Unconditional – Seven.
by arcanewinter. NC17 4141 Roy*Hughes. Fullmetal Alchemist. AT, pan-series spoilers.
Deceit is a vice Greed can’t endure.

These characters do not belong to me.  I do not profit from this.

The heavy metal doors of the factory burst open under their force, clanging rudely in the otherwise silent night. Envy skidded out first, followed by an irritably-rushed Greed, flipping up the collar of his new black jacket.

A few paces ahead, Envy straightened as he turned back, more familiar features replacing the disguise. “Would you hurry up? I’d rather not have to plan this all over again.”

Greed shrugged, the yells still echoing from deep inside the factory. “They’re not going to catch us, I don’t know why you’re so–”

But the gunshot punctuated his drawl prematurely, not to mention the center of his hand.

“You little–” he growled, stomping back towards the factory entrance before Envy grabbed him rudely by the wrist above the wound and pulled him down the street, soon hauling him up onto the roof tops.

Greed twisted his wrist free and rubbed grumpily at the palm of his hand as he followed. The wound had healed quickly, but it wasn’t often he was pierced at all. “They’re just lucky they missed the clothes,” he muttered, and even above the wind in his ears Greed could hear Envy call him a priss.

* * * * *

Down at the old docks, their only company was the stench of water made shallow by silt and refuse and the dull clatter of rotting boats against the pier. Even still, Greed stood watch from inside the old storehouse, scanning the blocked road for some kind of alchemist assassin, or maybe even the sharp-eyed homunculus himself, if he wasn’t already too busy choking the independence from his political neighbors.

“He could come from the water, you know,” Envy mused cynically from the makeshift table.

“Covered in garbage and slime? Not Pride.” Greed snorted lightly, but it was a feigned confidence. “When he comes he’ll be struttin’ pretty.”

But they could really only guess. It had been nearly five years and they hadn’t seen him outside of a newspaper, but they could feel that Eye on them almost always, especially when they had stones. And so they travelled more than they settled, striking their targets randomly across Amestris and sometimes outside of it, though fewer and fewer regions of late remained outside of its borders.

And they never spared the stones for very long, sometimes consuming them on the spot, or on the way. It could have been mere paranoia, but those glittering prisms were like thousands of tiny beacons in their pockets, flaunting their continued survival.

Envy dumped the stones on the small table, and Greed finally turned at the sound. There was a danger in bringing them back to their current residence, but now that they’d hit the factory–and at the perfect time, too–there was no reason to stay. They had the journal, Greed had a nice-fitting jacket, and they’d be off again in a matter of hours.

Greed tugged the stool closer and sat down, watching Envy roughly divide the pile, each jagged morsel gleaming even in the dim and grimy light. He finally pushed Greed’s portion toward him, grunting furtively to seek Greed’s approval.

But they’d been at this a while, and Greed barely compared the portions before grunting his acceptance. He ran his palm over his share for a moment, even as Envy began pulling his to his mouth, just appreciating the sheer number of them as a king might relish his jewels.

But he was no king, and his appreciation turned quickly to ravage. For that short, unrefined feast they both resembled another Sin entirely, but it was unavoidable, and afterwards they felt stronger, safer, and almost sated.

Table clear of stones, they both sat and gazed at it, eyes lazily searching its warped surface for a forgotten glitter, lazy only because they knew there was none.

“Few hours more, then?”

Greed looked up at Envy’s disinterested question, then nodded. He reached for the journal lying on the crate at his side and dropped it in front of his companion. “Your turn to pick.”

“And where are you going?”

Greed primped at the lapels of his jacket as he stood, grinning with conceit. “Figured I’d say goodbye to the ladies. However many I have time for, anyway.”

“Oh, I’m sure it won’t take you too long,” Envy teased, but when Greed glanced at him, he was looking a little meaner than he expected.

Greed stood up a little straighter, glaring his indignation, though he hadn’t lost his smile. “I may just take all night on one.”

“Have fun without me, then,” Envy muttered. He folded his arms and looked away dismissively, and Greed turned on his boot to walk out. His response to Envy’s jab could have been a little smarter, but he had better things to do than argue with him.

* * *

Though Greed hadn’t planned it that way, the location at the dock had been convenient for these visits. Sailors and whores seemed to have gone hand-in-hand while the ships were still coming in, and though the sailors had long since left the brothel’s beds, the seedy establishment had taken root.

Greed was far from sentimental, but he couldn’t help feeling regretful that they’d be leaving. He liked that they knew his face there, that he had his pick, give or take, for less than the going rate. Ironically, it appeared that Greed’s preferred method of taking and owning what he wanted was, by their standards, downright gentle. It wasn’t exactly the reputation he was going for, but he preferred making women come to making women cry.

Much as he wanted to savor this last walk, though, most of his attention flitted from broken window to rotting roof along his path. There were so many places Pride could be watching from, and once or twice he thought he caught a glimpse of movement.

But he reached the brothel unscathed, and the warm filth of the place felt comfortable. He grinned at the matron as he sauntered in, and she nearly hit him on the arm for trying to frighten her, saying something about his teeth that made him cackle smugly.

“Sorry to say your favorite isn’t here, dovey,” she began, hardly by way of apology, and handed him a drink, which he guzzled. It made it easier to part with the money later on, or so he imagined it did. Little could diminish that pain for Greed. “Y’want to come again tomorrow?”

“Can’t,” Greed grumbled. If he was going to take one all night, though he wasn’t sure why he felt the obligation, he would have wanted it to be with that one. But before he could decide on a replacement, a familiar voice called him from the creaking staircase, finely seductive.

He turned and grinned a little wickedly to see her. She was leaning against the railing, one bare arm supporting her slight weight with a careless command. “I decided I needed the money after all,” she called lithely to the matron, and Greed dropped his payment into the woman’s hand before heading to the stairs.

They were barely halfway down the upstairs hallway before he caught her and pressed her against the wall, running his fingers and palms up her arms to her smooth shoulders. She regarded him evenly with her dignified, yet jaded smile, which Greed displaced with his knee nudging the inside of her thigh.

“You know, you paid for the bed, too,” she murmured, and for Greed this was reason enough to rein himself in and continue down the hall. He all but lead her into her own room, barely closing the door behind her before he pressed her to the mattress, the curls of her long, dark hair rolling over the pillow under her head.

“Why so eager tonight?” she purred, though she gasped a little when he tugged open her bodice, his hand soon cupping her warm breast beneath the pleasantly constricting frills.

“Why so nervous?” he murmured back, his voice still resembling a growl, albeit softened.

She chuckled at him, though her breath caught as he brushed over her nipple with his thumb, one last layer of thin material still obstructing the touch. “I can be whatever you want. You want nervous?”

“I want everything,” he muttered mechanically, distracted by the clasps of her brassier, which he could so easily tear with his claws. The restrictive contraption finally burst open with her next breath, and he drew back to look at her as he pushed these final obstacles to her sides.

She smiled up at him with a lazy confidence, the fingers of one hand slowly twirling a thick brown curl on the pillow . “Greed,” she murmured, drawing out his name with a sophisticated but almost primal intonation. She extended her hand to stroke the back of his neck, lifting herself up. “Do you want me?”

The scent of her was naturally intoxicating, and his mouth played at her waiting lips in the same manner that he had rolled the stones under his palm before devouring them.

“Say it,” she whispered, her harsh breath teasing between the points of his teeth.

“Yes,” he almost hissed at her, his breathing more forceful than he’d allow himself to be, though still he pushed her to the mattress again, just barely catching the flare in her dark eyes before he pressed his mouth along her jaw to her ear. He bit carefully at skin too soft for it before dragging his attention down her neck and along the fine line of her collar bone.

Every sound she made under his tongue was his. Her scent was his, wafting up in reaction to him; the trembling just under her skin belonged to him. The smallest aspects of her were in his possession if they were because of him, and it was for this reason that his attention was so quickly and so tightly drawn in, why nothing she did went undetected in his presence. He nudged the softness of her breast with his chin, running his tongue over the nipple to make her breathe faster, his hand playing at her ribs to make that breath irregular. He dragged his mouth over her stomach to her navel, teasing around it with his tongue, counting her pulse thumping beneath it, faster when he began to tug her skirts down.

His money may not have bought her for very long, but for now, she was his, and nothing would go unnoticed, unappreciated.

Especially not that tattoo staining the skin of her hip, large and elaborate, and new.

His lips marked a path to it as he shifted to the side, pushing her skirts down to her knees until her legs could slide free of them. “This what you needed the money for?” he murmured, his hand coming to rest high on the inside of her thigh while his tongue resumed a reconnaissance of the ink’s design.

She tensed beneath him, and he could feel the muscle tightening under his mouth before her hand slipped into his hair, tugging him up until she could kiss him.

“And what if it was a gift?” she purred against his lips. “What if I liked him?”

Greed’s mind clouded over for a moment, but he wasn’t one for wasting time in situations like this. He couldn’t keep her and he knew it; Pride stopped him from having anything he wanted.

“We’ll just have to make this count, then,” he answered gruffly, forcing a toothy grin at her.

She scowled prettily. She had hoped for another answer, he imagined, but Greed had more pressing things on his mind, one of which he finally reached down to release from his human-made pants. He shifted to position himself, grasping her hip almost roughly to haul her closer.

He was about to move his grip to press her legs further apart when his attention snagged again on the design next to his hand. Anything that could distract him now could not be taken lightly, but at first he saw nothing that would explain it.

There was just something within its shape that struck some affinity with the insignia stamped on the back of his hand.

“Don’t tease me,” she murmured persuasively, rolling her hip away from his grasp. “Keep going.”

He nearly did. He wasn’t interested in complications, especially not now. He didn’t like wasting time with questions when he was so close. But some die-hard suspicion in the back of his mind made him glance behind him for the skirts he’d pulled from her.

They weren’t there.

Greed’s jaw tightened as he closed his eyes. He was silent for the moment, believing it but not. It was the ouroboros hidden in that tattoo, the ouroboros even his tricks couldn’t hide.

“Envy . . . ”

It spoke of his independence from Dante that although the hand so recently almost gentle had turned black and dangerous, he did nothing more than curl it into a fist. His eyes were vicious when they found the large, pretty gaze of Envy’s disguise, and his lust had given way to a wounded fury–though not completely.

