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akainagiKataomoi Ch 2: In which Ed screams like a girl
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
akainagi
Genre: Romance/Angst/Humor (little for everyone)
Pairing: RoyEd
Rating: So far PG-13 for Ed's dirty mouth
"But that our Stone is not in beasts, heare how Hermes saith. All things are made according to their nature. Out of man another man is made, and out of a living creature another living Creature is produced, and one thing produceth another like it selfe. How then can the medicine helpe man, it being not fit for man? The Master answeres thus …”
Bullshit.
It might as well be written in tongues. The letters stared up at him as if daring him to make sense out of them and then mocked him when he couldn’t. There were few times in his life where Ed found himself so out of sorts that research was an impossibility. Normally, a few dusty alchemical texts, notepaper and a pen could make any inner turmoil seem if not curable then at least temporarily bearable.
He had tried convincing himself that he was overreacting, that it was not as big a deal as he was making it out to be.
Oh, but it was. Because he had actually thought …
Shit.
He slammed the book closed, getting some small satisfaction from the thump that echoed inside the cavernous library. He couldn’t concentrate on research when his life, the universe and everything had just been rearranged in a new and disturbing pattern.
The Colonel, Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist, Ed's commanding officer, the bastard bane of Ed's existence …
Was attractive.
Not attractive. Attracted. To. He was.
He was attracted to Mustang.
He held his breath, patiently waiting for the world to come to an end. When it didn’t, he put his head down on the table. Maybe if he concentrated hard enough he could just sink through the table, the floor, the ground and disappear into the earth, only reemerging when his life started making sense again. Merely admitting such a bizarre notion made his mouth go dry, his gut and his teeth clench and his eyes squeeze shut in denial.
He had made the vague and nebulous conclusion that he was attracted to men. Even if he had not ruminated on it, meditated on it, chewed on it or whatever one was supposed to do with such revelations, it hadn’t rendered him a nonfunctional wreck. It seemed to go something like this:
Hormones: “You’re attracted to guys.”
Ed: “No shit? How ‘bout that.”
Hormones: “You’re attracted to Roy Mustang.”
Ed: Total frontal lobe meltdown.
He didn’t even like Roy Mustang. This morning he could have sworn to the god he didn’t believe in that he hated Roy Mustang. He had spent hours on trains extolling the virtues of a Mustangless society to his long-suffering brother. He rarely uttered the man’s name without a “Bastard” in front of it or a “shithead” in back of it. The man was a conniving, lazy, womanizing, sarcastic, manipulative, promotion-obsessed git. And Ed had heard a few things from Havoc about a “miniskirt policy” that made him distinctly ill. So he could not, underline the not, be attracted to the colonel.
He folded his arms over the table and laid his head down on the softer flesh arm. This was not like him, sitting here brooding. He preferred action, not introspection. And the action that seemed most appealing to him right now was the one where he punched the colonel’s face in for the heinous crime of looking far too attractive in his sleep. Unfortunately that would require being in the same room with the man.
The light that streamed in through the windows of the National Library was taking on an orange tinge. He'd best put the agonizing on hold long enough to trudge back to the tiny, depressing dorm room that served as his home in Central City. His brother was waiting for him, probably wondering where the hell he was. Al would ask him how his meeting with the colonel went, of course. He could picture it now; “You see, Al, the lazy bastard was asleep on the job. So I just dropped off the report, drooled over his magnificent visage for a few minutes, decided he was pretty hot, crapped myself, and then ran screaming out of the building. So how was your day?”
Yeah, that would go over real well. It would result in squeaking, stuttering and probably a panic attack on the part of his brother. He imagined trying to revive a fainted suit of armor. He nearly laughed at the thought, but instead yawned into his elbow. What a god-awful day. After half a day of sitting in the library, his ass was almost as numb as it had been when he stepped on the inbound platform at Central Station. And he hadn’t slept for crap on that train. He never could sleep well on trains, even if he was (much to his disgust) the perfect size for lying on the seats. His military issue bunk would feel good tonight by comparison. He felt heavy and bone-weary. He wanted to lose himself to sleep, and forget this day ever happened.
