FMA -- Horror Vacui

Apr 20, 2013 15:51

Title: Horror Vacui
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Al
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 775
Warnings: sexytalk, underage parties trying to get some, major spoilers for '03/CoS
Summary: The General is a bastard, and Al is not a child. (Offshoot of the Frozen Flame/etc. 'verse.)
Author's Note: Not dead. Just busy. And stupidly writing things like this to cheer myself up, siiiiiiigh. XD Does it help at all if it's totally phindus's fault for being so freakin' awesome? Anyhoo, sort of a coulda-woulda-mighta outtake for Frozen Flame? I don't even know anymore. >___>


HORROR VACUI
Using one’s voice to purr while remaining intelligible is rather more difficult than the average romance novel would lead one to believe.

“Oh, General,” Al murmurs as enticingly as possible.

That wasn’t quite a purr. Perhaps if he added a bit more of a rasp next time, or if he rolled the R, or…

“I said ‘no’, Alphonse,” the General says. “I have now said it an even dozen times.”

He’s the type to have actually counted-the bastard. Al understands now why Brother’s notes were peppered with the word, saturated with it, turning it into an alias and a nickname and something like an endearment. Roy Mustang is a bastard, from the tip of every strand of midnight hair to the deepest bastions of his granite heart. He’s arrogant and sarcastic and closed-off and charming and altogether too decent to be seduced by the fifteen-year-old brother of his vanished lover.

If one purrs the word “bastard”, does it start to sound affectionate?

Roy Mustang, bastard general extraordinaire, does not sprawl on the bed, as any other human being might do in his place-he stretches out and luxuriates. It’s very impressive, all things considered; Al always supposed that he must have remarkable control of his body and his impulses to have mastered the staggeringly subtle art of Flame Alchemy, but supposing as much and actually seeing the consummate self-control in every line and muscle of his body as he moves…

Well, it whets Al’s hunger for him even more.

“Why, General,” Al says, possibly with a hint of desperation, clambering up onto the bed, “may I join y-”

“No, Alphonse.”

“I only meant t-”

“No, Alphonse.”

“Whoops, there goes my shi-”

“No, and that’s fifteen.” The General shifts to lie on his (strong, beautiful) back, folds his hands on his chest, and sighs. “I’m honestly not sure whether to applaud you for your persistence or berate you for your stubbornness.”

“Why don’t you reward me for both?” Al asks, crawling up beside him.

The General gives him a fairly mild reprimanding look as he nestles into the folds of the blanket, within wriggling distance of the General’s side. Al could alchemize those pajamas into not-so-tasteful rags if he’d thought to leave his gloves on; he could transmute them into a cord to bind the General’s enterprising hands; he could trail his fingertips downward over every rise of bone and ridge of scar tissue too-white against the ivory skin; he…

…is getting hard in a hurry.

The General’s next sigh begins as a low rumble deep in his chest. “Aren’t you even the slightest bit exhausted from spending the better part of two hours trying to wear me down?”

Al waits until the General glances over and meets that single eye, angling his own gaze through his lashes.

“General,” he says, “I could go all night.”

“No, you couldn’t,” the General says with a narrow smile. “That would require superhuman stamina and a wealth of knowledge from experience, neither of which you possess.”

Al’s instinct is to pout, but he knows that Ed would bristle. “All the same, my enthusiasm-”

“Is going to get you hurt very badly someday,” the General says softly. “Please don’t force me to be the one who does it.”

Roy Mustang, bastard general extraordinaire, has no right to criticize anyone for stubbornness.

“You wouldn’t hurt me,” Al says. “I can tell that about you.” He levers himself up on his elbows, inching a little closer under the guise of getting comfortable. “You’d be careful. You’d be kind. You’d hold me afterward and ask me how it was and run your fingers through my hair and wax poetic and talk to me about Brothe-”

“Goodnight, Alphonse,” the General says, and turns away.

But he’s wrong-wrong about Al, anyway. Al can take rebuffs and rejections all day long and feed off of them forever, because they’re data points. If he keeps changing his tactics every time, eventually he’ll find something that works; the refusals are a thousand little challenges, and they motivate him all the more. Science doesn’t flag. Science doesn’t fail. Science does not understand the concept of defeat.

And surely the General knows better. Surely the General knows that Elrics are incapable of giving up; and surely the General knows that, in a world rife with different varieties of pain and peril, nothing hurts more than an absence.

There is nothing that General Roy Mustang or anyone else could throw at Al that would hurt more than losing Ed in so many ways at once.

As far as Al’s concerned, the bastard is welcome to do his worst.

[character - fma] alphonse elric, [length] 1k, [fandom] fullmetal alchemist, [genre] angst, [genre] humor, [character - fma] roy mustang, [rating] pg-13, [pairing - fma] roy/al, [year] 2013

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