Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

— 1922, Central —

Six months passed and Ed made plans to visit Central. He planned, however tentatively, to turn over the clinic in the north to Georgie and open another in Central, depending on whether he could find space to set up a new clinic in and funding to back it. A surprising number of staff at his existing clinic had friends or family in Central who also worked in the medical field and wanted to work for him if he set something up, which made the question of staffing upsettingly easy. Somewhere, secretly, he’d been hoping for more roadblocks.

The train ride took four days and, for most of it, was blisteringly hot; a harsh winter had barrelled into an excruciating early summer and after so many years up north, Ed didn’t own clothes light enough to deal with it. For four days he sat in his compartment with the window wide open, balmy country air blasting into his face, and he tried and failed to keep his mind off how things would be in Central. First and foremost, the trip was about seeing his brother for the first time in years. Second, it was about looking into moving back to Central. Third—and this piece was infinitesimally small—it was about deciding whether he’d see Roy Mustang again. Roy was an afterthought. He’d see Al, get situated, and then maybe after a few days he’d drop Roy a line and see about meeting up if he was feeling stupid or bored. He couldn’t lie: there was a ‘will we or won’t we’ about the whole thing that made it appallingly exciting.

On the last day of the trip, the passengers deboarded the train to allow for maintenance and he got an hour to freshen up at the station’s traveller lodgings. He pulled his hair back into a high ponytail that kept it off his neck, scraped back to keep it off his sweaty face. Even after a shower, he was intolerably sticky with the heat.

As the train continued its journey, he started to recognize the outer reaches of Central City and got jittery-excited. He regretted telling Al not to meet him at the station and dreaded the long cab ride into the apartment Al had rented in the city. Still, hitting the platform at Central always made him feel like a kid again. It was oppressively hot, the air still and muggy, the sun high overhead. He hauled his trunk behind him out of the way of the passengers pouring off the train and the attendants rushing on, wiped sweat off his forehead and surveyed the platform to situate himself and figure out where to grab a car.

Making its way towards him across the platform through the throng of people and the heat mirage was something broad-shouldered and dark-haired that looked suspiciously like Roy Mustang. He wore an airy white shirt and dark slacks and a jacket tucked under his arm. His windswept hair just starting to silver, his dark eyes, the charming wrinkles at the corners of his smile—Ed squinted angrily at the injustice of it all. What gave him the right? He wasn’t even sweaty, he just glowed.

“Edward! You look strangely unhappy to see me. And here I thought it would be a fun surprise,” Roy said cheerily. He stuck out his hand for Ed to shake and Ed snorted at it, but shook it anyways. No gloves. A strong grip. “Long time no see.”

“Six months,” Ed said. His hand slipped from Roy’s and Roy’s hung forlornly between them for a moment before he put it in his pocket. “I think that’s a pretty good turnaround.”

“Given the distance, yes,” Roy said, still unflappibly happy. “You look absolutely radiant.”

“I’ve been on a train for four days.”

“Yet you look fresh as a daisy.”

“Are you going to be like this the whole time?”

“Not once I get over the unbelievable excitement of seeing you again.”

He was beaming at him like he hung the moon and it was a funny look on him. Ed had always found Roy so serious when he was a kid and learning in adulthood that he was kind of an idiot and a goofball was very charming. Did he always have dimples? 

“Sap.”

He looked the same as he had that winter, maybe a little more tan. Memories of their one strange and wonderful night together came flooding back to Ed all at once, suddenly very real after seeing him again; what had felt like a dream in the months since was suddenly crystal clear and concrete. Roy was interested in him romantically. Roy wanted to have sex with him again, probably, unless a lot had changed. Ed had a series of decisions to make.

Roy stepped closer.

“I’d hug you at the very least, but anyone who’d recognize us would know we don’t have the kind of relationship where we hug.”

“A dead giveaway.”

“Yes.”

Ed was looking at his mouth. He wanted more time to get grounded in Central before being tossed into whatever things were between the two of them and Roy’s sudden presence was like jumper cables to his brain. He was enticing and infuriating like a finger-trap puzzle.

“I have to meet my brother,” he said, like an excuse.

“And I’d never keep you. I thought I’d offer to drive you, if you’d like. Where are you meeting him?”

“Some rental downtown.”

“Excellent. It’s on my way.”

“You don’t even know where it is.”

“Trust me, it’s on my way.”

There was a lull. Roy’s smile dimmed some, replaced by something thoughtful, almost intense. He glanced over Ed’s shoulder, then leaned in so close Ed could smell his aftershave. He spoke near his ear, their cheeks almost brushing like he was telling a secret.

“I want you so bad my teeth hurt.”

Ed yearned. Every scrap of cool, calm and collected that he’d hoarded up north like a crow picking through shiny things was suddenly gone.

“I know,” he said lowly. He was proud of himself, leaving Roy to decide whether it was agreement or acknowledgement. “What are you gonna do about it?”

He heard the deep, slow breath Roy took.

“If you think I’m saying this for any particular reason, I’m not,” he said, in a tone that implied that he very much was saying it for a reason, “but I’ll be in the washroom at the north end of the platform in two minutes. So there’s no reason whatsoever for you to… also be there.”

Ed laughed before he could stop himself. “You’re joking.”

“I’ll see you in two minutes if you feel like finding out.”

“You—”

Roy took off down the platform, whistling to himself.

Ed squeezed his eyes shut and counted to ten. Shapes danced across his vision when he opened them. He weighed his morals and his sense of decency against his flagrant disregard for authority, then headed in the direction Roy had gone.

The washroom was, in his defense, clean. Sun streamed through a high window and a creeping vine lined the ceiling. Roy stood washing his hands at a polished little sink and jumped when Ed entered the room. He looked impossibly relieved to see him.

“Thank God, I didn’t think that would work.”

Ed was charging across the room before he could think any more about it; his face hurt from smiling.

“Idiot.”

He grabbed his shirt and kissed him and it made his body sing. Roy shoved him into the stall and devoured him, and if there was anything better than getting sucked off in a bathroom stall by a decorated military official, Ed hadn’t experienced it yet. He let his head fall back against the tile and laughed, burying his hands in Roy’s hair. 

It’s good to be home, he thought.

—

Roy insisted on carrying his trunk to his car afterwards, which would have been borderline humiliating if his arms didn’t look so nice when he lifted things. Ed carried his jacket and felt like a caddy.

“New car,” he said idly as he got into said new car. His face was still red and Roy was practically glowing. After Roy swung into the driver’s seat, Ed hissed, “Could you look a little less smug?”

Roy turned his highbeam smile in his direction. “Nope. And yes, new car, thank you for noticing.”

“Surprised you didn’t go with something more ostentatious. It’s downright classy.”

“Me? Perish the thought.”

Ed hid his smile by looking out the window as the vehicle roared to life and they took off down the street.

“How are things?” he asked, trying to be polite. Trying not to think about coming in his mouth.

“Fantastic. There’s a brigadier general trying very hard to get me fired.”

“What?”

“Carlson Metock. He’s a horrible little man who desperately wants to get me involved in a scandal. Last week he sent a prostitute to my apartment.”

“No way.”

“Yes way. I told her very politely that she had the wrong unit and shut the door, and I have no doubt he was waiting down the hall with a camera.”

“Why is he trying to get you fired?”

“I don’t know, he avoids me when I try to confront him. Not that I’ve tried very hard, I find it amusing. I assume he’s a Bradley loyalist who thinks I made the whole thing up, you still find those once in a while. Few and far between, now, but I got a pipe bomb in my mailbox in the year after it happened. That’s stopped, thankfully.”

“Your life is insane.”

“My hope is that you find it exciting.”

Ed realized he was looking at his hands on the steering wheel and looked away.

“I’m here to see Al,” he said, maybe harsher than he needed to be. “I don’t want you, or anyone, to—”

Gum up the works was the only phrasing that came to mind and it sounded stupid. While he workshopped something else, Roy cut in.

“All jokes aside, I’m genuinely offended that you think you need to tell me that your brother comes first. I may be a nuisance—usually on purpose—but I’m not going to insert myself into your family life.”

Ed winced. “I know.”

“I like you, I’m not an asshole.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

He glanced over. Roy looked serious, his eyes on the road. Ed felt guilty.

“If you…”

Roy interrupted. “Are you looking for clinic space while you’re here?”

“I might.”

“Let me know if you’d like me to line anything up. My aunt’s new suitor works in real estate and he’s been begging to show me his chops, I could get you some showings.”

Ed didn’t want to admit he hadn’t thought about that. It sounded better than his original plan to find a place, which was ‘I’ll ask around.’

“Could do,” he said, noncommittal, as if it weren’t an extremely kind and thoughtful offer. “Left here. The brick building at the end.”

Roy hummed. Ed looked at his hands again as he turned the wheel—long, artful fingers, bluish veins under pale skin. It was hard to not think about them being on him.

“Well, call me if you’d like to take me up on it,” Roy said as they pulled up outside the building. “You’ve got my number.”

It was all so polite; Ed didn’t know whether to be surprised or disappointed. The blowjob in the bathroom hadn’t been polite, so there was that, at least. Roy was an enigma.

“Thanks for the ride.”

“Any time.”

Ed climbed out and pulled his trunk out of the back. The hot, metallic smell of the car and gasoline and Roy in the driver’s seat with his crisp white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, smiling at him—he didn’t know what to call it. He wasn’t great with words outside the scientific lexicon.

“I’ll call you,” he said quickly. Decisive. Roy beamed.

“Can’t wait. Tell your brother I say hi.”

—

When Ed opened the door to the small, third-storey apartment Al rented and saw his smiling face for the first time in two years, he forgot all about Roy for a full forty minutes as they hugged and laughed and unpacked and babbled at each other incessantly. How have you been how was the train where did you stop when did you leave and on and on and on. It wasn’t until Al asked how he’d gotten there from the train station, as they leaned on their little balcony in the hot sun, that Ed remembered Roy.

“Uh, Mustang got me, actually,” he said, not cool at all. Al raised his eyebrows.

“You had him pick you up?”

Ed squinted against the sun, the apartment inside over Al’s shoulder black in his sun-blindness. Al’s hair was cropped short again—last time he saw him, he’d been growing it out—and he was a little wider, his arms freckled and thick, and he wore a big t-shirt tucked into shorts. The picture of an approachable young man on summer vacation.

“He knew when I was coming in but I didn’t know he’d be there. Like I didn’t ask him or anything. He blindsided me.”

He was being weird and he knew it.

Al asked, “Why are you making that face?”

“I’m not making a face, I just look like this.”

“You do not! What’s so funny about meeting him at the station?”

It was always more fun to torture Al in person than over the phone. Ed wasn’t a saint.

“We had sex in the bathroom.”

Al recoiled in horror. “Of the train station?”

“I’m not proud of myself.” He couldn’t stop grinning.

“God, you have untold diseases now. You’re disgusting. This is such a bad idea.”

Al spun on his heel and went back inside, the curtains over the doors fluttering in his wake. Ed trailed after him, laughing.

“He’s exciting! I’ve never done exciting!”

“He’s a threat!”

“To who, me?”

“To your sanity! Your sense of human decency!”

“Oh, whatever.”

“And to your privacy and maybe your safety, if we’re getting into that now.”

“We’re not.”

Al sat hard on the leftmost bed, sheets bouncing up around him. The apartment was a single room, two beds on the left, a kitchenette on the right, and a bathroom at the far end. An ugly painting of a lake (marsh?) hung over the beds and the whole place smelled musty and old. But the location was good and the price was right, and it had a certain charm.

Al said, “I know you know this, but we live in a pretty awful society. For people who are, uh, different.”

Ed sighed and leaned against the kitchen table tucked against the far wall.

“You can say gay, Al.”

Al was as good about it as anyone had been, when Ed told him, but there were always little things that showed he didn’t fully understand. Ed didn’t blame him and didn’t need him to; Al led with love, which was the important part.

“I just mean it’s not smart to be flippant, Ed! He’s a general! It’ll be so messy if—do you even know how old he is? He’s old enough to—”

“He is not old enough to be my dad and I’d like that stricken from the record.”

“Are you deflecting because you don’t know how old he is?”

“I don’t know because it doesn’t matter! Who cares?”

