Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Love is a scene I render
when you catch me wide awake

Love is a dream you enter
though I shake and shake and shake you

–Lion's Mane, Iron & Wine

—Prologue: 1914, East City—

The first time Ed really surprised him was followed closely by the second time, in a one-two sucker punch that left him reeling—quietly, and without admitting it to anyone—for years. In 1914 Ed was fifteen and prowled across the country hunting any trace of a miracle he could get his greedy little hands on, with his tin brother in tow. When he came back to Eastern headquarters, he was a nuisance at worst and entertaining at best. The two of them wouldn't begin to respect each other for a few years yet, and in the absence of that, they were stuck in a strange, mean stalemate where they constantly tried to fuck with each other, Roy with some semblance of subtly and Ed with as much fanfare as possible. Looking back, Roy thought, it was embarrassing how little he could control him.

The afternoon in question was on a sweltering summer day and Roy’s wing of HQ was under renovation. The walls of his office had been broken down and covered with sheeted plastic and plywood that reeked in the heat, and construction workers came and went all hours of the day.

He'd also heard that the Elric brothers were back in town, which wasn't ideal. Ed would transmute the walls of his office into a gothic cathedral made of chrome, or whatever else the boy’s horrendous sense of taste thought was cool.

Sure enough, there was a thump and a scrape at his office door. It opened a crack and Ed stuck his head in.

“Come help, you bastard.”

Roy glanced up. “With what?”

Ed huffed, "I'm carrying—building stuff—for some guys. Hurry, this stupid door is breaking my foot."

Roy rolled his eyes and went leisurely to the door. Ed stood in the hallway with his arms piled high with two-by-fours, alone. Roy peered down the hall.

"Where's your brother?"

"Who knows? Take this!" Ed fumbled half the lumber into Roy's arms, more than half. He took off down the hall and his mismatched footfalls echoed off the walls. "Follow me. They want it in the unfinished wing."

Roy hefted what he could over his shoulder. "May I ask why you're running errands for construction workers?"

"Because they asked me to! I wasn't raised by wolves."

"Could have fooled me."

"Get fucked, I'm plenty polite."

Roy felt sweat bead at his brow. Regret loomed. Ed turned sharply into the new corridor that was being built at the end of the hall, plastic sheeting flapping in his wake. The unfinished extension was bright with the afternoon sun, cooler than Roy's stuffy office, and empty. Ed trotted to the far corner and dumped his armful of lumber down, and Roy did the same.

"It's been a pleasure running pointless errands with you, Fullmetal," Roy said dryly. "Next time, get your brother to help. He doesn't get tired."

"Wait," Ed said sharply. Roy turned.

"You have something heavier you'd like me to tote around? A table saw? Some lengths of industrial chain?"

He went quiet when he saw the intense look on Ed's face. He wasn't sure how to interpret it and didn't want to.

Ed said, "What are you doing after work?"

Roy went perfectly still. He felt sweat bloom on the back of his neck, his short hairs standing up. He glanced behind him to see who else Ed could possibly be talking to.

"Pardon me?"

Ed shifted his weight from foot to foot. He didn't look nervous, exactly, but he looked wary and on edge, like it was him who was being cornered and not Roy.

Ed said, "Yeah, like… would you wanna… do something?"

Roy's mouth fell open. The world tilted on its axis. “Do I ‘wanna do something’?”

"Yeah, y'know. I don't know. A drink."

"A drink, with you."

"Yeah."

Roy didn't understand where he was. He didn't know how he got from his office to the parallel universe he was in then, with his sweating palms, being asked out by a small child. He stared at Ed so hard his vision began to tunnel. He had to clear his throat before he spoke, and he spoke painfully slowly.

"I assume you're aware of this, but I'm worried you aren't, so I have to tell you: you are fifteen years old."

Ed scowled. "Thanks for the update. It don't mean at like a bar, just like… something…" He trailed off and Roy finished the sentence with the only logical option: Something private. Quiet. Your place.

Roy devoured superhero comics when he was a child and often worried that someone out there, in real life, could read his mind like some villain in a story. When he was young, he would have some mean and intrusive thought, then pause and think: If anyone's listening, I'm sorry for all that. I'm not bad, I didn’t mean it. This moment reminded him of that: it was as if someone had dug around in his brain, pulled out the worst, most unforgivable thought he'd ever had, and put him on a trial for it. Something so bad he'd never realized he thought it at all, a possibility that scared him so badly that he didn't allow himself to even consider that it would come to light.

He had made a mistake. He didn't know where, but he must have. He couldn't believe that Ed would do this without having gotten some indicator—however infinitesimally small—that his advances were welcome.

"You're joking," Roy said quietly. Ed didn't crumple. He stood up taller.

"That's a no, then."

"Yes, that's a no, Fullmetal." Roy's voice shook, and as far as reasons went, anger was easiest to lean into. Anger was hot and bright and simple, and it fixed everything. If he berated Ed to within an inch of his life, if he obliterated him, he'd be better for it. He'd understand. "You are unfathomably lucky that it's me you're talking to, because there are men on this base who would end your career, if not your life, for suggesting to them what you just did to me."

Ed snorted and rolled his eyes. If he was hurt, he hid it well.

"You're overreacting. If you wanna say no, just—"

"Think very hard about what you just said. You've insinuated that, based on what you know of my character, I would be romantically interested in a teenage boy. You. Because you wouldn't have asked otherwise. Do you understand how that comes across?"

"Don't be a—"

"It's insanely disrespectful, and I don't mean because of our ranks and situation. It would be disrespectful between two humans anywhere, in any context."

"Oh, fucking excuse me for thinking you might actually—"

"What," Roy barked, "did you think? Did you think I'd drop to my knees and fucking service you, Fullmetal?"

It was if he'd slapped him. "Fuck, I didn't—"

"You are half my age!" Roy shouted before he checked himself. He lowered his voice to an incensed hiss. "And despite what you may think, you are not an adult. You do not look like an adult, you do not act like an adult, and you couldn't be mistaken for one."

"I—"

"I'll spell it out so we don’t have to have this conversation again: I do not see you as an equal. I do not consider you a prospective partner. Being smart does not change anything, nor does living a difficult life. You are not even mature for your age. Have I made myself clear?"

He could see in Ed’s wild eyes that he was seething. It was petty (Ed was rubbing off on him) but Roy wanted to fight him. It would be so easy and so good to make him spit and snarl and be allowed to, however dishonorably, have an outlet for his anger. If they fought, they would both get to play their childish game, and Roy would win. He wasn't mature for his age, either. But Ed would cast that first stone, he knew it. Ed was young and dumb and couldn't process his feelings, he threw tantrums, he denied allegations, he twisted words around. Ed, now, would screech and blow the whole wing to bits and try to convince him that he was wrong.

Ed rolled his right shoulder in its socket until there was a metallic click and a locomotive sound, like pressure escaping. Roy could see the muscles in his jaw move as he clenched his teeth.

"Crystal fucking clear," Ed said. He didn't transmute anything or throw any punches. Hatred radiated off him like nothing else and he remained quiet, contemplative, still. Ed had directed that anger at him before, but never with such gravity. "Anything else, sir?"

This was the second time that Ed surprised him: he just took it.

"Don't tell a single soul about this," Roy said, ignoring Ed's sarcasm. "You don't need me to tell you that."

Ed nodded, then walked past Roy with a wide berth and left the unfinished hallway, with its plastic walls and shafts of sunlight coming in through the ceiling. Roy stood there a few minutes longer and let humiliation and guilt swallow him whole.

—

Afterwards, every time Ed was in a room with him, Roy cringed visibly until Ed was out of that room. Where there used to be a hint of good nature, there was now acid and bile, and sometimes nothing at all; Ed avoided speaking to him altogether when he could. Things got easier as time dulled how awkward it was or, more accurately, as their lives became so complicated and dangerous that they couldn’t afford to be awkward anymore, but Roy understood the sacrifice he'd made. Regret was a strong word, and not one Roy used, but he could have been kinder. It wouldn't do either of them any good to bring it up now.

The next time Roy was in Central, loosened by whiskey, he told Hughes about it. He didn’t know how to process things without running them through Hughes like a filter for his conscience. Hughes never seemed to mind, and had been doing it for so long that they were both used to the arrangement. Roy stumbled around it when he finally got it out.

"Fullmetal has a… He has feelings. For me."

There was a long pause. Longer than anything. It hadn't come up naturally, Roy had just said it during a lull. They sat in a tight booth in the back corner of a dusty wooden bar where late afternoon sun spilled in through the blinds. It was too early for them to be drinking.

Hughes asked, "How do you know?"

"He told me."

"You must've misunderstood."

Roy laughed quietly. "Christ, I wish. He all but propositioned me."

This pause was shorter. Hughes swirled his melting ice around in his glass. "And what did you do?"

"I'm going to pretend I'm not wildly insulted by you asking that." Roy flicked his thumb nail against his glass, his glove deadening the tink tink tink. "I shouted at him."

"Aw, jeez, Roy."

"He wasn't—he's so—insufferable. He's absolutely infuriating. I had to, I had to make sure he knows…" He trailed off. "You should've heard what he said to me, Maes. Like I was a stranger at a bar. The fucking stones on that kid."

"That's no reason to yell at him, it's not his fault."

"Having a big head is his fault. It's all our faults. No one's ever told him no, and now he thinks he runs the world. Anyone else would shut up about it." He knocked back the rest of his drink. "They'd be ashamed of themselves. Appropriately so."

Hughes laughed. "He doesn't know what shame is. That's not all bad, is it? To be so confident so young?"

"Don't defend him, you didn't hear him. Everyone has a crush on their teacher, or drill sergeant, or something as a child, but you don't—who would—" Roy was coming apart. He didn't want Hughes to see it. "I realize it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it's disgusting. He's brought it into my life and now I have to know about it, and think about it, and it's disgusting."

Hughes eyed him thoughtfully. "You're really bent out of shape over this, huh?"

"It's—it's—I'm appalled, I don't need this. Wouldn't you be?"

"I dunno, it's never come up.” Hughes smiled. “Do you think he went for it because he knows you… y’know.”

Roy flushed. “No, I don’t know.”

Hughes leaned in with a wolfish grin.

"C'mon, we were in the same dorm building. I know you weren't tutoring those guys."

Roy put his hands over his eyes. "Maes, please. We've gone ten years without having this conversation and I'd like to go another ten."

"Well, you brought it up! It's topical now! Maybe the kid could sense it in you. Is that a thing? Pardon my ignorance, I’m not of the life."

"If you're trying to make me feel better by joking around, don't."

"You should feel better. It's not your fault that Ed made some insanely bold assumptions, you didn't do anything wrong."

"You can't know that. I… I worry I must have did something to him. Given him some kind of…"

"I sincerely doubt that you did." Hughes scrubbed his hair and sighed. "He just runs with things. You're not wrong about his ego. We could all do more to tug him back down to earth."

—

Just months later, Hughes was murdered and the number of people who knew how Ed felt about him dropped back to just him and Ed. After, it felt like Roy didn’t sleep or eat for months and became a husk driven by grief and revenge. Ed was everywhere and told him nothing, and Roy’s neat little life unravelled completely.

In his personal all-consuming dark, after their gates were opened, there was a moment where hands grabbed at his arms, five hard fingers, five soft. Roy shut his eyes uselessly; there were no shapes of red dancing in his vision as if they were just closed, it was all black, nothing.

There was a cheek against his and warm breath against his sore skin. A sound that was almost a laugh.

"I never thought you'd be here," Ed said into his ear, "at the end of it."

Roy leaned heavy against him as his legs gave out. There, with nothing, he didn't think anything of the closeness. He half forgot it as soon as it happened; human comfort, given when needed.

Ed retired as a state alchemist, obviously. They let him go without much ceremony for obvious reasons, but Hawkeye organized a very nice evening at a local restaurant, once Al was up and moving, that both brothers seemed to enjoy. Roy remembered that Ed kept his new right arm hidden in the sleeve of a big sweatshirt to hide how much smaller it was than his left. No one asked Ed what he would do with his new life free of alchemy. A bird with clipped wings, Roy thought ruefully. If he hadn't burned a bridge on that hot summer day, he would've given anything to know how Ed felt about it all.

After Ed left the military, the brothers came and went from Central for a few years. Al was in Xing often for reasons that were never fully explained. And then eventually, as subtly as they'd worked their way into the lives and hearts of Roy's whole team, they left them.

A year passed since they'd seen them, and then it was two. Roy stopped scanning the newspaper for mentions of their exploits after not seeing any for a while, unsure that the brothers still did exploits. They became less like people in their memories and more inextricably linked to the horrible events of that year, and were spoken of the way people speak about devastating hurricanes after they pass through. Roy wondered abstractly where Ed had gone, without making any effort at all to find out.

— 1921, somewhere west of Esfakot, North Area —

Roy thought about Ed as he trudged through knee-high snow with a dozen men under his command. His train of thought went: It’s freezing cold. What if it were summer? Remember that one extremely hot summer in East City? The unfinished corridor. Edward. It had been nearly seven years ago and Roy was still embarrassed when he remembered; embarrassed for Ed, embarrassed for himself. And there was a tiny part of him that had softened enough over time to be flattered: to date, Ed was his highest-profile suitor.

He squeezed his eyes shut hard, then opened them. Not the time.

He pulled out a glove, kept in a waterproof bag in his breast pocket, and snapped his fingers. Sparks danced across his face, what little was exposed between his hat and the warmer pulled up over his nose. He looked over his shoulder to the men stumbling behind him and snapped again, warming each in turn. There was too much moisture in the air for it to be effective and he spent as much energy warming their bodies as he did their guns. They nodded their thanks with their faces buried in caps and scarves.

“Just to the tree line head!” he yelled over the howling wind. “We’ll set up camp!”

It was nearly dawn and they had been moving all night. They left Central two weeks ago on reports that Drachman forces were edging down around the mountains, swinging wide past Briggs through the thick, black forests to the east. Intelligence from the small towns that dotted the border put a group of Drachman soldiers moving southwest through the frozen bogs and marshes towards North City, and the plan was to proceed quietly towards them from the south and engage before they reached the cities. Roy was sent because his flame alchemy increased the team’s chances of survival in the cold from “zero” to “not zero.”

The team he had with him was good, he wouldn’t let them down. A man named Donald was up front, a wall of a human who was maybe the second best shot he’d ever seen. Behind him were Dennis, Wyat, Helen, their nervous comms man, Jaema, and others still. But Roy was so, so tired, they all were. Based on what they knew, they were supposed to have intercepted Drachman forces the night before, and they hadn’t. Every moment that passed as night turned into dawn had Roy on pins and needles; either they’d gotten bad intel and the Drachmans weren’t where they thought they were, or they knew they were coming and they were the ones being intercepted.

When they made it to the safety of the trees ahead, they would set up camp and rest. A tripwire around the perimeter would keep them safe from full-frontal attacks, and if anyone—

He heard the first bullet whiz by his cheek. He spun around to face his team.

“Get down!”

The second shot got him through the stomach.

He staggered forward. If he fell and got his glove wet, it was over for him. He heard the rat-tat-tat of gunfire over his head and the squeak of boots in snow as a hot and pulsing pain bloomed through his entire body.

“In the trees!” Donald shouted. “Eleven o’clock! Keep low!”

Roy shoved a hand against the bullet wound; it didn’t feel wet, but he wasn't sure that was good. He turned and snapped his fingers and the front row of trees a hundred yards away were set ablaze. He thought he heard screams. Gunfire sounded all around him, most of it, he hoped, from his team.

