FMA -- Unwound
Title: Unwound
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed, Ed/Hei
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,040
Warnings: language, aaaaaaangst, major SPOILERS for '03/CoS
Prompt: Neon is the birthday girl~
Summary: When the wind stirs, human beings tangle together, and it's hell to pry them loose.
Author's Note: For Neon's birthday! ♥ …uh, late! ♥ …and I know I have a ton of comments to reply to, but I am busy-busy-busy, so I'm going to throw this fic as far as I can and run in the opposite direction please enjoy a hopeful-ending angstbucket in the meantime! ♥
And when you kiss me
I’m happy enough to die
- “I’m Not Calling You a Liar” - Florence + the Machine -
UNWOUND
I.
It’s the wind that does it. Oh, God, if there is any justice in the world, it’s the wind; it’s not some festering infection inside of him that will hound him to his grave.
Doesn’t he know better by now?
Certainly Roy can’t be faulted for standing to stretch and pausing to look out the window. Surely Roy can’t be blamed for the way his eyes track motion, for the way the wind drags pale petals from the trees, for the way they tumble and tangle into vibrant yellow hair, for the way Ed flails and flings his hair loose and then unleashes a grin like a flashbomb as Alphonse grasps his shoulders to hold him still. Of course Roy can’t be held responsible for the fact that his guts tighten until he can’t breathe.
It’s the wind that does it.
It’s the wind that carries that spark into the pit of his stomach; it’s the wind that banks it, feeds it, fans it until the flames seethe through his veins and spread beneath his skin.
He’s not a man anymore-he’s a wildfire contained in flesh. Wildfire has no feelings; wildfire has no will. Wildfire has neither restraint nor control. When the wind drives him, he flows-
It’s at the long-awaited end of an exhausting day that Roy steps out into the hall, shouldering on his coat, smoothing the lapels, blinking through the low-grade sting of the text that feels imprinted on his eyes. It’s almost midnight, and he’s almost ready to surrender this for good-he might have given up already if it wasn’t for the weight of the expectations, if it wasn’t for all of the people relying on him to persevere. It’s late; he’s tired; he’s cynical; he’s scared; he’s lonely-
And someone grabs his sleeve.
Ed’s eyes are the color of a candle flame, and the way they dance is even more enticing.
Will the whimper of Oh, God, not now that echoes in Roy’s brain be levied when his soul is judged?
“Yo, Mustang,” Ed says-the epitome of charm, as usual. He’s still holding Roy’s sleeve, gloved metal fingers curled into the cuff. “We need to talk.”
“No,” Roy says, trying to tug free, “I need to sleep.”
“Sleep is for the weak,” Ed says. “Look-”
Ah, the one thing Roy cannot afford to do.
“We had a deal, Colonel. Deal is that if I go out on your damn missions like a fucking grown-up and get your damn results like a fucking grown-up, then you treat me like one.”
“Do you have that in writing?” Roy asks.
“Shut up,” Ed says. He’s still gripping Roy’s sleeve; Roy’s fingertips are tingling at the simple proximity; just what sort of creature is this child? “I need leads, Colonel. I need your connections, and I need all your damn craftiness. I’m holding up my end of the bargain-you better do the same.”
“Or what?” Roy asks.
Ed’s gaze flits to Roy’s mouth. He swallows. His cheeks go pink, and his fingers tighten, and his shoulders tense.
Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no.
Disinterest he could resist. Disdain he could withstand. Disapproval he could weather.
But this-
If it was anyone else, anyone on the planet but this terrible, brilliant, broken, precocious boy, it would be too easy from here-it’s the oldest dance in the world, the dip and sway; it’s the simplest rhythm; it’s the finest temptation. What Roy wouldn’t give to find out how damnation tastes-
He lifts his hand and doesn’t let it tremble as he touches Ed’s heated cheek.
“Get some sleep, Edward,” he says; and if his voice comes out as a whisper, it’s because he’s trying not to howl. “First thing tomorrow, we’ll-”
Ed seizes his lapels and hauls him down into more of an oral assault than a kiss.
Damnation tastes like nectar, and Roy knows better-Roy is better-than this.
He twists the fingers of his right hand into Ed’s hair, cups the sharp-emerging jaw with his left, and teaches the brightest young man he’s ever met how to make promises without uttering a word.
For four days, the wish overpowers his will, and the inconceivable, the inadmissible, the indescribable becomes reality. He doesn’t quite believe it-how could he?-and of course that makes it even easier to pretend that this can go on.
For four days, every flickering shadow is Ed’s coattail; every creak of the floorboards is his boot tread; every shift of air is a breath of laughter from his lips.
For four days, Roy feels Riza’s eyes on the back of his head, striving valiantly to bore through his skull and root out the source of the distraction.
On the fifth day, he finds the strength to draw the line.
Ed thinks that Roy is playing when he pulls back, and watching the grin fade slowly from radiance to guarded fear feels rather a lot like being sucker-punched.
Roy flattens his hand on Ed’s chest. The distance helps; Ed’s skipping heartbeat doesn’t. Roy keeps his voice low and his eyes unreadable. “We have to stop this.”
Ed’s breath leaves him in a single gasp like he’s been struck, but after that he doesn’t move. The silent stillness is worse-Roy can’t look at him, can’t bear to see it sinking in, can’t watch his clever cat’s eyes sharpen as he comprehends and then gleam with the disappointment.
“Why?” Ed asks.
That’s all-no protest, no wail, no sarcasm. Just the worst of all the questions, simply stated, deeply felt.
“Because if you asked me to risk everything,” Roy says, “I would. And I would lose. Neither of us has a knack for forgiveness.”
“I don’t care,” Ed says.
Roy strokes his hair back from his forehead, savoring it, treasuring- “There are more important things that need your energy.”
Ed tilts his head down, and his bangs hide his eyes. “S’pose so.”
“Later,” Roy says, helplessly, powerless against this child. “Someday, when it’s safe-we can have and be anything you want. But not… yet, not now. It’s too dangerous for both of us. There’s too much to do, and too much at stake.” He guides a silky wisp back behind the curve of Ed’s ear with his fingertip, fighting to focus on the sensation through the slamming rhythm of his own heart. This is your last damn chance, Mustang; don’t you ever forget this; this might have to sustain you for the rest of your sad little life. Then again-that might not be too long. “Someday, Edward. Not today. Please don’t ask me to give you today.”
