Chapter Text
A press of his hands together to make the circle, the splitsecond mental calculations to form the array in his mind—invisible but very real—and his palms on the wall to direct the energy, and a doorway opened for him, silently. The walls here were two feet thick. He ducked through and closed the entrance on the other side.
You could build a wall thick enough that even slamming an automobile into it wouldn't knock it down, could put barbed wire on the top and razor-wire in loops at the bottom, but none of that would stop an even vaguely determined alchemist. People were stupid.
Creeping across the compound grounds by night made him think of—oh, a hundred times he'd done this before, and usually with Al, back in the day. Al had been remarkably good at sneaky for someone who was seven feet talk and clanked when he walked, and remembering that (the grounds outside of Lab Five, the courtyard of the Blue Star Alchemist, the tunnels beneath the city) made him feel suddenly lonely. But Al was well out of this. Al had better things to do now than sneak around at night —
The lock and doorknob changed shape beneath the muted flare of his alchemy, tumblers clicking back and melting into the unlocked position for good measure, eased the door open, slipped into the darkened hallway. Why crazy alchemists always kept such large houses he would never know, they were always in the back or in the cellar and the rest of the place always looked deserted, maybe it was some kind of weird tradition —
He crept down the hall. Three steps, pause; three steps, pause; three steps, pause. It wasn't that he was afraid of facing the researchers (ha, 'researchers,' Mei-Chan was a better researcher than any of them and she was all of about thirteen, they weren't researchers, they were selfish narrow-minded meddlers). He just didn't want them alerted to his presence so they could flee before he got his evidence.
(Yes, Al was well out of this, Al had more important things to do with his time these days than tromp around in the darkness with Ed, he had goals and dreams and a body to pursue them with, he didn't need to risk his neck on things like this. Anyway, he'd try to talk Ed out of it.)
Down the narrow hallway, ears pricked for sounds, and—there. A snarl that turned to a whine, he didn't know exactly what kind of chimeras they were making here but chimeras almost always sounded miserable, even people who were good enough to make a chimera that didn't suffer physical pain all the time (which was hard enough) couldn't figure out how to merge two animals and make them happy about the idea. Conflicting instincts, conflicting memories, a brain that doesn't quite jigsaw together and a body that isn't quite right . . . .
He headed toward the noise. To the left, and . . . downward. A cellar again. It was like chimera makers and other crazy alchemists got some kind of handbook to follow: do your work in a cellar, by candlelight, and if you can possibly manage it involve blood in your array in some way.
(Of course, those criteria matched both the time he'd tried to resurrect his mother and the time he restored Al, which just went to show you.)
He hesitated by the stairs, listening. Another animal whine, and two sets of voices. Good. Both of them still here.
Hand on the banister, shoulder to the wall. Down into the darkness of the cellar; he could still move lightly when he wanted to . . .
The fight went fast—so fast, because the man who called himself the Blood River Alchemist was good at deceiving humans and torturing animals but he was not so good at fighting—and then the alchemist and his assistant were tied up under bonds made from the floor itself.
Ed could see the diagrams tacked up everywhere, and for the most part they were the same sickening shapes he knew all too well: the fluid lines of biological alchemy, but with the sigils and words for mutation and integration, many with an actual representation of the lion-goat-serpent from which the alchemical construct got its mythological name. But —
— but —
— if you knew what you were looking for (and Ed did, because he couldn't forget it, it seared behind his eyelids at night and itched at the tips of his fingers during the day) you could see something new in the designs, something Ed hadn't seen in any transmutation circles before three years prior but that he now saw all the time, and that he almost always saw in situations like this, the seedy and unethical underbelly of alchemical research, almost always it turned up in the worst places.
and no wonder, right?
The man who'd called himself the Blood River Alchemist (stupid, Ed thought, you didn't get a Something Something Alchemist name unless you passed the state qualifications, and if you wanted the qual so badly you'd pretend you already had it you really were stupid) struggled as Ed leafed through the stacks of notes, papers, arrays in various stages of composition.
"You can't just—I demand—"
"Military police will be here soon," Ed said absently, riffling through the stack once more and then abruptly wrenching the whole half-foot-thick pile of papers off the workbench and onto the floor. The workbench was wood, and therefore flammable . . .
"What are you doing?" screeched the would-be chimera master.
Ed yanked open the filing cabinet, hauled out the paper—no point sorting—and dropped it on the floor too. "There was a fight," he said, "accidents happen, you really shouldn't have open flames around so much paper anyway—"
"No!"
Ed swept the fattest of the candles on the workbench off it and onto the stack of papers.
"That's—that's destruction of property, you little brat, you're not going to get away with—"
"There was a fight," Ed repeated, watching to make sure that the fire didn't spread even as it licked eagerly through the stack of paper. It made him think of Roy, and no wonder, but fire was the most efficient and plausibly deniable way to make sure those arrays were destroyed, gone, irretrievable . . . "Accidents happen."
"Oh, Ed," came an exasperated voice behind him, and he froze and whirled to find . . . Major Ross, pinching the bridge of her nose and giving him a Look. "If you could be a little faster about your accidents, it would really help keep my blood pressure down."
Roy's first-thing-in-at-work ritual, while he waited for his brain to wake up and engage: a cup of black coffee, the window open behind him (unless the weather was really atrocious), and the daily paper spread out before him. It was, also, a way of connecting with Riza even though she now had a well-merited office of her own to take care of; technically the paper he read was her paper, and as she skimmed it on her way in to work she circled in blue things she thought he'd find interesting. Then he circled in red the things he thought she'd find interesting and passed it back to her at lunch.
This morning's circled items: the coming-of-age ball for the Emperor of Aerugo's only granddaughter (he filed that away in memory, wondered if any of Amestris' spies in Aerugo had netted an invitation), a city improvement bill was close to passing the parliament (good), a military funding bill was also close to passing (not so good), the football playoffs were drawing to a close (Riza's hometown team was doing very well indeed), and . . . .
At first he couldn't understand why she'd circled the article in the Science and Technology section; it was on alchemy, certainly, but she didn't circle just any article on alchemy. He skimmed down over it ("Professor Maynard notes that some compounds, such as insulin, that have proved difficult to synthesize using ordinary alchemy, can be created by alchemically modifying bacterial cultures to encourage them to produce the compounds as a byproduct. 'Just as a brewer uses yeast in order to create alcohol, we're using these bacteria to create insulin . . . '"), but the last paragraph made him sit up and take notice:
"Alphonse Elric, one of Professor Maynard's students, was very excited about the direction of this research. 'We're looking into using Xing alchemical techniques next, for multistep biochemical reactions—Xing alchemy allows for gradual reactions over time in a way that you really can't manage with standard Amestrian transmutation circles. I think there's a lot of fertile ground for combining the best attributes of both Xing and Amestrian alchemy.'"
It was not difficult, if you knew how to read between the lines, to put the pieces together: Alphonse studying biochemical alchemy could only mean one thing.
Hm. Perhaps it was time to share a cup of coffee with Alphonse and see how things were. He hadn't heard anything from either Elric brother in some time, and that tended to be a dangerous sign.
"Havoc?"
