[Edward Elric; R] 9 - The Shower Character/Series: Edward Elric; Fullmetal Alchemist (2003; Pandora's Universe) Rating: R (VERY hard R) Notes: Written for the 30screams theme #9 - The Shower Warnings: Semi-explicit sexual assault on a minor. I AM SO FUCKING SORRY. Title: 9 - The Shower Author:yuuo Word Count: 3124 Summary:Edward was used to being woken by his dreams, nightmares that chased him out of the unprotected depths of his unconscious mind to the waking world, and he'd spend several minutes having to wander around his room before his mind settled and his stomach untied itself from the knots the nightmares had left it in enough that he could crawl back into bed. Assuming they didn't just send him hiding in the back of the closet in his sleep.
That night was the first time one of those dreams woke him up.
what's he gonna dream tonight? this world's a nightmare don't tell him that you understand 'cause you and I don't come from his land so look out dream 'cause here comes your nightmare -Mother Tongue
Edward was used to being woken by his dreams, nightmares that chased him out of the unprotected depths of his unconscious mind to the waking world, and he'd spend several minutes having to wander around his room before his mind settled and his stomach untied itself from the knots the nightmares had left it in enough that he could crawl back into bed. Assuming they didn't just send him hiding in the back of the closet in his sleep.
That night was the first time one of those dreams woke him up.
Even if he didn't remember the contents of the dream, it wouldn't have been a mystery to him what kind of dream it was; none of the authority figures in his life growing up had been shy about teaching him and his brother about what to expect as they approached puberty, Grandma picking up after their mother died, and Teacher picking up after her.
Having no idea what a wet dream was wouldn't have made it much of a mystery either, the wet and tacky mess on his sleep pants and bedding something he was far too familiar with, without ever being taught anything about sex growing up. The smell made him half-dive off the bed to retch and heave out the meager remains of his dinner on the floor. The memory of the dream made his stomach insist there was more there to get rid of.
How long he sat there, doubled over with his arms over his stomach, shaking and trying to keep his gag reflex from tearing up his throat at the combined smell of vomit and semen, he had no idea. Not long, but long enough that the cold air that the radiator in the room could never fully banish back to the outside world had dried the sweat off him and left him shaking from the chill more than the combined smell and the rising self-disgust already had.
That night hadn't been Leann's fault, why would his brain come up with that sick little fantasy? And why did his body respond to it like that?! He wasn't like that, he wasn't one of those types! Fuck, Archer wasn't even one of those types, he was usually almost completely flaccid when the blinds were closed and the door locked and his gun was pulled out from the desk!
Edward ran trembling hands through his hair, pulling at it like he might pull whatever part of his brain that dream had originated from out if he just tugged hard enough. His scalp protested sharply, a jolt of pain snapping down from the side of his head, across his face, and forcing his feeble and weak voice to try to yelp. He let go of his hair, having to use his flesh hand to untangle it from the joints and screws of his automail hand.
His hand came away with several strands of hair still wrapped around the catches and grooves of his knuckles, and there was a faint sheen of blood on the outside of his little finger. No wonder his head hurt so much on that side; he'd pulled hard enough to draw blood.
There was another image from the dream and another attempt on his stomach's part to empty itself when it was already empty.
Sobs picked up where his gagging left off at ripping up his damaged throat, wracked his body so hard that he was forced to crawl away from the puddle of mostly spit and bile to curl up on his side before he got knocked headfirst into it.
He wanted out of that hell. He was starting to become a part of it, starting to belong there. It was seeping into his head and growing roots that needed to be cut before they dug in too deeply.
The pain on his back from the lash the other day reminded him the dangers of trying to leave. The third time hadn't been the charm, a fourth wasn't going to mysteriously be any different.
A shower. Maybe a shower would help. It couldn't hurt; at this point, nothing could.
He scrambled to his feet, using alchemy to clean away every trace of the dream and his body's mixed reactions to it. He wasn't going to go dragging soiled laundry around in the middle of the night, and definitely not laundry soiled by that. Technically, a shower wasn't needed to really clean up, not when alchemy could take care of the sweat too, but he wanted something to clean off the psychological slime, and a shower was the only thing he could think of that he had access to that might help.
Silently begging anything that would listen that nobody would see him, he snuck out of his room, hurrying down the halls to the showers. Alchemy may have cleaned his clothes, but it couldn't clean his face, which he knew was probably tear-streaked and flushed scarlet, his eyes sore enough from crying that they had to be red. He wouldn't get away with saying he was 'just going to the bathroom.'
Nobody at the station ever spoke up for him, though, so maybe it was less that he wouldn't get away with it, and more that he didn't want to see that he would.
