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Roy knew when Fullmetal and his brother returned to Central first because he made it his business to know these things, and second because two large crates were delivered by messenger to the office that morning. Payment upon receipt, naturally. They contained several hundred books, most alchemy related, and a crumpled train schedule with a few lines scribbled on the back -- Old bastard was making explosives to sell to Drachma. Got rid of them. Mayor says he'll send you the repair bill. Figured the library could have these.
Roy pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. He had simultaneously developed a throbbing headache and the inexplicable urge to tuck a grin down inside a smirk. A natural response to Edward, he had learned. And it seemed it was time to review the definition of "report" with him again.
"Shall I send these to the library, sir?" Hawkeye prompted, tapping the crates.
"No," Roy said, thinking of the mountain of paperwork on his desk. "Best that I inspect them first, make sure there aren't any of the Inferno Alchemist's notes left."
Hawkeye raised an eyebrow, but not even she could fault his logic, seeing as how it was true. He drafted the entire office to help, and the break in routine had everyone in a good mood.
Roy ended up with the bulk of the alchemical texts, and he wasn't faking his absorption. The Inferno Alchemist, retired from the state, now traitor and missing, had amassed a fascinating personal library.
Hughes came by just before lunch. He blinked around the office to find them all down on the floor surrounded by piles of books. Roy looked up from an enormous tome called A Treatise Upon the Divinative Powers of Alchemical Science and the full-page plate of an array that he'd been attempting and failing to decipher.
"Happy day, my friend," Hughes said cheerfully. "For my beautiful wife and brilliant daughter are cooking dinner for you tonight."
Roy blinked. "Not that I'm not pleased, but what's the occasion?"
"Ed and Al," Hughes said. "Gracia's missed them. Seven o'clock, don't be late."
"Hold on," Roy said, before he could bound off again. "You can help."
"Help with what?" Hughes asked suspiciously.
"Carrying," Roy said, and pushed himself to his feet. "I want to look a few things up in the library, and we might as well take some of these over while we're at it."
"Sir," Hawkeye began forbiddingly, "you're to read the draft budgetary –"
"Alchemist's business takes precedence, Lieutenant," Roy cut in smoothly. He tucked the Treatise under his arm, shoved a stack of books at Hughes, and ushered him out the door.
"Alchemist's business?" Hughes asked with predictable nosiness as they headed up the hall.
Roy shrugged. "Just curious about something. Did you say Alicia was cooking?"
Hughes beamed. "She's a chef in the making. I got her a little apron with flowers on it and a miniature set of pans and . . ."
Gracia answered his knock, accepted the proffered bottle of wine, and shooed him through the house to the backyard. They'd already started – Hughes was listening rapturously to Alicia as she described her day, and at the other end of the table the Elrics were hunched together over an appetizer platter as Fullmetal used carrot sticks to block out misshapen, square arrays. He was talking about alchemy in the exact same fixated, awed tones with which Alicia was describing the burrow of earthworms she'd discovered.
Alphonse glanced up at once and inclined his helmet. "Hello, Colonel," he chimed brightly.
Fullmetal twisted around to look, a handful of carrots bristling from his mouth. "Oh, it's him," he mumbled, and snapped through all the carrots at once with a fierce click of teeth.
"Fullmetal, Alphonse," Roy said calmly, taking a quick inventory. He would know if either of them had sustained serious damage, but it was always worth checking for himself. They seemed fine – Edward was tanned a toasty brown, and Alphonse didn't have so much as a scratch. "Thank you for the interesting delivery," he continued. "Though I would point out that it is traditional for subordinates to present field reports in person. And in complete sentences."
"Sorry, was busy," Edward said, blinking disingenuously. "Had to wash my hair."
"Tomorrow," Roy said firmly, and moved on to Hughes before Edward could air more of his authority issues.
Dinner was long and boisterous. Hughes was famous for getting buzzed on half a glass of wine, Alicia was turning into a downright chatterbox, and Edward contributed his usual efforts to the racket when he wasn't shoveling in food like a starving alley cat. Roy ate the home cooked meal with quiet gratitude and drank himself into a haze of mellowed contentment.
