FMA -- A Wicked Game: Part 3
Title: A Wicked Game - Part 3
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed, Winry/OC, Maes/Gracia, Ling/everyone he can get his hands on
Rating: R
Word Count: 60,300 (9,100 this chapter)
Warnings: language; shenanigans; semi-explicit sexual material; frank discussion of mental illness; modern AU
Summary: Roy has lucked into the all-expenses-paid vacation of his dreams - all he has to do is convince a bunch of happy couples that he's head-over-heels in love with Ed Elric. What could possibly go wrong?
Author's Note: The fact that I keep forgetting to alter the headers properly tells you how long it's been since I posted a long fic… and a little bit about my mental state. :DDDD
A WICKED GAME - PART 3
Roy makes it all the way through ‘Tangled’ (despite the fierce debate about whether Zachary “You know, the guy on ‘Chuck’” Levi or Jim “You know, the guy on ‘The Office’” Krasinski is cuter) and twenty minutes into ‘Avatar’ before his head and heart are fighting it out over who can pound the harder.
It’s getting to be too much-the noise, the people, the laughing, the chattering, the spinning colors on the screen. He kisses Ed’s temple, murmurs “Baby, I’m going to run upstairs for a minute,” and makes his escape.
Lying on the bed with his phone clutched to his chest, he feels a little stabler-not really any more sane, but at least stable. A little less like the planet’s hurtling through space without any gravity, and he’s only barely clinging on.
Much as he could embark on a long treatise about the evils of the cellular phone, his feels like a lifeline at times like this. If he needed to-if he really needed to; if it was the difference between dangling from the edge and letting go-Maes and Riza are a swipe and two thumb-taps away. They’d pick up, too. It’s just about eleven; that’s two in the morning for Riza, but she’d pick up. Is Maes going to stop taking calls if he gets himself saddled with a sproglet (his word-Roy prefers ‘recombinant gene creature’, though he concedes that it’s a bit long)? His whole universe is going to reconfigure itself, won’t it? All he’ll want to talk about is sproglets; all he’ll want to do is nurture things; he’ll only ever have things in common with other sproglet-mongers and their kin. The distance is bad enough-is Roy going to get pushed out of Maes’s life altogether to make more sproglet space?
It probably won’t be a push. He’ll probably just… fade. Fewer and fewer phone calls; no more Skype chats with Gracia holding up bunny ears in the background; the Hughes household will shut down after nine. Maes won’t have time for emails; he won’t have time for texts; he’ll be so insulated in the day-to-day of his own life that he’ll forget he and Roy ever had two that overlapped almost completely. Pretty soon it’ll just be silence.
What difference does it make, anyway? Shoring up old friendships is hard, against the sheer weight of time and distance trying to make them crumble, and Roy, frankly, doesn’t have much to offer. He never has anything to say that doesn’t involve naming a new microscope (the lab has all of the Founding Fathers now). He’s usually in the middle of something and has to call back, and sometimes-often-he genuinely forgets. He only calls them when he’s needy, when he’s lonely, when he can feel his constitution cracking and knows he’s slipping towards a full-fledged breakdown.
Riza would always answer, though-wouldn’t she? Theirs is a bond of veins and ribs and hair and thoughts that grew together, intertwined; no time difference and no span of miles could separate such tangled vines. No depths of romance and no quantity of sproglets (Roy suspects Riza would rather die than reproduce, but he tries never to say “never”; more likely she’ll accumulate a large pack of frighteningly well-trained dogs) could tear them apart.
He picks up his phone and emails her the picture he took down the side of the mountain. He types out Wish you were here <3, which says just about everything without saying much at all.
He thinks about texting her, but it’s enough just knowing she’ll get the email tomorrow morning at some unholy hour and smile. He could text Maes instead, just for the breath of unguarded human contact, but-what the hell would he say? Hey, remember that time we were a little drunk, and you were telling me that love is sacred, and that you’d this-is-Sparta kick me down a flight of stairs if I ever faked being in love with someone? Does that still apply if it’s a mutual agreement of fakeness for the purpose of material gain? …wait, don’t answer that.
He doesn’t get too much longer to languish in languor and wallow in self-pity before the door opens a crack. Ed’s hair, followed by Ed’s forehead and Ed’s eyes, appear in the gap.
“I thought you might be sleeping,” Ed says, stepping in and closing it quietly.
“Sleep is for the weak,” Roy says. “I haven’t slept since 1906.”
“You look pretty good for a hundred and eight,” Ed says.
“I exfoliate,” Roy says.
Ed gestures to the empty side of the bed with an elbow, keeping both hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt. “Can I join you?”
“It’s your room, too,” Roy says. “At least if the heart on the door is to be believed.”
“Seems legit,” Ed says. He flops down and releases a massive sigh. “They’re coming up on the part with the blue people having hair-sex. I saw it with Al and Win in the theater, and I just lost my shit, I was laughing so hard, and people started throwing things at me, and… I don’t think Winry ever forgave me. So I figured I’d cut and run.” He looks over. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Roy says. It’s a bit generous. “Long day, that’s all. Long, bizarre day.”
“You’re tellin’ me,” Ed says. He wrestles the tie out of his hair and shakes his head, making bright gold spill all over the pillow. “You mind if I ditch my leg?”
It takes Roy a moment to process that ostensibly nonsensical statement. “Oh. Sure, go for it.”
Ed sits up, pauses, glances at Roy, pauses some more, slides off of the bed, turns away, unzips his jeans, shimmies until they crumple around his ankles, steps out of them, and removes the prosthetic.
“So, uh,” Ed says.
He settles on the edge of the bed, rolling his shoulders and looking faux-idly at the lamp. Several inches above where his knee would be, his thigh rounds off. There are a few faint, pale scars across the… stump. It’s a stump. Is that something Roy shouldn’t say? Is it something he shouldn’t think? He doesn’t have the vocabulary for this.
“I dunno about you,” Ed is saying, “but tonight I learned that apparently money can’t buy hearing aids for the tone-deaf.”
“I guess even currency has its limits,” Roy says.
Ed swings himself fully onto the bed again, curling the toes of his right foot. “So what do you want to do tomorrow? I’m vetoing further adventures in running the fuck away from wildlife. Unless we get a camera crew, in which case, sign me up for promotional shit.”
“Just think of it,” Roy says. “DVDs. Action figures. Playsets. Coloring books. Snuggies with our faces on the back.”
“I’m going to have nightmares,” Ed says. He looks at Roy, looks away, and looks down at his knee. He lifts it up to his chest and wraps both arms around it, and then he looks at Roy again. “You sure you’re okay?”
Did he think Roy was going to be repulsed? No doubt most of it was a matter of comfort, but all the same-there was a very delicate sort of trust in it. To be less than clothed and less than whole in front of another human being… That was a brave thing.
Roy has been brave, once or twice. He doesn’t much care for it, but sometimes…
Well, sometimes you’re sitting two feet from a half-naked early-twenties amputee, and fuck your insecurities.
“No,” Roy says. “I mean-I’m not sure. And I’m not really okay. But it’s not-it’s nothing to do with you, or anyone, or any of this; it’s… it’s all right. That’s all. It’s fine.”
Ed is watching him with a very emblematic Ed expression-mixed confusion and conviction, with a burning foundation of compassion underneath.
“What the hell does that mean?” he asks.
“Nothing,” Roy says. Bravery is for fools, of course; fools and the dead, who don’t have to endure the consequences. “Is it all right with you if I hop in the shower first?”
“Yeah,” Ed says. “No problem. Roy-”
Roy’s already digging through his suitcase, trying not to think-or is he trying to think, through the screaming whirlwind of voices in his head? “Yes?”
“Nothing,” Ed says.
When Roy comes back out, still waging the unending battle against the drips from his hair, Ed darts past him-being down a knee, a calf, and a foot doesn’t seem to deter him at all-and the shower water starts up again. Even thinking about all of the long blond hairs that are going to be straggling all over the tub and nesting in the drain like lost worms doesn’t gross Roy out very much. Thinking about Ed drenched in water, wreathed in steam, and garlanded in gleaming soapsuds does not gross Roy out at all.
This is a problem.
Fortunately, Roy has managed to fan his blazing cheeks into submission by the time Ed reemerges.
“Hey,” Ed says. He leans against the bathroom doorway; a few last gusts of steam billow out around him, and his hair streams down his shoulders, painting lines of wetness on his shirt. His pajamas pants simply hang empty on the left side. “I was just thinking, like… I mean, do you think we’re gonna be able to do normal lab shit after this? It’s just… I mean, even if we’re too mature to be awkward about it-which we are! I think. Maybe. Whatever. I mean… Either way, we’re, like, friends now. Kind of. By default. Aren’t we? You sorta can’t just go back to normal small talk after something like this, right?”
“I don’t know,” Roy says truthfully. “I’ve never… It’s not like it’s going to be a breakup or something, but…”
“It’s like that part in the first Harry Potter,” Ed says, “where Harry and Ron and Hermione-”
“Fight the cave troll?” Roy says. “And that’s not something you can do without becoming friends with someone?”
Ed chews on his bottom lip. “See, that’s exactly what I mean. You just finished my sentence. And got the Harry Potter thing. And… just… well, shit, cave trolls can go fuck themselves.” He unfolds his arms from across his chest in order to wave them in a manner that is equal parts emphatic and unrevealing. “Mountain lions, man.”
“I’m starting to doubt my own memory that that ever happened,” Roy says. “I’m glad you’re a witness.”
“Oh, yeah?” Ed says. He nods to… Roy. Roy in general? Ah, Roy’s face in particular. “We should put some Neosporin on your souvenirs there, or they’ll scar, and you’ll have them as witnesses, too.”
“I should have taken a picture of it,” Roy says.
“Yeah,” Ed says. “So you could’ve been the first person to get ‘Instagram’ written as the cause of death on their certificate.”
Roy heaves himself up off of the bed and pads over towards the bathroom. “You and I both know that the first was some tragic hipster who wanted to make a slideshow of skydiving and forgot to pull his chute.”
“I don’t think you got hugged enough as a child,” Ed says. He isn’t moving out of the doorway.
“I didn’t,” Roy says. Slowly, to cover his hesitation, he takes a step closer.
Instead of shifting aside, Ed hops twice to cover the space between them and then flings both arms around Roy’s chest.
“There,” he says, squeezing. “That’s one out of your lifetime hug deficit. C’mere, dumbass.”
He hops over to the sink counter and starts banging drawers out and then back in. Before Roy has time to comment that their next-room neighbors probably won’t appreciate that-and then time to remember that their next-room neighbors are most likely still downstairs, reveling in James Cameron’s extraordinary budget-Ed is holding up a little yellow tube in triumph.
“Rich people think of everything,” he says.
“Except the poor, I suppose,” Roy says.
“Do you need another hug?” Ed asks, and somehow it sounds like a threat.
Roy wakes from a wretched dream about Ed falling off of the pier, over and over, clutching a huge, heavy bottle of Neosporin to his chest as he goes. Sometimes he has both legs, and sometimes he has only the right, and sometimes he doesn’t have any legs at all.
When Roy’s eyes will focus on the shapes in the shadows, he directs them towards the clock.
5:50.
Could be worse.
He blinks, rubs at his eyes with the back of his wrist, and blinks again.
5:51.
Progress.
“Jesus fuck,” Ed mumbles as Roy tries-evidently without success-to slip to the edge of the bed and subtly disentangle himself from the sheets. “…time s’it?”
“Unholy o’clock,” Roy says.
Ed snuffles and rolls over, pressing his face into the pillow. “Go back t’sleep.”
“I can’t.”
“S’easy, just read Hegel. Zaps your brain. Knocks you out.”
