FMA -- Thermodynamics
Title: Thermodyanmics
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: R/NC-17/whatever
Word Count: 13,200
Warnings: language; explicit pr0nz; worst title ever? maybe; major spoilers for '03/CoS
Summary: Roy pines, and perseveres, and the rewards are greater than he ever dared to dream of.
Author's Note: This fic is for (and more than a bit inspired by) the inimitable mthaytr… and for anyone who has never gotten a reply even through their comment on my work was extremely kind and wonderful, because I'm a piece of crap who thrives on reviews but is absolutely terrible at responding to them. ;_____; Thank you guys, always, for your support. ♥ ETA: LOL I FORGOT ABOUT LJ'S POST LIMITS. Le sigh. XD
THERMODYNAMICS (1/2)
It’s almost amusing how avidly Central City hates the snow-scarves and hats and mittens in every color that wool can be dyed dot the crowds on the streets; Roy has spotted two separate secretaries wearing their overcoats inside, and one trying to hold the telephone against her earmuffs. And while (in something of a sick turn of irony) it has only gotten harder for him to look the other way since he lost one of his eyes, he can’t exactly criticize their longing to be warm. It’s an impulse he’s always understood, and now…
Well. The citizens of Central don’t know, don’t really know, how cold it’s possible to be-but who can blame them for bemoaning the prickle of the frozen air against their tongues? They don’t have to gorge themselves to know they hate the taste.
Roy stands in his office as the sun goes down, watching pink and violet bleed into the sky. The light barely even touches the North this time of year-hardly skims it; kisses just the surface of the snow with glints of silver, then is gone.
It’s all a bit like his encounters with a certain blond-haired alchemist-for-hire who swans in and out of his life with reckless abandon, carving trails of fire through the drifts.
Roy lifts his bare hand to the windowpane and presses his fingertips against the glass. He can feel the cold radiating through, and the contact plunges needles of it deep into his skin.
But not so deep. Nowhere past that; nowhere near the bone.
He draws a breath and lets it out to mist against the glass, and then he smiles at the shadows on the snow.
Two hours later, the dark has swelled out from the night and seeped into the offices; it’s pooling in the corners and bruising nightshade-purple at the edges of the haloes of the lamps. His ever-faithful pack-his angel-dogs, the devotees who saw him sink into the glacier, watched him drown in soundless ice without so much as an attempt at fighting, and believed him still a hero all the same-scrape their chairs back from the table one by one and stretch, and scratch, and yawn, and crack their knuckles and their elbows and their jaws. They mutter their goodnights; Falman and Fuery grace him with a weary tap of heels each and a pair of numb-fingered salutes; the usual suspects deign to wave over their shoulders, burying their noses in their scarves.
Riza waits it out for another half-hour before she rises, sets a stack of folders on the corner of his desk, straightens them, and fixes him with a sharp look.
“Don’t stay too late, sir,” she says.
“Certainly not, Major,” he says. “When have I ever taken poor care of myself?”
Her eyebrows drop, and the corner of her mouth quirks, ever-so-slightly sardonic. “When indeed,” she says. She crosses back to the coat rack and lifts hers down, shoulders it on, smoothes the lapels, dons gloves and hat, and draws her scarf up over her nose. She turns at the door with hardly more than her eyes showing; he can see the flicker of a smile in them. “Goodnight, sir.”
“Goodnight, Major.”
He’s earned back her faith in him. No swathe of medals or line of stars could measure up to that.
He tracks his eyes over another report, a second, a third… Does she calculate how far he’ll get by the end of the day and slip a series of particularly dull requisition forms into the part of the pile he’ll reach at six, with the intention of boring him so badly that he’ll leave?
They also tend to lower the heat in this godforsaken place after five, as if he needed another reason to be dreaming of his hearth. His fingers are starting to cramp-he can’t tell if it’s from the cold or the repetitive motion; likely both. He rubs his knuckles at his eye for a moment, then stares at them as he lowers his hand, realizing far too late that they’re smudged with ink all over; now he may very well have smeared an artificial black eye onto his own face.
He sighs-mostly inwardly; there’s no one left to impress with the melodrama, after all-and leans back until the axle of his chair creaks, massaging at the bridge of his nose as he goes. The motion makes the patch scrape softly across his cheek.
He lowers his hand to pull out the top-right drawer of his desk. He nudges a few spare ignition gloves and a pen and three faded-edged photographs aside to slide an envelope from underneath them.
To most, perhaps, it might look ordinary. There are two remarkable features of the front: the unspeakably atrocious handwriting; and the fact that it is addressed to someone named “General Bastard (i.e. Mustang)”.
Fortunately, military contractors can’t be court-martialled.
Equally fortunately, Roy actually takes pleasure in puzzling out the tangled letters and distorted lines-somehow the extra effort to unravel the words seems only to amplify their meaning. Having to decipher the scrawl every step of the way makes the fragmentary notes last longer. All he wants is more-more words, more thoughts, more time. More of Ed.
One last miserable week remains of the two-month contract that sent Edward swaggering up to North City just before the freeze set in; six days and some dozen hours lie between Roy Mustang and the meaning of it-between him and the moment Ed bounds down off of the train steps and sets off along the train platform towards him. After so many partings-so many last words swallowed down while watching that boy walk away-Roy doesn’t think the novelty of Ed coming to him will ever wear off.
It’s as simple as that, sometimes. Sometimes it’s easy.
But not always.
Sometimes the unnumbered wonders of the world are much more fascinating than a sad old dog with a desert for a heart and snowfall in his soul. Sometimes Ed is perfectly content for days, for weeks on end, before he stands up one morning and declares that he’s got somewhere to go. Sometimes they’re both too volatile; sometimes Roy’s too shuttered-up, and Ed spells out the hardest truths in painful little syllables, one chunk of stubborn sound after another, and he can’t return the honesty in kind. Sometimes all he has to offer is the silkspun lies and a handbook’s worth of smug, poetic little platitudes. Sometimes Ed can’t stand him-hence the walking out.
But-these days, these nights, this new-born lifetime-he always comes back.
Mostly, they’re all right. Mostly, they’re so much more than all right-mostly, they fit together like two cogs turning in perfect time. Mostly, it’s strange and remarkable like everything about that boy has always been; mostly it’s as beautiful as he’s become.
Mostly, Ed’s planted both feet in Roy’s life and wrapped both hands around his heart, and mostly he looks more reluctant every time he goes to leave.
Mostly, Roy strives to say what he means in a way that can be comprehended, and what he can’t speak, he writes. Mostly, Ed is sweeter than Roy ever would have dreamed possible; mostly, he’s learned how to tease, but when to stop; he’s learned how to express the gratitude before it curdles into guilt; he’s learned, now, how to love without destroying the object or himself. Mostly, he’s searingly bright and incurably restless, but he’s never, ever cruel. He knows-knows more; knows better; knows how brittle Roy Mustang’s constitution is beneath the shell. He knows a thing or two about bravado, and he knows the sound it makes when a human being breaks below the surface.
