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Ed thinks about hands.
To be able to perform alchemy, a person has to be able to use his hands first. Roy Mustang cannot produce fire without his gloved hands as well as Armstrong uses his fists to punch rock spikes into the air. A person needs all of his fingers to hold the chalk that later will be used to draw a transmutation circle. Alphonse claps his hands when he fixes Winry’s clothes after a particularly difficult day.
An alchemist is nothing without the use of hands, but even so, Ed hadn’t put much thought into it until now.
He looks at his open palms, one calloused after years of use, the other soft to the touch, unused as it was replaced with a false one. Ed squints his eyes. He curls his fingers inside and out one time after the other; there are ten of them, five per hand, and they don’t seem any special. Ed cracks his knuckles until they don’t make any more sounds, but it doesn’t hurt or feel other-worldly. His nails are short and filthy with dirt after working on granny’s roof all day.
Maybe now that he can’t perform alchemy anymore his hands aren’t any different from the average person.
It doesn’t satisfy his curiosity: now that he’s put his mind on it, he can’t stop. So Ed walks every afternoon to the bar just below Hawkeye’s apartment and sits as close to the scenery as possible. He orders the same every time, milk chocolate, because he couldn’t have any when he was looking with Al for a way to recover their bodies, and waits patiently—a trait he’s developed in the few last years.
He sits upright when the man—whose name Ed’s become to know is Oliver—comes out from his hideout, wearing a black tuxedo with a bowtie. He always smiles at the public, however small, and he doesn’t act surprised when he sees Ed sitting so close another time around. They’ve never actually shared a word, but Ed considers him almost a friend by now.
Straining his neck as much as he can—he’s glad he’s taller than years back, or else he wouldn’t see—and looks in stunned silence at the way Oliver moves his fingers over the black and white keys with such control and such delicacy. His black fingers are long and thin; Ed’s come discover that almost every pianist has the same fingers. Slender and pristine, not even a scratch on them.
The melody reaches his ears as soon as Oliver presses a soft finger over a key. Ed watches as the rest follow, dancing a waltz only they know. Oliver closes his eyes and leaves his fingers to do the rest. They move slow ad they move quickly, they hover over a black key and then string another note. Ed forgets his drink completely and immerses himself into the sound, even if that’s not what he came for.
However, Ed doesn’t find anything particularly special about pianists’ fingers, either. He admires the songs they are able to create and he admires all the work they put in when they play the instrument, but there are people with long fingers that don’t play the piano.
He moves on to arm wrestling, with its big hands and meaty fingers, but he comes up empty-handed again. Ed looks at swordsmen and they way they clench their swords, at the fragile fingers of ladies born into royalty and how they hold a teacup as if their very own lives depended on it. He watches Izumi Curtis cut meat and perform alchemy in her backyard. When Roy Mustang is writing, he holds the pen very differently than when he talks into the phone. Once, he caught Mustang and Hawkeye making out in his office when they thought no one was looking—he held her differently, too.
When he lays awake in bed at night, unable to sleep and alone, Ed thinks about it too. Truth’s slimy, black hands grabbing his shirt touching his face grazing at his skin. Alphonse covering Winry’s eyes from behind and asking who is it, who is it. Ed closes his eyes and tries to sleep when his thoughts stray to dangerous territory, but he hasn’t been able to sleep well since he was seventeen and it doesn’t change now.
Ed holds up his left arm, as if to reach for the ceiling, and stares at the back of his hand, illuminated by the faint moonlight that comes through the window. There are tiny, little scars scraping it all over from when he was a child and fell, when he was older and cut himself as he viciously read books and books about alchemy, when he was older still and fought to the death. It’s calloused, rough. He closes it into a fist.
He’s been held before, by either men or women, but he didn’t find anything spectacular about their hands, black white brown. He’s felt nothing unfamiliar, nothing’s left him breathless. He’s shared kisses and promises that didn’t last, goodbyes and hellos and sounds only meant for the bedroom. There’ve been fiery touches, sneaky hands under his shirt and cold fingers around his wrists.
