FMA -- Getting Off Easy I: 1914
Title: Getting Off Easy
Chapter: 1. 1914
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed, featuring much Al
Rating: R
Word Count: 3,983
Warnings: language, sexual situations, mild violence, major spoilers for Brotherhood
Summary: Ed happens upon the unsettling revelation that Mustang is desirable, and Roy happens upon the implacable revelation that Edward is off-limits. A story in two halves.
Author's Note: Hey, guys, I fixed Brotherhood! …unless you don't ship Roy/Ed, in which case I probably made it worse.
1914
It’s not his fault. It was nothing. It was just-a thought. Practically a challenge. Just a stupid thing that sort of occurred to him, and he figured why not, and… and it’s not like he did it on purpose.
If there is any kind of a God-like entity anywhere that doesn’t hate his sorry, shitty, twisting guts as much as the other and usually more prominent God-like entities, please let it have his back. More specifically, please let it obliterate the wall behind his back, and then he can run forever and not stop until he drops dead and returns to dust.
It was nothing.
It was just that he’d been sparring with Al out on the parade ground, because they’d been cooped up in the library throughout the thick heat of the afternoon, and sunset brought this awesome breeze, and Al couldn’t feel it, but he’s always like some kind of wonder when it comes anticipating Ed’s physical needs. So they sparred out there for almost a whole hour, and then they were both covered in dust, except that Ed was really more covered in mud because the dust had clung to his sweat. So he told Al to head on down to their room at the barracks and break out the armor polish while Ed popped off to the showers. And then he popped off to the showers, quick as you like, to scrape the coating of mud off and wash out his hair and maybe preen a little bit, because he’d landed a few good hits, but Al would take it personally if he gloated.
And then it was just a thought.
It was just this weird thought about Mustang-just this flash of an image from that morning, when Ed had been slumped on the couch, giving Mustang this (hopefully) baleful look. And Mustang had smiled at him, the usual thin, smug-smarmy-bastard smile, except that his eyes had been kind of… soft. A little bit amused, and strangely warm. And he’d steepled his fingers and then un-steepled them and stroked one fingertip slowly along the side of his pen.
Ed hadn’t even realized he’d been paying that much attention. But then there it was, revived and startlingly clear, and Mustang’s eyes were in his head as the hot water ran in little rivers down his chest. So it was almost like Mustang was watching him. But there was still that very un-Colonel-ish warmth to the look-fondness, maybe. Affection, almost.
And then Ed was profoundly horrified to find himself getting hard.
Really? Was that all it took? Somebody just had to-whatever, look at him like they thought he was only a total waste of the oxygen he was breathing half of the time?
Fuck you, Major Elric, he thought, furiously, glaring down at his goddamn traitor of a dick, which was still siding with goddamn Mustang of all people, Mustang and his dancing eyes. You are a fucking sap and an idiot and you are going to die alone.
And then that thought was so scary and rang so true that nothing else really… mattered.
Because who cared? Who would give a shit if he tossed one off in the shower, alone, quick and painless, and let the evidence swirl down the drain? It was the perfect crime. Mustang would never know. Actually, this would kind of put Ed one up over Mustang, because this amounted to using the bastard, not unlike how he tended to use Ed and Al to fix shit all over freaking Amestris whenever and wherever the citizens stirred and clamored for a hero of perfectly normal height for his age.
That settled it. And Ed settled his hand on his stiffening cock, hesitantly at first, and then with a bit more assurance. Nobody was about to walk into the showers at half-past six; nobody stuck around that long. And this wouldn’t take more than a minute or two-the water was fabulously hot, and Ed was just tired enough from the sparring that his body was tensing to unwind. To unravel. Who was he to deny it that, when he’d abused it like he had?
Deep breaths. Deep, centering breaths, focusing on the heat in his belly, on the stroking pressures of his individual fingertips, on the slow unfurling into ripples of desire. Deep, centering breaths and that flicker of something in Mustang’s dark eyes-that flicker of something new. Tightening his grip, swallowing a groan, closing his eyes, leaning his forehead against the cool tile of the wall as the hot water coursed over his shoulders and down his spine. Faster, harder-Mustang’s hands; damn, but they looked strong, and surely he’d be some kind of miracle, what with all the snapping and the scribbling of signatures and the saluting and the collar-tugging. Ed hadn’t noticed that he’d noticed, but Mustang had long fingers and broad palms, and the veins and tendons stood out just a little in his wrist; you could see them when his sleeves rode up, if the gloves were off, if he trusted you enough to leave them on the desk while he looked at you, looked at you with something new, gazing over the half-clasped hands that would feel nine kinds of gorgeous all over Ed’s body.
Yeah. Oh, fuck yeah. Mustang’s hands spread on his back, hot sparks on his skin from shoulder-blade to hipbone; Mustang’s fingertips digging into his ass; Mustang’s body pressed up against his, slick and strong and wanting-wanting him. Yeah, Mustang wanting him; Mustang could have any girl in Central groveling at his feet if he so much as winked in her direction, but Mustang wanted Ed-wanted Ed’s tortured, rebuilt body; wanted to tangle his fingers into Ed’s hair; wanted to pin Ed to the shower wall and grind against him slowly, mouth ghosting through the rivulets tracing down his neck, free hand curling around Ed’s dick and pumping hard. Mustang wanted to fuck him, but You’d be too damn loud, wouldn’t you, Fullmetal? You’d scream like an alley cat, and you’d give away our little secret, and wouldn’t that be troublesome?