He caught Edward watching as he poured his third glass, and lifted a sardonic eyebrow. "Sorry, Fullmetal, it'll be a few years before you're grown up enough for this," he said, laying the provocative emphasis out of sheer habit.
Edward went rigid. "Who're you call—"
"Oh, now, Roy, Ed's fifteen now. He can have a taste if he wants." Hughes leaned around him, beaming paternally. "Here, let me pour you—"
The thunderclouds on Ed's brow receded. "As if age is any indicator of mental maturity," he said. "Just look at the Bas – Colonel." He plucked Roy's own glass from his fingers, eyed it as if he were trying to divine its nature down to the component atoms – which, Roy realized, he probably was – and swigged half of it in one mouthful. "Huh," he said judiciously, after a long moment of swirling and gulping. "It doesn't come out of a cow, I'll give it that."
Roy snorted and recovered his glass, both relieved and appalled, as he always was, to see flickers of the child in Ed.
Gracia served an enormous chocolate cake for dessert, "to welcome the boys home," she said. Ed looked touched beyond all expectation, though Roy supposed if there was any language Ed was fluent in, it was food.
Roy carried a stack of plates into the kitchen and lingered there as the coffee perked. Gracia hummed along to the quiet radio, then turned it up for the news segment. She politely told Roy to get his guest hands out of her dishwater, and he acceded the old skirmish with a laugh. He went out to the entryway for a minute and dug the book out of his coat, then snagged a cup of fresh coffee on his way back through. Hughes had come in, and the two of them were standing at the sink, arms around each other's waists, looking out at the bulk of Al in the small garden and the tiny lump of Alicia in his shadow.
Roy stepped out onto the back deck to find Fullmetal hunched up on the steps in the glow of the setting sun, a book open in front of his face and the bright rope of his braid flung crookedly across his curved spine. Roy stood a moment in his light, got no reaction, and cleared his throat. Edward turned a page, one finger tracing down the text as his eyes flickered fast and efficient.
"Fullmetal," Roy said, waited, and tried an exasperated, "Edward." Ed made a premonitory back-of-the-throat sound of irritation, hunching up as if the book were a threatened cub. Roy sighed, shrugged, and dropped down to sit beside him on the top step. He flipped open the treatise to the place marker, then simply slid it into Ed's line of sight, between clutched book and devouring eyes.
Ed jumped, scowled. "What the—" he began, then he processed the sprawl of array on the page and broke off.
"What do you make of that?" Roy asked.
Ed cast him a look, irritated and curious and irritated to be curious. "What's this?" he asked suspiciously.
"An alchemical array," Roy said in tones of exaggerated patience.
"Need me to tell you what it is?" Ed asked maliciously. "I guess it is a bit more complicated than that kindergarten Hydrogen-Oxygen-boom thing you do." He glanced down at the array, eyes tracking in the peculiar center-out way of alchemists. Roy swallowed a sharp reply; Ed had just switched him off entirely and disappeared into the intricacies of the array, and he wouldn't hear a word of it. Edward's metal fingertips traced lightning fast patterns over the page, deviating here and there to sketch invisible adjustments of his own. He looked up after a minute and a half, and Roy grimaced to remember the two painstaking hours and stack of reference books it had taken him to do what Ed had just done like reading the newspaper.
"Divination alchemy," Ed said scornfully. "Also known as complete and total bullshit." He flipped back and glanced at the title page, then snorted. "Thought so – crazy old bastard had a whole library of crap like this."
"You don't believe in divination?" Roy asked. It was a largely unknown branch of Alchemy, ignored at most universities and out of favor for over a century. But Roy had come across a few compelling historical references during his studies, and it was odd to hear Ed, of all people, dismissing any facet of the science.
Ed snorted again, eyes flickering briefly across the yard to his brother. "Didn't say that. But what's the point? I already know everything I need to about the future, and the rest doesn't matter."
Roy blinked, scrutinized his profile. What was it like, he wondered a little dizzily, to have that kind of absolute assurance? Ed knew he would restore his brother the same way Roy knew the sun would rise every morning. It wasn't arrogance, either; to Ed, there was simply no other option. It was how the world would be, and that was the end of that. Not for the first time, Roy felt a stirring of fear for him. What would Ed do – what wouldn't he do?
