Ed doesn't exactly start out intending to hide his relationship with Roy from the rest of the BAU—it just kind of happens. Just like he just kind of happened to attend a guest lecture where Dave Rossi spoke about criminal psychology and behavioral science. Just like he happened to catch Rossi's attention after the lecture when he told Rossi that they should go back and check missing persons from the next county over, because they might have caught the guy, but he had victims long before he hit the cops' radar and to check with the Mennonite communities. Rossi had given him a strange look, taken Ed's name, and Ed had gone on his merry way because this college thing, where you could take as many classes as you wanted and just learn stuff all the time? It was fucking amazing. And there was so much to learn in this strange, alchemy-less world.

When Rossi showed back up on campus a few months later looking for him and with a potential job offer when he graduated, Ed wasn't interested. He'd spent enough years hunting down psychos, he didn't need to do it again. Besides, what Rossi was offering was government work, and while the forged backgrounds Ed and Roy had managed to cobble together held up well enough to get Ed into college and Roy an administrative role on Ed's campus, Ed was under no illusions that it would stand under more thorough scrutiny.

This world is just so… connected. It honestly creeps Ed out at times and makes him want to go wholly off the grid. His background as the kid of paranoid off-the-grid, anti-technology parents excuses most of Ed's odd knowledge gaps. Roy had flounced in and acted like he simply preferred older ways, and of course, 90% of everyone swooned and bought it. Roy was taking classes to allow him to teach after they both decided that the military was not the way to go in this world.

Still, Rossi was insistent. Ed took his card and his information and filed them away, not intending to do anything else with them.

But the idea had taken root. Not that he wasn't still working on a way to get him and Roy back to Amestris, but Ed had really hit dead ends. Everything he could find was less hypothetical than pure speculation, and none of it jived with the Truth-cursed knowledge in Ed's brain. Really, they just weren't even close. Ed was certain he had his alchemy back after coming to this world, but this world had no useable alchemy, which, honestly, stumped even Ed.

So five years after he and Roy had arrived, two more years after meeting Rossi, Ed had a half dozen degrees under his belt, job offers coming at him from left, right, and center, and no fucking idea what to do with any of it until he remembered Rossi's offer.

Roy had finished his own program, so he could officially teach if he wanted to, and five years of basically living in the same place with minimal travel had Ed's wanderlust acting up like a bitch. He and Roy tried to travel whenever they could, but it's mostly long weekends because even though Ed's got scholarships coming out of his ears, they both feel more comfortable with them both working. And it's not like Ed doesn't have a ton of experience tracking down and dealing with psychos. The ones the BAU deal with don't even have alchemy.

He calls Rossi and asks about the position, the requirements. He expresses his concerns about his patchy background. Rossi pretty much says they'll find a way to work around it.

And they did. It relocates Ed and Roy to Virginia, but that's okay. Roy gets a job teaching community college science courses at first, moving to a local high school a year later. He is both better at it than Ed would have expected, and enjoys more than Ed thinks either of them expected. In all of the time it takes Ed and Roy to make the decision to move and Ed to accept the job offer, somehow, it never occurs to Ed to tell Rossi about Roy.

It wasn't intentional, exactly, but they're very aware of how their world would have looked on their relationship, and that was with the bulletproof fact of Ed being a legal adult by virtue of his status as a State Alchemist. People wouldn't have liked it, but that had more to do with the fact Ed was Roy's subordinate than because of his age. If he was old enough to kill people and be killed, he was old enough, in the military's eyes, to be having sex.

They don't have that defense here, and even though Ed is twenty-two before he joins the BAU, and well beyond anyone's ability to complain about how old his lover is, it only takes him a few days to realize that this group will psychoanalyze the hell out of his relationship. The unwritten rule of not profiling one another notwithstanding, they are going to look Ed, realize Roy has fourteen years on him, and figure out pretty quickly that their relationship started when Ed was—to them—unacceptably young.

So, he just… doesn't talk about Roy. It's not that hard, really, just another of the thousand things about his life that he can't allude to in any way, shape, or form. Hotch knows that Roy is listed as Ed's next-of-kin because he has access to his file, but Ed's not the only one who doesn't talk about his family a lot, so he probably assumes they're not close.

It goes on for two years before Morgan catches him in a sour mood—it's the anniversary, and this is one day a year that makes him willing to give up both arms and legs if it would give him his brother and his world back—and Morgan has recently taken to teasing him about needing a relationship. Ed took the day off last year—the sixth year they'd been in this world—clinging to Roy as the only touchstone he had. This year, they had an emergency serial child killer pop up two days before it, and Ed hadn't been able to make himself stay behind. Not with a child killer out there. The kids always get to him because every failure reminds him of Nina.

Something about those cases makes all of the knowledge in his head seem to come together and spit out solutions and clues that he shouldn't have. After two years, the team kind of takes it in stride, but Ed sometimes wonder if this isn't Truth trying to balance the scales a little bit. In this case, so close to the anniversary, the clues and answers unfold in Ed's mind like a perfect array. In the end, they save three kids, and they're on a plane back to Virginia in the evening of the anniversary.

He knows that Morgan is trying to distract both himself and Ed. Once they showed up, no more kids died, so this is considered a win in the BAU's book. But Ed's head is filled with Nina's sad eyes, her warped voice saying "It hurts, big brother" is tangled with memories of the monstrous thing he created instead of his mother and the images of the dead children they hadn't been able to save.