Mostly, their jagged jigsaw edges perfectly align, and Roy hasn’t loved so hard or so deep or so fully in all the years that he’s known how. Mostly, it’s far more than he dared to dream on winter midnights when the snowed-in silence weighed down on his eardrums with such a pressing emptiness that he was sure they’d burst.
Roy unfolds the latest letter. Six more days; six more days and a handful of hours until the fingertips that held the pen will slide across his skin again.
Hi Mustang,
So fucking cold here. I don’t know how you ever did it let alone for all that time. It’s like knives at first but then it gets like this river of ice in your bone marrow and I guess I don’t have to tell you but holy hell Roy, how did you do this without anything to come back to?
You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want.
I am a little curious because you don’t seem to be missing any toes and that is fucking impressive actually.
I don’t know how you write so much, I always feel like an idiot trying to make up shit to say and it looks even dumber on the paper than it does in my head. And I can’t ever write pretty like you do, you bastard. I was reading science books when you were getting all poetic and shit, it’s not my fault.
You always say you don’t care what I say but obviously you don’t mean that.
Does Major Hawkeye know you write me fucking novels? You must be doing it at work, you wouldn’t waste your newspaper/lounging time on this shit. Plus nobody other than the major would notice that you were writing something other than your paperwork right. Except you’re probably the type who gets all thoughtful and wistful and taps your pen on your lips and stares off into space a lot while you’re thinking about what gross disgusting poetry to write about my hair and whatever. Don’t even deny it, I know you are. And now I’m thinking about your mouth and also your eye and also your hands which is a goddamn pain in this ass and completely your fault. It isn’t fair play for you to go around looking like that you know. I bet you do know. You bastard.
Anyway all there is to write about is either bitching about how you’re not here which (a) you already know and (b) will go to your head… or the stupid shit I’m working on so I’ll tell you about that I guess.
What follows is-as Roy knows almost down to the last uneven swipe of the low-quality pen-a long and detailed record of the research Ed’s been commissioned to conduct in that lousy little gray-walled lab. The treatise is complicated, packed with jargon and abbreviations both, and denser than the snowbanks suffocating the alchemical scientists holed up inside, but it’s full of what Roy very fondly terms Ed-ioms-turns of phrase so terribly particular and absolutely characteristic that Ed could read the telephone book followed by an inventory list of janitorial supplies, and Roy would soak up every word. Besides, he’s read it enough times now that he mostly understands the principles at the heart of it; he may even have a few pieces of useful commentary when Ed inevitably wants to rant about the project later on.
Ed finishes up with a few sage words that will spin slowly through Roy’s head like so many pinwheels winking in the sunlight, for years and years to come:
Anyway that’s the gist of it. Fuck you and your letter fetish, my hand hurts like hell now. Or I think it does, it’s pretty numb. I have to take the gloves off to write obviously so I hope you are appropriately grateful for the sacrifice of my comfort etc. If I get frostbite and lose all my fingers and shit you better still find me sexy or I am going to be pissed like you would not believe and there may be some irreparable damage done to your balls just so you know.
You know sometimes I wonder if that bullet didn’t graze your brain or something because. Nobody’s ever treated me like you do. Or at least not anyone who wasn’t stuck with me from the start and whatever. And I know sometimes I’m the most obnoxious shit (not a little shit though, don’t even go there Mustang) in two fucking universes (I checked don’t forget) but. I hope you know it’s never because I don’t… you know. Care. It’s not because I don’t care, I always care. Most of the time I care too much. I think you figured that out about me a long time ago. And I think you figured that sometimes when I’m mad I say shit I don’t mean and later it’s like a fucking flesh rot inside me and I hope you think about it the same way I do is all because my feelings aren’t your responsibility or your fault, they’re mine. I own that. And I know I’m not always fucking easy to deal with and a lot of people have given up on me and you’d be within your rights to but
I hope you won’t.
I hope you don’t ever because I swear I feel you burning in my blood every second of every day like the baseline my heart beats to and it makes me better, it makes me stronger and it makes me a lot happier too just knowing that you exist for fuck’s sake let alone that you’re there and waiting and thinking of me. You could have anybody Mustang and maybe it’s vain or selfish or whatever but I can’t help that it feels good knowing that you picked me and the only reason I’m so good at riling you the fuck up is that we’re the same like that, it gets under our skin because we care too much. You always thought I wasn’t paying attention but I was. You always cared. It’s just a little bigger now.
Anyway my hand is going to fall the fuck off in another minute and then Winry will try to talk me into getting a claw one with a grappling hook or some shit which would be useful but then you probably wouldn’t want to have sex anymore so fuck it I better keep this hand.
I guess this is the part where I’m supposed to write the sappy shit so. I love you.
Don’t do anything stupid before I get back because I’ll probably either want to join in or laugh at you so just save all your dumbass urges for two weeks.
Thanks for giving a shit about me, Roy. I mean that.
Thank you for giving me one last chance so goddamn many times.
Thank you for being you.
Bastard.
More stupid love shit,
Ed
It gets even better: Roy bought him a camera this time, making an offhanded mention of how expensive and inefficient developing fluid seems to be. As would probably have been uncharacteristic a few years back, Ed got the hint-he sends snapshot photographs of himself making faces at his experiments, and at the other alchemists in the lab, and at the weather outside the windows. One arrived, tucked into the folds of this letter, which depicts him pouting in a dormitory wearing an enormous scarf and looking balefully out the window at the snow. He scrawled wish you were here to melt this shit, although Roy’s fingerprints around the edges have almost smeared it out by now.
Six more days. That’s not so long, and it’s not so cold.
Not here. Not anymore.
Rereading the letter sustains him for another half an hour of miserable drudgery and so forth. He’s now entirely positive that Riza deliberately stacks the paperwork with the intention of chasing him out of here before he loses his mind.
He swallows down the sigh-no need for it, not here, not now, not with the whole world swimming in light snow and possibility-and taps the piles on his desk into a slightly more convincing semblance of order, and then he dons all the trappings dangling from the coatrack, looking rather lonely there now that all of their erstwhile companions have gone. He winds the faded red scarf Hughes gave him heaven knows how many years ago around his neck three times, sets his fedora at a jaunty angle that won’t chafe against the patch, and pulls on his rabbit-fur-lined gloves-the one insulated pair he owns with ignition cloth sewn carefully into the fingertips. As he bends his fingers and savors the way the fur caresses his tired hands, he can’t help a little slip of fantasy: Ed will almost certainly try to drag him into a snowball fight before the weather turns, especially if Alphonse comes from Dublith for a visit, and he’ll wear these gloves, and the snow will soak them straight through. The world, two worlds, the life, the thousand shadowed edges on the brightest lights-Roy, with all his misery and his melodrama and his blood-soaked dreams-haven’t ground the last sparks of youth out of Ed just yet, and there are no words sufficient for the depth of gratitude Roy feels for that.
He buttons his coat and strides through the dim, empty halls; he steps out to the motor pool and breathes out a coil of mist, and he simply can’t help the smile.
The corporal standing at the head of the motor pool with both arms wrapped tightly around himself gives him an odd look-which transitions into recognition, and then vague horror at the realization that he’s just side-eyed a general.