Envy slowly pouted under his gaze, his lower lip protruding, still feminine and smooth. “It’s about time,” he intoned, but among the signs of smug disappointment, Greed could still detect a subtle fear.

“Where is she?” Greed seethed. He wanted what he came for, not some joke of Envy’s.

“Don’t worry, she won’t bother us.” Though not nearly as confident as usual, Envy’s sly smile remained.

Greed’s eyes widened slightly. Would Envy really have–”What did you do to her?”

It was now that Envy’s entire demeanor changed, his proud shoulders drooping into the mattress. “I didn’t do anything to her. She wasn’t here tonight.” He shifted under the press of Greed’s body as though uncomfortable, his gaze slipping to the side. “I didn’t plan this, you know.”

“Well, it wasn’t in my plans either,” Greed growled, frustrated. But it wasn’t easy to berate him while he looked like that. It wasn’t the disguise, but the expression on his half-hidden face that slowed Greed’s anger.

Still, he’d been robbed of something his body was still prepared and aching for.

And Envy hadn’t changed back, yet.

Greed glanced to the side for barely a moment as he considered it, then took Envy by the hip again, though it felt more like the first time. Keeping the momentum of surprise on his side, he flipped Envy to his stomach and dragged his backside up.

“You’re just gonna have to deal with this,” he muttered.

Envy had to pay somehow.

“What do you think you’re–”

But Envy’s anxious demand was interrupted by a grunt of discomfort, even pain, as Greed pressed into him. Coming from that throat, however, it sounded more like an acquiescent sigh, and that was what Greed chose to hear.

He could have taken his time, could have eased the entrance, made it better, but this was ultimately what he wanted, and he was far from brutal, especially by a homunculus’ standards.

And Envy wasn’t exactly fighting him.

Greed answered the sigh with a small groan of his own, letting his groin lead him, which it was more than happy to do, its clipped thrusts rocking Envy forward while Greed’s hands guided him back.

“Looks like you were thorough,” was all Greed could think to say between his breaths, which was really quite impressive.

And while he expected a smug, scornful reply from his partner, and could even have spoken it for him, Envy didn’t seem to have heard him. He was breathing hard, just as Greed was, and he rested on his elbows, forehead drooping to the bed. Hair cascading forward, his slender neck lay bare, and before Greed knew what he was doing he had bent over him to put his mouth to its base, inhaling what he imagined was a woman’s scent.

He told himself it was only in his nature that he would wrap his arms firmly around the slender waist, closing all gaps between them, his movements becoming faster, feverish and shallow. His hands slid up so that the sway of Envy’s breasts brushed teasingly over his palms, and for a long, ecstatic moment he forgot that Envy was not the whore he came to see tonight.

But the whore could never have knocked Greed back the way Envy suddenly did, separating them just long enough that Envy could turn to his back beneath him.

Greed’s weight brought him close again quickly, and though still positioned between Envy’s legs, he was stilled by the heat in Envy’s face and a strange intensity in his eyes that nearly turned them from brown to purple by its force alone.

Greed couldn’t fathom why Envy wasn’t denying him, or why his only real retort was an accusation that Greed couldn’t face him while he did it.

Greed clenched his jaw with the comment, muttering with the remainder of his breath as he returned to the wet heat between Envy’s legs, “It’s not your face anyway.”

Envy chuckled lightly, the breathy sound of it almost a hiss. “You want it to be?”

Greed ignored him. In fact, he couldn’t even be sure he’d heard him right over his own heartbeat in his ears, even while Envy’s lips were so close to his ear that he could feel his breath there.

Envy’s groan, though, he did hear, though it was a much smaller sound, as though he’d tried to stifle it.

It propelled Greed almost to the brink, surprising him so that he answered it with nearly the same sound, though his retained the heaviness of his gender. For only a second, he paused, gathering his control before one hand, now clawed in his need, pressed under Envy’s hip to clutch the ample flesh there, forcing Envy to take him to the end, deep and hard and desperate.

His supporting arm pressed under the homunculus’ shoulders as Greed tucked his head down. Envy’s body, however he had managed to do such a thing, was beginning to react, he could feel it, ready to clutch him, ready to convulse beneath him. Never mind that he was about to make Envy come. It was just a body, one he’d been tricked by, but god damn did it feel good, and it was only going to last another two seconds.

In the cacophony of sensation, Greed’s mind erupted in a repetition of Envy’s name, but he bit his tongue against it, the pain forgotten with the surge that vaulted through him. Beneath him, Envy writhed with the same involuntary rhythm, his nails digging into Greed’s back just above the smooth legs locked around his waist.

And there was something else, Greed thought, as the culmination left him much more quickly than it had crept up. Drained, and panting lightly, he could still hear it in his ear: his own name.

* * *

Greed left the establishment the same way he’d come in; he could only assume Envy had done the same–through the window–from his readiness to confront him on the pier.

But Greed ignored him, hands shoved in his pockets and a scowl on his face that didn’t know if it was angry or confused or just maybe a little hurt. Whatever it was, he kept just a little ahead of Envy’s pace to keep him from distinguishing it for him.

“Greed, would you just slow down?”

Greed couldn’t think why he would want to do that.

He couldn’t decide exactly why he wouldn’t, but it didn’t matter. He just couldn’t look at Envy right now, and he timed his march to keep Envy behind him while not running from him outright.

But Envy wouldn’t have it. With reflexes always a little faster than Greed’s, Envy finally forced himself in front of him. In his urgency he was almost as close to him as he’d been in the brothel, though he wisely took a step back once Greed finally leveled his gaze at him.

“What?”

“Look, I was just trying to–”

“Trying to what?”

“You’re always leaving–”

“I have things to do.”

“Greed, I can be whatever you want.”

Greed’s coldness wavered for just a moment with Envy’s words, their tone strangely quieter, his eyes suddenly more interested in the putrid water than in Greed.

“You know I want more than anyone could ever give me,” Greed muttered, almost by default. He stepped around the immobile Envy to continue on his way, slower than before, but still putting distance between them.

“That’s not what I meant,” Envy finally answered behind him, but Greed had no further response as he kept walking. He had an idea what Envy did mean, but Greed wasn’t ready for it.

Envy had lied to him. Envy was designed to lie, but he’d never lied to Greed before, and that was Greed’s only means of trusting a creature whose very nature wallowed in deceit.

Or maybe this wasn’t the first time Greed had been fooled. Maybe his trust had been unfounded for some time–how would he ever know?

Greed hurried on, and Envy, whose steps had remained behind him, did not match his pace.

* * * * *

Greed had passed the disintegrating warehouse hours ago. He’d instead travelled the length of the pier until he came to rest at the edge of a dock he wasn’t sure would support his weight for long.

When he’d first sat down, he’d understood that something fatal had occurred in their agreement. Truth be told, as homunculi went, they’d surpassed all expectations concerning how long they could remain civil to each other. Their little pact had almost reached the level of friendship among humans, and now that Greed thought of it, he realized how short-sighted he’d been. Envy had saved his life, out of the other six, and above Dante herself. Yes, that had meant something, but it probably meant less than what Greed had made it out to be.

The smartest, most self-preserving action Greed could take at this point would be to take the journal and set off on his own. They weren’t that much better off together than alone, and as Greed, he shouldn’t care that Envy would have no means of finding more of the remaining stones in the world. Greed should want them for himself. He did want them for himself.

But with respects to their former agreement, Greed knew the better compromise was to split the journal between them. Then they would both have an equal chance of surviving in the world, and Greed would have no further vulnerabilities, no further questions about trust and–dare he think it–friendship.

But as dawn finally illuminated a harbor that was better off in the dark, Greed rose with the conviction that he just didn’t want what was wise or even what was fair, and Greed’s wants were not easy to overcome, no matter what his artificial conscience was telling him.

He entered the warehouse quietly, no door to creak or to clatter behind him. Envy sat at the table with the journal open before him; as Greed expected, perhaps gullibly, Envy had not disappeared with it.

But Envy heard him. He lifted his head just a little, though he didn’t turn.

“If you ever deceive me again, it’s over,” Greed said from the door.

The silence that followed was brief, but in its space Greed knew Envy had truly heard him.

“Yeah.”

But there was more that Greed wanted to set right. His departure from wisdom was just about complete.

His footsteps were dull on the moldy floor, but again, Envy could not mistake his approach. Grasping his arm, Greed drew him to his feet and brought him as close as they’d been last night.

Envy still seemed uncertain of his mood, but Greed tried to make it obvious.

“You want her again?” Envy guessed, his voice more acquiescent than usual.

Greed met Envy’s eyes only briefly before he drew in closer, losing sight of them.

Envy’s hands swiftly found Greed’s shoulders to stop him. “Greed, who?”

Greed ran his tongue over his pointed teeth in final resolution.

“Let’s try just you.”

Envy seemed startled when Greed met his mouth, vulnerable and unprotected by disguise, but the trust Greed had once rebuked him for eventually kicked in. Envy’s arms tightened predictably around him, and Greed had pressed him to his back on the table–journal forgotten at the edge–before either had paused long enough to breathe.

Under Greed, Envy’s fervent expression was a hundred times more satisfying now that it was his own.

“You did say all night on just one, didn’t you?” Envy murmured, lifting his chin as though Greed needed the temptation. “You owe me.”

Greed smirked, holding his head a little higher.

“I am a man of my word.”

Unconditional – Six.
by arcanewinter. R 2870 Roy*Hughes. Fullmetal Alchemist. AT, pan-series spoilers.
Greed’s debts may be too much for him to handle.

These characters do not belong to me.  I do not profit from this.

The sand was getting irritating. Really irritating.

It was hard to walk in, hard to see in, hard to breathe in, but that was really the wind’s fault.

No, grumbled Greed wordlessly, that was really Pride’s fault–all of it was. Envy didn’t seem to be having any trouble at all with the conditions.

No trouble at all.

Greed stopped his trudging a moment just to stare at the figure several paces ahead of him. For two weeks it had been like this: Envy as normal as ever, Greed barely able to function. He was really no better than human right now. If it weren’t for Envy, Pride would have overtaken Greed days ago.

And if it weren’t for Envy, Greed never would have got out of there in the first place.

Damn it.

Greed sat down hard in the sand and flopped onto his back, arms folded. He was supposed to have everything, not owe everything. And with every step he took, he owed more. He was just slowing Envy down, and he had nothing to offer in return. It would make splitting up harder once Greed was well enough to survive alone, especially when Envy thought they’d be a team.

