Roy couldn’t recall when the moment happened exactly. It had been somewhere between his fifth drink and sixth when he noticed how Edward, no longer donning the moniker Fullmetal, had slinked closer to him at the bar. It seems that even with age and having grown fully into a man, Ed was still as un-subtle as ever.
And Roy couldn’t recall why he hadn’t moved away, too intoxicated from his drinks or from the honey eyes that dared him to do something. What Roy could remember, though, was that Havoc and Breda were still lingering only a few feet away. He could remember leaning in and whispering, conspiring for Ed to make an exit now and wait around the corner for Roy to follow a few minutes later.
Even before they had reached Roy’s apartment, it had been a flurry of hands grasping, clothes being torn, lips claiming every inch of skin on each other. It was messy and rushed and something that a man of his standing and age should not have indulged in, and yet. And yet Edward was too magnetic for his own good, it was inevitable the gravity between them would crash together this way
By the time morning came, Roy woke to a mess of golden hair pressed against his chest, drooling and snoring. Perhaps this could have been nice and sweet, if they were different people at a different time. But not now, not with the elections coming.
But that had been nearly a year ago since it all began, so long that he had been sworn in as Führer. At first, Roy had presumed it was a drunken mistake on both of their parts, one they would not be repeating. Until the next night that they had both drank a few glasses and the pattern repeated.
And repeated.
And repeated.
And even some nights they didn’t even have sex, they simply tangled up in each other and talked about nonsense, about work, about the meaning of life, about love.
Eventually, Roy knew he had to face the truth of the matter: He didn’t only want drunken rendezvous with Ed, he wanted something more. Any of the shame that he still held about coming to love the man he had known since he was a child, the one he had dragged into war, it all disappeared when he remembered. Remembered what Ed looks like when he rambled on about alkahestry and alchemy, the way they argued in biting jabs but never crossing the lines each knew existed. Remembered that the same clay that had molded Roy had molded Ed too.
He resolved to tell Ed, sober, and when he could formulate what to say properly, how to broach the subject when he knew that there may never be a time where they could be openly together, that it would almost certainly be a love that would blossom behind closer doors and drawn curtains. He resolved to be better about this delicate situation, but the rest of his body had other decisions.
It was another late night, feeling Edward’s pulse underneath his lips, savoring the way he could leave small marks, enough to make the blonde flustered but not nearly large enough to draw attention. In between each mark, compliments dropped from his lips, the tiny bits of Ed he had collected in his heart over the years, all of the bits of the young man that made Roy fall in love. They had all been part of what Roy had planned to say later, when their heads were both clearer. Not now, when his mind was hazy with liquor ad his heart clouded by love.
Hands pushed him away, honeyed eyes blazing with hurt and tears, “You can’t keep doing this to me, Mustang. You either want all of me or none of me, I’m not taking anything less from a jackass like you.”
“So you’d take shittier treatment if I wasn’t an asshole?” Roy raised an eyebrow, his snarky comment only halfhearted as what Ed had truly meant sank in. All his worrying over some dramatic confession was clearly for naught, Ed’s heart burned as fiercely as his own.
He caught the fist that was ready to strike and his expression softened as he leaned in to kiss the hollow of Ed’s neck, “It’s a good thing, then, that I want it. All of you. I know I can’t offer you much, but I offer all I can give.”
Ed became the sun, filled with joy and life as he kissed Roy, and Roy had never felt his heart both swell and ache so much.
Three years was a long time for a secret to still stay under wraps, especially as Ed had practically moved into the Führer’s home. At least mostly it was still a secret. Al had been told and while he was not thrilled at first with either his brother’s choice in a partner or the fact it would remain a secret, he hadn’t said a word.
Roy suspected that Riza had caught on that the Führer was seeing someone and once he caught her eyeing him and Ed suspiciously as the young man, acting as an alchemical advisor, poured over reports of a crime reports. He saw how she looked at them as Roy had leaned over the desk and pointed to a different part of the diagram, how he fit so naturally into Ed’s personal space.
