FMA -- Pretty Good Company
Title: Pretty Good Company
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: R
Word Count: 14,730
Warnings: language, explicit sex, major spoilers for Brotherhood
Summary: “You haven’t changed. Things have changed around you. I assume that’s what you’re running from.”
Author's Note: My sincerest apologies to Elton John, and my sincerest gratitude to eltea.
Hello, baby, hello
Haven’t seen your face for a while
Have you quit doing time for me?
Or are you still the same spoiled child?
Hello, I said hello
Is this the only place you thought to go?
Am I the only man you ever had?
Or am I just the last surviving friend that you know?
- Elton John - “Harmony” -
PRETTY GOOD COMPANY
When Roy shifts the three deadbolts, twists the handle, and opens the door, light spills out onto the doorstep. It is shortly after midnight, and Edward Elric is a silhouette and a flash of yellow eyes.
“I understand you’re not Führer yet,” he says before Roy has regained the intellectual capacity required even to lower his gloved right hand. “So you still owe me something. Can I crash on your couch?”
Roy has not yet enjoyed the luxury of a coherent thought by the time he’s closed and locked the door again. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
Edward sets down his suitcase and toes off his shoes; the loss of the latter leaves him half an inch shorter and displays rather threadbare socks for a moment before his pants legs trail down over his heels. He pads along the entry hall, and if Roy’s not mistaken, his ponytail flicks just a little-betraying a glance through the doorway into the kitchen before he enters. “Can I help myself?”
“Can I stop you?” Roy asks.
“I think you’re getting smarter,” Ed says.
If that’s the case, it’s only because four years broken by nothing but a postcard (with an image of the seaside on the front; with half a dozen stamps, most of them Cretan; with the wandering penmanship even less legible than was its habit before; with the words Very wet here-you’d be even lamer than usual scrawled across the open space) has been enough time that Edward Elric had almost ceased to occupy his thoughts.
Roy follows him to the kitchen and leans on the doorframe, watching him bang through the cupboards like a hungry tornado. “Is it pointless to ask how you’ve been?”
The next door doesn’t bang; it slams. Roy suppresses a wince.
“Yeah,” Edward says. “So don’t.”
Roy makes tea. Edward makes toast. Roy puts two mugs down. Edward gives him a look that seems to convey that no real man would stock his kitchen with apricot jam.
Roy sits down and folds his arms. He watches Ed through the overlaid steam curling from both of their cups. “Going to be in the city long?”
Ed takes the largest bite of toast Roy has ever seen. Over a quarter of the piece of bread is gone. “There’s a train East at nine.”
While they’re playing the observation game, there are crumbs all over Roy’s kitchen table at twelve-fifteen.
“Resembool?” Roy hazards.
Edward nods.
“For maintenance, or for…” He can’t bring himself to utter the word ‘forever’ to a twenty-year-old. Edward’s scientific comprehension of the concept of infinity is unassailable; his emotional understanding is a wisp of marsh gas in the night. “…an extended period, perhaps?”
Edward shrugs and moves on to the second piece of toast. Despite being a critic of those who purchase apricot jam, he seems to have no problem slathering it on thick. “I was thinking about getting Winry to put the Northern stuff back. See if they’re doing any interesting research at Briggs. Maybe hang out there a while.”
“Blizzards, monotony, and unquestioning obedience doesn’t sound like your kind of gig,” Roy says.
Edward shrugs again. “I could keep an eye on General Armstrong for you. Make sure she doesn’t decide that she wants your chair and then kick your sorry ass out of it. Warn you if she starts thinking about it, so you can run.”
“Spying isn’t your kind of gig either.”
Edward scrapes the back of his hand across his mouth, and he’s scowling by the time Roy can see his face. “Since when do you know what kind of gigs I take, General?”
Roy leans forward and looks him in the eyes. “You haven’t changed. Things have changed around you. I assume that’s what you’re running from.”
Edward looks like he wants to put a metal fist in Roy’s face.
Then he looks like he’s just remembered he doesn’t have one anymore.
“Fuck you,” he says, picking up his tea. “If pretending that predicting people will let you control their actions makes you feel better, I’m not going to rain on your parade.”
Roy sits back and folds his arms again. “I don’t think Briggs would suit you. I’m surprised you’re even considering working with the military again-and if you’re serious about it, why not stay here instead? The weather’s nicer, for one thing, and you have…” Friends. Ex-lovers. “…contacts.”
“It doesn’t matter where I am,” Edward says. “It’s all shit if I’m not… reaching for something. Right now, I don’t have a direction, and I don’t have a specialization, and for all intents and purposes I don’t have a brother, and I’m just… drifting. Which is shit.”
He dips a finger into the jam jar. Roy resists the extremely powerful urge to splash this tea in his hair.
“You’ve accomplished more in two decades than most people do in a lifetime,” Roy says. “At this point, I think it’s time to sit back and think about what you want. It doesn’t seem like you’ve ever… quite… done that before. Lived for yourself, I mean.”
Edward shakes his head faintly; by the haziness of his eyes, he’s already half a world away. Roy was right-he hasn’t changed. “I guess not. I thought this whole quest-for-knowledge thing was a good idea, except it’s just… an idea. It’s too abstract for me, I guess. Like, when am I finished? When have I done enough? I need something specific. And I tried not to think about it too much, before-about what I’d do when I could do whatever I wanted. It seemed like teasing myself. But when I did, I thought… I mean, I assumed it’d be alchemy. And that’s out.”
It’s kind of wonderful and kind of terrible and kind of like being socked in the diaphragm to hear that Edward Elric’s sacrifice of what was almost certainly the finest talent the country has ever known amounts to that future’s been crossed off the list.
“Why did you come here?” Roy asks. “You could have tried any member of my team, or Gracia.”
Edward looks at him for a long second and then smirks. “Dumbass.”
Roy blinks. “I beg your pardon.”
“I’m pretty sure Lieutenant Hawkeye doesn’t even have a couch.”
“Lieutenant Havoc, then.”
“Place is an ashtray.”
“Breda.”
“Would get me plastered, and I’d miss my train.”
Fuery and Falman live in the dorms; the Armstrong estate is a rather long taxi ride from the train station. “Why not Gracia?”
“Hurts too much.”
Roy’s lungs go on strike for a few moments.
Ed gets up, chugs the last of his tea, and takes the mug over to the sink, where he fits it in among the other dirty dishes waiting for the weekend. “If you’re not changing your answer to a no, can I have a blanket or something?”
Inside of ten minutes, he’s brushed his teeth and let down his hair and curled up on the sofa, and the meteorite Roy hooked to his chariot eight years ago is just a huddled body underneath some borrowed bedclothes.
An amendment: he hasn’t changed much.
Twenty minutes after three, Roy’s sidling down the stairs in the dark, one hand grazing the wall to guide him. He makes his way to the foyer like a blind man-like a blind-again man-and flattens his palm on the front door. Up, right, up a little further; he touches each of the three dead-bolts. They’re all secure. He lets out a breath, drops his hand, and turns a hundred and eighty degrees to stumble back towards the stairs.
“General?” Edward’s voice calls unsteadily.
Roy hesitates, and then he redirects his stumble in what he believes is the direction of the sitting room. “Everything all right?”
“Um-not-really. No. Definitely not.”
Roy’s too old for this.
He fumbles his way down the entry hall; there’s a light on very low in the sitting room, dim enough that it doesn’t illuminate anything until he’s actually stepped over the threshold. Edward is sitting on the floor in front of the couch, the blankets around his shoulders. His eyes are glazed, fixed unblinkingly on the small white pill bottle he’s set on the coffee table.
“I think… I took too many,” he says.
Roy can hear his heart in his ears, a distant drumbeat, accelerating towards a call to panic and to arms. “Too many what, Ed?”
“Sometimes I can’t sleep,” Edward says.
Roy’s too old for this.
Proof positive-his knees crack alarmingly as he crouches down in front of the evening’s muddled miracle and preemptively apologizes to his back.
“Put your arms around my neck,” he says.
Ed blinks once, very slowly, and then gives a crooked smile, eerie in the half-light. “It’s funny ’cause I always used to imagine putting my hands around your neck and squeezing until you, like, set me on fire or some shit.”
“That’s not funny at all,” Roy says.
Edward snickers.
