Fullmetal Alchemist Fan Fiction ❯ By Sightless Lightning ❯ Part V - The State Alchemist ( Chapter 5 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

With the fire extinguished, the house quickly began to pick up the day's chill. Edward was only halfway through the house, collecting their gear so he could decide what to bring and what to leave, when he caught himself chafing his bare arm. This was arguably counterproductive, as his automail did little to warm him, but it did draw his attention to the nip in the air.

He brought out both their coats and tucked Alphonse into his first; this was a bit of a task, as his brother's interest was currently in arranging a group of mason jars into a perfect line. Anything less than a perfectly straight line just would not do, and this required a lot of nudging and examining the items from various directions. Alphonse had no patience for Edward's efforts to dress him while he was busy at this, and kept wriggling away.

Once Alphonse's coat was on, Edward sat down in a kitchen chair with his own coat in his lap, and watched his brother's activity for awhile. He had a lot to sort through still, and Winry would be by soon to pick them up, but the prospect of transporting Alphonse suddenly felt ... impossible.

"It's done you good, hasn't it?" he asked quietly. "It wasn't a mistake to come here, was it, Al?" He received no answer, not even a glance and a grin for his trouble, but Edward well remembered the nearly catatonic boy he'd brought into this house, all those months before. Alphonse was still a far cry from anything like normal, but he didn't spend so much time staring off into the distance, and he didn't trip quite so often. Language, however, was the litmus test that Alphonse had continued to fail; Edward had yet to hear his brother's voice at all in a context that didn't involve sex or crying, and he was never sure how much Alphonse understood of what was said to him.

The decision-making process that had brought them back to Risenbourg had taken Edward all of thirty seconds, and had consisted more of a desire to flee for home than anything rational. He'd been able to rationalize it after the fact, of course, and perhaps raw instinct had guided him truly. He wasn't sure at all that Alphonse would have gotten this far in the bustle and busyness of Central. The quiet and isolation had given Alphonse a chance to remember who he was without the distraction of thousands of other souls. He just ... hadn't come quite as far as Edward had hoped.

Edward wished they could stay here forever.

Leaving Alphonse in the kitchen, Edward stood up, put on his coat, and went into the library.

Most of the things Winry had bought with his cash would stay. The blankets, the candles and lamps, the delicate little music box that for some reason Winry had thought Alphonse would like (Alphonse had taken no interest in it whatsoever), all of it was put onto shelves or tucked into closets for the benefit of the house's next occupant. Winry had said she would come back and get all of the food that they hadn't eaten, which was fine with Edward. He had decided to travel light, the same way they had traveled together for years, carrying only as much as he could fit into a single suitcase.

Before, however, Alphonse hadn't needed much in the way of clothing or personal effects, and neither had Edward. When his clothes tore or became dirty, alchemy was always the easy fix unless he left something behind, or too many pieces of it. There had been plenty of room in the suitcase for a couple of journals full of notes, a few items that he found problematic to transmute, and whatever odd texts he picked up along the trip.

He stood in front of the suitcase now and weighed the journals in his hand. He really had no further use for them, and considered kindling up the fire long enough to burn them, but in the end he did no such thing and forced them into the suitcase. He told himself that the librarians at the new First Sector Branch would kill him if he failed to turn them in; force of habit had nothing to do with it, he told himself, nor did any kind of sentimental attachment to the knowledge that he had painstakingly assembled and indexed.

At the bookshelf, he ran his fingertips over the spines of the alchemy books he'd brought with him - Harrington's Basics of Elemental Fusion, Bannister's The Structure of Organic Matter, a book called On Interactions which listed no author at all, and a copy of James Pfeffer's The Ethics of Human Transmutation. The first two were reasonably easy to acquire, and Edward had picked them up in Dubois more for something to do than anything else. The third one had promised to be a treatise on what exactly constituted life itself, but it had turned out to be mostly nonsense, and the lack of attribution was probably because nobody in their right mind would want to take credit for such a load of dreck. The last book had been so controversial at the time that most of the original printing had been destroyed, making it one of the rarest and most difficult-to-acquire books on any alchemy topic. Edward had gotten lucky with this copy, finding it in the possession of an antiques dealer who had no idea what he had, and who hadn't recognized Edward until after the sale had gone through.