“That’s—”

“—totally irrelevant, and I know for a fact you don’t care about stuff like that, so you’d better tell me what’s really bothering you because I know it’s not his age.”

“Wh—all that other stuff I just said! That’s what’s bothering me! The risk to your safety, to his life and career and, since he’s the only high-ranking military official I trust, the risk to all of Amestris—are you even listening?”

“I’m listening plenty! You’re being a dick!”

“I’m looking out for you! Someone has to!”

“I didn’t ask!” Ed put his hands against his eyes and hunched over, deflated. “I don’t wanna talk about this. I’m sorry. Have you eaten? Let’s get lunch.”

—

That night back at the apartment, when they were both sun-baked and tired from walking, Ed crept out of the apartment while Al was in the shower and went down the block to call Roy.

“Roy Mustang.”

“Hi.”

“Oh.” He sounded surprised. Ed was mildly flattered that he recognized his voice. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

“Don’t rub it in. Al got me excited about opening the clinic and I wanna start looking into it.” It was getting dark and street lights began to flicker on around him. He tugged absently on the payphone cord. “Can you get showings together by Saturday?”

“Consider it done. I’ll pick you up Saturday morning.”

Ed smiled against the receiver. “Cool. Thanks.”

Roy laughed softly. 

“Why you’d thank me for being so self-serving, I’ll never know.”

—

Ed spent the next three days crawling through the best parts of the city with his brother, his best friend in the world. Central had changed for the better in the post-war period and now had a bevy of delights to offer a tourist and old friend, not a stoic city of white and gray pointing towards a monolithic government building but a colourful, pleasurable city of food and lights that grew more vibrant every year. Without the looming threat of violence and death, culture grew, and Ed enjoyed himself more than he thought possible in such a short amount of time. They ate and walked and talked, and he got his brother wasted more than once, which was one of his favourite things; Al didn’t drink often and got candid and almost bawdy when he’d had a few. They bought stacks of books and read them in lush parks, on the sunny balcony of their apartment, before bed. Ed read a novel for the first time in years for the sheer wanton hell of it—no science, no alchemistry, just a solid story about a man on a quest. He felt like a kid again. And then on Saturday morning, he twisted his freshly washed hair into a braid, slunk out of the apartment where Al slept, and ran into Roy Mustang at the foot of the stairs that led out of the building.

“God, you can be creepy.”

“Riza always told me to take initiative. I’m giving it a shot.” He had paper cups of coffee in his hands, one of which he handed to Ed. He was wearing his civvies, a long navy blue coat in the early morning chill, bluer under the crystal blue sky. “I assume you take it black.”

“Right,” Ed said, both wary and incredibly grateful. “Good guess.”

“You’re not as unknowable as you wish you were. An obsession with ‘toughness’? Desperate to appear wiser than your years? You take it black.”

“And you must take yours with milk and sugar because you’re insanely decadent and don’t give a shit about what anyone thinks.”

“See? You know me, too.”

Roy motioned for him to follow him down the street. Ed sipped his coffee and it burnt his tongue but it was rich and strong. He could smell Roy’s cologne, familiar and new at the same time.

“So, what’s your guy got up first on the docket?” he asked.

“Step-uncle is sitting this one out. He gave me the listings and I’ll be taking you to the showings.”

“Of course you are.”

“There’s not much to being a real estate agent, turns out. He took me through the basic things to look for, and you’re no slouch.”

“This won’t take all day, will it? Al wants to shop for dinner.”

“Not at all. Not many spaces for sale that would be suitable for a clinic, I’m afraid. Something of a zoning issue. I went through the legal mumbo-jumbo last night and I think I’ve got it straight.”

“Hm. Thanks.”

“I think I’m in the wrong career. I’d be a fantastic real estate agent.”

“You’re sure smarmy enough.”

“I think I’d have to get smarmier, actually.”

They got into Roy’s car parked down the block, Roy consulted a map he had spread out in the back seat, and they took off down the lane. It was busy with early morning commuters and they went slow.

“It’s weird being here again,” Ed said, tugging absentmindedly at his short jacket. “It’s so different.”

“I was wondering if you’d say that. Being here all the time, you don’t notice it, but I was thinking the other day about how things have changed since the last time you were here. Feels like a lifetime.”

“I’m seeing fewer armed guards. That’s nice.”

“One of the many benefits of peacetime,” Roy mused. “Well, peacetime enough. There’ll always be border skirmishes.”

“Are they still sending you out to the trenches?”

A flicker of something passed over Roy’s features and was gone before Ed could place it. “Not if I have anything to say about it. Not since I was up north.”

“Oh, you didn’t like getting shot?”

“Very funny. If I hadn’t been near a certain brilliant doctor, I might have died.”

“As if you’d let some knuckle-dragging merc kill you.”

“I didn’t have much say in the matter.”

“You always have say.”

“That’s blatantly untrue,” Roy laughed. “You’ve been good at everything for so long that you forget what it’s like to have fate drag you around by the nose! How far up your ivory tower do you have to be to say everyone chooses when they die, you brat?”

Ed laughed. He forgot that he liked talking to Roy. He was so busy obsessing over the more visceral parts of him that ‘chatting’ hadn’t come into it. He forgot that they were friends, if you squint.

“So where is this place?”

“Right downtown. It used to be a walk-in clinic several years ago and has been sitting empty, apparently.”

“Nice.”

“It’s a couple blocks from HQ. We could get lunch together.”

Ed looked over at him. He was stifling a smile.

“Is its proximity to where you work the main selling point?”

“It’s a big one.”

Ed snorted and shook his head. “You’re…” He didn’t know what he was. They were all over each other at the train station and now they were both pretending they weren’t. There was this tension crackling between them and it was unbearable. “So, what, you’re just my real estate agent now?”

“As opposed to what?”

“You know what.”

Roy hummed. It took him a second. “I don’t know, honestly. I planned to take it easy and see how things go. Kind of… play it as it lays.”

“You sucked my dick within the first five minutes of seeing me. If that’s you taking it easy…”

“That was just a greeting. Like a secret handshake.”

Ed laughed despite himself. “You’re so weird.” Roy was smiling, too. “So we’re playing it by ear?”

“Exactly.”

“You’re not losing your mind over not knowing?”

“Cool as a proverbial cucumber,” Roy said, so easy-breezy about it that Ed almost believed him.

“Look at you, living with uncertainty.”

“Are you proud of me?”

“Yes.”

They had to circle the place twice before they found parking and each time they went by, Ed craned his neck to look.

“It’s the red door?”

“Yes.”

“It looks, uh, shitty.”

Roy clicked his tongue. “You dare insult your real estate agent this way.”

They parked, got out and walked up. It was a narrow building set between a laundromat and a For Lease sign on the next building, with no windows on the front face. Roy knocked on the red door and waited a lifetime for it to open. A man’s gaunt face appeared in the crack. He looked like some species of previously undiscovered bird.

“You’re here to look at the place?”

“Hi,” Roy said pleasantly and stuck out his hand. “Roy Mustang, we spoke on the phone.”

“Did we?”

“Ah, yes. Yesterday. We want to open a clinic…”

“Oh, right, yeah, right, you wanna use it as a doctor place. C’mon in.” The man threw the door open and wandered inside without shaking Roy’s hand. It was dark beyond the threshold and smelled old and musty. Ed glanced sideways at Roy.

“What are you getting me into?”

Roy hesitated. “I’m not positive that this is the man I spoke to on the phone.”

“What?”

“This reeks of Carlson Metock.”

“Who?”

“The man trying to get me fired.”

“Ah.”

“Well,” Roy said, taking a swig of coffee, “you’re not afraid of a fixer-upper, I assume,” and he headed into the space after the bird-like man.

“Roy,” Ed hissed, missing the back of his jacket with a desperate snatch. From within the dark he heard him say, oh, love the wallpaper.

He crept in after the two of them, leaving the door open behind them for an easy exit. The space was low-ceilinged and dark, lit sporadically by narrow windows up where the ceiling met the wall. The wallpaper in question was both striped and floral, pale blue like a nursery, wet and peeling all over. The bird man stood at the back wall and Roy made a slow lap of the room with his hands in his pockets, inspecting the crown moulding.

Ed cleared his throat. “This isn’t supposed to be a ‘doctor place,’ is it? Like it’s not set up with examination rooms?”

“It can be whatever you’re into, man. Knock down a few walls. Put up a few walls. Whatever.”

Ed found Roy’s gaze across the dark room and mouthed abort, abort.

“But,” the bird man went on, “you’re looking for the real special thing about this place, you gotta see this back room here.”

Roy stopped his amiable pacing. “What’s in the room?”

“You just gotta see it to believe it. You know? Makes this place a real steal, you won’t wanna open your… your…”

“Clinic.”

“Yeah, your clinic anywhere else.”

The man stood near a door at the back of the room that was newer and cleaner than anything that surrounded it. A coloured light spread from under the frame. Roy made no move towards it. After a long silence, Ed slurped his coffee loudly.

“Thank you for your time,” he said politely, “but this is not the doctor place for us.”

Back out on the street, hurrying away from the building, Roy laughed.

“Genuinely sorry about that. He must have put in a fake listing, or switched it, or… I don’t know.”

“What do you think was in the room?”

“Opium den? Something else incriminating? Who knows.”

Ed shook his head and laughed. “If this guy wants to get rid of you so badly, why doesn’t he just go the old fashioned route and kill you?”

“I’m a widely-loved public figure! If I died now, it would be with honour. I’d be immortalized. If I die some years from now totally disgraced, however, he wins the long game.”

“Wow.”

“He’s thinking outside the box, I’ll give him that.” Roy raised a hand to his eyes and squinted into the sun. “Lovely day, though.”

Ed hummed and took a sip of coffee. “Mm. So what’s on the docket now, Mr. Real Estate? Got an abandoned barn you wanna show me? A haunted mental hospital?”

“That’s all I had for today, actually. There’s a very nice place in the northern district but it won’t be ready for viewings until after the weekend. And I’m sure about that one.”

“Right.”

“You’ll just have to trust me.” Roy slowed his walk and looked down at Ed. Ed looked back. The sun was behind him and it was hard to see his features, just shapes in the blackness and the wind tousling his hair. “Let me take you to breakfast to make up for almost taking you into an opium den.”

Ed grinned despite himself. “Not gonna say no to that.”

—

Roy picked an upsettingly classy diner, sweet and charming and sun-soaked. It was off the main drag and quiet, nearly empty, and the hostess who greeted them at the door clearly recognized him.

“Can we sit in the back?” Roy asked. The woman laughed.

“You don’t have to ask every time.”

She led them across the tiled floor past tall open windows and trailing plants with heart-shaped leaves. The air smelled of fried meat and bread and honey.

“It’s quiet today,” Roy said, and she laughed again.

“It’s too hot! All these windows don’t help, no one’s coming in.”

She sat them at a little red table in the corner. Ed sat in the booth facing the bank of sunny windows and Roy, after a moment, slid in next to him instead of across from him.

“Better for my back,” Roy said to the hostess. Ed elbowed him, which seemed to go unnoticed to both him and the hostess, who left them with menus and disappeared around the corner. Ed started flipping idly through the menu.

“Same side of the table, Casanova?”

“I like being close to you.”

He said it like it was normal. Ed didn’t know what to do with it, so he ignored it and kept looking at the menu.

“Any recommendations?”

“They make a very good eggs benedict with spinach and that thick Cretan cheese, but anything’s good.”

It was the closest they’d come to being alone since they’d been here, save for the train station bathroom, which Ed wasn’t counting. He felt like there was something he should have wanted to say to make use of the privacy but he didn’t know what. He felt tense, not in a bad way. Roy smelled nice. He liked being close to him.

The server came and took their orders; Ed got what Roy recommended and Roy got some kind of sandwich on multigrain bread. Roy hummed so quietly that Ed wasn’t sure he was doing it at all. It was still so strange to see him again and to be back in Central after what felt like a lifetime away. He was having a quiet Saturday-morning breakfast in the place where all the worst things of his life happened to him, with a man who was there when they happened.

He wasn’t sure what came over him—needing a distraction from the past, wanting to bother Roy for fun, or both. He leaned over, close enough for his lips to brush Roy’s ear.

“Put your jacket over your lap.”

Roy did it with no questions asked, which was a bigger ego boost than he needed. Under the jacket, he slid his hand up his leg and palmed his dick through his slacks. Roy didn’t flinch. His voice was low and even.

