Chapter Text
Last night Roy dreamt in black, white, and red—red for blood, for the flame array, for unblinking eyes. The sky was red, and the desert was gray, and then there was Ed in his old coat, with his arms full of carnations. He pressed them into Roy’s dripping hands and said They’re painkillers, Colonel; just take them—please.
“Elixir of life, sir?” Riza asks. The mug clinks down on his desk. He’s turned his furniture to face the door again in order to read the lines of light.
“You’re a mind-reader,” Roy says, reaching forward until his fingertips find the handle of the mug.
“I don’t need to be,” Riza says. “Your ‘help, I need caffeine’ expression has only grown more pronounced since you lost your sight.”
“Is that so.”
“Yes, sir.”
He blows on the surface of the coffee and sips it. It’s perfect. “What would I do without you, Lieutenant?”
“Die, I suppose,” Riza says.
“I don’t think there’s any supposing about it,” Roy says. “Can you get me Sergeant Fuery’s analysis of the downtown power grid? I told Grumman I’d have added my commentary by this afternoon, and Havoc’s due at ten.”
“Certainly, sir.” She crosses to the door, leaving it open as she sorts through the filing cabinets, which is why Roy can hear the outer door opening.
“If you keep hanging out here,” Breda says, “you’re going to get conscripted.”
“I don’t believe that’s legally tenable,” Falman says.
“Good morning, Edward,” Riza says.
“Hi,” Ed says. “I need a typewriter. A durable one this time.”
“I fixed the last one,” Fuery says. A cabinet door opens, and then there’s a clunk on the tabletop. “I wrote it into an expense report and said there was a very localized earthquake.”
“You should get promoted,” Ed says. “I think I’ve got the typebar momentum thing down now; it has to transfer enough ink without… anyway. Pretend I’m not here.”
“Did you and the colonel have glorious makeup sex last night?” Breda asks.
“Today’s platen is going down your throat if you don’t shut up.”
“Whoa. You the expert on putting things in throats now?”
“Second Lieutenant Breda,” Riza says sharply, “please refrain from sexually harassing Colonel Mustang’s alchemical consultant.”
Roy, who is currently scrubbing at his face with both hands, can almost hear the glares.
“Sorry,” Breda says. “I didn’t mean to get that crude.”
“Whatever,” Ed says, and Roy knows—knows he’s hunched his shoulders and donned his darkest scowl. Typewriter keys start clacking like mad.
Riza comes back in and sets a report down on his desk. He can feel her gaze on him.
“I didn’t do anything,” he says in an undertone.
She heads back for the door. “Perhaps that’s the problem, sir.”
He’s only just lit up Fuery’s notes on inefficient wiring when there’s a tentative knock at the door.
…well, shit. That narrows it down.
“Ed?” he asks.
“The one and only.” The mismatched footsteps forge across the room and smack something new onto his desk. “Typewritten by yours truly. I already drew the last line for the circle on the back, so let me know if the brightness is all right.”
“Edward,” Roy says.
“Don’t wear it out,” Ed says, and then he’s out the door again.
Roy stifles a pointed sigh and switches Fuery’s report out for the typewriter sheet, laying it over the array on his desk. It takes him a moment to process the shapes of the letters—he’s spent the last few weeks acclimatizing to all of the handwriting that passes through his office, and the regularity of typeface is slightly bizarre. The characters are more or less evenly stamped and therefore more or less evenly lit; once he’s skimmed the first sentence a couple times, his brain is generous enough to change gears and cooperate.
Look, Ed writes, which is funny in the weary, tragic, oddly sweet way that Ed’s blind jokes usually are. I don’t regret what I did, but I’m sorry if it made your work harder. I guess you probably know by now that sometimes I don’t think things through because I’m just FEELING too much. That dickwad scared the crap out of me with what he did to us—to you—and I wanted him to understand what it’s like. I wanted him to experience that world-collapsing feeling, because that shit can’t just be described. I know you think I went too far. I did go too far. I just want you to get it, okay? I know it was a stupid kid reaction, but it was real. My feelings were real.
It’s just that he’s everything that’s wrong with this country—with people, honestly—and you’re everything that’s right. So it’s not fucking fair that he can overpower you. And I never want it to happen again.
If you’re going to be pissed at me, fine, but if you really think about it it’s kind of your fault for insisting on curry. I totally said we should get sandwiches.
Roy leans back and reaches down to pet Hitomi’s ears. He really needs a few minutes’ silence to contemplate all possible courses of ac—
“Love letter?” Breda asks cheerfully.
“Second Lieutenant,” Riza says in the This Is Your Last Warning voice.
“If he would ’fess up,” Breda says, “I wouldn’t have t—”
“There’s nothing to talk about!” Ed says. “Get it through your goddamn skull, will you? I help him do his damn job, and we have dinner sometimes. That’s it. End of story. End of book.”
“That’s not what he thinks.”
“You don’t know what he thinks!”
“I’m a strategist, bucko.”
“No, you’re an asshole!”
Roy stands, and Hitomi’s tags clink as she gets up to accompany him. He flattens both hands against the door, pushes it open wide, and folds his arms across his chest.
