FMA -- Void
Title: Void
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: proto-Roy/Ed-kinda
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,830
Warnings: language (i.e. Ed), Havoc is a dumbass
Prompt: demisexual Ed
Summary: Scientifically, he knows exactly what's missing, but for once he can't fix it by force of will.
Author's Note: I did my best to write this both accurately and kindly, and I don't know if I succeeded. I hope it's okay. ♥ …I also wrote it all in one go instead of cleaning the apartment, so… please be on typo watch. >__>''
VOID
Ed is not hiding. He’s… just… keeping under the radar a little bit, because Mustang looked like he was gonna blow a fucking fuse this morning, and Ed is positive that the bastard somehow has it written in his will that if he dies, it’s Ed’s fault, and there’ll be a court-martial involved, and Ed really doesn’t have time for that shit. He figures if he stays out of the way long enough for Colonel Bust-a-Gasket’s blood pressure to drop back down to sustainable human levels, everybody’ll benefit in the long run.
Al went to the barracks when they got in-to go pore over the book they found while they were off ousting corruption and whatnot; and also because it’s sort of embarrassing to get screamed at when Al’s standing in the other office making little scrape-wince noises the whole time because he said it was a bad idea, but Ed did it anyway-but Mustang told Ed not to leave HQ today in case more testimony-type crap is needed for the requisite pile of paperwork. So he’s hanging around the cafeteria for lunch, even though everything they serve here seriously sucks, on top of which the portions are, like, for babies or some shit.
Anyway, that’s why Ed’s chilling out at an empty end of a table, counting down the hours until he can probably creep back into the office without being held responsible for the sudden and suspicious heart attack sustained by a certain overly decorated bastard.
Jeez. All this fuss over a government building that didn’t even really blow up so much as… kind-of-crumble with a lot of smoke. Honestly, it’s no wonder nobody ever gets a damn thing done around here; they spend so much freakin’ time making entire mountain ranges out of single-residence molehills that it’s shocking this city has paved fucking roads.
“Is anybody sitting here?” somebody asks.
Ed tears his eyes away from the fascinating process of prodding with the tines of his fork at what was advertised as meatloaf but might just be a sentient organism, which he’s really not sure he wants to consume even though he’s fucking starving. There’s a girl in a uniform standing there holding a tray and smiling at him-he recognizes her as one of the secretaries from the phone thingy; she always says hi to him. He’s ninety percent sure her name is Suzy, and seventy-five percent sure her hair started out being that coppery red instead of getting dyed that way.
A portion of his consciousness duly acknowledges the fact that Is anybody sitting here is an entirely different question from Do you mind if I sit here but functionally accomplishes the same thing, and that is one of the many reasons why language and people are stupid and annoying.
But Suzy’s always seemed pretty nice, so… whatever.
“Nah,” he says. “Go ahead.” That sort of answers both of the questions, right? Or… something? Fuck it.
“Thanks!” she says. She puts her tray down, sits, and kind of leans forward over the table. She starts playing with her fork handle, but in a running-her-fingertips-up-and-down-it kind of way, not as a This meatloaf is highly suspect gesture, as far as he can tell. “I haven’t seen you around in a while, Major.” It takes him a second to realize that that means him. Further proof that the military’s batshit: he’s a fucking officer. And not a crappy everybody’s-bitch-level one, either. “How’ve you been?”
“Eh,” he says. “Y’know. Startin’ shit. Almost dying. The usual.”
She has pretty green eyes, which are getting very big very fast. “What do you mean, almost dying?”
So he tells her the story, admittedly with some pretty substantial on-the-fly editing, especially because he’s not sure what way Mustang’s planning to spin it to try to bail his ass out of trouble, and he doesn’t want to fuck that up just in case his version gets spread. For all that he’s a total raging tight-ass piece of shit, Mustang can be a little bit almost cool about rewriting Ed’s accidental destructive rampages in such a way that nobody gets fired and/or put in front of the firing squad. He thinks Ed doesn’t notice, but that’s because he’s a moron. Ed hasn’t figured out how to cure stupid yet, or he would’ve done it for Mustang; the guy’s got potential in other areas, but he can be thick like fresh-churned fucking cream sometimes.
Suzy’s a pretty good listener-she gets really into the dramatic parts and asks good questions, like “But how did you make a whole bridge out of the broken door? I mean, that can’t have been enough material to work with,” to which the abridged answer is Ordinarily, no, but in case you haven’t noticed, they put my picture in the dictionary next to the word ‘badass’. Also, despite its dubious edibility, the meatloaf turns out to be a really helpful visual aide for how buildings collapse.
“Wow,” Suzy sort-of-sighs-sort-of-says. “You’re so exciting.” Her cheeks turn kind of pink. “I-mean-your life is-exciting. You do exciting stuff.”
Ed has no fucking clue what to say to that, so he goes with the Al default: “…thanks.”