Like it always did, the door to the bathroom made a noise like a gunshot against the dead silence of the night when it closed behind him, and he practically flew into a shower stall, locking it shut behind him and leaning back against the wall by the knobs that controlled the water temperature, folding his arms over his stomach again as he desperately tried to untangle himself from the reflexive fear for his safety that sound kicked up. The cold tile of the wall was unyieldingly hard against his sore back, and he bit off another sob, pushing away from the wall to ease the pressure on the wounds.
He hit the stall door with his fists, resting his forehead on it with a hard thump as it occurred to him that the water from the shower was only going to make his back hurt. His flesh hand left behind a tiny smear of blood from where the chapped skin had torn open at the contact with the door. He stared at it out of the corner of his eye with a sick feeling that was starting to set a cold fire of numbness in his chest. There was no way out, nowhere to go, nothing available to him to let him breathe and come back from the damage the place was doing to him. The cold was tearing up his hand as much as the lash tore up his back, as the sobs and retching was tearing up his throat, and the nightmares were tearing up his soul.
With a sigh that was almost defeated, he straightened, unbuttoned his flannel sleeping shirt and draped it over the edge of the shower stall. His pants and boxers followed suit. He was going to be in pain any which way it went, he may as well see if he couldn't ease the mental pain.
The door opened again and he froze, hand inches away from the hot water knob, listening as two voices he didn't recognize started whispering and laughing in a way that suggested the people the voices belonged to were drunk. He held his breath, hoping like hell they were just there to use one of the toilets or something, and would be on their drunken way back out before they could realize there was someone in there.
Who were those two? They weren't speaking Amestrian, but their shitty Drachman had an obvious Amestrian accent to it, and even though Edward didn't know Drachman much more than to be able to tell the difference between someone fluent and someone who only knew a little that could be drawn from time on the field, it didn't sound like the speakers were anyone who wasn't supposed to be there. They were fellow Amestrian soldiers, probably swimming up to their eyeballs in alcohol, and making fun of the people who were doing nothing but defending their homes from invaders like they were some sort of hairy, barbaric neanderthals. The sort of typical misplaced sense of racial superiority that the other soldiers serving there carried around, and was worse in newcomers who hadn't had to look any of those 'neanderthals' in the eye when they pulled the trigger yet.
There had been new personnel that came in with the last supply train, these two assholes, whoever they were, must've been from among them. Edward knew almost everyone at the supply station otherwise, and he definitely didn't recognize these two.
A few of the toilet stall doors banged open and shut and the volume of the voices waxed and waned as the men wandered closer and farther away from Edward. The laughter started sounding downright nasty, and Edward was glad he didn't know what they were saying, if they even knew what they were saying. His stomach tightened into a ball of nerves as he held perfectly still, barely breathing, waiting for them to leave.
The laughter and terrible mangling of a foreign language turned to grunts and pants and a mess of swearing that made Edward's already wrung-tight stomach drop into his feet, and he turned, backed himself into the far corner of his stall, ignoring the way the wall and pipes dug into his back as he covered his mouth with one hand and wrapped his other arm around himself defensively, hunching down and squeezing his eyes shut against the awareness of what those noises were.
Oh god, why that night, why right then, would a pair of idiots choose to come into the showers to have a drunken fuck on whatever surface they'd end up using out there? Why couldn't they have waited even one more goddamn half hour? Now he was trapped there, going to be forced to listen to that while he silently waited in terror for them to finish and leave, when he just wanted to shower in the hopes of washing away the memory of his own twisted sexuality.
The phrase "we got company" interrupted the swearing and Edward's eyes flew open as the blood drained from his face. He snapped his head up, swallowing down his own breathing to judge how far from his stall they were before he leapt forward, grabbing at his clothes to pull them on so he could make an escape before whatever Trouble this might lead to could find him.
His clothes were yanked back out of his hands before he could get them off the stall door, and a ghost of a panicked scream escaped his throat as he clapped his hands and slammed them against the door, sealing the door shut to the walls of the stall. The hand that grabbed his clothes yanked at the door uselessly, an ugly voice yelled curses at him as he backed away from the door.
A large and cold hand wrapped around his right ankle, yanking him off his feet before he could think to kick away from it. He hit the far wall of the shower stall, then the hard floor with a solid smack, pain flooding his mouth along with the coppery taste of blood. He was spitting and trying to scream for help as he was bodily dragged out of the stall through the enormous gap between wall and floor. His body burned from the friction, and the pain and fear threatened to drown out thought and send him into a panicked fight to get away. He swung his automail fist out in a wide, uncontrolled arc, only succeeding in leaving a dent in the wall, yanked up onto his feet before it could connect with his attackers.
"So this's the little shit that thinks he gets to run away 'n leave the rest 'a us t' get our hands dirty," one of the voices snarled. Edward got his vision to clear from the fear-driven rage that had made him lash out to finally look at the two men that had him cornered, trapped against the wall and the stall he'd been yanked out of, with them between him and the rest of the room, and most importantly, the door.