“Neither of you knows what I think,” he says. “I think, Edward, that if you just wanted to help me do my job, you wouldn’t put up with all of the crap you get for it. And I think that if I just wanted you to help me do my job, I wouldn’t have let you become a fixture in my home. At this point, what I think is that it’s time we made a decision and stuck to it.”
Ed’s voice is faint. “It’s not that simple.”
“Yes,” Roy says, “it is.”
“I—”
Roy moves towards the sound of that syllable. He raises his hand and brushes Ed’s shoulder, which leads him to Ed’s hair. He twines all five fingers into Ed’s ponytail, tugs to tilt Ed’s head back, and leans in to kiss him until he learns to take a good thing and run with it.
Ed is absolutely delicious today. When Roy first catches his mouth, he goes entirely still—but then his right hand fumbles against Roy’s uniform front and curls in it, and he hauls Roy in closer to reciprocate. This isn’t a quick, haphazard thing like either of the two before; this is deliberate, hard and hot and deep and almost vicious. Ed’s tongue twists against his, and Ed’s teeth scrape at his lip, and a jerk on Ed’s hair earns a hiss. Roy flicks the tip of his tongue against the roof of Ed’s mouth and drags the boy in closer when he startles; Roy has so many tricks to teach him now—
Breda wolf-whistles. That’s a mistake, because it gives Roy an auditory cue at which to aim his rude gesture.
The door opens, and that could be problematic—Roy comes up for air and prays to several individuals he doesn’t usually believe in that the newcomer isn’t Führer Grumman.
“Well,” Havoc says. “Can’t decide whether I’m early or right on time.”
At least this saves Roy the trouble of breaking the news to his team.
“Um,” Ed says. Roy’s close enough to feel the warmth of his cheeks reddening. “I’m just—I’m going to—go—and—maybe—see you later—or something.”
Roy backs up a step to leave room for Ed to get out of the chair. “I’ll call you.”
“Yeah. Okay. Um.” He clears his throat. “You know what? You’re just a bunch of pathetic gossips who meddle in other people’s personal lives because you don’t have any of your own. So fuck all of you.” He swallows. “Well, not the sergeant or Second Lieutenant Falman or Lieutenant Hawkeye. You guys are okay. Really just fuck Havoc and Breda. Fuck you guys. Anybody who laughs is getting shanked.”
By the shuffling, he gathers his design papers in a rush and rockets from the room before anyone can challenge his threat. A slightly awed silence sees him out.
“While I’m glad you finally made an unequivocal expression of your feelings, sir,” Riza says, “next time I would suggest a venue other than the office.”
“Wait,” Havoc says. “So you’re not sleeping with Ed?”
“Not yet,” Breda says.
Roy twirls one of Ed’s pens as he dials.
The line catches. “Hello?”
Flickers of heat in his stomach and a lightness in his chest, just like that.
“It’s me,” he says.
“Are we having phone sex on an actual phone this time?” Ed asks.
“What?” In all honesty, he should have been expecting this tangent. “No. We can do better than that.”
Ed is quiet for a long moment. “We’re—we’re really a thing now.”
“We are unequivocally a thing,” Roy says. “What kind of thing I don’t believe we’ve entirely determined. In any case, I just wanted to warn you that I’m still at the office. I’m hoping to flee while the lieutenant’s back is turned—”
Riza’s voice drifts in from the other room. “Good luck, sir.”
“—within the next half-hour or so, but I can’t make any guarantees. I didn’t want to keep you waiting.”
“Oh, I’ll be waiting,” Ed says. “But I’ve gotten pretty patient over the years.”
“I’ll do my best to be worth waiting for.”
Ed’s quiet again, and then Roy can hear the smile in his voice. “That’s the kind of thing we are,” he says.
When Riza deposits Roy and Hitomi on a curb he knows by its angles and its ambient noise, she shuts the engine off, and he goes tense. “What is it?”
“The lights are on,” Riza says. The next series of sounds unmistakably accompanies practiced hands drawing a cartridge out of a gun and then pushing it back into place. “I’ll just walk you to the door, sir.”
He wants to refuse. He wants to scoff and rationalize, to appreciate the sentiment and then wave off the concern. He wants to be able to do this, to do something so simple, on his own.
But he can’t. The fact is that things have changed. The fact is that the contours of the world are entirely different and significantly more dangerous without sight. The fact is that there’s a lot he can’t do, and he owes honesty about his new limits to the people who care about him.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” he says.
She starts up the front walk, Hitomi trots after her, and Roy trails. “You didn’t leave the lights on, by any chance, sir?”
He tries not to smile. There’s a chance this is something bad; amusement is inappropriate. “Exactly what are you trying to imply, Lieutenant?”
“That you have had more important things to worry about lately than your electricity bill.”
The doorknob rattles softly, the hinges squeal, and she steps lightly over the threshold.
Hitomi creeps forward, sniffs at the air a few times, and then returns to nose insistently at Roy’s hand. If he’s not mistaken, that means—
“Whoa!” Ed calls from what sounds like the top of the stairs. “Don’t point that thing at me! I made dinner!”
Riza holsters her weapon. “You should really warn me if you’re going to—”
“Break into Roy’s house?” Ed asks. “But then it wouldn’t be a surprise inspection. We’re revamping the security around here, by the way. Are you free this weekend, Lieutenant?”