Always he finds himself wanting more, sometimes less; something that he doesn’t have. It drives him nuts. When he can’t sleep and it’s almost dawn, Ed closes his eyes and tries to imagine the hands he’s looking for, even if he doesn’t know anything about them. It’s mysterious and it intrigues him, but he’s tired of searching.
Al and Winry’s baby has chubby hands, little and fragile. His small fingers curl around Ed’s bigger one and don’t let go, like a lifeline. The baby moans and smiles, putting Ed’s finger inside his mouth. There are black bags under his eyes he’s sure Alphonse is going to ask about later, his hair is messy and tied into a bun because he didn’t have the strength to braid it. But he cracks a smile at the sight of the tiny human.
“She likes you,” Winry mumbles. Her stomach is still bloated but she’s lively as ever.
Her fingers are dirty with grease, even if the doctor prohibited her to work on her automails for two weeks at least. Full of callouses and nips from tools she’s used, they obviously belong to a mechanic. Ed scowls at them while he’s being trapped by the baby’s claws. Winry doesn’t notice, but Alphonse does and so he asks about it later.
His brother is sipping hot tea and watching the scenery on the other side of the window. He says, “How are you doing?”
“’M fine.” Al knows he’s not, in a sense, but he doesn’t comment on it.
“It’s been some time, since you came over. I’m glad to see you.”
Al’s hands aren’t like his brother’s, and Ed can’t help but feel envy at that. Even if Alphonse suffered as much as Ed, maybe even more, he doesn’t have anything to remind him of it. He doesn’t have an artificial leg, doesn’t own a scarred shoulder. Alphonse keeps talking, oblivious of Ed’s train of thought.
“Are you still traveling?”
“Yeah.” He hesitates, before: “Not much lately, though.”
“Is that so.” Al grabs the teacup with both hands, fingers slender as a pianist but not as coordinated. He taps on the porcelain unconscious of it, nervousness creeping at him. Ed simply stares. He’s grown quiet in the past years. He’s grown out of so many of things, in the past years. “Ed,” Alphonse says, carefully. “I think you should go to Xing.”
“No,” says Ed, too quickly maybe, but he doesn’t regret it. “Why would I?” He asks. “I don’t have any business in Xing.”
“But you do.” Al has never really beat around the bush, always getting to the point. Ed hears Winry cooing to the baby upstairs. “It’s been years.”
“No,” he says again. It’s his final decision, and Alphonse sighs, knowing better than to insist.
When he sleeps, Ed dreams. It’s usually about Envy and his cruel laugh, a thousand hands choking him until his windpipe is crushed and useless, and other times it’s about his father, hair greying and smile tired, tears streaming down his face as he holds his books in front of him with big hands. There are times when he’s inside a jar being watched over by Pride, smiling with a thousand mouths and watching with hundreds of eyes, tapping a kid’s finger to his chin in thought. Sometimes it’s Wrath, hands around a sword that piercings through his stomach. Lust appears too, her fingers—no, claws—a millimeter away from his forehead.
But there are times when it’s none of the above, when instead of harmful hands there are friendly ones, hands that trace the line of his spine and playful fingers that tickle him until he’s rendered to a mess. Calloused hands but not quite like Ed’s, bigger and with pianist’s long fingers that like to touch all his favorite spots, nails that scrap his back and make him moan.
Ed prefers the nightmares, because when he wakes up he does so screaming and with tears flowing out of his eyes. But when he has dreams, when he feels invisible fingers that wouldn’t even think of harming him, he wakes up with a hole inside his stomach that he can’t close. It only keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and—
He used to write letters, at the beginning. Ed carried a notebook with him everywhere he went, scribbled down whatever thought he deemed interesting enough, wrote about the places he visited and the people he met. When he got home, wherever that was at the time, he sat down and wrote everything properly into a letter. Ed didn’t know how to start those, never was very eloquent when he had to put down a piece of his mind, so he simply started with:
This is what happened today:
It’s an unusual greeting, but soon enough it became custom for the both of them. Ed read his letters when he went back to Central. It wasn’t uncommon to find four or five piled up in his mail, waiting to be opened, and he always grinned when he read:
This is more interesting than yours:
In hindsight, Ed thinks it’s silly and childish, but they were both children, back then. Even now, at twenty-three, Ed likes to think that they’d do the same anyways, as child-like as it could be. They’d bark and howl at each other like dogs, even by mail, and he would call Ed stupid and Ed would burst out with a curse-word.