“Go on without me.”

The distant crunch of sand stopped under Envy’s feet. “That’s dramatic.”

“It’s not like I won’t be here when you get back,” Greed retorted, letting his irritation have free reign of his tone. “Go do your thing,” he mumbled, adding begrudgingly: “and save me a leftover.”

It wasn’t as though Greed hadn’t considered a partnership. It was mutually beneficial: they could steal more stones as a team, and they’d be better guarded against Pride. Moreover, the thought of giving Envy up was like another sword through his ribs.

But a partnership required compromise, and it required trust. Greed’s name rejected the former, and the latter, well, he didn’t have much evidence that their kind could be trusted. The sooner they could split up, the better–but not until Greed was restored to something near his previous strength, and he needed Envy for that. Until Envy collected enough stones, Greed would just have to pretend, and as he could do nothing to earn them, that might be a while.

He wished he didn’t feel so damned guilty about it, though.

“Suit yourself,” Envy called back. “But it’s right there.”

Greed opened an eye. To his right, the dunes stretched out to meet the clear and moonless sky. To his left, though, a little further ahead of them, were the distinguishable remains of a mansion.

On top of a fucking mountain.

“God damn it.”

“You want me to carry you?”

The mild ridicule snapped Greed upright again like a catapult.

“Just walk,” he growled. “I’m coming.”

He’d had a much harsher response in mind, but it wasn’t in his best interest to let it fly. He’d just have to put up with it until they were on equal footing again, however long that took.

Finding his balance again on the shifting sand was hell, but it wasn’t nearly as hard as keeping it. Still, Greed followed, hiding as much of his weakness as was physically possible. But much as he hated to admit it, he was utterly vulnerable, no matter who attacked him: Pride, Envy, a human, a gust of wind . . . but Pride was the more immediate, more likely threat–if he could be torn away from his shiny new war of expansion long enough to confront them.

They might have had a chance to hide practically anywhere if Pride weren’t the Sin they were running from. That just figured. And it didn’t help that Pride was holding their aces, while they didn’t have a clue where Pride now kept his.

They were were halfway up the mountainside before Greed tripped for the third time. Rough terrain and an upward slope had replaced the difficulty of the sand, and it was no improvement. The rocks were far less cushioning, and far less quiet. They no longer escaped Envy’s notice.

“For the last time, just sit down and wait for me! I said I’ll do the goddamned work.”

“Oh, now I get your sympathy,” Greed mumbled, pushing himself up again. He’d been able to fake it pretty well until now. Now, he was actually bleeding. Fucking ridiculous.

“Yeah, well, you didn’t tell me–”

“Well, I don’t need it,” Greed snapped. “Go.”

Envy’s expression turned from mild concern to the more usual scorn. “Fine. Split your head open. More stones for me.”

He turned and marched with enviable ease up the narrow path in front of him.

Greed watched him, pulling himself up and forward until he’d gained his footing again, but that was all. Greed did need his sympathy, or more accurately, his charity. And Envy, expecting a partner out of him, was willing to give it. So why couldn’t Greed just take it? Sure, he planned on leaving, but Pride must have been planning that uprising for some time and he never seemed to feel guilty. Why did Greed? Why couldn’t he just take Envy for all he was worth? Wasn’t Envy already his?

Or maybe–maybe he could accept that offer. His body and his conscience were begging him to do it. He needed the rest that trusting Envy could bring, and he needed a release from the guilt he couldn’t quite escape. They’d been partners before under Her direction. They were good at working together. It would be easier all around if they could just–

But no. He had already seen the mistakes Envy made on his account. Envy wasn’t watching out for himself, and Greed would not be responsible for his being a damned fool. Greed was leaving, as soon as he was strong enough, and they’d both be better off.

He trudged up the rest of the steep path, his weight sinking into every step just to anchor it. When he reached the top, he sat himself down a little harder than he meant to against the remains of a foundation wall, arms folded over his chest. Fine. So he probably couldn’t move another inch. At least he’d got up here.

A few feet away, the other homunculus was fingering through the journal they had brought with them, crouched over where it lay open on the ground. It was very thoughtful of Dante to have made all record of her intended exploitations so easy to transport.

“I think we can guess why this attempt got crossed out,” Envy confessed, rubbing the hair on his chin.

Scowling, Greed leaned to the side until he could peer around the edge of the wall. Sure enough, most of the mansion had collapsed into a pile of debris as though the rock underneath it had given way. Only one narrow wing remained standing, its short end gaping open where the rest of the structure had ripped away.

Greed leaned back again, eyes narrower than usual. “So there’s a good chance we came all the way here for nothing.”

“It was a big operation. There’s gotta be something stashed away somewhere.” Envy closed the book and stood, tossing it closer to where Greed was sitting. “And whatever’s still in progress is too risky right now.”

Greed looked away, pretending to listen for unwelcome company. Envy really was banking on Greed’s aid in the future. “Well, have fun,” he grumbled, dismissing the other, along with his own thoughts. He closed his eyes, still leaning against the crumbling wall.

He heard the crunch of footsteps moving towards the mansion, but not immediately.

“Let me know if he shows up,” he said, his footsteps soon breaking into a run before a heavier crunch of gravel sounded his leap. It was quiet after that.

Greed opened his eyes, warily looking over the desert-like horizon, barely distinguishable from the sky. He couldn’t see any figures, alone or otherwise, but at the moment he’d have missed them even if they were there. Pride would be on him before he could call out, and then what would Envy do?

It was another of Envy’s mistakes: now he was trusting Greed for their safety. Yes, the sooner he was out of there, the better.

He squinted as the stronger wind kicked up, spraying sand into his face. Once it died down, he reached to pick up the journal, shaking it off before he could somehow lose it under a dune. Their lives from now on more or less depended on this little book. And that meant, of course, that they’d have to figure out how to divide it between them.

Greed scanned the landscape again rather uselessly before opening the journal. He found the entry for the collapsed mansion, then flipped forward a few entries until he found a few operations he remembered. For several of them, he had been working with Envy.

Greed frowned, flipping more pages. No, after a certain point, he’d spent all of them working with Envy.

He supposed that made sense. Lust had always been with Gluttony. Sloth was always busy with Pride, and Wrath . . . well, Wrath was useless.

And now, in addition to Pride, Envy and Greed were the only ones left. He hadn’t even trusted Sloth enough to keep her: in fact, from what they could gather in the newspapers (which glorified King Bradley as a national hero), she’d been the first to go.

And that’s just the point Greed would eventually prove to Envy. Homunculi could not be trusted, not by anyone, not even by other homunculi.

So why Envy had risked so much to bring Greed with him out of that battle was beyond Greed. For a human, maybe that was noble. But for their kind it was just unnecessary. There were no allowances for behavior like that, and it only bred confusion. If Envy knew what was good for him, he’d take the journal and leave Greed to his own devices. It would mean eventual but certain death for Greed, but at least Greed could stop worrying.

Squinting again with the return of the wind, Greed tucked the journal under one arm and used the wall to haul himself upright. He turned his back to the dry landscape below and was just about to plop himself down on the other side of the wall when he saw Envy approaching. It took him a moment to spy the corked flask in his hand, and another moment further to make out the red stones within it.

“We’re in luck,” Envy announced as he stopped a few feet away, and Greed leaned warily against the wall, hoping it wasn’t about to topple behind him. He probably wouldn’t get up again if it did. “Looks like part of the lab was still standing. These were as far as they got.”

All human emotion forgotten, Greed’s eyes followed the sway of the flask, his hunger and his sin making him powerless to look away. So the stones weren’t the real thing–Greed didn’t really think they would be, not in a laboratory, but he couldn’t help wanting them with every untrustworthy fiber of his being, and he wanted much more than what he expected Envy to give. If he surprised him, could he manage to take them all? Did he stand even the smallest chance?

But it was Envy who surprised him, the action so opposite to what Greed was thinking that he barely caught the flask when it was tossed to him. He had no mind for questioning now: he got exactly what he wanted, and it didn’t matter why.

Well, it was almost what he wanted. While one hand awkwardly gripped the rounded glass belly, the other tugged fruitlessly at the cork. He nearly rubbed off the skin of his hand twisting and pulling at it, his mouth watering already for what was inside, but the damned thing wasn’t coming out, and the struggle wasn’t doing Greed any favors.

Growling in frustration, he lifted the flask to hurl it against the wall, wondering if he even had the strength to break it. But before he could try it, Envy had taken it out of his hand, throwing Greed from his already-precarious balance. He hit the ground, sitting, once more, against the wall, furious and pathetic and starving.

He heard the pop of the cork just before the narrow mouth was set against his, and his tongue eagerly accepted the short flow of stones that followed. They made ugly sounds against his teeth, but he was far beyond the perception of most of his senses. He knew only the sensation of physical restoration as the life in the stones replenished much of what he’d lost on the transmutation circle.

When the reaction had fizzled out, and his tongue could find nothing further in the corners of his mouth, he could tell he wasn’t quite on par with his usual self. But he was close. He felt good.

It wasn’t until he opened his eyes again that he realized the flask was empty, and had been since it left his mouth. His eyes flicked up to Envy just as Envy tossed it away to shatter safely away from them.

It was much easier to stand this time.

“You didn’t take any?”

The question wasn’t a kind one, and Envy’s expression acknowledged that fact as he looked Greed over.

“You needed them more than I did.”

“Since when does that matter?”

Envy folded his arms indignantly, still cool against Greed’s temper. “Since the faster we can actually work together, the faster we can move on to bigger operations. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is, you sap, that we won’t be working together, and if you’d been a little more concerned about your own skin, you’d have seen that coming!”

“What do you mean we won’t be working together?”

Greed clenched his teeth and turned away. He knew he’d have to explain himself when the time came, he just didn’t think it’d be right now. “You just keep setting yourself up,” he growled. “I don’t know where you learned to act all naive and sentimental, but you need to be more greedy.” He turned to face him again, grinning unsuccessfully. “Or more selfish, if you prefer.”

“Just like she taught us, huh?” Envy’s voice was as smooth as his expression. It only heated Greed further: what was so hard about this concept?

“She taught us self-preservation, which is exactly–”

“Yeah, her own self.”

“And shouldn’t we be in it for ourselves now?”

“Should we?”