“You made dinner?” Roy cuts in. “I didn’t know you could make toast.”
“I can’t,” Ed says. “Turns out I can’t make dinner either. So there’s takeout from the noodle place. And you’re going to like it.”
“I’m sure he will,” Riza says. “In that case, I’ll leave you to it. Goodnight, sir.”
“And you, Lieutenant.”
She pulls the door shut behind her. Momentarily the car’s engine turns over, and it rumbles off down the street.
“Please tell me you didn’t break a window to get in,” Roy says.
“Didn’t have to,” Ed says. “You left the one in your bedroom unlocked.”
“That’s on the second floor,” Roy says.
He can almost hear Ed blinking at him.
“There isn’t a tree,” Roy says.
He can hear his own watch ticking.
“You scaled the wall to climb into my bedroom window?” Roy says.
“I picked it up from Ling,” Ed says. “Do you want noodles or not?”
When critical levels of noodle consumption have been reached, Roy collapses onto the couch in the living room and sorts through the stack of reports on the coffee table, which Riza categorized with differently-shaped sticky notes.
“Oh, hell, no,” Ed says from the doorway.
Roy looks up, for all the good that does. “What?”
“We made out in your office,” Ed says, stomping towards him; “we decided that we’re a thing, I climbed the fucking wall to get into your house before you, I made a strong effort at a romantic dinner, and you’re trying to work tonight? I repeat: hell fucking no.”
Ed stops right in front of the couch, and Roy attempts to shrink back into it a bit. “There’s… a lot of reading to d—”
The couch creaks as Ed climbs up to straddle Roy’s lap, fisting both hands in the front of his uniform and crushing their mouth together.
Ed’s let his hair down, and it swings against Roy’s neck and slithers across his throat as they twist together, chests knocking, mouths melding, and Ed’s hips grind into his. This time Ed’s kiss is furious—searingly possessive, sloppy, reckless, hard. He nips Roy’s bottom lip sharply and snickers when Roy squirms, and then he buries both hands in Roy’s hair, and everything’s forgiven. Before Roy’s quite remembered how breathing generally works, Ed’s spreading his legs a little wider still—oh, holy hell; he can do the splits, can’t he?—and pressing his tightly-muscled ass down against Roy’s dick. How in the blazes did he get to be such a fucking tease?
Roy is going to have to discourage that kind of behavior. Or maybe he’ll ask for more.
He curls a hand tightly around either of Ed’s hipbones, demonstrates the heavy-breathing-on-wet-lip technique to distract Ed with a sudden need to gasp for oxygen, hefts the weight settled in his lap, and flips them over. He can hear Ed’s hair whip as the boy’s head bounces against a throw pillow, and he plants his hands just above Ed’s shoulders and wedges a knee between the cushion and the couch back to loom more efficiently. Ed growls and wraps both legs around Roy’s waist, snapping his hips up in a way that makes Roy’s brain flounder helplessly.
“You’ve done this before,” Roy notes when he can summon speech again.
Ed snorts. “Why does everyone assume I’m a virgin?”
“You’ve been… busy. And you don’t exactly socialize.”
“No,” Ed says, “but I spent a long time being busy with Captain Pervert before we joined up with the rest of the Anti-Apocalypse Squad.”
…oh. Oh. “You—?”
“Let’s just say they don’t call him ‘Greed’ for nothing,” Ed says. “And that Ling’s not going to have any trouble populating the entire country of Xing with his bloodline.”
“Ah,” Roy says. The more he thinks about it—not that he’s thinking particularly clearly at the moment—the more he can’t help wondering. “Wasn’t that… traumatic?”
“It’s not like they took advantage of me,” Ed says. “I mean, they drew up a schedule for whose turn it was, and if I wasn’t interested, I would’ve kicked their combined ass.” The tone of his voice shifts to the one that accompanies his scowl. “Okay, look, I really don’t want to talk about it while I’m trying to have sex with you.”
“That’s fair,” Roy says. “I’m sorry; it was just a bit surprisi—”
Ed’s arms wrap around his neck and drag him down into another wet, desperate kiss.
Roy’s dizzy with it—with the heat of Ed’s mouth, with the tangle of their tongues, with the clench of Ed’s fingers in his hair, with the weight of Ed’s metal foot on the small of his back. His heart’s slamming, his blood’s seething, and he can feel his right hand trembling as he smoothes it down Ed’s side and slides it under the hem of his shirt.
He draws back and rests his forehead against Ed’s for a moment while he pants for breath.
“You taste like noodles,” he says, spreading his fingers over Ed’s ribs, wanting a way to touch all of him at once.
Ed arches up into his palm, and he frees his hands from Roy’s hair and sets to undoing the front of the uniform. “You taste like shut up and fuck me.”
Roy peels Ed’s shirt off, careful not to catch the unruly hair, and tosses it onto the back of the couch. While Ed’s still fighting with the buttons of his, he sits back and runs his fingertips slowly over every inch of Ed’s skin—shoulders, collarbones, automail scars, pectorals, ribs, ribs, ribs, stomach, hips. “Evidently your previous partners left you woefully unschooled in the fine art of foreplay.”
Ed makes a soft half-sighing sound, pausing in his removal of Roy’s clothing to rise into the contact. “All right. So teach me.”