Ed liked to imagine the way he held the pen; was it like Mustang? Did he hold people different, did he talk into the phone while waving his free hand in the air? He’d like to know so many things even now, after years of radio silence. He didn’t have any letters even after a month away from home, and it didn’t matter how many more he wrote, he didn’t receive any more.
Are you okay?
I’m worried.
Please, just tell me you’re fine.
If you’re dead, I’ll kill you!
Please.
Did I do something wrong?
I’m sorry.
I really miss you.
Don’t do this to me.
And in a final, desperate attempt, he recklessly wrote:
I love you.
But in the end, it didn’t matter much.
He wakes up one morning angry. He slept a dreamless sleep, but when he wakes up he hears Alphonse’s voice, quiet in its loudness. I think you should go to Xing. I think you should go to Xing. Ed throws the sheets away in a fit of rage and screams, anger seeping through the wounds he’s carved into himself these past years, oozing uncontrollably. He feels himself flush with fury when someone kicks at the wall and tells him to shut up.
“No!” Ed screams back, kicking the walls as well. He stares down at this fist, angry red. When he opens his hand, there are half-moons carved into his skin from nails dig too deep, almost to the point of bleeding. It’s his right hand, the noticed with a start, a cries out again. “Fuck!” There’s something reviving about it, so Ed does it over and over again until his throat is sore and there are threats of calling the police coming over to the other side of the wall. Ed smiles and tells him, “Fuck off!” and it feels so nice he wants to jump.
So he does, unashamed when a new voice mixes up with the previous one, this time from a woman. “Stop it!” She says, but it doesn’t deter Ed. He’s been bottling everything up for too long a time, he can’t hold it in anymore. He feels his heart swelling up then, almost painfully, when he makes up his mind. He reads in between Al’s words, he finds the meaning they have, hidden in plain sight, even if Ed was too proud to see it back then.
He thought it’d be shameful, if he crawled back to the hand that held him, if he cried and let it all out. So Ed didn’t flinch when Alphonse asked about him and all Ed said was, “I don’t know about him anymore.” It was all he could do to shrug when Roy Mustang mentioned him in a conversation and stared at Ed a second too long.
I already did everything I could, he’d thought, but that wasn’t it at all. He’d visited the whole world, except for one place.
Riza Hawkeye moans when she picks up Roy’s phone. “Yes?”
“It’s Ed,” he says, ecstatic. He throws some clothes into a bag and kicks the wall again when his neighbor screams. “I’m going out.”
“Who’s that?” Ed hears Roy ask, sleepy and tired. Hawkeye tells him: “It’s Ed.”
Ed grins. He’s no longer angry, he realizes, at least not very much. He feels like he owns the world, alchemy or not, and comes to the sudden realization that he hasn’t felt this well in actual years. He wants to scream cruse words out his window, stomp down the street and get into a fight. He wants, for a fleeting moment, his old arm back just so he could kick a wall and not break any fingers. He feels invincible, now that he’s made up his mind, never mind that he’s barely slept in the past six years.
Fuck it, he thinks, throwing a pair of pants into the bag. I’m gonna do it.
“Fullmetal,” Roy growls into the phone. “Where the hell are you going?”
“Xing.” Ed beams proudly and runs to the bathroom to fetch his toothbrush and a few hair ties, in case he breaks the one he has around his wrist. “I’m gonna go now.”
Roy Mustang sighs. “Why?”
“I need to see someone.” Ed’s stomach churns with uneasiness, but also with happiness. Even if it doesn’t work out, he thinks, even if he doesn’t want to see him, Ed would be glad he tried. No matter the outcome, at least he did everything he could, this time for real. He grins into the phone. “At least I know he’s not married yet.”
He hearts Roy chuckle. “I take it you’re not coming to tomorrow’s reunion, then?”
“Correct.” Ed closes the bag with a satisfying zip. Someone bangs on his door urgently, but Ed ignores it in favor of ending this conversation quickly. He’ll need a horse.