“Terribly sorry, sir,” he says, sounding ever so slightly faint. “There just…” He gestures out to the empty loop of pavement and then tucks his hand securely back under the opposite arm. “I’m afraid no one’s been willing to walk tonight, and… I-if you don’t mind waiting, sir-or if you’d like to stay inside, I could send someone the moment a car arrives-”
“It’s quite all right,” Roy says, tugging his gloves on more firmly, somehow forgetting what they symbolize until he sees the corporal’s gaze following the tiny white stitches of the array on the back. He clears his throat, and the young man’s eyes dart back up to his face-in mortification this time. Roy summons his single most cordial smile to show that he’s not bothered… yet. “I don’t mind walking,” he says. “It’s not going to snow for another hour at least.”
He remembers, at the surprised blinking, that not everyone knows how to smell it in the air with quite so much precision.
“Stay warm,” he says, turning up his collar around the scarf. “Goodnight.”
The “Goodnight, sir!” trails him down the stairs, and he acknowledges it with a wave over his shoulder for good measure. It never hurts to bestow impeccable courtesy upon lower officers; Roy doesn’t suppose that most of the brass understands how much the cumulative gravity of their individual opinions may someday change the tide.
In the meantime, one of the perks of his recovered rank-and one of the unexpected boons of having lost everything and started to rebuild from spare fragments of a foundation-is owning a townhouse a mere mile and a half from Central Command.
The crystalline frigidity of the air feels bracing, tingling as it burrows into his lungs, but even as his fingertips begin to numb-this isn’t cold. Not really. The streetlamps push their feeble orange glow against the thickness of the night, and some of the shopfronts remain resolutely lit. The snow has cast a pall over the city, to be sure, but the life pulses underneath. This is worlds away from cold, from true cold-this is a charitable, habitable place. This is far, far, far from that paradoxical hell.
It is also far, far less welcoming than he’d been hoping after the first half-mile. It isn’t in his bones; it isn’t in his soul; it isn’t in the core of him, spreading spindly trees of white along the lines of every capillary, claiming him from the inside to destroy him piece by piece-but Central’s winter, while comparatively tame, is certainly making a sincere attempt to seep into every last layer of his skin.
No matter. He raises his shoulders to shift his scarf higher and pushes his hands into his pockets. No matter; ten tiny minutes stand between him and his sanctuary. No matter-the world is kind, mostly; and almost-fair some days, some nights.
And some nights-tonight, at least-he sees from three houses down that there’s warm golden light pouring out from his front window.
Either a rather incompetent burglar has broken into his home and seen fit to open his drapes during the robbery, or something’s caught on fire and incinerated the curtains without producing any smoke, or-
More likely-
Inconceivably wonderful, in the life he’s lived ’til now, but somehow more likely-
If any of his neighbors have objections to a decorated general of the Amestrian military clapping one hand on top of his hat and sprinting down the sidewalk at the greatest speed he can muster without slipping on the ice, then they can-as the glory incarnate at his destination would say-get fucked.
He takes the front steps in one leap but forces himself to pause on the doorstep long enough to catch at least a fraction of his breath. Some dignity would be a welcome change, whether or not it really matters here. Whether or not there’s anything left to hide.
He drags a little more frozen air into his lungs, grins, fumbles one gloved hand into his trouser pocket, and fishes up his keys.
A gust of wind enters with him; he pushes the door shut, bolts it, and hangs his hat from one of the prongs on the coatrack. That’s as far as he gets before the footsteps and the motion from down the hall monopolize every iota of his attention.
There’s a tremor in his chest, somehow-illogical but unshakeable-what if he’s wrong? What if it’s not? What if this is another fever dream in the cabin in the white; what if-
“Fuckin’ thermodynamics,” Ed says, giving an overstated shiver as he emerges from the flickering flame-spun shadows of the living room swathed in a blanket and-unless he’s doubled in volume in his absence-quite a lot of layers underneath. He could be wearing burlap and trailing sludge; his grin is a revelation. “’Dja miss me?”
Every inch of skin; every strand of hair; every spark in your constellation-eyes.
“A bit,” Roy says. He gestures to the pile of fabric cascading from Ed’s shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“Gonna have to be,” Ed says, grin jackknifing just a little wider. “Every damn fireplace in your house is lit.” One hand-the right, unrecognizable as automail under a monstrosity that looks like it once aspired to being a knitted glove-appears from under the blanket-cloak to gesture unrevealingly. “On the upside, it’d take you the better part of two hours to get into my pants, so I’ll know if you’re serious.”
Roy can’t resist the draw of him for the sake of stupid banter anymore. His heart beats weak, weak, weak-or maybe warm, warm, warm-as he crosses the foyer, peels off his gloves, drops them to the tile, and lays his hands somewhere in the area of Ed’s shoulders. He raises one to graze his knuckles down the too-beautiful line of Ed’s jaw, then swipes the pad of his thumb over the cracked, chapped line of Ed’s bottom lip. It curves at the attention, nearly splits-it’s all right, though. He’ll kiss it until it heals. And then, perhaps, quite a bit longer after that.
“Was there ever any doubt of my seriousness?” he asks.
“Eh,” Ed says. Hot blood blossoms on the peaks of his cheekbones. “I didn’t think it was possible to put the word ‘love’ in a one-page letter eighty fucking times, so after you managed that… I sort of got the point.”
“Are you sure?” Roy asks. He doesn’t need the fire, or the coats, or the insulated windows, or the fur-lined boots-none of it. Just this. Just this, and he has never been so warm. “I could say it again, if you like.”
“Nah,” Ed says. The blush deepens; his lashes dip; he looks up through them in what-knowing Ed-must be one of the charming bouts of shyness, but which somehow manages to look indescribably sultry. “I got parts of that thing memorized anyway.” At Roy’s slow grin, he scowls. “Shut up. It’s fucking cold up there, and-you know about the phones.” He shuffles his feet, which are swaddled in at least two pairs of socks. It’s a wonder there’s not lightning crackling from his heels every time he moves across the carpet. “Sometimes-I mean, sometimes your damn gushy-ass letters are all I got.”
“You’re back early,” Roy says, filing the words away in the center of his chest, wrapping them in tissue and ribbon to open again and appreciate another time. “Did everything go all right?”
Ed may be shrugging, or it might be a full-bodied shiver. “Yeah, it was fine. Just figured out what I was doing at the last minute there and finished it up faster than they expected. Once I realized that my two choices were to get the shit done or freeze my ass off for another week while I took my sweet time, it was pretty obvious. Only took one all-nighter, which is freakin’ child’s play.” He frowns, expression overstated, bottom lip protruding, and Roy could kiss him forever and never tire of craving more. “If they try to dock my pay for that, though, asses’re gonna get kicked from here to Xing.”
“All I ask,” Roy says, “is that you let me know if they’re stupid enough to try to keep your money from you, and give me a few days to try negotiation before you expatriate anybody with your foot.”
Ed grins up at him, shameless and radiant and so damn cute that it’s really no surprise that neither universe could hold him any longer than he wanted; working miracles is hardly even a strain for the ever-impossible Edward Elric, is it?