Maybe he should do that more often. Nobody ever gets mad at Al. Then again, Al has the advantage of being seven fucking feet tall and made of steel with glowy red eyes, so maybe people do get mad; they’re just too chickenshit to say anything, and Ed’s mental data set gets all skewed.
Suzy’s eyes keep darting down below his chin, to… what? He ditched his jacket at the barracks because it was covered in mud and filth and blood and whatever-does the neck of his shirt hang low enough that she can see the gnarly-ass scars all along the edge of the automail? She’s probably grossed out. Awesome. Maybe he can kind of shrug his coat around and cover it all better.
Except the trajectory of her gaze doesn’t really seem to be on his shoulder-more like his collarbones. Or his throat. So either she’s a vampire thinking about eating him, or… what? She can’t be a vampire; he’s seen her outside in daylight before.
This is why Ed doesn’t talk to people; they don’t make any fucking sense.
Suzy fingers the braiding on her uniform and looks-deliberately?-out at the various other military idiots passing by their table.
“Oh,” she says, eyes going all wide again. “There’s Lieutenant-Colonel Treyvas.”
Ed glances over, because it seems polite. Katia Treyvas has been kind of the talk of the town-or at least of Central HQ-since she transferred from Southern. She wears really bright red lipstick and has really thick eyelashes and extremely pronounced curves. Ed heard somebody from her unit mentioning that she’s extremely kickass at martial arts and stuff; why doesn’t anyone talk about that? All Havoc wants to do is sing the praises of her cleavage, which just sort of makes Ed feel like there are spiders underneath his skin. Havoc always pats him on the back and says he’ll understand when he’s older, which is fucking obnoxious, and then Breda always says “Dude, he’s fifteen; I’m pretty sure he understands now,” and then Hawkeye always clears her throat really loudly, although whether it’s specifically to rescue him or just to shut them up in general he can never tell.
Point is, Breda’s wrong. He just… doesn’t… get it. He understands perfectly well, in a clinical, scientific sort of way, that people… feel… stuff… when they look at other human beings. He’s watched the changes in Havoc’s facial features, even-his pupils dilate, and he swallows a lot, and he starts licking his lips after a while. His body language changes, too; he fidgets like crazy, and he sort of squares his shoulders, and he turns his hips at a different angle and tosses his head all the time if he starts talking to the woman he’s eyeballing. Ed understands it just fucking fine. But he doesn’t… get it. People are just… people. Sometimes they’re cool, and sometimes they’re douchebags, and obviously some of them are more aesthetically pleasing than others, and that’s fine; he has no problem recognizing that. Sometimes he even thinks it’d be nice if somebody-y’know. Cared about him. A lot. Like Al does, with all the worrying and the gentleness and the trying-to-help, but-different. Sometimes thinking about that, sort of abstractly, makes him feel kind of warm in the middle of his chest.
But the shit that the office-the shit that everybody-is always talking about is a totally different kind of warmth, right? Something… fucking… what? Lower? Not even warm, anymore, but-hot. Right? That’s what they’re talking about. That’s what makes Havoc go all slack-jawed and hazy-eyed and drop his cigarette on the table and almost light his paperwork on fire. There’s something happening in him, chemically and psychologically, that makes him feel a certain way.
Ed just… doesn’t, though. Is the thing.
And it’s not like he hasn’t tried, and it’s not like he hasn’t been scientific about it-he tried to look really closely at a selection of women that Havoc had drooled over (subtly, of course; he doesn’t want to stare at people; that’s fucking rude; and when people stare at him, he feels sort of violated, so fuck that); and then at a… well, at a couple of guys, for experimental completeness and stuff.
So he tried. He looked. He tried to think about… whatever kinds of shit Havoc’s probably thinking when he briefly becomes disconnected from his mental faculties the instant some chick goes by.
Except nothing happened. No sparks, no heat, no hormones-not a goddamn thing.
Everybody talks about teenaged boys like they’re supposed to act like hungry dogs or something. Did he miss a fucking memo? Did he crush something out of himself with the sheer weight of the fucking guilt that he brought on his own ugly fucking shoulders? Did the Truth take something extra out of him, or-what?
Is he just not trying hard enough?
Is he fucking damaged?
What?
He doesn’t let himself think about it very much. He doesn’t have the goddamn motherfucking time, and besides-who cares? It doesn’t have any bearing on the important shit, like getting Al back and maybe, maybe, someday putting all this wrong shit right. He’s not like most people to start with; most people are allowed to sit down sometimes and get concerned about their internality. He’s not. He hasn’t done a fucking thing to deserve that. Ruminating over all of this irrelevant bullshit when he’s got work to do is selfish, and he’s done more than his fucking share of selfish shit, and he doesn’t have time for this. It doesn’t matter. Who cares? He probably won’t live long enough for it to make a difference anyway. People with a future can afford to spend time getting all bent out of shape about that kind of shit; it’s a reasonable investment of energy given what they have ahead of them. He probably won’t need that, so… who fucking cares what’s wrong with him, anyway?
He doesn’t.