“Oh, shit,” Ed said to the shower wall, faintly, barely hearing himself.
Perhaps later, if you’re very good. Can you be good, Fullmetal? Or should we both be very…
Fuck, tighter-
Very…
Shit, so close-
Bad?
“Oh, fuck!” Ed heard himself that time, loud and clear. “F-fuck-” Just one more oh holy hell please yes- “Colonel!” So goddamn close he could taste it, and it tasted like white skies and lightning-
The door slammed open.
Silence.
Then, “Fullmetal?”
And here he is with his throbbing dick in his left hand, almost cracking the tiles of the wall with his right. Here he is looking at Mustang over the stall door, with the shower streaming down over his head and his shoulders, like it’s apologizing for the fact that he’s not soluble, so it can’t help him disappear.
Mustang stares back. “What… are you…”
“Nothing,” Ed says.
It’s not even untrue. Because it was nothing. It was no thing, no thing at all, just a weird thought that-just a-just-
He can’t think, and he can’t breathe, and it takes him a minute to identify this-to identify shame, to pinpoint humiliation. He doesn’t remember the last time he felt quite like this. Ordinarily he doesn’t have time for embarrassment; he gets up and brushes himself off and moves on, because he knows where he’s going, and every movement that’s not a step forward is energy squandered. He knows the pain of defeat, and he knows the pain of wounding Al on accident, but it has been a very long time since he met the pain of sudden and total and terrible exposure. It’s like there’s a sudden, sticky heat flaring under every centimeter of his skin; and his face must be aflame; and his throat is unexpectedly inoperable, because it’s tied itself into a complicated knot.
“I… thought…” Mustang says, and he has the grace to half-turn and assiduously look away. “…something was wrong. I… heard your voice, and then it sounded like you were-calling.” He swallows. Bastard can still swallow. Bastard doesn’t know what he has, never does, never will. “For me.”
Ed tries to say Egotistical fucker and ends up with “Fuck.” Which sums the whole thing up better anyway.
This hurts. It hurts. He’s-weak. He’s flayed and laid flat, and his insides are out in the open, and he’s bleeding onto the cork board, and it hurts. At least Mustang isn’t looking.
Where’s his towel? Shit. This never happened. He’s-dreaming. Nightmaring. He’ll sit up in a second, and Al will make soft, echoing noises of concern, and Ed will tell him it was just… needles or something. Lots of needles. Pins and needles underneath his skin, and his hands are so fucking clumsy as he fumbles for the faucet and then for the towel.
Mustang still hasn’t looked. He should just leave. He should leave, and they can pretend this never happened, and if they pretend well enough, maybe they’ll both forget.
It feels like everything is pulsing like a recent bruise, and his hands won’t stay still or stay dry. His eyes prickle, which is horrifying and frustrating and awful and wrong-Ed doesn’t cry. Not at stuff like this. But this is just so… acidic. It’s consuming and abrasive, and he’s spent his whole life keeping the nasty secrets quiet, but now his guts are all on display. He’s been torn open and rooted through. He feels… violated. Wrecked. Shaken.
“I’m sorry,” Mustang says-quietly, but the words ricochet off the floor and bounce around the way-too-fucking-tiny-all-of-a-sudden room.
Ed wraps the towel around his waist. He wishes he could keep going, keep wrapping forever, swaddling himself in terrycloth, layers on layers on layers until the end of time. He could be unreachable; he could become untouchable. He’d be safe.
He swallows once, twice, fights for the word. “Whatever.”
He expected Mustang to be insufferable-to take advantage (fuck), to rub it in (fuck), to taunt and gouge and cackle and strut and favor Ed with one of those sharp-edged little smirks. But Mustang’s just standing there, looking at the floor, which is sort of damp but otherwise undeserving of study. Maybe he’s just so surprised that he hasn’t even thought to be a bastard yet. What if he thinks of it later? He could hold this over Ed’s head for years. Forever, maybe. No damn way. They have to square this now.
Ed rustles up a breath. “Why aren’t you being smug?”
“Believe it or not,” Mustang says, and it sounds like he’s aiming for wry instead of wobbly, “I remember adolescence. It’s nothing to be… I mean, it’s perfectly-natural.”
Maybe that’s it. Maybe this shit happens to Colonel Sexcapade so often that he’s bored of people getting off to him.
“Sure,” Ed says. If he can just make this end, he can run back to Al, dive into hiding, disappear for a couple days, skulk around sneakily until Mustang loses patience and mails him the next assignment, and then that could take weeks. He just needs to get through the next heartbeat, and then the next, because this can’t last forever; he just needs to stay noncommittal and uninteresting, and Mustang will leave, and the worst of this unexpected hell will be over.
