What's Left of Him
Title: What's Left of Him
Summary: Written for the an fma ihop kink meme. Prompt was "Roy finding Ed working for Madame Christmas, who took him in after returning from the other world without anyone knowing." It's a little shotty on plot details, but it turned out decent.
Rating: NC17
Roy pulled his overcoat closer as he walked down the snow-covered street. At about nine o'clock the sun had long since sunk behind the horizon and it was practically happy hour at Madame Christmas's brothel. He came every year on this day, the day he left for the military all those years ago. He always came to have a few drinks with some of the 'employees' and catch up with his foster mother, with whom he was not able to have much contact with-- after all, he didn't want Madame Christmas or her girls-- and some boys for that matter, to catch any flack for his political games or vise versa.
Once in a while Madame Christmas will remind him that he's welcome to use any of their services, or as she liked to say "The girls wont stop raving about you, they'd all like a chance you know... but if you're not planning on dating any of them it's still full price. I'm not giving any discounts even to you, Roy-boy,"
Roy has never taken her up on the offer, but more than once he has briefly considered it.
He looked around briefly to make sure no one who knew him was around before walking up the stoop and opening the door. The lights were dimmed and many girls were flirting with the patrons in what served as both a living room and a waiting room. Upon more observation Roy noticed that some of the girls who were more masculinly dressed weren't girls at all. He smirked and turned to the house's kitchen in an attempt to find Madame Christmas only just after a blonde head caught his eye.
In a dashing suit was a slight young man with long golden hair tied up in a ponytail, sashaying his way into the room of patrons after descending from the curving staircase. Something about him glowed amongst the room's velvety reds and golds, and a few patrons of either gender turned their heads. He smiled politely and began to engage a few of them in conversation, though Roy could tell by looking at the man's eyes how bored he was.
Roy stopped mid-stride as a sudden thought struck him. His eyes. His eyes were golden. The black haired man stared in awe at the possibility. 'There's no way that's..."
"Roy-boy! I didn't see you come in," Madame Christmas exclaimed happily after having just left the kitchen with a tray of hors d'oeurves to replace some of the depleting ones on the antique tables in the living room.
Roy startled a bit before smiling at his foster mother and giving her a careful hug around the tray of food. "Good to see you Madame. How've you been?"
"Just peachy thank you. Here, let me drop these off and I'll get you a little drinky," The jolly, almost stout woman said rather insistently before heading off towards one of the empty trays. In her absence Roy found his eyes drawn back to the mysterious blonde figure that was currently playing hard-to-get with a younger gentleman who was encouraging the working boy to sit on his lap.
"I see someone's finally caught your eye, Roy-boy," Madame Christmas smirked while holding up a glass of scotch to the taller man.
"That was fast," Roy commented airily, rubbing at his right eye vacantly before accepting the drink.
"Speaking of eyes," she began quietly, "how's your replacement coming?"
Roy shrugged, taking a sip from of the expensive scotch. "Sometimes it itches or hurts a bit, otherwise its okay. The automail fixture in the socket is a very, very new development, so sometimes it's not terribly the most comfortable thing, but the glass eye looks well enough and moves in synchronization with my other eye, and we both know how much I care about my looks," he smiled down at her and she chuckled. Roy's hand paused half-way in delivering the edge of the glass to his lips once more. "Is this going to be on my tab?" he asked suddenly.
Madame Christmas winked. "As always, my dear. Though some of the girls are starting to claim they're willing to pay for your drinks if you pay for their services. Your reputation really has gotten around,"
Roy smirked and continued to sip his drink while the two stood just outside the living room by the kitchen door. He watched as a woman twirled the blonde man's ponytail in her fingers in the midst of a civil argument with the man currently on the sofa, still intent to get the working boy on his lap.
"What about that one, then?" Roy motioned with his glass. "He's new, isn't he?"
Madame Christmas made a noise that crossed between scandalous gossip and undeniable humor. "Definitely new. He's been here about nine months and let me tell you he's the reason we're able to afford scotch like that," she motioned vaguely to Roy's glass.
