FMA x HP -- Two Months and Counting
Title: Two Months and Counting
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist X Harry Potter
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,485
Warnings: language, discussion of adult activities that will be legal when one party is no longer underage, vague situational spoilers for '03/CoS 'verse
Prompt: Boots wanted a crossover where Roy surprises Ed at Hogsmeade. At least my muse got CLOSE to the prompt… >__>
Summary: Given that Ed is past words and beyond belief, surely it's fair to break the rules right in half.
Author's Note: Once upon a time, I used to have the spells section of the Harry Potter Lexicon pretty much memorized, but in the five years since, I filled that headspace with other fandom tidbits. XD Some canon divergences are intentional; please forgive the ones that are not. ^^; Anyway, all of it's for kushinas, whose fault this is. ♥ It was also influenced by some discussion begun by the extremely talented hikaru_9 o'er in Tumbland. :3 …and I've already started on a damn sequel. I hate myself sometimes. :DDDDD
TWO MONTHS AND COUNTING
Roy waits with his hands in his pockets and his heart in his throat. He feels like a child; he feels like a fool; he feels like a paranoid, delusional freak.
But when he sees the quick little form bundled into a scarf and its trademark red peacoat, he starts to feel like he’s floating.
As Edward gets close, Roy can see that he’s not wearing his House scarf-which is probably a good thing, given that the burgundy clashes with his beloved coat, and the gold clashes with his beautiful hair-and has instead donned a slightly monstrous tangle of black yarn that seems to aspire to scarfdom someday. Roy wonders whether it was Winry or Alphonse who took up knitting just long enough to produce handmade Christmas gifts before realizing they had no aptitude for it whatsoever.
Ed kicks at the lackadaisical dusting of snow on the pathway, looks up, smiles, and wraps another tiny silver chain around the pounding vulnerability in Roy’s ribcage. “Hey.”
“Fancy meeting you here,” Roy says.
The smile cracks open and widens into a grin. “Yeah, what a coincidence. It’s almost like, y’know… magic.”
“Quite,” Roy says.
“Or like you sent me a really subtle note asking if I could get here tonight, and I sent a really subtle note back saying I’d show up or die trying.”
“I’m very glad that death didn’t turn out to be necessary,” Roy says.
Ed shoves his hands into his pockets, raises his shoulders, and scuffs a toe on the cobbles again. Roy stands extremely still and wonders if it’s possible to be deafened by one’s own heartbeat.
It is two days short of three weeks since they met here in Hogsmeade in daylight, with the perfectly innocuous common goal of finding Al a Sorry You Fell Off Your Broom and Broke Your Tibia Because Your Brother Is a Backseat Seeker gift. Roy’s responsibility in the execution of this task was to explain that Al would value the sentiment more than the object-without ever uttering the words “It doesn’t matter”, which would have prompted a bout of Edward’s best howling rage. He’d played the game before, but somehow it never lost its luster (rather like Ed’s hair).
Except that Ed had been quiet, that afternoon, as they wound their way through the streets, scanning the windows and skirting the crowds. Perhaps he was sleep-deprived; perhaps he was worried about Al; perhaps he’d dreamt of their mother again; perhaps he was simply thoughtful today-Roy thought it wisest not to interrupt. He was no stranger to silences, or to waiting for Ed’s bottled feelings to fizz and overflow.
After the summary rejection of several Zonko’s speciality items and a dozen assorted books and baubles, halfway into the second butterbeer of their brainstorming break, Ed looked up at Roy through the curtain of his hair.
“Winry’s dating this guy,” Ed said.
It was extraordinary, when you thought about it, just how many kinds of pain there were in the world. A papercut and a deep gash were the same basic wound; the nerves in skin and muscles and bones all telegraphed damage differently; slicings and shatterings were universes apart. Having an eye gouged out by a madman’s wand and feeling, for a fraction of a moment, that your heart was gone, with a roaring vacuum in its place; realizing in the same instant just how wretched you were-they weren’t the same, of course, but who was to say which of them was worse?
“And it’s-” Ed glanced out from their little table in the corner; Roy couldn’t pry his gaze away from the sharp-bright, wonderful, forbidden face long enough to verify that no one seemed to be listening. “I mean, it’s-all anybody ever wants to talk about, y’know, is who’s dating who-” He paused, rolled his eyes, tried to grin. “Who’s dating whom-but I… I just… don’t… care.” Edward was crestfallen; Roy had fallen so long ago he couldn’t remember open sky. “I should, though, shouldn’t I? I should-wanna get with girls, and like the way they do their hair, and notice how they dress. Right? Or something? I mean, I-”
“That’s fine,” Roy said softly. “The only way you are supposed to be is the way that you already are.”
“No, but-” Ed turned his mug around by the handle and dragged a fingertip through the condensation pooling on the table. “What if-it’s not just that I’m a late bloomer or something; what if I never care?”
“That’s fine, too,” Roy said.
Ed eyed him for a full thirty seconds before looking away. There was a little more fiddling with the butterbeer, and then Ed licked his lips and focused intently on the tabletop.
“What if,” he said, “it’s… it’s not that I don’t care at all-just that I don’t… care… about… girls?”
Roy’s heart was a sledgehammer on an anvil, and his feeble hope was a shard of steel-
“What if,” Ed said, so low that the ambient noise almost swallowed him, “when I do… think about… those things, it’s… I think about… guys?”
Roy wanted to hold him so tight, so tight that the world out there would never find him in the first place to judge him for this-wanted to whisper to him gently until he really believed that he’d done nothing wrong-Roy knew the hiding; knew the fear; knew the self-loathing and the desperation and the bone-weary bravery in getting up each morning and trying not to be too tired to keep going-but it felt like the very air had frozen, and he couldn’t move-
“What if,” Ed said, voice trembling, “it’s… one… guy… in particular?”
Ed’s hands had stilled, and he didn’t look up. Dishes clattered on the other side of the room; somebody chortled much too loud. How were they all so stable when the planet was tilting wildly off its axis? How had gravity continued to exist?
