FMA -- Between Peril and Home

[tierfal]

Title: Between Peril and Home
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7,740
Warnings: language; AU from end of Brotherhood (so no real spoilers?); some heavy stuff; quite a lot of intense hurt/comfort fluff set against the heaviness; shoddy editing ahoy!
Summary: Ed's mission goes sour, and Roy is left trying to hold them both together.
Author's Note: Another felt-compelled-to-finish-something fic, although it went awry in that regard when it just kept going. O_o In any case, it's sort of the convergence of an eternally-unresolved Edblog subplot (wow, I suck); a bit in the latter half of inugrlrayn's really lovely If I Should Die where I just jacked an idea to use as a premise (wow, I suck); and having Imagine Dragons sap in the back of my head. It also owes to Umeko, because of this gorgeousness; and, immensely, to Pax, who suggested taking a break from all the other fics I was stuck on, and who draws stuff like this, which is really just too beautiful to be fair. The whole thing was meant to be a counterpart to the last one, only then it got grossly out of hand and turned into… whatever the hell this is. :| tl;dr: [spoilery AU circumstances under the cut]established relationship post-Brotherhood AU where Ed keeps alchemy and has ended up under someone else's command.


BETWEEN PERIL AND HOME
He can’t sleep worth a damn anymore in an empty house.  He suspects, from the way that Alphonse always smiles (with lips and teeth and crinkles at the corners of his eyes, not just with the nuance of his voice) when he describes it, that this is an unexpected but inevitable consequence of Ed.  Ed takes up an inordinate amount of space; Ed spreads like heat and sunlight.  Ed is an entity.

Ed makes him whole.

He’s not sure which of them the missions torment worse-on the upside, Ed’s grown out of the worst of his recklessness, and his propensity for making enemies at every turn and deliberately goading them has mostly faded into a worldliness that sometimes verges on cunning.  Ed was never a military dog, but for all of his feral tendencies-for all his chafing at the collar and hauling on the leash-Roy could never quite consider him a wolf.  The streak of canniness in him now, though-the way the sheer cleverness and faultless instincts have been honed down to an edge every bit as lethal as the automail’s… Perhaps Roy should have predicted from the very beginning that Edward Elric would grow to be a fox.

He thinks about Ed a lot, when he’s alone.

Well, hell.  He thinks about Ed a lot all of the time, including when Ed is barely a breath of air away.

It’s a bit tragic, isn’t it, for a man of his stature and status and reputation to be so enraptured with another human being?  (He rolls over and stares balefully at the pale face of the clock; fuck this bed; it always seems too small when Ed’s flailing all his limbs about, but right this moment, it’s an ocean, and he fears he’ll drown.)  But it’s hardly his fault-it was never voluntary, and Ed, for all his genuine humility, has never been mistakable for ordinary.  Ed, for all his self-deprecation, for all his sheepish grins, for all his boundless earnestness, for all his outward-pouring generosity and all his inability to comprehend his own attractiveness-

Ed is the miracle Roy’s heart was waiting for without him ever knowing it had opened up the space.

With the guilt assuaged and Alphonse bound to flesh-with the business done, the weight lifted, and his father something-like-redeemed-Ed slammed into Roy like a newly-freed berserker and utterly obliterated the orderly vegetable cart of Roy’s carefully-assembled life.  In the chaos of crushed legumes and splattered tomatoes, Roy sat stunned and disbelieving, pulp on his face and seeds scattered over the ground, and suddenly, suddenly, everything made a tremendous amount of sense.

Being in love is disgusting.

He adores it.

It is altogether too wonderful to put into words-the privilege of waking to a warm body, whispering his worship to a half-hair-shrouded ear.  The little things, the tiny moments; every prolonged roll of Ed’s eyes and every deepening kiss.  Two sets of dishes banging into the basin of the sink; the extraordinarily organic gold rug that crops up with ineluctable regularity on the bathroom floor.  Talking to him; laughing with him; touching him, and the way he warms to it, leans in, softly sighs and revels-to be the uncontested object of his attention and the reason for his smile-

It’s turned Roy Mustang into a schmoopy, schmaltzy, gooey-jointed, hare-brained teenager again, and he couldn’t be more delighted.

He hadn’t realized he still had the capacity for such an incandescent sort of joy.  Even now, it’s difficult to comprehend some days-the thought that he can be a part of something so profoundly good.  The thought that something in his soul has been transmuted, and that he is now the kind of man who can believe in love at all, let alone be overflowing with it so intensely that there’s probably a cloud of cupids twittering around his hea-

The phone rings.

He squints at the clock, bones deadened by confusion for a moment.  It’s two in the morning.

The phone rings again.

It can only be Ed, and if he’s calling this late-

Roy’s out of bed and in the hall, and then his hand’s on the banister, and his ankles are tangling with each other as he staggers down the stairs.  He swings around the ornamental twirl of the railing at the foot of the staircase, releasing himself with far too much momentum and stumbling heavily into the end table where the telephone trills one more time-

“Mustang,” he says, and if it comes out slurred, well-let that be attributed to drowsiness, not paralyzing terror at the thought of what might-

Silence on the line.