So they stand there, on opposite sides of the claustrophobic box of tile. Ed drips on the floor and clutches the towel, and Mustang stares at the toes of his boots with those goddamn motherfucking hands folded behind his back.
“I’m sorry,” Mustang says again, just louder than the blood rushing in Ed’s ears. “It’s been a long day. I’ll just… Goodnight, Fullmetal.”
He glances back.
Except it’s not a glance-not really. It’s a onceover. It’s quick and guilty and utterly fucking unmistakable.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Ed asks before he can bite his tongue.
Mustang blinks, and then the dark eyes narrow. “I beg your pardon?”
Heat seethes in Ed’s cheeks, which at least means it’s not directed towards the regions under the towel. “Don’t give me that. You were just-checking me out, you piece of shit.”
Mustang closes his eyes, unfolds his hands, and raises one to pinch the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “This is neither the time nor the place, Fullmetal. Actually, there will never be a time or a place. Just leave it. I apologize for the intrusion. Goodnight.”
He starts for the door, and then some fuckwit part of Ed decides it hasn’t taken enough of a beating yet today. “Do you want me or not?”
That was the thing in Mustang’s eyes before, wasn’t it? That was the spark of warmth, and the impulse making his fingers move. It must have been. It has to be. Because Ed is fifteen fucking years old and so much more than that in his head; and he’s never been kissed and barely ever been touched and he pretends that carnality is poison so that Al won’t have to be jealous; and he’s proud and isolated and lives in terror of the unbelievably weird and irrational shit his body decides to do; and he’d throttle anyone who called him cute, but if someone doesn’t tell him right this second that he’s sexy, everything might just fall apart.
“It would be,” Mustang says, “indescribably inappropriate.”
“‘It’,” Ed says. “Because there’s something.”
“If you have a crush,” Mustang says, and Ed swears to anything omniscient that’s taking note that he sees red, “I am sincerely flattered, but that is the beginning and the end of anything between us. It has to be, Fullmetal. Surely you’re not too young to see that. Given our positions, any feelings you have practically qualify as Stockholm syndrome.”
Isn’t he clever? Isn’t he the bright, brazen colonel flush with victory? He’d claim it was victory, anyway, apparently, with his final breath.
“I know more about love than you do,” Ed says, and his voice quavers a little, but it doesn’t crack. “And more about sacrifice, and more about loss, and more about the value of things. You can tell me what to do, and I’m still your fucking dog, Mustang, but don’t you ever tell me what I feel.”
Mustang runs his hand through his hair. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Yeah,” Ed says, “it is. Poor Roy fucking Mustang, tormented hero of a massacre war. So fucking haunted and tragic and maligned. Nobody feels pain like you do; nobody knows what it’s like; nobody can possibly understand your sick little secret attractions and the dreams of your twisted soul. Give it a fucking rest, Colonel. You’re not special around here. We’re all broken.”
Mustang’s eyes are fixed on Ed again, but they’re unreadable now. “I’m protecting us both,” he says, and his voice is like steel-Ed would know. “Someday I dare to hope you might even appreciate it.” He heads for the door again, and Ed can’t think of anything to say to stop him. “This conversation is over. I believe you owe me a report tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t owe you shit,” Ed shouts after him, and the echoes mingle with the banging of the door.
Al looks up from building a pyramid out of empty polish jars as Ed sidles into their room. “Brother! What happened? Are you all right?”
“Nothing,” Ed says, and he forces his feet not to stomp as he crosses to the bathroom and wrings his braid out over the sink. “Nothing happened. I’m fine. I’m great.”
There’s a pause, and then he hears the quiet click of a jar being placed. He’s used to hearing hollow things move.
“That was a longer shower than you usually take,” his slightly psychic and also slightly evil brother says slowly. “Did you run into someone?”
Ed tosses his hair back over his shoulder, steps out into the room, leans against the doorway, folds his arms, and admires his boots. He needs the comfort and the counsel more than he needs the last few shreds of dignity.
“I, um,” he says. Well, fuck dignity anyway. “I-Mustang.”
“You must ang what?” Al asks. That’s a definite yes on the ‘slightly evil’, except that Al’s faintly-ringing voice softens after that. “What happened, Brother?”
“Well,” Ed says, running his sensitive hand up and down the doorframe behind him, “I mean… do you think-you know, realistically, scientifically-that someone my age can have valid adult emotions?”
Al goes silent, and quite despite the fact that his face can’t register changes, Ed knows he’s staring. And Ed knows that he knows what all of the equivocating really means.
Roy hears the clanking and glances at the clock.
Havoc knocks peremptorily and pokes his head in before Roy can grant him entrance. Roy despises the repercussions of Riza’s morning liaison meetings with friends in other departments, whether or not the results have saved his ass half a dozen times in recent memory.
“Elric for you, Boss,” Havoc says.
“Send him in,” Roy says, and then he ducks to a file with very small type. There should be a regulation about that; he’s going to get eyestrain. He makes a mental memo to bring it up as the clanking proceeds through the door, covering the sound of almost imperceptibly uneven footsteps. Roy swallows the pang of guilt at the prospect that Edward didn’t want to face him without an ally. “Early, Fullmetal? Are you feeling all-”
“Colonel,” Alphonse says, and shuts the door.
