(A/N: Tread lightly with this one, it is worthy of the fic's rating. Also, I don't think Kimblee's roommate ever gets a name -_-' Not that it matters, the poor bastard should be glad to get out when he does, AND to remain anonymous.)

.

There was no question of sleeping after Envy left. Kimblee's mind was too full - the darkness, the alleged conspiracy, Father's plans, what it all meant, his part in it.

The cryptic warning about the shadows was indeed enough to scare him, but he reminded himself than this new fact was not contingent upon his knowledge of it. That threat had existed all along, he had simply been unaware. Better to know than not to. Ignorance might indeed be bliss, when monsters stalked you in the shadows, but knowledge was power, and he preferred the latter to the former.

He thought about Envy as well. It was impossible for him not to. Their encounters had been so brief they could hardly be said to know each other at all, and yet since when was the value of something measured chronologically? Explosions were the essence of brevity, but it was in their evanescent intensity which lay the thrill. Envy was like an explosion, changing everything in an instant. The memory of that icy touch on his skin, slight as it had been, was exhilarating.

My body doesn't create its own warmth, Envy had said. That meant that it could absorb warmth from other sources, right?

Although not usually given to 'nurturing' impulses, he found he wanted to warm the homunculus up. He imagined it lying beside him, under the blankets, drawn into his nest of body heat. How cold Envy would be, at first. He imagined lying skin-to-skin until their temperatures were aligned, no matter how long it took…

Yeah, he definitely wasn't going to be sleeping anytime soon. He shifted, sliding one hand down, down, deciding to take advantage of his roommate's state of unquestionable unconsciousness.

Doesn't it bother you? The critical question had gone unanswered. For all he knew, Envy was content to be cold. For the sake of his fantasy, however, warmth was as pleasant for a homunculus as it was for a human, if not as necessary. Envy would press close against him, touching in every way possible, arms around his neck, legs intertwined with his and oh, Envy would be warm then; he was burning up just thinking about it.

He thought about how Envy would feel in his arms, slender and yet strong as forged steel; he imagined that Envy's hair, so distinctive to look at, would feel like a cat's whisker in his hands. Thought about the graceful, tantalizing contours of muscle, taught as a drawn bowstring. Visualized running his fingertips over them like water pooling and flowing down Envy's arms, shoulders, neck, chest, stomach, legs…he wanted those legs wrapped around him. He didn't care what was between them, so long as there was something, something tight and slick that he could pound into…thoughts were malleable, and in his mind Envy was male and female and a range of things in-between, changing with whim, with desire, wrapped all around him, deep and hot and tight –

He groaned through clenched teeth as he came, sated but not satisfied, and the presence of his imagined partner faded from his mind.

You've got it all wrong. Greed's words replayed involuntarily in his mind. Envy is an 'it'. And you're a human. It would be a cold day in hell.

Was he setting himself up for failure? And for that matter...why did it matter? He was no stranger to physical desire, and yet his had never fixated so suddenly, so intensely, on anyone before Envy.

Why?

He didn't know. And he liked that he didn't know. It made things more interesting. He wanted to follow this fascination as far as he could, to get as close as he could, to be destroyed in the blast or shaken to the bone in the fallout. Whether ecstasy or agony was in store, it had to be better than boredom.

.

He had no words to adequately describe Monday morning - well, aside from being tired. Never mind about that, it was the psychological aspect that was worth noting. How could he explain the feeling when everything has changed, and yet nothing is different? Obnoxiously early muster, the drudgery of his menial and unchallenging tasks, the forced, uninteresting conversation. The humdrum, painfully banal life of a 'normal' person.

So strange to think, beneath them all, there existed a secret world unbeknownst to this one, just waiting to rise up and devour this bright kingdom in which humans believed they ruled supreme. What would happen, when humans discovered they were no longer the apex predator of the world? They would find out, eventually, even when it was already too late, when they were already falling, and then…

He smiled.