“I get it,” Ed says in a low voice. His eyes are glassy-not wet, but… crystalline. His whole face is very still except for a tremble to his jaw, so slight that only the keenest observer of the planes of his features would notice it at all. His shoulders have hiked up half an inch, and his gaze is fixed just past Roy’s face. The signs are surprisingly few and surprisingly minuscule, but together they’re enough to make Edward Elric look like an animal kicked one time too many.
“Edward,” Roy says slowly.
“No,” Ed says. “I get it. It’s fine.”
Someday he will, and someday it will be. Someday he’ll look back and see this encounter through a new filter of age and experience, and he’ll realize that Roy isn’t trying to protect himself. Someday he’ll realize that Roy was already destroyed by the time the words passed between them-but that the words were his last chance to offer Ed salvation. Someday he’ll understand that this was kind, and maybe, maybe, by then he’ll have learned how to forgive.
Maybe, when that day comes, Ed will still want him, and the world will part its petals and tilt up towards the light.
Or maybe Roy will die alone, like he fucking deserves.
“One thing,” Ed says.
Anything but forever, Roy thinks. Ed’s waiting, eyes wide and pinned on his, so he manages a nod.
Ed’s labored smile quavers at the edges. “Just… when does it stop feeling like-this?”
Roy Mustang is a disgusting human being. In five days, he taught a prodigy how to fall in love and how to kiss like the world’s burning, and now he’s going to teach him how to lie.
“Soon,” he says softly. “It’ll never be this bad again.”
Ed won’t forgive him this.
II.
Alfons knows that there is something wrong inside of Edward Elric. There is something twisted buried in him; something damaged behind his darting golden eyes; something flawed that fuels his extraordinary limbs. There is something incorrectly made that beats inside his ribcage, suspended by the slender veins Alfons will only ever see in one of those pale wrists.
Alfons knows that there is something wrong because Ed shoots glances at dark-haired men when he thinks no one is watching-glances that are one part bitter and one part wistful.
Alfons knows that there is something wrong in Ed because he recognizes it from the mirror.
Everybody knows that nobody has money to spare, which makes the program grant from the university even more of a triumph. The whole team keeps buying Alfons drinks, even though all he did was write out what he knew that the board would want to hear, and Ed keeps half-smiling over the rim of his glass-enthralling, enigmatic, untouchable.
Isn’t he? Or is it just that Alfons doesn’t dare to reach for him?
More drinks, and a few more still, and then he finds himself stumbling out into an autumn night tormented by a brisk and playful wind. He can just smell the coming winter’s ice in the air; he can almost feel it in his bones. He draws a deep breath and regrets it-no surprise, it catches in his lungs and comes up racking.
Ed’s left hand settles very gently on his shoulder as he straightens. “You okay?”
Alfons smiles in a way he hopes is reassuring; he doesn’t have the breath for I’m dying, you’re crazy, and we’re both diseased in the soul-I’d say everything’s wonderful.
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? There is a particular sort of wonder to Ed. There’s something otherworldly about him, something entrancing, intoxicating, inescapable-
There is something with its own gravity, something that drags Alfons in as if there was a rope around his ribs. There is something that sets off tremors in his spine and signal flares in his stomach; there is something that makes his heart flit and his thoughts freeze.
There is something that owns him.
Ed is so strange-so small, and so solid; so fine, and so ferocious; so perfect, and so poorly-assembled-
Ed has been built of impossible pieces: histories that can’t have happened, mechanical limbs that shouldn’t exist, colors that oughtn’t be real. But he’s tangible, isn’t he? He’s here. He’s living proof of the inexplicable. And he doesn’t think there’s anything extraordinary about him.
Alfons has tried many times to despair of Ed for all of his not-inconsiderable flaws. Edward Elric is pigheadedly stubborn, rude, reductionist, distant, condescending, parochial, and moody in the extreme.
But he has the largest and the finest and the warmest and the most welcoming heart of anyone that Alfons has ever known. Alfons thinks it used to be wider even than it is nowadays-that Ed’s capacity for love used to extend to anyone and anything, but something, maybe many somethings, wounded him so badly that now he hesitates. His instinct is still to open up his arms and his generosity, but experience has taught him how to hesitate. The world has taught him how to hide.
“Come on,” Ed says softly, taking Alfons’s hand in his gentle left one and leading them in through the back door, through Gracia’s shop, through the breathless humid perfume and the rows of silhouettes. “You’re going to drink some water, and then you’re going to brush your teeth, and then you’re going to go to bed, and in the morning I’ll say ‘I told you so’ just loud enough to make your headache worse.”
Alfons fists his free hand in Ed’s shirtfront and pushes him up against the wall behind the hyacinths. Ed’s breath chokes out of his throat in surprise; Alfons’s knuckles graze the leather strap of the prosthetic through the fabric of the shirt; Ed looks up into Alfons’s eyes.
So strange, that he can be so little-that he can seem so fragile, that he can be towered over and gazed down upon. So strange, that he could fold right into Alfons’s arms, tuck his head under Alfons’s chin, press his cheek to Alfons’s shoulder, when the passion and the volume and the fierceness make him seem so big. So strange that he can be so small and contain so much.
Alfons breathes once, twice, three times; the air is so thick with the cloying scent of the flowers that his head spins. Part of him thinks this is an inexcusably terrible place for a kiss; and part of him thinks that he won’t do it, that he’s waited too long now to follow through, that it’s too late, that it’s always too late-
Part of him isn’t thinking at all.
He curls his fingers tighter into Ed’s shirt and leans in to find Ed’s mouth with his. He keeps his eyes open until the last second-he can’t miss; he’d just die if he missed; and he’s never going to get to see Ed quite like this again. Life’s not large enough to hold more than one moment of absolute perfection.
Ed is pale blue with sparks of yellow in the broken moonlight, and then Alfons’s eyelids drop, and Ed is radiating warmth and a dry-lipped hunger. He’s a sharply-drawn breath and a quick heartbeat; he’s a beautifully asymmetrical human body rising upward; he’s two fingers twining into the hair at the nape of Alfons’s neck to pull them both in closer-
But then he’s gently pushing Alfons back.
The concrete world trembles back into focus, blue light and black outlines and Ed’s wide eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s not-you, it’s just-I just-” He takes a deep breath, raises a shaky hand to smooth wrinkles out of Alfons’s shirt, and smiles thinly. “There was… somebody. Before, back home. Wouldn’t you know it, he set my whole world on fire.” He smiles, and the smile tilts a little wryer still; his eyes dart up to meet Alfons’s and don’t waver. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before he pines for anyone, least of all me, but-I know he made it. I know he’s still out there, being a giant, gorgeous, cocky bastard. Thinking too much, running himself ragged, driving everybody crazy, leaving infatuated women in his wake everywhere he goes. But you know me. I can’t let it go. Can’t forget, can’t even try. And the longer I cling to it, the more sacred it is in my head, and the more I just… belong… to him. Even now, the stupid fucker’s got me on a leash-how’s that for irony, huh?”
