("Don't – don't – ohgod–")

---

Ed turned onto his other side and tried to concentrate on the still-strange press of his own skin against his chest and his leg instead of the cold twisting up in his guts. His eyes were tight and dry but he couldn't close them, wouldn't, was unable and unwilling to face what lay inside his eyelids.

Two days (nights) ago, he'd stumbled back at fuck-what o'clock and hadn't even had the energy to get under the blankets, had just fallen onto the mattress and thought dimly that maybe he'd be lucky for once and the pillow would suffocate him – and slipped into sleep without really realising he had. And dreamed. And woke up two hours later, hard and sick and burning, with the memory of heat-dark eyes and moon-bright hands all over his skin.

Al had noticed – of course Al had noticed – when Ed had slumped down the stairs the next morning (not the morning after, because – because, and it wasn't, and Ed didn't – he didn't think – but his cheeks still prickled with heat in the dark and his whole body throbbed with the pulse of his blood) and fumbled himself into a chair with his bones old and shaking inside him. And Al had also somehow known (god, there was no 'somehow'; it was Al) that it wasn't just the hangover spinning nausea around Ed's insides; he'd watched Ed with concerned eyes as Ed stared blankly at the food on his plate (toast? Eggs? Grass clippings? He didn't think he'd even known at the time) and felt sick at the thought of opening his mouth.

Ed put that down to the hangover at least, because he'd been ravenous by lunch, and even if it felt like he was disintegrating from the inside, that could just as well have been the alcohol atrophying his muscles.

Al didn't say anything, though, not until the next morning, when he'd found Ed sat up at the table with a cup of milk-pale coffee half gone at his elbow (it had seemed like the most logical thing to do when the night had dragged and dragged and kept on dragging and the coffee he'd made had been syrup-thick and heat-dark) and Roehl's treatise on the role of the array in alchemy open to the first page in front of him.

Even then, all Al had really managed was a querulous, "Brother...?" with his hand outstretched toward the coffee cup but not actually touching, as if he were afraid that that would – what? Make it real? It was just milk, it wasn't like Ed had done something like... suddenly decide to kiss Winry (oh – god, never think that again, never) in front of the stove, or – ha. Gone out drinking with the ex-superior officer he'd hated and made himself sick because he –

There was no reason for Al to look at him like that, like he was more of a freak than he'd been with the automail and more broken than when he'd been running desperate toward the Gate, knowing he was going to die and knowing Al would hate him and knowing he –

He was fine. He'd been fine, he'd told Al he was fine, there was nothing to worry about, it was just a bad night. They both had them; Al less so now he had – Winry, and maybe Ed a little more so now because he had the wide loft to himself and maybe he couldn't really get used the hollow-thick silence that echoed around his every breath like two everything-nothing black doors that were only ever a clap away. But that was okay, because Al had Winry and Winry had Al and they were happy, like they should and would have been years ago if Ed hadn't fucked it up in the first place. It was fine, Ed was fine, as long as they were happy it didn't matter that maybe sometimes (every time) he woke in the echoing dark the air pressed in on him like sticky black hands and glowing white eyes and the smell of his own acrid sweat made him gag, and sometimes (every time) he couldn't stop himself from thinking oh god, please, I want

Ed wrenched himself upright, threw himself out of bed and choked on his own breath trying not to – scream, sob, speak, he didn't know.

Dammit, dammit, dammit, Mustang probably didn't even care, had probably just smirked and thought such a short attention span, Fullmetal and forgotten about it –

Except it wasn't Fullmetal, any more, was it? He'd said Edward at the hospital, nearly two years ago, now, and he'd – he'd said Ed; it had fallen out of his mouth like it had been waiting there, sitting on the tip of his tongue (oh god oh god, don't think about his tongue, don't, don't) until he had the opportunity to say it (fuck, don't be stupid, it wasn't – he wouldn't – just don't be fucking stupid). And then he'd kept saying it, not even hesitating over the more familiar F- or Edw-, like Ed was no one but Ed to him, like Ed was Ed to him in a way he wasn't even to Al.

Fuck, except that didn't even make any sense; it was just a name, just one fucking syllable, it was no reason to – to – to think anything. He wasn't a goddamn girl, he didn't want. He. Mustang would never. It just wouldn't –

The point was, Mustang wouldn't care. There was no reason Ed should still be awake (two days, and Ed knew he'd gone longer without sleep before but surely it had never been like this, like each minute stretched endlessly out before him with the threat of a million thoughts in his own company), no reason Ed should be pacing back and forth and back and forth and back with sweat cooling on his too-hot skin and forth, thinking –

Mustang and Mustang and Mustang –

Fuck, bastard, fuck

The phone was a sudden shock of cold in his hand, on his ear, and he didn't know what he was doing even as the ring shrilled too-loud and too-sharp and again and again and –

Stopped.