“I would be honored,” Roy says, and he bends to kiss his way damply down Ed’s chest this time, hands working slowly and deliberately at Ed’s belt. He breathes against bare skin as he unzips the fly, and Ed squirms, hips rolling, legs shifting, flesh heating under Roy’s hands.
“Wait,” Ed says.
Roy knew it. He knew it—knew it would come to this, knew it would come to a halt. Knew it was too good to be true. Knew it was better than he deserves.
“The dog is watching,” Ed says.
“I… beg your pardon?”
“The dog,” Ed says, “is in the room, watching us. I don’t want to get it on in front of your guide dog.”
Roy tries not to laugh. He does. He makes a valiant effort, and it’s not his fault that it fails. “I don’t think she’s likely to judge.”
“Roy,” Ed says, and the way the sounds curl off his tongue just makes Roy want to bite into him and taste every goddamn fiber.
Roy struggles to get words around the flood of saliva in his mouth. “Shall we relocate upstairs?”
“It’s a good fucking thing we never had phone sex,” Ed says, contorting deftly and leaping off the couch. “You are shit at dirty talk.”
“You’re going to hurt my feelings,” Roy says, steadying himself against the couch as his knees wobble a bit. “Hitomi, stay. Good girl.”
“Hurry the fuck up,” Ed calls from the direction of the stairs.
“You have a lot of learning to do,” Roy says.
Ed’s footsteps thunder towards him again. Two hands clasp tightly around his right wrist and tug vigorously. “I said come on. Maybe you’re too old to get it up—”
“I’ll show you old, you little bitch—”
“You’re talking dirtier already.”
“That’s because I’m going to whip your ass.”
“I—um.”
Roy will explore the bounds of that stammer thoroughly on an occasion when stumbling up the stairs isn’t monopolizing all of his remaining brainpower. It might present something of a challenge to tie Ed up without the benefit of sight, but Roy thinks he rather likes the sound of that.
Roy drags his hands down Ed’s chest, settles them on the narrow hips, and pushes Ed backwards until his knees hit the edge of the bed, and he flops down onto it, bedsprings protesting. Roy kneels to lick and mouth and nibble and Ed’s stomach, wishing hard that he could see this—that he could watch the flush rising on Ed’s cheeks, watch his fingers curl into the comforter, watch him writhe and send his bright hair flying. But this isn’t the time to discount his blessings; in all honesty he can’t ask for much more. In all honesty, his blood is beating in his ears, and his pants are far too tight, and following the trail of coarse hairs down from Ed’s navel with his tongue is so fucking glorious he almost feels sick.
Ed’s trousers aren’t fitting him terribly well either. Roy thinks perhaps he had better remedy that.
He digs his fingers in underneath all the layers of fabric and draws them down, going for Ed’s cock with his mouth before the slacks are quite out of the way. Ed makes a high, faint noise that sends a jagged shiver down Roy’s spine, and he gets to work tracing his tongue up and down and slowly around and gently into the slit. Ed’s back arches, and his hips jerk; his right hand fists the shoulder of Roy’s half-assembled shirt and tightens until one of the knuckles cracks. Roy deems it high time to quit fucking around and takes Ed all the way into his mouth, sucking hard, pushing upward with his tongue—it’s a struggle to keep the suction and to keep his teeth away from the delicate nerves, especially with the way Ed’s hips buck and drop and twist. Roy’s been sweating since they started, but at the howl of a cry that tears out of Ed’s throat, he gets goosebumps everywhere. The unfulfilled heat in his belly is beginning to ache, and his cock is throbbing for attention; it’s just not fair to leave it straining in his trousers, is it, when there’s so much fucking beauty laid out in front of him that he doesn’t even need to see?
“Sh-shit,” Ed gasps out, and Roy can feel the trill of a shiver that rolls all the way down to his tailbone. “Fucking get up here and fucking fuck me—”
Roy doesn’t really need to be told twice.
He would have expected that he’d be rusty after such a lengthy monogamous marriage to his career goals, but his old habits are sound, and even with the blood in his veins coursing wildly, his muscles remember the moves. It’s the work of moments to hitch Edward further up onto the mattress, grasp his hips, bunch the comforter beneath them, drag his pants the rest of the way off, pitch them onto the floor, and climb up to kneel between his legs.
“Fuck,” Ed says, writhing against Roy’s grip on his hipbones. “Goddamn secretaries weren’t exaggerating. I owe Al a thousand cens.”
Roy leans down to mouth wetly at the inside of Ed’s right thigh, flattening a hand on the other and pinning it to the bed in the hopes of not getting an automail foot in a tender place.
Ed screams.
Then he pants to catch his breath, and his heels slip against the sheets, and his body tilts—he’s sitting up. “Fucking say something; I feel like I’m talking to myself.”
“I’m concentrating,” Roy says.
“What the fuck requires so much concen—”
Roy lathes both of Ed’s balls throughly and draws them carefully into his mouth, digging the fingernails of both hands into Ed’s thighs.
“Ohholyfuck!”
Roy sucks gently, pauses, and draws back to extract a hair from the inside of his cheek. Ed’s chest is heaving, and his whimpers are almost intense enough to qualify as sobs. Roy smoothes his hands down Ed’s legs, skimming his thumbs over the crescent-shaped indentations left by his own fingernails, hikes Ed’s knees over his shoulders, and ducks again to run the tip of his tongue as lightly as he can down Ed’s perineum.
