AN: Thanks for the reviews guys! Reviews are always good motivators for posting new chapters quickly. I'll warn you now however this chapter is full of fluff and angst. I promise the next chapter will have more plot.
Disclaimer: Not mine
Alone at last Ed thought when the portrait swung shut behind them. It had been four years since he'd seen Roy, and he was anxious. What had happened in the two years that he'd been gone?
Ed found himself looking at a small sitting room; there was a couch, and a desk in front of a fireplace, and a door on the left that probably led off to a bedroom. "Not bad" he commented.
Roy didn't respond, hadn't even moved from his position by the door. Ed frowned at him "Roy?"
"Stop"
Ed's level of worry jumped up the scale from a 2 to a 6. "Stop what?" he asked and took a cautious step towards the man. Was he shaking?
"Just stop Ed. I'm ready to wake up now" the agony in his voice broke Ed's heart as realization dawned. He thinks he's dreaming.
"My subconscious has really outdone itself this time" Roy continued falling heavily against the wall behind him and sinking slowly to the hardwood floor. "I mean magic?" he laughed but it was cold and mirthless. "And I'm going to wake up soon and you'll be gone. You're always gone. Then it just hurts worse, it always does. To think I might actually get you back, only to wake up alone again… It hurts Ed. So just stop. Stop pretending. You're gone and I'm trying to accept that, but you're not making it any easier."
Ed went over and sat next to the broken man. When Roy didn't object to his closeness he leaned his head down on Roy's shoulder. "I have dreams about coming back to Amestris too" Roy didn't comment so Ed continued, "Practically every night. At first it was comforting, almost like reassurance that it had all been real, and I wasn't just a crazy person in a perfectly normal world. But eventually the reassuring dreams turned into taunts of something I couldn't have, and it would hurt waking up alone again." Ed took a shaky breath "That had been a bad year. I spent most of my days researching ways to get back, and I spent most nights passed out on my desk, because I found that in exhaustion I wouldn't dream. Eventually I made a breakthrough, and my dreams turned hopeful."
Ed lifted his head and positioned himself so that he could look into Roy's eyes; he had to lift the man's chin to do so as he was staring at the floor.
"This isn't a dream Roy. It's real, I'm real. I'm here with you and I'm not leaving again, what do I have to do to prove that to you?"
Roy moved swiftly tackling Ed to the floor and pressing their lips together. Ed was surprised but pleasantly so.
"Finally figured out this isn't a dream?" he asked pulling away.
"No, this is defiantly still a dream; I've just decided to make the best of it."
Ed tried to protest when Roy kissed him again, and he could feel the want and need behind Roy's lips burning with an intensity that matched his own, and it really started to sink in. This man attacking his lips, pulling him close and groping his hair, was Roy. His Roy. The man whose touch he had dreamed of since long before they had been separated by different worlds.
Ed decided that perhaps this was as good a way as any to convince the man that he wasn't dreaming.
"Still think you're dreaming?" Ed asked later that night.
They had eventually made it to the bedroom. There was a trail of clothes leading from the door to the bed, and Ed was currently snuggling up to his naked lover.
"Four years have really done a number on your automail" Roy commented avoiding the question. He was running his hand over the cool metal of Ed's right arm, noticing all the new scratches and indentations.
"Hey, four years is a new record for me! I've never gone that long without breaking it before. And what about you" Ed reached up with his flesh hand to trace the new scar on the left side of Roy's face stretching from his temple to his hairline. "How did this happen?"
"Bradley got in a few good shots before going down."
"But he did go down?"
"Yeah, he's gone, and Al took care of Envy-"
"What?" Ed narrowed his eyes.
"After we found Al, alive and in the flesh, in the underground city, he went back to Risembool for a while but he didn't stay long. He left to track down Envy who had fled when you disappeared. I think he was hoping to get information out of him on how to get you back…he didn't learn anything though…" Roy trailed off remembering the disappointment both he and Al shared the night the young alchemist had come to inform him that Envy had been defeated, but didn't give up any new information. He didn't remember much of that night after Al left, he only knew that Hughes had been the one to keep him from getting alcohol poisoning.
"You let him go by himself?" Ed was furious. How dare Al go off and face that damn homunculus on his own, and how dare Roy let him?