The four books, a little dusty now, leaned on a slant on the bookshelf where he'd put them. Edward picked up the book of faerie tales from the next shelf down, and tossed it next to the suitcase.



They went to the train station in Winry's wagon, Alphonse staring wildly at the scenery around him and clutching Edward to him in a tight embrace. Winry brought apple tarts with her, baked only that morning and then wrapped up warmly in a floury red-checkered cloth inside a basket. Edward was grateful; the tarts would give him something with which to distract Alphonse on the train.

"I hate them all," said Winry with a low heat. She didn't really mean that, though, and it wasn't too hard for Edward to hear what she was really saying: I hate Roy Mustang.

"It's not his fault." Edward did not bother to look at Winry, choosing instead to watch the scenery pass and discretely stroke his brother's thigh. The gentle petting seemed to soothe Alphonse, a little.

She did not attempt to dispute his interpretation. "Why not? He's the one calling you back. He says he tried, but what did he do? Probably nothing."

Edward sighed, and could have argued that Mustang was just the messenger on this one, but there would be no convincing Winry of anything positive where Mustang was concerned. So he just smiled and said, "It'll be all right."

"How do you figure that?" She gave Edward a sidelong glare, and continued in a lower tone, "I'm not going to ask if you're seriously expecting to get Al back to Central in this state, but come on. Look at him, Ed."

"I'll get him back. He's better, really." Edward rested his cheek on Alphonse's shoulder for a moment, but straightened up again almost immediately. He had to remember that becoming physically affectionate with his brother would be noticed in Central. It wouldn't look right, so it was a habit he needed to break now.

He was sure that Winry had something to say about how much better Alphonse was, from the way she gave him a hard stare. But, if she did, she kept it to herself. Nothing more was said for a long time, the silence broken only by the rough grind of the axles and the horse's steady clip-clop against the road. Cornstalks, broken by the harvest and blackening with mildew, passed by one side of the road; along the other side, the sheered-off stubs of tobacco shared a field with gray weeds. Off in the distance, someone began to build or repair something, and the sharp hammer-blows came to him on the wind, followed three-quarters of a second later by the ghosts of their echoes.

As children, Edward and Alphonse had played in these very fields, stalking each other between rows of corn, teasing the cattle, fighting on hilltops and swimming in the river. Had the timing been a little different, Edward would have liked to take his brother around the outskirts of Risenbourg, showing him the places they had loved as children and hoping that would help him find his way back. In just a little longer, Alphonse would have been coordinated enough to tolerate a trip like that, Edward thought. Alphonse would have liked playing in the snow.

Edward hunched his shoulders and transferred his stare to his hands. He didn't want to go back. He didn't want to leave the peace and ... familiarity, of Risenbourg, and return to Central. Central was going to crush him, and he didn't want to think about what it would do to Alphonse.

"If you keep thinking about it, you're just going to make yourself sick," said Winry, her tone carefully neutral.

"Quit reading my mind," said Edward sullenly.

Winry made a face. "Who'd want to read your mind? It's probably a mess in there. It's not too late to write that Colonel of yours and tell him where he can shove his silver watch."

"It's not that easy."

"Why not? You didn't even bother with your assessment this year."

"If I'd been discharged for not bothering with my assessment, I'm sure I would have heard about it. Just take my word for it, it's not that easy. Maybe if I sucked, it would be that easy. But I just turned a disembodied soul back into a living, breathing human being, so I don't think anybody is going to say I suck."

"How many people know about that, though?"