Roy cleared the rubble of imminent obliteration from his throat.
“That’s fine,” he said. “Edward, there’s nothing wrong with you.”
Ed picked at a nick in the table’s edge for a long time-for eternity, perhaps; for a portion of it far too great to bear.
After mountains had crumbled and oceans had gone dry, he whispered, “What if it’s you?”
Roy’s throat was a riverbed reduced to dust. “If this is… some sort of-elaborate joke, it’s not amusi-”
Ed looked up sharply, and the agony in his eyes killed the rest of the words before they reached the tip of Roy’s tongue.
He had to find new ones, better ones, the best ones-words that would fix this, heal this, undo it all-
“Ed,” he said carefully, twisting his hands together to stop them from moving across the table, seeking Ed’s fingertips, his face, his hair; “please, don’t… offer me that. You’re-young, you’re new to this; I know it feels like the be-all and the end-all, but it’s… you have so much ahead of you, and so much to do, and so much to be, and so much to give-I’m not worthy of any of it, and it would be a terrible mistake to waste any of your potential on the time it took you to realize-”
“Shut up,” Ed said, and the weight of the misery left him so small and sad and sweet that Roy had to gather every last iota of courage in order to keep fighting.
“Gratitude isn’t love,” he said to the broken expression already twisting into a defensive scowl. “Stockholm syndrome isn’t love. I’m not trying to be cruel, Ed; I just don’t want you to throw yourself aw-”
“Fuck you,” Ed said, fingers curling on the table until his fist shook. “I know what I want, and I know what I feel, and if you don’t fucking care, just fucking say it without the bullshit-”
Roy’s hand was closing over Ed’s, leaching its warmth, clutching at the hard little knuckles and the clever fingers wrapped beneath. Too late. He was always, always too late to keep either of them safe.
He looked Ed in the wide, terrified gold eye.
“What in the world makes you think I don’t care?” he asked.
Ed flushed, and his gaze kept slipping sideways-he’d always been the clever one, in the end, hadn’t he? Roy was too stupid to remember to look and see if they were being watched-
“Everything you fucking say,” Ed said, leaning away without withdrawing his hand. “If you-damn it, Mustang, if you-can’t you just not give me the fucking runaround for once in your life when I’m handing you my fucking heart on a platter?”
“I don’t even deserve the platter,” Roy said.
“Dumbass,” Ed said, and his voice shook, and his hand shook, but his slowly-spreading smile didn’t.
So here they are-nineteen days later, alone in this odd little pocket-world, with the wind tugging and the snow swirling and the lights softly orange in the dark.
“Can I buy you a drink?” Roy asks as the pale flakes twirl between them.
Ed grins. “When have I ever turned that down?”
“Never,” Roy says, and he clenches his fists to resist the urge to take Ed’s arm. “Opportunistic of you.”
“Life doesn’t give out too many freebies,” Ed says, starting towards The Three Broomsticks. “I learned a long time ago to take what I can get.”
If only Roy could kiss him, instead of having to make do with a smile that can’t hope to convey everything. But-
But it’s two months yet until Edward Elric turns seventeen-two months yet until a square on the calendar and the twitch of a slender second-hand declares him an adult. It’s two months yet until this stack of kindled something smoldering between them is sanctioned and acceptable and legitimized. It’s two months yet until they can have this in the open, in the streets, for all that it is and could be.
Roy thinks that it’s going to be a rather long wait.
“So I’m worried about Al,” Ed says.
“That seems to be a basic fact of your existence,” Roy says.
“Shut up,” Ed says. “He’s been having weird nightmares since he fell off the broom, and he’s started to lose weight, and there’re circles under his eyes, and it’s… I mean, I’ve been sneaking into his Common Room every night anyway to hang out with him to try to calm him do-”
“You’re setting a terrible example,” Roy says. “They can take your Prefect status away if you continue to break and enter, you know.”
“They wouldn’t,” Ed says. “My marks are killer; they’d be too embarrassed. And anyway, it’s not breaking and entering-I guessed all the Hufflepuff passwords fair and square.” He considers. “I should get some extra credit in Cryptology for that.”
“Do you need extra credit in Cryptology?” Roy asks.
“No,” Ed says. “But still.”
“Out of morbid curiosity,” Roy says, “have you ever found a class to be difficult in the duration of your academic career?”
Ed chews on his lip while he thinks it over, and Roy steels his spine against a shiver.
“Define ‘difficult’,” he says. “And ‘class’. ’Cause the work’s never hard, but sometimes dealing with the teachers is a right pain in the arse.”
“Edward,” Roy says, “don’t let it go to your head, but… I believe you’re what society calls a genius.”
“Einstein was a genius,” Ed says. “I’m just a kid with a stick.”
A kid with a stick would not have unraveled the thousand-and-one sickly-bandaged layers of necromancy and attempted it nearly-successfully at the age of ten. A kid with a stick would not have figured out soul-binding magic on the fly to save his younger brother whilst bleeding from the backlash. A kid with a stick would not have spent the time recovering from an experimental and extremely traumatic half-Muggle, half-magical surgical treatment developing entirely new spells-and coaxing adults into testing them so that he wouldn’t attract any more attention for underage magic.
A kid with a stick would not have piqued Roy Mustang’s interest long before skewering his heart.
It was meant-Roy holds the door, grins at Ed’s scowl, shepherds him to a table, flags down Rosmerta, orders two butterbeers and a basket of chips-to be a reprieve.
That Roy had been born to be an Auror was not, Grumman explained cheerfully, and never would be, in dispute. He was their prize, really; the finest flower of the bunch; the brightest star in the constellation; the sparkiest wand in the whole of Ollivander’s, and no mistake-
(At this point Hughes had cleared his throat loudly and plastered on a strained smile unrelated to the pervasive smell of lingering Floo smoke and ambient antiseptic.)
