Title: From One Broken Body to Another
Fandom: Full Metal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: This fandom is disclaimed.
Genre: Angst
Warnings: Boy love
Word Count: 450
Synopsis: Post Movie-verse. Roy and Ed compare their flaws. Slightly AU.
From One Broken Body
“I wish I had a normal arm so I could feel you,” he says, as if the only real way people connect is skin-to-skin and everything else is just trying too hard.
Roy doesn’t look at him, doesn’t speak. He takes Ed’s metal hand in his and kisses his palm, then wrist, then elbow, working his way up to Ed’s shoulder. His fingers trace the automail port, moving from metal to scarred skin, circling once before working his way back down Ed’s arm.
Ed watches him and wants to say, “I can’t feel that, you idiot, you’re making this worse,” but it’s oddly comforting. He can’t remove his gaze; when Roy ends at his fingers, licking the very tips, Ed wonders if they taste metallic on Roy’s tongue. He reaches out, cupping Roy’s cheek and imagines it hot against his palm.
Roy’s expression is one of a man with regrets.
“I wish I had a left eye so I could see you,” he says, as if the soul is so immense it can only be savored by two eyes and that one could never contain it.
Ed reaches up and traces the place where he knows there once was an eyebrow, his metal fingers ghosting over what he imagines to be a perfect lid, hiding a beautiful black iris. He cannot feel the softness of the patch, but he can sense the tension of the fabric under his touch, and the sorrow.
And he has more wishes, but he keeps them silent. These wishes pass quietly from one broken body to another, finding solace in the loss of one another. And it ceases to matter that they are flawed, because they are alive and their flaws only serve to intensify the moment.
And Ed finds himself glad for his metal arm because it cannot feel the empty eye that cannot sense his touch and they fit together, feeling and sensing both lost but not quite missing.
I wish I could make everything perfect, thinks Ed, but he does not say this. There is no need. He knows that Roy is thinking the same because there is understanding in his expression.
And somehow his wishes feel unimportant as he realizes that far better than feeling or seeing is knowing. Knowing that for what he has lost, something has been gained.
As he places his head against Roy’s, Ed allows himself one more wish: it is the wish to live without regrets. It is not so much for himself as it is for Roy, and he passes this wish to his lover, along with so many hopes to fill their broken bodies and leave them whole once more.