“Push forward!” he yelled. “Get out of this fucking snow!”

Shouts of assent. There was a hand on his back, yanking on his arm, pulling him up.

“Keep your hand in your jacket, General, we need—” Jaema paused as more guns rattled. “There’s a settlement or something just west of here, I don’t know what—they radioed earlier when we asked about supplies, it could just be a couple cabins, but they’ll have—Get down, sir!”

He pulled Roy down. The thought of not being there for his men, now of all times, burned angry and hot through Roy's gut. He popped up and spotted a few figures through the snow that was falling fast now, snapped his fingers, and everything around them turned to wet. The grass became so dry it burned, surrounded by snow. He saw Donald charge ahead, but the hand he had pressed to his stomach was soaked and warm now and he felt the heavy and irresistible lure of unconsciousness pull him under.

—

He only came to when his boots clacked on tile floor and not snow. An arm was shoved under his and there was yelling. It was finally warm. He didn’t understand where he was, only that he was somewhere else, and his nose and ears were on fire from the cold.

There was a face in his face, wide features and a baritone voice.

“He’s not lookin’ too hot. Are there others?”

“Just him. Please, please—” Jaema.

Roy's heavy layers were peeled off and he caught a glimpse of his snow-white winter fatigues soaked with blood. He was eased down onto something plush, a bed, a gurney, and finally his aching legs could rest. His feet were so cold they burned in agony; he struggled for his gloves and his hands were pushed gently away, rest, sir, you’re safe here.

He looked around for touchpoints, anything. The whitewashed walls were dirty and fluorescent lights hummed above him in cracked casings. There was a set of double doors at the end of the hall that opened both ways. It was a hospital, then, in the middle of nowhere.

The doors banged open. The doctor who stormed in was small and blond and Roy thought: Twice in one day. Here of all places, I’m reminded of him.

Roy's head lolled to the side and he tried to focus. The man who confronted Jaema before was speaking to the blond, and Roy kept watching, eager for something to focus on besides his blinding pain.

He heard, "skirmish by the forest," and "slug went right through him."

The blond came up to his gurney. Looking up at him, Roy knew instantly, with a sharp breath—he didn't remind him of Ed, he was Ed.

He looked world-weary and grim, but his eyes burned the same gold as they used to. His gaze was, as always, faintly accusatory; back in the day, Roy often thought of him as some rude imp of God, passing judgment and doling out punishments as he saw fit. His hair was scraped into a ponytail that trailed down his back. Blondish stubble marred his jaw.

"Oh," Ed said flatly. "You."

Over five years apart and it amounted to oh, you.

"It can’t be you," Roy said, in too much pain to trust himself. He had too much experience being in pain to not know what it did to you.

Ed said, "Focus on not dying, we can do the teary reunion later." He started to push his gurney and called out to the other man; the speed and urgency with which he moved made Roy nervous. "Ryder! Room eight's free?"

"For a general? You bet, boss."

Roy watched the lights scroll by on the ceiling. Ed leaned down near Roy's head as they hurried him down the hall. "Who knows I'm here?"

"No one, I didn't even—can we worry about my blood loss?"

"Always so demanding," Ed snorted. "We'll get you fixed up. If anyone gets to kill you, it’s gonna be me. God be damned if I'm gonna let some asshole with a gun do it."

The pain from Roy's abdomen spread hot up his chest until his whole body ached. He felt himself shaking but couldn't stop. The gurney turned sharply through a doorway and he heard the sounds of people bustling around him.

"Alright, folks!" Ed announced loudly to the room. "Bullet wound! Abdomen! You know what we need here!"

The flurry of motion continued and Roy bobbed in and out of consciousness. He heard carbon, iron, whatever's in blood, objects being passed over his prone body, a light in his face. He was lifted by several hands from the gurney to something harder beneath him, and the crinkle of paper. Gentle hands peeled off his shirt.

He heard Ed's voice somewhere, not to him, "Remember to account for the damaged fatty tissue. Burst capillaries. We've got blood, but if we can make some, that's ideal. Hey." Louder. Roy opened his eyes to see Ed's face hanging over his. "This is gonna feel weird and hurt like hell, but it's better than the regular way." He grinned. "Trust me, I'm a doctor."

There was a flash of bluish light and Roy felt like his insides were being torn apart. He couldn't describe the feeling if he'd tried; something pulling, swelling, moving around inside him. He felt himself slipping under and went willingly to escape the pain.

—

Roy awoke in a bed in a small, gray room with one window and no medical equipment. The blinds on the window were shut and he couldn't tell what time it was. The door was glass and wire like a screen door and every few moments he would see someone walk by in the hallway outside.

It took him a minute to notice that he wasn't in pain, and he expected to be. He prodded his stomach gently; tenderness, but no sharp pain or bandages. They must have done some kind of medical alchemy but he didn't know the specifics and he'd never seen it used before, not like that.

He heard Ed's voice out in the hall before he saw him. It was a little deeper than it had been when he was young, but it still carried that subtle Eastern twang.

"She's been here for three days, are you kidding me? We need the bed."

Another voice. "She says there's still pain in her left leg."

Ed made a guttural, frustrated sound. "Are we sure? There's kind of no do-overs with this."

He came into the room with another person, a willowy figure with short, fair hair, wearing the same white coat that he was. The other doctor glanced at Roy and went to say something, but Ed continued.

"That's unless she wants Martin cutting her open to run quality control. But no one wants that, except maybe Martin." Ed puttered around the room, talking to his colleague and not looking at Roy. He walked around the far side of the bed and opened the curtains. It was darker outside than Roy thought and fat snowflakes fell steadily. "You could draft up something exploratory, we've done that before. Not necessarily mending but strengthening any gaps, in case we, I dunno, left out a shard of bone or something."

He had become a beautiful young man somewhere in those lost years and Roy felt sick at the realization. His eyes tracked obsessively over all the ways Ed was different and the same; his jaw was sharper and his shoulders were wider, he grew into those big doe eyes and he was taller, imagine that, but not by much. He still stood obsessively straight (for the added height, Roy always figured) and he had the same wry mouth, the same straight nose. He was a vision, one Roy wished he hadn't seen.

Ed's colleague nodded at his words. "If nothing else, it'll make her feel heard."

Ed's golden eyes finally landed on Roy. "You're up."

It was surreal, seeing him so unexpectedly after so many years. Roy hardly recognized him without that braid and red duster.

"How long was I out?"

"Half a day. It’s lunch."

The other doctor came up to Roy's bed while Ed lingered at the foot and managed to look menacing.

The doctor said, "I'm Georgie. Nice to meet you, General."

"Likewise. Thank you for all this, but—where are my men?"

"You were the only one who was injured," they said. Ed chuckled and Roy ignored him. "I believe they're staying in town, or back at your camp. But we can talk about that later. First, how are you feeling?"

"Fine. Good," Roy said, still letting his eyes flick over to Ed. He couldn't stop. "A bit of tenderness, but nothing bad."

Georgie's brow furrowed. "That's not good, there shouldn't be any pain at all." They looked up at Ed. "Doc?"

Ed hummed thoughtfully. "If we missed any burn damage from the bullet as it went in or out, that would be a different type of tissue to reconstruct, and if we didn't do it, that's internal bleeding. If you feel good about it, you could get in there for a look and go from there."

Georgie nodded seriously. "I can do it."

"Cool. I'll grab the stuff." Ed pointed a finger at Roy. "Be nice."

Roy recoiled. "Wh—I'm always nice!"

Ed left the room and Roy's head buzzed with questions to ask Georgie about him. He tried to decide which was more important: Ed's sudden re-entrance into his life or the strange medical alchemy they were doing.

Georgie beat him to it. "You're Ed's friend?"

Roy laughed. "That would be generous. We used to work together."

They went to a cupboard against the wall and pulled out a big sheaf of paper and a small notebook. "Oh? Working where?"

Roy froze. They knew he was in the military, they called him by his title. Where else would he have met Ed, if not when he was a state alchemist?

Unless they didn't know that Ed was a state alchemist. Because Ed hadn't told them.

"At…" Roy floundered. He'd never done anything else, he hardly knew what civilian jobs looked like. "... a laboratory in Central. He was commissioned to do some work for my department."

"Very cool," Georgie said, clearly not thinking much of it. They sat at a chair and started to scribble arrays in the notebook. "It's a small world. With all these cars now, people are really getting around."

"They are," Roy agreed. "How long has Edward worked here? If you don't mind."

Georgie looked up, deeply amused. "Edward."

Roy winced. How could Ed hide so much? Roy would be stepping on Ed's toes no matter what he said; he was lucky he hadn’t called him Fullmetal. "Ed," he corrected. The sharp little name felt strange on his tongue.

Georgie laughed. "Funny. Well, I've known him for about a year, when I first came here. He opened the clinic about three years ago, last I heard, so he's been here since then at least."

Ed blundered back into the room with glass jars in his arms, full of strange substances. "I think this is everything you'll need. Got an array?"

"I've got this." Georgie held up their notebook. "It should account for the work we've already done and identify any broken capillaries we missed. I figured there could be internal bleeding."

"Likely. It's good, get it down."

Georgie spread out the paper on the top of the cabinet and started to sketch on it with a piece of chalk. Ed's jars clinked loudly as he set them down. Seeing him with two flesh hands made Roy's heart jump. He had scars on the knuckles of his left that weren't on his right and there was dirt (or blood, something black) under the nails on both.

Roy did some quick math: Ed would be twenty-one or twenty-two, if he remembered right. Still fifteen years Roy's junior, because time and space hadn't bent to his will before and weren't going to now.

Guilt hit him hard across the mouth because he shouldn't have been doing age math upon meeting an old colleague after years apart. He was too fucking old to nickel and dime it, and Ed was… complicated. Fifteen or twenty-two, he was a snare trap of a human being and Roy had to know better. He had to.

He watched Ed's ponytail swing as he weighed out little piles of substances into a metal bowl, and he worried that he did not, in fact, know better. Ed was a snare trap and Roy was a stupid rabbit who would die for a sprig of alfalfa.

Ed caught him looking. Roy expected some snide comment, but Ed just held his gaze for a long moment before turning back to his jars. This was a new Edward, he was quickly learning. Here, he was a private young man who left behind some secret life to open a magic hospital in the woods. Ed, not Edward. Doc.

Georgie finished their array and showed it to Ed, who made a few quick edits. They pulled a kind of tray from under the lip of Roy's bed, like a pull-out leaf on a dining table. The array was placed on that, and then Ed unceremoniously dumped out the pile of whatever he'd been mixing.

Georgie asked Roy, "Are you an alchemist, sir?"

Roy looked up. "Hm? Yes."

"Only alchemists seem to be interested in all this. Other patients just lay back and wait for it to be done."

Ed's glinting eyes landed on Roy's. "Have you figured it out?"

Roy said, "It's… just alchemy. Hyper-specific medical alchemy. You're breaking down damaged tissue and using materials to create new… body stuff. Correct?"

"Nailed it," Ed said. "It's crazy that it's never like this, eh? Traditional medical alchemy doesn't get into the actual reconstruction, not by supplying additional materials. So I just thought… we know what we're made of, so why not make more?"

"Those arrays are insanely complex." Roy leaned over and watched Georgie prepare to place their hands on the array under him, and he tensed involuntarily. "Your average alchemist wouldn't be able to account for the changes in composition between capillaries, tissues, fluids…"

"We're very fortunate to have Ed," Georgie said reverently. "Quiet now, and hold still."

Ed moved up the bed to Roy's other side. He said to Georgie, "Fortunate my ass. You drew that."

Georgie ignored him. There was the flash of blue again and Roy flinched. It didn't hurt but he felt something moving somewhere and that was bad enough. It was indescribably strange.

"You came up with this," he said quietly to Ed.

"If you wanna think of it like that, sure. Everyone knows how now, I just taught 'em."

Roy leaned over again to peer at the array. "How did you even begin? It's extraordinary."

Ed shrugged. "I broke my leg a few years ago and hobbled to a town without a doctor, so I had to come up with something. And it's fucked that alchemy is only used for violence here. We've got so much to learn."

Roy looked up at him. He was watching Georgie focus on the array and his brow was drawn as if he were waiting for something to go wrong. He always looked serious, Roy remembered, but he was never so focused before. An adolescence spent scrambling for his life must have prepared him for adulthood in a way that nothing else could have.

"It's been a while," Ed said idly, not looking at Roy. "What are you now, like fifty?"

"Not even forty, you monster."

Ed cracked a smile. “Whatever. I see those grays.”

He was handsome. Edward Elric was handsome. How long had this been going on, up here in the tundra where Roy didn't know about it? He was mortified.

The blue light faded and Georgie huffed and sat back. "How's that feel, sir?"

Ed said, "You don't have to call him sir, George, he's not even in uniform."

Roy prodded his abdomen. "No tenderness."

Georgie and Ed high-fived over him. Georgie gathered up the paper and the spent jars and headed for the door.

"I'll go check on Mrs. Manus. You two catch up."

Ed sputtered. "Wait—"

Georgie slammed the door behind them and the two were left alone. Ed sighed and tightened his ponytail.

"One of your pups has been in the waiting room this whole time, so you'll probably have to scrape him off the ceiling. Skinny guy, curly hair?"

"Jaema," Roy said. "I hope he wasn't a problem."

"Nah, nah, nice guy. Just, y'know, nervous. No nose for alchemy." Ed leaned on the far wall of the small room. "I assume you're here because of the Drachmans."

Roy sat up. "You've seen them?"

"Yeah, they've been dropping in every few weeks all winter. They're fuckin’ gargoyles, fully kitted out. Last time they were here, two of ‘em took over the Mayburys’ house for days."

"You saw invading forces and didn't think to pick up the phone?"

Ed raised his eyebrows sharply. "There was only a few of them and I’m so sorry that I've been too busy reattaching severed fingers to make a long distance call. I haven't been up here jonesing for an opportunity to feed you military intel."

"I wasn't implying that you were."

Ed stared at him long and hard and Roy couldn't imagine what he had done to make him so hostile. Mention of the military? Ed had always been touchy, but not about that. What had changed in their time apart?

Finally, Ed said, "Don't act like we're friends. We're not even on a first name basis."

Roy winced. Not enough had changed, maybe.

"We could be. Life is long." He lay back in his bed and rubbed his brow. "You're awfully antagonistic for someone who hasn't seen me in years. Have I done something to you by proxy? Or maybe while I was unconscious?"

Ed groaned and shoved the heels of his hands against his eyes. His two human hands, ungloved. It was like Roy was looking at someone else.

“To be totally transparent, I don’t have a lot of great memories of you. As you can probably imagine.” Ed still had his hands in his eyes. “Wasn’t a great time in my life.”

He was perfectly right, but hearing it still made Roy’s heart flub-dub out of sync. It was naive of him to think that Ed would just pop back up after all that and be fine, that his wax wings hadn’t melted.

“Nor mine,” Roy said.

"Plus, you humiliated me for having a crush on you when I was a kid." Ed looked at the floor. "It's not a big deal, but don't think I forgot."

Roy inhaled sharply. That was unexpected. "I didn't think you'd forget."

"Did you think I'd still be mad?"

Roy hesitated. "I considered the possibility that you would still be mad."