Roy sighs again. “Good luck, Ed.”
“I won’t need it!”
There’s a laugh at the other side of the line, breathy and loud. “If you say so, Fullmetal.”
The banging at the door gets heavier, but Ed couldn’t care less. He puts in a shirt over his head so fast he doesn’t even know if it’s inside out or not, and then throws a red jacket over it for old time’s sake. He feels giddy with emotion, ready to overrun whoever’s at his door at three in the morning. Not even the thought of sand inside his pants or sweat drenching his clothes in the desert makes him recoil. He’s made up his mind already.
Because he knows whose hands he was looking for all along. He just wasn’t ready to accept it.
It comes as a surprise then that, when he opens the door, it’s not one of his neighbors. Not even remotely. Ed stops in his tracks as soon as he sees the man, distinguishable even with a hood and a pair of glasses on. Ed drops his bag to the floor, feels a shiver up his spine. He stops himself from doing anything he’d regret, and suddenly all the energy he’d muster in the last half an hour dissipates.
“Hello,” the man says, smile small.
Ed stares, dumbfounded. He’d thought that it’d take him at least a couple of weeks to see him, but he couldn’t be more wrong. He wants to reach out, prove he’s real. Maybe he’s still dreaming. It wouldn’t be the first time this has happened, when everything was in front of him but he could never grasp at it.
The man changes his weight from one foot to another. He glanced at Ed’s bag, not on the floor. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes,” Ed replies, gulping.
“Oh.” There’s a pause longest than time itself. Ed feels breathless. It’s been three years since the letters stopped coming. “Where?”
“Xing. I was—I was going to Xing.”
“Oh.”
Ed gulps again and he can’t take it anymore, he can’t. He touches his fingertips to the man’s cheek, slowly and afraid it’s going to disappear if he so much as lays a finger on it. But he doesn’t fade. He tenses, breathing in air through his mouth and letting it out through his nose. Ed stares helplessly as his chest heaves and tries not to think of older days, when he didn’t wear a shirt and was nothing more than a lost prince.
It comes to Ed suddenly, stupidly, that for all his dreams and thoughts, they haven’t actually touched like that, not ever. Not even in the letters did they talk about it, not until Ed’s last and final one. It comes to him, painfully, that maybe it was all one-sided, after all. He recoils, and the man flinches when the heat of Ed’s fingers leaves his face.
The bravado he felt earlier has dissipated, and now only doubts remain. It’s been so long, since they saw each other. Ed feels like he’s forgotten how to breathe, like he’s forgotten how to do everything, at the sight of him. His heart clenches painfully. He thought that it hurt, the fact that he didn’t know anything about him but having him like this and not knowing what to do hurts even more.
He opens his mouth, but there are no words to be spoken. He doesn’t know what he should do. In the end, all he can say is, “Ling.”
It comes out desperate, breathless and needy. Ed wants to wrap his arms around his neck, feels his breath on his neck and hold his hands, so different from anybody else’s, so unique and perfect Ed hasn’t found any that could even compare to Ling’s. It’s all he can think of, Ling Yao, emperor of Xing, right at his footstep. Ed still isn’t sure that he isn’t dreaming.
“Hi,” Ling muses, flushing pink. He puts down the hood and lets the glasses fall to the floor beside Ed’s bag, only for Ed to find teary eyes and broken flesh. There’s a gash on the right side of his face, from ear to jaw, shining and angry red with fresh blood. His hair, still long, is disheveled and messy, free of the ponytail he used to tie up. He’s still tall, taller than Ed, and he sees his hands clench the fabric of his hoodie. “Hi,” he repeats, voice wobbly. He’s at the verge of tears, and Ed wants nothing more than to comfort him.
“What happened?” He asks instead, afraid of making him go away, of scaring him.
“I was hungry,” Ling says, as if that explained everything. “Tried to get some money… and failed.”
Ed gulps. “You should’ve that looked at.”
Ling looks him in the eyes then, shining with unshed tears. Ed almost takes a step back. “I was hoping,” Ling begins, steady in a way Ed himself doesn’t feel, “that you could do that.”
“I’m not a doctor.”
“My wound isn’t that bad that I need a doctor.”
