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When 1am hits and the cast careens into a drunken rendition of who can outsing each other in the tongue twisting La Vie Boheme that butchers Jonathan Larson’s vision, Roy makes an express decision to scoot onto the meager fire escape for air and a semblance of silence.
He is the host of the party, and there is plenty to celebrate with the first weekend done, dusted, and wildly successful. Congratulations flood in one ear and out the other in a steady stream, but even Roy can only soak up so much before everything becomes oversaturated and the oxygen in the room gets scarce.
Roy needs a breather.
Closing his bedroom door with a click, Roy heaves a sigh and leans back against it, a tipsy smile tilting his lips as he feels the room sway in the waters of success and scotch. Someone, likely Havoc, has taken to Roy’s janky upright piano to stomp out the music, but the din is dimmed by the door, and Roy feels like he’s walked into a bubble that won’t pop until he says so.
And then he opens his eyes and notices the fire escape isn’t so empty as he thought.
Edward Elric sits on the creaky metal, high ponytail gone dark with the faint fog of misty drizzle, his legs stuck between the iron bars and swinging over the side of the sixth story. Roy can’t see from this angle, but he looks like he’s rocking lightly from side to side and—
And singing.
Quietly, Roy approaches as if he would a wildcat, one that wouldn’t hesitate to tear open his guts at the wrong word. Roy loves that about Ed, but it’s also an excellent defense mechanism that has kept Roy from ever properly getting to know the one and only pit conductor of their entire orchestral production.
As Roy rounds the bed that takes up the majority of his claustrophobic Central City apartment, the profile of Ed’s features come into vision and god, he’s beautiful. Young—too young to be a conductor of his caliber, too young to play seven instruments and then some, too young to be renowned for his intensely vivacious symphony compositions—
Young and beautiful and singing in a raspy, throaty tenor that Roy never knew Ed was hiding. Of all things, he’s singing along to an artless pop song blaring from a car parked in front of the pizza place that serves as the first floor of this building. He appears totally relaxed and content. There’s a first time for everything, apparently.
How many more talents does Edward Elric have? And how can Roy feasibly discover them all?
“WINE AND BEER!” yells twenty-some people in the other room and Ed looks over his shoulder with eyes wide, his strong shoulders scrunching in reaction to the sound.
He sees Roy and his face goes mutinous.
“Go somewhere else, Mustang.”
Roy looks around, smirking with hands on hips as he assesses his bedroom.
“This is literally my house.”
“So you should know all the best places to go.”
Smirking and brave with his scotch and his own night’s success, Roy ducks through the open window and onto the dangerously creaky fire escape that he doubts will ever save someone if the building ever goes up in flame. With a grunt, Roy drops down beside Ed, slotting his legs between the bars in a mirror of Ed’s position.
“You already found it.”
Ed looks supremely displeased as he eyes Roy from top to bottom, not a hint of appreciation in his expression of which Roy is generally accustomed. One of Ed’s talented hands brings a beer to his mouth for a pull, his throat damp from the fine, hazy rain as he drinks.
“Yeah, well, finders keepers. Anyway, all of your fans are in there.”
“Are you saying you’re not a fan, Ed?” Roy only smiles wider, his facial control somewhat melted with the warmth of liquor and present company. He leans back on his hands so Ed is forced to glance over his shoulder to look at him properly. It’s a lovely angle, with the bedroom light glowing warm against Ed’s back and shooting fire through his thick gold hair.
“There’s plenty already,” Ed says, very much not answering the question. “Like you need any more. You won’t be able to fit your damn head into costume.”
“Your concern is noted and deeply appreciated,” Roy says, basking in the light of Edward Elric’s attention.
The appreciation doesn’t simply stem from Ed’s appearance or even his wealth of accomplishments. It’s the brain inside and the mouth which the brain implements that has struck Roy with fascination from their first meeting onward. If anyone works their ass off during production, it’s Ed, who insists on being present for just about every practice they ever have. His days off are limited, but he never complains. Never gripes about hard work or long hours.
Oh, he’ll fire on all cylinders about keeping the rhythm or the flutes being too pitchy or the percussion too strong. He’ll even argue with the director over the creative licenses he may take with the music. But Ed works his very shapely, stunning ass off, and Roy wants to, well—
He wants to jump Ed’s bones, for lack of a better term.