As the door shut, he could already tell Riza had wanted to say something. It was not the conversation he wanted to have now. “Hawkeye,” he spoke sternly but casually, “You are dismissed.”
And yet despite all of the hiding and pretending, Roy could not have loved Ed more fully, could not have wanted to more deeply to built a home with him. And it tore the older man apart at how improbable of a future that was.
The election was coming back around again, and Roy had hoped he would be a shoe-in, hoped he wouldn’t have to bother with the whole campaigning and parading like he did before. But this time around there was a small but vocal party against him.
It did not help that their candidate, Emil, was an engaging speaker, a powerful presence. The words he spewed were terrible, but in tone alone he drew people in. Emil spoke of the clarity and certainty a military state had allowed, how it was possible to reinstate the structure with a genuinely benevolent and kind leader at the head. He spit in the face of everything Roy had worked towards.
“Stop thinking.” With a flick to his temple, Roy was pulled out from his thought and towards the blonde laying on top of him.
His arms tightened around Ed, letting his face curl against his skin and pressing a kiss to the long-healed scars near his shoulder, “Didn’t you tell me just last night I wasn’t thinking enough?”
“You’re a paragon of inconsistency, you prick,” Ed’s bite to his words was weak, and Roy could feel the younger man shiver against him as the kisses trailed further up the column of his neck. They found a home at his jaw, Roy savoring each taste he could get of his lover, wishing to spend and eternity wrapped up together like this.
Ed’s resistance was little at best, as Roy had come to learn that it always was in the early morning. Both men were putty in the others’ hands, melting against each other with ease. Sex had never been so simple, so precious, or so loving for Roy. Worshipping Ed was as natural as breathing when they were like this, after all there was so much to revere.
He was strikingly beautiful with a wit sharper than anyone else, a heart too large and caring for the world. And somehow Roy had found a way into that heart as well. He considered himself to be a lucky man by nearly all accounts.
As his hands drifted lower, covering as much soft flesh as possible, Edward let out a soft sigh of pleasure. Some would describe as more like a whine, but Roy had said as much once and received an elbow to the gut and a fierce scowl.
Ed adjusted himself, until his legs came to cage Roy’s side as he sat down right above where the other was already growing hard. He was flushed from the chest up to the tips of his ears, almost as red as the jacket he had worn so many years ago.
This is going to be a good morning, Roy thought, trying to push all election strategies and gossip from his mind. He leaned up to wrap his lips around one of Edward’s nipples before a hand pushed him roughly back down.
“Are you really trying to just fuck me instead of actually telling me why you’re so fucking high strung at 5am?” Despite how clearly turned on the younger man was, his face no longer bore an expression of pure bliss—more like pure annoyance.
Roy sighed and let his head drop back onto the pillow and closed his eyes. “And here I thought you liked morning sex.”
“I do,” Ed poked at his side, “But not when you’re just using it as a distraction.”
Peeking one eye open, a small smile crossed Roy’s face, “It’s dangerous how well you know me.”
“Four years together will do that, Mustang,” Ed returned the smile, his eyes melting into softness for just a moment before sharpening again, “So I know you’ve got something rattling around up there. Just tell me already before that frowning gives you even more wrinkles.”
Roy’s hands traveled up Edward’s back only to pull him back down into a hug, “I don’t have wrinkles.”
“Sure you don’t, old man,” Ed nuzzled against his neck, and Roy could feel his body relax at the comfort, “Seriously, what is it?”
For so long it had been a challenge to talk to him like this, to really talk and not just bounce barbs back and forth in between sex. Both men had built fortresses inside themselves that had taken years to break down. Eventually Roy had, though, but only for the blonde in his hands.
“It’s the election.”
“No shit,” Edward huffed a laugh, as his hand traced idle patterns across his chest, “Election’s been bothering you for months. Same shit or anything new?”
“The same, I suppose. Just coming sooner,” Roy admitted. That was most of what occupied is mind, but there was always a part of him that more concerned about the man he loved. A part more concerned about when and if there would be a time where they could be open, hold hands and argue in public like the old married couple they had functionally become.
