FMA -- They Have All Been Blown Out
Title: They Have All Been Blown Out
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,305
Warnings: schmoop, language, fade-to-black sexytimes, major spoilers for Brotherhood
Summary: To say that waiting is not Ed's forte would be understating matters a bit.
Author's Note: Have some schmoop I wrote to de-stress last week, which is a follow-on to Leading the Blind, In the Shadow of Your Heart, and No Dawn, No Day; and which brings the total wordcount for this 'verse to something I don't even want to think about. \o/
THEY HAVE ALL BEEN BLOWN OUT
Roy’s going to win. Roy has to win. Roy’s probably never lost a game in his life-not a long game, not one that counted, and boy howdy does this one fuckin’ count.
Ed pauses in his feverish pacing to glare at the silent telephone and then at the inconceivably sluggish hands of the clock. The slow, slow tick and the pounding of his feet on the carpet runner are the only sounds in the house.
Ed’s not worried, obviously, because Roy will win, but that doesn’t make the waiting any easier.
He should be there. He should be in the center of the city, in the council hall, pacing off in the wings somewhere, watching and listening and tearing his hair out-he should be close, so he can push positivity directly at Roy, feed him hope, trade sheer faith for any of his fears. He should be there, except that when he got the news that shit was getting real, he was two days of train rides north, checking out the factory where they’re going to start manufacturing ink-pen cartridges prepped and ready to be lit by array.
Ed’s still planning to make all of Roy’s writing implements by hand, but once he got it into his head that the doors that his brainchildren opened for Roy should be available to everybody, he couldn’t get it out again, and this seems like the best way to smash windows of opportunity through all kinds of walls, and…
And the point is, that doesn’t matter, because he should be there-he should be hovering at Roy’s elbow and biting his fingernails, even if it’s a nasty habit or whatever. The point is that he should be there, but he isn’t, because he was thinking about himself. All right, so he was thinking about how he wants to help blind people to give himself some kind of purpose in life. But since Grumman chose this week to have some crazy-ass heart palpitations and then to rush-elect his successor, it all turned out to mean the same thing: Ed isn’t there.
Honestly, if he was, he’d probably just be gibbering incoherently and threatening the heavens and proceeding to throw up violently regardless of the result, but… still.
It’s okay, of course, because the result is going to be that Roy wins. There’s not really any doubt of that, although Ed’s trying to pretend like there is, because if he operates on the principle that they’re going to lose, the only possible outcomes are accuracy or elation. It’s disappointment-proof.
Fuck, though, Roy has to win; this is the only thing Roy’s ever really wanted. The only thing except… Ed, anyway.
That has to be equivalent. Doesn’t it? The balance of the universe has to owe him this. The give-and-take has to be willing to grant this tiny little favor. The world has to be that fair. And Grumman isn’t an idiot, and only about half of Parliament are total dipshits, and the people… they must be smart enough to vote for Roy. Right? And the voting is a third and a third and a third, since apparently Grumman was drunk when he started arranging his stupid finding-a-replacement plan, because everybody with more than two brain cells to their name knows it’s got to be Roy.
The problem is that for months Hakuro’s been waging a big, stupid propaganda campaign founded on his ‘experience’, which is pretty much his bullshit way of saying that he thinks Roy’s too young for responsibility-which is hilarious, in a let-me-laugh-my-knuckles-right-into-your-face kind of way. First of all, Roy was born ready for leadership-so thoroughly that he wants to figuratively-oversee things like the pattern of the curtains even though he can’t look at them for fuck’s sake. Second, Roy’s thirty-five now, which rounds up to forty, which means he might as well be a billion, so the whole thing is moot.
Besides, it’s not like Hakuro’s ever been on the front lines, or anywhere else that makes any damn difference. All he has ‘experience’ doing-as Ed is happy to declaim loudly until Al shushes him so they don’t get kicked out of another coffee shop-is being a giant fucking douchewaffle.
Roy’s angle is all calm dignity and stuff, though, so basically every time Hakuro’s camp starts slinging mud, he just sort of wipes it off and turns slowly to the witnesses and raises an eyebrow to say Did you see that? What a dreadful shame and then moves on. And obviously anybody with half a lick of common sense buried somewhere between their ears would nod and say I don’t want that other asshole signing off on my rights.
Except that there are people-real living, thinking, breathing people-who have met Roy and still back Hakuro. Ed doesn’t get that. It just doesn’t make sense, and it scares the crap out of him. Because if that can happen, what else might? Because what if this time, for the first time, for once, Roy doesn’t win? Because if people are the problem, what’s this world coming to-?
Hakuro is just such a fucking snake-a rattlesnake, probably; he makes a ton of noise, and you think maybe he’s just all sound and no substance, but it turns out he’s venomous as hell. Hakuro’s a rattlesnake, and Roy’s trying to grab him by the head and milk him without getting bitten, and… Ed’s not sure he likes that metaphor anymore.
Anyway, he should be there. He should be there instead of here, pacing the damn hallway, watching the cats take up his anxiety like a standard of war and prowl around the kitchen. He should be there, wringing his hands and probably vomiting in a couple minutes when they finally, finally finish counting all the fucking votes-
And he could be, even though he’d been a ways out this morning, except that he missed the phone call from Al about the last standing room ticket for the council hall, because he’d been making a call of his own.
“Rockbell Automail,” Winry said, “Rush Valley bran-”
“Hey,” he said. “It’s me.”
“Ed? What in the hell is wrong with you? In four months, I get six letters and five phone calls from Al, and not so much as a telegram from your dumb ass to tell me that you’re still alive-”
Girls. “Yeah, yeah, sorry and stuff. Y’know, I was thinking about automail.”
