FMA -- Dynamo (Part II)

[tierfal]

Title: Dynamo (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: Don't miss Part I! …or do, and be very confused. XD


DYNAMO (PART II)
Ed is knee-weakeningly beautiful when he’s engrossed in a book.  His hair hangs around his face, gleaming as it filters the last of the light; his eyes skim back and forth across the text; a sliver of a groove between his brows is the only hallmark of his absolute concentration.

Roy could watch him for hours when he’s like this-and might do, if he wasn’t so hungry.

He touches Ed’s left shoulder, and the golden head snaps up.  It takes Ed’s gaze a moment to focus on him.

“S’up,” Ed says.  “Is it dinnertime already?”

“That depends,” Roy says. “Are you hungry?”

Ed grins wolfishly. “Is rain wet?”

“Unless the universe has very recently undergone a drastic reconstr-”

“Does it make you useless?”

“I suppose I had better not order any water,” Roy says, fighting the urge to grit his teeth. “We’ll just have to drink wine.”

Ed claps the book shut and jams it into an overflowing satchel bag, which he slings over his metal shoulder. “Yeah, no way that can go wrong.”

He starts off towards the exit, stride uneven from the weight of the books. Roy follows without comment until the third time Ed hikes the strap upward.

He clears his throat tactfully. “Is that a bit too heavy for y-”

“Fuck off,” Ed says. “I’ve got a lot of reading to catch up on, okay? Four years of alchemical progress. Even if most of it’s boring or crap or wrong-which most of it is-I still need to know what’s getting talked about.” Suddenly, the scowl drops from his face, and he flashes Roy a grin like a small supernova. “God, it’s awesome, though-alchemy, getting to do alchemy, getting to talk about it and think about it and use it and… It’s like if you were mute for four years, or bli…” His gaze fixates on the eyepatch. He stumbles, and then he swallows. “…oh. I mean-I didn’t mean-”

“Edward,” Roy says, “I paid a price. Whether or not it was equivalent isn’t for me to decide, but I wouldn’t act differently if I had the choice again. I’m not bitter, and I’m not offended.”

Ed smiles. Roy smiles back. Most of it’s even true.

Their table nestles against the back wall of the restaurant, near a window that radiates with the cold. There’s a candle on the tabletop, and the flame flirts with the pale lily in the narrow vase beside it. When Roy sees Ed glance at it and then at him, he can’t resist the urge to toy with it-just a little. Just enough to singe the arching ends of the petals.

They laugh. They laugh more than Roy ever expected; more than he remembered he could-they laugh in amusement; they laugh sardonically; they laugh in solidarity; they laugh out of giddiness and sheer relief. They’re circling each other, wary still because they’ve both been let down and shot down and shut down so many times before. In the shared laughter, though, they can sidle closer without having to commit. They can weave this slow, cautious, mutual understanding one spindly thread at a time. It’s warmer underneath the spreading tapestry. The world seems kinder from under here.

There’s a strange commonality to it-an overlap of experience that’s surprising and bizarre. They’ve both exiled themselves, voluntarily, to the furthest reaches they could find; they’ve both hunkered down and stared head-on at the reality of human beings at war, and they’ve both acknowledged that it’s impossible to face that and stay sane. They’ve both stopped pretending to understand the universe; they’ve both stopped pretending that their souls aren’t cracked and seething like infected wounds.

In the span of three hours, Roy discovers that it is wonderful to be able to look into Ed’s eyes and see clearly that all is not well in his heart-and to see that he doesn’t expect Roy to feign contentment. So much of civility is lies; “I’m fine”, “No trouble”, “You’re welcome”; to sit across from Edward Elric is to be real, to be honest, and to be accepted. Roy will never ask to be absolved, but acceptance-

He’s been in love with a figment for years now; he’d prepared himself for the actualization to fall short.

Ed has always taken a very pure sort of joy in gutting his preconceptions.

They step out into the brisk night, and Roy tastes reluctance like licorice on the back of his tongue as he makes his mouth form the words: “Let me walk you home.”

It’s not even about sex-isn’t that absurd? It’s not about anything in particular; he simply does not want to lose Ed’s presence. He doesn’t want the companionship to disappear; he doesn’t want this prickling, unusual warmth to fade out into solitude and silence; he doesn’t want the night to end. He doesn’t want to let go of the careful steel hand he hasn’t even taken yet.

