FMA HOILIDAY SPECIAL: A MIDWINTER'S TALE
Part 1: A Drink With Alphonse
By The Binary Alchemist, 2013
(from One Man's Battlefield: The Autobiography of Roy Mustang)
The best stories—and the wildest exaggerations—always begin with the same five words:
"No shit, there I was…."
These are stories told over a pint or a bottle. Stories told by the campfire between old friends or in the trenches under fire. Stories to entertain. Stories to impress or intimidate. Stories about close shaves, opportunities nearly missed, bullets dodged or sexual escapades. Stories of bravery, of Fortune's favor or—to be blunt—cocksmanship.
Especially cocksmanship.
Many, many men would ask me about my adventures with women in those days when I was busily plotting to overthrow the Bradley regime. I had a reputation as quite a skirt chaser, going through the women in each region the way a man with hay fever goes through clean handkerchiefs. The girlfriends of other officers. The secretaries of other officers. The mistresses of other officers-note the pattern here. Hughes kept at me to find a wife and join the status quo. In truth, I was climbing into their beds for information, and I made damn sure that when I climbed out the ladies in question had been treated well-and in many cases compensated with generous gifts of jewelry, flowers and, frequently, envelopes well stuffed with banknotes.
When it came to the 'no shit, there I was…' stories about my sexual escapades, I kept my mouth shut and smiled, suggesting that I was too much the gentleman to kiss and tell about the ladies.
And as far as the men? I would take most of those stories to my grave, I swore.
Eventually, I became president, where the private and public—and pubic-parts of one's life become front page news. There had been talk aplenty behind my back in the barracks over the years, and once I took the oath of office that talk became gossip page news, especially when Edward Elric moved into my mansion and my life and we chose not to conceal our relationship.
All along, Alphonse had known the truth of my feelings for his brother, long before Ed figured it out after he and Winry separated for the final time…but what I had never told anyone was how I discovered my feelings for this younger man I had known since his childhood…
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I splashed another measure of Stray Dog into Alphonse's glass. Cold rain hissed down the chimney in my private drawing room and the night had been so raw and wet that all but the most loyal of friends had begged off the traditional Solstice Eve ritual of drinking and gambling and shooting the shit. Those who had come by were now downstairs snoring in various guest rooms and I had managed to evade Hawkeye's persistent following by pretending to be slightly drunker than I actually was, asking Alphonse to guide me up the stairs to my now-empty bed.
Edward was not in my bed that Solstice. Neither one of us was happy about this, but an order from Izumi Curtis is an order from on high and must be obeyed. Fond as I am of her, she could put the fear of god into an atheist. Winry was expecting her first child with her second husband, Dr. Pitt Renback, and somebody had to keep an eye on Maes and Nina, since Izumi and Sig had come east from Dublith to help her out, bringing Ed's children with them. Ed had offered to bring the kids to Central for the Solstice holiday. Winry had countered that offer with the threat to shove a pipe wrench up his sigmoid colon. Izumi had seconded that threat. "Take Maes and Nina from their mother when she needs her family the most? At Solstice? What's the matter with you, Ed?"
And while Ed always enjoyed the company of his offspring, he hadn't even wanted to be in the house during their births. Only the love of his children—and his sheer terror at the thought of getting his ass handed to him by his teacher—could come between us on our second Solstice together. We had agreed on a time for a late night private phone conversation that would involve quite a bit of innuendo, heavy breathing, and the use of hands and assorted toys to bring said conversation to a…well….climactic conclusion. However, Ed had called early to advise me that Winry was now upstairs in labor and that Pinako had warned Ed to stay off the phones upon the threat of her extreme displeasure. "You can play with yourselves later, Roy," I heard her yell across the room. "No man ever died of a hard-on."
"What's a hard on?" I heard little Maes pipe up from somewhere near Ed.
"Nothing, Maes," Ed stammered, fuming that our private business was somehow Pinako's business too.
"My thing gets hard," my future step-son confided cheerfully. " It sticks up when I wake up. N' then I gotta pee. Does Uncle Roy gotta pee?"
"GET OFF THE PHONE, ED!" Pinako bellowed, and Ed hastily promised a masturbatory rain check as soon as we could arrange it before hanging up on me."
And so now it was a drink in my fist instead of Ed's cock and my extreme disappointment must have been evident on my face.
Alphonse, always a first-rate judge of other people's moods, sipped his drink and studied me over the rim of his glass. After a few moments, he smiled. "You've never really told me how it got started."
"Hmmm?"
"You and Brother. I know when you told me how you felt about him…but when did it start, Roy?"
Alphonse Elric and I are brothers by marriage. Even now, that face is disarmingly boyish. Hard to imagine how many pairs of feminine legs that face has been between if you don't know him as well as I do. All of Alphonse Elric's "no shit, there I was" stories are true and there are legions of women who will smile—and blush—and assure you that our man does not tell lies about his athletic and geographically diverse love life.
His tales are always told with reverence, respect and affection for the lady—pardon me, ladies—in question. Alphonse has always been a very social gentleman and is noted for exceeding the 'safe occupancy level' of your average four-poster bed. Alphonse does not tell tales with the half-snickering 'slut-with-the-big-titties-harharhar" jocularity of your average soldier. No, if Alphonse tells you about the night upstairs in the Drachman tavern with three milkmaids, a very sturdy headboard, a coil of rope, a pound of caramel toffee, a whole wheel of gouda cheese and a goat, for god's sake-he will tell his tale cheerfully, praise the ladies as near-goddesses, and damned if I don't believe him every time.
"Well," I mused, "it wasn't anything as entertaining as the one about the Aerugoan ballerinas and the bathtub full of strawberry gelatin-"
"—raspberry, actually-"
"—yeah. Raspberry. And those goddamn duck feathers. Hell, Alphonse, compared to you, any story I tell is going to be dull as shit."
His grin was encouraging. "Try me."
I was drunk. I was lonesome, and Alphonse is amazingly easy to talk to—even better that I can trust him never to tell a soul.
Plus—he's unshockable.
I took a warming mouthful of scotch, savoring the slow burn as it slid down my throat. Same way I would have savored his brother if Ed had been here.
"It was a Solstice night, couple of years ago, when Ed turned up unexpectedly in the middle of a poker game." I leaned back into my armchair and closed my eyes.
"No shit…there I was….."
TO BE CONTINUED….