Written for the Scar prompt for Almei week on tumblr. Here, I offer you my soul and literally days of my time. You know it's bad when the last draft is called v. please end this. Prepare for a long story.
Spoilers for Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and the manga.
I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist.
EDITS:
Please check out the adorable sequel to this story written by KAviator67, A Story Rewritten: [ fanfiction . net/s/12867562/1/ ]
Also check out the Russian translation as penned by HouRaiko: [ ficbook readfic/6637135 ]
As Fleeting as Ink
He tips her back onto the bed and follows after, his lips molded onto hers. He takes choppy breaths of her where he can, and he relishes the small gasps she takes of him. They're mixing in the air between them, and the thought makes him moan into her mouth. Their kisses become sloppy, wet, frantic. Her fingers tug at the short strands of his hair finding something to grasp. Her makeshift braid is unraveling fast, and he guides it to ruin as he enmeshes his hands in her hair, entangling his fingers and her locks so he has some kind of anchor. Otherwise he might just float away, as heady as he feels.
Finally she breaks, taking the long shuddering breaths her lungs need. Her lips are pink, puffy, shiny, smiling, but he doesn't have time to admire his work because her eyes are just staring at him with the utter desperation of lost time.
They say, we need to hurry.
He closes them, his fingertips ghosting across satiny eyelashes. Because that's not what this is about. Don't rush. We'll make time. He kisses one eyelid, his lips lingering before sneaking another. We'll stretch this night as long as we need to. He kisses the other lid.
This time. It's ours.
When Al gets his body back, it's unmarked, unblemished, fresh and smooth like a newborn's.
His family appreciates it in the little ways.
Winry pretends she's not jealous. Except she's the kind of person who hides envy with violence. She has no qualms with pinching his cheeks until they're radiating red and pain, while she rambles on about wind damage, and calluses, and the money she sinks into lotion. Al has a feeling that she's slowly distorting the shape of his face. He also has a feeling that she doesn't care.
When he told her as much, she got an odd twinkle in her eye, and her smile was lethal. The bad kind of lethal.
"Of course, I care," she patted his cheeks before giving them a squeeze, "Why would I want to ruin this perfect perfect skin?" Al never mentions it again because he suspects that his cheeks will start to sag from his face if she pinches them so hard a second time.
Still for all her acting, Al can see right through her. She's his sister after all, in every figurative and now legal sense of the word. She's a layered person. She pretends that she's not jealous, and underneath that she pretends she is. In the end, she's just happy to be able to pinch skin and to hear him say anything, even if it's an "ow."
Brother is not so complicated. Sure, there are jabs. "Baby brother" pops up in conversation. Al finds himself in a childhood's worth of headlocks, made all the more uncomfortable by the fact that he's still taller than his brother. And Ed can't seem to hold back a punch to Al's shoulder. "Need to toughen up your skin," he'll always say like Al is flimsy as paper, even though Al is still slightly ahead when they spar.
But Al can't say a word. How can he? Ed gives him the most gratified smile, like he's saying this – this! – is how it should be, when each punch doesn't echo with a metallic clang.
Al, though. He wonders.
He wonders at how – if he's completely honest with himself – he could do a little less with the pinches and the punches. He'll never tell Ed or Winry though. They're entitled to a lifetime of abusing his skin if it will make them so happy.
He wonders at Ed's scar, the one that stripes across his shoulder, the one that used to be acquainted with automail. It's all white tissue haphazardly knitted together. It's jagged and sinewy and ugly and perfect all at the same time. It's sore when it rains (damn weathervane, Ed calls it), but Al's seen Ed trace it with a finger from time to time, reflecting.
He wonders at Winry's calluses and the paper thin scars that mingle with the creases of her hands. They're beautiful in the way they make the mountains and valleys of her skin. She has worn hands. Lovely hands. Hands that tell how she handles a wrench and screwdriver, how she adores her children, how she loves her husband.
He wonders at how he's gone through a crazy adventure, one that he'll tell his children and his children's children, and – if he's lucky to live so long – his children's children's children.
But his body is unmarked, unblemished, and blank.
It doesn't tell a single story.
He trails wet open-mouthed reverence down her cheek, following the contour of her jaw, and down to her sloping neck. He murmurs into her pulse, and she can't hear him. That's probably why he says them. Muddled choruses of pleasebemineallminejustfornow and mantras of justlovemedon'tleaveneverleave.
She shivers against his lips and shakes her head. For a moment, he stops. Everything. His heart. Breathing. He's nothing but a brittle glass statue hovering over the woman he loves. He thinks that she's heard him, that she's refusing him. That she can't go through this after all.
It's awful how she holds the hammer that could shatter him.
But then she stirs under him, lifting her chin higher so that he can gain better access to her neck. She guides his lips up and towards the back. A place where the mark won't be seen.
Because she's not his.
It's Mei he confesses to over lunch, that sometimes he feels his time in the armor was just one hazy dream. He punctuates his thought with a long draught from his cup and even waves down a waitress to their booth for a refill. This may be his third time around the East, his eighth pit stop by Xing, but the burning spice is something his tongue is still getting used to.
Mei clacks her chopsticks thoughtfully as she mulls over his words. It's an old habit of hers. She needs small sounds to get her mind rolling, and it used to drive him crazy when he was first her student. Nowadays, he finds himself tapping his pen when he's poring over a complex transmutation circle. Sometimes he even makes entire symphonies in her name. When he misses her.
She doesn't need to know that.