He wasn't afraid for the rest of the world, as he might have been with anyone else. For all his youth, Edward had a moral compass seemingly set into bedrock and calibrated to some true North Roy knew existed out there somewhere, but had never quite been able to find for himself. But when it came to his own life . . .
Roy wondered bleakly if perhaps it wasn't time to have a little chat with the younger Elric, ensure Alphonse was fully aware just how far his brother's devotion might take them. Ed would be furious – Ed would be incandescent -- but Roy was under absolutely no illusions about who might have a chance of controlling Edward in extremity.
Ed was looking over the array again, chewing at his lip and blowing his long bangs absently away from his eyes. "What idiot would try this?" he asked, jabbing a finger down on the crackling page. "That's not equivalent. What does that even mean?"
"Knowledge," Roy said automatically, following his pointing finger to the complex glyph scribed above the array.
Edward cast him a disdainful look. "No shit," he said irritably. "But what does it mean?"
Roy opened his mouth to answer, realized he didn't immediately have one, and stopped. Edward was right – the price to be paid for a glimpse of the future was obscure at best.
"Why d'you want to know about this, anyway?" Ed asked abruptly, slanting suspicious eyes his way. "Want an edge for betting on the horses?"
Roy shrugged with reflexive unconcern. "Oh, just general interest," he said.
"General bullshit," Ed said, slammed the book closed, and shoved it at him. "Next time you need me to interpret for you, make sure it's at least interesting." He sprang lightly off the steps and went to join his brother, coat flapping.
The Fuhrer departed for one of his periodic tours of the East, while the Elrics settled into Central for a few weeks of library time, pending a new assignment. Roy was obscurely relieved; it made him nervous just to have Edward in general proximity to the Fuhrer -- rather like Gracia's terror of leaving Alicia alone anywhere near Roy's gloves, come to think of it.
Roy followed both their activities with equal, habitual care.
"He's sent his secretary off on an errand, apparently," Hughes said, feet kicked up on the edge of Roy's desk. "Don't know where yet. Something odd about that. I'll let you know." And "Ed's back to chimeras again – that can't be healthy bedtime reading."
"Mmm," said Roy. "That's bothering you. The secretary."
Hughes shrugged noncommittally. "Just a hunch," he said, and Roy's attention immediately snapped to, because historically speaking Hughes's hunches were as good as another man's hard proof.
"Any particular reason?" Roy asked.
Hughes shrugged again. "Probably nothing," he said casually, and made a photograph appear in his hand with some invisible legerdemain Roy personally found nearly as impressive as his own alchemical trick. "Have I shown you this yet?" Hughes asked brightly. "She's dressed like a pumpkin, Roy . . ."
The next morning Roy made a pro forma check on the location of the Elrics – as if he couldn't guess – and then had Havoc drive him over to the library. Fullmetal, he had found, performed most effectively (and entertainingly) when periodically prodded. And leaving him to his own devices for too long was just never a good idea.
A librarian directed him into the back to one of the private study rooms. Roy blinked in momentary startlement at her delighted, fond smile; it was so odd to find another person who actually liked Edward. Ed's peers were either frustrated or flatly confused by him, while Ed himself dismissed the whole lot as incomprehensible, and most adults Roy had observed either made the mistake of pitying Ed (some had even survived doing it to his face) or envied his brilliance. Probably a very lonely life, with just Al and Hughes and the staff. And him too, Roy supposed.
But librarians liked books, and Ed loved books. They were the only things in the world aside from Al that Roy had ever seen him treat with tenderness.
He found them hunched together over the same book, Ed speaking in rapid, low tones as he leaned his entire body weight onto the arm hooked over his brother's shoulder. Al sat still and solid, breaking into the monologue once in a while to make an observation, one huge gauntlet hovering unobtrusively behind Ed's back to catch him should his balance slip in the precarious position.
Roy coughed gently from the doorway, and Ed fell silent immediately, twisting around in an unbelievable contortion to look. "What now?" he asked, as if Roy had been harassing him regularly on the half hour.
"Hello, Colonel," Al said, lifting his brother one-handed and depositing him neatly in his chair. Ed squeaked, and Roy grinned to see a line of red creeping up the back of his neck.