“I don’t feel comfortable using German philosophers without a prescription,” Roy says.
Ed groans. “Can’t fuckin’ believe you. ’F you get cut, d’you bleed sass?”
“Purer than maple syrup,” Roy says, sorting through his suitcase for a dark clothes-blob that feels like denim.
“Jus’ lie down quiet for a while ’n you’ll get tired.”
“It’s fine,” Roy says.
“Be that way,” Ed mumbles.
“It’s the only way I know,” Roy says.
Whatever Ed says next gets lost in the bedclothes, so Roy dons his jeans, changes his shirt, finds some socks, and makes a break for it.
“Hey,” Chad says.
“Hey,” Roy says. “You’re looking nice this morning, Chad-oh, but no homo. That makes it okay, right? You mind if I make some coffee? Did you make sure to get no-homogenized milk?”
Chad appears to be at a loss for words.
Roy opens the cabinet and considers the options.
“Sumatran?” he says. “Fucking sweet.”
Maybe he’s out of line. Maybe he’s out of his mind. He can hear his pulse in his ears, counting down the seconds. It’s a pity hourglasses went out of style; nothing conveys the sheer, inevitable futility of human existence quite like sliding grains of sand. Anyone who’s ever tried to get a handful of beach will feel the cold brush of the end against their skin as they watch the trickle narrow into nothing.
In just his socks, he goes out onto the deck with his coffee. He sets the cup down on one of the chairs and climbs up onto the balcony railing to sit; when he’s steady, he picks up the mug again. He thinks about dopamine and distance and the fact that people always leave you without warning, no matter how long in advance you know, because the human brain is incapable of preparing to be bereaved. He thinks about how he could post cell phone pictures to Facebook of this sunrise over the lake-and how he could take pictures only for himself, to preserve it, to encapsulate even just a single frame. But if he doesn’t-if he doesn’t even try to pin it down-he’s the sole curator of this moment’s memory, and the riot of sherbet-orange in the sky, bleeding pink into the water, is his and his alone.
When the coffee mug is empty, and the sky has claimed the sun, Roy goes back in and pours himself enough mojo juice to make Chad audibly choke on a comment. Armed and ready to double-fist his caffeine for the day, Roy goes into the living room and selects one of the newspapers he was attempting to read yesterday.
It’s remarkable, really, how Ed takes up so much space-headspace, physical space, percentages of the mattress. It’s like what you’re supposed to do when faced with a cougar-make yourself seem bigger, louder, and more aggressive than you are, to make the higher predator think you’re not worth fighting. But then… somehow it’s when Ed’s at his quietest that he’s the most enthralling-when his head’s tilted just a little to the side, and his eyes are so sharp they look like candle flames caught for just an instant.
And here’s Roy, liberated momentarily both from the co-conspirator and the ruse, gracing him with half a dozen further thoughts.
At eight, he goes back into the kitchen, studiously ignores Chad’s judgmental and/or extremely worried stare, and starts hunting through the refrigerator and the embarrassingly well-stocked pantry. Roy’s never owned a waffle iron in his life, but Mr. and Mrs. Treavisor found it necessary to purchase one for their cabin.
Mansion-cabin. Cabin on crack. There ought to be a word for this precise category of excessive expenditure; there’s probably one in German. Something to the effect of stupid-filthy-rich-entertainment-house, with a lot more spit and some umlauts. They could put it on their Welcome mat. Maybe with some edelweiss. And a little cartoony cougar. The hills are alive with the sound of screaming…!
There is a remote possibility that Roy has had a tad bit too much caffeine.
He takes the fruits of his labors upstairs and deposits the plate on Ed’s nightstand.
“Eat fast,” he says. “It’s going to get cold.”
Ed peers at him from within the labyrinth of golden bedhead. “…s… what?”
“I made you a waffle,” Roy says.
“…waff…?”
“From scratch,” Roy says.
“…nh?”
“Turns out it’s a lot harder than putting an Eggo in the toaster oven,” Roy says.
Ed gazes at him uncomprehendingly for another moment before swiveling his line of sight to the food.
“Oh,” he says. “Waffle.”
Roy honestly can’t resist patting his head-or at least the halo of hair, which is about the only thing he can reach. “I’ll get your coffee.”
By eleven, half of the group has sojourned their way off on a scenic nature hike, from which Roy and Ed very cordially abstain. The other half is still in bed. There are rumors that someone from that cadre of film buffs thought it was a fine idea to put ‘The Ring’ on at two-thirty, and all involved parties swore off sleep forever.
In any case, it means Roy and Ed have no competition for the deck chairs. Ed doesn’t really need a second one to put his feet up on, since the feet in question only barely reach past the edge of the one he’s lying on, but Roy decides it’s kinder not to say anything.
“Yo,” Ed says after almost a whole uninterrupted paragraph of Tom Clancy. “Why’d you make me breakfast?”
“Because it’s a nice thing to do,” Roy says. “Such as, for instance, just as an entirely random example, letting a strapping young man read a single page of a novel in silence.”
“Fuck you,” Ed says. “And your waffle.”
“How was it?” Roy asks.
“Pretty good,” Ed says. “Not, like, lick-the-plate-good, but definitely get-a-couple-crumbs-with-your-finger-good.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Roy says.
Ed fiddles with his hoodie drawstrings for a grand total of twenty seconds.
“You read slow,” he says.
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” Roy says. “You may hereby clap me in irons, although I humbly request that you let me keep the book while I’m in prison.”
“I’ll make sure the guy in the next cell is a rambler,” Ed says.
This time he plays with the drawstrings for sixty-three seconds. If Roy’s being generous, it’s almost sixty-four.
“How do we even know we’re doing this right?” Ed asks. And then, because Ed has all the subtlety of a freight train careening into a Whoopie cushion factory, he clears his throat and says, “I mean, what’s being in love with a guy even like?”
“It’s exactly the same as being in love with anyone,” Roy says.
It’s the way Ed avoids his eyes in favor of picking at a loose stitch in the sweatshirt pocket-that’s how he knows, once and for all.
“It’s the usual,” Roy says. “The agony and the ecstasy, and if you’re talented you can turn it into Sistine Chapels, but most people just sort of slowly melt. Their laughter lights the stars, and you learn every constellation, and if you’re very lucky, they’re looking at you through a telescope, too.”
Ed clears his throat. “I don’t think I’m lucky.”
“You don’t believe in luck,” Roy says.
“Neither do you,” Ed says.
“Which is good,” Roy says, “because I’m not lucky either.”
Ed slumps a little lower in his chair. In another minute, he’s going to disappear into his hood. “You talk like you’ve tried it.”
“Being in love with a guy?” Roy says.
Ed nods.
“Once,” Roy says.
Ed peeks at him over the hood’s edge. “Oh.”
“The one I told you about,” Roy says. “With the wife.”
Ed’s wince would probably be visible from space. “Oh.”
Roy is not destined ever to get through the first chapter of this fucking novel. He drops it onto the next chair over. “Long story short, we were up all night packing so he could leave for Oregon in the morning, and Gracia had passed out on the couch, and when the sun came up, and we had one suitcase left to go, I told him. He said he was sorry, and I said that was stupid, because it wasn’t his fault, and why would he even say that? And he said it was what he would have said about anyone I’d fallen for that I could never have. So I went to go cry in the bathroom, but we’d packed all the towels, and then I had to drive them all the way to the airport with Gracia asking why I looked like shit. And when he hugged me right before they went through security, he whispered that he hoped he didn’t have to say it, but nothing was different, and nothing ever would be, and he’d love me as long as there were stars in the sky and idiots in the world and weird parts of my hair that wouldn’t lie down. Then I learned that there are few experiences quite as humiliating as sobbing in an airport bathroom.” He picks up Tom Clancy again. “Just for future reference.”
“I don’t get you,” Ed says.
No, you don’t, Roy thinks, looking at the neat little serifs on the letters on the page. If I have anything to say about it, no one ever will again.
“You’ve got all this-misery,” Ed says, “but you don’t really touch on it, you just sort of-” He strikes the heel of his left hand with the plane of his right. “Glance it. And you’re not even bitter; it’s like you’re just… tired. Like the bitterness sort of went stale and turned into wryness, and now that’s how you keep yourself afloat.”
There’s a crease in the cover of the book from where Roy’s been gripping it.
“Actually,” he says lightly, “I think you get me pretty well.”
Ed sinks a little lower into his hoodie still. If it wasn’t for his hair, it might be difficult to see him in there. “That’s not what I wanted you to say.”
“By all means,” Roy says. “Enlighten me, and I’ll say it.”
Ed sighs. “I want you to say it’s all just a big cynical joke, and you’re secretly really happy with how things are and where you’ve been and where you’re going. I mean, you’re smart, and even though you’re kind of a douchebag, you’re not really, because you care a lot about people, underneath all the wiseass shit. I figure maybe you’re like me with that stuff, where it’s partly ’cause if you stay all prickly on the outside, nobody will find out you’re actually pretty squishy under all the spines, and then nobody’ll pry you open and cut you up and serve you up as sushi.”
Roy swallows. “I’ve… never had hedgehog nigiri.”
“Sea urchin, dumbass,” Ed says. He glares balefully over the edge of his hood. “Did you just hijack my metaphor to compare me to a hedgehog?”
“Possibly,” Roy says. “Hedgehogs are adorable.”
Ed pouts. “Yeah, well, I’m not.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Roy says.
Ed smiles thinly. “Why, Mr. Mustang,” he says. “Are you hitting on me?”
This is already ranking high on the most awkward exchanges of Roy’s life, so he lets the wind have caution; it’s not capable of getting much worse. “Rather clumsily, but I seem to be making an attempt.”
“I’m attempting to be flattered,” Ed says. “Y’know, I think… I think maybe we spiny people should stick together.”
“But not too close,” Roy says, “or we’ll stab each other.”
“Right,” Ed says.
Roy tries to smooth the worst of the wrinkles out of the book cover.
“You think we can make more coffee without Chad sending us to rehab?” Ed asks.
“Fuck Chad anyway,” Roy says.
“Damn right,” Ed says.
They do not move.
“You know,” Ed says, slowly, with all the subtlety of a fireworks show in the middle of a sleepy suburb, “I mean, as far as… being… convincing… I’ve never… kissed anybody. So. Just. If… we get… put in a position where… I mean, it’s a fucking miracle it’s not Christmas, ’cause there’d be mistletoe, and you bet your ass Winry’d be a menace with that stuff. She’d appoint herself the smoochy Christmas fairy or some shit.”
“If you want me to kiss you,” Roy says, looking intently at the book, “all you have to do is ask.”
“Oh, like hell,” Ed says. “And I wasn’t-saying that; I was just saying-I was giving you a heads up. And fuck you, you’re not that hot.”
Roy can’t help looking up at that. Ed is sputtering and scarlet-faced.
“And fuck you more,” he says, “because if I asked you’d probably just say no, and fuck you more than that, because it’s not like you can just kiss somebody, and I was just talking about how we were friends, and-and kisses mean shit, apparently, for people that have them and have had them. Also, germs. Fuck your mouth bacteria. I don’t want it.”
“My mouth bacteria is exquisite,” Roy says. He watches Ed’s eyelids lower for a glare. “It could be just a kiss.”
“No fucking way it could,” Ed says. “There’s no such thing. And nothing’s just an anything with you; that’s the thing I can’t… every fucking sentence that comes out of your mouth is a secret fucking coded message. All your gestures are fucking semaphore or some shit. You never say or do anything that’s not calculated and significant, and… and fuck that. I don’t want this to get more complicated, okay?”
Roy directs his gaze at the book again. “Okay.”
