A kiss on the nape of his neck and fingers skittering over his ribs wakes Ed up. He flinches from the fingertips, trying not to laugh.
"Stop," he says, trying to pull away only to have Roy's hand tighten on his hip. "Sadist," he accuses.
Roy hums, nuzzling the join between his neck and shoulder. "You like it," he replies.
"I do not like being tickled!" Ed argues, squirming to roll over and face Roy. It's hard to be taken seriously when he's fighting down a grin. He might have been better off staying facing away from Roy, actually, but for some reason, Ed really wants to see his face. Roy easily resettles his hand on Ed's hip, thumb rubbing gently across the unscarred skin there. He's smiling softly, his lazy, Sunday-morning smile, as Ed has taken to calling it.
"Have I told you lately you're infuriating when you're smug?" Ed asks.
Roy's grin goes from lazy to arrogant, and it's all Ed can do not to laugh with it. "It has been a while," Roy says.
He's beautiful in the early morning sun—not that Roy Mustang is ever not beautiful. Hair sleep mussed, the glare of it hiding the grays Ed has noticed starting to come in, the indulgent happiness relaxing the lines on his face, though? Those things make him both real and almost a dream. It figures that of course Roy Mustang would age gracefully, with the kind of dignity most men can only hope to. If Ed's lucky enough to have to worry about it, he's sure that he's going to turn into the kind of hunched, crotchety old man who yells at asshole kids to get off his lawn, telling them about how he did things in the "good old days."
The mental image makes him snicker, and Roy lets go of his hip to brush some of his bangs away from his face.
"What are you chuckling about?" Roy asks, his voice as soft and tender as his touch, an empathetic smile pulling at his own lips.
"Me as a grumpy old man," Ed admits. "Everyone's gonna wonder why the fuck you saddled yourself with me."
"They will wonder how I ever won you over," Roy says, moving on from stroking Ed's bangs, down his neck, then over his shoulder. His touch is light, not quite enough to tickle, just on the edge. He's laying on his right side, automail arm jammed under the pillow to soften it, so Roy is playing over his flesh shoulder, though he dips down to trace the occasional scar. Roy has a few scars—most notably the burn scar from cauterizing his own damn wound—but nothing like Ed's collection.
"You're not still mad at me?" Ed asks. He's not entirely sure where the question comes from, just that he's relieved down to his core to have Roy looking at him like this, touching him like this. That usually means they've had a fight, but what it was about is alluding him at the moment.
Roy's brow furrows, confusion darkening his eyes. "Why would I be mad at you?" he asks.
Ed deflects. "You mean you don't have a standing reason?"
It's the wrong tack to take because Roy sits up, looking concerned now. "I'm…" he trails, the concern melding into confusion. "I don't think I'm angry with you," he says. He doesn't look convinced though, which is not especially encouraging.
Sighing, Ed makes himself sit up too. His hair is loose, which is probably a sign of sex before they went to bed—he doesn't usually go to bed with it down, but it definitely happens when he falls asleep after sex since Roy is such a sucker for his hair. When he takes stock though, he doesn't really feel like they had sex the night before. The gross, went-to-bed-sweaty-and-didn't-bother-to-do-more than-wipe-off-shit feeling isn't there, neither are the telltale lingering physical signs. No new bruises—though, really, they try not to do that too often these days, if Ed's team ever saw them, they'd freak the fuck out—no soreness, good or otherwise. He feels like he slept well.
On a whim, he pulls his hair over his shoulder, and it spills down his chest like a perfect cascade, a tiny bit of a wave from his usual braid permanently kinked into it, but his fingers don't find a snarl, knot, or tangle as he runs them through it. That's not normal. His hair is always a disaster if he falls asleep with it down.
"Roy?" he asks, feeling increasingly unsettled.
Roy is frowning, thoughtful now, the military veteran coming to the forefront in a way that Ed doesn't see much these days. "We argued," he says, but it's almost a question.
"Yeah," Ed replies, "'Cause that's real unusual for us." He's aiming for flippant, but he doesn't quite think he hit it.
Reaching out, Roy runs his fingers down through Ed's hair, well aware of the rat's nest it should be, but just as Ed's did, his fingers slide through without a catch.
