Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ Automail ❯ Thunder ( Chapter 4 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Thunder

Roy Mustang lay asleep on the couch, the book he had been reading now lying in a crumpled heap on the floor where it had fallen, its pages sitting beneath it like the folds of an elegant, yet quickly discarded, wedding gown. Though Edward, book connoisseur that he was, found this annoying, he did not get up to correct the problem.

His despicably small frame was folded up comfortably to fit into an armchair and he was enjoying his own tome too much to move. Besides, if Roy awoke and found his previously abandoned book sitting neatly on the floor, its pages straight and flat and tidy, he would know exactly who had done it. Then he'd look at Ed with that smug, handsome face and tell him about his obsessive tendencies when it came to literature and how it somehow made him appear even shorter than he actually was.

Ed scowled at the unspoken insult. Bastard.

He quietly harrumphed and looked back down at his own book, quickly losing himself once again in the absorbent alchemic text. In fact, he was so engrossed in the work that he didn't even notice the swiftly approaching storm as it bore down on the estate.

It was actually an unusual sound that alerted him to the fact.

Not the pitter-patter of hard raindrops against the library window.

Not the violent crack of thunder as lightning tore down.

Not the fierce wind whipping the trees and shrubbery of Roy's estate around like Elysia playing with her dolls.

No.

What drew Edward's attention from his book was the small, barely-audible whimper that came from Roy's slumbering form. The blonde alchemist looked up in his lover's direction and was a bit shocked to see Roy now balled up against one armrest, his whole body shaking.

Ed's book hit the floor, his literature etiquette promptly pushed to the back of his mind, and he rushed to the older man's side. The blonde knelt down before the sofa and stared anxiously at Roy's contorted, sweat-sheened face. Reaching out with his flesh hand, he gently brushed the dampened hair away from his lover's closed eyes.

Thunder suddenly cleaved the night sky and Roy flinched like he had been burnt, throwing his hands up to clutch desperately at his hair, a pitiable moan welling up in the back of his throat.

Edward blinked. Is he afraid of thunder?

As if in answer to the unspoken question, the heavens opened up again and bellowed raucously, causing the colonel to whimper and flip over in his troubled sleep. Now staring at his lover's back, Ed let a small smile cross his face.

So Roy was afraid of a little thunderstorm, was he? Ed mentally made himself a sticky note—one that said this would be something he could later use as blackmail or something simply to chide the older man with—and stuck to the back of his brain. He found it funny that the great Flame Alchemist, egotistical, tight-assed, self-proclaimed pride of the Amestris militia, could be afraid of something as simple as the sound of air rapidly expanding. Ed almost laughed as he reached over to wake the man.

Almost.

The blonde alchemist's hand mutely hovered over Roy's right shoulder, the terrified and equally terrifying murmur that the man had just languorously uttered hovering in the air like cigarette smoke, leaving him completely numb.

“Please . . . don't . . . I never wanted to . . . Please don't . . . kill me. I don't wanna die!”

And as thunder cracked again, Edward Elric realized that Roy, though his body may have been curled up in a fetal state on the plush divan, had been transported back to the Ishbalan War

(Massacre, Rebellion, genocide)

and he was a soldier again.

Shortly after they had become seriously involved, Roy had explained to Ed exactly why he sometimes couldn't sleep.

Shortly after they had become seriously involved, Roy had told him why at other times he would thrash about and mumble things that his conscious mind wasn't aware of.

Shortly after they had become seriously involved, Roy had informed the blonde that sometimes . . . just sometimes . . . he would hurl himself out of bed, screaming with everything he had—screams that peeled paper and paint from walls, screams that shattered glass with their intensity, screams that, with their ferocity and sorrow, tore grown men's hearts from their chests and brought them to their knees.

Shortly after they had become seriously involved . . . Roy told Ed about his dreams

(nightmares)

. . . and about his past . . . and his sins.

Roy had told him that sometimes, whenever he was alone with his own thoughts, he just wanted to rip the skin from his body because it would hurt so much less. He told him

(fuck, he had told him)

why he hated the rain to terribly. Ed had always assumed that it was because he was the Flame Alchemist and water trumped fire no matter what game you were playing. But no . . .

He hated the rain because with rain came lightning, and lightning was accompanied by thunder which, to Roy, sounded remarkably like

(BANG! CRASH! “Get down, goddamit!”)

bombardment on the bloodied fields of Ishbal.

Roy had told him all this one night.

Roy had confided in him . . .

And Ed had balked . . .

. . . then had thrown up on the floor.

Now back in the present, there was once again a momentary hiatus in Ed's assisting process as he considered what should be done, feeling the bile creeping up the back of his esophagus.

Horrors and phantom pains of a tortured past, deftly creeping in to jab cruel, spiteful prongs and rusted knives into an quiescent mind, were things that Ed had—and still—dealt with on a semi-regular basis, every time waking him up in a cold sweat, screaming, pleading to Al and his mother to please forgive him.

(I can't fix you! I'm sorry! It's all my fault and I can't do a damn thing about it! I'm sorry!)

However, it was a completely different story to be the observer of the internal tryst of hated memories and unconscious, watching the trembling, sweating form of the dreamer as if he were going through some type of strange out-of-body experience. With this, Ed had pause. He was stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place. Not only that, but the rock was more akin to a gigantic, flaming boulder and the hard place was covered in huge, poison-tinged spikes of steel.

He couldn't just let Roy lay there writhing in his own tormented agony—not with the lover in him twisting his heart and guts together into a cats-cradle of guilt and worry.

Rock.

And if he woke Roy up . . . if he just shook him and told the Flame that he was scaring him, then Ed would have to later deal with re-inflating the bastard's ego; which, though fun at some points, was generally an unbearable pain in the ass . . . so to speak.

Hard place.

Edward had no place to retreat to.

So, he reasoned. Why should I? Why not march out and meet the monster head on?

So he did.

Ed gently eased himself onto the couch, fitting snuggly between the colonel and the back of the plush sofa, then wrapped his arms around the tremulous form and drew him closer. The blonde didn't know if it was because it was he who was now offering Roy comfort or simply the presence of another warm body, but soon the colonel relaxed and stilled in his embrace.

After a long time of quiet, Roy shifted and opened his red-rimmed eyes, looking up at his lover; black regarded gold for a moment, then quietly hid behind dark fringe. The man moved closer to Ed, draping his arm over him and snuggling his damp face into the young alchemist's chest. There was a mumble—something that sounded an awful lot like `thank you'—and Ed smiled.