"Al, don't do that—"
""If you would sit like a normal—"
"I was trying to see--"
"You could have just asked—"
"Some people are so oversized—"
"Brother--"
"Boys," Roy said hastily, before it could degenerate into arm wrestling. He'd seen it happen once, and though the look of comic shock on Ed's face upon defeat had been entertaining – as if he had honestly expected a different outcome – the library wasn't really the place.
"What do you want?" Ed asked, his tone of fond irritation losing the fond.
"Just checking up on my subordinate," Roy said, coming in and perusing their study table. "Finding anything interesting?"
"Well, we were before—" Ed began, at the same time that Al said, "not really, thank you for asking, Colonel."
"Chimeras," Roy said, leaning over to read the spines on the nearest stack of books. "Any particular reason, apart from the obvious?"
Ed shrugged, and Roy couldn't tell if it was just Ed being Ed, or the characteristic prickliness of alchemists about their work. They were, by and large, a bunch of secretive bastards, and Ed had every right to conceal his works in progress. Which didn't mean that Roy wouldn't come up close to the table and take a quick but thorough perusal of Edward's notes under the guise of inventorying the rest of their books. Not that it did him much good – Ed's notes were so cryptic as to nearly be in code, and all Roy got was a snatch of formula H2O7N and a hurried marginal scrawl that just said always the gate
"Have you fed your brother yet today, Alphonse?" Roy asked, mouth working on auto-provoke. "He seems a bit cranky."
"I'll show you cranky, you jerk-off bast—"
"Time for lunch," Al said brightly, bouncing to his feet and beginning to tidy their table. "Come on, brother, you know you'll think better after a sandwich or two. Or three."
Ed simmered down and tucked away his notes with the sort of obedience only Al could expect, and Roy waited politely to walk out with them.
"Have you found the café two blocks up?" he asked idly. "They have the most enormous frosty shakes."
"We usually go to the street vender on the corner," Al said, just as if he were included in the meal. "But brother likes shakes. Where did you say it was?"
"The cart is right here," Ed said with the incomprehension of someone for whom the only important food criteria were here and lots.
"Why don't I walk with you," Roy said, and Ed's sputtering lasted through the whole first block, at which point Roy initiated a debate on the merits of the newest state alchemist's technique for faster liquid-gas transmutation. And the next thing he knew, Roy found himself seated at an outdoor table with lunch spread before him, listening to Ed tell him how wrong he was through a mouthful of chicken – "so obvious even you have to see it; hand me the salt, will you?" -- and quietly thinking what gate?
And Roy didn't take out the book crammed at an angle so it would fit into the bottom drawer of his desk. He let it be for an entire week, in fact, before shutting his office door late in the evening, when only Hawkeye was left, and taking it out for another look. He studied the array he had brought to Edward's attention, then flipped to the beginning and started reading. The next time he looked up, it was nearly midnight. He had a terrible crick in his neck, an empty stomach, and a head full of theory and very little fact. Which, he supposed wearily, wasn't entirely unexpected. Ed wasn't precisely wrong about this.
And yet . . .
And yet Hughes still didn't know what the Fuhrer's secretary was up to. And yet the reports coming out of Ishbal were solidifying from 'nebulously unsettling' to 'quietly alarming.' And yet Roy was getting older and less angry and more cynical to replace it, and he had the patience of someone who knew what it was like to lose, but sometimes it was just so exhausting. And Edward was reading about Chimeras again, and Roy took the book with him when he got up to get his coat and go home.
Alchemists were secretive, yes, but it was really just an extension of seemingly universal possessiveness. Which explained how it was that Roy had become such a dab hand at fine embroidery. He wasn't about to let anyone else apply the arrays to his gloves, after all.
But it had been a while since he'd needed to make a new pair – a fact which made it possible to get back to sleep, some nights – and it took Roy a while to dig out his supplies. He assembled a sandwich for himself, not having the patience to wait to have something delivered, and wandered into his study as he ate. He had a well-stocked kit packed neatly in a travel-ready bag. Roy sat at the desk, unpacked needles and thread and tiny scissors, and considered his options.
He sketched first, going through a few dozen sheets of large draftsman's paper he kept around for just this purpose. He perfected the array each time, applying compass and protractor first, and then working freehand until the shape sprang quick and clear from his fingertips. Then he measured, reconsidered, measured again, and cut a pattern.