He sighs, smiling still, and straightens Alfons’s suspenders, left hand so delicately meticulous, right hand moving slow.
“Shit,” he says. “It’s not you. It’s just that it wouldn’t be fair to you, because he and I never finished any of what we started, and I can’t offer you any of the parts of me that he still owns.” He shakes his head lightly, and the long tail of gold hair swings behind him. “I’m a lot of things-I mean, for starters, I’m a freak in more ways than I can even tell you-”
“You’re not,” Alfons says, powerless to stop himself from cringing.
“I don’t mean for this,” Ed says, eyes darkly amused momentarily before they’re flat and solemn again. “I’m a foul-mouthed cripple with guilt complexes and authority issues, and that’s only page one of the report. But I’m not a liar. And I’m not going to promise you anything I know I can’t give.”
“I don’t want promises,” Alfons says. His head’s reeling from all the alcohol-and, worse than that, from Ed. Oh, God, he kissed-he really-when exactly did he go mad? “I just don’t want to die alone.”
“It’s not about who you die with,” Ed says. “It’s about what you die for.” He lifts his hands to lay one against each side of Alfons’s jaw. The left is warm; the right is clumsy. “A life’s not worth living unless you’ve got something worth dying for.”
“You don’t have to lie to me,” Alfons says, and his hands find Ed’s waist, Ed’s hips, Ed’s spine. “Just love me.”
Ed smiles his devastating, cat-eyed smile.
“All right,” he says.
III.
This one’s not like the others.
This one starts with opening the office door, and he can hear his own footfalls on the carpet. Roy’s head is bowed low over the desk; he has one hand splayed on an open file while the other takes careful notes, and his head tilts gently back and forth as he looks between them. He stills at the sound of steps but doesn’t raise his head.
“You got your stripes back,” Ed says. “I’m glad. You looked kinda naked without ’em.”
“You wouldn’t like to see me naked?” Roy asks. His lips move, his voice resonates, but he stays so motionless that Ed can see his bangs swaying gently in the draft through the door. He hasn’t glanced up. “I daresay you led me on.”
The laugh feels more like a bark as it rolls off of Ed’s tongue and bounces towards its target. Figures that he turns into a dog the second he walks back in here. “I led you on? That’s news to me, Colo… what the hell are you now?”
“I’m a major general,” Roy says. Even the end of his pen isn’t budging; how is he doing that? “I’ve been working hard.”
“That is news,” Ed says.
“It’s easier,” Roy says, looking up at last, “without distractions.”
Roy’s one eye is so intense Ed wants to step back-but that’s stupid, and he’s run away before, and it never helps.
Roy’s definitely breathing, at any rate; the light gleams off of the medals on his chest. Ed swallows and scuffs his right foot on the floor.
“You know what’s really shitty?” he asks.
Roy-smiles. It’s a miserable, tired, sardonic smile at best, but it counts. “Do tell.”
“I miss you,” Ed says. “Too much to hold a grudge. It’s crap.”
Roy’s sharp eye softens, and the right corner of his mouth turns up. “If it’s any consolation, the world is a wasteland without you.”
The grin splits Ed’s face without his permission. “I bet you say that to all the cute young male subordinates you dry-humped in a hallway.”
The dark eye glitters-humor, and heat. “Only the ones I’d do it to again.”
Ed shoves his hands into his pockets, kicks at the carpet again for good measure, squares his shoulders, and starts over towards the desk. Roy lays the pen down, pushes his chair back, and sets his elbows on the armrests to steeple his fingers in midair. Bastard looks like a paragon, as usual.
Ed will be the first to admit that he’s gutsier at times like this-times when there’s nothing whatsoever to lose. Ordinarily he’d probably chicken out long before his affected swagger brings him all the way around the desk to lean back against it, where he crosses his legs at the ankle and folds his arms across his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Roy’s smile twists. “Me, too.”
“Not just in general,” Ed says. “I’m sorry I didn’t have the balls to say goodbye.”
Roy huffs out a breath that might have been intended as a laugh. “You were a bit preoccupied.”
“Nah,” Ed says, digging his fingers into his arm-and jeez, that kind of hurts; this one is real vivid. “I was a fucking coward. I thought maybe if I didn’t say it, it’d be less true.” He makes a point of rolling his eyes. “Should’ve learned from you that that doesn’t work worth a damn.”
“Touché,” Roy says lightly. “You know, I… I’ve spent all of this time trying not to hold it against you. And what I’ve come to realize is that you were doing what you felt was right, at the expense of your personal happiness. It wasn’t about me; it certainly wasn’t about you and me being together. It was simple mathematics-the lives at stake vastly outnumbered the two of us. Outnumbered the three of us, given Alphonse; I suppose he probably counts for ten-but even so. It wasn’t vengeance or rejection of me or of him or of Amestris. It was bigger than that. It was greater than any of us.”
There’s something weird going on. Usually Roy’s much more handsy and much less mouthy. Well-pretty mouthy, actually, but not talky-mouthy. Usually he’s using his tongue for something very different than discussing the smoldering wreckage of what-ifs and maybes that the two of them left behind.
Ed frowns and tries to focus.
“You’re looking a little rough around the edges,” he says.
Really, Roy’s looking a little clear around the edges-detailed, distinct, defined. The hem of the eyepatch is worn almost to fraying in a couple places; white’s seeping into the jet-black at his temples; there are little lines like lightning at the outside corner of his eye.
“A young sage once suggested that I give up sleeping,” Roy says with a tantalizing shadow of the old smirk. “You, however, look positively radiant.”
Ed fights the rush of blood to his face and loses by a landslide. “Oh, Jesus, shut up. Your crappy pickup lines aren’t gonna cut it anymore.”
“No?” Roy muses. “Pity. In every way, it seems, I slide gracelessly into decrepitude while you ascend to absolute magnificence.”
Ed’s stomach is starting to twist itself up in ways he doesn’t think he likes. “Nice to know some things haven’t changed,” he says. “For instance, you trying to pull the moves on anything with a heartbeat. Kinda reassuring. How’s about we cut the chitchat and get to business?”
Roy blinks at him several times before speaking. “I beg your pardon?”