"I don't know what to do." He heard himself blurt in his own voice. Some part of him screamed what the fuck are you doing? but the rest was just – relieved, and he thought, Oh...

"Are you alright?"

Ed got a hand over his mouth before the sound choked up from his throat, but only barely. Was he alright? Was he–? He'd just called R-Mustang in the middle of the night after – after – that – and the shit bastard fucker asked if he was alright?

"N-no, you bastard, fuck, didn't you spend however long fuckin' tellin' me I wasn't? Just –" fuck, what the hell was wrong with him? "– nothing, never mind, fuck you –" god, he was such a fucking idiot, next time he couldn't sleep he was just going to bash himself over the head with a brick –

"Ed!" Ed's hand froze at the sharp call and he scowled at it, holding the receiver just above the cradle and not lowering it any further no matter how hard he grit his teeth. The bastard, how dare he, how dare he use Ed's body against him like – like – "Wait, I'm sorry," like his voice stroked all the way up inside him even barely audible through a stupid lump of phenolic resin. "I was asleep. Are you – where are you? What happened?"

What – what? Ed stared at the phone, black lost into the dark of the room and cupped in his palm like holding a shadow, like holding –

Fuck, that was stupid – so stupid – and – fuck. Like something a lovesick girl would think; he might as well just cut his balls off and hand them over to save Mustang the trouble.

Except he wasn't lovesick and he wasn't a girl and –

Fuck.

"Nothing happened, okay?" He said into the receiver that had somehow made its way back up to his mouth. "I just – I –" god, he was going to hate himself in the morning "I don't know what to do. That's it, that's my 'I don't'. Equivalent exchange. I didn't mean to – yeah. So, that's it. Okay. Bye."

He hated himself right now; his hand didn't even twitch, and Mustang's urgent-quick, "Ed!" burst like a shot right into his ear. "Wait. Please?"

And for a moment it didn't even matter, because that soft, nakedly pleading tone stole his breath and made everything, suddenly and inexplicably, okay.

The absolute, rotting bastard.

"Where are you?"

"What?" Apparently, whatever Ed's fucked-up hormones thought, Mustang was still a moron. "I'm on the phone, obviously, did you think I was standing there talking to you? God, how the hell do you even dress yourself in the morning?" God, don't think of him dressing himself ever

"You're at home, then?"

Oh. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm in my room. Why?" Which was... possibly the stupidest question Ed had ever asked, including enough dumbarse what?'s over the years to power a small country with wind turbines alone. Because, he didn't usually (never) rang Mustang in the middle of the night to blurt out non sequitur confessions from days old conversations. Because, he'd made a habit of running off to potential and likely death without telling anyone he was going. Because

"I just wanted to know you were safe, Ed."

– he was a bigger moron that even Mustang, obviously.

"Though now that I'm already awake, you might as well talk to me. I'm quite happy to listen, as it were."

A completely and utterly fucked moron.

"I –" Ed blinked into the dark and thought, I...? There were an infinite number of things he could say that started with just that, and for a moment he was crowded with so many words that there were none at all, his mind faded to a formless, colourless, soundless blank. And then he realised – the silence didn't echo.

He held the warmed bakelite to his ear and he could hear the tiny disturbance, the hushed schh of static that was Mustang's breath, Mustang's presence, Mustang. There, listening, despite Ed being... Ed.

"I don't. Know what to do."

Suddenly tired in a way he hadn't managed to be all day, all night, Ed looked dazedly around his room with neck muscles that felt stiff and brittle, wondered how he hadn't noticed he'd been staring at the wall two feet away for the last... however long. He picked up the body of the phone in his free hand (and felt the untouched chill of it because that hand was flesh, too, now) and backed up until the bed touched the back of his knees, let himself fold onto it.

A year, six months, three days ago, there had been so many things that he couldn't say; he'd hardly dared start a sentence with I at all. And now... now there was Mustang, Roy, and they were all okay.

(The bastard.)

He said, very quietly into the hush, "I still don't... get it. I mean, we reached our goal, right? We – we got everything, an' I just. Sometimes I can't touch anything with my hand 'cause it's – it's too much, an' I look at my leg and don't even know why it's there, it's like I've got someone else's – meat stuck on me and I don't – I don't – I don't want it, and how fucking stupid is that? 'Cause I do, I want it more than... than I ever wanted it back then, and it just. Doesn't make any sense."