“Yeah, concern,” Ed says, barking a laugh and taking another swig of beer. From Roy’s reclined angle, he watches the tip of Ed’s ear paint red and wonders if his cheeks are the same. He’s facing the dark, though, and his shadowed expressions are muted. “What’re you out here for, anyway? What a shitty host.”
“I was searching for a quiet moment,” Roy says, raising his face to the gentle kiss of mist. The car playing pop music drives away with a shriek of wet wheels on pavement.
“You?” Ed looks over his shoulder with a grin sharp enough to flay open Roy’s resolve not to mix business and pleasure. Despite the endless rumor mill spinning behind the closed curtains of the stage, Roy does not actually sleep with his co-stars. While they are his co-stars, anyway.
And while Ed is not a co-star, he is intrinsic to the show. He makes the show run. He is the master of the tempo and swell and temperature of the show. Even Roy can be replaced. Everyone has an understudy. Ed is extraordinary in his own specific gravity.
“Well.” Ed leans back against his hands too, and lolls his head toward Roy with that same I Dare You grin. “I’m not leaving. Sorry not sorry.”
Roy realizes Ed is a little drunk, but so is he, and maybe a little tipsy isn’t the worst thing ever right now. A relaxed Ed seems to smile more, even if those lion eyes and sharp, toothy mind are poised to eviscerate him at any given moment.
Without reply, Roy purposely stretches the silence. Allows his attention to drop on Ed’s wide, expressive mouth, lingering with intention until that smile falters and melts away. Raising his gaze back to Ed’s eyes, Roy’s own lips curve at the swell of Ed’s pupils and the rich, saturated amber they go in the near-dark.
“I wouldn’t dream of having you leave,” Roy murmurs, low and velvet, slowly shifting his weight to one hand so he can lean into Ed’s space. The mist is still freckling their skin and hair, and Ed’s high, tawny cheekbones are glazed with damp shimmer. Roy ducks his head just a sliver, his stare flickering between Ed’s softly parted mouth and heavy-lidded eyes; gauging, hoping, wanting. “And you? Would you have me leave you to the quiet, Ed?”
Ed blinks slow, dreamlike, his body very still.
“You’re so damn full’a yourself, aren’t you, Mustang?”
Not the answer Roy is expecting, but it wouldn’t be the first time with Ed.
“May I request clarification?” Roy says, not denying and not moving either. Are they playing a game of chicken right now or is Ed simply testing him out like a new tune of unfamiliar notes?
Ed licks his lips in a gesture that appears entirely without ulterior motive, and Roy’s stomach pulls hot and syrupy.
“You think you can just use the voice on me and I’ll drop to my knees or some shit?” Ed asks, his voice a rasp of what it had been minutes ago. The backbone is still there, though. Ed is practically built of steel.
“The voice?” Roy asks, breaking into a smile that’s entirely sincere. Ed brings it out in him, whether he likes it or not. “I’m sorry, Ed. I’ll have my vocal chords stripped immediately. How very dare I use what—”
“The sex voice,” Ed snaps irritably, and somehow him going prickly and heated is even sexier than the bedroom eyes and drawling Resembool accent that rounds off his words in deep summer whenever Ed forgets himself. He rises up a little, though still leaning back on his hands, and the gesture unintentionally brings their faces closer. Roy makes a point not to move, because Ed hasn’t seemed to yet notice in his rant. “Don’t come over here—”
“To my home?”
“—and treat me like I’m some dumb floozy in dance troupe number fucking three , you arrogant asshole.”
Delighted and uninterested in hiding it, Roy experimentally rests a hand on Ed’s thigh and grins wider when Ed startles and stains red from cheeks to ears.
“Noted,” Roy says, soothing and warm. “Perhaps I should write this all down.”
“You got brain damage or something, old man? If it’s so hard to remember not to actively seduce your co-workers—”
“Am I?” Roy must look like an absolute loon, just smiling and leaning into Ed’s gravity like he even has a choice otherwise.
“Are you what?” Ed mutters, suddenly seeming to realize the position they’re in as he visibly swallows and peers up to meet Roy’s eyes in full. The mist has shifted away, and damp baby hairs cling to his flushed temples and cheeks.
“Seducing you,” Roy asks, drifting forward to nudge at Ed’s chilly nose with his own. “How’s it going? Constructive feedback?”
“Less talking,” Ed murmurs, his breath a warm whisper from Roy’s. “Maybe wear a bag over your head. Less distracting.”
