Disclaimer: I do not own or profit from the Eds~
You know the EEnE marathon inspired something in me!
I feel like I tried to pack waaaay too much in to this one...
I really need to find a beta reader.
Any takers?
Rated: T for some nasty little words.
Third Try's A Charm:
Ed's foot fell with the surprise of being caught off guard by a nearly naked DD, crashing onto the powdery pink rug, and forcing it forward with his unsteady weight. The untidy rug suddenly became trapped beneath Ed's lumbering body as he fell upon it.
Grimacing, his clumsy nature only further embarrassing him in such a delicate moment, he placed both, strong, large palms on the wooden floor beneath him, and pushed himself into a kneeling position.
At once his eyes met DD's, and the disapproving look plastered across his face could have made Ed's heart burst.
Despite the 12 inch height difference, Ed suddenly felt immeasurably small in front of DD.
'I can't do anything right, I always mess up! I can't remember simple rules, I can't think ahead, not once! I'm so impatient and awkward…' His face had lowered in shame as he silently beat himself up, and only the harsh yanking of the woven rug from beneath his heavy body awakened him.
Hurrying to his feet, slipping once before finally finding stable footing, he allowed DD to remove and replace the crumpled rug. He returned his hands to his pockets, nervously shoving them deep into the denim confines as he watched DD, in all his glory, lower himself to his hands and knees to straighten the disheveled carpet.
Ed's oversized feet tapped anxiously as he looked away from the scantily clad bottom a mere four feet away from him, his cheeks burning with a discomforted blush.
Standing, DD absently pulled his shirt closed, crossing his arms over his chest to shield his body as best he could. His hardened eyes, hooded with a look of angry disbelief, locked on to Ed's sullen face.
Despite the rosy blush blooming across the young man's nose, Ed's sorrow was all too obvious.
DD's nose wrinkled in disgust that, of all people Ed was hurt. Hurt that DD wasn't coddling him as he did before? Perhaps hurt than his eternally patient companion now had no time, energy or want to be around him? He shook his head in near disbelief and turned his back on Ed, reaching for the handle of the door, which rested ajar.
"DD, wait!" Stepping forward, landing again on the pink rug, Ed reached out, one heavy hand landing on DD's shoulder.
'I knew he'd catch me staring at his tush…he catches everything! What was I thinking!?' Of course that was the reason DD was turning his back on him, wasn't it?
Ed continued to mentally scold himself as DD did, in fact, stop. Turning to look at the silent oaf behind him, DD caught a rare glimpse of his former lover.
His free hand covered his eyes, his head was tilted down, and a frown pulled at the corners of his mouth. He shook his head as if responding negatively to something and suddenly dropped his hand, staring directly in to DD's red-laced, honey brown eyes.
"What happened to your face?" DD's voice was deceptively lacking in concern as an icy cold hand carefully traced the darkening bruise on the left side of Ed's face.
The touch caused Ed to jump, his hand anxiously releasing DD's shoulder and hovering near his blackened eye as he stared in confusion to DD.
Ed's thick skull allowed him little insight in to what DD was truly feeling; it could only be construed as worry. Was this concern? Had DD suddenly forgiven him for all his wrong-doings? Or was this simply a trick…a ruse, an attempt at burrowing in to his mind to relinquish all the secrets Ed stored up there, much like the alien-kind in Ed's current movie fandom, Abduction.
The glassy look in Ed's emerald eyes gave away the boy's wandering mind, and DD's slender fingers would continue to roam the freckled face above him freely.
A few scrapes and scratches dotted Ed's prominent cheek bone, his crooked nose looked swollen and his baby face appeared more rugged than usual, withered even. The tender-looking shiner that surrounded Ed's left eye was gingerly fingered, jerking Ed back to consciousness via a painful reminder of the previous night's activity.
He looked genuinely embarrassed, one monstrous hand flying up to shield the left side of his face, in turn furthering the pain and revealing a purple bruise beneath Ed's wrist.
DD absently wondered if perhaps he truly didn't want to know where those bruises came from, who knows how Eddy reacted to a larger, more dominant lover.