“Hello?” he says, and if his voice is thin and fragile as his heart begins to race-

Nothing, not a sound.

Wait-

A shiver of static; something like a shaky breath.

“Ed?” he says, as softly as he can.

“I’m sorry,” Ed’s voice says-an approximation of Ed’s voice says, really; a shadow of it, a specter.  “I shouldn’t’ve-I didn’t-mean-to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” Roy says gently.  His pulse is roaring in his ears; he has to know- “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Ed says.  He pauses, hesitates, clears his throat.  “I’m fine.  It’s-I’m fine.  Just-wanted-to hear you.  That’s all.”

That’s not all, and Roy knows it, and Ed knows that he does-and Ed probably also knows that Roy knows that Ed will die before he spills the truth of it out on the phone; and there’s a distinct possibility Ed knows how much better Roy will be at consoling him in person, and he wants to hold out for the full effect.

But it must be bad-it must be very bad-if Ed would call and make Roy wait in agonized anxiety for him to travel back.  Ed hates imposing; he hates to be a burden; he hates to cause others unnecessary pain.

Something has to be done.  Something has to be offered; something has to be put forth to sustain him.  The most beautiful boy that’s ever trod the planet deserves a great deal more than Roy can give him, but perhaps there’s something…

“I miss you something awful,” Roy says, and Ed makes a startled noise into the phone.  “What?  I do.  I want you to know that.  I tell myself over and over that you’re coming home soon, and it’s not much longer, and I remind myself that you are a thousand times more than worth the wait.  I am pathetically inept at entertaining myself, so it’s very slow going, but I’m here, and I am far too ready for you to be here with me.”

It’s not that he’s not honest, with Ed-it’s not that you can be anything else, looking into those eyes-but he’s never this candid.  His sense of self-preservation is too deeply ingrained to be conquered even by the strength of this devotion.  They both know that Ed has ruined him-that he’s an abject remnant of the monument to self-control and suavity he used to be; and that he couldn’t be more content to shed the tatters-but rarely does he summon up the courage to bare his well-scarred heart and speak the simple truth.

“I-” Ed sounds like he’s trying hard to smile.  “It’s-there’s a train leaving a little after noon tomorrow.  Should be in by… five or so.  Got some stuff to tie up in the morning, but I think I’ll make it.”

“I’ll be at the station,” Roy says-as if he’d be anywhere else; as if a team of horses could drag him to another spot.  “What do you want to eat tomorrow?”

“Dunno,” Ed says.  “Just… if we can stay in, I…”

“Of course,” Roy says.

“I should go,” Ed says, and the sliver of sheer misery in his voice makes Roy’s throat tighten; no one should be able to do that to him, but he can’t find it in himself to muster resentment.  “It’s late, and you gotta go to work tomorrow, ’specially if you’re planning to convince the Lieutenant to let you off early to come meet the train, and…”

“I love you,” Roy says.  “I’ll see you soon.  Travel safe.”

“Y-yeah,” Ed says, and his voice is thickening by the second, but Roy can hear that most of it’s relief.  “I’ll-g’night.”

“Goodnight, Ed.”

“Roy-”

“I’m here.”

“I-love you-too.  Stupid.”

It is strange and surreal and bewildering to be standing in his foyer at two in the morning, dressed in his pajamas and clinging to the phone, bereft and worried and so distraught and still… buoyant.  Still warm.

“It is a bit stupid of you,” Roy says.  “Me, of all people.”

“Shut up,” Ed says, and his voice trembles harder this time.  “Go back to sleep.  Asshole.”

“I will,” Roy says, which is the kindest sort of lie.  “Take care.  I’ll count the hours until I see you, all right?”

“Me, too,” Ed says, and then he breathes “G’bye” out softly and hangs up the phone.

Roy looks at the dim shape of the receiver in his hand for a long moment before he sets it back in the cradle.  For all his ginger handling of the thing, the click of it settling into place still sounds like a gunshot in the silence.

It shouldn’t be silent in here; he hadn’t noticed until now that his grandfather clock had stopped.  He’ll have to call someone to repair it.  He ought to have it polished.  Possibly they could tune the piano, too.

It’s nice, almost, thinking of quotidian things.  It’s nice thinking of anything other than Ed bracing both hands on the tabletop in some much-too-distant inn, staring at the phone with his shoulders shaking and his bright eyes dull and scared and shining with the insupportable effort of just holding it together.

Roy draws a deep breath, straightens his spine, and feels his way along the wall back to the staircase banister.  Ed’s going to need him tomorrow-as much of himself as he’s able to give, by the sound of it.  He’d better scrounge up every last minute of sleep that he can.

But the bed is cold, and so quiet, and for all his pillow-punching, toss-and-turning, sheep-and-cow-and-pony-counting efforts, he just can’t seem to rest.

