Cost of a Secret

Review Replies: radcat, I'm going to start hinting to what the problem is, but I promise these secrets aren't the only problems in this story.

Chapter 2

Photos and Phone Calls

Roy could not believe Ed was still pouting, even as they reached HQ. Hardly a single word was said as they drove together in Mustang’s convertible. Roy was not used to this type of silence from the usually exuberant young man, and it was somewhat unnerving not to hear the normal chatter from the blond. Ed was always awake and alert long before Roy could even contemplate being coherent, but today, Ed was silent.

Even as they reached the Central office, Ed hadn’t even said goodbye to him when they’d gone to their separate offices.

Still, he could hear Ed’s only words to him when they’d gotten in the car as clearly as if they were being said to him now, as he walked to his own double doors. “I know you’re keeping something from me.”

Of course Roy was keeping something from him. He had to. If he’d had a choice, he… Well, he knew he had a choice, he’d always had a choice, but at this point, telling Ed wasn’t going to make a difference. It probably never would have stopped him from being hurt by this secret. Perhaps once they became friends it would have been safe to tell, but any time after that, as they became closer, it would have hurt Ed too much to know that Roy had been keeping something so big from him.

Roy still wasn’t sure what had originally kept him from telling Ed, but for attachments to form, hurt to happen, it just wasn’t something Roy wanted. He’d just known when he entered his relationship with Ed that it simply couldn’t last. He’d been sure that the young man wouldn’t want anything to do with him for very long, but here he was, now a year later, and still with the stubborn blond.

Still keeping things from him.

Roy went into his office and began working on paperwork. Riza always accused that when he wanted to try to ignore something, paperwork suddenly became the most interesting thing in the world to him, but otherwise, she could never manage to force him to get any done. Admittedly, that was true, but Roy didn’t have to like what it implied about his work ethic.

He’d been signing papers for maybe an hour when Riza stormed into his office. He’d expected her to stop short when she saw him at work—she usually did out of pure surprise, if nothing else, not that he’d admit it was shock-worthy—but this time, she continued on, looking ready to take him down a few pegs, if not shoot a few rounds into him. She shut the door behind her, none to gently, and stopped to his desk.

“I spoke to Ed this morning, Sir,” she said. Roy repressed the desire to shudder at the coldness of her words. This wasn’t just going to be a lecture. It was going to be a guilt trip fueled by anger and disgust at him.

“Did you?” Roy asked.

“How can you not tell him?” she asked.

“Riza, I have no idea what you are—”

“I am not Ed, Roy,” she said, warningly, breaking the rule that they would not address one another by their first names while still in the office. “I know what you are keeping from him.”

Roy bit his lip. “The relationship was too new to tell him. There was a chance—”

“Roy, of your entire team, the only person who doesn’t know is the person you go home to every night. I’m not saying it would have been responsible to tell the thirteen-year-old, even the fifteen-year-old Ed. But what about the one three years ago who trusted you enough to stay in the military to work under you at the office? The one you fought alongside two years ago?”

“Riza, maybe I should have, but how do you just broach that subject? Do you really just blurt something like that out? And once we were dating, what was I to say? Should I have let them meet? Because I know Ed would have insisted that they at least do that. Then if Ed and I broke up… we won’t have a pretty break-up, Riza, and this way at least, I’m the only one hurt.”

“No, Ed would be hurt, too. Particularly if he hears that you doomed your relationship from the beginning.” Riza shook her head at Roy, looking positively sick at him.

“Riza, there isn’t anything I can say now that will make it better, not after al this time.”

“So, you’ve been so certain it would one day end, but yet you’re so scared of losing him that you’d rather let him suffer? Thinking you’re cheating on him? Maybe he’s the one who you’re cheating on someone else with? You’d let him go through all this so you can just enjoy your relationship with him while it lasts?” Her eyes narrowed at Roy. “You’re low, Roy Mustang. Very low. I would never have expected you capable of this.”

Roy looked up at her, but she was already heading to his office door.

“I know,” he said quietly.

She paused, as though she heard him, but made no other indication that she had. He watched her leave and he groaned to himself.

********

Ed sat at his desk, in his office at Central. Never would he have thought the day would come that he would have a desk, but here he was, perfectly miserable at his desk for a reason that had nothing to do with paperwork or the tedium of a job so stationary. He flicked a piece of dust off of the dark walnut wood. This used to be Roy’s desk, from when he was a colonel. Roy got a new one with his promotion to major general, and Ed got one when he got a desk job as a lieutenant colonel.

He sighed. A lieutenant colonel. He had become a bastard colonel himself.