“Jesus, that’s exactly what I fucking mean-”
“But if you haven’t experienced it,” Roy says, “are you sure you don’t want to try just to find out?” He looks up at Ed through his eyelashes. “You know-for science?”
“You know what?” Ed says. He jackknifes out of the chair-Roy didn’t know it was possible to move like whiplash. “Fine. Fine. If you’re gonna give me shit for being a fucking virgin because I’m a recluse cripple über-geek with one friend, fine. I’m gonna give you what you’re fucking asking for. And don’t you fucking say you were just kidding, you fucking coward.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Roy says.
Ed stalks across the creaking boards and stands over him. Carefully, gingerly, making no sudden movements, Roy sets the book down again.
“Well?” Ed bites out. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Start by sitting down,” Roy says, tugging the nearest deck chair closer. “Right on the edge there.”
As Ed eyes him warily and finds a perch, Roy sits up straight and swings his knees over the side to face his… what? Victim? Student? Idol?
He’s not quite sure anymore.
“Look at me,” Roy says. “Constantly. Just… take everything in, very quietly. Until it starts to get uncomfortable.”
“Can I blink?” Ed asks.
“Please do,” Roy says. Ed is staring at him so hard he feels like he’s being flayed alive.
Ed’s mouth pulls down into a frown, and thence into a scowl. “What am I looking for?”
“You’re not looking ‘for’,” Roy says. “You’re just looking.”
“What am I looking at?”
“You’re just… looking.”
“What the fuck, Roy?”
“Love is less a transitive verb than it is a state of being,” Roy says.
“Bullshit,” Ed says.
Roy is, naturally, obligated to stare back. There’s a line dug in between Ed’s eyebrows where the pout has drawn them together. The wisps right along his hairline are fine and airy and butter-pale, and there’s a tiny upturn to his nose. When his mouth starts to twist like that, it always means he’s screwing up his courage to blurt something out.
“And how do you know so much about love, anyway?” Ed asks. “Your one love story there kinda spiraled out of control, and it wasn’t even… I mean, it was just you, wasn’t it? Is it even a love story if it’s one-sided?”
“It’s a story with love in it,” Roy says. “And, for your information, that is not the only time I’ve had the experience. I’ve starred in a few love stories that were requited. How else do you think I learned how to kiss in the first place?”
“You don’t have to love someone to kiss ’em,” Ed mutters. He’s staring at Roy’s cheekbone. “Huh. You’ve got a…”
“A what?”
“A freckle. I think. Maybe it’s chocolate.”
“Maybe it’s your imagination,” Roy says.
Ed glowers. “Maybe you should shut the fuck up and put your mouth where your money is.”
“I did tell you to be quiet,” Roy says.
Ed snorts. “And I did tell you to go fuck yourself.”
Perhaps Ed’s very personality is rooted in being the most cockily pigheaded ass in the modern universe. He’s practically a barnyard of stubbornness all on his own.
But maybe-just maybe-Roy has a chance, now, to shut him up for a while.
“Come here,” he says, and before Ed has shaken off the overstated scowl, Roy reaches in and cups his face very gently in both hands. He runs the thumb of his right slowly up along the line of Ed’s jaw and threads just the fingertips of the left into Ed’s hair above his ear, smoothing it back over the curve, slowly tangling his fingers into it. It’s every bit as goddamn silky as it looks.
Ed swallows. Roy swipes the pad of his thumb slowly over Ed’s warming cheek, then lifts it to run it over the curve of his eyebrow next, trying to smooth out the frown lines. He brushes Ed’s bangs back, letting his fingernails graze Ed’s scalp on his temple as they slip free to swing into place again. Ed’s hair gleams in the strengthening sunlight, and his eyes dart quickly, nervously-but there’s a hunger there. Roy can just detect a bit of the flaring lust for knowledge, too, but it’s not the only emptiness that wants slaking.
“Look at me,” Roy whispers, leaning forward until their foreheads meet, until the warmth of Ed’s is seeping into his skin. Their eyelashes graze and catch every time they blink. He can hear Ed’s heartbeat; he can hear Ed’s throat swallowing once, twice, three times. Ed’s breath comes faster, lighter, and the tip of his tongue slides across his upper lip.
“S’gonna taste like coffee,” he says. He looks startled to hear himself so hoarse; he clears his throat. “Y’know.”
“Did you miss the part where coffee is my addiction of choice?” Roy asks. “There are few tastes I love more.”
Ed tries to smile.
“Relax,” Roy says. “It’s not going to hurt. It’s just a kiss.”
“I already won that argument,” Ed says.
“I beg to differ,” Roy says.
“Douche,” Ed says. He licks his lip again. “I-what are we waiting for?”
“Excruciation,” Roy says.
“I didn’t realize this whole kissing thing was so sadomasochistic,” Ed says. “Or is that just with you?”
“The longer we sit here,” Roy says, “the tenser you’ll be, and the more heightened your senses, and the more explosive the sensations.”
“I don’t want to explode,” Ed says. “I just want you to fucking kiss me so I’m not an unscientific loser-virgin anymore.”
“You’re the most scientific person I know,” Roy says. “And you’re not a loser.”
“You can sweet-talk me later,” Ed says. “And I do mean ‘can’, as in ‘will be physically capable of’, ’cause I know you won’t.”
“I wasn’t aware that you had such a firm grasp on the events of the future,” Roy says.
“I cannot believe,” Ed says, grinding his teeth audibly, “that we are sitting here, breathing in each other’s fucking exhaled CO2, and you won’t fucking shut up long enough to give me one fucking kiss for experimental refere-mmf.”
He tries to articulate another syllable against Roy’s mouth before he finally gets the hint and gives up.
art by the way-too-wonderful Phindus
It’s about what Roy might have expected after that-Ed doesn’t know what he’s doing and doesn’t especially seem to care; Roy presses in closer, curling all five fingers into his ought-to-be-impossible hair. Ed’s mouth is hot and warm and smooth and pliable, and he tastes overpoweringly of coffee and maple syrup. Slowly, carefully, gently-he’ll balk if he’s forced into anything-Roy nudges at his chin with a few knuckles to coax him into tilting his head. Their lips slot together, fitting as perfectly, as effortlessly, as their shoulders did last night. Ed makes a soft noise deep in his throat and pushes back, fisting his right hand in Roy’s shirtfront and dragging him in closer; they knock teeth, and he startles, but he’s not deterred for long.
Roy thinks it wiser to keep the whole thing relatively chaste for now-and favoring the corner of Ed’s mouth, then the meat of his bottom lip, then drawing back enough to breathe on the wetness before diving back in makes Ed quake under his hands, so he’s not sure the poor kid could handle much more.
Except that just as he’s considering pulling away and saying something insufferably smug, Ed’s hands flatten on his chest, slide slowly and deliberately up over his collarbones, skate up the sides of his neck, and clench in his hair. Roy tenses a little-just to see if he can move back, just to test the possibility of retreat-and finds himself securely trapped. The way Ed’s grip tugs on his hair follicles makes his whole scalp tingle, and if he wants to pull free, he’s going to have to wrench himself away. There may be casualties in the form of bald spots. There may be tears, and they may not be Ed’s.
Shit.
Ed twists in closer still; there are only inches left between their bodies, and someone’s going to fall off of the edge of his deck chair soon. Every time they breathe, their chests collide, and Ed is a dangerously quick study. Roy should have known. Roy should have known better than this.
That’s the story of his life, isn’t it?
Ed bites his bottom lip-hard, and the gorgeous dart of pain ripples straight down Roy’s spine and twists into another scrap of kindling for the embers in his stomach-and then draws back. Roy opens his eyes. His face is threatening to burst into flame, and his knuckles appear to be bone-white where his hand is clenched in Ed’s hair.
Ed swallows. His lips are a terrible, terrible, tantalizing dark red right now, flushed and swollen and gleaming wet. His eyes flick up to meet Roy’s, then away, and his grasp on Roy’s hair loosens in little fits and starts, uncertainly.
“Well,” he says. His voice cracks; he withdraws one hand to cough into his fist. “Well. That was-interesting.”
Roy’s blood is beating in his ears, in his fingertips, in his toes, in his groin, in his throat; his heart rocks forward against his sternum three times to every breath. “Ah. Educational, I hope.”
Ed’s other hand drops away from the nape of Roy’s neck; he folds both arms tightly over his chest and curls around them, sitting back. “Yeah. Yeah, not bad.”
Roy nods.
Ed uncrosses his arms long enough to pull his sleeves down over his hands and then huddles up again.
Roy feels giddy, and mortified, and kind of like his heart is hurling itself over and over again on sharp rocks. There’s no room left in the muddle for cowardice. “I think we just fucked it up.”
“I dunno,” Ed says, looking intently at the deck between his feet. “Did we?”
“You were right,” Roy says. There’s a vague mist of resignation to it; admitting that to Ed will probably never be pleasant. “There’s no such thing as ‘just a kiss’.”
“Oh,” Ed says in a very small voice.
Ed doesn’t know what he’s doing. Ed doesn’t know what he wants. Ed is here to keep an eye on Winry and take a breath of fresh air-Ed is here to be liberated from the close, chemically-laced little universe of the lab. Ed is here to be free, for a few days. Ed is here to stop thinking, just this once.
And that’s why Roy’s here, too, really. But somewhere along the line-somewhere in between falling into a lake with him and this morning, this moment with his guts squeezing and his heart tripping and his head banging like there’s a door in it that he can’t afford to open-
Somewhere along the line, he went from tolerating Ed to liking him. Somewhere along the line, all the quirks and weird foibles started to be strangely charming. At some point in the last three days, Roy started to care what Ed thinks of him, and then he started to care what Ed feels.
Kissing him gouged a hole in that door like Jack’s fucking hatchet in The Shining.
He can’t open that fucking door.
It wouldn’t be fair.
And he cares now-about Ed. He cares enough to know that he has to get up out of this chair and walk across this deck and go back inside and pick up a newspaper and pretend so fiercely that they both forget this happened.
He has to. He has to, and he’s strong enough, isn’t he? He’s good enough for this. It’s not too much to ask. For fuck’s sake, he has to; it’s the only choice he won’t regret.
He just has to get up. That’s all.
Seconds pass. He can almost hear the ticking; his own breaths echo in his ears.
He doesn’t move a muscle.
Ed buries his face in both hands. His bangs slip forward and drape against the ragged hems of that damn hoodie’s worn sleeves.
“All right,” he says. “Awesome. I fucking told you so. Are you happy now?”
“Not particularly,” Roy says.
The snarl sounds weak. “Oh, fuck you.”
“I really don’t think that would be wise,” Roy says, “given the trend here.”
“I should’ve figured you’d turn out to be a fucking asshole,” Ed says, and before Roy can make a feeble attempt at a defense, Ed’s on his feet, and then he’s halfway across the deck, and then he’s somehow managing to slam a sliding glass door behind him.
Roy gets through a whole chapter of Tom Clancy. Something is rotten in the state of ’Murricah, and the intrepid ex-Navy SEAL and the hot FBI chick are tasked with setting it right, which Roy imagines that they will probably do without even having to stab anyone through an arras. Presumably several things will get blown up at dramatic moments, however, and five bucks says that one of those things is a car. Before he hits the back cover, someone will have said “Time is running out!”, there will have been at least one high-speed chase with slightly confusing descriptions of vehicles and directions, and Rugged Hero and Agent Nice Rack will almost certainly have hooked up.