His final thought, before he slipped into unconsciousness between the stacks of the National Library, was that he hoped his sleep would be dreamless.
---
And his first thought on waking was that his back hurt, he had been drooling, and Roy Mustang’s smirk was about six inches from his face.
So he did what any reasonable person would do in similar circumstances. He jerked up in his seat, screamed like a girl and tried to belt the man with his automail arm.
Mustang avoided the uncoordinated, flailing appendage without even losing his smirk. He stepped back, hands in his pockets, and made every appearance of thoroughly enjoying Ed’s disorientation.
Ed, for his part, stared. Blinked. Cursed. Processed his surroundings. Tried and failed to process the fact that the one person he was hoping not to see for a hundred years or so was standing in front of him. Smirking. He realized that he better come to terms with it soon, because he was probably going to be expected to carry on at least a short conversation with the colonel in the very, very near future. That is, unless he wanted to repeat this morning’s performance and haul ass away from the man as fast as he could. Not that it wasn’t tempting …
This colonel was miles away from the one he had accidentally encountered this morning. The smirk, the posture, the air of condescension. He searched himself for any sign of warm fuzzy feelings towards this insufferable prick. His relief at finding none was overwhelming. He celebrated this victory by putting on his surliest face and engaging in a time honored tradition:
“What the hell are you doing here, you Shit Colonel?”
The smirk got even wider. “Now is that any way to speak to your superior, Fullmetal?” Mustang assumed a put-upon expression. “And after I went out of my way to do you a favor …”
Ed pushed back his chair and stood up in a huff. He couldn’t argue properly when he had to look up at the man. Of course, even standing, he still had to look up.
God he hated being short.
“What favor?” he spat angrily. “The one where you send me hundreds of miles away to some backwater dump on your bullshit errands?”
“You’re the one who wanted leads.”
“Lead my ass!” Ed growled. There was something unsatisfying about arguing in a library voice. “That wasn’t a lead. That was you using me do your dirty work again and passing it off as a lead. What the hell do you take me for?”
Mustang left that one alone. “Actually, the favor I was referring to was for your brother. Imagine my surprise when Alphonse comes knocking on my office door at nine at night begging me to help find his poor lost brother …”
Night? Shit. It only took one look out the window to confirm the lateness of the hour. Ed scrambled to pick up his notes, coat, books … damn, he still had to check those out.
Mustang watched with amusement. “I generously offered to look for you on my way home. It took longer than I expected …”
Ed brushed past the colonel, trying not to drop his armload of books. The jackass could stand and talk to himself all night for all Ed cared.
“You were difficult to find behind that pile of books.”
He whirled around a chucked a book at the smirking man’s head. “WHO ARE YOU CALLING SO SHORT HE’S PRACTICALLY INVISIBLE!”
Of course Mustang caught the book easily, and Ed succeeded in spilling the rest of his armload all over the floor in the process.
He knelt down and began picking them up as fast as he could. For every two he picked up, he dropped one. All he could see was red and his teeth were clenched so hard his jaws hurt. ‘I can’t believe I thought I was attracted to this asshole.’ Ed wanted to get his hands on the man, all right. Preferably wrapped around the bastard’s neck. ‘Pompous, manipulative, sadistic …’
… and now the fucker was laughing at him.
Goddamn it. That evil man was the reason he was going through this. That stinking colonel was reason he raced out of headquarters this morning and hid in the library like a coward, indulging in agonizing fits of introspection. He was going to throw more than books this time. He clapped his hands together and prepared to release an alchemical salvo on the one person he might be attracted to, but definitely hated. Ed was on his knees on the library floor in the middle of the night because of this guy and the fucker was laughing.
Suddenly his hands, possibly his heart and definitely his brain stopped cold.
Because the fucker was laughing.
