Reactivity
It really had been rather bad at first.
The conversations laden with awkward silences, the office rumors, the vastly differing interests, the sex. Ah, the sex. The sex had been terrible and amazing in the way that only first times could be. This was, indeed, new territory for both men.
They had come together with ferocity; hands and tongues and eyes welding into something with a temperature of raging intensity and an instability to rival that of cesium. There had been no grace, no finesse. Just explosive reactivity. The heat given off was as scalding in rage as in passion and those who were aware knew enough to stay clear of the flying debris.
Edward was forceful in all things, taking whatever he needed and yielding little. There were no candle-lit dinners, no moving picture viewings, no late-night heart-to-hearts. There was merely the physical - both the pleasurable and the agonizingly painful. Edward didn't know about passive aggression or snide barbs. He knew bodily retaliation and, thus, so did Roy Mustang.
The young man was given to tantrums, to sparks and explosions and, at first, Roy's body had been little more than the catalyst that prompted the release of Edward's anger. He let the boy rage and sizzle and dissolve into kisses that pulled Roy closer and they clung to each other for what they hoped would be some sort of stability.
And, not surprisingly, they had found that stability in each other. Maes - the only member of the Amestrian military to know the whole truth, though Hawkeye likely did as well, damn her - had merely shrugged at Roy's awkward confession over well-aged scotch. The lieutenant colonel had half-feigned disappointment at never being a pseudo-uncle to any of Roy's little foals and commented that intimate relations must be rather interesting, what with the height difference and all.
Roy grinned. 'Interesting' was an understatement. The small blond man nuzzled deeper into the valley at the junction of his shoulder and mumbled something about ham sandwiches. Roy stroked at his lover's side and began to drift back off to sleep.
It had been bad at first. Bad and dangerous and incredible. But it had gotten better with each encounter, and when the sparks of dramatic reactivity had fizzled out, together they made a rather lovely compound.