"That's surprising," she says slowly, contemplating the taste of each syllable as they leave her mouth. She's hesitating, which is interesting because she's like Ed in that she's almost always sure of herself. Al sees an opening and swipes the piece of fish off her plate. It triumphantly goes into his mouth.
The score: Al thirteen; Mei twelve.
She scowls but forges on ahead with her thought. "I'm just saying there's some pretty unsavory stuff there. I'm surprised that you're beginning to forget."
Al knows what she means. He now understands her hesitation; she didn't want to drudge up bad memories. She knows his entire story, knows every frustration, every dead end, and every dead acquaintance. But it's not that he's forgetting.
"No, it's more like… I can't relate?" He's never thought to articulate this feeling of missing something, and it's a jumble now that he's trying. Each word comes to him slowly, like they're reluctant to leave his headspace and go out into the world. "I have all these… images in my head, but I can't tie them to anything physical. I mean, I've gone through hundreds of fights. I have all these memories, but I don't have a single scar to show for them."
Mei stabs at her fish fillet with excessive force. She doesn't like this conversation. "You wouldn't just have one scar, Alphonse. You would have been crisscrossed with them. My god," she says under her breath at the thought. She's a bleeding heart, and Al loves it because she's so expressive where he isn't. "Knife wounds, bullet wounds, powder burns. You would have been a mess."
She gives him a look that's more petulant child than twenty year old woman and takes one of his fish balls as prisoner in her mouth. He's about to protest – I thought you said fish balls were off-limits – but the glare she aims at him dares him to say something.
This is what you get for starting this awful conversation.
Al's not intimidated, only amused. He gives her another fish ball as a peace offering of sorts. She's quick to take it before he changes his mind, and her glare eases to a deadpan I'm still not quite happy but good enough look.
"Well, go on."
He smiles, because all it takes is a fish ball to turn her around, because – though he'll never tell her – that last move reminds him of a chipmunk, and it's a charming look on her. "I don't know," he finally says wistfully. "Yeah, maybe I would have been messed up, but reminders like that – in small doses," he quickly concedes when he catches the return of her glare. "They're good for you. They mean something. It feels like my body lost my story somewhere."
Mei looks thoughtful at that, her chopsticks now entirely their own instrument. "Well," she says, grabbing a napkin and wiping her mouth, "Then we just have to write it back in, right?"
He has all of two seconds to think, uh wha-, before she reaches across the table and plucks up the pen he has in his front shirt pocket. Professor pockets, she calls them. He saves her long hair from falling into the food and stinking of spiced fish, and she just laughs like she knew he would do that. Part of him would rather she just keep her own hair safe if she knew it was in danger. The other part takes a bit of guilty satisfaction in running her braid between his fingers.
Mei uncaps the pen with a pop, "So give me a scar."
Al is clueless. It's a normal feeling. She tends to jump leaps and bounds ahead in her thought process, while he's left behind to just watch her rocket off.
"I don't – uh…" He lets his absolutely lost expression speak for itself. Mei's undeterred (he's not even sure he knows what deterred looks like on her), and she reaches across the table to take his hand. He's trained himself well in the last three years against her touch. There used to be a time when every friendly touch would send him down a one-way track to becoming a hurdling, heart pounding, double-guessing, teenage-girl mind guessing train wreck. Now his pulse only thrums harder, not unpleasantly but with a deep ache to do something, anything but maintain the status quo, and he resists the urge to do something stupid like squeeze her hand and bring her closer.
Mei is everything zen as she observes his knuckles. Somewhere along the way, she had become less transparent and more dignified royalty. Though she still has her moments. Her last letter had included a forty-nine page report detailing a theory that the square was the best alchemic medium. She had filled every margin with her neat handwriting, absolutely ripping the theory apart with a sharp humor that had him laughing at each page.
But she no longer tackles him with hugs or showers him with thinly veiled confessions. It's like she drew a line, and now he's only a friend. He's guilty of wishing that she was openly enthralled with him like she was as a teenager, which makes him feel like a creep because she's worked so hard to become a respectable figure of her clan.
But at least, things would have been black and white between them, instead of meandering in grey.
"Do you remember," she begins, still staring at his knuckles, "when I first showed you Alkahestry at Briggs? I nicked you with a kunai right here." She swipes a blue line right beneath his knuckles. "First page of your story." She smiles - mission accomplished - and Al finally gets it. She is writing his story, but with blue ink instead of scars.
It's weird and creative and completely Mei.
"So... The next page?"
Al smiles as he uncuffs his right sleeve and rolls his shirt up to his elbow. "There probably should be one here." He traces the inside of his elbow. "Barry got me with his knife."
"A chopping knife, right?" Al's surprised by how well she remembers. She never met Barry. "It's probably a slice rather than a stab wound."
"More of a graze, really."
She takes that into account as she pulls his elbow towards her for easier access. She has a light touch with the pen, and the mark is equally light and tapered at the edges.
"And then here." He runs a nail along the jaw line of his chin. "Pride," he says simply, his nose wrinkling at the memory of that crazy fight.
Head down and still adding final touches to Barry's mark, Mei seems to agree as her own nose wrinkles at the name, but she laughs when she sees where Al's pointing. "So your face is fair game?"
He grins, edging closer to the table so she can get to his chin more easily. Except he realizes too late that he should have thought this one out more.
One hand cups his chin to hold him steady, and the other hand with the pen hovers so close over his lips that when he breathes he can feel it ricochet back onto his nose. He immediately stops doing that. Breathing that is. He enters dangerous grounds when he realizes that a tiny nudge forward would connect her pinky with his lips. His sense of control wrenches his eyes as far left as they can manage, as far from the princess as possible.