“Y’know,” Ed says. He crosses to the chair and climbs up to straddle Roy’s lap. “Business.”
“Oh,” Roy says, slightly breathlessly. “Business indeed.”
Ed runs the pads of his thumbs around the curves of Roy’s ears and strokes them through the little fans of pale gray hairs. They’re coarser than the others; whether or not the color’s compromised, though, Roy’s hair is still thick and smooth and irresistible for burying your fingers in, and Ed doesn’t resist the impulse.
Roy’s hands settle on his hips and gently squeeze. The solitary eyebrow arches, and-slowly, slowly, slowly-Roy’s whole face gives over to a delighted grin.
“Hey,” Ed says. “There you go. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Jesus, you looked so fucking sad this time.”
“I told you,” Roy says. “What I was and what I wanted lost meaning when I lost you.”
“And I called bullshit on that,” Ed says.
“My dearest Edward,” Roy breathes against Ed’s jaw, mouth tinglingly moist along his throat, “I only exist to keep struggling towards your expectations. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why you set them so high.”
“Who you callin’ so short he overcompensates with impossibly lofty standards?” Ed asks, and he leans into the kiss right as Roy starts laughing.
This is everything he remembered and everything he extrapolated and everything he could have wished for. One more second, just one more second of this-damn, if he wouldn’t gladly starve to death for a forever made of single seconds of Roy Mustang’s kiss-
“And they say,” Roy whispers, smiling, one eye pinning both of his, “that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. You’ve learned several.”
“Picked a few things up from a Frenchman,” Ed says, loudly to be able to hear himself over the sound of his own heart. “And… got some practice before that, too.”
Roy’s hands trail up and down Ed’s thighs, but his face doesn’t change. “You fell in love.”
“Except I was still in love with you the whole time,” Ed says, and that makes Roy startle, which is weird, because it’s not like he hasn’t said it a hundred times in the mushy ones. “What?”
“Nothing,” Roy says. “It’s just so terribly you to have so much to give. Tell me about-her?”
“Very funny,” Ed says. “Oh, fuck you; don’t pretend you’re surprised. Whatever. He was brilliant and shy and committed, and he believed in things. Sky-blue eyes. The sky was his first love, and I was the last. He’s dead. My fault.”
Roy’s fingertips skim slowly up his cheek. “You can’t keep score.”
“Can and will,” Ed says. “Well? What about you? There must have been somebody else. Probably an encyclopedia of somebodies.”
Roy just… smiles.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Ed says.
“Ah,” Roy says. “There was a brief affair with an excellent brandy. And a fling with gin. And the long, slow wooing of whiskey.”
Ed’s heart sinks so fast and so heavily that he half expects the rest of his body to collapse into the vacuum. “Don’t say that. Don’t do that.”
“When I have the time for sleep,” Roy says, “often that’s the only way to find it.”
“I’ve played that game,” Ed says. “There’s no way to win.”
“I know,” Roy says. “But don’t you ever get so tired of trying?”
“Lately,” Ed says, “yeah. Yeah, I do. And it fucking sucks.”
Roy smiles faintly. “That it does.”
“Okay,” Ed says, rolling his hips and gleeing in the little gasp he earns for his trouble. “I think that’s enough conversation, don’t you?”
“Oh, God,” Roy breathes, dark eye alight. “You are sin incarnate. And you’re so damn beautiful.”
Ed ducks in an attempt to distract from the way he’s turning pink like a twelve-year-old girl. “Christ, Mustang, I’m already sitting in your lap with my legs open; you don’t have to butter me up.”
“It’s not flattery,” Roy says. “I should have told you when I had the chance. I should have told you every time I saw you, and the world stopped turning. I should have swept you off your feet and never let you down, to hell with consequences-”
Even here, now, when he should be tame, the bastard knows how to rip Ed’s heart into bloody tatters. Ed looks away; looking at him’s too much-which sucks, because even with the years and the stress and the sacrifices catching up, Roy’s still pretty damn good to look at.
Aw, shit. The walls are starting to warp and fade a little, and the window-frame is going fuzzy.
“C’mon,” Ed says, rocking forward more urgently. “We’ve got to get to the good part, or I’ll be horny and obnoxious for days.”
Usually Roy starts moaning and grinding even before the invitation, but this time he gazes up (up!) at Ed bewilderedly.
“Are you… sure?” he asks.
Ed bests the urge to growl; they don’t have time for this. “Of course I’m sure. For fuck’s sake, it’s not enough for you to be the love of my fucking life and live in a different universe? You have to cockblock me in my dream, too?”
Roy stares at him.
Ed stares back.
Roy wets his lips with the tip of his tongue and says slowly, “What do you mean, your dream?”
Ed wakes up to a dim sunrise outside the window. Sunrise is misleading, though, because autumn in Edinburgh means full darkness at four in the afternoon. You can’t trust the light up here. Time’s different.
He can feel that there’s a crease on his cheek from where he’s been sleeping on a fold in the blankets. More importantly, he’s half-hard, and Al is puttering around the kitchenette behind him, which is presumably the origin of the glorious bacon smell.
Forty-five seconds of cold-shower thoughts later, Ed rolls over and watches his brother derive pure bliss from the first bite of buttered toast.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Ed says.
“Can it wait five minutes?” Al says. “I was going to scramble the eggs in the bacon pan so that they take up some of the flavor.”
“You’re a genius,” Ed says. “But I meant… not here-here.” He sits up, pushes his hair back, and draws a deep breath. “I want to go home.”
Al pauses-which means a lot, given how much he likes breakfast. He likes everything, of course, but breakfast especially.
“That is a very significant decision, Brother,” he says.
“I know,” Ed says. “But look at us, Al. We’re fucking nomads fighting-and losing-and other people’s wars. We don’t have any friends, we don’t have any money, we don’t have any future-no alchemy, no connections, no education, no power at all. We’re just drifting. And I’m so tired, Al. I’m so tired of being noble instead of being happy. I just want to go home. And-” He forces himself to sit up straighter, forces himself to swallow, forces himself to breathe. “-Al, if you come with me, I will get there or die trying.”
The silence is impressive and impregnable. Al doesn’t break it-he waits a long moment and then grins.
“What the hell’s so funny?” Ed asks dazedly.
“Nothing,” Al says. “It’s just that that’s the most like you that you’ve sounded since we wound up here. And of course I’m with you, Brother; you ought to know you don’t even have to ask. Now come here and eat your breakfast and tell me where we’re going to start.”
The thing is, the boundaries between living and dying and dreaming all start to unravel when you go about it right.