A flash of memory came then, overlaying the gray hills. An elegant gloved hand waving smoke aside. Ink-blue eyes flicking between Edward and the body he so fiercely clutched in the center of the array. That soft, modulated voice, saying, "I'll make the arrangements."

"Enough," said Edward.

Winry sighed and shifted a little in her seat. "You're impossible." She went quiet again then, and the punctuated silence returned.

The letters from Mustang had mostly been polite inquiries into how Alphonse was doing, inquiries that Edward had answered very, very carefully. Edward had had to somehow convey that he needed as much time alone with his brother as possible, without actually telling Mustang that Alphonse was still a long way from any state that could be considered independently functional. He had no idea how well his vague reassurances had been received, but he'd gotten the extensions he'd needed, and he didn't believe it was Mustang's fault that there hadn't been enough of them.

Edward hadn't even thought about his assessment until three months after it had been due. He wondered in a distant kind of way what sort of excuses Mustang had offered on his behalf, or if any had been required.

Quietly, Winry said, "You could leave Al here, you know. I'd take care of him."

"No," said Edward automatically.

"I could. He needs ..."

"No," said Edward again. And, when Winry would have continued, he said, "Stop it. Just stop it. He's my responsibility."

"I could take care of him just as well as you can," she said, with a determined frown. "I may not be his sister, but I love him too. I love you both, Ed, and you're not going to convince me that taking him all the way back to Central is somehow a brilliant move."

"I'm not being given a lot of choice anymore, and I'm not leaving Al behind."

With an annoyed sound, Winry said again, "I can take care of him just as well as you can. He'd be happy at my place, I'm sure he'd remember it once he was there. He could play with Den, and come up into town with me. It wasn't right for the two of you to be locked up alone in that old army house. He just needs to see his old friends and ..."

"Winry," said Edward, consciously unclenching his jaw and not sure when he'd clenched it. When she paused, he said again, "No. He's coming with me."

"You're being unreasonable!"

"Yeah, I know."

She set her jaw and glared at him furiously, but he glared back just as furiously and after a minute or so she glanced away. "I could do it."

"No. You can't." Al would have a freakout if he saw me walk away from him onto that train and leave him behind. Even if he eventually calmed down, would it bother you to have to bathe him, dress him, make sure he's aimed when he takes a piss? What would you do the first time he gets a hard-on and wants you to take care of it for him? Edward said none of it, but he took comfort in the weight of the unspoken arguments. "You couldn't."

"I could!" At Winry's words, Alphonse made an unclassifiable, unhappy sound.

"Give it up. Just give it up before I get mad. I don't want to leave Risenbourg mad at you." Edward couldn't help rubbing his cheek against his brother's shoulder again, although whether he was offering comfort or looking for it was unclear to him.

"Fine."

They didn't speak again for the rest of the trip to the station.



There weren't many passengers at the train station, but it was still busy with cattle and other cargo. It was hard to get Alphonse to let go of Edward long enough to let him buy the tickets, but somehow between Edward and Winry together they managed. Edward returned with the tickets to find that Alphonse had latched onto Winry in his place, whimpering unhappily into her shoulder.

"Al," said Winry. "Your annoying brother is back, you can let go of me now. Al, come on." She turned sideways on the bench and started trying to pry his fingers loose from her jacket.

Edward tucked the tickets into a pocket inside his coat and said, "It's okay, Al. It's time to go, I'm not leaving you here. Come on, it's okay." He touched his brother's cheek to get his attention, and Alphonse blinked at him for less than a second before transferring his grip from Winry's jacket back to Edward's. The taller boy buried his face in Edward's shoulder, as if ashamed to face the world.

It was painful to see how nervous and highly-strung Alphonse was, and the grin that Edward offered Winry felt strained. "Sorry about that," he said, picking up his suitcase from the bench beside Winry and arranging it in his grip with the basket of tarts.

"It's okay," said Winry, in a subdued tone. "I still think you should leave him here."