"Sir?" Havoc's voice came from the rest of the office, through Mustang's partially-open door.
"Can you find me the current number for Alphonse? It's been a while since I've seen what either of them were up to."
"Sure, boss—" Havoc began, and then the outer door slammed open, slammed closed. "— But I don't think you'll need that to talk to an Elric," Havoc finished.
Ed stood by the window while Major Maria Ross filled Roy in. He looked tired, and he smelled like . . . smoke?
"We got a tip to check the cellar of forty-eight Woodlawn Avenue," Maria Ross said, "and sure enough we found illegal chimeras—and, uh, Ed."
"And the call was from . . . ?"
"The caller was anonymous."
Roy considered this, and used the first—and, often, most effective—tool in his arsenal: the serious look. Ross sighed.
"The caller was Alphonse," she said, "but you didn't hear it from me."
That surprised him. He'd expected that it would be Ed, underestimating how long it would take him to get clear of the scene of the crime. Why would Alphonse rat his own brother out . . . ?
"Ordinarily, I would've just told him to get lost," Ross continued. "I mean, we owe him that much, right?" She seemed to be looking to him for confirmation. He gave her a brief nod. That was fair, at least; they did owe the Elric brothers a lot. "But finding him burning the notes . . . well, I didn't want to make that decision on my own, so . . . "
"You did the right thing," Roy said, and saw Ross relax marginally. Well, he couldn't blame her; the tribunal after the revolution had found her cleared of all charges, but there were still some in the military who thought of her as quite possibly a murderer; she couldn't afford any stains on her record. "Leave it to me. I'll sort things out."
"Thank you, sir," Ross said.
When she had let herself out, and the door clicked decisively behind her, Roy seated himself in his chair and waited. Ed was still staring out the window. He hadn't grown much in the prior four years, presumably to his chagrin, but he had very clearly aged and matured; his face had the strong bones of an adult, without any of the softness of youth. He looked even more severe with his hair drawn sharply back into a ponytail. He smelled of smoke, and his eyes were a little red.
It was Ed who broke the silence, as Roy had anticipated; he'd never had much patience. "Look," he said, sounding both aggressive and weary, "either it's a citizen's arrest and you clap me on the back and tell me 'well done' and send me on my way, or it's a breaking-and-entering and you hand me over to the civilian authorities. I'm not your subordinate anymore."
"That's true," Roy said. "And yet."
"What?" Ed demanded, with surprising force, turning away from the window. "And yet what?" Straight-backed, strong, angry. Roy was taken aback, though he didn't allow his face to show it.
"You know I'm not going to hand you over to the police for breaking and entering, Edward," he said. "Not least because you were quite right. They were breaking the law."
"Of course they were." Ed glared at him, pale bonfire shine of his eyes and then turned back to look out the window, leaving Roy with only his eagle profile. "All alchemical experiments involving living creatures of any type must be cleared by a panel of ethicists, and all actual transmutations of animals must be done under strict oversight. That's a quote."
It was almost word-for-word, in fact. Ahh, the Elric memory—"I know."
"So why exactly do you have me here? Pat me on the back, well done lad, off I go," Ed said, with an undertone of sarcasm that was unexpected and, quite frankly, disturbing. Edward had been angry, snarly, surly, contentious, but often almost painfully earnest. Where had this bitterness come from? Alphonse was fine —
He made his voice soft, low. "So why," Roy said, "did you burn the evidence?"
Ed was silent.
"It would make the case against them all the more ironclad, and I know you hate chimerists, Edward, I know that you find the manipulation of living beings abhorrent unless it's for purely advantageous medical alchemy—"
Ed was silent.
"—so why wouldn't you want the prosecutors to have the best case possible? Why would you burn the arrays that proved precisely what they were doing?"
Ed spoke, finally, to the skyline of Central. "The chimeras in the cages were proof enough."
"Proof that they'd contravened the Ethical Alchemy Act, yes. Proof of exactly what they were up to—"
"It was enough," Ed said, his voice tight and sharp.
"What was so important in those papers that you couldn't let the prosecutors see them, Edward?"
"The prosecutors are hired by your goddamned government—" Ed began, his voice hot, and then he broke off and his eyes widened.
Aha.
"What don't you want the government to see?" Roy asked, softly.
Ed closed his mouth stubbornly and did not speak.
"Edward," Roy said. "I'm not going to betray whatever it is. I just need to know what you were doing. Otherwise there will be inquiries."
"They had some research that no one should have," Ed said. "About life and death. And I wasn't about to let anyone, anyone see it. And that's all you're getting out of me."
The look in his eyes—in profile, just slivers of pale light—reminded Roy of Riza, so many years ago, demanding (not pleading, demanding) that he burn her back. He didn't ask any questions, not now. He said, "You're free to go, Edward. I'll make certain this does not affect your files."
"I don't care about the files."
"No," Roy said, "but Alphonse does, I imagine."
Ed's mouth tipped up at one side, as though he couldn't help himself. "You're still a bastard," he said, but then he turned away from the window so fast that his ponytail spun (a whip of gold around his shoulders), and slouched his way out of the office.
Roy stared after him, at the closed door, for a long time, thinking, hell, not again. And then he picked up the phone and dialed Riza's extension, and said, "You won't believe who I just had in my office . . . ."
Ed walked, as insouciant and careless as he could manage, through the halls of Central Command, out down the long straight path of the lawn, down Front Street to the alley behind the Blue Cartwheels. And then he ran, as though there were hellhounds at his heels, as though his heels were on fire, as though—
— as though the long arms of the gate were chasing him —
No no no, he didn't need to remember this, he didn't want to remember this, it was over, damn the chimerists for making him remember, damn Roy for not letting him just forget —
He knows he was physically gone because when he returns to the cave—it had to be a cave, it's always a cave, cave womb spark the beginning of the world—he lands on his back, and Alphonse lands on top of him.
Alphonse—!
The armor is gone, blown into a million pieces, but on top of him is Al's body, sixteen years old and skinny as a starvation victim, long lank hair dark bronze and his eyes closed and his emaciated chest perilously still and Ed thinks oh no no no, you can't, you can't give him his body back dead, no —
— and then a deep shuddering wrack of breath, coughing, a whine on Al's inhale as though his lungs are rusty with disuse, do you need to breathe in the Gate—?
And then, and then, the blood.
Like some kind of horrible joke, the blood. It felt like gallons of it, pouring out of nowhere over his clothed body and Al's naked one, warm as though it were pouring out of a living vein, pulsing out of . . . nowhere. Maybe it wasn't some kind of joke, maybe it was just equivalent exchange, all the blood he'd bled for Al, all the blood Al had bled for him.
He wiped blood out of his eyes, his face, his thick-hanging bangs. He eased Al off himself—Al, breathing deep steady breaths, painfully thin and covered in blood but alive, alive, enfleshed and alive—and looked up.
Alchemical symbols burned their way through his eyes, past his brain, into his soul.
He'd drawn a circle, a circle born half of his expertise and half of pure terrified desperation, on the floor of the cave. That circle, drawn in chalk, was, gone, obliterated by blood. But on the ceiling of the cave was —
Not its twin. But its sibling: alike but not the same. There were patterns there that he'd never seen, never thought of. There were symbols there . . . .