Roy smothers his inhibitions and manhandles Edward into a piggyback position. All of his joints object at once as he stands; if he can move tomorrow, he’ll pat himself on the back for not dropping his muttering charge onto the floor. As they make their ungainly way back down the hall-Edward has been eating too much; that hasn’t changed-Roy can’t help getting distracted by the fact that the back of Ed’s left knee is cold, and the back of the right one is warm. Or by the fact that Edward’s arms, looped loosely around his shoulders, feel strangely comfortable. Or by the fact that Edward’s breath is soft and moist against the back of his neck, and Edward’s loose hair is catching in the collar of his shirt and tickling.
“Stairs,” Roy says. He waves his elbow around a great deal, which would be extraordinarily embarrassing if it wasn’t pitch-black, and manages to make contact with the light-switch. They shrink away from the light like two pieces of a single nocturnal beast, and then Roy squints and carefully ascends. “You’re heavy.”
Edward’s voice slurs, and his lips move against the nape of Roy’s neck. “’M not fat.”
“I know that,” Roy says. “Do people call you fat?”
“No,” Edward mumbles. “They jus’ ask why ’m not.”
“That’s rather rude of them.”
“Uh huh.”
“Just because you eat a metric ton at every meal?”
“Uh h… shut up.”
“How did the Cretans take your eating habits?”
“Bad.”
Roy’s back is screaming, his breath is coming short, and there are goosebumps all over his body from the way Edward’s mouth keeps shifting against his skin. “Do tell.”
“Pushy asshole… bastard… stuff.”
Roy tops the stairs. “You’re very lucky you don’t work for me anymore, or I might have to report you for that.”
“You never did b’fore.”
“I was somewhat lax.”
“You were lazy.”
I was in love with you. “Watch the doorknob. Careful-”
Somehow he sets Edward on the bathroom floor without injuring either of them. His skeletal system will never forgive him for tonight; he kneels, takes a deep breath, and cradles Edward’s remarkably defined jaw in one hand.
The gold-eyed glare is every bit as arresting as it was the first time-the very first time. “The fuck are you-”
Roy pries Edward’s mouth open and sticks two fingers down his throat.
He didn’t expect induced vomiting to be pleasant or pretty, but he still feels like he’s been skewered with the arm-blade of old when Edward sits back gasping, and there are tears at the corners of his eyes.
“The fuck, Mustang?” he hisses, wiping weakly at his mouth.
“I thought it was likely to be preferable to dying of an overdose,” Roy says.
“I didn’t take… I don’t th… I… Fuck you.”
Roy helps him up and searches the medicine cabinet for a toothbrush. “You’re welcome.”
“You shouldn’t even…”
“Save your life?” Roy looks at the way Ed’s hands are shaking and applies the toothpaste for him instead. “I’m sorry; I just thought it would be slightly inconvenient if I came downstairs for breakfast and found you dead on my couch. Awkward questions, you know-police inquest, lots of red tape, your brother inevitably finding out and killing me and then figuring out human transmutation so that he could resurrect me to kill me again…”
The altered line of Edward’s jaw tightens. “Shut the fuck up.”
“Gladly,” Roy says, and hands him the brush.
It’s not long before the energy of Edward’s rage is fading, and Roy has bundled him into bed and wrapped both arms around him to monitor his heart. A half-hour dwindles while Roy counts the gentle presses against his palm, planning the caffeine hits he’s going to need tomorrow if he intends to stay awake for more than five minutes at a stretch. It’s closing in on four; if he skips a shower in the morning-the proper morning-he can get three more hours of sleep. He decides that if a dozing Edward was going to die, the little twit would have done it by now, and he reaches out for the alarm clock and turns the dial.
As he moves back, Ed rolls over, snuffles, and nestles in against his chest. There are two flesh hands to fist his shirt this time; the way Edward noses at his neck and then settles again, breathing evenly, with a shadow of a smile, makes his heart twist like it’s being bathed in flame.
Roy’s too old for this.
beautiful art by Brennan, originally posted here
“…bastard,” Edward says.
Roy lifts the arm that is not completely numb from Edward’s weight and uses it to ruffle the tangled mass of yellow hair. “Good morning. Breakfast?”
“Kill you.”
“After breakfast, Ed.”
“Messily.”
“Toast?”
The scintillating rejoinder is lost to the pillow in which Edward buries his face. Roy pats the back of Edward’s head, waits for the growl, and then drags his sorry body out of the bed, the better to drag it through another day.
Edward is attempting to fight his hair into some semblance of order when he trudges into the kitchen ten minutes later. The toast leaps from the toaster as though Roy masterminded it this way. Edward drops into the closest chair; first he leans back so far that the front legs leave the ground, and then he rocks forward and buries his face in both hands.
“About last night,” he says.
Roy pauses in spreading apricot jam.
Edward swallows audibly. “Just… thanks, all right? You didn’t have to, but-I mean, it was an accident. And… yeah. Thank you.”
Roy smiles faintly. “Of course.”
“And thanks for… the other thing.”
Roy tilts his head, and Edward looks away.
“For… not calling me ‘Fullmetal’. Most people forget.”
The prospect is surreal almost to the point of being amusing-the idea that anything about Edward Elric could be forgotten.
Roy sets the plate of toast on the table. “Fortunately, I’m not most people.”
Edward eyes him, warily it seems. “Fortunately.”
Roy keeps feeding him for another fifteen minutes, and then he’s brushing up against the deadline for showing up to work looking like a human being rather than a reanimated corpse.
He leans against the counter and waits until Ed glances up from cleaning the most recent plate of scrambled eggs. “You should come in,” he says.
Edward blinks. “To Central Command?”
Roy shifts. “Everyone’s missed you, and they’ll be glad that you’re all right.” He succeeds in suppressing a wince. “More or less.”
“Asshole,” Ed mutters, scrubbing at his face with both hands. He gets up and wanders over to the sideboard, examining the wallpaper and then prodding at the light-switch. “Well-I dunno. I was-I could still catch my train, if I-”
“Stay,” Roy says. “Just for a while.”
Edward eyes him for a long, long moment; the wall clock counts out ten, eleven; the heat of Ed’s gaze makes Roy’s skin burn, but the silence makes it crawl.
And then Edward is crossing the room, one foot bare and one foot clicking steel, and twisting both hands into Roy’s shirtfront, and pushing up on those mismatched toes to crush their mouths together hard.
There’s a shower of sparks in Roy’s head, and then… white. Nothing. A flash of stark yellow and a burst of red and a heat building behind his eyes, inside his ribs, between his hips.
Edward draws back, panting lightly, and the sharp eyes search Roy’s face. The grip on his shirt tightens fractionally.
“Thought so,” Edward says.
“What in the hell did you ‘think so’?” Roy is understandably proud that he’s managed a response given that his head is a merry-go-round spinning disastrously out of control.
Ed releases his shirt and steps back, chin raised, gaze assessing. Roy hasn’t seen him level that kind of a challenge in a long time. “That you still wanted me. It was the only logical explanation for the way you’ve been taking care of me but keeping me at a distance. Like you’re scared of what you might do.”
The merry-go-round is flinging small children off into the stratosphere, and the horses are next.
“I have to go to work,” Roy says, focusing on the syllables. “I’m sure everyone would like to see you, but it’s your choice.”
He turns and leaves the room without giving Ed time to reply. Any more of this ridiculous game, and he’s going to be late. At least if Riza eviscerates him for tardiness, he won’t have to worry about his guts churning to the point of malfunction anymore.
“Edward!”
The unison is impressive. A part of Roy-one of the few parts not occupied with processing caffeine, suppressing memories, planning meetings, remembering deadlines, or figuring out how the hell he’s going to explain this-is miffed that he can’t get this group of individuals to salute at the same time for the life of him.
Riza sweeps in to embrace the boy first, and it doesn’t escape Roy’s notice that Edward clings to her like he doesn’t want to let her go. Havoc is already reaching for his shoulder, however, and in moments he’s been drawn into a circle of hand-pumping and back-patting and hair-tousling, and he’s scowling fit to break his face.
Riza moves over and touches Roy’s arm. “Are you all right, sir?”
After last night, it is an inevitable fact that Edward looks like death warmed over. Roy looks like death slopped into an airtight container and thoroughly chilled under fluorescent lights.
“I need more coffee,” Roy says.
“That wasn’t my question.”
“Close enough,” Roy says.
The corners of Riza’s mouth quirk. “I see.”
