somewhatclear

Roy occasionally chooses this pub specifically because none of the meddlesome prats he calls his team would think of looking for him there (too dingy even for him, and also too out of hand), and yet— there is Edward Elric, wearing an unfamiliar brown coat, a hint of annoyance on his face as the bartender doesn’t immediately notice him.

Technically, Edward isn’t part of his team—not anymore. He’s not military anymore, even, he just comes in for consultations now and then, he’s one hundred percent a civilian now, but Roy still thinks it’s against the rules. On the other hand, possibly, Roy is seeing things. It wouldn’t be the first time.

But then Edward notices him, making a face that looks like Roy feels. “Good evening, general. You look like you want to die even more than usual. Long day?” He drops on the stool next to Roy’s with a grunt.

It’s so strange seeing him here. Roy wants to touch his braid just to make sure he’s real. “The fuck you doin’ here, Fullmetal?” he slurs instead.

Edward snorts. “It’s Mister Elric for you—but you know that. How much did you drink, not to remember that? I have some catching up to do.”

“Not enough, if I’m not dead yet,” Roy mutters. He grits his teeth then, works his tongue over his gums to mutter an apology. He’s joking, Edward has to know that, but Edward isn’t one of his anymore, it’s not fair to shove his messes on him. He’s not Riza, he’s not Hughes—

Edward huffs. “Why are you apologizing?” He grabs some peanuts from the bowl sitting on the counter, throws them in the air with a practiced gesture and catches them with his mouth, grimacing. “Ugh, musty and salty. Now I don’t know if you fucking noticed, but I tore my own limbs off at the age of eleven, and besides, I was never under the impression that you were mentally stable. What’s a little suicidal joke between insane old colleagues?”

“Are you admitting to the insanity of your actions? That’s a first.”

The bartender finally comes back with Edward’s drink: a couple fingers of the same gut-scouring scotch Roy’s getting poisoned on, with a chunk of ice floating in it. Edward takes a sip, and seems to think over the answer before giving Roy a one-shouldered shrug.

“I mean—we were acting on the assumption that our theories were right. We did extensive research on it. We went out of our way to get a teacher to fill the gaps in our education. The only really insane thing about it all was that we believed we could succeed.”

“Believing impossible things is pretty much the definition of insanity.”

“You really should open a dictionary sometimes,” Edward shakes his head. “The point is— It didn’t feel like we were doing something insane. We went about it in a very ordered way.”

Roy pours himself another scotch—the bottle resting on the counter had been his previous drinking buddy, before Edward’s arrival. He still doesn’t know how he feels about the change of partners. “Of course it didn’t feel insane. Nothing ever does, not until reality punches you in the face.”

“That’s not necessarily true. I have lots of insane thoughts, and do insane things all the time, and sometimes I just think the world is insane, you know?” Edward takes another sip of scotch and hums. “The more I say it out loud— it’s starting to lose all meaning as a word.”

Roy can’t help but chuckle. “Tell me an insane thought you’ve been having.”

“Knives,” Edward says, without missing a beat. “Can’t handle knives. The second I have a knife in my hand I imagine stabbing myself in the leg.”

Roy hums. “Intrusive thoughts.”

“Yeah, that’s not the insane part—that’s normal. Everyone has those. I think the real unreasonable part creeps in when you start thinking about loopholes,” Edward continues, gesturing with his glass. “Because, you know, it’s pretty hard to find a moment to drive a blade into your leg when your baby brother, who is physically unable to sleep because of your stupid-ass insane actions, is watching you like a hawk. So here’s where insane thought turns into insane action.”

Edward punctuates the sentence by putting the glass back on the counter, and then hoists his left ankle up onto his right knee and starts rolling his pant leg up. The automail glints in the low light, shocking and impressive; Roy always forgets that Edward never got all of himself back, even with the very obvious reminder in the form of the limp that he’s noticed has been growing worse every week.