And he knew what they were.
Life. Death. The secrets therein. The Gate was the guardian of mortality, and as he'd spoken to it, so it spoke to him, white-light writings on the ceiling.
He looked away, looked down, even the sea of blood preferable, because what he saw there was enough to drive better people than him insane. He didn't have time for this. He didn't have time for this. He needed to pay attention to Alphonse, breathing deep but still comatose.
He hefted his brother (taller than him somehow but still so light, still fragile) onto his back, turned away from the white-light writings of mortality and immortality, and made his way out of blood and darkness and into daylight.
Ed wiped his eyes and looked up to the sky. If he closed his eyes for too long he could still see the writings. And sometimes, even if he didn't, on paper . . . .
Goddamn Mustang for making him think about it.
"Alphonse," Roy said, "Thanks for taking the time to meet with me."
"Of course," Al said. He put down the book he'd been reading—not only about Xing alchemy but actually written in Xing script. "It's good to see you again."
"That's hardly likely," Roy said, and smiled. "I only turn up when there's bad news."
"That's not true at all," Al said. "You turned up—er—well, you—hm." He frowned, then brightened again. "You were there when I got my body back. And when Falman got married, you came to the wedding."
"I could hardly have missed that."
"But it's a solid counterexample. You aren't always a harbinger of bad news." Al grinned at him. In a lot of ways, objectively, he looked like his brother—same bone structure, same unique golden eyes, and hair just a few shades darker—but he never quite looked like Ed. He didn't have the same desperate, unearthly edge.
He looked, Roy realized with a lurch, content. Ed looked happy sometimes, but Roy wasn't sure he'd ever seen him look content.
"I'm sure you didn't come just to talk about Falman's wedding."
"As remarkable an event as that was," Roy agreed. "No. I came because I read about your research in the paper. It sounded like something of interest to the military. And to me."
Al brightened. "Of course," he said. "Amestris has neglected medical alchemy for a long time—not that that's entirely a bad thing, with Amestrian alchemical techniques all we could really manage was mutation, not restoration, and that's a dangerous game, although Marcoh has managed to turn it to his advantage—but Xing alchemy's focus on cyclical patterns opens up whole new frontiers—"
Roy just let himself listen as Al held forth on cutting-edge advancements in biological alchemy. It wasn't too hard to see where it was going —
"You want to restore your brother's limbs," he said, when Al had wound down.
"Of course," Al said, easily and without argument. "Since he wasn't able to do it for himself."
They'd both been pretty tight-lipped as to why that was. Roy didn't press. "So how is Edward, these days?"
"Ed is . . . Ed," Al said, and looked rueful, but also somewhat . . . sad? "Ed doesn't know what to do with himself without a crusade."
"Hence the midnight raids on the compounds of dubious alchemists?"
Al gave him a level look, and didn't say anything, reminding him—for the first time—very sharply of Ed.
Roy added, "Lieutenant Ross does know your voice."
"I know she does," Al said.
Ah. Ah. "You're trying to manipulate me," Roy said, unsure whether he should be flattered or offended.
"Is it working?" Al asked, and looked at him with Elric-golden eyes, mouth tipped up to one side—wry, where Ed was never wry, where Ed was earnest or furious but never subtle. But then Al was very much his own person.
"Better than it ought to have," he admitted, and Al laughed. He continued, "Are you trying to manipulate me to look after your brother? He is an adult."
"He's bringing himself to your attention,"Al said. "I'm just helping things along."
"Because you're worried about him."
"Well," Al said. "Yes." And there was that, the undeniable sweetness of Al's personality. Who could deny that request?
"I'll do what I can," he said. "But Ed is an adult, and not under my command anymore."
"I know," Al said. "But I'm worried, and you were always the only person who could actually work around him adequately."
"Which is why you decided to use me."
"Well, yes," Al said. "If I was going to manipulate someone, I was going to manipulate someone effective, right?" And he looked so helplessly sincere that Roy couldn't feel offended, could only laugh.
"Brother," Ed heard through the fog of sleep—and the more tangible muffle of the pillow over his head. "Brother. Brother." Al, not raising his voice but patiently repeating the one word.
"Whf?" Ed said, pulling the edge of the pillow off his head and squinting into the daylight.
"It's nearly five. I thought maybe you'd better get up before you run out of daylight."
It would have been easy to get angry at being mothered by his own younger brother, but it was so hard to actually get angry at Al, especially when he was standing there with such a worried look in his eyes—and standing there with a steaming mug of coffee. "Yeah, okay," he said, tossing the pillow to the foot of the bed and swinging his legs over the side. His flesh foot touched the floorboards silently; his metal foot clicked.
Al put down the mug on his bedside table. "Where were you all last night?" he asked. "I don't even know when you got in."
Nearly five AM. "I dunno. Just wandering around. Lost track of time."
"Well, there's more coffee in the kitchen, and, uh—you should also probably drink about a quart of water and take some willowbark tea."
"I didn't actually have that much to drink."
"Still." Al gave him his patented I'm-worried-about-you-but-I-know-you-won't-react-well-if-I-say-so look, which was almost as bad as the 'I'm worried about you' talk itself but harder to complain about.
"I think I'm going to take a shower," Ed said, to circumvent the whole non-discussion, and headed for the bathroom, scrubbing a hand back through his rumpled mess of slept-on hair.
He was careful not to look at himself too closely in the mirror (the exploded-dandelion mess of his hair was bad enough caught in profile, without the added sight of bloodshot eyes) and ran the water hot, hot enough to almost scald. This close to winter, it wasn't a bad idea to get the automail good and warm before the ambient temperature started to suck the heat back out of it; Al always courteously kept the heat up in winter, up to temperatures that had to be bordering on uncomfortable for him, but there were still drafts. It was an old building. Anyway, the hot water pounding on his skull helped drive the last fuzziness of overlong daytime sleeping after overlong insomnia out of his brain.
He'd been telling the truth: he hadn't had that much to drink. A beer and a half, along with a meal, which wasn't so much. But the night had sunk through the pub door, spread itself out like wings, and at closing time he hadn't been able to bring himself to go home. He couldn't even say why. So he'd walked, and walked, and walked, all around Central at night (it wasn't actually as dangerous as all that, though a few muggers had, over the past months, learned not to pick on people just because they were sh— young, and fair, and long-haired). He'd walked and felt the night seeping into his brain and hadn't been able to convince himself to go home until he was flat-out exhausted.
He shook his head, tried to shake the night out of it as well, let the hot water pound and pound.
When he emerged, he found a tall glass of water and two pills next to it—and, as if in silent apology for the criticism implied in the water-and-aspirin, a bowl of spicy chili and a hunk of bread. Ed's sleep patterns were shot all to hell, but his appetite was still good; he fell to with enthusiasm. Al smiled at him.
"How're things at the university?" he asked, which in the silent language of Elrics meant that he wasn't going to get weird about Al dragging him out of bed and feeding him aspirin and coffee.
"It's okay," Al said. "My grant came through for studying poison and toxin neutralization using stable array loops, which I'm pretty excited about, so the next step is writing to Mei-Chan and seeing if she wants to co-author a paper."