It is only as he is blinking at the solitary figure towering over his desk that Roy realizes that he’s trapped.
He clears his throat. “Can I help you, Alphonse?”
The boy bends down and plants both massive hands on the edge of Roy’s desk, armor creaking. “Let’s find out.”
Roy resists the urge to lean back. He folds his hands on top of the latest file, which will hopefully quell the nervous fidgeting. “This is about Edward,” he says, looking directly into the helmet’s blazing eyes. “I apologized to him repeatedly at the time. It was never my intention to cause embarrassment-by walking in, or during our discussion. I was attempting to be reasonable and mindful of our… delicate… professional relationship, which should come first and forem-”
Alphonse slams one fist down on Roy’s desk, and all the paperweights jump. “What comes first and foremost is my brother, Colonel. Do you have any idea how hard it is for him-to be who he is? To be brilliant and talented and angry and sad and scared and small? To be alone except for me, and never to think of anyone but me? Some nights I have to make him eat, Colonel, because he’s ‘making progress’ and doesn’t want to stop. We haven’t been normal, and we’ve hardly been children, since the day our mother passed away, and when he tried to share something deeply personal with you, you told him to hide himself. He spends every single day trying to hide, Colonel-trying to hide his automail, trying to hide his intelligence, trying to hide his past, trying to hide his fear and his love and his cynicism and everything else he feels. Trying to hide what he is-when what he is, Colonel, is perfect.”
The soulfire eyes bore into Roy’s as Alphonse leans in very, very close.
“You can give my brother orders,” Alphonse says, “and you can give him instructions, and you can even give him grief about his height if it makes you feel more adequate. But if you ever hurt him like that again, Colonel Mustang, you will answer to me. And I’m not afraid of fire.” He draws himself up, and the overhead lights leave Roy blanketed in his shadow. “Good morning, sir.”
He rattles demurely out and pulls the door shut quietly behind him.
Roy thinks that if he described his life to an outsider, he would not be believed.
Just as he’s managed to shake the mental image of Alphonse impaling him on one of those shoulder spikes long enough to focus on the paperwork at hand, there’s a commotion outside, and Edward bursts in. He slams the door behind him.
“I don’t need a fucking herald,” he says.
Roy is imagining him naked. The kid has been in the room for two seconds. There is no hope. “You certainly don’t seem to have trouble announcing yourself.”
Edward shoves his hands into his pockets and slouches against the door. That’s an extremely bad sign; there’s little Ed loves more than flinging himself down on the couch and pretending to be asleep, or transmuting Roy’s paperweights into ingeniously unhelpful shapes, or gazing out the window over Roy’s shoulder and nodding and “uh huh”-ing at inappropriate points during the lectures.
“So what’ve you got? I don’t have all day.”
Roy keeps Edward’s assignments in a folder he hand-labeled “Government Property: Do Not Steel”. He swivels it on the desk and opens the cover. “I am unerringly confident in your literacy, Fullmetal, and as such am disinclined to read this out to you.”
“You could just ask me to come closer,” Edward says, wandering up to the desk and skimming the introductory material, “like a human being, instead of whipping out the damn sarcasm.”
“Caustic humor is a storied and venerable tradition as old as language itself.”
Ed flips a page. “Bullshit.”
“Most likely,” Roy says. “Sometimes my inventions turn out to be true. What do you think?”
“I think we’ve got time for lunch before we catch the train,” Edward says, slipping a fingertip under the cover and snapping the folder shut. “See you around, Colonel.”
Roy could let him go-say nothing, watch the deliciously compact body disappear. Wait for communications that wouldn’t come, see the headline a few hours before the train arrived, give an earful and get a shrug.
But perhaps Alphonse is right, in some measure.
“Fullmetal,” he says, and Ed half-turns. His eyes are guarded, and his jaw is tight. Roy didn’t expect either of them to be so obvious. Edward has a way of catching him unawares. “Your brother stopped by earlier.”
Ed pauses, and then he smiles thinly. “What’d he threaten you with?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Roy says. “He left it ominously ambiguous.”
Edward hitches his left shoulder halfheartedly. “I keep telling him he should write spy novels or something. Lots of sinister dialogue in dark alleys or whatever.”
Roy knits his fingers together to still them. “I truly am sorry. For all of it. For what was done and what was said. I never meant-”
“It’s fine,” Edward says, turning his back again. “I’ve got a train to leap onto at the last second because I suck at schedules.”
He lifts his hand to the doorknob and then drops it.
“Are things gonna be different?” he asks.
“How do you mean?” Roy says slowly. Things have been different ever since you kicked your shoes off and made yourself at home in my life. And immediately started complaining about the décor.
“Later,” Ed says. “In a couple of years, maybe. After Al’s body is back, maybe when you’ve finally got enough medals on your uniform to compensate for your dick.”
It takes ninety-six percent of Roy’s willpower to stop his right hand from hurling a paperweight. “Things will be different, certainly,” Roy says. “A lot of things. I imagine that will include things between you and me.”
Edward is still for another moment, and then he nods, and then he slips out the door.