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed, Ed/Hei
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5,040
Warnings: language, aaaaaaangst, major SPOILERS for '03/CoS
Prompt: Neon is the birthday girl~
Summary: When the wind stirs, human beings tangle together, and it's hell to pry them loose.
Author's Note: For Neon's birthday! ♥ …uh, late! ♥ …and I know I have a ton of comments to reply to, but I am busy-busy-busy, so I'm going to throw this fic as far as I can and run in the opposite direction please enjoy a hopeful-ending angstbucket in the meantime! ♥
And when you kiss me
I’m happy enough to die
- “I’m Not Calling You a Liar” - Florence + the Machine -
UNWOUND
I.
It’s the wind that does it. Oh, God, if there is any justice in the world, it’s the wind; it’s not some festering infection inside of him that will hound him to his grave.
Doesn’t he know better by now?
Certainly Roy can’t be faulted for standing to stretch and pausing to look out the window. Surely Roy can’t be blamed for the way his eyes track motion, for the way the wind drags pale petals from the trees, for the way they tumble and tangle into vibrant yellow hair, for the way Ed flails and flings his hair loose and then unleashes a grin like a flashbomb as Alphonse grasps his shoulders to hold him still. Of course Roy can’t be held responsible for the fact that his guts tighten until he can’t breathe.
It’s the wind that does it.
It’s the wind that carries that spark into the pit of his stomach; it’s the wind that banks it, feeds it, fans it until the flames seethe through his veins and spread beneath his skin.
He’s not a man anymore-he’s a wildfire contained in flesh. Wildfire has no feelings; wildfire has no will. Wildfire has neither restraint nor control. When the wind drives him, he flows-
It’s at the long-awaited end of an exhausting day that Roy steps out into the hall, shouldering on his coat, smoothing the lapels, blinking through the low-grade sting of the text that feels imprinted on his eyes. It’s almost midnight, and he’s almost ready to surrender this for good-he might have given up already if it wasn’t for the weight of the expectations, if it wasn’t for all of the people relying on him to persevere. It’s late; he’s tired; he’s cynical; he’s scared; he’s lonely-
And someone grabs his sleeve.
Ed’s eyes are the color of a candle flame, and the way they dance is even more enticing.
Will the whimper of Oh, God, not now that echoes in Roy’s brain be levied when his soul is judged?
“Yo, Mustang,” Ed says-the epitome of charm, as usual. He’s still holding Roy’s sleeve, gloved metal fingers curled into the cuff. “We need to talk.”
“No,” Roy says, trying to tug free, “I need to sleep.”
“Sleep is for the weak,” Ed says. “Look-”
Ah, the one thing Roy cannot afford to do.
“We had a deal, Colonel. Deal is that if I go out on your damn missions like a fucking grown-up and get your damn results like a fucking grown-up, then you treat me like one.”
“Do you have that in writing?” Roy asks.
“Shut up,” Ed says. He’s still gripping Roy’s sleeve; Roy’s fingertips are tingling at the simple proximity; just what sort of creature is this child? “I need leads, Colonel. I need your connections, and I need all your damn craftiness. I’m holding up my end of the bargain-you better do the same.”
“Or what?” Roy asks.
Ed’s gaze flits to Roy’s mouth. He swallows. His cheeks go pink, and his fingers tighten, and his shoulders tense.
Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no.
Disinterest he could resist. Disdain he could withstand. Disapproval he could weather.
But this-
If it was anyone else, anyone on the planet but this terrible, brilliant, broken, precocious boy, it would be too easy from here-it’s the oldest dance in the world, the dip and sway; it’s the simplest rhythm; it’s the finest temptation. What Roy wouldn’t give to find out how damnation tastes-
He lifts his hand and doesn’t let it tremble as he touches Ed’s heated cheek.
“Get some sleep, Edward,” he says; and if his voice comes out as a whisper, it’s because he’s trying not to howl. “First thing tomorrow, we’ll-”
Ed seizes his lapels and hauls him down into more of an oral assault than a kiss.
Damnation tastes like nectar, and Roy knows better-Roy is better-than this.
He twists the fingers of his right hand into Ed’s hair, cups the sharp-emerging jaw with his left, and teaches the brightest young man he’s ever met how to make promises without uttering a word.
For four days, the wish overpowers his will, and the inconceivable, the inadmissible, the indescribable becomes reality. He doesn’t quite believe it-how could he?-and of course that makes it even easier to pretend that this can go on.
For four days, every flickering shadow is Ed’s coattail; every creak of the floorboards is his boot tread; every shift of air is a breath of laughter from his lips.
For four days, Roy feels Riza’s eyes on the back of his head, striving valiantly to bore through his skull and root out the source of the distraction.
On the fifth day, he finds the strength to draw the line.
Ed thinks that Roy is playing when he pulls back, and watching the grin fade slowly from radiance to guarded fear feels rather a lot like being sucker-punched.
Roy flattens his hand on Ed’s chest. The distance helps; Ed’s skipping heartbeat doesn’t. Roy keeps his voice low and his eyes unreadable. “We have to stop this.”
Ed’s breath leaves him in a single gasp like he’s been struck, but after that he doesn’t move. The silent stillness is worse-Roy can’t look at him, can’t bear to see it sinking in, can’t watch his clever cat’s eyes sharpen as he comprehends and then gleam with the disappointment.
“Why?” Ed asks.
That’s all-no protest, no wail, no sarcasm. Just the worst of all the questions, simply stated, deeply felt.
“Because if you asked me to risk everything,” Roy says, “I would. And I would lose. Neither of us has a knack for forgiveness.”
“I don’t care,” Ed says.
Roy strokes his hair back from his forehead, savoring it, treasuring- “There are more important things that need your energy.”
Ed tilts his head down, and his bangs hide his eyes. “S’pose so.”
“Later,” Roy says, helplessly, powerless against this child. “Someday, when it’s safe-we can have and be anything you want. But not… yet, not now. It’s too dangerous for both of us. There’s too much to do, and too much at stake.” He guides a silky wisp back behind the curve of Ed’s ear with his fingertip, fighting to focus on the sensation through the slamming rhythm of his own heart. This is your last damn chance, Mustang; don’t you ever forget this; this might have to sustain you for the rest of your sad little life. Then again-that might not be too long. “Someday, Edward. Not today. Please don’t ask me to give you today.”