As he turns the page that reveals the second chapter heading, he hears the sliding glass door dragging open, and he can’t help the way his head snaps up. Even while trying to distract himself by skimming through the text, he’s thought of a hundred-thousand things to say-a billion variants and permutations of sorry and it’s not your fault and you don’t understand. Even with the antics of the cardboard cutouts dancing through his mind’s eye, he’s sifted through the possibilities and found a few gentle ways to say Ed, believe me, I’m a disease.
But it’s not Ed-it’s… Treavisor?
He saunters up from the side where Ed’s deck chair was, pulls it back a little ways from Roy’s, comes around the side, and sits down. It does not escape Roy’s notice that he sits like a dude, with his legs opened wide and his feet firmly planted. He folds his hands and props his elbows on his knees. It is a tragic commentary that bedhead looks slovenly, not adorable, on everyone except Ed.
“Hey,” Treavisor says. He lifts his chin at the book in Roy’s hands. “Any good?”
“No,” Roy says.
“Yeah,” Treavisor says. “My dad really likes them, but I’m, like… My mom wouldn’t let me keep any Stephen King stuff here, because my sister read one once when we were here over Christmas, and then there was a huge storm that night, and she wouldn’t stop crying and stuff.” He pauses, contemplatively. “She’s twelve. And dumb.”
“Stephen King is pretty scary,” Roy says. “I used to get nightmares.”
“Same,” Treavisor says. He pauses again, glancing back at the house, and then looks at Roy like Roy is a leopard without spots-not unthinkable, but perhaps unheard of. “So… Winry’s trying to figure out why Ed banged all the cabinets in the kitchen one by one and then practically kicked a hole in the staircase.”
Roy should be a hot air balloon with a hole in it for Halloween; he’s so intimately acquainted with sinking feelings that he’d be brilliant at staying in character. “If there’s any property damage, I’ll pay for it.”
“Nah, nah, it’s good,” Treavisor says, waving a hand. “It’s nothing more than, like, a sleepover full of twelve-year-old girls does a couple times a year, anyway.”
“If you’re sure,” Roy says, which is more graceful than It’d have to be on a gradual payment plan, though, because right now I can’t afford it.
Treavisor looks at his hands and picks at one of his fingernails for a second before he glances up. “Just… y’know. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Roy says. That’s not even a lie, anymore; not really-he always envisions fine as a sort of baseline, like a synonym for surviving. It’s not the same thing as well, or even as okay, but it doesn’t pretend to be.
“Ed seemed real upset,” Treavisor says slowly. “That’s all. I thought maybe you guys had a fight.”
Roy shrugs. The lies are getting progressively more difficult, which is counterintuitive, isn’t it? “Trouble in paradise; what can I say?” The secret is always a sliver of the truth-“It’s my fault.”-followed by an egregious falsehood: “I wanted to give him a minute to cool off before I went to apologize. It’ll be all right.”
Treavisor smiles tentatively. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Roy says.
Treavisor smiles a little wider and releases a deep breath. “Okay. It’s just… I mean, jeez, you guys are really cool. I like you a lot. And you’re always so happy together, it’s like… if something happened here that messed that up, I’d feel like shit.”
“It’s fine,” Roy says. “Don’t worry about it. Totally my bad. And Ed’s just dramatic; he’ll settle down.”
‘Dramatic’ isn’t quite the right word for him-‘drastic’, maybe. Ed doesn’t do the slow descent from numbness into abjection that Roy has known for as long as he can remember; Ed feels things more powerfully than anyone he’s ever met. It’s not that Ed makes his emotions a big deal; his emotions are, and it’s not like he can change that.
“All right,” Treavisor says, standing. He’s still smiling; Roy forces one for him in return. “Just lemme know if I can help, okay?”
“Sure thing,” Roy says. “Thanks.”
Roy presses the tip of his tongue against the point of his eyetooth to stop himself from adding, Maybe if you pushed me into the lake again, and this time you held me under.
Nature begins to call insistently right as a series of unseasonably dark clouds roll in. Roy packs up his riveting literature and heads inside. He leaves said riveting literature in the living room and has already forgotten where by the time he reaches the top of the stairs.
The door to their room isn’t locked, which at least is a start. The door to their bathroom is closed, however, which is substantially more ominous.
Roy hesitates, braces himself, goes over, and knocks.
Nothing.
He tries the handle, and it doesn’t yield.
He knocks again.
“Hey,” he says. “I had at least a liter of coffee.”
“Fuck you,” Ed calls through the door-but his voice is steady, and there’s none of the anger in it, and none of the hurt. “Go get a bucket.”
“What are you doing in there?”
“Hiding from fuckin’ Winry and her fuckin’ advice.”
“What was her advice?”
“I dunno. I hid as soon as she got started on her whole ‘Ed, I know you’ve been through more than I have in a lot of ways, but hear me out on this’ shit.”
“I didn’t see her on my way up. You could hide under the bed.”
“Fuck you. I’m not that small.”
Roy looks back at the space between the box-spring and the floor, does a quick distance estimation, and decides he’s going to walk away from that battle. “Okay, you can stay in there and watch me pee.”
“You’re fucking weird.”
“I’m aware.”
The door opens. Ed glares up at him. Roy steps back, and Ed moves past him.
“Hurry up,” Ed says. “Winry can smell fear.”
Roy wants to laugh it off, but- “You’re… afraid?”
Ed’s eyes widen, and his arms wave. “Jesus, Roy, have you ever had to sit through one of her life-coaching sessions? Don’t fucking judge.”
Roy holds both hands up for peace and slips into the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind him.
When he steps back out, Ed’s sprawled on the bed, arms folded, chin resting on them, apparently examining the carpet.
“All yours,” Roy says, gesturing back.
“Look,” Ed says-to the carpet, really, but the normal rules of polite conversation don’t tend to apply to Ed. “Winry said a couple things before I escaped, and I was thinking… Just… She said, y’know, you gotta think about the big picture sometimes, and not let the little shit ruin it if the whole thing is mostly good. And… I mean, obviously that was meant to be, like, relationship advice, but it’s still pretty true, right? What… happened, what we did this morning-that was a little thing. Right? And by and large this whole bigger thing that we’re doing is working pretty great, so let’s just… not get hung up on that, maybe. Sound okay?”
“Sounds perfect,” Roy says, and the lies are getting harder. “I was thinking of going on another hike. In the opposite direction from mountain lion territory, that is. Watching the signal bars on my phone the whole time.”
Ed makes a face that speaks volumes.
“Fair enough,” Roy says.
“Nah,” Ed says. “It sounds all right, just… I mean, half the reason I came was to hang out with Win, and first chance I get, I end up hiding in the bathroom. Figure I’ll go catch up with her while everybody’s out, and she’s not tryin’ to be all Martha Stewart-y and shit. Sometimes she does weird shit to my hair, though; you gotta promise not to laugh.”
“I promise I’ll find an excuse that makes it look like I’m laughing at something else,” Roy says. “How about that?”
“Deal,” Ed says.
When he’s halfway up the hill on the other side of the house, his will breaks, and he calls.
Riza picks up on the third ring. “Where are you?”
“This guy from the lab grew up with a girl who’s dating a guy whose parents are stupid-rich and have a cabin out here,” Roy says. “And by ‘cabin’, I mean ‘bigger than your dad’s old place’.”
“Exactly how did you get involved in this game of Seven Degrees of Separation?” Riza asks.
“By being a fucking idiot,” Roy says.
“You’re not an idiot,” Riza says.
“You know better than anyone that that’s not true,” Roy says.
“You know better than anyone that you’re not enough of a rhetorician to talk me into calling you an idiot,” Riza says, “so give up. What happened?”
“I-kissed-him. I kissed him. It was stupid. I’m fucking stupid.”
“Roy. You… the… guy the girl is dating, or-?”
“The guy from lab.”
“Does the guy from lab have a significant other?”
“No. And he never has; he’s never dated anyone. He’d never even… it was his first kiss, Riza, and now every single time somebody touches him, he’ll think of how terrible it was, and how terrible I am, and how terrible he felt, and I’ve ruined his love life forever, and I really-I think-”
“He didn’t like it?”
“Well, I don’t… know. That’s not the point; it doesn’t even matter. It’s-complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
“We had to fake involvement to get here and have a free vacation. Which, for the record, we both desperately needed; he’s worse than I am. I don’t know if he sleeps. He’s the one with the Cheetos.”
“I remember the one with the Cheetos,” Riza says slowly. “And… honestly, the one with the Cheetos is the only one I remember, Roy.”
He rubs at his forehead. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s the only person in your lab that you’ve ever talked about at length.”
“So? He’s bizarre. And he’s always there. And he eats my food all the time.”
“It’s all right to be attracted to him,” Riza says, and Roy’s heart does a weird somersaulting thing not unlike the feat Ed executed during their flight from the cougar. “And I imagine that the situation you’re in would only heighten that feeling, and confuse it a little, and acting on it would intensify it more-”
Roy stops walking before he can trip on something and break his face. “What the hell are you saying?”
“Did he push you away?”
“No, but-”
“Did he tell you not to?”
“He told me to, but-”
“Body language?”
“I mean, he literally requested it; I’m not-but-”
“Did you have any indication that he did not want to be kissed by you?”
“Well, no, but-”
“Then why was it stupid, Roy?”
“Because he hates me!”
“Then why did he want you to kiss him?”
“Because it was for science!”
There is a long pause. Roy, who is currently dragging his free hand down his face, actually glances at the phone screen to make sure the call hasn’t dropped.
“I still don’t think you’re stupid,” Riza says, delicately, “but you cannot possibly believe that.”
“We called a truce,” Roy says. “I think he wanted to deck me, right after the fact. He probably still wants to deck me. I never took you for a romantic, Riza-trust me, you shouldn’t start now. He doesn’t want me-if he wants anything, I don’t think he knows what it is, and I certainly don’t think he’d know how to go about getting it, and I can’t…”
He looks up at the net of intertwining pine needles silhouetted against the gray.
“You can’t what, Roy?” Riza asks softly.
“I can’t do it again,” Roy says. “I can’t save up all that love for someone who doesn’t want it, or doesn’t know how to use it, or can’t or won’t give back. Once was enough. Lesson learned. It is not fucking better to have loved and lost; it’s better to let it pass you by and not feel like you’re scraped out hollow and frozen through.”
Riza takes a deep breath. “How do you feel now?”
“Like shit,” Roy says.
“But you’re decided,” Riza says. “It will hurt less to hold back now and wall him out and cope with his hurt at your mixed signals than it would to let him in and risk it falling through.”
“Yes,” Roy says.
“Hm,” Riza says.
“What’s ‘hm’?” Roy asks.
He can almost see her shrugging. “You wouldn’t have called me if you didn’t want me to disagree with you.”
“Remind me why you didn’t go into psychology?” Roy says.
Riza scoffs. “Not nearly enough guns.”
Roy keeps trekking uphill until he crests the rise, and the trees fall away into another one of those indescribable vistas. It’s funny to think that there are places like this out here all the time, no matter where he is, no matter what he’s doing-that the world keeps being magnificent without him. It hardly seems fair, but then, he supposes he’s not especially magnificent himself, so it’s not as though he’s earned a right to it.
There aren’t any palatable-looking logs or stumps available in the vicinity, so he climbs up into one of the pines right at the edge-just a little ways; just high enough for a sturdy branch facing outward, where he can lean in against the trunk and stay still enough for the squirrels to forget he’s there.
He sits, drinking in the view and savoring the silence, until his ass is starting to go numb, which happens to be right about the same time that the moisture in the air solidifies into actual rain.
Well, this is going to be unpleasant. And fairly cathartic. But mostly unpleasant.
Roy holds in a sigh as he jumps down, and the damp leaves squish and scuttle, and then he raises his head to the dripping sky and lets out his breath as a cloud of mist.