It was just a few hours off dawn by then, and Roy abandoned the project and creaked up to bed to catch what sleep he could. He functioned most days on just a few hours' rest, plus whatever catnaps he could catch over his paperwork, and it was no particular hardship. Except, perhaps, when he caught a glimpse of Edward, who spent energy with the shocking abandon of a burning star and who didn't seem to know what tired was.
It became a sort of obsession over the next weeks. Roy would come home from the office, fix himself something simple to eat, and retreat to the study and his work. He was fixated on the small details, to the point of going out and purchasing an entirely new bedset with a few extra white pillow cases, in case he made a mistake and needed to start over. And he acquired more thread, as this was a much bigger undertaking than his gloves. He stuck to the dark red he'd always preferred, and the lines of neat stitching blurred and writhed like bloody snakes after a long night hunched over his work.
Roy told Hawkeye that he couldn't hold a pen to sign anything; she examined his reddened, needle-scored fingertips with some confusion and politely told him to suck it up.
He paced himself over the last few days so that he set the final stitch a little after two in the morning, just as he was beginning to feel sleepy. Roy sat back carefully, straightening his spine and wincing as his vertebrae crackled. The pillowcase was laid out flat across the desk, tacked down at one end for stability. Roy studied his handiwork, head to one side, flexing his hands and stretching his cramped fingers. The array was perfectly centered on the cotton, the outer circle done in a thick double band and the intricate patterns inside done in his finest, smallest stitches.
Roy glanced over to the book which he'd kept on his desk the whole time, though he'd rarely needed to refer to it after the first few days. He pulled it over, opened to the appropriate page, and made one last comparison. Perfect, as he'd thought.
It was only then that he hesitated again, with Ed's voice in his ear -- what does it mean? Mustang, you moron, you know better. Which he did, definitely.
Roy shook his head, laughing a little. It was a very special state of affairs, he was sure, when Edward Elric was the voice of reason. A voice he was about to ignore entirely.
Because the Fuhrer, and the Fuhrer's secretary, and Ishbal, and Scar, and the little flickers of something he'd been catching for years, the slowly coalescing idea that there was a great deal more going on in this country than anyone would guess, and Roy was a patient man of ambition if there ever was one and he could wait and watch and scheme, but it had been eating at him more and more lately and he just wanted to know -- would it all be worth it?
And because Hughes wasn't the only one to get hunches, and in moments of distraction from paperwork or boredom in meetings, a little voice would whisper at the back of his mind, what gate? Edward, what are you doing?
Roy carefully put away his tools, re-packing his sewing kit against some future emergency when he might have to leave fast and well supplied to defend himself. Then he took the embroidered pillowcase up to bed, slipped it over his pillow, and lay down. He set his fingers delicately on the outer circle, rolled to his side with his cheek pressed to the array, and willed himself to sleep. For once, it was easy.
. . . morning sun slants over the bed, and it's these moments when Roy could weep for never having seen this with his two whole eyes. Because Ed asleep in the morning light with the sheets pushed down to show him bare to the knees socks Roy in the chest and leaves him breathless. Ed does that to him a lot.
Ed is bright everywhere – metallic luster of the automail, distracting shine of his loose hair, warm glow of tanned skin down the sculpted lines of his back. Roy lifts his hair away from his face, touches the fan of translucent lashes on his cheek until Ed twitches and swipes irritably at him.
"What're you doing – trying to sleep . . ."
"Edward," Roy murmurs, leaning close over him. Ed's eyes pop open at once, cat quick and alert at the tone of his voice. "I love you in sunlight, you should have your own personal sun just to follow you around."
"Oh fuck, you're getting all drippy again," Ed says, rolling his eyes so hard he can probably see the back of his own head.
"Yes, the things you endure," Roy says, and Ed flops over onto his back with a disgruntled noise.
"If you're going to wake me up, the least you can do is make it worth my while instead of just spouting all that bullsh – ooh." He breaks off the warm-up morning rant to sigh and arch as Roy rolls one palm over his cock.
"Didn't have enough last night?" Roy asks silkily.