“Next time I see your dumb little-little!-face, I’m gonna brain you so hard I knock you back all four months, and you can start over with the le… wait, what?”
Ed cleared his throat and enunciated. “I was thinking about automail.”
There was absolute silence on the line.
“Uh,” Ed said, “hello? You still there?”
“You haven’t thought about automail in… ever,” Winry said in a hushed sort of voice. “It never really made sense to me-you’ve got such a scientific mind, and engineering isn’t all that different from alchemy, ’cause it’s all about figuring out what makes things up and what makes things work, and… but you’ve never been interested in automail.”
“Well, after Mom died, I didn’t have time,” Ed said. “And then after I had the stuff, it was… well, it was like an anchor, and an-I dunno, an accusation, and every time I used it, I had to remember that it was there because I’d failed everybody I cared about and everybody who cared about me. So I didn’t want to think about it any more than I had to. But… y’know… now I can.”
Winry was quiet for a long time-Ed was going to have to remember this one-except for breathing into the phone.
“I guess so, huh?” she said at last. “I mean, does that… never mind. So what where you thinking about automail?”
“I was thinking about…” Ed had been striving all morning to think of a tactful way to say it, but he and tact had always enjoyed what Roy would (tactfully) call ‘a fraught relationship’. “…organs.”
Winry went quiet again. Ed was on an unprecedented roll today.
“Organs,” she said after a brief eternity.
“Yeah,” Ed said. “Limbs are really great and all, but organs are just machines, too, when you get right down to it-why can’t we make automail hearts, or lungs, or…”
“Or eyes?” Winry asked.
So much for subtlety. Maybe it and tact were hiding together, in a distant mountain cave somewhere-someplace Ed would never find them.
“Sure,” he said, forging right ahead. “Why not?”
“You know exactly why not,” Winry said softly. “Every time before-”
“Every time before, it wasn’t you and me, Win,” Ed said. “There’s gotta be some way to prevent the other systems from rejecting it, and if anybody’s gonna find that way, it’s us-”
“Ed-”
“The human body’s stupid,” Ed said. “We can trick it somehow, we’ve got alchemy on our side, at least the theoretical parts-and we’re fucking brilliant, Win, if you’ve ever let anybody tell you different, they were wrong-”
“Brilliant is one thing,” Winry said, although Ed could’ve sworn the blood was audible rushing to her cheeks. “You’re talking about rewriting the rules of automail and medicine. That’s pushing the ‘brilliant’ thing a long way towards ‘crazy’.”
“That’s the way I like it,” Ed said.
Winry sighed feelingly. “Can’t say experience hadn’t taught me that, but… well, jeez, Ed, what brought this on? All of a sudden it’s time to revolutionize two extremely specialized disciplines at once, possibly by implementing a third?”
“Lay off the big words,” Ed said.
“Answer the question,” Winry said.
Ed gritted his teeth and tried to find a way out of it, but other than pretending the line had dropped-which Winry would not believe-and acting like something had blown up nearby-which she would believe, and which she would kill him for when she found out it was a lie-he was pretty damn stuck in this one.
“I dunno,” he managed after half a minute of high-quality equivocation. “What brings anything on? I just… well, y’know. Roy’s got his campaign, and Al’s in school learning all kinds of shit, and I’m just… well, I’m just… nothing. I’m not doing anything. I’m not building anything. And I’m so fucking bored, and I feel so fucking useless that it just eats away at me until I wish I’d never… except I don’t; I don’t wish that; just-I mean, maybe, if I’d been smarter, or faster, or better, I could’ve found a different…”
“Except you weren’t,” Winry said. “You were you, Ed. That’s always been enough for everybody else. Let it be enough for you, okay? You did all kinds of amazing stuff, and-I know what you mean; neither of us can really just… sit on our hands after all the crap we’ve been through. But I know you don’t really regret it, because I know you would’ve given anything for Al, and that includes the thing you assumed was your purpose in life. So… screw alchemy, Ed. Dwelling on losing it won’t make it an option again, and you don’t need it anyway-you can do even more amazing stuff just the way you are. You’re proving it right now, dummy. Let’s just take that and run with it. I’m game.”
“You’re the best, Win,” Ed said.
“Buttering me up isn’t going to get you out of the hard work,” Winry said. “You’ve got a hell of a lot of research to do and a hell of a lot of minds to change.”
“That’s the way I like it, too,” Ed said.
The hall phone rings.
Ed snatches the receiver out of the cradle and slaps it to his ear way too hard; it’s actually lucky that hand’s not metal anymore, or he might have just cracked his own skull. “Hello?”
“Which do you want first?” Al asks. “The good news, or the bad news?”
Ed’s throat has gone all sticky and funky and weird. “Bad.”
“The bad news,” Al says, “is that we’re going to have to host a big, fancy inauguration party, and all the generals are going to take one look at Roy and see that he’s in love with you, and all of your extremely clumsy attempts to conceal your mutual devotion will have been for nothing.” He sighs. “And the cats are never going to forgive us for bringing so many strangers into the apartment at once.”
“The…” As far as Ed knows, his brain is still in his head, but it doesn’t seem to be functioning. Maybe he hit himself with the phone hard enough to give himself a concussion. “…cats?”
“The good news,” Al says, “is that a really cute girl at the council hall asked for my telephone number. I gave her this one. Her name is Marisa; if she calls while I’m out, this time, please don’t demand that she get tested for sexually-transmitted diseases before she tries to hold my hand.”