Roy has to resist the urge to look away when Edward pulls the fabric past the port, uncovering a mess of scars and lightly tanned skin, something about the gesture feeling obscene and inappropriate. “Here,” Edward says, rotating his knee on the outside, and pointing to an ugly bruise on the inside of his thigh, just against the rim of the port. “If you jam a finger at the right angle in this spot, it hurts like a motherfucker. Hours of entertainment for when you’re stuck on the train.”

“Is that why you’ve been limping?” Roy asks, and Edward goes a little blank.

Roy runs his tongue over his teeth. He wasn’t supposed to look. He wasn’t supposed to point it out.

“No, the damn thing is just too short,” Edward answers calmly, fixing his pants and going back to his drink. “I should go to Rush Valley and get it fixed—been putting it off for months.”

“Didn’t we have this exact conversation like, two months ago?” Winry’s been riding my ass about maintenance again, Roy remembers him muttering to someone else at the office at some point, his cheek smudged with chalk and his hair in disarray as usual, his shirt sleeves rolled past his elbows, looking tired and ragged surrounded by piles of notes, as if I could just leave y’all in the middle of this mess. She doesn’t understand I cannot just leave, she’ll deal— but he’s not sure. Roy wonders if that’s just another little insanity on top of all the others.

“Don’t be stupid,” Edward says, smoothly finishing his glass. “You didn’t know about the bruise back then, did you?”

*

The next time, Edward is already there. He’s curled up on the same stool as the last time, but this time the bottle of scotch has become his drinking buddy. An empty glass rests at his elbow, and he’s scribbling something on a napkin. His hair is a mess, barely put together in a low ponytail, and he’s pale and looking like he could use some sleep.

Roy isn’t sure if he still wants to get drunk or swear off liquor altogether.

“I didn’t realize we were taking turns,” Roy tells him as a way of greeting, gestures to the bartender for an empty glass and sits next to Edward. He glances at the numbers scratched on the napkin, and takes an educated guess. “Is that painkillers or sleeping pills?”

“Painkillers. Winry’s prescription,” Edward slurs. His eyes are too bright. “Sleeping pills make me stupid, fuck that crap. Also, they don’t always work, sometimes I swear it’s just sugar or some shit.”

“Duly noted,” Roy says. He reads the calculations over his shoulder, doing the math in his head. “I’m not familiar with this specific compound but that many grams all at once seem a bit drastic, as a remedy for pain—unless you’re trying to cure it once and for all.”

Edward ignores him. His pen trembles over a number, hesitates before scratching it out and starting over. “Thank you for your input.”

“You’re welcome. Your handwriting is atrocious as always. Weren’t you right handed?”

“Shut up.”

“And I think you converted milligrams wrong.”

Edward scratches out another number with an angry scribble, and glares at Roy. “If you have to criticise my suicidal tendencies, at least buy me another drink.”

“Oh no, I’m cutting you off.” Roy pours the last glass from the bottle and sips it. He’s definitely too sober for this. “I’m not used to seeing you drink.”

“Well, I’m not a kid anymore. I can drink now.”

Roy glances at the empty bottle sitting between them. “I can see. How much?”

The napkin gets scribbled on some more, then Edward gives up on it. He pushes the pen and the paper away and pulls his leg close to his chest. Roy doesn’t know how he doesn’t topple over, stool and everything. “Dunno. A couple glasses before bed help me sleep, and don’t leave me too groggy in the morning. And you know, all this fucking consultation work is just so fucking stressful, I just—a glass in the evening, to relax. And I come here, sometimes—I know what you’re thinking. That’s not it.”

Sleeping pills, and then drinking himself to sleep. Roy struggles to put it together with the kid he remembers, who used to fall asleep in the middle of reports on the couch in his office, that spent more time sleeping on the train than doing anything else. Eighteen hours a day, like a cat. “Do you have trouble sleeping?”

