Chapter Text
Shawn’s body is on fire. At least, it sure feels like it is. Eddie said it would only hurt a little. He said it would feel good.
Shawn now realizes that Eddie lied. He feels tears run down his cheeks as Eddie puts another finger inside of him. He starts to think of all the times Eddie’s ever lied. It’s all so clear to him now.
“There’s a puppy for you behind old man Carl’s trailer.”
“Earl will give you a dollar if you eat this worm.”
“Santa Claus is totally real, he just doesn’t like trailer park kids.”
“The boogey man will get you if you keep crying at bedtime.”
“Mom will be back soon.”
“If you lick this, it tastes good and it makes me feel good.”
The puppy was a rabid raccoon. Earl did not give Shawn a dollar. Santa Claus wasn’t real, even for the rich kids. There’s no such thing as the boogey man. Mom was gone for a month that time. Eddie’s penis did not taste good.
Shawn was aware that he didn’t know much, being just 6 years old, but he knew that his brother was wrong. This wasn’t what they were supposed to be doing. But he didn’t know what to do about it.
“Come on Shawn, it’s okay. This is going to make things easier for you later, I promise.”
“No, Eddie. I don’t want to play this game anymore,” Shawn whined, trying to squirm off the bed.
Eddie stopped moving his fingers for a moment, still inside Shawn, looking directly at him. “Well, if we don’t play this game then we have to play the other one.”
Shawn gulped. He hated the other game too. He looked away from Eddie. He knew his parents were still at work and Eddie would be babysitting for a few more hours. There was no way out of this.
“I’ll do it if I have to.”
“Good. You’re a good brother Shawn. You do right by your family and that’s what’s important.” Eddie smiled and slowly took his fingers out of Shawn before taking out his own dick and waiting for Shawn to reach for it.
“Alright, just like I told you before. You did so good last time.”
Shawn blinks back his tears and accepts his position. He knows Eddie lies about some things, but maybe this is what little brothers are supposed to do. They’re supposed to help their older brother and keep it a secret. Maybe that’s why Cory doesn’t talk about doing this with Eric. Families keep their own secrets.
Shawn will take this secret to his grave.
Especially when next week, Eddie shows him a new game and Shawn knows it’s not a game. He doesn’t know what to call it, but he’d never call it a game.
“Close your eyes this time,” Eddie tells him, in that nice way that Shawn knew was covering up how mean he was going to be.
“I don’t want to Eddie... You can’t make me.” Shawn never closes his eyes around Eddie anymore. He would stay up all night if he had to when Eddie was around.
“Who are you to say no? You’re my little brother and I can make you do whatever I want.” Eddie grabbed Shawn’s hair and pulled it hard. “Now, I said, close your eyes.”
Shawn hissed in pain as he closed his eyes, hoping Eddie would be nice if Shawn just did what he said.
Eddie laughed a bit but let go of Shawn’s hair, giving him a pain free moment until his fingers were at Shawn’s entrance again. Shawn hated this the most. He hated the feeling of having Eddie’s fingers wriggling inside of him. He could feel the tears building behind his eyes. He focused on breathing and hated that he had to close his eyes this time. Normally he’d count the spots on the ceiling or the cracks on the wallpaper. Now he had nothing to focus on but the feelings in his body. He hated it. He hated the wet jelly stuff Eddie would rub on him. He hated the weird sounds that filled his room. He hated his whole body.
For a moment, Eddie pulled out and Shawn wondered how long it had been. Eddie normally did more than this. But suddenly he felt Eddie at his entrance again, it felt like something different.
This was definitely something different. Shawn’s eyes shot open and he realized Eddie was directly above him. Eddie slowly pushed his penis inside of Shawn as he held one hand over Shawn’s mouth. All Shawn wanted to do was scream and bite Eddie’s hand, but his body didn’t seem to work anymore. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember how to breathe as he felt the pain of Eddie moving in and out of him.
He has no sense of time, and he just lets himself cry, hoping Eddie will be done soon. Whatever soon means. Shawn thinks he might be stuck in this moment forever.
Finally, he feels something weird inside of him, and Eddie stops moving. Shawn opens his eyes again as Eddie rolls off of him and lies on the bed.
