FMA -- Dynamo
Title: Dynamo
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 11,550
Warnings: language, tactful sexytimes, major SPOILERS for '03/CoS
Summary: If colored light can strafe the sky in two worlds not quite alike, perhaps anything is possible.
Author's Note: This is far from a masterpiece, but writing it kind of kept me sane, which is the entire point of fanfic for me. ^^; It's also shoddily edited, because I have a headache and a 50,000-word Big Bang to fix up in a zillion ways! XD Enjoy~ ♥
DYNAMO
When his desk phone rings, he lifts the receiver to his right ear so that the patch won’t rustle against the mouthpiece. “Mustang.”
“It’s-” The woman hesitates. “Edward Elric for you, sir.”
No.
It’s not.
How dare you-
“He… his identification code-I mean, it’s… it’s correct, sir; he-”
It’s not him.
It’s not him, and Roy is going to incinerate whoever is responsible for the writhing of his insides and the skewer through his heart.
“Put it through,” he says.
“Yes, sir.”
The line clicks, skittering with static. Someone clears their throat.
“Colonel?” the voice-not the voice-not quite the voice-says slowly.
“Brigadier General,” Roy says.
The laugh that rings tinnily in his ear is slightly lower and raspier than the one he remembers, but it’s-it’s almost-
“Fuck you, bastard,” the voice says. “It’s good to hear you, too.”
It is him.
Roy swallows. “How in the name of all that is holy did you-”
“It’s complicated,” Edward says. “Look, the, uh-the phones are kinda crap up here, uh-”
How embarrassing that he didn’t think to ask: “Where are you?”
“Place called Pazakov,” Edward says. “Population of twenty, counting the goats. There was just this huge blizzard, right, which we… might… have… had something to do with, and the dinky little rail line to North City is out. I thought-” For the first time in this wild, wildly impossible conversation, for the first time since Roy started gripping the telephone so hard his knuckles ache, Edward pauses. “Well, Al was saying you might be willing to make a couple calls and maybe get a car sent up from the city contingent, and… well, I mean, otherwise, we’ll be stuck here ’til the thaw, and I’m gonna have no choice except to figure out cloud alchemy or something. It can’t be too hard.”
“I’ll have a car sent,” Roy says. “Please don’t do anything untoward to the climate of the country in the meantime.”
This laugh is sharper-abrupt, breathless. “I could write a report. Y’know, for old times’ sake.”
“Just stay where you are,” Roy says. Just stay here, how in God’s name did you make it back? What were you doing? What were you thinking? What did you pay? And how, how, can I be sure that this time you’re here forever? “Is-Alphonse-?”
There is a brief silence, and then Edward scoffs so loudly that the line spits static into Roy’s ear.
“Duh, Al’s here,” Edward says. “Like I’d come back from another fucking universe without him. Anyway, fine, fine, whatever, just… we’ll wait. Thanks.”
You’ll ‘wait’, Roy thinks. My dear boy, my dearest boy, you have no concept of waiting.
“Certainly,” Roy says. “I imagine you don’t have currency? I’ll make sure the military reimburses any citizen who puts you up.”
“Damn,” Edward says, and Roy can hear the narrow, slanted grin; he can feel its edge pressing in against his own throat. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d accidentally learned how to get shit done.”
“How fortunate that you’re not fooled,” Roy says.
Ed laughs again. It’s startling. It’s strange. Roy’s fingers tighten around the receiver; if he hangs up, that laughter will stop.
“All right,” Edward says. “See you in a couple days, I guess. Don’t work too hard.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Roy says.
“Uh huh. Well, g’bye.”
“Goodbye, Edward.” Is there blood in his mouth? Those two words cut coming up.
“For now,” Ed says. “Oh, and this is a collect call. ’Bye!”
The line goes dead. Roy manages not to follow.
He lets the phone ring once, twisting his fingers so tightly together that his knuckles pop.
He snatches the receiver halfway into the second trill. “Mustang.”
“Lieutenant Ross for you, sir.”
“Put her through.”
“Yes, sir.”
Static. Static is the sound that snow should make; instead it comes on so quiet until it’s frozen your tongue in your mouth.
“Brigadier General?”
“I’m here.”
“Reporting on the Elrics as you requested, sir.”
“Go ahead, Lieutenant.”
“They’re reasonably healthy-both a little bit too thin for my liking; you can see their cheekbones, but they don’t seem to be much worse for the wear. Unusual clothing, like the last time. Al’s cut his hair. And he’s gotten really-” She lowers her voice almost to a whisper. “-tall.”
Does that rankle, with Ed? Or is it different now? Is he different now? He looked like a shadow, moved like a wraith, smiled without showing his teeth-his eyes were darker, his shoulders were broader, his hair was longer; his soul was older, and his heart was heavy, and there was something weary in the way he held himself.
(Wasn’t there? Or was Roy extrapolating a wisp of real indecision into two years of imagined pain because he knew even then that an Ed who was whole wouldn’t want him?)
A whistle shrills beneath the sound of the static and a ripple that might be wind.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Roy says. “The circumstances are so extraordinary that I thought it most prudent to…”
“Be sure it was really them?” Ross asks with a smile in her voice. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, sir; I would have done the same.”
“Safe journey, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Someone starts to say “Come on” in the background just as she hangs up the phone. Roy strains to hear but can’t identify the voice.
He sets the phone back in the cradle and folds his hands. He knows that he’s changed-he’s a different man than he was then; he’s a different man this year than he was the last; he’s virtually unrecognizable to anyone expecting the cocky young colonel who walked into a wall of flames and earned the white scars that make trenches on the backs of his hands. He knows he can’t anticipate that Ed will be the same-he can’t anticipate that any facet of Ed will be the same. And that’s… unsettling. That raises a question he’s not sure he’s ready for the answer to.
Exactly who is going to step off of that train?
“You look like a pirate,” Ed says the instant he steps into the office.
Roy clenches his hands tighter-slowly, fractionally, so subtly that only Riza will notice, if she cares to look. “I don’t imagine,” he says, “that my physical deformity-”
“Whoa, whoa,” Ed says. “I didn’t say ‘deformity’. Jesus.”
Roy raises his voice over the nonsense. “-is more important than the fact that this is your only opportunity to avoid facing a military tribunal. I suggest you treat it with appropriate solemnity.”
“C’mon,” Ed says, grinning. “When have I ever not taken shit seriously?”
“Don’t be a smartass, Brother,” Alphonse says calmly.
“Can’t help it,” Ed says, but the smug expression falls away. “Look, Mustang, I know what’s at stake. I know a lot more now than I did-about people, and about people in power. We can handle it. Trust me on this one.”
The last time I trusted you to ‘handle it’, you fled back to another universe. The time before that, you died.
“Lieutenant Ross will see you to your room in the barracks,” Roy says, inclining his head slightly to acknowledge her sharp salute. “I am obligated to post a guard over persons of interest; anything you require between now and noon tomorrow will be provided for. Rest up.” He looks at them both-really looks, the way he fears to let himself, the way he fears will topple him. Alphonse blinks calm gray-brown eyes, and Ed looks directly back: fierce, but not defiant. “And use the time,” Roy says, “to get your story straight.”
Ed smirks. “Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed,” Roy says.
Lieutenant Ross ushers them out, and Riza turns to Roy.
“Sir?” she asks, which means Are you all right?
“I should have expected that they would crash back into my life eventually,” he says. “And that they would open up all the old wounds on impact.”
Riza pauses. “Will those wounds heal, sir?”
“They’ll have to,” Roy says.
Brigadier General Talia Parish piques Roy’s nerves-underneath the surface, she’s so ruthless her blood must run cold, but when she smiles she could charm water from a stone; she is, perhaps, his strongest competition for the Führership. Scarier still, she might well make a better leader, which would effectively render his whole existence moot.
He folds his hands on the table. Talia is at his left-she made the selection look perfectly natural, but he knows she chose the seat in his blind spot entirely deliberately-and a very nervous young man from Investigations who will be taking minutes sits to his right. Immediately after receiving that first phone call, Roy made sure that Fuery would be out in the field today; he doesn’t want this encounter recorded. He doesn’t want the tone of his voice when he is faced with Ed, in all of the boy’s wretched impossibility, to be preserved and presented for later scrutiny. He doesn’t trust his tongue not to betray him.
He expected Ed to slouch in the chair he occupies across the table from Roy-within an arm’s length, and so far away-but the elder Elric is upright and alert. His eyes are so much older than they used to be, and so much older than the rest of his face. Caution is a learned habit; children are fearless, but Ed is not a child anymore.