“What are you doing?”

Ed looked around. Their section of the restaurant was deserted, sun streaming bright onto the empty tables.

“Would you let me?” he asked quietly. He heard Roy inhale. Wondered if he’d hesitate.

“Yes,” Roy said, right away. His hand tightened around Ed’s leg.

“Right here?”

“Anywhere.”

Ed felt dizzy. He laughed softly, moved his fingers against him and felt him harden.

“Good thing you can be quick.”

Roy exhaled, long and slow. Ed rested his cheek against his shoulder, kept moving his hand. He was hard now, too.

“I’m going to let you lead me off a cliff someday,” Roy said quietly, his voice strained. Ed laughed.

“That sounds like a you problem.”

“Forget breakfast. Let me take you home.”

He turned his head and pressed his mouth to Roy’s shoulder. 

“Not yet,” he said. Roy made a breathy, frustrated noise. “Undo your belt.”

Roy’s hands were moving under his jacket when they heard footsteps clack down the hallway. Ed scooted away, biting back a smile. Roy’s whole face was red.

“Fresh coffee for you gents?” the server asked, brandishing a carafe.

“Please,” Ed said, beaming, pushing his mug towards her. She refilled Roy’s without him saying anything, then left. Roy let go of the breath he’d been holding.

“You’re a menace,” he said tightly. Ed kissed his shoulder again.

“Who’s cool as a cucumber now?”

—

Roy drove him home after breakfast, the day getting hot in the afternoon sun.

“Call me mid-week and I’ll have a time for the next showing, the better place,” Roy said. “Its proximity to HQ leaves something to be desired, but it seems nice in all other respects.”

“Oh, boo hoo.”

“Who’ll chauffeur you around if you’re not near my office? Perish the thought.”

Ed laughed. The street whizzed by outside, the tall, narrow buildings re-familiar to him now after his first week.

“Thanks for breakfast, by the way.”

“Thanks for half a handjob, you charmer.”

Roy parked and walked him to the door. He patted all his pockets and realized he didn’t have his keys.

“Ah, shit. Wait ‘til Al comes down, in case he’s not home.”

He rang the buzzer for their apartment and Al picked up right away.

“Hello?”

“I forgot my keys again.”

“Oh my God. Be right down.”

Roy snickered. “You do this often?”

“I have done this. Occasionally. Not often.”

Feet thundered down the stairs and the door almost hit them when it swung open.

“You goof, you—” He looked up at Roy and jumped. “Oh! General Mustang!”

He was much closer to Roy’s height than Ed was, which Ed was annoyed by.

Roy laughed. “Please, it’s ‘Roy.’ We’ve been through hell together, Alphonse, I’m not general anything.”

Al blinked at him. Ed would give anything to know what his brother was thinking, wondering if he, like himself, was shocked at what Roy had become over the years: a warm, living human, with guilt and rage only lapping faintly at his shores and not crashing into his beachfront community.

“Alright, Roy,” Al said, only half joking, “it’s good to see you. Are you—” He flicked a glance at Ed; Ed conveyed a successful no no no no no with his eyes. “—just leaving?”

“I have an engagement, unfortunately,” Roy said. Ed snorted.

“An engagement.”

“Alright, I’m going to go home and listen to records in my underwear, smart guy. Are you happy?”

“Immensely.”

For a second, he thought Roy would kiss him goodbye. He had this look on his face like he was going to. He didn’t know what he’d do if Roy kissed him in front of Al. He’d never kissed Roy in front of anyone and had never kissed anyone in front of Al, and it was something he’d never thought about until he was presented with the reality of it happening. He was surprised to find that it made him nervous.

No one kissed anyone and the moment passed.

“It’s good to see you, Alphonse,” Roy said warmly. “It’s been too long. If your brother lets us, we should all go to dinner. I’d like to hear about Xing.”

Al smiled and nodded hard. “Absolutely. For sure.”

Ed looked between the two of them and their strange tension, clearly pleased to see each other after such a long time but also simultaneously grimacing. Finally, Al laughed.

“Sorry. It’s just… funny,” he said, halting, trying to stifle another laugh. Roy just smiled and shook his head.

“I thought you’d say that.”

“It’s different.”

“It’s allowed to be funny. I just hope you’re adjusting.”

“I’d adjust a lot better if Brother could stop talking about you.”

Ed croaked, “Al.”

Roy was instantly, as if someone had flipped a switch, smug. “Fascinating. That’s something you’ll have to take up with him, I’m afraid.”

Ed started pulling on his jacket. “You’re done here. Go home.” Roy dug his feet in.

“We should go for dinner just us, Alphonse, I’d love to discuss what your brother has to say about me.”

Ed kept shoving, backing up into the doorway with Al. “I’ll call you.”

“He’s the greatest mind of his generation, I’m sure he—”

“Out!”

Roy mimed call me at Al with his thumb and pinkie as Ed slammed the door in his face. As soon as it was shut, Al doubled over laughing and didn’t come up for air for some time.

“Knock it off,” Ed said, shifting his weight around uncomfortably. “You’re so embarrassing.”

“He’s funny!” Al said, beaming. “You didn’t tell me he was funny!”

Ed climbed the stairs, Al trailing behind.

“I didn’t notice.”

“Oh, come on!”

He wandered into the room, toed off his shoes and tried to busy himself by putting away dishes. “I’m not putting my dick in his jokes.”

Behind him, Al made a yech noise. “Oh my God, Ed! Will you lay off for one second? What’s the matter with you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You—I don’t know! You seemed like you liked talking to him, at least. Why do you keep shoehorning all this sex stuff into it?”

“I’m not trying to.”

“You mention it constantly! You’re not friends with him, too?”

“You can’t tell me you don’t think he’s handsome.”

“Of course I do, he looks like one of those buff-guy marble statues with a nicer face and a more complex ethnic background.”

“There you go.”

“But that’s not the point! You’ve known him your whole life, and it’s nothing now? Who cares what he looks like? This is what I’m talking about.”

“Why is it okay to be someone’s friend, but not sleep with them? Do you not like him?”

“Of course I do!”

“But you don’t want him sleeping with your brother.”

“I don’t want most people sleeping with my brother! That shouldn’t come as a surprise to you!”

Ed groaned and put his hands over his eyes. “I am so, so tired of talking about this.”

Without looking, he swore he could hear Al throw his arms in the air.

“But you keep bringing it up! You let him come over and you talk about him when he’s not here, and I just— I wish you’d talk to me. For real.” He sat hard on the end of his bed. “Far be it from me to tell you you can’t do something, especially date someone, I just… If you don’t even like him, it sounds like you’re just doing it for fun. Or because you think it’s funny. Which, on top of all the reasons not to, makes it a really bad idea. In my books, anyways. It would be different if you were… I don’t know. If you actually liked him, I wouldn’t be saying any of this. I just don’t wanna see you get hurt. Or, uh, hurt anyone.”

Tell him, Ed thought, his gut twisting. Tell him about how it makes you feel when you catch him looking at you out of the corner of your eye. About falling asleep with him tucked against your chest last winter and the delicious and horrifying sinking feeling you get when you think about whether there’s actually something THERE with him and his delightful fucking jokes.

Instead, he said, “Yeah, well,” and didn’t look at him.

—

The next showing was in the late afternoon on Wednesday, further out of the city centre in a suburban area where the streets were wide and lined with trees.

“Isn’t this quaint,” Ed said, slamming the car door behind him. “Where was this when I was here before?”

“It was a light industrial area, I think,” Roy said, coming around to the sidewalk. “Nice, isn’t it? I have colleagues who live out here. Great place for young families.”

“Not too far to drive from anywhere.”

“Great place for a clinic,” Roy teased, nudging him as they started down the street. There was something familiar and sweet in the action that made Ed’s throat catch, but he didn’t say anything. “I’ll give you a discount on my finder’s fee since we’re such good friends.”

“Is that what we are?”

“Good friends and then some.”

The clinic was unassuming from the street, a flat front and a window and a wooden bench outside. The window was boarded up; the place wasn’t in use. Ed knocked on the door and shoved his hands in his pockets, waiting in a strangely tense silence. The man who answered was young and bright-faced, half a head taller than Roy with slicked-back black hair. His smile somehow conveyed a gentle, wordless understanding.

“Hello! You’re here to see the clinic?”

He addressed Roy and Ed decided to be benevolent by not faulting him for it.

“Yes, hi, Roy.” Roy shook his hand and gestured at Ed. “This is Edward. He’s the buyer, I’m just tagging along.”

Ed watched the man make the face that people made when they thought they recognized him from somewhere but couldn’t place where. He’d gotten it a handful of times every day since returning to Central and not getting it was the only thing he missed about the north.

“I’m Thomas. Nice to meet you.” He shook his hand, too, still smiling. “Not to show my hand here, but I’m glad to have the interest. Not too many folks looking to open a clinic these days. Or, ever.”

“Fair enough,” Ed said. “Why’re you looking to sell?”

“C’mon in. Mind the mess, we’re finishing up some renovations.” Thomas opened the door and gestured for them to enter. “My father and I run a family practice together and we’ve just outgrown the space. There’s a need for GPs out east and we’re opening a bigger community clinic with a couple other doctors.”

“That’s great,” Ed said, genuine but distracted, looking around. Buckets of paint and rollers and a shop vac lay scattered around the room. The lobby area was wide and open, a small nurse’s station to the left and a reception window in the centre, standard and also perfect. A set of swinging doors led into the rest of the clinic. “Can I…?”

“Yes! Look around, you’ve got full reign.”

“Sweet.” Ed banged through the doors and hummed appreciatively. “They’ve got a nice heft to them, I like that. Oh man, it’s huge back here!”

“Twenty-four rooms,” Thomas agreed. “I think plenty sizable for this neighbourhood. What kind of clinic will you be opening? A walk-in, family medicine…”

“Kind of everything,” Ed said, popping his head into each exam room that lined the hall. “We specialize in a new kind of medical alchemy, I ran a clinic up north near Esfakot, if you know it. I’m looking to do the same here.”

“A… new kind of medical alchemy?”

“I realize that sounds sketchy but trust me, I got all the regular permits.”

Thomas laughed. “I’m sure you do. That sounds very exciting.”

Roy said, “I got shot in the gut and was up walking again that afternoon. Zero pain, no complications. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. The man’s a genius.”

Ed stuck his head out of an exam room. The look Roy was giving him was entirely too affectionate. “It’s just science, grow up.”

Both the other men laughed. Thomas said, “My father always says that. He’ll have patients saying medicine is a miracle, thanking him, and he’ll say things like, ‘What are you thanking me for? I didn’t invent penicillin.’“

“He sounds very down-to-earth.”

Thomas looked down. Ed stopped bopping in and out of rooms to listen, curious.

“He’s a good man. Troubled, but… he was a military doctor. We run a clinic together now, but there was a time where he wasn’t working, out of some sense of… I don’t know. Guilt. It was hard on our family.”

Roy nodded solemnly. “It can be tough to come out of, afterwards. Civilian life doesn’t always follow as neatly as we want.”

“Were you in the military, Roy?”

“Still am.”

Thomas made a quiet noise of acknowledgement that sounded almost like a condolence. “My father retired some time ago. For years after, he only worked on cadavers. He said he wasn’t worthy to treat the living. I don’t know what he…” He stopped and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m—”

“You’re not... Dr. Knox’s son?” Roy said suddenly. 

Thomas froze in front of them, then slowly turned around. Ed saw the resemblance instantly, the same shape of the jaw and the long nose. He didn’t realize Knox was old enough to have a son in his thirties.

“You know my father?”

“We were in Ishval together,” Roy said, and the two of them shared a frown that Ed imagined came up a lot when you talked about Ishval. “And after, he did some very important work that saved a couple friends of mine. During… everything.”

There were a couple different things that people called the events that led up to the end of King Bradley’s reign, but none stuck. People used get-around-it words and hand motions and made unpleasant faces to convey what they meant.

“That’s incredible,” Thomas said, obviously moved. “He—he never referred to any of his old friends by name, but I’m sure you’re one of them.”

“That smarmy bastard, maybe,” Roy supplied helpfully.

“That sounds familiar.” Thomas laughed, clearly embarrassed. “Come on, let me show you the offices and workstations in the back.”

