Closer part V Closer part V Beta'd by toxicbullets - *hugs* for her ^^ Rating: R Warnings: The song prompt for this chapter is a horrible, horrible pun ^^; Disclaimer: If I owned it I don't think I'd've cried like a wailing child at the movie ^^; Summary: 'Alone in the dark and somewhere in this building there's someone who takes the heart and blood of alchemists . . .' All other parts are in my memories. When I met you I just knew that you would take my heart and run - Mary J Blige, Real Love "What are we doing? How is this meant to help us find Fletcher?" Russell said through gritted teeth, holding the torch high enough to cast salsa-ing shadows across the walls as Ed crouched at the meet of floor and wall and ran his hands over the cracks and gaps in the floorboards. "Shut up and stop shaking the torch." "Brother, what are you doing?" Al said quietly, watching as Ed knocked his knuckles off the floorboards. "Alchemists are disappearing. The kids see people and strange lights in here, so whatever's happening to them is happening here. But whoever took Fletcher didn't take him past us and through the door, so there's another -" He clapped his hands and slammed them to the floor. "-entrance." The crackle of the alchemical reaction lit them blue from below for a moment, and then they were looking down a trapdoor at a flight of steps - and, immediately, the entire floor shifted under them. Ed put a hand down to steady himself, Al staggered into the wall and Russell dropped the torch - which span into the trapdoor, bounced down the steps and went out before it lit the distance to the bottom. They heard it rolling down a few more steps before clattering to a halt. "Nice going, genius." Russell muttered. "You just destabilised the whole building." "You just dropped the fucking torch," Ed growled back, and Al said weakly, "This isn't the time to fight . . ." "Where's the point of finding this? If they already brought Fletcher in this way, how does finding it help us?" Russell hissed. Ed stood up, squinting through the barest light the high, grimed-over windows offered, and rapped the back of his automail hand off Al's chest plate. "Al's gonna stand guard here in case they haven't brought Fletcher through yet, or to stop them escaping if they have. We're going upstairs." "Brother-" "Stay here." Ed said, his voice low and serious, and he heard Al shuffle and clank uneasily. "Be careful," Al whispered, and a leather and metal fist nudged his metal one for a second. Ed smiled up at him, though he wasn't sure Al could actually see him. "Yeah. You too." "Can't see a damn thing," Russell muttered, as they walked away from Al, towards the strange shadows cast by the stairs. Their feet clattered and slid over obstructions they could barely see on the floor and Ed prayed it was fallen rubble, it was dead rats, it was anything but the image his mind still couldn't detach itself from. "You left him there to keep him safe, not to keep Fletcher safe-" "There are things Al doesn't have to see." Ed said calmly. "Like what? What are they going to do to my little brother? What did you find here?" Russell's voice was going higher with panic and Ed glanced back at Al as he reached the stairs at the edge of the warehouse floor, but Al was just standing silently by the gaping shadow of the trapdoor, so still he could have been an inanimate suit of armour. He didn't want Al to hear this. He tested the bottom step cautiously, and it creaked like a bitch but seemed pretty solid. "It was hard to tell. It- she'd been eaten by cats. But -" There was a thickening in his throat he tried to ignore. "Whoever it was had cut out her heart and drained all her blood. You can't do that quickly," he hissed as Russell gave a muted cry into his hand. "It was precise, that takes time, nothing can have happened to Fletcher yet, they wouldn't have had the time-" "He could still be dead-" "They drained the blood while she was still alive," Ed said, and his hand tightened a little on the banister before he flexed it and kept moving. "I asked the police who picked up the body, whoever did it must have knocked her out or-" He paused as they came onto the first floor, a corridor of what must have once been the offices to serve the warehouse below, bleak bare floorboards and doors that could have been any colour in the darkness. "We have to be quiet," he whispered, and then gestured at the left hand doors. "I'll take these, you take the right side." The first room still had a desk in it, and a chair with most of its stuffing bared, a cat asleep on the seat. The next was empty apart from a rusted filing cabinet. Ed was just opening the door to the third when he heard a cry and skidded out immediately, almost falling over in his hurry to cross the corridor- Russell was leaning over Fletcher, who was lying on his side on a wooden