“’S for your own good,” Ed says automatically. “Wait-but-”
“Yes, Brother,” Al says, and he’s trying for a tone of long-suffering exasperation, but Ed can hear his grin. “Roy is the Führer. It’ll probably take him a long time to get home, though; the crowds are unbelievab-”
The sound that tears free from Ed’s throat is not quite a cackle, not quite a scream, and not quite a cheer. It is, however, a crime against vocal cords and probably sufficient cause for the neighbors to call the police.
“Oh, dear,” Al says. “You know, I think I’m going to go pay Mrs. Hughes and Elysia a visit. And sleep on their couch. All night. So that you and Roy can… celebrate.”
“Fuck,” Ed says faintly.
“…well, yes, that’s what I’m anticipati-”
“He actually did it,” Ed says. “The crazy bastard actually did it.”
“You should’ve seen General Hakuro’s face, Brother. He looked like he’d been force-fed an unripe lemon.”
The laugh that wriggles out of Ed’s throat and dies a slow and painful death on the carpet makes Al snicker. What a traitor Ed’s precious baby brother is sometimes.
“I see you’re handling the whole matter with appropriate grace and composure,” Al says. “You’re going to make an excellent Führer’s wife.”
That wakes Ed’s brain up in a wrenching hurry: “A motherfucking excellent motherfucking what?”
“I think I’ll let Führer Mustang field this one,” Al says cheerfully.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Ed says as a terrible thought slowly dawns. “He’s gonna make me call him ‘Führer’ in-uh-places-where he-should shut the fuck up about it.”
“Thank you for providing me with that rich nightmare fodder,” Al says.
“Can it. Aw, shit. But-crowds-how long-?”
“Keep it in your pants, Brother. Goodness, if you’d told him you have a thing for men with supreme executive power, I bet he would’ve made a bid for succession years ago.”
“Eew,” Ed says. “No. Get your mind out of the gutter and keep it out, Alphonse Elric, or so help me, I will…”
Al’s voice is sweeter than syrupy pancakes on a brisk summer morning. “You’ll what, Brother?”
“Barf,” Ed says. “It’s not-damn it, Al, I just-really… want to see him. I feel like shit for missing this, and I really… I really want him to know how much I… I mean, I’m really… fucking… proud.”
Al sighs contentedly. “I’ll just… knock very loudly when I get back tomorrow, shall I?”
“You,” Ed says, “are evil,” and they both know he doesn’t mean it in the slightest.
“So I hear,” Al says. “Tell the Gen… oh, my. Tell the Führer that I’m proud of him, too.”
Ed grunts an affirmative.
“And tell him that I’ll bring cake,” Al says. “Am I forgiven now?”
“Depends on the cake,” Ed says.
“But of course,” Al says. “Well, I should go-you have a good night, Brother. A good, long night, if you know what I-”
“I know what you mean!” Ed says, face on fire. “Who the hell raised you? Goodnight, okay?”
“Love you, Brother!”
“Love you, too, jerk!”
Ed hangs up the phone and manages to frown at it for a full six seconds before he cracks a grin.
Despite the fact that Al talks to the cats all the time, when Ed asks them how much longer they think Roy’s likely to be, they stare at him like he’s crazy. Damn cats; who the hell are they to judge? These are the same cats that start milling around like furry piranhas and meowing deafeningly the second Al takes out a tuna can. They can’t afford for anyone to go deaf around here, not with Roy “I apologize for the… oversight” Mustang winking and elbow-nudging his way across the obstacle-ridden floor like blind jokes are going out of style.
Obviously, they can’t be, since blind jokes were never even in good taste, let alone in style. All things considered, they’re pretty unseemly.
While he waits, Ed pokes around in the icebox, attacks the dog’s bed with a lint brush, sketches a few arrays that might help convince the circulatory system to accept a steel interloper, closely examines the distribution of cat hair on the nearest couch cushion, writes a letter to Winry that consists of the words STILL NOT DEAD ARE YOU HAPPY NOW, and practices saying “It’s your turn to clean the bathroom, Führer Mustang” in his best impression of a suck-uppy political leech. The cats seem to have given up on him for good after that, and they ignore him completely while he sorts through some of the recent newspapers stacked on the end table and cuts out pictures of Roy to make a collage.
Just after one-fifteen, while he’s trying to decide whether to put the unflattering ones obviously taken by Hakuro supporters together in the middle or around the whole thing as a border, he hears an engine and then the slam of a car door.
Ed’s halfway down the front walk before Havoc has even climbed out of the driver’s seat. Roy must’ve heard his footsteps and calculated his speed-crafty bastard-because the newly-minted leader of Amestris leans down with his arms open and catches Ed at exactly the right moment.
This is the second-best hug of Ed’s life, beaten only by the first one that Al gave him on the Promised Day.
Roy’s grip is almost a little too tight; Ed loves when he can feel the strength in every line of Roy’s body where it presses to his. It makes him feel kind of-safe, and kind of… precious. Cherished. Important.
It makes him feel really fucking loved.
Roy smells faintly of cigar smoke, and when he loosens his arms just enough to kiss Ed thoroughly, he tastes like champagne. His fingers curl into Ed’s hair, and his eyelashes brush Ed’s cheek, and he pauses to whisper, “Edward, my love, we did it.”
“You did it,” Ed says. “Well, you and Major Hawkeye, and Captain Havoc, too-” Havoc raises a hand in appreciation; the other’s laden with a rather large bag that Ed can’t see the contents of. “-the whole team, I guess. Mostly you.”
“But you’re a part of me,” Roy says. “You are my reason for being and therefore my reason to succeed. And you’re so scrumptious that I could just eat you up-” This final clause he punctuates by nipping at Ed’s ears and neck and throat. “-and then you’d definitely be a component of-”
“Hey!” Ed… shouts. Not squeals, shouts. Which is probably not the most considerate thing to do at one in the morning when there are neighbors and shit, but apparently the new Führer is a cannibal, so they might as well know.
