Don't Touch Me
Edward had been acting strangely lately, and not in the way Roy had half-expected.
He'd figured things would change; it would have been stranger if they hadn't after all that was said and done the night before. But he'd thought the changes would be, well, for the better. He knew Ed would still shriek and rant if he ripped on the younger man's height, but now he would know that he teased to watch the flush explode across his face, to laugh at his exaggerated reactions. He knew Ed would still refer to him as "colonel bastard", he just heard it differently in his head, like a kind of twisted nickname.
What he had not expected was to be so completely and utterly ignored.
At first as he tried to work on the various files and folders stacked before him, Roy had thought that it was probably because they weren't alone in the office. Breda, Falman, Havoc, Feury, Hawkeye, they were all busy and oblivious. Ed had always been a private person, maybe he just didn't want anybody to know. That was fine, he could live with that, but there was a tension, a very deliberate avoidance of eye contact that belied the implication.
The minutes of boring paperwork dragged by like hours before noon struck, and the majority of the office staff breathed sighs of relief and fled to the mess hall. Edward began putting his things away to follow.
"Edward." It was not a complete sentence, but Ed neither looked up to see what he was being called for, nor did he pause to hear what would be said afterward.
Roy frowned, slipping out from behind his desk and crossing the small office in a few steps to lay a hand on the blond alchemist's shoulder as he stated toward the door.
Edward all-but slapped his hand off with a hiss.
"Don't touch me, asshole."
Roy stood, frozen as Edward stalked his way out of the office and disappeared into the hallway. He let his hand drop.
"Okay" he muttered to himself "I misunderstood something somewhere."
The night before had been a gamble, there was no question about that. And usually Roy wasn't the type to take a chance unless he was more than ninety percent certain it would benefit him. With Ed it had been fifty-fifty at best.
But everything about Ed was a gamble, because Ed was unpredictable. He'd always played by his own rules. It had been almost two years since Ed had returned from the other side of the gate for good, he'd be celebrating his twentieth birthday soon, and that still held true. He was a marvel of power and skill, and he was a loose cannon. By all rights anyone with common sense should have been scared spitless of the pipsqueak. But they weren't. Roy at least had never felt anything similar to fear or misgiving about him, he enjoyed watching him defy all the odds again and again. It was what made him who he was.
Odds, however, had not been anywhere near his line of thinking when he'd bumped into Edward on the street. He still wasn't sure how they'd come from insults to banter to mild flirtations to falling through fire and stars and the taste of salt and sun. It wouldn't change anything to know how one thing had led to another anyway. The point was what he did know; he did know that Edward had not protested to anything in the remotest sense of the word. He did know that he had not been the only one taking action, and he remembered clearer than a bell the sound of the contented sigh against his chest, the feeling of a hot-blooded heartbeat next to his.
So, it begged a question.
Which was why Edward was currently standing before the closed door of his office while the rest of the staff did business in other parts of the building for a little bit, as was usual when colonel Mustang wanted to talk to someone in private. They probably didn't mind, the tension in the office had been kept up since Ed walked into it, and it was exhausting.
"What the hell, Edward."
It was half a statement, half a question, and Roy was beyond caring which it was taken as.
"You wanted me for something, Colonel?"
The use of the deliberate honorific stung so much he almost flinched. "I want to know why you're avoiding me" he said, tiredly. He was sitting in Falman's seat, having not bothered to return to his desk. That would have felt too formal anyway.
Edward remained silent, staring at his boots.
"Won't you at least look at me?"
He looked up, slowly, gold eyes narrowed in a glare that hurt almost as much as the refusal to use his name.
"I think" he said, slowly, grating each word out "last night was a huge mistake. I think you'd better forget it and let me do the same."
"A... mistake?" Roy stood up when Ed turned around and reached for the door. "I don't believe that."
"Well, believe it." Ed dropped his hand from reaching out in favour of clenching his fists at his side. "Winry and I are engaged, have been for a few weeks. I didn't want to cause a fuss saying anything."
Time stopped, Roy had been making his way toward Edward to stop him from leaving, but he stopped in place also. A faint buzz covered his thoughts a he tried to comprehend.
"....what?"
"That's as it should be, don't you think?" there was a note of resignation in Ed's voice, or was that just wishful thinking? "Winry and I have always been around each other since we were little. It's always sort of been expected that we'd stay together. It doesn't make a difference where my home is, whether I like men or women, whether or not I like you." He frowned, and lowered his gaze again. "Winry and Risembool, they've always been my safehouses; the last places uncorrupted by everything that's happened. I can't let anything bring more sadness or confusion than is already there, not even me."
"So that's it, then. You're just going to act as if nothing happened?"
"Yeah, pretty much. What else can I do? If Winry found out about anything that.... happened, you know, between you and me, I'm sure she'd cry. I promised I wouldn't let that happen."
"And what about you?" he laid a hand on Edward's shoulder, and when he didn't flinch away, took the other also and turned him around. "Are you trying to tell me this doesn't bother you at all? I can read you like an open book, Edward, and you've been miserable all day!"
"It's better if you don't touch me any more, Roy." He'd turned his head aside, but there was a tremble in his voice.
"Edward..." gently he tilted the younger man's chin upward, leaning forward.
"Please!" Edward had ducked forward, gripping the lapels of his military jacket and burying his face in the fabric that smelled faintly of gunpowder. "Please don't kiss me again because I already know, okay? I already know that you taste like smoke and sparks and feel like fire and that the clock will stop turning and I'll never want to let go because you move me more than anybody else, I already know all that so please, please..."
Roy started to close his arms around the shaking blond, but Ed gave a muffled cry as if he'd been pricked with something sharp, and stepped backward, wiping his eyes on one sleeve hastily. "Please don't touch me any more; it's hard enough as is"
He surveyed the shattered youth a moment, nothing seemed to make sense today. The man before him was falling apart, and everything behind what he said and did screamed to be held, kissed, mended, touched. But he still all-but begged for the opposite. He reached one hand out.
"Please!"
The word echoed in his head. Ed had never begged for anything before.
"Don't touch me!"
Roy would have laughed if he felt able, the words conveyed such obvious meaning, but every action that went with them desperately denied them. He wanted to take one more step forward, close the distance between them and hold him till he stopped struggling, he wanted to smooth away the fear reflected in the gold eyes, wipe the hot tears from beneath them and tell him it didn't have to be this way.
Except, so far as Edward seemed to see, it did. If he was to have any stable remnant of normalcy to cling to, it had to be.
"That's... that's really what you want?"
The silence was thicker than Ed's voice when he finally replied. "Yeah."
He was lying; he could always tell, Ed always tried to smile when he lied. Roy felt a weight growing on his shoulders, it sounded like someone else's voice talking through his mouth. "I'm writing you some paid leave" Roy said, feeling rather shaky, himself as he turned around and started for his desk. "Go home, Edward. I hope you'll be happy"
Ed took the paper without a word, and Roy had his back to the door when he heard it close. Silence filled the room like deep water, and the pressure threatened to implode his chest. He slumped to a seat behind his desk and buried his head in his folded arms.
Slowly, like a record tape, he played out everything Edward had said in his mind. It didn't make sense; Edward said it himself, they were good. Before his death, Maes had once laughingly said he was ambition personified. Hawkeye had said more than once that he seemed incapable of giving up on anything. Well, it was true, and he could not let go of Edward so easily.
"All right." He murmured into the woodwork of his desk "I won't touch you. Never again; and I hope you know you've ruined things for me. Nobody else can be like you; but I won't break you from your world if you want so badly to keep it together. But I won't let you forget what happened, either. I won't touch you, but I'll be there."