It wasn't that he fancied himself impervious to the danger that no one else suspected. No. If anything, he was more at risk than anyone else, at least at the moment. It wasn't even about the rewards he had been promised, the power and the money and all of it, although that certainly sweetened the deal. This wasn't an issue of risk and reward, at least not on that level.

Even if it cost him his life, even if he received nothing at all in return, it was so well worth it, just to be privy to this clandestine truth, this secret.

Life didn't seem like a boring waste of time anymore. What reward could compare to that? What risk could detract from it?

His unusually cheerful demeanor attracted some odd looks at work, but he couldn't bring himself to be bothered. At least not until when, at lunch, Blake approached him. His expression was grim.

"I take it you haven't heard the news?"

"What?" His heart lurched unpleasantly in his chest, anticipating questions about the incident with Envy, his involvement, his alibi…

"Cramer was found dead in his house this morning. Suicide."

It was a profound relief, but he schooled his face into a look of surprised remorse. "He did seem a bit upset when I walked him home." A long pause. "I…I should have stayed with him or something. I had no idea…"

"None of us did." Blake said in a consoling tone, apparently mollified by Kimblee's act. "Don't blame yourself."

He had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing.

.

An amusing day was followed by an amusing evening. He walked through the door of his apartment to find his roommate hitting on Lust. She sat on the far left of the couch, and he sat as close to her as possible short of being on her lap.

"Zolf, I was wondering when you'd be getting back." She got to her feet, smiling just a tad stiffly. "Not out playing around on me, are you?"

"I wouldn't dream of it." He took off his coat and hung it by the door, trying hard to hide his amusement at the disgruntled homunculus. "You should have called; I would have been home sooner. Can I offer you a drink?"

"No." She stood, tilting her head in the direction of his room. "I'd rather get straight down to business."

He wished he could have photographed his roommate's expression and framed it.

"You are getting a private room." Lust intoned fiercely as soon as Kimblee had closed the door tightly. "I'm telling Father it's imperative."

"That bad?"

"Fifteen more minutes, I would have sliced him horizontally and vertically."

"Too bad the two of you didn't have more time to get acquainted. I'm assuming it was you guys who were behind Cramer's death?"

She arched a brow. "Envy didn't tell you?"

Oops. Apparently that was what Envy was supposed to have told him, rather than whispering classified knowledge about the rest of its kind.

"I was half-asleep when Envy was here." He lied. "I just wanted to verify while I'm more awake."

"Yes, we were behind it. The real problem was in the other witnesses of Envy's transformation, but it seems we contained the damage. Father is still unhappy, though, which is why I'm here rather than Envy."

Her voice was grim. He was struck with the ludicrous impression that she cared about her sibling. That in Envy's suffering, she was suffering too. It was strangely touching, this bit of affection in the face of all their ghoulish brutality.

"I'm sorry." It was one of the few true things he had said that day.

"It was as a result of Envy's own actions." She said it like a mantra.

There was a moment of heavy silence. Finally, Kimblee ventured,

"How did you manage to make it appear self-inflicted?"

"It was. Not all humans react as…placidly as you, to creatures like us. Actually, that's what I'm here concerning. Sometimes people have complications, after we take them underground."

He grinned. "Oh?"

"In my experience, one of four things tends to happen." She held up a slender, black-clad finger. "One: they doubt what they saw was even real. Decide they were having a psychotic episode. Two, even if they rationally know it happened, something in them refuses to accept it, and they go into denial. Or, three, they can't reconcile it with their view of reality at all. Their mind simply breaks from the strain."

"And the fourth option?"

"They take their own lives."

"You seem to have a high turnover rate as employers."

The quip fell flat. Far from 'hitting on her', as Envy had put it, she seemed hardly to register his existence.

"Alright, seeing as I haven't gone insane, is that all you came here for?"

"Basically." She shrugged. "But I assume you don't want your roommate to think we're dressed and done in…what's it been, three minutes?"