The offices and workstations in the back were, of course, perfect. Everything was perfect. Ed’s realization that he could actually move back to Central and keep doing what he was doing swelled in him like the crest of a tidal wave and broke against his consciousness: you could come home.

“That’s about it,” Thomas said as they stood outside the back entrance after a full loop of the facility. “Since we’re all friends here, I’ll be honest—no one else has put an offer in on the place, so if you want to talk, it’s yours.”

“I want to talk,” Ed said earnestly, shaking Thomas’s hand when he offered it. “It’s great. Really perfect.”

“Glad to hear it! The place means a lot to dad and I, it would be nice to sell it to an old friend of sorts.” He took a business card out of the file folder he’d been carrying and handed it to Ed. “Sleep on it and give me a call when you’re ready, I’m sure you’ve got other places to look at.”

“Absolutely. Sounds great, thanks.”

They exchanged pleasantries and well-wishes for Knox Sr. for a few more moments before Thomas went back inside and Roy and Ed were left alone in the lane behind the building.

Roy grinned at him. “Well?”

“It’s perfect. It’s perfect.”

“Not too shabby for a first-time real estate agent.”

“It’s perfect!” Ed said again, laughing. “God, thank you, you’re—”

He took Roy’s face in his hands and kissed him.

Roy made a surprised noise in the back of his throat, his hands coming up to his arms. He smelled like sweat and heat and sun and for a few long seconds, everything was perfect and easy. Ed was fifteen in his everlasting red duster, running on fumes and self-importance; he was nineteen in a long white parka, quiet and cold and untethered; he was twenty-two and wearing practical walking shoes on a hot summer day, closer to something that felt like home than he’d been in years and years and years.

They broke apart, still clinging to each other. Ed sucked in a panicked breath. Roy’s face was hot under his palms and he was looking at his mouth, so close he could taste him.

“Is this—”

“Yes.”

Roy fisted his hands in the front of his shirt and ran him back against the wall of the alley, a drain pipe offering some minor protection from the view of the street, and kissed him so hard their teeth hit. Ed swore his feet weren’t even touching the ground and he just clawed at whatever part of him he could get his hands on, shoving at each other, lost in it.

He choked in a breath. “Do you live near here?”

“I’d better.” Roy kept alternately keeping him away and pulling him in, kissing him hard and then trying to pull back. “Okay, okay, we’ll just—the car—over—here—”

“Mm.”

Ed fisted a hand in his shirt and tugged until he kissed him again. He had his face in his hands, one moment clutching him closer, the next keeping him at bay.

“Just—one second—”

“Mmhm.”

“God—”

“In a sec.”

Another long, torrid kiss; each one was harder to end than the last and it felt like drowning, sucking in last gasps of air before being dragged under.

“Okay okay car, now,” Roy said, holding him back. He gave a furtive look around, then took off towards the street holding Ed’s wrist. In the car, he sat close enough on the bench seat for Roy to keep a hand on his leg as he drove and it was all he could do to keep from pushing it between his legs.

“You’re speeding,” he said, trying not to smile.

“I am,” Roy agreed, squeezing his leg. “This is torture.”

“You’ll fuck in a train station bathroom, but you’re too good to do it in an alley?”

“They’re inherently different. And we didn’t fuck in the bathroom.”

“Only because you’re a coward.”

He felt like a crazy person. He wanted Roy’s mouth on him and every second it wasn’t felt like cruel and unusual punishment. He didn’t know where Roy lived and couldn’t gauge the length of the trip. It was killing him, it already felt like hours.

“Have you been with anyone since?” he asked, not because it meant much to him, but he was curious. He had very little understanding of what Roy was like when he wasn’t around. 

Roy huffed. “No. But don’t flatter yourself, I’ve been busy.”

Ed laughed. Roy squeezed his leg again. He’d been in Central over a week at this point and he couldn’t remember why he’d been waiting.

Roy lived in an apartment building with a green awning, a uniformed doorman and marble floors in the lobby that clicked under Ed’s uneven footfalls. He thought they’d get a second alone on the way up to his apartment, but as the gilded gate of the elevator pulled back it revealed a kindly old operator standing there.

“General Mustang! Nice to see you again, sir.” The old man blinked up at Roy, hardly chest-high on him. His bleary eyes swiveled to Ed as they both stepped in. “And a friend!”

“Hi,” Ed said, awkwardly shuffling into the corner.

“Hi, John,” Roy said warmly. “How’s Elma?”

“Surgery went fine! Thank you, thank you.” The old man slowly pulled back the giant lever at his side until the elevator started moving. He seemed to know the floor without Roy asking. His gaze fell back on Ed. “I feel like I know you from somewhere.”

Ed realized he was wearing a red shirt. Rookie move. The more red he wore, the more people remembered. “Not sure.”

The old man snapped his fingers. “Don’t tell me—you’re that magic boy what saved the country a few years back! How long ago was that now, ten years? Nearly ten?”

Roy choked on a laugh that the old man didn’t seem to notice, or else it didn’t bother him. Ed was mortified.

“About that, sir.”

“Isn’t that something! A real hero, in my little lift. My daughter was there, you know, in the city when it happened. I was out visiting my aunt down south and missed the whole thing.”

Ed didn’t appreciate the flippancy but wasn’t about to ream a sweet old man. “It’s better that you were gone.”

“Oh, maybe, maybe. You could be right.” The elevator started to slow as they approached Roy’s floor. The old man peered up at him again. “They made you look taller in all those photographs, imagine that. If only I had that magic in my wedding photos!”

Roy made a noise that couldn’t be put into words. Ed closed his eyes and tried to school his face into something serene.

“Have a good one, John,” he heard Roy say as the doors parted. The hallway was carpeted, silent. As soon as the elevator doors shut behind them, Roy barked out a laugh. “He’s a nice man.”

Ed scrubbed his hands over his face. “Christ. Talk about a mood killer.”

“Believe it or not, I already knew you were short when we were making out. This isn’t news.” His keys jingled. “I don’t know what it says about me that my mood is undamaged.”

“Psychopath.”

Roy’s apartment was down at the end. Ed stood behind him as he unlocked the door, watching his shoulders shift as he moved. His heart was beating too hard. He’d never imagined what Roy’s apartment would look like, he hardly considered that he existed at all when he wasn’t looking at him. And now he had an elevator operator whose wife’s name he knew.

Roy led him inside. “Make yourself at home, or whatever it is people say. Spend some time getting your mood back.”

The narrow hallway led the length of the apartment, the walls paneled with walnut at the bottom and painted warm gray at the top. Sun streamed in the open doorways and a bright painting hung in a massive frame down the hall.

“Wow,” Ed said, like an idiot. Roy toed off his shoes and hung his jacket on a rack by the door, then walked ahead.

“What makes you horny? Books? The library’s at the end of the hall.”

“Right,” Ed said, too distracted to engage, and followed him. The first room he stuck his head into was an immaculate sitting room, two lush love seats, a coffee table, bookshelves, a plant trailing from somewhere. The window showed the brick facade of the building next to this one. He kept walking. “Nice place. Is it new?”

“Thank you! No, I’ve been here about five years, which seems worthless when I’m always working.”

The hallway opened into a blue kitchen with copper pots hanging over a stove, white cupboards with latticed glass fronts showing heavy, sensible dishes stacked inside and a big wooden table under a window that looked onto the street. Roy leaned on the counter and smiled at him. Ed hovered in the doorway feeling like an idiot. He could imagine Roy wearing an apron in this kitchen, rolling up his shirt sleeves and pouring chilled wine to guests carousing around the table. It made his heart do a jump-twist-thud that he didn’t know how to classify. He wandered up to Roy, still looking around.

“If you’re trying to make me embarrassed of my little cabin-apartment, I’m not. I liked it there.”

“I liked it there, too.” Roy stepped in close enough to reach out for his arms and give him an amiable squeeze. He laughed. “It’s strange to have you here.”

“It’s strange to be here. You live here.”

“I do,” Roy agreed. “Not too strange?”

Ed was looking at his mouth. They were so close. He let his hands wander up his sides.

“Nope.”

Roy laughed again. He had a nice laugh. He knew he was making fun of him but for some reason, he didn’t care; when it was him, he didn’t mind much.

“How’s that mood coming?” Roy teased.

“Getting there,” Ed said, in fact far past ‘getting there.’ He could hardly think.

“If you like the kitchen, wait until you see the bedroom.”

Ed raised up on the balls of his feet and kissed him, clumsy and urgent. Roy’s arms came around him so easily like they’d kissed a thousand times exactly there, in his kitchen in the late afternoon. Roy grabbed the back of his neck hard and the dumb, possessive passion of it drove him wild. He started to tug him out of the kitchen before remembering he didn’t know where his bedroom was, and then Roy led him. Eventually there was a butter-soft comforter under his back, the room cool, dark, smelling overwhelmingly of Roy. Roy settled over top of him and ground a thigh between his legs, grabbed his face and kissed him until neither of them could breathe. 

“I lied,” he breathed, “I’m not cool as a cucumber, I want you so bad it makes me sick—”

Ed laughed and it came out high and bubbly and he forgot to be embarrassed. “I know.”

They kissed as they tore off their clothes, kept kissing as Roy slicked up his fingers and worked him open and he clung to him like he’d die if he let go, swallowing half-words and cries. Roy sat up and Ed sunk down onto him, his hair falling in a curtain around them, his back bowed, shuddering. He held his face in his hands and kissed him, kissed him, his nails dragging down his back so hard it stung, his mouth ferocious against his.

“Tell me what you want,” Roy panted, buried inside him, lips against his cheek, “Anything, anything—”

Ed said, “This,” and Roy dissolved under him. He hoisted him up by his automail leg—casual lovers were almost exclusively too shy to touch it at all—and flipped him onto his back, still twisted around each other, unwilling to give up an ounce of crushing intimacy. Roy fisted a hand in his hair and hammered into him, breath rushing, everything aching and hot and closer, infinite, all of it too much. Roy was taller than him and so their faces didn’t line up properly, they never did, and he sobbed into the crook of Roy’s neck, dug his fingers into his back and came. Roy made this sound and kissed him, bit his lip, and kept moving against him until he was there, too.

Roy slumped against him, face buried in his shoulder and breathing hard. Ed let his arms fall around his neck and his whole body buzzed and pulsed and slowly started to calm. They were a mess of sweat and Ed’s tangled hair and they lay like that for some time, catching their breath, basking.

Eventually, Roy peeled himself off. His face was red and blotchy and Ed watched him roll off the bed and disappear into the ensuite bathroom to get him a damp washcloth; seeing him slump around his apartment naked was deliciously undignified. He looked around his bedroom for the first time. It was very nice and perfectly normal: one window with the curtains drawn, a chaise at the foot of the bed, a chair draped in clothes near the closet, a glass lamp. He peered over the edge of the bed and sure enough, there was a pair of slippers. 

“You’re very normal,” Ed said, still loopy, lying on his back the wrong way across the bed. Roy returned and dropped a warm washcloth on his stomach, then flopped down next to him. 

“What?”

“Your bedroom,” he said, cleaning up. “It’s just regular.”

“Well, what kind of pizzazz did you expect? A sex dungeon? An underprivileged Cretan houseboy?”

“No. You just always surprise me.”

Roy’s hand drifted down his arm. He rolled onto his side and Roy curled an arm around him, pulling him closer. He felt cracked-open and raw, vulnerable in a way that took a lot of grappling with, but not unhappy. Just a lot.

“That was…”

“Very,” Roy agreed. He was looking at him like… Ed didn’t have a word for it. His whole body was sore in a way he really liked and Roy’s arm around him felt like it was supposed to be there. He liked having his face so close to his, able to map out the fine lines at the corners of his eyes and his immaculate eyebrows and wide nose. The endless black of his eyes. His hair, sticking up stupidly at the front.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” Ed said quietly. Roy stifled a smile, clearly very, very pleased to hear it.

“The feeling’s mutual. As you know.”

It didn’t feel impulsive anymore. It was something they’d both spent months turning over in their minds.

“I don’t know why I made you wait,” Ed admitted. Roy shrugged a shoulder.

“You’re here for your family. You’re testing the waters. I respect that.”

“You’re just… such a good real estate agent, I didn’t want to jeopardize that.”