"So he's good?" Roy raised an eyebrow.
"Better than good. He's the best in the industry, I'd say. Just look at how customers are fighting over him! They say he's VERY talented," she chuckled.
When Roy was hitting puberty, conversations like this with his foster mother were extremely awkward, but at the age of 34 it's hardly more than talking business.
"What's his story?" Roy sounded suspicious and Madame Christmas caught on.
"You know him?"
"Maybe. He's got golden eyes. That's rare enough. Does he by chance have all of his...limbs?" he glanced discreetly at her before returning his gaze to his flirting face.
"Yes, why?" the older woman also observed the man in the living room.
"Hm. Must not be the same one. Out of curiosity, what's his name?" Roy tore his gaze from the blonde and turned to face Madame Christmas fully, sipping from his drink again.
"Edward Hohenheim," she said rather fondly.
And Roy froze. He stood stock-still, staring at her, until the sound of shattered glass against the wood floors broke him from his reverie. Most of the people in the living room looked over at the sound, but after dismissing it as harmless, went back to their chatter. The blonde's eyes lingered curiously at the scene slightly longer than most before turning back to his conversation, currently being ruled by the woman at that point.
"I-I'm sorry, I'll pay for the glass and the scotch," Roy said hurriedly and quietly, kneeling to pick up the broken shards quickly while Madame Foster snagged one of the girls who wasn't busy at the moment to grab a rag.
Roy stood and moved to a nearby trash bin to dump the shards in before taking the rag from the girl and wiping up the spill quickly.
"What's gotten into you, Roy-boy?" Madame Christmas cocked her head to the side.
"Edward Hohen-- You've got to get me an appointment with him. I don't care if I have to pay double what any of those idiots will!"
Madame Christmas paused in surprise and shrugged. "Very well then. You know how it works. Edward's room is number 314. You must remember, it's down the hall past the--"
"Past the vases. Got it. Thank you," Roy left the rag on the table before making his way upstairs at a cool and unhurried pace, despite that his pulse was racing and his mind was buzzing.
Madame Christmas disappeared for a moment into the kitchen only to return with a small envelope and made her way through the crowd of people to hand to Edward. Upon opening the card the blonde's eyes went wide for a moment before nodding and turning to the woman he was speaking to.
"I'm very sorry Madame, but I'm afraid I've been called to other business," he bowed respectively and headed towards the stairs, leaving Madame Christmas to deal with a furious woman who had thought she'd paid for an evening and began frantically demanding a refund.
Edward stopped in front of the table full of decorative vases to check his reflection in the mirror that hung on the wall there. He tucked a thin strand of hair behind his ear before turning and entering his room.
The door closed quietly and Roy had his back to it. He was currently flipping through a 'menu' of sorts that was on a bedside table.
"I thought it would only be a matter of time before I saw you come by here, Colonel-- or is it General now? Though I'll admit I never expected you'd buy a night from me," Edward looked up through his long lashes and Roy turned to see that Edward, now a full grown man, was indeed capable of the art of seduction. "I suppose every man has a hard time getting a date once in a while, though with your eye mysteriously returned I can't see why" the blonde added coyly, a faint smile painting across his lips.
Roy made his way across the room in four quick strides and fiercely latched onto the lapels of Edward's jacket before lifting him nearly five centimeters from the ground and slamming him with all the force he could muster into the wooden door. The blonde's head collided with the wood with a loud 'thunk' and a grimace flashed across his visage momentarily.
"You know, if you're rough it costs extra. Patrons don't want to buy bruised or broken goods, so depending on the damage I could be off the market for a while," Edward tried to sound informative but Roy could only hear insult and heresy,
"You think I'm here for a quick fuck?!" Roy hissed into the blonde's face, furious enough to startle the lithe man in front of him.