“Falling asleep, It’s like—you ever forget to eat and then you feel like your body needs the nourishment but the idea of getting lunch makes you nauseous because it’s too late?” He rubs his hand down his face. “I think it’s just—my body has been sleeping and eating on behalf of Alphonse’s body for so long it forgot how to do it on its own, and now that he doesn’t need me anymore—but it’s fine. I’m working on it.”

Roy taps on the napkin, “By killing yourself?”

“Yeah, drinking myself to death was taking too long, so I’ve been outsourcing it.” Edward shakes his head. “No, don’t be stupid. It’s just—”

His thumb rubs a spot on the inside of his thigh. Roy knows what it is, now. He doesn’t comment. Insane thoughts. Insane actions.

“I’m stuck,” Edward blurts out in a low voice, like he’s confessing some horrible crime. “Winry is the best mechanic in Rush Valley, Alphonse wrote me some incredible shit about alkahestry in his last letter and I’m—” he gestures at the half-empty pub with a sneer. “So I figured—that’s when people get life-turning revelations, right? In life-or-death situations, right when it’s almost too late.”

Roy’s mouth is dry. He takes a sip from his glass and grimaces at the taste. “So that’s what the math is about? Almost dying?”

“No,” Edward starts, then reconsiders. “Well, yes. I mean, I haven’t gotten any brilliant ideas, so clearly I haven’t almost killed myself well enough yet.”

How many times did you try, Roy wants to ask, but he’s too afraid of the answer. He drains his glass, to have something to do with his mouth that isn’t scream or suck in an oxygen-less breath.

*

“You’re still alive,” Roy greets him when he sees Edward enter the pub a week later. He meant to sound sardonic and sarcastic, but it comes out too sincere, too relieved. He hadn’t seen him come in for consultation for the whole time. He had been considering looking up his address, just in case—and then he didn’t. Coward.

The shock on Edward’s face is also too bright, too honest. “How morbid, general. You sound like you didn’t expect me to be. Besides, so are you.” He scoffs, then adds quietly. “I went to fix the goddamn leg. Winry says hello.”

He sits. They drink in silence for a while. It’s uncomfortable. Their stools are pushed too close together—Roy can feel the warmth of Edward’s shoulder through his coat. He didn’t take it off, like he didn’t expect to stay long. Neither of them pull away. They just drink from the same bottle of shitty liquor for a while. Something changed, but he can’t tell what. Roy drags his fingers through the condensation on his glass, and waits.

Edward breaks first. “Tell me an insane thought you’ve been having.”

“I considered telling people I’m a vegetarian so I don’t have to explain why it’s forbidden to consume lunch on my office floor, but I do eat cold cuts sometimes and it wouldn’t hold up as an excuse.”

“Amazing how boring you can be. Tell me something you tell yourself when you come to drink here.”

Roy startles when Edward leans harder into his arm, head basically on Roy’s shoulder—seeking comfort? Warmth?—but not looking at him, golden eyes lost in the distance. He clears his voice. “It’s your turn, if I’m not mistaken.”

“I wasn’t aware it was a game. I’m not playing.” Edward grits his teeth, covers his face with one hand. “Just say something, please.”

“I tell myself that I had a shit day at work and I deserve a night out to relax,” Roy says.

It’s the truth. It’s the smallest lie Roy can usually come up with. It doesn’t matter that it’s the very top layer of a stack that contains things like I know there’s a gun in the house and I could put my hand over an open flame and screw painkillers, the sleeping pills is where it’s at.

Edward barks out a hollow laughter, turns his face into Roy’s shoulder. “That’s really insane.”

“It’s enough to get me out of the house. Out of my head. That’s all it takes sometimes. That’s why you also come here, isn’t it?” Roy whispers. He wants to put an arm around him. He doesn’t dare move, afraid to break the moment.

“I don’t know why I’m doing anything, if I must be honest,” Edward mumbles.

*

“I can’t stand this place tonight. Let’s get out of this shithole,” Edward mutters one night, throwing wrinkled bills on the counter and doing up the collar of his coat only after a couple drinks. “Wanna see my place?”