[PART 2] [PART 4]
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed, Winry/OC, Maes/Gracia, Ling/everyone he can get his hands on
Rating: R
Word Count: 60,300 (9,100 this chapter)
Warnings: language; shenanigans; semi-explicit sexual material; frank discussion of mental illness; modern AU
Summary: Roy has lucked into the all-expenses-paid vacation of his dreams - all he has to do is convince a bunch of happy couples that he's head-over-heels in love with Ed Elric. What could possibly go wrong?
Author's Note: The fact that I keep forgetting to alter the headers properly tells you how long it's been since I posted a long fic… and a little bit about my mental state. :DDDD
A WICKED GAME - PART 3
Roy makes it all the way through ‘Tangled’ (despite the fierce debate about whether Zachary “You know, the guy on ‘Chuck’” Levi or Jim “You know, the guy on ‘The Office’” Krasinski is cuter) and twenty minutes into ‘Avatar’ before his head and heart are fighting it out over who can pound the harder.
It’s getting to be too much-the noise, the people, the laughing, the chattering, the spinning colors on the screen. He kisses Ed’s temple, murmurs “Baby, I’m going to run upstairs for a minute,” and makes his escape.
Lying on the bed with his phone clutched to his chest, he feels a little stabler-not really any more sane, but at least stable. A little less like the planet’s hurtling through space without any gravity, and he’s only barely clinging on.
Much as he could embark on a long treatise about the evils of the cellular phone, his feels like a lifeline at times like this. If he needed to-if he really needed to; if it was the difference between dangling from the edge and letting go-Maes and Riza are a swipe and two thumb-taps away. They’d pick up, too. It’s just about eleven; that’s two in the morning for Riza, but she’d pick up. Is Maes going to stop taking calls if he gets himself saddled with a sproglet (his word-Roy prefers ‘recombinant gene creature’, though he concedes that it’s a bit long)? His whole universe is going to reconfigure itself, won’t it? All he’ll want to talk about is sproglets; all he’ll want to do is nurture things; he’ll only ever have things in common with other sproglet-mongers and their kin. The distance is bad enough-is Roy going to get pushed out of Maes’s life altogether to make more sproglet space?
It probably won’t be a push. He’ll probably just… fade. Fewer and fewer phone calls; no more Skype chats with Gracia holding up bunny ears in the background; the Hughes household will shut down after nine. Maes won’t have time for emails; he won’t have time for texts; he’ll be so insulated in the day-to-day of his own life that he’ll forget he and Roy ever had two that overlapped almost completely. Pretty soon it’ll just be silence.
What difference does it make, anyway? Shoring up old friendships is hard, against the sheer weight of time and distance trying to make them crumble, and Roy, frankly, doesn’t have much to offer. He never has anything to say that doesn’t involve naming a new microscope (the lab has all of the Founding Fathers now). He’s usually in the middle of something and has to call back, and sometimes-often-he genuinely forgets. He only calls them when he’s needy, when he’s lonely, when he can feel his constitution cracking and knows he’s slipping towards a full-fledged breakdown.
Riza would always answer, though-wouldn’t she? Theirs is a bond of veins and ribs and hair and thoughts that grew together, intertwined; no time difference and no span of miles could separate such tangled vines. No depths of romance and no quantity of sproglets (Roy suspects Riza would rather die than reproduce, but he tries never to say “never”; more likely she’ll accumulate a large pack of frighteningly well-trained dogs) could tear them apart.
He picks up his phone and emails her the picture he took down the side of the mountain. He types out Wish you were here <3, which says just about everything without saying much at all.
He thinks about texting her, but it’s enough just knowing she’ll get the email tomorrow morning at some unholy hour and smile. He could text Maes instead, just for the breath of unguarded human contact, but-what the hell would he say? Hey, remember that time we were a little drunk, and you were telling me that love is sacred, and that you’d this-is-Sparta kick me down a flight of stairs if I ever faked being in love with someone? Does that still apply if it’s a mutual agreement of fakeness for the purpose of material gain? …wait, don’t answer that.
He doesn’t get too much longer to languish in languor and wallow in self-pity before the door opens a crack. Ed’s hair, followed by Ed’s forehead and Ed’s eyes, appear in the gap.
“I thought you might be sleeping,” Ed says, stepping in and closing it quietly.
“Sleep is for the weak,” Roy says. “I haven’t slept since 1906.”
“You look pretty good for a hundred and eight,” Ed says.
“I exfoliate,” Roy says.
Ed gestures to the empty side of the bed with an elbow, keeping both hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt. “Can I join you?”
“It’s your room, too,” Roy says. “At least if the heart on the door is to be believed.”
“Seems legit,” Ed says. He flops down and releases a massive sigh. “They’re coming up on the part with the blue people having hair-sex. I saw it with Al and Win in the theater, and I just lost my shit, I was laughing so hard, and people started throwing things at me, and… I don’t think Winry ever forgave me. So I figured I’d cut and run.” He looks over. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Roy says. It’s a bit generous. “Long day, that’s all. Long, bizarre day.”
“You’re tellin’ me,” Ed says. He wrestles the tie out of his hair and shakes his head, making bright gold spill all over the pillow. “You mind if I ditch my leg?”
It takes Roy a moment to process that ostensibly nonsensical statement. “Oh. Sure, go for it.”
Ed sits up, pauses, glances at Roy, pauses some more, slides off of the bed, turns away, unzips his jeans, shimmies until they crumple around his ankles, steps out of them, and removes the prosthetic.
“So, uh,” Ed says.
He settles on the edge of the bed, rolling his shoulders and looking faux-idly at the lamp. Several inches above where his knee would be, his thigh rounds off. There are a few faint, pale scars across the… stump. It’s a stump. Is that something Roy shouldn’t say? Is it something he shouldn’t think? He doesn’t have the vocabulary for this.
“I dunno about you,” Ed is saying, “but tonight I learned that apparently money can’t buy hearing aids for the tone-deaf.”
“I guess even currency has its limits,” Roy says.
Ed swings himself fully onto the bed again, curling the toes of his right foot. “So what do you want to do tomorrow? I’m vetoing further adventures in running the fuck away from wildlife. Unless we get a camera crew, in which case, sign me up for promotional shit.”
“Just think of it,” Roy says. “DVDs. Action figures. Playsets. Coloring books. Snuggies with our faces on the back.”
“I’m going to have nightmares,” Ed says. He looks at Roy, looks away, and looks down at his knee. He lifts it up to his chest and wraps both arms around it, and then he looks at Roy again. “You sure you’re okay?”
Did he think Roy was going to be repulsed? No doubt most of it was a matter of comfort, but all the same-there was a very delicate sort of trust in it. To be less than clothed and less than whole in front of another human being… That was a brave thing.
Roy has been brave, once or twice. He doesn’t much care for it, but sometimes…
Well, sometimes you’re sitting two feet from a half-naked early-twenties amputee, and fuck your insecurities.
“No,” Roy says. “I mean-I’m not sure. And I’m not really okay. But it’s not-it’s nothing to do with you, or anyone, or any of this; it’s… it’s all right. That’s all. It’s fine.”
Ed is watching him with a very emblematic Ed expression-mixed confusion and conviction, with a burning foundation of compassion underneath.
“What the hell does that mean?” he asks.
“Nothing,” Roy says. Bravery is for fools, of course; fools and the dead, who don’t have to endure the consequences. “Is it all right with you if I hop in the shower first?”
“Yeah,” Ed says. “No problem. Roy-”
Roy’s already digging through his suitcase, trying not to think-or is he trying to think, through the screaming whirlwind of voices in his head? “Yes?”
“Nothing,” Ed says.
When Roy comes back out, still waging the unending battle against the drips from his hair, Ed darts past him-being down a knee, a calf, and a foot doesn’t seem to deter him at all-and the shower water starts up again. Even thinking about all of the long blond hairs that are going to be straggling all over the tub and nesting in the drain like lost worms doesn’t gross Roy out very much. Thinking about Ed drenched in water, wreathed in steam, and garlanded in gleaming soapsuds does not gross Roy out at all.
This is a problem.
Fortunately, Roy has managed to fan his blazing cheeks into submission by the time Ed reemerges.
“Hey,” Ed says. He leans against the bathroom doorway; a few last gusts of steam billow out around him, and his hair streams down his shoulders, painting lines of wetness on his shirt. His pajamas pants simply hang empty on the left side. “I was just thinking, like… I mean, do you think we’re gonna be able to do normal lab shit after this? It’s just… I mean, even if we’re too mature to be awkward about it-which we are! I think. Maybe. Whatever. I mean… Either way, we’re, like, friends now. Kind of. By default. Aren’t we? You sorta can’t just go back to normal small talk after something like this, right?”
“I don’t know,” Roy says truthfully. “I’ve never… It’s not like it’s going to be a breakup or something, but…”
“It’s like that part in the first Harry Potter,” Ed says, “where Harry and Ron and Hermione-”
“Fight the cave troll?” Roy says. “And that’s not something you can do without becoming friends with someone?”
Ed chews on his bottom lip. “See, that’s exactly what I mean. You just finished my sentence. And got the Harry Potter thing. And… just… well, shit, cave trolls can go fuck themselves.” He unfolds his arms from across his chest in order to wave them in a manner that is equal parts emphatic and unrevealing. “Mountain lions, man.”
“I’m starting to doubt my own memory that that ever happened,” Roy says. “I’m glad you’re a witness.”
“Oh, yeah?” Ed says. He nods to… Roy. Roy in general? Ah, Roy’s face in particular. “We should put some Neosporin on your souvenirs there, or they’ll scar, and you’ll have them as witnesses, too.”
“I should have taken a picture of it,” Roy says.
“Yeah,” Ed says. “So you could’ve been the first person to get ‘Instagram’ written as the cause of death on their certificate.”
Roy heaves himself up off of the bed and pads over towards the bathroom. “You and I both know that the first was some tragic hipster who wanted to make a slideshow of skydiving and forgot to pull his chute.”
“I don’t think you got hugged enough as a child,” Ed says. He isn’t moving out of the doorway.
“I didn’t,” Roy says. Slowly, to cover his hesitation, he takes a step closer.
Instead of shifting aside, Ed hops twice to cover the space between them and then flings both arms around Roy’s chest.
“There,” he says, squeezing. “That’s one out of your lifetime hug deficit. C’mere, dumbass.”
He hops over to the sink counter and starts banging drawers out and then back in. Before Roy has time to comment that their next-room neighbors probably won’t appreciate that-and then time to remember that their next-room neighbors are most likely still downstairs, reveling in James Cameron’s extraordinary budget-Ed is holding up a little yellow tube in triumph.
“Rich people think of everything,” he says.
“Except the poor, I suppose,” Roy says.
“Do you need another hug?” Ed asks, and somehow it sounds like a threat.
Roy wakes from a wretched dream about Ed falling off of the pier, over and over, clutching a huge, heavy bottle of Neosporin to his chest as he goes. Sometimes he has both legs, and sometimes he has only the right, and sometimes he doesn’t have any legs at all.
When Roy’s eyes will focus on the shapes in the shadows, he directs them towards the clock.
5:50.
Could be worse.
He blinks, rubs at his eyes with the back of his wrist, and blinks again.
5:51.
Progress.
“Jesus fuck,” Ed mumbles as Roy tries-evidently without success-to slip to the edge of the bed and subtly disentangle himself from the sheets. “…time s’it?”
“Unholy o’clock,” Roy says.
Ed snuffles and rolls over, pressing his face into the pillow. “Go back t’sleep.”
“I can’t.”
“S’easy, just read Hegel. Zaps your brain. Knocks you out.”
