AN: Yay! My first (posted and completed) FMA fic! Woot! LOL
Okay, read this and enjoy it, then tell me how much you liked it and where I may have screwed up. XD Special thanks to those friends of mine - you know who you are! - who read this ahead of posting and gave me invaluable feedback. Really, I know the awesomest people. :D
Now go!
Everyone always thought Ed would end up with Winry when all was said and done. Even Ed had believed that to be the fated course of events. He should have known better; he'd never believed in fate, anyway.
"Are you okay?" Roy Mustang asks, perhaps a touch apprehensively. He isn't used to being emotionally considerate.
Ed looks up, surprised. He isn't used to Mustang being emotionally considerate, either.
The look on his face suggests he doesn't think the bastard capable of consideration, period, and something inside the cold bastard's chest twinges at the thought.
Finally, Ed looks away, golden gaze sliding to the treetops silhouetted against the night sky. Roy sighs his relief, free from the burn those eyes bring to his skin.
"I'm fine," Ed mutters, maybe a touch sullenly. Who can really blame him, though? His whole world has been constantly upended, and it's likely that everyone, well-meaning friends all, have been asking him the same question.
Truth be told, Ed had come to this park seeking solace. He certainly hadn't anticipated running into his bastard boss here, a collision more metaphorical and meaningful than he'd realize.
Silence wraps the two men in a starry cocoon. Roy sprawls lazily across a mildly uncomfortable creation of wrought iron and polished wood masquerading as a bench, watching with idle eyes the dark summer sky. Ed is an artless tangle of limbs and grass and dew, ignoring the chill of early morning, or reveling in it. He shuts out the brilliant view for the space of a deep breath, letting out a noisy sigh as he resumes his perusal of the mysteries beyond.
His voice breaks the quiet softly, crickets and cicadas long ago retired. "I just thought things would be different," he says slowly. Mustang is silent and Ed wonders if he is listening, if he even really cares.
"I'm happy for Al; he deserves this, the chance to be happy. He lost out on so much..." Ed's voice trails off for a long moment as he considers all that has happened in their young lives.
Roy is drawn back in silent contemplation, as well, thinking that, of all the horrors he's seen and all the terrible things he's lived through, the Elric brothers probably had to bear twice the burden. He wonders if having each other made it easier for the brothers to bear their burden of guilt and sin. He wonders how Ed will manage alone, now, one half of a hell-forged soul.
Ed finally continues, drawing Roy back to the stars and the grass and the metal filigree digging into his back. What would Ed think if he were to lie down beside him, all elegance cast aside in favor of dew-dropped comfort?
"I just..." Ed hesitates, so unsure in this arena. Battles are so much easier to figure out than life, so straightforward, he muses. "With Al happy – with Winry – I don't really know what to do with myself. I'm like... I'm like this watch," he says, holding up his shiny silver pocket watch. Not the same as his old one, he acknowledges, and he finds himself missing that sorrowful inscription.
Really, how could he ever forget?
Mustang shifts on the bench, the whisper of fine clothing sighing through the air. He stands, discarding his dignity like a candy wrapper, and reclines among pearly gems of light and shadow, tears of the night waiting for the sun to rise and wipe them away. His head is near Ed's, but his feet are as far as they can get, as though part of him wants to run away from this socially awkward conversation. He looks up at the star-specked sky, trying to ignore the scent of Ed's wildly golden hair, and the way the younger man glances at him from the corner of his considering eye.
Ed almost wants to run away, too, but he doesn't; he looks back at his pocket watch instead. "When you wind this," he says, voice low and trembling across airwaves to reverberate in Roy's ear, "it has a use, a purpose. It knows its duty, and it performs it without fail. But when it is lost or sold, or just gets too old, it is put away somewhere – on a dusty shelf, in a box – and there it sits, lifeless. It has no purpose, no one to wind it, no reason to tick." Ed's arm and the watch drop back to the ground, the cool metal of the automail and the watch's casing immune to the tickle of the cut grass.