"Well sorry, Mustang, what the hell else would you be here for?" he smiled half-cockily and half-sadly. Roy released his grip on Edward's suit coat and turned his back again, running a hand through his hair in an attempt to compose himself. Edward straightened himself before tucking his hands in his pockets. "Usually, I pour wine for my guest, but if you'd rather something different or stronger I'd be happy to order some for you,"
Roy hissed out a sigh of frustration. "Fullmetal. Madame Christmas is my foster mother. I visit her every year on this date,"
Roy turned again to see Edward's stunned face. "..." "..." "... oh," Edward finally managed.
"Yeah.’Oh'," Roy sneered back. "Now you had better start explaining what the FUCK you're doing here," he spat. "How'd you get back from the gate? What happened to your automail? Why didn't you come back to central? Where's Alphonse? Why are you whoring yourself out?!"
Edward held up both of his hands defensively. "You might not want to shout things like that; it might offend some of the workers here,"
"Edward these women and men prostitute themselves because they have no other choice. You had a promising career, a home, a reputation; you could have had anything you wanted! Now stop dancing around my questions because I think some goddamned answers are in order!" Roy was shouting at this point.
"There's nothing to tell. I'm back. Al isn't. Now I'm here. Do you want to get what you paid for or not, because there are plenty of other people who would--" Sudden pain interrupted Edward's sentence as Roy's fist collided into the side of the blonde's head.
Roy shoved Edward against the door again and leaned in dangerously close to his face. "I swear to god I will beat the living shit out of you if you don't answer me right fucking now," the military man ground out. Edward wiped a small amount of blood away that had gathered at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Fine," Edward said, all of his impatience and cockiness replaced with sudden somberness and a rather pissed expression took over his face. "I'll tell you. Sit down,"
Roy released the blonde none to gently and sat on the edge of the queen sized bed while Edward leaned against the door, his left arm seemingly unconsciously gripping his right.
"I'm waiting," Roy said testily, albeit quietly.
Edward let out a shaky sigh. "Al and I...We came up with some ideas as to... as to getting back. Back home, I mean. Using alchemy and some unproven theories on parallel universes-- by creating a hole in space and time using gravity-- we were able to access the gate. We'd planned to bypass the judgment, you know, by making our own portal and not using the pre-existing one... but..." Edward paused and his eyes grew distant.
"I guess... no one can fuck with God. It wasn't that our portal didn't work, but the gate... it intervened. It... It moved..." Edward's voice was quiet desperate and suddenly Roy had a feeling he knew where this was going.
"It was so angry at us, so unbelievably enraged. Winds whirled around us and horrible images kept flashing up and Al just wouldn't stop screaming," The blonde sounded confused and pained at the last word of his sentence, and his grip on his right arm got tighter, tight enough to make his knuckles white. His slender frame started shaking, and in a second Roy was up with his hands on Edward's shoulders.
"Fullmetal, Edward, its okay. Calm down. It's okay now," Roy's voice was hushed as he was horrified at both the fact that the blonde had face yet more suffering and that he himself was forcing the younger man to relive it.
Edward's head snapped up to make burning eye contact with Roy. "It's not okay! It's not damn it! I was the one who activated the array; it was ME the array worked for, not for Al! It took Al, but it wasn't just his body, and it wasn't the gate's hands that did it! It felt... I just... it possessed me or... or something..." Edward was still shaking and his eyes were blinking back tears desperately. "I killed him. I killed Alphonse. It infused me with the will to do so and also the strength... it wasn't just strangling him or stabbing him, it made me rip him apart with my own hands, limb from limb, until there was nothing to do but snap his neck..." Edward's voice was a whisper now and he was staring distantly at his two hands.
"And then... and then it gave me my arm and leg back," He was smiling and laughing half-heartedly, staring up at Roy and begging him to feel the irony of the situation with him. "And when I woke up, I was here. In an alley. A girl brought me here, Madame Christmas took me in. She didn't ask any questions, and I didn't tell her anything..."
Roy stared in disbelief at the blonde before slowly pulling him into an embrace. Edward burrowed his face into Roy's neck and Roy pressed his cheek to Edward's temple.
"I'm sorry," the blonde whispered.