Ed ground his forehead into his palm and squeezed his eyes closed against the sharp ache stinging behind them, didn't even try to stop the words.

"I should be happy." Through a throat stuck with razor blades. "I should – Al's worried about me. Fuck, you're worried about me, an' you spent my adolescence sending me after – psycho alchemists and serial killers."

"I believe you were under strict orders to avoid most of the serial killers, actually."

Ed laughed only a little thickly, and he'd swear he felt Mustang's smile in reply; it shivered all the up his spine and all the way down again.

"S'not like I didn't try." He retorted, and un-squeezed his eyes so they could just be shut to the breath of laughter that Mustang hah-ed down the line. There was silence, a moment, and when Ed spoke again his voice was barely more than a whisper. "I feel like I lost something. I got everything I wanted, and I feel like I lost something. I never thought... is it supposed to be this hard?"

A pause, then; "Living? Unfortunately, yes, most of the time." Ed stayed silent, curled over his knees with Mustang's presence pressed to his ear. "If I were an idealist, I'd tell you that the struggle is usually worth the life you get in return."

Tiny hah of amused breath. "You're not?"

"Well." Mustang murmured. "Someone did tell me once that to gain anything, one has to give something of equal value in return."

"... You believe him?"

Silence.

"No." Oh. Ed's heart twisted, stopped. "I thought it was rather naïve at first, actually. But then he proved it so thoroughly that I couldn't not."

... Oh. He – oh.

---

"Well, what do you want to do?"

"If I knew that I wouldn't be having this problem, would I?"

"Not necessarily. You've spent the majority of your life up to now not wanting anything; I imagine it's rather difficult to suddenly reverse the behaviour."

"Shit, what, you're a shrink now?"

"I couldn't have got to where I am without a certain understanding of human psychology. And I certainly couldn't have lasted as your superior officer for so long without a certain understanding of you."

"Aren't we full of ourselves?"

"Not without good reason, I assure you."

Surprised bark of laughter. "Fuck. You're still a dick."

---

"Don't you ever..."

"Ever what?"

"I – I dunno, just. Wan' it to stop?"

"... Not so much any more, actually."

---

"Have you thought about going into alchemy research? You could get into any lab in Amestris on your name alone, and you always did enjoy a mental challenge."

"I – guess."

"Yes, I suppose you're right – you are getting on in years, after all. What are you now? Nineteen? Twenty?"

"Twenty-one, bastard, like you're in any position t' be talkin' about getting on in years. You blink, you're gonna be forty."

"Ah, the 'I know you are, but what am I' defence. How will I ever compete?"

"Shud'up. Dick."

"I'm thinking 'no'. If I recall, you are the one that called me at – three o'clock in the morning with the burning desire to converse. As you are being uncharacteristically reticent, it falls to me to speak. Unless you would like to sit here in silence listening to one another breathe?"

Yes. "No. Did you just use 'reticent' in a sentence at butt-fuck o'clock?"

"I do believe I did, thank you for noticing."

"Are you always this weird?"

"Only when I'm woken at – what did you say? – butt-fuck o'clock by stubborn alchemists who have no idea of their own brilliance or value, even after saving the world."

"... 'msorry."

A sigh. "Ed –"

"An' I didn't save anything."

"Ed, you–"

"I didn't. All I did was get Al back, which was my fault anyway, an' – an' I didn't even do that very well, did I, 'cause he had these – nightmares, an' he'd wake up screamin' like. Like his guts were bein' ripped out, an' I couldn't – couldn't do anything, they kept gettin' worse an' I. I. I w's jus' – tired."

"Ed..."

"An' it was always me'n Al, y'know, ever since. With mum. I know you get it, got it better'n I did for – years – even though y' didn't know anythin' 'bout me from before. So I didn't think – Winry, didn't think maybe she could help, didn't think. I'm not saying – I'm glad she did, could, that he's happy, that he c'n have more th'n just me, 'cause. 'Cause. I'd never – all I ever wanted. Want. Right? Jus' for Al t' be fine, t' be happy, t' have the life he should'a had, should'a never lost. I. I shouldn't – hate it."

---

Three nights with no sleep, then; Al took one look at him the next morning and his mouth hardened into a flat line before he spun, snatched up his coat, left.

Ed stood alone in the kitchen, his whole body too heavy too light and his stomach rolling sick inside him.

