Ed's senses felt heightened in the moments before Maes was returned to him. He could feel his presence just walking to the door, could see him look up at the knock even through wood and walls - "-and here's Daddy," Gracia said as she opened the door and Ed leaned down and Maes grabbed his hair. Ed lifted him carefully, settling him more against the automail arm - the left still ached from yesterday - and smiled down at him, finally relaxed again, and Maes just held his hair hard and didn't say anything. He never did, in company, of course. Gracia said, "Ah - Mr Elric, I assume-?" Ed glanced over his shoulder at his father, who offered a hand and said, "Hohenheim. Is the resemblance so obvious? I was told to bring cheesecake, I don't know-" "Thank you!" Elysia sang, bounding through the doorway and whipping up the paper bag. She did a little double-take at the smell, and looked up at Hohenheim uneasily from beside her mother. "I don't look like him," Ed snapped, and Gracia just glanced to him and gave one of her secretive little smiles. He scowled, moved to shake his hair from his face and realised he couldn't because Maes had hold of it, and said instead in a mutter, "Thanks for looking after him." "It's always a pleasure, Edward, though it's good you came back now - he's a little grumpy for his daddy and his nap, aren't you?" Gracia touched Maes underneath the chin and Maes wriggled back against Ed, who shucked him more neatly into his elbow. "Bye bye, Maes. Come visit again soon." Ed at least managed to wait until they were walking down the street, away from the door, to growl at Hohenheim, "I don't look like you." Maes drowsed in his arms and Hohenheim pushed the empty buggy beside him. "Not with that big nose and I don't have a damn scruffy beard like that, I don't look anything like you-" "Hm?" Hohenheim said mildly, wheeling the buggy along and apparently interested only in the sky. "I don't need dorky glasses either." Ed muttered, and ignored the voice in his head that said, Actually, aren't the words always fuzzier than they used to . . . ? * Maes slept perfect, infant sleep in his cot while Ed made coffee, and the smell was like heaven in a mug compared to what wafted from his father. "Does it hurt?" "Hm?" "Your 'condition'." "Oh, no. Not really. I don't really feel pain anymore." "It better not be genetic." Ed muttered, mind flicking and fixing to the cot upstairs, but Hohenheim gave an odd sort of smile. "No. I very much think it will stop with me, actually." Ed glanced at him, put two mugs down on the kitchen table and sat. "You keep staring at me." "I'm sorry. It's been a long time." Another one of those odd smiles. "You have a lot of Trisha in the way you move." "I-" Snapping that he didn't move like a girl was different, when it was his mother. "I . . . dunno. Why'd you come back now? Of all the times you could choose . . ." "I finally had the chance. I was - travelling. Getting home again turned out to be more difficult than I expected. And when I got back . . ." He looked, for a second, almost lost. "My house was gone. I thought I saw you but you were too young, and then - Alphonse-" "You thought you saw me?" "Alphonse's son. He looks so much like-" "Balls he does, that little brat's Winry all the way." Ed muttered, and scowled into his coffee. "Trisha - the little girl - she's a good kid, though." His voice always softened for her. "There's a lot of Al in her." And in Maes, of course. Alphonse's genes had won out in the end. They probably had plenty of blackmail material to beat Ed's genes down with, of course. "I had no idea so much time had gone. To find Alphonse a grown man with his own children, and Trisha . . ." "How could you not know she was dead?" "How could I know? All this time . . ." Despite his father's 'condition', Ed still wasn't used to even the idea of Hohenheim vulnerable, and it was so unsettling when he said quietly, "She was the only woman I have ever loved." Ed's eyes were on Roy's coffee mug from this morning, clean and white on the draining board by the sink. Every night, every day, every morning when he woke and every evening when he left Maes and flumped into bed, there was Roy. Roy's shirts in the washing and Roy's scent on the sheets and Roy's cologne in the bathroom and Roy's coffee mug in the kitchen, Roy who touched him so casually and knew exactly how far to tease him without dragging real rage from him and smiled at him like he made him happy - and to ever find that all gone, to find Roy gone . . . "Alphonse told me to come visit you." Hohenheim said, and Ed tried to drag his attention away from the exact spots he knew Roy's fingers and palm touched on the mug at the other side of the room. "It's certainly been educational." He said it in a bright, bland voice, so hard to place. Ed gave him a long look while he tried to work his