“Would you still kiss me with a bag over my head?” Roy says, and oh, there is a strong hand and pianists fingers tentatively brushing his own that rest upon Ed’s thigh. Through the rain-damp jeans, Ed’s leg feels practically on fire.
“Wouldn’t kiss you no matter what,” Ed says, absolutely about to kiss him.
“No?”
“Couldn’t pay me,” Ed says, mouth sweeping across Roy’s in a feather touch that sparks through him like a match to a gasoline trail.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Roy manages before he cups the back of Ed’s head and draws him into a firm, tender kiss of closed lips.
And Ed parts for him like heaven opening up, roaming tongue and curious hums of hunger as he leans into it hard. Then harder, fingers finding Roy’s hair to flex and hold him in place, moaning as he practically fucks into Roy’s mouth with an enthusiasm that burns Roy to the ground. No, the fire escape isn’t doing shit for his situation.
Then again, Roy has always been the kind to run into the fire first. And so is Ed. There are so few people like them.
“God,” Ed says, dragging his wet lips across Roy’s as they gasp for breath, foreheads pressed together, “I fuckin’ hate your mouth.”
“My apologies,” Roy breathes out, suddenly very aware that they’ve managed to entwine upon the meager scrap of metal, six stories up, Ed reclined back on his elbows with Roy’s knee wedged between those parted, tempting thighs. They’re practically horizontal. Roy has no memory of this. “Might we take this—”
“Roy!” Maes’ voice cracks through the shut door and both Roy and Ed have two seconds flat to untangle, Roy half-way through the window by the time Maes swings the door open with the drunken fanfare of a man who was too-many deep into Fuery’s deceptively fruity punch. “Where are—oh.”
Roy fluffs his hands through his mist-damp hair to dry off the excess and offers a smile that he hopes is the right percent calm and unaffected. Ed has notably not scrambled in after him and Roy’s unsure just what he looks like.
“Sorry, Maes. Ed and I were just discussing pop music. Did you know that he knows all the words to—”
“Fuck off, Mustang.” Ed shoves past Roy with barely a sound of approach, his elbow jamming into Roy’s ribs with purpose. “You remember the words to shit as well as I do. That’s normal for people like us. Hear those shitty radio songs once and they never leave your brain. They’re called ear worm for a reason.”
“What’s people like us?” Roy asks, trailing after Ed and ignoring Maes sparkling smile of abject joy.
“Music people. Fast people.”
“Am I fast?” Roy says with specific, purposeful slowness. He pockets his hands so he doesn’t grab at that wickedly slim waist and yank Ed back against his body.
“Stop digging.”
“For?”
Ed whirls with murder in his eyes, his still-swollen lips pulled back to snarl, but the cast greets them both with a roar of welcome and glee. Roy ends up with a drink in a hand as Ed is shoved and cajoled toward the upright piano.
“Havoc plays like the only place he ever performed was church,” Falman says, grinning as he pointedly takes Ed by the shoulders and outright sits him down at the bench. It’s strange to see him there, sitting in Roy’s living room with the piano dragged up six floors just because it has been his mother’s. Roy’s not even that good of a player, but he’d needed it like a comfort blanket.
“That was where I learned to play, you asshole! My teacher was the hot mom of my best friend, she always wore—”
“Holy shit,” Ed says, “You’re all obnoxious as fuck.”
Words aside, Ed’s profile is easy and loose and his hair is drying in a wild fray of gold haloed hairs as he casts his face toward the keys. Fingers caress the discolored, cracked ivory in an absent movement from a lifetime of playing, his right hand tumbling out a playful sprinkle of what Roy instantly recognizes as the previous pop song with flare.
There’s so much to Ed that Roy has never been allowed to know, but how he burns for that knowledge. Even now, after a handful of minutes in the span of the year they’ve been acquainted, Roy aches in a way that he could never have anticipated.
Just what talent does Ed have in regards to Roy’s heart? The concept is terrifying, but at the same time is no longer a concept. The stage is set and the roles have already been cast for the two of them.
“What d’you assholes want to hear?” Ed tosses a look over his shoulder as both hands pop across the keys in a quick, bright tempo. If it’s a real song, Roy’s never heard it, and his performer’s heart tells him that Ed’s music is his mood.