It was the first time Roy had ever heard it out loud. Having a crush on you. Suddenly he was thirty again, an insomniac workaholic bore, his left ear sore from always being on the phone with Maes. Ed was still this Ed, this young and tired doctor who, if Roy knew anything about trauma, had trouble sleeping. Roy could only imagine what vices Ed had come up with to deal with it, and hoped they were better than what he’d done at Ed's age.

Ed added, “That, and I spent a good month or whatever thinking you’d murdered Lieutenant Ross. I know you didn’t, but that kind of thing sticks around.”

It was nice of him to not bring up the thousands of people Roy had actually killed.

“So there are reasons not to be friends with me,” Roy said slowly. “Does that mean you won’t be?”

Ed groaned like he had when he heard someone was taking up an extra bed in the clinic. Like he was put-upon.

“It… It means I’m not on break and I’ve gotta go. You don’t have to stay, there’s no bed rest." He headed for the door, stopped, then looked at Roy. "I'm usually here 'til eight."

By the time Roy got it, Ed had already mostly left.

"I'll be here at eight!" Roy called after him.

"There you go," Ed said, and disappeared into the hall.

Ed had gotten charming while he was sequestered up here in the snow, too. Roy hated it.

—

Roy ambled into the waiting room and found Jaema anxiously reading a pamphlet on arthritis. He leapt out of his chair when he saw him.

"General! You're alright!"

"I'm fine, Jaema, thank you."

Roy looked around the room. There was a small window through which he could see a receptionist. Wooden benches dotted the space, most of which were empty. An old man and his wife sat near a potted plant at the back.

Jaema said, "An update, sir: everyone's at the inn in town. The snow has gotten too heavy for us to move back to the forest and Donald thought, in your absence, it would be best to remain here until it lets up."

Roy waved his hand. "Fine. Good call." He took his jacket from Jaema when he offered it, mysteriously free of blood stains. More alchemy? As they headed for the door, he said, "Fill me in on the confrontation with the Drachmans. After I was hit."

"Wait, wait—sir, are you really alright? When I saw you last, you were on death's door. Should you be up and moving?"

"I'm fine, Jaema." Roy smacked himself in the stomach demonstratively. "They use a strange kind of medical alchemy, I've never seen anything like it. I'm one hundred percent, in just a few hours."

Jaema made a small sound of disagreement and held the door open for him. "I don't know, sir. I'm not sure about that quackery, to be perfectly honest. How do you know it's effective? There's a reason it's not done."

"Watch your tone, lieutenant," Roy snapped. "They're competent doctors pioneering a new field of medical alchemy and they deserve your respect. You're far too young to be so afraid of change."

Jaema looked away. "My apologies, General."

The snow was falling so quickly Roy could hardly see in front of him. The town that appeared nestled between the pine trees was a cluster of buildings with clapboard siding and metal roofs. There was a large building with a vaulted roof that looked like some kind of hall, groups of single-dwelling cabins, and paths that had been carved crudely in the snow, but it was falling too fast now for anyone to keep up. A man was shoveling near the town's centre and it looked futile.

Roy said, "Edw— the doctor shared that the Drachmans have been making trips past the border for some time now, with no kind intentions. Our intel may have been stale."

He couldn't see Jaema's face under his hood but he heard him make a noise of disgust.

"I'll radio North City immediately. They may have been ferrying in troops for months, who knows how big this has gotten."

"Get an ETA on how quickly they can get staffed up, and whether they're sending anyone up from Central. We'll move out as soon as the snow lets up." Roy thought of Edward. Off at eight. "Potentially tomorrow morning. No sense in heading out tonight."

An old man with giant eyebrows intercepted them as they pushed open the inn’s heavy wood doors. He was a head taller than Roy and draped in furs, and his heavily lined face stared sourly down at him.

“You must be General Mustang.” His voice was like a gravel driveway.

“I am.” Roy edged in enough to shut the door behind them against the howling wind. “And you are?”

Jaema jumped in. “Sir, this is Lyl. He runs the inn, and has been so generous as to allow us use of the common room to—”

“I run this town, Lieutenant,” Lyl cut in, “and my generosity has its limits. General, how long are you planning on having your men crawling around here?”

“We’ll be gone when the snow lets up, sir. And let me thank you personally for allowing us the space. We’ll pay for everything, rest assured.”

Lyl squinted at him. “Folks are getting uneasy with all the troops around. And it’s not every day you see a wildfire in this weather.”

“I apologize for the damage,” Roy said, fighting the urge to huff. “The doctor who runs your clinic shared that Drachman soldiers have been through the town recently, we’re tracking them. If we get things under control, they’ll stop paying your people visits.”

“Are you bargaining with me, General? I’m not allowing your men to stay in the hopes of getting military protection.”

“I wasn’t suggesting—”

“And don’t believe everything you hear, my boys got the situation with those soldiers under control. I don’t know what that fairy at the clinic told you, but he’s been up my ass for years. Wants to make me look bad, God only knows why.”

Roy wanted to see him burn.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said through his teeth. “Jaema? The common room?”

Jaema all but tugged on his sleeve to pull him away from Lyl. “This way, sir.”

—

Roy worried that telling his team that Ed was an old friend would jeopardize whatever smoke screen of privacy Ed had built in this sleepy winter town, so he said he had to check in with the doctor to make sure everything was alright with his wound. With that being said, his past was well enough known and Ed looked so distinct that anyone who had the pieces would put them together regardless of what he said or did.

He trudged through the driving snow from the inn to find the clinic still open at eight. He stamped his boots on the rough mat inside the door, lowered his hood, and spotted Ed leaning against the receptionist's counter with his coat over his arm. Ed turned when he heard the door.

"Like clockwork," he said from across the room. He wore boxy jeans cinched with a belt and a gray sweatshirt tucked into them. His long parka was white, not red. To Roy, whose memory was stuck so many years in the past, it was like he was dressed up as someone else.

"I'm nothing if not punctual," Roy said.

A giant man banged through the swinging doors at the end of the hall, and it took a moment, but Roy placed him as one of the nurses who loaded him onto the gurney when he first arrived. Ryder, Ed had called him.

"Military guy!" the man yelled, raising a meaty hand. His skin was dark and his hair was mop of curly black. "Doc said he was seein' someone tonight and I knew it was you! Mister Popular’s always got folks coming through!"

Ed tried to cut him off before he got to Roy. "Ryder, come on—"

Ryder ducked around him, sidled up to Roy and shook his hand hard. "Ryder Stalman, nice to meet you. I'm Doc's right hand man."

"That's not strictly true," Ed said, trying to shove them apart. "Ryder, get out of here, we're leaving."

"Roy Mustang," Roy said, dripping with enjoyment over Ed's obvious discomfort. "It's nice to see Ed's made so many friends up here, he always was a bit shy."

Ed wailed and tried to shove Ryder back. Ryder grinned and planted a hand on top of his head to keep him away.

"No shit! You his teacher or something?"

"His boss, technically. Back in the day."

"You were never my boss and we're leaving!" Ed howled, swiping at Ryder. "Don't make me change my mind! And Ryder, go home!"

"I'm workin' tonight! You go home!"

"I live here! Agh!"

Ryder shoved Ed away and Roy narrowly avoided making contact. Ed hastily pulled on his jacket as Ryder cackled and strolled off the way he came.

"Have fun! Mustang, do me a favour and get him to loosen up, he's killin’ us."

Ed pushed Roy towards the door and they stumbled out into the freezing night. Roy pulled his coat tight.

"He seems nice." He could barely keep the laughter out of his voice. Ed grunted.

"He's a piece of fucking work. He's lucky he's such a good alchemist, ‘cause he's also an asshole."

"Are all your colleagues alchemists?"

"Not all," Ed said, leading him off towards town. "There's a couple who are just real doctors or nurses, for stuff we can't fix. And some people are both."

"That makes sense." Roy bubbled with questions, but they were trudging through knee-high snow in the near pitch black. There would be time. "Should I ask where you're taking me?"

"Town's only got one diner-pub type of thing. My place isn't much for entertaining."

"You said you live at the clinic?"

"Above it. There's a block of apartments."

They soldiered on towards the pub in silence, leaning forward at a 45-degree angle to keep from blowing over in the wind. Ed in his white parka in all the snow looked like a spectre ahead of him, slipping in and out of view. It was easier once they were through the trees and into the town square, shoveled clear and lit by gas lamps that threw long, warm shadows over the cabins and white hills.

The pub was a welcome wall of heat when they stepped inside. A coat rack groaned under so many coats that it looked like a mountain of canvas and fur, and they added theirs to the pile. Thick wooden tables were arranged around the big room, all clustered around a giant bar on the back wall. Droopy vined plants hung from shelves near the ceiling and one wall was mirrored, which made the room seem cavernous. The patrons were largely old men hunched over giant steins of beer, save for a young couple in the corner and a family near the door. It smelled like age, cedar and sour beer.

"I haven’t been anywhere like this in a long time," Roy said, looking around. He smiled at the hardened bartender, who offered him something that was not quite a smile. He wished against logic that he'd brought his civvies. He'd left his inner jackets back at the inn, but the silhouette of his trousers and boots were unmistakably military.

"Less lush than wherever you get your luxe Central cocktails, I'm sure." Ed wandered over to a table at the back. "Don't ask for anything fancy, they won't make it."

Roy sat across from Ed. He could see the top of his own face over Ed's head in the mirrored wall behind him and he didn't like it. He looked tired. His hair was doing something weird. The black thermal layer he wore instead of his jacket was far too tight.

"I don't know where you got the idea that I'm fancy," he said.

"Uh, from watching your general demeanour for the past ten years? I'm not wrong."

"And I'm multi-faceted." Roy picked up a menu that stood propped between a pepper grinder and hot sauce in the middle of the table. It was faintly damp. "Are we doing food?"

He almost added, joking, or are we just finally getting that drink you wanted?

Ed said, "I haven't eaten all day, we'd better be doing food."

"Figures that you wouldn't be taking care of yourself."

"Hey, I cook! I cook like nobody's business, I just didn't have time for lunch."

"Of course."

Roy looked up from the menu. Ed was rolling his eyes.

"Cooking is just alchemy, anyways. Changing matter, it's all science."

"You're preaching to the choir," Roy said, which got a chuckle out of Ed. "Do you like it up here?"

"Sure, as much as anywhere. The winter's not bad if you know how to prep."

"Is it always like this?"

"God, no, this counts as a storm. You've always had bad luck." Ed stood and tipped his chin. "We order at the bar."

Roy watched Ed as he spoke easily to the bartender. Ed was a strange creature. His features had grown strong and sharp—his jaw, his nose, his deep-set eyes—but they were at war with his long, golden hair, like something out of a fairy tale. The top of his head hardly reached Roy's nose. In the same way that he eschewed so many of society's rules, Ed operated as if gender didn't apply to him.

Roy got steak and a salad and allowed Ed to carry their massive pitcher of beer back to the table. Ed poured them both beer and Roy's had way too much head, which he figured was an intentional slight.

Roy asked, “You said you broke your leg and came up with this type of alchemy you’re using, but what made you pursue it?"

"What, medical stuff?"

"Yeah. Why open a clinic? Is it something you’re passionate about?”

Ed seemed to think about it as he took a giant swig of beer.

"Seizing a gap, I guess." He spread out his hands and said, without an ounce of good humour, "You know what they say. Those who can't do, teach."

Roy thought, more often than he would have imagined, about Ed's loss of alchemy. One of the greatest minds of their generation had been snatched from the field in adolescence, and whenever someone brought up a great feat of alchemical brilliance that someone else had done, Roy thought, imagine what Fullmetal would be able to do now.

"That's crushing," Roy said.

Ed sighed an exhausted sigh.

"I wanna say I'm used to it, but I'm not. I don't regret it, obviously I don't, but it was, uh, an appropriate toll." He looked away, anxious. "I'm just starting to not clap my hands together anymore. For years there, I'd look like an idiot all the time."

Roy quirked a smile. "I'm sure you didn't."

"It was brutal. I'd see something broken—like a flower pot or car windshield or whatever—and I'd go I'll help you, madame, all swish, and I'd clap my hands and just like… place them on the windshield. And nothing would happen. And it's too much to explain, so I'd just yell I used to do alchemy and run off."

Before Ed had finished, Roy was laughing so hard he had to cover his mouth. It was miserable and wonderful and he couldn't help it.

"I don't mean to laugh, I—"

"No, no, it's fine. It's hilarious."

Roy drank. The beer was bitter and sharp and cold on his tongue and even that first sip, the thought of it, lowered his inhibitions. He'd been go go go for so long that this brief respite was heady and exciting.

"Where’s your illustrious brother these days?" he asked.

"Figuring out how to be in love with a Xingian princess," Ed said, only a bit sour. Roy raised his eyebrows.

"The little one?"

"The very same." Another huge swig. "I sound bitter. I'm not."

"Clearly."

"I'm not. It's just—he's young. You know. He's only twenty-ish. I mean, so am I, but it's a lot to be… I dunno. It's important that he's doing his own thing, in any case."

"Were you worried about him not doing his own thing?"

"Kind of. Not that I think he's incapable of doing his own thing, but just that… it was…"

"About you," Roy finished, "for so long."

Ed sneered at him. "Did you come here to psychoanalyze me or what?"

"Not at all. But am I wrong?"

"Of course you're not, but shut up about it. He didn't have a chance to make it about him, he didn't even have a face. He couldn't be the state alchemist, and one of us had to be."

"So you're worried he'd never grow into his own because he was too used to being your sidekick?"

"Get fucked, Mustang."

Roy held up his hands. "He wasn't just your sidekick, he was wonderful, he was always whole, but you know what I mean."

Ed deflated. Another gulp of beer. "Yeah. I know."

"Well, I'm glad to hear he's out on his own. You must miss him."

"So much that it's like there's a hole in my chest," Ed said, so startlingly sentimental that Roy didn't know what to say. He was so used to Ed being sullen and aggressive that hearing him express anything at all seemed strange. "We talk on the phone all the time. It's not so bad."

"Do you keep up with anyone else from the old days?”

Ed glowered at him. “It’s not like I’m a recluse.”

“Oh, please. I called you ‘Edward’ and Georgie looked at me as if I’d called you 'Reginald.’”

“I’m just extra casual now. I go by ‘Ed’ more.”

Roy put his elbows on the table and leaned in, lowering his voice. “I also gather that they don’t know you were a state alchemist.”

Ed leaned in in kind. “You didn’t say anything, did you?”

“I’m extremely well-versed in tact. Of course I didn’t.” Roy sighed. "What's your angle? Why hide?"

"Maybe you're still too far up the military's ass to know this, but being a state alchemist sucks. It's better now, but you're still a tool and a weapon. No one's clear on timelines or who did what, and I'd rather not be associated with the military at all after all that."

Knee-jerk anger pricked at Roy's fingers. Ed wasn't wrong, but Roy hated being told it. He still harboured a sick and howling grief over what he'd done and that no matter what he did going forward, he couldn't take it back.

He said, "It is better now. It's always getting better."

Ed snorted. "People up here don't care about that. They've got no resources and no support. They sell the whole country lumber and get no support when their pipes freeze and run brown. I don't wanna be associated with the government that's letting them down."

His face was drawn and serious. He had always been a man of the people, and incurably empathetic. Roy smiled.

"Have you ever considered getting into politics?"

Ed pretended to gag. "Not on my goddamn life. All that schmoozing and fuckery, never saying what you really think. I couldn't do it."

"Well, I have no doubt that you'd skyrocket to the top in no time if you tried. You have a way of being, uh, in the public eye. Notable."

