Work Text:
Edward knew it was a bad idea to sleep with Roy. He knew it before kissing him, ash and smoke around their hands. Whiskey drunk, stomach warm and filled with something Alphonse might call butterflies but Ed would definitely call anxiety.
Roy is laying on the right side of his bed, sleeping over his stomach. He looks gorgeous like this: head pressed on his pillow, hair ruffled and spread out. The sun is entering through the window, lightning up his back, shoulders lax and filled with little white scars. The sheets cover his low back and ass, but it is enough to tease Edward's eyes. He knows how he looks, radiant and handsome.
How does he look so ethereal? Edward wants to draw over his trapezius and deltoids, muscles taut and stressed under the pressure of the world. He wants to take that weight and hold it for him, make it disappear. Ed wants so deeply to hug him, to hold and take care of Roy it is almost unnerving.
Roy's under his skin, marked on his mind like the unfunny joke that is his life. He's written in every thought he has, every association and research.
Edward fears this feeling. Wants to kill it. Wants to take it by the throat and obliterate it once and for all. It feels like free falling, like emptiness and the type of cold he can't shake out of his automail leg when it is winter. He's so angry, so mad at himself for not stopping this fall before. How couldn't he notice?
What can he do to unroot this feeling out of his chest? How could he tear it apart?
The worst part is: he doesn't want to stop feeling like this, not really. He can recall the warmth he felt when Roy kissed him, lips hot and soft - hands caressing his cheeks, his neck, his shoulders. His body, an awful traitor, had reacted accordingly. Veins full of fire and desire and.
Edward wishes he didn't want so much.
Roy is still laying down on his bed, hair uncombed and the sun showing all his scars. Edward wonders how he could sleep like this, with light so close to his eyes. He looks so relaxed like this.
Edward wants to keep him, design a box big enough for the both of them. Dig a hole and hide away from the world. Take care of him, sush all his demons. Erase that smirk he usually has on his lips, take down every piece and layer of his masks and tell him it's alright to feel lost. That Roy can't keep going on like this - pushing down every feeling he has, repressing his demons and getting no sleep for his nightmares. Oh, how much Edward would give to help Roy, to walk by his side if that helped him.
Instead he gets whatever-this-is, a half-assed attempt on no-attachment sex which will turn sour in the immediate future. Edward can already feel his throat burning, his heart aching.
Right now, he’s just waiting for Roy to wake up and push him away.
When Ed wakes up again, his bed is empty. Roy is gone.
His sheets still smell like him; like cinnamon and cloves, a little bit like ash and golden tobacco. The mattress has his body imprinted, and Ed could draw him right there if he so wished to. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine him right there – his cologne is impregnated in the fabric, and he can get his face closer to the pillow he used last night to sense him better. Smell him.
When he crawls out of bed, he finds a note neatly folded over his table. Pretty cursive looks at him mockingly, words curling in loops and words neatly written despite the running ink Roy probably used to write that.
Edward,
The note states, of course it does. As ridiculous as it might be, Ed's chest feels tight just by reading his name in this mesmerizing cursive. Roy had a specific way to write his name, the first letter looking like a number three inside out, curling by the end of the vocal to connect with the next letter – each of them big and wonderful and blessed.
I had to be in the office by eight. It would be detrimental if you spoke about anything that happened last night.
There it is. The heartbreak. The arrow Ed has been waiting to get through his heart. He realises he doesn't have the guts to burn the letter. Only thing he can do is keep reading.
If you want to repeat last night's rendezvous, it can be arranged.
Have a good morning.
There is something else in Edward's chest now – the aching has become a warm sensation, something he is scared to name and can't quite understand. It feels awfully like a promise. Like hope.
His hand is dialing Roy Mustang's office even before he can change his mind. His hands are shaking. He shouldn't be doing this. It feels like offering ammunition to his enemy.
But his enemies had never held him so dearly. They had never kissed his scars, bitten and scratched his shoulders. Neither they had tugged his hair, manhandled him in every step to bed or gotten his clothes so masterfully taken off.
“Mustang speaking,” Roy says, and it's unfair how calm and collected he sounds. How his voice seems cold when he's working, a mask he holds so tight to his face it might melt and become his true self.
“General bastard,” he says, “you're free next Saturday.” It's not a question. It 's a demand.
“Yes, Edward,” damn this man and how every word he says can sound sweet and thick, hot and velvet and so tempting.
Edward finds himself again failing to resist this feeling. This infatuation makes him feel like falling, like he's about to die but not quite yet. And again – what's one more mistake, when you've acted like a God in the past? What's one more sin to accumulate with the other ones, the ones Ed keeps hidden inside his chest and in the dark to prying eyes?
What's one more weakness, when he can't physically unroot this feeling off his chest?