Apparently she does, because she doesn’t try to get him to undertake any strenuous mental activity while he can hear Edward’s voice bantering with the team so nearby.
A few budget proposals come back bearing the marks of his previous corrections, and he signs off. Riza fills and refills his coffee mug; when he doesn’t look at her straight on, he can almost see her halo.
“How bad?” she asks, tilting her head fractionally towards the outer office.
Roy folds his hands atop the latest file. “Very.”
Riza sorts through the paperwork apocalypse of the in-box. “How long will he be here?”
Roy shakes his head.
“Right,” Riza says. She pauses. “If he gets to be too-problematic-he can stay with me.”
“He said he didn’t think you have a couch.”
“Like hell,” Riza says, handing Roy a folder and sifting deftly through the next few in the pile. “He knows you’ll let him walk all over you.” She softens a little at his expression. “I know he doesn’t do it on purpose-this is Edward after all-but he’s so used to being focused that his aimlessness is… destructive. And I think he knows instinctively that he can take it out on you. Misery loves company, and he needs someone to… fall back on. That’s not good for you.”
“I can handle him,” Roy says.
Riza favors him with the look that routinely makes Havoc whimper aloud.
Roy holds his hands up. “Maybe I can set him right.”
“Forgive me, sir, but last time your feelings on this matter dictated your decision, you were unproductive for an entire week, and we simply can’t afford that kind of a delay with quarterly reviews imminent and Hakuro breathing down our necks.”
“I’m not going to get distracted,” Roy says.
Riza favors him with the look that once made Havoc cry.
Roy smiles faintly. “Trust me?”
She sighs, somewhat meaningfully. “You know I do.”
“And kick him out of here so that I can get some work done?”
She smiles back-thinly, but she knows that he knows his limits, at least today. “Yes, sir.”
The door shuts behind her, and the excited conversation peters out. She doesn’t even have to clear her throat. Roy lives in awe of this woman.
“Why don’t you gentlemen show Edward the new coffee shop down the street? And then you could take him out to lunch.”
There’s a pause.
“Boss is sick of us, huh?” Breda asks.
“‘Sick’ is a rather strong word, Second Lieutenant,” Riza says.
“How was the coffee in Creta?” Havoc asks.
“Crap,” Ed says.
“How were the women?” Breda asks.
Judging by the silence, Edward shrugs. “Fine, I guess.”
“Maybe you should try Creta, Havoc,” Breda says. “If nothing else, you don’t have a rep there.”
“But he doesn’t speak the language,” Falman says.
“That might actually help,” Fuery says, “given his pick-up lines.”
That sounds distinctly like one of Breda’s trademark palm-stinging high-fives.
“You’re all traitors,” Havoc says. “And bad friends.”
“We’re just trying to help,” Breda says, entirely unconvincingly.
This time Riza does clear her throat.
“So,” Ed says. “Where’s this coffee place at?”
The exodus is followed by merciful silence. At last Roy manages to fix his eyes on the lines of small print crawling across his desk.
As the fading sunlight slants across his back, the door creaks open. Edward’s head appears in the gap. His hair swings like a metronome. “Are you almost finished?”
Roy just raises an eyebrow.
“This is insane,” Ed says. “The more they promote you, the more work you do?”
Roy lowers the eyebrow and attempts to find his place in that sentence again. “I believe that’s how the system is meant to function, yes.”
“Since when do you play by the rules?”
“Since I intended to win the game.”
“Well, I’m hungry.”
“I’m shocked.”
“Save it. Should I wait, or do you want me to bring up takeout or something?”
Roy digs into his pocket and comes up with a couple bills. “You’re probably tired of Cretan food; pick whatever you like.”
Edward leans forward and takes the money by pinching it between his finger and his thumb, maintaining eye contact for the entire exchange. “It confuses me when you’re nice.”
Roy blinks. “I’m always nice.”
“In a self-serving, part-of-the-plan kind of way.”
Roy frowns at him. “Just go get us something to eat.”
Ed grins, and there’s a weird pang in Roy’s (admittedly empty) stomach. “That’s more like it. Ta.”
Once he’s blasted out of the office again, Riza peeks in. “I’m headed home, sir. Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”
“That depends,” Roy says, “on whether he drives me to homicide.”
“That would besmirch your record a bit, sir,” Riza says.
He settles his chin on his hand and musters a smile. “I’ll keep that in mind. Goodnight, Lieutenant.”
“General.”
She closes the door quietly, and then it’s just him and the million tiny weights bogging down his impossible dreams.
Edward drags Havoc’s chair into Roy’s office and spins around in it until Roy’s dizzy. “What are you working on?”
“Something that will not be aided by your inexplicably insatiable curiosity about my progr-stop doing that.”
Edward laughs, loud and bright, too big for the space. “Come on, it’s dark out there. You can work more tomorrow; I promise the papers aren’t going anywhere.”
Roy skims the last few paragraphs of this file, slaps himself mentally, and rereads them more carefully. Only when he’s sure of what he’s signing off upon does he look up at Edward. “You were still talking about leaving this morning. What are you in such a hurry to do?”
Ed gives him a bored look. “You, dumbass.”
The pen drops to the blotter and rolls around a bit, rather feebly.
Edward frowns. “What? That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“And what would that make us?” Roy asks, and if his voice comes out low and slightly harsh, he hardly thinks that’s his fault. “A two-night stand? Or has sufficient time passed that it’s just two loosely-connected one-night stands? Lovely. Perfect. Bless your brilliant little heart; that’s exactly what I was looking for this week.”
Ed bares his teeth, and it’s definitely not Roy’s fault that he’s just imagining them grazing his skin. “Don’t you fucking snark at me-I can take you, and you know it. We were fucking amazing last time. Why the hell wouldn’t you want to do it again? Aren’t you supposed to be Central’s resident sex machine, or are you too old for that shit these days?”
Roy is not going to throw the pen at him. He’s not. He’s better than that. “How dare you-”
Edward’s up and out of the chair and gesticulating wildly, ponytail flying everywhere. “How dare I? Right, I think I get it-it’s totally okay to throw me down on your bed and fuck me until I can’t walk when I’m fifteen years old and work for you and get all starry-eyed when you look my way, but when I’m actually of the age of consent and have a life and don’t worship the ground you walk on, it’s not kinky and flattering enough, so never mind, let’s just chalk that one up to youthful naïveté and pretend like it never ha-”
Roy slams both hands down on the desk as he stands. “Shut your fucking mouth, Ed.”
Whether it’s the noise or the profanity or the look on Roy’s face, for once Edward does as he’s told.
“Thank you,” Roy says delicately. “Listen to me. It was a mistake to begin what I did with you when our time was limited, but I was acting on the assumption that things might go sour, and I should seize any opportunities that I could. I did not intend for us to have sex once and then go our separate ways. I did not treat you that way deliberately, and I regret that I gave you that impression, but of course it’s far too late to change that now. Tonight, however, is within my power. We can start over. Tonight, no bullshit-not yours, not mine. Dessert if you want it, and then sleep so I can get to work on time tomorrow. If you’re still interested by this weekend, we can reevaluate.”
Edward blinks at him. “…‘still interested’?”
Roy stares back.
“I just…” Edward blinks a little more. “I just pretty much told you I was infatuated with you.”
“When you were fifteen,” Roy says.
Edward shrugs. “I haven’t changed that much, have I?”
Roy looks down at his hands as they start sorting folders. He’s always thought his hands were intelligent-certainly more than his heart, and often more than his brain. “I don’t know. Have you?”
A glance up finds Edward sucking on the inside of his cheek. “What day is it-Wednesday? Guess you’ll have to wait and find out.”
Roy ends up bringing paperwork home. Edward ends up prying it out of his hands and dragging him upstairs. They both end up wrapped around each other on the bed, one tight tangle of limbs and blankets. Edward tucks his head under Roy’s chin, curling one arm in between them and laying the other over Roy’s side, and it’s close and comfortable and warm.
“How’s this?” he mutters.
Roy manages not to hum contentedly. “What do you mean? It’s-nice.”
“I meant as far as this whole pretend-relationship thing you’re suddenly obsessed with.”
Damn him. Forever. “Why does it have to be pretend?”
The hand between them extends a finger and pokes Roy in the chest. “You don’t have time for courtship if you’re going to be Führer. Which you are. If you hurry your ass up.”