“I get it,” Ed says in a low voice. His eyes are glassy-not wet, but… crystalline. His whole face is very still except for a tremble to his jaw, so slight that only the keenest observer of the planes of his features would notice it at all. His shoulders have hiked up half an inch, and his gaze is fixed just past Roy’s face. The signs are surprisingly few and surprisingly minuscule, but together they’re enough to make Edward Elric look like an animal kicked one time too many.
“Edward,” Roy says slowly.
“No,” Ed says. “I get it. It’s fine.”
Someday he will, and someday it will be. Someday he’ll look back and see this encounter through a new filter of age and experience, and he’ll realize that Roy isn’t trying to protect himself. Someday he’ll realize that Roy was already destroyed by the time the words passed between them-but that the words were his last chance to offer Ed salvation. Someday he’ll understand that this was kind, and maybe, maybe, by then he’ll have learned how to forgive.
Maybe, when that day comes, Ed will still want him, and the world will part its petals and tilt up towards the light.
Or maybe Roy will die alone, like he fucking deserves.
“One thing,” Ed says.
Anything but forever, Roy thinks. Ed’s waiting, eyes wide and pinned on his, so he manages a nod.
Ed’s labored smile quavers at the edges. “Just… when does it stop feeling like-this?”
Roy Mustang is a disgusting human being. In five days, he taught a prodigy how to fall in love and how to kiss like the world’s burning, and now he’s going to teach him how to lie.
“Soon,” he says softly. “It’ll never be this bad again.”
Ed won’t forgive him this.
II.
Alfons knows that there is something wrong inside of Edward Elric. There is something twisted buried in him; something damaged behind his darting golden eyes; something flawed that fuels his extraordinary limbs. There is something incorrectly made that beats inside his ribcage, suspended by the slender veins Alfons will only ever see in one of those pale wrists.
Alfons knows that there is something wrong because Ed shoots glances at dark-haired men when he thinks no one is watching-glances that are one part bitter and one part wistful.
Alfons knows that there is something wrong in Ed because he recognizes it from the mirror.
Everybody knows that nobody has money to spare, which makes the program grant from the university even more of a triumph. The whole team keeps buying Alfons drinks, even though all he did was write out what he knew that the board would want to hear, and Ed keeps half-smiling over the rim of his glass-enthralling, enigmatic, untouchable.
Isn’t he? Or is it just that Alfons doesn’t dare to reach for him?
More drinks, and a few more still, and then he finds himself stumbling out into an autumn night tormented by a brisk and playful wind. He can just smell the coming winter’s ice in the air; he can almost feel it in his bones. He draws a deep breath and regrets it-no surprise, it catches in his lungs and comes up racking.
Ed’s left hand settles very gently on his shoulder as he straightens. “You okay?”
Alfons smiles in a way he hopes is reassuring; he doesn’t have the breath for I’m dying, you’re crazy, and we’re both diseased in the soul-I’d say everything’s wonderful.
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? There is a particular sort of wonder to Ed. There’s something otherworldly about him, something entrancing, intoxicating, inescapable-
There is something with its own gravity, something that drags Alfons in as if there was a rope around his ribs. There is something that sets off tremors in his spine and signal flares in his stomach; there is something that makes his heart flit and his thoughts freeze.
There is something that owns him.
Ed is so strange-so small, and so solid; so fine, and so ferocious; so perfect, and so poorly-assembled-
Ed has been built of impossible pieces: histories that can’t have happened, mechanical limbs that shouldn’t exist, colors that oughtn’t be real. But he’s tangible, isn’t he? He’s here. He’s living proof of the inexplicable. And he doesn’t think there’s anything extraordinary about him.
Alfons has tried many times to despair of Ed for all of his not-inconsiderable flaws. Edward Elric is pigheadedly stubborn, rude, reductionist, distant, condescending, parochial, and moody in the extreme.
But he has the largest and the finest and the warmest and the most welcoming heart of anyone that Alfons has ever known. Alfons thinks it used to be wider even than it is nowadays-that Ed’s capacity for love used to extend to anyone and anything, but something, maybe many somethings, wounded him so badly that now he hesitates. His instinct is still to open up his arms and his generosity, but experience has taught him how to hesitate. The world has taught him how to hide.
“Come on,” Ed says softly, taking Alfons’s hand in his gentle left one and leading them in through the back door, through Gracia’s shop, through the breathless humid perfume and the rows of silhouettes. “You’re going to drink some water, and then you’re going to brush your teeth, and then you’re going to go to bed, and in the morning I’ll say ‘I told you so’ just loud enough to make your headache worse.”
Alfons fists his free hand in Ed’s shirtfront and pushes him up against the wall behind the hyacinths. Ed’s breath chokes out of his throat in surprise; Alfons’s knuckles graze the leather strap of the prosthetic through the fabric of the shirt; Ed looks up into Alfons’s eyes.
So strange, that he can be so little-that he can seem so fragile, that he can be towered over and gazed down upon. So strange, that he could fold right into Alfons’s arms, tuck his head under Alfons’s chin, press his cheek to Alfons’s shoulder, when the passion and the volume and the fierceness make him seem so big. So strange that he can be so small and contain so much.
Alfons breathes once, twice, three times; the air is so thick with the cloying scent of the flowers that his head spins. Part of him thinks this is an inexcusably terrible place for a kiss; and part of him thinks that he won’t do it, that he’s waited too long now to follow through, that it’s too late, that it’s always too late-
Part of him isn’t thinking at all.
He curls his fingers tighter into Ed’s shirt and leans in to find Ed’s mouth with his. He keeps his eyes open until the last second-he can’t miss; he’d just die if he missed; and he’s never going to get to see Ed quite like this again. Life’s not large enough to hold more than one moment of absolute perfection.
Ed is pale blue with sparks of yellow in the broken moonlight, and then Alfons’s eyelids drop, and Ed is radiating warmth and a dry-lipped hunger. He’s a sharply-drawn breath and a quick heartbeat; he’s a beautifully asymmetrical human body rising upward; he’s two fingers twining into the hair at the nape of Alfons’s neck to pull them both in closer-
But then he’s gently pushing Alfons back.
The concrete world trembles back into focus, blue light and black outlines and Ed’s wide eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s not-you, it’s just-I just-” He takes a deep breath, raises a shaky hand to smooth wrinkles out of Alfons’s shirt, and smiles thinly. “There was… somebody. Before, back home. Wouldn’t you know it, he set my whole world on fire.” He smiles, and the smile tilts a little wryer still; his eyes dart up to meet Alfons’s and don’t waver. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before he pines for anyone, least of all me, but-I know he made it. I know he’s still out there, being a giant, gorgeous, cocky bastard. Thinking too much, running himself ragged, driving everybody crazy, leaving infatuated women in his wake everywhere he goes. But you know me. I can’t let it go. Can’t forget, can’t even try. And the longer I cling to it, the more sacred it is in my head, and the more I just… belong… to him. Even now, the stupid fucker’s got me on a leash-how’s that for irony, huh?”