Ed’s smile twists wryly. “The barracks aren’t home. If you’re talking conceptually, then this world’s enough, and there’s not a whole lot of walking to do. And by the fact that you’ve got your gentleman face on, you prob’ly don’t mean your home, do you?”

Roy’s heart seems to be in every square centimeter of his body, beating light and fast. “I don’t want either of us to feel later that we were… hasty. And I swear to you it’s a matter of respect.”

Ed pushes his hands into his pockets and rocks back on his heels.

“That’s fine,” he says.  “I just… I mean, to me, it’s never really real until it’s… physical.  Words are just sounds you make with your mouth, y’know?  They don’t prove anything.  It’s actions, for me.  It’s the way somebody… touches-not what they say.  And I get that not everybody’s like that, and that’s fine-it’s fine.  I know a lot of people see it the other way around; they want to feel like they know what’s going on in the other person’s head first.  And you’re all about minds and mindgames and whatever, so it makes sense that you’d be that way, and I can deal with that.  Just… for me it won’t be the same unti-”

Roy cups his face in both hands and kisses him, hard.

They’re standing in the middle of the sidewalk in the city where he lives and works and is held accountable for his actions, and he cannot care. He’s twining the fingers of one hand into Ed’s hair and settling the other against the curve of the boy’s neck; Ed’s pulse flutters against his skin, and his stomach melts-

Ed makes a soft sound into his mouth, and there is nothing-nothing-left to want in a human life. There is nothing more perfect than-

Ed fists a hand in the braiding of Roy’s uniform and pries their mouths apart. He pants a little, and his eyes search Roy’s face. The patch always feels heavier when people look at him intently; their attention gives it gravity.

“You sure about this?” Ed says, grip tightening. “Just-I mean, you have a reputation. And I get that; I get that it’s important. I don’t want to fuck that up. I don’t want to jeopardize your Führership ascendancy plan or whatever the hell it is.”

“I’m already considered unorthodox and possibly unhinged after my time in the North,” Roy says delicately. “In the long run, I imagine that tacit approval of my governmental aspirations from a recently-recovered and recently-retired Fullmetal Alchemist can only help my case. I’m sure most dissenters can be persuaded that discreet homosexual relations are the sort of indiscretion that can be overlooked.”

Ed stares at him. Then Ed frowns.

“I’m sorry,” Roy says. An apology seems like the safest option despite not being entirely certain what he’s done.

“Yeah,” Ed says, cagey again. “You were supposed to say, like, ‘Oh, it’s probably dangerous, but being with you makes me forget the risk’ or some shit.” He wrinkles his nose adorably. “No, wait, that’s totally what a chick would want you to say, isn’t it? Fuck it. I don’t care. Use it like that if you want, I guess. I should’ve figured you already would have factored it all in.”

“I hadn’t,” Roy says. “It didn’t even occur to me that I could want something as madly as I want you. Which is completely absurd given how much time I spent pining after the abstract concept of what we could have had.”

Ed’s eyes go very wide, and his fingers curl even closer into the front of Roy’s uniform.

“Don’t say shit like that,” he says. “Don’t-I mean, we’re both jumping into this with no idea how far it goes, right? No assumptions, no demands, no conditions, right? You shouldn’t-don’t talk like-”

“I’m tired of hiding,” Roy says. “I’m tired of stifling things, and biting back words that other people might find disagreeable, and trying to make myself feel less.” For all that, of course, he hesitates; he is a strategist. “What I feel with you is-uncontainable. Trying to hold it in is exhausting, and in any case there doesn’t seem to be much of a point. You understand what it’s like to feel too much. You know what it means to give up everything. And you will not think that I am weak for wanting things.”

Ed finally releases the fabric of the uniform, freeing his hand to scrub down his face. “You gotta stop doing this to me, you fucking bastard.”

“I’m sorry,” Roy says again. He pauses. “Doing wh-”

“Talking like that,” Ed says, stepping back and hunching his shoulders high. “It fucks with my head when you get all-confessiony.”

“I’m… sorry?” Roy attempts.