He’s almost proud of himself, the next morning, for having managed an hour or two of a light, fitful sort of doze punctuated with dreams of Ed collapsing on a rain-slicked cobblestone street, over and over, with Scar standing over him, holding up a bloodstained pocketwatch on a long chain.  The watch would start to swing, slowly at first, and then faster and faster until the ticking of it rose to a merciless drumbeat march, and the watch’s silhouette became a clock pendulum with a guillotine blade for the shaft’s edge, and Ed was pressed against the casement wall, and Roy was trying to pry through the window at the front to reach him, but his ignition gloves could gain no purchase on the glass-

He makes the coffee strong enough that it very nearly qualifies as sludge, and he knocks back a cup before his better judgment can dissuade him.  Probably he should have another, but if his hands get twitchy, Riza’s going to side-eye him all day.

He puts the cup in the sink and stares at it for a moment-dirty dishes never used to look lonely before-and then he heads back upstairs.  There’ll be more coffee in the office, and there will be people there to remind him of a world that is bigger and broader and more complicated than just a field of tortures set for Ed, whatever it might seem like on an empty night.

The call comes at five minutes to four.

“Mustang,” he says.

He barely recognizes the uncharacteristically un-chirpy voice of Private Mollie Irvin at the switchboard.  “Major Elric on an outside line for you, sir.”

“Put him through,” he says, and if she can’t hear anything amiss in his voice, he’ll graciously accept all the acting awards Amestris has on offer.

There’s static, then a catch.

And then nothing-and then a faint rasp of breath.

“Ed?” Roy prompts gently.

“Hey,” Ed says.  He sounds… unsteady.  Unstable.  “I… I’m at Insselberg.  They had to stop the train and close the tracks.  Somebody…” He breathes once, twice, three times.  “Somebody-jumped.  So-I dunno-when-the trains’ll run again.”

Shit.  Shit.  Some poor soul; some miserable victim at the end of their rope; the last resort of a lost heart-

How much did Ed see?

How much has death has he been dealt in the past twenty-odd hours?

How much more of this can he take?

“I’m coming to get you,” Roy says.

“What?” Ed asks.  There’s a croaking sort of tone to his voice that has nothing to do with the tinniness of the phone line.  “Y-it’s two hours.”

“I don’t care,” Roy says.

“You’re at work.”

“Yes.”

“Hawkeye’s gonna skin you.”

“She is not,” Roy says.  “And even if she did, I don’t imagine that would stop me just now.”  He shoves the piles of papers aside in an attempt to find his gloves, which he vaguely remembers burying beneath one of the stacks.  “Sit tight-just a little while; just a little longer.  Have you eaten anything?”

He hears Ed swallow.  “Not hungry.”

“Drink something,” he says.  “Something sugared-you need the calories.”

Ed’s voice hardly qualifies as anything more than a whisper.  “Okay.”

There are the damn gloves-there’s a moment where Roy doesn’t understand why he can’t start leaving and still keep talking to Ed on the phone.  “No caffeine, though, if you have a choice.”

“Yeah.”

“Ed,” he says.

“I’m fine,” Ed says, which is ludicrous and heartbreaking at once.

“Hold on,” Roy says instead of debating it.  “Just a little longer.  Just hold on.”

“Okay,” Ed says with half the volume of half his voice.

“Wait for me,” Roy says, and puts down the phone.

No doors made by mortals could ever hold him, and Riza Hawkeye is welcome to his epidermis if she’ll let him leave once she strips it from his flesh.

“Sir?” she says, and it’s a thousand questions, but first and foremost What the hell do you think you’re doing, man?

“It’s Ed,” he says.

He’s distantly conscious of the others’ eyes on him, but Riza’s face is the only thing in this room that matters now.

But he knows-and she does-that anyone who has ever accused Riza Hawkeye of callousness doesn’t understand her at all.

“Drive like something other than a maniac for once,” she says, “…sir.”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” he says, and then he’s out the door and gone.

That was a white lie.  He drives like his life depends on it, because the light of his life does.  It’s a tricky thing, hanging all your hopes on one bright star-caring with so much of yourself that there’s nothing left to you when something’s threatening to drag it all away-

It is a two-hour drive, from which he whittles a full thirty minutes in his sheer reckless need to reach Ed and wrap him into warmth and safety until the raw edge and the wretchedness are soothed away.  Roy knows a thing or two (or three or four) about despair; and he knows, for a fact, that it will not take Edward Elric from him.  Not without a fight.

He spends the duration of the ninety-minute stint in vehicle-bound purgatory clenching and unclenching his hands around the steering wheel-and then realizing what he’s doing and trying to stop.

It’s not his call anymore-it’s not his hand that picks the folders, fans them out across the desk, points imperiously in the general direction of the station and makes some ambiguous height-related gesture just to watch the temperature of Ed’s blood skyrocket instantly.

Colonel Frejas has, by and large, been very good to Ed, and Roy wouldn’t have facilitated the possibility of the existence of a transfer if he hadn’t known from the start that she would be.  She challenges Ed’s intellect, admires his magnanimity, and tolerates his impetuousness with a degree of saintly patience Roy couldn’t achieve if he had a lifetime in a private monastery.

