It's not a long wait. Ed hangs up his coat, checks the locks, checks in with the head of night patrols and goes to the study.

He stands at the door for a moment, struck all over again by how beautiful Oswald is. Maybe other people didn't see it, but to Ed, there's something hypnotic about him, so much power and violence and sharpness in such a pale, fragile seeming form. His skin looked like the faintest touch would bruise it, but Ed had seen the scars of what he had survived.

"You're so perfect," he hears himself breathe out.