“Sooner is still three years away, Roy,” Ed reminded, sitting up enough to lazily press a few kisses from his jawline to the corner of his mouth, “You are already doing as much as you can right now. Emil doesn’t stand a chance to you.”
Roy tipped his head to the side, hand coming to rest against Ed’s cheek as he pulled the younger man in for a proper kiss, “I love you.”
“Love you too,” Ed tucked his face back again into the crook of Roy’s neck, still flustered after all this time to look Roy in the eye as he said those words. It was no matter, Roy found it adorable regardless.
A few more moments passed in silence, Ed’s breath against his skin, Roy’s hands trying to pull the blonde closer. Finally breaking the silence, Ed suggested, “How about we get you out of your head for a night?”
“I thought I couldn’t use sex as a distraction,” Roy countered softly, letting his hips roll up to met Edward’s as he spoke.
He could feel the breath catch in his lover’s chest, but Ed still responded in his usual sardonic way, “Not if you’re avoiding talking to me, idiot. If it’s for something else, fine—fuck me senseless.”
“Enthusiastic,” Roy teased back flatly. If he and Ed had not already been through so much together, not spent a year tiptoeing around each other and three years together, the comment might have stung. But the two knew better than to assume the worst in the other.
“Just saying, maybe it’d be good to get you out some night,” slowly Ed pushed himself back up until he was seated upright, letting the curve of his ass brush against Roy’s length, “Maybe go to a bar, reconnect with an old colleague, get too drunk and nearly fuck in the alleyway.” It was exactly what had happened the first night this pair had come together, the start of this beautifully messy and exhilarating four years. “It was good enough to take your mind off of the election last time.”
Roy wanted nothing more than to throw Edward back onto the bed and claim him, but the final sentence gave him pause. It could have meant nothing, a reckless throwaway comment but, “Edward.”
“What?”
“You were never just to keep my mind off of things,” taking Ed’s hand in his, Roy pressed a careful kiss to the finger that may forever go unadorned by marriage, no matter how much Roy had considered it.
Ed rolled his eyes and knowingly frowned, “I know I was, Roy, I’m not stupid.” He repeated the action Roy had done, lingering his lips against Roy’s skin for moment more as he spoke, “And I know I’m not that anymore.”
Roy’s heart felt at ease hearing that because it was true—there was nobody in this world he could love more than Edward, the boy was no longer a plaything to occupy his time and calm his libido, he was a partner in the truest and most genuine meaning of the word.
“And you never will be, Edward,” Roy promised, sitting up as much as he could to press his lips to the younger man’s, let their tongues and bodies move against one another in the way they both knew too well. He let himself be pulled apart at the seams by Edward’s skillful hands and mouth until he saw stars.
It felt almost like playing dress-up as Roy donned his more casual slacks and button up for the night. Edward had, for the first time in a while, spent a night in his own apartment. For years it had been for show alone, evidence that the Fuhrer and his former subordinate did not spend every spare moment wrapped around each other. Ed had teased that it could make it more exciting, that perhaps that freshness would help Roy’s mind be occupied by something other than the election anxiety.
So Roy arrived at the small bar, one so familiar to the both and slid into a barstool with a polite nod to the bartender. Thankfully it was one that had been working there for years, one that hadn’t begun treating him that different since becoming Fuhrer, and hopefully one that would turn a blind eye if he saw glances between the pair too intense to be wholly appropriate.
Roy was already a whiskey in by the time Edward showed up, He wore something a touch nicer than usual, unnoticeably so to anyone glancing at him but for Roy who knew almost every part of the blonde’s closet at this point, he noticed. He raised an eyebrow seeing a red corduroy jacket thrown over his button up, and by the glint in Edward’s eye, the effect was intended. Roy cherished seeing Ed in crimson, not simply because it made his eyes and hair glow more golden, but because it acted as a reminder of how far they had come, a reminder of how the flames that had burned his past were now the same shade wrapped around his lover.
“Good to see you didn’t wait for me to start chugging that,” Ed gestured to the empty glass with a huff before throwing himself on the seat beside Roy, and waved the bartender over for a glass himself.
