This chapter 100% new to the story.
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Chapter Warning: Mild Adult Content
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TEN
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Edward looked up at the neon sign (currently turned off) and groaned. God—how he hated Lolita's. As luck would have it, that crappy dinner pinched between Main and Bradley was Alphonse's favorite.
Edward wiped off the frown from his face and opened the door; he shouldn't keep Alphonse waiting.
A good stretch of time had gone by since Edward last seen his younger brother. Nothing, not even that crummy place was going to ruin his good mood—he was going to see Alphonse! Although, if he was more sincere with himself, he would admit that a small part of him was somewhat reluctant of their reunion, it was silly, but he couldn't help it. Alphonse begged for them to meet, and his younger brother isn't the type of man who begs.
The brass bell greeted Edward with a happy ding as he stepped inside. He took a good look around, but couldn't see Alphonse anywhere.
"What can I do you you, hon?"
Edward cringed, recognizing the voice.
"Hi, Delores!" He said the moment his golden eyes met with the curly-q, bubble gum smacking waitress that wrangled the busy place.
"Hello, Handsome," Delores replied in that sleek oily voice that always made Edward shudder.
Delores' ebony eyes sparked in amusement. She folded her leathery arms under her tired breasts, just as a wolfish smile grew on her face.
Edward forced a smile.
"Is Alphonse around?" He asked, trying to avoid her rapacious stare as he scanned the place for a second time.
The waitress brought a bony finger to her chin, and paused to think. "No, hon, Gorgeous isn't here yet."
Edward cursed under his breath. How dare she speak about Alphonse like that!
He cleared his throat.
"Well," he said, hiding his repulsion for the middle-aged woman as best as he could, "is our table available?"
Delores smirked. "Follow me."
She escorted Edward to the far corner of the diner.
A shiver ran up his spine when he catch her staring at his behind as he sat down—this was the sole reason why he hated that diner with all of his might.
The loud pop of Delores' bubble gum brought him back to the moment.
"I'll be bringing your coffee just the way you like it, Handsome," Delores offered before snapping her gum between her yellowing teeth.
Edward gave her a quick nod of assent before ducking behind the worn menu.
"Hey, Brother!"
Edward peeked from the side of the menu card and saw Alphonse heading his way; he put the menu down.
"You're awfully chirpy this morning, Gorgeous," Delores mentioned as she turned to greet the younger Elric.
"I'm sure are, Lori!" He all but giggled.
"My—you're just so adorable!" Delores cupped a side of Alphonse's face with a familiarity that made Edward's jaw drop.
"You should learn a thing or two from your brother, Handsome," Delores rebuked as she turned her attention to him.
Edward crossed his arms in front of his chest.
"So I've been told," he ground out, petulantly, while shooting daggers at his embarrassed younger brother.
The waitress exchanged an amused look with the brothers before leaving their side.
"I'll bring your orders soon!" She said out loud before disappearing into the kitchen.
Edward mumbled some obscenities as Alphonse sat down. He picked up the menu, knowing that Delores hadn't actually taken their order. He was about to call for her but Alphonse stopped him with a wave of his hand.
"Lori knows what we like," Alphonse grinned.
Edward hid his face in his hand. He will never get used to seeing his baby brother act so smooth around women—around any type of women.
"So how are you?" Alphonse asked, picking up the conversation where they left off.
He wondered then why Alphonse was all smiles.
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Edward woke up with a start. He looked around, trying to recognize his surroundings. It didn't take him long to remember that he was staying at the Rockbell house; he heaved a sigh of relief.
He was running a hand along his tangled hair when it hit him: last night, he and Winry shared a night of unbridled passion in that room. His eyebrows met in a frown when he looked at the spot where it all happened.
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he started to wake up out of the haze. The scene at Lotita's came to mind as his thoughts became clearer.
That wasn't a dream… Edward concluded, identifying the dream as a memory recall.
He sighed.
Edward brought his metal leg close to his chest and rested his chin on the cold kneecap. His expression turned forlorn, then unseeing, as his mind went back to that fateful day.