He takes a step aside, and Ling comes in.
He finishes treating Ling’s wound covering it with gauze and sticking it with adhesive. It’s been a long time since Ed was in a fight, and he doesn’t have the proper material to treat a would like Ling’s at home. So he makes do with what he has, and receives a kind smile when he’s done. Ling hasn’t said a word since he entered the door, and Ed hasn’t asked. He’s still shocked, he thinks. Also, he doesn’t want to say something inappropriate and fuck everything up.
Ling crosses his legs over the bed when Ed comes back from washing his hands. He considers sitting beside Ling on the bed, but decides against it and sits in a chair instead. He stares at Ling, who looks pensive, no sign of the tears from before. The silence falls heavy between the two of them, so Ed asks, “Why are you here?”
At the same time, Ling asks, “Why were you going to Xing?”
After a moment of hesitance, both boys laugh. Ed feels his chest expand with heaving breaths, short and quick. He laughs until he can’t keep it up anymore, until his breaths become ragged and ugly, until he’s sobbing like he’s never before. Ling stops laughing at the same time Ed feels the first tear roll down his cheek.
“Ed,” Ling says, worry all over the place. He’s up from the bed and kneeling in front of Ed in less than two seconds, and this time Ling doesn’t hesitate before placing calloused hands on either side of Ed’s face. “Hey,” he mutters, voice soft like a mother’s, gentle as a father’s. Ed places his hands over the emperor’s, but nothing deters his sobs.
“I’m sorry,” he says. He hiccups. “I just—fuck, Ling. What are you doing here?”
At this, Ling recoils. Ed curses again, because he didn’t mean it to sound so harsh. When Ling tries to pry his hands away, Ed doesn’t let him. Fuck it, he thinks finally. This would’ve happened, one way or the other, because Ed was going to see him, he reminds himself. He’d made up his mind. What does it matter, that Ling decided to come to Central just tonight? Nothing, because it makes things easier. He’s here, now, and Ed can’t let him go just yet.
He falls to his knees too, in front of Ling. The emperor of Xing opens his eyes wide when Ed takes his hands into his and examines them, breathless. They are not the hands of a pianist, even if his fingers are long and thin and beautiful. Ling doesn’t have soft hands, no one that has been training since he was a child would; instead they are calloused and rough to the touch, scratched and full of scars. Ed flips them over, and he touches a finger to where Greed’s mark used to be.
“Ed,” Ling breathes, but Ed doesn’t mind.
Ed feels something stir up in his stomach when Ling’s breath touches his face, warm and old. It smells of mint, faintly, and greasy food he must’ve stolen in his way here. He traces his pointer finger over the lines on Ling’s palms, slow and deliberate—he’s been dying to do this for years, he’s not going to go easy on him now. Neither say anything, but Ling chews on his lower lip hard enough to draw blood.
What has he done with these hands? Ed wonders as he draws an invisible picture over them. He’s hold a sword, he’s written counter letters, he’s touched people. Ed intertwines their fingers together and looks up at the man before him, notices the little changes in his face—longer hair, older eyes, new scars. He presses a finger against Ling’s lips, careful not to startle him, as if he were a fragile creature.
“Don’t,” he says. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Ed,” Ling repeats, as if it were the only word he knew. Ling squeezes his hand, knuckles bending slightly, the tip of his fingers turning white. “I couldn’t take it anymore,” he whispers. “I couldn’t forget you.”
It’s been so many years without his letters, so many years without him, Ed doesn’t know how to react, so he says nothing and waits for more. Ling looks out of breath when he continues, “I read your letters, all of them till the very last one.”
Ed flushes red to the tip of his ears. “You didn’t answer,” he says.
“I know. I know I didn’t. and I’m so sorry.” There’s a loon in his eyes, the look of a dove that’s been spotted by a wolf, the look of someone who knows that there’s no turning back now. “I wanted to forget about you but I couldn’t.” He squeezes Ed’s hand harder, fingernails buried deep inside his flesh. “You were in the golden sunset, in the blood I spilled when I trained, in the alchemists that came to the city. You were everywhere and I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Why are you here?” Ed asks again, for lack of a better answer.