“I don’t feel comfortable using German philosophers without a prescription,” Roy says.
Ed groans. “Can’t fuckin’ believe you. ’F you get cut, d’you bleed sass?”
“Purer than maple syrup,” Roy says, sorting through his suitcase for a dark clothes-blob that feels like denim.
“Jus’ lie down quiet for a while ’n you’ll get tired.”
“It’s fine,” Roy says.
“Be that way,” Ed mumbles.
“It’s the only way I know,” Roy says.
Whatever Ed says next gets lost in the bedclothes, so Roy dons his jeans, changes his shirt, finds some socks, and makes a break for it.
“Hey,” Chad says.
“Hey,” Roy says. “You’re looking nice this morning, Chad-oh, but no homo. That makes it okay, right? You mind if I make some coffee? Did you make sure to get no-homogenized milk?”
Chad appears to be at a loss for words.
Roy opens the cabinet and considers the options.
“Sumatran?” he says. “Fucking sweet.”
Maybe he’s out of line. Maybe he’s out of his mind. He can hear his pulse in his ears, counting down the seconds. It’s a pity hourglasses went out of style; nothing conveys the sheer, inevitable futility of human existence quite like sliding grains of sand. Anyone who’s ever tried to get a handful of beach will feel the cold brush of the end against their skin as they watch the trickle narrow into nothing.
In just his socks, he goes out onto the deck with his coffee. He sets the cup down on one of the chairs and climbs up onto the balcony railing to sit; when he’s steady, he picks up the mug again. He thinks about dopamine and distance and the fact that people always leave you without warning, no matter how long in advance you know, because the human brain is incapable of preparing to be bereaved. He thinks about how he could post cell phone pictures to Facebook of this sunrise over the lake-and how he could take pictures only for himself, to preserve it, to encapsulate even just a single frame. But if he doesn’t-if he doesn’t even try to pin it down-he’s the sole curator of this moment’s memory, and the riot of sherbet-orange in the sky, bleeding pink into the water, is his and his alone.
When the coffee mug is empty, and the sky has claimed the sun, Roy goes back in and pours himself enough mojo juice to make Chad audibly choke on a comment. Armed and ready to double-fist his caffeine for the day, Roy goes into the living room and selects one of the newspapers he was attempting to read yesterday.
It’s remarkable, really, how Ed takes up so much space-headspace, physical space, percentages of the mattress. It’s like what you’re supposed to do when faced with a cougar-make yourself seem bigger, louder, and more aggressive than you are, to make the higher predator think you’re not worth fighting. But then… somehow it’s when Ed’s at his quietest that he’s the most enthralling-when his head’s tilted just a little to the side, and his eyes are so sharp they look like candle flames caught for just an instant.
And here’s Roy, liberated momentarily both from the co-conspirator and the ruse, gracing him with half a dozen further thoughts.
At eight, he goes back into the kitchen, studiously ignores Chad’s judgmental and/or extremely worried stare, and starts hunting through the refrigerator and the embarrassingly well-stocked pantry. Roy’s never owned a waffle iron in his life, but Mr. and Mrs. Treavisor found it necessary to purchase one for their cabin.
Mansion-cabin. Cabin on crack. There ought to be a word for this precise category of excessive expenditure; there’s probably one in German. Something to the effect of stupid-filthy-rich-entertainment-house, with a lot more spit and some umlauts. They could put it on their Welcome mat. Maybe with some edelweiss. And a little cartoony cougar. The hills are alive with the sound of screaming…!
There is a remote possibility that Roy has had a tad bit too much caffeine.
He takes the fruits of his labors upstairs and deposits the plate on Ed’s nightstand.
“Eat fast,” he says. “It’s going to get cold.”
Ed peers at him from within the labyrinth of golden bedhead. “…s… what?”
“I made you a waffle,” Roy says.
“…waff…?”
“From scratch,” Roy says.
“…nh?”
“Turns out it’s a lot harder than putting an Eggo in the toaster oven,” Roy says.
Ed gazes at him uncomprehendingly for another moment before swiveling his line of sight to the food.
“Oh,” he says. “Waffle.”
Roy honestly can’t resist patting his head-or at least the halo of hair, which is about the only thing he can reach. “I’ll get your coffee.”
By eleven, half of the group has sojourned their way off on a scenic nature hike, from which Roy and Ed very cordially abstain. The other half is still in bed. There are rumors that someone from that cadre of film buffs thought it was a fine idea to put ‘The Ring’ on at two-thirty, and all involved parties swore off sleep forever.
In any case, it means Roy and Ed have no competition for the deck chairs. Ed doesn’t really need a second one to put his feet up on, since the feet in question only barely reach past the edge of the one he’s lying on, but Roy decides it’s kinder not to say anything.
“Yo,” Ed says after almost a whole uninterrupted paragraph of Tom Clancy. “Why’d you make me breakfast?”
“Because it’s a nice thing to do,” Roy says. “Such as, for instance, just as an entirely random example, letting a strapping young man read a single page of a novel in silence.”
“Fuck you,” Ed says. “And your waffle.”
“How was it?” Roy asks.
“Pretty good,” Ed says. “Not, like, lick-the-plate-good, but definitely get-a-couple-crumbs-with-your-finger-good.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Roy says.
Ed fiddles with his hoodie drawstrings for a grand total of twenty seconds.
“You read slow,” he says.
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” Roy says. “You may hereby clap me in irons, although I humbly request that you let me keep the book while I’m in prison.”
“I’ll make sure the guy in the next cell is a rambler,” Ed says.
This time he plays with the drawstrings for sixty-three seconds. If Roy’s being generous, it’s almost sixty-four.
“How do we even know we’re doing this right?” Ed asks. And then, because Ed has all the subtlety of a freight train careening into a Whoopie cushion factory, he clears his throat and says, “I mean, what’s being in love with a guy even like?”
“It’s exactly the same as being in love with anyone,” Roy says.
It’s the way Ed avoids his eyes in favor of picking at a loose stitch in the sweatshirt pocket-that’s how he knows, once and for all.
“It’s the usual,” Roy says. “The agony and the ecstasy, and if you’re talented you can turn it into Sistine Chapels, but most people just sort of slowly melt. Their laughter lights the stars, and you learn every constellation, and if you’re very lucky, they’re looking at you through a telescope, too.”
Ed clears his throat. “I don’t think I’m lucky.”
“You don’t believe in luck,” Roy says.
“Neither do you,” Ed says.
“Which is good,” Roy says, “because I’m not lucky either.”
Ed slumps a little lower in his chair. In another minute, he’s going to disappear into his hood. “You talk like you’ve tried it.”
“Being in love with a guy?” Roy says.
Ed nods.
“Once,” Roy says.
Ed peeks at him over the hood’s edge. “Oh.”
“The one I told you about,” Roy says. “With the wife.”
Ed’s wince would probably be visible from space. “Oh.”
Roy is not destined ever to get through the first chapter of this fucking novel. He drops it onto the next chair over. “Long story short, we were up all night packing so he could leave for Oregon in the morning, and Gracia had passed out on the couch, and when the sun came up, and we had one suitcase left to go, I told him. He said he was sorry, and I said that was stupid, because it wasn’t his fault, and why would he even say that? And he said it was what he would have said about anyone I’d fallen for that I could never have. So I went to go cry in the bathroom, but we’d packed all the towels, and then I had to drive them all the way to the airport with Gracia asking why I looked like shit. And when he hugged me right before they went through security, he whispered that he hoped he didn’t have to say it, but nothing was different, and nothing ever would be, and he’d love me as long as there were stars in the sky and idiots in the world and weird parts of my hair that wouldn’t lie down. Then I learned that there are few experiences quite as humiliating as sobbing in an airport bathroom.” He picks up Tom Clancy again. “Just for future reference.”
“I don’t get you,” Ed says.
No, you don’t, Roy thinks, looking at the neat little serifs on the letters on the page. If I have anything to say about it, no one ever will again.
“You’ve got all this-misery,” Ed says, “but you don’t really touch on it, you just sort of-” He strikes the heel of his left hand with the plane of his right. “Glance it. And you’re not even bitter; it’s like you’re just… tired. Like the bitterness sort of went stale and turned into wryness, and now that’s how you keep yourself afloat.”
There’s a crease in the cover of the book from where Roy’s been gripping it.
“Actually,” he says lightly, “I think you get me pretty well.”
Ed sinks a little lower into his hoodie still. If it wasn’t for his hair, it might be difficult to see him in there. “That’s not what I wanted you to say.”
“By all means,” Roy says. “Enlighten me, and I’ll say it.”
Ed sighs. “I want you to say it’s all just a big cynical joke, and you’re secretly really happy with how things are and where you’ve been and where you’re going. I mean, you’re smart, and even though you’re kind of a douchebag, you’re not really, because you care a lot about people, underneath all the wiseass shit. I figure maybe you’re like me with that stuff, where it’s partly ’cause if you stay all prickly on the outside, nobody will find out you’re actually pretty squishy under all the spines, and then nobody’ll pry you open and cut you up and serve you up as sushi.”
Roy swallows. “I’ve… never had hedgehog nigiri.”
“Sea urchin, dumbass,” Ed says. He glares balefully over the edge of his hood. “Did you just hijack my metaphor to compare me to a hedgehog?”
“Possibly,” Roy says. “Hedgehogs are adorable.”
Ed pouts. “Yeah, well, I’m not.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Roy says.
Ed smiles thinly. “Why, Mr. Mustang,” he says. “Are you hitting on me?”
This is already ranking high on the most awkward exchanges of Roy’s life, so he lets the wind have caution; it’s not capable of getting much worse. “Rather clumsily, but I seem to be making an attempt.”
“I’m attempting to be flattered,” Ed says. “Y’know, I think… I think maybe we spiny people should stick together.”
“But not too close,” Roy says, “or we’ll stab each other.”
“Right,” Ed says.
Roy tries to smooth the worst of the wrinkles out of the book cover.
“You think we can make more coffee without Chad sending us to rehab?” Ed asks.
“Fuck Chad anyway,” Roy says.
“Damn right,” Ed says.
They do not move.
“You know,” Ed says, slowly, with all the subtlety of a fireworks show in the middle of a sleepy suburb, “I mean, as far as… being… convincing… I’ve never… kissed anybody. So. Just. If… we get… put in a position where… I mean, it’s a fucking miracle it’s not Christmas, ’cause there’d be mistletoe, and you bet your ass Winry’d be a menace with that stuff. She’d appoint herself the smoochy Christmas fairy or some shit.”
“If you want me to kiss you,” Roy says, looking intently at the book, “all you have to do is ask.”
“Oh, like hell,” Ed says. “And I wasn’t-saying that; I was just saying-I was giving you a heads up. And fuck you, you’re not that hot.”
Roy can’t help looking up at that. Ed is sputtering and scarlet-faced.
“And fuck you more,” he says, “because if I asked you’d probably just say no, and fuck you more than that, because it’s not like you can just kiss somebody, and I was just talking about how we were friends, and-and kisses mean shit, apparently, for people that have them and have had them. Also, germs. Fuck your mouth bacteria. I don’t want it.”
“My mouth bacteria is exquisite,” Roy says. He watches Ed’s eyelids lower for a glare. “It could be just a kiss.”
“No fucking way it could,” Ed says. “There’s no such thing. And nothing’s just an anything with you; that’s the thing I can’t… every fucking sentence that comes out of your mouth is a secret fucking coded message. All your gestures are fucking semaphore or some shit. You never say or do anything that’s not calculated and significant, and… and fuck that. I don’t want this to get more complicated, okay?”
Roy directs his gaze at the book again. “Okay.”