“I was not chugging, I was sipping. Can’t help it that you won’t bother to show up on time,” Roy snaps back, his lips tugging at a smile. As the bartender his pouring out Ed’s glass, he adds, “Make it two.”
“I’m not paying for your sorry ass,” Ed shrugged off his jacket, purposefully flipping his hair back behind him and stretching out his neck. Roy’s eyes lingered on the expanse of skin, how much he wanted to mark and claim it, even mores now that they were in a bar peppered with those who didn’t know. It made his heart race a bit faster to know that there were so many parts of Ed that were only shared with him, physical and not. And Roy knew it was the same in reverse, he held behind lock and key aspects of himself, kept tightly hidden until Ed had come and wrenched it all out.
“What a gentleman you are,” Roy whispered conspiratorially as he thanked the bartender and slipped the man more than enough bills to cover the drinks that had been purchased thus far—and hopefully buy his silence if Ed kept teasing him like this
Ed slung one leg over the other, his body angling closer as he swirled the dark liquor around in the glass. “So what exactly was the reason you dragged me out here to talk, Mustang?”
Roy raised an eyebrow at Edward’s charade, the familiar bite to his last name. Right, he was meant to come up with some reason they were here, that had been part of the deal. So he continued on, “Last we spoke you were interested in the applications of alkhastrey as an automation technique and you said you would need some time to research. It’s been some time, I’m curious.”
Looking over at the blonde, he seemed to be genuinely disarmed. Ed was known for plenty of things, one was his ability to ramble on about his work, the theories, and all the potential alchemy and alkahestry offered. And Roy would use the time to actually catch up on the paperwork that stacked high on his home and work desks. Even though it did not seem like it, apparently to Ed himself, Roy listened to it all, remembered it all.
To snap Ed out of it, Roy carefully let his foot move to gently knock at his ankle, “Tell me, Elric.”
And he did for nearly an hour and a half of excited chatter mixed with nearly an entire of a bottle of whiskey split between them. Comments were thrown back and forth with slight references to events of the past four years, embarrassing and humorous, the bartender none the wiser. By the time the bottom of the bottle was reached, Roy no longer remembered anything about the election. No, the only important point in his mind was the man beside him with flushed cheeks from the liquor and subtle flirtations, the one whose eyes lingered lower and longer than was tactful.
“Well,” Roy stood and threw his jacket across his back, “Good to hear that your work is making progress and you have made too many enemies as of yet. Though perhaps thats just a matter of time, Elric, you have a talent for getting under a man’s skin.”
“Thanks,” Ed responded with a flirtatious smile crossing his lips, “I’ve spent the last few years really cultivating that talent of mine so it’s nice to know someone as dense as you has been able to pick up on it.”
This was their standard barbs and back and forth, and yet it was more fun somehow. Nobody had any inkling here and that thrilled Roy, especially considering Ed was no less biting and fun than he usually was, no less innuendos laced into his words.
“A charmer as always,” Roy turned on his heels, only looking back for a moment to add, “I’m grabbing a cab now so I’ll leave you to paying,” before waving his hand behind him and heading out.
He could hear Ed’s indignation and could imagine how furious the younger man was. Not that it truly mattered in the grand scheme of things, only two years ago the two had pooled together their money in a closely locked bank account—everything Roy had was Ed’s and vice versa.
As he exited the bar, Roy feigned waiting to hail a cab for a few moments. His mind was entirely lost in what else would come of the night, snapping back only when a stranger cleared his throat, “Fuhrer Mustang, please, take this one,” and gestured to the cab that had pulled up.
He couldn’t simply just get in and abandon Ed, there would be no real fun in that. So instead he blinked a few times and laughed good-naturedly, “No, no, I was in my own thoughts and didn’t see it coming like you did—it’s all yours, sir.”
The man nodded politely, “Right, of course,” and went to open the door. As Roy looked down at his watch and wondered how much longer Ed would be playing hard to get, he could feel a pair of eyes on him. Looking up, the cab was gone and so was the feeling of being watched.