"I guess it'd be hypocritical of me to ask whether people will have an issue with a paper co-authored by a fourteen-year-old."
Al grinned. "Quite. Anyway, that's just the first step—if we can get that working reliably we might be able to use it in conjunction with targeted arrays to kill parasites and other disease agents, and then flush them out of the body. There's a lot of potential for combining Xing and Amestrian alchemy in the medical sector, and we have so much ground to catch up." Ed could feel the next sentence coming even before Al put down his coffee cup and said, "You know we'd love your help, brother."
"Al."
"Not that you'd need to go into biomedical alchemy just because I love it. I know you were doing good work with chemical and physical alchemy—Doctor Ericsson says your paper on the implications of the double-headed eagle in arrays involving the transmutation of transistors and electronic parts was excellent, even half-finished and with no citations—"
"Al."
"—or if you don't want to work for the university, there's always—"
"Al!" Ed said, finally raising his voice, and Al stuttered off to a stop. "I don't need a pep talk. Okay? I'm fine."
Al leveled him a serious look, and god, sometimes he looked so much like their mother it was heartbreaking. Ed had always envied him that, that he'd got their mother's hair, the shape of her face, and her peculiar expressions . . . "I'm not sure people who are 'fine' wander around the streets all night."
"I didn't say I was normal," Ed said, and tried for a grin. It was apparently good enough to make Al relax marginally. "Look," he went on, "the university and me just wasn't working out. You love it there, I get that, I'm thrilled for you, and they'd better keep giving you fellowships and staying out of your way. But it didn't work for me."
"That's the thing, though, it worked great for you for the first year, and then—"
"Stuff changes. People change. Look." Ed daubed the last of the chili out of the bowl with the crust of the bread. "I'm okay, okay? I'm fine. I'll let you know if that stops being the case."
Al looked dubious, but he said, "Okay. I'll trust you, brother."
Which, as far as Ed was concerned, was fighting dirty.
Despite what Al thought, Ed didn't totally keep his head stuck in the sand, although the more he heard, the more he wished he had. He knew the newspapers were biased and bigoted and knew very little, but he read them anyway. The Grand Duchess Marguerite Lucubrate of Aerugo had her coming-of-age ceremony—none too soon, since her grandfather the Emperor seemed likely to bite the dust any day and she was the only heir—and was saying nasty things about Amestris. Well, no doubt over the past few centuries Amestris had deserved those nasty things . . . .
He hung around the house and looked meek until Al went to work (thank goodness—he'd never forgive himself if Al hobbled his career looking after him), and then spent the afternoon napping and reading alchemy books. Not that any of them ever contained the answer to his questions, but they soothed him. And then, when evening came down low and close on the horizon, he got dressed and went out, not to the Cartwheel, but to the Three Serpents.
Al didn't know about the time he spent at the Serpent, or at least if he did he didn't show any indication of it. Winry didn't either, or any of Mustang's office (Mustang's former office, that was years ago, he had to get with the times—), because even though they weren't technically Mustang's office anymore, they would have still ratted him out.
Maria and Denny knew about the Serpent, though. In a weird way they'd earned it. In a weird way, he didn't mind them being there.
Mostly because they left him alone if what he wanted was to order a pint of beer and brood.
The hospital: white, white, white, sterile white, acres of it. Antiseptic smell. And Al, awake, finally, thank god, thank god—sitting up and looking at him with real eyes, real dark-gold eyes and not glowing reddish armor-lights, and saying—
— "I don't remember—"
"Don't try. It's okay." Elation bright like a bubble of sunlight behind his breastbone. "You're fine. You're going to be fine. That's all that matters."
"I remember something, pulling, something tugging at me, was that you?"
(I don't think so.) "I don't know. It doesn't matter. You're okay now. You're fine. You're going to be fine." Al was so—dark-gold eyes but hair like their mother's, brown, and his body so thin but tall, tall, he'd had trouble dragging it (naked and bloodstained, god what a sight they'd been) because it was so tall, which meant he'd kept it okay, which meant he hadn't ruined his brother permanently—"You're going to be perfect."
Al, sitting up, looking at his hands—flexing them, tensing them. "It's so strange. I don't know how to, sometimes I think I might faint, they give me weak broth and I think my mouth is going to explode."
"You'll get used to it." Al was going be fine, Al was going to be perfect —
And then, dark gold eyes, serious expression, "What about you?"
"What about me?" For the moment Ed was baffled.
"Your arm. Your leg."
"Oh." And the question made him—remember. No. He was okay with automail, it wasn't worth—"Me, I'm fine. I'll be fine."
"We were going to restore both of us."
"I'm fine. You were in danger. I wasn't. Plenty of people have—soldiers have automail their whole—"
"We were going to restore both of us."
"I'm fine, Al." He could feel his voice go tense and strange. "I'm fine. I don't need anything else." Please don't make me go back.
"But—"
"Sleep. Please. Just sleep. I want you to be better. Okay?"
"But how did you . . . restore me? Can't we—"
"Please," Ed said, and heard the strained rawness of his voice, saw Al recoil. "Just sleep, okay? It's all okay now. Just sleep."
Ed clearly thought he was hiding a great deal with his forays into the seedier part of town, but the confidantes he'd chosen included Denny Brosh. Brosh was loyal as the day was long, but he wasn't the . . . cleverest fish in the barrel. Roy doubted he'd even been aware that he'd given away Ed's secret watering hole.
(He would've felt bad for, essentially, stalking Ed, except that Al had sent him on this mission, and Al was one of the sanest people he'd ever known.)
So it was that Roy wound up at the doorway of the Three Serpents.
It wasn't a dive bar by any stretch of the imagination. It was actually quite a nice place, and the only real difference between that and the Blue Cartwheel was that . . . nobody else Ed knew spent time at the Three Serpents. Which was in and of itself rather odd. Ed had never been a solitary creature, not really; he'd always had Al, and he'd gotten along well with people, in a crude and rough-edged way. Nobody would have pegged him as a smooth talker, and yet people liked him; he'd been called Alchemist of the People for a reason. So why . . . .?
He'd hesitated outside, looking up at the sign. (The sign predated even the pub's name: a red serpent with three heads, and from each head came three tongues. It had the look of an alchemical symbol, though Roy couldn't place its specific meaning.) What drove him inside was neither altruism nor manipulation but sheer curiosity. If something was up with Edward Elric, he wanted to know what. Whatever it was, chances were it was interesting.
As soon as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he got his great surprise of the day. He'd seen Ed off and on in the past few years, but he must not have really looked, because—
Ed sat near the bar, nursing a beer. The light swinging on a chain over his head illuminated his distinctive bright-gold hair (tied back in a tail at the nape of his neck), but somehow even that splash of color wasn't what drew the eye. It was the breadth of his shoulders, the strong line of his back even as he slouched, the planes and angles of his profile as he turned his head. The years had been, oh, kind to him—or maybe he'd always been this attractive, and Roy had simply not allowed himself to notice it back when Ed was a subordinate, underage, and otherwise A Very Bad Idea.