Ed rubs at one eye with the heel of his left hand, gesturing unrevealingly with the right. “No, just-I mean, you keep saying you don’t want to rush into this, and you don’t want it to be a big deal, and whatever, and then-but then you’re always talking about how, for you, emotionally, it already is. And I don’t… I don’t do promises, okay? I do proof.”

They will always be at odds; they will always be battering at one another’s weakness; they will always collide so violently that the bruises bloom violet.

And it will always be worth the marks.

“How do I prove it?” Roy asks. “Tell me what to do, and it’s done.”

Ed looks at him critically for a long moment and then offers up a bright-eyed, narrow smile.

“You can start,” he says, catching Roy’s elbow to draw him down and touch damp lips to the shell of his ear, “by fucking me senseless.”

Roy swallows and then swallows again.

“Let me walk you,” he says, “to my home.”

Ed’s grin might eviscerate a lesser mortal. “That’s more like it.”

It’s a blink-of-an-eye eternity before they’re back on the fateful doorstep. Operating his key is much easier this time; his head is clear, his sight is sharp, and his fingers are actually responding.

Ed breezes past him the moment the door is open. Roy steps inside, bolts it, and has time to draw half a breath before he finds himself pushed back against the doorframe by Ed’s body pressed to his.

“Oh,” he says.

Ed’s hot breath ghosts up his throat and along his jaw. “Yeah,” Ed says.

It’s fascinating-being seduced by Edward Elric. He was an arresting child and a beautiful adolescent, but only now that he is a stunning young man has he realized the power in appearances. This is part of what Roy was always scared of, isn’t it? If Ed knows what he has, what he is, what he’s capable of, what’s available to him-he won’t settle. He won’t compromise. And he might not choose Roy Mustang, in the end. He must know now that he can have better: he can have anyone he wants.

To think that wanton arrogance in romantic dalliances used to be Roy’s lot.

“So,” Ed says, too warm and moving with that slow, graceful, feline sensuality; “there are a couple ways this could go.”

“No,” Roy says. “Just one.”

The cat-bright eyes are eager and curious as they fix on his face, and Ed licks his lips.

The howl he releases when Roy ducks smoothly and hefts him over one shoulder, however, is much more of a canine sound.

He squirms like an eel but-rather tellingly-carefully avoids putting any metal appendages through Roy’s face. “You bastard! Let me down!”

“Not a chance,” Roy says, tightening the grip of the arm encircling Ed’s waist and lifting the other hand to grip the back of the boy’s extremely appetizing thigh.

“Oh,” Ed says, slightly breathlessly. “I-unhand me, you fucking cad!”

Roy smoothes his hand up over the absolutely rapturous curve of Ed’s ass and massages at the sharp hipbone with the pad of his thumb. “I don’t believe I shall.”

“Nnh-fucker!”

It has been so long, too long, too many years, and Roy’s back will begrudge him tomorrow, but for tonight-tonight everything in him, every muscle and tendon and fragment of flesh, wants Ed. Everything in him has rallied to the all-consuming cause, and the pain can wait for morning.

Ed is growling in the back of his throat as they top the stairs; there’s a petulant kick of the booted feet, but it’s not intended to injure.

“Now, now,” Roy says, and then he fulfills an extremely longstanding dream and squeezes Ed’s gorgeous ass.

Ed squeaks.

Roy could cry with contentment, but there simply isn’t time.

He knees the door of his bedroom open, attempts to prompt more of Ed’s impatient wriggling as he crosses the floor, and tosses the boy down on the bed. Just the splay of gold hair on white sheets and the careless spread of limbs is enough to make Roy’s guts tremble, and then that grin-

Roy pins him to the bed and kisses him and kisses him deeper; Ed’s fingers twist themselves into his hair and drag him in; Ed’s right leg hooks around the small of his back.

“Always fuckin’ knew,” Ed mumbles into Roy’s mouth. Roy, drawing back, breathing lightly, scrabbling for the tiny buttons of the waistcoat with his unsteady fingers, makes a faint noise of inquiry. “That you’d-” Ed’s sigh roughens into a groan, and he arches his back off the mattress as the waistcoat falls open, and a fairly considerable part of Roy’s brain explodes. “-be-amazing. In the sack.”