There’s a ninety percent chance that he’s going to get knocked out by a jerking hipbone or deafened by the keening wails before the night is out, but this is already worth it.
He raises his head and looks in what should be Ed’s direction, provided that Ed hasn’t simply twisted himself apart by now. “Call me an asshole.”
Ed’s voice is high and halting. “Wh… what?”
Roy thinks it’s pretty funny to go from that to wetting the ring of puckered flesh slowly with his tongue. Maybe when Ed’s done screeching like a cat and disheveling the bedclothes, he’ll appreciate the humor more.
Gauging sensitivity by the volume of Ed’s responses, Roy dips his tongue in, presses deeper, flicks the tip, breathes moistly, and concludes with a solid lick.
When he sets his hands on Ed’s hips again, the boy’s whole body is quivering.
“Fuck.” Ed’s breathing’s light and desperate. “I’m going to c-come all over your fucking face in a minute if you k-keep that up.”
Roy licks his lips slowly, casting a sightless pensive gaze towards the ceiling. “Have you learned a couple things?”
The brief silence disconcerts him just a little—and then Ed laughs, albeit breathlessly.
“Point taken,” Ed says. “Foreplay is the greatest fucking thing since… anything… or whatever. Now seriously fuck me before I pass out from an endorphin overdose.”
“I don’t remember reading about those during my studies of biology,” Roy says.
“I’ll study your fucking biology—get down here—”
Roy can’t exactly say no to that.
Ed groans loudly and more than a bit suggestively while Roy’s fingertips search the drawer of the nightstand. He really should have taken his pants off first so that he could at least have the friction of the sheets underneath him to alleviate the ravenous need—but he can’t do too many things at once, and at the moment the drawer is a foreign landscape composed of vaguely familiar objects. He didn’t open this drawer when Riza was helping him emboss labels onto his belongings, which perhaps was a mistake; surely the awkwardness wouldn’t have been as frustrating as the current oblivion… This feels like glass; the bottle’s the right shape; he’s fairly certain the cork was this tall.
He holds it out in Ed’s general direction for inspection.
“‘Infused with lavender’?” Ed asks. “Did some spiteful ex-girlfriend give that to you and tell you to spend some quality time with your hand?”
“Lavender is supposed to be a relaxant,” Roy says, cautiously tipping a generous portion onto his fingers.
“It’s not gonna relax me,” Ed says. “I’m horny as fuck, and the solution is not some fucking flowe—”
Roy trails one fingertip slowly up the underside of Ed’s dick, and the slick coolness of the oil makes him choke on the rest of the dismissal—rather fittingly, Roy thinks.
These trousers are going to have to be cleaned soon. Roy doesn’t care; he lets the oil smear everywhere as he undoes the fastenings and then kicks them off onto the carpet. He has another clean pair anyway. Maybe. It doesn’t matter—it’s not like his entire team doesn’t already know he’s fucking Ed right now; and if he ends up in a higher-level meeting, he’ll just keep a clipboard in his lap.
Ed sighs throatily at the dapple of Roy’s damp fingers against that fine, fine ass. Roy leans in and mouths at his neck, softly at first, and then with a hint of teeth.
“Ready?” he murmurs into Ed’s pulsing veins.
“Born ready,” Ed says. He snickers. “When you were fifteen.”
“Please don’t mention that while I’m having sex with you ever again.”
Ed starts to protest, and then Roy presses a finger into him, and the bitchiness immediately dissolves into mewling.
Fuck, Roy doesn’t want to wait. Roy doesn’t want to prepare. Roy doesn’t want to ease them both into it; he wants to slam his dick into that tight ass even if it tears them both apart; he wants all of it, now, this fucking second, and it’s criminal that he has to slow down—
His shirt’s unbuttoned, but he left it on in the rush to remove the necessary articles. Untucked now, it’s draping against Ed’s thighs as Roy works him open feverishly, and when the fabric whispers over exposed skin, Ed twitches hard. Roy’s heart pounds distractingly loudly, and he stops with three fingers buried in Ed’s gorgeously hot little ass to stroke himself with his other hand. His dick is so fucking sensitive that he notices the healing scabs on his own fingertips for the first time tonight. They scrape and drag a little bit, and the change in texture is fucking marvelous.
Just not as fucking marvelous as what comes next.
“Now,” Ed gasps, arching against Roy’s hand. “Now, now, fuck, Roy, come on—”
Roy is only too happy to oblige.
For a second Ed’s almost too tight, and the sweat on Roy’s forehead stings as all of his nerves go haywire—too tight, too much, too fucking perfect, and it hurts—
Ed snaps his hips up and unleashes another feral animal scream, both hands fumbling to fist themselves in Roy’s shirt, hauling him in for an overwhelming kiss. Their bodies crush together, damp and sticky with oil and sweat, and Ed hooks his flesh leg around Roy’s waist and arches his back, and the tremor that tears through Roy rattles him down to his toes. It’s not supposed to be this good. Nothing is supposed to be this good.
Apparently Edward didn’t get that memo.