With no consideration for time, place, or library noise levels, Roy Mustang was laughing. The calculated smirk was gone. It was replaced by the most natural (actually, the only natural) smile Ed had ever seen on the other man. It was an easy, relaxed expression that, before this morning, Ed had never thought the colonel capable of generating. The edges of Mustang’s eyes crinkled where they were squeezed shut from mirth. His head was thrown back, displaying a graceful neck that Ed had so fervently wished to wring a moment ago. Now it occurred to him that he would rather apply something other than his hands to that little spot just below the colonel’s jaw. He wanted to kill the man, kiss him, and then kill him again for making Ed even consider the second option. The dichotomy of the two mutually exclusive desires made his head want to explode. Ed’s world, which had briefly repaired itself, re-sustained a comminuted fracture.
In an encore of his morning performance, Ed again found himself fleeing from Roy Mustang as fast as reasonably possible. He could later commend himself that he didn’t actually run the second time. He vaguely realized that Mustang was calling after him as he disappeared into the stairwell. It was only when he emerged from the library doors into the cool night air that he counted himself free from pursuit. He barely had time to plaster a smile on his face as his brother clanked over to him. Al was so relieved to see him, that Ed was assaulted by a wave of guilt on top of everything else. He spent the walk home spouting apologies and empty reassurances. I’m sorry I worried you Al. I was studying, Al. I lost track of time, Al.
No, nothing’s wrong, Al. Everything’s fine, Al. Really, I’m fine, Al.
Liar.
They were almost at the dorms when something occurred to him.
“Hey, Al?”
“What?”
“What the hell was Colonel Shit doing in his office at nine-o-clock at night?”
Al shrugged. “Paperwork, I think. Lieutenant Hawkeye was there too. She kept talking about ‘making up for lost time’ and fingering her gun. It was kind of scary.”
Ed burst out in the first genuine laugh he’d had today. He’d really have to apologize to Hawkeye for almost running her over this morning. “That’ll teach him to sleep on the job. Lazy bastard.”
Al sighed. “He did go out of his way to help me find you, Brother. He doesn’t seem that bad. You should really try to be nicer to him."
If Al had ears, they would have been ringing.
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Author:
akainagiGenre: Romance/Angst/Humor (little for everyone)
Pairing: RoyEd
Rating: So far PG-13 for Ed's dirty mouth
"But that our Stone is not in beasts, heare how Hermes saith. All things are made according to their nature. Out of man another man is made, and out of a living creature another living Creature is produced, and one thing produceth another like it selfe. How then can the medicine helpe man, it being not fit for man? The Master answeres thus …”
Bullshit.
It might as well be written in tongues. The letters stared up at him as if daring him to make sense out of them and then mocked him when he couldn’t. There were few times in his life where Ed found himself so out of sorts that research was an impossibility. Normally, a few dusty alchemical texts, notepaper and a pen could make any inner turmoil seem if not curable then at least temporarily bearable.
He had tried convincing himself that he was overreacting, that it was not as big a deal as he was making it out to be.
Oh, but it was. Because he had actually thought …
Shit.
He slammed the book closed, getting some small satisfaction from the thump that echoed inside the cavernous library. He couldn’t concentrate on research when his life, the universe and everything had just been rearranged in a new and disturbing pattern.
The Colonel, Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist, Ed's commanding officer, the bastard bane of Ed's existence …
Was attractive.
Not attractive. Attracted. To. He was.
He was attracted to Mustang.
He held his breath, patiently waiting for the world to come to an end. When it didn’t, he put his head down on the table. Maybe if he concentrated hard enough he could just sink through the table, the floor, the ground and disappear into the earth, only reemerging when his life started making sense again. Merely admitting such a bizarre notion made his mouth go dry, his gut and his teeth clench and his eyes squeeze shut in denial.
He had made the vague and nebulous conclusion that he was attracted to men. Even if he had not ruminated on it, meditated on it, chewed on it or whatever one was supposed to do with such revelations, it hadn’t rendered him a nonfunctional wreck. It seemed to go something like this:
Hormones: “You’re attracted to guys.”
Ed: “No shit? How ‘bout that.”