“‘The sack’,” Roy says to the soft skin of Ed’s throat, to the pulse racing beneath it. “You come back with a thousand new profanities, and you have nothing better to say of my sexual prowess than ‘amazing in the sack’-”

Ed laughs, brightly, and shoves at him, only then to fist a gentle hand in his hair and reel him back in.

Roy kisses him feverishly but unbuttons his shirt slowly, savoring it. He dreamed endlessly, shamelessly, fearlessly; no one could deny him the privilege of fantasy, but this-to have, to touch, to taste-Ed has always has a knack for defying expectation. Ed has always had a penchant for leaving him kindled and speechless.

Ed is making a positively pornographic noise as his hips rise off of the bed to fit themselves neatly into Roy’s hands.

“Jesus,” he says, voice rising into a moan.  “General, fuck-just-do me a favor-”

“Anything,” Roy says, and to offer that truthfully is terrifying.  If Ed asked for his life, his world, his head on a platter; if Ed asked for a dozen heroes’ trials; if Ed asked for a crescent moon and his choice of constellations-Roy would die striving.

“Roy,” Ed says, lips curling at the corners, “strip me naked and make me yours.”

With a pounding heart and burning hands, with the universe in harmony with the sing of hot blood through his veins, with cold fingers curled against his scalp and Ed’s spine arching and Roy’s throat rough and his lungs straining-he does.

It’s startling, some sentient part of his spinning but sated brain thinks, that Ed has become an outstanding lover.  Ed-who used to blush hotly from collarbones to forehead when Havoc started rambling about cup sizes and the sexiest color of lace-just jimmied his hips with such unbelievably impeccable timing that Roy slammed into the abyss and came violently, with a a full-voiced shout and a shudder that probably tweaked a muscle.

With characteristic heart-stopping verve, Ed laughs his way through orgasm, gasps in a ragged breath, and drops to the mattress beaming broadly.  Roy wants so badly to touch him, to hold him, to cradle him, to stroke the damp hair back from his forehead, to lick the sweat from the hollow of his throat and trace the lines of cold metal and warm flesh-but if starts touching, he’ll start clinging, and he’ll never let go.  And that’s not fair, is it?  That’s not equivalent.

Ed stretches his beautiful back and twists his beautiful hips and curls his beautiful toes, and then he settles, looking like a very well-fed-and rather ruffled-cat.  Roy lies down beside him, at a distance that would be safe with anyone who wasn’t so mind-bogglingly unpredictable as Ed.

Ed closes his eyes and hums softly for a moment, and then he rolls onto his side and pops up onto his metal elbow, eyes fixed on Roy’s face.  He reaches out with his left hand and tugs on the bottom of the patch.

“You’ve gotta take this off next time,” he says.

Next time.

“If you like,” Roy says, which sounds slightly less obsessive than Anything you ask for.

Ed’s soft thumb runs along the edge of the fabric, and his fingertips dapple against Roy’s jaw.  He clears his throat and asks, rather gently, “Can I see?”

Anything but that.

Roy draws a deep breath and forces a smile.  “If you like.”

Evidently he likes.

Edward has grown in more ways than one; there’s no sharp intake of breath, no grimace, no change at all in his expression but for a faint furrowing of his forehead and a flicker in his eyes.

“That’s not so bad,” he says.  “Sucks about your eye, though.  You’ve got damn sexy eyes.”

“Damn sexy eye, now,” Roy says.

Ed grins at that.  “You’re good enough to make one do the work of two.”

Roy smiles, sincerely, even though the abomination spread across his face feels even vaster and more grotesque when it’s exposed-when it’s exposed to Ed.  Ed, in all of his brazen, effortless glory, makes the scar tissue a vital part of his perfectly mismatched form.  On Roy Mustang, it’s a badge of failure.

Ed’s hand trails down to Roy’s shoulder and kneads at one of the innumerable tense spots.  “Hey,” he says.  “You know that theory of Al’s I was talking about?”

Roy nods instead of announcing that his mind has dwelt on little else.