Shawn quietly keeps crying, not knowing if he’s allowed to move yet. Not knowing if his body will be capable of moving ever again.
Eddie takes a deep breath and sits up. “I didn’t do this. Do you understand? This didn’t happen.”
He gets off the bed leaves Shawn alone in his room.
He supposes this is all part of the family. A lot of things don’t happen in their family. It makes sense.
“We didn’t do it,” The Hunter Family motto.
Eddie wouldn’t do this. This isn’t what brothers do.
Shawn doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have, since Eddie wakes him up. It’s still dark outside and his small body aches.
“You gotta shower before your dad gets home. I’m going back to my dad’s trailer. I’ll see you later. There’s some candy on the kitchen table if you’re hungry.”
Eddie turns on the bedroom light before walking out again. Shawn hears the front door close and he knows he should move. Eddie’s right. Shawn needs to shower. He should probably also take the sheets off his bed. He must have had an accident. There are a couple wet spots, a little bit of blood. Shawn can feel himself wanting to cry. He slowly stands up but his legs buckle beneath him. He takes a deep breath and tries again. His butt hurts but he knows how to walk. It’s kind of like when Eddie would stick his fingers up there, just much more painful. Shawn grips the bed and stands. He yanks the sheets off the bed and crumples them on the floor. He then slowly walks to the shower and cleans himself up. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be clean again. He tries to clean his lower half and he can barely touch himself. He finally just sits down and cries until the water runs cold, which doesn’t really take that long. They’re always running out of hot water.
By the time he’s out and in a towel, he’s shivering. He goes back to his room and puts on two long sleeve shirts and some sweatpants. He shoves his old bedsheets in a garbage bag in the closet and tears fall down his cheeks. He wishes he could go eat the candy in the kitchen, but his stomach rolls at the thought of putting food in it. Instead, he lies back down on his bare mattress and hides himself in his blanket, letting sleep overtake him again.
It doesn’t happen every night. It doesn’t happen every week even.
Eddie doesn’t live with them. He lives with his dad a few trailers down. But he’s 11 and Virna trusts her older son to babysit. It’s really only on Thursdays and Fridays that Eddie is over for a long time. Mom works a double on those nights and she isn’t home. Chet sometimes has odd jobs or schemes in the evening, otherwise he’s out drinking and doing whatever else he does. Shawn doesn’t really know. He just knows he dreads when his parents aren’t around.
Sometimes when Eddie babysits, he has his friends over and they just let Shawn be part of their little gang. Sometimes Eddie is mean and sometimes he’s nice. Shawn doesn’t know which he prefers. Either one is better than when Eddie’s alone with him. Because then, he’s both at the same time.
Shawn gets used to his life. He stops crying so much when Eddie abuses him, he just waits for it to be over. He turns off his brain and just does whatever Eddie tells him to do. Because it’s easier than fighting him. It’s less painful that way.
It started when he was 6. He learns the word rape, but he’s too scared to say it. The word turns over in his mind again and again, making it hard for him to breathe. He heard his mom gossiping with Mrs. Patrell. Her daughter was hurt by her boyfriend, and it sounds an awful lot like what Eddie did to Shawn.
He finds out he has another brother when he’s 7. His dad tells him and he panics at first. He wonders if this other brother is going to hurt him like Eddie does. But after a while, he starts to daydream that this other brother is his good brother. The one who will come and save him from Eddie. A brother that will be like Eric. Who will maybe tease him sometimes, but ultimately, look out for him and be his friend. He can only dream.
At 7, he also feels brave enough to run away some nights. Nights that his mom took off again or Eddie was supposed to come over; he sleeps at the park, in the tunnel on the jungle gym. He can curl up, hidden away from Eddie’s touch or mom and dad’s fighting. No one ever seems to notice when he disappears. Especially on the times his mom would run off too. For some reason, it makes him feel closer to his mother on those nights. He dreamed that they would run into each other. They’d both laugh and she’d hold him, ask him what he was running from. He’d probably ask her the same thing.
He started to understand why she would run away sometimes. The air was different when you were by yourself, away from a place you didn’t want to be. He always wished she’d take him with her. Maybe then they wouldn’t have to come back.