“She’s just so beautiful,” Suzy is saying. She’s still watching Lieutenant-Colonel Treyvas, but her pupils are not dilating; she just looks sort of… sad. “God, I wish I looked like that.”
“Why?” Ed says. He’s eighty percent sure about her hair now after looking at her roots a little more closely, and he takes the leap of probability faith. “Your hair’s a much rarer genetic variant than hers-and it’s curly, which is way more interesting. Plus red is the best color out there, so… yeah.”
Suzy looks startled, and then touched, and then… confused.
People are so fucking weird.
“You really-you think so?” she asks. She pats at her hair a little bit. He wonders if she realizes she’s doing it. “That’s-that’s really nice.” She’s blushing. Crap. Well, at least she seems to be taking the compliment-observation-thing. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” he says.
She glances over at Lieutenant-Colonel Treyvas again, then back at him. “Are you sure… that…”
He waits for her to finish the question, but she sits there with her lips parted and nothing coming out. Then she blinks, and then she looks at him like he’s an equation that was all jacked up and then magically got jarred into a configuration where she can solve it.
“Oh,” she says.
People. For fuck’s sake. “‘Oh’ what?”
“Nothing,” she says, even though it is obviously not nothing; it’s just something that she doesn’t want to say. He’s not stupid. “Um-oh, gosh, there’s Colonel Mustang.”
“Shit,” Ed says, swiveling. “Where? Is there murder in his eyes? Fuck.” He considers taking his coat off, but-no jacket; the automail’s almost as fucking glaring as the red in a sea of uniforms. He could hide under the table without much trouble-it’s a really high table, is all-but he’s got, y’know, a tiny atom or so of dignity left, and he’d like to keep it. Maybe if he jumped over the lunch counter, the servers would protect him; they seem okay. Maybe he could make a break for the exit fast enough that lazy-ass Mustang couldn’t catch up. Maybe-
“He’s kind of dreamy, isn’t he?” Suzy says. She puts her elbow on the table and her chin on her hand and gazes at Mustang, of all people, then flicks a glance at Ed.
“Uh,” Ed says.
Thing is, Ed has dreamed about Mustang before, but as part of a, like, lots of shit burning down and the bastard blaming it on him sort of a dream-plot. Because his sleeping brain is a douchebag, and apparently Mustang doesn’t yell at him enough while he’s awake. Something tells him that’s not what Suzy’s talking about.
She’s now giving him a conspiratorial look and lowering her voice. “Have you ever seen him with his hair back? Don’t you just want to climb that like a tree?”
Ed feels like a very small animal in the headlights of a very large truck careening towards him at approximately a thousand miles an hour.
“He’s… not really that tall,” he manages after fifteen seconds of frozen bewilderment. “I mean… even if you were on his shoulders, you wouldn’t… be able to see that much, so… you’d… be better off with a real tree, honestly.”
Suzy blinks at him again.
“You don’t think he’s gorgeous?” she asks.
That’s an even more fucking complicated question-and he knows, he knows, logically, that it shouldn’t be. He knows that what she’s really asking is Are you attracted to him?, because that’s what people care about, and think about, and talk about in low voices at lunch tables while people with a favorable arrangement of facial features walk by. That’s how it works. If you think someone is pleasant-looking, you’re supposed to want to jump their bones and have their babies; that’s what evolution is.
But it’s not that fucking simple-not for him. Because… yeah, sure, whatever, maybe he’s lost his vise-grip on his stupid fucking brain once or twice, and he’s thought about what it might be like to feel Roy’s hands on his face or in his hair-if it’d tingle or give him the shivers or what. And he’s-considered-Roy’s mouth before. It’s a nice shape, is all, and when it’s not all smushed up in a frown ready to howl at Ed about property damage and all that shit, it looks sort of-soft. Like maybe it’d feel nice.
But the idea of getting naked in front of anyone makes him want to throw up.
Maybe right now that’s just a larger effect of the meatloaf, but-it’s all so fucking-
How do you look some nice, friendly girl in the eyes and say, Yeah, I mean, his phenotypic expression is fairly high on my list of favorites, but there is something fucking missing at the core of me, and I don’t know how to feel anything deeper or hotter than maybe some little fucking butterflies, and even then they’re kind of anemic, but it’s okay, because after the shit I’ve done, I’m not supposed to be all right?
He tears off a little corner of his paper napkin and rolls it up between the pad of his thumb and the first finger of his left hand.
Suzy’s okay. He likes her. But she’s watching him like this because she’s waiting for something, and what she’s waiting for is a confirmation that he’s into dudes, because he didn’t care about Lieutenant-Colonel Treyvas’s breasts, and he’s not acting interested in her either, so she’s hoping he’s gay or-whatever. It’ll make her feel better if she thinks he is; she’ll feel all rejected and shit if she thinks he’s capable of liking her and just doesn’t, and…
It’s easier for everybody if he just fucking lies.
It usually is.
“Yeah,” he says. “He’s-pretty-hot.”
Smooth like fucking gravel.
