damned_institute | Day 34: Men's Showers

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Day 34: Men's Showers

Artemis Fowl was, yet again, exceedingly displeased to be naked.

As much as Haku insisted that since he had experienced public bathing before, this time would be easier, the feeling was not mutual. Artemis' body was his own personal business, as far as he was concerned, and no one else's. His only comfort was the fact that he was not hideously tattooed anymore with various and sundry insults branding him a moron.

Still, that did not stop him from taking a towel into the shower area once again, Nurse Hedgerow grudgingly allowing it. She could see no other way of getting the boy to bathe. He was as stubborn as ten teenage boys. And after that lecture on psychological torture through means of public humiliation...

The boy let the water run over his head, the towel clutched firmly around his body. And he thought. July. How was it July when it had been fall just a week previous? It was impossible, logically speaking. But what part of this place fit in with any sort of logic Artemis had ever encountered? No, if he didn't let go of the fact that things would be as insane as people claimed he was, he would lose his mind.

His fingers brushed the burn mark Caleb had given him for what seemed the fortieth time. ...He had to get himself together, or this would only be a small taste of what awaited him in the hallways.

[For Omi]

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"It'd only be right, wouldn't it?" Tamaki asked. "I'd feel...terribly disrespectful if I could ask for your father's approval and didn't." And he made a mental promise not to make a very big deal of it, since it seemed Ed really wasn't too keen on the idea. Maybe he could track Mr. Elric down on his own.... One of Ed's friends had to know who he was!

"And, well, sometimes things happen. I didn't really know my father until I was a teenager. And he can be a terrible pest sometimes!" But...he was his father. And he did love him - the same as he loved his grandmother, despite how she felt towards him.

"I'd like to meet her! Oh, I'm sure she has all sorts of stories from when you were little!"

Ed blinked at his boyfriend, the seriousness of the situation only just starting to hit him. Wasn't asking for approval something that men did when they wanted to get married or something?

He gulped in horror. Did this mean that he was the woman?

No. This was ridiculous. He was getting worked up over nothing.

"I guess," Ed agreed reluctantly. There had been circumstances, Ed just thought that they were rubbish. He hadn't even come back for mother's funeral. "Al barely remembers him," Ed said, trying to explain just a bit. "And I wasn't much older. I just know that mother was always sad after that."

He wondered absently how long he could keep Winry and Tamaki away from each other. At least no-one had photographs.

Tamaki nodded. "My mother was sad, too, when my father wasn't there," he agreed. "We only saw him when he was in France on business - when I lived with my mother, I mean. But...she knew why they couldn't be together. And they loved each other so much that it didn't matter. That they couldn't really be together, I mean. Sometimes...when you have something like that, being sad is part of it, because... nothing that wonderful and powerful can happen without some sort of trade off. And...unless you're so terribly sad when it's gone, how do you really know how much it really means to you? It's very beautiful, really, even if it's very sad."

And he wondered if his mother was still sad. Now not only had she lost the man she loved, but her son, too. But it was better that way. She had the health care she needed, and money, and a better life.

He frowned some, reaching for the shampoo.

"I miss my mother," he admitted. He couldn't remember ever saying the words out loud.

Ed stepped back underneath the shower spray, letting the water wash away the shampoo while he listened to Tamaki speak about his parents. It sounded painful to him, but also, to Ed's ears, a little naive. Wouldn't it have been better for them to stay together? Or to forget each other and find someone else rather than being sad for the rest of their lives? That was the trouble with forming attachments with people. They inevitably left and then it hurt.

He winced when he heard Tamaki say those words, homesickness welling again as he thought of his mother and Al. He reached out to squeeze Tamaki's shoulder comfortingly. "Me too," he said, giving him a lopsided smile.

Tamaki nodded, returning the small smile. "I wish I could see her again," he said, knowing it was a sad thing to talk about, but preferring this to...anything else. "I can't even go back to France. I...almost did, when I was engaged, but I couldn't go through with it. I miss it there, too. The countryside."

This wasn't something he normally talked about, but with Ed, he felt he could.

"It's been four years since anyone called me anything other than Tamaki. It's strange...I can't even think of being called anything else now." And four years ago, he would have thought it ridiculous to be called anything but Rene.

Engaged? Oh, he thought he remembered Tamaki mentioning something that had happened at home. He just seemed very young to be getting married in Ed's opinion. No that people didn't get engaged and married younger where he was from, it was just that Ed had mostly been around people who weren't married except for Sensei and Sieg.

He blinked at his boyfriend in confusion. "Isn't Tamaki your name?" he asked. He should know this stuff, shouldn't he? He was supposed to know lots of things about Tamaki.

He took a breath anyway, considering that this was probably a good time to speak this 'French' stuff if he was ever going to get around to it. Now, just how did he go about it? "Uh, French is a really romantic language, isn't it?" he began, cursing himself for how awkward it sounded. "'cause I um, learned some earlier from someone." His mind went blank for one horrible moment before he remembered it. He took a breath and said it. "Voulez-vouz coucher aved moi?" And then beamed, glad that he'd managed t not mangle it too horribly.

Tamaki nodded, rinsing out his hair. "Well...Tamaki wasn't originally my given name," he explained. "I had to change it, when I went to live with my father. Tamaki was my middle name. My mother named me Rene - Rene Tamaki Richard Grantaine. But when I went to live with my father in Japan when I was fourteen, I took his family name and Tamaki became my given name. It's silly, really. Everyone knows I'm not his legitimate son, but it's important to the family to keep up appearances."