“His Superior Magnificent Preeminence is a little bit drunk,” Havoc says helpfully.
“Never woulda guessed,” Ed says, writhing away from Roy’s extremely insistent tongue.
“I feel entitled,” Roy says. He laughs, low and rich, against Ed’s skin. “God, I feel invincible.”
Havoc grins around the ubiquitous cigarette-replacing toothpick and hefts the bag-of-whatever. “Why don’t I let you go be invincible inside, boss?”
“Saucy,” Roy says, fumbling to seize Ed’s hand. “And an excellent suggestion, Captain.”
“I try,” Havoc says. “Lemme get the door.”
Roy finally catches Ed’s hand in his right, reaching out with the left-immediately, Hitomi trots up from where she’d been waiting at a safe distance and pushes her nose at his palm. Thus lopsidedly linked, the three of them stagger back up the walk, where Havoc’s holding the door open.
“G’night, Chief,” Havoc says. “The ultra-Chief. And g’night, Führer Mustang.”
“Oh, ha,” Roy says. “Goodnight. You’re fired.”
“Cool,” Havoc says. “Should I pick you up at the normal time tomorrow, or are you going to rest up for a while?”
“The normal time,” Roy says. “Demonstration of commitment. Critical stage. Adjustment period. Verbs optional.”
It takes Ed a long and awkward moment to realize that the discontented growl he just heard came from his own mouth. At least that explains why Havoc and Roy are staring at him bewilderedly-well, Havoc is staring at him; Roy’s staring just past his right ear.
“Ah,” Roy says. “Perhaps an hour or two later than the normal time, Captain.”
“Good choice, sir,” Havoc says. “Here, lemme just…”
The bag he’s been lugging around ends up next to the shoe rack; and then the door shuts; and then Hitomi sniffs at Ed’s collage-in-progress; and then the Führer yawns hugely, kicks his boots off, and starts rummaging in the bag.
“I brought you something,” he says.
“I hope it’s a lobotomy,” Ed says.
“Evidently I missed the memo that everyone’s a comedian tonight,” Roy says. “I think I’ve… aha.”
With a flourish, he presents… a dishtowel.
Is this some sort of household-chores thing? Because Ed is going to strangle him with it if…
“Wait a moment,” Roy says. He drags his fingertips down the front and then flips it to show the other side of the fabric.
Turns out it’s not just a dishtowel-it’s a dishtowel with a horrifically bad embroidered portrait of Roy’s face.
“In a lifetime,” Roy says, “how many opportunities does a man have to purchase memorabilia of himself?”
Ed’s trying not to laugh, but seriously, this thing is an insult to Roy’s parents and an insult to thread and an insult to dishes-
“I thought you might occasionally see fit to mop up particularly hideous spills with my face,” Roy says. “When I asked Major Hawkeye about the resemblance, and she went suspiciously quiet for a very long time before saying you would ‘probably appreciate the creative liberties and the overall aesthetic,’ I knew it was a winner.”
Roy holds it out, but Ed’s still not sure he wants to touch this thing; is the crazy contagious?
“It…” Roy hesitates, which gets Ed’s attention in a hurry, and then smiles, which melts Ed’s stomach just as quick. “It was also the only item on offer that cost exactly five hundred and twenty cens.”
Ed’s whole body stops for a second, and then he’s snatching the towel and slinging it heedlessly over his shoulder, the better to grab the lapels of that damned dress uniform and drag Roy in for a wet, messy kiss.
He pretends he doesn’t see Hitomi catching the towel in her mouth and waiting for a polite moment to offer it back to her master. She’s a great dog, but she really doesn’t get the whole dramatic-seductive-gesture thing, no matter how many times Ed tries to explain.
In the morning, as promised, there is a very loud knocking at the door.
Ed drags himself upright and scrubs at his eyes as he tries to get his bearings. He draws a few blankets over the extremely enticing naked Roy curled up on the carpet, and he enlists his own slacks from last night to protect his brother’s better-be-virgin eyes from his own bare ass.
“Hold your damn horses,” he calls towards the door, buttoning the fly as he staggers into the entryway. The phone starts to ring, but that can wait; he flings the door open with a really pretty good quip about cake first and formalities later waiting on the tip of his tongue.
Only problem is, the front step is swarmed with…
“Journalists,” Ed says blankly. “Fucking… journalists…”
Moving as one horrible, irrevocable monster made of microphones and notepads and seeking eyes, they all tilt their heads, crane their necks, and look past him at Roy-who is sitting up and stretching, extraordinarily recognizably, from the blanket nest where Ed left him.
Ed slams the door. He walks back through the hall. He picks up the phone.
“Brother?” Al’s voice gasps. “Brother, there’s-there are reporters everywhere-”
“I know,” Ed says.
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of-whatever you do, don’t open the door!”
“Too late,” Ed says.
There is a long pause.
“Oh,” Al says. “Oh, dear.”
“Yeah,” Ed says. “Did you get the cake?”
“Of course,” Al says. “Um… let me see if I can get through the crowd.”
The line clicks, and Ed goes and opens the door again.
“Hi,” he says. “No fucking comment.”
From behind him, Roy starts-slowly at first, and then with the low, deep richness that makes Ed’s fingertips tingle-to laugh.
“Oh, fuck you,” Ed says.
“Eloquently put,” Roy says.
That’s when the flashbulb goes.
On the upside, the headline about the Führer’s boyfriend is going to get overshadowed by the news that Ed has killed everyone.