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Like always, he and Alphonse engaged in an avid conversation: chatting about alchemy and alkahestry, then changing the subject to aviation engineering. Alphonse was as equally fascinated by the concept of flight as he was about alkahestry. Once his younger brother's thirst for knowledge had been satisfied, they finished their chat by admitting to each other how much each missed the other.
Their meetings were always the like that, but he knew that Alphonse was withholding something from him in that particular encounter.
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A sad smile crept to Edward's face as memories of his brother's first days back in his original body came rushing forward.
He remembered Alphonse having difficulty adjusting to his body, and trying to figure him out had been exceptionally hard, something that got easier with each passing day. In the end, he had learned how to read his younger brother's expressions.
The way Alphonse's mouth twitched when he spoke and the vivid green in his olive eyes, told Edward that his baby brother was pretty excited about something.
On that fateful day, Edward wondered if this excitement had a name attached to it.
"So…"
He remembered smirking and wiggling his eyebrows at his brother as he folded his arms and leaned over the table.
Alphonse had cocked a questioning eyebrow at him, like he always did whenever he put him on the spot.
Something was up, he could swear by his life on it.
He remembered leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms in front of his chest and sporting a vainglorious grin that threatened to split his face in two.
"Bean Girl got lucky, didn't she?" He dropped his assumption like a bomb.
Oh, how he loved teasing his little brother! He had been so so into it that he completely missed the moment when Alphonse's expression darkened.
"No, Edward." Somber words followed by a weak smile.
Something was definitely up; Alphonse had called him by his name.
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The chirping of a bird startled Edward. He looked towards the window, where the noise had come from, and saw a cardinal perched on the frame. It chirped again, its beady eyes were intensely staring back at him the same way Alphonse had stared at him that day in the diner.
The curious bird decided to look about the room for a brief second before taking wings.
Edward kept looking at the empty space, turning inwards, his thoughts returning to Lolita's.
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"No, Brother, nothing is wrong!" Alphonse had cried out when he started nagging. And he had believed his words until he noticed the tension mounting on his shoulders.
He had thought the worse, like he always did with anything regarding his baby brother, and he resorted to emotional blackmail, like he always did when Alphonse didn't want to cooperate.
"It's about Winry." His brother confessed after being thoroughly subjected to his techniques of persuasion.
But Alphonse's answer only made him worry even more, he thought that something terrible had happened to Winry. His mind was spinning, playing out all sorts of crazy scenarios, except for the one that Alphonse was about to confide.
"We're going to get married."
It was funny how those words could still cut so deep.
Edward could still feel the hard blow those words had inflected on him years ago. For a fraction of a second, he thought that Alphonse was playing with him, pulling a fast one on him, but he wasn't. All he could do was to conceal his pain.
He never asked how it happened, neither did he wanted to know; however, he did ask his precious brother if they were happy together, to which Alphonse responded with a rotund "yes".
Even though it had hurt, he had been genuinely happy for Alphonse, and for Winry, to whom he had brought nothing but grief. He remembered congratulating Alphonse just as he went around the table to give him a big hug.
Alphonse, like the caring brother that he is, had the decency to ask if he still loved Winry.
"No," he had answered, the lie slid out easier than he had expected.
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Edward swung his legs to the side of the bed and stood up. He lost some of his balance, it seemed like both pleasure and guilt had a hand in this, as they sucked what little was left of his strength. He dragged his feet to where his suit case stood, and brought it back to bed. He snapped the locks open, and opened the case, and dug through his clothes until he found what he was looking for. He clasped the article in his right hand—keeping it out of sight—then gingerly sat on the bed, right next to the suitcase. Once comfortable, he opened his hand to reveal a small velvet-covered box. The smooth fabric had been black at one point in time but now it was the color of rust and just as degraded. A wry smile crossed his tired face as he ran his thumb across the deteriorated surface.
Winry Rockbell will always be the love of his life. More than a decade had already passed by since he took upon himself to destroy any happiness he could've experience by her side. He hadn't acted out of sheer malice, his mental problems had snatched away his ability to foresee a bright future together.