Hormones: “You’re attracted to Roy Mustang.”
Ed: Total frontal lobe meltdown.
He didn’t even like Roy Mustang. This morning he could have sworn to the god he didn’t believe in that he hated Roy Mustang. He had spent hours on trains extolling the virtues of a Mustangless society to his long-suffering brother. He rarely uttered the man’s name without a “Bastard” in front of it or a “shithead” in back of it. The man was a conniving, lazy, womanizing, sarcastic, manipulative, promotion-obsessed git. And Ed had heard a few things from Havoc about a “miniskirt policy” that made him distinctly ill. So he could not, underline the not, be attracted to the colonel.
He folded his arms over the table and laid his head down on the softer flesh arm. This was not like him, sitting here brooding. He preferred action, not introspection. And the action that seemed most appealing to him right now was the one where he punched the colonel’s face in for the heinous crime of looking far too attractive in his sleep. Unfortunately that would require being in the same room with the man.
The light that streamed in through the windows of the National Library was taking on an orange tinge. He'd best put the agonizing on hold long enough to trudge back to the tiny, depressing dorm room that served as his home in Central City. His brother was waiting for him, probably wondering where the hell he was. Al would ask him how his meeting with the colonel went, of course. He could picture it now; “You see, Al, the lazy bastard was asleep on the job. So I just dropped off the report, drooled over his magnificent visage for a few minutes, decided he was pretty hot, crapped myself, and then ran screaming out of the building. So how was your day?”
Yeah, that would go over real well. It would result in squeaking, stuttering and probably a panic attack on the part of his brother. He imagined trying to revive a fainted suit of armor. He nearly laughed at the thought, but instead yawned into his elbow. What a god-awful day. After half a day of sitting in the library, his ass was almost as numb as it had been when he stepped on the inbound platform at Central Station. And he hadn’t slept for crap on that train. He never could sleep well on trains, even if he was (much to his disgust) the perfect size for lying on the seats. His military issue bunk would feel good tonight by comparison. He felt heavy and bone-weary. He wanted to lose himself to sleep, and forget this day ever happened.
His final thought, before he slipped into unconsciousness between the stacks of the National Library, was that he hoped his sleep would be dreamless.
---
And his first thought on waking was that his back hurt, he had been drooling, and Roy Mustang’s smirk was about six inches from his face.
So he did what any reasonable person would do in similar circumstances. He jerked up in his seat, screamed like a girl and tried to belt the man with his automail arm.
Mustang avoided the uncoordinated, flailing appendage without even losing his smirk. He stepped back, hands in his pockets, and made every appearance of thoroughly enjoying Ed’s disorientation.
Ed, for his part, stared. Blinked. Cursed. Processed his surroundings. Tried and failed to process the fact that the one person he was hoping not to see for a hundred years or so was standing in front of him. Smirking. He realized that he better come to terms with it soon, because he was probably going to be expected to carry on at least a short conversation with the colonel in the very, very near future. That is, unless he wanted to repeat this morning’s performance and haul ass away from the man as fast as he could. Not that it wasn’t tempting …
This colonel was miles away from the one he had accidentally encountered this morning. The smirk, the posture, the air of condescension. He searched himself for any sign of warm fuzzy feelings towards this insufferable prick. His relief at finding none was overwhelming. He celebrated this victory by putting on his surliest face and engaging in a time honored tradition:
“What the hell are you doing here, you Shit Colonel?”
The smirk got even wider. “Now is that any way to speak to your superior, Fullmetal?” Mustang assumed a put-upon expression. “And after I went out of my way to do you a favor …”
Ed pushed back his chair and stood up in a huff. He couldn’t argue properly when he had to look up at the man. Of course, even standing, he still had to look up.
God he hated being short.
“What favor?” he spat angrily. “The one where you send me hundreds of miles away to some backwater dump on your bullshit errands?”
“You’re the one who wanted leads.”
“Lead my ass!” Ed growled. There was something unsatisfying about arguing in a library voice. “That wasn’t a lead. That was you using me do your dirty work again and passing it off as a lead. What the hell do you take me for?”