“Damn right we should! You almost got yourself killed five times over back at that old hag’s house! You should have been getting your ass out of there instead of exposing yourself to save mine. What the hell was that back there, anyway?”

Finally, Envy’s calm expression began to falter. Maybe Greed’s point was getting through to him.

“What? What the hell was what?”

No, still acting stupid.

“When you did your thing to me,” Greed spat with an exasperated gesture, ignoring Envy’s puzzling look of relief. “You had no idea that stunt would work, and then we both would have been dead.”

“I told you, I couldn’t just leave you.”

Greed folded his arms, matching the return of Envy’s coldness. “Yeah, well, you can try again now.”

Envy narrowed his eyes. Clearly he had already regained the upper hand. “The only reason I ended up having to save our asses with that ’stunt’ in the first place was because you tried to save mine. Remember that?”

Greed’s eyes widened. “That–”

“Yeah?”

He wanted to say it wasn’t the same thing–and it wasn’t; that Greed hadn’t expected to make it out anyway–and he hadn’t; but all he could do was snatch the journal from the sand where it had fallen and shove it to Envy’s chest so he could go.

But he couldn’t win even at this. Envy made no move to take it.

“Keep it,” he suggested slyly. “Be a little more selfish. Or greedy if–”

“SHUT UP,” Greed growled, taking the journal back and twisting it at the spine to tear it, half for each of them.

But the leather binding wasn’t giving. The damned thing was old enough to fall apart on its own and he couldn’t tear it a fraction of an inch no matter how much he swore.

He finally gave up as he felt the hand on his shoulder, and he looked at it, unaccustomed to the gesture.

“Look,” Envy muttered, “the only one I’m trusting from here on out is you. So if you know you can betray me, then by all means, go.”

Greed scowled as his attention shifted sidelong to Envy’s face. He knew he should have been asking himself if he thought Envy could be trusted, but the answer to that had been written on Envy’s face the very moment he ran headlong onto the transmutation circle after him.

Greed shrugged out from under Envy’s hand. “Why do you have to put it like that,” he mumbled, smoothing the journal’s pages before he closed it.

Unconditional – Five.
by arcanewinter. R 2522 Roy*Hughes. Fullmetal Alchemist. AT, pan-series spoilers.
Pride’s betrayal threatens everything.

These characters do not belong to me.  I do not profit from this.

He wasn’t sure how much more it would take for the garish ballroom to collapse. He almost wished it would: a few tons of debris would quickly take out the swarm of blue uniforms without doing the Sins any lasting damage.

But that wouldn’t stop Pride. Pride would only bring more soldiers; Pride with his Eye would continue the righteous assault on the homunculi wherever Dante took them.

Shoulda seen it coming, Greed thought scornfully, swinging another soldier away from him and using him to clear the area around him.

But it was like trying to push away water. Pride had brought so many . . .

You don’t lead an entire country with a sin like pride–

Greed spied the large array on the floor behind him and cursed, rushing back into the line of men so naively trying to push him towards it.

–and follow some woman’s orders forever.

They’d tried to dispense of the alchemists first. They were easy to pick out: they looked too privileged, too pampered, too educated to fight alongside the lower ranks. And for the most part they didn’t.

But for every alchemist they quashed, another scrambled forward to continue the complicated sealing array. By now, they’d managed to complete at least a dozen of the fatal designs. Some of them were so quick with that art . . . It was as though the rest of the soldiers were merely there to pave the way for the real weapons.

Greed growled as he threw off another human net, involuntarily scanning the battle for someone he couldn’t pick out anyway. He almost felt sorry for them: they led such fragile lives. And yet, they all seemed so damned eager to throw them away–for what? For Bradley? For that god damned traitor?

Just as Greed was beginning to wonder how much longer he’d have to put up with this useless onslaught, a message traversed the blue sea, soldier-to-soldier until it reached him.

The woman was dead.

Greed would have grinned if his shield hadn’t been grinning for him already. They had put up a fight for her: they’d done what was necessary to stay in her favor. But they were pretty much free to go, now. Show was over.

“ENVY!” he roared, barreling his way towards the center of the ballroom, avoiding the etched arcs on the floor whether they were complete or not. “LET’S GO!”

He wondered briefly if Envy had been the soldier to land that final blow. It wouldn’t have surprised him. Greed knew a lot about wanting everything for himself, but when it came to being selfish, that bitch took the fucking cake.

“Give it up already,” he growled at his attackers, impatiently shoving them away and forcibly parting the mass of them as he pitched ahead. He scanned the many rushing soldiers, searching for the one that changed, listening for it even above the guns and the shouting.

But the transformation was far closer than he expected.

His indestructible shield splintered away as though struck by a shock wave. It may as well have been.

Knocked to a standstill, he tried in vain to rebuild his protection, but he could barely remain standing. What the hell?

“Move aside, men,” a voice commanded pleasantly. “I’ll take care of this one.”

Greed sneered as the uniforms crowding his blurring vision obediently made way for their leader. Though he could make out nothing different about him, there was only one explanation for Greed’s sudden weakness.

Pride probably came prepared for all of them.

He was just about to growl out a lewd greeting when Pride’s elbow connected with his gut, sending him many paces back and stealing the breath from him. He had barely seen Pride move.

This couldn’t end well.

He’d barely found his balance when Pride shoved him again, forcing him through the ranks of the military’s lap dogs. Pride could have chosen the nearest working circle, but didn’t. He could have unsheathed one of his swords, but didn’t. It was as though he’d rather make a spectacle of his power, and the monotonous faces that passed him as he plunged by were indeed watching, for there was no shield to hide him now.

He tried putting enough space between them to gain some energy back, but Pride never gave him the chance. If he wasn’t falling or back-peddling, Pride’s hands were already on him.

He’d been so stupid. He’d been so stupid not to have noticed where Pride was at all times, stupid not to have realized that Pride would not have attempted this without some advantage. But Greed had been too busy at the time, too worried about what Envy was doing to worry about saving his own skin.

And now he was going to pay for that.

He heard the quick shuffle of boots behind him. He knew without turning that they were clearing away from the finished sealing array in the corner, though he was the only one who’d be harmed by it. Maybe they didn’t want a homunculus vomiting on their boots. It was hard to say.

“You’re a damn traitor,” Greed jeered. He watched the way Pride was standing, waiting for him to make his move.

“And why would a homunculus have any reason to call me that?” Pride took the necessary steps forward, his manner relaxed as always. Greed wished he could say he was overconfident, but at the moment . . .

“As a matter of fact,” Pride mused, “weren’t you about to abandon your comrades?”

Greed could only narrow his eyes in response. He watched as Pride smirked with satisfaction, his body bending into a slight crouch before he lunged forward, his hand pressing solidly on Greed’s chest.

But Greed wasn’t going alone. Not if he could help it.

He gripped Pride at his wrist, using his momentum to pull him towards the etched lines with him. Pride wouldn’t win entirely. And if he were lucky, he could switch places just in time–

Greed only knew Pride had drawn his sword by the sound it made. It pierced him in his right side, its tip soon catching on the inside of his ribs on the left.

Pride used this anchor to fling him past the outer line of the array, himself just stopping a pace from it. He sneered, triumphant, as though he had never been worried at all.

If words accompanied that triumph, Greed didn’t know it. His insides paid the injury no mind as they convulsed, twisting and wrenching, expelling the very substance he needed. He couldn’t even haul himself to the edge of the sinister design to find he could not cross it a second time.

He couldn’t tell whether the gunfire and explosions continued on the other side of the ballroom or if that thunder was only in his head now. But somehow, Pride’s voice slipped in again. Why did it have to be the last thing Greed heard?

“Lieutenant,” he was saying, “why don’t you finish this one off. I’ll continue with the others.”

“Sir!” came the affirmative response, further away. But her boots sounded quickly as she approached. He heard the cock of her gun.

Greed laughed weakly. “Can’t come stick me again, can you, Pride.” He rolled heavily to his back, eyes focused on the other homunculus, his grin almost wild. He wanted more than this, more than what he had, more than what he lived. He wasn’t ready to give up that accumulation yet–Greed would never give anything up–but it was too late to be anything but angry. So angry.

“You’re delusional already,” Pride assessed, smiling beneath his mustache. He sheathed his sword, but his malice remained. “Is there a problem, Lieutenant Hawkeye?”

“No, Fuhrer, sir.”

Pride’s smile was a little more pleased than usual as he turned and disappeared past the other soldiers, leading them away and towards the next unlucky Sin.

It was only now in the relative quiet that Greed paid the officer any mind despite the role she was playing. She still held her gun aimed for his head, probably between the eyes, but her severe hesitance was written all over her pretty face. Greed smirked. Hadn’t she ever killed anyone before?

“Pull the damn trigger,” he grumbled. “I feel like shit.”

The soldier paused. She lowered the gun a few inches, but it soon snapped up again.

“Yes, sir,” he heard her whisper.

Her finger tensed. Greed closed his eyes, tired of keeping them open.

But all he heard was the officer’s cry as she hit the floor. Another soldier had attacked her, knocking her hard off her feet. She wasn’t moving as the soldier straightened, turning with a wide, almost panicked expression.

“Greed?!”

He started running.

“DON’T!” Greed yelled, mustering the strength to sit up, but Envy was already against him, looking very much like Envy as his eyes darted around the array beneath them.

“Oh, FUCK.”

The officer wasn’t down for the count. She rose to one knee, trying to steady herself until her gun was perfectly still. A gash in her forehead sent blood trailing toward one eye, but that didn’t seem to be the one she was aiming with.

“You’re a god damn idiot,” Greed rumbled. Envy might survive her first round of shots, but after he lost the stones, he’d be done, too. And what for? Stupidity? He was already beginning to tremble against him, turning his face away with the exertion.

Circumstances what they were, Greed hardly noticed the way his arms tightened around the other Sin. He only knew that Envy was close, that Envy was where he wanted him to be, if this was it. Envy was his; it had always been that way.

This time, the gun fired.

But all Greed felt was a sudden freedom, as though the weight binding him had been lifted.

He opened his eyes to see that a good chunk of the marble floor had been shattered along the outer rim of the array.

She couldn’t be that bad a shot.

“Go,” he thought she said, and Greed could only watch her turn on her boot and hurry towards the other soldiers.

Greed was confused enough to be angry. So he’d been terrified for nothing? So he’d had his ass handed to him–first by Pride, then by some little girl soldier– for nothing?