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The belief that he was unworthy to love or to be loved took a life of its own one miserable night in the winter of 1917. The ridiculous belief turned out to be like a weed: undesirable, unwanted and extremely predatory, and it spread throughout every cell of his being, only stopping its rampage once it set roots in his psyche. Afterwards, the corruption of his soul happened fast, and by the time spring settled in Resembool, he was plagued with conflict. It was during that same time when Alphonse proposed to expand their knowledge of alchemy by taking on new travels. He had intended to propose this himself but his younger brother beat him to it.
The new journey was a godsend, it provided him with the opportunity of riding himself from the inner conflict that threatened to swallow him whole on a daily basis. The turmoil caused by these dark emotions did pull back as he jumped from town to town, giving way to the peace he was so desperately seeking. He should've known that dark emotions are unpredictable in nature. Major depression touched down on his soul like a tornado touches down on land, and just like a tornado, it left devastation behind. He wandered in darkness through long stretches of land, trying to find his way back to his soul. Every cloud has a silver lining and his was found on the far end of Creta.
The tribal people of western Creta showed him how to reconnect with himself. They imparted their wisdom, morsels of knowledge that he took to heart. He left their side with better clarity of mind, and with the realization that alchemy was the key to reclaiming his life.
Even more months were spent into finding ways to regain his ability to perform alchemy.
In the blink of an eye, those months had turned into years, with no significant progress being made. It was then when he understood that he might never rid himself of the curse that had claimed his soul. With such corruption governing every aspect of his life, he couldn't offer Winry what he had promised her at the train station one beautiful spring morning.
Letting her go had been one of the hardest things he had ever done, but he wasn't going to marry Winry, defective as he was, because he would end up abandoning her. And turning into Hohenheim would prove to be much harder to bear than the sum of all his mental problems.
With her image still burning vividly in his mind, Edward opened the velvet box, inside, an engagement ring sadly greeted him.
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Winry's engagement ring had been crafted by one of the best jewelers in the west. It had been an ironic coincidence that the ring was in his possession days before his meeting with Alphonse. He had planned on showing it to his little brother at Lolita's. He even was going to ask Alphonse for his advice about how to win Winry's favor, but he didn't get a chance to do so.
Edward glared at the platinum ring. It was almost obsessive-compulsive the way he handled it: taking it out of his suitcase, sitting down, opening the box and peering inside. But this pointless act was his penance for throwing happiness away. Every time he opened that damn box he wondered why he didn't speak up and told Alphonse about his true feelings for Winry, if he had done so, then what happened hours ago would've been right, it would've been husband and wife having a fucking good rump.
Edward scoffed at himself, remembering how those feelings of worthlessness had made him choke up on his own words at Lolita's. His chest had tighten as an insidious voice inside his head cackled. The voice mocked him, tortured him and reminded him of the scum that he was. It drilled into his head that he was not the better man, Alphonse was. Even to this day, he couldn't deny that the malicious voice was right. Alphonse was a beacon of light whereas he was but a mere shadow. How was he supposed to compete with that? So on that fateful day at Lotita's, he swallowed the lump in his throat and smiled wide for his little brother. On that fateful day, he willingly chose to suffer his loss in silence. And he told himself that he was going to be okay.
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It was on the day of their wedding when he realized the gravity of his folly. He felt something deep inside of him break the moment Alphonse lifted Winry's veil and sealed the bond of matrimony with a kiss.
Alcohol was his only confidant on that long day.
Like a hummingbird going from flower to flower feasting on precious nectar, he went from server to server picking up wine, whiskey and beer, so he could drown his senses—maybe even ignore the looks of pity people gave him at the wedding reception. The moment the newlyweds parted for their honeymoon was also the moment he left the venue. He didn't leave alone; during the course of the night he made damn sure to seduce one the servers—the blonde one with the pretty blue eyes, just not as pretty as Winry's—and they made their way to the storehouse. Between food shelves, wine bottles and crates, he lost his virginity and what was left of his soul in one single swoop.
After the wedding, he spent years wandering from place to place, from country to country. He had given hope on restoring his alchemy, on restoring his sense of self. Everything was destroyed after Winry married his own brother.
One day, he managed to come out of the mental fog he had succumbed to, and remembered what he once told Rose after her world came crashing down.