Mustang left that one alone. “Actually, the favor I was referring to was for your brother. Imagine my surprise when Alphonse comes knocking on my office door at nine at night begging me to help find his poor lost brother …”
Night? Shit. It only took one look out the window to confirm the lateness of the hour. Ed scrambled to pick up his notes, coat, books … damn, he still had to check those out.
Mustang watched with amusement. “I generously offered to look for you on my way home. It took longer than I expected …”
Ed brushed past the colonel, trying not to drop his armload of books. The jackass could stand and talk to himself all night for all Ed cared.
“You were difficult to find behind that pile of books.”
He whirled around a chucked a book at the smirking man’s head. “WHO ARE YOU CALLING SO SHORT HE’S PRACTICALLY INVISIBLE!”
Of course Mustang caught the book easily, and Ed succeeded in spilling the rest of his armload all over the floor in the process.
He knelt down and began picking them up as fast as he could. For every two he picked up, he dropped one. All he could see was red and his teeth were clenched so hard his jaws hurt. ‘I can’t believe I thought I was attracted to this asshole.’ Ed wanted to get his hands on the man, all right. Preferably wrapped around the bastard’s neck. ‘Pompous, manipulative, sadistic …’
… and now the fucker was laughing at him.
Goddamn it. That evil man was the reason he was going through this. That stinking colonel was reason he raced out of headquarters this morning and hid in the library like a coward, indulging in agonizing fits of introspection. He was going to throw more than books this time. He clapped his hands together and prepared to release an alchemical salvo on the one person he might be attracted to, but definitely hated. Ed was on his knees on the library floor in the middle of the night because of this guy and the fucker was laughing.
Suddenly his hands, possibly his heart and definitely his brain stopped cold.
Because the fucker was laughing.
With no consideration for time, place, or library noise levels, Roy Mustang was laughing. The calculated smirk was gone. It was replaced by the most natural (actually, the only natural) smile Ed had ever seen on the other man. It was an easy, relaxed expression that, before this morning, Ed had never thought the colonel capable of generating. The edges of Mustang’s eyes crinkled where they were squeezed shut from mirth. His head was thrown back, displaying a graceful neck that Ed had so fervently wished to wring a moment ago. Now it occurred to him that he would rather apply something other than his hands to that little spot just below the colonel’s jaw. He wanted to kill the man, kiss him, and then kill him again for making Ed even consider the second option. The dichotomy of the two mutually exclusive desires made his head want to explode. Ed’s world, which had briefly repaired itself, re-sustained a comminuted fracture.
In an encore of his morning performance, Ed again found himself fleeing from Roy Mustang as fast as reasonably possible. He could later commend himself that he didn’t actually run the second time. He vaguely realized that Mustang was calling after him as he disappeared into the stairwell. It was only when he emerged from the library doors into the cool night air that he counted himself free from pursuit. He barely had time to plaster a smile on his face as his brother clanked over to him. Al was so relieved to see him, that Ed was assaulted by a wave of guilt on top of everything else. He spent the walk home spouting apologies and empty reassurances. I’m sorry I worried you Al. I was studying, Al. I lost track of time, Al.
No, nothing’s wrong, Al. Everything’s fine, Al. Really, I’m fine, Al.
Liar.
They were almost at the dorms when something occurred to him.
“Hey, Al?”
“What?”
“What the hell was Colonel Shit doing in his office at nine-o-clock at night?”
Al shrugged. “Paperwork, I think. Lieutenant Hawkeye was there too. She kept talking about ‘making up for lost time’ and fingering her gun. It was kind of scary.”
Ed burst out in the first genuine laugh he’d had today. He’d really have to apologize to Hawkeye for almost running her over this morning. “That’ll teach him to sleep on the job. Lazy bastard.”
Al sighed. “He did go out of his way to help me find you, Brother. He doesn’t seem that bad. You should really try to be nicer to him."
If Al had ears, they would have been ringing.
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Next Chapter
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