"What?" Roy responded, confused and surprised at the apology.
"I said I'm sorry. After all you've done for me an Al; I should have gotten in touch with you, at least,"
The two were quiet in their embrace for a moment.
"But..." Edward started, "But I can make it up to you. You know, give you what you paid for,"
Roy blinked and moved away from the blonde enough to look him in the eyes. Throughout the entire ordeal not one tear had been shed, and Roy admired his courage, but...
"Edward I don't think that's a good idea,"
"What? Why? It's my job,"
"I didn't pay for that,"
"Actually, you did,"
"Edward I don't--"
"Don't what?" Edward suddenly smirked with a predatory look. "Don't like men? Or just don't like me, because I know both of those are complete bullshit,"
“Edward-,” Roy gaped at him in confusion. How could the man go from reliving horrid memories to wanting to have sex? It was like he’d just forgotten their entire conversation.
And then it dawned on him: the reason why he stayed to work for Madame Christmas.
“Edward,” Roy began more firmly. “I am not going to be subject to your coping method for loss,”
The blonde’s face twisted into a snarl before catching the military man off-guard, shoving him with surprising force onto the bed and crawling on top of him before the older of the two had time to react. With two flesh legs he straddled Roy, who was leaning back on his own arms, and the blonde fisted fabric of Roy’s suit coat in his hands.
“You’re one hypocritical bastard, Mustang. Just because your coping method is somewhere at the bottom of a bottle, it makes it all fine for you?” Amber eyes softened as the younger man leaned closer to Roy’s face, lips hovering over his. “I saw the way you were looking at me downstairs. It’s the same way you looked at me when I came back to stop the invasion from the other world, and the same way I sometimes caught you looking at me when I was only seventeen. Tell me, Mustang-or should I perhaps call you Roy for tonight?” the blonde smirked devilishly when he heard Roy’s breath catch and watched his eyes flutter shut for barely a second. “What about me makes you get that sultry look in your eyes? Makes your gaze linger on my neck for seconds longer than it should? Hmm?” Edward tilted his head sideways and laid barely-there kisses along Roy’s strong jawbone.
“F-Fullmetal, this is wrong,” Roy’s voice was weak, as if he didn’t completely believe in what he was saying.
“In several ways, yes,” Edward nipped lightly at the pale skin on Roy’s neck and grinned silently when he felt the beginnings of the other man’s erection against his crotch. “Just think of this as a night out for you, and just another day at work for me,” the blonde moved to the other side of Roy’s neck and licked very delicately beneath his ear. Roy tried to suppress a shiver but it did not escape Edward’s notice.
The blonde smiled knowingly. He had won. Roy’s breathing was measured and smooth, but Edward could feel the thudding pulse in the hollow of his neck beneath his lips.
Roy licked his lips. “First and last time,” he whispered hoarsely. Edward nodded before letting his lips softly descend onto Roy’s. Black eyes fluttered shut before pressing up into the blonde’s kiss, his right hand gliding up the other man’s side and resting on the base of his neck. Roy’s fingers tangled in blonde locks and his thumb massaged circles behind the blonde’s ear while he began to trace his tongue along Edward’s bottom lip.
Edward gave a quiet moan before parting his lips and slipping his tongue against Roy’s, deep into the other man’s mouth, tasting and feeling and rubbing and meshing. Roy sighed through his nose as he pulled the elastic band from Edward’s hair, letting soft tresses fall around his face like a curtain.
The older man felt Edward smile into the kiss and an involuntary groan escaped him as the blonde ground his building erection against Roy’s. Roy’s mind barely registered Edward’s hands pushing on his shoulders before allowing the blonde to push him down to lie flat on the bed. Teeth were nibbling on Roy’s lips and the military man realized that his suit coat was being un-buttoned.
“Edward…” Roy breathed, but the blonde took no notice as he suckled briefly on Roy’s lower lip before pushing his jacket aside and moving to his collared shirt. Within moments the military man’s torso was fully exposed and the blonde’s lips moved down Roy’s neck, nipping at his collarbone and licking playfully at the hollow of his neck.