Ed groaned and rubbed his eyes. "I'm tired of being notable."

"I hate to break it to you, but you're incapable of being un-notable."

"I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time back then. Or the right place. But I'm just a regular guy now."

"Are you kidding? Hidden up here in the snow, you've more or less accidentally broadened our country's collective knowledge of alchemy and how it can be used to help people."

"Aw, whatever."

Roy leaned in again. "Not whatever. You're saving lives without even trying. If you erased your past from this moment forward, you'd be in the news again in two years. You're permanently notable."

Ed shrunk back. "I don't want to be."

"You could try not caring so much about your fellow man and the pursuit of excellence." Roy smiled. "But I don't think you can."

"I wish there was a switch I could flip to make me stop caring."

"No, you don't."

Ed offered him a chagrined smile in return. "Sure, but I dunno. I could be a schlubby guy who watches daytime TV and runs a gas station. That seems less stressful." He leaned his chair back on two legs. "I had to stop wearing red because people would always recognize me."

"It's a shame. You've got summer colouring, all this white and gray doesn't suit you."

Ed scowled. He looked charmingly put off by any talk of his appearance.

“Anyway. To answer your question, I talk to some people. Zampano was up here last year and now he sends me letters from wherever he goes.”

“That’s precious.”

“And I hear from Havoc and Armstrong sometimes. Hawkeye calls on my birthday.”

Roy raised his eyebrows. “You talk to Riza?”

Ed hid behind another long pull of beer.

“I guess she didn’t tell you that.”

Riza broke up with Roy three years ago, which Ed must have heard from someone because he didn't ask him how she was doing immediately upon seeing him, which everyone who hadn’t heard did. When Roy was still crawling his way out of the depression that followed their breakup, he would reply with a bitter you’ll have to ask her, and now that he had recovered, he just said, she’s stellar.

“She hasn’t mentioned it.”

“Do you talk much?”

“Oh, constantly.”

“You’re friends?”

“As much as we can be, yes.”

“Damn. Is that hard?”

“Not most of the time." Another sip. The beer was vinegary and weak but it was growing on him. "It’s much less painful to figure out how to keep a loved one in your life than to cut them out of it as if they were dead.”

Ed’s mouth opened and closed once. Unasked questions. Roy realized that if Ed had really seen him as an adult back then, he might have seen him and Riza as an Adult Couple in the way that he saw his aunt and her partners when he was a child: adults were just together, they didn’t have feelings, and they were static in a way that meant they couldn’t break up. It was tough to understand when they did.

“What happened?” Ed asked, as polite as he ever got. “You guys seemed solid.”

Roy sighed. It was a conversation he'd only had with close friends, but a practiced one nonetheless.

"I think we learned that devotion isn't love, unfortunately. Or, not that kind of love." He ran a finger through the condensation on his glass. "I'd die for her if given half a reason, but I didn't like her friends. She didn't like my stories. Our shared interests dwindled. That old tale."

Roy looked up and Ed was watching him carefully. Scrutinizing, maybe.

He added, "Not to over-share. Although if the intent of this evening is to become friends, this is pretty indicative of friendship with me."

"Getting maudlin about your exes after…" Ed peered across the table at his glass. "... half a beer?"

Roy tipped his head back and chugged the rest of his beer. Ed was laughing when he slammed it back down on the table.

He pointed at him and said, "That's one beer. Keep up."

—

The second and third beers went by almost unnoticed and Roy was startled to learn, somewhere around the time he had the last bites of his not-altogether-appalling steak, that he was having fun. Talking to Ed was no longer pulling words out of a cranky teenager, but having real conversations with a strange and funny young man. It felt as if they were old friends, though he kept reminding himself that it wasn't true.

A lanky server came by to take their empty plates and asked, in a squeaky pubescent drawl, "'Nother pitcher, boys?"

Roy looked at Ed, who was already looking at him.

"Up to you," Roy said, which was incredibly dumb and still impossible not to say. "What time do you work tomorrow?"

"None of your goddamn business." Ed fished a crumpled bill from his pocket and handed it to the kid. "Another, thanks."

Roy shook his head and laughed. "Wildly irresponsible. You're in charge of saving lives and you're out cavorting until the wee hours."

"It's not even late! You're the one with the tough job, general. My job is easy."

"Is it?"

"Well, no, it's stressful as shit. But everyone's so self-sufficient now, Georgie basically runs the place. I strut around and put out fires and pay the bills, which I can do with a hangover."

"Are things usually on fire? What kind of injuries do you deal with, generally?"

The server brought another pitcher and Ed poured them both a glass as he spoke.

"It's a logging town, so it's mostly accidents. Felled trees, chainsaws, dehydration, frostbite. Otherwise, not much. All anyone does here is fight, fuck and drink."

The evening was getting to the point where Roy felt drunk, daring and stupid. He grinned.

"Does that anyone include you?"

Ed wagged his hand and gave him this funny, coy smile. "Two out of three."

He must have gotten a look on his face, because Ed laughed at him. He scowled and took a swig of his beer and Ed kept laughing.

"You're such a prude," Ed said. "Either I got some bad gossip back in the day or you're getting crotchety."

He couldn't decide which was more likely: Ed running a for-profit fighting ring with the town's backwater thugs, or Ed fucking his way through the population as a way to pass the time. He realized he didn't know him well enough to even guess.

"I'm not dignifying that with a response," he said, which Ed seemed to enjoy.

He had a nice smile, Roy thought. It was toothy and mean and, for some reason, completely charming.

This was followed by a second thought, one that crashed into him like a tidal wave: he had been infatuated before, and he couldn't pretend that he didn't recognize the feeling. He kept looking at Ed's hands. He was trying very hard to make him laugh. He already dreaded the moment their evening together would end. It was textbook. He was an idiot for not seeing it sooner. He rolled the thought around in his head and sucked on it like a hard candy: Edward Elric of all people, leading him around by the nose. Appalling. Also gut-wrenchingly exciting, in a way he didn't let himself examine too closely. He told himself he wouldn’t do this.

“I thought you’d look older, by the way,” Ed said, which didn't help

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I didn’t know how old you were back then, so I didn’t know how old you’d be now. I figured older. And you're younger." His eyes flicked away from Roy's and back. "You're also unnecessarily shredded, if you don't mind me saying."

His eyes dropped again. Roy watched his gaze rove over his chest and it was more thrilling than it had any right to be.

"What makes it unnecessary?"

"Your alchemy isn't physical, you just snap your fingers. Why work out?"

Roy smiled and shrugged. "Posturing. Vanity. An attempt to look imposing to my many enemies. Etcetera."

Ed's eyes snapped up to his.

"You're such a jerk."

"Being a general is still military, hand to hand combat does come up. You have to be able to disable without killing, and I'd rather not cause scarring."

"So, shoot them in the kneecaps! I've seen you carry a gun."

"Well if nothing else, being fit looks good. That's not reason enough?"

Ed stared at him with his jaw set for long enough to make it uncomfortable. Not mad but thoughtful, almost. His eyes flicked down to Roy's chest, arms, back up.

"I don't think about that kind of thing," he said finally. He was almost, almost smiling.

Roy sat up straight. Were they flirting? Was this a spark?

His head spun. He had to be reading into it and seeing something that wasn't there. They hadn't seen each other in half a decade and it was laughable to assume that Ed carried a torch for him based on a silly childhood crush. If there were something, Roy wouldn't have had to twist his arm to get dinner. He was just hundreds of miles from home, in the pit of a dry spell. Ed was beautiful. Forbidden fruit. A snare trap. Roy was an idiot.

“So down-to-earth,” he said, laughing. “Not vain like the rest of us plebians.”

“Who’s got time to be vain?” Ed said, finishing his beer. “There are so many better things I can be a dick about.”

“It’s a never-ending list,” Roy agreed.

Ed glanced at something behind him, then visibly deflated. Roy turned around to see what he was looking at and the place was almost empty, but there was a big clock on the wall.

Ed said, "We'd better wrap this up soon. I'm scheduled for the asscrack of dawn tomorrow."

"You're joking."

“I wish.”

“Why did you get another pitcher? You could have gone home! I’d understand.”

Ed looked embarrassed, which was new for him. “I was having fun.”

Roy laughed. He expected to spend the evening, if he was lucky, getting to a place where Ed didn’t openly resent him. He hadn’t expected to have the most fun he’d had in months, or to feel much of anything besides guilt and nostalgia.

“You sound as surprised as I feel,” he said.

“Didn’t hide it well, eh?”

“Not particularly.” Roy finished his beer. “Well, drink up. I’ll walk you home.”

Their jackets were two of the only ones left on the coat rack and they were still wet when they pulled them on. The night was inky black and swirling with snow and they walked side by side as much as the path carved in the snow drifts allowed.

Asking for his phone number seemed too obvious, although with anyone else, it wouldn't have been. He could ask for his address or find it out from someone the clinic or inn, but the thought of waiting months to exchange a few paltry letters—if Ed even wrote back—wasn't enough.

Ed said, "I think I was allowed to assume that we wouldn't have fun."

Roy was lost in his thoughts. "Sorry?"

"We've never had a real conversation, so I didn't know. You're not how I thought you'd be."

"No?"

"You're regular. I thought you'd be all…" He snapped a cartoonish salute and clicked his heels together and Roy laughed and laughed.

"I have never been like that!"

"Sure, but you’ve moved up the ranks since I last saw you, and I thought maybe it bred the open contempt out of you. Made you doughy and gray."

Roy shoved him. "I'll show you doughy and gray, you brat."

Ed shoved him back, knocking his shoulder against his. "Yeah?"

"I've been dying to see what kind of a fight you put up when your arm isn't a shiv."

Ed looked up at him, eyes blazing. "Yeah?"

They both stanced up, laughing. Roy had grown up with close quarters military combat while Ed fought with open hands, using whatever you'd call the high-flying martial arts he learned from his mentor. Roy had only seen him fight while he could still use alchemy and it was a miasma of kicks and claps and pillars of stone like a golem's hands rising out of the ground. Fighting Ed himself and not the forces of nature he once had at his disposal was so exciting. Or maybe Roy was just drunk.

"This is stupid," he said, but he was grinning.

"Afraid to get beat, hotshot?" Ed took a swipe at him and he blocked it with his forearm. "I spar with Ryder, if you're worried I'm out of practice."

He didn't have a chance to respond before Ed struck at him again and stepped in close. It was hard to fight when he was laughing. He kicked up snow and blocked, blocked again, got Ed with a quick jab under the ribs. He kept going to snap his fingers as a reflex. Ed kneed him in the gut.

"Son of a—"

Ed dropped low and caught him behind the knees with a sweeping metal leg. While he was off balance, he shoved him over like a lumberjack felling a tree and Roy fell to the ground in an explosion of snow. He tried to leap to his feet and Ed crammed a fistful of snow into his face, cackling. Roy shoved him hard and he toppled over. He tried to pin him, but Ed snatched and rolled and then Roy was on his back, winded. Ed's ponytail swung over his shoulder and hit him on the cheek. His hands were fisted in the front of Roy's jacket and it was so physical, he was so close and warm and heavy and bright.

Roy realized, too late, that he was hard. He pushed his hips up into Ed's without thinking and Ed's breath stuttered. Then his eyes got wide. Everything was suddenly quiet. Anyone else would have ignored it and it let it go, but Ed had a death wish and the social graces of a doorstop.

"You're fucking kidding me," Ed croaked. He looked down, then at Roy, and then anywhere but Roy. "Is this an accident, or—or something?”

The fact that he was asking meant he knew there was a possibility that Roy was hard because of him specifically, because of the context and not just the physicality. That the answer was it's something.

Roy knew he could lie and that there was a decent chance that Ed would believe him. He was surprised to find that he didn't want to lie.

"It's something," he said quietly, staring up at him. He didn't dare move or even blink. He held his breath until his head was pounding with it. "I'm sorry," he added, because he was; he apologized sparingly so it would count the most when he did. By the little sound Ed made, it worked, or it infuriated him. He rolled off him and flopped onto his back in a spray of snow.

"Is that why you're here?"

"No!"

"Did you lie to me?"

"No! I had no idea I'd find you here and even if I did, I wouldn't…" He trailed off, unable to find a good way to phrase poach you for a long-belated fuck.

"You've gotta be kidding me," Ed said again.

“I sincerely wish that I was.”

Ed was quiet for a long time. Roy wanted to get up but didn’t know what to say to excuse himself and his breath still burned in his lungs. He stared up at the dark sky between the crowning trees, dotted with more stars than he ever could have seen in Central.

“Since when?” Ed asked.

“Concretely, for the past twelve hours. Beyond that… I don’t know." Roy sat up and brushed snow from his hair. "Don't make me think too hard about it."

Ed gurgled. "For fuck's sake."

"I know."

The world spun a bit from all their beer. He didn't dare look at Ed but he looked at his boots sunk into the snow next to his own. There had to be something he could say to fix this, some way to express himself that made whatever it was that he wanted sound less complex, less icky.

Ed said, "I gotta go." He hauled himself clumsily to his feet. He didn't even look at Roy as he started to walk away. "I'm not doing this. I'll see you later."

"You won't, actually!" Roy called after him, stumbling up. "Let me—"

"I'll be in Central in the spring. Summer. I don't know."

"Edward—"

"Don't follow me!" Ed yelled, not turning around, not slowing a bit. He charged back towards the clinic and was soon lost in the trees.

Roy stood for a moment longer, then tipped over onto his back in the snow. He thought of the teenaged Ed who had gone out on a limb to connect with him and got brutally shot down, and understood for the first time what it must have felt like and the reality of what he did.

—

Roy wandered back to the inn, lost in his thoughts. Ed was being the bigger man. He was doing the right thing. There was no universe in which them getting together in any capacity wasn't a giant mess: he'd be risking his career if anyone found out, and Ed his carefully cultivated private life, and people always found out. For his own sanity, he had to believe that it wasn't worth trying. He had to.

Twenty-four hours ago, Ed had been nothing but a half-formed memory of a strange time in his life. He was an old friend at best, and at worst, a famous person he used to know. Why was it different now?

He couldn't pretend that he didn't know why. It was different because they'd had their first real conversation as equals and it had been a good one. Because there was a spark, as much as Roy didn't want to admit it. Because if he had stumbled upon Ed at that pub without already knowing him the way he did, he would have gotten his number and called him the very next day with zero hesitation.

He saw a flickering light around the side of the inn, and voices. He followed it and found his squad gathered around a not-insignificant campfire, sitting on logs and boughs, talking joyously and drinking foamy beer out of giant steins. His flicker of annoyance at the unprofessionalism was doused quickly; he was glad they were getting along and having something to think about besides armed conflict. And after two pitchers, he had no leg to stand on.

No one noticed him slink out of the trees. He sidled up next to Donald, who sat apart from the others resting his hulking frame against the back wall of the inn. He barely jumped when he noticed him.

"You alright, sir? Jaema said you went to the clinic."

Ed wanted a private life. He didn't want anything to do with Roy or what Roy represented.

He said, "Do you think you've ever… missed opportunities in your life, Donald? Big ones?"

Donald sighed a giant sigh like a steam engine.

“I sure do, sir. You wanna hear about it?”

“Please.”

“Well. When I was still a cadet, the Commodore Berringer came by our podunk compound and saw me running drills and offered me a position on a squad in Central, just like that. Would've skipped the rest of the academy. But I said no 'cause I didn't want to leave my girl.”