"I can't." Looking away, Edward decided to leave it at that. "I just can't." He took a step toward the waiting train.

Before he could move farther than that, Winry surprised him by grabbing him in a tight hug; she hadn't hugged him in months, since he'd gotten over his post-transmutation breakdown, and he hadn't expected her to now. "I hate you sometimes," she said, but her voice was thickening with suppressed emotion. "I think you try to drive me crazy."

There was no good way to put down the suitcase and basket, so Edward hugged her awkwardly back with the suitcase in his hand and the basket hanging from his forearm. He didn't bother to reply.

She moved to hug Alphonse next, but Alphonse didn't much care for that, and gave a small, distressed squeak before she let him go.

"I'll be here," she said, backing off once her urge to hug was satisfied. She wiped her nose quickly with one hand, and sniffled some. "Offer is still open."

Edward nodded. Words failed him. "Thanks," was all he said.



The conductor gave Alphonse a bemused look as he checked their tickets, but politely said nothing about the teenaged boy wrapped around Edward's arm. Edward smiled back, and dared the man to say something with his grin, and was disappointed when nothing came. Their tickets were in order, so the conductor moved on.

Edward looked over at Alphonse, who was huddled into as small of a ball as he could make himself, and hiding his face in the sleeve of the red coat. "Hey," said Edward, hopefully just loudly enough to be heard by Alphonse and no one else. "It's okay, I'm here. I'm here."

The only reply was a soft whimper, and a slight motion as Alphonse rubbed his face against the fabric of Edward's coat. Edward continued, "I'm not leaving you behind. You don't have to be afraid. No matter where we are, at least we're together, right? We'll always be together." He smiled and ran his fingers through his brother's hair.

With a soft sniffle, Alphonse lifted his face from Edward's sleeve, and gave him a miserable look. Edward could almost hear the plaintive question: Do you promise, Nii-san?

"I promise."

He nudged Alphonse into sitting up a little straighter, and put an arm around his brother's shoulders. The train clacked over an irregularity of the track, and they both swayed with the motion. "Winry didn't mean anything by it. She just wants what she thinks is best for you, but she doesn't understand. Nobody understands, but don't worry. I won't let anyone separate us, ever."

Promise me, Nii-san.

"I promise. I swear. We'll always be together."

Edward's heart lightened when Alphonse relaxed a little against him. He wasn't sure if his brother actually understood the words - he could have just been reacting to the reassuring tone of Edward's voice - but it was a good sign. He could always hope.

The lingering tension in Alphonse's body was disturbing, however. Edward didn't want his brother fretting the whole way to Central. Pulling the suitcase up onto the seat beside him, Edward opened it and took out the book of faerie tales. "Look what I brought. Want me to read you a story?"

Alphonse perked up slightly, grey eyes falling to the pages as Edward opened the book on his lap. Turning the pages with only one hand was awkward, but his other was occupied around Alphonse's shoulders. "I'll read you the one about the brownie and the miller's daughter. Then you can have one of Winry's tarts."

There was no response, positive or negative. After a moment, Edward began to read.

"A long, long time ago, back when fish lived on the land and rabbits lived in water, and before frogs taught birds how to sing, there lived a miller at the edge of a very small town. He was a simple man, and kind-hearted, but his wife had died many years earlier. So he lived alone with his daughter, who was very beautiful, and who took care of the house while her father worked in the mill. She had an easy time of it, though, because that was back in the days when brownies sometimes lived in the hearth, and to have a brownie in the house was to be very lucky indeed."

Alphonse relaxed further, uncurling his fists a little; this was a familiar story, and it was one that Alphonse had always seemed to like. Edward gave him a grin, and continued.

"Every evening, the miller's daughter would mix up a bowl of her best porridge, and lay it by the hearth with a lump of butter the size of a goose egg floating atop it ..."