“I’ll still be a good, ah, real estate agent. Regardless of what happens here.”

Ed’s throat got tight for some reason. Unbridled post-sex hormones. “Thank you.”

Roy kissed him, soft. Without the tension of earlier it was slow and relaxed and easy and went on longer than Ed realized; Roy pulled a sheet over them and they laid like that for some time, trading kisses, half asleep.

“What are your plans for tonight?” Roy asked softly, rubbing his knuckles against Ed’s cheek. “I can make you dinner if you’re free. I’ll brine a chicken.”

Ed nipped at him. He rolled onto his back and flicked his hair out of the way, and Roy propped up on an elbow to look down at him.

“Make me a drink first,” Ed said, “dinner can wait.”

—

Ed used the phone in Roy’s study to call Al, mad at himself for being impressed that Roy had a phone.

“I’m staying at Roy’s tonight if that’s cool,” he said, watching the door as if Roy would sneak up on him. Al laughed.

“Ah, you’ve progressed to a first name basis. Is that good?”

“Yes, you brat. Whatever. He just doesn’t live near us and it’s easier to stay.”

“Pure convenience, I’m sure. Did you like the place today?”

“It’s perfect! You’ll love it. And you won’t believe who owns it, you’re gonna lose your mind.”

“Who?!”

“I’ll tell you later. But Roy already has another one planned in a few days, and it can’t hurt to have a look, too. Round things out. So I’ll be gone again on Wednesday.”

“When did you get so practical?”

“I’m practical as shit.” He glanced at the door again. “You’re not mad?”

“That you’re staying out tonight? Why would I be mad?”

“I dunno, I’m here to see you. I should be spending time with you.”

“If anything you spend too MUCH time with me. Gracia invited us for dinner again tonight, I won’t be sitting around alone.”

“Oh, shit, should I come? I can—”

“We were just there the other day! It’s fine! It’s not a thing.” There was a crackling pause. “In case it comes up, and maybe this is a stupid question, but—are you telling people?”

“About…”

“Yeah.”

It hadn’t come up yet; he’d only seen Roy around Roy, and briefly Al, who already knew. But Havoc called him the day before and wanted to get everyone together for drinks the following week, and it would come up. They hadn’t talked about it, and given everything, Ed didn’t think they had to.

“We’re not,” he said. “Please. I mean, you can tell her we’re hanging out or whatever, but don’t make it sound—”

“I get it. Trust me, no one’s mind would go there without being told.”

“Thanks.”

“Any time. Have fun with your ‘hangout,’ you demon.”

—

They migrated from the bedroom to the kitchen, and then to the library on Ed’s request after Roy made him a greenish cocktail that tasted like heaven. He put a chicken in the oven an hour ago and the whole apartment smelled like garlic and butter. 

“I can’t believe you own a robe,” Ed said, not for the first time. Roy gave a flourish of the cotton robe in question as he entered the room.

“I’m a hedonist.”

“You’re a workaholic.”

“Right, and when I’m not, I deserve to be a hedonist.” He sat on the loveseat next to Ed, who was poring over the bookshelves with his eyes and half ignoring him. “I have a guest robe, if you’d like.”

“I’m plenty comfortable without your used robe, thanks.”

“I guess we’ll have to get you your own.”

Ed looked at him sharply. “Don’t get me a robe.”

“Too late. I’m already picking out the colour.”

Ed chuckled. He stood and moved over to the shelves that lined the walls of the small room, his head cocked to read each title. 

“Marine Craft of the Amestrian Navy, 1712–1780,” he read aloud. “Do we have a navy? We’re landlocked.”

“We had patrols in the canals for a while. Fascinating stuff.”

“You’re so lame.”

“I also have some sordid romance novels in there if you dig.”

“Pathophysiology of Blood Disorders… The Complete Guide to Xingian Show Dogs, 4th Edition… Analyzing the Alchemical Mind…”

“Yes?”

“You’re a piece of work,” Ed said happily. “I thought you’d just read like… well, Marine Craft of the Amestrian Navy.”

“And I told you, I’m multifaceted. I don’t know why you insist on thinking of me as some stuffy old man when you also insist on sleeping with me.”

Ed turned around, slurping his drink, and Roy was looking at him. More specifically, he was looking at the valley of muscle between his shoulder blades. Ed let him.

“How old are you, exactly?” he asked.

“Why?”

“Al asked me the other day and I didn’t know.”

Roy shrugged. “I’ll be thirty-eight this fall.” Ed squinted at him. Roy added, “Fifteen years. If you’re wondering. Assuming you were born in ‘99, which I believe you were.”

“Is fifteen years bad?”

“Depends on who you ask. Do you think it’s bad?”

Ed did some quick soul-searching, nothing new. He landed on the same answer he’d always landed on.

“It’s unpleasant,” he said simply, turning back to the books. Roy raised his eyebrows.

“Is that what you’d call it?”

“Yes. You’re not my boss anymore, but you were, so there’s that. And fifteen is a lot of years to be older than someone.”

“Not a lot a lot.”

“It’s kind of a lot-a-lot, actually. So there are those two things, which make it…” He searched for another word. “Questionable. But not gross or illegal.”

“I’ve never heard the prospect of sex with me be called ‘not gross or illegal,’ as a positive thing.”

Ed turned around. The drink was going to his head. It was too good, he was drinking it too fast. “Have you heard it at all?”

“I’ve heard lots of things.”

“No doubt.”

Roy held out an arm. “Come sit, your literary scrutiny is giving me hives.”

Ed laughed, and went anyways. Roy kissed him as he settled down next to him, taking his drink and putting it on the side table. He smelled like sex, and faintly like parsley from the kitchen.

“I love having you here,” he said, his arm falling easily around Ed. “You notice every little thing about everything. You make me feel more like me.”

Ed didn’t know what to say, embarrassed. After a moment, he reached up and brushed Roy’s hair back.

“Speaking of which, did I mention you’ve got more grays than I thought you would?”

“Several times, thank you very much.”

“Why’re you going gray if you’re not even forty? I feel like that’s young.”

“Genetics, I assume. Stress. Who knows, but it balances out my baby-face, I think. Lends some credibility.”

“You’re that stressed?”

“Not lately, no. But it’s the military, you remember. They’re not small decisions.”

There was a pause. Roy lifted his drink and ice clinked in his glass. Ed hesitated around a question he’d been meaning to ask him since he was fifteen.

“Are you ever worried they’ll make you… do something again?”

He wouldn’t give words to what do something had been for Roy in the past. Already Roy’s face had become lined and harsh at his question and Ed saw the man he remembered from his youth, whom he wasn’t exactly eager to visit.

“I’m not worried about that,” Roy said finally, not sounding even a little bit unsure. Easy breezy.

“Because we’re not at war?”

“Because I wouldn’t do it.” He still wore that lined, stressed face. “Anything like that happens again, and I say no. No matter the consequences, I say no.”

“But what if—”

He put two fingers to his head like a gun and pulled the trigger with his thumb. Made a faint boof sound with his mouth.

“I should have the first time, too,” he said, “but I was young. I don’t know. I still believed.”

Ed hardly knew what to say. A dozen conflicting feelings battled for dominance and he just sat with it for a while.

“If you don’t believe in it now, why are you still doing it?” he asked, only a little afraid of the answer. Roy passed him his drink and he took it with numb hands. “The military. Any of it. You could… I don’t know. Do something else.”

He half-remembered his offhand comments last winter about Roy ‘getting a new job’ and felt belatedly guilty. Roy had a way of making people forget who he was, what he’d done and the weight he carried around every day; his smiles, his jokes, his cotton robe. The misdirection was probably intentionally and painstakingly cultivated. When Ed remembered, it felt like staring over the edge of a cliff he suddenly found sloping away under his feet, skittering into a black gorge below that echoed with words like war criminal and genocide.

Roy said, “I hope you don’t think I’ve grown compliant.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever been compliant,” Ed said meekly. “You’re not even, like, agreeable most of the time.”

Roy smiled down at his hands and, seeing it, Ed found it a little easier to breathe.

“I don’t do something else because I have more than blind belief now,” Roy said. “I have… a strategy. Blueprints. A plan, and power. I’ll make things better through action and decisions and an agenda. Hope and belief aren’t strategies, not good ones. I can do better now.”

Ed just stared at him. Again, he’d forgotten. Roy was just Roy and to think that he was also this important figure, someone powerful, was constantly lost on him. He was wearing a robe. 

“Wow.”

Roy scoffed and looked away. “Sorry. I’m being dramatic.”

“No, I just—I forget. Sometimes. Who you are.” Ed put his hand on his leg, feeling too dramatic himself. “You’re a really, really good man. I don’t know if you hear that enough.”

He sucked his teeth. “Good is subjective.”

“Did you ever—”

“Please,” he said softly, his voice breaking, “let’s talk about something else. So much good came from what we did. You—your continued existence, who you’ve become—are one of those things. I don’t need to think about the rest of it.”

He dipped his head and kissed him, long and slow and deep, until Ed was dizzy and lost in it. 

—

Over the next week, Ed and Al saw old friends; they spent a night at Gracia’s, took Elicia to a playground and the zoo, and stayed for two more dinners and a lunch. They saw Roy’s old team, now scattered in different parts of the organization but still friends. They went to a pub with Breda, Havoc and Feury, and after an hour Roy showed up. Ed was on high alert, but they quickly and obviously settled into keeping it a quiet secret. They pretended they hadn’t seen each other since Ed got back, which was fun and made Roy’s eyes glint impishly in a way Ed loved. If it ended up being anything, there would be time to share.

—

“This one’s really out there.”

“I thought you’d appreciate the variety.”

Another gloriously sunny afternoon spent in Roy’s car. Ed leaned out the window and the wind whipped through his hair. They’d been driving for a half an hour and had just cleared the city, the tall, crowded buildings giving way to clusters of homes and sprawling acreages.

“I don’t know how practical it is,” Ed said, pulling himself back inside. Roy’s hand settled almost automatically on his leg. “I really liked Knox’s place. I don’t think this can top it.”

“Probably not, but it was already set up. It could be fun if nothing else.”

“Fair ‘nuff.” Ed was happy to go. He was in an exceedingly good mood; Roy had made him breakfast. “Wait, shouldn’t you be at work? What day is it?”

“I took the day off!” Roy said, triumphant. “You’re a good influence on me. I’m shirking responsibility wherever possible.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“No, but one day off won’t kill anyone.” Roy squeezed his leg. “And you’re still a good influence.”

Ed hummed. The sky was perfectly blue and Roy was wearing these dark little sunglasses while Ed squinted against the light. He’d forgotten what summer was like; up north, it was just a gray, muggy couple of months that broke up the rain and snow, and here, summer rolled over the low hills and baked the stone streets and it was big and hot and visceral. It was quiet outside the city, too, only a lone red car puttering off in the distance behind them and otherwise, nothing. Just low buildings with wooden gates out front, rows of tomatoes, a burnt-out truck on the property.

“This one up ahead,” Roy said, gesturing at a cluster of outbuildings off the main road. As they approached, Ed spotted a wooden hanging sign by the driveway with a big red cross on it, indicating a clinic.

“Oh, too cute,” he said as they pulled in. “Like something out of a cartoon.”

They drove down the dirt driveway towards the main building and an old woman emerged teetering from behind the screen door.

“I dunno if this is a good idea,” Ed said. The woman waved at them as they approached. “It’s too far out of the city. We’re stringing her along.”

“It’ll be fun,” Roy said, switching off the car, waving at the teetering old woman. “Haven’t you ever fantasized about owning a farm? Play with it.”

“Who fantasizes about owning farms?”

“Stressed people. Humour me. Hello, Mrs. Morten!”

“Hello there, boys!” she called back. “Roy, is it? Thank you for coming!”

“Thank you for having us!” Roy climbed out of the car and shook her hand. “What a beautiful property.”

“Oh, it’s not much. And you came all the way out here.”

Out of the car, Ed felt the sun beat down on him. His left leg always heated faster than the right one, even under slacks, and it never stopped being a strange sensation. 

“Hullo.”

“Hello, young man! Two of you, what a treat.”

He avoided standing too close to Roy when they were shoulder to shoulder; the height difference became pronounced.

“Yes, this is Edward,” Roy said, and he curled an arm around Ed’s shoulders. Ed froze. “He’s the one looking for a clinic, I’m just here to support.”