“All right, all right,” Ed says. “You’re such a spoilsport.” The grin tilts like the deck of a ship, and Roy’s heart has long since skidded overboard. “You gonna shut up long enough for a proper ‘hello’ now?”
“Oh,” Roy says, pretending to consider as Ed’s arms-knitted abominations and all-slide up around his neck, “I suppose.”
Ed glowers.
Roy kisses him, and kisses him again, and again, and would be overjoyed to keep at it for the rest of time if there weren’t such petty concerns as sleep and nutrition getting in the way.
Somehow, some fingertips have emerged from the terrible semi-sentient wool-creature that’s devoured Ed’s hands. These fingertips wind themselves into the hair at the nape of Roy’s neck, slowly and deliciously, tugging just enough to send a touch of electricity lancing down his spine.
Ed sinks back down onto his heels, panting lightly, and the boy who was here that one wretched day-those few wretched hours-wore a different pair of eyes altogether than the one in Roy’s arms right now.
“Aren’t you starving, dumbass?” Ed asks. “What the hell were you doing there so late, anyway?”
Occasionally, the truth is very simple, and the heat in Roy’s chest smoothes its passage up his throat. “Not having you to come home to.”
Color leaps to Ed’s cheeks, seeping sideways towards his ears.
“You-” he says. “Shut up. You’re hungry. C’mon.”
He seizes Roy’s hand in his-in the automail, notably, because Roy’s being ‘bastardly’ at the moment-and drags them into the kitchen, where he commences rummaging through the icebox with gusto. Roy doesn’t remember what’s there. Roy doesn’t remember much at all; his perception has narrowed to Ed and Ed alone, and he wouldn’t change that for anything.
Ed makes something warm and surprisingly palatable. Roy suspects that his knack-which the occasional forgotten pot boiling over or neglected pan burning probably precludes from classification as a talent-for eminently edible cooking most likely originated in the other place, very possibly when he brought Alphonse back there with him and felt compelled to provide for his newly-recovered idol. Roy has a lot of guesses about the things that happened there, a lot of observations traced partway back and ending at a brick wall. Ed speaks of it so rarely that it’s like he’s trying to make those silent years cease altogether to exist. The scraps of history that he does reveal, he doles out at unexpected moments, when Roy’s entirely unprepared-in the middle of a normal conversation, sometimes, in a soft, light, casual voice with his eyes tracking upward to the ceiling; or late at night, tacked onto the end of another sentence like Roy won’t notice, but the truth of it will still have slithered out, and maybe, maybe, once voiced, it won’t watch him from the shadows anymore.
Cooking requires Ed to pull the vaguely glove-shaped items made of pink wool with blue and white specks off of his hands. He jams them into his pockets, rather proudly; there’s a tube of the same tragic color scheme cocooning his automail arm.
“Tam made these for me,” he said. “Pretty great.”
Roy has never been able to determine any personal details about Tam except that this individual has earned Ed’s approval by virtue of a firm grasp of the scientific method, and that they knit when they’re waiting for their experiments to percolate. Apparently Ed passes the downtime either writing letters to Roy (like a sop, Mustang, this is what you do to me, I hope you feel like shit, you transmuted me into a sop and I can’t reverse it) or redesigning the entire system of pipes for the laboratory complex to make their heating more efficient, but the steady stream of warm gifts seems to have instilled in him a genuine admiration for the knitting.
“Pretty great, indeed,” Roy says. Ed is stirring things, grabbing down plates; Roy should get up and help, but it feels like he’s rooted to the chair. “You’re much too good to me.”
Ed grins at him, bright and delighted, and Roy knows that his laziness is forgiven, at least for now. “You’re damn right I am. Don’t you fuckin’ forget it.”
Roy puts an elbow on the tabletop and balances his chin on his hand, letting his eyelid slip low. “I have a few ideas about how to balance the equivalent exchange.”
He thinks he can see a flush climbing the sides of Ed’s neck, and the way Ed refuses to turn around from the stove might as well be a signed confirmation of its presence. “Jesus fuck, you get horny when I’m gone.”
“You’re damn right I do,” Roy says. “Can you blame me?”
The blanket mound making him dinner shakes its golden head. “I keep tryin’. Never can. You fuck up my logic like nothing else I’ve ever seen.”
“In its way,” Roy says, and a bit more honesty isn’t too much to muster when Ed is here at last, “I think that’s the highest compliment I’ve ever received.”
Ed darts a glare at him, red to the tips of his ears and impossibly adorable for it. “Save your fat mouth for eating and sex, Mustang.”
“As you wish, my love,” Roy says, and he can’t help the little smirk that hijacks his grin at the tiny squeak noise that leaves Ed’s throat.
As soon as he’s eaten-Ed cleaned his own plate several minutes ago, of course-Roy snatches up all the dishes, dumps them in the sink, and takes Ed’s hands instead. The automail is so bitterly cold even indoors that he understands the purpose of the glove.
“Well, then,” he says, sweeping his thumbs over the knuckles on both sides. “Shall we see about your exchange?”
Ed’s right eyebrow arches, pulling the corner of his lips up with it until a flash of ivory shows. “Aren’t you gonna regret this tomorrow when you’re half-asleep at work, and Major Hawkeye keeps looking at you and stroking her guns all meaningfully?”
“No,” Roy says, and that’s honest too.
Ed grips his hands, grinning wider, and makes a show of rolling his eyes. “I can’t leave you alone for five fuckin’ minutes.”
“You can,” Roy says. “Although I’d rather that you didn’t.”
That’s the dream, isn’t it? That’s the whisper of an undying hope-to preoccupy the pole star just a little longer. To convince him, somehow, that this time he should stay.
“Fuck’s sake,” Ed says.
“One of those syllables is very much to my liking,” Roy says.
Ed blinks wide, innocent eyes at him. “‘Sake’?”
“Close enough,” Roy says.
Ed grins, cheekily, and Roy presses his advantage.
One-eyed or no, he can still move faster than almost any man alive-he has an arm around Ed’s waist and the bulk of Ed’s weight over his shoulder in the time it takes his quarry to react with a lot of scrabbling and a vociferous howl. Ed’s instinctive reflexes used to best him almost every time, but he’s finding it easier to get the edge of late: either Ed is letting Roy win, or he’s letting his guard down. Is it possible that he’s finally settled enough to sleep through the night?
Well-Roy can seek the answers to that query later on. For now, the play-fighting-which it certainly is; no matter how vigorously Ed squirms, no metal strikes the side of Roy’s head, and none lands solidly in his gut, and if Ed wanted out of his grasp, he’d know-carries them all the way up the stairs, where Roy’s back sends up a prayer of gratitude as he deposits his extremely heavy, avidly-writhing charge onto the bed.
Ed’s hair bounces, and his chest heaves, and his grin curves wicked, and this should not be real. This is a thousand, a million times more than Roy has ever deserved; this is more than he’s ever dared to want for longer than a fragment of a second; this is the sort of sublimity that sent poets up to mountain peaks to gaze up at the sky until the darkness came-
[PART II]
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: R/NC-17/whatever
Word Count: 13,200
Warnings: language; explicit pr0nz; worst title ever? maybe; major spoilers for '03/CoS
Summary: Roy pines, and perseveres, and the rewards are greater than he ever dared to dream of.