“Oh, shit, yes.” Ed releases one fistful of shirt and tangles his fingers in Roy’s hair instead, tugging meaningfully. “This is what I was fucking waiting for. God damn you for making me wait so fucking long.”
It feels like the room’s spinning, and then like Roy’s in an elevator. His heart’s expanded to fill his ribcage, and it’s still swelling—his whole skeleton’s going to snap any second now; they’re so close, and it’s so right, and his whole body’s aflame. He braces one forearm on the bed and slides the other hand up Ed’s side; he leans down and licks sweat off of Ed’s breastbone, out of the hollow of his collarbones, from along his throat—salty-sweet-sweltering.
“Hey,” Ed says. “Why is sex the only time you stop talking? It’s fucking weird. You’re freaking me out.” He swallows, tendons tensing under Roy’s wandering lips, and pulls harder on Roy’s hair. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Roy says. Because he can’t say I want to wake up next to you every morning and nestle in and hold you while you start to stir; I want to wash your hair and rub your feet and kiss your ears and massage around your automail port until you turn to jelly in my hands; I want to bring your coffee exactly how you like it best; I want to push you into a snowbank and lick the flakes off of your cheeks; I want to curl up on the couch with you underneath a blanket and listen to the rain; I would give anything I have to see you, Edward, because I want to look you in the eyes and tell you that I love you, but I can’t.
And if I told you now, you’d run.
“So much better than fine,” Roy says, and shifts his hips so that Ed gasps and then moans.
It’s too easy from there—Ed’s ferocious and feline but pliable, and he’s having the time of his life. That’s good for Roy’s ego, and it’s also good for the sex; Roy rolls him over, flips him back and forth, twists him, bends him, takes him every which way, and Ed keeps nipping and snarking and tussling, elastic and hot-skinned and fighting back. It’s tight and wet and intricate and a little bit rough, and Roy’s hands and mouth go questing to discover every centimeter of Ed’s body as it moves under (and over, and next to, and around) his own.
Ed kisses him hard, too hard, teeth drawing blood from Roy’s bottom lip, as he comes with a characteristic, half-muffled “Fuck!”
And Roy gasps “Ed—” and follows, thinking How can I be so lucky and feel so cold?
The moment Roy collapses onto the bed, Ed sprawls like a starfish, right arm splayed over Roy’s chest, face squished into his shoulder.
“Damn,” Ed says. “Let’s do that every night. No, that’s not enough. Let’s do that every night and every morning and sometimes during lunch. Instead of lunch.” His smile is pressed against Roy’s bicep, and then it fades. “You’re not okay at all, you bastard. What’s—was it something I did? I mean, I thought—it seemed like—”
“I need you,” Roy says. “I can’t do this without you. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
Ed is silent for a long moment, and when he speaks his voice shakes. “That’s the oxytocin talking.”
“No,” Roy says, “it’s not.”
Ed swallows. The hoarse edge to his voice persists. “What do you want me to say?”
“You don’t have to say anything.” He extricates himself from under Ed’s arm and sits up. His skin is crawling; it’s freezing in here; his mouth is dry. His eyes are burning, but the curtain hasn’t lifted; everything is black. He starts sliding towards the side of the bed, and Ed catches his arm.
“Don’t you try to fucking esc—are you—? Roy, fuck, you dumbass, just—come here—”
Ed wraps both arms around him this time, tightly. Roy lets the tears roll down his face and drip onto the bedsheets; he’s spent and tired and disadvantaged and sick and scared and shamed. He can’t do this alone. Not anymore. Not in a world that’s indistinguishable.
“I’m right here,” Ed says quietly. “And I’m going to stay here. What the hell, you asshole? I’m here, okay? And I’m staying. I want to stay.”
Roy buries his face in Ed’s hair and tries to believe him.
When the alarm rings, Roy opens his eyes and expects it to make a difference. Thirty years of habit had convinced him that his privilege was a right.
“Fuckin’ early,” the warm mass against his chest mutters.
Roy reaches over and flips the switch on the clock to stop the noise. “Sorry to wake you.”
He shifts to crawl out of the bed, suddenly extremely aware of the fact that he’s naked, but Ed’s hand catches his arm again. “Hey, slow down a sec.”
Roy stills and waits—he doesn’t know what for, and he feels too emptied-out to care.
Ed’s voice says “Good morning” from very close, and then Ed kisses him, softly, before drawing back.
If only Roy could see his face. Was that a joke? Surely even Edward’s sense of humor isn’t so twisted as to find that funny.
“That’s how it’s supposed to go, right?” Ed asks, sounding nervous, after a lengthy pause. “Now that we’re a thing, I mean.”
“Oh,” Roy says, and he wants to react, but the hollowness swallows everything. “Yes. Good morning. Excuse me; I need a shower.”
“You smell fine to me,” Ed says, and that helpless earnestness is a shard of glass ramming through the center of Roy’s chest, and he can’t… he can’t…
He gathers his things and goes to lock himself into the bathroom, stepping carefully en route to avoid the abandoned clothing on the floor.
When he reemerges, the bedsprings are creaking softly, and Hitomi’s tags are clinking.
“I got some new clothes out for you,” Ed says. “I couldn’t tell if you had a specific system or anything, and if you do, I remember where everything came from, so I can just put it back.”