He sighs, smiling still, and straightens Alfons’s suspenders, left hand so delicately meticulous, right hand moving slow.
“Shit,” he says. “It’s not you. It’s just that it wouldn’t be fair to you, because he and I never finished any of what we started, and I can’t offer you any of the parts of me that he still owns.” He shakes his head lightly, and the long tail of gold hair swings behind him. “I’m a lot of things-I mean, for starters, I’m a freak in more ways than I can even tell you-”
“You’re not,” Alfons says, powerless to stop himself from cringing.
“I don’t mean for this,” Ed says, eyes darkly amused momentarily before they’re flat and solemn again. “I’m a foul-mouthed cripple with guilt complexes and authority issues, and that’s only page one of the report. But I’m not a liar. And I’m not going to promise you anything I know I can’t give.”
“I don’t want promises,” Alfons says. His head’s reeling from all the alcohol-and, worse than that, from Ed. Oh, God, he kissed-he really-when exactly did he go mad? “I just don’t want to die alone.”
“It’s not about who you die with,” Ed says. “It’s about what you die for.” He lifts his hands to lay one against each side of Alfons’s jaw. The left is warm; the right is clumsy. “A life’s not worth living unless you’ve got something worth dying for.”
“You don’t have to lie to me,” Alfons says, and his hands find Ed’s waist, Ed’s hips, Ed’s spine. “Just love me.”
Ed smiles his devastating, cat-eyed smile.
“All right,” he says.
III.
This one’s not like the others.
This one starts with opening the office door, and he can hear his own footfalls on the carpet. Roy’s head is bowed low over the desk; he has one hand splayed on an open file while the other takes careful notes, and his head tilts gently back and forth as he looks between them. He stills at the sound of steps but doesn’t raise his head.
“You got your stripes back,” Ed says. “I’m glad. You looked kinda naked without ’em.”
“You wouldn’t like to see me naked?” Roy asks. His lips move, his voice resonates, but he stays so motionless that Ed can see his bangs swaying gently in the draft through the door. He hasn’t glanced up. “I daresay you led me on.”
The laugh feels more like a bark as it rolls off of Ed’s tongue and bounces towards its target. Figures that he turns into a dog the second he walks back in here. “I led you on? That’s news to me, Colo… what the hell are you now?”
“I’m a major general,” Roy says. Even the end of his pen isn’t budging; how is he doing that? “I’ve been working hard.”
“That is news,” Ed says.
“It’s easier,” Roy says, looking up at last, “without distractions.”
Roy’s one eye is so intense Ed wants to step back-but that’s stupid, and he’s run away before, and it never helps.
Roy’s definitely breathing, at any rate; the light gleams off of the medals on his chest. Ed swallows and scuffs his right foot on the floor.
“You know what’s really shitty?” he asks.
Roy-smiles. It’s a miserable, tired, sardonic smile at best, but it counts. “Do tell.”
“I miss you,” Ed says. “Too much to hold a grudge. It’s crap.”
Roy’s sharp eye softens, and the right corner of his mouth turns up. “If it’s any consolation, the world is a wasteland without you.”
The grin splits Ed’s face without his permission. “I bet you say that to all the cute young male subordinates you dry-humped in a hallway.”
The dark eye glitters-humor, and heat. “Only the ones I’d do it to again.”
Ed shoves his hands into his pockets, kicks at the carpet again for good measure, squares his shoulders, and starts over towards the desk. Roy lays the pen down, pushes his chair back, and sets his elbows on the armrests to steeple his fingers in midair. Bastard looks like a paragon, as usual.
Ed will be the first to admit that he’s gutsier at times like this-times when there’s nothing whatsoever to lose. Ordinarily he’d probably chicken out long before his affected swagger brings him all the way around the desk to lean back against it, where he crosses his legs at the ankle and folds his arms across his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Roy’s smile twists. “Me, too.”
“Not just in general,” Ed says. “I’m sorry I didn’t have the balls to say goodbye.”
Roy huffs out a breath that might have been intended as a laugh. “You were a bit preoccupied.”
“Nah,” Ed says, digging his fingers into his arm-and jeez, that kind of hurts; this one is real vivid. “I was a fucking coward. I thought maybe if I didn’t say it, it’d be less true.” He makes a point of rolling his eyes. “Should’ve learned from you that that doesn’t work worth a damn.”
“Touché,” Roy says lightly. “You know, I… I’ve spent all of this time trying not to hold it against you. And what I’ve come to realize is that you were doing what you felt was right, at the expense of your personal happiness. It wasn’t about me; it certainly wasn’t about you and me being together. It was simple mathematics-the lives at stake vastly outnumbered the two of us. Outnumbered the three of us, given Alphonse; I suppose he probably counts for ten-but even so. It wasn’t vengeance or rejection of me or of him or of Amestris. It was bigger than that. It was greater than any of us.”
There’s something weird going on. Usually Roy’s much more handsy and much less mouthy. Well-pretty mouthy, actually, but not talky-mouthy. Usually he’s using his tongue for something very different than discussing the smoldering wreckage of what-ifs and maybes that the two of them left behind.
Ed frowns and tries to focus.
“You’re looking a little rough around the edges,” he says.
Really, Roy’s looking a little clear around the edges-detailed, distinct, defined. The hem of the eyepatch is worn almost to fraying in a couple places; white’s seeping into the jet-black at his temples; there are little lines like lightning at the outside corner of his eye.
“A young sage once suggested that I give up sleeping,” Roy says with a tantalizing shadow of the old smirk. “You, however, look positively radiant.”
Ed fights the rush of blood to his face and loses by a landslide. “Oh, Jesus, shut up. Your crappy pickup lines aren’t gonna cut it anymore.”
“No?” Roy muses. “Pity. In every way, it seems, I slide gracelessly into decrepitude while you ascend to absolute magnificence.”
Ed’s stomach is starting to twist itself up in ways he doesn’t think he likes. “Nice to know some things haven’t changed,” he says. “For instance, you trying to pull the moves on anything with a heartbeat. Kinda reassuring. How’s about we cut the chitchat and get to business?”
Roy blinks at him several times before speaking. “I beg your pardon?”
