"Is this what you really look like, then?"
Envy shrugs, feet dancing over the Ishval sand. "Well, I can look like whatever you want me to. Just watch, Crimson; I'll show you—"
"No, no. I've seen you shift before." A thousand times, really; Envy never tires when it comes to trying to dazzle Kimblee with reality-bending stunts. While the process is fascinating, and while Kimblee wouldn't mind watching it, he isn't interested in watching that particular trick at the moment. "I mean, is this body your body? What's your unaltered state?"
Perhaps Kimblee's mistaken, but he notices a shadow, quick as anything, passes over Envy's face. But the flicker of a frown vanishes as fast as it had come, and Envy's smirk returns. "Funny that you're that eager to know. But, yes, it's the one I like the most. I came up with it more than a hundred years ago-I'll bet that it's hard for you to imagine that."
They so often underestimate him in such humorous ways—the span of a century is well within Kimblee's comprehension. But he won't tease them about that this time. "Interesting," he merely says, resting his face in his hand. " You designed it?"
"Yep." Envy grins, twirling around once. "Nice, isn't it? You like it, don't you?"
"Very," Kimblee replies dryly. But he's not quite satisfied. If it was a design, there surely must have been a predecessor to it… "But I wonder. Since you came up with it some time after you were born, you must have looked like something else before that, correct?"
Envy stops.
Oh dear. He's pushed the wrong buttons again…
"I don't want to talk about that." Envy's eyes have lost all of the mischief that they held before; they're cold, unreadable. "Talk about something else."
Well, he'd better placate them. "I'm sorry," Kimblee says, casually shifting position on the sand. "You know how I have to know everything about you; I suppose that I overstepped my boundaries. I'll talk about something else—but I'll need a minute to think of something interesting to say. Of course, nothing that I'd have to say is more interesting than your stories."
His words aren't even flattery; Envy would be able to tell if his words were less than genuine. Really, that's why he has to consider what he says so carefully; caution is the price that he has to pay for being able to while away the hours talking to a homunculus.
Envy's shoulders slump slightly; Kimblee's words seem to have alleviated their nervous tension. "You need to learn how to observe boundaries, Crimson," they say carelessly, sitting down next to him as if there had been no conflict. "But I'll forgive you this time."
"What a relief," Kimblee says lightly; he can tell that he's free to relax now.
He still wants to know about what Envy really looks like, and why they look the way they do, but now, he knows, is not the time for such questions. He'll bide his time, breaking down the barriers one piece at a time; he'll find out somehow, someday.
A/N: This one's so short I'm sorry... I have so much trouble writing them in the Ishval time period, but at the same time, it's an interesting time, when Kimblee's just trying to discover what makes Envy tick, so I have to get better at it! This was written for a tumblr prompt, for the phrase "I don't want to talk about it."
Thanks for reading!