[1919]
Chapter: 1. 1914
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed, featuring much Al
Rating: R
Word Count: 3,983
Warnings: language, sexual situations, mild violence, major spoilers for Brotherhood
Summary: Ed happens upon the unsettling revelation that Mustang is desirable, and Roy happens upon the implacable revelation that Edward is off-limits. A story in two halves.
Author's Note: Hey, guys, I fixed Brotherhood! …unless you don't ship Roy/Ed, in which case I probably made it worse.
1914
It’s not his fault. It was nothing. It was just-a thought. Practically a challenge. Just a stupid thing that sort of occurred to him, and he figured why not, and… and it’s not like he did it on purpose.
If there is any kind of a God-like entity anywhere that doesn’t hate his sorry, shitty, twisting guts as much as the other and usually more prominent God-like entities, please let it have his back. More specifically, please let it obliterate the wall behind his back, and then he can run forever and not stop until he drops dead and returns to dust.
It was nothing.
It was just that he’d been sparring with Al out on the parade ground, because they’d been cooped up in the library throughout the thick heat of the afternoon, and sunset brought this awesome breeze, and Al couldn’t feel it, but he’s always like some kind of wonder when it comes anticipating Ed’s physical needs. So they sparred out there for almost a whole hour, and then they were both covered in dust, except that Ed was really more covered in mud because the dust had clung to his sweat. So he told Al to head on down to their room at the barracks and break out the armor polish while Ed popped off to the showers. And then he popped off to the showers, quick as you like, to scrape the coating of mud off and wash out his hair and maybe preen a little bit, because he’d landed a few good hits, but Al would take it personally if he gloated.
And then it was just a thought.
It was just this weird thought about Mustang-just this flash of an image from that morning, when Ed had been slumped on the couch, giving Mustang this (hopefully) baleful look. And Mustang had smiled at him, the usual thin, smug-smarmy-bastard smile, except that his eyes had been kind of… soft. A little bit amused, and strangely warm. And he’d steepled his fingers and then un-steepled them and stroked one fingertip slowly along the side of his pen.
Ed hadn’t even realized he’d been paying that much attention. But then there it was, revived and startlingly clear, and Mustang’s eyes were in his head as the hot water ran in little rivers down his chest. So it was almost like Mustang was watching him. But there was still that very un-Colonel-ish warmth to the look-fondness, maybe. Affection, almost.
And then Ed was profoundly horrified to find himself getting hard.
Really? Was that all it took? Somebody just had to-whatever, look at him like they thought he was only a total waste of the oxygen he was breathing half of the time?
Fuck you, Major Elric, he thought, furiously, glaring down at his goddamn traitor of a dick, which was still siding with goddamn Mustang of all people, Mustang and his dancing eyes. You are a fucking sap and an idiot and you are going to die alone.
And then that thought was so scary and rang so true that nothing else really… mattered.
Because who cared? Who would give a shit if he tossed one off in the shower, alone, quick and painless, and let the evidence swirl down the drain? It was the perfect crime. Mustang would never know. Actually, this would kind of put Ed one up over Mustang, because this amounted to using the bastard, not unlike how he tended to use Ed and Al to fix shit all over freaking Amestris whenever and wherever the citizens stirred and clamored for a hero of perfectly normal height for his age.
That settled it. And Ed settled his hand on his stiffening cock, hesitantly at first, and then with a bit more assurance. Nobody was about to walk into the showers at half-past six; nobody stuck around that long. And this wouldn’t take more than a minute or two-the water was fabulously hot, and Ed was just tired enough from the sparring that his body was tensing to unwind. To unravel. Who was he to deny it that, when he’d abused it like he had?
Deep breaths. Deep, centering breaths, focusing on the heat in his belly, on the stroking pressures of his individual fingertips, on the slow unfurling into ripples of desire. Deep, centering breaths and that flicker of something in Mustang’s dark eyes-that flicker of something new. Tightening his grip, swallowing a groan, closing his eyes, leaning his forehead against the cool tile of the wall as the hot water coursed over his shoulders and down his spine. Faster, harder-Mustang’s hands; damn, but they looked strong, and surely he’d be some kind of miracle, what with all the snapping and the scribbling of signatures and the saluting and the collar-tugging. Ed hadn’t noticed that he’d noticed, but Mustang had long fingers and broad palms, and the veins and tendons stood out just a little in his wrist; you could see them when his sleeves rode up, if the gloves were off, if he trusted you enough to leave them on the desk while he looked at you, looked at you with something new, gazing over the half-clasped hands that would feel nine kinds of gorgeous all over Ed’s body.
Yeah. Oh, fuck yeah. Mustang’s hands spread on his back, hot sparks on his skin from shoulder-blade to hipbone; Mustang’s fingertips digging into his ass; Mustang’s body pressed up against his, slick and strong and wanting-wanting him. Yeah, Mustang wanting him; Mustang could have any girl in Central groveling at his feet if he so much as winked in her direction, but Mustang wanted Ed-wanted Ed’s tortured, rebuilt body; wanted to tangle his fingers into Ed’s hair; wanted to pin Ed to the shower wall and grind against him slowly, mouth ghosting through the rivulets tracing down his neck, free hand curling around Ed’s dick and pumping hard. Mustang wanted to fuck him, but You’d be too damn loud, wouldn’t you, Fullmetal? You’d scream like an alley cat, and you’d give away our little secret, and wouldn’t that be troublesome?