“What the hell was that about?” he growled, pushing Envy away from him even as the other Sin pulled him to his feet.

“How should I know?” Envy retorted. “I’m not complaining.”

Greed wanted to continue his disagreeableness, but Envy was already pulling him towards the doors to the east wing, away from the throng of soldiers. Greed didn’t like to notice it, but Envy was supporting most of his weight.

“Shit,” Envy muttered suddenly, and he tugged Greed behind one of the room’s great pillars.

Greed leaned heavily into the marble support, knowing only through reason that the pillar was upright and that he was not tipping over. “What’s the problem?” he panted gruffly.

“The doors are gone.”

“What?”

“I said the fucking doors are gone!”

Greed swung his gaze from Envy to the wall. Just as he’d said, the whole thing was flat paneling from corner to corner, floor to ceiling.

The fucking doors were gone.

“If I ever come across an alchemist after this, I’m gonna rip his fucking head off.”

“Well, don’t get too excited yet,” Envy muttered. “They’re coming back this way.”

Greed quieted, staring at the wall that was going to be–was supposed to be–his exit to freedom. He was getting tired of this. First he’d been on his way out of here, then he’d been about to die, then he’d been on his way out of here, and now–

“Just get out of here,” he muttered.

The chorus of boots on marble grew louder. They were searching for their remains, if not them. Did they have to be so thorough?

“What about you?”

“Don’t get stupid,” Greed hissed. Pressed to the pillar, he peered along the very edge of his sight. Any second now. “I can’t run and you can’t carry me out of here.”

“I can’t just–”

Greed reached back to silence him, his pupils narrowing as the first officer broke into view. All he’d have to do is turn around. He’d turn his head. He’d alert the others. He’d fire, and if his aim wasn’t any good, the others would make up for it.

All he had to do was turn around.

Greed stepped in front of Envy, using everything he had left in him to call the shield back just one more time, just long enough. It made no difference at the moment that Envy could survive the firing squad; it made no difference that Greed wouldn’t.

It was the principle of the thing.

The shield, though, wouldn’t budge past his elbows, and when it fell away, so did he. The attempt had drained him.

Envy came down after him, an arm catching him around the side. Greed looked up, smirking with a sort of relief as Envy’s form rippled downward into that of an officer. Now just get out.

But the rippling transformation didn’t stop with Envy. He was holding so tightly to Greed that Greed could feel him shaking, even through the blue uniform that now clothed them both.

“What is this?” Greed slurred.

Envy merely shook his head, his face a troubled mask of control, though someone else’s face now.

“Lieutenant General?”

One of the soldiers had called out toward them. Greed listened as his boots hurried closer. What now?

“This man needs a medic! Get that wall open!”

It took Greed’s failing awareness a moment to realize those orders were coming from Envy. Maybe there was hope. Despite his careless bravado, he didn’t really feel like dying.

“We need a State Alchemist!” the soldier shouted, obediently relaying the order. “Open the wall!”

“Wait!” another voice interrupted. Greed heard more boots shuffling in their direction. “How do we know that’s not them?”

Figures. Shoulda left me. Greed smirked weakly, but his eyes widened through the haze as Envy stood up with him, bearing him like a true fallen comrade. Greed didn’t even have the strength now to hold onto him. It was pathetic.

Envy still trembled with the exertion, but his voice boomed loud enough in the near silence to make Greed wince.

“IF HE DIES, YOU’LL ANSWER TO ME.”

The other soldiers remained quiet in the impasse. Greed guessed they were vacillating between what would happen if they were wrong about either assumption. But Envy couldn’t prove anything, and he probably couldn’t keep this up forever.

Greed couldn’t stay awake forever, either. His eyes were closed before he realized it. He’d only know the outcome if he woke up again. If.

“Open it,” a soldier finally commanded. Either his voice was low, or Greed was already losing consciousness.

“Only one of them can change his shape.”

Unconditional – Four.
by arcanewinter. PG13 1002 Roy*Hughes. Fullmetal Alchemist. AT, pan-series spoilers.
Greed’s shield can only guard him against so much.

These characters do not belong to me.  I do not profit from this.

Greed couldn’t help but feel some satisfaction in surprising her. It was time for Envy to test his honed skills against one of them–humans broke and fell too soon to try him–but she hadn’t expected Greed to volunteer, now had she?

He stopped in front of the other Sin and smirked.

Like he’d let anyone else touch him.

“Let’s go,” he said, shrugging out of the shirt and jacket he indulged himself with and letting his indestructible protection consume him. The tactless expression on Envy’s face reminded him that it wasn’t pretty, but it was damned effective. His solid fist in Envy’s chest sent him hurtling further than his fleshier form could allow.

“You’re supposed to fight back,” he growled, following him to the broken marble that marked his landing. Once there, he relaxed into readiness again.

Envy pushed himself up, unsteady for only a moment. His growl was far closer to whining. “I can’t fight a shield, moron. This isn’t going to work.”

“Get around it,” Greed pressed, ejecting Envy’s next attack as it rebounded, then again. The Sin flipped away from him with each failure, landing on his feet with practice. His grace seemed to grow with his frustration, but Greed wasn’t trying to beat him into the ground. “Change, you idiot!”

Envy stopped, his expression briefly divided by the trailing marks of Greed’s claws.

Greed glanced away while they healed.

By the time he looked back again, Envy had already lunged for him, striking him just under the chest with a blade where his arm had been. His force was enough to knock Greed backwards, but despite the audible sharpness of his weapon, it had no other effect than that. None of the weapons he could muster even scratched him.

“Find his weakness,” Dante advised, her presence slipping into Greed’s awareness again like a snake into water. He rolled his shoulders back and ignored her intrusion, sending Envy away from him with more force than before.

Envy picked himself up from the wall, brushing the debris from his shoulders with an expression only slightly more wounded than his body.

“I thought I was your weakness,” he pouted slyly as Greed came forward again.

“It’s for your own good,” Greed responded, hiding his indignation.

“Then I wonder if you would hit me as hard?”

Greed paused and smirked at the sultry transformation. Envy was better than he thought.

“No offense to Lust, but yeah, I could hit her as hard.”

Lust’s face frowned as Greed lunged forward, claws just barely missing the Sin as he flipped away, taking a new form as he did, a new tactic. Greed knew Envy’s abilities were a poor match for the Ultimate Shield, but even in failure, he was improving.

And so this continued. Greed knew Envy was attempting to find something, anything that would affect him past the hard shell of the shield, an identity that would reach through it and hold him just long enough to land a solid blow.

Greed smiled. This was all Envy could do, and yet he knew it too would fail. But it wouldn’t fail on their more mundane enemies, and that was the important lesson here.

Envy’s metamorphoses ran the gamut of the remaining five Sins, Greed included, then branched out to include Dante (as if Greed would attack her with less force) and the short-lived Hoenheim. Greed watched between each flurry of attacks as Envy focused his talent on every individual they had come into contact with during the last eight months, never stumbling on anyone Greed gave a damn about.

He laughed finally as Envy changed tactics, broadening his system.

“A doctor?”

At least he was back to his own face.

“Come on, you’ve got to be a pussy about somebody.”

“Try a priest, just for the hell of it.” Greed grinned at him, dodging the swipe of Envy’s blade.

“How about a nun,” Envy smirked, nearly catching Greed off-balance when he tried it.

Growling, Greed stumbled backwards. “You could at least try to look pretty.”

“Same to you, Prince Charming.”

Greed narrowed his eyes at the slight, but the parade of identities continued, none of them any harder to deflect or to dodge than the last. Of course none of them mattered, none of them spoke to his short history: the farmer, the foreigner, the scientist, the prisoner, the policeman, the soldier . . .

The soldier.

Greed’s heart thudded too hard in his chest just once before Envy’s blade ran up under it to stop it. Greed sneered from the pain, but more so from the defeat, his clawed hands gripping Envy’s forearm through the blue military jacket.

When Envy tugged his arm away, the blade sheathing into his human guise again, Greed’s momentary weakness dropped him to his knees in front of Envy’s boots, the rest of his shield melting away.

“Envy!” Dante interrupted, “That’s enough.”

Greed listened as Envy reverted to his usual attire. “Like I was gonna keep going.”

“You’ll have an easier time with mere humans,” she concluded. “Good work.”

The rest of them were leaving. Greed watched them go with a scowl, his hand rubbing his chest. It healed much faster than his pride, even if that wasn’t his particular vice.

He looked up only begrudgingly when Envy crouched in front of him.

“So why’d you do it?”

“Do what?” Greed rumbled. Why’d I drop my guard for no reason?

“You didn’t have to.” Envy looked away, elbows on his knees, indignant. “I woulda got there on my own if you’d let me.”

Greed studied him, eyes again narrowed, purple now rather than red. He soon snorted, pushing Envy off balance as he used him as support to stand again.

“So I felt sorry for your ass,” he answered. “I didn’t have all night.”

He grinned his antagonism over his shoulder as he sauntered in the direction the others had taken, palm still rubbing at his chest, unseen.

Unconditional – Three.
by arcanewinter. PG13 486 Roy*Hughes. Fullmetal Alchemist. AT, pan-series spoilers.
Envy can have whatever face he wants, but Greed has only one in mind.

These characters do not belong to me.  I do not profit from this.

The new Sin stood. He wasn’t the pulsing mess he’d been the last time Greed had seen him, but though it was an improvement, it wasn’t what Greed expected.

Even if he didn’t know what, exactly, that was.

“Where’s your real form?” He came closer, sneering at the light hair, the thin build, the smooth face. He didn’t trade his freedom for this. “I want your real form.”

The other Sin’s eyes grew a fraction wider, and his jaw tensed, though so briefly Greed might not have noticed if he hadn’t been staring so intently. But his expression returned quickly enough to disdain, and the Sin feigned an appraisal of him, one hip sliding to the side. “Greed, I take it. She told me I didn’t have a real form.”

“Well, she lied,” Greed hissed. “It’s what she does. What form were you before you knew you could change it?”

The new Envy narrowed his eyes, plucking Greed’s hands from his shoulders with remarkable force. “How should I know? And what’s it to you?”

Everything.

It was everything to him, only he couldn’t explain why, he could never explain why he wanted anything. But this want was stronger than anything else she’d ever tempted him with, this was a gaping hole that needed to be filled, and he was so close. He knew he was close. This was everything.