Roy stands there in his underwear, toweling at his dripping hair, and tries to breathe around the tightness in his throat. “Anything is fine.” He balls the towel up and just… holds it. “Thank you.”
Is Ed smiling? Or is he scared?
Roy should be terrified of the man he is this morning, but he’s too numb for fear.
Riza sets the coffee mug down on his desktop and guides his hand to it. “One step at a time,” she says.
Roy runs his thumb down the curve of the handle. “What’s the fucking point when I can’t see where I’m headed?”
“The fucking point, sir, is the same one it’s always been.” She takes a deep breath. “You’re stronger than this. I think you know that, too. We had days like this at the beginning, remember? You’ve got to ride this one out. Let me help you. Let the big picture sink in. And just take it one step at a time.”
He draws the mug towards him. Riza sets down a file.
“You’re here,” she says. “And you’re holding on. All you have to do is not let go.”
His desk phone rings while the others are at lunch and Riza is fetching him something.
“Mustang,” he says.
“Alphonse Elric for you, Colonel?”
“Put him through.”
“Right away, sir.”
He rolls his pen back and forth a couple times. The line catches.
“Colonel?”
“How do you keep getting past the operators?” Roy asks.
“I have special clearance,” Alphonse says. “And by that I mean that I’m really good at flirting on the phone.”
Roy rubs his eyes, not that it matters. “What do you want?”
Alphonse is quiet for a long moment. “Brother spent the morning hugging a cat again.”
“He’s warming to your pets. Congratulations.”
“Thank you for the extraordinarily unhelpful sarcasm,” Al says. “Brother ricochets through a lot of moods, but the swings tend to be brief, and he’s vocal about them—mostly he just wants to be reassured that his feelings are valid. It’s when he gets quiet that I worry. And when he gets quiet and brings the cats into it, I worry a lot, because something is very wrong.”
Roy breathes in, breathes out, and breathes in again. “I don’t know if I can do this today, Alphonse.”
“Tough shit, Colonel,” Al says. “We’re doing it right this second, and you’re going to take it like a man. Listen to me. I don’t think Ed has ever been in love before. I don’t think he even realizes that he is now—certainly not consciously. To Ed, love is something married people have. It’s something you either get, or you don’t, like alchemy, and you’ll know if you have the capacity for it by the time you can read. I think he’s completely separated that abstract concept from the reality—and the reality is that he wants you to be happy, and he wants to be something that makes you happy. Ed’s causes have always been based in love—trying to bring Mom back, trying to bring my body back, trying to save all of the people who’d looked out for us, trying to make some kind of tiny reparation for what we let happen to Nina—and I think that’s made it so that he can’t tell the difference anymore. He loves you, and he’s dedicated everything he’s got to helping you. To him, those are basically the same thing.”
The receiver feels strange and very heavy in Roy’s hand. “But this is all—speculation.”
“Colonel,” Al says, with a faint but detectable undertone of Please don’t tempt me to destroy you, “I know my brother.”
“But you said yourself that he’s never been in this situation before, so how can you be so su—”
“Ed spent the four years after our failed transmutation pouring himself into righting every wrong he could get his hands on,” Al says. “I spent those four years watching people so that when the time came, I would remember how to be human. Brother is hopeless at nuance; I’m not. Just trust me, Colonel. It can’t hurt you at this point.”
Somehow Roy doubts that. “Then what do I do from here?”
“This is the only thing Ed has wanted for himself since we were children,” Al says. “I suggest that you give it to him.”
Roy runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t—”
“Oops,” Al says. “Cat emergency. Oh, God, that’s gross. Talk to you later.”
The line goes dead. Roy misses the ability to stare incredulously at his telephone.
Roy tries to make out lampposts for the duration of the drive home, to mixed success. He thinks he can almost pinpoint them when the car is stopped, but the orange blots are so fuzzy that he could be simply imagining them and fooling himself.
Havoc rolls to a stop. “Uh… Colonel, the lights are on in Casa Mustang.”
Roy collects his papers. “Is the front second-floor window open?”
“Let me… yeah, it is—why?”
“Ed broke in again,” Roy says. “You’re dismissed, Lieutenant; thank you.”
Sure enough, Hitomi maintains her calm as Roy lets them into the house.
“I could make you a copy of the key, you know,” he says as he closes the door behind him.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Ed asks from the direction of the living room. “Um… how was your day?”
“Stand still and say something,” Roy says, starting towards his voice.
“Huh?”
Roy’s outstretched hand grazes Ed’s shoulder, which is enough of a spatial reference for Roy to wrap both arms around him and hold him close.
“My day,” Roy says, “is better now.”
Ed snuggles into his chest, both hands curling into the fabric of the uniform. “It’s been night for a couple hours, although I guess it’s not like you can tell.”
We’re a good thing, Roy thinks. With you, I am part of something good.
He takes Ed’s right hand in his and leads the way into the kitchen, Hitomi trailing. He fixes her dinner first.
“I was thinking,” Ed says, “about when you used that flashbang the night that those fuckers came after us.”
“I got the idea from you,” Roy says, stroking Hitomi’s back once and then stepping away to let her eat. “After you mentioned smoke bombs, I went to the chemist—who, for the record, sounded like my shopping list was going to give him nightmares.”