“Oh!” The woman’s eyebrows rose, staring at Roy’s hand on his shoulder. “Well, isn’t that lovely.”

Ed couldn’t place her tone and his brain was screaming with the uncertainty of it. But to his surprise, he didn’t shake Roy’s arm off. He just smiled at the woman.

“Thanks for having us.”

—

As he suspected, the clinic was just fine, but not as good as Knox’s. It was bright and old and the walls were covered with coloured tiles, small and crowded, quaint. They followed the old woman around to each room and listened to her talk about the history of the space and all the things it had been used for. 

Roy had his arm around his waist the whole time.

“You’re being stupid,” Ed said lowly, when the woman wandered into another room.

“It’s nothing.” Roy turned his head and spoke into his hair. “No last names, and this far out of the city? Let an old man pretend.”

Ed snorted. The woman paused in her monologue about how the sun coming through the back windows did so much for patients’ well-being and gave them a coy look over her shoulder. She hadn’t said anything about it yet and it made Ed nervous. He liked old people and they liked him, but he’d never been with someone in front of anyone and it was making him... unsure. He kept thinking about him and Roy in this stupid ancient clinic in the country, living in the apartments above it, keeping a few animals and drinking juleps on the back porch and it made him—again, he didn’t know what to call it. He didn’t hate it. He opposite of hated it. Which, if he was being honest, scared him a little. 

He had to remind himself: that wasn’t how it would be. They both worked all the time. Roy had never, and could never, ‘be himself.’ Ed hadn’t been either, not really. It was complicated and it would always be complicated and juleps on the porch wasn’t in their future, not in any reality Ed would entertain. It wasn’t what he wanted, anyways, but it made him think about what he did want and that was hard in it’s own way.

“That about covers it,” the lady said, swinging open the screen door to the fields beyond. “There are folks in the other buildings, but they won’t mind you none. Christine raises fowl and I never know what Guillame is up to, but he keeps to himself.” She squinted into the sun. “You looking at other places?”

Ed nodded. “A few more into the city. But… I don’t know. I’m from Resembool, and it’s just nice to…”

“It never leaves you,” the woman said earnestly. “Being raised out in the country, with the sprawl. You get a bigger soul than most, with all that space to grow.”

Roy laughed. “So that’s what it is.”

The woman beamed up at them. Chickens babbled in the back of the property as they walked around the side of the building and tires crunched on gravel as someone approached the house.

“You’ve got my number, give me a call if you’d like to make an offer. No rush.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Morten. It’s wonderful, really.” Ed shook her hand, and she shook his so hard his knuckles ground together.

“Pleasure’s all mine. Stay safe getting back into town.”

 She went back the way they came and the two of them were alone by the edge of the porch. Roy slid his sunglasses back on.

“I told you it would be nice.”

“She didn’t say anything.”

“Not everyone cares. Some people are just… you know. Pleased to see a couple of handsome men touching each other.”

Ed choked back a laugh. “Oh, whatever. You’re the handsome one, you look like a centerfold.”

“Please, I do not.”

“Don’t be humble, you sound stupid.”

“I’m serious!” Roy smiled, stepping into his space. “Have you considered that your… affection for me… colours your opinion of how handsome I am?”

“You’re hot because you’re hot. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact.”

“I’ve been called shrewish by some.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Homely, even. Weak-featured.”

“You’re just trying to rile me up.”

“Why would this rile you up?”

“Because you’re saying I have bad taste!”

“I’m saying you like me. That’s why you think I’m attractive.”

Roy’s hand slid down his back and slipped into the back pocket of his jeans. The sun was behind him, a halo around his head. Ed leaned up, smiling.

“Pure speculation.”

“General Mustang!”

A voice crackled into their quiet world. Ed jumped a foot in the air and Roy’s hands left him instantly, like they’d never been there.

A man was walking up the driveway from a red car. He was exceedingly tall and relatively handsome but somehow unpleasant to look at, like his features weren’t arranged properly. He had thinning brown hair and a long brown coat that almost reached the ground.

“Fancy meeting you here!” His voice boomed as he approached them, all but sauntering. Ed didn’t know what to do.

“Metock,” Roy said between his teeth.

Ed half remembered the name: the man trying to get Roy fired. Goosebumps raised all down his arms.

“And so far out of the city,” Metock went on, “on a weekday. Almost as if you’re trying not to be found.”

Roy had gone very still. It was terrifying to see, like a cornered wolf with his ears back.

“I took the morning off. Which is none of your business.”

“Of course it’s not. You’re due a break now and again, being so… busy.” Metock’s eyes landed on Ed. He looked so obviously and batantly pleased, syrupy sweet, a cat with a canary. “And you are?”

Ed said nothing. His hands balled into fists. Roy didn’t answer either. Metock went on.

“You always did strike me as a secret double life kind of man, Mustang, I should have known that all I had to do was wait.”

“Or tail me on my day off.” Roy paused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Has that line ever worked for you? Well, no matter. I doubt you’ve ever been so—” His eyes flicked down to Ed. “—compromised.”

Again, Roy didn’t answer; Ed had never seen him like this. It reminded him of a courtroom, I won’t say anything without my lawyer present. Was this really that bad?

Metock drawled, “I have dinner with Rothman tonight. I’m sure he’ll be deeply interested in knowing what I’ve been up to today. The sights I’ve seen. Et-cet-er-a.”

“I don’t think he will be.”

“Oh, I do. He’s a bit of a hardass, isn’t he? You’ve heard his grand speeches about traditional values, I’m sure—all that claptrap about dismantling a gun in thirty seconds and writing letters to the wife and kids back home. You being his direct report and all.”

Ed’s palms were sweating. He couldn’t think of anything to say to make it better but there had to be something, he had to help, why wasn’t Roy saying anything?

Metock’s smile widened. “I see I’ve caught you at a bad time, General. I’ll leave you to it.” He raised his eyebrows at Ed. “Nice to meet you.”

Then, as easily as he came, he got back in his car and left. The two of them just stood there and watched him go, silent until his car was almost out of sight.

“I was prepared to knock his teeth out if he said one single thing about you,” Roy said, his voice almost but not quite wobbling. “The nice to meet you wasn’t enough.”

Would it really be so easy to bring it all down? If they were in the wrong place at the wrong time once, was Roy’s career over? What if Roy had hit the guy, or even said something he shouldn’t? He was supposed to be the one to fly off the handle, not Roy. What if it wasn’t Metock but someone else, some other general with a penchant for traditional values? That was all it would take, and it would be Ed’s fault.

“Edward?”

“Hm?”

His face was numb.

“You’re okay?”

“Are you?”

Roy ran a hand through his hair. His gaze was distant, looking somewhere over Ed’s head.

“He was lying,” he said faintly. “He doesn’t have dinner with Rothman tonight, it’s the charity gala.”

Ed squinted at him. “Charity gala?”

“Everyone goes, it’s an annual thing in partnership with the city. Rent out a big ballroom or mansion… that kind of thing. You eat at it, you don’t go to dinner beforehand. It’s at the, uh… I forget the name.”

Metock could find Roy’s boss at any time. He sounded so confident. Ed couldn’t imagine a world in which it was so easy to ruin someone, with something so cartoonishly evil. He was stupid to think that wasn’t the world he lived in and learning that it was made him feel sick to his stomach.

“I don’t suppose you brought formalwear,” Roy said, still distracted. Ed was shaken out of his reverie.

“Why?”

“You should come as my guest. I’m sure you’re capable of doing lovely things with your hair when you try.”

“I’ve never tried.” He cocked his head. “Guest as in date?”

“Not on the books. But in my head, yes.” Roy looked away. “On the books, you’d be an old colleague and famous veteran back in town after a wilderness sabbatical.”

“Is that… wise? After this?”

Roy sighed and started off towards the car.

“We wouldn’t rub their noses in it, but if I’m going to get dishonourably discharged, I’d like to at least have fun at my final gala.”

“Are they normally not fun?”

“It would be more fun with you. There’ll be an open bar and a lot of old money to gently mock.”

That didn’t sound bad, but mostly, Ed didn’t want to let him go alone. When he got into the car, he rested his forehead on the steering wheel; after a moment, Ed put a hand on his arm.

“I’ll find a tux.”

—

When Al came home that evening, Ed was sitting on the floor in his underwear in front of the floor mirror, trying to twist his hair back into some complicated kind of bun.

“I thought you’d settled permanently into the high ponytail,” Al said, throwing his bag onto the bed. “Trying something new?”

Ed bit a bobby pin between his front teeth.

“I have been invited to a charity gala.”

“Mustang?”

“Who else?”

“As his date?”

“As a celebrated veteran of the Amestrian army.”

“Well, that’s bullshit.”

“I am a celebrated veteran of the Amestrian army.”

“You’re also his date.”

“Obviously I’m his date.” Ed tried to twist a braid at his temple back into the mass of the bun at the back of his head. “I want to do my hair all fancy. My suit is just regular.”

“I’m sure it’s nice.” Al sat on the end of his bed and watched Ed struggle. He had two hair ties snarled in his tangle of hair and at least five bobby pins that could be seen. “Are you okay?”

Ed spat out a bobby pin and let his hands drop into his lap.

“He makes me happy,” he said all at once, a rush, a confession. “I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know what it means.”

“Ed…”

“What happens if we start dating and I don’t like it? I just break up with him? I’ve known him my whole life, how’s that supposed to work?”

He couldn’t keep the panic out of his tone. Al spoke to him like he was talking down a jumper.

“He’s a grown man, I’m sure he’s had his share of breakups.”

“Well, I haven’t! What if I don’t have the guts to break it off, and then I just date him until I die? I’m not ready to date someone until I die!”

“You have the guts for everything! And you haven’t even started dating him, why are you worried about breaking up?” Al paused. “This is why you’ve been so weird about sleeping with him. You like him.”

Ed rubbed his forehead. “I guess so.”

Al got off the bed and crouched on the floor in front of Ed, peering into his face.

“You like him a lot.”

“So what if I do?”

“So nothing, Ed! You’re the only one who’s being so weird about this! It’s fine if you’re in love with him, you freak!”

“I’m probably not in love with him! Leave me alone!”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re in love with him!” Al grabbed his hands and held him still. “I’m sorry, okay? About this whole trip. I thought you were being thoughtless and rude about dating a guy we both like and respect, and I was mad at you. You didn’t tell me you were this worked up about it.”

“I didn’t know I was.” Ed pulled his hands free and stared at his reflection in the mirror. “He… he just says this stuff to me, sometimes, and I think… no one else is ever gonna know me like this. He acts like I’m this—this cool, weird puzzle that he can’t stop thinking about. I dunno.”

“He’s infatuated with you.”

“Probably,” Ed said again. It didn’t seem right, but he couldn’t argue with it. All this time, had he been testing Roy, bothering him in an attempt to finally catch him in a lie? Aha! Got you! You don’t like me at all, you’re just going to incredible lengths to— to what? What could Roy possibly gain by making Ed fall for him? There was no answer besides the obvious. Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

And, maybe, it had cost Roy his life’s work. He was trying not to think about that part.

“What are you going to do?” Al asked, in that way that said that he really meant it. Ed shook his head.

“Please just help me do something good with my hair,” he said miserably, gesturing at his tangled mass. “You’re good at this stuff.”

Al laughed softly and gave him a half hug. “Only because you’re having a crisis.”

—

Ed locked the door behind him. Roy would be there in ten minutes and it was easier to wait on the street than deal with Al leering at them, and he wanted time to clear his head. He moved carefully, worried he’d disturb his hair; Al had fixed it into an ornate, twisted bun at his nape, with braids woven through. He’d never understand how he did it. His tux was plain, black, and fit him well enough.

“Edward.” Roy appeared at the end of the hall, hand raised in greeting. “I was going to come up.”

“Oh.”

Roy’s wore his full dress military uniform, rarely seen on anyone in modern life; it was the same blue as everyday Amestrian military attire, but the jacket and trousers were a slimmer cut and it was customary to wear medals and other shiny pins on the chest. He wore a long cape pinned at the shoulders with gold brooches and piped with a golden braid. A ceremonial sword hung at his hip in a gilded scabbard. His hair was slicked back, flecked with silver, and he looked like the head of some ancient king’s royal guard, something out of a fairytale. Ed met him at the top of the stairs.