“Nothing,” he growled. He turned away as the skin of his hands blackened to mirror the solid weight in the pit of his stomach. Maybe this new Sin was toying with him, as Sins so often did. Or maybe he was telling the truth.

He should never have struck a deal with her. She created him, after all. She always won in the end. He knew she did. He didn’t even know what it was he wanted and she had used his confused need like he’d tried to use her alchemy. And now he had nothing. It had been a trap, not a deal. He wasn’t satisfied, and as Greed, he was better off being sealed on one of her wretched designs.

“Watch yourself with her,” he advised, a petty offering to another like him, but an offering nonetheless. He retreated to the door still hanging crookedly from his impatient entrance, grasping its edge to pull it shut in his wake.

He stopped short at the faint sound behind him, a sensation like electricity in the air.

“You mean this one?”

Greed turned back. His eyes found him, and for a moment he didn’t breathe.

Envy kept his gaze focused on the wall to his side, arms folded over a broader chest. The dark hair running along the line of his jaw matched the short hair swept back from his forehead.

“Yeah,” Greed answered. One corner of his mouth pulled it into a smile he couldn’t explain. “That one.”

Unconditional – Two.
by arcanewinter. PG13 174 Roy*Hughes. Fullmetal Alchemist. AT, pan-series spoilers.
Bartering his soul shouldn’t have been worth it.

These characters do not belong to me.  I do not profit from this.

She had him by the very soul now, or maybe she had since she’d made him. But the difference, of course, was that he accepted it now. He felt it binding him like the steel she had thrust through the red anchors on his skin, pinning him to the wall of her derelict mansion. He didn’t care very much for her painful little metaphor, or the week she’d left him there in the dark to think about the bargain he’d struck with her.

But it had paid off. Still suspended, he had a clear view of what that soul of his was worth, and it was gasping and choking on its own breath in front of her. Crude nails scraped at the marble floor where it writhed, ugly and tortured, seeking to consume something it could not know existed until she offered it almost kindly in a cupped hand.

“He is Envy,” she said.

No, thought Greed, hanging his head again with a weak but satisfied smirk.

He is mine.

Unconditional – One.
by arcanewinter. PG13 545 Roy*Hughes. Fullmetal Alchemist. AT, pan-series spoilers.
Greed has no memory of what’s come before him; he only knows what he wants.

These characters do not belong to me.  I do not profit from this.

She called him Greed.

From the moment he opened his eyes, he knew why. It was all he was and all he felt, and his wanting didn’t stop with the stones in her outstretched hand. It drove him and it pulled him, and in his first weeks as her creation, he obeyed her when it got him something and he rebelled when the world showed him something better. He among them was difficult to control.

She knew his tendencies. She punished and she belittled and she did her best to lash him to her will, but whatever he had always faded in the promise of what he wanted.

But at the heart of it, at the heart of him, was a want that predated everything he knew, a want that seemed to have been born with him, at his side. It held his ear to its mouth and was never quiet, and it was this weakness that she reached for, and this weakness that she twisted.

She dangled the offer in front of him as though he were a dog. One request for his sworn obedience. One wish for his life.

He didn’t want to give in to her. Giving in meant bending to her, answering her summons, serving her fickle will. He would be hers. That was her offer, her equal exchange.

He hissed shortly and turned away, his arms folding across his chest as the skin along his hands hardened and blackened with his mood. He knew his own name was guiding him, curling around his conscience and clouding his reasoning. He knew he didn’t belong to anyone, that he was clever enough to evade her long enough to make escape worth it. It was just that he wanted so damned much.

It was what kept him from using his claws to remove her from his world: she alone was capable of giving him more than he could give himself. There was an ability that separated them, and without it, he was powerless to make manifest his greatest desire.

He began to smile jaggedly, taking his time, greedily claiming the moments for himself. That he’d give in to her he had no doubt. She promised him things and the only thing he had to give in return was something he couldn’t see, something he couldn’t touch. Sure, freedom and dignity were valuable, but there had to be something worth more, something he could feel and hold and possess. He just had to find it.

And it was already there in his mind, something he’d been wanting even before he could breathe, before his heart could beat. It was familiar, familiar to a point that frightened him, comforting in a way that suggested the ashes he’d risen from. He didn’t understand what he wanted, but someone did; this was someone else’s wish.

And he’d never be satisfied without it.

She stood before him, tempting him though her hands were empty, commanding him though her form was weak.

“What is it that you want?” she repeated.

His mind had already begun humming with the answer. He rested the full weight of his contempt on her as he lifted his gaze.

“I want him back.”

Unconditional – Prologue
by arcanewinter. PG13 150 Roy*Hughes. Fullmetal Alchemist. AT, pan-series spoilers.
Roy’s vengeance alters the course of Amestris, and though he’s reunited with what he’s lost, it’s nothing he would have wanted.

These characters do not belong to me.  I do not profit from this.

Not stepping out of the way soon enough didn’t rank very high on his list of regrets.

It should have. It should have felt like the costliest mistake of his life, being the one to end it, but there were others he would rather undo in its place. Maybe that was what he was doing tonight.

An eye for an eye.

Tooth for a tooth.

He fell heavily into the wall at his side, slamming his shoulder into it and not feeling it. A few feet away from him, a homunculus spit and shrieked through the blaze, but he wouldn’t for long.

“Did you think it would bring him back?” she asked from the shadows, as though she’d watched everything, never lifting a finger.

Roy smiled as he hit the ground, choking on the smoke of his own flames.

No, he couldn’t bring him back.

But this was close enough.

x-posted:
[LJ] fullservicefma
[LJ] fma_yaoi
[LJ] hughesxroy

Part I

Prologue . One . Two . Three . Four . Five . Six . Seven

Part II

…

Part III

…

These characters do not belong to me.  I do not profit from this.  You, and not I, are responsible for your offense if you choose to read what follows.

10

It’s only been a few days since Lt. Col. Maes Hughes was found, but Roy Mustang needed only that long to project what the rest of his life might feel like. His 29 years shrink to almost nothing under the weight. An aimless desire for revenge makes his hands twitch emptily at his sides: if he only had a target; if he only knew the name. The war taught him how to raise his hand against his enemies, how to stamp down the unjust reality of human against human. He often wishes he’d never learned such a lesson, that he’d never lost sight of his own humanity in Ishbal, but he doesn’t wish it today. Today he wishes only for a direction to send his wrath. He is thankful that he is the Flame Alchemist. Someone deserves to burn.

The mourners have mostly retreated, but one approaches to stand silently at his side, gazing at the stone as he does. He doesn’t need to look up to know her. They are paralleled in ways that can’t be said aloud. Though she his wife and he his best friend, they both knew Maes Hughes in the same way. They both know how he laughed, how he worried, how he smiled, how he kissed. They both know the great extent to which the man loved, and they’ve known it for many separate years.

But only one of them has the greater right to stay; only one would be venerable in the public eye, military or civil. Roy touches the brim of his hat in a gesture and turns to give them the privacy he’s always depended on.

“Colonel–”

He stops when she does. He hates what this means for her, for her daughter. He hates that he knows some part of what she feels, that he knew her husband in ways he shouldn’t have. He hates that he’s willing to set aside their plan for peace in Amestris to avenge him.

But he turns back. He lifts his eyes to hers, keeping hidden what is hers to show. She attempts a smile that threatens to break him, but her eyes, though wet, are steady.

“Colonel, there’s something I want to tell you.”

9

Though just 28, Roy is drowsy beyond his years, and a knock at the door causes him to stifle his own yawn with a grumble. Retying the robe he’d been about to discard, he traces a path of lamps from his bedroom to the door of his apartment and pulls it open.

“Roy! Thank God.”

Roy stares bleary-eyed for a moment before he moves to close the door again, but as expected, the bespectacled visitor blocks him, and Roy finally rolls to the door’s frame to allow him entrance. He rubs the corners of his eyes, opening them again unwillingly.

“Hughes, what are you doing here?”

Maes Hughes shuts the door behind him and turns, sharp eyes inspecting his friend. “You didn’t answer your telephone.”

“Yes, I did. And we spoke at length about–”

“No, after that.”

Roy frowns momentarily, his exhaustion dogging his thoughts. “Mm, I was in the bath.”

“For two hours?”

Roy glares, then sighs as he pushes himself from the wall in an attempt to be less asleep. “Anyway, what did you want?”

It’s only now that Hughes loses his chiseled expression of concern and smiles. He seems more himself. “Wasn’t important. I just got worried when you didn’t answer.”

“So you got on a train at ten o’clock at night just to check on me?”

Hughes counters the reproach with a grim frown. “These are targeted murders, Roy. I told you–”

“–that I have to be careful. I know.” Roy smiles slightly. This is typical Hughes: protective and selfless to a fault. Roy knows he should be more grateful, but–

“So you’re really all right?” Hughes asks, stepping forward abruptly to pull open Roy’s robe, his hands inspecting the bared skin of his stomach and sides.

Roy laughs before he can cover his mouth, and Hughes stops with a chuckle of his own, staying close enough to slide his palms to Roy’s less-ticklish back.

“I hate it when you make me do that,” Roy scolds, but his voice is quiet, almost sly at this proximity.

Hughes smiles a little smugly. “But I love it when you make me do this.”

Hughes tightens his arms as he steps closer, and Roy tips his head involuntarily, eyes drifting nearly closed. His lips part under the feel of Hughes’ breath, gentle as he draws Roy’s to stillness. When he kisses him, Roy lets his tongue slip in past his teeth before responding, meeting it rather sleepily, arms threading up over his shoulders to anchor him as he presses further into the kiss.

He can’t be sure how Hughes does what he does. Though a scientist with unfettered access to each cause and effect, he’s never been able to pinpoint the exact method, or the precise moment at which Hughes must support his weight. But with humbling predictability, he is rendered defenseless in the man’s presence, and he is many years beyond protest.

Roy rests his chin against the roughness of the scant beard along his jaw. “So what did you tell Gracia?”

“The truth.”

Roy lifts his head to find Hughes’ eyes, waiting for clarification.

Though Hughes smiles, he looks down. “I told her I was worried and that I needed to know.”

“And she didn’t bring you back down to earth?”

“She told me to look after you and that she’d see me in the morning.”