Paranoid. That’s all it was and all it had been since the Promised Day. After all that had transpired, it had taken a long time to even feel comfortable trusting others, trusting the world. It was no surprise, then, that he felt that sinking feeling creep into his bones, then, not when he was out here waiting to take his lover into the alleyway and kissing him until his lips were swollen and bruised.
Once he could see nobody on the street, Roy ducked into the alleyway nearby, their old haunting ground, and waited. It took Ed a few more minutes before he turned the corner as well and Roy preened at the sight. His red jacket looked hurriedly put on, and the expression on his face nothing short of eager and desperate.
Roy had little time to admire his face before they crashed into one another. Roy’s hands immediately found their home, one wrapped around his waist and the other making quick work of undoing his ponytail and threading through the long golden locks. He could taste the liquor lingering still in his lover’s mouth, could hear how both of their pulses were racing, could feel their bodies pressed against each other and the excitement they both clearly felt.
Pulling away for air, Ed panted hotly against Roy’s skin, murmuring in between feather-light kisses, “You’re a dick, you know that?”
Roy laughed, softly but genuinely, “You’ve told me that more than a few times, actually, and despite the brain cells I lose doing it—I do listen to you.”
Ed paused and Roy could feel the all-too-familiar smile press against his neck. He let himself tilt his head enough to press a kiss to the blonde’s temple as the younger man grumbled out, “No reason to pretend you don’t listen when you do, asshole.”
“No reason?” Roy teased, “But it riles you up so much. I’d say that’s reason enough.” He punctuated his rebuttal with a pinch to Ed’s waist, making the blonde curl in closer with an exasperated huff and a few curses muttered out underneath.
For a few moments longer, Roy let himself simply look at Ed, beautiful, wild, and brilliant. He let himself be the romantic sap that he only was for this one man, smiling at him with pure, undiluted love. He met the honey eyes that had seen through all of the posturing and walls and had accepted the man underneath.
It hit him then what it was he truly wanted. Brushing the long bangs back, Roy spoke softly, “Stay with me, Edward.”
He raised an eyebrow at that, “Didn’t know I was supposed to be going somewhere.”
“I mean it, Ed,” Roy pressed their foreheads together in a solemn promise, “I want to you to stay with me. And I can find a way for us to stay together, not in alleyways but anywhere.”
Ed was silent for a few moments and Roy was only left to wonder if he had said too much, pushed too far. Finally Ed spoke, gentle but firm, “Don’t make me a promise like that if you can’t keep it.”
Instead of giving a proper answer, Roy responded with a kiss, trying to push through the press of their lips all of the love he held for the younger man. For minutes more the pair stayed tied up in each other, no longer as frantic and desperate as before, but luxuriating in the feeling of each other.
Finally, Roy pulled away and whispered, “Let’s go home.”
Ed stepped back and nodded, readjusting his jacket and pulling his hair back into its ponytail, “You go ahead. I’ll follow in five.” Per usual, was left unsaid.
It was the logical decision and the right one, of course, Edward was usually right no matter how much Roy would deny. But still, it managed to get under his skin this time—how easy Ed was willing to accept going home separately just moments after Roy had promised for them to be together more publicly. Again, it was the right decision but not the decision that Roy wanted to make.
He poked his head out of the alley to see the final patrons being tossed out of the bar with an unceremonious shout of “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
Keeping Ed’s hand in his, Roy waited until he could hear the final few people turn the corner and begin to walk away. For the first time in the four years they had been together, Roy and Ed walked in public with their hands intertwined. They stayed that way for the entire, long walk home.
When they finally reached the front door, Ed squeezed his hands and Roy looked down to see the blonde with a tight jaw and glassy eyes, biting out, “That was a stupid decision, Roy.”
“You told me not to make promises I couldn’t keep,” Roy opened the door and pulled Edward in with a kiss, “I intend to keep this one.”
The morning came with incessant banging on his front door. Bleary-eyed, Roy sat up, letting Ed’s arm slide down not the pillow behind him. The clock read barely 7:00am and not only that it was a Saturday. Now, he was no stranger to early mornings during the week or working throughout the weekend, but generally he could count on his Saturdays not truly starting until at least 8:30.