…but mightn’t he perhaps benefit from a modest, little, non-permanent, quite noble, entirely shameless break?
Before he could slip two Knuts in edgewise, his gathered superiors had all agreed that the Diagon Alley beat had beaten him down-that it had taken his eye and shaken his confidence to the core he wouldn’t have argued, but he wasn’t beaten; he hadn’t lost-
Grumman had patted his knee beneath the sanitized mint-green sheet-Why don’t you think on it, my boy?-and the moment he was discharged from Saint Mungo’s, there was a missive in his hand reassigning him to the Improper Use of Magic Office, with a postscript ordering him to follow up on a violation in a hamlet outside of Gloucester.
Surely the best modest, little, non-permanent, quite noble, entirely shameless breaks begin with descending into a basement splattered with the blood of children and crowned with a mangled corpse.
The rebound stripped most of the biological material from Ed’s right arm. It’s partly metal, now, and partly magic; it draws from his soul for fuel in a feedback loop just this side of ethical-just a few shades brighter than the body of work that made Hohenheim of Light fade into obscurity instead of adorning Chocolate Frog cards from here to Vancouver.
In places, Ed’s arm is very faintly phosphorescent; in silence, you can hear the tiny gears inside it click. It is a breathtakingly delicate conjunction of brilliance, and as Ed curls his gloved fingers around the handle of his mug, Roy cannot convince his brain to do anything but speculate about how it would feel.
He knows, from casual touches, that it’s cooler than flesh; it’s reinforced, so the fingertips don’t give as softly as their brothers on the other side. There’s a thin layer of false skin, and the pulse of magic through the tiny tubes and wires is so close to a heartbeat that it can almost make you forget the lack of fingerprints. Ed, of course, with typical Elric flair, has made it completely his own, and his usage of it has grown so deftly precise that most of his cohorts probably don’t know it’s there until they accidentally jar his elbow and encounter metal instead of bone.
…Roy is now wondering if Ed ever strips naked in his dormitory in front of other teenagers, and will duly serve his allotted time in hell for entertaining that mental image with such extensive hospitality.
Ed shakes salt all over his side of the chips and then wastes no time in cramming four into his mouth.
“I’sh jush’ hard,” he says. “Bein’ reshponshible f’r effryfing’t happensh to Al.”
“I know,” Roy says, and he does-not about brothers, per se, but about hanging all his hopes on the upturn of a young man’s smile.
“I’m shtarting t’get shcared-” Ed swallows, bearing more than a passing resemblance to a boa constrictor. “I mean, I’m-y’know, concerned-that maybe he-hurt something, when I made him fall, y’know. Like it woke something up in his brain, and now he’s… remembering. Remembering more, anyway. And he’s… suffering-twice over, now. Because of me.”
Roy squanders the breath, because the attempt is meaningful: “It’s not your fa-”
“Is so,” Ed says, nonchalantly, stating fact. The sky is blue, iron oxidizes, and everything that has happened to the brothers is Ed’s doing. “I just… I mean, I can’t exactly sit vigil at his bedside every night in case he wakes up screaming. That’d be creepy.”
He’s looking to Roy for answers that don’t exist. There is no potion for post-traumatic stress-Roy’s searched, and sought, and tried.
“Maybe you should let Alphonse get a cat,” he says. “Pets are very therapeu-”
“And have him waltz into class with fur all down his robes?” Ed looks aghast.
“Haven’t you staggered into a morning session or two in yesterday’s uniform, covered in crumbs from an all-nighter with snacks?” Roy asks, as innocently as he can manage.
“Once,” Ed says. “I respect the institution. I am a Prefect.”
“Of course,” Roy says, taking a solemn sip of butterbeer.
Ed maintains a straight face for a record-breaking three-point-two seconds before he cracks a grin. “I figured out a crumb-removing charm after that. S’brilliant, Flitwick said so. Plus you can make a whole new biscuit out of the leftovers, for free.”
“If you need money for new biscuits,” Roy says, “you know I’d give it to you so that you don’t have to scavenge off your own clothes.”
Ed, still grinning, waves his left hand. “’Course I know that. You’re missing the point.”
“Enlighten me,” Roy says.
“Improvised charms,” Ed says, pulling a sizable swig from his mug. “Especially ones that can make it impossible for anyone to tell what you might’ve been doing last night.” His eyes dart up to meet Roy’s one, and there’s a spark that-that just-God- “Could be… useful. Maybe. Later on.”
Edward Elric is planning to develop new and improved charms for a walk of shame that he won’t even have the opportunity to begin for two months plus… a tactful interval of abstinence.
It’s hardly any surprise that Roy’s in love with him, really.
“That’s excellent advance planning,” Roy says.
Ed’s face has gone bright pink, and in the six years of their acquaintance, he has rarely been more adorable. “Well-y’know. Somebody’s gotta think about these things.”
Roy sets his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand and raises his eyebrow as he smiles. “I’ve given it some thought myself.”
Ed’s flush deepens. “Uh. No kidding.”
“On my honor,” Roy says. He leans forward, selects a chip, takes it between his first finger and his thumb, and drags it slowly through Ed’s pool of ketchup. “I was thinking,” he says, feigning great interest in his ketchup art, “about how lovely it’s going to be to take you in my arms and hold you tightly to my chest and bury my face in your hair. I think about that quite a lot, actually. And about how you might look first thing in the morning-I’m not sure whether you’re the type to snap awake and instantly be bright-eyed and ready to start moving, or whether you’re more likely to be bleary for a full half-hour on waking. I look forward to finding out. And I can think of several ways I’d like to wake you, none of which are currently legal.”
He hears Ed swallow hard and has to fight down the glee-letting it surface would ruin his superb coolly debonair performance; he can’t have that.
“I think,” he says, admiring the chip now, “that I would very much enjoy watching you roll out of bed, stagger off to the shower, and then reemerge wet and dripping. And I imagine I’d probably have to tackle you and pin you to the bed again at that point.”
