Okay. I haven't updated this in about five months. I hope none of you are gearing up to murder me...

I wanted to have several chapters done before I updated so I could have a steady stream of chapters going up on a schedule, but life got so busy I haven't even been able to do that.

Please enjoy.


The colonel sat at his desk, fingers linked before his lips and eyes trained on the grain of his desk.

He himself didn't even know why he had kissed Edward. It could have been his curiosity. He had been curious for a while, but now he just felt foolish. He would have to make sure that something like that didn't happen again. It was important that they maintain something of a platonic relationship, because, if they could not, some undesirable measures would have to be taken.

He hoped Edward would understand this. Edward should understand. The both of them had goals, and the both of them were working fervently towards those goals. Each step closer to one goal was a step closer to the other, because really, their goals, though very different, were linked.

As much as he would love to explore that area of any sort of relationship with the teen, he would have to be more careful, both for his reputation and Edward's well-being. He wanted to know Edward, to understand him, and he would die before letting an alchemist of Fullmetal's caliber slip through his fingers without some conversation and insight into how to improve his own alchemical research.

There was just no fucking way!

But now he knew that Edward had a crush on him, and in light of that, he would have to tread lightly and carefully.

He had already fucked up with the kiss, but it's not like he didn't want to.

Mustang smiled behind his fingers.

Damn Fullmetal for being so beautiful.

Damn the brat for being so cute!

Temporarily dismissing Edward from his mind as he had from his office, Roy resumed his paperwork.


Edward grinned as he turned the corner to the cafeteria. The seventeen year old felt that life wasn't going to be so frustrating anymore because his biggest antagonist was going to be mellowing down a bit, at least that is what he hoped.

At least they understood each other now.

And he hadn't asked anything of Mustang! He had questions, too..!

So the next time they end up spending time together, he planned to know about the other man's troubles, that they might even be able to share their common pain and console each other in ways that didn't include going over each other's alchemy notes and theories-as much as he would love that anyway. It wouldn't include trips to museums or expensive cafes…

…or clothing.

That thought caught Edward off guard and he shook his head to clear the hormone induced fuzziness and the possible redness from his face. He barely managed to catch himself before charging head-first into a blue uniform.

He jumped back, wide-eyed and a little off balance due to the vigorous head-shaking, and gaped at the handsome older man in front of him. He looked to be in his thirties and had the stars of a lieutenant colonel on his shoulders, but his rank, Edward failed to notice.

"Oh! Excuse me, young man. You should be more careful in these halls, Major Elric."

The man's voice was rich and he didn't seem in the least bit irritated at Ed's distractedness.

"Uh, it's fine." Ed mentally face-palmed for coming up with such a stupid response, but he was at a blank at the moment, mentally incinerating that hideous uniform off of the attractive older male's tall and well-built frame.

Of course, it makes sense that the military was brimming with attractive, well-built men…

And then the information sank in.

"You know who I am? Have we met?"

Ed felt so stupid that he couldn't recall a name…

…and that he kept coming up with the worst one liners.

"No, we have not. But, yes, I know who you are. Everybody does." The man paused and gave Edward a small smile.

The blond felt his cheeks going pink and hoped to the powers that be that it wasn't all that noticeable, and if it were that it be taken as embarrassment rather than infatuation.

"My name is Lieutenant Colonel Lucas Mathers. It is incredibly nice to meet you." He extended a hand.

"Oh," was all he could come up with as he took the offered hand and barely managed to move it in the up-and-down motion of hand-shaking.

"Well, I hope to see you around, but I have to get back to my office. I took my lunch break early so I could endure the entirety of my meeting without withering away and dying. I hope you have a nice day." The man smiled a rather charming smile and winked, to which Ed smiled rather awkwardly. The lt. colonel patted Ed's shoulder, and passed him to go in the direction Ed assumed Lucas's office was.

Edward watched him go, suddenly very interested in how his mind could switch from the colonel to whoever ended up in front of him so fast. It was almost as if his crush extended to everything that was good looking and had a penis.

Oh! And it didn't hurt that they weren't too tall.