"It wasn't an argument," Roy says, eyes distant, as if he's digging through memories. "It was a… disagreement?"
"Did we get drunk last night or something, 'cause I don't remember a fucking thing before we went to bed," Ed says, reaching for options but not at all happy with the ones he's finding.
But Roy is shaking his head, already dismissing it. "No," he says. Of course not. Roy almost never drinks, even at home, and Ed doesn't let him drink till he's drunk, and Ed's too much of a control freak to get drunk. It's not like them at all. Why does his head feel so damn fuzzy? Why does he feel like important memories are like sand, slipping through his fingers more the more desperately he tries to cling to them?
When Roy runs a hand through his own hair, Ed notices something he hadn't before. He reaches out to pull Roy's hand to him, looking at the back. There's a scar in the center of the back of his hand, and when Ed turns his hand over, there's a matching scar in the palm. Ed grabs Roy's other hand and the scarred array is more detailed and visible than it's been in years. It's also pierced by another scar in the center that matches another one in the palm.
"Your scars are wrong," Ed says, tracing the outline of Roy's familiar array. It's not just that it's more visible, the scar is raised and far more noticeable than Ed ever remembers it being. Roy had never carved the array deeply; Ed's fingers rarely even found it. And the scars through his hands? He never had them. Marco had used his Philosopher's Stone to heal those.
Roy moves Ed's bangs aside and traces where Ed knows he once had a scar across his brow.
"Yours are too," he says.
Ed scrambles and lifts the edge of Roy's shirt, and sure enough, the cauterization scar is far darker and more severe than it is in real life—
It clicks together.
In real life . "This isn't real," he says. It can't be real. As if the realization is a catalyst, Ed starts remembering where he actually is, where Roy is, what has happened in the last week. Fuck, was it really less than a week ago that they had their fight? It feels like it's been so much longer.
"It's not real," Ed repeats, feeling panicked. He doesn't dream like this. This is too real. This is their bed in their room in their house.
Roy reaches and cups the back of Ed's head, pulling him close. Ed takes a deep breath, fighting down the panic, and Roy smells like Roy. Even after all these years without access to alchemy, there's a scent of ash and fire that seems like it's burned into Roy's very being. It's hidden beneath newer scents—the clean, unscented laundry detergent they use, Roy's rich tobacco cologne that has sharp notes of blackberry and vanilla if you breathe it in deeply enough. Always, though, beneath that, there is always the lingering shadow of fire and burning things that is just Roy .
"Breathe, Ed," Roy says, making him realize that he hasn't let out a breath since he inhaled, trying to prove to himself this isn't real. Roy's strength, the weight of his hand, the cadence of his heart beneath Ed's ear, they are perfect. How could anyone get those details right? How could it possibly be right?
"This isn't real, " Ed tells him again.
"It's not not real either," Roy says, far more calm than he has any fucking right to be. But he's also still holding Ed close to him, has his own face buried in the crook of Ed's shoulder, breathing in Ed just as Ed had done.
"How the fuck can you know that?" Ed demands.
"Because I have never had a dream this real," Roy says. One of his hands runs down Ed's flesh arm, not stopping until their fingers are tangled together, then he raises their hands, and the arrays on their wrists touch.
Just like that, all the memories that had been evading Ed's attempts to wrangle them are back. He remembers their fight clearly, he remembers being in that nowhere fucking town in Pennsylvania, remembers confronting Truth again, and he slumps into Roy, the strength gone from him.
Only with Roy has he ever truly let himself be weak.
"Fuck, I miss you," Ed says into Roy's chest.
He feels it lift with a silent sigh as Roy's arm tightens around his waist.
"I've missed you too."
"I don't want you to be mad anymore."
"I want you to value your own life as much as you value others'," Roy replies, but it's tired and not hurt anymore. It's a step in the right direction, and Ed will take it.
"I do," he says, but even as he does, it feels like a lie on his tongue.
"You don't," Roy says, a simple statement, not an accusation. "But we're all still works in progress."
The silence is oddly peaceful, comfortable. After nearly a decade together, they don't need to fill the silences anymore. Sometimes just being with one another is enough, and Roy isn't letting go of him, so Ed takes that as another win.