[ADDITIONAL SEQUEL-Y GOODNESS]
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,305
Warnings: schmoop, language, fade-to-black sexytimes, major spoilers for Brotherhood
Summary: To say that waiting is not Ed's forte would be understating matters a bit.
Author's Note: Have some schmoop I wrote to de-stress last week, which is a follow-on to Leading the Blind, In the Shadow of Your Heart, and No Dawn, No Day; and which brings the total wordcount for this 'verse to something I don't even want to think about. \o/
THEY HAVE ALL BEEN BLOWN OUT
Roy’s going to win. Roy has to win. Roy’s probably never lost a game in his life-not a long game, not one that counted, and boy howdy does this one fuckin’ count.
Ed pauses in his feverish pacing to glare at the silent telephone and then at the inconceivably sluggish hands of the clock. The slow, slow tick and the pounding of his feet on the carpet runner are the only sounds in the house.
Ed’s not worried, obviously, because Roy will win, but that doesn’t make the waiting any easier.
He should be there. He should be in the center of the city, in the council hall, pacing off in the wings somewhere, watching and listening and tearing his hair out-he should be close, so he can push positivity directly at Roy, feed him hope, trade sheer faith for any of his fears. He should be there, except that when he got the news that shit was getting real, he was two days of train rides north, checking out the factory where they’re going to start manufacturing ink-pen cartridges prepped and ready to be lit by array.
Ed’s still planning to make all of Roy’s writing implements by hand, but once he got it into his head that the doors that his brainchildren opened for Roy should be available to everybody, he couldn’t get it out again, and this seems like the best way to smash windows of opportunity through all kinds of walls, and…
And the point is, that doesn’t matter, because he should be there-he should be hovering at Roy’s elbow and biting his fingernails, even if it’s a nasty habit or whatever. The point is that he should be there, but he isn’t, because he was thinking about himself. All right, so he was thinking about how he wants to help blind people to give himself some kind of purpose in life. But since Grumman chose this week to have some crazy-ass heart palpitations and then to rush-elect his successor, it all turned out to mean the same thing: Ed isn’t there.
Honestly, if he was, he’d probably just be gibbering incoherently and threatening the heavens and proceeding to throw up violently regardless of the result, but… still.
It’s okay, of course, because the result is going to be that Roy wins. There’s not really any doubt of that, although Ed’s trying to pretend like there is, because if he operates on the principle that they’re going to lose, the only possible outcomes are accuracy or elation. It’s disappointment-proof.
Fuck, though, Roy has to win; this is the only thing Roy’s ever really wanted. The only thing except… Ed, anyway.
That has to be equivalent. Doesn’t it? The balance of the universe has to owe him this. The give-and-take has to be willing to grant this tiny little favor. The world has to be that fair. And Grumman isn’t an idiot, and only about half of Parliament are total dipshits, and the people… they must be smart enough to vote for Roy. Right? And the voting is a third and a third and a third, since apparently Grumman was drunk when he started arranging his stupid finding-a-replacement plan, because everybody with more than two brain cells to their name knows it’s got to be Roy.
The problem is that for months Hakuro’s been waging a big, stupid propaganda campaign founded on his ‘experience’, which is pretty much his bullshit way of saying that he thinks Roy’s too young for responsibility-which is hilarious, in a let-me-laugh-my-knuckles-right-into-your-face kind of way. First of all, Roy was born ready for leadership-so thoroughly that he wants to figuratively-oversee things like the pattern of the curtains even though he can’t look at them for fuck’s sake. Second, Roy’s thirty-five now, which rounds up to forty, which means he might as well be a billion, so the whole thing is moot.
Besides, it’s not like Hakuro’s ever been on the front lines, or anywhere else that makes any damn difference. All he has ‘experience’ doing-as Ed is happy to declaim loudly until Al shushes him so they don’t get kicked out of another coffee shop-is being a giant fucking douchewaffle.
Roy’s angle is all calm dignity and stuff, though, so basically every time Hakuro’s camp starts slinging mud, he just sort of wipes it off and turns slowly to the witnesses and raises an eyebrow to say Did you see that? What a dreadful shame and then moves on. And obviously anybody with half a lick of common sense buried somewhere between their ears would nod and say I don’t want that other asshole signing off on my rights.
Except that there are people-real living, thinking, breathing people-who have met Roy and still back Hakuro. Ed doesn’t get that. It just doesn’t make sense, and it scares the crap out of him. Because if that can happen, what else might? Because what if this time, for the first time, for once, Roy doesn’t win? Because if people are the problem, what’s this world coming to-?
Hakuro is just such a fucking snake-a rattlesnake, probably; he makes a ton of noise, and you think maybe he’s just all sound and no substance, but it turns out he’s venomous as hell. Hakuro’s a rattlesnake, and Roy’s trying to grab him by the head and milk him without getting bitten, and… Ed’s not sure he likes that metaphor anymore.
Anyway, he should be there. He should be there instead of here, pacing the damn hallway, watching the cats take up his anxiety like a standard of war and prowl around the kitchen. He should be there, wringing his hands and probably vomiting in a couple minutes when they finally, finally finish counting all the fucking votes-
And he could be, even though he’d been a ways out this morning, except that he missed the phone call from Al about the last standing room ticket for the council hall, because he’d been making a call of his own.
“Rockbell Automail,” Winry said, “Rush Valley bran-”
“Hey,” he said. “It’s me.”
“Ed? What in the hell is wrong with you? In four months, I get six letters and five phone calls from Al, and not so much as a telegram from your dumb ass to tell me that you’re still alive-”
Girls. “Yeah, yeah, sorry and stuff. Y’know, I was thinking about automail.”