"I tried to stop him", Mustang defended, "or at least go with him, he wasn't the only who wanted information on getting you back …or revenge on the homunculus for killing you, but he's an Elric and they're a stubborn bread."
Ed punched him playfully, Roy was trying to lighten the mood and Ed let him. "But he's okay?"
"Yes, he's perfectly healthy. He and Winry moved to Central a few months ago and opened an automail shop there." He answered glad for the change of subject.
Ed let out a breath that he seemed to have been holding for years, not only was his brother alive and flesh again, all of the homunculi were gone.
"When you say Al and Winry moved to Central…"
"I mean together, as in dating, living in the same apartment, together." The older man said tentatively, wondering how his lover would take that piece of news.
"Finally!" Roy raised an amused eyebrow at him. "I was afraid I'd need to lock those two naked in the same room, if they didn't get together soon."
Roy smirked "Be kind of awkward for Winry to be locked naked in a room with a suit of armor."
Ed punched him again "I always thought in future tense, as in when Al got his body back." He was silent for a moment before asking his next question. "Are you going to tell me what happened to you while I was gone?"
"I don't want to get into it right now Ed-"
"Oh, come on! I just spent how long up in that office explaining to not only you, but two strangers what I did with the past half decade of my life. The least you can do is tell me what happened to you in the past two years."
"Fine" Roy conceded, but decided to leave out certain facts, such as the spiraling depression he'd been in when Ed first disappeared. "After Bradley was killed General Halcrow was promoted to Fuhrer, and I got promoted to General." He summarized, "Then eight months ago Drachma started attacking the border. Halcrow was killed by a group of soldiers from Drachma, and I ended up taking control of the troops on the front. It was a mess, but I finally got a chance to sit down with the leaders from Drachma. Turns out Halcrow had actually started the war, something about wanting to expand the country. In the end I signed a ceasefire contract with them and was made Fuhrer by a unanimous decision of the other generals when we got back to Central."
Ed looked at him skeptically, "If you're Fuhrer why weren't you wearing the tunic thing Bradley always wore?"
Roy made a disgusted sound "I always hated that thing, made me feel like I was wearing dress, but I couldn't get away with just wearing my regular uniform, so we settled on the compromise that I'd wear the black dress uniform."
"You were wearing a black uniform?" Ed sat up to look about for a piece of clothing, and he did indeed find a black military jacket on the floor by the door.
"You didn't notice?"
"I had other things on my mind." Ed defended himself lying back down on the bed and nuzzled back up to his lover and saying sincerely, "Congratulations."
Roy was the first to break the comfortable silence that had fallen between them, "So, if time moves differently here how long do you think we'll be gone from Amestris?"
Ed's brow furrowed in concentration. "I've been thinking about that…about this whole world actually. It's like this place is unaffected by the gate. In our world alchemy is predominant, but on the other side of the gate there is nothing, no alchemy or…magic. But here in this world their magic seems to have an endless power supply, where equivalent exchange means nothing. They also have alchemy, and I'll have to research where the energy for that comes from, …and seeing as how magic doesn't requires you to sacrifice anything I can understand why it's more readily used…And I've been thinking that if I can find a way to use magic as a power source for an alchemy array, I'd be able to get us back home. If I get the equation right I should be able to choose when we go home."
It was a testament to how much Roy had missed Ed that he wasn't even the slightest bit annoyed at Ed's monologue. "Was there an answering to my question in all that rambling?"
The blonde sighed, missing for a moment how his brother would pick up on what he was saying, without needing an explanation. "What I mean is, if I get the equation right I could have us appearing in Amestris, minutes after you disappeared from your office. That way Riza won't have to shoot you for getting behind on your paperwork."
Roy glared at him. "You're always thinking of me."
Ed smirked, something he'd no doubt picked up from the flame alchemist himself, "Does your questioning on when we'll be returning home mean you've finally accepted that even you aren't creative enough to come up with a dream this elaborate?"
Roy sighed and pulled Ed close. "I've really missed you, Ed. I can't count the number of times I've woken up disappointed because I'd dreamed you'd come back. I couldn't afford to get my hopes up. Even now it seems too good to be true."
"I missed you too bastard." Ed responded lovingly and for the first time in years both men fell into a naturally dreamless sleep.