Suzy smiles, though, so that’s a fucking relief. “Yeah?”
Ed’s starting to see Mustang’s point about damage control; it’s kind of a pain in the ass. “Do me a solid and just-don’t say anything, though? He’s my fucking C.O., and also a fucking douchecanoe, and he’d be a huge dick about it, and… yeah.”
Suzy pantomimes zipping her lips shut and tossing the key over one shoulder before she grins at him again, leaning in closer over the remnants of his meatloaf of doom.
“He’s always so suave when he’s out in front of people,” she says. “Does he ever relax in the office?”
“Uh,” Ed says. “Does fucking sleeping at his desk to avoid paperwork count?”
She laughs. Which is weird, because it was a serious question.
Next she’s doing something with her eyebrows that looks vaguely familiar from all of Havoc’s bullshit. “What’s he like behind closed doors?”
“Annoying,” Ed says, which is true. “But he’s… I mean, he really cares about his team. He tries to pretend like he doesn’t, but usually you can tell. Sometimes I figure he even gives a shit whether I live or die, but mostly I think that’s just a budgetary balance thing, and there’d probably be a lot of forms to fill out if I kicked the bucket on duty, so…”
“Very astute,” the worst voice on the fucking planet right this second says. “I never dared to hope that you thought so highly of me.” Ed can see it reflected in Suzy’s wide eyes as a hand settles on his left shoulder. “May I borrow Fullmetal, Private Leighton?”
She’s up out of her seat and saluting sharply, although her whole face is bright red. “Yes, sir!”
“Hey,” Ed says, shaking Mustang’s hand off-and it does, it did, feel kind of-nice-but- “At ease or whatever. You shouldn’t fucking scare people like that, Colonel; everybody’ll find out you’re an asshole, and then you won’t be able to fake-charm your way to the next promotion.”
“Forgive me for the intrusion,” Roy says to Suzy. Ed can hear that he’s smiling, and he’d also know it from the way that she’s blushing to the roots of her definitely-natural hair. “And forgive Major Elric for his inconceivably filthy language.”
“Fuck you,” Ed says, feeling better than he has in about… since that building came down, and he knew what he was in for.
“O-of course, sir,” Suzy says-to Mustang, obviously, but then she shoots Ed a not-exactly-subtle little raised-eyebrows smile, like the fact that Mustang lets Ed swear at him means something, or… something.
Ed picks up his tray. “Thanks for hanging out with me,” he says. “See you around?”
She beams at him as she returns his wave, so that’s presumably a yes.
Mustang’s fingertips rest on Ed’s shoulder-blade for about a quarter of a second on the way out of the cafeteria-just to sort of nudge him in the right direction once they reach the hall.
“You’ll be glad to know that neither of us is at risk of a dishonorable discharge for your untimely demolition of Mandrett’s City Hall,” Mustang says, using his goddamn motherfucking stride advantage to stay just a little bit ahead.
“My demolition?” Ed says. “I told you, I didn’t demolish a fucking thing, except the problem you sent me out there f-”
Mustang turns in a swift swirl of blue fabric, and his index finger settles against Ed’s lips.
What-
-thefuck.
That’s not-bad, but it’s-he doesn’t-
Know what to do.
Mustang’s hand drops faster than it rose. “I am aware,” he says, “of the statistically remarkable propensity of edifices to self-destruct without any provocation whatsoever when you happen to be nearby. I was using a linguistic convention. The point is, I took care of it. Happy now?”
“Fuckin’ peachy,” Ed says.
Mustang smiles, in what looks like genuine amusement rather than the usual smirking-bastard-asshole-condescending shit. Ed can almost fucking taste his skin, and it feels like his heart’s beating six times harder in the little portion of his lips where that fucker’s finger was, and it’s a nice smile, and he’s trying, but-
He just doesn’t feel anything at all.
Except annoyed. And a little bit relieved. And a little bit glad that Mustang’s not pissed off anymore, maybe; it stops being funny after a while, and one of these days one of the blood vessels in his temple is actually going to split, and that’ll be fucking messy.
“You’re dismissed for the day, by the way,” Mustang says. “If you’d like to get some research in, feel free. Report to me at fourteen-hundred hours tomorrow; I should have something else for you by then.”
“Goody,” Ed says, as acidly as he can.
Mustang smiles again-that same fucked-up, different smile-and then turns on his heel and strides off. Ed watches him go. It should be doing something-the shape of his shoulders, the shine of his hair. That should be doing something, shouldn’t it?
When Mustang’s safely around the corner and out of sight, Ed lifts his left hand and touches the tips of his fingers to his lips. It feels like he’s been branded, but there aren’t any marks.
He’s just fucked up. What else is new? He’s just fucked up, and that’s par for the fucking course, but it’s okay, because he’s got his stupid-ass nice-faced C.O.’s permission to go back to Al, and Al’ll never give up on him just because he’s broken.
It’s okay. He’s going to be okay; he’s going to be fine.
Somehow.