Mustang was the perfect height…

And now he had already forgotten that Mathers existed at all and was back to thinking about the colonel.

Mustang was tall, but he wasn't 'too' tall. He was just under six feet, a little less than a head taller than Edward. Ed could just tilt his head back and it wouldn't be too far of a distance for the older to bend and…

Edward's mind escalated quickly from a simple kiss to a ravenous fuck in the halls of military headquarters, inspiring the rest of the staff to enjoy romps of their own.

But the orgy came to an abrupt end when the fuhrer walked in and ahemed at the lot of them getting their jollies together. The fuhrer stood there, quietly observing before smiling and passing them with a simple, "Carry on."

That thought made Ed wince. There was no way in hell his mind should be allowed to go from good, to GOOOOOOOD, to great, to just plain weird. There should be a mental rule against that…

…or some kind of therapy…

Whatever! Food sounded fantastically appealing right about now. And Ed had other matters to think about concerning alchemy, his brother, and the philosopher's stone.

Contrary to popular belief, Edward was quite picky about his food. It didn't seem so to the others because he ate a lot, and that, he could blame on his age and his hormones. He was a growing boy, after all! But when it came to the actual food, he preferred that it taste good, was done correctly, and that there was a lot of it.

He also had a taste for foreign food.

Aerugian spices reminded him of licorice, though he knew there to be no licorice in the blends. Aerugo also made some of the best curries, only to be rivaled by Xingian curries. Aerugo had fish and other seafood from the ocean that bordered the southwest part of the country as well. The fish was transported in refrigerated trucks.

A lot of the fish in Amestris was imported more from Aerugo than Creta because the currents that brought the best fish passed Creta and came right up to Aerugian shores. There was something that came from Cretian seas that wasn't so good from Aerugo, and that was the seaweed that they used to wrap rice like the Xingians.

Cretian food was arguably his favorite. He simply had a taste for pasta and meat sauce, and there was no pasta like Cretian pasta.

It was rare to get good quality foreign food in Central, Amestris, and when he could manage to find a place that sold genuine foreign food that wasn't Amestrianized, it was usually near the borders between the countries.

There were some fancy restaurants in Central that sold delicacies from other countries, but they were too expensive and they never served enough.

The worst Amestrianized foreign food was Xingian. It was often more greasy than it should be and had a lot of sugar in it. But like any kind of food, there were some things that he could enjoy, and for him it usually involved meat, especially the beef.

Drachman food, however, was something he had never tried. He didn't think he wanted to. He could only imagine the food there was just like the people. Bland and tasteless.

There wasn't a lot of trade happening between Drachma and Amestris for obvious reasons. If there was, it usually happened underground, and things were often brought back by people that were either stupid, or clever enough to travel to Drachma without getting caught.

Wherever he traveled, he made sure to try the cuisine of the area and also made sure to scout out places with good foreign food. Edward had quite the palate.

But nobody would know that, would they? They never asked.

There was somebody that knew he appreciated her efforts to bring foreign and Amestrian food together in a pleasing blend, though.

Her name was Crista, and she worked in the military headquarters' cafeteria. She was relatively new, but already the rest of the kitchen staff didn't like her. She was young and had dreams. The lot of them had given up on their dreams long ago and thought her foolish.

But she wasn't going to give up. She will be head chef of her own seven-star restaurant someday, and Ed believed she could do it.

He'd be damned if she didn't.

And, she had a strange and rather annoying habit of kissing all of her friends when she saw them, which is why he was greeted with a pair of lips pressing against his. He hadn't realized that he had arrived in the cafeteria and was already on his way to the buffet.

His second kiss of the day, and only the first was welcomed.

He pushed her away and wiped at his mouth.

"You really need to stop doing that!" he half shouted.

The uniforms that saw or were close enough to hear started making cat calls and whistling like they did every time she kissed him or anyone else.

His face went red and he moved to grab a tray.

Crista rounded the buffet and pointed out to him the things she had made and picked out the best pieces. He smiled as they spoke briefly, but he wasn't listening to what she said, except that the pasta today had an assortment of sauces that included a thick meat sauce, a pesto sauce she made herself, and a white, alfredo sauce.