Edward’s amber eyes glanced upwards to catch the breathless look on Roy’s face before lapping his tongue over an exposed nipple.
“Oh god damn…” Roy moaned and Edward couldn’t help but to grind his hardness into Roy’s thigh.
Slow and precise hands worked at Roy’s belt, soon freeing his erection and wrapping one hand around the hard length. Roy panted and tried earnestly to thrust up into the hand but Edward had already drawn the hand away. Roy’s cries of frustration elicited a moan from the blonde, who was currently backing off the bed and one by one dropping articles of his own clothing on the floor.
Roy’s breath was labored as he watched a very speedy but no less enticing strip tease from the blonde, and when he propped himself up on his elbows for a better look he realized that the scars on the blonde’s body must have rivaled his own. Edward’s right arm and left leg were smooth and supple, but his torso and other limbs-even his neck, if one looked closely, were riddled with jagged white lines or marred, tan shapes of flesh. And then Roy’s gaze finally caught Edward’s eyes, which were staring directly at him. His heart managed to skip a beat at the intensity of the amber stare, wrought with lust and passion and something more that he couldn’t quite catch. Was it admiration? Envy? Obsession?
The intense gaze of Edward’s soon mimicked Roy’s earlier patterns, observing the scars over the older man’s muscular torso and moving closer with a certain delicious sway of his hips in order to lean over Roy once more. Two real hands pressed into the comforter on either side of Roy’s hips and the blonde leaned down to trace his tongue across the most obvious of scars. The line over his breast bone from a stab wound, a kiss over the star-burst shapes of gunshots, outlining the once life-threatening burn on Roy’s side.
Roy swallowed and focused on staying still, on not just overpowering the naked blonde and fucking him absolutely senseless. Precome was sliding down the sides of his shaft and Edward’s head was already hovering there, a devil’s smile on his face as he lapped at the tiny droplets.
Roy couldn’t stop the gasp from escaping his throat and immediately afterwards Edward’s hands were holding down pale hips, his mouth engulfing Roy’s erection and Roy throwing his head back, hissing in pleasure. The blonde head bobbed slowly, torturing every single raw nerve that was Roy’s, and the older man was fighting against the grip on his hips, silently demanding more and more.
“Please, Edward, don’t do this to me,”
And the tongue was gliding over the tip of his cock and tracing down the vein on the underside of it before retreating, and Edward’s hands released Roy’s hips. Without giving Roy any time to ask for more he was fully on the bed, knees straddling the pale hips and gentle hands pressing Roy flat against the bed.
The blonde’s petal-delicate ass was hovering only inches from Roy’s throbbing erection and the older man tried in vain to thrust upwards for some kind of relief. The blonde leaned flush against Roy’s torso, backside still in the air and intelligent hands running through silky black locks.
“Help me forget, Roy,” Edward whispered into his partner’s ear. “Tell me what you want. Take control of me, use me for release,”
And something in Roy screamed at him that this was wrong and that this wasn’t the way to help Edward but then there were teeth on his ear and neck and Edward was tasting his salty skin and panting above him and there was no more reluctance, nothing standing in his way but
“Where’s lube?” Roy hoarsed out. Edward pulled back a moment and grinned like hell, pulling a bottle out from behind Roy’s ear just like a magic trick. Roy was confused by the gesture, wanted to know where Edward had been keeping it, but at the moment all that matter was that it was there and Roy grabbed forcefully onto Edward’s wrists and rolled over on top of him, standing just long enough to pull his trousers, shoes and socks off before hoisting Edward’s newly flesh leg over his shoulder and sloppily coating his fingers. Black eyes caught gold for just a moment and Roy pushed two fingers into the younger man, who groaned appreciatively, even going so far as to buck his hips in an attempt to get more.
