Disclaimer – I own... This half empty cup of coffee – yum!

A/N – Ok, so I'm procrastinating over my history essay, and have decided that a new chapter to CS would be far more beneficial in the long run than an essay on King Charles I... really it will... So here it is! Enjoy!


Closeted Secrets

Double D sat in his room, his head buried into his arms, which were wrapped around his knees, and sobbed. He should have known that his parents would be back this morning, that the house was still in no fit state for them to return to, but he had forgotten. He had failed them, and they had not been happy.

He listened as the black car backed out of the drive and faded into the distance, taking his parents with it. He had gotten used to his parents not being around, they had been absent ever since he was a child, and even when they were there in person, Double D could tell that they would never really be with him in spirit. That's just the way it was. As though they lived in parallel worlds, their paths only crossing briefly, for a single swift moment that was gone almost as soon as it had come. And it was that moment that he cherished. That one moment that he could strive to impress his parents, that opportunity that he could try and grasp in order to gain their love.

But this time he had let them down, let himself down, and now that moment was gone.

Sighing, he lifted himself from the floor, hissing sharply as the bruised skin on his stomach brushed roughly against the material of his shirt, and made his way slowly to the kitchen, the source of his parent's initial anger. His mother was right – the kitchen did look like a bomb had recently hit it, or, more precisely, Ed had hit it. Various plates and cutlery lay strewn about the room, the floor was covered in the leftovers of a pile of broken eggs that had fallen out of the fridge when Ed had tried to reach the butter and jam, which itself was smeared around the worktops, along with trails of breadcrumbs that lead into the living room – the devastation caused by Ed attempting to make his own sandwich yesterday afternoon after Eddy's impromptu disappearance. Double D dropped to his knees in front of the fridge and began to delicately pick out the pieces of broken eggshell from the sticky mess on the floor. How could he have been distracted so easily last night? He should have cleaned this mess up straight away, before going for a shower, and certainly before even considering leaving with Eddy.

Double D's blood turned cold at the thought of his friend's name. Could he even call him his friend any more? Maybe not. Maybe their friendship could never recover from this. Maybe this was his punishment for neglecting his duties to his parents. If he had never gone with Eddy last night, if he had not abandoned his responsibilities at home then none of this would have ever happened. Eddy would not have had the chance to betray him, and they would still be happy, the best of friends. But no. Double D had failed, and he now had to make up for that failure.

His parent's words filtered through his mind as he cleared the large fingerprint shaped smears of butter from the fridge door. They had already seen the state of the kitchen when he arrived from Kevin's home, and so they were already extremely angry with him. It didn't make things any better once they had seen exactly what state their son would arrive home in. His pale skin flushed red, streaks of midnight smeared down his cheeks and his hair. His hair just left uncovered. How his father hated his son's long hair – clamed it made him look feminine, that no son of his would ever be anything less than a man. And now this, Double D tried to back away from his father as he grabbed his son's chin in his strong hand and harshly ran his thumb over his cheek before pushing the boy away from him and examining the smears of black left behind on his fingers. Double D watched as his father's dark eyes flashed with fury and turned a pleading gaze unto his mother who remained frozen, neither able nor willing to protect her son from her husband's advances. Without warning, his father's fist shot out and made contact with the lean boy's stomach, making him cry out. He so desperately wanted to run to his mother, for her to hold him and protect him – tell him everything was ok, he wanted so desperately to let the tears fall from his eyes. But he knew he couldn't. To show weakness would only enrage his father further. He braced himself for the next impact, fighting the temptation to close his eyes, only barely managing to keep them open and on his father. But that next blow never came. Just the heat of his father's breath on his face as he leaned in to his son and spoke.

"We should have gotten rid of you long ago. If only we'd have known then exactly what a damned creature you were going to become." He turned away from his son and led his wife out of the house.

Those words haunted him. No matter what bruises his parents could ever paint upon his body, the scars that they left behind – the physical wounds would always heal, but the emotional wounds would bleed forever. Crimson tears that stained the very fabric of his soul and tore apart his spirit.

But he would never hate his parents for it. No. They were only doing their job. It was their duty to make sure that their son grew up to be perfect, that he would go through life without performing evil. Any parents would do the same. Maybe Kevin was right. Maybe he would never grow up to be the person that his parents wanted him to be, and he was just destined to a life of evil, of wickedness. Maybe this was all part of his punishment – that Eddy would betray him, and now that Kevin would torture him, though Double D still had no idea how. This was his penance for his flaws.

The loud sound of knocking from the front door continued to echo through the house, only to fall on Double D's deaf ears.

He could hear nothing now but that taunting, unidentified voice.

"You're a wicked child Edward, a wicked damned child..."


Wooooooo, kinda crazy huh? Again, I love this chapter – it's just so -creepy- (this may start to get dangerous, that's two chapters in a row now! Shock!) So please, please R&R to tell me what you guys think! It means a lot! And now I return to good ol' Chalie boy... -sigh- Bye-ee!