[SEQUEL: SUMMER]
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: proto-Roy/Ed-kinda
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,830
Warnings: language (i.e. Ed), Havoc is a dumbass
Prompt: demisexual Ed
Summary: Scientifically, he knows exactly what's missing, but for once he can't fix it by force of will.
Author's Note: I did my best to write this both accurately and kindly, and I don't know if I succeeded. I hope it's okay. ♥ …I also wrote it all in one go instead of cleaning the apartment, so… please be on typo watch. >__>''
VOID
Ed is not hiding. He’s… just… keeping under the radar a little bit, because Mustang looked like he was gonna blow a fucking fuse this morning, and Ed is positive that the bastard somehow has it written in his will that if he dies, it’s Ed’s fault, and there’ll be a court-martial involved, and Ed really doesn’t have time for that shit. He figures if he stays out of the way long enough for Colonel Bust-a-Gasket’s blood pressure to drop back down to sustainable human levels, everybody’ll benefit in the long run.
Al went to the barracks when they got in-to go pore over the book they found while they were off ousting corruption and whatnot; and also because it’s sort of embarrassing to get screamed at when Al’s standing in the other office making little scrape-wince noises the whole time because he said it was a bad idea, but Ed did it anyway-but Mustang told Ed not to leave HQ today in case more testimony-type crap is needed for the requisite pile of paperwork. So he’s hanging around the cafeteria for lunch, even though everything they serve here seriously sucks, on top of which the portions are, like, for babies or some shit.
Anyway, that’s why Ed’s chilling out at an empty end of a table, counting down the hours until he can probably creep back into the office without being held responsible for the sudden and suspicious heart attack sustained by a certain overly decorated bastard.
Jeez. All this fuss over a government building that didn’t even really blow up so much as… kind-of-crumble with a lot of smoke. Honestly, it’s no wonder nobody ever gets a damn thing done around here; they spend so much freakin’ time making entire mountain ranges out of single-residence molehills that it’s shocking this city has paved fucking roads.
“Is anybody sitting here?” somebody asks.
Ed tears his eyes away from the fascinating process of prodding with the tines of his fork at what was advertised as meatloaf but might just be a sentient organism, which he’s really not sure he wants to consume even though he’s fucking starving. There’s a girl in a uniform standing there holding a tray and smiling at him-he recognizes her as one of the secretaries from the phone thingy; she always says hi to him. He’s ninety percent sure her name is Suzy, and seventy-five percent sure her hair started out being that coppery red instead of getting dyed that way.
A portion of his consciousness duly acknowledges the fact that Is anybody sitting here is an entirely different question from Do you mind if I sit here but functionally accomplishes the same thing, and that is one of the many reasons why language and people are stupid and annoying.
But Suzy’s always seemed pretty nice, so… whatever.
“Nah,” he says. “Go ahead.” That sort of answers both of the questions, right? Or… something? Fuck it.
“Thanks!” she says. She puts her tray down, sits, and kind of leans forward over the table. She starts playing with her fork handle, but in a running-her-fingertips-up-and-down-it kind of way, not as a This meatloaf is highly suspect gesture, as far as he can tell. “I haven’t seen you around in a while, Major.” It takes him a second to realize that that means him. Further proof that the military’s batshit: he’s a fucking officer. And not a crappy everybody’s-bitch-level one, either. “How’ve you been?”
“Eh,” he says. “Y’know. Startin’ shit. Almost dying. The usual.”
She has pretty green eyes, which are getting very big very fast. “What do you mean, almost dying?”
So he tells her the story, admittedly with some pretty substantial on-the-fly editing, especially because he’s not sure what way Mustang’s planning to spin it to try to bail his ass out of trouble, and he doesn’t want to fuck that up just in case his version gets spread. For all that he’s a total raging tight-ass piece of shit, Mustang can be a little bit almost cool about rewriting Ed’s accidental destructive rampages in such a way that nobody gets fired and/or put in front of the firing squad. He thinks Ed doesn’t notice, but that’s because he’s a moron. Ed hasn’t figured out how to cure stupid yet, or he would’ve done it for Mustang; the guy’s got potential in other areas, but he can be thick like fresh-churned fucking cream sometimes.
Suzy’s a pretty good listener-she gets really into the dramatic parts and asks good questions, like “But how did you make a whole bridge out of the broken door? I mean, that can’t have been enough material to work with,” to which the abridged answer is Ordinarily, no, but in case you haven’t noticed, they put my picture in the dictionary next to the word ‘badass’. Also, despite its dubious edibility, the meatloaf turns out to be a really helpful visual aide for how buildings collapse.
“Wow,” Suzy sort-of-sighs-sort-of-says. “You’re so exciting.” Her cheeks turn kind of pink. “I-mean-your life is-exciting. You do exciting stuff.”
Ed has no fucking clue what to say to that, so he goes with the Al default: “…thanks.”