Next door, Major General Hakuro will be settling next to Riza, opposite Alphonse. Roy has no choice but to believe that the two of them can take him.
He clears his throat, opens his pocket-watch, and turns to the scribe.
“Interview of Edward Elric,” he says, “commencing Tuesday, November twenty-ninth, 1919, at oh-nine-oh-two. Present: Brigadier Generals T. Parish and R. Mustang; Corporal L. Kerwich; Major E. Elric, State Alchemist, heretofore missing and presumed dead.”
Ed opens his mouth and then snaps it shut, and Roy hears his own voice echoing in both their heads-I always knew you were alive.
“To business,” Roy says as Liam Kerwich’s pen scratches across the page. “Major Elric, precisely where were you, and precisely how did you return?”
Ed takes a deep breath; as he sighs it out, his hair dances around his eyes. “I… this is complicated. Okay? Bear with me.”
“We’re not going anywhere, Major Elric,” Roy says.
Ed makes a face at him. Liam’s pen pauses, apparently in bewilderment as to how he should convey wordless communications.
“There’s a Gate,” Ed says, and his voice is flat and composed, but something in Roy’s spine prickles. “You only ever see it if you do really, really big alchemy-the kind of stuff you probably shouldn’t be doing in the first place. And on the other side of it, there’s a place a lot like this one.” He crosses his arms over his chest and frowns at the table thoughtfully. “It’s… it’s all the equal and opposite forces to our world, I guess. It’s not a mirror image as much as it’s a… complement. A lot of things are different, but the people are still people, so a lot of it’s the same. Anyway, even if you do alchemy you shouldn’t be doing, you don’t always go through and get there-or, y’know, go through and come back. Especially because they don’t even have alchemy there; it doesn’t work unless you have a connecting… well, that’s complicated, too. So we-me and Al, I mean-we were stuck there, basically, once we got there. But after a while we realized…” He runs his tongue over his teeth, curls his hands a little tighter around his own arms, and darts a glance at Roy. “They’re… about to have a really big war. Bigger than the last one they had, and that was… I mean, they called it a World War; it was fuc-uh, sorry. It was gigantic. It decimated their population, and it ruined all kinds of stuff, but some of the people who got ruined the most want a second go at it to see if they come out on top this time. They just don’t…” He scrubs the heel of his left hand at his face. “Never mind.”
Roy waits, but when a moment passes and nothing is forthcoming, he prompts, “So it occurred to you that there was going to be a war.”
Ed smiles humorlessly; the expression is unsettling on him. “It occurred to us, yeah. And we thought, ‘Okay, no time like the present to see if we can get out of here before we get drafted.’”
“How,” Roy asks, “did you proceed to ‘get out of there’?”
“It’s the lights,” Ed says.
Silence reigns for a long moment. Ed blinks.
“The… lights,” Roy says.
“Yeah,” Ed says. “The… the lights up north. The lights. You know-you must know; Al said you were up there for ages. On the other side they call ’em auroras; I dunno if we have a name here, but we should. They’re all-photons and magnetism and electricity, is the thing. Have you seen ’em?”
“Yes,” Roy says.
Ed hesitates for a moment and then plows onward when Roy doesn’t elaborate. “Well-yeah. Then you know they’re intense. So when Al and I heard about that, heard about all of that-energy-just pouring into the thermosphere, we thought… well, we thought ‘What if we can harness that? What if we can ride that home?’”
“Ordinarily,” Talia says, and Roy tightens his folded hands to stop himself from jolting in surprise; “thinking about something and actually doing it are two entirely different matters.”
Ed stares at her for a moment, and then he unfurls a slow, slow, dangerous grin. “Have you read my file, sir?”
Talia’s eyes narrow, but she says nothing.
“Major Elric,” Roy says, “I believe what Brigadier General Parish is asking is that you explain your methods.”
Ed stretches both arms over his head, tugging on his left wrist with his right hand. “No point. Alchemy is real particular over there-I mean, far as I can tell, only people from here can do it, and let’s be honest; Al’n I are fucking talented. Pretty much nobody is capable of cooking up the kind of stuff we did, and definitely nobody is ever going to be dumb enough to actually try it. We took a leap of faith from way out on a limb, okay? Nothin’ to lose, and anybody with their head screwed on straight would’ve thought we were crazy for even thinking about it. But-y’know. That’s sort of how we are. It’s how we always have been. Long story short, we did stuff nobody’s done before that nobody would do again, and we slingshotted ourselves straight back through that Gate I told you about. Honestly, I still can’t believe it worked, either. If I wake up in a snowbank in Finland tomorrow, I’m not gonna be surprised.”
Don’t you dare, Roy thinks. Don’t you dare vanish now; don’t you dare let me be dreaming.
“The thing is,” Ed says slowly, staring at the tabletop, “you… don’t want me to draw you the array. You don’t. Because you don’t want that shit in the hands of anybody-anybody-who hasn’t gone through the stuff we have. Anybody who doesn’t know what it can do, and what that means. Anybody who doesn’t know the cost in all the ways you pay it.”
Suddenly he goes very still and looks very old.
“If you believe nothing else today,” he says, “believe that. Let that go. It’ll wear out of the snow, and Al and I are never going to breathe a goddamn word. If you let it go, it dies, and that’s the best thing for everyone.”
He glances up at them, and the shift of the angle of his hips and his shoulders is subtle, but it marks an about-face in his attitude.
“So,” he says. “If I’m still enlisted, where do I get the forms to quit?”
Spending most of a weekday in an interrogation room does little to decrease the monumental stack of paperwork looming upon one’s desk. Riza sorts the contents into Urgent and Less-Urgent.
“How was Alphonse?” Roy asks after a few token attempts to ignore the itch of his curiosity.
“He was in fine form,” Riza says. “He was so expansively eloquent that he managed to speak for hours without saying anything definitive, and Hakuro was too embarrassed to ask for clarifications lest he look like he’d failed to understand a teenager’s vocabulary.”
When Roy stops to think about it, Alphonse Elric is terrifying. Accordingly, he tries to think about it as infrequently as possible.
“How was Edward?” Riza asks in the calmest of her thousand voices.
“Magnificent,” Roy says, and signs off on a report.
Riza heads home at eight-thirty. There’s a brisk knock on the door a little after ten. Before Roy can call out to grant entrance, the door’s pushed open, and Ed peers in.
Roy doesn’t think he will ever stop being stunned and speechlessly grateful. It was the little things, in the end, that were unbearable: it was praying that the precise shade of golden-yellow would never fade; it was forgetting the exact arch of his eyebrow; it was not hearing the thump of his boots in the hall. It was not finding blond hairs on the office couch; it was never skimming newspaper articles about unexplained explosions suspiciously close to the assignments; it was the end of laughter, of banter, of light. It was the blackout, which made Roy seek the whiteout, which only made the stifled hopes take cruel shape against the unrelenting snow.
“Jesus,” Ed says. “Don’t you ever sleep?”
“When it can’t be avoided,” Roy says, tipping his mouth into a smirk that feels extremely artificial nowadays.
Ed smiles thinly back. “You want a drink?”
“Desperately,” Roy says.
Ed insists, and Roy knows that the Fullmetal Alchemist’s bank account is still teeming with old paychecks and four years’ accumulated interest, so Roy lets him buy the first round.
“You think they’re gonna need to hear more bullshit?” Ed asks, and the beer foam clings to his upper lip, and glimpses like this are lightning in Roy’s heart-stabbing, twisting, and then the thunder.
He sips serenely from his own glass. “That’s difficult to predict at this juncture.”
Ed rolls his eyes. “You could just say ‘Fucked if I know’ like a normal person.”
“I should hate to be mistaken for normal,” Roy says.
Ed scowls, and it makes him look so young again. “Yeah, well, at least I’ll never mistake you for nice.”
“I’m extremely nice,” Roy says. “I might very well be the nicest person I know.”
“Oh, boy,” Ed says, sitting back, beer in hand, right leg swinging up to settle over his left knee, with a brightly-gleaming grin. “Here we go.”
“You don’t think I’m nice?” Roy asks. It’s extraordinary, the rush of feelings-he’d forgotten just how tumultuous his insides are when Ed starts to stir them; disappointment and amusement and shame and a touch of cold terror. He masks it all in suave overconfidence, because he has no choice. “How dreadfully unperceptive.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Ed says cheerily. “I think you scrape your way into the category of basic human decency-just barely, by the way, and only because you’ve got all kinds of mitigating circumstances, and I believe in intentions-but you’re a dick, all right?”