Ling fills his lungs with air before whispering, “Because I couldn’t stop loving you, not for a day.”
That’s all Ed needs to hear, all the confirmation he needs before leaning in and pressing his lips against Lings in a chaste, quick kiss. It’s there and then gone, short but meaningful, and Ling’s pupils are blown when Ed presses their foreheads together and looks at him.
It’s his turn, he thinks. “I was going to see you,” he says, touching his fingers to Ling’s cheek. “I missed you too much.”
Ling laughs shakily. He’s so beautiful, Ed thinks, even in the faint light of his apartment, even when he’s dirty from days without a bath and nights in the streets. There’s grime in his nails and Ed should probably offer him his shower, but he can’t bring himself to utter any more words now. Ling brings a hand to Ed’s face and rubs his thumb over the apple of his cheek slowly.
Ed wants to kiss him senseless, to hold him by places he’s never hold anyone and taste his skin until there’s not an inch he hasn’t pressed his lips against. He wants Ling to touch him, too, like he’s never been touched; he wants his dreams to come true, he wants sneaky fingers and quick fingers and loving fingers.
This time it’s Ling the one who leans in, but not like before. Once their lips touch it’s like they are glued, and Ed feels himself wanting more and more and more. He’s a kid who’s just discovered chocolate and can’t stop eating it. And so he does. He kisses Ling chaste first, presses a thumb against his pulse point and tilts his head just so. Ling cocks his head as well and opens his mouth first a little, when he swallows Ed whole.
It’s been so long since he kissed anybody, so long since he had hands touching his skin that Ed’s almost forgotten how it feels to want and be wanted in return. He feels everything about Ling, from his hitched breath to how he’s trying to get impossibly closer. Playful fingers come under his shirt, and Ed gasps when they press against his abdomen. Ling smirks into the kiss and lets go with a wet sound.
“Didn’t know you were so easy to please,” Ling says against his ear, biting his earlobe. Ed chuckles and pushes him away only to come for his lips a moment later.
It’s the first time they’ve done this, and yet Ed feels like he’s been doing it for his whole life. He licks Ling’s lips and pulls from his hair and makes him moan just doing this, he can’t help himself from imagining what it’s going to be like if they go further. It’s not like Ed’s not loud, but he has the feeling that Ling is louder and careless about it.
“What’s that dirty mind of yours thinking?” Ling asks, incriminating. Ed shoves him as he laughs.
“Shut up.”
Ling wriggles his eyebrows. “Make me.”
I will, Ed thinks before going back to him. And he thinks, he’ll ask tomorrow what’s going to happen to Xing, what’s going to happen to the both of them and what are they going to do. Because right now the last thing Ed wants to do is talk. Instead, he adds tongue to the kiss at the same time Ling has the same thought. The emperor of Xing buries his hands deep under Ed’s shirt and presses cold fingers against his spine just like in his dreams.
Then, Ed has a thought. He’s been obsessing over hands this whole time, over pianist hands and arm wrestler hands and loyalty hands, but now that he has the ones he’s been looking for for almost a decade, he’s not even paying attention to them. He changes his tactics.
Breaking the kiss—Ling whines, and it’s so terribly adorable it’s all Ed can do not to kiss him again—he takes one of Ling’s hands from his back, stares at it and then at Ling. “Y’know,” he begins, smile lopsided, “I really love your hands.”
Ling blushes a rich red, the color of roses. He says, “Is that so?”
Ed nods his head. He takes one of Ling’s fingers and presses his lips against it. He notices how Ling’s breath catches and, feeling incredibly smug, licks it. Ed takes pleasure in the way Ling’s face contorts into surprise, then something like awe. His face colors even more, but he doesn’t utter a word as Ed takes the fingers into his mouth.
He doesn’t break eye contact, and at first he has to admit that it feels a bit weird, but then Ling closes his eyes and throws his head back. He groans and Ed feels so damn hot inside his own body. He pulls the fingers out of his mouth and cradles Ling, which surprises him by the look on his face. He murmurs, “Didn’t think you’d be like this.”
Ed snickers. “Like what?”
“So dirty,” Ling says, grinning. Ed grabs the hems of the hoodie and pulls up. He admires Ling’s body for all of a second before they’re kissing again, hard and needy.