Maybe he should do that more often. Nobody ever gets mad at Al. Then again, Al has the advantage of being seven fucking feet tall and made of steel with glowy red eyes, so maybe people do get mad; they’re just too chickenshit to say anything, and Ed’s mental data set gets all skewed.
Suzy’s eyes keep darting down below his chin, to… what? He ditched his jacket at the barracks because it was covered in mud and filth and blood and whatever-does the neck of his shirt hang low enough that she can see the gnarly-ass scars all along the edge of the automail? She’s probably grossed out. Awesome. Maybe he can kind of shrug his coat around and cover it all better.
Except the trajectory of her gaze doesn’t really seem to be on his shoulder-more like his collarbones. Or his throat. So either she’s a vampire thinking about eating him, or… what? She can’t be a vampire; he’s seen her outside in daylight before.
This is why Ed doesn’t talk to people; they don’t make any fucking sense.
Suzy fingers the braiding on her uniform and looks-deliberately?-out at the various other military idiots passing by their table.
“Oh,” she says, eyes going all wide again. “There’s Lieutenant-Colonel Treyvas.”
Ed glances over, because it seems polite. Katia Treyvas has been kind of the talk of the town-or at least of Central HQ-since she transferred from Southern. She wears really bright red lipstick and has really thick eyelashes and extremely pronounced curves. Ed heard somebody from her unit mentioning that she’s extremely kickass at martial arts and stuff; why doesn’t anyone talk about that? All Havoc wants to do is sing the praises of her cleavage, which just sort of makes Ed feel like there are spiders underneath his skin. Havoc always pats him on the back and says he’ll understand when he’s older, which is fucking obnoxious, and then Breda always says “Dude, he’s fifteen; I’m pretty sure he understands now,” and then Hawkeye always clears her throat really loudly, although whether it’s specifically to rescue him or just to shut them up in general he can never tell.
Point is, Breda’s wrong. He just… doesn’t… get it. He understands perfectly well, in a clinical, scientific sort of way, that people… feel… stuff… when they look at other human beings. He’s watched the changes in Havoc’s facial features, even-his pupils dilate, and he swallows a lot, and he starts licking his lips after a while. His body language changes, too; he fidgets like crazy, and he sort of squares his shoulders, and he turns his hips at a different angle and tosses his head all the time if he starts talking to the woman he’s eyeballing. Ed understands it just fucking fine. But he doesn’t… get it. People are just… people. Sometimes they’re cool, and sometimes they’re douchebags, and obviously some of them are more aesthetically pleasing than others, and that’s fine; he has no problem recognizing that. Sometimes he even thinks it’d be nice if somebody-y’know. Cared about him. A lot. Like Al does, with all the worrying and the gentleness and the trying-to-help, but-different. Sometimes thinking about that, sort of abstractly, makes him feel kind of warm in the middle of his chest.
But the shit that the office-the shit that everybody-is always talking about is a totally different kind of warmth, right? Something… fucking… what? Lower? Not even warm, anymore, but-hot. Right? That’s what they’re talking about. That’s what makes Havoc go all slack-jawed and hazy-eyed and drop his cigarette on the table and almost light his paperwork on fire. There’s something happening in him, chemically and psychologically, that makes him feel a certain way.
Ed just… doesn’t, though. Is the thing.
And it’s not like he hasn’t tried, and it’s not like he hasn’t been scientific about it-he tried to look really closely at a selection of women that Havoc had drooled over (subtly, of course; he doesn’t want to stare at people; that’s fucking rude; and when people stare at him, he feels sort of violated, so fuck that); and then at a… well, at a couple of guys, for experimental completeness and stuff.
So he tried. He looked. He tried to think about… whatever kinds of shit Havoc’s probably thinking when he briefly becomes disconnected from his mental faculties the instant some chick goes by.
Except nothing happened. No sparks, no heat, no hormones-not a goddamn thing.
Everybody talks about teenaged boys like they’re supposed to act like hungry dogs or something. Did he miss a fucking memo? Did he crush something out of himself with the sheer weight of the fucking guilt that he brought on his own ugly fucking shoulders? Did the Truth take something extra out of him, or-what?
Is he just not trying hard enough?
Is he fucking damaged?
What?
He doesn’t let himself think about it very much. He doesn’t have the goddamn motherfucking time, and besides-who cares? It doesn’t have any bearing on the important shit, like getting Al back and maybe, maybe, someday putting all this wrong shit right. He’s not like most people to start with; most people are allowed to sit down sometimes and get concerned about their internality. He’s not. He hasn’t done a fucking thing to deserve that. Ruminating over all of this irrelevant bullshit when he’s got work to do is selfish, and he’s done more than his fucking share of selfish shit, and he doesn’t have time for this. It doesn’t matter. Who cares? He probably won’t live long enough for it to make a difference anyway. People with a future can afford to spend time getting all bent out of shape about that kind of shit; it’s a reasonable investment of energy given what they have ahead of them. He probably won’t need that, so… who fucking cares what’s wrong with him, anyway?
He doesn’t.
