Disco Elysium In Between Commissions Felt A Lot Better While Doodling These.

Disco Elysium in between commissions… felt a lot better while doodling these.

I like Kim a normal amount I promise.

i don’t know if this has been done before, but i really just need his hair to get messed with

Day 3 of Painland Week - First Kiss

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I feel like Charles and Edwin are definitely the people who are either incredibly productive or not productive at all when they have free time.

Like:

Crystal, waking up from like 2 hours of sleep: Did you guys make any progress on the case

Charles: Yeah actually we solved the entire thing and then we had extra time so I put some more stuff we might need in my bag and Edwin learned a new language

And then two nights later Crystal gets a full nights sleep and Charles is like: Not really but I introduced Edwin to trivial pursuit and that was a good time

Charles has settled on Edwin's lap in the wingback chair in a comfortable sprawl, his knees on either side of Edwin's. He'd gone about it with a practiced ease, as though this is something he's done a million times; as though he belongs here; as though he could search out this spot in his sleep, if ghosts could sleep.

Yet Charles being so near to him, and with such deliberate and specific intent—that being their mutual enjoyment—is a relatively recent development, in the grand scheme. Edwin is... ablaze with the newness of it. He has to tip his head back just to get the full measure of Charles perched astride him, of the low lamplight diffused across Charles' face, of the fond, familiar mischief that glimmers in his eyes.

Port Townsend may have opened Edwin to his innermost desires, but if he is very, very honest he can admit that his private longing for Charles is of much older provenance. He would have given Charles an eternity to sort out the shape of his own feelings, if he needed it. And if it had meant Charles' continued happiness, he would have been content to live out their days alone in his regard, content with a cherished friendship that never included this.

By some miracle, he does not have to.

It had not taken Charles anywhere close to an eternity to figure out the rest, so to speak. What is a single year, after all, to a pair of ghosts? Falling in love, Charles had told him, felt like waking up in a strange bedroom which became, as you shook off sleep, suddenly as familiar as your own. "Oh... bit of a weird metaphor, that," he'd said, wrinkling his nose in the way Edwin privately found exceedingly endearing. Then: "Sorry, mate. I'd been building up to this, you know? What I was gonna say to you. Had it all planned in my head and now. Well. Can't get it out right, can I?"

But semantics didn't much matter, in the end.

In the end, being in love with one another had come to them as easily as it had to fall into step walking through the gates of St. Hilarion's, away from their shadowed past and towards their intertwined future.

It is dizzying to acknowledge that this is real—not a game, or a trick, or a trap. Just Charles Rowland, whom he adores, looking equally smitten as he steadies himself with his hands on Edwin's upper arms, the better to give an experimental shimmy of his hips against Edwin's. Like an anchorless ship Edwin drifts on the sweeping tide of pleasure their proximity brings. He relishes how Charles’ gaze rolls over him, terribly tender in its focus and promisingly molten.

"Charles," he says in unspooled wonder, simply because he can. Simply because happiness, in this moment, takes the shape of his best friend's name in his mouth. To his own ears he sounds strangled. Transported. Not himself whatsoever. It ought to scare him, the difference Charles can work through him so easily with the barest effort; it both does and doesn't. "I am certain you'll be the death of me."

"You're already dead, mate," says Charles, "live a little," and he actually giggles, like he's just said the funniest thing in all the world; like it pleases him immeasurably to know he can have this mad effect on Edwin. The giddy edge of his laughter vibrates through his chest, and into Edwin's. And Charles sounds breathless, even though ghosts do not need to breathe.

Edwin loves him so much, just then, that it genuinely aches. Not the agony of hell or the shocking burn of iron, but something new altogether, an incandescence that lances sharp beneath his breastbone. Something else to add to his running mental catalogue of sensations he shouldn't be able to feel, along with the beginnings of a flush spreading over his skin and the welcome heat of Charles' body through their clothes.

It is, all told, rather overwhelming.

Charles must read something of the enormity of his predicament writ plain on his face, for in the next second he reaches out to stroke careful, calloused thumbs over Edwin's burning cheeks. It's only a feather-light touch, back and forth and back again, one that might irk him were it to come from anyone else—but Charles has always been permitted certain liberties, so instead Edwin finds it... grounding. Or exhilarating. He isn't sure which. Possibly both.

"Hey," Charles says. "It's all right. It's fine. Still going slow, remember? This is brills, just this. We can st—"

"I do not wish us to stop," Edwin protests, before Charles can even finish the unthinkable suggestion. He could remain suspended in this precise millisecond for the next thirty years without complaint. "It is only that I... I can feel you. And everything. Everything we are doing. And it—you—you are so very...”

"Good?" Charles supplies, grinning Edwin’s favorite of his grins—the wide, unfettered one that shows his gums and lets a bit of his tongue peek between his teeth. He looks hopeful, impossibly bright in his joy, and just a little wicked.

“Yes,” Edwin says. "Better than good." He smiles up at Charles, some distant part of him registering that he must look utterly besotted.

Charles laughs, delighted.

And he tips forward to drop his forehead onto Edwin’s shoulder; to put his lips to Edwin’s neck, just below his ear. He presses a kiss there, so quick Edwin might think he’d imagined it, except that Charles does it a second time. And a third, this one open-mouthed and lingering, sending little shivers skittering down Edwin's spine and drawing a soft noise from his throat.

“I like this,” Charles whispers into Edwin's skin. His voice is raw-edged, confessional in a way Edwin hasn't quite heard him sound these three-odd decades. “So much. Being like this, with you. Didn't know how much I would, did I? 'Course you'd see it before me. Brilliant, you are, Edwin Payne."

Edwin Payne and his silly little hand gestures Pt 1 | Pt 2