Roy chuckled. "A tale as old as time."

"Of course, I was just a kid. Her an' I broke it off three months later and I spent another three years at the academy proving myself. Didn't make it to Central for another five." He looked down at Roy. "Something like that, sir?"

Roy sighed down at his clasped hands. "Almost the opposite."

Donald was quiet for a moment, no doubt deciding what was and wasn't appropriate to ask of his commanding officer.

"Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Always."

The big man shuffled around for a moment. "That means you got somebody you're leaving behind, maybe?"

"Maybe," Roy agreed.

There was another silence. Donald picked at his nails.

"Well. Not to suggest that a guy like you needs advice from a guy like me, but no matter if it's a person or a thing… if I could go back to when I was a cadet and talk to myself…" He sniffed loudly. "I'd tell him that missin' one of those big opportunities in life makes you feel pretty empty, after. Pretty stupid."

—

The cold bit at Roy's cheeks as he trudged through the dark towards the clinic. He noticed for the first time the row of lighted windows on the second storey of the squat building and took a shoveled path around the side that led to a door. It was unlocked and opened onto a narrow stairwell of pink carpeted stairs. He climbed.

The hallway at the top was dotted with shoe racks and doormats, its walls wood-paneled like everything else in town. There were no nameplates above the apartment numbers and he considered yelling Ed's name as he charged down the hallway like the end of some romantic movie, but he doubted that Ed would find being shouted at as charming as the women in those films did. Instead, he crept past each door until he found Ed's worn leather boots and big white jacket dripping with melting snow outside suite number six.

Roy swallowed his pride and whatever else had stopped him from pursuing a good thing in the past, and knocked on the door. He resisted the nervous reflex to stand at attention.

After a moment, there was the click clack of a sliding chain lock and Ed's face appeared in a crack between the door and the frame. First he looked surprised, and then moved into anger.

"What part of I'm not doing this wasn't clear? Get lost!"

Roy stuck his foot in the door.

"Are you scared?"

Ed sputtered. "Christ, you don't give up! I’m fucking tired! I have to get up early, and I want to go to bed, and I don't want to talk about this!"

He seethed up at Roy and Roy held his flashing eyes for a moment, then removed his foot from the doorway.

Ed didn't slam the door. He flung it open and stormed into his apartment.

Venting, then, Roy thought.

He stepped cautiously inside. It was a single small room, dimly lit, with a bed on one side and a kitchenette on the other. Piles of books sat on the nightstand, the little square dining table, and at the foot of the bed. The window was half blocked with snow piled on the sill.

"I don't like it any more than you do," Roy said, shutting the door behind him. "I just think we should talk about it."

"What's there to talk about?" Ed spat.

Roy's heart hammered in his chest. There had to be a good way to say it, there had to be something he could say to calm Ed down.

"You… used to have feelings for me. Or still do." He watched Ed's back go tense. "And I…"

"You fucking what, Mustang?" Ed yelled, whirling around. "You can't just drop into my life and act like everything's okay, you prick! We're not old war buddies! That wasn't fun for me! I'm still working out all the ways that I'm fucked up because of what happened, and having you here with your fuckin'—your buddy-buddy bullshit and your smiles, saying all this shit—"

"I didn't mean to—"

"You never mean to do anything! You just happen to come here, you just happen to have that little wrestling match, and—"

"The world doesn't revolve around you!" Roy snapped. "Don't think I spent the past five years agonizing over you. You think everything I do has this insane, malicious intent, but I don't know what you don't tell me. I'm not trying to put one over on you, I'm not—"

Ed got up in his face. Roy couldn't be the one to step back first.

"How can I believe you? I don't know you, I don't—"

Roy, against his better judgement, shoved Ed in the chest.

"For us to go through everything we went through together and have you say you don't know me says more about you than me," he hissed, temper flaring. "You are the most pigheaded person I've ever met and I don't know who told you to get into all this machismo bullshit, but you need to grow up."

"I need to grow up? That's fucking rich, coming from you. You and your fucking mind games—"

"You're acting like a spoiled brat. I can't read your mind, and you expect me to—to jump through these hoops? To fucking prove myself? I've done enough proving myself, thank you very much, and if it's still not enough, I don't know what to say. Why don't you just tell me what you want, because you are the most infuriating—"

Ed grabbed his face and crushed their mouths together.

Roy froze for a moment as his brain struggled to keep up with the excruciating context switch.

He thought: a smarter, stronger man with better morals would have gently eased Ed back and had a difficult but necessary conversation about their feelings and intent and history.

Roy rarely considered himself to be any of those things. He grabbed Ed's ass and kissed him back, devoured him.

Roy couldn't remember the last time he'd been kissed like that, like the world was crumbling around them, like he was going off to war—like, he figured, two people who had been dancing around each other for far longer than either would admit. Spit, fire, brimstone, thumbs digging into his cheeks.

He waited for Ed to get his faculties back and push him away, but he kept going. Ed kissed him so hard he nearly stumbled back and Roy just let him. He felt so maddeningly good, his broad shoulders and narrow waist and hard arms an expanse Roy could spend eternity letting his hands explore. His coat fell to the floor in a wet pile. He let himself be kissed, sick and lucky and endlessly, tirelessly wanting. He slid a hand under Ed's shirt and his skin was like butter.

Roy lifted him up to sit on the table against the wall and stood between his legs. Ed dragged him in with his heels, his hands pulling at Roy’s shirt, looking for closer, closer. Roy was a man possessed; he leaned into Ed's warmth, his soft hair, his skin, the way he smelled, the feel of his mismatched legs curling around him.

Roy wrestled back control for long enough to consider the implications. What came after? What happened to the friendship he was trying to build? What did a snow-bound roll in the hay mean for someone you'd known for so long?

Roy scraped together enough brain cells to mumble, "We can't do this."

Ed snarled wetly against his cheek, "Fuck me," which was much, much more persuasive.

Roy tugged Ed's hair tie free and buried his face in his neck, felt the tangled silk on his cheek, bit hard where his neck met his shoulder. Ed made a sound that tore through him. He hopped off the table and fumbled with his belt, his head bent so Roy couldn't see his face. He turned around. Roy shoved his pants down and spat in his palm in lieu of anything better, unwilling to wait after however long it was that they’d been waiting. Ed gasped and shuddered and then Roy was inside him and couldn't think anymore.

He could hardly breathe, nothing had ever been so good. He held Ed's hips and fucked him into the table, not thinking, not existing anywhere at all beyond the tight, unbearable pleasure of that. There was just the creak of the wood, the slap of their skin, his rushing breath and Ed's half-swallowed cries, fate and destiny cackling at them. Roy would die if he came first. He wrapped his fingers around Ed's cock and it was hot and heavy in his hand. Ed groaned and pushed into his fist. Roy knocked his legs wider with his knee. Ed's nails scraped on the table and cold sweat pricked at the back of Roy's neck. He pushed up Ed's sweatshirt and smoothed a hand over the peaks and valleys of muscle in his back and felt them shift and pull under him as he fucked him. Roy's throat got tight, his legs buckled and he came, glorious and dumb, his face buried in the back of Ed’s neck. Ed came into his fist with his nails digging into Roy’s forearm.

Slowly, everything crashed down around him. Roy gulped for breath, his chest plastered to Ed's back. His fingers still clutched at Ed's bare hips and he ran a hand under his shirt and up his chest, digging his fingers in. He felt so good. They poured years of frustration and affection and loss into a single crushing embrace.

"Stay," Roy said into Ed's hair. "I know you have a habit of… leaving. Places, and people. But…"

He trailed off. Ed choked and laughed.

"And you don't?"

"I'll stay."

Roy didn't know what it meant. He wouldn't stay in that little forestry town, he couldn't. Ed knew that. But regardless, he'd stay.

He pulled out and Ed hissed at him. He didn't want to let him go, so unsure of whether he would ever let him do this again, whether it meant anything, what on earth he would say next and how Ed would take it. He felt perfect in his arms and if it was the last time he'd be there, he wanted to savour it.

He finally stepped back. Ed hiked up his jeans and it took him a lifetime to turn around and look at him. His face was flushed and he was breathing hard and Roy regretted more than anything that they hadn't done it in a way where he could watch him. He couldn't place his expression—surprised, nervous, maybe grimacing.

"Okay," he said.

Roy didn't know what to do with that. He wanted to kiss him. Every cell in his body was screaming at him to kiss him.

"Okay," he said back, breathless. Not going in for the kiss.

"I'm gonna..." Ed trailed off, unwilling to give shape to the undignified realities of sex. He slid to the door, pausing to shove his feet into slippers, and went into the hall.

A shared washroom, Roy figured. Alone, he sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. He was still sweating and felt hot, heavy and swollen in his clothes and boots.

You unbelievable jackass, he thought, staring down at his hands. You're in over your head.

The room smelled indescribably like Ed, a quality to his hair and skin and clothes that didn't smell like anything other than him. Roy peered at the spines of the books on his nightstand. Advanced Biophysical Alchemy. Michel Avendano's Big Book of Edible Herbs and Fungi (2nd ed., 1919). The Mysterious Affair at Styles. An old mug of water and Ed's heavy metal watch sat next to the stack of books, and on the floor in front of the nightstand sat a little yellow telephone. Ed lived here. It was dizzying.

Not knowing what else to do, he went to the sink, wet a washcloth and cleaned cum off the floor boards by the table. He rinsed the cloth and left it hanging on the counter, then sat back down, feeling stupid. He listened nervously to footsteps in the hall.

Ed didn't look at him as he came back into the room. He toed off his slippers and started to go to the sink, but looked down at the floor by the table and stopped.

"You cleaned up."

Roy drew up his shoulders. "I'm polite."

"Fuck-standing-up polite."

"Polite, not romantic."

They looked at each other for a tense and upsetting handful of seconds, Roy sitting on the edge of the bed, Ed standing across the small room, all lit up in orange from the lamp-glow. Roy couldn't stop thinking about what they'd done and still felt slow and loopy in his post-coital haze, trying to stave off the sappy feelings that were his, and everyone's, biological imperative after sex. He had no illusions about whether this was the time or place. But he was romantic. He didn't know what he wanted.

He went with: "We should talk."

Ed snorted. "You think?"

He wondered if Ed's brain hormones were reaching out to his own, begging him to curl up on the bed with his head on his chest, or if he was alone in that. Ed visibly struggled with whether to sit on the bed next to Roy or to remain leaning on the table across the room. It was as awkward as Roy expected it to be. In the end, he slunk across the room like a wary animal and perched on the bed next to Roy. Conveniently, that meant he wasn't looking at him. He picked at a fraying seam on the knee of his jeans as he spoke.

"Don't pretend there's anything more than there is here. We have… tension."

"Chemistry."

"Tension," Ed insisted, "and it's tension that’s been resolved. We finally had sex and now we can go live our lives and deny it if anyone asks.”

“Who would ever ask us that?”

“You’re missing the point." Ed glanced over at him. "Aren't you here chasing Drachmans? You're all healed up, when are you leaving?"

Roy winced. "In the morning."

"Right, so none of this matters." Ed's voice was just shy of snippy. "I'll see you next time I’m in Central like five years from now, and you’ll have a wife and a baby and you’ll act like you didn’t raw me during a snowstorm that one time.”

"Is that where you think I'll be in five years?"

"I think military men are supposed to have families," Ed said. "And I think you're very good at doing what you're supposed to do. Or like… what you have to do."

Roy rubbed his eyes and left his hands there. "That was uncalled for."

"Is assuming you want a wife and kids rude?”

"No. Yes. I don't know." He uncovered his face and looked at Ed. "I don't know what I want. Clearly."

Ed looked, in a word: tense.

"Me neither," he said quietly.

He'd combed his hair in the bathroom and now had it tucked neatly behind his ears. It fell loose in a golden curtain over his shoulders. If nothing else, Roy was relieved to finally look at him—really look—without having to hide it. He had a sharp nose and strangely masculine eyebrows; Roy didn't know what it meant to have masculine eyebrows, but Ed had them. His Adam's apple jutted out with a plucky, boyish charm. Roy could have drowned in him. He didn't remember being so besotted with him while they were at the bar, but sex probably hadn't helped.

Roy asked, "Do you… like me? In any measurable way?"

Ed groaned and flopped onto his back on the bed. His knee rested against Roy's and it was all Roy could think about.

"Does it matter?"

"Call me a sap, but yes. I assume that if you just wanted to get laid, you'd find someone… simpler."

There was a long, long silence. Quiet like a carpeted hallway, like fresh snow. Roy held his breath. What did ‘like’ mean? Should he have said something else? Was there a better way to phrase do you see anything in me at all?

"It's too much," Ed said to the ceiling. "All of it. You. Me. It's huge and gross and… I don't know. I can't imagine being able to make it fun. Or even okay."

Roy turned around. Ed's hair was spread out on the unkempt quilt like a halo.

Roy said, "We could try again. Start fresh."

"You of all people know there's no fresh. Neither of us are fresh anymore."

"So, we figure out how to move forward anyways. Un-fresh. Rottenly."

"Loaded with baggage, you mean."

"If you want to be negative about it, yes." Roy sighed and lay down next to Ed, propped up on an elbow and carefully, strategically, not touching him. "I can leave if you'd like."

"No," Ed said. Nothing else.

"I should stay?" Roy ventured.

"Yes."

Ed wasn’t quite looking him in the eye, his gaze falling closer to his chest, his throat, anywhere but his face. He was still tense—not upset, but not loopy and lovesick either. They were laying so close Roy could feel Ed's breath on his arm.

“So, we have tonight, then.”

“Theoretically.” Ed raised his eyebrows. “What do you want to do with it?”

Lots, Roy thought, but it all boiled down to: Convince you, for the second time today, that I'm worth spending some time on.

He said, “Let’s stay up. Give me as many hours as possible to get to know you before I have to leave."

Ed's eyebrows raised even higher. "Like a sleepover."

"Yes."

"You're trying to court me."

"I'm trying to get to know you."

He squinted up at Roy, his cogs turning, no doubt weighing the pros and cons of not kicking Roy out and going to bed immediately.

"Alright," Ed said slowly, his tone implying a sly kind of what's your angle here. "I'm not opposed."

"Good." Roy's heart was racing for no good reason. It was just Edward but it was so different now and it was dizzying, more exciting than he had the guts to admit. "I told you, I'm not trying to trick you, or whatever it is you think I'm doing. I'm just…" Time ticked by excruciatingly slow. His tongue felt heavy. "... interested in you. As it turns out."

Ed sighed. Not what Roy expected.

"What now?" Ed asked. It only took Roy a second.

"Can I kiss you?"

He felt like a child. They'd kissed earlier but none of that was intimate, it was lust and frustration and fumes. A kiss was vulnerable and neither of them were good at that.

Still, Ed nodded, so Roy leaned down and kissed him. The angle was funny but it was soft and slow and heat licked at his throat anyway. It hadn't gotten any less exciting or any less good. Ed nipped his lip and it made his breath stutter. He pulled back and Ed laughed against his lips. Roy's nose pressed against Ed's cheek and they stayed there, alarmingly close.

"So weird," Ed mumbled.

"This?"

"Yeah. You."

Roy laughed. He started to run his hand up Ed's arm and Ed drew gently away, nudged him aside and sat up.

"I'll need fortifications if we're staying up all night." Ed went to the cupboards above the sink and started opening them. "Coffee?"

"Sure. Thank you."

He rooted through a cupboard and pulled out a giant glass bottle of liquor. "Whiskey in that coffee?"