"Walk on your own. Move forward. You've got a good strong pair of legs—you should get up and use them."
And so he did.
Milos became the place where he found a new purpose to keep moving forward.
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Edward never imagined that the day he decided to buy a train ticket to Resembool would be the day that would forever change his current life. Nothing could've prepared him for that fateful encounter with Winry, and he should've declined her offer to stay when he still had a chance, but he didn't.
"Heh…" Edward sneered at himself, replaying in his mind the precise moment where he changed the course of destiny.
And he wasn't going to pin the blame on Winry. He saw an opportunity and took it, as simple as that. Thanks to that selfish impulse, the days that followed had been heaven.
From day one he fell prey to his most intimate desires. In the back of his head, a fantasy begun taking life. He created an idyllic world, where he was Winry's husband, and her, his wife. And everything was just as it should've been.
Years of living dangerously had taught him the value of patience and self-restraint, but being around the object of his affection wasn't easy. Many times he came very close to spilling words of love, and he almost succumbed to this desire the night Winry walked into Alphonse's study, but he stopped himself, because it wasn't fair to her. He was eight years too late.
The Annual Sheep Festival became a turning point in this fantastic world of his own devise. The festivities, with its flashing bright lights, its gaudy games and its artery-clogging food, sent him on a journey back in time to a simpler time, a happier time, and he felt seventeen again. His self-restraint finally caved in, so he took Winry by the hand, and walked the festival grounds holding hands, just like he had done so many years in the past. Mirroring the last only helped to ignite old passions; the conflicted look in Winry's face said it all. It was time to put an end to the fantasy.
But sometimes life takes an unexpected turn.
He was only thinking of Winry's safety when he pulled her by the hand and wrapped her in his arms, removing her from immediate danger. The embrace itself posed more danger than the inconsiderate driver.
The way Winry held on to him confirmed how she really felt. He had suspected attraction, but nothing else, because Winry wasn't the type of woman that would fool around, and yet, when she entered his room, he hoped she would.
What a pleasant surprise it turned out to be when Winry stayed. He should've stopped everything right there, but his primal need trumped over everything else. And he found himself wanting her, coveting her.
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Making love to Winry was as amazing as he thought it would be. She was his, if only for an instant.
Their lovemaking had been intense, but a part of him was not fully in the moment. That elusive portion was preoccupied with the notion that his younger brother had been the one who had her first. He began feeling possessive as he took her, and at some level, he found himself competing with his baby brother. He wanted to mark Winry in a way that she would only think of him every time she engaged in the act. Yes, he was being irrational, but it is irrationality what feeds the thought process of covetous man. A part of him still wishes that time would've just stopped so their sinful union would be eternal.
Edward looked away from the ring. He felt disgusted with himself, but only at a basic level, because deep inside, he was unrepentant. He would do it all over again if Winry gave him the chance.
"Winry…" Edward whispered, wondering how Winry was faring.
He left her alone, just like she requested, but he wasn't going to let her avoid him all day long. They needed to sit down and talk about what they had gotten themselves into.
Edward knew where he stands; there was no way he was going to keep the affair hidden from Alphonse. His little brother had a right to know, he had the right to pass judgement. Alphonse was going to learn about the affair, but he was also going to learn about his undying love for Winry, because this time he wasn't going to hold back like he did at Lotita's.
Only destiny will tell how their lives were going fare from that point onward.
The sun was shining strong. Edward snapped the velvet box close and buried it in his clothes. He locked the suit case but not before taking out a fresh set of clothes.
He went to the door. His heart raced, but he needed to be strong.
The springs of the doorknob wound tight as he turned handle.
Edward headed to the bathroom to freshen up then went to the living room. He was going to wait for Winry, so they could talk about the future.
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Dear reader, this week was a good one. I managed to edit two chapters of the story. The next upload will happen next week. Thanks for all your support!
End Note: This chapter has a commentary at Live Journal.
Dear reader: I created a new Tumblr account to house works I have created on all my accounts. The blog is hirstories dot Tumblr dot com (please edit link accordingly-sorry I can't give you a direct link, this website won't let me). I hope that you follow me there too!