Ling holds him by the legs, digging his fingers into the flesh of his real one and rubbing the metal of his false one. Ed feels self-conscious, a little, and stutters when he tells Ling to tell him if it gets uncomfortable. Ling cracks a smile, eyes shining and pupils blown, before pressing his lips to Ed’s neck.
Ling doesn’t know, but necks kisses are Ed’s best fantasy. So he just pulls his head back and moans unashamed when he feels Lings tongue against his sensitive skin, teeth sinking and bruising. He’s never felt like this, he swears to god, while making out with someone. He feels like he could do anything, absolutely anything, and he speaks Ling’s name like a prayer. He asks for more, more, more and then stutters when he feels a warm tongue inside his mouth, fingers touching him everywhere at the same time.
He doesn’t know at what point exactly did they move to the bed, but it’s a decision Ed doesn’t regret. He holds Ling by the thighs and squeezes at the same time he presses wet kisses against his collarbone, chest and stomach. Ling squirms under him when Ed’s cold leg touches his, but then says that it’s okay, he doesn’t care, and Ed’s the happiest man on earth.
Ed’s particularly busy making a hickie in Ling’s bicep when the former pulls from his hair and moans, “Ed.”
He doesn’t put much thought about it and doesn’t interrupt his task until Ling says, “Come with me to Xing.”
Ed sits upright to look at him in the face, flushed and eyes closed. He opens them and smiles and repeats, “Come with me.”
Ling grabs a strand of Ed’s hair and pulls, making Ed lean over again. Ling kisses him behind his ear over and over, making wet noises as his hands travel down Ed’s belly. Ed stutters when he asks, “You want me to come to Xing?”
“Yes,” Ling whispers into his ear. He stops the kissing, the hands and everything and just wraps his arms around Ed, who feels Ling’s mouth moving as he continues talking. “Now that I’ve a taste of you, I sure as hell can’t keep on living without you.”
His stomach drops, and Ed can’t believe that sweet words making him even hotter than all the kisses and wandering hands. He tries to push himself up to get a look at Ling, but his arms are made of steel and he doesn’t let go. He speaks his name, and Ed startles when he realizes that Ling is silently crying. So Ed buries one of his right hand in Ling’s hair, greasy from his journey and impossibly black.
“You’re the emperor,” Ed breathes. “You’ve got the philosopher’s stone. You could be immortal.”
Ling shakes his head. “I don’t want to be immortal,” he weeps, “I want to be with you.”
“Ling,” Ed says. And he feels so goddamn good it’s just like his heart is going to burst.
“It’s just,” Ling cries, sobs stuttering through his whole body. “I just wanna be with you, y’know?” He laughs-sobs, and Ed finds it so endearing. He brushes a hand against Ling’s cheek. “I’m a fucking mess, jeez.”
Ed takes a breath. “I can’t sleep at night,” he says, though he doesn’t really know why. “And I still travel a lot.” He hesitates, then adds, “I want a kid.”
Ling barks a laugh and kisses his cheek all over again. “And if you want thirty, then so be it.” He locks his legs around Ed’s waist, hugs him tighter than before. “I’ll lay awake beside you if I have to. You can travel as much as you want to, with one condition.”
“And what would that be?”
“You have to come back to me.”
Ed laughs, uncontrollably. He pushes himself up and grabs Ling’s hands tightly, as if he would escape if Ed let go. But Ling only pushes himself up as well, kisses Ed’s cheeks and his closed eyelids and his nose so tenderly, so lovingly, so carefully. Ed traces lines over Ling’s palms, so perfect in their imperfections.
Ed thinks about hands all the time.
But he thinks about a specific pair of hands, slender as a pianist’s and rough to the touch. He dreams about long fingers sneaking up his shirt and drawing invisible lines over his spine, thin fingers brushing his hair at night when he can’t sleep and calloused hands rubbing circles over his back when he wakes up from a nightmare. His life revolves around hands hands hands, all his thoughts are about them.
There’s something better than thinking about them, though, and that is when Ling cups his cheeks tenderly after a long trip and kisses him and mutters, “Welcome home.”