He decided to try the pesto, foregoing the meat sauce in favor to venture into a new flavor. He'd get the meat sauce next time.

"So, did you get a boyfriend, or something?"

He was immediately ripped out of his thoughts.

"What?!" His face was heating up again and he looked around, hoping that nobody had heard that.

Luckily, crista was kind enough to keep her voice down.

"Where the fuck did that question come from? What gave you that idea?"

"Calm down! Calm down! You just had 'the look' on your face." She did an imitation of a bashful, blushing girl.

"I did?" Ugh! He was capable of looking like a girl with a crush? He'd just have to fix that, won't he?

Crista was also the only person, aside from Al, that knew he was gay. That was a comfort. Sometimes when they ran into each other at the library, which happened often because she like to research cuisine as much, if not more, than he liked to research alchemy and the sciences, they would get distracted by each other and end up talking about 'boys'. Sometimes they talked about girls, but that was mostly on her end. She liked both.

Which was one of the reasons he liked her; she understood him to a degree and could relate to the confusion and embarrassment of being sexually attracted to the same sex.

She wasn't embarrassed anymore though. She was 19 years old, and already she was past the confusion and was very comfortable in her own skin.

He wished he could be like her in that respect and she often assured him he would be. He wasn't so sure that he could be, but he allowed himself the frustration of hoping at least a little that it might get easier to be himself as something of a flaming homosexual.

He sighed.

"Is it that colonel of yours?" She whispered, wiggling her brows at him.

"Shut up! I'll tell you later if I bump into you. Are you gonna be at the library later?"

"Yeah, I'm going straight there after I'm done here."

"So am I." He chewed his lip. "You'll know where to find me. But I won't be able to talk forever. I've got some things on my mind." He looked at his tray.

Juice! That was what he was missing!

"Thinking about sex?" she asked without a hint of shame.

"I am going to kill you, and I'll skin you alive, starting with those lips of yours!"

Crista laughed and waved him to a table.

"I'll see you at the library then," was all she said in response to that and he moved away to eat.

Of course he had been thinking of sex. Of course Crista would know that. She was a teenager herself.

It was said, and very easily believed almost as fact, that alchemy started in the kitchen. Really, cooking and the science weren't all that different. A recipe required a list of ingredients and putting them together required knowledge of those ingredients and how they would react to each other.

Of course one would not need to know the molecular structure of flour when baking strudels, but it was very important when placing elements together or taking them apart with alchemy.

But both required a recipe, ingredients, and a means to put them together. So to anybody, it was highly conceivable that alchemy started in the kitchen, and seeing how long alchemy had been a practice, it wouldn't hurt to say that the first alchemist was a woman.

A very amazing woman.

Gender didn't mean as much now as it did hundreds of years ago when women were at the peak of oppression. Naturally, it wasn't inconceivable that a woman had been the first alchemist.

The origins of alchemy and the similarities even now between simple kitchen activities had to have been something that could have aided in drawing Crista and Edward together.

He needed a friend outside of Alphonse, and Al had told him so before, but Edward would have none of it.

It wasn't until one day he was interrupted at the library by a very vivacious chef-to-be that Alphonse ceased his nagging. There was an immediate friendship there and Ed was all the more happy to have his precious younger brother shut up about him needing friends.

Al was all he thought he would ever need. At least, that is what he thought until puberty decided to bitch-slap him and break a few of his ribs.

Fucking hormones!

He began to have dreams he didn't know he was capable of having, and he ate even more than he already had been, which was still half the planet's rations. Now he was gearing up to eat the entire world into liquidation, but at least his best friend aside from his amazingly wonderful younger brother was an amazing cook.

Crista was definitely a keeper.

He just might have to persuade Al to marry her…

He laughed out loud at that thought.

There was no way in hell!


This chapter was something of a filler chapter. It has everything I wanted in it in the first place, but at the same time, I needed to make sure I can get the rest of it written.

I cannot guarantee a chapter very soon, but I hope I should have another one out by next week.

Please still love me, my Cheshires!

Alice out!