“Next time I see your dumb little-little!-face, I’m gonna brain you so hard I knock you back all four months, and you can start over with the le… wait, what?”
Ed cleared his throat and enunciated. “I was thinking about automail.”
There was absolute silence on the line.
“Uh,” Ed said, “hello? You still there?”
“You haven’t thought about automail in… ever,” Winry said in a hushed sort of voice. “It never really made sense to me-you’ve got such a scientific mind, and engineering isn’t all that different from alchemy, ’cause it’s all about figuring out what makes things up and what makes things work, and… but you’ve never been interested in automail.”
“Well, after Mom died, I didn’t have time,” Ed said. “And then after I had the stuff, it was… well, it was like an anchor, and an-I dunno, an accusation, and every time I used it, I had to remember that it was there because I’d failed everybody I cared about and everybody who cared about me. So I didn’t want to think about it any more than I had to. But… y’know… now I can.”
Winry was quiet for a long time-Ed was going to have to remember this one-except for breathing into the phone.
“I guess so, huh?” she said at last. “I mean, does that… never mind. So what where you thinking about automail?”
“I was thinking about…” Ed had been striving all morning to think of a tactful way to say it, but he and tact had always enjoyed what Roy would (tactfully) call ‘a fraught relationship’. “…organs.”
Winry went quiet again. Ed was on an unprecedented roll today.
“Organs,” she said after a brief eternity.
“Yeah,” Ed said. “Limbs are really great and all, but organs are just machines, too, when you get right down to it-why can’t we make automail hearts, or lungs, or…”
“Or eyes?” Winry asked.
So much for subtlety. Maybe it and tact were hiding together, in a distant mountain cave somewhere-someplace Ed would never find them.
“Sure,” he said, forging right ahead. “Why not?”
“You know exactly why not,” Winry said softly. “Every time before-”
“Every time before, it wasn’t you and me, Win,” Ed said. “There’s gotta be some way to prevent the other systems from rejecting it, and if anybody’s gonna find that way, it’s us-”
“Ed-”
“The human body’s stupid,” Ed said. “We can trick it somehow, we’ve got alchemy on our side, at least the theoretical parts-and we’re fucking brilliant, Win, if you’ve ever let anybody tell you different, they were wrong-”
“Brilliant is one thing,” Winry said, although Ed could’ve sworn the blood was audible rushing to her cheeks. “You’re talking about rewriting the rules of automail and medicine. That’s pushing the ‘brilliant’ thing a long way towards ‘crazy’.”
“That’s the way I like it,” Ed said.
Winry sighed feelingly. “Can’t say experience hadn’t taught me that, but… well, jeez, Ed, what brought this on? All of a sudden it’s time to revolutionize two extremely specialized disciplines at once, possibly by implementing a third?”
“Lay off the big words,” Ed said.
“Answer the question,” Winry said.
Ed gritted his teeth and tried to find a way out of it, but other than pretending the line had dropped-which Winry would not believe-and acting like something had blown up nearby-which she would believe, and which she would kill him for when she found out it was a lie-he was pretty damn stuck in this one.
“I dunno,” he managed after half a minute of high-quality equivocation. “What brings anything on? I just… well, y’know. Roy’s got his campaign, and Al’s in school learning all kinds of shit, and I’m just… well, I’m just… nothing. I’m not doing anything. I’m not building anything. And I’m so fucking bored, and I feel so fucking useless that it just eats away at me until I wish I’d never… except I don’t; I don’t wish that; just-I mean, maybe, if I’d been smarter, or faster, or better, I could’ve found a different…”
“Except you weren’t,” Winry said. “You were you, Ed. That’s always been enough for everybody else. Let it be enough for you, okay? You did all kinds of amazing stuff, and-I know what you mean; neither of us can really just… sit on our hands after all the crap we’ve been through. But I know you don’t really regret it, because I know you would’ve given anything for Al, and that includes the thing you assumed was your purpose in life. So… screw alchemy, Ed. Dwelling on losing it won’t make it an option again, and you don’t need it anyway-you can do even more amazing stuff just the way you are. You’re proving it right now, dummy. Let’s just take that and run with it. I’m game.”
“You’re the best, Win,” Ed said.
“Buttering me up isn’t going to get you out of the hard work,” Winry said. “You’ve got a hell of a lot of research to do and a hell of a lot of minds to change.”
“That’s the way I like it, too,” Ed said.
The hall phone rings.
Ed snatches the receiver out of the cradle and slaps it to his ear way too hard; it’s actually lucky that hand’s not metal anymore, or he might have just cracked his own skull. “Hello?”
“Which do you want first?” Al asks. “The good news, or the bad news?”
Ed’s throat has gone all sticky and funky and weird. “Bad.”
“The bad news,” Al says, “is that we’re going to have to host a big, fancy inauguration party, and all the generals are going to take one look at Roy and see that he’s in love with you, and all of your extremely clumsy attempts to conceal your mutual devotion will have been for nothing.” He sighs. “And the cats are never going to forgive us for bringing so many strangers into the apartment at once.”
“The…” As far as Ed knows, his brain is still in his head, but it doesn’t seem to be functioning. Maybe he hit himself with the phone hard enough to give himself a concussion. “…cats?”
“The good news,” Al says, “is that a really cute girl at the council hall asked for my telephone number. I gave her this one. Her name is Marisa; if she calls while I’m out, this time, please don’t demand that she get tested for sexually-transmitted diseases before she tries to hold my hand.”