He licks a bit of ketchup from the end of the chip and looks up at Ed.
“Hnh,” Ed says in a voice that could charitably be described as slightly strained.
There’s heat gathering at the back of Roy’s neck and in the pit of his stomach, but the thing that’s remarkable is the constant warmth in the center of his chest.
“Mostly,” he says, “I think about how I’m going to make you feel safe, and comfortable, and cared for.”
And loved, he does not say, even though the syllables are stopping up his throat.
And loved, he does not say, because he can’t even offer open affection for two months yet.
And loved, he does not say, because he intends to prove it so distinctly that Ed will see it every smile and sense it in every touch, and the promises won’t be necessary.
And loved, he does not say, because the word’s too small for the feeling these days.
The abominable scarf is wound half a dozen times around the tall chair-back, framing Ed’s jaw as he grins so slowly, like a star unveiled by the spread of night.
“Well,” Ed says.
“Well,” Roy says.
Ed nods to the chip still suspended by Roy’s fingers. “Are you going to eat that, or just play with it?”
“I’m not playing,” Roy says. “It’s a visual aide.”
He eats it anyway, to make a point. He’s not sure what the point is, but there must be one somewhere.
“Meant to ask,” Ed says as they tear through the victuals with considerable gusto. “You distracted me by bein’ all… y’know.” His cheeks darken several shades, and he fumbles the salt shaker. “…seductive. And stuff. How’s work?”
“Work is fine,” Roy says as part of him triumphs and part of him is touched. “There never seems to be a shortage of misspoken spells and misplaced Portkeys, and every now and again someone reports a suspected Unforgivable.” More often, lately; people are jumpy these days. “We had someone call us in swearing up and down that they’d seen a werewolf last week, which naturally turned out to be a much-maligned Saarloos wolfdog called Mister Wuffington. Mostly it’s been the usual routine-Riza magicking another thumbtack into the seat of my chair for every day I put off the overdue reports, etcetera and so forth. I’ve taken to working standing up.”
“I hear that’s good for you,” Ed says. His grin is dangerously winsome now. “You should let me come along on an assignment sometime. I bet I could get extra credit in Defense Against the Dark Arts.”
“Do you need extra credit in Defense Against the Dark Arts?” Roy asks.
Ed wrinkles his nose. “No.”
“I’m not sure you understand the concept of extra credit,” Roy says.
“At least I understand the concept of deadlines,” Ed says.
Roy snatches a chip from Ed’s side of the basket for that.
Despite his touted talent for procrastination, however, he can’t seem to add more hours to the night, and Ed has classes to attend tomorrow. Far, far too soon, they’re starting onto the path with snowflakes crunching softly underneath their feet.
“Let me walk you back,” Roy says, and the butterbeer is warm and fizzy in his guts, and his blood is hot and sparking in his veins, and he can’t help lifting his hand and brushing his knuckles against Ed’s jaw.
Ed’s eyelids dip, and color rises to his cheeks, and he smiles. “You’re so paranoid. Okay.”
If you had what I do to gain and to lose, Roy thinks, you wouldn’t blame me for clinging to you like a child.
No one will notice, though, will they, if a tall, dark-haired man with one eye is walking closer than strictly necessary to the young man in the hideous scarf. No one will notice if their shoulders-well, Roy’s upper arm and Ed’s shoulder-bump together more than once, or if they can’t stop glancing at each other, or if they’re walking very slowly for this hour of night, as though they don’t actually want to arrive…
“Hey, Roy?” Ed mumbles when the looming silhouette of the castle wall is in sight. “Can we… I mean, can we… bend the rules a little? Just this once-just for a second.”
“How do you mean?” Roy asks slowly. He will not assert; he will not assume; he will not fuck this up-
Ed reaches up, grabs his collar, and hauls him down into a very clumsy, patently unpracticed, utterly transcendent kiss. He’s such a viciously swift learner that Roy gives in to the impulse to start teaching him now-gently, gently; showing him where tongues go, sucking his lip, nipping at it, murmuring softly into his mouth. Ed whimpers, and his grip on Roy’s shirt tightens, and he rises into the contact, pushing up on his toes-God, that’s sexy; God, being wanted feels so good-
beautiful art by red-oobleck, originally posted here
Ed draws back gasping, dropping to his heels again, and his wide eyes are like harvest moons.
“Oh,” he says.
“That was more than a second,” Roy says.
“That’s ’cause I didn’t realize that making out was so fucking awesome,” Ed says. “Next time I’ll ask if we can bend the rules for an hour.”
“And I will protest that I have to conduct myself in accordance with the law if I intend to enforce it,” Roy says. “After which you’ll pout and plead for approximately thirty seconds, and my willpower will completely fail.”
Ed’s grin is brutally sweet. “Eh. You weren’t really using the willpower anyway.”
Roy tucks a wayward wisp of hair behind Ed’s ear; it’s so impossible not to touch him when he’s close. “You’d be surprised. But you’d better run along before I give up on decorum entirely.”
“And ravish me in the snow?” Ed asks, and Roy’s skin tingles at the mere words. “That sounds… amazing and uncomfortable at the same time. Well-well, g’night. I’ll see you soon, okay?”
“Goodnight,” Roy says. “You will.”
Ed beams at him and clutches at his sleeve for five precious seconds before bolting off into the dark.
Two months yet. Two months, and Roy can give himself over wholly-as if there’s anything left to give; as if he’s been able to hold back since the crystal moment he saw the gleam in Ed’s eye and began to hope so fiercely that he choked on shame-
Two months. Two months isn’t so long, really, in the span of a life that could be perfect very soon.
Roy touches a fingertip to his lips; he can almost still taste Ed on them; he can almost still feel the tantalizing heat. Perhaps he’s an addict angling for an overdose, but he’s just so happy that he doesn’t care.
He raises his solitary eye to the stars peeking through the heavy clouds overhead and thanks them for being lucky, just this once. Just this once is shaping up to be enough.