Ed turns his head to glare out of one malevolent golden eye. "I wasn't the one who –"
Roy shuts him up by kissing him, because arguing can be foreplay – for them, arguing can also apparently be sex -- but Roy doesn't want that this morning. This morning just like many others before it, only today Roy feels something enormous swelling behind his breastbone. It's ravenous and tender – Roy wants to leave teeth marks on Ed's shoulder while they're fucking, and then kiss them better after.
He pulls back a few inches, looks into Ed's eyes, then lifts a deliberate hand to touch his lips. Ed accepts his fingers silently, turning his head to slide his mouth down them, tongue flickering behind a hint of teeth. Roy holds him there, free hand tangled in his hair while he slips his damp fingers behind Ed's balls and presses. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated – nothing like last night, actually, which Roy is more than happy to take the credit for, thank you, because Ed certainly hadn't been complaining when Roy had licked up inside him and fucked him with his tongue until they were both dizzy and shaking. Nothing like that now, because Roy just wants him.
His fingers are only a little wet from Ed's mouth, but Roy knows Ed, and so he's a little rough when he pushes inside, a little fast to twist his fingers. Ed writhes against the bed, and Roy doesn't think he can hold him down with one hand in his hair and the fingers of the other setting up a quick, hard rhythm inside him, but he doesn't want to move either hand.
Ed's hips snap down hard, bending Roy's wrist a way it really isn't intended to, and he flashes Roy one of those snarling, pissed-off looks that Roy has developed a rather embarrassingly intense response to.
"Come on, bastard," Ed says, grabbing indiscriminately at Roy, one hand snagging his cock and the nails of the other scraping down his chest. Roy obeys, because that's just what you do when Edward Elric is digging his fingers in like that. "Yes," Ed hisses, bending himself nearly in half in one of those impossibly lithe contortions of his to hook one foot over Roy's shoulder. "This is more like it, none of that sappy crap."
Roy thrusts in hard and fast just to watch his face go slack and shocked, and he thinks, one day I'm going to tell you how beautiful you are and you're actually going to hear me. And ruefully, then where will I be?
There are words for lovers like Ed, who twists so hard he's knocked them off the bed more than once, who kicks at Roy's back mercilessly until Roy abandons the slow morning sex he'd been planning and just fucks him. And even when he's getting what he wants Ed is all teeth and nails, wild eyes and foul mouth. Roy can't stop staring at him, and that feeling is pressing at him again because Roy just cannot believe that this has become normal for him, that he can have this every morning if he wants.
"I never believed it," he pants, because he has to say something. "I always knew you were alive, and you'd come back some day."
Ed doesn't answer, except to swipe messily at the hair falling into his eyes. "Bastard pervert," he croons softly, so Roy has to lean even closer to hear him. "Can't ever get enough of it, can you, bastard?" and with the tone of his voice and the look on his face he might as well be saying I love you . . .
Roy woke up coming, fingers clenching spasmodically as if to hold onto something. He shot bolt upright, left hand sliding home into the proper glove on the nightstand. He lit the candle with a snap, other hand scrabbling for . . . Roy blinked. Why would he be looking for an eye patch?
He reached for his watch, and found that it was just after three in the morning. He'd only been asleep for –
Roy twisted around and stared down at the array on his pillowcase. The dream – the vision – he'd meant to
It was sliding through his mind now like water through a sieve, and Roy snatched frantically at the details, imprinting the fading fragments into memory. He was shaking, his body still pulsing to the beat of receding pleasure.
He sat there in bed for a few minutes, waiting for his breathing to slow and carefully sorting the few remaining impressions. The one thing he didn't doubt, from the moment of waking, was that the dream was no dream.
Roy laughed, and if he sounded a little hysterical there was no one to hear him. He'd been hoping to catch a glimpse of his future, perhaps get an idea just how far his political machinations would take him.
Instead he'd gotten morning sun on bare skin and bastard pervert and I always knew you were alive and Ed. And the feeling that still persisted, fluttering frantic wings in his chest and making every breath tremble a little.
Roy dropped his head to his raised knees. He hadn't seen the future, he'd been the future. And it hurt, because his heart was a droughted little creek bed, but just the few scraps he could remember had burst it wide with a river, a flood. Edward . . .