“Jesus, that’s exactly what I fucking mean-”
“But if you haven’t experienced it,” Roy says, “are you sure you don’t want to try just to find out?” He looks up at Ed through his eyelashes. “You know-for science?”
“You know what?” Ed says. He jackknifes out of the chair-Roy didn’t know it was possible to move like whiplash. “Fine. Fine. If you’re gonna give me shit for being a fucking virgin because I’m a recluse cripple über-geek with one friend, fine. I’m gonna give you what you’re fucking asking for. And don’t you fucking say you were just kidding, you fucking coward.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Roy says.
Ed stalks across the creaking boards and stands over him. Carefully, gingerly, making no sudden movements, Roy sets the book down again.
“Well?” Ed bites out. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Start by sitting down,” Roy says, tugging the nearest deck chair closer. “Right on the edge there.”
As Ed eyes him warily and finds a perch, Roy sits up straight and swings his knees over the side to face his… what? Victim? Student? Idol?
He’s not quite sure anymore.
“Look at me,” Roy says. “Constantly. Just… take everything in, very quietly. Until it starts to get uncomfortable.”
“Can I blink?” Ed asks.
“Please do,” Roy says. Ed is staring at him so hard he feels like he’s being flayed alive.
Ed’s mouth pulls down into a frown, and thence into a scowl. “What am I looking for?”
“You’re not looking ‘for’,” Roy says. “You’re just looking.”
“What am I looking at?”
“You’re just… looking.”
“What the fuck, Roy?”
“Love is less a transitive verb than it is a state of being,” Roy says.
“Bullshit,” Ed says.
Roy is, naturally, obligated to stare back. There’s a line dug in between Ed’s eyebrows where the pout has drawn them together. The wisps right along his hairline are fine and airy and butter-pale, and there’s a tiny upturn to his nose. When his mouth starts to twist like that, it always means he’s screwing up his courage to blurt something out.
“And how do you know so much about love, anyway?” Ed asks. “Your one love story there kinda spiraled out of control, and it wasn’t even… I mean, it was just you, wasn’t it? Is it even a love story if it’s one-sided?”
“It’s a story with love in it,” Roy says. “And, for your information, that is not the only time I’ve had the experience. I’ve starred in a few love stories that were requited. How else do you think I learned how to kiss in the first place?”
“You don’t have to love someone to kiss ’em,” Ed mutters. He’s staring at Roy’s cheekbone. “Huh. You’ve got a…”
“A what?”
“A freckle. I think. Maybe it’s chocolate.”
“Maybe it’s your imagination,” Roy says.
Ed glowers. “Maybe you should shut the fuck up and put your mouth where your money is.”
“I did tell you to be quiet,” Roy says.
Ed snorts. “And I did tell you to go fuck yourself.”
Perhaps Ed’s very personality is rooted in being the most cockily pigheaded ass in the modern universe. He’s practically a barnyard of stubbornness all on his own.
But maybe-just maybe-Roy has a chance, now, to shut him up for a while.
“Come here,” he says, and before Ed has shaken off the overstated scowl, Roy reaches in and cups his face very gently in both hands. He runs the thumb of his right slowly up along the line of Ed’s jaw and threads just the fingertips of the left into Ed’s hair above his ear, smoothing it back over the curve, slowly tangling his fingers into it. It’s every bit as goddamn silky as it looks.
Ed swallows. Roy swipes the pad of his thumb slowly over Ed’s warming cheek, then lifts it to run it over the curve of his eyebrow next, trying to smooth out the frown lines. He brushes Ed’s bangs back, letting his fingernails graze Ed’s scalp on his temple as they slip free to swing into place again. Ed’s hair gleams in the strengthening sunlight, and his eyes dart quickly, nervously-but there’s a hunger there. Roy can just detect a bit of the flaring lust for knowledge, too, but it’s not the only emptiness that wants slaking.
“Look at me,” Roy whispers, leaning forward until their foreheads meet, until the warmth of Ed’s is seeping into his skin. Their eyelashes graze and catch every time they blink. He can hear Ed’s heartbeat; he can hear Ed’s throat swallowing once, twice, three times. Ed’s breath comes faster, lighter, and the tip of his tongue slides across his upper lip.
“S’gonna taste like coffee,” he says. He looks startled to hear himself so hoarse; he clears his throat. “Y’know.”
“Did you miss the part where coffee is my addiction of choice?” Roy asks. “There are few tastes I love more.”
Ed tries to smile.
“Relax,” Roy says. “It’s not going to hurt. It’s just a kiss.”
“I already won that argument,” Ed says.
“I beg to differ,” Roy says.
“Douche,” Ed says. He licks his lip again. “I-what are we waiting for?”
“Excruciation,” Roy says.
“I didn’t realize this whole kissing thing was so sadomasochistic,” Ed says. “Or is that just with you?”
“The longer we sit here,” Roy says, “the tenser you’ll be, and the more heightened your senses, and the more explosive the sensations.”
“I don’t want to explode,” Ed says. “I just want you to fucking kiss me so I’m not an unscientific loser-virgin anymore.”
“You’re the most scientific person I know,” Roy says. “And you’re not a loser.”
“You can sweet-talk me later,” Ed says. “And I do mean ‘can’, as in ‘will be physically capable of’, ’cause I know you won’t.”
“I wasn’t aware that you had such a firm grasp on the events of the future,” Roy says.
“I cannot believe,” Ed says, grinding his teeth audibly, “that we are sitting here, breathing in each other’s fucking exhaled CO2, and you won’t fucking shut up long enough to give me one fucking kiss for experimental refere-mmf.”
He tries to articulate another syllable against Roy’s mouth before he finally gets the hint and gives up.
art by the way-too-wonderful Phindus
It’s about what Roy might have expected after that-Ed doesn’t know what he’s doing and doesn’t especially seem to care; Roy presses in closer, curling all five fingers into his ought-to-be-impossible hair. Ed’s mouth is hot and warm and smooth and pliable, and he tastes overpoweringly of coffee and maple syrup. Slowly, carefully, gently-he’ll balk if he’s forced into anything-Roy nudges at his chin with a few knuckles to coax him into tilting his head. Their lips slot together, fitting as perfectly, as effortlessly, as their shoulders did last night. Ed makes a soft noise deep in his throat and pushes back, fisting his right hand in Roy’s shirtfront and dragging him in closer; they knock teeth, and he startles, but he’s not deterred for long.
Roy thinks it wiser to keep the whole thing relatively chaste for now-and favoring the corner of Ed’s mouth, then the meat of his bottom lip, then drawing back enough to breathe on the wetness before diving back in makes Ed quake under his hands, so he’s not sure the poor kid could handle much more.
Except that just as he’s considering pulling away and saying something insufferably smug, Ed’s hands flatten on his chest, slide slowly and deliberately up over his collarbones, skate up the sides of his neck, and clench in his hair. Roy tenses a little-just to see if he can move back, just to test the possibility of retreat-and finds himself securely trapped. The way Ed’s grip tugs on his hair follicles makes his whole scalp tingle, and if he wants to pull free, he’s going to have to wrench himself away. There may be casualties in the form of bald spots. There may be tears, and they may not be Ed’s.
Shit.
Ed twists in closer still; there are only inches left between their bodies, and someone’s going to fall off of the edge of his deck chair soon. Every time they breathe, their chests collide, and Ed is a dangerously quick study. Roy should have known. Roy should have known better than this.
That’s the story of his life, isn’t it?
Ed bites his bottom lip-hard, and the gorgeous dart of pain ripples straight down Roy’s spine and twists into another scrap of kindling for the embers in his stomach-and then draws back. Roy opens his eyes. His face is threatening to burst into flame, and his knuckles appear to be bone-white where his hand is clenched in Ed’s hair.
Ed swallows. His lips are a terrible, terrible, tantalizing dark red right now, flushed and swollen and gleaming wet. His eyes flick up to meet Roy’s, then away, and his grasp on Roy’s hair loosens in little fits and starts, uncertainly.
“Well,” he says. His voice cracks; he withdraws one hand to cough into his fist. “Well. That was-interesting.”
Roy’s blood is beating in his ears, in his fingertips, in his toes, in his groin, in his throat; his heart rocks forward against his sternum three times to every breath. “Ah. Educational, I hope.”
Ed’s other hand drops away from the nape of Roy’s neck; he folds both arms tightly over his chest and curls around them, sitting back. “Yeah. Yeah, not bad.”
Roy nods.
Ed uncrosses his arms long enough to pull his sleeves down over his hands and then huddles up again.
Roy feels giddy, and mortified, and kind of like his heart is hurling itself over and over again on sharp rocks. There’s no room left in the muddle for cowardice. “I think we just fucked it up.”
“I dunno,” Ed says, looking intently at the deck between his feet. “Did we?”
“You were right,” Roy says. There’s a vague mist of resignation to it; admitting that to Ed will probably never be pleasant. “There’s no such thing as ‘just a kiss’.”
“Oh,” Ed says in a very small voice.
Ed doesn’t know what he’s doing. Ed doesn’t know what he wants. Ed is here to keep an eye on Winry and take a breath of fresh air-Ed is here to be liberated from the close, chemically-laced little universe of the lab. Ed is here to be free, for a few days. Ed is here to stop thinking, just this once.
And that’s why Roy’s here, too, really. But somewhere along the line-somewhere in between falling into a lake with him and this morning, this moment with his guts squeezing and his heart tripping and his head banging like there’s a door in it that he can’t afford to open-
Somewhere along the line, he went from tolerating Ed to liking him. Somewhere along the line, all the quirks and weird foibles started to be strangely charming. At some point in the last three days, Roy started to care what Ed thinks of him, and then he started to care what Ed feels.
Kissing him gouged a hole in that door like Jack’s fucking hatchet in The Shining.
He can’t open that fucking door.
It wouldn’t be fair.
And he cares now-about Ed. He cares enough to know that he has to get up out of this chair and walk across this deck and go back inside and pick up a newspaper and pretend so fiercely that they both forget this happened.
He has to. He has to, and he’s strong enough, isn’t he? He’s good enough for this. It’s not too much to ask. For fuck’s sake, he has to; it’s the only choice he won’t regret.
He just has to get up. That’s all.
Seconds pass. He can almost hear the ticking; his own breaths echo in his ears.
He doesn’t move a muscle.
Ed buries his face in both hands. His bangs slip forward and drape against the ragged hems of that damn hoodie’s worn sleeves.
“All right,” he says. “Awesome. I fucking told you so. Are you happy now?”
“Not particularly,” Roy says.
The snarl sounds weak. “Oh, fuck you.”
“I really don’t think that would be wise,” Roy says, “given the trend here.”
“I should’ve figured you’d turn out to be a fucking asshole,” Ed says, and before Roy can make a feeble attempt at a defense, Ed’s on his feet, and then he’s halfway across the deck, and then he’s somehow managing to slam a sliding glass door behind him.
Roy gets through a whole chapter of Tom Clancy. Something is rotten in the state of ’Murricah, and the intrepid ex-Navy SEAL and the hot FBI chick are tasked with setting it right, which Roy imagines that they will probably do without even having to stab anyone through an arras. Presumably several things will get blown up at dramatic moments, however, and five bucks says that one of those things is a car. Before he hits the back cover, someone will have said “Time is running out!”, there will have been at least one high-speed chase with slightly confusing descriptions of vehicles and directions, and Rugged Hero and Agent Nice Rack will almost certainly have hooked up.
As he turns the page that reveals the second chapter heading, he hears the sliding glass door dragging open, and he can’t help the way his head snaps up. Even while trying to distract himself by skimming through the text, he’s thought of a hundred-thousand things to say-a billion variants and permutations of sorry and it’s not your fault and you don’t understand. Even with the antics of the cardboard cutouts dancing through his mind’s eye, he’s sifted through the possibilities and found a few gentle ways to say Ed, believe me, I’m a disease.