---

Ed ignored the doorbell, and the knock on the door – and the second, and the third, but it wasn't so easy to ignore the man that made his way up the stairs into the lounge like he had every right to saunter into Ed's life however he pleased.

Ed didn't move from his heavy sprawl across the sofa, didn't move his eyes from their heavy stare at the ceiling.

"Whatever you're selling, I don't want any." He said.

Mustang flicked his eye over to him (Ed felt it like a touch, like a shiver) but didn't pause on his way across the room.

"I have had a long day," he said as he reached the kitchen, "and on pain of several broken bones I came straight from the office, so I am making coffee. Then we are going to talk." Several cupboards opened and shut and two cups tap-thunked lightly onto the bench.

"Don't take orders from you any more." Ed said without much inflection – and then, because it was Mustang and the man had always managed to drag things out of Ed that Ed hadn't wanted to give up, "There's pasta in the fridge."

A pause, silent but for the slow building rush of the kettle.

"Thank you." The fridge opening, more cupboards, a drawer, and Ed lay on the sofa, listening and staring at the ceiling. "And that wasn't an order; I was merely informing you of the inescapable facts of the situation."

For some reason, Ed couldn't think of anything to say to that. Or, rather, couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't come out sounding far too grateful for just the man's unexpected presence; Ed's own had been grating on him so badly that he'd started considering – doing something, anything, just to get away from it.

Apparently he didn't need to be facing imminent death to think stupid things, he just had to be left on his own for long enough. He was a genius, after all.

Ed snorted a breath through his nose that might have started out somewhere as a laugh.

"Something amusing?" Mustang asked, voice suddenly too close, and Ed opened his eyes (when had they closed? When had he decided that it was okay to let himself relax around Mustang at all?) to find Mustang standing beside the couch, dangling a coffee mug over his face in mute offering.

"No." Ed sat up too quickly, nearly hit the mug with his head and had to sit very still a moment while the room lurched and then settled around him. Mustang just stood, waited. "Yes. Me, I guess." He took the offered cup, didn't feel branded by the fingers that slipped briefly along his (warmth and skin and oh god Mustang), and sipped. It was thick, black, sweet. "Why're you here, anyway?"

Mustang raised one incredulous eyebrow and turned away to sit in a chair, but Ed still saw the tightening of a frown just at the corner of his lips.

And god, even when Mustang was disapproving of him, his lips could still burst heat in his gut like a gasp.

Bastard, bastard, (gorgeous) fucking bastard.

"You should really try the wonders of communication." Mustang murmured with typical bloody crypticness, taking a sip of his own drink (thick, black, bitter). The anger and – fuck, there nothing else to call it even if it made him stupid – hurt rose up in him like bile at the taunting evasion – but Mustang continued before Ed could spit it back out at him. "The simple answer is that Alphonse was rather insistent that I come."

Ed (like an idiot) nearly dropped his cup. "What? Al –" Al. Al had – fuck, Al had – "Fuck." Of course he had. Ed slumped back into the couch cushions and hacked up an approximation of a laugh. Somehow, his eyes didn't leave Mustang, and he meant to say, Well, you came, you can piss off now, I'm not your problem, but what actually came out was, "What's the complicated answer then?"

A pause.

"Well." Mustang said. "That's rather complicated." Almost (completely) despite himself, Ed found a proper laugh rising up in his chest, spilling out of him – and even after the moment, and the next and the next, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Damn the man, anyway. "How are you, Edward?"

Ed frowned. "Wha's that have t' do with-?"

"Rather everything, actually."

Ed didn't know whether to scowl or go red with the sudden rush of heat that streaked up from his chest – so he settled on flat denial. (Because he was stupid.) "Well I'm fine, told you I w's fine."

"Yes," Mustang said, his eye dark and bottomless and fixed on Ed's, "you did."

Bastard always had found something in his words Ed hadn't even known was there to find. In him.

---

("Ed, breathe. Relax. It's alright."

Relax. Relax. Ed didn't know how – relaxed was splayed out on the grass in Risembool covered in sweat and bruises, relaxed was hunched over a book about long-dead alchemy for no other reason than he was interested, relaxed was eating until he felt he couldn't move and then not moving. It wasn't this: lying naked with his legs cocked wide and Roy – Roy – equally naked, pressed over him and pressed into him and pressed everywhere, so close and so hot that Ed couldn't get a decent breath, couldn't do anything but lie here with the heat sinking into him and burning

"S'fine." It was barely a word, barely a gasp, his voice too choked up with awe and terror to manage much else. This wasn't supposed to be – he'd been stabbed right through before and it hadn't been as hard as this, hadn't split him open or sliced all the way up the middle of him, hadn't left him open and exposed and desperate –

"You're shaking."