“’S for your own good,” Ed says automatically. “Wait-but-”
“Yes, Brother,” Al says, and he’s trying for a tone of long-suffering exasperation, but Ed can hear his grin. “Roy is the Führer. It’ll probably take him a long time to get home, though; the crowds are unbelievab-”
The sound that tears free from Ed’s throat is not quite a cackle, not quite a scream, and not quite a cheer. It is, however, a crime against vocal cords and probably sufficient cause for the neighbors to call the police.
“Oh, dear,” Al says. “You know, I think I’m going to go pay Mrs. Hughes and Elysia a visit. And sleep on their couch. All night. So that you and Roy can… celebrate.”
“Fuck,” Ed says faintly.
“…well, yes, that’s what I’m anticipati-”
“He actually did it,” Ed says. “The crazy bastard actually did it.”
“You should’ve seen General Hakuro’s face, Brother. He looked like he’d been force-fed an unripe lemon.”
The laugh that wriggles out of Ed’s throat and dies a slow and painful death on the carpet makes Al snicker. What a traitor Ed’s precious baby brother is sometimes.
“I see you’re handling the whole matter with appropriate grace and composure,” Al says. “You’re going to make an excellent Führer’s wife.”
That wakes Ed’s brain up in a wrenching hurry: “A motherfucking excellent motherfucking what?”
“I think I’ll let Führer Mustang field this one,” Al says cheerfully.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Ed says as a terrible thought slowly dawns. “He’s gonna make me call him ‘Führer’ in-uh-places-where he-should shut the fuck up about it.”
“Thank you for providing me with that rich nightmare fodder,” Al says.
“Can it. Aw, shit. But-crowds-how long-?”
“Keep it in your pants, Brother. Goodness, if you’d told him you have a thing for men with supreme executive power, I bet he would’ve made a bid for succession years ago.”
“Eew,” Ed says. “No. Get your mind out of the gutter and keep it out, Alphonse Elric, or so help me, I will…”
Al’s voice is sweeter than syrupy pancakes on a brisk summer morning. “You’ll what, Brother?”
“Barf,” Ed says. “It’s not-damn it, Al, I just-really… want to see him. I feel like shit for missing this, and I really… I really want him to know how much I… I mean, I’m really… fucking… proud.”
Al sighs contentedly. “I’ll just… knock very loudly when I get back tomorrow, shall I?”
“You,” Ed says, “are evil,” and they both know he doesn’t mean it in the slightest.
“So I hear,” Al says. “Tell the Gen… oh, my. Tell the Führer that I’m proud of him, too.”
Ed grunts an affirmative.
“And tell him that I’ll bring cake,” Al says. “Am I forgiven now?”
“Depends on the cake,” Ed says.
“But of course,” Al says. “Well, I should go-you have a good night, Brother. A good, long night, if you know what I-”
“I know what you mean!” Ed says, face on fire. “Who the hell raised you? Goodnight, okay?”
“Love you, Brother!”
“Love you, too, jerk!”
Ed hangs up the phone and manages to frown at it for a full six seconds before he cracks a grin.
Despite the fact that Al talks to the cats all the time, when Ed asks them how much longer they think Roy’s likely to be, they stare at him like he’s crazy. Damn cats; who the hell are they to judge? These are the same cats that start milling around like furry piranhas and meowing deafeningly the second Al takes out a tuna can. They can’t afford for anyone to go deaf around here, not with Roy “I apologize for the… oversight” Mustang winking and elbow-nudging his way across the obstacle-ridden floor like blind jokes are going out of style.
Obviously, they can’t be, since blind jokes were never even in good taste, let alone in style. All things considered, they’re pretty unseemly.
While he waits, Ed pokes around in the icebox, attacks the dog’s bed with a lint brush, sketches a few arrays that might help convince the circulatory system to accept a steel interloper, closely examines the distribution of cat hair on the nearest couch cushion, writes a letter to Winry that consists of the words STILL NOT DEAD ARE YOU HAPPY NOW, and practices saying “It’s your turn to clean the bathroom, Führer Mustang” in his best impression of a suck-uppy political leech. The cats seem to have given up on him for good after that, and they ignore him completely while he sorts through some of the recent newspapers stacked on the end table and cuts out pictures of Roy to make a collage.
Just after one-fifteen, while he’s trying to decide whether to put the unflattering ones obviously taken by Hakuro supporters together in the middle or around the whole thing as a border, he hears an engine and then the slam of a car door.
Ed’s halfway down the front walk before Havoc has even climbed out of the driver’s seat. Roy must’ve heard his footsteps and calculated his speed-crafty bastard-because the newly-minted leader of Amestris leans down with his arms open and catches Ed at exactly the right moment.
This is the second-best hug of Ed’s life, beaten only by the first one that Al gave him on the Promised Day.
Roy’s grip is almost a little too tight; Ed loves when he can feel the strength in every line of Roy’s body where it presses to his. It makes him feel kind of-safe, and kind of… precious. Cherished. Important.
It makes him feel really fucking loved.
Roy smells faintly of cigar smoke, and when he loosens his arms just enough to kiss Ed thoroughly, he tastes like champagne. His fingers curl into Ed’s hair, and his eyelashes brush Ed’s cheek, and he pauses to whisper, “Edward, my love, we did it.”
“You did it,” Ed says. “Well, you and Major Hawkeye, and Captain Havoc, too-” Havoc raises a hand in appreciation; the other’s laden with a rather large bag that Ed can’t see the contents of. “-the whole team, I guess. Mostly you.”
“But you’re a part of me,” Roy says. “You are my reason for being and therefore my reason to succeed. And you’re so scrumptious that I could just eat you up-” This final clause he punctuates by nipping at Ed’s ears and neck and throat. “-and then you’d definitely be a component of-”
“Hey!” Ed… shouts. Not squeals, shouts. Which is probably not the most considerate thing to do at one in the morning when there are neighbors and shit, but apparently the new Führer is a cannibal, so they might as well know.