A step backwards was taken by the towering twenty-year-old, his right hand snatching the hand-rail just in time to buffer his fall down the top two stairs. Lord, could Ed be any clumsier?
Huffing his exasperation, Ed knelt on the top stair, his hands falling to his lap as he surveyed the wiry boy before him.
'I didn't mean to hurt you like I did, DD. I didn't mean to make you so angry, to break your heart the way I just know I did. I only wanted everything to be better…to be the way it was! I missed you, God I missed you. I didn't know what to do with myself! I never know what to do with myself…but you had Eddy, and I had nothing. And now…now I don't even have that nothing, anymore.'
"Eddy's gone." He never could manage to put an adequate voice to his thoughts. "You're gone, too. Everyone left…"
DD's lip would curl in distaste, how dare he come blubbering in here with tales of how his lover had left him, likely for some other unsuspecting sucker, only hours after stealing said lover from DD himself. Awkward with frustration, DD's fingers attempted to button the long-sleeved pajama top he wore as he fumed down at the hulking moron beneath him.
What a cruel hand fate had dealt Ed, destined to eternal stupidity and, now loneliness. But DD hadn't any pity left for the buffoon taking up space in his, soon the bank's house. He had cleaning to do, acceptance letters to dig out of the trash, clothing to pack. He had more things to do than hours left in the day.
As he mismatched another button to a hole he would breathe a calming sigh.
"Ed, go home. I'm terribly busy and I just don't think you could even begin to comprehend how important some of the chores I have planned are." His pale face flushed with anger as he waved Ed down the stairs.
"Go on, shoo! I have much to do today, Ed." But Ed hadn't the mentality to stand just yet, let alone understand how incredibly unfeeling DD appeared.
His jaw nearly dropped at the heartlessness DD displayed, hadn't he once had feelings for Eddy too? Why didn't he care? He hadn't asked a single question…he didn't even know if Eddy had just left or been taken by bad men! How was DD being so..so..!
He stood at that, one long-legged stride bringing him face to face with DD and two strong hands easily lifting him off his feet by his upper arms. Brought to eye level, his arms restrained, Ed shook him.
"How can you be so selfish, DD!?" Time and time again DD had proven his selfishness to Ed. In how he'd so coolly dumped Ed, how he easily went on living his life after tearing Ed's heart out, how he'd constantly been able to blow Ed off and sometimes even Eddy for his own 'personal' reasons, and now! How on Earth could someone care so little about another human being, especially one you'd had such an intense bond with. You'd think a decent person would at least care to know where their former lover and best friend had gone.
"SELFISH!?" DD's feet curled upward in rage.
"How do you mean selfish, Ed?" His eyes revealed the wickedness coming to fruition within him, "Do you mean it in the literal sense, perhaps? In that I was concerned solely with my own desires and future? Hmm? In that I never put the needs or wants of others ahead of my own? Do you believe I never bent over backwards for you or your undeserving slut of a boyfriend? If he can truly be called that, after all, you two only ever see each other through bedroom eyes. That can't really be called a relationship, can it?"
The way DD's head would tilt with his quickly dispelled definition and rapid-fire questions prompted a whimper from Ed, his jaw having fallen slack.
"Or, possibly you meant the figurative sense? That I preferred my own well being to that of a lying, cheating miscreant and his bed mate? Is that what you think that word means, Ed?" Ed's face faltered with shock at the emotion displayed in front of him.
"Of course not! Because you're such an undeniably, ignorant, useless, waste of space that the definition of a word, as carelessly used as SELFISH, had never once occurred to you!" In retrospect, DD would find his hurtful words difficult to believe.
"I was not, in any way, selfish, the three years that we dated! I never cheated on you, not once! I constantly made myself available to you even after we had broken up, Ed. The first and only time I put my own mental health and safety ahead of someone else's I get called SELFISH?" Unbelievably irate, DD reared back, coughing free the most foul and disturbing substance he could manage and spit it squarely in to Ed's face.
DD was dropped, a yelp of surprise accompanying the gob of spit and mucus launched in to Ed's face, and DD tumbled on to his back, groaning.
Leaning against the hallway wall, Ed wiped furiously at his assaulted eyes, disbelief obvious in his voice as he shrieked, "Who are you?!"