"M'n-o-t."

"Ed." Just a whisper, just a brush of air, just a threat that could tear him apart because he couldn't stop wanting it – "It's alright. Just breathe.")

---

"So." Mustang said, and somehow made the word sound decisive rather than awkward after the slightly-too-long silence. He'd swapped his coffee cup for a plate of chicken and bacon fettuccine ("This is good." With eye slightly wide in surprise, and Ed tried to keep the stupid shivery flush of pleased warmth out of his voice when he said, "'course it's good, I made it."), and he ate another forkful as he watched Ed expectantly. Ed tried not to think about how eating had never been erotic before, how he'd never be able to look at pasta again without remembering the way the fork drew out of Roy's mouth (Roy's lips) naked and brightly damp. "Something happened between butt-fuck o'clock and a decent hour this morning that made Alphonse want to break my legs."

"Fuck, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't know he was gonna –" tell you whatever he did to make you think I was broken and make you come here when I feel like I am – "He jus' left, I thought he was pissed at me, how w's I s'posed t' know?"

"I wasn't accusing you, Ed." Mustang said, too softly. "I find it amusing that he threatened me with bodily harm on your behalf, actually."

Ed was not blushing, he was twenty-one now, a man by anyone's standards and he was not fucking blushing. "Fuck you."

As per usual, Mustang (smoothly) ignored him.

"Though it does makes a little more sense now. You look tired, Ed."

"You're the one I called at butt-fuck o'clock this morning, why're you surprised?"

"Ed."

"What?"

"Ed."

(And Ed remembered thinking Ed was Ed to him in a way that he wasn't even to Al and Roy's voice stroking all the way up inside him in the dark.)

"What?" It wasn't a snap, wasn't quick enough to run over his own thoughts and wasn't sharp enough to warn Mustang away and was just too wearily resigned to be anything but sullen. "I couldn't sleep f'r a bit, s'not a big deal. Happens t' everyone."

"Not to everyone." Mustang said without enough (any) arrogance or condescension or smug smugness for Ed to get mad at.

Ed glared at him and just felt tired. "Don't tell me you never sit up trying t' do anything but sleep an' then get stuck needin' t' sleep when you c'n do anythin' but. Three days isn't that long."

He'd spent years unable to see anything in those eyes save for fathomless black, but he barely had to look to see the drop of understanding, the weighted agreement in them – and he looked quickly away, terrified of the sudden clench of yearning in his guts. He could deal with the – attraction, the thoughts and the dreams and the hunger, but he couldn't stand this ache that spread through him, that clutched at his heart and rose up pressure behind his eyes. This yearning (not yearning but yearning, like a bone-deep keening he couldn't stop) for something beyond the man's body – for that understanding, for not just the man's hands but the man's eye and voice, for that steady regard that saw all Ed's sins and kept looking anyway. For some vague notion of a fantasy of all his shattered pieces being held, being wanted, being – loved. By this man. By Mustang. Roy.

And even knowing that it wouldn't happen, that he'd given up the chance to deserve it when he was eleven years old, he couldn't stop yearning, and the keening ache just kept getting worse.

"Not when you're living on adrenaline, no." Mustang was saying, and Ed tipped his head back into the cushions, let the man's voice sink into him like maybe he could fill himself up with it and pretend he didn't feel hollow all the way through. "When there's no threat to your life to keep you running and even just getting up feels like an impossible effort some days?"

Ed's head came back up with a jerk and he was caught by Roy's intent, completely unguarded eye.

"I do understand, Ed." He said, and the ache burst, bright and dark, in Ed's chest. Oh god, he couldn't do this – "And, trite as it sounds, it will get better in time. You don't have to do anything; let your friends hold you up for a while."

And with a dumb kind of wonder, Ed heard himself say, "Friends."

Roy tilted his head at him. "Yes." He said simply, and Ed breathed, "Oh."

---

It was late when Al and Winry came back, shutting the door with a carefully quiet click and not even whispering, so they didn't wake him. When they got to the top of the stairs, Ed rose from the couch and crossed the room, wrapped his arms around his little brother's flesh and blood body and pulled them together as close as their skins would allow.

"'m sorry." His voice scraped rough and freeing out of him. "An' I love you."

Al's arms flung around him, clung tight enough to force the breath out of them both and Ed let him, returned the pressure, ground his aching eyes into Al's bloodbonemuscleskin shoulder and loved him like he hadn't let himself since he'd put him in a metal body.