Morgan's forced cheer and teasing is an unwelcome interruption. "Isn't it about time we find someone for you, Ed? Someone for you to come home to." he asks, plopping himself down in the seat across from Ed. It's not the first time he's said something along the same lines to Ed recently, it just hits a nerve today that it wouldn't normally hit. Maybe it's the day, maybe it's because Morgan seems less teasing and more sincere this time. Whatever it is, it makes Ed snarl back.

"Pretty sure my partner would have an issue with you setting me up with someone."

Morgan stares at him, shocked, and Ed can tell that he suddenly has the attention of the rest of the team. He sighs.

"You're… seeing someone?" JJ asks, cautious and less intrusive, but still annoying. "You hadn't mentioned it."

Fuck. This is exactly why he hadn't mentioned it. It isn't any of their business anyway.

"Partner, huh?" Rossi asks, leaning over a seat to look at Ed. "How long has this been going on exactly? It couldn't go back to why you didn't want help moving, could it?"

Sometimes, it's really fucking annoying working with profilers.

"More than two years?" JJ looks hurt, and fuck, Ed is useless against emotional women. "It's not because…"

"It's not because he's a guy," Ed says sighing, already over this.

"It's because he's so much older than you are," Hotch says. Of course he would figure out that his next-of-kin is his partner.

Morgan sits up, alert and looking almost alarmed. "How much—"

"Fucking hell," Ed interrupts. "He's fourteen years older than I am," he admits, because Hotch can and probably will look it up later if he doesn't tell them now.

"Ed…" Morgan starts, his serious and concerned face on, and Ed is not even a little in the mood to listen to how the one good thing in his life is bad for him.

"Just stop," he says, and his voice is cold in a way he hasn't heard it in a long time. Even dealing with absolute scum he would happily beat to death with a wooden spoon, he knows this cold edge as the same one he got when defending Al, when condescending to people who thought they could play god. He knows it's not one they've heard from him, because no matter how depraved and terrible people can be in this world, they don't have alchemy; they can't play god and unmake people. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want to deal with this."

No one stupid gets into the BAU, so he's sure they're all going to figure out that he and Roy have been together for a while just based on how defensive he is of it. If he had just started dating someone fourteen years older than he is, it might get some raised eyebrows but probably not much commentary. The only reason he would be defensive about it is if the relationship has been going on long enough to do more than raise eyebrows, and they are all smart enough to know that.

Again, it sometimes really sucks working with smart people.

He can practically feel them all trading looks over his head, and it's annoying as fuck when all he wants to do is go home and sink into Roy.

Because everyone knows he's got a weak spot for JJ—JJ who is a beautiful young mother, who has two boys, who is blonde and blue-eyed and so earnest it reminds him of Winry—she's the one who says, "I think we'd like to meet him."

She's not asking, not really. Anyone who has a significant other pretty much has been introduced to the team at this point, except Ed keeping Roy out of it. He knows Roy would like to meet the team that Ed spends so much of his time with, but Ed is, justifiably, concerned about how they will react to Roy. They'll profile him—they won't be able to help it. Ed doesn't know what they'll see when they see him and Roy interacting, because Ed knows that he's very different with them than he is with Roy. With them, he has to hide all his broken, jagged pieces. He has never had to with Roy. Roy has known his greatest sins and his deepest shames from the beginning.

Everyone is looking at him expectantly, and he knows he's not getting out of this one unless he's willing to quit over it, and even then, that doesn't guarantee the team showing up at their doorstep.

"Whatever," he says. It's been a long few days, it's the anniversary, and he just doesn't fucking have the energy to fight a losing battle right now. "Not when we get home. Maybe next weekend, or whatever."

"We can have a barbeque at my place," Morgan offers, and Ed knows he's trying to be kind, but barbecuing tends to be a no-go for Roy, and Ed shakes his head.

There's no winning scenario here, because Ed doesn't want them in his home or around Roy, but he wants him and Roy to be outside their own environment even less. "I'll cook or have it catered or something." They have a decent-sized yard, so at least it won't be too many people crammed in.

"We can do potluck?" JJ offers.

"Sure," Ed says, just wanting this conversation over with. "Whatever." He pointedly pulls out his phone and opens to the academic journals he's subscribed to. "If you don't mind." He flicks his eyes up to them, and they slowly subside back to their own seats.

"Ed…" Morgan tries again.

"Reading," Ed says, cutting him off. "Not listening. You can be judgy after you meet him."

Morgan sighs but gets up. "Okay. If you ever—"

"Reading," Ed says again.

Raising his hands in surrender, Morgan gets up, though he does pause in the aisle before he goes back to his own seat. "We're here, you know. If you need us."

What he needs is for his coworkers to stop trying to barge in on his life. He needs to find a way home. He needs to get back to Al.

But he can't have any of that. Not yet. It's starting to look like maybe not ever. In their lieu, he needs Roy. He needs Roy's strength, his pragmatism, his understanding, and his warmth. Most of all, he needs Roy's love. Ed might like his team, but he doesn't need them. He won't let himself need them. Because if he did and then found a way home, he'd miss them.

He ignores the voice in the back of his head that sounds like Truth and says that it's probably already too late for that.