Shouts of requests and groans of displeasure at said requests ring out and Ed laughs over them, in a notably better mood in Roy’s opinion than he had been when the cast first dragged him to the apartment hours ago. It seems that even the great and powerful Edward Elric enjoys a bit more fun than he likes to let on.
The drinks flow and songs are sung, over-dramatized stories are spun with expressive hands, and the furniture is eventually pushed away and the rugs rolled up. With a coaxing grin, Roy insists on yanking Riza center stage and cajoles her into a very clumsy but still ingrained, living-room safe version of the Good Morning tapdance from ‘Singing In The Rain’.
The two of them had obsessed over the film as children, and it had been Roy who dragged Riza onto the stage of Madame Christmas’ club during off-hours where they would practice and play around with the steps for hours. Roy has always been a Gene Kelly kind of guy.
Riza doesn’t sing well, but she’s always been good with complex footwork. Watching their assistant director dance is something Roy is certain most people in this room have never seen, and the hoots and hollers are probably going to get the police called on them, but Roy doesn’t care. And when Ed, who is frantically playing along without looking at the keys but instead at the dance, joins to sing in time with Roy, well—
Roy is certain he’s half in love already.
Eventually, the cast begin to stumble home. Some are passed out on the couch and armchair and. . .floor. Others have the wherewithal to actually leave, dragging along the more inebriated in their wake. Maes heads out, but not before wagging his eyebrows at Roy in a way that gives Roy a full-body shiver of horror.
And Ed. Ed stays until he doesn’t. He helps wash the dishes, pick up empties from various surfaces, and outright ignores Roy’s insistence that it’s not necessary.
“Where I come from,” Ed says, tying off a grocery bag full of cans and handing it to Roy, “you leave a party as good as when you came. S’polite and all that shit.”
“And you are a paragon of manners,” Roy says, lips curved.
“Fuck yeah,” Ed says absently, patting his pockets for probably his wallet and keys while glancing around the room.
“Coats were piled on the bed,” Roy says, turning away to rid himself of trash.
When he returns from the tiny kitchen, Ed is standing at the front door with a typical frown, his hands shoved in the depths of the black jean jacket layered in a wild array of sewn-on patches. With the red hoodie underneath and shapely, strong legs clad in worn leather pants tucked into black and red plaid boots laced up in knots, he looks nothing like a man who writes symphonies that sound like an alchemy of thunder and lightning. He looks nothing like anything anyone can ever imagine him to be.
And Roy is possibly three-fourths in love.
“You could stay,” Roy says before he has the good sense not to.
Ed watches Roy’s approach with narrowed eyes, beautifully molten and suspicious. He doesn’t back up when Roy steps in too close, but he doesn’t lean into their proximity either.
“Like hell.”
“Merely a suggestion,” Roy says with an innocent lift of palms.
Ed grunts, shrugging. Silver pointed studs glint on one shoulder of the jacket and Roy realizes it’s an excellent defense mechanism from being touched.
Roy is much more tenacious than that.
Making a slow move, watchful for signs of Ed’s retreat but only meeting finding a direct, curious gaze aimed his way, Roy rests a hand on Ed’s leather hip. He strokes a thumb beneath the hoodie, the pad of his finger finding warm, smooth skin. Ed sucks in a sharp breath, so quiet one wouldn’t notice unless one was Roy, looking so intently.
“You, uh,” Ed says, licking his chapped lips, “you’re gonna have to do better than a fumble on the fire escape, Mustang. I got standards and shit.”
“I intend to do much more than that,” Roy says, his chest squeezing tight with the realization that he has a chance. “If you’ll allow it.”
A pale eyebrow raises followed by a cocky grin.
“Yeah, alright,” Ed says. “We’ll see.”
“I suppose we—”
Ed goes to his toes, fists a hand in Roy’s hair to tug him down for a single bruising kiss. The plunge of his hot, clever tongue knocks the sense right out of him, and all Roy can do is melt into it, relenting to the searing aggression of the kiss.
When Ed releases, he’s still grinning, albeit flushed and hazy around the edges.
“That was just to shut you up from saying ‘shall’.”
“You can’t be sure I was going to—”
“I’m sure.” Looking pleased with himself, Ed reaches up and pats down the fisted fray of Roy’s hair. “There. As good as I left it.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“As good as I left you?”
Ed smiles and Roy is certain he is one-hundred percent in love.
“Better.”