"I work quickly and efficiently."

Again, nothing.

.

As a result of fighting with Wrath and by extension of the disastrous public transformation, Envy was grounded. Literally, not allowed to go above ground until otherwise specified.

It was on a routine check of one of their several mechanical rooms, and it was exhausted - the homunculus, not the room. The room was feverishly hot and humid, but for a short time it was a welcome reprieve from the sunless chill of the tunnels outside. The heat made Envy more aware of its own weariness. It didn't need to sleep, but sometimes it really wanted to. The urge was more a craving than a need, like the impulse to smoke a cigarette when one is trying to quit. Intense, but fated to pass with time.

Envy didn't always care to wait it out, though. Shit, this must be what Sloth felt like all the time: eyes heavy and sore, head in a fog. Envy pushed the thought way. It didn't care to dwell on the subject on its siblings.

It had possessed a 'bedroom' once. Several, in fact. Greed had always insisted on a place of his own, and anything Greed got, naturally, Envy was entitled to as well. It didn't quite have the same appetite for owning things, though. The rooms inevitably fell out of use, either being allocated to other purposes or forgotten all together. Envy rarely went back to check. For some reason, every room that it had taken for its own became abhorrent to it after long enough.

Again, Envy preferred no to dwell on it.

This left it in a fix at the moment, because there weren't a lot of comfortable places to lie down in their abode. It was sort of the antithesis of comfort. Still, this room was as good a place as any, if only because of the temperature. There weren't any problems with the machinery, but Envy could pretend to have been fixing something if Father got on its case for dawdling. So what if the room was rather airless, Envy didn't really need to breathe anymore than it needed to sleep.

It located a tangle of coiled hose and a plastic tarp, which where lumpy but had more give than the solid bedrock of which the floor, walls, and ceiling were made. It curled up and closed its eyes. Then stretched out. Then curled up again. Opened its eyes. Closed them. Curled up. Stretched out. Opened eyes.

Damn it.

So the sleep thing wasn't happening. It could lie there and close its eyes and feel tired all it wanted, sleep apparently was not a direct result of fatigue.

It wasn't ready to leave, though. Exhaustion was like a physical pain, distracting and distressing. Envy didn't really want to be there, doing that, but it wanted to be doing anything else even less.

Do you want out? Kimblee's question recalled itself to Envy for some reason.

It wanted out of this, although it didn't know what 'this' was. There had to be more, more to existing, than this…

When the world is ours, it will be different. Envy told itself, as it often did. The thought of the future was cold comfort. It could work for a happy future, but how could it hope for such a thing, when it had no idea what said future would even look like?

On a whim, Envy shifted into Greed. It wasn't something Envy did often, maybe once every several years or so. Yet the transformation happened automatically – almost instinctively. It had started a long time ago, when Envy was more curious, less bitter and alienated from everyone, itself included. It had been curious, and feeling brave; it had wanted to know what Greed felt like. Greed's body was old news now, but there was still the echo of distant thrill to it.

It was the details that Envy appreciated. For all that Greed was built like a cart-horse (or maybe a bear, since bears are predators), his body was not lacking grace or subtlety. His wrists might be thick as tree branches, and yet Envy found delight in the refined articulation of muscles and tendons and bones, the subtle protrusion of the ulna at the wrist's most slender point, the veins across the tops of his hands, the Orobros tattoo on his left hand. He brought his hand to his mouth, laying the mark against his lips. Envy liked how Greed's lips were the only soft thing about his face.

Then there was Greed's neck, solid and strong, and yet there was something delicate about his jugular notch. Envy could feel a pulse there if he searched for it. There was no pulse to be found in the same area of Envy's usual form. Greed's body was apparently more demonstrative of life that Envy's.

Envy didn't want to think about itself just then.