The train line ended in New Dalwar, although Edward was assured, repeatedly and unnecessarily, that the line was going to be extended sometime in the near future. The near future didn't concern Edward, only the reality that he needed to change trains, and the train that would take him into Central wasn't due to arrive until the next morning.

Under normal circumstances, he and Alphonse would have just napped on the benches right in the train station. They would have talked until Edward got tired and fell asleep, and he'd doze sideways on a bench with his suitcase under his head until his brother woke him to let him know that their train had arrived. Such was the way they had spent uncounted layovers in the past, but Edward didn't think it would be a very good idea to try it this time.

New Dalwar was, like Risenbourg, a small farming community, with most of what constituted the town huddled around the intersection of river and train line. There was one inn, which was mercifully close to the train station; Alphonse walked the whole distance almost in lockstep with Edward, hands clenched in the sleeve of Edward's coat. This earned them several curious looks, but nobody said anything, not even the group of teenaged boys kicking a can around the alley beside the inn.

To Edward's surprise, the price of the room actually went down when the matronly old innkeeper noticed the silver chain at his belt. He didn't know why, and didn't care, but he did express his gratitude.

"Dinner is in the common room, there, in half an hour," said the innkeeper, with a curious glance at Alphonse. But, like most everyone else, she was too polite to ask why Edward's companion was pressed against him and twitching nervously.

"Is there any chance I can get something sent up to my room?" asked Edward.

She smiled at him and said, "There's a very good chance of that."

Once up in their room, there wasn't much to do. Alphonse calmed down a little once the door was closed, but not enough for Edward to feel that leaving him alone for any length of time would be reasonable. Edward opened the window, despite the coldness of the end of the day, and leaned out of it a little. The window overlooked the road, but there wasn't much traffic, so he watched the sky turn colors as the sun slid toward the horizon.

"This really sucks," he said. He could hear Alphonse moving around behind him, the shift of cloth against itself, but didn't turn to look. "We're not even in Central yet and this already sucks. How in the hell am I going to get you from the train to headquarters? I'll need to commandeer a car or something, and that will mean people asking questions. I don't need questions. I'll have enough when I see Mustang, that bastard probably already knows what's going on and he'll want me to explain myself."

Alphonse made a distressed sound, and Edward glanced over his shoulder; he could feel his expression soften from a hard frown into a gentle smile at the sight of his brother's unhappiness. "It's okay. I'm not mad at you. Here, come sit by the window."

Transferring Alphonse from his seat on the bed to the chair by the window was relatively easy, and Edward pulled up another one to sit beside his brother. "See? We can watch the sunset from here." He hoped Alphonse would tolerate Edward being next to him while the sun went down, because there was no way Edward was going to leave him alone next to a third-story open window. "I just ... wish you'd talk to me. That's all." He laid his head on Alphonse's shoulder. "Everything would be fine, if I just knew what you were thinking. I ... want to know that you're okay in there."

Alphonse made an odd little sound, and Edward held his breath. As always, however, the little grunt was not followed by anything. "Speak to me, Al. Please. Just one word. Just one. I swear, I'll never ask anything of you again. Just one word."

He waited for a long time, long enough for the sun to touch the horizon. There was nothing more. Edward turned his face into his brother's shoulder, the pain in his belly devouring him alive.

"How could I do this to you?" he whispered roughly. "What was I thinking? What was I thinking? Why didn't you stop me?"

A knock at the door roused him, and made Alphonse jerk. Edward wiped his face and went to open it, finding the gently smiling innkeeper on the other side.

"You wanting your dinner yet, boys?" she asked.

"Thanks," said Edward, and tried to smile back. "Sorry about the trouble, but ..."

"It's no trouble at all," she said, interrupting him before he had to try to explain why feeding Alphonse in the common room would have been problematic. She had a tray with her, which was placed on the bureau, and she began to bustle about, arranging plates and dishes.