The two men lie still as the world shifts in silence around them. Al and Winry have surely left on their honeymoon trip by now, and Ed feels a little guilty that he wasn't there to see them off, but somehow he thinks they'll understand. He wonders what Al would make of him laying here under the stars with Mustang, of all people. It seems so out of character for the military man, and Ed feels a little awkward as he realizes the romantic connotations of the situation, suddenly glad Al isn't there to make something of it.
Mustang shifts, rolling onto his side to face Ed and propping his head on his palm. He ignores the grass stain that is likely embedding itself on the elbow of his shirt as he looks – really looks – at the young man Ed has grown into. His hair is the same sunlight shade Roy remembers from so long ago, longer now, and braided once again.
When Ed first showed up, springing out of nowhere with his brother like two weeds that refused to be trodden down, his hair had been tied up in a simple ponytail. It suited him, painting a picture of odd maturity, but some part of Roy – a part stuck in the past, he thinks – was happy when he started braiding it once more. Now it trails like a rope of precious metal through the stalks of green, and the dew glistens as it clings to the smooth strands. Roy looks away before his fingers can so much as twitch.
Ed's face is very much as Roy recalls it from when he was fifteen-almost-sixteen and already so much older than his short years. It is perhaps a little slimmer, the eyes a little narrower, but the jaw has the same determined set. Roy sees a younger Ed in his memory, eyes blazing and brows lowered in righteous anger, so passionate, so alive, ready to sacrifice his life if it means saving his brother, or even another that Ed might deem worthy of his protection. His very gaze seems as if it would be enough to set his foes ablaze with the ruthless justice of Hell's flames.
That gaze is dormant now, lurking behind shadows of uncertainty as Ed watches the heavens, leaving Roy to his perusal. His eyes gleam just as brightly, though, the sun's rays undimmed by their time under Sister Moon's reign.
Ed feels Roy's thoughtful gaze pass over him and he fights the urge to twitch, to move at all. The bastard's black eyes seem so heavy on his skin and finally he can take no more. Ed rolls himself into a not-quite mirror image of Mustang and stares back defiantly. He absolutely refuses to sink into the bottomless depths of those eyes, ignoring the way they want to pull his soul in and bind it eternally within, like some dark fairytale. He arches a brow, determined that Mustang will be the one to break the silence.
He does not disappoint.
"Maybe..." That voice, every bit as deep and dark as those eyes, drifts into Ed's ears, unfurling like smoke and filling his head. "Maybe someone will come along and dust off the watch. A well-made watch would not need much tuning before it could be wound once again." Black holds gold captive. "Maybe the watch needs a new purpose to keep moving."
Ed holds his breath, holds his heart, holds his whole world, and waits.
"Maybe," Roy says softly, hesitant and ignoring the faintest trembling of wings over his nerves. He swallows, gathering his courage about him like a cloak. "Maybe the watch – Maybe you... just need me."
He said it and there's no going back and Ed isn't moving, isn't saying anything and Roy can't look away, as much a captive of gold as gold is of black, and he doesn't realize he's holding his own breath until Ed releases his own, a soft warmth rushing through midnight strands.
"It's about time, bastard," Ed says, because really, he has no idea what to say, but Roy understands, isn't mad. Instead, he laughs, a short huff of amazed disbelief, and leans forward to close those last couple inches that separate them, and his free hand is tangling in Ed's head full of gold, pulling him closer.
Finally, after two seconds of infinity, and five years too long, their lips meet, a dichotomous blend of chill and heat. Roy catches his breath, Ed groans a response, and they lose themselves in an unexplored universe.
Overhead, the darkness begins to fade as the world takes on a gilt edging. A bird awakens, rustling and chirping from its nest, soon joined by another. In the grass, forgotten amongst the light-stained dewdrops, the silver watch catches the dawning light for the barest moment, a brilliant wink of defiance in the face of destiny, and then ticks steadily, purposefully on.
END