“She’s just so beautiful,” Suzy is saying. She’s still watching Lieutenant-Colonel Treyvas, but her pupils are not dilating; she just looks sort of… sad. “God, I wish I looked like that.”
“Why?” Ed says. He’s eighty percent sure about her hair now after looking at her roots a little more closely, and he takes the leap of probability faith. “Your hair’s a much rarer genetic variant than hers-and it’s curly, which is way more interesting. Plus red is the best color out there, so… yeah.”
Suzy looks startled, and then touched, and then… confused.
People are so fucking weird.
“You really-you think so?” she asks. She pats at her hair a little bit. He wonders if she realizes she’s doing it. “That’s-that’s really nice.” She’s blushing. Crap. Well, at least she seems to be taking the compliment-observation-thing. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” he says.
She glances over at Lieutenant-Colonel Treyvas again, then back at him. “Are you sure… that…”
He waits for her to finish the question, but she sits there with her lips parted and nothing coming out. Then she blinks, and then she looks at him like he’s an equation that was all jacked up and then magically got jarred into a configuration where she can solve it.
“Oh,” she says.
People. For fuck’s sake. “‘Oh’ what?”
“Nothing,” she says, even though it is obviously not nothing; it’s just something that she doesn’t want to say. He’s not stupid. “Um-oh, gosh, there’s Colonel Mustang.”
“Shit,” Ed says, swiveling. “Where? Is there murder in his eyes? Fuck.” He considers taking his coat off, but-no jacket; the automail’s almost as fucking glaring as the red in a sea of uniforms. He could hide under the table without much trouble-it’s a really high table, is all-but he’s got, y’know, a tiny atom or so of dignity left, and he’d like to keep it. Maybe if he jumped over the lunch counter, the servers would protect him; they seem okay. Maybe he could make a break for the exit fast enough that lazy-ass Mustang couldn’t catch up. Maybe-
“He’s kind of dreamy, isn’t he?” Suzy says. She puts her elbow on the table and her chin on her hand and gazes at Mustang, of all people, then flicks a glance at Ed.
“Uh,” Ed says.
Thing is, Ed has dreamed about Mustang before, but as part of a, like, lots of shit burning down and the bastard blaming it on him sort of a dream-plot. Because his sleeping brain is a douchebag, and apparently Mustang doesn’t yell at him enough while he’s awake. Something tells him that’s not what Suzy’s talking about.
She’s now giving him a conspiratorial look and lowering her voice. “Have you ever seen him with his hair back? Don’t you just want to climb that like a tree?”
Ed feels like a very small animal in the headlights of a very large truck careening towards him at approximately a thousand miles an hour.
“He’s… not really that tall,” he manages after fifteen seconds of frozen bewilderment. “I mean… even if you were on his shoulders, you wouldn’t… be able to see that much, so… you’d… be better off with a real tree, honestly.”
Suzy blinks at him again.
“You don’t think he’s gorgeous?” she asks.
That’s an even more fucking complicated question-and he knows, he knows, logically, that it shouldn’t be. He knows that what she’s really asking is Are you attracted to him?, because that’s what people care about, and think about, and talk about in low voices at lunch tables while people with a favorable arrangement of facial features walk by. That’s how it works. If you think someone is pleasant-looking, you’re supposed to want to jump their bones and have their babies; that’s what evolution is.
But it’s not that fucking simple-not for him. Because… yeah, sure, whatever, maybe he’s lost his vise-grip on his stupid fucking brain once or twice, and he’s thought about what it might be like to feel Roy’s hands on his face or in his hair-if it’d tingle or give him the shivers or what. And he’s-considered-Roy’s mouth before. It’s a nice shape, is all, and when it’s not all smushed up in a frown ready to howl at Ed about property damage and all that shit, it looks sort of-soft. Like maybe it’d feel nice.
But the idea of getting naked in front of anyone makes him want to throw up.
Maybe right now that’s just a larger effect of the meatloaf, but-it’s all so fucking-
How do you look some nice, friendly girl in the eyes and say, Yeah, I mean, his phenotypic expression is fairly high on my list of favorites, but there is something fucking missing at the core of me, and I don’t know how to feel anything deeper or hotter than maybe some little fucking butterflies, and even then they’re kind of anemic, but it’s okay, because after the shit I’ve done, I’m not supposed to be all right?
He tears off a little corner of his paper napkin and rolls it up between the pad of his thumb and the first finger of his left hand.
Suzy’s okay. He likes her. But she’s watching him like this because she’s waiting for something, and what she’s waiting for is a confirmation that he’s into dudes, because he didn’t care about Lieutenant-Colonel Treyvas’s breasts, and he’s not acting interested in her either, so she’s hoping he’s gay or-whatever. It’ll make her feel better if she thinks he is; she’ll feel all rejected and shit if she thinks he’s capable of liking her and just doesn’t, and…
It’s easier for everybody if he just fucking lies.
It usually is.
“Yeah,” he says. “He’s-pretty-hot.”
Smooth like fucking gravel.