"That's ... very kind of you," said Edward, but his eyes were on Alphonse; with the advent of another person in the room, his brother had shrank back against the wall beside the window. It seemed like a good idea to cross the room and lay a comforting hand on Alphonse's hair, and lend his brother one of the lapels of his coat to hide his face in.

"Oh, nonsense. You've obviously got a lot on your mind, and anything I can do to help you out, you just say so."

Edward wondered where this assessment had originated, but decided that he didn't care enough to ask. So he said only, "Thank you. I appreciate it."

The innkeeper finished arranging the dishes and turned her smile back to him. The smile was somewhat sad, although there was no reason for that as far as Edward could see. "If there's anything else you boys need, you be sure and let me know. When you're done, just put the tray outside your door."

Alphonse made a soft, distressed sound when the door closed behind the innkeeper, and Edward ruffled his hair. "It's okay," he said. "You don't need to be afraid. Nobody is going to hurt you, I won't let them. Come on, let's sit on the floor."

Dinner turned out to be a tureen full of thick crawdad chowder, not unlike the chowder that Auntie Pinako would make in the heat of the summer when the river level went down and the crawdads were easy to catch. Edward sliced fingers of bread into his brother's bowl and spooned the chowder over the top of them, to make it easier to handle. Alphonse ate the chowder slowly, and once Edward had eaten two bowls of his own, he watched his brother quietly and wondered what he was thinking.

"Remember when we used to catch crawdads back home?" said Edward. "It was always so hot, and the river was so cool. We'd spend as much time swimming as catching, and Winry would yell at us." He laughed a little, and said, "I remember once when you finally realized that all those crawdads were going to be killed so we could eat them, and you dropped a whole bucketful of them back into the river. We had to catch them again. Winry was so mad."

Alphonse looked up at him curiously, but did not seem to understand; Edward swallowed, the laughter dying in his throat. "Finish your dinner," he said, pointing at the bowl to draw his brother's attention back to his food.



Edward woke to the sound of Alphonse whimpering and, after his head cleared a little, the sound of voices outside the door. He sat up immediately, hampered by both the unaccustomed weight of the blankets over him and his brother's arms around him, and for one wild instant was prepared to start transmuting things to defend them because nobody should be in their house.

Then he abruptly remembered that they weren't in Risenbourg anymore. This was New Dalwar, an inn in New Dalwar. The voices disappeared with the hollow thud of another door closing.

Relaxing, Edward put an arm around the shivering body pressed up against him. "Al. It's okay, Al. It's fine, we're safe." He kissed the top of Alphonse's head and stroked his brother's naked shoulders, and wondered how long he had continued to sleep while Alphonse lay awake and frightened in this strange place. "I'm sorry. It's okay. I won't let anyone hurt you." He wasn't entirely certain that Alphonse was afraid of being hurt, per se, but he didn't have any better guesses.

The air was cold because Edward had left the window cracked open to dispel the stuffiness of the room, but the inn blankets were dense and heavy. Edward pulled the edge of the blankets up over his shoulders and persuaded his brother to lay back down. "It's okay," he said, smiling reassuringly, although it was dark and he wasn't sure Alphonse could see. "Everything's fine."

Edward lay down again behind his brother, spooned up against Alphonse's back, and then said, "Do you think you can go back to sleep?" The answer he got, if it was intended to be an answer, was a soft whine, and Edward ran his hand across his brother's chest. "We're okay," he said, pitching his voice as low and soothing as he could. "We've slept in a lot of inns before. This is actually a pretty nice one, as inns go. You remember that one in Canterfeld? We would have been better off sleeping in the barn, you said, and you were right. The barn probably had fewer fleas." He chuckled a little, and added, "You were right about a lot of things back then. I didn't listen to you as often as I should have, and I always regretted it when I ignored you. You always ..."