As much as part of him wants to do nothing more than relax and lose himself in Roy's arms, there are more important issues to take care of. Other problems to address.
"Am I forgiven?" he asks, trying not to let his automail rip Roy's shirt to shreds with how tightly he's gripping it.
Roy sighs again. "Will you do it again?" he asks with the kind of tone that says he knows the answer.
Ed pulls back a little bit, not because he wants a millimeter more between them than absolutely necessary but because he needs to look Roy in the eyes as he says this. "I will do everything in my power to make my way home to you. Always. If you believe in nothing else, please believe that."
They hold one another's gazes for a long moment, but the tension goes out of Roy as if he can't bear to hold it anymore.
"I believe in you, Ed," he says. "I always have."
Ed knows that, knows that the only people who have ever had more faith in him than Roy are Al and Winry, and they're both fools twice over for it. There are also probably no other people Ed loves as much as he loves them, so perhaps it's fitting that the fool he's in love with believes in him when Ed isn't certain he should.
"I know," he says, dropping his forehead to Roy's collar this time. "I know you do."
Roy's hand moves up to rub at the spot between his shoulder blades, where he carries the worst of the tension from his automail arm and the muscles are always doing their best to imitate cement blocks.
"Do you know where we are?" Roy asks.
Ed shakes his head against Roy's collar. "But I think we're really here. I think it's you and me, I mean."
"How can we be so sure that this isn't a dream?" Roy asks.
Sitting back to look Roy in the face again, he says, "Have you had dreams like this?"
"You mean dreams where we are together and not angry and hurt anymore?" Roy replies, his features softening with self-deprecation.
"Dreams where we talk like this?"
"Dreams where I've said I love you? That I can't live without you? That I beg you not to make me live without you? Dreams like that?"
It makes Ed's heart ache. It echoes the dreams Ed's had, nightmares, really, where he begs Roy not to leave him, not to give up on him, to please give him another chance.
"Dreams where we actually talk about it?" Ed asks, forcing the words past the pleas that want to spill from his throat. "Dreams where we both agree that I fucked up and that I promise I'll do better? Be better?"
Roy cups his face. "You don't need to be better," he says, eyes full of pain again, pain that Ed put there, and he hates it, hates it so much. Why does he always hurt the people he loves the most? Why are they always the ones who pay for his mistakes? "Just… if not for yourself, value your life as you value mine. Because it is, Ed. If I lost you, that would end me. Do you understand that?"
He thinks he knew that, somewhere in the depths of his heart. Never has he wanted to hear those words spoken though, and he wants to tell Roy that there has to be more to live for in life than just Ed because Ed is so fucked up and unreliable. Ed is not someone you build a life on and around.
Except Roy would probably say the same if Ed asks. Roy would say that he's too ambitious, too single-minded, that he's going to put his goals before his people, even though it's a lie; Ed knows it's a lie, even if maybe Roy doesn't.
He laughs, humorless, helpless, but it feels like relief, like an array that he's been fiddling with for years and hasn't been able to make work click into place. All the sudden, it makes sense. Ed doesn't know what he'd do if he lost Roy, except it'd be astonishingly stupid, and Ed wouldn't hesitate to pay whatever toll it cost.
All those words and feelings are too much to explain, so he simply says, "I love you too, bastard." He smiles as he says it, because it's true. "And I'm not going to leave if I have anything to say about it. You're not allowed to leave me either."
Caution wars with hope in Roy's eyes, but he nods after a moment. "An overdue bargain, I think," he says, bowing his forehead to lean against Ed's.
They soak one another's presence in for another moment before Ed realizes that he has no idea how long they have.
"Where are you?" Ed asks, and then he gets an odd, disconnected feeling.
"Small town in Pennsylvania," Roy says, which is confusing enough that Ed almost doesn't catch his return question. "You?"
"Xerxes. With JJ and Morgan."
Roy leans back this time, brow furrowed. "Xerxes?" he asks.
"Yeah," Ed says. He opens his mouth to say more, when pain rips through him. He tries to hold onto Roy, but there is no resisting that pain. Their hands are yanked apart and the house shatters around them. Ed sees the terror on Roy's face as they're separated. "I'll find a way back!" he yells.
That will not be the last time he sees Roy's face. Ed is going to find a way back if it kills him.