And it’s better this way, all things considered-he has been telling himself that from the first inklings of the idea in his brain; he told it to himself in a deafening voice when his fingers shook as he tried to sign the paperwork to pass responsibility for Major Elric on to someone else.  Colonel Frejas makes, perhaps, a more pragmatic use of Ed’s talents than he ever did; either she’s nobler than he was, or the fact that Ed’s fame is already established has allowed her to forgo the flares of deliberate press-mongering that Roy worked into Ed’s every public appearance.  They used each other, and they were good at it, and that was part of the reason he begun to fear…

It hardly matters.  The point is that Colonel Frejas has been nothing but generous and nothing but just.  The point is that Colonel Frejas is an excellent superior officer and a fine mentor for an extraordinary young man.  The point is that Colonel Frejas cares about her major and his missions a great deal and treats him unerringly fairly.

But she doesn’t love him.

She doesn’t feel Ed’s pain resonating in the center of her chest like a bell struck with a sledgehammer; she doesn’t believe in him so fiercely that the fire of it runs through her veins and brands her very fingertips with hope for a world that can hold him in it.  She hasn’t dredged up all the muddiest secrets from his past; she hasn’t waded into the thickest reaches of his quagmire guilt and taken both his hands and slowly, slowly drawn him through the pit.

She didn’t feel accountable for his safety and his salvation from the moment she dragged him into this hellhole with her; she didn’t feel compelled to protect him long before she ever dreamed of kissing him and woke up in a cold sweat.

She doesn’t know him-not really, not like Roy and Riza and the team.  Not like the people who have seen him crushed down to nothing but scrap metal and a flicker of a will and helped him cobble himself back together.  Not like the people who have stood behind him and beside him every step of the more-than-treacherous way.

So she doesn’t know-she couldn’t know-how fragile he can be.  She believes the bravado, and she doesn’t read between the lines of every mission and discard the ones that might just break him.

That’s the price-the exchange.  That’s the cost of a life without the accusations of fraternization, of favoritism, of preferential treatment, of nepotism, of corruption, of abuse of power-the turn of phrase turns Roy’s stomach; he hardly dares to think-

But this is what he pays: every moment, Ed is at the mercy of someone else.  Every time an assignment lands on Colonel Frejas’s desktop, Ed’s fate hangs in the balance, and Roy’s nimble hands are tied.

He has tried so very, very hard to believe that it was the right thing to do-that it was better for them in every possible way; that working together would strain their slowly-strengthening rapport; that their volatile tempers were better vented at people they didn’t also happen to be sleeping with.  That Ed was safer away from him, where neither of them had to fear that the feelings would get in the way; where neither of them had to lie awake nightly wondering if Roy would have made a different choice for just another soldier-as if Ed has ever acted like a soldier at all, let alone an ordinary one.

Most of the time he can make himself believe that he did what was best for both of them-for everyone; for Amestris, in abstract principle, at least.

But at times like this-at times when the memory of the tremor that racked Ed’s voice keeps circling in his ribcage, cinching tighter and tighter in around his heart-he knows, with a certainty like a knife’s point digging into bone, that trading Ed’s safety for a chance at Ed’s love was the single most selfish thing he’s ever done.

Just one more failure he has to live with, now.  One more small atrocity to tack onto the list-one more coiling ribbon tied to the black trail unfurling out behind him.

He pries one hand off the steering wheel and runs it down his face.  He has to stop thinking like this-he has to stop besieging himself in every split second of quiet he can muster; he’ll drive himself insane.  He’s taken on as many lost causes as he could get his hands around; he shoulders all the blame that he can carry without breaking his own spine; he can’t afford to sit here and dwell on it.

But Ed… Ed is the most precious thing he dares to claim.  So this one hurts.

He has to hold it together.  Ed will need him to be the foundation today; Ed will need him to be the strong one; Ed will need him, and that’s beautiful, in its way.  That’s validating.  For all that he has done and not done and wrought and ruined, someone like Ed wants him, picked him, and-at times like this, on days like this, when the shadows are closing in, and that incredible bright-gold resolution starts to fail-depends on him.  To say that it’s an honor and a gift is understating just how much the very abstraction of it bolsters Roy’s sad excuse for a soul.

But it wouldn’t have come to this if Roy had just been stronger from the start-stronger than the squeeze of his heart every time Ed smiled; stronger than the leaping heat in the pit of his stomach when Ed brought that lithe, limber body anywhere near his own; stronger than the magnetism of the thick drape of blond hair begging his fingers to stroke, to twist, to curl, to worship-

If he’d resisted this-if he had rounded up enough resolve to keep his distance from everything Ed except for the reports-they’d both be happier now.  Wouldn’t they?  Ed would have found someone else, surely; Ed would have found someone safe and pleasant and deserving; someone who could make him laugh with his whole perfect frame every bit as much, without putting a cringe on his features just as often.  Ed would have found someone normal, someone sane, someone who could sleep through the night and act as his rock without ever becoming an anchor.  Ed would have found someone who wasn’t cracked so deep that the jagged-glass edges, for all their familiarity, won’t ever dull too much to cut him.  Ed would have found someone good, someone healthy, someone who made him even more instead of pulling him constantly backwards and down-

Roy honestly did make every effort to let Ed decide.  He kept his mouth sealed shut and his fingers off of the marionette strings; he bit his tongue until it bled to keep from whispering to people Ed trusted, whose opinions Ed would sound.  He did everything in his power not to influence it at all.