Mei takes her sweet time and doesn't notice his discomfort. Yes, Al does miss her outright forwardness from when they were younger.
Because if this is her new way of snaring guys, he's already long gone.
Then he feels the pen nub dig into his cheek. She draws a circle. One he didn't tell her to draw.
"What are you doing?" His irritation is like a cold shower to his senses, and he firmly holds onto it.
She chuckles and hurriedly draws more: on his other cheek, his nose, his forehead. She's going for one just above his brow when he grabs ahold of her hands.
"You've gone crazy with power," he says with more wryness than reprove.
"Bullet wounds," she manages between snatches of laughter. "I was going for realism. You've been shot in the face so many times." Her pen reaches to finish the mark, but he keeps a firm grip on her hand.
"I'm not leaving looking like a giraffe."
"Oh what's one more mark?" She laughs a bit too loudly, gaining the attention of some the nearby tables. Immediately, he lets go of her hands, and the pen is innocently behind her back. Their smiles give it away though. Mei takes a drink from her cup to hide the evidence.
"You look good in polka dots though," she finally remarks, unable to keep in the peals of laughter. He smiles, rolls his eyes good-naturedly, and resists laughing with her. She would take it as permission for a repeat performance.
Once Mei calms enough to breathe normally, she takes his hand and runs a finger down the line she drew on the back. It sends shivers up his arm. "You know, you can talk to me anytime. Edward and Winry, too, I'm sure. Just say the word, and we'll make every page of your story."
He thinks of the pinches and the punches and the circles on his face. He's touched and warmed and turns his hand so they're palm to palm. He dares to edge out of status quo by running his thumb up and down her pinky, the one he was a nudge away from kissing. If his newfound bravery doesn't fail him, he might just follow through and kiss it.
But it's Mei who withdraws her hand. She doesn't need any fancy martial arts move; her hand slips easily out of his grasp like water through fingers.
"Oh, I have some news to tell you!" She claps her hands together in excitement, and an evil thought in his head says she's doing it to erase the feeling of his hand in hers. She's all wide grin and merry eyes, but there's a stiffness to her smile, to her shoulders, that he's not familiar with.
"Oh uh…" He's still recovering from the avalanche of a fall his pride has taken. His heart is still squeezed into his veins and running around his body, and his head has given up and taken a vacation. Still, he manages a response that isn't stuffing the remainder of his rice in his mouth so he doesn't have to talk to her for the rest of the meal. "Yeah, I remember you saying that in your letter. New festival in town?"
The smile gets impossibly wider, her eyes pained from the effort.
"No. I'm getting married."
He nips at her neck, where she's guided him. He searches for confirmation and finds an impatient huff and hazy upturned eyes. He's never been one to make her wait, so he pushes into her neck, his mouth sucking and worrying at her skin. She moans, a perfect "oh" slipping from her lips. He can tell from the way she squirms that it tickles. She bucks up once into his crotch that's achingly hard. He bites harder into her neck to see if she'll do it again. She's all rustling red fabric, and fingers on his back, and hungry whiny noises against his lips.
His hand finds her smooth skin under her shirt. He glides up and down her sides against the planes of her stomach, finding the small touches that set her off in moans and jerks. His feather-like fingers trail from her collarbone and traces down the underside of her breasts to her stomach. She lets out a long luxurious groan that sounds like she's asking for more. More of his hands, his mouth.
More of him.
And who is he to say no?
His ninth pit stop by Xing is six months later, and he's on the doorstep of Mei's apartment for a surprise visit. The ink across his knuckles has long disappeared. He tries not to think of how quickly it did and knocks on the door.
Mei throws it open, her hands quickly working an over-the-shoulder braid into her hair. Her face is all surprise (what he was going for) and maybe a bit of dismay (not what he was going for). Al tries not to think of how fast his stomach is plummeting and how explosive the impact will be once it hits ground zero.
He fails.
"I thought you weren't coming until three days from now." No one would call Mei's tone accusative, but Al's known her too long. He can hear the frantic thread running under her words.
"Oh." He's not quite sure what to say because she's never been disappointed in him coming early before. "I just took some short cuts, and here I am." Tada?
"I see," she smiles, though it's a bit strained. "I should have known. Well actually, I kind of have an appointment…"
His tongue is too fast and obliterates through every security gate on verbal runoff. There's no recovery. "With your fiancé?"
"Uh," she starts to give a questioning glance and then thinks better of it. Her face switches to a cheerful smile, one that's safe for both of them, one that maintains status quo. "No. Just a tailor. I'm getting some alterations on my dress today."
"Oh," there's too much relief, and he's screwed up two too many times. Suddenly Gluttony coming back to life and swallowing him whole is a pleasant thought. "Sooo, I guess I came at bad time. I can just come back tomorrow-"
"Oh no," Mei cuts in. "It won't be that long. You could wait here, or even…" She mulls over it for a moment, tapping a polished nail against the doorframe. "You could just come with me. It won't be longer than an hour, and we can grab lunch afterwards." She smiles a hopeful grin.
He smiles back, feeling at ease that their falling into the usual pattern that's them. "That sounds good. Your treat."
Mei rolls her eyes and pushes at his shoulder, despite that it's never her treat and probably will never be her treat. He's too much of a gentleman to let her.
That and he loves her.
"Just wait here a sec."
She closes the door, and he wonders at how far gone he is.
It's official. Al's a stickler for pain.
"So what's your fiancé like?"
Mei doesn't hear him because one of the thousands of cousins she has speeds down the hill past them and catcalls them.