He was noticing now. And that complicated his simple mission of curiosity enough that he almost backed right out of the Three Serpents, except just then Ed turned a little more, and noticed him, and raised one eyebrow.
And that was a challenge Roy wasn't equipped to pass up.
"So you want to tell me why exactly you're following me around?" Ed asked, and he looked at Roy through the veil of his own thick golden bangs, and —
"Honest truth?" Roy said.
"Like you'd ever give me that," Ed snorted, and took a long pull of his beer.
"Al's worried about you," Roy said, mostly because he thought the truth would startle the hell out of Ed. He was right, too. Ed snorted into his beer and got foam on the bridge of his nose and Roy was shocked to find himself fighting the urge to lean forward and lick it off.
"Al shouldn't waste his time worrying about me."
"But he does."
"He shouldn't." Ed drew patterns in the condensation on the table.
"But he does."
"Stop repeating yourself, you sound like a parrot."
"Hm," Roy said. "My plumage is too drab. As I think you've mentioned, you never liked the uniform."
"I dunno, you look pretty . . . " Ed said, and then choked off.
Roy tried not to reveal how much that admission had shot through his body. He just raised an eyebrow.
"Shut up," Ed said.
It wouldn't have happened—none of it—Ed thought, except for the dream. He'd slept too late again (Al hadn't even tried to wake him this time, so he slept straight on to five p.m.), and dreamed of —
— the Truth, the gate Truth, wearing his face, and other people spawning off from it, putting on human faces, bringing the worst alchemy out in to the world —
and he woke up gasping, sweaty, unable to breathe, unable to bear it. He wandered the house for a while, drinking coffee and wishing Al were there, wishing someone were there (wishing Roy were there) —
and then went out to the Three Serpents.
Maria and Denny weren't there, and neither was Roy, and that was a bad thing because it meant that he couldn't drown out the voices with companionship and had to rely on beer instead. One beer two beer three beer—and someone was beside him, saying angry words—
You cost my brother-in-law his job, you spoiled freak
— and if he'd cost anyone their job it was because they had been working with chimeras, torturing animals and maybe humans and they deserved it, and maybe on three (four, five) beers he'd actually said that, and then —
There was a fight. He was good at fights. Bruises were nothing, he used to get cut open, he used to get his automail taken apart, bruises were nothing and the fighting meant pure clean anger and straightforward goals, a face to punch, a fist to avoid —
— and he wasn't sure what was going on, really, until suddenly there was Mustang's face, white with rage (or maybe just white, he never had tanned properly), saying "What the hell do you think you were—"
"— doing?" he demanded. Ed hung his head, and Roy realized the ridiculousness of his position, holding Ed by his (lean, muscular) shoulders in an alleyway as Ed looked up at him, bruised and tipsy and angry and bruised. He had a darkening mark on his cheek, his lip was split, his eyes . . . ancient, much older than his just-past-twenty years.
"It was just a couple of guys," he said.
"'Just'—"
"I used to fight homunculi, Roy, a couple of guys aren't going to bother me." Ed looked very . . . tired. Roy wondered whether he'd noticed that he'd used his first name; Ed pretty much never did that. "Shit. They started it."
It was such a very childish response that Roy had to fight down the crazy urge to laugh. "You should go home," he said, and realized that he was still holding onto Ed's shoulders, and let them go.
Ed turned his face to one side, pressed his lips tight together.
"You're not going to go home?" Roy pressed.
"Al'd worry if I showed up like this," he said, and waved a hand as if to sum up his appearance: skin flushed with alcohol and exertion, pupils dilated, split lip. "I usually walk it off first."
Usually? Roy exhaled. "Look, my place isn't too far—"
"I know," Ed said, and gave him a look that Roy couldn't interpret.
"—you can come back, wash your face, take a nap, and then you can go home."
"How gentlemanly of you," Ed said. "Okay."
"You really didn't need to sic Roy on me," Ed said, coming in the door.
"I didn't," Al said from the table. He had mimeographs of journal articles spread out around him, an array of purple on white.
"You told him you were worried, which amounts to the same thing," Ed said.
"You're not exactly going to make me regret it if you go on being so cheerful."
"I'm always cheerful."
"Not when you sleep until three in the afternoon," Al said, mildly, and reached for another mimeograph. "Do you want leftovers or do you want to order takeout?"
And that would have been that, except that Roy got drunk two days later.
Things were going, oh, badly. The Cretan Council of Elders had withdrawn their ambassador, and word was there were troop movements along the far southwestern border. Which was alarming enough as it was, but especially so because they'd never had problems along the southwestern border, because Aerugo didn't like it when Creta put troops there, either. But Aerugo was saying nothing, and the word was that that was because Grand Duchess Marguerite was much more antagonistic to Amestris than the current Emperor, and the current Emperor was sliding rapidly into senility, leaving her with more and more of the decisions . . . .
And then there were the problems within Central Command. Olivia Armstrong, though so often an ally these days (thanks in large part to Riza, with whom she got along very well), was pushing not for concessions but for a display of force, and though there were high-ranking officials hoping to sue for peace, Armstrong had the connections and the sheer force of personality to push her agenda through. She didn't believe in backing down and though he made his arguments as calmly and rationally as he could, in his head all he could think was the repeat of Oh no, no, not a war, not again.
(And the hell of it was that it was entirely possible that Olivia was right, that conceding now would only result in more situations like this, but they could at least try diplomacy first, they could—)
"Go home," Riza said, pausing by his office with a sheaf of papers.
"I—" he said.
"I'm going to talk to General Armstrong right now," she said firmly. "She still doesn't like you, so it's not as if you can help. Go home. I'll let you know how things went in the morning."
"Tomorrow's your day off."
Riza made an exasperated noise. "Because we all keep entirely regular timeclocked hours here, of course. Get out from underfoot."
"Woof, woof," he said, but he managed a smile at her. He never was sure what he'd done to deserve her as a friend and ally, but he certainly wasn't going to question it.
So he went out, but he didn't go home. He wanted a drink. He wanted, if he was honest with him, several drinks, stiff ones. And he didn't want to go to the pub near Central Command, where everyone would be thinking and talking about Aerugo —
(It didn't just happen by chance; he could've got drunk anywhere, including his own home, but though he didn't let himself examine the impulse too closely, what he did was go to the Three Serpents. Ed's bar. Ed's bar . . . .)
And Ed was there, making small talk with the bartender (one of the most aggressive and socially clumsy people Roy knew, and yet people liked Ed, he hadn't become the Alchemist of the People by chance), and when he turned to look at Roy coming in his cheeks were already a little flushed, his pupils just a little dilated, and in the light slanting down from the lamp overhead the long tail of his hair shone bright-gold.
"What're you doing in my bar?" he asked, mouth crooked a little at the side in a way that meant he wasn't totally serious.
"It's your bar, now?" Roy asked, though he had been thinking of it that way himself.
"Okay, then, what are you doing in the bar that I frequent, that, before this week, you never used to set foot in?"
"Getting drunk," Roy said, "without looking like an ass in front of anybody from Command, and without any of my friends trying to talk me down."
"Huh. If Maria was here that wouldn't be the case. If she thinks I've had too much she grabs me by the ear and boots me out, you'd think I was twelve," Ed said, but—fondly?