Author's Note: This fic is for (and more than a bit inspired by) the inimitable mthaytr… and for anyone who has never gotten a reply even through their comment on my work was extremely kind and wonderful, because I'm a piece of crap who thrives on reviews but is absolutely terrible at responding to them. ;_____; Thank you guys, always, for your support. ♥ ETA: LOL I FORGOT ABOUT LJ'S POST LIMITS. Le sigh. XD
THERMODYNAMICS (1/2)
It’s almost amusing how avidly Central City hates the snow-scarves and hats and mittens in every color that wool can be dyed dot the crowds on the streets; Roy has spotted two separate secretaries wearing their overcoats inside, and one trying to hold the telephone against her earmuffs. And while (in something of a sick turn of irony) it has only gotten harder for him to look the other way since he lost one of his eyes, he can’t exactly criticize their longing to be warm. It’s an impulse he’s always understood, and now…
Well. The citizens of Central don’t know, don’t really know, how cold it’s possible to be-but who can blame them for bemoaning the prickle of the frozen air against their tongues? They don’t have to gorge themselves to know they hate the taste.
Roy stands in his office as the sun goes down, watching pink and violet bleed into the sky. The light barely even touches the North this time of year-hardly skims it; kisses just the surface of the snow with glints of silver, then is gone.
It’s all a bit like his encounters with a certain blond-haired alchemist-for-hire who swans in and out of his life with reckless abandon, carving trails of fire through the drifts.
Roy lifts his bare hand to the windowpane and presses his fingertips against the glass. He can feel the cold radiating through, and the contact plunges needles of it deep into his skin.
But not so deep. Nowhere past that; nowhere near the bone.
He draws a breath and lets it out to mist against the glass, and then he smiles at the shadows on the snow.
Two hours later, the dark has swelled out from the night and seeped into the offices; it’s pooling in the corners and bruising nightshade-purple at the edges of the haloes of the lamps. His ever-faithful pack-his angel-dogs, the devotees who saw him sink into the glacier, watched him drown in soundless ice without so much as an attempt at fighting, and believed him still a hero all the same-scrape their chairs back from the table one by one and stretch, and scratch, and yawn, and crack their knuckles and their elbows and their jaws. They mutter their goodnights; Falman and Fuery grace him with a weary tap of heels each and a pair of numb-fingered salutes; the usual suspects deign to wave over their shoulders, burying their noses in their scarves.
Riza waits it out for another half-hour before she rises, sets a stack of folders on the corner of his desk, straightens them, and fixes him with a sharp look.
“Don’t stay too late, sir,” she says.
“Certainly not, Major,” he says. “When have I ever taken poor care of myself?”
Her eyebrows drop, and the corner of her mouth quirks, ever-so-slightly sardonic. “When indeed,” she says. She crosses back to the coat rack and lifts hers down, shoulders it on, smoothes the lapels, dons gloves and hat, and draws her scarf up over her nose. She turns at the door with hardly more than her eyes showing; he can see the flicker of a smile in them. “Goodnight, sir.”
“Goodnight, Major.”
He’s earned back her faith in him. No swathe of medals or line of stars could measure up to that.
He tracks his eyes over another report, a second, a third… Does she calculate how far he’ll get by the end of the day and slip a series of particularly dull requisition forms into the part of the pile he’ll reach at six, with the intention of boring him so badly that he’ll leave?
They also tend to lower the heat in this godforsaken place after five, as if he needed another reason to be dreaming of his hearth. His fingers are starting to cramp-he can’t tell if it’s from the cold or the repetitive motion; likely both. He rubs his knuckles at his eye for a moment, then stares at them as he lowers his hand, realizing far too late that they’re smudged with ink all over; now he may very well have smeared an artificial black eye onto his own face.
He sighs-mostly inwardly; there’s no one left to impress with the melodrama, after all-and leans back until the axle of his chair creaks, massaging at the bridge of his nose as he goes. The motion makes the patch scrape softly across his cheek.
He lowers his hand to pull out the top-right drawer of his desk. He nudges a few spare ignition gloves and a pen and three faded-edged photographs aside to slide an envelope from underneath them.
To most, perhaps, it might look ordinary. There are two remarkable features of the front: the unspeakably atrocious handwriting; and the fact that it is addressed to someone named “General Bastard (i.e. Mustang)”.
Fortunately, military contractors can’t be court-martialled.
Equally fortunately, Roy actually takes pleasure in puzzling out the tangled letters and distorted lines-somehow the extra effort to unravel the words seems only to amplify their meaning. Having to decipher the scrawl every step of the way makes the fragmentary notes last longer. All he wants is more-more words, more thoughts, more time. More of Ed.
One last miserable week remains of the two-month contract that sent Edward swaggering up to North City just before the freeze set in; six days and some dozen hours lie between Roy Mustang and the meaning of it-between him and the moment Ed bounds down off of the train steps and sets off along the train platform towards him. After so many partings-so many last words swallowed down while watching that boy walk away-Roy doesn’t think the novelty of Ed coming to him will ever wear off.
It’s as simple as that, sometimes. Sometimes it’s easy.
But not always.
Sometimes the unnumbered wonders of the world are much more fascinating than a sad old dog with a desert for a heart and snowfall in his soul. Sometimes Ed is perfectly content for days, for weeks on end, before he stands up one morning and declares that he’s got somewhere to go. Sometimes they’re both too volatile; sometimes Roy’s too shuttered-up, and Ed spells out the hardest truths in painful little syllables, one chunk of stubborn sound after another, and he can’t return the honesty in kind. Sometimes all he has to offer is the silkspun lies and a handbook’s worth of smug, poetic little platitudes. Sometimes Ed can’t stand him-hence the walking out.
But-these days, these nights, this new-born lifetime-he always comes back.
Mostly, they’re all right. Mostly, they’re so much more than all right-mostly, they fit together like two cogs turning in perfect time. Mostly, it’s strange and remarkable like everything about that boy has always been; mostly it’s as beautiful as he’s become.
Mostly, Ed’s planted both feet in Roy’s life and wrapped both hands around his heart, and mostly he looks more reluctant every time he goes to leave.
Mostly, Roy strives to say what he means in a way that can be comprehended, and what he can’t speak, he writes. Mostly, Ed is sweeter than Roy ever would have dreamed possible; mostly, he’s learned how to tease, but when to stop; he’s learned how to express the gratitude before it curdles into guilt; he’s learned, now, how to love without destroying the object or himself. Mostly, he’s searingly bright and incurably restless, but he’s never, ever cruel. He knows-knows more; knows better; knows how brittle Roy Mustang’s constitution is beneath the shell. He knows a thing or two about bravado, and he knows the sound it makes when a human being breaks below the surface.