But they both always ended up back in the trailer.
He almost tells someone when he’s 8. But he’s still too scared to say it.
His third-grade teacher is sweet to him, even when he’s causing trouble in class. One day it hurts too much to sit down, so he doesn’t like to stay in his seat. She keeps him in at recess and her voice is so soft as she asks him lots of questions, as she reassures him that there are grownups who can protect him if someone is hurting him. But he can’t tell her. He can’t tell anyone because he can’t rat on family. He knows about those grownups who are supposed to protect kids. The ones that take you away and send you to new homes. Jeff and Rita got ‘protected’ a few months ago. They had to go live in a group home where they got beat up a few times, just to end up back at the trailer park now.
No, Shawn doesn’t need that kind of protection. He just wants Eddie to disappear.
When he’s 9, Eddie does just that. He disappears. He gets sent to juvie for fighting at school and stealing from the mall. He’s gone for 6 months.
When he comes back, he isn’t around as much. He starts hanging out with older girls and running scams with his buddies. Virna and Chet don’t ask him to babysit anymore.
So now, sometimes, Shawn has to hang out with Mrs. Cratt a few trailers down. Her trailer always smells like cats and cigarettes. She always gives Shawn gross hard candy and makes him help clean the weird antiques she buys and sells. He hates spending time with her, but he’s glad he’s not at home with Eddie.
More often, Shawn gets to spend time at Cory’s. He lives for those days. He gets to forget that he lives in the trailer park. When he’s with Cory he can pretend for a few hours that he’s just a normal suburban kid. That he has a nice older brother like Eric and parents who feed him dinner and ask how his day at school was.
He knows now that his family secrets aren’t like anyone else’s family secrets. Eric and Cory are real brothers, they never did what Eddie and Shawn did. So, he buries his secret down a little further. Far enough down that he can almost forget it.
Once in a while, everyone forgets about him, and he’s left on his own in the trailer.
The first time it happens, he cries for a few minutes. He’ll never admit it, but he feels a hole in his heart, knowing that everyone forgot about him. That no one thought to make sure he was taken care of for the evening. If he knew the word at the time, he would have known he was feeling abandoned.
Instead, he makes himself a peanut butter sandwich and he watches TV until he gets sleepy. He secretly hopes they all forget about him again.
Life continues this way and Shawn keeps going. He lulls himself into a pattern of feeling good enough to feel safe for a while and then panicking when he sees Eddie around. He figures out what it feels like before he’s overwhelmed with panic in the middle of the day. He learns that when his fingers start to get cold and tingly or his chest starts to feel tight and he can’t breathe very well that he has to get somewhere quiet, away from anyone that could see that he’s going to break apart. He’s hidden under beds, inside closets, behind parked cars; he gets very good at slipping away.
He also starts to pick fights with other kids in the trailer park, trying to prove how tough he is. Knowing that if he can just get strong enough, no one will ever hurt him like Eddie did ever again.
When he’s 10, he writes letters to his other brother. He’s finally worked up the courage to see if his other older brother will care about him. He never hears back. This would break his heart if there were any pieces left to break.
He runs away often, and he steals small things from convenience stores. He sleeps in class or skips school all together. He’s been in and out of 5 different schools by the time he’s 11. He gets labeled as a troubled kid and he can’t argue that he’s not.
He lets everyone assume what they want about him because it’s easier than answering questions. Eventually, everyone figures out it’s easier not to ask the questions at all.
He’s glad when he finally gets to go to the same school as Cory, but it doesn’t change the fact that Shawn can’t stop acting out. He sees his dad and mom getting more and more frustrated with him. He gets yelled at and overlooked more often. He can see how exhausted they are. He’s exhausted too.
He can’t shut off his impulses to do stupid things. Things that keep getting him into trouble. He blows up a mailbox, floods part of the school, hangs out with thugs and walks the thin line between troubled kid and real criminal.
But he successfully keeps his secrets. Hiding it even from himself most days, craving physical affection from any girl that will give it to him, which is quite a lot of them. He finds that he’s able to shut off his brain when he’s kissing a pretty girl and focusing on anything other than how empty he feels.