Roy scoffs quietly, shaking his head. “I’m fully an adult, Hughes. And I went through the same combat training you did.”

“Makes no difference.”

Roy pulls back to look sternly at him, but this, too, makes no difference. “So you’re here for the night, then?”

Hughes cocks a smile in response, one slender eyebrow lifting in affirmation.

Shaking his head, Roy can’t help but smile back, one hand clicking off the lamps on the way to bed, the other pulling Hughes behind him.

* * *

The sun is barely risen when the train back to Central City pulls into the station, but both are properly dressed in full uniform and as alert as can be expected. Hughes continues to scan the crowded platform for any sign of an unfriendly face, and Roy, though grudgingly, does the same.

Hughes sighs as he turns to Roy, scratching the back of his head.

“It’s only a matter of time before Scar moves on to the State Alchemists in East City, you know, and you’re at the top of that list.”

“I’m flattered.”

But Hughes isn’t amused when Roy glances toward him. “And I’ll be prepared,” he adds quietly.

“And Ed?”

Roy frowns lightly, scanning the faces exiting the train. “Honestly, you should be less worried about him.” Edward Elric’s arrogance, while completely insufferable, is also completely justified. He is an unlikely genius, a prodigy of considerable ability.

“He’s still just a kid.”

Roy returns his gaze to Hughes, silent for a moment. He could disagree. He could mention everything the Fullmetal Alchemist has been through, the trials and hardships and utter skill that convinced Roy to recruit an alchemist of his age, but he knows it is irrelevant.

“I know, Hughes.”

Hughes nods. He rummages in his pocket for his ticket, then steps toward the emptied train. “Pick up next time, Roy.”

8

A 27-year-old officer of Roy’s rank with no apparent interest in dating is more a curiosity than a candidate when it comes time for promotions. Though he knows this, he does not suffer it quietly.

“I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things,” Roy mutters under his breath, but Hughes hears him over the running water in the restroom.

“I don’t know why you’re complaining,” Hughes responds, joining him at the sink and nudging him in the ribs. “She’s practically in love with you.”

“Precisely.” Roy looks up with a scowl, but it’s lost on Hughes, who dries his hands on a towel before holding it out for Roy.

“Look, you’ve got to show interest in somebody, right?”

Roy sighs primly and nods, drying his hands. He can’t afford to tempt the military’s disdain.

“Well, so long as she’s here in Central,” Hughes explains, “and you’re over there in East, you can make up all the excuses you want not to take her out.”

Roy’s brows remain dubious.

“And when you do take the train to see her,” he continues with a lower tone, “you’ll be in the neighborhood to drop by, right?”

“Hughes, don’t tell me you developed this ploy at that girl’s expense.”

Laughing quietly, Hughes takes the towel back before Roy can hit him with it. “It was mostly Gracia’s idea. She said she had a cousin who loved military men but didn’t have much time for dating, and did I think Colonel Mustang would be interested?” He tosses the towel to the sink. “It works out, Roy.”

Roy scowls again, but with less enthusiasm. He isn’t in the mood to reject any logic that brings them closer more often. “All right, you win. Now let’s go before they–”

But Hughes silences him with a fluid step in his direction and one arm to keep him still. Roy glances behind him just enough to see Hughes’ hand at the handle of the door to keep it closed. “Hughes–”

“Just a few more seconds,” Hughes murmurs, the words barely audible against Roy’s lips.

* * *

“We’re sorry to keep you waiting,” Roy announces, knowing his smile will erase any misgivings.

“Not at all,” Gracia answers with a pleased smile of her own from beside the dark-haired girl. “I was just showing Valerie the necklace Maes gave me for my birthday. You don’t mind swapping places for now, do you, darling?”

“As long as I’m not too far away.” Hughes’ grin is sincere as he bends over the table to kiss his wife, and he takes the seat next to Roy as requested. Roy does his best not to notice the warmth of his thigh against his leg.

“Valerie, the lieutenant colonel tells me you run a hat shop,” Roy offers, and Valerie looks up from the necklace with a pleasant, likable smile.

“Oh, yes! It keeps me so busy it’s hard to find time for anything else.” She folds her hands as though suddenly conscious of them, but her conversation flows. “My uncle left it to me when he was badly injured in the war.”

“I’m sorry to hear that”. His sympathy, while genuine, is restrained. He feels Hughes’ leg tense against his.

“It’s the same for so many,” Valerie answers, her voice dodging the concern. “Were you in the war, colonel?”

“I can’t say I was.” Roy’s smile is unfaltering. “But my hands were busy. War generates so much paperwork.”

Valerie nods politely.

7

Roy lifts his glass for what could be the twentieth congratulation tonight, but neither minds the additional cheer. Both are happy, both are drunk, both are just 26.

“I just wish I could have been there,” Hughes laments, emptying the contents of his glass and waving for another.

“I’ve heard plenty of men wish they hadn’t,” Roy counters. “But maybe next time.”

Hughes doesn’t seem to hear him. He has that look in his eyes again, a sort of wonder that becomes him. Life permitting, he should have been a father earlier and several times over. “She’s so perfect, though, Roy. Everything about her–the tiniest things you never thought about before. I thought the day I got married would be the happiest day of my life, but this . . .”

Roy smiles to himself, setting his drink on the bar and toying with its rim. “Congratulations, Maes.”

Hughes looks up at him, his smile changing subtly, though it is no less grateful than before. “Thanks, buddy.” He nods to the bartender with the arrival of his next beer, but he turns from it to face Roy.

“I heard you’ve got a new little one of your own, too.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The alchemy kid. Passed the exam, didn’t he?”

“Oh, the Elric boy.” Roy smirks at the poor joke before he takes up his glass to sip from it. “I invite you to call him ‘little’ when you see him.”

Hughes chuckles into his drink. “What should I call him? You State Alchemists love your titles.”

“He’s the ‘Fullmetal’ Alchemist.”

“Heavy name.”

“That’s what he said. But if I know you, you’ll call him Ed until he’s a general.”

“Isn’t he a major already? Might not be too long from now.”

Roy smirks faintly, watching the last of his ice melt. “He’s not the pandering type. He just needs the privileges. I just need the recognition for finding him.”

“And the good luck not to send him to war.”

Roy looks up at the sobering remark, but his friend is more sympathetic than his words.

“That’s why I need the recognition,” Roy replies. “To make sure we stay lucky.”

Hughes sighs with a nod, sipping through the froth of his beer. “Still, to get involved at his age. He’s only twelve.”

Roy frowns with the unnecessary reminder, but knows it won’t take much effort to change the subject. “Are you sure you should still be out?”

“Not sure.” Hughes nearly pouts over his drink. “Gracia told me to go celebrate so Elysia could get some sleep. How much do you think she needs?”

“I hear infants need a great deal.”

“Really?” Hughes frowns with some distress.

“So it seems,” Roy answers, clapping him on the back for support.

“Well, shoot.”

6

Roy tosses his hat on the bed of the hotel room as Hughes closes the door, having driven him. It’s been a long and exhausting night for a 25-year-old, filled with perfect mannerisms, flawless formality, and just the right amount of concession to his superiors, all while in dress uniform.

Facing the mirror, he reaches to unfasten the irritating button at his neck, but Hughes reaches to stop him, turning him again.

“I haven’t got to look at you, yet.”

Roy smirks tiredly. “You’ve been able to look at me all night.”

“Not like this,” Hughes answers, preoccupied, and even with his dulled senses Roy can detect the greater degree of lascivious interest. “It looks good on you, Roy.”

“Hughes, you have one just like this.”

“No, not quite,” he counters, and his fingers brush the left side of Roy’s chest to indicate the ribbons and medals of rank and accomplishment. “We’re getting closer,” he murmurs.

Roy nods, but stays quiet. Closer to the top. He’s been praised enough tonight to last him years, but his pride is in constant check, if it can be called pride at all. Still, at 25, he is the youngest of his rank, and he’s attracted the attention of the people who matter. He has hope for Amestris.

Hughes has wandered close enough for Roy to smell the remains of his cologne. He can feel his touch on the new epaulets on his shoulders.

“So,” Hughes murmurs, “can I be the first?”

Roy yawns noisily. “The first to what?”

“Call you ‘colonel’ in bed.”

Roy starts to pull away in mild diffidence, but Hughes’ teeth at the lobe of his ear stop him short, soon followed by the tip of his tongue.

Roy’s hands find Hughes’ shoulders to grip them, his knees growing less trustworthy by the second. “Hughes . . .”

“That a ‘yes?’” murmurs his tormenter, and Roy pushes him roughly, though only far enough to reach for his clothing.

They are as expert at removing their complex attire as they are at disassembling firearms, and with the same deft swiftness, Roy finds himself pushed back onto the bed with nothing to separate them. Hughes reaches for the hat Roy had thrown there, but rather than tossing it to the chair, Hughes places it on Roy’s head.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Roy reaches up to remove it, but Hughes covers his hand to still him. The steel of Amestris’ shield is cool against his warming fingertips.

“Indulge me, colonel,” Hughes murmurs, his voice a persuasive purr. He tips his head under the brim of the hat to reach Roy’s lips, and within a heartbeat Roy has forgotten it.

5

It’s after midnight when Roy finds Hughes alone on the tiny balcony of the apartment he won’t need for much longer. The party was small, and relatively tame enough that clean-up doesn’t have to wait until morning. At 24, they’ve outgrown pushing their limits.

“Need help in there?”

Roy shakes his head as he joins his friend at the railing. “Finished.” Truth be told, he put off having this talk until there was nothing else within reason to do. But there’s no hope of postponing it further. The bridge must be crossed, and Roy knows its mettle on the very first step.

“Roy, I don’t think I–”

“You will do this.”

Hughes stops, but he makes no argument, and Roy knows he doesn’t really want to. He wants to be pushed by the man who’d rather pull. “You don’t think you can, but you will,” he repeats. “And by tomorrow night, you’ll have made the right decision.”

“How can you say that?” Hughes lifts his head from where he leans, elbows to the railing.

Roy frowns, then pulls his gaze to the horizon instead. A few windows in the distant buildings are still lit. “You love her, don’t you?”

“I love her,” Hughes affirms, and the quickness of his response is necessarily painful. “I love her every bit as much as–”

Roy’s eyes return to his friend as he pauses, having more difficulty with his words than Roy’s ever seen.