"Yes. You angel."

Ed grinned at him. It was such a nice smile.

They didn't say much as Ed puttered around the kitchen; pulling out a coffee press, measuring grounds, grabbing two misshapen and poorly painted ceramic mugs. While the kettle heated on the stove, Ed went to a closet at the far end of the room.

"If we're staying up, I'm at least getting comfy," he said as he rooted through clothes.

"I assume you'd offer me something to wear, but…"

"If you're suggesting that my clothes wouldn't fit you, they'd fit you perfectly, you jerk."

"Try me."

Ed threw a pair of sweatpants at him. He took his pants off—Ed watched him hungrily, which was nice—and tried to pull the new pants on. It didn't go well. Ed scoffed.

"Those are old ones, so they're smaller. And you can't wear my new ones, I'm wearing them."

Roy stepped out of the pants and held them out to Ed. "Why would your old ones be smaller? You can't still be growing."

"Men can grow until they're twenty-one and I'm barely twenty-two, so it's not unbelievable! And it's true!"

"Don't remind me that you're only twenty-two."

"I bet you know exactly how old I am, you freak." Ed stormed over and snatched the sweatpants out of Roy's hands. "Fine, sit in your wet snow pants, see if I care."

"Or." Roy sat on the bed in just his underwear, smiling. "We really get to know each other."

"Don't peacock, Mustang."

Roy peeled off his shirt and Ed's eyes roved over him, lingering on the expanse of scar tissue on the side of his abdomen that Roy had learned to live with for almost a decade.

Ed said, "It's cold in here. We'll freeze."

His resolve was cracking. Roy kept smiling up at him.

"You've got a stove," he said, and nodded at the small wood stove in the corner of the room.

"It's dying, and I'm all out of wood."

"Mm. I can make it last." Roy got up off the bed, went to where his jacket lay crumpled by the door and pulled out his gloves. He crouched again in front of the stove. "As long as you've got something in here, it'll work."

He pulled on a glove and clapped his hands. The ashes and coals and small amount of burnable wood lit up with a brilliant flame. Ed was peering over his shoulder.

"How are you doing that? It was almost out."

Roy shut the stove's little metal door. "Controlling combustion rates. It's a secret. Don't worry about it."

When Roy turned around, Ed was naked. Roy sat on the floor in front of the stove and watched Ed go to the bed, throw a blanket over his shoulders, then return to the kitchen. The thunk of his metal foot made the old wooden floorboards shake. Roy lifted his hips and pulled off his briefs, and Ed pretended not to notice.

"Are we talking a little whiskey in the coffee or a lot?" Ed asked.

"A reasonable amount."

He put more than that into the bottom of both mugs, saying nothing. He kept glancing at Roy as he rummaged around the kitchen.

"What?" Roy asked.

Ed busied himself with the coffee press. "I didn't see it before. It's nice."

Roy looked down at his dick and back up. "It's nice."

"What, you want me to write a sonnet? It's a nice dick. Get over yourself."

Ed very pointedly didn't look at him after that. Roy watched him from in front of the fire, mostly his calves and arms and gaps of skin in the wide weave of the blanket he'd thrown over his shoulders. Even that was intoxicating.

Roy said, "It's a mark of trust and intimacy to see someone's flaccid penis."

Ed went, "Ugh."

"I mean it! You don't get that with one night stands. You're either hard and in the throes of it, or you're covered up, or you're dressed." Roy cocked his head. "They go from being these big, virile things to something little and floppy. It's funny."

"Hey!"

"Not just you, I mean everyone. It's vulnerable. I'm saying it's nice."

"You're insufferable."

"I think I'm very sufferable."

Ed didn't dignify that with a response. He poured the finished coffee into their mugs and handed one to Roy, then stood awkwardly for a moment, looking down at him.

So they weren't going to talk about it, Roy thought. That was fine. He could be hip and cool and not talk about his feelings, if that's what Ed wanted. They would have a fun, nude sleepover, and then he'd leave and not see Ed again for months or maybe years. And that was perfectly fine to Roy. It certainly didn't make him feel like he had something to prove.

He sipped from his mug. It was a jackhammer of whiskey and coffee, sour and bitter and bright.

"So, what do you do to entertain around here?" Roy asked. "For people who aren't me."

Ed slurped his drink and seemed to barely suppress a grimace. "I have backgammon."

"Not chess?"

"I'm not stupid enough to play chess against you. You said we'd have fun."

Roy laughed. "Backgammon it is, then. Bring it in front of the fire."

Ed pulled a battered leather backgammon case from under his bed, took a second blanket from the bed and sat on the floor across from Roy. He lobbed the blanket at Roy, who lay it over his lap. The backgammon case smelled like dust and age when Ed opened it, and each little piece, made of some hard white and black resin, was worn smooth. Roy watched him set up both sides of the board—maybe assuming Roy wouldn't know how—and everything was electric. Roy crackled with energy, absorbed in the way Ed's fingers moved, the sharp bones of his wrists, the curve of muscle in his forearms. It was like he was seeing in real life something he'd only heard described. He had no way of knowing whether it was mutual, or what it meant.

"You know how to play?" Ed asked. Roy jolted.

"What?"

“Backgammon.”

Ed smiled at him. He ignored it. "I played with my aunt when I was a boy. She said it was one of the few things I'd have to talk to older men about that wasn't lecherous or violent."

"She's right. The only other thing that falls into that category is sports."

Roy made a face and Ed laughed. They each won a game and drank a mug of coffee and whiskey that way, sitting wrapped in blankets in front of the wood stove. By the time they started their tie-breaking game, Roy had convinced himself so fully that he was playing it cool that he didn’t realize he cared anymore.

Ed was beating him by a wide margin. Roy had never been good at backgammon.

"This is supposed to be a fast-paced game," Ed said, teasing.

"You're distracting."

Ed leaned back on his hands, a stretch of smooth skin and a tumble of honeyed hair over his shoulder.

"You think I'm pretty?" he said in a drawling voice.

"Upsettingly so." Roy moved one piece six, one piece two. "What part of having sex with you left that unclear?"

"Just wanted to hear you say it." Ed opened his knees a little wider. A subtle taunt. "Do you do this often?"

"Backgammon?" Roy joked.

"Sex with men." Ed shook his dice and rolled. "I thought I'd know about it if you did."

"I've been very careful in making sure that you and everyone don't know. Only with strangers. Trysts. No one who would reasonably know who I am."

"How's that going?"

Roy scowled at him. "Fun and emotionally dissatisfying. Is that what you want to hear?"

"No. I don't want you to be sad."

"News to me."

"Oh, come on, I like you plenty." Ed moved his pieces with no hesitation. "So, why the secrecy? I thought we were living in a modern society or whatever."

Roy chewed on that. Why was it a secret, one that only Riza—once, Hughes—and now Ed, knew? Where did his quiet, painful embarrassment over it come from? Was his concept of masculinity that fragile, and more importantly, why did Ed seem to be handling it so well in himself where Roy had always struggled?

He landed on: "It's… unbecoming of a military officer."

"What does that mean?"

"It means it's not done," Roy snapped. "There are rules and I care enough about my future to follow them."

"At what cost, though? Being closeted your whole life?"

Roy shrugged uncomfortably. "I like women, too."

"Good for you. But what if you fell for a guy? You'd break it off so you could follow rules?”

Roy looked at him long and hard. Edward Elric in his natural habitat, waving away generations of tight-lipped discrimination with a flick of his wrist.

What if indeed, Roy thought ruefully.

"I would make considerations," he said.

Ed scoffed. "I know for a fact that you don't care about rules. You're making excuses."

"Well, they're my excuses to make. And it hasn't come up yet."

Ed laughed at him. "Coward."

Roy let it go because he was good like that, and because examining his feelings on it was depressing him. Clack clack, he moved his pieces. They weren’t good moves.

"I need another drink if I'm going to take this loss gracefully." He stood, taking his mug with him. His blanket fell to the floor. "Can I get you anything?"

"Another, thanks," Ed said, handing Roy his mug. Ed watched him set the kettle to boil again, then lay back on the floor and propped himself up on an elbow. His eyes stayed on Roy but he said nothing, like he was waiting for something besides another drink. It looked like ‘getting to know each other’ meant politely pretending that they didn’t want want to fuck. There was something sweet about it.

Roy tried, "Can I help you?"

Ed made a face that was more or less a grimace.

“You just…” He let out a heavy breath. “Look… good."

He gave compliments like it physically pained him. Roy laughed.

"Glad you think so."

"I never thought I'd see you naked. It's a weird new reality to live in."

"Isn't it, though?" Roy leaned on the counter and crossed his arms. “Do you like it?”

Ed nodded. He pointed at the scarring on Roy's abdomen. "That was from…"

"Mhm. Your brother told you about that, I assume."

"In excruciating detail. I think he still thinks you're a superhero." Ed paused. "Also very unhinged, but. Potato-potahto."

It was strange to talk about it so flippantly now, but time and success made everything easier in hindsight. Roy pulled the kettle from the stove before it started to screech and filled the press.

"Speaking of your brother—will you tell him? About this."

"Probably. He's not gonna get it, though."

"What's there to get?"

Ed mulled it over.

"What I see in you, after so long. He thought I was an idiot for liking you when I was a kid and he'll think I'm a huge idiot when he finds out I still do."

Roy looked at Ed over his shoulder. It was so casually spoken that he almost missed it—and, if he wasn't being self-deprecating and obtuse, it was already obvious through Ed's actions—but there it was: Ed liked him. In whatever way that meant to him. Roy bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling and turned back to the coffee.

"Can't imagine why he'd think that."

Ed barked a laugh.

"The first time we met, you called me a self-pitying cripple, I think? And then you screamed in my face. If we can both get over that and still like you, he can get over this."

Roy would never forget stepping into the old Elric home and seeing the array on the floor and so, so much blood. He compartmentalized it a bit, and it wasn't often that he remembered that the little boy in the wheelchair he met that day was the same Edward he knew later.

"You remember that."

"It's not something you forget. And then later, you blackmailed me."

Roy smiled. "You have a good memory."

“You stood out.” Ed rolled onto his back on the cold floor. "I can't believe blackmailing a kid wasn't a red flag. I'm a loser."

Coffee poured, whiskey added, Roy carried the mugs back to their blanket pile, set Ed's near his side of the board and sat back down.

"You were a country bumpkin. It's only to be expected that you were blinded by my charm."

"You were the first 'grown-up'"—Ed did air quotes—"to talk to me like an adult. I'd never been worth blackmail before."

Their game seemed forgotten and Roy was in no hurry to lose a second time. He burned his tongue on his new coffee.

"You've been extremely generous in your interpretations of our past."

Ed closed his eyes and folded his hands over his stomach. "Maybe I'm making up for yelling at you earlier."

Roy had nearly forgotten about that in the wake of the sex that came after the yelling.

Roy said, "I get yelled at all the time, it's like white noise to me now." He weighed his next words carefully, remembering the fight and everything before it. "And, also. I never apologized to you, earlier. For how I acted when you… told me. Back then."

That made Ed sit up. He shrugged at Roy and as far as shrugs went, it seemed genuinely uncaring.

"It doesn't matter. You weren't wrong about any of it."

"Maybe not, but I didn't have to scream at you."

"You didn't," Ed agreed, "but I get it. Now seems like an okay time for me to start batting my lashes at you, and even now it's a little iffy. Age fifteen was not a good time."

"An objectively awful time."

Ed tried to pick up his coffee, learned that it was scalding and shot back. He sighed.

"I know. Obviously I knew. I didn't think you'd be such an asshole about it, but still. Did you think I thought you'd take me up on it?"

Roy had never considered another possibility.

"You propositioned me knowing I'd say no?”

"Yes! Christ, of course I didn't think you'd be into it." Ed rubbed his eyes. He looked embarrassed, maybe for the first time since Roy had known him. "I just couldn't stop thinking about it. You. I said something because if I heard you shoot me down, I could stop being delusional and hormonal. You can't logic your way out of stuff like that, you have to…" He seemed to lose his way.

"Get obliterated," Roy supplied.

“Exactly. Get reduced to rubble, so your brain can't supply any more tantalizing ‘what ifs’.”

It was a surprisingly adult concept for a fifteen-year-old to have had: self-immolation as a kind of self-defense.

"That's a bold move."

"I dunno, I was mad. You're supposed to marry the girl next door, not fantasize about the guy you hate." Ed picked at his nails. "Couldn't figure out what was wrong with me."

Roy wondered if that was a direct reference to a very real girl next door or if he was speaking figuratively.

"You know nothing is wrong with you."

Ed shrugged. "Sure, now, maybe. Try telling that to a kid."

Roy hesitated on the next one, long enough for Ed to take a wary sip of his coffee.

"You hated me?" Roy asked.

Another shrug from Ed.

"In the vague, amorphous sense, I guess so, yeah. I didn't know you so I couldn't hate you for real, but I hated being told to do things, which you did a lot. And you were horrible to me."

"Was I? I thought we had a fun little dynamic going on."

"We didn't."

"Well, I'm sorry for misreading the situation." Roy looked down at his hands and they looked old. Slack skin around the knuckles reddened by the cold, ridged fingernails cut square. "If it helps, you really did a number on me."

"What?"

"Confronting me. Hearing you say all that, when you did. Never in my life has anyone put me off balance like that."

Ed turned that over for a moment, like he knew, or sensed it.

"Not because you actually…"

"No." Roy made a frustrated sound. "But I thought I'd… led you on."

Guilt flickered across Ed's features until he schooled it neatly away.

All he said was, "Ah." Anything else would have been too much. He shook his head and pushed his hair back over his shoulder. "This is heavy."

"Very."

They let that hang between them in a horrible, pregnant pause. Finally, Ed spoke.

"If you're trying to distract me from the game, it won't work, I want a clean win."

Roy let go of his breath, grateful. "You haven't won yet."

"So optimistic."

So they returned to their game and Roy tried to yank his mind back into the present. Ed sat with one leg outstretched next to the board and his metal toes brushed against Roy's thigh over and over again. Roy realized he probably didn't notice and couldn't feel that he was doing it. He didn't feel the need to tell him. It was nice. If he was reading Ed right, he wasn't interested in the game any more than he was, but couldn't think of anything to talk about that wasn't horny or depressing. The second whiskey-coffee was helping, though.

"The owner of the inn sure hates you," he said, a stab in the dark.

"Lyl? Obviously."

"If you were anyone else I'd be worried that you didn't know he had a problem with you, but you've always been very 'in the know' about that. The problem is usually you."

"Hey! Do you know how hard I have to try to cause property damage these days? It's different."

He rolled a three and a two and was forced to move into a bad position. Roy smiled.

"What did you do to him?"

"Still you assume it's me! Did you talk to the guy?"

"Yes, and I wanted to strangle him. But you're telling me you didn't do anything?"

Ed sucked his teeth.

"I... might have fucked his brother last year."

Roy beamed at him. “You didn’t!”

“I didn’t know who he was! He showed up at the bar and I jumped on the chance to bed someone I don’t have to see every goddamn day.”

“You have truly blossomed. Having sex with the mayor's brother out of spite."

They were making these long, circuitous loops into physicality and sex. It hadn't been enough, earlier, and they both kept edging back towards it.

"Did he tell you he's the mayor? Because he's not, Old Lady Jenkins is the mayor. And I didn't know he was his brother! Spite didn't come into it!"

"You couldn't tell he was Lyl's brother? The man is… distinctive."