He stood, slipping on a simple shirt and lazily made his way into the living room. By the time he was there, he already heard the click of his door unlocking—well, at least that narrowed down the number of people who it could be, the very few who had keys to his home. Just to be safe, he let his right drift upward, the faint scars from a long-healed transmutation circle capable of still creating a small flame.
The door swung open and Roy heaved a sigh of relief and dropped his hand, “Hawkeye, may I ask what you’re doing at this hour?”
She looked barely as awake as he did, but there was something behind her eyes that made anxiety seep into the air of the room. Clutched in her hand was a newspaper, which only added more questions to his ever growing list.
Hawkeye tossed the newspaper to him which he caught with ease and immediately began massaging her temples, “Sir, is this true?”
“Is what—” Roy wasn’t able to finish the question as he unfolded the newspaper and had nothing left to ask.
The top news story for the day was barely 10 hours old and yet here it was. In an image that couldn’t have been clearer, he and Ed were front and center, as they had been tucked into the alleyway last night. Their bodies were flush against each other, their foreheads pressed together as they had been whispering sweet words in presumed privacy. As he unfolded the newspaper again, the next image was that of he and Ed leaving the alleyway with their hands intertwined.
Roy’s blood ran cold at the sight, unable to even read whatever the gossip columnist had written. Yes, he had promised Ed that he would find a way for them to be together, openly and happily, but it was not this. This was forced and scandalized and everything Roy had never wanted their relationship to be.
Ultimately, how he wanted their relationship to be, the truth of what it had become, no longer mattered. It was now left up to strangers to look at two pictures and an over exaggerated headline and assume.
When he finally set the paper down and looked at Hawkeye once more, she simply repeated the question, “Is this true, sir?”
“You know the answer,” he sighed and shook his head, “Don’t sit and pretend as if you haven’t known for years.”
Silence fell between them until Hawkeye broke the silence, “I’ll work on drafting a statement with media and start looking into how the information leaked you two were there. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was some underhanded work from Emil or someone on his team.”
Emil; of course that was the answer. While Roy had his vocal detractors in his career as Fuhrer he was still largely well-liked. A scandal of this proportion would be an almost certain fall from grace. Unless—
Mustang looked up at the click of the front door and found the room empty once more.
“Why was she here so early?” Edward’s voice pierced through, followed by a loud yawn.
Roy reached out a hand, pulling Edward into his lap as he did. No, he still wasn’t sure how to broach the subject, much less how the blonde would react. But he would be lying to pretend as if he didn’t need to feel his lover’s comfort now.
“The newspaper this morning,” he began softly and slowly, choosing each word with care. “It’s not good, for either of us.”
“Not good?” Ed repeated, his eyes wandering to where the paper had fallen onto the floor, squinting to try and see.
“Not at this time. It,” Roy stopped himself before he could dig himself further into a hole of shame and guilt over the love he held for the man in his arms. “It’s what we talked about last night.” He could feel Ed freeze in his arms. “Someone saw us. Took photos of us.”
“And that’s what the story is?” Ed’s voice was icy in a way Roy hadn’t heard in years, lethal in his enunciation and poisonous in tone.
“Yes.”
“Who did it?”
Roy hesitated before responding, “Unsure. Hawkeye seems to think it’s from Emil’s camp.”
Edward stood suddenly, reaching down to look at the paper for confirmation. Roy watched as his eyes scanned across every part of the photograph. With rushed tears, the paper was thrown in pieces to the floor and Ed stormed towards the door.
“Edward,” Roy warned, standing up to place a caring but halting hand on his shoulder, “We can’t just storm into this.”
“Why the fuck not,” Ed turned on him, eyes lined with tears and fierce with rage, “Whoever from that asshole’s team did this stormed right into it—why can’t we give them that back?”
“Because it’s more complicated than that. This isn’t a fight that we can easily win, Ed, this is going to take navigating the court of public opinion and running outside in a furious rage in my tee shirt is not going to help that situation.”
Ed jerked his hand away and walked past Roy with a shove to the shoulder, “Fuck you, Mustang.”