“Every damn bit as much,” he continues, “in however many ways I can measure it.” He swallows, and Roy must do the same. “I can’t make this decision. I don’t want to!”

“You have to.” Roy’s voice is quieter than intended, but it is steady. Though young, he is already a master of deadening even the slightest emotion. “This is everything you’ve wanted since I met you, and you’ll never be happy if you don’t marry her tomorrow.”

He watches as Hughes pulls off his glasses and presses his forearm to his eyes. His other arm reaches for him, and Roy doesn’t have the strength to pull away when he tugs him into a hard embrace.

Roy can feel the coarseness of his chin against his neck. He can feel the heat of his shaky breaths and the eventual wetness. He can feel his heart pounding against his chest.

“Isn’t this killing you, Roy?”

He swallows as he returns the embrace, just as fervent in its own way. He wants to say it isn’t, that it’ll pass, that he’ll recover, but he can’t force the lie, no matter how protective, no matter how right.

“Yeah.”

Hughes only clings more tightly, and Roy focuses with all his might on the world beyond the railing, on its houses and its windows and the lives of people who are never in danger of losing themselves. Roy has been through worse, Roy has held his breath far longer, but it doesn’t feel like it now.

“I can’t choose,” Hughes finally whispers, and though it is as quiet as the night Roy is struggling to hear, it is resolute, it is a decision unto itself.

Roy’s mind is blank. He has the strength nor the will to change course. Their downward momentum is unalterable.

“All right.”

4

The desert sun finally disappears behind the flap of the tent when Roy, looking older than just 23, returns to it. In less than an hour it will disappear completely for the night, leaving the scorching, biting sands to grow cold in the dry freeze. They have to sleep close to survive.

Roy doesn’t bother to remove his hat or the cloak that protects him from the stinging desert winds. He turns at the far wall of the tent and sits on the hard ground, shedding sand as he meets it.

It is no wonder that the people of Ishbal worship their god with such obstinate loyalty to have flourished in such a place. It is no wonder that they have continued to reject the godless influence of Amestris for eight years. But one must wonder that it has come to this.

“How goes it?”

For a moment, Roy doesn’t react. Hughes’ stubborn mirth always glances off him, too oblique to strike home. But he lifts his head, turning his sand-reddened gaze to the only connection he can make to himself, to his ideals.

“Same as usual, I see,” Hughes answers for him.

And by the military’s standards, Roy’s “usual” is a shining example of the iron hand of Amestris. As a State Alchemist, Roy’s potential outstrips the guns and the bombs and the swords of other soldiers: Roy himself is a weapon. He can no longer even guess how many of the charred bodies outside are to his credit, or how many more there will be. The orders keep coming.

Hughes picks up the tin bowls and tin cups with a dull clanking and sets Roy’s share on the ground in front of him. With his own weariness he joins him there, picking up what the military considers fit nourishment for their work. Roy watches him eat in silence, his vision losing focus now and again in the dim light of the lantern.

He’s startled to feel Hughes’ hands at his wrist, no longer toiling with the meal but pulling the gloves from him, the gloves whose friction sparks the fire he controls. He loses one, then the other, and their rough material is replaced with the calloused hands of his best friend.

There’s only one office in Amestris that furnishes the power to choose peace over bloodshed. Roy’s only way out is to fill it, but to do that–

“You have to play their game, Roy.”

Roy’s stomach turns at the word. It’s no game, and yet he’s seen the grins of power, he’s heard the laughter from the mouths of his allies. They don’t care to stop this.

“How long?”

“As long as it takes. You can’t change the outcome here.”

Roy stares, eyes stinging from the elements, at their hands. He tightens his grip and tugs Hughes forward, wrapping his arms around him and not caring how much sand is shaken off into his food. The grit is unavoidable; it’s in his mouth already, it’s on Hughes’ tongue as he finds it with his own. It’s rough as he swallows it, and rough against his teeth as he holds Hughes’ bottom lip a moment before they part.

He lowers his eyes, his breathing somewhat even again. He reaches for the unidentifiable food they managed not to knock over and tries to muster an appetite for it. Hughes is right: he has to endure this if he is to bring anything good from it.

“That a letter from Gracia?” he murmurs, noticing the folded paper on the bed and mimicking Hughes’ forced optimism, if just for a minute.

Hughes glances toward the letter before sitting back. “Yeah. She hopes you’ll be all right.”

Roy laughs shortly.

3

“Do you think I’m overdoing it?” Hughes frets, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind Roy.

“If you’re going to wear the suit, you have to wear it properly,” mumbles Roy, tying his friend’s bow tie. “And if you don’t stand still and look at me straight, it’ll be crooked.”

Hughes finally calms just long enough for Roy to straighten it, but as he looks up to find Hughes staring straight at him, as requested, he grows self-conscious and dusts the man’s lapels. “How you’ve lived 22 years without tying your own bow tie, I’ll never know.”

But the comment does nothing to deter Hughes’ steady smile. Roy steps aside and prods the man to look at the mirror instead. “There, you look fine.”

“Are you sure?” Hughes scrunches his nose, then stretches out his chin to tug at the uncomfortable collar of his shirt.

“I’m not tying that again! And yes, you look fine.”

“Would you date me?”

Roy narrows his eyes, but he can tell from Hughes’ grin that it was deliberate. “Incorrigible,” he mutters, and he glances away as Hughes steps forward, resting his hands at Roy’s sides.

“You almost seem more nervous than I am,” Hughes murmurs, his lips at Roy’s ear. “Do I look that good?”

“I’ll singe your hair off if you’re not careful.”

Hughes chuckles against his hairline, his hands moving to Roy’s back to rock him closer. “And here you told me you’d only use your powers only for good.”

“I can make an exception.”

“I appreciate the special treatment.”

“So tell me how beautiful this Gracia is.”

“Gorgeous, Roy. Brown hair, green eyes. And clever. And wonderful. I can’t wait for you to meet her, but she seems to be familiar with you already.”

“How’s that?”

“On our first date she asked me if I was friends with the young State Alchemist Roy Mustang. Seems she saw your picture in the paper after the exam last year. I didn’t think the article mentioned me, but I guess it did.”

“Small world. But you’d better get going.”

Hughes grins and bends to press his mouth to Roy’s, squeezing him tightly enough to wrinkle his own suit before he finally releases him. “Wish me luck.”

Roy, wheezing faintly, merely waves him out.

2

“So let me see how you do it,” Hughes urges, turning his chair around in their tiny dorm room and straddling it, arms folded on the back. One would never guess he were a grown man of 21.

Roy looks up from the book he’s trying desperately to absorb. “I need to study this first.”

“I thought you already took the written exam?”

“I did, but the practical exam could be anything.”

“So you should just practice, not study.”

Roy glares over the open pages of the heavy book. “Do you want me to fail?”

“No, I want you to make fire.”

“I can’t make–” Roy stops, seeing the futility in avoiding it any further. He closes the book and turns to face his friend, pulling on one of his hand-made gloves. “When friction is applied, this material causes a spark which has no effect on air of standard composition. But using the alchemy circle I put on it, I can alter the air’s composition to form an avenue of concentrated oxygen along a path of my choosing, which the spark will then ignite.”

“And then what?”

“And then . . .” Roy frowns, then peers out of the open window. He collects himself, then snaps his gloved fingers as the next falling leaf drifts past. To his relief, it burns up in a tiny curl of flame and smoke before the remains of its stem spiral to the ground.

Hughes seems as giddy as a child at a circus. “Roy, that’s amazing!”

Roy, however, allows himself only the barest smile. “It’s all science, Hughes.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

Roy shrugs, pulling off the glove and dropping it to the closed book. “Research. I could assist in experimentation. They might not need me at all. But did you know State Alchemists are promoted to major? Automatically? And they get titles.”

“What do you think yours will be?”

Roy smirks faintly, remembering to rein himself in. There’s no way of knowing what he’ll be called on to do tomorrow. His skills and knowledge may not even be relevant to the task. “They only accept one applicant per year, Hughes. I doubt I can compete with researchers twice my age.”

Hughes smiles from the back of his chair, then rises to cross the small space. He bends down and slips his hand under Roy’s chin before he kisses him, slow and persistent, until Roy stops blushing and responds. He draws back enough to hold his gaze. “You can compete with anyone. I don’t care who they are.”

Roy watches his face carefully, but he can’t detect even the smallest shred of doubt. He bows his head with a half smile, toying with the glove self-consciously. “Thanks, Maes.”

1

The bricks at his back are cool in the evening shade, but they are hardly a salve to Roy’s nerves. At 20 years old, it’s been a long time since he did anything he could get in trouble for.

But it’s a good feeling. It’s a strange feeling. His best friend at the academy is only inches from him in a deserted square in town, far from the prying eyes of teachers, sergeants, and worst of all, fellow cadets. Roy is faintly trembling, though he blames the lack of proper clothing for the hour, and he is glad for it when Hughes presses just a little closer, his heat alone enough to keep Roy against the wall.

It isn’t something Roy understands, but when Hughes’ expression suddenly turns serious, and he swallows hard as though in resolve, Roy can only pray he doesn’t change his mind. He waits for it; he lifts his head from the wall just an inch to encourage him, if not beg him, and when Hughes’ mouth finally meets his, he feels like his chest could erupt. He lets the taller man press in against him, and though Roy doesn’t know if he should have expected it or not, he lets his tongue into his mouth. He doesn’t know if he’s being quiet, but he hardly has the thinking power to care. He only knows he’s doing something he shouldn’t, and it’s the most wonderful thing he’s ever felt.

A small gasp from down the alleyway breaks them free of each other, and Roy only catches a glimpse of the girl before she disappears, her shoes clicking on the pavement.

“Shit,” he mutters, his heart thudding double time now. But Hughes hasn’t moved away, and Roy is grateful for that. He isn’t as decent now as he was a moment ago.

“Did you see who it was?”

Roy shakes his head. “Just a girl, about our age. Brown hair. Didn’t get a good look.”

“Then she didn’t either. And as long as she wasn’t a cadet, I’d say we’re fine.”

Roy frowns lightly. He supposes Hughes is right, but he’s never been able to shrug things off like he does.

“Look, we’ll probably never see her again, right?”

Roy studies Hughes’ face with a frown, weighing his options and the relevant probabilities, but Hughes’ continued proximity makes up his mind. “Right,” he murmurs, finally, and he smiles as Hughes draws close again.

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