Suzy smiles, though, so that’s a fucking relief. “Yeah?”
Ed’s starting to see Mustang’s point about damage control; it’s kind of a pain in the ass. “Do me a solid and just-don’t say anything, though? He’s my fucking C.O., and also a fucking douchecanoe, and he’d be a huge dick about it, and… yeah.”
Suzy pantomimes zipping her lips shut and tossing the key over one shoulder before she grins at him again, leaning in closer over the remnants of his meatloaf of doom.
“He’s always so suave when he’s out in front of people,” she says. “Does he ever relax in the office?”
“Uh,” Ed says. “Does fucking sleeping at his desk to avoid paperwork count?”
She laughs. Which is weird, because it was a serious question.
Next she’s doing something with her eyebrows that looks vaguely familiar from all of Havoc’s bullshit. “What’s he like behind closed doors?”
“Annoying,” Ed says, which is true. “But he’s… I mean, he really cares about his team. He tries to pretend like he doesn’t, but usually you can tell. Sometimes I figure he even gives a shit whether I live or die, but mostly I think that’s just a budgetary balance thing, and there’d probably be a lot of forms to fill out if I kicked the bucket on duty, so…”
“Very astute,” the worst voice on the fucking planet right this second says. “I never dared to hope that you thought so highly of me.” Ed can see it reflected in Suzy’s wide eyes as a hand settles on his left shoulder. “May I borrow Fullmetal, Private Leighton?”
She’s up out of her seat and saluting sharply, although her whole face is bright red. “Yes, sir!”
“Hey,” Ed says, shaking Mustang’s hand off-and it does, it did, feel kind of-nice-but- “At ease or whatever. You shouldn’t fucking scare people like that, Colonel; everybody’ll find out you’re an asshole, and then you won’t be able to fake-charm your way to the next promotion.”
“Forgive me for the intrusion,” Roy says to Suzy. Ed can hear that he’s smiling, and he’d also know it from the way that she’s blushing to the roots of her definitely-natural hair. “And forgive Major Elric for his inconceivably filthy language.”
“Fuck you,” Ed says, feeling better than he has in about… since that building came down, and he knew what he was in for.
“O-of course, sir,” Suzy says-to Mustang, obviously, but then she shoots Ed a not-exactly-subtle little raised-eyebrows smile, like the fact that Mustang lets Ed swear at him means something, or… something.
Ed picks up his tray. “Thanks for hanging out with me,” he says. “See you around?”
She beams at him as she returns his wave, so that’s presumably a yes.
Mustang’s fingertips rest on Ed’s shoulder-blade for about a quarter of a second on the way out of the cafeteria-just to sort of nudge him in the right direction once they reach the hall.
“You’ll be glad to know that neither of us is at risk of a dishonorable discharge for your untimely demolition of Mandrett’s City Hall,” Mustang says, using his goddamn motherfucking stride advantage to stay just a little bit ahead.
“My demolition?” Ed says. “I told you, I didn’t demolish a fucking thing, except the problem you sent me out there f-”
Mustang turns in a swift swirl of blue fabric, and his index finger settles against Ed’s lips.
What-
-thefuck.
That’s not-bad, but it’s-he doesn’t-
Know what to do.
Mustang’s hand drops faster than it rose. “I am aware,” he says, “of the statistically remarkable propensity of edifices to self-destruct without any provocation whatsoever when you happen to be nearby. I was using a linguistic convention. The point is, I took care of it. Happy now?”
“Fuckin’ peachy,” Ed says.
Mustang smiles, in what looks like genuine amusement rather than the usual smirking-bastard-asshole-condescending shit. Ed can almost fucking taste his skin, and it feels like his heart’s beating six times harder in the little portion of his lips where that fucker’s finger was, and it’s a nice smile, and he’s trying, but-
He just doesn’t feel anything at all.
Except annoyed. And a little bit relieved. And a little bit glad that Mustang’s not pissed off anymore, maybe; it stops being funny after a while, and one of these days one of the blood vessels in his temple is actually going to split, and that’ll be fucking messy.
“You’re dismissed for the day, by the way,” Mustang says. “If you’d like to get some research in, feel free. Report to me at fourteen-hundred hours tomorrow; I should have something else for you by then.”
“Goody,” Ed says, as acidly as he can.
Mustang smiles again-that same fucked-up, different smile-and then turns on his heel and strides off. Ed watches him go. It should be doing something-the shape of his shoulders, the shine of his hair. That should be doing something, shouldn’t it?
When Mustang’s safely around the corner and out of sight, Ed lifts his left hand and touches the tips of his fingers to his lips. It feels like he’s been branded, but there aren’t any marks.
He’s just fucked up. What else is new? He’s just fucked up, and that’s par for the fucking course, but it’s okay, because he’s got his stupid-ass nice-faced C.O.’s permission to go back to Al, and Al’ll never give up on him just because he’s broken.
It’s okay. He’s going to be okay; he’s going to be fine.
Somehow.
[SEQUEL: SUMMER]