Another unsettled little whimper interrupted him; the muscles under his stroking hand were not relaxing. "Hey, it's okay. You know I'll protect you. Nothing can hurt you without going through me first, and nobody can get through me." Trust me, he wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat. The scent of Alphonse's hair was warm, familiar and comforting, and Edward laid a kiss on the smooth skin that was so close to his lips.

Sometimes, Edward dreamed. He would dream the old dream of their mother's face, twisted with pain and horror, the one that used to wake him screaming. Sometimes, for some reason, Envy would be there as well, disguised as someone Edward loved, but in his dreams he always knew it was Envy. Sometimes lately, he dreamed instead of the second transmutation, the one that had brought Alphonse back to him. Those dreams should have been beautiful.

It felt a little bit like a dream when Alphonse responded to his chaste kiss by squirming around to face him, arms going around him to cling, and Edward closed his eyes to take his brother's mouth. This wasn't their cozy second-story bedroom back in Risenbourg, surrounded by an empty house and miles of nothing, and there was a surreality to the wet taste and haphazard motions of Alphonse's mouth that went entirely beyond the strange tang that was always there. The blankets were too heavy, the air too cold outside of them. A tight shiver briefly gripped Edward's spine, despite the warmth of his brother's arms.

They lay on their sides now, facing each other, and Edward ran his free hand up Alphonse's flank, then down his back. It was going to be entirely impossible not to get aroused, not with Alphonse pressing closer, feeding him hungry kisses and needy sighs. Edward didn't try to resist.

When Edward broke the kiss and mouthed his brother's throat, the moment of bizarre unreality abruptly peaked. This couldn't be happening - it was one thing for him to fit one leg between his brother's at what passed for their home, so he could feel Alphonse's erection against his thigh. It was quite another to do this in the late-night darkness of an inn, with a hundred strangers within shouting distance. To taste moist skin under his lips in this place, where untold numbers of strangers had slept before them, where the matronly innkeeper with her kind smile would later come and see the imprint of their bodies on the sheets ... was obscene in a way it had never been before.

Edward shivered again, guilt and shame and arousal braided together in like colors, so that there was no way to tell one feeling from the other two. His own cock had gone from flaccid to painfully erect in less than a minute, and he caught himself thrusting helplessly against Alphonse's hip.

Maybe, thought Edward, it wouldn't be so bad if he could only know that Alphonse knew what was happening. If Alphonse knew what Edward was doing to him, really understood in terms other than just knowing that the experience felt good, would he still want Edward to touch him? Would he still moan softly when Edward's hand went between his legs to fondle his testicles, when Edward's mouth fastened onto his nipple? Would his hand still go, rough and heavy and uncoordinated, through Edward's hair, pulling at the braid?

The skin of Alphonse's scrotum was soft and yielding, but Edward had to nudge his brother's legs with his own knee to get them to spread apart. "Tell me this is okay," he whispered against his brother's chest. "Please, Al. I need to know." It was hopeless, and Edward did not really believe that Alphonse would respond to his pleas, but he couldn't stop making them as he kissed his way down his brother's belly. "Tell me that you're okay with this," he whispered; when there was no answer, he went entirely under the covers.

The only response he received was a broken sigh of pleasure, muffled by the blankets, as he rubbed his cheek against Alphonse's cock. It was hot and hard against his skin, damp with sweat, and the smell was ... Edward moaned, breathing the close, over-warm air through the musky hair at the base of Alphonse's cock. He'd never done this before, and he wasn't sure why he was doing it now, but there was no way to resist now that he'd smelled it. The scent was intoxicating, similar to his own sexual aroma, but subtly different. Better, somehow. His hips moved on their own, thrusting into the mattress as he opened his mouth for his brother's cock.