And Ed chose this-chose him.

But it was the wrong decision.  Days like today-it’s all wrong.

He has to stop thinking like this.  He has to.  He has to think of something else.

Long drive.  Flat road.  Dust, paint, pavement.

Why can’t loving him be enough?

The exhaustion isn’t helping, but the moments start to blur together when he gets close to the train station-something with a stoplight; he parks on the street somewhere; he crosses without looking, and a horn blares, and then he’s striding under the archway, turning the corner around the ticket window-there’s still a cluster of a few weary police officers taking notes; a woman is gesticulating; caution tape and orange cones blanket the edge of the platform and a section of the tracks-

Ed was easier to find back when the red coat ruled-back when he was a splash of blood and amber in a milling crowd.  He still draws the eye, and he always will, but his hair has never seemed quite as vibrant against a dark blue uniform and a charcoal-gray overcoat as it did framed by the red.

It doesn’t help, of course, that he’s slumped down on a station bench, staring at his boots.  It doesn’t help that there’s nothing left of the youthful enthusiasm that used to define him-that all of the joy at simply living that usually sustains him has drained out of his eyes.

He doesn’t look up as Roy approaches.  He doesn’t even move.

How bad was it?

How much is in Roy’s power to mend?

Well-speculating about it won’t fix a damn thing.

He swallows hard, and then he speaks softly.  “Ed.”

Ed’s head snaps up, and a flash of feeling-not hope, not yet; it looks more like relief, lined with something like gratitude-darts into the dullness of his gaze.  He stands, although to say he stands up would be unfair; he’s slouching still, and almost swaying, and Roy reaches towards him instantly; he doesn’t have a choice-

Ed moves like his automail is lead, not steel, but it’s weariness, not hesitation, that drags out the seconds between him rising from the bench and falling into Roy’s open arms.

Roy wraps him up tight, burying one hand in his hair, curling in around him.  His hair is cleaner than Roy expected-which is a bad sign.  If he’s just trying to haul himself homeward, he doesn’t bother to shower; this means that the ash and blood and grit smeared by the mission proved so oppressive that he had to scrape it from his skin before he could prepare himself to leave.

Something so faint it’s inaudible gets mumbled into Roy’s chest.  Ed’s left hand clutches at his collar, and the right worms underneath his jacket to fist itself immovably in the back of his shirt.

“What’s that?” Roy asks, pressing his cheek in closer against Ed’s temple and straining for the timbre of his voice.

The one advantage of this whole debacle is that they can have this moment somewhere far from Central Station-somewhere the press don’t see Roy’s face as an instantaneous target and zero in for the kill.  Roy passed the local small-town journalist, complete with oversized newsboy cap, but the flash of his camera is fixated on the train tracks, and he didn’t even blink when Roy walked by.  There’s a fragment of peace to be found in that.

“Nnh,” Ed mutters marginally louder.  “Said ‘fuck’.”

“How unlike you,” Roy says.

The weak shake of Ed’s shoulders is like an underwater echo of a laugh.  “Bastard.”

Roy cards his fingers gently through Ed’s tangled ponytail and draws him in a little closer still.

“Ow,” Ed mumbles, easing back an inch.  “Sorry-s-sorry-”

“Don’t be,” Roy says, touching his jaw, trying to tilt his face up enough to see the damage.  “I am.  I’m sorry.  For all of it, and for that.  What hurts?”

Ed somehow manages to execute a watery snort.  He still won’t raise his head.  “Easier to list what doesn’t.”

Roy kisses the top of his head.  “Are you ready to go home?”

Ed nestles his face a little deeper into the front of Roy’s jacket-surely all of the seams and ornamentation make that painful, too.  “D’you really have to ask?”

Gently, gently Roy holds him just a little tighter-just for a moment; just for two deep breaths and one small stretch of darkness as he closes his eyes and hides his face in Ed’s hair.  Ed smells like cheap motel soap; Roy can almost taste the slippery scumminess of it clinging to his skin; and under that, he smells like blood and dust and machine oil and Ed, skin-and-sweat-and-essence, a scent that’s somehow simultaneously slightly musky and sunshine-bright.

He wants to pour, to press, to bleed his own strength and energy into Ed’s weary body and bring it back to life.  He wants to give-that’s the thing that’s so remarkable about all of it; the thing that’s so new.  He wants to give Ed everything, and he honestly doesn’t care if he gets anything back.

Ed would probably try to use brute-force logic to twist that around into some kind of an exchange, and possibly he’d succeed-Roy doesn’t believe in altruism except as a function of the positive feeling that comes of displaying one’s purported generosity.