“You look…” He searched for something other than very, very good. “... regal.”

Roy smiled at him. Ed felt concussed.

“I look like I’m in the Nutcracker and I’ll be basting in sweat in a few hours, but thank you.” He gave him an appreciative, unsubtle once-over. “You look upsettingly handsome.”

Ed’s ears got hot. “Okay.”

Roy gestured for him to head down the stairs, so he did. “I didn’t think you’d actually do your hair.”

“Be careful what you wish for. Now I look fantastic.”

“You do, and it’s going to make this evening extremely difficult.”

Roy reached over him with one perfectly white-gloved hand and opened the door with a flourish. He could smell his cologne, sharp and spicy, and the cold, smoky scent of the night air as they took off down the street. He felt wildly underdressed but he couldn’t imagine a civilian was supposed to own anything as gaudy as all that. He kept sneaking glances at him as they walked. All the pomp and circumstance made him look older than usual in a way that really, really worked for him.

“Is the sword real?” Ed asked, reaching past his cape to touch it. Roy flicked it out of the sheath with his thumb and the long, thin blade glinted like mercury.

“If I could move in this getup at all, I’d ask if you want to find out the hard way.”

Ed laughed. “I couldn’t hold my own anymore. I never actually learned how to hold a sword, I just was a sword.”

“An important distinction,” Roy agreed. “Well, I can’t use it much either. Never my thing.”

He sounded better than he had earlier, more put-together, but Ed wasn’t naive enough to think he was doing well.

“How are you?”

Roy opened the rear door of their hired car for him.

“Dead inside, but thank you for asking.”

Ed patted him on the arm. “Nothing a little liquor can’t fix.”

Their driver gave them their privacy as they sped down the streets to a moneyed neighbourhood Ed had never been to, all emerald lawns and white columns.

“I can’t believe you’re going.”

“I don’t know that my career is over. Maybe Metock died on the way over.”

“Maybe you’ll be surprised.”

“By what?”

Ed grimaced. “People’s capacity for kindness?”

Roy huffed a little laugh. “I haven’t been yet, but I admire your optimism.”

More giant, identical houses sped by. “Should I really be here?”

“It’s fine,” Roy said again. His hand inched towards Ed’s across the seat between them. “Not to get too maudlin about it, but the thought of going without you makes me want to die, and I have to go, so. Thank you for coming.”

Ed let the sides of their pinkies touch. “As if I’d miss a chance to see you in that get-up.”

The gala was in some kind of hall, Ed didn’t know what to call it, a big, old building made of brick and covered in vines that was too big to be someone’s home. Their car pulled up out front and Roy stared up at it, taking a long, slow inhale.

“All this time, and it comes to this,” he said softly. “A lifetime of effort thwarted by some asshole who tailed my car.”

“I can fight him, if you want. The arm’s gone, but the leg still has some tricks.” Ed wasn’t great at being sincere.

“I spy a balcony on the top floor you could kick him off,” Roy said. He didn’t seem to mind.

There were people milling around outside, smoking, talking, dotted up the long walk to the front door. Ed was relieved to find he wasn’t underdressed, for a civilian. The military men wore Roy’s same uniform or a less ostentatious version of it—no one’s was more ostentatious, which made Ed proud in a way he didn’t appreciate—and the civilians wore tuxedos and ball gowns, all glitter and gold and sleekness. The doorman greeted Roy with a stiff salute and Roy raised a polite hand at him. The man’s eyes then fell on Ed, with an implacable expression that Ed figured he’d better get used to; curious/confused/interested/disapproving/is-that-who-I-think-it-is?

Servers glided around offering canapes and flutes of champagne. There didn’t seem to be a central thing going on, just people schmoozing in ever-circulating clumps, eating and drinking to the sound of a twinkling piano somewhere. The ceilings floated unimaginably high above them, everything draped in greens and blues and twinkling lights, oil paintings, gilding upon gilding.

“This is so insane,” Ed said quietly as they made their way into the room. “Is this how rich people are?”

“No, this is performativeness at its best. Top tier and absolutely ridiculous.”

Ed glanced up at Roy. His stress was obvious to anyone who knew enough to find it, but Ed doubted that anyone in the room did. There was a tightness to the faint smile he plastered on that made Ed tense in turn.

“Where’s…”

“As long as he’s not by the bar, I don’t care.” Roy put a hand between his shoulder blades and guided him into the next room. “You’ve literally never worried in your life, don’t start on my account. I worry enough for both of us.”

The weight of his hand on his back was comforting beyond all measure of comparison.

“Yes, sir.”

“Shush, you brat.”

Having a drink in your hand was evidently the signal that you’d been at the party for long enough to be spoken to. People descended on them a few at a time and it was exactly the blend of stressful and boring that Ed expected it to be, but it wasn’t all bad; some asked him about his work and seemed halfway interested in his response, and other than that, he got to listen to Roy talk, which was nice. Otherwise, he fielded inane questions about where he’d been the past five-plus years or why he didn’t do alchemy anymore, which he answered through gritted teeth.

When they slipped away to go back to the bar, Ed asked, “Will it look weird if we don’t split up for a bit? I can… I don’t know, mingle.”

“I don’t give a shit how it looks, you’re—” He looked at Ed with an unexpected flare of passion and Ed expected him to say something grandiose like mine and a not-insignificant part of him chanted say it, say it, say it! “—you’re welcome to mingle if you’d like, but don’t do it for me.”

“I don’t—”

“Mustang.” A voice like a towering oak boomed from behind Ed. He tipped his head back and looked up. A wall of a man in a uniform that paralleled Roy’s stood behind him, curly gray hair and a salt-and-pepper beard. Roy saluted the man as Ed stepped out of the way.

“Field-Marshal Rothman,” he said stiffly. Roy’s superior. “Having a pleasant evening?”

Rothman seemed in no mood.

“Brigadier General Metock called me on my way out babbling like a kid with a secret, demanding an emergency meeting. I obliged.” He looked down at Ed, as if noticing him for the first time. “Let’s go somewhere private.”

Roy nodded assent. He touched Ed’s arm and said, quiet, “I’ll be back,” and walked with Rothman out of the main hall towards the wide marble staircase that curled up to the second floor.

For the first time, Ed was left alone with his thoughts, clutching his drink off to the side of the bar, next to a large potted citrus tree. 

He had been lying earlier, of course: he was worrying and he hated it. Worrying was impotent and useless and yet he couldn’t do anything else. He couldn’t talk Roy out of this situation, and he couldn’t do anything better, either. He put his drink down on the bar and, for the thousandth time since he was seventeen, he gingerly touched his palms together and pictured an array. Nothing, obviously. And not that there would have been a way to alchemize Roy out of his current situation, but it would’ve made him feel better. He picked up his drink and stared into it—C_nH_{2n 1}OH, C₁₀H₁₆, some other shit. He couldn’t break things down like he used to.

“Excuse me…”

He jumped. A woman with slicked-back hair was hovering in front of him, half a head taller than him and some years older. She was startlingly beautiful and Ed felt awkward just looking at her; he never knew what to do around women, these weird and wonderful people he knew nothing about. He always figured he’d grow out of the awkwardness but he hadn’t yet, and Al, who knew exactly how to talk to women, roasted him for it constantly.

“Hi! Sorry. How’s it… going?”

She laughed, not unkindly.

“Good. Marta Bronwyn, nice to meet you.”

She put her hand out to shake and Ed shook it. “Ed Elric. Nice to meet you.”

“I know who you are,” she teased. “Obviously I know who you are.”

“Why would you know who I am?”

“Because everyone knows who you are. Are you not aware of that?”

Ed slurped his drink loudly. “I try to forget.”

She laughed again. “That makes sense. I can’t imagine. You were like… a child celebrity. That has to be tough.”

“I’ve never thought about it.” He had thought about it. It was tough.

She added, “‘Celebrity’ isn’t the right word, though, sorry. I don’t mean to trivialize. I don’t think there’s a word for what you did.” Ed appreciated the gravity; too often, he found himself fielding glib conversations around what happened, as if overthrowing a non-human government prepared to murder its citizens to become God was on par with a really stellar radio play. He was going to say that it wasn’t him who did everything, it was so many people, but Marta went on. “Did the Fuhrer invite you himself? Or are you here with someone?”

“Roy Mustang. We’re… friends.” He let himself imagine a world (a future?) where he could elaborate. “I mean, considering everything.”

“That’s neat. He’s a really wonderful man, from what I’ve heard.”

Ed’s heart went flub-dub. “He is.”

“My little sister’s studying to be an alchemist because of you, you know. That’s why I wanted to say hello,” Marta said. “She’s about your age. She’s getting really good, too. She wants to work in construction, hell if I know why, but it’s good.”

“That’s—I’ve never heard that before.”

“Really? It’s like magic, what you do. I’m sure you’ve made a lot of kids want to be alchemists.”

Ed spotted Roy across the room, coming towards him and blissfully alone. He looked, dazed, lost, but—not unhappy.

“As long as they don’t join the military,” Ed said, eyes glued on Roy. “I have to go, it was nice to meet you. Really.”

Marta gave him a wave in parting and he hurried through the throng of people to Roy.

“Hey!” He put a hand on his arm, maybe more intimate than he should have been. “How’d it go, what did he say?”

“He… he said Metock’s being transferred out of the city.”

“What?”

“By him. He said… I don’t remember exactly. You of all people have earned some privacy from these vultures. Keep quiet about it, and so will we.”

Ed scrunched up his face. “That’s not great.”

“It’s a start. It’s more than I thought I’d get.” Roy looked down at his upturned hands, which held a fat cigar. “He gave me a cigar for some reason.”

“Well, congratulations,” Ed said, laughing. “Seriously. If it’s good, it’s good. C’mon, let’s go somewhere where you can smoke that thing.”

—

It was easier to breathe outside, looking over the showy topiary of the building’s grounds. A wide cement plaza led from the building scattered with benches and glowing fairy lights. Roy walked ahead, stretching his arms over his head.

“I prepared a whole thing. I was going to yell.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s discrimination, isn’t it? It’s not like I’d just let them fire me.”

Ed followed him down a short flight of stairs to a lower plaza, a concrete table and bench next to a flowering basket that smelled like soap.

“So, now that you’re not fired, you’re not saying the whole thing?”

“Now I get more time to plan the whole thing, and get some additional leverage and backing to make the thing successful. Give me some credit.” Roy wandered closer. He peeked up the stairs over Ed’s shoulder and over the grounds below, and found no one. “You wear the hell out of a tux. I had no idea.”

“Don’t get used to it, I don’t like dressing up.”

“Well, it likes you.”

“Don’t expect me to come to all of these. You get paid to schmooze, and I’m not charitable enough to tag along all the time. If I stay.”

Roy laughed. “That’s fine. I’m starting to accept life as a confirmed bachelor.” He gave another furtive look over Ed’s head. “Besides. There’ll be time.”

He put his hands on his neck and kissed him, long and slow; his tongue flicked against his, wet, warm, vermouth. His toes curled inside his shoes.

“It’s okay,” Roy said quietly. “I don’t know if you need to hear that, but I’ve never seen you stressed before, so. Everything’s okay.”

“I know.”

“I’m okay.”

“You’re always okay.”

“Exactly.”

Another kiss. His fingers traced the shape of the golden braid over Roy’s chest, Roy’s hands slid appreciatively down his arms. Another few seconds and it was over. Roy bumped their noses, their heads bowed to touch, and Ed let go of a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

“I don’t worry.”

“It’s okay if you were worried.”

“Worrying isn’t useful. I fix things.”

“This would’ve been a tough one to fix.” Roy sat on the concrete bench and pulled Ed to stand between his knees. Ed searched his features for a few moments, still tense; his dark eyes, long lashes, the way his slicked-back hair made his jaw seem stronger somehow, and how his ears kind of stuck out, plucky and boyish.

He poked a particularly shiny gold and purple medal on Roy’s chest.

“What’s this one for?”

“Getting Gruman’s cat out of a tree.”

“And this one?” He touched another.

“Figure-skating championship, second runner up.”

“This one?”

“Demonstrating outstanding bravery in circumstances of extreme peril.”

Their eyes met.

“That sounds big.”

“Only twelve ever awarded.”