The air outside smells like rain, and Edward’s uneven steps are heavy on the wet concrete. He lives close by, in a two-room apartment Roy has never seen but has envisioned in his mind so many times. Unsurprisingly, there’s a ratty couch pushed against a wall and more books than actual furniture to store them. It smells like mold and paper, and the light fixture in the hallway doesn’t turn on.

Edward kisses him under the coat rack. It’s frantic, brash and unapologetic like everything Edward ever does. Roy kisses him back, cradling the nape of his neck to slow him down. He savors the moment with his eyes closed until Edward blinks in terrified regret, opens his mouth in stunned silence—and then his expression crumbles into something furious, humiliated and pained.

Roy expected all of that—but the first sob still comes as a surprise.

“Oh, Edward,” he murmurs, holding him by the shoulders. “It’s alright.” He sits them on the sofa, letting Edward pull away to cover his face. Roy gives him a little space, just listens to the muffled sniffles Edward smothers against the palm of his own hand for a while.

“Why the fuck didn’t you stop me,” Edward scolds him, eventually.

Roy wants to laugh. How do you stop the boy who punched God in the face from kissing you? “I figured you needed to let it out of your system,” he says instead. “There’s nothing wrong with a little physical touch.”

“Of course you saw that coming,” Edward mutters. It’s a little slurred. Maybe he’s a little drunker than Roy gave him credit for. “You know I went to see Winry the other week?”

Roy grimaces. He doesn’t particularly want to hear about Winry while he still remembers the feeling of Edward’s lips on his—but this isn’t about him. “You mentioned, yes.”

“I figured—maybe she’s right, I need a break. I like this job, I swear but it’s murder on my nerves. So I get on a train, go to Rush Valley to see her. And I expect to be happy to see her, but she’s so—” he gestures, shaking his head. “We’re in the shop and she goes on and on about the fact that I need to take care of myself, that my spine is going to give me issues if I don’t stay on stop of maintenance, all her usual nagging, and—” He wipes his nose on his wrist. “And not one later we have dinner, and we’re kissing and—I feel nothing, like I’m not even there.”

The despair in his voice is bewildered and resigned all at once.

“I kept thinking about the way you looked at my leg when I showed it to you that night at the pub,” Edward blurts out, and it shoots a wave of dizziness through Roy. “I wanted more of that—that’s why tonight—fuck. It was so stupid. I’m sorry.” His voice breaks again, and he wipes angrily at his eyes, not looking at Roy.

“It’s fine,” Roy says. I will look at you as much as you want, he wants to say. “Did it help?” he asks, instead.

“I don’t know,” Edward says, too honest. “It wasn’t bad, though.”

Roy can’t help but snort. “A glowing review. I’ll have you know that I never had any complaints—”

“Would you fuck me if I asked you?” Edward interrupts him, blunt and rough. He’s still not looking at him.

“Not today,” Roy answers, not unkindly. Despite his fame, he isn’t that much of a bastard. He wouldn’t want Edward to have regrets in the morning. He’s curious though. “Was that your next step?”

Edward shrugs. “I figured I would try going all the way, since you’re the one thing making me feel something, these days.”

*

“You weren’t at the pub,” Edward accuses him, pointing a finger at him, dripping all over Roy’s doorstep. He looks like a drowned cat, with the fringe plastered on his forehead and the brown coat flattened against his body. He looks like rain has personally offended him, and it’s the brightest spark he’s seen in his eyes all month.

You’re here, Roy wants to tell him. “Ever heard of an umbrella, Edward? Come in,” he says instead, gesturing him inside, and it comes out warmer than he expected. He must be drunker than he thought, with the funny way his stomach flips when Edward pushes his hair out of his face with a huff, stomping through the doorway.

He goes to fetch a towel and a robe and comes back to Edward hovering awkwardly at the edge of the living room, leaving a pool of rainwater on the floor as he looks around. He’s fuzzy and stupid with drink, and inordinately happy. He’d been regretting not going out—rain made him crabby, he could drink in his own home from his own booze stash, couldn’t he? But he’d started drinking and getting crabby anyway, because he missed—

But Edward is here now. Roy is a pathetic excuse of a man.