Ed’s fingers flirt with his neck and then his ear, and Ed’s gaze watches their progress intently.  “So I was thinking it over,” the boy says, “and… I mean, I wasn’t planning it, but…” The laugh is so self-deprecating it verges on nervousness, which is incongruous with Ed.  “Shit, Mustang, it’s just so fucking Freudian.”  He draws his hand back to run it down his own face and then looks Roy in the eye, cheeks darkening to a rather charming shade of pink. “I mean, I… all of ’em were older. All of ’em were smartasses who could work a room and-well, fuck, if they didn’t make me fucking quiver, they weren’t good enough. Lots of bars, lots of little cabarets. Couple backalleys. And then I… you gotta promise not to laugh.”

“I won’t,” Roy says. He doesn’t think he’s capable; he’s thinking about Ed and alley walls, about hoarse whispers and surreptitious hands, about chipped brick and pungent smoke and music floating out a cracked door-about mouths sealing tight together and blood quickening to a tempo that doesn’t match the jazz-

“I slept with-” Ed worries at his lip and sizes Roy up again, as though he’s changed in the last four seconds, as though he wouldn’t take anything he’s given now. “-with-officers. Military officers. And despite it being the worst idea ever, I tried three of ’em.”

“Three,” Roy says faintly.

“One’s a data point,” Ed says, “two’s a pattern, and three’s enough to draw logical conclusions.” Ed’s fingertips tap their way down Roy’s breastbone. “Anyway, tall and dark are easy, but handsome is the kicker.  Especially handsome like you, ’cause… you’re…” He gestures unhelpfully to Roy’s face. “Y’know.”

“Mangled and of mixed descent?” Roy supplies.

“Rare,” Ed says.  “What you are is rare.”

Roy blinks. The measuredly amused Jaded, broken, and brooding? he meant to suggest next gets stuck in his throat.

“There was this one guy,” Ed says, “in Amsterdam-the one guy I picked who wasn’t a bastard. I guess I subconsciously focused on the bastard part too much. Or maybe underneath it all, I wanted to get shoved around, ’cause I thought I deserved it.”

Roy’s muscles tense; his heart skitters. “What? Of course not, of course you don’t des-”

Ed’s finger presses against his lips. He wants to lick it, but instead he obediently shuts his mouth.

“Anyway,” Ed says, “the guy in Amsterdam was blind. He got sick when he was a kid, and it fucked up his eyes. He said the last thing he remembered seeing was the kitten his parents had given him to try to make him feel better-this little tiny gray cat sitting on the windowsill. And he said that wasn’t such a bad image to be holding in his mind forever, was it? And he still had the cat. Al loved him for that. And I loved him because he didn’t take anything for granted.”

“Ed,” Roy says against the soft contours of the boy’s hand.

“Shut up another second,” Ed says. “That’s the thing, though, about Al’s theory-little shit’s always right about everything, and he was right about you, too. You’re a hell of a lot more than the sum of the personality traits that stuck with me. And I think-” His thumb drifts up to Roy’s cheekbone, dragging gently across the tangled web of scars. “-I mean, if you want to, I’d… really like to find out what you add up to.”

“There is nothing,” Roy says, “that I want more.”

Ed grins, tangling his fingers in Roy’s hair. “Good.” He wriggles in closer, dragging the nest of bedclothes with him. “That’s enough goddamn philosophy for one night. Can we do some serious fucking cuddling?”

“Yes,” Roy says. “Cuddling is an extremely grave matter, and I treat it accordingly.”

Ed nestles in against his chest, and Roy wraps both arms around him and wonders how he’ll ever find the strength to let go.

“I’m glad you know the important shit,” Ed says.

Roy breathes in the scent of him rising from his hair. “As am I.”

As the night wears on, following some very solemn snuggling, Roy deems that a post-coital soak in the bathtub would hit the spot.  Ed, none too surprisingly, is more interested in a post-coital bowl of ice cream.

“Gotta raise my blood sugar,” he says, licking the spoon in a way that is raising an entirely different part of Roy.

The thing that’s strange, though, is how strange it isn’t-how calm and warm and normal it feels to sink into the hot water while Ed, dressed in an oversized bathrobe and holding the spoon in his mouth, plunks down on the end table in lieu of a stool.