“You… seem to be predicating your assumptions on the-entirely erroneous-perception that there are two types of relationships, one of which involves a full-fledged, long-term emotional process complete with various symbolic gestures; the other of which is sex without strings attached.”
“I fucking hate your vocabulary.”
“That may be, but I’m right. Why can’t we have a valid relationship that still accommodates my political ambition-and also frees you to pursue whatever activities strike your fancy?”
“Well-well, relationships are shit anyway. We should probably just stick with the sex, and if you insist on cuddling like this and eating together and whatever, I guess that’s fine.”
Roy is about to protest when he realizes how few examples Edward has had of romantic relationships in the past. His father deliberately abandoned their family when he was a child; Maes unintentionally left a similar void in his; Havoc is constantly getting jilted and discussing it loudly; and Roy himself is a notorious womanizer.
“Perhaps we should approach it like that,” Roy says slowly. “As… sex, with trappings. Do you think?”
“‘Trappings’ sounds like you trying not to say ‘trap,’” Edward mutters.
Roy smiles thinly. “Sex with flourishes? Sex with extras? Sex with bonus material?”
Ed buries his face in Roy’s chest. “Fuck it; never mind; goodnight, asshole.”
Roy smiles a little more. “Goodnight, Edward.”
Thursday, Roy leaves Edward as a muttering lump under the blankets, topped with a tuft of somehow-still-startling gold hair. He returns to find Edward sitting in the bath, both feet propped up on the edge, reading the newspaper.
“Make yourself at home,” Roy says. “You’re welcome to anything you like. Don’t worry about sloshing your bathwater all over the floor like a four-year-old.”
“Cool, thanks,” Ed says without looking up.
Roy grinds his teeth and takes a deep breath and counts slowly to ten.
“Have you eaten?” he asks when none of his veins are likely to burst any moment.
“Poked around in the fridge a little,” Edward says, turning the page, “but I haven’t had dinner, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It is,” Roy says. “About how long are you likely to be?”
“Huh? Oh, I’m done. Just loitering. Nice bathtub you got here, General.” He tosses the paper aside-directly into a puddle of water, of course-and climbs out. Roy assiduously does not look at certain now-obvious parts of him, because Roy is exhausted, and exhaustion makes him weak, and just the sharp lines of Edward’s strong back and the wet drape of his hair make Roy’s insides twist and throb.
As Ed stomps (metal foot loud on the tile) over to the heated towel rack, Roy gets a little weaker-can he be blamed for that?-and lets his gaze slide low, appreciatively, over the firm curves of Edward’s ass and the tantalizing definition of his athletic thighs. That’s not a crime, is it? Looking? Liking? Planning where to touch?
He sweeps past before Ed’s finished wrapping the towel around his waist. “It is a nice bathtub,” Roy says, “isn’t it?”
Edward has turned up Roy’s best bathrobe and donned it to hover, mostly unobstructively, as Roy makes dinner for the pair of them. Despite the fact that Edward has, at last, noticeably grown, the garment dwarfs him. Roy bites his lip to hold that observation back; he’s cooking with hot oil, and the odds of it getting splattered all over one or both of them after a size comment are extremely high. (Unlike Edward.)
Miraculously, and mostly thanks to Roy’s impressive self-control, they make it to the table unscathed.
“So,” he says, trying not to feel slightly ill just watching Edward inhale food at such an unholy speed, “have you heard from Alphonse recently?”
“Nah,” Ed says. He has the grace to pause, chew, and breathe. “But it’s cool, because he was planning to go up to this sanctuary-monastery-thing at the top of a really big mountain for, like, a week or two, and I figure they probably don’t have a post office.”
“Oh?” Roy says, and not about the post office; he certainly wouldn’t expect… Goodness, it’s been a long day. And goodness, Ed’s eyes are distracting.
“Yeah, he said it’s supposed to be the best place in the entirety of Xing for deep-immersion meditation. He’s really hoping he can get that to work as an in for figuring out all this qi stuff.” Edward starts gesturing haphazardly with his fork, and Roy resists the urge to duck. “Because the thing is-it’s central to alkahestry, right? But it’s not just something alkahestrists can sense; Ling and Lan Fan and Fu were all over who had what qi, and whose qi was bad, and what Al was if he wasn’t a source of qi. So it must not be related to the actual performance of alkahestry, or to any kind of inherent power-it must be something you can learn. He’s been struggling with it, but it’d give him a huge edge as far as Amestrian alchemy is concerned, so I’m expecting him to come back and start throwing knives around, and there’ll be alkahestry circles drawn on, like, the shower door and stuff.”
“He’s coming back, then?” Roy says, and as soon as the words are past his lips he wishes that he could rescind them.
Edward blinks. “Well… yeah. Of course. That’s what you do when you go away from home.”
“Right,” Roy says slowly. He mashes the fish on his plate and then moves it around with a finesse that borders on artistic. “Did you pick up anything interesting in Creta?”
Ed snorts. “Does a bear shit in the woods?”
“Given that I understand their habitat is mostly in the north,” Roy says, “which doesn’t have a great deal of forested area in the regions where the reports are concen-”
Edward is glaring at him. He grins.
“Anyway,” Edward says, pointedly, “I’m excited to get a chance to talk to Al about it. Cretan alchemy is mostly like a sort of muted version of Amestrian alchemy-like, they don’t do much of any significance; they’re kind of scared of it. It’s not as taboo as in Ishval, or anything, but they associate it with us, and not in a good way. Except-” He points his fork at Roy. “-a ton of it revolves around something that translates roughly as ‘soul currents’. Which is basically qi. So I’m really interested to find out if Hohenheim taught them that-and I’m not sure either way, because they don’t have a big dumb ‘yellow-haired sage’ legend like we and the Xingese do-or whether there’s something embedded in alchemy that makes the soul thing paramount.” He sets the end of the fork on his bottom lip and presses until the tines make little dimples, and Roy wants to vault across the table and suck on every inch of him. “If it does, there’s a hell of a lot more potential for combining branches of alchemy even than Al and I were expecting, and he’s going to be goddamn unstoppable.”
Roy puts his utensils down, sets his elbow on the table-his mother would kill him-and rests his chin on the heel of his hand. “As are you.”
Edward blinks, and then he scowls. “Very funny, douchewad.”
It is remarkable that four years and immense exposure to another language have not improved Edward’s selection of insults. “I wasn’t trying to be funny. You just spent several minutes proving my hypothesis that even without your alchemy, you’re an incredibly brilliant scientist. You could apply that to theoretical alchemy, if you wanted-you could transform the ready-made array busin-”
“Ready-made arrays are shit.”
Roy resists the urge to massage his temples. “But they don’t have to be. That’s what I mean. Your intellect is powerful enough that you could change that single-handedly, if the whim struck you. Or you could go into chemistry for its own sake; clearly your knowledge is extremely advanced. Hard science. Why not?”
Edward’s fingers tighten around the handle of his fork, and his eyes are sharp as they flick over Roy’s face. “I didn’t realize this was a career counseling dinner. What the fuck is your game, Mustang?”
“I don’t have one,” Roy says. “You’re looking for a way to apply yourself; I’m making suggestions. Plans come from ideas, and results come from plans.”
“You should write a fucking book of aphorisms,” Edward mutters.
“When I’m Führer,” Roy says. “It’d be pretentious now.”
Ed laughs and then looks slightly surprised. “You’d better get a move on. I was serious about General Armstrong; she could kick your ass and feed it to you.”
Roy manages not to be slightly stung. “I am quite aware of that. General Armstrong’s ambitions, however, seem to be satisfied where she is-which I certainly don’t blame her for. Given her temperament, I think she’s much happier commanding her extraordinarily well-trained contingent than she would be playing politics with all of the juvenile talking heads down here. Frankly, even if she didn’t hate the word-bandying and the back-stabbing, I think she’d be bored. Every day is a test of survival up there; around here it’s a very, very slow game of chess.”
“Which you’re going to win,” Edward says, in the exact same tone he used to say When you have your body back, Al. Roy finds that for a moment he can’t speak. “And then you’ll have to wear the dress-thing all the time, and maybe a hat, and you’ll be insufferable.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” Roy says, standing to collect the plates. “Would you like more, or are you ready for dessert?”
Ed flashes the hungry-wolf grin in answer.
Amusingly enough, on the many late-lonely-night occasions upon which Roy imagined this scenario, he always forgot to account for how much food would be required.