He couldn’t read Roy’s tone. It wasn’t strictly proud, not boastful, just solemn and subdued. Ed sighed, glanced over Roy’s shoulder to make sure the coast was still clear, then ran his hands up his chest. As far as he could go without touching the medals.

“Proud of you.”

“Eh.” Roy closed his hands around his own, brought them to his mouth and kissed them. “Heavy is the… chest that wears the medals.”

“That classic saying.”

“You know what I mean.”

It was really something to have someone dressed like Roy hold his hands with such quiet deference, kissing them like he was a king, cradling them so gently in his own like they were something precious.

“Roy,” he said quietly. “Let’s talk.”

“We are talking.”

“I’m serious.”

He put some space between them and Roy looked up at him with a face that had seen this coming, something tired and disappointed and empty. He took the cigar out of his pocket.

“Can I smoke?”

“Sure.”

Roy lit his cigar and Ed paced, nervous, trying to gather his thoughts; Roy let him, his eyes tracing him back and forth across the small plaza. Roy, who lived in Central along with everyone else who lived in Central, for better or worse. Roy with his big apartment and big responsibility and frightening past and bright future, Roy who looked at him like he was everything, who he looked at like he was everything, the only people either of them wanted to look at in a room full of the most glamorous people in the city. Roy, who was sitting on a glorified park bench and looking sad. He’d never seen anyone look sad while smoking a cigar.

“This isn’t bad,” Ed started. “I mean, I don’t think it’s bad, I just want to talk.”

“You mentioned.”

“I need to sort things out.”

“I’m not mad, Ed. Sort away.”

Had Roy called him ‘Ed’ before? It made his palms sweat.

“I’m new at this,” he said quickly, embarrassment rising to a crescendo. “I like you. A lot. I’ve never liked anyone enough to have them meet my brother, and maybe this doesn’t count because you already know him, but I mean I’d let you see him, as my—as someone I’m with, and I’ve never done that before.”

“I like you, too. Also a lot.”

“I just—I never thought I’d want anyone around for long. I was never interested in that kind of thing, and now, growing up and realizing that maybe I am, it’s kind of upsetting to like… not really know what I want in a partner. I’d never thought about it.”

“That’s alright,” Roy said, slower than before.

“Not that you’re not what I want in a partner!” he said, raising his hands. “I just mean, like—if you’d asked me a year ago whether my type was a forty-year-old military general, I probably would have said no. Unless it reminded me of you specifically, but we weren’t talking last year and I didn’t—”

“I know what you mean. It’s okay.”

“Okay, good. I don’t mean you’re not my type, you are, I mean—God, you make me stupid. I’m not normally like this.”

“Take a deep breath. You sound like how I feel most of the time.”

Ed ran his hands over his face and groaned. “Okay.”

“I’m in no hurry. Say whatever you’d like.”

“Well, just that—it could be you. It could be someone else. I don’t know how I’m supposed to know.”

Roy laughed, not in a mean way.

“That’s life, you beautiful fool. It’s trial and error, knowing yourself, figuring it out. It’s what we’re all here for.”

“The trial and error part is playing with people’s lives, though. That’s not nothing.”

“People get over it. They grow too.”

“So you’re saying if I decide tomorrow that I don’t want this, and I just walked out of your life, that’d be you growing? You’d be all good?”

Roy grimaced. “I would… cope.”

“Cope.”

“I’d recover, that’s the point. My wellbeing shouldn’t be your concern when you’re making a decision like…” He seemed to realize what he was already saying. “Like deciding whether you want to be with me.”

“Your wellbeing matters.”

“So consider it, but it’s not up to you to manage how I feel.”

He looked as tense as Ed felt. He wanted to go over to him but it didn’t seem like the best idea. He wanted to kiss him and kiss him and never stop. He wanted to go to dinner at Gracia’s with him, buy him train station tchotchkes, force him to let him try on his ridiculous uniform, split a bottle of wine with him, keep a toothbrush in his bathroom.

“How do you feel about me?” he heard himself ask. Roy sat up straight. “For real. Or just like… concisely? Nevermind, I don’t know what I’m asking, I—”

“Sometimes, in the right light, when you’re in a good mood, when celestial bodies align just so—”

“Quit it.”

“—I don’t care about anything else,” Roy finished. “Not a damn thing. I think about changing my name and moving out to the country to raise chickens with you. Learning how to plait a fishtail braid. Bringing you wildflowers. The whole nine yards.” He sucked on his cigar with an intentional flourish, joking, as if he weren’t saying something massive. “I think the world could burn around us and I’d try to come up with a funny little joke to make you laugh about it.”

Ed went still. He could hear his heart beat in his ears.

“That’s a lot to say to someone.”

“I know.”

“You aren’t worried it’ll scare me off?”

“I know it might. But I want to give you a full deck to play with, it’s only fair.”

They shared a long, heavy silence. The exterior door on the plaza above opened for a moment and the din of the party inside rang out over the grounds, slicing into the night.

“It does scare me off,” Ed said quietly. Roy didn’t crumple a bit and, Ed thought, it was credit to why he’d be such a great leader. Provided everything didn’t go to shit. “It scares me that you’d give up your goal for anything.”

“Like I said: when celestial bodies align. It’s once in a blue moon and then I go back to my stupid little life, but it still happens.” He ashed his cigar. “And for the record, it scares me, too.”

Ed wrung his hands. “Did you ever think all that with Hawkeye?”

“No, but that was different. All we had were my goals.” Roy glanced up and the look he gave him shot through him like an arrow. “Do you ever think like that?”

Ed went still. Christ, he’s asking if you’re in love with him. 

“Maybe,” he said slowly. “I’d need to think about it.”

Roy chuckled. He was looking down at his hands. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re too smart for love?”

“Not until now.”

After a beat, he stubbed out his cigar and crossed to where Ed stood. He bent down and kissed him on the head, which Ed wasn’t sure he appreciated.

“We’ve endured this party long enough. I’ll get you a car.”

—

Roy put him in his own car and said goodnight, which wasn’t good. It was dark in the back seat and he was alone and he was panicking, which wasn’t good or like him.

You shouldn’t have said anything. It’s controlling to ask for validation. It’s uncool. Is that what you were asking for? Validation? Or were you looking to make him say it, that you’re too much and too complicated and not worth it? Even at a stuffy party you have to be on your toes around him because if anyone sees you LOOKING at each other he’ll get court martialed, apparently!

Because it was easier than being upset and unsure, he got angry.

Fuck him for being weird about it! I’m allowed talk about US, I’m allowed ask him things, sue me for not being old and jaded like him! I spent four days on a train coming down here to see him, I’m spending time I could spend with Al to be with him, is that not enough? Before he came up north I hadn’t thought about him in years and it was FINE, I was HAPPY, I didn’t ask for this! 

And then:

Does wanting to buy someone train station tchotchkes mean you’re in love with them?

He imagined getting Roy an ugly little tourist trinket from every train station gift shop he passed, gaudy snow globes and painted tin minutiae, a paperweight shaped like a mail box, a blown glass hummingbird, a sign that said ‘don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee,’ each thing stupider than the last. It would be so funny to see him be straight about it at first—kind and sincere about the gifts as he put each one out on display on his desk—and then slowly less and less kind as he realized Ed was doing it to make fun of him. It would bring him unparalleled joy to pull off such a long con and see how many he could get him to put on his desk before he figured out that his judgement in gift-giving couldn’t possibly be that bad. He would put a lot of them on his desk, he thought, maybe long after he realized Ed was messing with him, because no matter how ugly and dumb the tchotchkes were, they meant Ed had been thinking about him on his travels. And he would have been, of course. He’d think about Roy all the time.

“‘Scuse me,” he said to the driver, “could you take me to the big apartment building downtown, with the green awning?”

—

The old elevator operator remembered him and let him up to Roy’s floor. His heart was thundering in his ears and his body felt swollen and angry and nervous, regret flip-flopping with passion and certainty. Roy’s door was down at the end. He knocked, feeling stupid and praying he hadn’t gone out for a night cap.

Footsteps on the other side. He still had a few seconds to run.

The door opened and Roy stood there barefoot, wearing his short cotton house robe and the glitzy cape of his full dress uniform. His hair had been tousled but still crackled with gel.

“Edward.” He looked mortified. “Is… everything alright at home?”

“I want to talk. More. From earlier.”

“I…”

“Please. I don’t—”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Roy backed up a little. “Not because I don’t value what you have to say but because I do, I’m—I’m not at my best. This isn’t a good time. Tomorrow.”

“Please,” Ed tried again, inching his left foot towards the door in case Roy slammed it. “I’ll just be a sec, I don’t want to—”

“I’ll say something I’ll regret,” Roy said, not looking quite at him. “I care about you and I’ll—you don’t need to hear all this, it doesn’t matter, just—”

“It does matter! Five minutes, Roy, please, don’t make me think about this all night.”

“I’m begging you to let me cope in peace.”

“It’ll be good! I promise!”

Roy’s hand, clutching the door, went limp. He ran it over his face and left it there for a second.

“Five minutes,” he said from behind the hand. “And let me take the cape off first.”

Ed stepped gingerly inside. “It’s a good look.”

Roy scoffed and disappeared into his bedroom. Ed hesitated in the hallway before slipping into the study, where a still-cold glass of wine sat on the end table. Like before, Roy’s apartment smelled so much like Roy and it made him dizzy with fondness and lust and, now, regret. He had to do this right.

Roy returned wearing a blue sweater over his robe, which would have been funny if things weren’t so important. His hair had been somewhat smoothed.

He said, “Let me go first,” before Ed could speak. “I gave you some half answers earlier and I want to be absolutely clear.”

Ed sunk to sit on the loveseat, his hands clasped between his knees to keep from fidgeting. “Okay.”

Roy took a deep breath and leaned on the arm of the sofa. He still couldn’t look right at him and seemed to be focusing on Ed’s left ear.

“I want… all of you.” His voice was hard and serious. “I understand that you’re young and you want your freedom, and I’m not here to tether you. Travel the world and open a thousand clinics, open none and become a lion-tamer, the choice is yours. I don’t care if it’s you and me for two months or twenty years, but I want it to be real.”

“Roy…”

“This has been fun. Fantastic. Soul-crushingly perfect. But even I’m not stupid enough to keep doing this to myself. If you want to stay in Central, let’s just run into each other once in a while and be pleasant, and maybe if you’re drunk, we’ll fuck like animals and I’ll leave completely soulless and empty.” He looked down at his hands. “And I’ll tell my future ex-wife about it when she asks why I’m emotionally unavailable.”

Ed swallowed hard. 

“That sounds horrible.”

“I’m being realistic.” Roy shrugged, miserable. “Don’t worry about me. Don’t do this because you’re too afraid not to. If you think you can lie to me for any longer than a few days, you don’t think very much of me.”

“I think a lot of you.”

“Well, good. Then please, please do not be with me because you don’t want to say no to me. I think that’s fair to ask.”

He walked through the future of Roy’s imagining, where he ran into a gray-haired Roy on the street and didn’t have anything to say to him. A future Roy who was with someone else, not with him, not part of the neat little thing they were building between them, day by day for the past few weeks and during every second they were around one another, every time he learned something new about him that he filed away into a meticulously-managed Roy Rolodex in his brain that he found himself poring over every free moment he had. That scared him more than any maybe-what-if that he could come up with.

“You’re good to me,” he said softly. Roy waved his hand.

“You’re good to be good to. We’ve both had enough bad in our lives, and you don’t even deserve yours.” He slid off the arm of the loveseat to sit next to Ed, close enough that their knees bumped. “Thank you for letting me try. This really has been a wonderful, wonderful couple of weeks, they’re their own merit. Maybe this is just a case of too good to be true.” He reached out and curled Ed’s hair behind his ear, a sappy habit he’d picked up in their short time together. “In another lifetime, maybe.”

Ed heard his own voice before he registered saying anything. Whatever it meant, whatever uncertainty he had, he wanted it. He wanted Roy and Central and his stupid little life, and he couldn't stand having it any other way.

“I want this lifetime.” He grabbed Roy’s hand and brought it to his cheek. “As if you’d make me wait.”

He tugged him into a kiss. It was clumsy at first as Roy stumbled into the wordless yes of it and then deeper as he caught up, sunk into it and didn’t come up for air for a very, very long time.