“Ed,” Roy breathed, already feeling a migraine beginning. The last thing he needed in balancing this situation was Edward being furious at him—at a time like this, Roy needed them to be a united front.
“Don’t ‘Ed’ me,” the blonde kept his back turned, though Roy could see the slight shaking of his shoulders that suggested the tears, “This is all your fault, you know that right?”
“My fault?” he responded incredulously.
Ed’s face snapped back to his, hurt and anger written across it in every language of the world, “Are you suggesting it’s my fault?”
“No. Of course not. It’s the fault of whoever it was that took those photographs without our consent,” Roy tried to calm himself, reason with Ed with facts and facts alone. The anger itched at him though, the impulse to bite back at each insult with a deeper cut.
“If we had been honest years ago this wouldn’t have happened and you know that. It’s on you, Roy, for making this situation, not me, and not Emil’s lackeys. I would have loved you openly from the moment we first kissed but you were too much of a coward to want that too.”
Edward, for all of the reasons that Roy loved him, knew the harshest wounds to cut open once more.
Roy steeled himself as his felt his own fury rising, his own hurt and pain spilling over into wet eyes, “You don’t have a right to say that, not when you were terrified to tell your own brother. And you don’t get to sit there and pretend like it wasn’t something I wanted for our future. I thought I said as much clearly last night but it’s clear you didn’t care. Don’t put all the blame on me just because it’s easier than owning up to your own fear. Don’t turn me into the villain just so you can run away and pretend like none of this mattered, or that none of this has meant anything.”
Ed met his gaze unflinchingly, “So what? Even if I say that’s all true,” his lips quivered as he continued, “What are we supposed to do now? They already have the story and can turn it into what they want— ‘Fuhrer fucks the kid he brought into the military at 11’ ‘Flame and Fullmetal Queers’ ‘Trusted politician cant even be fucking honest about—”
“Edward, stop!” Roy roared back, letting the silence hang between them in rage for a few moments before carefully reaching his hand out, barely brushing against the blonde’s shoulder, “We can’t control what they say, not anymore. It’s as much their story to spin as anyone else’s.”
For a second, he thought his hand would be brushed of, but instead Ed seemed to soften at the touch, “Then what are we supposed to do now—what’s the story we try and tell instead?”
There were two real options in that answer: be honest with Ed and talk through the details of how it might be best to make separate statements, have close friends and family corroborate and give statements of support, regardless of how they thought of the relationship. The other was the more painfully earnest one, the type of truth that only Ed had ever been able to pull from Roy. It was this truth that he chose.
“I don’t know what we can say besides the truth,” Roy let his hand drop down to graze across the back of Edward’s hand, “That despite my best intentions, against all of my better judgement, that I could not help but fall in love with you. That I couldn’t help but want to spend every morning with you by my side and spend each night asleep with you in my arms. That hearing you talk, whether it’s about your research or arguing with me, is the most beautiful music I have ever heard. And that if loving you, having others know that I love you, is the cost of my position as Fuhrer then—” he sucked in a deep breath grasped Ed’s hand firmly. They were not easy words to continue, but after the revelation, there was little else to be done but push through. “—then I accept it. I did as much as I could in my time so far and if people decide that our relationship makes all of my visions and efforts to improve this country no longer worth anything, then I doubt I can convince them. So at this point, I would rather love you and lose my title than the reverse, Edward.”
Edward had a vice grip on his hand by time he stopped talking, tears falling more freely now as he huffed out a laugh, “Now where the fuck did you learn to speak like that?”
Leaning forward enough to press a kiss into blonde hair, he responded, “I had some inspiration.”
“So,” Ed snaked his arms fully around Roy’s body, pulling him close and tucking his head against the nightshirt, “We just be honest? That’s it?”
“Yes” Roy squeezed his lover tightly, “Well, we will need to walk through how we discuss it, work on timing and all of that—but no lies.”
They stood like that for nearly half an hour, rubbing circles into each other’s backs and letting the emotions pour from them. Once tears had dried, and they had both sworn under their breath enough times at the situation, they pulled apart.
In hushed whispers between gentle kisses, their love was reaffirmed, no matter how uncertain the future would be, they would bear it together.