"Looking good!" Her cousin's Xingese is lost in whirring bicycle gears and the wind, but Mei still yells after him so fast that Al can barely follow. He tries not to analyze what it means when her cousin says they look good together, when she's engaged and he's not her promised betrothed. His mind might break with the effort, and instead he focuses on Mei's angry Xingese mutterings. He does manage to catch her threat of chaining her cousin to a post so that he can roast in the sun.
It's one of the hottest days of the year even though it's already September. They've taken every route optimal for shade, but Al's still sweating through his shirt. It doesn't help that the boutique apparently rests on top of some of the hilliest parts of Xing south of the Beihua.
"Sorry about that," Mei says, wiping some of the sweat off of her brow. "Ju-Long is an idiot." It's a regular idiom in Mei's family. "So what were you saying?"
"Your fiancé?" He asks before he loses his nerve. "What's he like?"
"Well I've only met him twice," she says. He doesn't hear anything, fondness or disgust. She's completely neutral. "I told you it was arranged, right?"
He remembers vaguely. At that point, he might still have been shell shocked over her announcement.
"Well, it only takes a few seconds to make an impression," he says, a phrase she often parrots at him when she stuffs him into an ultra-traditional outfit for royal events.
She huffs, her expression a mixture of insult and amusement at his gall. "He's nice." She could be talking about the weather, and Al wouldn't know the difference.
"Just nice?"
Her lips make a firm line. "I just don't know him that well."
Al feels like a right asshole when he thinks that he wouldn't mind if it stays that way.
They turn into the boutique. It's clean, high-end, and above all air-conditioned. Rolls of cloth hang down from the walls, dominantly ranging in reds, golds, and whites, though the occasional green or black sneaks in.
A woman in a yellow cheongsam with peonies in her hair pops out from the door behind the counter. Al has been to enough stores with Mei to know that her royal status is something to respect, so he's surprised when they're met with furious rapid fire Xingese. As much as Al's Xingese has improved, it's harder when unfamiliar speakers and accents enter the mix. He does manage to catch that they're late and that Mei's lucky that she's a princess. The woman sweeps Mei into a dressing room in the back and hands her a dress wrapped in black plastic.
Mei has ingrained basic manners into Al, so he bows in greeting to Peony Lady. She, however, doesn't return the favor. She gives him one long hard look up and down. Al would have mistaken it for her checking him out if it weren't for the piercing edge to her gaze. Then, she says something in Xingese and points him to a bench near the dressing room. Al's edging more on confused than offended. He makes a note to ask Mei if that was normal, though he's guessing no. Still, he sits down, so she doesn't have to repeat twice.
When Mei finally emerges from behind the curtain, she's in a high collar two-piece dress, red and intricately embroidered from top to bottom in golds and whites. His gaze catches on the numerous tiny tassels that fringe the bottom of the top. They sweep and swish as she turns and tries to gauge the fit.
He thinks she looks great, but it shows how much he knows when Mei tugs at the arms and says in Xingese that the shoulders are too big. Peony Lady comes to her side, cinching and pinching, digging with pins, and taking out measuring tape from who-know-where.
Mei catches Al's curious glance, and she smiles at him. No doubt she sees this as an excellent lesson opportunity, and it's like clockwork when she begins explaining the details of the dress. "This is a Qun Kwa. It's traditional in the southern clans of Xing. Do you see the embroidery?" She motions him over, so he can get a better look. "They're phoenixes. They're to bless the union between wife and husband."
She starts into an explanation of phoenixes in yin and yang, but Al opts to wonderingly trace the design of a lotus – from the petals down to the stem until his hand catches a tassel.
"And this?" He asks, lifting the tassel.
"Oh," Mei brings her hands to her side and gathers a few of the tassels herself. "It's an old tradition. The idea is that the bride is supposed to give up all the things that tie her to her single life, so she can begin fresh anew with her husband. People took that rather literally though. If you managed to get your hands on one of these tassels, you were basically entitled to any request of the bride. Usually for her old things."
"Any request?" Al's disturbed as he thinks of how people could lose entire fortunes in a wedding. Mei laughs at his outright horror, earning a sharp scolding from Peony Lady.
"Well, I mean within reason. Also it's the groom's job to protect her, so she doesn't lose tassels left and right." He's still not reassured. "Anyway, nowadays people just use the tassels to request a personal toast from the bride. It's rude to actually demand anything."
The tailor takes a step away from Mei to see how the pins have changed the look, and Al follows her lead, so he's not in the way. Mei was right. It was big in the shoulders. Now the dress is slimmer and hugs her torso better. Mei looks good in red. It brings out the blush in her cheeks.
But he wonders what she looks like in western white. He wishes he wouldn't.
"You look nice."
She smiles, even though his compliment is near neutral, even though it doesn't have an ounce of how he actually feels. "Thanks."
Peony Lady mutters in Xingese, and Mei responds lightning fast. He can't follow her at all, and he's only heard her talk so fast when she's at the market, chewing out swindlers. The tailor doesn't seem angry. Instead, she laughs and pushes Mei back into the changing room.
"She's pretty, right?" Al is surprised when the tailor addresses him in Amestrian.
"Um, yes she is. Very." He answers plainly, too caught up in the pace of their quick-fire Xingese.
Mei doesn't seem to hear him because angry Xingese comes from the other side of the curtain, and a small hand thrusts out the red dress. The tailor laughs some more, taking the dress and heading to the back. Before disappearing behind the door, she calls out one final thing to Mei that Al does understand.
I approve.