“Oh, shit,” Ed said to the shower wall, faintly, barely hearing himself.
Perhaps later, if you’re very good. Can you be good, Fullmetal? Or should we both be very…
Fuck, tighter-
Very…
Shit, so close-
Bad?
“Oh, fuck!” Ed heard himself that time, loud and clear. “F-fuck-” Just one more oh holy hell please yes- “Colonel!” So goddamn close he could taste it, and it tasted like white skies and lightning-
The door slammed open.
Silence.
Then, “Fullmetal?”
And here he is with his throbbing dick in his left hand, almost cracking the tiles of the wall with his right. Here he is looking at Mustang over the stall door, with the shower streaming down over his head and his shoulders, like it’s apologizing for the fact that he’s not soluble, so it can’t help him disappear.
Mustang stares back. “What… are you…”
“Nothing,” Ed says.
It’s not even untrue. Because it was nothing. It was no thing, no thing at all, just a weird thought that-just a-just-
He can’t think, and he can’t breathe, and it takes him a minute to identify this-to identify shame, to pinpoint humiliation. He doesn’t remember the last time he felt quite like this. Ordinarily he doesn’t have time for embarrassment; he gets up and brushes himself off and moves on, because he knows where he’s going, and every movement that’s not a step forward is energy squandered. He knows the pain of defeat, and he knows the pain of wounding Al on accident, but it has been a very long time since he met the pain of sudden and total and terrible exposure. It’s like there’s a sudden, sticky heat flaring under every centimeter of his skin; and his face must be aflame; and his throat is unexpectedly inoperable, because it’s tied itself into a complicated knot.
“I… thought…” Mustang says, and he has the grace to half-turn and assiduously look away. “…something was wrong. I… heard your voice, and then it sounded like you were-calling.” He swallows. Bastard can still swallow. Bastard doesn’t know what he has, never does, never will. “For me.”
Ed tries to say Egotistical fucker and ends up with “Fuck.” Which sums the whole thing up better anyway.
This hurts. It hurts. He’s-weak. He’s flayed and laid flat, and his insides are out in the open, and he’s bleeding onto the cork board, and it hurts. At least Mustang isn’t looking.
Where’s his towel? Shit. This never happened. He’s-dreaming. Nightmaring. He’ll sit up in a second, and Al will make soft, echoing noises of concern, and Ed will tell him it was just… needles or something. Lots of needles. Pins and needles underneath his skin, and his hands are so fucking clumsy as he fumbles for the faucet and then for the towel.
Mustang still hasn’t looked. He should just leave. He should leave, and they can pretend this never happened, and if they pretend well enough, maybe they’ll both forget.
It feels like everything is pulsing like a recent bruise, and his hands won’t stay still or stay dry. His eyes prickle, which is horrifying and frustrating and awful and wrong-Ed doesn’t cry. Not at stuff like this. But this is just so… acidic. It’s consuming and abrasive, and he’s spent his whole life keeping the nasty secrets quiet, but now his guts are all on display. He’s been torn open and rooted through. He feels… violated. Wrecked. Shaken.
“I’m sorry,” Mustang says-quietly, but the words ricochet off the floor and bounce around the way-too-fucking-tiny-all-of-a-sudden room.
Ed wraps the towel around his waist. He wishes he could keep going, keep wrapping forever, swaddling himself in terrycloth, layers on layers on layers until the end of time. He could be unreachable; he could become untouchable. He’d be safe.
He swallows once, twice, fights for the word. “Whatever.”
He expected Mustang to be insufferable-to take advantage (fuck), to rub it in (fuck), to taunt and gouge and cackle and strut and favor Ed with one of those sharp-edged little smirks. But Mustang’s just standing there, looking at the floor, which is sort of damp but otherwise undeserving of study. Maybe he’s just so surprised that he hasn’t even thought to be a bastard yet. What if he thinks of it later? He could hold this over Ed’s head for years. Forever, maybe. No damn way. They have to square this now.
Ed rustles up a breath. “Why aren’t you being smug?”
“Believe it or not,” Mustang says, and it sounds like he’s aiming for wry instead of wobbly, “I remember adolescence. It’s nothing to be… I mean, it’s perfectly-natural.”
Maybe that’s it. Maybe this shit happens to Colonel Sexcapade so often that he’s bored of people getting off to him.
“Sure,” Ed says. If he can just make this end, he can run back to Al, dive into hiding, disappear for a couple days, skulk around sneakily until Mustang loses patience and mails him the next assignment, and then that could take weeks. He just needs to get through the next heartbeat, and then the next, because this can’t last forever; he just needs to stay noncommittal and uninteresting, and Mustang will leave, and the worst of this unexpected hell will be over.