PART II
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: R
Word Count: 14,730
Warnings: language, explicit sex, major spoilers for Brotherhood
Summary: “You haven’t changed. Things have changed around you. I assume that’s what you’re running from.”
Author's Note: My sincerest apologies to Elton John, and my sincerest gratitude to eltea.
Hello, baby, hello
Haven’t seen your face for a while
Have you quit doing time for me?
Or are you still the same spoiled child?
Hello, I said hello
Is this the only place you thought to go?
Am I the only man you ever had?
Or am I just the last surviving friend that you know?
- Elton John - “Harmony” -
PRETTY GOOD COMPANY
When Roy shifts the three deadbolts, twists the handle, and opens the door, light spills out onto the doorstep. It is shortly after midnight, and Edward Elric is a silhouette and a flash of yellow eyes.
“I understand you’re not Führer yet,” he says before Roy has regained the intellectual capacity required even to lower his gloved right hand. “So you still owe me something. Can I crash on your couch?”
Roy has not yet enjoyed the luxury of a coherent thought by the time he’s closed and locked the door again. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
Edward sets down his suitcase and toes off his shoes; the loss of the latter leaves him half an inch shorter and displays rather threadbare socks for a moment before his pants legs trail down over his heels. He pads along the entry hall, and if Roy’s not mistaken, his ponytail flicks just a little-betraying a glance through the doorway into the kitchen before he enters. “Can I help myself?”
“Can I stop you?” Roy asks.
“I think you’re getting smarter,” Ed says.
If that’s the case, it’s only because four years broken by nothing but a postcard (with an image of the seaside on the front; with half a dozen stamps, most of them Cretan; with the wandering penmanship even less legible than was its habit before; with the words Very wet here-you’d be even lamer than usual scrawled across the open space) has been enough time that Edward Elric had almost ceased to occupy his thoughts.
Roy follows him to the kitchen and leans on the doorframe, watching him bang through the cupboards like a hungry tornado. “Is it pointless to ask how you’ve been?”
The next door doesn’t bang; it slams. Roy suppresses a wince.
“Yeah,” Edward says. “So don’t.”
Roy makes tea. Edward makes toast. Roy puts two mugs down. Edward gives him a look that seems to convey that no real man would stock his kitchen with apricot jam.
Roy sits down and folds his arms. He watches Ed through the overlaid steam curling from both of their cups. “Going to be in the city long?”
Ed takes the largest bite of toast Roy has ever seen. Over a quarter of the piece of bread is gone. “There’s a train East at nine.”
While they’re playing the observation game, there are crumbs all over Roy’s kitchen table at twelve-fifteen.
“Resembool?” Roy hazards.
Edward nods.
“For maintenance, or for…” He can’t bring himself to utter the word ‘forever’ to a twenty-year-old. Edward’s scientific comprehension of the concept of infinity is unassailable; his emotional understanding is a wisp of marsh gas in the night. “…an extended period, perhaps?”
Edward shrugs and moves on to the second piece of toast. Despite being a critic of those who purchase apricot jam, he seems to have no problem slathering it on thick. “I was thinking about getting Winry to put the Northern stuff back. See if they’re doing any interesting research at Briggs. Maybe hang out there a while.”
“Blizzards, monotony, and unquestioning obedience doesn’t sound like your kind of gig,” Roy says.
Edward shrugs again. “I could keep an eye on General Armstrong for you. Make sure she doesn’t decide that she wants your chair and then kick your sorry ass out of it. Warn you if she starts thinking about it, so you can run.”
“Spying isn’t your kind of gig either.”
Edward scrapes the back of his hand across his mouth, and he’s scowling by the time Roy can see his face. “Since when do you know what kind of gigs I take, General?”
Roy leans forward and looks him in the eyes. “You haven’t changed. Things have changed around you. I assume that’s what you’re running from.”
Edward looks like he wants to put a metal fist in Roy’s face.
Then he looks like he’s just remembered he doesn’t have one anymore.
“Fuck you,” he says, picking up his tea. “If pretending that predicting people will let you control their actions makes you feel better, I’m not going to rain on your parade.”
Roy sits back and folds his arms again. “I don’t think Briggs would suit you. I’m surprised you’re even considering working with the military again-and if you’re serious about it, why not stay here instead? The weather’s nicer, for one thing, and you have…” Friends. Ex-lovers. “…contacts.”
“It doesn’t matter where I am,” Edward says. “It’s all shit if I’m not… reaching for something. Right now, I don’t have a direction, and I don’t have a specialization, and for all intents and purposes I don’t have a brother, and I’m just… drifting. Which is shit.”
He dips a finger into the jam jar. Roy resists the extremely powerful urge to splash this tea in his hair.
“You’ve accomplished more in two decades than most people do in a lifetime,” Roy says. “At this point, I think it’s time to sit back and think about what you want. It doesn’t seem like you’ve ever… quite… done that before. Lived for yourself, I mean.”
Edward shakes his head faintly; by the haziness of his eyes, he’s already half a world away. Roy was right-he hasn’t changed. “I guess not. I thought this whole quest-for-knowledge thing was a good idea, except it’s just… an idea. It’s too abstract for me, I guess. Like, when am I finished? When have I done enough? I need something specific. And I tried not to think about it too much, before-about what I’d do when I could do whatever I wanted. It seemed like teasing myself. But when I did, I thought… I mean, I assumed it’d be alchemy. And that’s out.”
It’s kind of wonderful and kind of terrible and kind of like being socked in the diaphragm to hear that Edward Elric’s sacrifice of what was almost certainly the finest talent the country has ever known amounts to that future’s been crossed off the list.
“Why did you come here?” Roy asks. “You could have tried any member of my team, or Gracia.”
Edward looks at him for a long second and then smirks. “Dumbass.”
Roy blinks. “I beg your pardon.”
“I’m pretty sure Lieutenant Hawkeye doesn’t even have a couch.”
“Lieutenant Havoc, then.”
“Place is an ashtray.”
“Breda.”
“Would get me plastered, and I’d miss my train.”
Fuery and Falman live in the dorms; the Armstrong estate is a rather long taxi ride from the train station. “Why not Gracia?”
“Hurts too much.”
Roy’s lungs go on strike for a few moments.
Ed gets up, chugs the last of his tea, and takes the mug over to the sink, where he fits it in among the other dirty dishes waiting for the weekend. “If you’re not changing your answer to a no, can I have a blanket or something?”
Inside of ten minutes, he’s brushed his teeth and let down his hair and curled up on the sofa, and the meteorite Roy hooked to his chariot eight years ago is just a huddled body underneath some borrowed bedclothes.
An amendment: he hasn’t changed much.
Twenty minutes after three, Roy’s sidling down the stairs in the dark, one hand grazing the wall to guide him. He makes his way to the foyer like a blind man-like a blind-again man-and flattens his palm on the front door. Up, right, up a little further; he touches each of the three dead-bolts. They’re all secure. He lets out a breath, drops his hand, and turns a hundred and eighty degrees to stumble back towards the stairs.
“General?” Edward’s voice calls unsteadily.
Roy hesitates, and then he redirects his stumble in what he believes is the direction of the sitting room. “Everything all right?”
“Um-not-really. No. Definitely not.”
Roy’s too old for this.
He fumbles his way down the entry hall; there’s a light on very low in the sitting room, dim enough that it doesn’t illuminate anything until he’s actually stepped over the threshold. Edward is sitting on the floor in front of the couch, the blankets around his shoulders. His eyes are glazed, fixed unblinkingly on the small white pill bottle he’s set on the coffee table.
“I think… I took too many,” he says.
Roy can hear his heart in his ears, a distant drumbeat, accelerating towards a call to panic and to arms. “Too many what, Ed?”
“Sometimes I can’t sleep,” Edward says.
Roy’s too old for this.
Proof positive-his knees crack alarmingly as he crouches down in front of the evening’s muddled miracle and preemptively apologizes to his back.
“Put your arms around my neck,” he says.
Ed blinks once, very slowly, and then gives a crooked smile, eerie in the half-light. “It’s funny ’cause I always used to imagine putting my hands around your neck and squeezing until you, like, set me on fire or some shit.”
“That’s not funny at all,” Roy says.
Edward snickers.