But he’s started to believe in this.  He’s started to believe in love, or at least in loving Ed, in a way that transcends his well-established selfishness entirely.

“Let’s go, then,” he says softly.  Ed’s left hand releases its vise-grip on his collar, and he takes it into his, knitting their fingers together securely before he starts back in the direction of the car.  He doesn’t move too fast, and he doesn’t tug too hard; Ed stays close and holds that same old battered suitcase in the automail hand.  Somehow they make it across the street without getting flattened into bloody, tire-treaded pulp; somehow Roy pries Ed’s metal fingers carefully off of the suitcase handle and sets it on the floor in the back of the car; somehow he shepherds Ed into the passenger seat and buckles him in.  Ed’s hands snag the loop of braiding on his uniform and hold him there, paused where he’s ducking in through the car door, half-bent with his back aching-and then Ed’s left hand curls around the back of his neck and pulls him in to kiss.

It’s a tentative thing-and Ed is never tentative, except when he is shaken.

Roy likes to think, though, that as much as he’s a wordsmith and a rhetorician, he has an equal aptitude for sending messages without a single syllable.  And he’s hoping quite sincerely that this is one of those times.

I love you, he kisses.  I’m here; I’m here; I’m never leaving.  You’re safe now.  I’ve got you.  It’s going to be all right-somehow, I promise, it is going to be all right.

Ed makes a very faint humming sort of noise in response.  Roy draws away and tucks the silky gold bangs back behind his ear-for all the good it does; the gesture is purely symbolic, as Ed’s hair is every bit as determinedly contrary as the rest of him.

It’s difficult to tell how many of the unuttered promises Ed can hear-some nights Roy wants to whisper them into his ear while he sleeps; maybe they’ll wriggle into his too-marvelous brain while it’s distracted.

When Ed looks up at him, though, there’s a tiny fragment of a spark kindling in his eyes.

“Thank you,” he says, quietly, and-perhaps he knows.  Perhaps he knows more than Roy’s ever dared to hope.

Roy leaves his hand lying against the side of Ed’s neck a moment longer, feeling his pulse.  His guts twist just thinking it, but even this could have been taken away-each time Ed kisses him goodbye and climbs up onto a chuffing train, he could be losing this.  There’s no way-and there never has been-of guaranteeing that Ed will come back to him alive.  Just this, just having him, just the beat of his blood in his throat and the rise of his chest and the flick of his eyelashes-just this is a blessing far too great to measure.  Anything else in the world can be overcome.

“Do you need something to eat first?” he asks.  “Or we could stop on the way.”

Ed’s smile is small and bitter, and the bronze in his eyes tarnishes again.

“Can’t,” he says.  “Been almost a day now.  Just-can’t.”

Roy kisses him again.

I’m sorry.  I love you.  I’d give up everything if I could spirit this away.

Ed presses their foreheads together for a few seconds after they draw apart, and he keeps his eyes closed.

“Let’s go,” he says.  “I want-maybe a bath, maybe-looking forward to the bed.”

Ed loves Roy’s bed.  To be fair, though, so does Roy, and so would anyone; it bears more than a passing resemblance to a benevolent cloud, and the sheets feel like caresses.

“Not too long,” Roy says, grazing a fingertip one more time against his jaw before circling around the car to get back in to drive.

“It’s better,” Ed says as Roy makes a slightly, marginally, arguably illegal turn to swing them back around and start them homeward.  “Just-being here.  Having you here.  It’s-better.  Thank you.  You-” Ed’s not known for his effusiveness.  Roy tries not to exert a death grip on the steering wheel.  “You-didn’t-have to come all the way out here, an’ I know you’ll probably get crap for it tomorrow, but-” His voice catches; he plows on like neither of them heard it.  “-I don’t-know.  I’d feel so-when I heard I’d be stuck here, I just-even just the thought of you getting here and me not having to drag my ass home all alone-that-I felt like maybe I could get through it somehow.  Like it wasn’t-impossible anymore.  Shitty, yeah, but-like I just got this-swell of feeling like… suddenly realizing that I was going to survive.  But-I mean, you didn’t have to, but you did, and-I-”

“Ed,” Roy says.

Out of the corner of his eye-his driving is at least fifty percent less dangerous when Ed’s in the car, when it matters-he sees Ed looking over at him and watching carefully.

“I’m not sure how to say this without it sounding like mediocre poetry,” Roy says.

Ed’s voice bears the faintest impression of a smile.  “Great start.”

Roy heaves an exaggerated sigh.  “Ed, I would walk through fire for you.  Hell and back would be an errand.  Groveling at your feet is a privilege.”

Ed shifts.  “You never grovel at my feet.”

“Maybe not literally,” Roy says.  “The point is-a few hours’ drive is nothing.  It is of no consequence whatsoever; it is actually a gift, because it meant I got to see you sooner.  There is nowhere in the vast span of the universe that I would rather be right now.”

A glance confirms that Ed has crossed his arms and hung his head, so that the fall of his hair hides his face.

