alone. In the end, Edwin takes matters into his own graceful, dexterous hand and brings both himself and Charles over the edge in unison, and it is the most gorgeous thing Thomas has ever witnessed in all of his centuries.
Or it was, until both Edwin and Charles, sweaty and flushed and boneless and alive in a way only dead boys can be, turn their attention on him.
“I do believe,” Edwin pants, running his fingers through messy russet waves, “it is your turn, Thomas.”
Charles grins broadly in return, so wide it must hurt his dimpled cheeks. “Yeah. We’re just getting started, aren't we?”
And though the truth spell has now all but faded into shimmery golden flecks, Thomas knows deep down in his soul that for the three of them, this really is just the beginning.