“I am not,” Roy says. Surely he’s not. Surely he can’t be. Surely the ferocity of his commitments counts for something; surely he doesn’t have to sugarcoat every interaction with another person to prove something; surely he doesn’t have to mollycoddle people and their feelings to legitimize the fact that he cares about them-
Ed rolls his shoulders and draws another grin from his endless arsenal. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, you kind of have to be a dick sometimes to get anything done.”
“How silly of me,” Roy says, “to have taken offense at what seemed to be name-calling when you were, in fact, obliquely complimenting my ambition.”
Ed’s eyes dance. They’re in a back corner, at a small table, and he’s close enough to touch; Roy’s whole body burns for the pressure of his fingertips.
“Now you’re getting it,” Ed says. He raises his empty glass and then slides it swiftly across the tabletop-only Roy’s reflexes keep it from smashing on the floor, and the quickness of his rescuing hand makes Ed’s gaze spark. “Your turn this time.”
Roy takes both of their glasses and casts a deft look leftward into his blind spot before he stands. “As long as you promise not to exceed your limitations. You have a great deal less body mass for absorbing alcohol, after all.”
Ed’s delight is wicked, and his eyes are wide. “Fuck your shit, Mustang; I’m not too small to hold my liquor, and I’m gonna prove it.”
Roy thinks, as he dodges bodies en route to the bar, that Ed was right: there is nothing nice about him. There is nothing nice about the way he’s sorely tempted to befuddle Ed with drink and seize him when he’s suggestible. There is nothing nice about the things he’d do, the marks he’d leave, the liberties he’d take. There is nothing nice in how his blood beats, possessive, possessed. Passionate? Yes. Compassionate? Possibly. Nice? Not a chance in any of the hells he’s been to.
He passes bills across the counter and carries both glasses back without spilling a drop. Maybe he should have been a waiter all along. He always wondered. Given what ‘destiny’ means, you can’t actually miss yours, can you? You become who you have to be; when you arrive you realize that you’ve always been headed towards the place you ended up.
By that logic, they were always meant to converge here, weren’t they? Everything they have ever done, every word spoken, every muscle moved, has led them to this spot. And from the way Ed watches him as he approaches, Roy thinks-they’re teetering. They’re on the verge; the precipice is crumbling, and the next few moments will decide whether or not they fall.
Already he’s presuming that they’ll fall together. He should know better than that by now.
Ed asks about the developments in the government instead of offering a ‘thank you’ as he starts in heartily on the second drink. What he’s really asking is whether Roy has whipped the ruling powers into a marginally less-oppressive shape, but to his credit he pays close attention to the long and convoluted answer.
And they smile at each other, and it’s strange; Ed’s eyes rake up and down his face; Ed scrapes his chair closer, and their knees brush underneath the table. Ed’s voice lowers and lilts, and when Roy returns from fetching the third round, he touches Ed’s elbow as he offers the glass.
They were both scientists, once, and this cannot be a coincidence.
“Edward,” he says, slowly, baiting an animal that bites, “I don’t want to misconstrue your intentions.”
Those words will never be celebrated. That sacrifice will never get a parade. The fact that he has loved Ed so long that he breathes devotion and bleeds despair, and he has opened himself to rejection when he finally has cause to hope-
Courage is a funny thing.
Roy Mustang is a sad little man.
“Look,” Ed says, watching his left-hand fingertips dragging wavy trails through the condensation on his glass, “I’m not gonna screw around, okay? No damn games, or I’m done. It’s… I could’ve had something, before, back in Germany-the place I was, on the other side. I don’t know what exactly it would’ve been, but it would’ve been something-except that I wasted it. I don’t know if you think about it like this, but that’s… the ultimate crime, in science. Not even trying is the worst thing you can do; not even finding out. The result isn’t really that important-whether it goes down in flames or gets off the ground doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you tried, and you got the data, and now you know.”
Roy raises his folded hands and settles his mouth behind them. His heart is not beating so much as trembling rhythmically. “Do you think that you and I would go down in flames?”
Ed smiles thinly and pops a lopsided shrug. “Dunno,” he says. “Maybe we’d go up in flames. That’s what I mean-the important part is finding out. I’ve got another opportunity here, maybe, if you’re game, and I’m not gonna squander this one.”
“‘If I’m game’,” Roy says carefully.
Ed’s eyes narrow. He swills his beer, takes a sip, and licks his lips. “That’s what I said.”
“I thought you didn’t want games,” Roy says.
One eyebrow arches. “I thought you didn’t want me to call you a dick.” Ed’s face goes shuttered; his eyes darken; he pushes his chair back, plants his palms on the tabletop, and stands. “Well-” His voice is cool and clipped, and it sounds wrong. “-guess that answers the question.”
What? No. No, no, no, no-
Roy grabs for Ed’s forearm, misses, and recoils-it’s his fucking depth perception; it’s his fucking eye. He clutches his clumsy hand to his chest and tries not to blame that fucking patch for everything, but it is an inescapable emblem of the moment where everything went awry-
Ed hesitates, half-turned away.
Roy clears his throat and fights the urge to cower, to cave, to hide and lick his wounds as he has always done. “I was asking for clarification,” he says. “I wouldn’t joke about-that.”
Ed barely moves-barely swivels-but it brings him closer. He draws three shallow breaths in succession, and then he says, “Fine. I’ll make this real simple. Do you want me?”
“Yes,” Roy says, and it is too small a word to hold the infinity of hurt and rapture that it means. “I… have wanted you a very long time.”
Ed’s smile is gradual and shy. “No shit?”
“None,” Roy says.
The next smile’s bigger, and it makes Roy’s stomach flip.
Several drinks later, they stagger all the way to Roy’s townhouse and finally crash together on the porch-Roy has time to think blearily that it’s a miracle they’ve made it up the steps, and then Ed’s fingers are fisted in his hair, and they’re joined at the mouth and moaning.
It should have been more than this. It should have been glorious and grandiose, a culmination of all of the longing vigils, an apology for all of the wasted grief. It should have been elegant and poetic and chaste.
It’s not. It’s sloppy, wet, and more than a little bit filthy. And Roy loves that Ed is never what he should be.
Ed pauses for breath and starts dragging at the catches of Roy’s uniform-here, outside, in public, on the porch.
“Nonono,” Roy says, fumbling for Ed’s wrists. With thumb and index finger he can circle them; the automail is remarkably cold. He holds Ed’s hands back, out of range; Ed wriggles his fingers and looks slightly confused. “It’d be tawdry,” Roy says. “And we’re drunk.”
“Speak for yourself, bastard,” Ed says, beaming. He’s a thing of wonder in the moonlight.
“I’ll call you a taxi,” Roy says.
“Lame,” Ed says. He breaks Roy’s grip, reaches for Roy’s collar, and slips warm fingertips underneath it. “Lemme just stay here.”
“Alphonse would be furious with me,” Roy says.
Ed’s thin smile wobbles in the silver light. “Al won’t care.”
The keys jingle far too loudly as Roy shies back and fishes them from the depths of his pocket; they jump and shudder in his hand as he tries to fit them into the lock. “No?”
When the door gives at last, he swings it open wide and holds it-but Ed presses up against his chest and slides past him slowly, both eyes locked onto his lonely one the whole way in.
“Nope,” Ed says, toeing off his boots-his new boots, his different boots; they’re lower-heeled and lace up around grommets, and it’s a marvel he can kick them off-and casting a slightly hazy assessing look around himself. “He’s got a theory, actually. Real scientific.”
Roy closes the door, bolts it, and stares at his hand. He just locked himself inside his own home with tiger-eyed temptation.
“What theory is that?” he asks, standing up as straight as he can manage.
Ed’s ponytail snaps like a pennant as he turns again, and a smile darts elusively in the cuts of light and shadow on his face. “Al,” he says, “thinks I’m sweet on you.” He swaggers over-those hips- “Al,” he says, “swears that when we were on the other side, he saw something of you-” Ed splays his left hand on Roy’s chest, pushing him back against the door; he stands on his toes to whisper into Roy’s ear, and his moist breath sends ripples of goosebumps down Roy’s leaden arms. “-in every guy I fucked. Something different in every one. So Al’s got a theory…” His fingers walk languidly up Roy’s chest and curl into his collar. “…that I was trying to put all the pieces together in my head, because what I really wanted all along was you.”
Roy’s whole body is humming; his skin’s aflame; his heart slams out a frantic tattoo. “Do you think that’s-do you think his theory’s viable?”
“I dunno,” Ed murmurs, damp lips dragging down Roy’s throat. “Maybe we should run some tests.”
