Fourteen, an Ed Edd and Eddy Fanfic
A/N: Have to post the next few chapters at once, or the story won't make as much sense; ie. Make it look like a complete cop-out on my part, blahblahblah, whatever.
Forgot the stupid disclaimer: Ed Edd and Eddy ain't mine, all three kids belong to Danny Antonnucci and Canada. Canadians are weird. (Like I have any room to talk...)
xxxx
Leaving me alone to die is worse than having the guts to kill me...
Poke.
Poke. This time a bit harder against his forehead, accompanied by a snigger and a muffled snort. No response other than a forehead twitch-
PokePokePoke. Double D finally twitched, shifted from his semi-comfortable position on the grass-
"OI, SOCKHEAD!"
Edd physically jerked up into a sitting position, but consciousness was half a second late. This amounted to giving him just long enough to let out half of his customary, "Good Lord!" before, along with a good amount of dirt and sand, he was scooped up and unceremoniously tossed into the creek by the tallest, sniggering Ed.
There was a loud splash and then silence for a few shocked seconds, and then a very wet, very miffed fourteen-year old's head broke the water's surface. To (big surprise), both Ed and Eddy, howling in laughter from the bank. All while the now-shortest Ed flailed and spat freezing creek water.
Figures.
"Eddy!" Double D managed to choke out at least part of an annoyed protest, though ultimately forced into setting his vocal irritation aside after inadvertantly taking a lungful of water and really drowning himself. Embarrassing... The creek couldn't have been more than five or six feet deep where he had been thrown in, and he didn't look it (at all), but he was a functional swimmer.
Necessity worked in strange ways.
Taking a breath that managed to chill the rest of him, Edd tried to find the bottom of the creek with his toes. "You shoulda seen your face!" Eddy, doubled over and snickering, gasped for breath; from appearances he looked as though about to pass out from laughing so hard. Gnarr... Ed had joined in, though in a half-hearted, distracted way.
"I'm glad the two of you found that so humorous." Though he mentioned the both of them, the comment was mainly directed at Eddy. Not that it would have any affect; while they both knew Eddy was perceptive enough to pick up on his friend's sarcasm, Double D's theory was that he just didn't let it bother him.
So Edd rolled his eyes, teeth chattering and feeling snarky as he tread the surprisingly deep water. Aside from the dubious cleanliness of said water and the abrupt (and frankly rude) wake-up call, he really couldn't muster the energy to be more than mildly irritated at the both of them: it was an unspoken rule that if you fell asleep out in the open like that you were basically fair game. Which Eddy would no doubt remind him of until the end of time... An unelegant few breaststrokes later found him within feet of the bank and able to touch the smoothed stones of the creek-bed with his toes.
The little voice in the back of his head that still screamed unclean he was able to silence with a firm mental order to shut up. So much for 'mild irritation.'
"Oh come on, Sockhead." Eddy held out hand with a cocky grin firmly in place; a split second of deliberation passed and with one hand on the top of is head to keep his sodden hat in place, Double D accepted the assistance, sloshing back onto mostly dry land and crossing his arms over his chest and trying not to shiver. It might have been the beginning of summer, but the water was still as bitterly cold as it had been all spring. Hence his preference to simply sunbathe (a laughable concept, the closest he'd been to getting anything approaching a tan had been two years ago and he'd looked like a boiled lobster for two weeks) until he dozed off, and his dear friends decided to toss him in the creek anyway. "Lighten up, yeah?"
Edd looked over his shoulder at him, eyebrow cocked in an approximation of, 'oh, really?' Glancing past him to Ed, he absently adjusted his black hat a bit with one hand as the other squeezed creek water from his clothes. Squelchysquelchysquelchy... Out of the three, Eddy was the only one really dressed for taking a dip, sporting the most gods-awful yellow swim trunks Edd had been forced to lay eyes on. Double D vaguely remembered telling him so at some point, not that he'd listened, of course... Par for the course, really, considering how Eddy rarely took his suggestions seriously, unless it was related to a scam or attempting to talk him into something the stocky loudmouth wanted to do anyway.
Edd smiled tightly at the thought, squeezing more water out of his shirt. Few could really appreciate just how easy it was to, well, not manipulate Eddy, the word had entirely the wrong connotations... Still, he had found that all he had to do was phrase it right, make it seem like the idea was Eddy's own...
Even for something as simple as learning to swim.
Really, as often as Eddy's schemes involved use of the creek in some way or another, it had come as something as a shock to find Eddy couldn't, at least up to a year ago... Not that Eddy's pride would ever let him admit it to Double D, no, that information had come in one of his Father's notorious green stickies.
So when Eddward had asked Ed to teach him through any means necessary, it wasn't him being neurotic or paranoid. No, he was just being a good friend.
Nevertheless, of all the hairbrained schemes he had been asked/coerced/decided to engage on his own, this specifically had turned out to almost be more trouble than it was worth. Eddy could be incredibly stubborn, prideful... In fact, it was only thanks to those qualities that Edd had been able to get him to agree to do it. But after what Father had let accidentally drop between the two of them regarding his friend on his birthday last year, Edd had decided it was absolutely necessary. Even if the reasoning wasn't anything more than hypothetical, or would even be ultimately effective...
Early 1924. Peach Creek had thawed earlier that year thanks to the early onset of spring... Not that that had been at the forefront of Eddy's mind when he had been trying to escape the angry mob out for his hide...
Edd shivered, very much doubting it had anything to do with the temperature. There were an awful lot of ways to die as a kid, after all. If he could help protect his friend from that one, though...
Double D shook his head to scatter his progressively dark thoughts; a quick glance informed him that,no, his friends were none the wiser of his momentary mental absence. It was difficult to set it aside, but worrying about something that may not even happen here was not the reason he and the others were out here, after all.
A sudden idea struck Edd as soon as he had shaken off the other, his hand falling to his hip as he considered the distance, Eddy's proximity...Ed, who was now focused entirely, or what passed for it with the oaf, on building a fortress out of sand and dirt, glanced up as if feeling a change in the winds.
Why not, you only live once...
"Eddy, you do realize turnabout is fair play?"
"Turna-whatawhat?" Double D took a moment to look at his stockier, confused friend with an apolegetic smile, bolting forward with an incoherent shriek and grabbing a startled Eddy's arm, locking at the elbow and dragging him forward (it only really worked since he was off balance to begin with) - and launching the three of them off the bank, into space in gravity-defying free-fall (okay, it was for all of about four feet, but still)...
And then minutes or seconds later, Edd couldn't be sure, but Ed had him by the collar of his shirt and Eddy by his hair, hauling them both roughly up above the waterline so he could cough and sputter and generally avoid looking in either boys' direction for a few more seconds. At least Ed was laughing.
Drenched again and shivering pathetically, Double D didn't really try to make sense of what had just happened. That was what childhood was supposed to be about, right? Trying to drown your not entirely-undeserving friends in a creek, when you should have outgrown the urge years ago.
"So, yes." Despite that, Eddward's cheeks blistered a bright red under what he imagined to be his friend's scrutinizing gaze. Though in all fairness it may have just been from the cold.
In retrospect, he really should have expected the tackle and dunk from a laughing Eddy as soon as Ed let them go...
A/N:
Its the stupid little things that stand out when you look back on your childhood. Here Edd starts to come to terms with the fact he won't always be there to protect his friends- and sometimes it's healthier all around if things are left as is just to happen.
Also... * Snort * Necessity may work in strange ways, but so apparently does artistic and literary license. Whatever, it fits the story.
Not as good as it could have been, but a week's long enough to stare/ obsess over something. I might rewrite it later.