Mostly, their jagged jigsaw edges perfectly align, and Roy hasn’t loved so hard or so deep or so fully in all the years that he’s known how. Mostly, it’s far more than he dared to dream on winter midnights when the snowed-in silence weighed down on his eardrums with such a pressing emptiness that he was sure they’d burst.
Roy unfolds the latest letter. Six more days; six more days and a handful of hours until the fingertips that held the pen will slide across his skin again.
Hi Mustang,
So fucking cold here. I don’t know how you ever did it let alone for all that time. It’s like knives at first but then it gets like this river of ice in your bone marrow and I guess I don’t have to tell you but holy hell Roy, how did you do this without anything to come back to?
You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want.
I am a little curious because you don’t seem to be missing any toes and that is fucking impressive actually.
I don’t know how you write so much, I always feel like an idiot trying to make up shit to say and it looks even dumber on the paper than it does in my head. And I can’t ever write pretty like you do, you bastard. I was reading science books when you were getting all poetic and shit, it’s not my fault.
You always say you don’t care what I say but obviously you don’t mean that.
Does Major Hawkeye know you write me fucking novels? You must be doing it at work, you wouldn’t waste your newspaper/lounging time on this shit. Plus nobody other than the major would notice that you were writing something other than your paperwork right. Except you’re probably the type who gets all thoughtful and wistful and taps your pen on your lips and stares off into space a lot while you’re thinking about what gross disgusting poetry to write about my hair and whatever. Don’t even deny it, I know you are. And now I’m thinking about your mouth and also your eye and also your hands which is a goddamn pain in this ass and completely your fault. It isn’t fair play for you to go around looking like that you know. I bet you do know. You bastard.
Anyway all there is to write about is either bitching about how you’re not here which (a) you already know and (b) will go to your head… or the stupid shit I’m working on so I’ll tell you about that I guess.
What follows is-as Roy knows almost down to the last uneven swipe of the low-quality pen-a long and detailed record of the research Ed’s been commissioned to conduct in that lousy little gray-walled lab. The treatise is complicated, packed with jargon and abbreviations both, and denser than the snowbanks suffocating the alchemical scientists holed up inside, but it’s full of what Roy very fondly terms Ed-ioms-turns of phrase so terribly particular and absolutely characteristic that Ed could read the telephone book followed by an inventory list of janitorial supplies, and Roy would soak up every word. Besides, he’s read it enough times now that he mostly understands the principles at the heart of it; he may even have a few pieces of useful commentary when Ed inevitably wants to rant about the project later on.
Ed finishes up with a few sage words that will spin slowly through Roy’s head like so many pinwheels winking in the sunlight, for years and years to come:
Anyway that’s the gist of it. Fuck you and your letter fetish, my hand hurts like hell now. Or I think it does, it’s pretty numb. I have to take the gloves off to write obviously so I hope you are appropriately grateful for the sacrifice of my comfort etc. If I get frostbite and lose all my fingers and shit you better still find me sexy or I am going to be pissed like you would not believe and there may be some irreparable damage done to your balls just so you know.
You know sometimes I wonder if that bullet didn’t graze your brain or something because. Nobody’s ever treated me like you do. Or at least not anyone who wasn’t stuck with me from the start and whatever. And I know sometimes I’m the most obnoxious shit (not a little shit though, don’t even go there Mustang) in two fucking universes (I checked don’t forget) but. I hope you know it’s never because I don’t… you know. Care. It’s not because I don’t care, I always care. Most of the time I care too much. I think you figured that out about me a long time ago. And I think you figured that sometimes when I’m mad I say shit I don’t mean and later it’s like a fucking flesh rot inside me and I hope you think about it the same way I do is all because my feelings aren’t your responsibility or your fault, they’re mine. I own that. And I know I’m not always fucking easy to deal with and a lot of people have given up on me and you’d be within your rights to but
I hope you won’t.
I hope you don’t ever because I swear I feel you burning in my blood every second of every day like the baseline my heart beats to and it makes me better, it makes me stronger and it makes me a lot happier too just knowing that you exist for fuck’s sake let alone that you’re there and waiting and thinking of me. You could have anybody Mustang and maybe it’s vain or selfish or whatever but I can’t help that it feels good knowing that you picked me and the only reason I’m so good at riling you the fuck up is that we’re the same like that, it gets under our skin because we care too much. You always thought I wasn’t paying attention but I was. You always cared. It’s just a little bigger now.
Anyway my hand is going to fall the fuck off in another minute and then Winry will try to talk me into getting a claw one with a grappling hook or some shit which would be useful but then you probably wouldn’t want to have sex anymore so fuck it I better keep this hand.
I guess this is the part where I’m supposed to write the sappy shit so. I love you.
Don’t do anything stupid before I get back because I’ll probably either want to join in or laugh at you so just save all your dumbass urges for two weeks.
Thanks for giving a shit about me, Roy. I mean that.
Thank you for giving me one last chance so goddamn many times.
Thank you for being you.
Bastard.
More stupid love shit,
Ed
It gets even better: Roy bought him a camera this time, making an offhanded mention of how expensive and inefficient developing fluid seems to be. As would probably have been uncharacteristic a few years back, Ed got the hint-he sends snapshot photographs of himself making faces at his experiments, and at the other alchemists in the lab, and at the weather outside the windows. One arrived, tucked into the folds of this letter, which depicts him pouting in a dormitory wearing an enormous scarf and looking balefully out the window at the snow. He scrawled wish you were here to melt this shit, although Roy’s fingerprints around the edges have almost smeared it out by now.
Six more days. That’s not so long, and it’s not so cold.
Not here. Not anymore.
Rereading the letter sustains him for another half an hour of miserable drudgery and so forth. He’s now entirely positive that Riza deliberately stacks the paperwork with the intention of chasing him out of here before he loses his mind.
He swallows down the sigh-no need for it, not here, not now, not with the whole world swimming in light snow and possibility-and taps the piles on his desk into a slightly more convincing semblance of order, and then he dons all the trappings dangling from the coatrack, looking rather lonely there now that all of their erstwhile companions have gone. He winds the faded red scarf Hughes gave him heaven knows how many years ago around his neck three times, sets his fedora at a jaunty angle that won’t chafe against the patch, and pulls on his rabbit-fur-lined gloves-the one insulated pair he owns with ignition cloth sewn carefully into the fingertips. As he bends his fingers and savors the way the fur caresses his tired hands, he can’t help a little slip of fantasy: Ed will almost certainly try to drag him into a snowball fight before the weather turns, especially if Alphonse comes from Dublith for a visit, and he’ll wear these gloves, and the snow will soak them straight through. The world, two worlds, the life, the thousand shadowed edges on the brightest lights-Roy, with all his misery and his melodrama and his blood-soaked dreams-haven’t ground the last sparks of youth out of Ed just yet, and there are no words sufficient for the depth of gratitude Roy feels for that.
He buttons his coat and strides through the dim, empty halls; he steps out to the motor pool and breathes out a coil of mist, and he simply can’t help the smile.
The corporal standing at the head of the motor pool with both arms wrapped tightly around himself gives him an odd look-which transitions into recognition, and then vague horror at the realization that he’s just side-eyed a general.
