#(writing him trying to escape the tub) one must imagine sisyphus underfell sans

[bittieswithbrokenbones]

A stray edgy gets scrubbed clean.

He used his tiny hands to rip the hole in the screen wider and frantically climbed in, smearing mud all through and across the window sill. As soon as he was past the threshold and officially out of the way-too-sudden downpour, he sat down and let out a relieved sigh. Once he had calmed himself, he got up and started looking around.

He had never been in a house; he'd actually only interacted with humans once. It's how he found out that his 'type' was one of the most hated ones and that experience had left him with a crack in his skull to prove it. So while his knowledge of humans was limited, he had a very specific and negative view of them.

He's not even sure what he was expecting when he climbed inside but this definitely wasn't it. The room was spotless and decorated very minimally. He couldn't see too much with the lights off but everything seemed meticulously cleaned, not even a speck of ash in the fireplace or a crumb on the shaggy rug. It honestly felt a little… off. The bitty waited a few minutes, listening carefully for any signs of a human before he figured he was alone.

Grabbing onto the curtain with his muddy hands, he slowly climbed down from the window and dropped to the floor. He tracked the mud a few feet before he shook the rest of it out of his bones and splattered it around. He was so cold but he knew he had to stay strong, he'd gone this long without clothes and he'd survived more than one rainstorm, he just needed to dry off, get warm, and hide until the rain stops. Then he can leave the same way he entered.

Or, that was the plan, until he felt how comfy the rug was and sat on it to run his hands through it. He'd never felt something so soft in his life and maybe it was just the adrenaline from the past ten minutes wearing off but he was exhausted.

Maybe he could just rest for a few minutes. A power nap, five minutes tops.

…

He was startled awake by a loud SLAM and scrambled up only to run face-first into a plastic wall. Quickly, he turned around and ran the other way just to knock into the wall again. He desperately glanced around and when he looked above him, he froze.

A woman was kneeling over him, holding a large plastic bowl to keep him trapped under. She had some form of thick rubber gloves on and a white mask that covered the lower half of her face which just brought even more of his attention to her gaze that seemed near-violent.

Those eyes terrified him, brought him back to that night where his head hit the ground with a crack. So he did the only thing he could think of, bare his teeth and hope he intimidated. He didn't, obviously, the combination of his tiny bitty teeth on display and the fearful tremors wracking his body did not paint any kind of 'intimidating' picture.

"Aw, is that meant to scare me?" she cooed in a mocking manner, "How cute."

His face flushed in embarrassment at her tone and he balled up his fists before pounding angrily at the wall of the bowl and shouting. The woman only hummed and, quicker than he could react, tilted the bowl with one hand so she could reach in and grab him tight with the other.

He screeched and attacked her hand as she pulled him out, careful not to let him get close to her face while tilting him left and right as if inspecting him.

"What a filthy little trespasser!" Her voice has taken on a sugary sweet quality that for any other bitty may have made them pause but he just tried biting down on her glove harder. The rubber was thick though and she didn't even react to his attack as she got up from the floor and started making her way through the house.

"Are you a stray? Are you? I think you are, look, you haven't even learned to speak, have you?" She continued to talk in a way that was mostly at him instead of to him as she walked up the stairs, "A poor stray edgy with no mommy to keep him clean…"

His jaw was starting to hurt from biting so he instead just continued to dig and scratch at her glove while growling at her. Her eyes only crinkled in a smile as she opened the door to her bathroom before locking it behind her. She gave him a gentle pat on his head with the other glove then peeled his tiny hands off of the one he was holding on to and set him into the tub.

While she got up and rummaged around in the closet and under the sink, he shouted gibberish and wildly tried skittering up the sides of the tub before falling right back down. Frustrated tears started gathering in his eye sockets as he tried over and over again but just kept sliding back down.

When she came back, she placed a bucket of cleaning supplies down into the tub beside him. Reaching in, she picked out a spray bottle of cleaner and aimed it towards his face, squeezing the trigger.

He hacked violently and covered his eye sockets in pain when she sprayed into his face. She sprayed him again and again until his entire body was soaked and dripping in the chemical; his mouth and eyes burned while the rest of his bones only tingled slightly.

Setting down the bottle, she reached back into the bucket and pulled out a steel scrub pad. The edgy slowly pulled away his hands and started to blink through the painful blurriness with red fat tears flowing freely down his face. The noise he let out when she grabbed him this time was a mixture between a whimper and a snarl that made her laugh.

"Don't worry, your new mommy will wash you up nice and good, okay?"

Without a second thought, she starts roughly scrubbing him. He screams bloody murder while the metal makes thousands of deep and fine scratches along every surface of his body but she just hums a little tune over his sounds. As she scrapes his bones raw and reddish, stretching out his arms to dig into every nook and cranny, the tingle from the chemicals bursts into an excruciating burn that has him twitching and spasming in her hand.

"Most people hate edgies, you know?" she says suddenly, adjusting her grip and scrubs in harsh and heavy circles around his skull, making sure to dig the metal into his crack to scrape it up and get any dirt out. "I think most of them just don't know how to handle you guys."

"A violent and rough bitty needs an equally violent and rough hand to keep them in line." She finally drops the scrub pad and stares at him. It's not like he could hear her over his screams but even if he could, he probably wouldn't be able to understand anyways. After a few seconds, his screams die down to enraged sobs and she turns on the cold water to rinse him off. He tries weakly one last time to bite her hand but opening his jaw that wide stings worse so he clenches it shut with a whimper.

She very quickly pushes him under the water, ignoring his flinch and yelp. Within a minute, the water is shut off and he's being carried back downstairs, wrapped tightly in an all-too-soft hand towel. It reminds him of the rug and it's so nice on his wounded bones that he can feel himself starting to drift to sleep despite himself. He doesn't want to go to sleep, he wants to rip her eyes out and bite her fingers off and run out the window and- and-

"I'll take good care of you! I'll keep you happy and clean and well-fed, okay, little edgy?" She places a tiny kiss on his skull that he winces at prior to setting him down gently on the couch. Letting out a quiet sniffle, he watches her walk away from him, carefully stepping around the tiny muddy prints as she makes her way towards the window he crawled in from.

"Although… we might want to get rid of those hands and teeth, first."

His eyes close shut at the same time the window locks with an audible click.