It has to start somewhere; like a spark that is the precursor to a bonfire, a tiny flash and then it is all smoke and flame and smoldering heat that builds and rises into something that is near uncontrollable.
It doesn't begin with shy admittances of 'I like you' or holding hands or even chocolates or flowers or sappy love notes. It's not small or subtle at all, though, if he looks back, the signs are there, furtive, infinitesimal indications that neither took the time or care to notice, or were too afraid to acknowledge. But the real beginning is more like an explosion than a spark or even the flare of a lit match.
There are normal days in everyone's life and there are days that start out normal and turn out to be much, much more. There are days, summer-bright and sticky with humidity that seem like everything is unbearable because it is so miserably hot. Days when Edward complains that they might as well live in the desert and Al snaps because he is overheated. Days when Edward stomps away in a fit of temper and Alphonse sucks because his brother is an idiot, but then seedlings of shifting change whisper in through the cracks and twist lives, hack up everything that is familiar and safe and piece together a new puzzle.
One moment Edward is stepping out of the bathroom, towel slung around his hips, hair dripping across the hall floor and the next he is assaulted in his own bedroom by unexpected fingers. They roam his body as if it is not his own, fingers threading through water-chilled hair, tongues and teeth clashing in a war that neither intends on winning.
How and why are not important, and Ed doesn't even have the time to feel guilty or wonder about what the world would think, if it happened to be watching; he knows only a world where his brother is fever-scorched hot, pressed flush against his own skin, where contact sears and mouths seek to explore flesh never before tasted. Ed gasps and Al's touch is maddening and it is only later, when lids are drooping, breath and hearts fast and irregular but slowing gradually, that he has time to consider.
Fingers brush up Alphonse's pale skin. Beneath it, blood runs blue, blood they both share; the same genes, birthed from the same woman. He considers everything his mother taught him before she faded away like breath puffed into chill-winter air. He considers right and wrong and damnation and a god he doesn't really believe in and I what would Winry, Master, Colonel, Ross, Granny Pinako, friendsfamilystrangers think if they knew?
This is wrong /I he thinks; knows that brothers do not touch, love, think, breathe the way they do. He also knows that all their lives they have been wrong. Spent years searching for something that did not exist, committed crimes like monsters, repressed, tucked away in corners where they waited and lurked and swirled through their heads at night when they were most vulnerable.
And he wonders exactly I who /I declared that this is wrong, where a love that is so unconditional that he can honestly look at his brother - mossy eyes glazed and half shuttered in sleepy bliss, hair tousled, flesh nested in tangled blankets – and know that he wouldn't hesitate to die for him.
There are pros and cons, he knows; reminds himself that it will be hard, they will suffer, yet again, for this choice. That it will be a furtive, concealed thing, locked away like guilt in a box, public prying eyes sternly rejected. But he looks down, presses a kiss against his brother's cheek, and all at once he I doesn't care about any of that. /I
"Al," he says, tone serious. He shifts, tugs the younger boy a bit closer and thinks once again of sin and pain and defiance. He thinks of love and devotion and slick heat spreading across his flesh and cements his resolve. "You know what this means, right?" he asks.
Al nuzzles closer, edging towards sleep. His hand flits across Edward's belly, gropes blindly until he catches Edward's hand in his own. "Mmm…Brother?"
"Yeah?"
"Do me a favor and shut up."
It's quiet for a moment, and Ed considers the boy stretched out beside him, a lopsided smile tugging at his lips. "Yeah, okay Al," he says with a chuckle.
Trust Al to tell him exactly what he wants to hear.