And now he answered to Tamaki and nothing else. No one had called him Rene in years.

And then he dropped his soap and turned with wide, confused eyes to his boyfriend. Had Ed just... he had! He really had! He just stood, staring blankly, his mind trying to process what he'd just heard.

A small rational part of Tamaki's brain realized Ed probably had absolutely no idea what he'd just said, but the rest of him was just hung up on the fact that his boyfriend had asked him to bed! While they were in the shower! Naked!

"What?!?!?" he squeaked, snatching up his towel to cover himself and looking shocked and taken aback in the face of Ed's pleased expression.

That was a lot of names to remember. Ed only had two and he shortened his but Tamaki had a lot of names. It seemed odd that he could have been forced to change his name just because he went to live with a different part of his family, but Tamaki was sort of posh and Ed knew that they did things differently. "So Tamaki is a Japanese name, then?" he asked curiously and then, more quietly, "Do you miss being called Rene?"

Ed just stared as his boyfriend squeaked and grabbed his towl and looked so shocked and horrified and that wasn't the way that Tamaki was supposed to react! His pleased expression faded and he ducked his head. "What? What's wrong? I thought... he told me it was something romantic!"

"Who...who told you that?!?!" Tamaki asked, though he had his suspicions. He took a deep breath to calm himself, because poor Ed didn't know what he'd just said. That was a very cruel trick!

He looked around and leaned over, to whisper very quietly to his boyfriend.

"I...I suppose it could be romantic," he admitted. "In the right circumstances, but...Ed...." He swallowed hard and his voice dropped another notch, to be safe. "You just...ah...asked me...oh, how do I put this? You just...er...asked me to...go to bed with you."

He ran a hand through his hair, deciding he'd have to have a little talk with someone. Or two someones.

"Yes, Tamaki is Japanese, Rene is French. And... oh, I don't know. I'm terribly used to Tamaki now. Most people don't even know I ever went by anything else."

"The... one of your twins!" he said, sounding confused and hurt and not at all happy like he'd been feeling just a few moments ago. He didn't know what he'd done wrong!

Then Tamaki leaned in and told him what he'd actually said and his face turned bright red, his jaw dropping. He'd... he'd asked for... for sex? He looked at Tamaki in abject mortification. "I didn't... I didn't know! I swear! I...I'm going to kill them!" As soon as he'd killed Envy. They were next on The List. He should probably be more worried that he actually had a List and that in his head it had capital letters.

"I like them both," Ed replied, thinking about the two names. He was probably forever going to think of Tamaki as, well, Tamaki now, but Rene suited him too.

Tamaki nodded. "Yes, you said 'will you sleep with me tonight'," Tamaki translated. "And I had a feeling it was one of them." He shook his head and closed his eyes. He was both mortified and a little amused. It was...something they would have done before. But did they have to go with...with...sex?

"I don't think they meant any harm," he pointed out, calming down from his initial reaction. "I think in their own way, they were trying to help. They just...have a very terrible way of going about it." Or maybe they thought...well, maybe they thought Ed should ask him that. Who knew?

"I'll speak to them," he assured his boyfriend, offering a smile. "Really, I think they're both too terribly concerned with my romantic life than is healthy. Perhaps they need their own to concern themselves with...." He finished with his hair and turned back to Ed, still smiling.

"But it was a very sweet thought, Ed. French is a romantic language. Ah....Vous êtes le mon soleil et lune, mon ciel étoilé, la lumière dans ma vie," he spoke, fluidly and with the accent of a native. Now that was romantic!

Ed wished that he had his alchemy at full strength right then so that it would be perfectly possible for him to, if not disappear into the floor, then at least blow a large hole in the wall, slip through and close it after himself. Admittedly, if he had his alchemy at full strength then this situation would never have occurred in the first place.

"Help?" he sputtered. "But that's..." It made no sense! And now both of them had been utterly mortified while naked and in the shower together. He sighed heavily, pressing his forehead against the cool tiles for a moment before looking back at Tamaki and nodding, managing to smile again.

He listened as Tamaki spoke, recogniasing it as the same language but still having no idea what it meant. It certainly sounded kind of romantic he thought. "What does that mean?"

"Well, they do have a terrible way of going about it," Tamaki repeated. "But it's...something they would have done when things were normal. I think maybe they're just trying to...help me get back to normal." Which was a nice thought, even if they'd had to go that route to do it.

And then he flushed, because Ed wanted to know what he'd said.

"Oh, just...complimenting you, that's all," he mumbled, because he didn't want to admit just how sappy he'd been. "I was...being romantic."

Terrible was definitely something of an understatement in Ed's opinion. Sadistic was probably nearer the mark in his opinion. Curelly sadistic. "Well, I suppose if they did it was good intentions," he replied, a little sceptically. Maybe they had been trying to make Tamaki feel better, but he also suspected that a lot more of it boiled down to them wanting to entertain themselves.

That flush was rather suspicious and Ed narrowed his eyes for a moment before Tamaki spoke. A compliment? Oh... He felt a flush starting to creep across his face. "Oh... I... thankyou," he said, awkwardly.

"I'm sure they didn't mean to be cruel," Tamaki insisted. "And...well, you are my boyfriend. So it isn't...horrible that you said that." It had just taken Tamaki completely by surprise.

"You're welcome," Tamaki said, still flushing pink slightly. "I just...I told you that...how much you mean to me. And how...wonderful you are." Which was essentially true. It was just...quite a bit more flowery, directly.

"And you do...mean so much to me."

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Day 34: Men's Showers

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