Bewildered doesn't even to begin to describe Al. He has a suspicion that he's become the butt of some joke in the last few minutes, but he has no way of knowing with just a single translated line. He decides to wait for Mei to come out to explain, but she's taking her time. He makes a couple of rounds around the store, admiring the different swatches of cloth available, before the curtain swings open again.
Someone's been paying attention to his wishes because there she is, white wedding dress and all, and she looks like she walked right out of one of his daydreams. Her face is flushed though he doesn't know if it's from embarrassment or the heat or something else entirely.
He's going to blame any flush he has on the heat.
She's not saying anything so he steps in, "Tada?"
She laughs, and he can tell from the breathiness of her chuckle that she's embarrassed. Verdict decided. She folds her arms - her bare arms and lacy shoulders might be burned into his mind's eye – in front of her self-consciously. He wants to untangle her arms, so he can admire how her perfect collar bone is exposed, how the bodice hugs her, how the beading curls across her waist and down to the skirt, how she looks luscious, and he takes it back: she looks much better in white than in red.
"This wasn't exactly my idea."
"Hers?" He nods towards the back where the tailor disappeared. Peony Lady is rising in the rank of people he likes, no matter if he is the butt of a joke. "Are you two close?"
"Kind of," she smiles, "We knew each other as kids. She's… She just likes to see me flustered."
It's on the tip of his tongue. He wants to ask if she is flustered, and if she is, why. He's not sure if he's ever had such a clean opening. But in the time he opens his mouth, she steps away from him and does a twirl.
"How does it look?"
His head goes through every corny answer that he's gleaned from reading Mei's romance books. Beautiful. Perfect. Like a dream. Like she dropped straight from heaven, only to keep flying out of his grasp with those damn wings of hers. There are no safe answers to this, so he opts not to. "Your back is open."
"Ah," she brings a hand to her back. "That's actually why I came out here. Could you zip me up the rest of the way?" She turns her back to him, sweeping her hair out of his way.
It's a simple task, but he's distracted by how the white zipper molds the lace together over every knob of her spine and the juttings of her shoulder blades. Her back looks impossibly more appealing behind sheer lace.
"Are you done?"
He quickly clasps the top hook of the dress, and he tears his eyes away from that back before he gives into the urge of running a finger down the mesmerizing bumps of her spine. She walks over to a mirror, twisting and turning to see how the back looks.
She hums, "It might look better with my hair up. Maybe if I…" And she quickly takes her messy braid and pulls it up into a bun with a hair band she has around her wrist. She turns her head this way and that, checking the security of the bun. He marvels at the sloping muscles of her neck and the curve of her shoulders. Her clavicle is moving.
He wants to bite it.
He puts his hands to her lacy shoulders to keep them still or he might just press his lips to her neck, right there and then.
"You look absolutely beautiful." A silence sits between them, and he wonders if she can hear it, in that one sentence. His adoration, his want, his desperation.
She puts her hand over his and squeezes. "Thank you... Really."
Maybe she heard it, but then she smiles at him like she would any other day. She leads him by the hand to her purse. "I have something for you." She rummages through papers until she takes an envelope out. "Here you are."
It says "To Mr. Alphonse Elric" in elegant loops and curves. He doesn't have to open it to know what it is.
"I've been meaning to give that to you for a while." she says, "I didn't send it by mail because well – I still don't have the spice set that you sent from Lubai, and phoning seemed too impersonal. I would really love it if you could come."
It's his saving grace that she doesn't say we.
For the briefest of moments, he wishes he was in that armor again and immediately regrets it because so many people went through hell to get his body back, himself included. But he wouldn't mind a mask right now. Anything to hide his face. He preoccupies himself with opening the envelope and the invite. He doesn't read a single word.
"Wouldn't miss it," his voice doesn't slip, and that's all he can ask for at this point, "When is it?"
Her hands travel to his pants, fumbling with the buckle until he moves her hands away. She's persistent, something that translates well from life to bed, and her hands keeps coming back. Al finally growls his annoyance against her pert breasts and traps her hand on either side. They're distracting him from the rosy buds that are reaching up for his mouth.
She arches into him instead and raises one of her legs, so it unmistakably grinds against his groin. He lets go of the nipple with a gasp, unable to deny a dry thrust into her pelvis. She does it again and again, and he buries his head into her shoulder, giving into her. She's winning this war, this standoff where she rushes him and he slows her down.
If she wants to go so fast, he'll send her careening.
His hand inches under her skirt, under underwear, snaking down her matte of hair, and sliding towards her center. She hisses into his ear, and she stiffens for the first time. He murmurs poetry and fairytales and lullabies into her ear, sweet rustling hums that have no meaning, but she eases into him because it's her language. They're the sounds she's made of.
He traces calming circles around her soaking lips – dazed by how slippery and easy it is when it's so wet. She relaxes under his touch, and he presses a kiss to her jaw. Slow. We'll go slowly. This is our story.
But she's an impossible minx. She thrusts into his palm, and there's a small squelch that's impossibly loud. The sound goes into his ear and straight to his cock. He grunts with veiled desire because that sound could burn him up. He peels her clothes down slick thighs and knobby knees and smooth ankles. He nudges her legs open, and she complies, shivering at the air the runs across her skin. It's slick and pink and beautiful, and he tells her in reverent gasps as she pulls him back up because she misses his lips.
His fingers ghost over and around and around, and she takes his hand and brings up to a little bead that makes her jerk when he rubs his thumb over it. So he does again and again, until she just a writhing mass of high-pitched oohs and throaty uhhs. Until her shaking hands squeeze around his shoulders, and her eyes close tight, and she stops breathing.