[SEQUEL]
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist X Harry Potter
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,485
Warnings: language, discussion of adult activities that will be legal when one party is no longer underage, vague situational spoilers for '03/CoS 'verse
Prompt: Boots wanted a crossover where Roy surprises Ed at Hogsmeade. At least my muse got CLOSE to the prompt… >__>
Summary: Given that Ed is past words and beyond belief, surely it's fair to break the rules right in half.
Author's Note: Once upon a time, I used to have the spells section of the Harry Potter Lexicon pretty much memorized, but in the five years since, I filled that headspace with other fandom tidbits. XD Some canon divergences are intentional; please forgive the ones that are not. ^^; Anyway, all of it's for kushinas, whose fault this is. ♥ It was also influenced by some discussion begun by the extremely talented hikaru_9 o'er in Tumbland. :3 …and I've already started on a damn sequel. I hate myself sometimes. :DDDDD
TWO MONTHS AND COUNTING
Roy waits with his hands in his pockets and his heart in his throat. He feels like a child; he feels like a fool; he feels like a paranoid, delusional freak.
But when he sees the quick little form bundled into a scarf and its trademark red peacoat, he starts to feel like he’s floating.
As Edward gets close, Roy can see that he’s not wearing his House scarf-which is probably a good thing, given that the burgundy clashes with his beloved coat, and the gold clashes with his beautiful hair-and has instead donned a slightly monstrous tangle of black yarn that seems to aspire to scarfdom someday. Roy wonders whether it was Winry or Alphonse who took up knitting just long enough to produce handmade Christmas gifts before realizing they had no aptitude for it whatsoever.
Ed kicks at the lackadaisical dusting of snow on the pathway, looks up, smiles, and wraps another tiny silver chain around the pounding vulnerability in Roy’s ribcage. “Hey.”
“Fancy meeting you here,” Roy says.
The smile cracks open and widens into a grin. “Yeah, what a coincidence. It’s almost like, y’know… magic.”
“Quite,” Roy says.
“Or like you sent me a really subtle note asking if I could get here tonight, and I sent a really subtle note back saying I’d show up or die trying.”
“I’m very glad that death didn’t turn out to be necessary,” Roy says.
Ed shoves his hands into his pockets, raises his shoulders, and scuffs a toe on the cobbles again. Roy stands extremely still and wonders if it’s possible to be deafened by one’s own heartbeat.
It is two days short of three weeks since they met here in Hogsmeade in daylight, with the perfectly innocuous common goal of finding Al a Sorry You Fell Off Your Broom and Broke Your Tibia Because Your Brother Is a Backseat Seeker gift. Roy’s responsibility in the execution of this task was to explain that Al would value the sentiment more than the object-without ever uttering the words “It doesn’t matter”, which would have prompted a bout of Edward’s best howling rage. He’d played the game before, but somehow it never lost its luster (rather like Ed’s hair).
Except that Ed had been quiet, that afternoon, as they wound their way through the streets, scanning the windows and skirting the crowds. Perhaps he was sleep-deprived; perhaps he was worried about Al; perhaps he’d dreamt of their mother again; perhaps he was simply thoughtful today-Roy thought it wisest not to interrupt. He was no stranger to silences, or to waiting for Ed’s bottled feelings to fizz and overflow.
After the summary rejection of several Zonko’s speciality items and a dozen assorted books and baubles, halfway into the second butterbeer of their brainstorming break, Ed looked up at Roy through the curtain of his hair.
“Winry’s dating this guy,” Ed said.
It was extraordinary, when you thought about it, just how many kinds of pain there were in the world. A papercut and a deep gash were the same basic wound; the nerves in skin and muscles and bones all telegraphed damage differently; slicings and shatterings were universes apart. Having an eye gouged out by a madman’s wand and feeling, for a fraction of a moment, that your heart was gone, with a roaring vacuum in its place; realizing in the same instant just how wretched you were-they weren’t the same, of course, but who was to say which of them was worse?
“And it’s-” Ed glanced out from their little table in the corner; Roy couldn’t pry his gaze away from the sharp-bright, wonderful, forbidden face long enough to verify that no one seemed to be listening. “I mean, it’s-all anybody ever wants to talk about, y’know, is who’s dating who-” He paused, rolled his eyes, tried to grin. “Who’s dating whom-but I… I just… don’t… care.” Edward was crestfallen; Roy had fallen so long ago he couldn’t remember open sky. “I should, though, shouldn’t I? I should-wanna get with girls, and like the way they do their hair, and notice how they dress. Right? Or something? I mean, I-”
“That’s fine,” Roy said softly. “The only way you are supposed to be is the way that you already are.”
“No, but-” Ed turned his mug around by the handle and dragged a fingertip through the condensation pooling on the table. “What if-it’s not just that I’m a late bloomer or something; what if I never care?”
“That’s fine, too,” Roy said.
Ed eyed him for a full thirty seconds before looking away. There was a little more fiddling with the butterbeer, and then Ed licked his lips and focused intently on the tabletop.
“What if,” he said, “it’s… it’s not that I don’t care at all-just that I don’t… care… about… girls?”
Roy’s heart was a sledgehammer on an anvil, and his feeble hope was a shard of steel-
“What if,” Ed said, so low that the ambient noise almost swallowed him, “when I do… think about… those things, it’s… I think about… guys?”
Roy wanted to hold him so tight, so tight that the world out there would never find him in the first place to judge him for this-wanted to whisper to him gently until he really believed that he’d done nothing wrong-Roy knew the hiding; knew the fear; knew the self-loathing and the desperation and the bone-weary bravery in getting up each morning and trying not to be too tired to keep going-but it felt like the very air had frozen, and he couldn’t move-
“What if,” Ed said, voice trembling, “it’s… one… guy… in particular?”
Ed’s hands had stilled, and he didn’t look up. Dishes clattered on the other side of the room; somebody chortled much too loud. How were they all so stable when the planet was tilting wildly off its axis? How had gravity continued to exist?