“Maybe,” Roy says, lifting a tingling hand to touch Ed’s hair-oh, God, it’s like silk; it’s like mercury; “I should-call you a cab-”
“Christ on a cracker,” Ed says, drawing back enough for a skeptical look-and he must be very drunk to spout that caliber of gibberish, mustn’t he? “I didn’t figure it was gonna be nearly this tough to get into your pants.”
“I didn’t imagine you would be so enthusiastic about the prospect,” Roy says. In all honesty, of course, the word fantasize would have been more accurate than imagine.
Ed’s mouth twists into another strange and intriguingly enigmatic smile. “Yeah, well, I was a dumbass kid last time I had a chance, or I would’ve asked then.” He looks up through his eyelashes and tilts his hips in against Roy’s-so close, too close, fuck-
He’s waited too long to rush this and ruin it. He can’t afford to lose control, whether or not-especially because-Ed encapsulates everything that makes him weak.
“It’s been four years,” he says, lifting a slightly tremulous hand to slide his fingers through Ed’s bangs. “We’re both different people than we were then. Wouldn’t you at least like to get reacquainted before we tear each other’s clothes off?”
Ed blinks and tugs at Roy’s collar. “Not particularly.”
That’s the bucket of cold water he needed. He never should have been so fucking stupid as to dream that this could actually work-that they could actually come together and not react like sodium and water.
The absent eye is aching. He wanted to ask Ed about phantom limbs; he wanted to ask Ed about architecture in the other world; he wanted to ask Ed whether the lights in the northern sky made his spine clench and his heart swell.
He pries Ed’s hand from his shirt collar and gently pushes past. He sheds his coat, hangs it from the hook, and crosses to the telephone.
“I’m not interested in a fling, Ed,” he says levelly as he pages through the phonebook. “I’m sure virtually anyone you ask would be more than happy to have sex with you, but I am too old and too tired and too preoccupied to play around.”
“What?” Ed asks in a voice so small it’s almost unrecognizable.
Roy despises his hands for shaking as he lifts the receiver to his right ear. “Evidently I’m more… emotionally invested in this than you are, and in the interest of not sabotaging our working relationship, I think we should-stop.”
The dial tone sings at him, blares at him; he starts to lower the phone. Ed is entirely still, backlit by moonbeams, a faceless silhouette. A motionless Ed is unnatural, and that is cause for alarm.
“How can we stop?” Ed asks. His voice is low and icy-frigid, brittle, sharp. The individual syllables fall like shards of glass to the hardwood of the hallway. “We haven’t fucking started. But I guess I wouldn’t want to sabotage any fucking relationships, so I’ll just see myself the fuck out.”
He turns smoothly on his right heel, jams his feet back into the boots, and Roy reaches for him like he’s a magnet, like it’s a compulsion-but too slowly-
The door swings, and slams, and Roy wrenches it open again, but Ed’s striding down the walk with his shoulders hunched; the light of the streetlamp catches his hair. Roy takes two, three, four steps over the threshold, wanting to run after him, but-
Well, what’s the point? They do what they have to; they are what they were slated to become. They were meant to touch like weather fronts, to smash and seethe and slip away again. This is the order of things. This is ordinary.
…this can’t possibly be right; if there is any sort of God at all, this can’t possibly-
This is it, isn’t it? This is a fragmentary taste of what he deserves.
The bed is too damn big and too damn cold and too damn quiet with only his own heartbeat for company.
When will he learn that anything worth having is worth gambling on and fighting for?
He sweeps his arm across the empty expanses of unwrinkled sheet and then, hesitantly, trails his fingertips down over the pit of scars where a bright, enticing eye used to be.
He holds out admirably until lunchtime. He hedges; he rationalizes; he invents novel and heretofore unimagined strategies of justification. It’s Ed’s fault. It’s just the way of the world; entropy dissolves everything; connections break; plans fail; the simple weight of existence brings perfectly viable structures to the verge of collapse. It’s for the best.
By twelve-thirty, Riza’s gaze has become so ponderous that he decides to do something just to get her to stop trying to figure out whether to punch him or pity him. At a vigorous, certainly not desperate stride, he makes it to the barracks room assigned to the Elric brothers by fifteen minutes to one.
He tries, for a long and earnest moment, to interpret the stuttering of his heart-surely it’s some kind of code; surely there’s some kind of meaning. Surely there’s some way that this can all be easy. Fools fall in love all the time; how in the hell can he be doing it so wrong?
When no illuminating message is forthcoming, he lifts his hand and knocks. The sound resonates right back through his hangover and drills into his brain.
The door opens a fraction, and Alphonse’s startlingly real gray-brown eyes appear in the crack. They blink. The gap widens slightly.
“Good afternoon, Brigadier General,” Alphonse says.
“Good afternoon,” Roy says, despite the fact that the afternoon is, of course, abysmal. “Is Edward in?”
Alphonse pauses. “In, yes. Available… no.”
“Not for me,” Roy says.
Alphonse winces.
Roy closes his eye, draws a deep breath, looks at Alphonse again, and keeps his voice painstakingly steady.
“Please tell Edward,” he says, “that I apologize for jumping to the conclusion I did. I don’t believe either of us was especially rational given all we’d had to drink, and I realize now that I projected my own insecurities onto our conversation in a way that was inexcusably insulting to his character. I hope…” He swallows and wets his lips before he selects the words. “I know he understands that being afraid of getting something that you want doesn’t necessarily mean you want it any less. I hope that he will consider the possibility that I feel like I’m betting my entire life on my ability to be enough for him-to be enough for Ed, who could have anyone and anything he wanted, to whom all I have to offer is a very ragged shadow of a man he hated once.”
Alphonse smiles faintly.
Roy hears a slight scuffling, and then a sliver of bright yellow hair appears over Alphonse’s shoulder-quickly followed by bright yellow bangs, which in turn are succeeded by bright yellow eyes.
“You’re full of shit,” Ed says guardedly.
“I assure you,” Roy says, “I am not.”
The sharp eyes narrow to pale slits. “That’s the way you talk in front of other generals. Real convincing.”
“Brother,” Alphonse says, looking less than delighted to be trapped between the two of them.
“It’s the way I talk when I take something very seriously,” Roy says. All of the deep breaths in the history of mankind’s lungs would be inadequate to prepare him for what he knows he has to say next. “It’s been a long time, Ed. For me, it has been a long time spent mourning, and assuming, and second-guessing, and pining, and wishing, and… I’ve developed so many scenarios in my head that actually living the chance to be with you seems like it must be another incarnation of a familiar dream. It’s-I’m not… good… at fielding situations that hinge on personal expectations.”
Ed’s eyes flick up to where the patch fails to hide the creases on Roy’s forehead, and then down to where the fingers of both of his hands have curled into fists at his sides.
“Still don’t buy it,” he says.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Alphonse says before Roy can give up hope forever. “The two of you had a misunderstanding while you were drunk off your asses, and despite the fact that I’m sure, Brother, that you conducted yourself abominably, he’s come here with the grace and humility to apologize. Ed, do me this one favor: swallow your pride and let something wonderful happen to you for once.”
Ed’s eyes go wide and round, and he opens his mouth indignantly.
“General,” Alphonse says, “Brother is terrified of commitment, because it always ends in disappointment and tears-and very often blood, in his case. And he’s so accustomed to pushing people away that it scares him that he’s cared about you consistently for so long. So you’re going to have to be very brave and very patient, but if you can do that, he’ll love you so intensely you’ll forget you were ever alone.”
Ed shuts his mouth.
Roy listens to the erratic rhythm of his heart in his ears and attempts to determine whether or not he has stopped breathing.
Alphonse wrinkles his nose.
“You’re both hopeless,” he says. “Go out somewhere tonight, and don’t drink, would you? Talk about the Northern Lights and about alchemy and about how things have changed-but none of the important things; those are all the same. And then go kiss in some quiet place, and make all kinds of promises, and realize later that you’ve never meant them before.”
The silence is so heavy that the weight may well crush them all.
“How the hell,” Ed says slowly to his brother, “did you get so diabolical?”
“‘Diabolical’ is a bit harsh,” Alphonse says pleasantly. “General, you should probably get back to work. Why don’t you collect Brother at the library whenever you’re finished for the evening, and the two of you can grab a bite to eat?”
“I’m afraid I have to side with Edward,” Roy says. “‘Diabolical’ is quite fair.”
Ed grins tentatively, and Alphonse rolls his eyes.
“Hopeless,” the younger Elric says. “I don’t know why I bother. Give everyone in the office my best, General.”
“Promise me one thing,” Roy says.
Alphonse raises his eyebrows.
“Don’t compete with me for governmental power,” Roy says. “I fear you’d win.”
Alphonse’s grin is terrifying.