Roy smothers his inhibitions and manhandles Edward into a piggyback position. All of his joints object at once as he stands; if he can move tomorrow, he’ll pat himself on the back for not dropping his muttering charge onto the floor. As they make their ungainly way back down the hall-Edward has been eating too much; that hasn’t changed-Roy can’t help getting distracted by the fact that the back of Ed’s left knee is cold, and the back of the right one is warm. Or by the fact that Edward’s arms, looped loosely around his shoulders, feel strangely comfortable. Or by the fact that Edward’s breath is soft and moist against the back of his neck, and Edward’s loose hair is catching in the collar of his shirt and tickling.
“Stairs,” Roy says. He waves his elbow around a great deal, which would be extraordinarily embarrassing if it wasn’t pitch-black, and manages to make contact with the light-switch. They shrink away from the light like two pieces of a single nocturnal beast, and then Roy squints and carefully ascends. “You’re heavy.”
Edward’s voice slurs, and his lips move against the nape of Roy’s neck. “’M not fat.”
“I know that,” Roy says. “Do people call you fat?”
“No,” Edward mumbles. “They jus’ ask why ’m not.”
“That’s rather rude of them.”
“Uh huh.”
“Just because you eat a metric ton at every meal?”
“Uh h… shut up.”
“How did the Cretans take your eating habits?”
“Bad.”
Roy’s back is screaming, his breath is coming short, and there are goosebumps all over his body from the way Edward’s mouth keeps shifting against his skin. “Do tell.”
“Pushy asshole… bastard… stuff.”
Roy tops the stairs. “You’re very lucky you don’t work for me anymore, or I might have to report you for that.”
“You never did b’fore.”
“I was somewhat lax.”
“You were lazy.”
I was in love with you. “Watch the doorknob. Careful-”
Somehow he sets Edward on the bathroom floor without injuring either of them. His skeletal system will never forgive him for tonight; he kneels, takes a deep breath, and cradles Edward’s remarkably defined jaw in one hand.
The gold-eyed glare is every bit as arresting as it was the first time-the very first time. “The fuck are you-”
Roy pries Edward’s mouth open and sticks two fingers down his throat.
He didn’t expect induced vomiting to be pleasant or pretty, but he still feels like he’s been skewered with the arm-blade of old when Edward sits back gasping, and there are tears at the corners of his eyes.
“The fuck, Mustang?” he hisses, wiping weakly at his mouth.
“I thought it was likely to be preferable to dying of an overdose,” Roy says.
“I didn’t take… I don’t th… I… Fuck you.”
Roy helps him up and searches the medicine cabinet for a toothbrush. “You’re welcome.”
“You shouldn’t even…”
“Save your life?” Roy looks at the way Ed’s hands are shaking and applies the toothpaste for him instead. “I’m sorry; I just thought it would be slightly inconvenient if I came downstairs for breakfast and found you dead on my couch. Awkward questions, you know-police inquest, lots of red tape, your brother inevitably finding out and killing me and then figuring out human transmutation so that he could resurrect me to kill me again…”
The altered line of Edward’s jaw tightens. “Shut the fuck up.”
“Gladly,” Roy says, and hands him the brush.
It’s not long before the energy of Edward’s rage is fading, and Roy has bundled him into bed and wrapped both arms around him to monitor his heart. A half-hour dwindles while Roy counts the gentle presses against his palm, planning the caffeine hits he’s going to need tomorrow if he intends to stay awake for more than five minutes at a stretch. It’s closing in on four; if he skips a shower in the morning-the proper morning-he can get three more hours of sleep. He decides that if a dozing Edward was going to die, the little twit would have done it by now, and he reaches out for the alarm clock and turns the dial.
As he moves back, Ed rolls over, snuffles, and nestles in against his chest. There are two flesh hands to fist his shirt this time; the way Edward noses at his neck and then settles again, breathing evenly, with a shadow of a smile, makes his heart twist like it’s being bathed in flame.
Roy’s too old for this.
beautiful art by Brennan, originally posted here
“…bastard,” Edward says.
Roy lifts the arm that is not completely numb from Edward’s weight and uses it to ruffle the tangled mass of yellow hair. “Good morning. Breakfast?”
“Kill you.”
“After breakfast, Ed.”
“Messily.”
“Toast?”
The scintillating rejoinder is lost to the pillow in which Edward buries his face. Roy pats the back of Edward’s head, waits for the growl, and then drags his sorry body out of the bed, the better to drag it through another day.
Edward is attempting to fight his hair into some semblance of order when he trudges into the kitchen ten minutes later. The toast leaps from the toaster as though Roy masterminded it this way. Edward drops into the closest chair; first he leans back so far that the front legs leave the ground, and then he rocks forward and buries his face in both hands.
“About last night,” he says.
Roy pauses in spreading apricot jam.
Edward swallows audibly. “Just… thanks, all right? You didn’t have to, but-I mean, it was an accident. And… yeah. Thank you.”
Roy smiles faintly. “Of course.”
“And thanks for… the other thing.”
Roy tilts his head, and Edward looks away.
“For… not calling me ‘Fullmetal’. Most people forget.”
The prospect is surreal almost to the point of being amusing-the idea that anything about Edward Elric could be forgotten.
Roy sets the plate of toast on the table. “Fortunately, I’m not most people.”
Edward eyes him, warily it seems. “Fortunately.”
Roy keeps feeding him for another fifteen minutes, and then he’s brushing up against the deadline for showing up to work looking like a human being rather than a reanimated corpse.
He leans against the counter and waits until Ed glances up from cleaning the most recent plate of scrambled eggs. “You should come in,” he says.
Edward blinks. “To Central Command?”
Roy shifts. “Everyone’s missed you, and they’ll be glad that you’re all right.” He succeeds in suppressing a wince. “More or less.”
“Asshole,” Ed mutters, scrubbing at his face with both hands. He gets up and wanders over to the sideboard, examining the wallpaper and then prodding at the light-switch. “Well-I dunno. I was-I could still catch my train, if I-”
“Stay,” Roy says. “Just for a while.”
Edward eyes him for a long, long moment; the wall clock counts out ten, eleven; the heat of Ed’s gaze makes Roy’s skin burn, but the silence makes it crawl.
And then Edward is crossing the room, one foot bare and one foot clicking steel, and twisting both hands into Roy’s shirtfront, and pushing up on those mismatched toes to crush their mouths together hard.
There’s a shower of sparks in Roy’s head, and then… white. Nothing. A flash of stark yellow and a burst of red and a heat building behind his eyes, inside his ribs, between his hips.
Edward draws back, panting lightly, and the sharp eyes search Roy’s face. The grip on his shirt tightens fractionally.
“Thought so,” Edward says.
“What in the hell did you ‘think so’?” Roy is understandably proud that he’s managed a response given that his head is a merry-go-round spinning disastrously out of control.
Ed releases his shirt and steps back, chin raised, gaze assessing. Roy hasn’t seen him level that kind of a challenge in a long time. “That you still wanted me. It was the only logical explanation for the way you’ve been taking care of me but keeping me at a distance. Like you’re scared of what you might do.”
The merry-go-round is flinging small children off into the stratosphere, and the horses are next.
“I have to go to work,” Roy says, focusing on the syllables. “I’m sure everyone would like to see you, but it’s your choice.”
He turns and leaves the room without giving Ed time to reply. Any more of this ridiculous game, and he’s going to be late. At least if Riza eviscerates him for tardiness, he won’t have to worry about his guts churning to the point of malfunction anymore.
“Edward!”
The unison is impressive. A part of Roy-one of the few parts not occupied with processing caffeine, suppressing memories, planning meetings, remembering deadlines, or figuring out how the hell he’s going to explain this-is miffed that he can’t get this group of individuals to salute at the same time for the life of him.
Riza sweeps in to embrace the boy first, and it doesn’t escape Roy’s notice that Edward clings to her like he doesn’t want to let her go. Havoc is already reaching for his shoulder, however, and in moments he’s been drawn into a circle of hand-pumping and back-patting and hair-tousling, and he’s scowling fit to break his face.
Riza moves over and touches Roy’s arm. “Are you all right, sir?”
After last night, it is an inevitable fact that Edward looks like death warmed over. Roy looks like death slopped into an airtight container and thoroughly chilled under fluorescent lights.
“I need more coffee,” Roy says.
“That wasn’t my question.”
“Close enough,” Roy says.
The corners of Riza’s mouth quirk. “I see.”