Roy cleared the rubble of imminent obliteration from his throat.
“That’s fine,” he said. “Edward, there’s nothing wrong with you.”
Ed picked at a nick in the table’s edge for a long time-for eternity, perhaps; for a portion of it far too great to bear.
After mountains had crumbled and oceans had gone dry, he whispered, “What if it’s you?”
Roy’s throat was a riverbed reduced to dust. “If this is… some sort of-elaborate joke, it’s not amusi-”
Ed looked up sharply, and the agony in his eyes killed the rest of the words before they reached the tip of Roy’s tongue.
He had to find new ones, better ones, the best ones-words that would fix this, heal this, undo it all-
“Ed,” he said carefully, twisting his hands together to stop them from moving across the table, seeking Ed’s fingertips, his face, his hair; “please, don’t… offer me that. You’re-young, you’re new to this; I know it feels like the be-all and the end-all, but it’s… you have so much ahead of you, and so much to do, and so much to be, and so much to give-I’m not worthy of any of it, and it would be a terrible mistake to waste any of your potential on the time it took you to realize-”
“Shut up,” Ed said, and the weight of the misery left him so small and sad and sweet that Roy had to gather every last iota of courage in order to keep fighting.
“Gratitude isn’t love,” he said to the broken expression already twisting into a defensive scowl. “Stockholm syndrome isn’t love. I’m not trying to be cruel, Ed; I just don’t want you to throw yourself aw-”
“Fuck you,” Ed said, fingers curling on the table until his fist shook. “I know what I want, and I know what I feel, and if you don’t fucking care, just fucking say it without the bullshit-”
Roy’s hand was closing over Ed’s, leaching its warmth, clutching at the hard little knuckles and the clever fingers wrapped beneath. Too late. He was always, always too late to keep either of them safe.
He looked Ed in the wide, terrified gold eye.
“What in the world makes you think I don’t care?” he asked.
Ed flushed, and his gaze kept slipping sideways-he’d always been the clever one, in the end, hadn’t he? Roy was too stupid to remember to look and see if they were being watched-
“Everything you fucking say,” Ed said, leaning away without withdrawing his hand. “If you-damn it, Mustang, if you-can’t you just not give me the fucking runaround for once in your life when I’m handing you my fucking heart on a platter?”
“I don’t even deserve the platter,” Roy said.
“Dumbass,” Ed said, and his voice shook, and his hand shook, but his slowly-spreading smile didn’t.
So here they are-nineteen days later, alone in this odd little pocket-world, with the wind tugging and the snow swirling and the lights softly orange in the dark.
“Can I buy you a drink?” Roy asks as the pale flakes twirl between them.
Ed grins. “When have I ever turned that down?”
“Never,” Roy says, and he clenches his fists to resist the urge to take Ed’s arm. “Opportunistic of you.”
“Life doesn’t give out too many freebies,” Ed says, starting towards The Three Broomsticks. “I learned a long time ago to take what I can get.”
If only Roy could kiss him, instead of having to make do with a smile that can’t hope to convey everything. But-
But it’s two months yet until Edward Elric turns seventeen-two months yet until a square on the calendar and the twitch of a slender second-hand declares him an adult. It’s two months yet until this stack of kindled something smoldering between them is sanctioned and acceptable and legitimized. It’s two months yet until they can have this in the open, in the streets, for all that it is and could be.
Roy thinks that it’s going to be a rather long wait.
“So I’m worried about Al,” Ed says.
“That seems to be a basic fact of your existence,” Roy says.
“Shut up,” Ed says. “He’s been having weird nightmares since he fell off the broom, and he’s started to lose weight, and there’re circles under his eyes, and it’s… I mean, I’ve been sneaking into his Common Room every night anyway to hang out with him to try to calm him do-”
“You’re setting a terrible example,” Roy says. “They can take your Prefect status away if you continue to break and enter, you know.”
“They wouldn’t,” Ed says. “My marks are killer; they’d be too embarrassed. And anyway, it’s not breaking and entering-I guessed all the Hufflepuff passwords fair and square.” He considers. “I should get some extra credit in Cryptology for that.”
“Do you need extra credit in Cryptology?” Roy asks.
“No,” Ed says. “But still.”
“Out of morbid curiosity,” Roy says, “have you ever found a class to be difficult in the duration of your academic career?”
Ed chews on his lip while he thinks it over, and Roy steels his spine against a shiver.
“Define ‘difficult’,” he says. “And ‘class’. ’Cause the work’s never hard, but sometimes dealing with the teachers is a right pain in the arse.”
“Edward,” Roy says, “don’t let it go to your head, but… I believe you’re what society calls a genius.”
“Einstein was a genius,” Ed says. “I’m just a kid with a stick.”
A kid with a stick would not have unraveled the thousand-and-one sickly-bandaged layers of necromancy and attempted it nearly-successfully at the age of ten. A kid with a stick would not have figured out soul-binding magic on the fly to save his younger brother whilst bleeding from the backlash. A kid with a stick would not have spent the time recovering from an experimental and extremely traumatic half-Muggle, half-magical surgical treatment developing entirely new spells-and coaxing adults into testing them so that he wouldn’t attract any more attention for underage magic.
A kid with a stick would not have piqued Roy Mustang’s interest long before skewering his heart.
It was meant-Roy holds the door, grins at Ed’s scowl, shepherds him to a table, flags down Rosmerta, orders two butterbeers and a basket of chips-to be a reprieve.
That Roy had been born to be an Auror was not, Grumman explained cheerfully, and never would be, in dispute. He was their prize, really; the finest flower of the bunch; the brightest star in the constellation; the sparkiest wand in the whole of Ollivander’s, and no mistake-
(At this point Hughes had cleared his throat loudly and plastered on a strained smile unrelated to the pervasive smell of lingering Floo smoke and ambient antiseptic.)