“Terribly sorry, sir,” he says, sounding ever so slightly faint. “There just…” He gestures out to the empty loop of pavement and then tucks his hand securely back under the opposite arm. “I’m afraid no one’s been willing to walk tonight, and… I-if you don’t mind waiting, sir-or if you’d like to stay inside, I could send someone the moment a car arrives-”
“It’s quite all right,” Roy says, tugging his gloves on more firmly, somehow forgetting what they symbolize until he sees the corporal’s gaze following the tiny white stitches of the array on the back. He clears his throat, and the young man’s eyes dart back up to his face-in mortification this time. Roy summons his single most cordial smile to show that he’s not bothered… yet. “I don’t mind walking,” he says. “It’s not going to snow for another hour at least.”
He remembers, at the surprised blinking, that not everyone knows how to smell it in the air with quite so much precision.
“Stay warm,” he says, turning up his collar around the scarf. “Goodnight.”
The “Goodnight, sir!” trails him down the stairs, and he acknowledges it with a wave over his shoulder for good measure. It never hurts to bestow impeccable courtesy upon lower officers; Roy doesn’t suppose that most of the brass understands how much the cumulative gravity of their individual opinions may someday change the tide.
In the meantime, one of the perks of his recovered rank-and one of the unexpected boons of having lost everything and started to rebuild from spare fragments of a foundation-is owning a townhouse a mere mile and a half from Central Command.
The crystalline frigidity of the air feels bracing, tingling as it burrows into his lungs, but even as his fingertips begin to numb-this isn’t cold. Not really. The streetlamps push their feeble orange glow against the thickness of the night, and some of the shopfronts remain resolutely lit. The snow has cast a pall over the city, to be sure, but the life pulses underneath. This is worlds away from cold, from true cold-this is a charitable, habitable place. This is far, far, far from that paradoxical hell.
It is also far, far less welcoming than he’d been hoping after the first half-mile. It isn’t in his bones; it isn’t in his soul; it isn’t in the core of him, spreading spindly trees of white along the lines of every capillary, claiming him from the inside to destroy him piece by piece-but Central’s winter, while comparatively tame, is certainly making a sincere attempt to seep into every last layer of his skin.
No matter. He raises his shoulders to shift his scarf higher and pushes his hands into his pockets. No matter; ten tiny minutes stand between him and his sanctuary. No matter-the world is kind, mostly; and almost-fair some days, some nights.
And some nights-tonight, at least-he sees from three houses down that there’s warm golden light pouring out from his front window.
Either a rather incompetent burglar has broken into his home and seen fit to open his drapes during the robbery, or something’s caught on fire and incinerated the curtains without producing any smoke, or-
More likely-
Inconceivably wonderful, in the life he’s lived ’til now, but somehow more likely-
If any of his neighbors have objections to a decorated general of the Amestrian military clapping one hand on top of his hat and sprinting down the sidewalk at the greatest speed he can muster without slipping on the ice, then they can-as the glory incarnate at his destination would say-get fucked.
He takes the front steps in one leap but forces himself to pause on the doorstep long enough to catch at least a fraction of his breath. Some dignity would be a welcome change, whether or not it really matters here. Whether or not there’s anything left to hide.
He drags a little more frozen air into his lungs, grins, fumbles one gloved hand into his trouser pocket, and fishes up his keys.
A gust of wind enters with him; he pushes the door shut, bolts it, and hangs his hat from one of the prongs on the coatrack. That’s as far as he gets before the footsteps and the motion from down the hall monopolize every iota of his attention.
There’s a tremor in his chest, somehow-illogical but unshakeable-what if he’s wrong? What if it’s not? What if this is another fever dream in the cabin in the white; what if-
“Fuckin’ thermodynamics,” Ed says, giving an overstated shiver as he emerges from the flickering flame-spun shadows of the living room swathed in a blanket and-unless he’s doubled in volume in his absence-quite a lot of layers underneath. He could be wearing burlap and trailing sludge; his grin is a revelation. “’Dja miss me?”
Every inch of skin; every strand of hair; every spark in your constellation-eyes.
“A bit,” Roy says. He gestures to the pile of fabric cascading from Ed’s shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“Gonna have to be,” Ed says, grin jackknifing just a little wider. “Every damn fireplace in your house is lit.” One hand-the right, unrecognizable as automail under a monstrosity that looks like it once aspired to being a knitted glove-appears from under the blanket-cloak to gesture unrevealingly. “On the upside, it’d take you the better part of two hours to get into my pants, so I’ll know if you’re serious.”
Roy can’t resist the draw of him for the sake of stupid banter anymore. His heart beats weak, weak, weak-or maybe warm, warm, warm-as he crosses the foyer, peels off his gloves, drops them to the tile, and lays his hands somewhere in the area of Ed’s shoulders. He raises one to graze his knuckles down the too-beautiful line of Ed’s jaw, then swipes the pad of his thumb over the cracked, chapped line of Ed’s bottom lip. It curves at the attention, nearly splits-it’s all right, though. He’ll kiss it until it heals. And then, perhaps, quite a bit longer after that.
“Was there ever any doubt of my seriousness?” he asks.
“Eh,” Ed says. Hot blood blossoms on the peaks of his cheekbones. “I didn’t think it was possible to put the word ‘love’ in a one-page letter eighty fucking times, so after you managed that… I sort of got the point.”
“Are you sure?” Roy asks. He doesn’t need the fire, or the coats, or the insulated windows, or the fur-lined boots-none of it. Just this. Just this, and he has never been so warm. “I could say it again, if you like.”
“Nah,” Ed says. The blush deepens; his lashes dip; he looks up through them in what-knowing Ed-must be one of the charming bouts of shyness, but which somehow manages to look indescribably sultry. “I got parts of that thing memorized anyway.” At Roy’s slow grin, he scowls. “Shut up. It’s fucking cold up there, and-you know about the phones.” He shuffles his feet, which are swaddled in at least two pairs of socks. It’s a wonder there’s not lightning crackling from his heels every time he moves across the carpet. “Sometimes-I mean, sometimes your damn gushy-ass letters are all I got.”
“You’re back early,” Roy says, filing the words away in the center of his chest, wrapping them in tissue and ribbon to open again and appreciate another time. “Did everything go all right?”
Ed may be shrugging, or it might be a full-bodied shiver. “Yeah, it was fine. Just figured out what I was doing at the last minute there and finished it up faster than they expected. Once I realized that my two choices were to get the shit done or freeze my ass off for another week while I took my sweet time, it was pretty obvious. Only took one all-nighter, which is freakin’ child’s play.” He frowns, expression overstated, bottom lip protruding, and Roy could kiss him forever and never tire of craving more. “If they try to dock my pay for that, though, asses’re gonna get kicked from here to Xing.”
“All I ask,” Roy says, “is that you let me know if they’re stupid enough to try to keep your money from you, and give me a few days to try negotiation before you expatriate anybody with your foot.”
Ed grins up at him, shameless and radiant and so damn cute that it’s really no surprise that neither universe could hold him any longer than he wanted; working miracles is hardly even a strain for the ever-impossible Edward Elric, is it?