So they stand there, on opposite sides of the claustrophobic box of tile. Ed drips on the floor and clutches the towel, and Mustang stares at the toes of his boots with those goddamn motherfucking hands folded behind his back.
“I’m sorry,” Mustang says again, just louder than the blood rushing in Ed’s ears. “It’s been a long day. I’ll just… Goodnight, Fullmetal.”
He glances back.
Except it’s not a glance-not really. It’s a onceover. It’s quick and guilty and utterly fucking unmistakable.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Ed asks before he can bite his tongue.
Mustang blinks, and then the dark eyes narrow. “I beg your pardon?”
Heat seethes in Ed’s cheeks, which at least means it’s not directed towards the regions under the towel. “Don’t give me that. You were just-checking me out, you piece of shit.”
Mustang closes his eyes, unfolds his hands, and raises one to pinch the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “This is neither the time nor the place, Fullmetal. Actually, there will never be a time or a place. Just leave it. I apologize for the intrusion. Goodnight.”
He starts for the door, and then some fuckwit part of Ed decides it hasn’t taken enough of a beating yet today. “Do you want me or not?”
That was the thing in Mustang’s eyes before, wasn’t it? That was the spark of warmth, and the impulse making his fingers move. It must have been. It has to be. Because Ed is fifteen fucking years old and so much more than that in his head; and he’s never been kissed and barely ever been touched and he pretends that carnality is poison so that Al won’t have to be jealous; and he’s proud and isolated and lives in terror of the unbelievably weird and irrational shit his body decides to do; and he’d throttle anyone who called him cute, but if someone doesn’t tell him right this second that he’s sexy, everything might just fall apart.
“It would be,” Mustang says, “indescribably inappropriate.”
“‘It’,” Ed says. “Because there’s something.”
“If you have a crush,” Mustang says, and Ed swears to anything omniscient that’s taking note that he sees red, “I am sincerely flattered, but that is the beginning and the end of anything between us. It has to be, Fullmetal. Surely you’re not too young to see that. Given our positions, any feelings you have practically qualify as Stockholm syndrome.”
Isn’t he clever? Isn’t he the bright, brazen colonel flush with victory? He’d claim it was victory, anyway, apparently, with his final breath.
“I know more about love than you do,” Ed says, and his voice quavers a little, but it doesn’t crack. “And more about sacrifice, and more about loss, and more about the value of things. You can tell me what to do, and I’m still your fucking dog, Mustang, but don’t you ever tell me what I feel.”
Mustang runs his hand through his hair. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Yeah,” Ed says, “it is. Poor Roy fucking Mustang, tormented hero of a massacre war. So fucking haunted and tragic and maligned. Nobody feels pain like you do; nobody knows what it’s like; nobody can possibly understand your sick little secret attractions and the dreams of your twisted soul. Give it a fucking rest, Colonel. You’re not special around here. We’re all broken.”
Mustang’s eyes are fixed on Ed again, but they’re unreadable now. “I’m protecting us both,” he says, and his voice is like steel-Ed would know. “Someday I dare to hope you might even appreciate it.” He heads for the door again, and Ed can’t think of anything to say to stop him. “This conversation is over. I believe you owe me a report tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t owe you shit,” Ed shouts after him, and the echoes mingle with the banging of the door.
Al looks up from building a pyramid out of empty polish jars as Ed sidles into their room. “Brother! What happened? Are you all right?”
“Nothing,” Ed says, and he forces his feet not to stomp as he crosses to the bathroom and wrings his braid out over the sink. “Nothing happened. I’m fine. I’m great.”
There’s a pause, and then he hears the quiet click of a jar being placed. He’s used to hearing hollow things move.
“That was a longer shower than you usually take,” his slightly psychic and also slightly evil brother says slowly. “Did you run into someone?”
Ed tosses his hair back over his shoulder, steps out into the room, leans against the doorway, folds his arms, and admires his boots. He needs the comfort and the counsel more than he needs the last few shreds of dignity.
“I, um,” he says. Well, fuck dignity anyway. “I-Mustang.”
“You must ang what?” Al asks. That’s a definite yes on the ‘slightly evil’, except that Al’s faintly-ringing voice softens after that. “What happened, Brother?”
“Well,” Ed says, running his sensitive hand up and down the doorframe behind him, “I mean… do you think-you know, realistically, scientifically-that someone my age can have valid adult emotions?”
Al goes silent, and quite despite the fact that his face can’t register changes, Ed knows he’s staring. And Ed knows that he knows what all of the equivocating really means.
Roy hears the clanking and glances at the clock.
Havoc knocks peremptorily and pokes his head in before Roy can grant him entrance. Roy despises the repercussions of Riza’s morning liaison meetings with friends in other departments, whether or not the results have saved his ass half a dozen times in recent memory.
“Elric for you, Boss,” Havoc says.
“Send him in,” Roy says, and then he ducks to a file with very small type. There should be a regulation about that; he’s going to get eyestrain. He makes a mental memo to bring it up as the clanking proceeds through the door, covering the sound of almost imperceptibly uneven footsteps. Roy swallows the pang of guilt at the prospect that Edward didn’t want to face him without an ally. “Early, Fullmetal? Are you feeling all-”
“Colonel,” Alphonse says, and shuts the door.