“Y’know,” Ed says around the utensil Roy currently envies, “you never really answered my question about the lights.  I mean, you were in interrogation mode, so I didn’t expect you to, but… it was the lights that made me think I could do it, y’know?  Schlep our asses back here.  Play Russian roulette with the Gate again, even though this time I had a hell of a lot on the line.”

Roy folds his arms on the edge of the tub and sets his chin on them, watching Ed suck on the edge of the spoon for a moment before delving it back into the bowl.  “The ones here are… extraordinary.  We could go and see them sometime, if you like.”

“Nah,” Ed says.  “I practically lived, slept, ate, and breathed that fucking atmospheric phenomenon.  And some less-rational part of me’s scared they’d suck me back through.  On the other side they call ’em aurora borealis, which is sort of a mishmash-it’s this one culture’s goddess of dawn and then this previous culture’s god of the north wind.  So I thought… y’know.  Maybe it’s a wind that’ll carry me into a new day, right?  Jesus, I don’t know; it’s so fucking cold up there that you think all kinds of things.  Anyway, we went way up into the mountains to try to get the best idea we could of what we were getting into, and what the chemical composition was, and what kind of array we could use-and that first night, the whole damn thing was red.  Like a wall of flame.  And I thought ‘This is it.  This is our chance, and we’re gonna make it.’”

Roy can’t stop himself from smiling when Ed’s eyes burn like that.  “And you did.”

Ed shrugs, nibbles on the spoon again, and looks at Roy with a thoughtful half-smile.  “You said you saw ’em, though, right?  So you know what I mean?”

“I saw them,” Roy says.  “Green like the southern hills in summer, glowing bright enough that I didn’t need both eyes.  It lit up the snow, too; it was everywhere, everything.  Absolute silence, and the sky torn through with light.  It was a little easier to make my peace with the world when I was a part of that.”

Ed grins, swings his feet, and reaches over to feed Roy a spoonful of ice cream.

A man could really get used to this.

The office, of course, can be put off but not denied.  He leaves a mumbling, tousle-headed Edward Elric half-buried in his rumpled sheets; his heart tightens, but he doesn’t hesitate to leave a front-door key on the nightstand.

“Ah,” Riza says.

Roy looks up from the day’s first report. Riza is not prone to needless interjections; is she ill?

She’s… smiling. Oh, God, she’s on her deathbed, and he didn’t even know-

“I’m happy for you, sir,” Riza says, setting a few more folders atop one of the carefully cultivated piles. “You know what they say about good things.”

“They come in threes?” Roy asks slowly. A third Elric might not be such a bad-oh, who is he kidding; both universes would explode.

“They come to those who wait,” Riza says. She pauses, and the smile darts around her mouth again. “Additionally, they come in small packages.”

Roy points the pen at her. “I’m going to use that.”

“Your funeral, sir,” Riza says.

Four minutes after noon, the desk phone rings.  Roy lets it sing out twice before he raises it to his right ear.  “Mustang.”

“Edward Elric for you, General.”

Roy’s skin tingles.  What extraordinary power there is in a name.  “Put him through.”

“Yes, sir.”  The line buzzes and then hums.

“S’up,” Ed says.  “This is your lunch hour, right?  I’m not interrupting anything Major Hawkeye’ll shoot me for?”

“Certainly not,” Roy says, not that he wouldn’t lie to say it if he had to.

“Cool,” Ed says.  “I just wanted to… y’know.  See how you were.”

“I’m well,” Roy says.  “I’m-better than well, honestly.  You?”

“I raided your kitchen before I left,” Ed says, “so I’m good.”

Roy pauses.  “Where are you now?”

“Library,” Ed says, as Roy should have known.  “They’re on their lunch break, too.  Al’s so deep in this book about light arrays that he prob’ly won’t surface for another hour.  Is, uh-is the office empty?”

Roy tilts his chair to peer around the door and then settles back into it.  He covers the mouthpiece, clears his throat, and then lowers his voice to a purr.  “It’s very quiet in here.”

Ed swallows audibly, and Roy can hear the curl of a sly grin.  “No kidding.”

“Oh,” Roy says slowly, “on my honor. It’s just me here-in a uniform that’s getting rather a bit too warm.”  He leans back until the chair creaks, lets his eye slide halfway shut, and wages a doomed battle against a smirk.  “Which begs the question, Edward-what are you wearing?”