“You’re fucked in the head, Mustang,” he says, and if his voice shakes, Roy pretends not to notice.

It is a long, long drive-isn’t the gap between peril and home always endless?

The suburbs of Central crawl past as the night deepens.  Ed has been leaning his head against the window for the last hour; his eyes are mostly closed, but the cadence of his breath is too quick and sharp for sleeping.  The silence itself isn’t uncomfortable-sometimes Roy has the arrogance to fancy that they’re beyond awkwardness, now-but it sets him on edge all the same.  Quietness and stillness from Ed are ominous signs.  He’s hurt, and deeply, and simply ferrying him home will not nearly be enough.

As Roy pulls up to the curb in the shadow of the house, just before he kills the engine, Ed says, “It was chimeras.”

There was never much doubt in Roy’s mind about what could have rattled him like this, but the words still fall like stones through the center of his chest.  “I’m sorry.”

Ed’s left shoulder hitches upward in a weak approximation of a shrug.  “I… I mean, I knew… from… the assignment, but…”

He always thinks he can do it.  He always finds a way to believe-doggedly, genuinely, absolutely-that this time, he’ll set it right.  He always hopes with everything in him that this time, he will save just one.  Roy thinks that’s all Ed wants-one tangled creature rescued; one miserable monster salvaged from the pit of cruelty where it was made.

Roy pulls the parking brake and takes the key from the ignition.

“I know,” he says.  “It’s not your fault.”

“Fuck that,” Ed says.  “I’m accountable.”

“You can be accountable without being responsible,” Roy says.

Ed looks down at his hands, twisted up together in his lap.  “Guess.  Maybe.”

“You didn’t start this,” Roy says.  “You didn’t cause it.  And you did everything in your power to intervene.  It’s not your fault.”

There are more ghosts in Ed’s life than Roy can number, but this graveyard tends to be the worst.  The word for the look in his eyes is haunted.

“Maybe,” he says.

Roy cups a hand against his cheek again.  “Can I entice you with promises of a warm bath and a warm bed?”

Ed musters something like a smile.

Roy gets the suitcase, and Ed shuffles to the door ahead of him and starts digging for his keys.  They don’t seem to be forthcoming, and the lines of his face are starting to twitch with-what?  Bewildered frustration?  The beginnings of panic?

Sometimes you don’t understand just how close to his breaking point Ed has come until a single breath of air pushes him past it.

Roy doesn’t know that he could bear that right now.

“Allow me,” he says in the suavest of his voices, leaning in to deliver a soft kiss to Ed’s ear as a distraction.  He whisks his keys out, kicks the door open, holds it.  “After you.”

“You can’t singlehandedly resurrect chivalry,” Ed says, slipping past him.

“Watch me,” Roy says.

“You have two hands,” Ed says, already on the stairs.  “That’s cheating.”

Roy puts the suitcase down by the shoe rack and locks the deadbolt on the door behind them.  “I’ll tie one behind my back.”

“Like hell you will,” Ed says as he tops the staircase.  “Just try tying a knot with one hand.  Try it.  See what happens.”

“Mm,” Roy says, hastening after him, “perhaps knot.”

The sound Ed makes is more like a cough than a laugh, but the balance seems to be shifting.  “Oh, fuck you.”

“Yes, please,” Roy says.

Ed stops in the bathroom doorway with his hand hovering above the lightswitch, half-smiling over his shoulder.  “Knotty bastard.  Quit stringin’ me along.”

“Home for two minutes and giving orders already?” Roy asks.  “You’re becoming quite the tierant.”

Ed’s eyes are warming, and his smile is widening, and Roy’s heart leaps.  “Gross.  Uhh, I-can’t believe you roped me into this.”

“Oh, God,” Roy says, “I missed you.”

The impulse is to reach for him like a snake striking and drag him in and hold him there forever, but Roy knows from the marks and imprints on his own soul not to move too suddenly.  Besides, two slow steps do well enough to bring him close, where he can brush Ed’s bangs aside and kiss his forehead and just savor it.

“Hey,” Ed says, softly, warmly, sounding so much more like himself-like the world’s worth being in, like the sun will rise.  “I got an exchange for you.  How ’bout you leave me alone for ninety seconds to take a piss, and then I’ll let you wash my hair?”

“That’s not equivalent at all,” Roy says, tugging at a lock of spun gold gently.  “You’re too good to me.”

“I’m an open-minded guy,” Ed says, and every smile is stronger, and Roy could cry for gratitude.  “You’re entitled to your hair fetish just like anybody else.”

“Not all hair,” Roy says, stroking it back one last time.  “Yours.  You.  You, Ed.”

Color floods Ed’s cheeks, and Roy winks at him and backs out of the bathroom, carefully pulling the door to.

They’ll get through this.  Ed bruises easily, wounds deeply, and heals slow, but heal he does.  He’s burnished steel underneath.  He bends, and scratches, and dents, and scrapes, but he hasn’t broken yet.

If Roy has anything to do with it-if there’s any way in the world to bolster him-he never will.