Roy’s other hand caressed Edward’s ankle and at the pained sound that Edward made as soon as a third finger was added, Roy turned his head to the side to kiss softly at the blonde’s leg. The choked, pained sound immediately gave way to passionate moans while Roy continued to kiss the skin and his fingers continued to stretch the blonde man’s entrance.
Roy smiled at the moan he received after biting softly on the flesh. “This isn’t some kind of fetish with you, is it?”
Edward was panting for air, almost beyond words. “New flesh,” he rasped out, “sensitive nerves,” He swallowed desperately, “Arm’s the same,”
Roy’s smile turned into a full-fledged grin as he removed his fingers and positioned himself at the blonde’s entrance, leaning over Edward’s torso so he was more than close enough to kiss the younger man.
“Are you enjoying this?” he whispered seductively. Edward moaned helplessly and seemed so shift his hips, squirming for release.
“Roy,” he moaned quietly, “Fuck me. Of all the people in the goddamned world I want to be fucked by… please, I’ve been fantasizing about this for years, just make it real. I need this to be real,” The blonde’s hips were still squirming impatiently.
Roy was at first surprised and then it seemed his lust for the younger man had tripled, and his ego immediately swelled at the prospect of being wanted so badly.
The older man coated his length in the lube before pressing very gently into Edward’s entrance, hissing at the tightness of the outer muscle and trying his damnedest not to alert everyone in the whole house with his moan as he drove himself deeper. When completely sheathed inside the younger man his vision was somewhat fuzzy, and only just then did he realize that Edward was clawing at his back, biting his own lip in treacherous pleasure.
Roy’s labored breathing stilled for a moment until the blonde opened his eyes, silently alerting the older man that he wasn’t in enough pain for the sex to stop.
And Roy’s lips crushed against Edward’s, his tongue roughly seizing the other’s mouth while his hips drew back almost completely before driving back into the smaller man with as much force as he could possibly muster, nearly drowning in the pleasure of it all. Edward screamed into the kiss, which definitely made Roy stop in his tracks before he noticed that Edward wasn’t letting him pull away from the kiss and the scream had subsided into an active moan. Roy grabbed Edward’s right wrist and pinned it above the blonde’s head, digging his nails into the smooth flesh there, earning a shiver and another moan from the younger man.
Roy smirked into the kiss and drew his hips out again, repeating the same earth-shattering movements at a torturously slow pace. Edward arched off the bed flush into Roy’s naked torso every time he slammed himself directly into the blonde’s prostate, the sides of the military man’s shirt and suit coat tickling his sides just enough to be noticed, but the detail was quickly discarded in lieu of the vibrating, stinging pain on his wrist and the bruising force of Roy’s cock.
Roy paced himself as well as he could, failing to notice when his thrusts became less timely and when he finally pulled his lips from Edward’s it was only because his knees kept slipping and he just needed better leverage for his impatient fucking.
And Edward was gasping and moaning and trying not to scream again but dear gods Roy wouldn’t let up and it was a hurricane of pleasure. Over and over again Edward felt like he might come but there still wasn’t any stimulation on his own cock and Roy was looking down at him with this look in his eye as if he was testing how long it would be until Edward just begged him to touch there.
But it soon came to Roy’s attention that he couldn’t last much longer and although he might have wanted to hear Edward’s pleading voice it didn’t seem to matter as much, especially once he gripped Edward’s cock he felt the blonde’s warmth tighten around his own and “Oh fuck Edward,” Roy groaned and threw his head back, stroking the blonde and thrusting into him in what he hoped was at all remotely timed. Roy released Edward’s right arm in order to balance better, and the sensitive hand flew to wrap over Roy’s grip on his aching erection and the blonde was so goddamned close.
“Please Roy, please!” the blonde gasped as his hips started bucking up into their fists and down onto Roy’s merciless thrusts, and the sound of their breathing and the wet skin-on-skin smacking was suddenly loud in both of their ears and that’s all there was in the world, the tightness and the warmth and the friction and the breath and
“Edward I’m close,” Roy moaned out, and the fact that it was ROY and his voice was trembling and he was saying those words to HIM…
Edward’s head craned back and his mouth gasped desperately for air as his hips started bucking at their own insane pace and there was pleasure on every side of him and he was vaguely aware at Roy’s name spilling from his lips as his world ceased to exist except for that tremendous feeling.