It's two and a half months later and four days before her wedding when he sees her again on the Chang estate.
"Alphonse, catch!" her voice shouts out to him from above. Above? She's perched on the sill of an open window – of the second floor bathroom if he's guessing at the layout correctly. She's prematurely outfitted for her ceremony; red dress, ornaments, the whole package.
And she's preparing to jump down.
Al doesn't even have time to think, ohnononodon'tyoudare, before she leaps. Ironic that she's falling while his heart is trying to beat up and out of his chest. He braces himself, arms outstretched at the ready to catch her. No matter how small or light she is, it's going to be painful when she lands. For the both of them.
But it's obvious that he's the greenhorn in this whole defenestration thing. She easily catches one of the wiry branches of the gingko tree near the window, slowing her descent, and she neatly plops into his arms. He suspects that she didn't need the help, that she just likes to send him into fits of terror.
Somewhere in this he deserves an apology and maybe some meat buns in compensation, but Mei is too distracted, looking for pursuers.
"What did you do?"
Mei huffs like she's scandalized by his accusation. "I did not do anything… extreme."
"Oh god," he groans, "I'm an accomplice, aren't I?"
"Oh it's not that bad," she waves off his whining. "I'm just running away from Mother. I've been practicing banquet speeches in front of her for four hours straight. I think that warrants playing hooky."
"Your mother?" Chilled does not even begin to describe Al's blood. He's seen Mei's mother angry. It makes him fondly remember his fights with Pride.
"Uncle is keeping her occupied." Despite the many uncles Mei has, she only calls one by Uncle, her great-uncle, also her teacher and one of the greatest Alkahestrists alive. The fact that a legend is on their side is comforting but sadly not by much.
Mei seems to agree by the way she's trying to squirm out of his hold. Oh, he's still holding onto her. Her, an engaged woman in her full wedding dress on her family's property. His hands fly off her waist. The only way they could be off faster is if his hands were attached to rockets. Al's embarrassed; he knows flustered is an awful look on him at age twenty-three. Mei's amused, but she's kind enough not to comment.
Or she's saving it for a good tease later. There's no knowing with her.
"Come on. Before my mother realizes I'm gone."
They end up at her apartment. "It's so empty." Al comments as they come in. Her living room is completely clear except for the couch.
"Oh, I've moved most of my stuff into the house. To lighten the load after the wedding." She answers distractedly as she detaches the ornaments from her hair. It's horribly complicated, a mess of bobby pins and hair ties. She pulls out wires of beads, and strings of flowers, and finally a silver gilded crown. They clatter onto her kitchen counter. Her hair is slicked into a side bun with strategic flyaway hairs. It's beautiful but a bit severe for her round face and eyes. It unravels and cascades over her shoulder as she pulls out more bobby pins that blend so well with her hair they seem to come from nowhere.
Mei sighs in relief and runs her hands through her hair. She catches him staring at her, and he resists the immediate urge to avert his gaze. It's a sure sign of guilt if he does. God, if only she knew. It's practically criminal, the number of glances he's stolen of her when she wasn't looking.
She smiles, mistaking his staring for curiosity. "It pulled really tight on my scalp. Thought I would go bald when they were doing it." She starts working a simple braid into her hair. "I think I like my usual braids better."
He agrees. As she braids, she looks less like a stranger in her own home. Not that there's much left of her home.
He paces around the living room, still seeing the afterimages of wall-to-wall bookcases and decorative weapons she used to have.
"It's weird how empty it is, right?" she observes as he makes his third time around the room. He pauses at where the coffee table used to be, the one that always seemed to position itself so he would bang his knee against it. He considers the empty space where there used to be an indoor garden lattice. Mei had long given up growing tomatoes and instead hung up pages upon pages of alchemic theories that would pop into her head at the most random times.
Mei suddenly clicks her tongue with frustration behind him. She's struggling with an ornate hairpin caught near the back of her head. "Damn it," she hisses, "I told them not to put these in. They snag like crazy."
"Missed one?" he asks with slight mirth. He hardly ever hears her curse, too unprincess-like.
"The worst one," she huffs and winces when she accidentally pulls out some of her hair.
"Want me to help?" Al's already over to her, relieving her hands the mess. It's a piece of work. Her hair is fantastically caught and curled around metal snags, no doubt made worse from her meddling. But if anything, patience is Al's virtue.
He figures it's less of a virtue and more of a necessity when he loves people like his brother and Mei.
Finally, the pin comes out and joins the rest of the decorations on the counter. Mei murmurs her thanks and scratches at her scalp, trying to overwrite the pain.
Al, however, is occupied.
He traces his eyes over the curling embroidery that wraps around her neck and snakes down her dress. He wonders, at her in this dress, her in an empty apartment. He's struck with how real this. How she's going to get married soon. He didn't realize it before (probably because he would feel like a creep), but there was some tiny – tiny – part of him that thought she wouldn't go through it. That something – he didn't know what: a disaster, some sensible relative, her epiphany that he loved her and that maybe she loved him, too – would cut her engagement short. That part of him is silent now.
In the plain light of her kitchen, the dress is nothing special. Just another red dress she owns. At least, that's what he tells himself. He follows the design of a dragon with his finger. The stitches are tiny, like satin under his skin. He starts at the snout, down the ribbed belly, all the way to the fire alight at the end of the tail. He doesn't stop there. He continues along the white details shaped like clouds. Somewhere, he vaguely hears Mei comment; something about letting him try it on if he likes it so much. He smiles but doesn't rise up with a retort, his fingers now finding the gold trim and those tassels.