Good for her, Roy thought, and then felt like a hypocrite. But then, he was thirty-five and could destroy his liver if he wanted to, Ed was young and smart and had a great future ahead of him . . . .
Young and perhaps too smart, because he tilted a look sideways at Roy and said, "Aerugo?"
"I came here because I didn't really want to talk about it."
"Huh. Fair enough," Ed said, and then signaled the bartender back over and ordered for both of them.
He'd seen Roy calmly in command, smugly superior, wrung-out with grief, crazy with rage, and turning the charm up to its highest setting, but this was a new thing: he'd never seen Roy trying to not think about something.
He kept the drinks coming. Sometimes that was all you could do.
"—she's gotten really good at fending off advances over the years, you can't be as pretty as she is and in the military without learning that, but I don't think she ever knew quite what to do with a suitor who was both a crazy serial killer and an empty suit of armor—" Roy was saying, and laughing. "Last birthday I got her a cleaver, and I had hearts etched all over the flat of the blade, and I wasn't sure whether she was going to laugh or throw it at me."
Roy drunk enough to tell goofy stories was new. Ed was staring, he realized, but there was something . . . "We all thought you two were going to get married," he said, though he hadn't really intended to. He was a good way toward drunk himself.
"I know," Roy said.
"So—?"
"I love her. She's my best friend, and my family, and she knows things about me that no one else knows, and we've been through everything together. I don't know what I'd do without her."
"And . . . ?"
"There's no 'and.'" Drunk, Roy's moods shifted very fast; now he was peering into his glass with a broody expression. "Why is it that everyone thinks that strong emotions and connections aren't really real unless they come with sex attached? There's no 'and.'"
"No, I get that," Ed said. "I actually do get that."
Roy looked at him over the top of his beer with impossibly dark eyes.
"I love Winry," Ed said. "But not . . . like that."
It was a classic conversational gambit, making it very, very clear to someone that you were single and available. He wondered whether Roy would get it. He was so smart that sometimes it made him really, really stupid.
Outside the bar in the dark; Roy was just the right kind of drunk, the kind where his head felt light and his toes tingled and his stomach was warm but where he could still walk more or less straight, where he still wasn't going to make any really stupid decisions, although he might make some impetuous ones.
Ed, standing next to him, glowed in the lamplight, looking thoughtful, or maybe glazed. No, just thoughtful. He hadn't drunk enough to be really drunk, either.
Roy realized he was staring. " . . . So," he said, "do you need to hide out from Al again?"
Ed's gaze flicked over to him, and in that same instant flicked from thoughtful to exasperated, the way his brows quirked and lowered, the way his mouth tilted. "You really are stupid sometimes," he said, and Roy had his mouth open to retort—which turned out to be exactly right, because Ed took one decisive step toward him, rose up on the balls of his feet, dug his hands into the collar of his shirt, and pulled him down and into the kiss.
Oh, Roy thought, and then he didn't think anything at all as Ed's tongue slid across his and then along his palate, as swift and wild as the rest of his body was when he was fighting.
Then Ed drew back, just a whisper of his slightly-chapped lips on Roy's, and his eyes flicked open, flicked up for some kind of response.
"Would you like to come to my place?" Roy asked, and was surprised by how gravelly his voice sounded.
Ed—smiled. "Okay, you're not so stupid all the time."
It wasn't a far walk to his townhouse, but it seemed farther because one or the other of them kept stopping in any patch of deep shadow on the way to kiss, and kiss, and kiss. Ed had an amazing mouth, flame-hot and wet and absolutely enthusiastic. He had obviously kissed before, been kissed before, and that was a relief.
He was a peculiar mixture of confident and shy—confident with his mouth and his tongue, confident with the way he stalked into Roy's townhouse like he owned the place, and yet his yellow eyes as he looked up at Roy were unsure, hesitant, letting Roy be the one to kiss him this time with a fervency that said to both of them yes, yes, I want this.
They pulled each other upstairs—Ed's ass was absolutely tempting when he walked in front of Roy, and just as tempting when Roy stopped him to kiss him, slid his hands down Ed's lower back to cup him and pull him closer. Three flights of stairs seemed a torture.
Three flights of stairs and then they were in his bedroom, Ed backing him toward the pristine expanse of his bed—he made the bed every morning, hospital corners and all, and he wondered if Ed was going to mock him about that, but certainly if Ed was going to he wasn't planning on doing it now. And again, that appealing moment of shyness, when Ed tugged meaningfully on Roy's shirt, his mouth as direct and confident as ever but his hands more subtle in their asking: here? now? with me?
Roy lost the shirt with speed, put his hands to Ed's shirt and began to unbutton it. He didn't have as much experience undressing lovers as rumor would say—rumors were useful but he hadn't actually had very many lovers in his life—but that didn't seem to matter because as he unbuttoned downward Ed helped him, unbuttoning from the bottom up so that their hands met in the middle, and then Ed shrugged the shirt off, and —
Ed's broad shoulders, his muscular chest, the strong line of his collarbone and the strong line of his neck where the tendons stood out, the dark-pink of his scars around the bright-silver automail port, his skin golden even beneath his clothes where the sun never touched it—it must be genetic, must be—and his eyes, sun-bright and warm as a summer afternoon, looking at Roy's bared skin with the same naked wonder that Roy knew must be on his own face.
"You're," Ed said, and then he made a noise as though his throat had thickened shut.
"You're so beautiful, Edward," Roy said, and his voice seemed to have dropped into the cellar, low and dark and alien.
"You say that like you actually mean it," Ed said, with a flick upward at the corner of his mouth, and then they were kissing again before Roy could answer, before Roy could even make sense of what he'd said enough to answer.
Roy cupped his face, palms against Ed's cheekbones and then skimming back over the tickling fringe of his long bangs, the smooth slide of his hair drawn back tight against his scalp, until Roy's fingers found the elastic of his hair tie and drew it back, gently and carefully so as not to snag, until Ed's hair spilled free around his shoulders, and then Roy had to break the kiss to see it. Long hair, thick and soft, straight except for the crinkle where the tie held it back, and a stunning bright gold color . . .
Ed bowled him back onto the bed, and he went willingly, gladly. His body was all one throb, from the alcohol-induced tingling in his toes to the frantic pounding of his heart that had nothing to do with the many beers. Ed pinned him, straddled his hips, and Roy felt the hot bulge of Ed's erection against his own aching groin and muffled a cry, arched up.
It was obvious, it was obvious from the way Ed kissed him and rubbed against him, from the confident grip of Ed's hands on his shoulders, that Ed was no virgin. Ed had done this before. And Roy didn't have any objections, Roy was glad of it, glad of Ed's experience and the fact that Ed came to this knowing what he was doing and knowing what he wanted . . . It had been some time since he'd had a male lover, and in fact he'd had many fewer lovers than rumor would have it; he was too busy, too focused, he didn't have much attention to give and therefore could only ethically indulge in trysts with people who didn't expect much of him.
But he knew that Ed on top of him and looking hungry must expect something, and yet somehow that didn't scare him off.