“Y’know,” Ed says. He crosses to the chair and climbs up to straddle Roy’s lap. “Business.”
“Oh,” Roy says, slightly breathlessly. “Business indeed.”
Ed runs the pads of his thumbs around the curves of Roy’s ears and strokes them through the little fans of pale gray hairs. They’re coarser than the others; whether or not the color’s compromised, though, Roy’s hair is still thick and smooth and irresistible for burying your fingers in, and Ed doesn’t resist the impulse.
Roy’s hands settle on his hips and gently squeeze. The solitary eyebrow arches, and-slowly, slowly, slowly-Roy’s whole face gives over to a delighted grin.
“Hey,” Ed says. “There you go. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Jesus, you looked so fucking sad this time.”
“I told you,” Roy says. “What I was and what I wanted lost meaning when I lost you.”
“And I called bullshit on that,” Ed says.
“My dearest Edward,” Roy breathes against Ed’s jaw, mouth tinglingly moist along his throat, “I only exist to keep struggling towards your expectations. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why you set them so high.”
“Who you callin’ so short he overcompensates with impossibly lofty standards?” Ed asks, and he leans into the kiss right as Roy starts laughing.
This is everything he remembered and everything he extrapolated and everything he could have wished for. One more second, just one more second of this-damn, if he wouldn’t gladly starve to death for a forever made of single seconds of Roy Mustang’s kiss-
“And they say,” Roy whispers, smiling, one eye pinning both of his, “that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. You’ve learned several.”
“Picked a few things up from a Frenchman,” Ed says, loudly to be able to hear himself over the sound of his own heart. “And… got some practice before that, too.”
Roy’s hands trail up and down Ed’s thighs, but his face doesn’t change. “You fell in love.”
“Except I was still in love with you the whole time,” Ed says, and that makes Roy startle, which is weird, because it’s not like he hasn’t said it a hundred times in the mushy ones. “What?”
“Nothing,” Roy says. “It’s just so terribly you to have so much to give. Tell me about-her?”
“Very funny,” Ed says. “Oh, fuck you; don’t pretend you’re surprised. Whatever. He was brilliant and shy and committed, and he believed in things. Sky-blue eyes. The sky was his first love, and I was the last. He’s dead. My fault.”
Roy’s fingertips skim slowly up his cheek. “You can’t keep score.”
“Can and will,” Ed says. “Well? What about you? There must have been somebody else. Probably an encyclopedia of somebodies.”
Roy just… smiles.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Ed says.
“Ah,” Roy says. “There was a brief affair with an excellent brandy. And a fling with gin. And the long, slow wooing of whiskey.”
Ed’s heart sinks so fast and so heavily that he half expects the rest of his body to collapse into the vacuum. “Don’t say that. Don’t do that.”
“When I have the time for sleep,” Roy says, “often that’s the only way to find it.”
“I’ve played that game,” Ed says. “There’s no way to win.”
“I know,” Roy says. “But don’t you ever get so tired of trying?”
“Lately,” Ed says, “yeah. Yeah, I do. And it fucking sucks.”
Roy smiles faintly. “That it does.”
“Okay,” Ed says, rolling his hips and gleeing in the little gasp he earns for his trouble. “I think that’s enough conversation, don’t you?”
“Oh, God,” Roy breathes, dark eye alight. “You are sin incarnate. And you’re so damn beautiful.”
Ed ducks in an attempt to distract from the way he’s turning pink like a twelve-year-old girl. “Christ, Mustang, I’m already sitting in your lap with my legs open; you don’t have to butter me up.”
“It’s not flattery,” Roy says. “I should have told you when I had the chance. I should have told you every time I saw you, and the world stopped turning. I should have swept you off your feet and never let you down, to hell with consequences-”
Even here, now, when he should be tame, the bastard knows how to rip Ed’s heart into bloody tatters. Ed looks away; looking at him’s too much-which sucks, because even with the years and the stress and the sacrifices catching up, Roy’s still pretty damn good to look at.
Aw, shit. The walls are starting to warp and fade a little, and the window-frame is going fuzzy.
“C’mon,” Ed says, rocking forward more urgently. “We’ve got to get to the good part, or I’ll be horny and obnoxious for days.”
Usually Roy starts moaning and grinding even before the invitation, but this time he gazes up (up!) at Ed bewilderedly.
“Are you… sure?” he asks.
Ed bests the urge to growl; they don’t have time for this. “Of course I’m sure. For fuck’s sake, it’s not enough for you to be the love of my fucking life and live in a different universe? You have to cockblock me in my dream, too?”
Roy stares at him.
Ed stares back.
Roy wets his lips with the tip of his tongue and says slowly, “What do you mean, your dream?”
Ed wakes up to a dim sunrise outside the window. Sunrise is misleading, though, because autumn in Edinburgh means full darkness at four in the afternoon. You can’t trust the light up here. Time’s different.
He can feel that there’s a crease on his cheek from where he’s been sleeping on a fold in the blankets. More importantly, he’s half-hard, and Al is puttering around the kitchenette behind him, which is presumably the origin of the glorious bacon smell.
Forty-five seconds of cold-shower thoughts later, Ed rolls over and watches his brother derive pure bliss from the first bite of buttered toast.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Ed says.
“Can it wait five minutes?” Al says. “I was going to scramble the eggs in the bacon pan so that they take up some of the flavor.”
“You’re a genius,” Ed says. “But I meant… not here-here.” He sits up, pushes his hair back, and draws a deep breath. “I want to go home.”
Al pauses-which means a lot, given how much he likes breakfast. He likes everything, of course, but breakfast especially.
“That is a very significant decision, Brother,” he says.
“I know,” Ed says. “But look at us, Al. We’re fucking nomads fighting-and losing-and other people’s wars. We don’t have any friends, we don’t have any money, we don’t have any future-no alchemy, no connections, no education, no power at all. We’re just drifting. And I’m so tired, Al. I’m so tired of being noble instead of being happy. I just want to go home. And-” He forces himself to sit up straighter, forces himself to swallow, forces himself to breathe. “-Al, if you come with me, I will get there or die trying.”
The silence is impressive and impregnable. Al doesn’t break it-he waits a long moment and then grins.
“What the hell’s so funny?” Ed asks dazedly.
“Nothing,” Al says. “It’s just that that’s the most like you that you’ve sounded since we wound up here. And of course I’m with you, Brother; you ought to know you don’t even have to ask. Now come here and eat your breakfast and tell me where we’re going to start.”
The thing is, the boundaries between living and dying and dreaming all start to unravel when you go about it right.