[PART II]
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 11,550
Warnings: language, tactful sexytimes, major SPOILERS for '03/CoS
Summary: If colored light can strafe the sky in two worlds not quite alike, perhaps anything is possible.
Author's Note: This is far from a masterpiece, but writing it kind of kept me sane, which is the entire point of fanfic for me. ^^; It's also shoddily edited, because I have a headache and a 50,000-word Big Bang to fix up in a zillion ways! XD Enjoy~ ♥
DYNAMO
When his desk phone rings, he lifts the receiver to his right ear so that the patch won’t rustle against the mouthpiece. “Mustang.”
“It’s-” The woman hesitates. “Edward Elric for you, sir.”
No.
It’s not.
How dare you-
“He… his identification code-I mean, it’s… it’s correct, sir; he-”
It’s not him.
It’s not him, and Roy is going to incinerate whoever is responsible for the writhing of his insides and the skewer through his heart.
“Put it through,” he says.
“Yes, sir.”
The line clicks, skittering with static. Someone clears their throat.
“Colonel?” the voice-not the voice-not quite the voice-says slowly.
“Brigadier General,” Roy says.
The laugh that rings tinnily in his ear is slightly lower and raspier than the one he remembers, but it’s-it’s almost-
“Fuck you, bastard,” the voice says. “It’s good to hear you, too.”
It is him.
Roy swallows. “How in the name of all that is holy did you-”
“It’s complicated,” Edward says. “Look, the, uh-the phones are kinda crap up here, uh-”
How embarrassing that he didn’t think to ask: “Where are you?”
“Place called Pazakov,” Edward says. “Population of twenty, counting the goats. There was just this huge blizzard, right, which we… might… have… had something to do with, and the dinky little rail line to North City is out. I thought-” For the first time in this wild, wildly impossible conversation, for the first time since Roy started gripping the telephone so hard his knuckles ache, Edward pauses. “Well, Al was saying you might be willing to make a couple calls and maybe get a car sent up from the city contingent, and… well, I mean, otherwise, we’ll be stuck here ’til the thaw, and I’m gonna have no choice except to figure out cloud alchemy or something. It can’t be too hard.”
“I’ll have a car sent,” Roy says. “Please don’t do anything untoward to the climate of the country in the meantime.”
This laugh is sharper-abrupt, breathless. “I could write a report. Y’know, for old times’ sake.”
“Just stay where you are,” Roy says. Just stay here, how in God’s name did you make it back? What were you doing? What were you thinking? What did you pay? And how, how, can I be sure that this time you’re here forever? “Is-Alphonse-?”
There is a brief silence, and then Edward scoffs so loudly that the line spits static into Roy’s ear.
“Duh, Al’s here,” Edward says. “Like I’d come back from another fucking universe without him. Anyway, fine, fine, whatever, just… we’ll wait. Thanks.”
You’ll ‘wait’, Roy thinks. My dear boy, my dearest boy, you have no concept of waiting.
“Certainly,” Roy says. “I imagine you don’t have currency? I’ll make sure the military reimburses any citizen who puts you up.”
“Damn,” Edward says, and Roy can hear the narrow, slanted grin; he can feel its edge pressing in against his own throat. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d accidentally learned how to get shit done.”
“How fortunate that you’re not fooled,” Roy says.
Ed laughs again. It’s startling. It’s strange. Roy’s fingers tighten around the receiver; if he hangs up, that laughter will stop.
“All right,” Edward says. “See you in a couple days, I guess. Don’t work too hard.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Roy says.
“Uh huh. Well, g’bye.”
“Goodbye, Edward.” Is there blood in his mouth? Those two words cut coming up.
“For now,” Ed says. “Oh, and this is a collect call. ’Bye!”
The line goes dead. Roy manages not to follow.
He lets the phone ring once, twisting his fingers so tightly together that his knuckles pop.
He snatches the receiver halfway into the second trill. “Mustang.”
“Lieutenant Ross for you, sir.”
“Put her through.”
“Yes, sir.”
Static. Static is the sound that snow should make; instead it comes on so quiet until it’s frozen your tongue in your mouth.
“Brigadier General?”
“I’m here.”
“Reporting on the Elrics as you requested, sir.”
“Go ahead, Lieutenant.”
“They’re reasonably healthy-both a little bit too thin for my liking; you can see their cheekbones, but they don’t seem to be much worse for the wear. Unusual clothing, like the last time. Al’s cut his hair. And he’s gotten really-” She lowers her voice almost to a whisper. “-tall.”
Does that rankle, with Ed? Or is it different now? Is he different now? He looked like a shadow, moved like a wraith, smiled without showing his teeth-his eyes were darker, his shoulders were broader, his hair was longer; his soul was older, and his heart was heavy, and there was something weary in the way he held himself.
(Wasn’t there? Or was Roy extrapolating a wisp of real indecision into two years of imagined pain because he knew even then that an Ed who was whole wouldn’t want him?)
A whistle shrills beneath the sound of the static and a ripple that might be wind.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Roy says. “The circumstances are so extraordinary that I thought it most prudent to…”
“Be sure it was really them?” Ross asks with a smile in her voice. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, sir; I would have done the same.”
“Safe journey, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Someone starts to say “Come on” in the background just as she hangs up the phone. Roy strains to hear but can’t identify the voice.
He sets the phone back in the cradle and folds his hands. He knows that he’s changed-he’s a different man than he was then; he’s a different man this year than he was the last; he’s virtually unrecognizable to anyone expecting the cocky young colonel who walked into a wall of flames and earned the white scars that make trenches on the backs of his hands. He knows he can’t anticipate that Ed will be the same-he can’t anticipate that any facet of Ed will be the same. And that’s… unsettling. That raises a question he’s not sure he’s ready for the answer to.
Exactly who is going to step off of that train?
“You look like a pirate,” Ed says the instant he steps into the office.
Roy clenches his hands tighter-slowly, fractionally, so subtly that only Riza will notice, if she cares to look. “I don’t imagine,” he says, “that my physical deformity-”
“Whoa, whoa,” Ed says. “I didn’t say ‘deformity’. Jesus.”
Roy raises his voice over the nonsense. “-is more important than the fact that this is your only opportunity to avoid facing a military tribunal. I suggest you treat it with appropriate solemnity.”
“C’mon,” Ed says, grinning. “When have I ever not taken shit seriously?”
“Don’t be a smartass, Brother,” Alphonse says calmly.
“Can’t help it,” Ed says, but the smug expression falls away. “Look, Mustang, I know what’s at stake. I know a lot more now than I did-about people, and about people in power. We can handle it. Trust me on this one.”
The last time I trusted you to ‘handle it’, you fled back to another universe. The time before that, you died.
“Lieutenant Ross will see you to your room in the barracks,” Roy says, inclining his head slightly to acknowledge her sharp salute. “I am obligated to post a guard over persons of interest; anything you require between now and noon tomorrow will be provided for. Rest up.” He looks at them both-really looks, the way he fears to let himself, the way he fears will topple him. Alphonse blinks calm gray-brown eyes, and Ed looks directly back: fierce, but not defiant. “And use the time,” Roy says, “to get your story straight.”
Ed smirks. “Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed,” Roy says.
Lieutenant Ross ushers them out, and Riza turns to Roy.
“Sir?” she asks, which means Are you all right?
“I should have expected that they would crash back into my life eventually,” he says. “And that they would open up all the old wounds on impact.”
Riza pauses. “Will those wounds heal, sir?”
“They’ll have to,” Roy says.
Brigadier General Talia Parish piques Roy’s nerves-underneath the surface, she’s so ruthless her blood must run cold, but when she smiles she could charm water from a stone; she is, perhaps, his strongest competition for the Führership. Scarier still, she might well make a better leader, which would effectively render his whole existence moot.
He folds his hands on the table. Talia is at his left-she made the selection look perfectly natural, but he knows she chose the seat in his blind spot entirely deliberately-and a very nervous young man from Investigations who will be taking minutes sits to his right. Immediately after receiving that first phone call, Roy made sure that Fuery would be out in the field today; he doesn’t want this encounter recorded. He doesn’t want the tone of his voice when he is faced with Ed, in all of the boy’s wretched impossibility, to be preserved and presented for later scrutiny. He doesn’t trust his tongue not to betray him.
He expected Ed to slouch in the chair he occupies across the table from Roy-within an arm’s length, and so far away-but the elder Elric is upright and alert. His eyes are so much older than they used to be, and so much older than the rest of his face. Caution is a learned habit; children are fearless, but Ed is not a child anymore.