“I love fucking with chemists,” Ed says. “It’s a time-honored alchemist tradition. Anyway, I was thinking that… well, that night it looked like you could kind of see for a minute while the thing was going off.”
Roy opens the fridge and starts assessing its contents with his hands. “Not very clearly, but for a moment it was bright enough to see outlines. It’s been a matter of necessity to develop my memory for relative positions, and I went from there.”
“That’s what I figured,” Ed says slowly. “I’ve been thinking… maybe we should put together a bunch of those, just to be safe. And maybe we can come up with something that works that way on a smaller scale—for stuff that you want to get a glimpse of.”
“Full disclosure,” Roy says. “I would probably only use those during sex.”
Ed makes a choking noise, and Roy would bet both hands that he’s blushing. “You’re a perv. Well—whatever. I’ll draft a couple designs. Should be interesting, at least.”
Roy pauses in fondling the edibles. “Ed, you don’t have to do so much on my account.”
“Of course I don’t have to,” Ed says. Roy can hear him starting to grin. “You think I’d put up with all your shit if it felt like an obligation?”
“I don’t know,” Roy says.
“Yeah, you do. You know me.”
Tonight, Ed curls up against Roy’s side on the living room couch. Everything is going delightfully until Roy prepares the files that he really needs to read in order to make up for today’s malaise, at which point Ed huffs out a frustrated noise.
“Fuck this shit,” he says, leaning forward and pulling half of the blanket with him.
But he doesn’t get up and leave—there’s a bit of scrabbling, and he shifts, and then he settles back down by Roy’s shoulder.
Roy clears his throat. “What… was that?”
“I brought a pair of sunglasses,” Ed says. “And now I’m wearing them, indoors, at night. I hope you’re happy.”
“I am, actually,” Roy says, and it’s the truth.
Ed flings his flesh leg over both of Roy’s and wriggles in as close as he can get. “I reserve the right to elbow you mercilessly if you start to snore.”
Roy adjusts the comforter over Ed’s shoulders and strokes his hair back. “I don’t snore. You do, but it sounds more like a kitten purring than anything else.”
In retrospect, he deserves to have freezing cold automail pressed against his feet.
When both the brief shove-fight and the subsequent interlude of hair-tugging have concluded, Ed calms down enough to get preoccupied sketching invisible arrays on Roy’s chest with his fingertip.
“Edward,” Roy says quietly.
“Nnh?”
“What color is Hitomi?”
Ed’s hand stops moving, and the clock ticks in the silence.
“What?” Ed says at last.
“I never got around to asking,” Roy says. “I know what she looks like, more or less, but I don’t know what color she is.”
Ed is quiet even longer this time.
“Her back and her ears and stuff are kind of a caramel color,” he says just when Roy’s about to tell him to forget the whole thing. “And her stomach and her front legs and the bottom half of her face are white. She sort of looks like crême brulée.”
Roy pauses. “Did you just compare my guide dog to a dessert?”
“…maybe.”
The next question takes twice as long to work up to, and Roy almost doesn’t get it out at all. There are just so many ways it could go awry, and—
“Do you think…”
“Occasionally,” Ed says. “It’s strenuous, though, thinking all the time.”
“You little bastard.”
“Who you ca—”
“Do you think I should find another place to live? Somewhere smaller than this, but larger than your and your brother’s flat—enough space for our small shared menagerie of domesticated animals, at any rate. If you think Alphonse would even be interested, that is. If you would be. If—”
“Yes,” Ed says. “Wait, let me rephrase that: fuck yes.”
“You really—?”
“I really,” Ed says. “But we need to make sure it’s someplace with thick walls.”
“Or that Alphonse’s room is at the other end of the property.”
“And that there’s an area to shut the cats in if we want to get busy on the couch.”
“And that the bathtub is big enough for two.”
Ed shivers. “Damn right.”
Roy draws a deep breath, releases it, and smiles. “Things are looking up.”
“I can’t believe I got you into blind jokes,” Ed says.
“I like to think I’m a vision of eloquent wit.”
“Okay, stop.”
“I can’t wait to figuratively see what the future holds.”
“Crap. This is my own fucking fault.”
Roy grins slowly. “It was a small error. Suits you that way.”
“It what?”
Roy merely smirks.
“You are dead to me,” Ed says. “From now on, I expect you to stay fifty feet away from my perfectly normally-sized person at all times.”
“That’s a tall order—or not.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
Roy kisses his cheek. “As soon as possible, please.”
Ed squirms, but he doesn’t pull away. “I am so fucking stupid for liking you so much.”
Roy hugs him closer. “You know what they say.”
“Uh, not until you tell me.”
“Love is blind,” Roy says.
“I think you should get that as a tattoo,” Ed says.
“Would you get one to match?”
Ed scoffs. “No. I’d get one that said ‘I’m fucking the Führer.’”
Roy’s face is getting rather warm. “Ah.”
“Yup.”
“Goodnight, Edward.”
“G’night, asshole,” Ed says. “See you in the morning.”
“Provided that you haven’t shrunk to nothing overnight.”
“Go to sleep.”
“You first.”
“God damn it, Roy.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“You’d better,” Ed says.
And Roy is better—he’s better now than he was; he’s better like this. He’s better with Edward Elric beside him.