They whisper as they rustle, whisper something like possibilities.
Like wishes and dreams and desires.
Al rips off a tassel, and it gives easily. He'll be selfish this once. Between pinches and punches and circles on his faces, surely he's earned a bit of selfishness.
Mei jumps away, surprised, when he snatches the tassel off. They both stare at it, she dumbfounded and he… Well, he's tired of waiting for something to happen. He's tired of edging around status quo and being chained to what's normal between them.
So he'll jump off and hope she'll catch him like he caught her earlier that day.
"Humor me?" He takes her hand and places the tassel into her palm.
She looks at it with confusion, and it's strange to be the one that's waiting for her to catch up. She laughs when she finally understands. "You can't have my romance novels if that's what you want."
"Come on," he says, even though a smile is playing on his lips. "A real request."
Her own smile falters, and she searches his face like she's trying to see where this is going. Al's terrified. She's going let him fall, and he's going to crash and break into so many small pieces he'll be unrepairable.
But she holds a hand out to him just in time.
"Okay. An early request." She nods reassuringly, "What is it?"
"Write a story with me."
"A story?"
Al shakes his head. That's not exactly right. "Our story."
"Our story…" Mei repeats quietly, not quite there yet. He leads her the rest of the way. Taking her hand, he brushes her fingers against his knuckles, a clean sweep, reminiscent of how she did the same with a pen nine months ago.
"Our story," she breathes with recognition. "And… how does this story end?"
The gaze she turns on him is plaintive, knowing. There's no need for any cheesy love confession. They're on the same page for once in the three years he's loved her. She's figured it out, or maybe she's always known.
More thrilling is that she's not letting him fall. She's still holding on tight.
At the very least, she'll hold on until they finish the story.
He resists the urge to kiss her hand, to wipe the gloom from her gaze. Instead, he squeezes her hands reassuringly. "Can't skip. You have to just wait and see."
"Okay. Fine then," she smiles – though a bit of melancholy tugs at the corners. "Does it start here?" She retraces the invisible line across his knuckles.
"Actually, I think it starts with you kicking me in the head." Mei laughs – really laughs – as she remembers their first encounter. He's glad. Sadness doesn't suit her. "But I think we can skip that part."
"Then maybe your back." She talks slowly, like she's not sure if she can make a suggestion in this new balance they've struck. He nods encouragingly. It's her story as much as his. "You probably would have gotten some nasty bruises from all the times I tackled you to the ground."
"I'm surprised you would bring it up. I thought you were embarrassed of those hugs." He follows her with his gaze as she circles around him so she can survey his back.
"They didn't embarrass me." Mei admits quietly. Over his shoulder, he sees her eyes rake over his back, zig-zagging down the length of his spine. "My grandfather said it was uncomely for a princess to shower her affection so openly. Who knows? Maybe I would still being doing it if it wasn't for that."
He reaches back with his hand, and she takes it.
It's a breath of air that she takes the things that he offers her rather than dancing out of reach.
"Maybe here." He feels her circle two spots on mid lower back. "You should land here if you remember my advice about breaking your falls."
"I always forget though."
"I know." And her fingers wander higher up to where he normally lands when he practices falls. She slowly traces a horizontal eight, an infinite sign, into his back. Once, twice, she does it again and again. It's not lost on him that she wants him to memorize this feeling, memorize it so that he can bring it up when he wants to. Otherwise, it doesn't have the permanence of a scar. So he commits the sound of rustling fabric, the dampened feeling of her nail catching on his shirt, the pleasant tingle her touch leaves behind.
"And next?" she murmurs, closer to his back than he thought.
"Where Father's blast hit."
He can feel it in the air, her stiffening. She knows exactly what injury he means. It's the one that swallowed the left half his body, the one that nearly broke his seal. The one that he saved her from.
"Just the outline." He squeezes her hand, pacifying, willing her to move. She responds and runs a finger from his shoulder, down his back, and across his ribs. She swings under his arm and lets go of the comforting hand he gave her so she can complete the circle.
Despite the bad memories, she handles this page of their story with the same care she did the last.
"Did I ever you thank you for that?" she asks quietly from under his arm, following the curves of his ribs, "For blocking that blow?"
It's an old hat. So long ago, mixed into so many favors and gifts and exchanges. What does it matter if one more is unaccounted for? "It doesn't matter. You returned the favor when you transmuted my soul."
"Oh," she chuckles, "I'm not sure if that's really returning a favor. I let some freaky gate engulf your soul."
"It was a favor," he reassures her, like the thousands of times he's reassured her before when she was uncertain.
She smiles and drops it because this too is an old hat between them. She connects the imaginary ends of the outline and finishes that page of their story.
"Next?"
"Here." He presses her hand gently onto his chest over his sternum, over his heart. He keeps his hand over hers. Even between the spaces of her fingers, he can feel his heart thrumming so fast that each beat seems to blur together.
"This one…" she manages to whisper.
"You. You've done quite a number here."
Mei laughs… or sobs; it's a broken mix of the two. She sinks her forehead into their joined hands, so she's resting against his chest.
"I could say the same," she whispers, "This whole game is cruel. I didn't know you had it in you."
"Do you love me?" He takes the hairs that have snaked out of her braid and curls them around her ears.
She shudders and pulls away. "I can't. You know I can't."
He holds fast onto her hand. He's not ready to go back to their old pattern where she always manages to squirm out of his hold. It's not just a matter of her catching him; he has to hold on tight to her. "But you do love me."