One of them was shorter than the other, stocky with a mess of brown hair that half-covered his eyes. The other was taller and just as stocky, with blond hair that was a step above fuzz that screamed of being just out of boot camp regulations. Both of them towered over him, and both smelled strongly of vodka. And both were only half-dressed, and the state of the clothes they did have on was in disarray at best.
The way his back screamed in pain from being shoved against the wall was the only thing that kept him from fighting back and making a break for it, terror of what he'd get for assaulting military personnel overriding his survival instinct's first reaction to run. They attacked first, but Edward wasn't serving under a commanding officer who understood the definition of the words 'sanity' or 'self-defense.' He'd already risked too much trying to argue 'self-defense' on the Drachmans' behalf to Archer, too much trying to run away from the sheer insanity of that place, and the only thing left to risk was his certification. Archer had to be out of other things to shred, had to be out of patience to look for other things to shred.
Unless these men left him with wounds worse than his bitten tongue from the fall to prove that whatever he did to fight back was truly to save his life, there wasn't anything he could do.
The shorter man grabbed his hair, pushing him back harder against the wall as he got down in his personal space, sneering at him. "What's th' matter, think you're too good to slit some Drachski throats?"
The other man leaned down over his partner's shoulder, a disgusting smile of amusement showing off yellowed teeth. "Sure not too good to listen to someone else havin' a good time," he slurred, leaning against the shower stall and completely cutting off view of the room from Edward. "You enjoying that, ya little perv? Mebbe wanted to join in?" He barked out a laugh like he said the funniest thing in the world.
Edward closed his eyes and whimpered, the grip on his hair iron-tight when he tried to shake his head as vehemently as possible, covering his face with his arms. "No, I was here to shower, I swear, I'll go back to my room, you can have the place to yourself," he babbled, voice cracking and breaking and wheezing over scar tissue.
The men laughed so loudly the sound echoed around the room and doubled back to drown out the pounding of Edward's terrified heart in his ears.
"Listen to that little crack!" the taller one howled. "Kid's balls're droppin' faster 'an his voice!"
"Funny, wasn't no water runnin'," the other one said, viciously amused and just as viciously pulling on Edward's hair, like he wanted to yank him up off the floor by his hair alone.
"I'd just gotten in here," Edward protested around a choked sob, wishing they'd either let him go, or draw blood so he could fight back and not just beg for mercy from a pair of adults more than twice his size and drunk on vodka and their own power over a terrified twelve-year-old child.
"And didn't say nothin' that whole time?" the one holding his hair said, voice closer to him than it was a second ago; any closer and he'd be practically drooling on Edward. "What's th' matter, embarrassed by that little squeak 'a yours?"
The other man kept laughing, unsteady around gasps for breath.
"I didn't want trouble, that's all!" Fear and desperation that no form of escape was being given was reducing Edward's protests to near-hysterics. "Please, let me go, I'll go back to my room, the shower's yours, I won't say anything, just let me go!"
The unsteady laughter continued, got unsteadier with each word that tumbled out of Edward's mouth.
"Ya sure 'bout that? Sure you weren't in there, fappin' away? Wanted a hand, mebbe?"
The pain in his scalp paled compared to the need to protect the rest of himself as he drew himself back, trying to hunch down into a ball to keep drunk and roaming hands away from him. It put more weight on the grip the man had on his hair. He didn't care, his scalp could bleed until he passed out if it kept those hands off of him.
"No, no, I just didn't want trouble, I was just here to shower, please, let me go."
The laughter continued.
"Whatcha gonna do if I don't? Gonna run? I heard they could hear the whip across the compound the other day."
More laughter.
Those near-hysterics turned into full-blown hysterics, nonsense pleadings to be let go and promises not to say anything tumbling out of Edward's mouth and only being met with a tighter grip in his hair, more goading and indirect threats, and more laughter.
Something hot and wet hit Edward's hip as the laughter strangled out in one last sharp pitch of sound.
Silence shattered the noise in his head as Edward opened his eyes, staring up at the men past his arms in sick horror. The laughing man was tucking his now-flaccid dick back into his pants and the other was giving him a self-satisfied smirk.
"Mebbe that'll learn ya to not run away," the laughing man said as the other one let go of Edward's hair. "Since whippin' ya into shape ain't workin'."
"We don't need no kid leavin' us to die out there 'cause he thinks he's too good fer this place," the other one said. "But you have fun tellin' people why the third whippin's finally doin' some good. Bet everyone 'll have a good laugh at a deserter tellin' tall tales."
Edward couldn't do anything but stare straight ahead as the men left, didn't move from his half-hunched position, face mostly hidden behind his arms, until the gunshot-sound of the door slamming jolted him out of the shock. He sank down onto the ground, curling up on his side with his hands over his ears, and cried until his throat bled.
He'd just wanted a shower to clean off the bad dreams. Not be given fuel for more.
The semen on his hip slowly slid across his belly, pulled by gravity to the cold tile under him.