Next door, Major General Hakuro will be settling next to Riza, opposite Alphonse. Roy has no choice but to believe that the two of them can take him.
He clears his throat, opens his pocket-watch, and turns to the scribe.
“Interview of Edward Elric,” he says, “commencing Tuesday, November twenty-ninth, 1919, at oh-nine-oh-two. Present: Brigadier Generals T. Parish and R. Mustang; Corporal L. Kerwich; Major E. Elric, State Alchemist, heretofore missing and presumed dead.”
Ed opens his mouth and then snaps it shut, and Roy hears his own voice echoing in both their heads-I always knew you were alive.
“To business,” Roy says as Liam Kerwich’s pen scratches across the page. “Major Elric, precisely where were you, and precisely how did you return?”
Ed takes a deep breath; as he sighs it out, his hair dances around his eyes. “I… this is complicated. Okay? Bear with me.”
“We’re not going anywhere, Major Elric,” Roy says.
Ed makes a face at him. Liam’s pen pauses, apparently in bewilderment as to how he should convey wordless communications.
“There’s a Gate,” Ed says, and his voice is flat and composed, but something in Roy’s spine prickles. “You only ever see it if you do really, really big alchemy-the kind of stuff you probably shouldn’t be doing in the first place. And on the other side of it, there’s a place a lot like this one.” He crosses his arms over his chest and frowns at the table thoughtfully. “It’s… it’s all the equal and opposite forces to our world, I guess. It’s not a mirror image as much as it’s a… complement. A lot of things are different, but the people are still people, so a lot of it’s the same. Anyway, even if you do alchemy you shouldn’t be doing, you don’t always go through and get there-or, y’know, go through and come back. Especially because they don’t even have alchemy there; it doesn’t work unless you have a connecting… well, that’s complicated, too. So we-me and Al, I mean-we were stuck there, basically, once we got there. But after a while we realized…” He runs his tongue over his teeth, curls his hands a little tighter around his own arms, and darts a glance at Roy. “They’re… about to have a really big war. Bigger than the last one they had, and that was… I mean, they called it a World War; it was fuc-uh, sorry. It was gigantic. It decimated their population, and it ruined all kinds of stuff, but some of the people who got ruined the most want a second go at it to see if they come out on top this time. They just don’t…” He scrubs the heel of his left hand at his face. “Never mind.”
Roy waits, but when a moment passes and nothing is forthcoming, he prompts, “So it occurred to you that there was going to be a war.”
Ed smiles humorlessly; the expression is unsettling on him. “It occurred to us, yeah. And we thought, ‘Okay, no time like the present to see if we can get out of here before we get drafted.’”
“How,” Roy asks, “did you proceed to ‘get out of there’?”
“It’s the lights,” Ed says.
Silence reigns for a long moment. Ed blinks.
“The… lights,” Roy says.
“Yeah,” Ed says. “The… the lights up north. The lights. You know-you must know; Al said you were up there for ages. On the other side they call ’em auroras; I dunno if we have a name here, but we should. They’re all-photons and magnetism and electricity, is the thing. Have you seen ’em?”
“Yes,” Roy says.
Ed hesitates for a moment and then plows onward when Roy doesn’t elaborate. “Well-yeah. Then you know they’re intense. So when Al and I heard about that, heard about all of that-energy-just pouring into the thermosphere, we thought… well, we thought ‘What if we can harness that? What if we can ride that home?’”
“Ordinarily,” Talia says, and Roy tightens his folded hands to stop himself from jolting in surprise; “thinking about something and actually doing it are two entirely different matters.”
Ed stares at her for a moment, and then he unfurls a slow, slow, dangerous grin. “Have you read my file, sir?”
Talia’s eyes narrow, but she says nothing.
“Major Elric,” Roy says, “I believe what Brigadier General Parish is asking is that you explain your methods.”
Ed stretches both arms over his head, tugging on his left wrist with his right hand. “No point. Alchemy is real particular over there-I mean, far as I can tell, only people from here can do it, and let’s be honest; Al’n I are fucking talented. Pretty much nobody is capable of cooking up the kind of stuff we did, and definitely nobody is ever going to be dumb enough to actually try it. We took a leap of faith from way out on a limb, okay? Nothin’ to lose, and anybody with their head screwed on straight would’ve thought we were crazy for even thinking about it. But-y’know. That’s sort of how we are. It’s how we always have been. Long story short, we did stuff nobody’s done before that nobody would do again, and we slingshotted ourselves straight back through that Gate I told you about. Honestly, I still can’t believe it worked, either. If I wake up in a snowbank in Finland tomorrow, I’m not gonna be surprised.”
Don’t you dare, Roy thinks. Don’t you dare vanish now; don’t you dare let me be dreaming.
“The thing is,” Ed says slowly, staring at the tabletop, “you… don’t want me to draw you the array. You don’t. Because you don’t want that shit in the hands of anybody-anybody-who hasn’t gone through the stuff we have. Anybody who doesn’t know what it can do, and what that means. Anybody who doesn’t know the cost in all the ways you pay it.”
Suddenly he goes very still and looks very old.
“If you believe nothing else today,” he says, “believe that. Let that go. It’ll wear out of the snow, and Al and I are never going to breathe a goddamn word. If you let it go, it dies, and that’s the best thing for everyone.”
He glances up at them, and the shift of the angle of his hips and his shoulders is subtle, but it marks an about-face in his attitude.
“So,” he says. “If I’m still enlisted, where do I get the forms to quit?”
Spending most of a weekday in an interrogation room does little to decrease the monumental stack of paperwork looming upon one’s desk. Riza sorts the contents into Urgent and Less-Urgent.
“How was Alphonse?” Roy asks after a few token attempts to ignore the itch of his curiosity.
“He was in fine form,” Riza says. “He was so expansively eloquent that he managed to speak for hours without saying anything definitive, and Hakuro was too embarrassed to ask for clarifications lest he look like he’d failed to understand a teenager’s vocabulary.”
When Roy stops to think about it, Alphonse Elric is terrifying. Accordingly, he tries to think about it as infrequently as possible.
“How was Edward?” Riza asks in the calmest of her thousand voices.
“Magnificent,” Roy says, and signs off on a report.
Riza heads home at eight-thirty. There’s a brisk knock on the door a little after ten. Before Roy can call out to grant entrance, the door’s pushed open, and Ed peers in.
Roy doesn’t think he will ever stop being stunned and speechlessly grateful. It was the little things, in the end, that were unbearable: it was praying that the precise shade of golden-yellow would never fade; it was forgetting the exact arch of his eyebrow; it was not hearing the thump of his boots in the hall. It was not finding blond hairs on the office couch; it was never skimming newspaper articles about unexplained explosions suspiciously close to the assignments; it was the end of laughter, of banter, of light. It was the blackout, which made Roy seek the whiteout, which only made the stifled hopes take cruel shape against the unrelenting snow.
“Jesus,” Ed says. “Don’t you ever sleep?”
“When it can’t be avoided,” Roy says, tipping his mouth into a smirk that feels extremely artificial nowadays.
Ed smiles thinly back. “You want a drink?”
“Desperately,” Roy says.
Ed insists, and Roy knows that the Fullmetal Alchemist’s bank account is still teeming with old paychecks and four years’ accumulated interest, so Roy lets him buy the first round.
“You think they’re gonna need to hear more bullshit?” Ed asks, and the beer foam clings to his upper lip, and glimpses like this are lightning in Roy’s heart-stabbing, twisting, and then the thunder.
He sips serenely from his own glass. “That’s difficult to predict at this juncture.”
Ed rolls his eyes. “You could just say ‘Fucked if I know’ like a normal person.”
“I should hate to be mistaken for normal,” Roy says.
Ed scowls, and it makes him look so young again. “Yeah, well, at least I’ll never mistake you for nice.”
“I’m extremely nice,” Roy says. “I might very well be the nicest person I know.”
“Oh, boy,” Ed says, sitting back, beer in hand, right leg swinging up to settle over his left knee, with a brightly-gleaming grin. “Here we go.”
“You don’t think I’m nice?” Roy asks. It’s extraordinary, the rush of feelings-he’d forgotten just how tumultuous his insides are when Ed starts to stir them; disappointment and amusement and shame and a touch of cold terror. He masks it all in suave overconfidence, because he has no choice. “How dreadfully unperceptive.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Ed says cheerily. “I think you scrape your way into the category of basic human decency-just barely, by the way, and only because you’ve got all kinds of mitigating circumstances, and I believe in intentions-but you’re a dick, all right?”