They fumbled together to get belts undone, trousers undone, underwear off. Ed's boots hit the floor with an uneven thud-thud, their pants and belts jingled off the side of the bed, and then Ed was on topfa of him, of course on top of him, light except for the blocky cool metal of his arm and leg and entirely beautiful with his golden skin, golden eyes, golden hair, like some kind of ancient idol.
But the feel of his cock against Roy's was entirely warm and living and real, and Roy closed his hand around both of them, felt Ed wrap his fingers around Roy's wrist, and tunneled their aching erections together through the stuttering thrust and thrust and thrust with nothing but sweat to guide them.
Ed let go of his wrist, leaned across him—Ed's hair fell in his face, smelling of sweat and shampoo and Ed, and if he'd been ten years younger the heavy silk brush and the scent alone would have been enough to put him over the edge—and dragged open his nightstand drawer, unerringly found the bottle of lube (used mostly, Roy had to admit, to make masturbating easier; he really didn't have much time—) and fumbled the cap open, dripped lubricant over Roy's hand and both their erections so the pulls came smoother, so the thrusts moved against each other in a torment of counterpoint, thrust and thrust and thrust and then Ed was stiffening up, tightening up (not just in his cock and his balls but through his well-muscled belly, his arms and shoulders, his tight ass) and spilling on Roy's cock and belly with a low, gritted exhalation of pleasure.
Roy couldn't help moaning, couldn't help continuing to move against Ed even as he relaxed into orgasm—whined (god, how embarrassing) when Ed slipped away. But Ed was fishing thorough the nightstand drawer again, rooting around desperately until he came up with a tin of condoms. Roy's head was spinning so much with lust and drink and sheer disbelief that he didn't really figure out what was going on until Ed was rolling the condom down over him, and then he thrust up into Ed's downward grip, and moaned—couldn't help it—when Ed followed the downward path of his fist with his mouth.
It didn't take long for him to come, like that, in the heat and wet of Ed's mouth, and the noises he made when he did were hard and sharp and made Ed moan too. Afterward Ed eased off him, stripped away the condom, and said, "We're going to get your blood tested soon," with surprising fervency.
"Right," Roy said, thinking of the natural extension of that, which was that Ed wanted to do it again without a condom. There was no way he was going to be able to get hard again so soon, but still, the thought made him feel faint.
"Glad you agree," Ed said, and tucked in against him, one arm across his stomach, still wet with Ed's semen.
The thing with his face was carving symbols in his skin, symbols of life and death and betrayal and forgiveness, creatures he had never seen, fire in the sky—and then it raised its head and looked at him, met his eyes with its matching yellow gaze and said, 'You will never be free of me now—'
— and Ed lurched to wakefulness, hands pressed to his stomach, gasping for breath.
Beside him, Roy had slithered half to his knees, and now leaned over him like a very concerned panther. "What —?"
"N-nothing," Ed said, feeling the flutter of his belly belie his words.
"Bad dream?"
Ha. "Yeah," he said, because it was true, even if incomplete. "Yeah."
"Well," Roy said, reaching across him for the clock, "it's almost eight. Do you want to try to sleep again? I'll . . . stay here with you, if you want."
The thought of human touch was comforting; the thought of closing his eyes to the darkness behind his eyelids, less so. "I'll be okay," he said. "I'll get up." He sat up, swung his legs off the bed, and became aware of two things: his naked, sweaty, semen-spattered self, and the faint hangover headache throbbing between his temples.
Roy was looking at him with concern. "Are you all right?"
"M'fine," he said. "Head hurts a little."
"I have aspirin. Or food, if you'd rather."
"Breakfast would be good," Ed said.
There was coffee, and oatmeal. Ed teased him pro forma about oatmeal ("Easy on your teeth, old man?") and then devoured it, slathered with milk and brown sugar, beneath Roy's bemused gaze. Food in his stomach always allayed the sick feeling of his hangover. When he was done, he reached for his jacket.
"Going already?" Roy asked, in a voice as clear and dark as deep water. Ed didn't know what that tone meant.
"Al's gonna worry," Ed said. "I always get home before daybreak." And the sun was already a good handspan above the horizon, now.
"Of course," Roy said, in that same unreadable tone.
On his walk home, though, Ed couldn't get Roy out of his head. He wasn't the first—he was, in fact, precisely the third, although one of his past lovers had been a very casual fling—but he was the first to fill up his brain quite like this: hands, mouth, eyes, the rumble of his voice, the way he'd laughed when Ed had rubbed his chin on his shoulder like a cat . . . . The whole thing made Ed's stomach fill with fireflies, like he'd swallowed a thundercloud. He wanted to fight, but he didn't so much want to find a bar and fight. He wanted —
Maybe Al would spar with him when he got home.
"You want to take a shower before sparring?" Al asked. He wasn't sure, but he thought Ed blushed.
"Uh," Ed said. "Yeah."
"You have a new boyfriend?" Al asked, and the faint blush on Ed's cheekbones turned to sheer brick-red embarrassment. Bingo!
"You might say that," Ed muttered, ducking into the bathroom with a hunch to his shoulders. But it was a much better hunch than his usual depressed-sullen slump; it was just fraternal embarrassment, and Al had known how to deal with that for years.
"Good thing!" he called after Ed. "You were a lot easier to deal with when the Pieter thing was going okay."
Ed's ears turned an almost incandescent shade of red, and the door slammed shut. Al grinned.
He and his brother were alike in many ways (alchemical ability, intellectual curiosity—though that had taken a worrying dip with Ed so mysteriously depressed these days—and devotion to family) and so unalike in other ways (temper, temperament, social tendencies). And one of the ways they were unalike: Al liked girls. Ed liked girls and boys, but mostly boys.
Al had no issue with that, especially as it meant that his pursuit of women (theoretically, at least; he hadn't gotten up the courage to make any moves yet, especially as unfamiliar as he was with his own body) wasn't going to be hindered too much by his handsome, intelligent and attention-attracting older brother. But he wished Ed was more comfortable bringing people home. He'd only met Pieter right before that particular relationship had ended.
The water shut off, and then Ed emerged in his familiar black undershirt and jeans. "Okay," he said, "let's do this thing."
That was so classically Ed that it made Al feel hopeful.
Their flat had no yard or garden, but there was a park not too far away. Al won the first bout, and the second, lost the third, won the fourth. By the end, Ed was cursing and laughing and oh, that was such a good sign after months of sleeping late and surling at the world . . . .
"Damn it!" Ed said. "How come you had to get the growth spurt, huh?"
"If you can't beat somebody who didn't even have a body for four years, that's pretty sad, brother," Al said, giddy with endorphins and adrenaline. It had taken him months to get back to where he could beat Ed—he'd had to relearn the use of his body, something that sparring had helped a lot with—but now he had a height advantage and a reach advantage, and he was stronger if not faster. "Teacher would be so disappointed in you."
"Teacher would beat your ass around the block, and you know it," Ed said, throwing a towel at Al.
"Well," Al said, mopping his sweaty face, "true." He took a long drink of water from his canteen, and then said, "So, are you going to spill any details about the mystery lover."
Ed was silent a long time, flushed or perhaps blushing. "What mystery lover?" he finally asked, weakly.