desk, eyes closed and still. "Fletcher, wake up, wake up," Russell hissed, rubbing the smaller boy's hair and almost-gently slapping his face. "Wake up." "Is he-?" "Unconscious, he won't wake up-" Ed let out his breath and with it a weight of tension on his shoulders he hadn't realised he'd been carrying, and then he heard a creak behind them - He span, and a cat looked up at him, and mewed. He sighed, and crouched down next to it, meeting it in the deep green eye. "I'm never gonna really look at you guys the same way," he muttered, but only hesitated for a moment before rubbing its forehead. The cat flicked its ears suddenly, its pupils changing, and it sprang out of the room in a single fluid bound. Ed stood uncertainly but then the jolt came, and Russell cried out, arms around Fletcher as the building shook. Ed felt one floorboard underneath his boot give way, and just had time to think, Oh, shit. before the rest collapsed as well. * Molly, twenty-three, brown hair and eyes and a way of tilting her head down and looking up at him that made him think - No. She laughed at every joke he made, even more so once Roy's darkly glowering friend had gone home to his family, and never once called him a bastard or made a growling retort of her own. She leaned close enough when she took his empty glasses that he could smell the lily-of-the-valley of her skin, and she was all curves and softness, no clean, hard metal edges, no filthy, travel-faded red coat, no suspiciously narrowed golden eyes - He even got as far as waiting until the bar closed, until she could finish her shift and perhaps he could offer to walk her home, before realising that this was pointless. He had an offering on a plate and he just didn't want it. Why go through with this? She wouldn't kiss clumsily and forcefully and frantically, she didn't smell right, she wouldn't taste right - there was no way she'd leave bruises on his neck just by trying to drag him down into range, there was no way he'd feel the sharp scrape of her teeth at the sides of his tongue for days afterwards- She said goodnight with an edge of disappointment on her voice, and Roy walked home alone, face turned up to the night sky, trying to remind himself of the reasons why he couldn't even fantasize about this. Ed was fifteen, but it wasn't like he wasn't aware of what he wanted - Roy remembered what it was like being fifteen. Even if Ed didn't know the technicalities, all the right desires would be there, buoyed by hormones and all this damn tension. He was underage, but then, no longer a child, that was blindingly obvious. Even 'young man' seemed out of place when applied to him - Ed was just Ed, man-boy-Ed, completely and utterly unique in that classification. It wouldn't last, but then none of Roy's relationships did, he couldn't let anyone get close enough to threaten his dark corners, couldn't create vulnerabilities for himself. Sex was enjoyable and sometimes women - and sometimes men - made good company, but not for long, not someone he actually cared about. He was a subordinate, but it wasn't like the both of them didn't know how much secrets mattered, how much was at stake here. What it came down to was that Roy would not do this, but he was losing grip of the why, when all he could think about was the feeling of Ed panting against his mouth, the smell and taste of his catching breath, which made him want more than he could ever remember wanting anyone. He had to block it out of his mind, never think of it, never think of the brat, make his brain an Ed-free zone. Had he ever really, really wanted anyone before, or had he always done this just because he could? He was at his front gate and he didn't remember how he'd got there. Had he ever lost track of time and place thinking about someone he hadn't even slept with before? He'd probably never lost track of time thinking about anyone. He was confident he'd left other people unable to think about anything but him before, and it was the first time since he'd been Ed's age he'd found himself in anything like the reverse position. "I have more important things to do than waste time giving a crap about you." He opened his gate and it was more than a pang, when Ed wasn't waiting on his steps, Roy's stomach clenched. Roy knew he wouldn't be here, he was across the damn country, but - He wanted, wanted, wanted, wanted so much it made his head spin, unless that was the alcohol . . . Was it for the best? If he'd seen Ed tonight, he didn't know how he'd manage to say no. Was that really for the best? * Complete panic - the feeling of falling was just too similar to the feeling of being flung through the Gate - All the breath was knocked out of him with a sharp cry as he hit something sharp-edged hip-first, and then he finally crashed to t...
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