“I am not,” Roy says. Surely he’s not. Surely he can’t be. Surely the ferocity of his commitments counts for something; surely he doesn’t have to sugarcoat every interaction with another person to prove something; surely he doesn’t have to mollycoddle people and their feelings to legitimize the fact that he cares about them-
Ed rolls his shoulders and draws another grin from his endless arsenal. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, you kind of have to be a dick sometimes to get anything done.”
“How silly of me,” Roy says, “to have taken offense at what seemed to be name-calling when you were, in fact, obliquely complimenting my ambition.”
Ed’s eyes dance. They’re in a back corner, at a small table, and he’s close enough to touch; Roy’s whole body burns for the pressure of his fingertips.
“Now you’re getting it,” Ed says. He raises his empty glass and then slides it swiftly across the tabletop-only Roy’s reflexes keep it from smashing on the floor, and the quickness of his rescuing hand makes Ed’s gaze spark. “Your turn this time.”
Roy takes both of their glasses and casts a deft look leftward into his blind spot before he stands. “As long as you promise not to exceed your limitations. You have a great deal less body mass for absorbing alcohol, after all.”
Ed’s delight is wicked, and his eyes are wide. “Fuck your shit, Mustang; I’m not too small to hold my liquor, and I’m gonna prove it.”
Roy thinks, as he dodges bodies en route to the bar, that Ed was right: there is nothing nice about him. There is nothing nice about the way he’s sorely tempted to befuddle Ed with drink and seize him when he’s suggestible. There is nothing nice about the things he’d do, the marks he’d leave, the liberties he’d take. There is nothing nice in how his blood beats, possessive, possessed. Passionate? Yes. Compassionate? Possibly. Nice? Not a chance in any of the hells he’s been to.
He passes bills across the counter and carries both glasses back without spilling a drop. Maybe he should have been a waiter all along. He always wondered. Given what ‘destiny’ means, you can’t actually miss yours, can you? You become who you have to be; when you arrive you realize that you’ve always been headed towards the place you ended up.
By that logic, they were always meant to converge here, weren’t they? Everything they have ever done, every word spoken, every muscle moved, has led them to this spot. And from the way Ed watches him as he approaches, Roy thinks-they’re teetering. They’re on the verge; the precipice is crumbling, and the next few moments will decide whether or not they fall.
Already he’s presuming that they’ll fall together. He should know better than that by now.
Ed asks about the developments in the government instead of offering a ‘thank you’ as he starts in heartily on the second drink. What he’s really asking is whether Roy has whipped the ruling powers into a marginally less-oppressive shape, but to his credit he pays close attention to the long and convoluted answer.
And they smile at each other, and it’s strange; Ed’s eyes rake up and down his face; Ed scrapes his chair closer, and their knees brush underneath the table. Ed’s voice lowers and lilts, and when Roy returns from fetching the third round, he touches Ed’s elbow as he offers the glass.
They were both scientists, once, and this cannot be a coincidence.
“Edward,” he says, slowly, baiting an animal that bites, “I don’t want to misconstrue your intentions.”
Those words will never be celebrated. That sacrifice will never get a parade. The fact that he has loved Ed so long that he breathes devotion and bleeds despair, and he has opened himself to rejection when he finally has cause to hope-
Courage is a funny thing.
Roy Mustang is a sad little man.
“Look,” Ed says, watching his left-hand fingertips dragging wavy trails through the condensation on his glass, “I’m not gonna screw around, okay? No damn games, or I’m done. It’s… I could’ve had something, before, back in Germany-the place I was, on the other side. I don’t know what exactly it would’ve been, but it would’ve been something-except that I wasted it. I don’t know if you think about it like this, but that’s… the ultimate crime, in science. Not even trying is the worst thing you can do; not even finding out. The result isn’t really that important-whether it goes down in flames or gets off the ground doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you tried, and you got the data, and now you know.”
Roy raises his folded hands and settles his mouth behind them. His heart is not beating so much as trembling rhythmically. “Do you think that you and I would go down in flames?”
Ed smiles thinly and pops a lopsided shrug. “Dunno,” he says. “Maybe we’d go up in flames. That’s what I mean-the important part is finding out. I’ve got another opportunity here, maybe, if you’re game, and I’m not gonna squander this one.”
“‘If I’m game’,” Roy says carefully.
Ed’s eyes narrow. He swills his beer, takes a sip, and licks his lips. “That’s what I said.”
“I thought you didn’t want games,” Roy says.
One eyebrow arches. “I thought you didn’t want me to call you a dick.” Ed’s face goes shuttered; his eyes darken; he pushes his chair back, plants his palms on the tabletop, and stands. “Well-” His voice is cool and clipped, and it sounds wrong. “-guess that answers the question.”
What? No. No, no, no, no-
Roy grabs for Ed’s forearm, misses, and recoils-it’s his fucking depth perception; it’s his fucking eye. He clutches his clumsy hand to his chest and tries not to blame that fucking patch for everything, but it is an inescapable emblem of the moment where everything went awry-
Ed hesitates, half-turned away.
Roy clears his throat and fights the urge to cower, to cave, to hide and lick his wounds as he has always done. “I was asking for clarification,” he says. “I wouldn’t joke about-that.”
Ed barely moves-barely swivels-but it brings him closer. He draws three shallow breaths in succession, and then he says, “Fine. I’ll make this real simple. Do you want me?”
“Yes,” Roy says, and it is too small a word to hold the infinity of hurt and rapture that it means. “I… have wanted you a very long time.”
Ed’s smile is gradual and shy. “No shit?”
“None,” Roy says.
The next smile’s bigger, and it makes Roy’s stomach flip.
Several drinks later, they stagger all the way to Roy’s townhouse and finally crash together on the porch-Roy has time to think blearily that it’s a miracle they’ve made it up the steps, and then Ed’s fingers are fisted in his hair, and they’re joined at the mouth and moaning.
It should have been more than this. It should have been glorious and grandiose, a culmination of all of the longing vigils, an apology for all of the wasted grief. It should have been elegant and poetic and chaste.
It’s not. It’s sloppy, wet, and more than a little bit filthy. And Roy loves that Ed is never what he should be.
Ed pauses for breath and starts dragging at the catches of Roy’s uniform-here, outside, in public, on the porch.
“Nonono,” Roy says, fumbling for Ed’s wrists. With thumb and index finger he can circle them; the automail is remarkably cold. He holds Ed’s hands back, out of range; Ed wriggles his fingers and looks slightly confused. “It’d be tawdry,” Roy says. “And we’re drunk.”
“Speak for yourself, bastard,” Ed says, beaming. He’s a thing of wonder in the moonlight.
“I’ll call you a taxi,” Roy says.
“Lame,” Ed says. He breaks Roy’s grip, reaches for Roy’s collar, and slips warm fingertips underneath it. “Lemme just stay here.”
“Alphonse would be furious with me,” Roy says.
Ed’s thin smile wobbles in the silver light. “Al won’t care.”
The keys jingle far too loudly as Roy shies back and fishes them from the depths of his pocket; they jump and shudder in his hand as he tries to fit them into the lock. “No?”
When the door gives at last, he swings it open wide and holds it-but Ed presses up against his chest and slides past him slowly, both eyes locked onto his lonely one the whole way in.
“Nope,” Ed says, toeing off his boots-his new boots, his different boots; they’re lower-heeled and lace up around grommets, and it’s a marvel he can kick them off-and casting a slightly hazy assessing look around himself. “He’s got a theory, actually. Real scientific.”
Roy closes the door, bolts it, and stares at his hand. He just locked himself inside his own home with tiger-eyed temptation.
“What theory is that?” he asks, standing up as straight as he can manage.
Ed’s ponytail snaps like a pennant as he turns again, and a smile darts elusively in the cuts of light and shadow on his face. “Al,” he says, “thinks I’m sweet on you.” He swaggers over-those hips- “Al,” he says, “swears that when we were on the other side, he saw something of you-” Ed splays his left hand on Roy’s chest, pushing him back against the door; he stands on his toes to whisper into Roy’s ear, and his moist breath sends ripples of goosebumps down Roy’s leaden arms. “-in every guy I fucked. Something different in every one. So Al’s got a theory…” His fingers walk languidly up Roy’s chest and curl into his collar. “…that I was trying to put all the pieces together in my head, because what I really wanted all along was you.”
Roy’s whole body is humming; his skin’s aflame; his heart slams out a frantic tattoo. “Do you think that’s-do you think his theory’s viable?”
“I dunno,” Ed murmurs, damp lips dragging down Roy’s throat. “Maybe we should run some tests.”