It is only as he is blinking at the solitary figure towering over his desk that Roy realizes that he’s trapped.
He clears his throat. “Can I help you, Alphonse?”
The boy bends down and plants both massive hands on the edge of Roy’s desk, armor creaking. “Let’s find out.”
Roy resists the urge to lean back. He folds his hands on top of the latest file, which will hopefully quell the nervous fidgeting. “This is about Edward,” he says, looking directly into the helmet’s blazing eyes. “I apologized to him repeatedly at the time. It was never my intention to cause embarrassment-by walking in, or during our discussion. I was attempting to be reasonable and mindful of our… delicate… professional relationship, which should come first and forem-”
Alphonse slams one fist down on Roy’s desk, and all the paperweights jump. “What comes first and foremost is my brother, Colonel. Do you have any idea how hard it is for him-to be who he is? To be brilliant and talented and angry and sad and scared and small? To be alone except for me, and never to think of anyone but me? Some nights I have to make him eat, Colonel, because he’s ‘making progress’ and doesn’t want to stop. We haven’t been normal, and we’ve hardly been children, since the day our mother passed away, and when he tried to share something deeply personal with you, you told him to hide himself. He spends every single day trying to hide, Colonel-trying to hide his automail, trying to hide his intelligence, trying to hide his past, trying to hide his fear and his love and his cynicism and everything else he feels. Trying to hide what he is-when what he is, Colonel, is perfect.”
The soulfire eyes bore into Roy’s as Alphonse leans in very, very close.
“You can give my brother orders,” Alphonse says, “and you can give him instructions, and you can even give him grief about his height if it makes you feel more adequate. But if you ever hurt him like that again, Colonel Mustang, you will answer to me. And I’m not afraid of fire.” He draws himself up, and the overhead lights leave Roy blanketed in his shadow. “Good morning, sir.”
He rattles demurely out and pulls the door shut quietly behind him.
Roy thinks that if he described his life to an outsider, he would not be believed.
Just as he’s managed to shake the mental image of Alphonse impaling him on one of those shoulder spikes long enough to focus on the paperwork at hand, there’s a commotion outside, and Edward bursts in. He slams the door behind him.
“I don’t need a fucking herald,” he says.
Roy is imagining him naked. The kid has been in the room for two seconds. There is no hope. “You certainly don’t seem to have trouble announcing yourself.”
Edward shoves his hands into his pockets and slouches against the door. That’s an extremely bad sign; there’s little Ed loves more than flinging himself down on the couch and pretending to be asleep, or transmuting Roy’s paperweights into ingeniously unhelpful shapes, or gazing out the window over Roy’s shoulder and nodding and “uh huh”-ing at inappropriate points during the lectures.
“So what’ve you got? I don’t have all day.”
Roy keeps Edward’s assignments in a folder he hand-labeled “Government Property: Do Not Steel”. He swivels it on the desk and opens the cover. “I am unerringly confident in your literacy, Fullmetal, and as such am disinclined to read this out to you.”
“You could just ask me to come closer,” Edward says, wandering up to the desk and skimming the introductory material, “like a human being, instead of whipping out the damn sarcasm.”
“Caustic humor is a storied and venerable tradition as old as language itself.”
Ed flips a page. “Bullshit.”
“Most likely,” Roy says. “Sometimes my inventions turn out to be true. What do you think?”
“I think we’ve got time for lunch before we catch the train,” Edward says, slipping a fingertip under the cover and snapping the folder shut. “See you around, Colonel.”
Roy could let him go-say nothing, watch the deliciously compact body disappear. Wait for communications that wouldn’t come, see the headline a few hours before the train arrived, give an earful and get a shrug.
But perhaps Alphonse is right, in some measure.
“Fullmetal,” he says, and Ed half-turns. His eyes are guarded, and his jaw is tight. Roy didn’t expect either of them to be so obvious. Edward has a way of catching him unawares. “Your brother stopped by earlier.”
Ed pauses, and then he smiles thinly. “What’d he threaten you with?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Roy says. “He left it ominously ambiguous.”
Edward hitches his left shoulder halfheartedly. “I keep telling him he should write spy novels or something. Lots of sinister dialogue in dark alleys or whatever.”
Roy knits his fingers together to still them. “I truly am sorry. For all of it. For what was done and what was said. I never meant-”
“It’s fine,” Edward says, turning his back again. “I’ve got a train to leap onto at the last second because I suck at schedules.”
He lifts his hand to the doorknob and then drops it.
“Are things gonna be different?” he asks.
“How do you mean?” Roy says slowly. Things have been different ever since you kicked your shoes off and made yourself at home in my life. And immediately started complaining about the décor.
“Later,” Ed says. “In a couple of years, maybe. After Al’s body is back, maybe when you’ve finally got enough medals on your uniform to compensate for your dick.”
It takes ninety-six percent of Roy’s willpower to stop his right hand from hurling a paperweight. “Things will be different, certainly,” Roy says. “A lot of things. I imagine that will include things between you and me.”
Edward is still for another moment, and then he nods, and then he slips out the door.
[1919]