And Roy’s eyes were on the blonde the whole time and he couldn’t stop the heated cries from the back of his throat as Edward’s hips ran back and forth over his cock faster than Roy could have possibly predicted and when the lithe body started trembling and the warmth around him tightened almost painfully-and he watched with hungry eyes while Edward spilled his load over first his stomach, then chest, then further to drizzle over his neck and that gorgeous hair and oh gods that was it.
Roy let out an almost pained-sounding cry and he was lost to Edward, to all of his pain and fears, his love and his hate and his pride and everything that was Edward was ruling over Roy in that one moment. In that one moment where every nerve in his body was alight with passion, he felt like he belonged to Edward.
And when Roy collapsed over the blonde, releasing any and all of the younger man’s limbs in order to run his hand through his loose and in some places sticky hair, he buried his face between the side of Edward’s face and comforter and realized that although he had paid for Edward’s services, he truly belonged to the blonde in the way that he owed it to him, to allow him this comfort in all that had happened. Because he shouldn’t be alone in this, or else Edward might end up the same way Roy would have if it weren’t for Maes directly after Ishbal.
Because everyone has their coping methods, and who was he to deny that to a former subordinate?
No, a former comrade. Because Edward deserved more than just a title. And then Roy felt something warm and wet on the side of his face, and that his eye was stinging just a little.
Finally their breathing quieted and Roy briefly wrapped his arms around the blonde, holding him for just a few seconds, hoping to convey his realization through that simple action. The blonde was still through the embrace, eyes wide and full of wonder, as if the touch of someone after sex was a golden thing that couldn’t possibly happen.
Their eyes locked for a moment when Roy pulled away, and suddenly an understanding had been reached. The two moved silently then, Edward pulling two damp cloths from beneath a cabinet and handing one to Roy, who cleaned himself quickly and dressed himself as did the prostitute. The older man spent a few minutes in the mirror afterwards, running his hands through his hair so that he didn’t look quite so frumpy. Once satisfied he turned to the blonde, who was brushing his hair as best he could and looked to be gathering things for a shower.
“Will you ever be considering coming back to the military?” Roy asked quietly. The blonde froze in his actions chewed on his lip in thought.
“I don’t think I can,” he replied, his voice soft and fragile. Edward looked up to see Roy’s inquiring eyes. “This is all that’s left of me,” he said with a small smile, gesturing to the room around him. Roy sighed and nodded in sad understanding before straightening his suit coat once more.
“You’re leaving,” Edward said quietly. Roy nodded. “Will I see you again?” the so very not-hopeful expression on the blonde’s face managed to twist something inside Roy’s heart.
Roy merely smiled. “We’ll see if I’m still without a date next Friday,” and at Edward’s rather surprised face, he turned and left the room, closing the door behind himself. It wasn’t until he was halfway down the hallway before he heard hurried footsteps and Edward’s face popped out from the door frame.
Roy looked behind his shoulder, pausing while Edward said just loud enough to be heard, “I hope you are remembering Madame Christmas doesn’t give discounts,” Edward’s face held a smirk.
Roy could only smirk back. “Oh, she does, but only under one condition,”
Edward looked surprised once again. “What’s that?”
Roy only chuckled to himself and resumed walking, waving vacantly behind himself to the blonde before trotting down the stairs.
When Madame Christmas was seeing him out after the usual chat about the year and another glass of scotch, she asked him without any pretext, “So when are you going to start dating him?” she held a cocky, knowing smile. Roy adjusted his overcoat and made to open the front door, about to leave.
“When I start running out of money,” he grinned at his foster mother, who yelled after him once he was down the stairs and out into the night.
“If you keep drinking all my scotch I don’t expect that to be long, Roy-boy!”
Roy shook his head and held his overcoat tighter against the winter winds, heading on his way home