Greed was also naturally warmer than Envy. He could feel a sheen of sweat blossom on his pilfered form, but he wasn't ready to leave the warmth yet. There was still Greed's sternum, the hard, dramatically accented muscles of his stomach, his sharp hip-bones, the trail of coarse, dark hair down to –

It was Greed's fault, damn it! He was male after all; gendered, sexed, sexual. And Greed was so self-loving, something of that must carry over along with his body. It wasn't Envy's fault it got pulled into the trap of physical desires when it took on Greed's form. (There was of course the issue of why Envy chose to assume that form in the first place, but as I said, Envy does not like to dwell on this.)

Envy felt superlatively guilty as he ran his fingers up the length of Greed's now hard member. The guilt wasn't enough to stop him though. It hadn't, that first time over a century ago when Envy hadn't quite figured life out yet, and it sure wasn't going to stop him now. He quickened the motion of his hand, biting back a moan. It was always long enough between incidences like these that the sensations took him by surprise.

So, not even you want to touch yourself, leviathan?

It was all too easy to imagine the barbs Greed would throw at him, they'd known each other long enough. Yet somehow the pain of the insult only heightened the pleasure. Sometimes it was welcome just to feel anything, which Envy hardly did anymore.

Go ahead and use my body if you need to. Whoever said I'm not generous?

Now that he had started, he didn't want to stop. It was shameful delicious and humiliating and he wanted more.

On a masochistic whim, Envy changed its form from Greed to Kimblee. It made sense, in a way. He was Greed's latest conquest, or would be soon enough. Besides, the variation was nice. Envy rarely understood Greed's motives when it came to his endless erotic episodes, but in this instance Envy saw the appeal. Kimblee was interesting as humans went, and good to look at. Playing with his body would be fun.

The first thing he did was reach up and free his hair from its neat ponytail, running his fingers through it. It was nice hair, long and soft, not something Envy got to enjoy in Greed's form.

The apparatus of his new body throbbed insistently, and he returned his attention to it. With his right hand otherwise occupied, he brought up the left hand and flicked his tongue around the perimeter of the transmutation circle. This was the one with the moon in the center, symbolic of silver and the feminine. He had never noticed before, Greed's body had never led him to, that the palms of the hands were such a sensitive area.

There was something missing. The sting of Greed's derision was the catalyst that made this pleasure what it was, and yet Envy had trouble imagining Kimblee saying anything especially cruel to him, probably because they were still on polite acquaintance terms. Nothing at all like Greed.

He settled on picturing the two of them together, Greed's touch on Kimblee's body, the two of them occupying that space reserved for Greed and his chosen partners, something that, briefly, fleetingly, could be akin to love. It was hardly an exclusive category, and yet one which Envy had nonetheless never been allowed into. And that was fine, he didn't want to be with Greed in that way or Kimblee either, Envy didn't do those nasty human things, and yet…

You're such a liar, Envy. For some reason, Greed using his real name left more of a sting than any 'nickname'. You've lied all your life and you'll lie yourself to death.

I'll outlive you! Envy screamed inside his own mind. Your greed will be the end of you!

Maybe I will die. But I'll die knowing I've lived.

Suddenly, Envy wasn't aroused at all anymore.

It shifted abruptly back into its own form, genderless once more. Its body felt strange now, having worked itself almost to completion only to have the possibility snatched away. It felt sore, heavy with unresolved tension.

It remained there for a moment longer, curling in on itself, more conflicted than before.

You'll all die.

Father would kill Greed, sooner or later. Greed would rebel, and Father would kill him. Him, and all his human pets, unnamed, innumerable over the years, the decades. Even Kimblee would die, if not because he was a human and to be used in Father's plan, then because he was a human and all humans died so quickly for whatever reason.

You'll die, and I'll be glad.

And yet it was hard to picture the future without Greed in it.

.

(A/N: Pfffft Envy for being nonsexual you're such a littler pervert XD. I am going to bed now, and I will undoubtedly regret this in the morning. Er, later in the morning. Anyway, thanks for reading...I think...)