“I guessed you had a nice house,” Edward says. “But this is nice. Did Hawkeye help you decorate?”

“Riza’s place looks even more of a bachelor pad than mine. My taste is way more sophisticated,” Roy points out. “Which is why I had Gracia pick out most of my furniture. She has an excellent eye for choosing functional furnishings that still look good.” Hughes had put her to the task actually, because he didn’t trust Roy to just move all his second hand shit from his old apartment; he’d wanted him to look the part, as Roy climbed the ranks. Fucking dumbass, always worrying more about Roy than himself— “You should take those wet things off, before you make my expensive hardwoods rot.”

“Trying to get me naked? Aren’t you worried I’ll take it as an invitation to try and jump your bones again?” Edward jokes weakly, avoiding his eyes as he takes the towel and the robe from Roy’s hands.

“I trust you to control yourself,” Roy answers dryly, but fuck, he wishes. He wants to kiss him. There’s something very wrong with him. “I’ll put the kettle on—unless you want something stronger?”

“I think I had enough for tonight,” Edward mutters, taking off his coat, his boots, his trousers, hanging them to the rack in the hallway to let them dry, before pulling Roy’s dressing gown over his waistcoat. It’s too big for him, and he should look ridiculous half dressed in his underwear, but he doesn’t, and Roy goes to the kitchen before he can entertain the thought any longer.

“Tell me an insane thought you’ve had tonight,” Edward says later while they’re on the couch, as Roy pours them two mugs of scalding tea. He’s got the towel draped over his head, and his expression is a little obscured by it and by the curtain of loose hair hanging in his face. “I can go first if you like.”

I think I’m falling in love with you, even if you’re here because you don’t know where else to go, Roy thinks. He takes a sip of tea and burns his tongue on it. “Go ahead,” he says.

“I was at the pub earlier, and I kept thinking that you weren’t coming because you were dead in a ditch somewhere,” Edward rasps. “The absolute dread that filled me—my stomach was trying to climb its way out of my throat, and I couldn’t sit on the fucking stool because my legs kept like, twitching with this awful ache and yet—” He laughs. “I was glad that I was feeling anything at all, you know?”

“So you came to check on me?”

“I came because I’ve been spending months doing my job every day, drawing circles I cannot activate and pretending that we never talked after I turned in my silver watch, while counting the minutes to the next time we could see each other at the pub, and tonight you weren’t there,” Edward says, his voice sounding like broken glass. “That’s another insane thought for you. I’m on fire, tonight. Your turn.”

He never bothered to properly fasten the robe, and when Roy looks down he can see the bruise on his thigh, just above the automail port. He moves slowly, giving Edward the time to pull away or to stop him, but Edward just looks like he’s forgotten how to breathe; Roy covers the mark with his hand, leans in, and kisses him.

Edward lets him. He tastes like the awful whiskey from the pub and uncertainty. The towel drops from his head. He gasps in his mouth when Roy pushes a thumb into the painful spot on his thigh, and he moans when Roy rubs the palm of his other hand against the hardening length of his cock through his underwear.

They end up rutting against each other like teenagers chasing pleasure for the first time, Edward straddling Roy’s lap and Roy kissing Edward with his hands buried in his hair, clinging on for dear life as the world becomes a distant and inconsequential blur in the back of his consciousness.

Edward’s weight against his chest is weirdly comforting, when he curls up against Roy to catch his breath. Roy strokes down his back and enjoys the softness of his cheek against his collarbone.

“You know, that’s cheating,” Edward huffs. “You still have to tell me an insane thought.”

“I ran out of insane thoughts,” Roy says. “Someone told me once that’s when you turn to loopholes—when you start turning to insane actions.”

Edward’s throat clicks against his sternum. “That felt less insane than it ought to be.”

Roy hummed, and closed his eyes. “That’s the insane part about it, isn’t it?”