"Oh, come on. You come home later even than usual, looking tired and happy, and you insist on a shower before sparring instead of waiting for after. C'mon. Tell."
"You never give me any details about your girlfriends."
"That's because I don't have any, and you know it," Al said. "I still don't know if anyone would put up with—"
"They would," Ed said, vehemently and almost angrily. "You're awesome. You'd totally be worth a little awkwardness."
"Well," Al said. "Anyway, when I have a girlfriend, whenever that may be, I'll share all the details. Are you going to tell me about your new boy?"
"He's not exactly a boy," Ed said. "He's actually kind of a bast—" And then he bit his tongue, and went white.
"A bit of a bastard?" Al said, faintly.
Ed said nothing, but his blood-drained skin suddenly flushed bright red again.
"You don't mean," Al said. Ed used invective about a lot of people, but that particular insult was reserved for . . . .
"Al—"
"Roy Mustang?"
"Al—"
"I told him to look after you! This wasn't exactly what I intended!"
"You told him to what?" Ed could always turn on an emotional dime, but the hairpin from 'embarrassed' to 'furious' was still remarkable.
"Ed, you've been so—"
"So what?"
"So depressed. And doing reckless things because of it. And—"
"So you thought I needed a babysitter?"
"If I thought you'd needed a babysitter I would've called Maria," Al said. Ed snorted. "A friend, Ed. A friend. But not—"
"See, this is why I wasn't going to tell you. What exactly are you pissy about?"
"You hate him! I wasn't exactly trying to encourage your self-destructive behavior."
"I don't," Ed said, quietly but so firmly that it made Al pause. "He frustrates the everliving fuck out of me, but I don't hate him."
Al hesitated. "Well," he said. "That's good."
Ed . . . snorted. "You really are a master of the understatement. Are you done flipping out? Yes, I had sex with Roy Mustang, yes, he's fifteen years older than me and used to be my commanding officer, yes, I'd do it again, no, I don't hate him, and I don't care whether you approve. Sorry."
"Okay," Al said, softly.
The sobering thing about Alphonse was that he wasn't temperamental like his brother. He wasn't going to fly off the handle. Which meant that if he decided to disassemble Roy for parts, it would be because, in his considered and very reasonable judgement, Roy deserved it.
Somehow that made the calm, measuring look in his eyes (a shade darker than Ed's, almost but not quite bronze) even more unnerving.
"I was concerned for your brother," Roy said. "That wasn't a lie."
"So you decided to sleep with him." Calm. No inflection. Alphonse was watching him with the same careful look that Roy thought of as 'prowling panther' when Ed gave it.
Roy . . . exhaled. He could have reasonably told Alphonse that that wasn't his business, that it was between Roy and Ed. But faced with Al's level gaze, what he said was, "No. That was . . . mutual attraction. Probably I should have worked harder to resist it, but it didn't have anything to do with Edward's . . . situation."
"Hm," Alphonse said, and then changed the subject. And that was all the information Roy could glean.
The phone call came after midnight. Roy rolled over to answer it, not bothering to disguise the sleepy tone in his voice.
It was Riza, who didn't bother to ask if she'd waked him. "I thought you ought to know. There's been a break-in at the Aerugasque embassy."
Roy's stomach dropped, cold as Briggs. "They must be livid."
"They haven't heard," Riza said, "and if we're careful, they won't."
"They haven't—"
"The local police noticed an alchemical flare at the back wall of the embassy, and then witnessed a cloaked figure fleeing the scene. As far as we can tell, there is no uproar in the embassy, nor any kind of outcry. If we're lucky."
Alchemical flare. "Who—"
"I think it's up to you to figure that out," Riza said, dryly.
"I hate you," he said.
"You charmer," she replied, and then, on cue, there was a banging at his door.
"I think there's my answer," he said.
"I'll see you tomorrow," Riza agreed, and then he clicked the phone back into its cradle and went down to answer the door.
He expected it to be Ed, cloaked as in the description. He didn't expect Ed to be bleeding heavily from a wound on his leg, another on his arm.
"Dogs," Ed said. "There were dogs, I don't—think I hurt them—god, it's inhumane the way they treat—"
"Breathe," Roy said. "Just breathe."
"I got it for you," Ed said.
"Got what?" Roy said, and Ed held out a package . . .
. . . containing . . . papers. Lots of papers.
"You'll be able to get some pretty good fucking blackmail there," Ed said, and laughed, and then bent over. "Shit. Ow."
Roy felt lightheaded. "Let me see your injuries."
He stripped Ed, to a chorus of Ed's salacious remarks interspersed with pained gasps. Dogs, indeed: Ed had been bitten on the calf and on his arm; he'd also bruised his ribs getting away from them. He sat naked in the bath—Roy ignored the spike of his lust, seeing him shining with water—and put disinfectant on his wounds, bandaged them, gave him aspirin and water for the bruising. "You'll see a doctor tomorrow."
"Hunh," Ed said. "Aren't you going to thank me?"
"I don't want to encourage you to pull that kind of stunt again."
"It wasn't a—hah—stunt. It was—I don't want there to be a war either, you idiot."
"There are other ways to—"
"There isn't anything else I can do," Ed snapped, and in a moment Roy could see that that was that. Ed didn't have any patience and he had relatively little faith in others, but if he could do it himself . . . .
"Thank you," Roy said. "And if you do it again, I'll wring your neck."
Ed grinned at him.
They made love slowly and more carefully than usual, because of Ed's bandages and the bruising on his ribs. Still, the taste of Ed's cock in his mouth was enough to make Roy's eyes very nearly roll back, and the way Ed moved beneath him, moved and moved, strong and insistent as the sea . . . .
"Gonna come," Ed rasped, head thrown back, one hand clutching the sheets, the other splayed awkwardly on the pillow with its bandage stark against his golden skin.
Roy hummed, and Ed writhed, cried out, came. Roy kept him there until he was spent, then nuzzled the join of his thigh to his body, nuzzled his unbruised side, kissed his way up to settle against an exhausted, grinning Ed.
There was a period of peaceful silence. Then Ed said, "It won't prevent a war permanently."
"I know," Roy said.
Another silence. Roy stroked his hair, worked out the kinks from his braid.
"I meant what I said," Roy said, and Ed raised his head. "I don't want to be another way you try to destroy yourself."
"Hunh," Ed said.
"I mean it," Roy said.
"I know," Ed said, and smiled, and lay his head back.
The telegraph went straight from Roy's office—with the blessing of President Delauney—to the office of the Aerugasque ambassador, with a few choice morsels that indicated that he could be blackmailed. Within a day, intelligence reports indicated some amount of strife within Aerugo's government. Within three days, reports came that Aerugo was standing down its battle-readiness.
"It's just temporary," Riza cautioned him, as they looked at the map together.
"I know," Roy said. "But any more time we have is more time to convince the rest of the government that we can't maintain this stance of aggression. Eventually it will come back on our heads."
Riza looked at him sideways, smiled. "And how have you done convincing others that a permanent stance of aggression is unwise?"
He didn't ask how she knew. She was Riza; she had sources he had never questioned. Instead, he thought of Ed, bright-shining in his bed, and said, "We're getting there."