Apparently she does, because she doesn’t try to get him to undertake any strenuous mental activity while he can hear Edward’s voice bantering with the team so nearby.
A few budget proposals come back bearing the marks of his previous corrections, and he signs off. Riza fills and refills his coffee mug; when he doesn’t look at her straight on, he can almost see her halo.
“How bad?” she asks, tilting her head fractionally towards the outer office.
Roy folds his hands atop the latest file. “Very.”
Riza sorts through the paperwork apocalypse of the in-box. “How long will he be here?”
Roy shakes his head.
“Right,” Riza says. She pauses. “If he gets to be too-problematic-he can stay with me.”
“He said he didn’t think you have a couch.”
“Like hell,” Riza says, handing Roy a folder and sifting deftly through the next few in the pile. “He knows you’ll let him walk all over you.” She softens a little at his expression. “I know he doesn’t do it on purpose-this is Edward after all-but he’s so used to being focused that his aimlessness is… destructive. And I think he knows instinctively that he can take it out on you. Misery loves company, and he needs someone to… fall back on. That’s not good for you.”
“I can handle him,” Roy says.
Riza favors him with the look that routinely makes Havoc whimper aloud.
Roy holds his hands up. “Maybe I can set him right.”
“Forgive me, sir, but last time your feelings on this matter dictated your decision, you were unproductive for an entire week, and we simply can’t afford that kind of a delay with quarterly reviews imminent and Hakuro breathing down our necks.”
“I’m not going to get distracted,” Roy says.
Riza favors him with the look that once made Havoc cry.
Roy smiles faintly. “Trust me?”
She sighs, somewhat meaningfully. “You know I do.”
“And kick him out of here so that I can get some work done?”
She smiles back-thinly, but she knows that he knows his limits, at least today. “Yes, sir.”
The door shuts behind her, and the excited conversation peters out. She doesn’t even have to clear her throat. Roy lives in awe of this woman.
“Why don’t you gentlemen show Edward the new coffee shop down the street? And then you could take him out to lunch.”
There’s a pause.
“Boss is sick of us, huh?” Breda asks.
“‘Sick’ is a rather strong word, Second Lieutenant,” Riza says.
“How was the coffee in Creta?” Havoc asks.
“Crap,” Ed says.
“How were the women?” Breda asks.
Judging by the silence, Edward shrugs. “Fine, I guess.”
“Maybe you should try Creta, Havoc,” Breda says. “If nothing else, you don’t have a rep there.”
“But he doesn’t speak the language,” Falman says.
“That might actually help,” Fuery says, “given his pick-up lines.”
That sounds distinctly like one of Breda’s trademark palm-stinging high-fives.
“You’re all traitors,” Havoc says. “And bad friends.”
“We’re just trying to help,” Breda says, entirely unconvincingly.
This time Riza does clear her throat.
“So,” Ed says. “Where’s this coffee place at?”
The exodus is followed by merciful silence. At last Roy manages to fix his eyes on the lines of small print crawling across his desk.
As the fading sunlight slants across his back, the door creaks open. Edward’s head appears in the gap. His hair swings like a metronome. “Are you almost finished?”
Roy just raises an eyebrow.
“This is insane,” Ed says. “The more they promote you, the more work you do?”
Roy lowers the eyebrow and attempts to find his place in that sentence again. “I believe that’s how the system is meant to function, yes.”
“Since when do you play by the rules?”
“Since I intended to win the game.”
“Well, I’m hungry.”
“I’m shocked.”
“Save it. Should I wait, or do you want me to bring up takeout or something?”
Roy digs into his pocket and comes up with a couple bills. “You’re probably tired of Cretan food; pick whatever you like.”
Edward leans forward and takes the money by pinching it between his finger and his thumb, maintaining eye contact for the entire exchange. “It confuses me when you’re nice.”
Roy blinks. “I’m always nice.”
“In a self-serving, part-of-the-plan kind of way.”
Roy frowns at him. “Just go get us something to eat.”
Ed grins, and there’s a weird pang in Roy’s (admittedly empty) stomach. “That’s more like it. Ta.”
Once he’s blasted out of the office again, Riza peeks in. “I’m headed home, sir. Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”
“That depends,” Roy says, “on whether he drives me to homicide.”
“That would besmirch your record a bit, sir,” Riza says.
He settles his chin on his hand and musters a smile. “I’ll keep that in mind. Goodnight, Lieutenant.”
“General.”
She closes the door quietly, and then it’s just him and the million tiny weights bogging down his impossible dreams.
Edward drags Havoc’s chair into Roy’s office and spins around in it until Roy’s dizzy. “What are you working on?”
“Something that will not be aided by your inexplicably insatiable curiosity about my progr-stop doing that.”
Edward laughs, loud and bright, too big for the space. “Come on, it’s dark out there. You can work more tomorrow; I promise the papers aren’t going anywhere.”
Roy skims the last few paragraphs of this file, slaps himself mentally, and rereads them more carefully. Only when he’s sure of what he’s signing off upon does he look up at Edward. “You were still talking about leaving this morning. What are you in such a hurry to do?”
Ed gives him a bored look. “You, dumbass.”
The pen drops to the blotter and rolls around a bit, rather feebly.
Edward frowns. “What? That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“And what would that make us?” Roy asks, and if his voice comes out low and slightly harsh, he hardly thinks that’s his fault. “A two-night stand? Or has sufficient time passed that it’s just two loosely-connected one-night stands? Lovely. Perfect. Bless your brilliant little heart; that’s exactly what I was looking for this week.”
Ed bares his teeth, and it’s definitely not Roy’s fault that he’s just imagining them grazing his skin. “Don’t you fucking snark at me-I can take you, and you know it. We were fucking amazing last time. Why the hell wouldn’t you want to do it again? Aren’t you supposed to be Central’s resident sex machine, or are you too old for that shit these days?”
Roy is not going to throw the pen at him. He’s not. He’s better than that. “How dare you-”
Edward’s up and out of the chair and gesticulating wildly, ponytail flying everywhere. “How dare I? Right, I think I get it-it’s totally okay to throw me down on your bed and fuck me until I can’t walk when I’m fifteen years old and work for you and get all starry-eyed when you look my way, but when I’m actually of the age of consent and have a life and don’t worship the ground you walk on, it’s not kinky and flattering enough, so never mind, let’s just chalk that one up to youthful naïveté and pretend like it never ha-”
Roy slams both hands down on the desk as he stands. “Shut your fucking mouth, Ed.”
Whether it’s the noise or the profanity or the look on Roy’s face, for once Edward does as he’s told.
“Thank you,” Roy says delicately. “Listen to me. It was a mistake to begin what I did with you when our time was limited, but I was acting on the assumption that things might go sour, and I should seize any opportunities that I could. I did not intend for us to have sex once and then go our separate ways. I did not treat you that way deliberately, and I regret that I gave you that impression, but of course it’s far too late to change that now. Tonight, however, is within my power. We can start over. Tonight, no bullshit-not yours, not mine. Dessert if you want it, and then sleep so I can get to work on time tomorrow. If you’re still interested by this weekend, we can reevaluate.”
Edward blinks at him. “…‘still interested’?”
Roy stares back.
“I just…” Edward blinks a little more. “I just pretty much told you I was infatuated with you.”
“When you were fifteen,” Roy says.
Edward shrugs. “I haven’t changed that much, have I?”
Roy looks down at his hands as they start sorting folders. He’s always thought his hands were intelligent-certainly more than his heart, and often more than his brain. “I don’t know. Have you?”
A glance up finds Edward sucking on the inside of his cheek. “What day is it-Wednesday? Guess you’ll have to wait and find out.”
Roy ends up bringing paperwork home. Edward ends up prying it out of his hands and dragging him upstairs. They both end up wrapped around each other on the bed, one tight tangle of limbs and blankets. Edward tucks his head under Roy’s chin, curling one arm in between them and laying the other over Roy’s side, and it’s close and comfortable and warm.
“How’s this?” he mutters.
Roy manages not to hum contentedly. “What do you mean? It’s-nice.”
“I meant as far as this whole pretend-relationship thing you’re suddenly obsessed with.”
Damn him. Forever. “Why does it have to be pretend?”
The hand between them extends a finger and pokes Roy in the chest. “You don’t have time for courtship if you’re going to be Führer. Which you are. If you hurry your ass up.”