“His Superior Magnificent Preeminence is a little bit drunk,” Havoc says helpfully.
“Never woulda guessed,” Ed says, writhing away from Roy’s extremely insistent tongue.
“I feel entitled,” Roy says. He laughs, low and rich, against Ed’s skin. “God, I feel invincible.”
Havoc grins around the ubiquitous cigarette-replacing toothpick and hefts the bag-of-whatever. “Why don’t I let you go be invincible inside, boss?”
“Saucy,” Roy says, fumbling to seize Ed’s hand. “And an excellent suggestion, Captain.”
“I try,” Havoc says. “Lemme get the door.”
Roy finally catches Ed’s hand in his right, reaching out with the left-immediately, Hitomi trots up from where she’d been waiting at a safe distance and pushes her nose at his palm. Thus lopsidedly linked, the three of them stagger back up the walk, where Havoc’s holding the door open.
“G’night, Chief,” Havoc says. “The ultra-Chief. And g’night, Führer Mustang.”
“Oh, ha,” Roy says. “Goodnight. You’re fired.”
“Cool,” Havoc says. “Should I pick you up at the normal time tomorrow, or are you going to rest up for a while?”
“The normal time,” Roy says. “Demonstration of commitment. Critical stage. Adjustment period. Verbs optional.”
It takes Ed a long and awkward moment to realize that the discontented growl he just heard came from his own mouth. At least that explains why Havoc and Roy are staring at him bewilderedly-well, Havoc is staring at him; Roy’s staring just past his right ear.
“Ah,” Roy says. “Perhaps an hour or two later than the normal time, Captain.”
“Good choice, sir,” Havoc says. “Here, lemme just…”
The bag he’s been lugging around ends up next to the shoe rack; and then the door shuts; and then Hitomi sniffs at Ed’s collage-in-progress; and then the Führer yawns hugely, kicks his boots off, and starts rummaging in the bag.
“I brought you something,” he says.
“I hope it’s a lobotomy,” Ed says.
“Evidently I missed the memo that everyone’s a comedian tonight,” Roy says. “I think I’ve… aha.”
With a flourish, he presents… a dishtowel.
Is this some sort of household-chores thing? Because Ed is going to strangle him with it if…
“Wait a moment,” Roy says. He drags his fingertips down the front and then flips it to show the other side of the fabric.
Turns out it’s not just a dishtowel-it’s a dishtowel with a horrifically bad embroidered portrait of Roy’s face.
“In a lifetime,” Roy says, “how many opportunities does a man have to purchase memorabilia of himself?”
Ed’s trying not to laugh, but seriously, this thing is an insult to Roy’s parents and an insult to thread and an insult to dishes-
“I thought you might occasionally see fit to mop up particularly hideous spills with my face,” Roy says. “When I asked Major Hawkeye about the resemblance, and she went suspiciously quiet for a very long time before saying you would ‘probably appreciate the creative liberties and the overall aesthetic,’ I knew it was a winner.”
Roy holds it out, but Ed’s still not sure he wants to touch this thing; is the crazy contagious?
“It…” Roy hesitates, which gets Ed’s attention in a hurry, and then smiles, which melts Ed’s stomach just as quick. “It was also the only item on offer that cost exactly five hundred and twenty cens.”
Ed’s whole body stops for a second, and then he’s snatching the towel and slinging it heedlessly over his shoulder, the better to grab the lapels of that damned dress uniform and drag Roy in for a wet, messy kiss.
He pretends he doesn’t see Hitomi catching the towel in her mouth and waiting for a polite moment to offer it back to her master. She’s a great dog, but she really doesn’t get the whole dramatic-seductive-gesture thing, no matter how many times Ed tries to explain.
In the morning, as promised, there is a very loud knocking at the door.
Ed drags himself upright and scrubs at his eyes as he tries to get his bearings. He draws a few blankets over the extremely enticing naked Roy curled up on the carpet, and he enlists his own slacks from last night to protect his brother’s better-be-virgin eyes from his own bare ass.
“Hold your damn horses,” he calls towards the door, buttoning the fly as he staggers into the entryway. The phone starts to ring, but that can wait; he flings the door open with a really pretty good quip about cake first and formalities later waiting on the tip of his tongue.
Only problem is, the front step is swarmed with…
“Journalists,” Ed says blankly. “Fucking… journalists…”
Moving as one horrible, irrevocable monster made of microphones and notepads and seeking eyes, they all tilt their heads, crane their necks, and look past him at Roy-who is sitting up and stretching, extraordinarily recognizably, from the blanket nest where Ed left him.
Ed slams the door. He walks back through the hall. He picks up the phone.
“Brother?” Al’s voice gasps. “Brother, there’s-there are reporters everywhere-”
“I know,” Ed says.
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of-whatever you do, don’t open the door!”
“Too late,” Ed says.
There is a long pause.
“Oh,” Al says. “Oh, dear.”
“Yeah,” Ed says. “Did you get the cake?”
“Of course,” Al says. “Um… let me see if I can get through the crowd.”
The line clicks, and Ed goes and opens the door again.
“Hi,” he says. “No fucking comment.”
From behind him, Roy starts-slowly at first, and then with the low, deep richness that makes Ed’s fingertips tingle-to laugh.
“Oh, fuck you,” Ed says.
“Eloquently put,” Roy says.
That’s when the flashbulb goes.
On the upside, the headline about the Führer’s boyfriend is going to get overshadowed by the news that Ed has killed everyone.
[ADDITIONAL SEQUEL-Y GOODNESS]