“All right, all right,” Ed says. “You’re such a spoilsport.” The grin tilts like the deck of a ship, and Roy’s heart has long since skidded overboard. “You gonna shut up long enough for a proper ‘hello’ now?”
“Oh,” Roy says, pretending to consider as Ed’s arms-knitted abominations and all-slide up around his neck, “I suppose.”
Ed glowers.
Roy kisses him, and kisses him again, and again, and would be overjoyed to keep at it for the rest of time if there weren’t such petty concerns as sleep and nutrition getting in the way.
Somehow, some fingertips have emerged from the terrible semi-sentient wool-creature that’s devoured Ed’s hands. These fingertips wind themselves into the hair at the nape of Roy’s neck, slowly and deliciously, tugging just enough to send a touch of electricity lancing down his spine.
Ed sinks back down onto his heels, panting lightly, and the boy who was here that one wretched day-those few wretched hours-wore a different pair of eyes altogether than the one in Roy’s arms right now.
“Aren’t you starving, dumbass?” Ed asks. “What the hell were you doing there so late, anyway?”
Occasionally, the truth is very simple, and the heat in Roy’s chest smoothes its passage up his throat. “Not having you to come home to.”
Color leaps to Ed’s cheeks, seeping sideways towards his ears.
“You-” he says. “Shut up. You’re hungry. C’mon.”
He seizes Roy’s hand in his-in the automail, notably, because Roy’s being ‘bastardly’ at the moment-and drags them into the kitchen, where he commences rummaging through the icebox with gusto. Roy doesn’t remember what’s there. Roy doesn’t remember much at all; his perception has narrowed to Ed and Ed alone, and he wouldn’t change that for anything.
Ed makes something warm and surprisingly palatable. Roy suspects that his knack-which the occasional forgotten pot boiling over or neglected pan burning probably precludes from classification as a talent-for eminently edible cooking most likely originated in the other place, very possibly when he brought Alphonse back there with him and felt compelled to provide for his newly-recovered idol. Roy has a lot of guesses about the things that happened there, a lot of observations traced partway back and ending at a brick wall. Ed speaks of it so rarely that it’s like he’s trying to make those silent years cease altogether to exist. The scraps of history that he does reveal, he doles out at unexpected moments, when Roy’s entirely unprepared-in the middle of a normal conversation, sometimes, in a soft, light, casual voice with his eyes tracking upward to the ceiling; or late at night, tacked onto the end of another sentence like Roy won’t notice, but the truth of it will still have slithered out, and maybe, maybe, once voiced, it won’t watch him from the shadows anymore.
Cooking requires Ed to pull the vaguely glove-shaped items made of pink wool with blue and white specks off of his hands. He jams them into his pockets, rather proudly; there’s a tube of the same tragic color scheme cocooning his automail arm.
“Tam made these for me,” he said. “Pretty great.”
Roy has never been able to determine any personal details about Tam except that this individual has earned Ed’s approval by virtue of a firm grasp of the scientific method, and that they knit when they’re waiting for their experiments to percolate. Apparently Ed passes the downtime either writing letters to Roy (like a sop, Mustang, this is what you do to me, I hope you feel like shit, you transmuted me into a sop and I can’t reverse it) or redesigning the entire system of pipes for the laboratory complex to make their heating more efficient, but the steady stream of warm gifts seems to have instilled in him a genuine admiration for the knitting.
“Pretty great, indeed,” Roy says. Ed is stirring things, grabbing down plates; Roy should get up and help, but it feels like he’s rooted to the chair. “You’re much too good to me.”
Ed grins at him, bright and delighted, and Roy knows that his laziness is forgiven, at least for now. “You’re damn right I am. Don’t you fuckin’ forget it.”
Roy puts an elbow on the tabletop and balances his chin on his hand, letting his eyelid slip low. “I have a few ideas about how to balance the equivalent exchange.”
He thinks he can see a flush climbing the sides of Ed’s neck, and the way Ed refuses to turn around from the stove might as well be a signed confirmation of its presence. “Jesus fuck, you get horny when I’m gone.”
“You’re damn right I do,” Roy says. “Can you blame me?”
The blanket mound making him dinner shakes its golden head. “I keep tryin’. Never can. You fuck up my logic like nothing else I’ve ever seen.”
“In its way,” Roy says, and a bit more honesty isn’t too much to muster when Ed is here at last, “I think that’s the highest compliment I’ve ever received.”
Ed darts a glare at him, red to the tips of his ears and impossibly adorable for it. “Save your fat mouth for eating and sex, Mustang.”
“As you wish, my love,” Roy says, and he can’t help the little smirk that hijacks his grin at the tiny squeak noise that leaves Ed’s throat.
As soon as he’s eaten-Ed cleaned his own plate several minutes ago, of course-Roy snatches up all the dishes, dumps them in the sink, and takes Ed’s hands instead. The automail is so bitterly cold even indoors that he understands the purpose of the glove.
“Well, then,” he says, sweeping his thumbs over the knuckles on both sides. “Shall we see about your exchange?”
Ed’s right eyebrow arches, pulling the corner of his lips up with it until a flash of ivory shows. “Aren’t you gonna regret this tomorrow when you’re half-asleep at work, and Major Hawkeye keeps looking at you and stroking her guns all meaningfully?”
“No,” Roy says, and that’s honest too.
Ed grips his hands, grinning wider, and makes a show of rolling his eyes. “I can’t leave you alone for five fuckin’ minutes.”
“You can,” Roy says. “Although I’d rather that you didn’t.”
That’s the dream, isn’t it? That’s the whisper of an undying hope-to preoccupy the pole star just a little longer. To convince him, somehow, that this time he should stay.
“Fuck’s sake,” Ed says.
“One of those syllables is very much to my liking,” Roy says.
Ed blinks wide, innocent eyes at him. “‘Sake’?”
“Close enough,” Roy says.
Ed grins, cheekily, and Roy presses his advantage.
One-eyed or no, he can still move faster than almost any man alive-he has an arm around Ed’s waist and the bulk of Ed’s weight over his shoulder in the time it takes his quarry to react with a lot of scrabbling and a vociferous howl. Ed’s instinctive reflexes used to best him almost every time, but he’s finding it easier to get the edge of late: either Ed is letting Roy win, or he’s letting his guard down. Is it possible that he’s finally settled enough to sleep through the night?
Well-Roy can seek the answers to that query later on. For now, the play-fighting-which it certainly is; no matter how vigorously Ed squirms, no metal strikes the side of Roy’s head, and none lands solidly in his gut, and if Ed wanted out of his grasp, he’d know-carries them all the way up the stairs, where Roy’s back sends up a prayer of gratitude as he deposits his extremely heavy, avidly-writhing charge onto the bed.
Ed’s hair bounces, and his chest heaves, and his grin curves wicked, and this should not be real. This is a thousand, a million times more than Roy has ever deserved; this is more than he’s ever dared to want for longer than a fragment of a second; this is the sort of sublimity that sent poets up to mountain peaks to gaze up at the sky until the darkness came-
[PART II]