It would be better, Roy decided, if he could muster up even a little more surprise. Then again, it would also be better if Ed didn't occupy his mind at every turn, saunter into his thoughts and make himself at home like he owned them. And it would be better if Roy had never thought about running his hands through that bright hair, or noticed the way his eyes softened when he spoke to Al, or kept helplessly prodding at him just to watch him spit and spark.
It would also be better if he didn't know now how Ed tasted, but Roy supposed that was just what he deserved for being the sort of man who could want a fifteen-year-old boy.
He certainly wasn't going back to sleep. Roy stripped the sheets and left them in a pile on the floor for the housekeeper. Except the pillowcase, which he took with him downstairs and burned to ashes that he rinsed away down the drain to leave no trace. Then he brewed an enormous pot of coffee and sat down to await the day. It occurred to him a while later that Ed was due in the office this morning to receive his next assignment, and Roy added a healthy slug of whiskey to his next cup.
He read the paper when it appeared, drank enough coffee to make his hands shake, and arrived in the office fifteen minutes early. Hawkeye gave him a piercing, evaluative look, and then mercifully left him to his paperwork and his thoughts.
Ed arrived a predictable twenty minutes late. He kicked the door shut behind him, planted a hand on the armrest of the sofa, and just sort of rolled over it to flump on his back.
"Well?" he asked the ceiling.
Roy's palms were damp. "Change of pace, Fullmetal," he said brusquely. "I need you to conduct a bit of a survey for me." He lifted a map from his desk and waited the long moments it took Ed to sigh to his feet and come collect it.
"Survey of what?" Ed asked.
"We've been experiencing some trouble with our telephone communications in the north lately," Roy said. "Lines going down mysteriously, that sort of thing."
"Sabotage?" sharp gold eyes slanted a look at him over the top of the map.
Roy folded his hands on the desk. My God, I'm already half in love with you, and I didn't even notice. "That's what I would like to know," he said. "You see the peculiar pattern emerging—"
"Yeah," Ed said, and waved him to shut up as he studied the map. He'd come to rest with his hip propped against Roy's desk. His hair was braided back, as usual, and with his head bent like that in concentration Roy could study him unobserved.
He could see it clearly, the man Ed would be emerging from the adolescent that was. He was mostly there already – his jaw would be a bit more pronounced, his shoulders a bit broader. He was already startlingly attractive; in just a few years he would grow into heart-stopping beauty. Roy could remember that clearly, carried an indelible impression of his face along with a few words they had panted to each other. That, and the lingering aftershocks of being, for just a few moments, a man so toweringly in love. A lot of truly awful poetry suddenly made sense; Roy felt as if his soul had been enlarged to twice its size. It was an uncomfortable fit now, trying to shove it back into the same old life again.
The map crackled in Ed's hands, and Roy let out a silent breath of sudden realization. Metal fingers, he remembered that, too. A pang of premonitory grief churned his guts, and he had to look away. Amazing that Ed had actually managed to convince him that he would accomplish the impossible and restore himself, so that it hurt to know he wouldn't.
"Hmph," Ed said, folding up the map. "Deliberate, if you ask me."
"It seems probable, yes," Roy agreed absently. "You can inspect a few of the downed lines and then go from there."
"I think I know what I'm doing, thanks," Ed said. "I've got enough pract – okay, what? Do I still have jam on my face?"
"No," Roy said hastily. "Um, sorry."
Ed eyed him with confused suspicion, then shrugged. "Anything else?"
I always knew you were alive, Roy thought, suddenly aware of all the things that might mean. It occurred to him that, overshadowed by the more viscerally shocking revelations of the night, this might be the most important piece of information he'd gleaned. There would come a time when Ed would live though others would doubt it, and all Roy would have to do was wait. He thought, despite everything, it might perhaps be worth knowing that, someday. "No," he said again. "You can pick up your train tickets from Hawkeye, as usual."
"Whatever," Ed said. "Later, Bastard." He slammed the office door behind him hard enough to make Roy's brain rattle.
He slumped forward, resting his forehead against the desk. He understood it perfectly now. The price for knowing the future was having to carry that knowledge while living through the endless present. Roy wanted it now, complete with unfulfilled hopes and past griefs. But all the wanting in the world wouldn't help him. Only years could do that.