“You… seem to be predicating your assumptions on the-entirely erroneous-perception that there are two types of relationships, one of which involves a full-fledged, long-term emotional process complete with various symbolic gestures; the other of which is sex without strings attached.”
“I fucking hate your vocabulary.”
“That may be, but I’m right. Why can’t we have a valid relationship that still accommodates my political ambition-and also frees you to pursue whatever activities strike your fancy?”
“Well-well, relationships are shit anyway. We should probably just stick with the sex, and if you insist on cuddling like this and eating together and whatever, I guess that’s fine.”
Roy is about to protest when he realizes how few examples Edward has had of romantic relationships in the past. His father deliberately abandoned their family when he was a child; Maes unintentionally left a similar void in his; Havoc is constantly getting jilted and discussing it loudly; and Roy himself is a notorious womanizer.
“Perhaps we should approach it like that,” Roy says slowly. “As… sex, with trappings. Do you think?”
“‘Trappings’ sounds like you trying not to say ‘trap,’” Edward mutters.
Roy smiles thinly. “Sex with flourishes? Sex with extras? Sex with bonus material?”
Ed buries his face in Roy’s chest. “Fuck it; never mind; goodnight, asshole.”
Roy smiles a little more. “Goodnight, Edward.”
Thursday, Roy leaves Edward as a muttering lump under the blankets, topped with a tuft of somehow-still-startling gold hair. He returns to find Edward sitting in the bath, both feet propped up on the edge, reading the newspaper.
“Make yourself at home,” Roy says. “You’re welcome to anything you like. Don’t worry about sloshing your bathwater all over the floor like a four-year-old.”
“Cool, thanks,” Ed says without looking up.
Roy grinds his teeth and takes a deep breath and counts slowly to ten.
“Have you eaten?” he asks when none of his veins are likely to burst any moment.
“Poked around in the fridge a little,” Edward says, turning the page, “but I haven’t had dinner, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It is,” Roy says. “About how long are you likely to be?”
“Huh? Oh, I’m done. Just loitering. Nice bathtub you got here, General.” He tosses the paper aside-directly into a puddle of water, of course-and climbs out. Roy assiduously does not look at certain now-obvious parts of him, because Roy is exhausted, and exhaustion makes him weak, and just the sharp lines of Edward’s strong back and the wet drape of his hair make Roy’s insides twist and throb.
As Ed stomps (metal foot loud on the tile) over to the heated towel rack, Roy gets a little weaker-can he be blamed for that?-and lets his gaze slide low, appreciatively, over the firm curves of Edward’s ass and the tantalizing definition of his athletic thighs. That’s not a crime, is it? Looking? Liking? Planning where to touch?
He sweeps past before Ed’s finished wrapping the towel around his waist. “It is a nice bathtub,” Roy says, “isn’t it?”
Edward has turned up Roy’s best bathrobe and donned it to hover, mostly unobstructively, as Roy makes dinner for the pair of them. Despite the fact that Edward has, at last, noticeably grown, the garment dwarfs him. Roy bites his lip to hold that observation back; he’s cooking with hot oil, and the odds of it getting splattered all over one or both of them after a size comment are extremely high. (Unlike Edward.)
Miraculously, and mostly thanks to Roy’s impressive self-control, they make it to the table unscathed.
“So,” he says, trying not to feel slightly ill just watching Edward inhale food at such an unholy speed, “have you heard from Alphonse recently?”
“Nah,” Ed says. He has the grace to pause, chew, and breathe. “But it’s cool, because he was planning to go up to this sanctuary-monastery-thing at the top of a really big mountain for, like, a week or two, and I figure they probably don’t have a post office.”
“Oh?” Roy says, and not about the post office; he certainly wouldn’t expect… Goodness, it’s been a long day. And goodness, Ed’s eyes are distracting.
“Yeah, he said it’s supposed to be the best place in the entirety of Xing for deep-immersion meditation. He’s really hoping he can get that to work as an in for figuring out all this qi stuff.” Edward starts gesturing haphazardly with his fork, and Roy resists the urge to duck. “Because the thing is-it’s central to alkahestry, right? But it’s not just something alkahestrists can sense; Ling and Lan Fan and Fu were all over who had what qi, and whose qi was bad, and what Al was if he wasn’t a source of qi. So it must not be related to the actual performance of alkahestry, or to any kind of inherent power-it must be something you can learn. He’s been struggling with it, but it’d give him a huge edge as far as Amestrian alchemy is concerned, so I’m expecting him to come back and start throwing knives around, and there’ll be alkahestry circles drawn on, like, the shower door and stuff.”
“He’s coming back, then?” Roy says, and as soon as the words are past his lips he wishes that he could rescind them.
Edward blinks. “Well… yeah. Of course. That’s what you do when you go away from home.”
“Right,” Roy says slowly. He mashes the fish on his plate and then moves it around with a finesse that borders on artistic. “Did you pick up anything interesting in Creta?”
Ed snorts. “Does a bear shit in the woods?”
“Given that I understand their habitat is mostly in the north,” Roy says, “which doesn’t have a great deal of forested area in the regions where the reports are concen-”
Edward is glaring at him. He grins.
“Anyway,” Edward says, pointedly, “I’m excited to get a chance to talk to Al about it. Cretan alchemy is mostly like a sort of muted version of Amestrian alchemy-like, they don’t do much of any significance; they’re kind of scared of it. It’s not as taboo as in Ishval, or anything, but they associate it with us, and not in a good way. Except-” He points his fork at Roy. “-a ton of it revolves around something that translates roughly as ‘soul currents’. Which is basically qi. So I’m really interested to find out if Hohenheim taught them that-and I’m not sure either way, because they don’t have a big dumb ‘yellow-haired sage’ legend like we and the Xingese do-or whether there’s something embedded in alchemy that makes the soul thing paramount.” He sets the end of the fork on his bottom lip and presses until the tines make little dimples, and Roy wants to vault across the table and suck on every inch of him. “If it does, there’s a hell of a lot more potential for combining branches of alchemy even than Al and I were expecting, and he’s going to be goddamn unstoppable.”
Roy puts his utensils down, sets his elbow on the table-his mother would kill him-and rests his chin on the heel of his hand. “As are you.”
Edward blinks, and then he scowls. “Very funny, douchewad.”
It is remarkable that four years and immense exposure to another language have not improved Edward’s selection of insults. “I wasn’t trying to be funny. You just spent several minutes proving my hypothesis that even without your alchemy, you’re an incredibly brilliant scientist. You could apply that to theoretical alchemy, if you wanted-you could transform the ready-made array busin-”
“Ready-made arrays are shit.”
Roy resists the urge to massage his temples. “But they don’t have to be. That’s what I mean. Your intellect is powerful enough that you could change that single-handedly, if the whim struck you. Or you could go into chemistry for its own sake; clearly your knowledge is extremely advanced. Hard science. Why not?”
Edward’s fingers tighten around the handle of his fork, and his eyes are sharp as they flick over Roy’s face. “I didn’t realize this was a career counseling dinner. What the fuck is your game, Mustang?”
“I don’t have one,” Roy says. “You’re looking for a way to apply yourself; I’m making suggestions. Plans come from ideas, and results come from plans.”
“You should write a fucking book of aphorisms,” Edward mutters.
“When I’m Führer,” Roy says. “It’d be pretentious now.”
Ed laughs and then looks slightly surprised. “You’d better get a move on. I was serious about General Armstrong; she could kick your ass and feed it to you.”
Roy manages not to be slightly stung. “I am quite aware of that. General Armstrong’s ambitions, however, seem to be satisfied where she is-which I certainly don’t blame her for. Given her temperament, I think she’s much happier commanding her extraordinarily well-trained contingent than she would be playing politics with all of the juvenile talking heads down here. Frankly, even if she didn’t hate the word-bandying and the back-stabbing, I think she’d be bored. Every day is a test of survival up there; around here it’s a very, very slow game of chess.”
“Which you’re going to win,” Edward says, in the exact same tone he used to say When you have your body back, Al. Roy finds that for a moment he can’t speak. “And then you’ll have to wear the dress-thing all the time, and maybe a hat, and you’ll be insufferable.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” Roy says, standing to collect the plates. “Would you like more, or are you ready for dessert?”
Ed flashes the hungry-wolf grin in answer.
Amusingly enough, on the many late-lonely-night occasions upon which Roy imagined this scenario, he always forgot to account for how much food would be required.
PART II