…but mightn’t he perhaps benefit from a modest, little, non-permanent, quite noble, entirely shameless break?
Before he could slip two Knuts in edgewise, his gathered superiors had all agreed that the Diagon Alley beat had beaten him down-that it had taken his eye and shaken his confidence to the core he wouldn’t have argued, but he wasn’t beaten; he hadn’t lost-
Grumman had patted his knee beneath the sanitized mint-green sheet-Why don’t you think on it, my boy?-and the moment he was discharged from Saint Mungo’s, there was a missive in his hand reassigning him to the Improper Use of Magic Office, with a postscript ordering him to follow up on a violation in a hamlet outside of Gloucester.
Surely the best modest, little, non-permanent, quite noble, entirely shameless breaks begin with descending into a basement splattered with the blood of children and crowned with a mangled corpse.
The rebound stripped most of the biological material from Ed’s right arm. It’s partly metal, now, and partly magic; it draws from his soul for fuel in a feedback loop just this side of ethical-just a few shades brighter than the body of work that made Hohenheim of Light fade into obscurity instead of adorning Chocolate Frog cards from here to Vancouver.
In places, Ed’s arm is very faintly phosphorescent; in silence, you can hear the tiny gears inside it click. It is a breathtakingly delicate conjunction of brilliance, and as Ed curls his gloved fingers around the handle of his mug, Roy cannot convince his brain to do anything but speculate about how it would feel.
He knows, from casual touches, that it’s cooler than flesh; it’s reinforced, so the fingertips don’t give as softly as their brothers on the other side. There’s a thin layer of false skin, and the pulse of magic through the tiny tubes and wires is so close to a heartbeat that it can almost make you forget the lack of fingerprints. Ed, of course, with typical Elric flair, has made it completely his own, and his usage of it has grown so deftly precise that most of his cohorts probably don’t know it’s there until they accidentally jar his elbow and encounter metal instead of bone.
…Roy is now wondering if Ed ever strips naked in his dormitory in front of other teenagers, and will duly serve his allotted time in hell for entertaining that mental image with such extensive hospitality.
Ed shakes salt all over his side of the chips and then wastes no time in cramming four into his mouth.
“I’sh jush’ hard,” he says. “Bein’ reshponshible f’r effryfing’t happensh to Al.”
“I know,” Roy says, and he does-not about brothers, per se, but about hanging all his hopes on the upturn of a young man’s smile.
“I’m shtarting t’get shcared-” Ed swallows, bearing more than a passing resemblance to a boa constrictor. “I mean, I’m-y’know, concerned-that maybe he-hurt something, when I made him fall, y’know. Like it woke something up in his brain, and now he’s… remembering. Remembering more, anyway. And he’s… suffering-twice over, now. Because of me.”
Roy squanders the breath, because the attempt is meaningful: “It’s not your fa-”
“Is so,” Ed says, nonchalantly, stating fact. The sky is blue, iron oxidizes, and everything that has happened to the brothers is Ed’s doing. “I just… I mean, I can’t exactly sit vigil at his bedside every night in case he wakes up screaming. That’d be creepy.”
He’s looking to Roy for answers that don’t exist. There is no potion for post-traumatic stress-Roy’s searched, and sought, and tried.
“Maybe you should let Alphonse get a cat,” he says. “Pets are very therapeu-”
“And have him waltz into class with fur all down his robes?” Ed looks aghast.
“Haven’t you staggered into a morning session or two in yesterday’s uniform, covered in crumbs from an all-nighter with snacks?” Roy asks, as innocently as he can manage.
“Once,” Ed says. “I respect the institution. I am a Prefect.”
“Of course,” Roy says, taking a solemn sip of butterbeer.
Ed maintains a straight face for a record-breaking three-point-two seconds before he cracks a grin. “I figured out a crumb-removing charm after that. S’brilliant, Flitwick said so. Plus you can make a whole new biscuit out of the leftovers, for free.”
“If you need money for new biscuits,” Roy says, “you know I’d give it to you so that you don’t have to scavenge off your own clothes.”
Ed, still grinning, waves his left hand. “’Course I know that. You’re missing the point.”
“Enlighten me,” Roy says.
“Improvised charms,” Ed says, pulling a sizable swig from his mug. “Especially ones that can make it impossible for anyone to tell what you might’ve been doing last night.” His eyes dart up to meet Roy’s one, and there’s a spark that-that just-God- “Could be… useful. Maybe. Later on.”
Edward Elric is planning to develop new and improved charms for a walk of shame that he won’t even have the opportunity to begin for two months plus… a tactful interval of abstinence.
It’s hardly any surprise that Roy’s in love with him, really.
“That’s excellent advance planning,” Roy says.
Ed’s face has gone bright pink, and in the six years of their acquaintance, he has rarely been more adorable. “Well-y’know. Somebody’s gotta think about these things.”
Roy sets his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand and raises his eyebrow as he smiles. “I’ve given it some thought myself.”
Ed’s flush deepens. “Uh. No kidding.”
“On my honor,” Roy says. He leans forward, selects a chip, takes it between his first finger and his thumb, and drags it slowly through Ed’s pool of ketchup. “I was thinking,” he says, feigning great interest in his ketchup art, “about how lovely it’s going to be to take you in my arms and hold you tightly to my chest and bury my face in your hair. I think about that quite a lot, actually. And about how you might look first thing in the morning-I’m not sure whether you’re the type to snap awake and instantly be bright-eyed and ready to start moving, or whether you’re more likely to be bleary for a full half-hour on waking. I look forward to finding out. And I can think of several ways I’d like to wake you, none of which are currently legal.”
He hears Ed swallow hard and has to fight down the glee-letting it surface would ruin his superb coolly debonair performance; he can’t have that.
“I think,” he says, admiring the chip now, “that I would very much enjoy watching you roll out of bed, stagger off to the shower, and then reemerge wet and dripping. And I imagine I’d probably have to tackle you and pin you to the bed again at that point.”