If Alphonse made any kind of sound as Edward took as much as he could, the blankets muffled it entirely. It wasn't as if Alphonse was ever especially loud, which Edward supposed was fortunate when he was able to spare a little attention from the dual distractions of the feel of having a cock in his mouth, and the pleasure of rubbing himself against the mattress. He was obliged to rest his weight on his brother's thighs to prevent Alphonse from thrusting into his mouth, but once that was done he took his time, exploring the contrast of foreskin and glans with his tongue, then sliding his lips as far down the shaft as possible. It was hard to breathe under the blankets, smothering and hot, and Edward started to feel a little lightheaded. That didn't stop him, though ... he could feel Alphonse writhing, jerking under the weight holding him down. It felt like power, and apology.

With Alphonse held mostly still and silenced by the layers of cloth between them, Edward had no cues at all to gauge how close his brother was to coming. It was a surprise when he sucked, suddenly and hard, and got a mouth full of semen. It made Edward choke at first.

The skin on Alphonse's belly and chest was considerably more damp when Edward kissed his way back up his brother's body and gasped cool, oxygen-rich air. His hand was already on his own cock, needing no encouragement to stroke himself swiftly to orgasm with his tongue in his brother's mouth. It hit him hard, rolling up his body from his groin and leaving him sprawled, panting and spent, across Alphonse. He couldn't even be bothered to worry about the slick wetness of his come between their bodies.

Neither of them moved for several minutes. Edward rested with his head on Alphonse's shoulder, his eyes closed, somewhat dizzy and increasingly sleepy.

"I'm sorry," he whispered against Alphonse's neck several minutes later. "I wish I knew you wanted that." He waited drowsily for an answer, and heard only the gentle sound of his brother breathing. "I wish ..." He tapered off, not entirely sure what he wished, and sleep overtook him before he could fully compose the thought.



"You boys not staying for breakfast?"

Edward paused and looked around until he found the innkeeper, standing in a doorway down the hall. "No, thank you," he said, offering her a smile over his shoulder.

"Train to Central doesn't leave for another two hours. Breakfast is complimentary." She gave them both a shrewd look, Edward with his suitcase, Alphonse with both arms wrapped around one of Edward's, and added, "Nobody else is up yet. Come on and eat." And, when Edward hesitated further, she smiled that motherly, vaguely sad smile and gestured. "Come on. Even alchemists have to eat."

The room she led them into wasn't the big common room, where Edward presumed she fed the inn guests and whatever townsfolk wandered in, but the kitchen instead. There was a table here, small and rough-built, and she gestured for them to sit down.

"Thank you," said Edward, pulling Alphonse to sit beside him and trying to adjust his brother's grip; his arm felt like it was losing circulation.

"Oh, it's no trouble at all. There's nothing good about letting you run off without breakfast, especially if your next stop is going to be Central."

"Who said I'm going to Central?" asked Edward.

Two bowls of something like thick porridge were set down in front of them, followed by a pitcher of frothing milk, a bowl of brown sugar, and a plate of sliced strawberries. "Where else would a State Alchemist be going on the early train? You're not the first State Alchemist to come through my inn. Eat up now."

Edward mixed some sugar and strawberries into his brother's breakfast, and then let him try to handle the spoon by himself; Alphonse gave up pretty quickly, and scooped the porridge up with his fingers.

"I'm kind of used to people throwing me out on the street when they find out I'm a State Alchemist," said Edward between bites of his own breakfast.

"It's a shame how people behave sometimes," said their host as she tucked loaves of bread into the oven. "My husband, God rest his soul, always said that all State Alchemists are good men trapped by bad circumstances."

Nodding a little, Edward wished he could believe that. But this wasn't the time or the place to go into the psychoses of the people who were theoretically his allies and co-workers.

The innkeeper went on, "Everything happens for a reason, they say. I'm not sure I believe that, but I'm sure you have your reasons for wanting that watch of yours, and God has his reasons for wanting you to have it. It's not for me to tell you that you're wrong, now is it?"

Edward was never comfortable when people started to drag God into their conversations ... he couldn't share the belief, and things tended to turn awkward if he mentioned his blunt atheism. So he changed the subject and said, "Do you have any coffee?"