Ed picked up his coffee and slurped it. "You're not thinking about who could be whose brother when you're cruising."

"Well, I appreciate your rampant disregard for authority nonetheless."

Over the rim of his cup, Ed's eyes lit up. He set the mug down and swallowed hard.

"Since we're two people with a rampant disregard for authority and very little to do—wanna go on a field trip?"

Roy squinted at him. "Where?"

"Don't worry about it, it'll be fun."

Roy looked around the room for a clock and didn't find one. "It must be two in the morning."

"You're gonna let a fake concept like time tell you when to have fun?" He downed the rest of his coffee and leapt to his feet. "Get dressed, we're going out."

Roy struggled to his feet, his knees cracking. "We shouldn't go near the inn. If anyone…"

"No need to be ashamed of me, it's pitch black out."

"I'm lying to my men about where I am, it's not—"

"Don't waste your good excuses on me. You'll need 'em if we get caught."

Roy was too curious to argue with him. He pulled on his briefs and snow-wet pants as Ed rummaged around in his closet again.

"Are those long johns?" he asked as Ed pulled on what were clearly long johns.

"I don't know if you noticed, but it's cold, you flaming bitch." He knocked on his left leg. "This thing saps heat like you wouldn't believe. Even with the special metals, it burns when I touch it."

"Like licking a flagpole."

"Exactly like licking a flagpole."

Roy wondered whether Ed would let him lick his metal leg, if he asked. He didn't particularly want to, but he wanted to know if he was allowed.

Once they were dressed, he followed Ed out into the night, colder than he remembered. It had stopped snowing and the buzz of whiskey through his veins made him giddy and warm. As far as he could tell in all the dark, they weren't heading back into town.

"Where are we going?"

Ed whispered, "That's on a need-to-know basis, cadet," mirth bubbling in his voice. "Keep it down, we're trespassing."

Roy was concerned that no part of him pulled away from that. Was that kind of trust a good thing or a bad thing? He'd let Ed lead him off a cliff.

The ground started to slope up under their feet, their boots slipping on icy stones and roots. Thick cedar trees rose up on either side of the path and somewhere between the branches, far to their right, there was a light. As it neared, Roy made out the angular shapes of a large and opulent cabin in the dark, surrounded by trees and dense, low shrubs. They were edging past it, several yards away and climbing. He reached out, grabbed Ed's arm and pulled him back against his chest with an inelegant thump.

"Are we breaking and entering?" he hissed.

"Only on his land," Ed whispered back. He tipped his head up to look at Roy, but it was too dark to see. "Lyl has a hot spring in the back of his property. Not near the house."

"But it's on his property?"

"You can't fence in nature. C'mon."

He took off carefully down the wooded path, a grayish smudge in the all the black, and Roy followed. It smelled cold, sharp and smoky, cedar and ozone, and not being able to see created a strange sense of isolation. He was very aware of his breathing. He kept glancing at the retreating glow of Lyl's cabin as they climbed up behind it. He started to hear water trickling faintly from somewhere, and the trees thinned. The snow at their feet turned to wet rocks and grass and he didn't see the spring until they were nearly on top of it. Half of it was under a shoddy wooden cover and half was steaming into the night air. Ed turned to look at him, still just shapes. His teeth flashed as he smiled.

"You like?"

"It's beautiful," Roy whispered, glancing down at the angles of Lyl's roof through the trees below. "Have you been here before?"

"I couldn't find anyone who'd sneak in with me."

Ed's voice was closer. Roy turned towards him and was met with a soft, warm mouth on his own.

He made a quiet noise of surprise and let his eyes fall shut. Ed slipped a hot hand into the collar of his coat. It was a kiss with the heat of promise and in the snow-covered silence, all he could hear was the thudding of his own heart.

Ed lingered close when they broke apart, whiskey tang on his breath.

"Take your clothes off."

The closeness was a physical ache in his chest.

"As you wish," he said, only half joking.

There was a clunk and a crunch of snow as Ed pushed the cover back, a swish of fabric as his clothes fell to the ground. It was so cold Roy's bare skin burned and he found the spring by its radiant heat alone. He put a foot in; it was surprisingly deep. Ed held his arm.

"Don't slip, old man," Ed said in his ear. "You don't want me to explain this at the clinic."

The heat burned worse than the cold, but he got used to it. They sunk into the water up to their shoulders and Ed made a thoroughly debauched groan.

"This is exactly as good as I wanted it to be," he said in hushed tones. They sat close, perched on stones that felt as though they'd been arranged in a kind of bench, flat-ish on top. The ground sloped away underfoot into the unknown depths of the spring.

"Heavenly," he agreed. He twisted around and ran a hand blindly over the dead grass and dirt that ringed the water's edge. "If we can find something to spark, I can make us a light."

"They might see it from the house."

"I want to see you."

He heard Ed sigh behind him. He found a small, dry stone and handed it to him. Ed leaned over him to ready it above another stone. The feel of his wet shoulder against his chest drove him wild.

"Spark it when I clap. You have to hit it at a—"

"You think I don't know how to start a fire?"

Roy rolled his eyes to no one. Ed struck the stone expertly, a spark leapt into the night and Roy clapped his hands. A wisp of grass caught fire and stayed lit, not seeming to burn down at all.

"Huh." Ed stayed leaning over him. "Since when do you do party tricks?"

"Since a certain someone inspired me to see if my alchemy could do something other than destroy," Roy said lightly, as if it weren't the biggest thing in the world. It must have gotten to Ed, because he didn't say anything back.

The ball of flame cast just enough light that he could make out his face, so close to his own. He looked perfect in the yellow light. It was mind-numbingly annoying that sneaking into this spring was one of the most romantic situations he'd ever been in, and not only was it not his idea, it was Edward Elric's. Fate had a disgusting sense of humour.

He took Ed's hand and pressed his lips to his work-roughened palm, his illustrious right hand.

"Congratulations on this, by the way." His lips moved against his skin. Ed huffed, almost a laugh.

"I look God in the fucking eye and you toss me a congrats."

Roy kissed the heel of his palm, then his wrist.

"If I were surprised you got it back, it would mean I doubted you at some point. Which I didn't."

He kissed the wet skin at the inside of his forearm, twice, up towards the crook of his arm. Ed seemed extremely interested in his progress.

"Good," he said absently. His free hand floated underwater to rest gingerly on Roy's leg. Roy kissed his impossibly smooth shoulder, then the craggy scar from his automail port, then his neck, and Ed let him.

Roy ran his nose up his jaw and under his ear. His hands slid up his arms. "Is it still weird?"

He heard him swallow. His heart beat hard in his chest, pressed to his own.

"Less so," Ed whispered, hoarse. He turned his cheek towards him. "Mustang…"

"You're killing me, it's Roy."

He found his mouth in the dark and kissed him hard, different than before, deeper. Ed sunk into him and ran his hands up his chest, taking a shuddering breath. He was a good kisser, as infuriating as that was; he kissed like he was having an argument and it was intoxicating to be drawn in like that. Borderline offensive. Roy slipped his hands down his waist and dragged him closer, and they spent an untold amount of time there, making out like nothing else mattered, both freezing cold and burning hot.

Roy eased back for a breath and Ed tried to duck back in to keep kissing him. Roy laughed.

"Eager."

Ed shoved him back and glided across the small spring, his face red. "Like you're not."

"I didn't say I wasn't."

Ed stretched his arms out against the stones on the opposite side of the spring and they spent a spell just looking at each other.

"I keep thinking of how I can scare you off," Ed said, "but I don't think I can. I've never thought that about anyone before."

"You said yourself, I don’t know you very well. There must be something."

"You already know the things that might make someone run. And you're not."

It never occurred to him that Ed would hide as much of himself as he did, but of course that was the case. Ed may have had a cleaner conscience, but they’d both seen things they couldn’t unsee.

"I'm not," Roy agreed, hesitant to say anything more flowery and declarative. There would be time.

Ed all but purred, "You have no idea how attractive that is."

Everything Ed said—everything he did—was so perfectly seductive to him that his first knee-jerk thought was that Ed was making fun of him. Somehow, he learned what Roy liked and was using it to play this little game. That kind of chemistry couldn't be genuine, he thought, and God help them both if it was. He was so hard it hurt. He swam across the spring in a stroke and stopped between Ed's splayed knees.

"You obviously can't help it. I'm your type, it seems like."

Ed's hands slipped almost hesitantly up his sides. "Don't flatter yourself, I don't have a type."

"I think it's pretty obvious. Young prodigy has a troubled relationship with his father, seeks the company of older men…"

Ed put his hands on his shoulders and shoved his head underwater and it burned hot in his ears and nose. When he emerged, he pulled him into a rough kiss and Ed laughed against his lips.

"Ugh, you taste like pond water—"

He wound his arms around him and slid his hands up his wet back. There was a fire between them that burned up the slowness of earlier and made everything fast and urgent and hard. Roy lifted him into his lap, weightless in the water, and dragged him against him.

"Ed—"

"Shh."

Ed rolled his hips and started to rut against him. Pleasure shot up his spine and Ed dug his hands into the wet hair at his nape; he was flatteringly hard and the slide of his dick against his own was maddening. He made soft sounds into his mouth when he kissed him, clearly trying his best not to. His skin was a thousand degrees in the hot spring. Every kiss felt like a competition and he had to remind himself that it wasn't, not really. He wondered if Ed knew that, and exactly when they'd become rivals.

"Hey, hey—" He nudged his face back with his cheek. "Not here. Let's go."

A metal foot curled around his calf.

"Yes here. I'm not waiting."

"You are. I want… a bed. Space. Time." Roy bit his lower lip and tugged on it. "We're doing this right."

Ed pulled back and in the low light he could just make out his bemused expression, like he wasn't sure what right entailed but was excited to find out. Roy wondered if anyone had ever fucked him thoroughly—properly—and if not, he was honoured to be the first. He'd make sure he hardly knew his own name by the end of it.

There was a wooden bang from the foot of the hill, followed by an earth-splitting bellow that rattled their ears.

"Who's up there?" Lyl shouted over the crunch of underbrush as he struggled to hike the slope. "You are TRESPASSING on PRIVATE PROPERTY and you have fifteen seconds until I get up there and show you the back of my hand!"

"Oh, shit," Ed laughed, but Roy hardly heard him. He leapt out of the spring and tried to pull his pants, boots and jacket on over his wet body. Ed did the same and nearly fell back in the water, struggling to keep his laughter in. Lyl grunted with exertion trying to climb the hill.

"You kids are in a world of trouble when I get up there! Don't you move!"

"Kids?" Roy hissed. Ed grabbed his arm.

"Hurry, down the other side!"

He took off running, stepping deftly over roots and fallen boughs; without Roy's light, it was pitch black again and he let himself be pulled along. Getting back down to level ground was more of a slide than a climb, ice nearly all the way, and they could hear Lyl at the crest of the hill cursing as he banged around with the cover on the spring. They didn't stop running until they had vaulted up the stairs to Ed's apartment, where Roy doubled over, breathing hard and choking on laughter.

"You menace," he managed.

Ed's key clicked in the lock. "Wasn't your fault. As an impressionable young man, you're easily persuaded."

He looked up. Ed was looking back at him, the door half open, smiling. His cheeks were flushed from the cold and the run and the bottom half of his hair was wet from the spring. He was glowing. There was something intimate about experiencing physical exertion with someone, too, Roy decided; a fight, an escape, anything. Or, worse, maybe everything just felt intimate then. Because he was experiencing feelings and making excuses. The thought gnawed at him, as it had all night.

"Young," he said. "If you're trying to butter me up, you're going to have to be more clever than that."

Ed's laugh trailed behind him into the apartment and Roy followed it.

"I think you're sufficiently buttered."

Ed threw his coat over a dining chair and, without pausing, pulled his shirt off, too. After being in the dark, seeing the curves and planes of his naked body in full light made Roy's brain melt. Ed approached him and slipped his hands inside his open coat. He was still burning hot. Roy spoke softly like there was something he'd disturb, some imbalance he'd strike, if he wasn't careful.

"We're not playing around anymore, are we."

Not a question. Ed leaned up towards him on the balls of his feet, smiling.

"Nope."

Roy kissed him so hard their teeth nearly clicked. Ed’s arms wound around his neck and he let Roy pick him up, a privilege he wasn't expecting. He was surprisingly heavy. He took him to his narrow bed and covered his body with his own, shoving his hips against his in a few unbridled, needy thrusts. Ed laughed. Had he always laughed so much? Roy didn’t remember him being giggly when they knew each other before; it was new, and he liked it. They kicked off their clothes and shivered in the cold of his small, wooden apartment. His linen sheets were rough against Roy’s knees. He pushed Ed to lay back and sat up between his legs. It was different to look at him. When they’d done it earlier, he'd been a pair of broad shoulders and a mess of hair, and now he was Edward and it was so much. He looked at him like he meant it and it left him breathless.

"God, you're beautiful."

Ed laughed again. He spread his arms out on the sheets and Roy drank in every inch of muscle and winter-pale skin.

"Yeah?"

He dipped his head and ran his lips over his obliques, down into the dip of his stomach.

"Quit fishing for compliments, you pest."

Ed moved under his mouth with the raw sexuality and unhurriedness of someone who had no idea that they possessed any sexuality at all. Unbothered, untethered, fluid. It had been insinuated by many of Roy's partners that even at his best, he was too painfully self-aware to be anything close to 'raw.' He bit Ed’s hipbone and he snort-laughed.

“Tickles.”

He slicked up his fingers with a bottle of oil Ed kept behind his nightstand—”I’m not a nun”—and worked him open, and there was a lot less laughing after that. Ed kept pulling him in by his shoulders, tugging his arms, taking his face in his hands to kiss him until his lips were raw. When he pushed inside him, his mouth opened soundlessly against his own, perfectly still.

“Oh.”

Roy kissed him. Sex was always fun and usually civil, but so rarely had it consumed him like this. His hands were shaking. It wasn’t frustrated like it was earlier, not an explosion but a burn, all-consuming, razing, the be-all-end-all. He couldn’t remember the last time he had sex with someone he cared about like this, for better or for worse; Ed fit his legs around his waist and it was him, not anyone else. It drove him wild. He pushed his knees up to his chest and hammered into him, flipped him onto his stomach, bit his earlobe, lost in the sweat and ache of it. For all that Ed was cagey in his daily life, he was surprisingly agreeable in bed, pushy but appreciative. He told him what to do and when he obliged, he made all these sounds. He wasn’t ashamed of anything and it was glorious, beautiful, rude to his neighbours.

Roy twisted his hair around his fist and tugged his head back, slowing to a torturous grind. He was too close. Ed blindly reached a hand back and closed it around his wrist.

“Trade me.”

He let him go and Ed spun him around, pushed him down into the bed and manhandled his way on top. He shuddered as he sunk down onto him again, his hands curling into fists against Roy’s chest. There was a faint creak to his automail as he moved, like the frame of a settling car. Roy just watched him, hardly there, wondering what mix of luck and cunning and karma could have landed him under a young, beautiful genius who seemed to have nothing in his mind beyond making him come. He didn’t deserve it. Could anyone?