But it’s not Ed-it’s… Treavisor?
He saunters up from the side where Ed’s deck chair was, pulls it back a little ways from Roy’s, comes around the side, and sits down. It does not escape Roy’s notice that he sits like a dude, with his legs opened wide and his feet firmly planted. He folds his hands and props his elbows on his knees. It is a tragic commentary that bedhead looks slovenly, not adorable, on everyone except Ed.
“Hey,” Treavisor says. He lifts his chin at the book in Roy’s hands. “Any good?”
“No,” Roy says.
“Yeah,” Treavisor says. “My dad really likes them, but I’m, like… My mom wouldn’t let me keep any Stephen King stuff here, because my sister read one once when we were here over Christmas, and then there was a huge storm that night, and she wouldn’t stop crying and stuff.” He pauses, contemplatively. “She’s twelve. And dumb.”
“Stephen King is pretty scary,” Roy says. “I used to get nightmares.”
“Same,” Treavisor says. He pauses again, glancing back at the house, and then looks at Roy like Roy is a leopard without spots-not unthinkable, but perhaps unheard of. “So… Winry’s trying to figure out why Ed banged all the cabinets in the kitchen one by one and then practically kicked a hole in the staircase.”
Roy should be a hot air balloon with a hole in it for Halloween; he’s so intimately acquainted with sinking feelings that he’d be brilliant at staying in character. “If there’s any property damage, I’ll pay for it.”
“Nah, nah, it’s good,” Treavisor says, waving a hand. “It’s nothing more than, like, a sleepover full of twelve-year-old girls does a couple times a year, anyway.”
“If you’re sure,” Roy says, which is more graceful than It’d have to be on a gradual payment plan, though, because right now I can’t afford it.
Treavisor looks at his hands and picks at one of his fingernails for a second before he glances up. “Just… y’know. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Roy says. That’s not even a lie, anymore; not really-he always envisions fine as a sort of baseline, like a synonym for surviving. It’s not the same thing as well, or even as okay, but it doesn’t pretend to be.
“Ed seemed real upset,” Treavisor says slowly. “That’s all. I thought maybe you guys had a fight.”
Roy shrugs. The lies are getting progressively more difficult, which is counterintuitive, isn’t it? “Trouble in paradise; what can I say?” The secret is always a sliver of the truth-“It’s my fault.”-followed by an egregious falsehood: “I wanted to give him a minute to cool off before I went to apologize. It’ll be all right.”
Treavisor smiles tentatively. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Roy says.
Treavisor smiles a little wider and releases a deep breath. “Okay. It’s just… I mean, jeez, you guys are really cool. I like you a lot. And you’re always so happy together, it’s like… if something happened here that messed that up, I’d feel like shit.”
“It’s fine,” Roy says. “Don’t worry about it. Totally my bad. And Ed’s just dramatic; he’ll settle down.”
‘Dramatic’ isn’t quite the right word for him-‘drastic’, maybe. Ed doesn’t do the slow descent from numbness into abjection that Roy has known for as long as he can remember; Ed feels things more powerfully than anyone he’s ever met. It’s not that Ed makes his emotions a big deal; his emotions are, and it’s not like he can change that.
“All right,” Treavisor says, standing. He’s still smiling; Roy forces one for him in return. “Just lemme know if I can help, okay?”
“Sure thing,” Roy says. “Thanks.”
Roy presses the tip of his tongue against the point of his eyetooth to stop himself from adding, Maybe if you pushed me into the lake again, and this time you held me under.
Nature begins to call insistently right as a series of unseasonably dark clouds roll in. Roy packs up his riveting literature and heads inside. He leaves said riveting literature in the living room and has already forgotten where by the time he reaches the top of the stairs.
The door to their room isn’t locked, which at least is a start. The door to their bathroom is closed, however, which is substantially more ominous.
Roy hesitates, braces himself, goes over, and knocks.
Nothing.
He tries the handle, and it doesn’t yield.
He knocks again.
“Hey,” he says. “I had at least a liter of coffee.”
“Fuck you,” Ed calls through the door-but his voice is steady, and there’s none of the anger in it, and none of the hurt. “Go get a bucket.”
“What are you doing in there?”
“Hiding from fuckin’ Winry and her fuckin’ advice.”
“What was her advice?”
“I dunno. I hid as soon as she got started on her whole ‘Ed, I know you’ve been through more than I have in a lot of ways, but hear me out on this’ shit.”
“I didn’t see her on my way up. You could hide under the bed.”
“Fuck you. I’m not that small.”
Roy looks back at the space between the box-spring and the floor, does a quick distance estimation, and decides he’s going to walk away from that battle. “Okay, you can stay in there and watch me pee.”
“You’re fucking weird.”
“I’m aware.”
The door opens. Ed glares up at him. Roy steps back, and Ed moves past him.
“Hurry up,” Ed says. “Winry can smell fear.”
Roy wants to laugh it off, but- “You’re… afraid?”
Ed’s eyes widen, and his arms wave. “Jesus, Roy, have you ever had to sit through one of her life-coaching sessions? Don’t fucking judge.”
Roy holds both hands up for peace and slips into the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind him.
When he steps back out, Ed’s sprawled on the bed, arms folded, chin resting on them, apparently examining the carpet.
“All yours,” Roy says, gesturing back.
“Look,” Ed says-to the carpet, really, but the normal rules of polite conversation don’t tend to apply to Ed. “Winry said a couple things before I escaped, and I was thinking… Just… She said, y’know, you gotta think about the big picture sometimes, and not let the little shit ruin it if the whole thing is mostly good. And… I mean, obviously that was meant to be, like, relationship advice, but it’s still pretty true, right? What… happened, what we did this morning-that was a little thing. Right? And by and large this whole bigger thing that we’re doing is working pretty great, so let’s just… not get hung up on that, maybe. Sound okay?”
“Sounds perfect,” Roy says, and the lies are getting harder. “I was thinking of going on another hike. In the opposite direction from mountain lion territory, that is. Watching the signal bars on my phone the whole time.”
Ed makes a face that speaks volumes.
“Fair enough,” Roy says.
“Nah,” Ed says. “It sounds all right, just… I mean, half the reason I came was to hang out with Win, and first chance I get, I end up hiding in the bathroom. Figure I’ll go catch up with her while everybody’s out, and she’s not tryin’ to be all Martha Stewart-y and shit. Sometimes she does weird shit to my hair, though; you gotta promise not to laugh.”
“I promise I’ll find an excuse that makes it look like I’m laughing at something else,” Roy says. “How about that?”
“Deal,” Ed says.
When he’s halfway up the hill on the other side of the house, his will breaks, and he calls.
Riza picks up on the third ring. “Where are you?”
“This guy from the lab grew up with a girl who’s dating a guy whose parents are stupid-rich and have a cabin out here,” Roy says. “And by ‘cabin’, I mean ‘bigger than your dad’s old place’.”
“Exactly how did you get involved in this game of Seven Degrees of Separation?” Riza asks.
“By being a fucking idiot,” Roy says.
“You’re not an idiot,” Riza says.
“You know better than anyone that that’s not true,” Roy says.
“You know better than anyone that you’re not enough of a rhetorician to talk me into calling you an idiot,” Riza says, “so give up. What happened?”
“I-kissed-him. I kissed him. It was stupid. I’m fucking stupid.”
“Roy. You… the… guy the girl is dating, or-?”
“The guy from lab.”
“Does the guy from lab have a significant other?”
“No. And he never has; he’s never dated anyone. He’d never even… it was his first kiss, Riza, and now every single time somebody touches him, he’ll think of how terrible it was, and how terrible I am, and how terrible he felt, and I’ve ruined his love life forever, and I really-I think-”
“He didn’t like it?”
“Well, I don’t… know. That’s not the point; it doesn’t even matter. It’s-complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
“We had to fake involvement to get here and have a free vacation. Which, for the record, we both desperately needed; he’s worse than I am. I don’t know if he sleeps. He’s the one with the Cheetos.”
“I remember the one with the Cheetos,” Riza says slowly. “And… honestly, the one with the Cheetos is the only one I remember, Roy.”
He rubs at his forehead. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s the only person in your lab that you’ve ever talked about at length.”
“So? He’s bizarre. And he’s always there. And he eats my food all the time.”
“It’s all right to be attracted to him,” Riza says, and Roy’s heart does a weird somersaulting thing not unlike the feat Ed executed during their flight from the cougar. “And I imagine that the situation you’re in would only heighten that feeling, and confuse it a little, and acting on it would intensify it more-”
Roy stops walking before he can trip on something and break his face. “What the hell are you saying?”
“Did he push you away?”
“No, but-”
“Did he tell you not to?”
“He told me to, but-”
“Body language?”
“I mean, he literally requested it; I’m not-but-”
“Did you have any indication that he did not want to be kissed by you?”
“Well, no, but-”
“Then why was it stupid, Roy?”
“Because he hates me!”
“Then why did he want you to kiss him?”
“Because it was for science!”
There is a long pause. Roy, who is currently dragging his free hand down his face, actually glances at the phone screen to make sure the call hasn’t dropped.
“I still don’t think you’re stupid,” Riza says, delicately, “but you cannot possibly believe that.”
“We called a truce,” Roy says. “I think he wanted to deck me, right after the fact. He probably still wants to deck me. I never took you for a romantic, Riza-trust me, you shouldn’t start now. He doesn’t want me-if he wants anything, I don’t think he knows what it is, and I certainly don’t think he’d know how to go about getting it, and I can’t…”
He looks up at the net of intertwining pine needles silhouetted against the gray.
“You can’t what, Roy?” Riza asks softly.
“I can’t do it again,” Roy says. “I can’t save up all that love for someone who doesn’t want it, or doesn’t know how to use it, or can’t or won’t give back. Once was enough. Lesson learned. It is not fucking better to have loved and lost; it’s better to let it pass you by and not feel like you’re scraped out hollow and frozen through.”
Riza takes a deep breath. “How do you feel now?”
“Like shit,” Roy says.
“But you’re decided,” Riza says. “It will hurt less to hold back now and wall him out and cope with his hurt at your mixed signals than it would to let him in and risk it falling through.”
“Yes,” Roy says.
“Hm,” Riza says.
“What’s ‘hm’?” Roy asks.
He can almost see her shrugging. “You wouldn’t have called me if you didn’t want me to disagree with you.”
“Remind me why you didn’t go into psychology?” Roy says.
Riza scoffs. “Not nearly enough guns.”
Roy keeps trekking uphill until he crests the rise, and the trees fall away into another one of those indescribable vistas. It’s funny to think that there are places like this out here all the time, no matter where he is, no matter what he’s doing-that the world keeps being magnificent without him. It hardly seems fair, but then, he supposes he’s not especially magnificent himself, so it’s not as though he’s earned a right to it.
There aren’t any palatable-looking logs or stumps available in the vicinity, so he climbs up into one of the pines right at the edge-just a little ways; just high enough for a sturdy branch facing outward, where he can lean in against the trunk and stay still enough for the squirrels to forget he’s there.
He sits, drinking in the view and savoring the silence, until his ass is starting to go numb, which happens to be right about the same time that the moisture in the air solidifies into actual rain.
Well, this is going to be unpleasant. And fairly cathartic. But mostly unpleasant.
Roy holds in a sigh as he jumps down, and the damp leaves squish and scuttle, and then he raises his head to the dripping sky and lets out his breath as a cloud of mist.
[PART 2] [PART 4]