"This isn't about that. Our story isn't some fairytale where love conquers all and all that nonsense. I have a clan." She's says it quietly, almost like she's reminding herself more than him, "I have a clan that's depending on me. My clan needs this marriage. This connection. They need this support. What could you possibly give to my clan?"
"What about you? Where does your happiness fit in this?"
"I-"
"You don't love him."
"You're right," Then she says with conviction that nearly breaks him in two, "But I don't hate him either."
He leans against the counter and tugs on her so she's a step closer. But nothing more than a step. She won't allow it. "You're terrible, you know." It's not anger. It's a deep tiredness that runs through his words, "You know what every single word does to me, and you say it anyway."
She's silent and looks away because she knows it's true.
He breathes and takes her other hand so that both of hers are in his. "I love you." The words are foreign when their sounds on his lips rather than a mantra in his head. "Give me a better ending. A happy one."
"Happy endings are usually marriages, you know. I can't give you that."
"Then one night." He presses a kiss to both hands, finally completing that nine-month promise between his lips and her pinky. "Love me for one night."
"One night?" She echoes back at him. He takes a step forward, and she doesn't back away.
"One night." He affirms.
"And tomorrow?"
"Back to normal. Like it never happened." He kisses her forehead.
"It'll be painful." She swallows hard. "That's not a happy ending," she says as she buries her head into his chest.
He wraps his arms around her, fiddling with the ends of her braid. "It'll end when you open your eyes in the morning. We'll leave with good memories."
They sink into silence. Her shoulders are shaking, and he would love nothing more than to kiss her fears away.
"…Okay."
"Okay?"
Mei looks up at him with a sad smile, her eyes round and despairing. But she leans up and kisses him sweetly on the lips.
"Yes."
Tell me a story.
He eases into her, listening to her sudden gasps and frantic whines for cues to stop or go. She's tighttightsotight, and he's unable to think beyond sounds like guhhhh. When he's sheathed into her all the way, he waits. He wants to buck his hips into her, let her feel his girth and length until she's howling his name, but he waits. She's torturous in that she brings him down for a kiss instead of letting him go.
She adores kisses; he knows because it never stops at just one.
Once, twice, thrice. Tell me a story.
She thrusts once, out then in, and squeezes around him.
What kind of story?
And he starts. He starts slow, a gentle rocking motion, because she's precious to him, because he doesn't want to break her. But she's not meant to be handled like glass. She begins her own motion, trying to meet him at every thrust, at first at odds with him but slowly finding his rhythm.
A story with a girl.
She's all fiery energy. Her hands snake from his shoulders, down his back, and cup around his buttocks. She gives them a hard squeeze that jolts him harder into her.
And a boy?
He thrusts harder and faster, and she folds her legs up and tips her hips up so he can go even deeper into her. He's never appreciated her flexibility so much before now; it's obvious in the way his mouth slacks open and he's staring at her. She pulls him down and teethes at his neck, murmuring promises of other things she can do. Devilish woman. She'll burn him right up.
Yes, a girl and a boy.
He's guttural grunts, and she's restless moans. The music they make is quiet but deafening in their ears. They're slapping skin and squelching symphonies. They're the damp spot growing beneath them, the pressure building in him, the shivers that wrack her.
Do they love each other?
She presses a finger to where they meet, his cock slathering her finger with their juices every time he slips out. She adds a gentle pressure to the underside of his dick, and his head reels when he's toeing the edge and has to yank himself back, the whiplash so much that he snaps clumsily into her. Her peals of laughter transform into ragged breaths as he pounds into her with a vengeance.
Maybe.
"Do you love me?" He moans into her, waiting for the answer he never got.
"Yes, I love you," She cries. There are tears. Of happiness. Of misery. Of need and desperation. "And I'll break when I have to let go."
He loses himself in her.
He wakes up alone. In her place are his clothes, perfectly folded. Even socks neatly on top.
There's no note though.
Al sits up, the sheets falling down around his waist. He runs a hand through his hair, and then stops when he realizes that he's over-writing her touch, that he's erasing the feeling of her fingertips running through his scalp. It's not just his scalp. He can feel the ghost of her fingers sweeping across his chest, his back, squeezing his cheeks, playing with his sack, running up his cock.
She's everywhere, painting him with invisible ink that ensnares him, traps him, and leads him straight back to her hand.
But it's not permanent. Even now, when he's wracking his brain to remember, the memories of her touches are losing definition, fading in vivacity, until they'll just be dead and cold on his skin.
And he'll be left wanting.
It's okay, Al reminds himself. Their story ended as soon as he opened his eyes. He's free to meet new people, new women. Find the new love of his life. And she's free too.
Free to marry someone he's never even met in three days.
He lets out a strangled groan and sinks back into the sheets, desperately trying to engrave every sight, sound, and touch into the very core of him so he doesn't forget. Except he knows. Absolutely knows that all of this – the ghosts of her fingers, the love bites, and she – she will be as fleeting as the ink that painted his knuckles so many months ago.
How cruel.
She let go and didn't hand him a branch to ease him down before he crashed.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed it in the "tear you to pieces" kind of way. I would love to hear some feedback, so if you can, please leave a review! Also be on the lookout for the second prompt: insomnia. Thanks!
EDITS:
Want not the saddest ending ever? Please check out a sequel to this story written by KAviator67, A Story Rewritten. [ fanfiction . net/s/12867562/1/ ]
Prefer Russian? Check out the Russian translation as penned by HouRaiko: [ ficbook readfic/6637135 ]