“Maybe,” Roy says, lifting a tingling hand to touch Ed’s hair-oh, God, it’s like silk; it’s like mercury; “I should-call you a cab-”
“Christ on a cracker,” Ed says, drawing back enough for a skeptical look-and he must be very drunk to spout that caliber of gibberish, mustn’t he? “I didn’t figure it was gonna be nearly this tough to get into your pants.”
“I didn’t imagine you would be so enthusiastic about the prospect,” Roy says. In all honesty, of course, the word fantasize would have been more accurate than imagine.
Ed’s mouth twists into another strange and intriguingly enigmatic smile. “Yeah, well, I was a dumbass kid last time I had a chance, or I would’ve asked then.” He looks up through his eyelashes and tilts his hips in against Roy’s-so close, too close, fuck-
He’s waited too long to rush this and ruin it. He can’t afford to lose control, whether or not-especially because-Ed encapsulates everything that makes him weak.
“It’s been four years,” he says, lifting a slightly tremulous hand to slide his fingers through Ed’s bangs. “We’re both different people than we were then. Wouldn’t you at least like to get reacquainted before we tear each other’s clothes off?”
Ed blinks and tugs at Roy’s collar. “Not particularly.”
That’s the bucket of cold water he needed. He never should have been so fucking stupid as to dream that this could actually work-that they could actually come together and not react like sodium and water.
The absent eye is aching. He wanted to ask Ed about phantom limbs; he wanted to ask Ed about architecture in the other world; he wanted to ask Ed whether the lights in the northern sky made his spine clench and his heart swell.
He pries Ed’s hand from his shirt collar and gently pushes past. He sheds his coat, hangs it from the hook, and crosses to the telephone.
“I’m not interested in a fling, Ed,” he says levelly as he pages through the phonebook. “I’m sure virtually anyone you ask would be more than happy to have sex with you, but I am too old and too tired and too preoccupied to play around.”
“What?” Ed asks in a voice so small it’s almost unrecognizable.
Roy despises his hands for shaking as he lifts the receiver to his right ear. “Evidently I’m more… emotionally invested in this than you are, and in the interest of not sabotaging our working relationship, I think we should-stop.”
The dial tone sings at him, blares at him; he starts to lower the phone. Ed is entirely still, backlit by moonbeams, a faceless silhouette. A motionless Ed is unnatural, and that is cause for alarm.
“How can we stop?” Ed asks. His voice is low and icy-frigid, brittle, sharp. The individual syllables fall like shards of glass to the hardwood of the hallway. “We haven’t fucking started. But I guess I wouldn’t want to sabotage any fucking relationships, so I’ll just see myself the fuck out.”
He turns smoothly on his right heel, jams his feet back into the boots, and Roy reaches for him like he’s a magnet, like it’s a compulsion-but too slowly-
The door swings, and slams, and Roy wrenches it open again, but Ed’s striding down the walk with his shoulders hunched; the light of the streetlamp catches his hair. Roy takes two, three, four steps over the threshold, wanting to run after him, but-
Well, what’s the point? They do what they have to; they are what they were slated to become. They were meant to touch like weather fronts, to smash and seethe and slip away again. This is the order of things. This is ordinary.
…this can’t possibly be right; if there is any sort of God at all, this can’t possibly-
This is it, isn’t it? This is a fragmentary taste of what he deserves.
The bed is too damn big and too damn cold and too damn quiet with only his own heartbeat for company.
When will he learn that anything worth having is worth gambling on and fighting for?
He sweeps his arm across the empty expanses of unwrinkled sheet and then, hesitantly, trails his fingertips down over the pit of scars where a bright, enticing eye used to be.
He holds out admirably until lunchtime. He hedges; he rationalizes; he invents novel and heretofore unimagined strategies of justification. It’s Ed’s fault. It’s just the way of the world; entropy dissolves everything; connections break; plans fail; the simple weight of existence brings perfectly viable structures to the verge of collapse. It’s for the best.
By twelve-thirty, Riza’s gaze has become so ponderous that he decides to do something just to get her to stop trying to figure out whether to punch him or pity him. At a vigorous, certainly not desperate stride, he makes it to the barracks room assigned to the Elric brothers by fifteen minutes to one.
He tries, for a long and earnest moment, to interpret the stuttering of his heart-surely it’s some kind of code; surely there’s some kind of meaning. Surely there’s some way that this can all be easy. Fools fall in love all the time; how in the hell can he be doing it so wrong?
When no illuminating message is forthcoming, he lifts his hand and knocks. The sound resonates right back through his hangover and drills into his brain.
The door opens a fraction, and Alphonse’s startlingly real gray-brown eyes appear in the crack. They blink. The gap widens slightly.
“Good afternoon, Brigadier General,” Alphonse says.
“Good afternoon,” Roy says, despite the fact that the afternoon is, of course, abysmal. “Is Edward in?”
Alphonse pauses. “In, yes. Available… no.”
“Not for me,” Roy says.
Alphonse winces.
Roy closes his eye, draws a deep breath, looks at Alphonse again, and keeps his voice painstakingly steady.
“Please tell Edward,” he says, “that I apologize for jumping to the conclusion I did. I don’t believe either of us was especially rational given all we’d had to drink, and I realize now that I projected my own insecurities onto our conversation in a way that was inexcusably insulting to his character. I hope…” He swallows and wets his lips before he selects the words. “I know he understands that being afraid of getting something that you want doesn’t necessarily mean you want it any less. I hope that he will consider the possibility that I feel like I’m betting my entire life on my ability to be enough for him-to be enough for Ed, who could have anyone and anything he wanted, to whom all I have to offer is a very ragged shadow of a man he hated once.”
Alphonse smiles faintly.
Roy hears a slight scuffling, and then a sliver of bright yellow hair appears over Alphonse’s shoulder-quickly followed by bright yellow bangs, which in turn are succeeded by bright yellow eyes.
“You’re full of shit,” Ed says guardedly.
“I assure you,” Roy says, “I am not.”
The sharp eyes narrow to pale slits. “That’s the way you talk in front of other generals. Real convincing.”
“Brother,” Alphonse says, looking less than delighted to be trapped between the two of them.
“It’s the way I talk when I take something very seriously,” Roy says. All of the deep breaths in the history of mankind’s lungs would be inadequate to prepare him for what he knows he has to say next. “It’s been a long time, Ed. For me, it has been a long time spent mourning, and assuming, and second-guessing, and pining, and wishing, and… I’ve developed so many scenarios in my head that actually living the chance to be with you seems like it must be another incarnation of a familiar dream. It’s-I’m not… good… at fielding situations that hinge on personal expectations.”
Ed’s eyes flick up to where the patch fails to hide the creases on Roy’s forehead, and then down to where the fingers of both of his hands have curled into fists at his sides.
“Still don’t buy it,” he says.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Alphonse says before Roy can give up hope forever. “The two of you had a misunderstanding while you were drunk off your asses, and despite the fact that I’m sure, Brother, that you conducted yourself abominably, he’s come here with the grace and humility to apologize. Ed, do me this one favor: swallow your pride and let something wonderful happen to you for once.”
Ed’s eyes go wide and round, and he opens his mouth indignantly.
“General,” Alphonse says, “Brother is terrified of commitment, because it always ends in disappointment and tears-and very often blood, in his case. And he’s so accustomed to pushing people away that it scares him that he’s cared about you consistently for so long. So you’re going to have to be very brave and very patient, but if you can do that, he’ll love you so intensely you’ll forget you were ever alone.”
Ed shuts his mouth.
Roy listens to the erratic rhythm of his heart in his ears and attempts to determine whether or not he has stopped breathing.
Alphonse wrinkles his nose.
“You’re both hopeless,” he says. “Go out somewhere tonight, and don’t drink, would you? Talk about the Northern Lights and about alchemy and about how things have changed-but none of the important things; those are all the same. And then go kiss in some quiet place, and make all kinds of promises, and realize later that you’ve never meant them before.”
The silence is so heavy that the weight may well crush them all.
“How the hell,” Ed says slowly to his brother, “did you get so diabolical?”
“‘Diabolical’ is a bit harsh,” Alphonse says pleasantly. “General, you should probably get back to work. Why don’t you collect Brother at the library whenever you’re finished for the evening, and the two of you can grab a bite to eat?”
“I’m afraid I have to side with Edward,” Roy says. “‘Diabolical’ is quite fair.”
Ed grins tentatively, and Alphonse rolls his eyes.
“Hopeless,” the younger Elric says. “I don’t know why I bother. Give everyone in the office my best, General.”
“Promise me one thing,” Roy says.
Alphonse raises his eyebrows.
“Don’t compete with me for governmental power,” Roy says. “I fear you’d win.”
Alphonse’s grin is terrifying.
[PART II]