“Slow down,” he breathed, trying to take his hips in his hands. “I can’t—”

“Too bad.” Ed’s mouth fell open as he worked, back arching. Roy yanked on his arm and he was forced to bow over him, swearing and spitting. Roy caught his mouth with his own and Ed slapped his hand down over Roy’s, pinned it to the bed and kept rolling his hips, fast and unrelenting. He gasped against his lips and struck some kind of angle and Roy came suddenly, digging his nails into the back of Ed’s hand, the hot, perfect ache in the pit of him finally letting go. Ed came with only a few more bucks of his hips, which was so wildly flattering. Roy kissed him again, hard, pushing up against the grip on his hands. Ed kept him pinned for a moment, their slow kiss lingering, then flipped off him and thumped down on the bed, their shoulders jammed together. Roy propped himself up. Ed looked wrecked, pink marks all down his throat and shoulders.

"That was alright?" Roy asked.

Ed threw an arm over his eyes. "I forget how to do math."

Roy laughed and buried his face in the crook of his neck, in the salt and skin of him, wet hair against his cheek. Minerals and algae. He hadn’t caught his breath. Again, that flood of endorphins and hormones threatened to drown him, and he fought it off. He felt like an animal, drawn into some primal instinct by the scent of another. He had to be better than that. They didn’t say anything for a long while. He forced himself not to think—not about Ed, the future, not anything. There was just a warm body pressed up against his in a very small bed, and that was enough.

“Do you want water?” Ed croaked.

“Yes, please.”

Ed struggled to his feet. Roy kept staring at the ceiling. The tap ran and it stopped running. Ed didn’t come back. Roy looked over and he was still at the sink, so he hauled himself up off the bed and, with only some hesitation, put his arms around him from behind.

He didn’t pull away. His head fit neatly under his chin; a little too high, not that he’d give him the satisfaction of telling him that.

"This is the most fun I've had in I don't even know when," he said, regretting it as soon as it came out of his mouth. Ed was wary about vulnerability the way most people were wary about explosive devices. It took him a while to answer.

“Good.”

Not particularly warm. He pushed his luck.

"Have you considered the possibility that this isn't just an especially good night?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, maybe it’s not the liquor and hormones. What if it would always be like this?"

The water glass was full. Ed pulled it from under the tap but didn’t turn around.

"That's speculation."

"Maybe." He stooped and hooked his chin over Ed's shoulder. Curled an arm around his waist. "You could test it. It would be the… the scientific thing to do."

Ed snorted. "Casanova."

"I know my audience."

There were pinprick holes in the wall where something had hung once. Thick, cheap paint. They stood there for a long time, Ed tucked naked against his front, his body warm and pliant.

Ed turned around.

“Water,” he said, pushing the glass towards him, and he didn't realize how thirsty he was until he'd drank the whole glass. Ed filled it again and finished it. When he was done, he rubbed an eye and said, “We should probably sleep at some point.”

“That would be nice.”

Ed took his hand and led him to the bed, which was new. He lay down and made room for Roy next to him, and soon as Roy's head hit the pillow he was infinitely more tired than he thought; it bled into his bones, catalyzed by drunkenness. Ed had the duvet laying around their waists and Roy looked down at his body and all its curves and old scars. Without the fire of lust scorching through his veins, it left space for softness and worry. He wondered if Ed felt the same. In the morning, he’d go back to his endless march through the freezing cold and a rifle strapped over his back. It would be months before he was home and even longer before he saw Ed again.

Ed, apropos of nothing, said, “When are you finally going to give it up? Do something productive with your life?”

It took Roy a second to pull back. “Give up what?”

Ed said, "Woof, woof." Roy rolled his eyes.

"I'll always be in the military, it's all I know.” He lay his head on his arm. "Not all of us can be lightning in a bottle."

"Oh, whatever."

“Not everyone’s lucky enough to be good at multiple things, boy genius.”

“Whatever, bootlicker.”

There was a pause. Roy thought of the Ed he used to know and the Ed he was trying to know now, and there was a quiet dissonance, something that didn't add up. Everything Ed went through and everything he gave up.

"Well, what are you doing up here?" Roy asked. Ed craned his neck to look up at him.

"I’m not murdering anyone, if you’re seriously about to see how we stack up.”

"Be nice. I mean up here in the mountains, making a couple calls back home every month, hiding it all... You don’t have to do this. Is this where you thought you'd be after everything?"

Ed shrugged. "I like it here. It's fine for now."

"Maybe. But I don't know how someone with so much love in their life could make themselves so alone." He put a tentative hand on his side. "What chance do us regular people have?"

"I didn't make myself shit, asshole," Ed hissed, turning towards him. "Things just turn out like this, sometimes. What do you care?"

"This may come as a surprise to you, but I care a lot. About you specifically." Roy squeezed him gently. "Before today, I mean, and in a much more... wholesome way. You and your brother."

He could practically hear the discomfort coming off Ed.

“You hid it well.”

“Where was I supposed to start? Was I supposed to drop my life and trek across the world looking for you?”

"No. Nevermind, I just—I've got a real profession up here. I have friends. I get out of bed every morning. That's most of everything, isn't it?"

"You're overworked and you have colleagues. When was the last time you saw your brother? Or called Winry?"

"Christ, will you leave me alone? We were having a good time, can we go back to that?"

"I'm not telling you what to do, I'm just telling you what I see."

Ed huffed. "And?"

"You've changed the lives of everyone you met. In your wake, there are hundreds of people thinking of you, wondering where you are now. Their little alchemist." Roy allowed himself a sappy moment and brushed Ed's hair behind his ear. "It seems like such a loss to see you up here alone. You're a national hero. You are deeply, deeply loved."

"Not by anyone who actually knows me."

"Since when have you allowed yourself to be known? How embarrassing."

Ed scowled and closed his hand around Roy's wrist. He brought it to his cheek. "Recently."

"And where was I for this?"

"You tell me."

Roy had built a life around being able to read the room. He chanced it and went in for a kiss. Ed let him. When he pulled back Ed huffed angrily, like he’d been made fun of.

“Maybe it’s a little quiet around here,” Ed admitted. “Part of me misses the… go go go.”

“And good food? Good films? Some actual excitement?”

Ed jabbed a finger into Roy's chest. “Don’t push it.”

Ed had tucked himself gently against Roy's front and it was as close as they’d even been, outside of sex, which felt important.

Roy ventured, "Well, you know what I'm going to selfishly suggest.”

"What?"

"Come back to Central. Open another clinic, spread your work there."

"Why is that selfish?" Ed paused. "Don’t tell me you wanna date me."

Roy swallowed his pride and the nervous lump in his throat just the same.

"I'd like to give it a shot."

Ed leaned back and looked at him long and hard and faintly amused, like he'd told an off-colour joke.

"Me," Ed said.

"You," Roy agreed. After so much practice being intentionally gauzy, he wasn't sure how to come across as genuine. "You're incredible, Edward."

He tried to think of something he could add to clarify, but that was it. Ed was incredible, extraordinary, completely singular, and Roy wanted to bask in his presence for as long as he was allowed. Maybe it was a relationship that would crash and burn, but he had to know. It would be worth every second regardless, whatever crashed and burned along with it.

He wondered how many times Ed had heard from his partners that he was incredible, being, even more so than Roy, notable. If Roy left the city and wore civvies, he had anonymity. Where could Ed go to escape his limelight, if anywhere? How could anyone else call him incredible without being part of the very small group of people who really knew how incredible he was? Roy guarded Ed guiltily, like a dragon's hoard. Anyone who knew him on that day did.

“You’re horny and loopy,” Ed said, sitting up a bit. He inexpertly fluffed the pillow behind his head and lay back down. “Talk to me at the end of a bad workday and tell me you still want to see me.”

“I almost bled out this morning. That’s not a bad enough day?”

Ed didn’t say anything. His point was clear enough: Roy did have something to prove. It wouldn't be easy and Ed was right to question it. Roy was older, powerful, rich and troubled. Ed was being smart.

Roy kissed Ed's jaw and said, "You don't know me very well yet, but trust me, I'm a catch."

Ed laughed brightly and nudged him away. "You think?"

"I'm an accomplished home cook and I have an unrelenting sex drive."

"You don't say."

"I travel enough that you won't be able to get sick of me. My personal library would keep you occupied for a respectable few weeks before you ate through it all."

Ed made a hmm noise that sounded wonderfully contemplative.

Roy said, “Consider it. That’s all I ask.”

Ed tucked his head under Roy's chin just a fraction more, and whatever self respect Roy had went out the window. If it didn't work out, the only person Ed would gloat to about it was him.

“I’ll consider it,” Ed said sleepily, draping an arm over Roy’s side. Ed smelled dusty and warm, dried pond water and human. “You’re a big feelings guy. You get lots of ideas. Sit on this one for a while.”

That jabbed Roy in the ribs, but it wasn’t wrong. He fell asleep running his fingers through the short, soft hair at the back of Ed's neck for something to do. Ed’s arm was still over his shoulder, his thigh between his own, and it was warm and easy.

—

Roy didn’t remember falling asleep but he was woken sharply by the shrillest, most annoying telephone ring he’d ever heard. There was that moment of disorientation, a bed that wasn’t his own and a warm, solid body under his arm. The phone kept ringing.

He groaned, not fully awake, “God, where did you get that thing?”

Ed slurred, “I'm a heavy sleeper,” and leaned over the side of the bed to snatch the phone from the floor. He answered it with: “Tell me someone’s dead or dying.”

They’d left the light on. A blossoming hangover beat a drum behind Roy's eyes and his mouth tasted like sewage. He blinked blearily at Ed’s smooth, toned back and tangle of golden hair and, without thinking, ran a hand down his spine. Real, apparently.

“He’s… what?” Ed said into the phone. "No, I haven't seen him." He twisted slowly to look over his shoulder at Roy. "Nnnno, I'm not on tonight. Ryder should… Right. He hasn't?"

Thoughts were spooling together in Roy’s brain. This was becoming his problem. Ed started to babble.

"No, I—calm down, he's probably—No no no, don't do that—fuck, he's here, alright? He's with me. I'll put him on." Ed rolled over, handed him the phone and mouthed sorry.

Roy sighed and put the receiver to his ear. Ed flopped back down and Roy put his chin on his shoulder. "Mustang here."

It was Jaema. "General? You're not at the clinic! Ryder—"

"—is just doing his job. While you should be asleep," Roy finished. He knew he wasn't keeping the sated and sleepy tone out of his voice well enough, and neither had Ed. "Do you need me for something, lieutenant?"

"N-no, I just… You're with the doctor? Ed?"

"Legally he's not a doctor," Roy said; Ed elbowed him. "But yes."

"Is something wrong?"

"No, Jaema. I'm catching up with an old friend and I'm steps from the clinic in case my body rejects my alchemically-created guts. At ease."

There was a long pause. What was there to say? Jaema wouldn’t confront him about it and it would be a long time before anyone would.

“We’re still leaving at…”

“Quarter to six. I’ll be there.”

“It’s, ah, half five now, sir.”

Roy closed his eyes. “See you soon, Jaema.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He thunked his head down on Ed’s back and fumbled the phone blindly over the side of the bed. Ed laughed hoarsely.

“You made me lie to that nice little man.”

“I appreciate you trying.”

“Sorry it didn’t work.”

“He won’t say anything.” Roy smushed his face against Ed’s shoulder. “I have to leave soon.”

“I heard.”

"I had a very nice time."

Ed muttered something into his pillow that sounded suspiciously like me too.

Having feelings for someone was so undignified, Roy decided—the wanton disregard that came with hangovers and bad breath and the sour vulnerability of not caring that someone else saw you like that, your hair sticking up at the back, hickies on your chest. He’d forgotten what it was like.

Ed mumbled, marginally clearer this time, “Ask Hawkeye for my number next time you talk to her, she's got it.”

Roy smiled against his skin. “You want me to call you?”

“Not enough that I’ll get out of bed to write my number down for you, so make of that what you will.”

Roy kissed his shoulder, then leaned over him to kiss the back of his neck, then his cheek. "I'll call you."

Ed buried his face in the sheets. "Don't get killed before you do."

"I won't, but only because you asked so nicely."

By the time Roy pulled his shirt on, Ed had fallen back asleep. Roy sifted through his piles of books until he found a notebook, tore out a page and wrote on it with a dying pen. He left it on Ed's nightstand and crept out the door, shutting it softly behind him.

Ready to know you whenever you'll let me.

xo Roy

— Epilogue: 3 weeks later—

Ed wedged the phone between his shoulder and cheek as he threw a piece of bread in the toaster. The cord of the phone trailed across the apartment.

“It sounds like you're doing good.”

“Yeah!” Al said, reminiscently tinny over the long distance connection. “Lots going on, but yeah, good. I cannot wait to see you, you have no idea.”

“Yeah, I’m excited too. We’ll do everything, see everyone. And hang out just us. It’ll be great. I haven’t been back in a while, either.”

Al sighed happily. Ed leaned back on the counter, pleased.

Al said, “Well, what have you been up to? You haven’t been back to visit at all?”

“Ah, no. Just really busy. I’ve been meaning to…”

“I bet. You said Breda was up in the fall, eh? Has anyone else come by?”

"You remember the colonel? Mustang? Well, General Mustang, now, I guess.”

“Do I remember him? Please.”

“Yeah, yeah. He was up the other week, we hung out for a bit."

He could tell by the delighted noise Al made that he was going to ignore any past messiness Ed had with Roy.

"Oh! That's so great, was he there for—"

Ed debated being regular and nice about it, but it was so rare these days that he had something to be a brat about and he missed tormenting his brother.

"We slept together," he said cheerily. And then, "Sorry," trying to stifle a laugh.

There was a long, painful pause.

"You're messing with me."

"Nope. Twice."

"PLEASE don't tell me—"

"—How insanely good it was? Why would I do that, what would you do with that information? Live with it, forever?"

"Disgusting. Thanks. You are so stupid."

"How am I stupid?"

“It’s Colonel Mu—”

“General.”

“What, like you’re proud of that? It’s Roy Mustang, Ed, he’s—”

Ed had been given this speech from Al over a handful of partners who were deemed less than savoury, but he was lying if he said he expected it over Roy. He thought he was a safe bet. Weren’t they friends?

“Aren’t you friends with him?”

“I mean—”

“You told me a few months ago how excited you were to read about him in the paper, you gushed.”

“Did anything I say sound like I wanted you to have sex with him? Did I CONVINCE you?”

“No. He did.”

Another grimace of a silence.

“Tell me you didn’t actually make him convince you. Is that… a thing?”

“I didn’t, and yes, probably.” His toast popped and spooked him. He plucked it out and started to butter it. “It’s not a big deal.”

"It is a big deal, he’s—him. We’ve known him for a very long time. I’m not getting into this over the phone.” Al made a frustrated noise. “I liked you better when you didn't know what sex was."

"I liked me better, too."

"You know most people wouldn't WANT their brother knowing this stuff about them? What happened to being cagey?"

"Excuse me for sharing my life events with you, my only family!"

"Share less, please."

"You’re still coming, though, right?”

“Obviously, idiot. If we’re meeting in Central, does that mean you’ll see him?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“Like hell you haven’t. Are you dating him?”

“No. He’s only called me once.”

“So what? If he calls you three times, will you be dating him?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“If you’re in Central, he’ll know about it. You’ll have to see him.”

“We can’t ‘go out’ like regular people, Al. He’s a general, he’d get skinned alive. Amestris isn’t like… a good place to live.”

"I know, I know. Does that mean you won't see him?"

Alone in his apartment, Ed allowed himself a small, secret smile, thinking of Roy Mustang and his carefully placed words and his try-hard poker face. His wide chest and his long eyelashes. His stomach flipped.

"I'll consider it."