He licks a bit of ketchup from the end of the chip and looks up at Ed.
“Hnh,” Ed says in a voice that could charitably be described as slightly strained.
There’s heat gathering at the back of Roy’s neck and in the pit of his stomach, but the thing that’s remarkable is the constant warmth in the center of his chest.
“Mostly,” he says, “I think about how I’m going to make you feel safe, and comfortable, and cared for.”
And loved, he does not say, even though the syllables are stopping up his throat.
And loved, he does not say, because he can’t even offer open affection for two months yet.
And loved, he does not say, because he intends to prove it so distinctly that Ed will see it every smile and sense it in every touch, and the promises won’t be necessary.
And loved, he does not say, because the word’s too small for the feeling these days.
The abominable scarf is wound half a dozen times around the tall chair-back, framing Ed’s jaw as he grins so slowly, like a star unveiled by the spread of night.
“Well,” Ed says.
“Well,” Roy says.
Ed nods to the chip still suspended by Roy’s fingers. “Are you going to eat that, or just play with it?”
“I’m not playing,” Roy says. “It’s a visual aide.”
He eats it anyway, to make a point. He’s not sure what the point is, but there must be one somewhere.
“Meant to ask,” Ed says as they tear through the victuals with considerable gusto. “You distracted me by bein’ all… y’know.” His cheeks darken several shades, and he fumbles the salt shaker. “…seductive. And stuff. How’s work?”
“Work is fine,” Roy says as part of him triumphs and part of him is touched. “There never seems to be a shortage of misspoken spells and misplaced Portkeys, and every now and again someone reports a suspected Unforgivable.” More often, lately; people are jumpy these days. “We had someone call us in swearing up and down that they’d seen a werewolf last week, which naturally turned out to be a much-maligned Saarloos wolfdog called Mister Wuffington. Mostly it’s been the usual routine-Riza magicking another thumbtack into the seat of my chair for every day I put off the overdue reports, etcetera and so forth. I’ve taken to working standing up.”
“I hear that’s good for you,” Ed says. His grin is dangerously winsome now. “You should let me come along on an assignment sometime. I bet I could get extra credit in Defense Against the Dark Arts.”
“Do you need extra credit in Defense Against the Dark Arts?” Roy asks.
Ed wrinkles his nose. “No.”
“I’m not sure you understand the concept of extra credit,” Roy says.
“At least I understand the concept of deadlines,” Ed says.
Roy snatches a chip from Ed’s side of the basket for that.
Despite his touted talent for procrastination, however, he can’t seem to add more hours to the night, and Ed has classes to attend tomorrow. Far, far too soon, they’re starting onto the path with snowflakes crunching softly underneath their feet.
“Let me walk you back,” Roy says, and the butterbeer is warm and fizzy in his guts, and his blood is hot and sparking in his veins, and he can’t help lifting his hand and brushing his knuckles against Ed’s jaw.
Ed’s eyelids dip, and color rises to his cheeks, and he smiles. “You’re so paranoid. Okay.”
If you had what I do to gain and to lose, Roy thinks, you wouldn’t blame me for clinging to you like a child.
No one will notice, though, will they, if a tall, dark-haired man with one eye is walking closer than strictly necessary to the young man in the hideous scarf. No one will notice if their shoulders-well, Roy’s upper arm and Ed’s shoulder-bump together more than once, or if they can’t stop glancing at each other, or if they’re walking very slowly for this hour of night, as though they don’t actually want to arrive…
“Hey, Roy?” Ed mumbles when the looming silhouette of the castle wall is in sight. “Can we… I mean, can we… bend the rules a little? Just this once-just for a second.”
“How do you mean?” Roy asks slowly. He will not assert; he will not assume; he will not fuck this up-
Ed reaches up, grabs his collar, and hauls him down into a very clumsy, patently unpracticed, utterly transcendent kiss. He’s such a viciously swift learner that Roy gives in to the impulse to start teaching him now-gently, gently; showing him where tongues go, sucking his lip, nipping at it, murmuring softly into his mouth. Ed whimpers, and his grip on Roy’s shirt tightens, and he rises into the contact, pushing up on his toes-God, that’s sexy; God, being wanted feels so good-
beautiful art by red-oobleck, originally posted here
Ed draws back gasping, dropping to his heels again, and his wide eyes are like harvest moons.
“Oh,” he says.
“That was more than a second,” Roy says.
“That’s ’cause I didn’t realize that making out was so fucking awesome,” Ed says. “Next time I’ll ask if we can bend the rules for an hour.”
“And I will protest that I have to conduct myself in accordance with the law if I intend to enforce it,” Roy says. “After which you’ll pout and plead for approximately thirty seconds, and my willpower will completely fail.”
Ed’s grin is brutally sweet. “Eh. You weren’t really using the willpower anyway.”
Roy tucks a wayward wisp of hair behind Ed’s ear; it’s so impossible not to touch him when he’s close. “You’d be surprised. But you’d better run along before I give up on decorum entirely.”
“And ravish me in the snow?” Ed asks, and Roy’s skin tingles at the mere words. “That sounds… amazing and uncomfortable at the same time. Well-well, g’night. I’ll see you soon, okay?”
“Goodnight,” Roy says. “You will.”
Ed beams at him and clutches at his sleeve for five precious seconds before bolting off into the dark.
Two months yet. Two months, and Roy can give himself over wholly-as if there’s anything left to give; as if he’s been able to hold back since the crystal moment he saw the gleam in Ed’s eye and began to hope so fiercely that he choked on shame-
Two months. Two months isn’t so long, really, in the span of a life that could be perfect very soon.
Roy touches a fingertip to his lips; he can almost still taste Ed on them; he can almost still feel the tantalizing heat. Perhaps he’s an addict angling for an overdose, but he’s just so happy that he doesn’t care.
He raises his solitary eye to the stars peeking through the heavy clouds overhead and thanks them for being lucky, just this once. Just this once is shaping up to be enough.
[SEQUEL]