In another era of his life, perhaps, undressing Ed and shepherding him over to the steaming bathtub despite his halfhearted protests might have been agonizingly erotic-especially given Roy’s relatively recent discovery that sex might as well have been invented for Edward Elric, given how beautiful he makes it, and how beautiful it makes him-but his fingertips on Ed’s skin are skimming on the search for injuries only, and his there’s nothing arousing about the sick pang his heart makes at how many they find.

“It’s okay,” Ed says.  Deep new gashes and several welts like a tiger’s stripes to match his eyes-bruises already mottling red-violet like the end of a sunset spreading misty fingers on his skin- “It’s really okay.”  He reaches up and wraps his hand around the back of Roy’s neck, drawing him down into another kiss-softer at first, butterfly-soft, but then he nibbles on Roy’s bottom lip.

“Sure you’re not hungry?” Roy mumbles with the parts of his mouth that aren’t being masticated.

Ed snickers, and never-never-has there been a more wonderful sound.

“C’mon, General,” he says.  “Sweep me off my feet already.”

That’s more of an invitation than Roy ever needed to catch him up in both arms and lift him carefully into the tub.  Is it unnecessary?  Yes.  Is his back going to despise him with every fiber of its being tomorrow?  Definitely.  Is it worth it?  No damn question of that.

Ed’s wet hair slides over his fingers as he works out the crimps and tangles from the ponytail.  The gold goes an amazing, shimmery honeyed-brown when it’s wet; he could run his hands beneath it forever, just watching the play of the light.

“This is the least shitty I’ve felt in a week,” Ed says, chin sunk so far on his own chest that it’s challenging to make out the words.  “Think I could just live the rest of my life in here?  Set up an office.  Alchemical consulting.  Reverse-housecalls only.”

“You’d turn into a prune,” Roy says, holding his hair aside and kissing at the join of his automail shoulder.  “More importantly, I don’t think they have any bathtub-on-wheels seating at that Aerugan restaurant you like.”

“Shit,” Ed says, leaning into the attention.  “Well-you’d get me takeout, wouldn’t you?”

“I would get you the constellations if you asked,” Roy says.

Ed hunches down a little lower, wriggling contentedly as Roy strokes a finger down his spine.  “Good luck.  Know how long it takes to travel a lightyear?”

Roy nestles his face into the side of Ed’s neck.  “Almost as long as I’ll love you, perhaps?”

“Shut up,” Ed says, twisting around to wrap both dripping arms around him and cling on tight.

Sometimes Ed can sleep, after the stresses; other times, the demons gnawing at his heels keep him anxiously awake.  Tonight, the bath water seems to have lulled him into something approaching unconsciousness well before he’s made it to the bed.

“Darling,” Roy says, midway through an uninspiring attempt to tow him across the bathroom floor without anyone slipping and concussing themselves.

A sliver of gold shows of Ed’s eyes.  Roy has been waging a pet name war of attrition since the very beginning, and he’s made more progress than he ever dreamed, but an Ed with any self-awareness left would not let ‘darling’ stand.

Roy waves a hand in front of his face for good measure, to no avail.

It’s not the worst thing in the world, though, sitting Ed down on the clothes hamper next to the vanity and brushing his teeth while he struggles valiantly to raise his eyelids.  It’s not the worst thing in the world, toweling at his beautiful hair, brushing it out, smoothing it back.  It’s not the worst thing in the world to bundle him into the worn-softest pair of Roy’s own flannel pajamas and roll up the sleeves and ankles, with Ed swaying slightly all the while.

It’s nice, actually-it’s magnificent.  He’s here.  He’s home.

Roy wipes a last bit of toothpaste foam from the corner of Ed’s lips, kisses the spot to make sure it’s clean, and carries his dozing idol to the bed at last.

He tucks Ed in, lets his own uniform crumple on the floor, reluctantly sets the alarm clock, crawls in next to Ed, and turns out the light.  Carefully, he wraps both arms around the warm body curling in towards him-mindful of the weight of the automail, which has cut off the circulation in his own limbs on more occasions than he’d like to quantify, once so badly that he thought he was going to lose his fingers to necrosis.

He closes his eyes and cherishes the sound of Ed’s breathing, the press of his skin, the rhythm of his heartbeat.  He’s just about to drift from the heavy haze of contentment directly into dreams when…

“Hey.”  Ed’s voice is slurred with the sleep dragging at its edges.  “When are you gonna give up on my dumb ass?”

“Let me think,” Roy says.  “I suppose it’ll be around the time the world stops turning, you stop loving Al, and sparks stop making fire.”

Ed snuggles in, and Roy can feel the drowsy smile curving against his collarbones.  “We’re gonna have bigger problems if the planet suddenly goes still.”

“True,” Roy says.  “Goodnight, darling.”

“Shut up.”

“Oh, good.  I was worried.”

“Shut up.”

“After you.”

“Nngh.  Fuckin’… Love you.  G’night.”

“And you,” Roy whispers, and the dark draws in around them like a black tide, but the balance of the universe has tilted back to rights.