damned father out, and then just shrugged and raised his mug. "Yeah. Learning curve every day around here." * By the time Roy came home from work - late, again - Ed had already made a bed on the sofa because he didn't know what else to do with his father, had already fed Maes and put him to bed, had already tidied up the cosmos of primary coloured crap, books and building blocks and stuffed toys, that had been scattered across the floor of the nursery while Maes had been 'playing' with his father and grandfather (Maes didn't like Hohenheim much; he was leery of strangers anyway, but even in his baby way he was polite and didn't obviously recoil from Hohenheim's reek like a week old corpse, was just slow and silent and watchful with him) and the first thing he did when Roy was through the door was grab him by the jacket and yank him upstairs, because he had a baby and a nosy father in the house and the bathroom was the only room with a lock. Slam the door, lock it, turn and wrench Roy against him. Roy had to support himself off the door to keep from falling over as Ed tipped his own head back and kissed Roy like he wanted to drown against him, wanted Roy to suck his lungs right out, and this they'd certainly not done for a long time. Roy clearly hadn't forgotten it, though, all he'd needed was the hint. He pulled Ed forward and Ed gripped at his arms, as Roy's mouth demanded without demanding and he tried - Tried to remember if this was it, was this the feeling, hadn't it been more than this, was he even capable of feeling it anymore? But he remembered, he remembered the utter helplessness of it, what it did to him, and the more he tried to snatch it back the more he was left with nothing but nervousness and raw unease because Roy, Roy of everyone who could have anyone wouldn't put up with nothing forever . . . Roy was already pulling back, pulling up, as if he could taste the indecision on Ed's tongue. "What-" He raised a hand, brushing one side of Ed's hair back as Ed's chest fluttered and he tried to, tried to - "brought this on?" Ed's breath fell loose hopelessly. His voice wobbled. The depth of this, the full stop of what he felt, he didn't understand but it was true, it was true, it was true whatever anyone thought or saw or wrote in the newspapers. "I love you." Roy's face was still unreadable before his eyes softened, his hand still on Ed's cheek, and the smile was quiet but very, very real on his face. "That is enough, you know." he said softly. His fingertips rubbed in Ed's hairline. "It is enough." Ed's eyes fell to Roy's collar, and then his head slowly followed, so he could rest his nose to Roy's shoulder and Roy's hand could slip around to settle at the back of his head, loosely in his hair. "I do. I know . . ." "It's enough." "This isn't what I want us to be." Ed's voice croaked out of him. "We only started together 'cause we couldn't keep our hands off each other and now-" "Don't push so hard. I . . ." Roy swallowed and Ed could feel it move his own body. "I can wait. Let yourself relax, and when you feel it, I know you'll come to me." Roy glanced down at him, and with a little nudge of his hand he drew Ed's eyes up from his chest to his face to see the humour there. "In my office, if you like. Or on the garden path. On the steps outside military headquarters. By this point I really don't care so long as you're there." "I could just blow you now." Ed mumbled. "That's not what I want." His face was a little closed off again. Ed didn't- "I don't get it, why not? You get to siphon off some tension and it's not like I mind, it's not like I've never done it before, used to do it every-" "I wish you would stop offering that." Roy stepped back a little and Ed blinked, cold suddenly now he wasn't leaning against Roy. "There is a difference, Edward, between making love and using you as a body to fuck and I can't believe sometimes that you don't seem to know the difference-" "Of course I - what the hell're you so angry at me for? I'm only trying to make this whole mess better, I know it's my fault anyway and you won't even let me-" "Because I am willing to be patient so that we can have something worth having, and I am getting fucking tired of you throwing it back in my face all the time." Roy snapped, and Ed didn't even know how they'd ended up here tonight. "How the hell can you think that I would ever want you to -" "Lie back and think of Amestris?" "Do you even realise that what we're missing isn't a handful of orgasms a week but us? You don't even act like you notice, you just-" Ed sat - fell - onto the toilet lid, pressed his hands over his eyes. "I don't - be angry with me then, I don't know, I don't even know anymore if I deserve - maybe I do, be angry with me, I just - I'm sorry and I don't even fucking know wha...
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