Well, he hoped he wasn’t a bastard like him. He didn’t think his subordinates talked about him the way he’d always talked about Roy.

The young man looked at the picture on his desk and flipped it down. It was of him and Roy when they’d been at the beach one weekend. That had been one of the stupidest things they’d done. Roy and water simply didn’t mix, and Ed always sank down in the water, even in the sand.

The picture was of Roy trying to pry Ed from the sand. One of those beachside photographers had gotten the shot of Ed in a ridiculous swimsuit, Roy in one even worse. The older man had his arms wrapped around Ed, laughing as he tried to pry the younger man from the clutches of the hot South Cretan sand. Ed was somewhat more panicked in his smile as he clung onto Roy, kicking his flesh leg against the sand. Roy’s face was already red from a sunburn. Ed had warned him to put on some kind of sunblock.

He groaned and put the picture back right. It was pointless to cover the thing. He could see Roy’s lobster red skin without looking at the picture. It was absolutely stupid to try to not think about it, just like it was idiotic to try to ignore the picture of Al.

Looking at the little pink sheet of paper from Fuery, who had taken over as Ed’s secretary once the blond became a lieutenant colonel, he saw that Al had called again. He was getting persistent again. Ed wondered why, but seeing the desktop calendar, it made sense. October 1.

Ed put his head in his hands.

He hated to admit how much he missed Al and talking to him. He bet his little brother would have been here in Central harping on Roy to find out what it was the older man was keeping from him. Al probably would have found out by now, and Ed’s relationship with the older man would be stronger for it, or it would be over.

But if Al was talking to Ed again, it would mean Ed backed down, and he couldn’t do that. He had to protect his younger brother, even if it was from himself.

There was a knock on Ed’s door. “Come in,” he said. He knew who it was already, and wasn’t surprised to hear Fuery’s voice.

“Lieutenant Colonel?”

Ed looked up at him between his fingers. “Lieutenant?” he asked.

“Your brother is on the phone again. What do you want me to do? The women at the switchboard are getting angry at you because he is so polite to them when he waits for me to come back with a reason why you can’t speak to him.”

Ed sighed. “I’ll… I’ll talk to him. This is a tough time of year for us.”

Fuery nodded and exited the room. In a matter of a few seconds, Ed heard the faint ringing of his phone. He’d hated how loud it used to ring and had “fixed” that about a month ago. He picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Brother? Is Captain Hawkeye holding a gun to your head?”

Ed wanted to laugh, though he held it back, because he didn’t know if he did what kind of laughter it would be. The joke had been a good one, despite the guilt it evoked—Ed hadn’t spoken to Al in a year, hadn’t seen him longer than that—and he might have had a chuckle at it. Yet, lingering in the background was the faintest hysterical laughter that hung around because this was Al on the phone with him. After all these months, he was bringing himself to talk to his brother.

Holding in the laughter he feared might escape forced Ed to clamp his mouth shut, giving Al no answer.

“Brother, that was a joke,” he heard the voice on the other end say. “Brother? She isn’t really, is she?” There was concern in Al’s voice, and it made Ed want to slide down beneath his desk.

“No, Al,” Ed choked out. “She’s not.”

“Are you okay, Ed?” Al asked. “You sound… in pain.”

Just buried beneath a ton of guilt at the moment combined with a headache from trying to figure out what it was Roy was hiding from him.

“No, Al, I’m fine. Just a little tired. That’s all.”

“You’re lying,” Al said.

“I am… not…” Ed pulled the receiver to glare at it. How did Al do that? How did he still know all of Ed’s tells? Really, was he that obvious?

“You are,” Al said. “What’s wrong, Brother? Is it something with you and the major general?” Then, Al’s voice got softer. “Is it because I’m calling you? I didn’t mean to get the operators to guilt you into this. If you don’t want to talk—”

“Al, stop,” Ed said. “Things are just a little rough at the moment. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh.” Then silence.

Again, Ed looked at the receiver. Al knew more than he was letting on, probably thanks to the switchboard operators. They were worse than Havoc and Breda combined when it came to office gossip. Largely because having the ability to listen in on any conversation was too much of a temptation for them to pass up. Especially now that listening in on a conversation wasn’t the automatic death sentence it was during the old administration.

“What do you know, Al?” Ed asked.

“I heard that you and the major general weren’t talking as much today from Shelly,” Al said.

“You know the operators’ names?” Ed asked, incredulously. It wasn’t that he took the men and women there for granted, it was just that he was usually on the phone with them for so short a time he never had time to ask.

“Well, they talk to me,” Al said, then hastily added. “I’m sorry, Brother. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Yes, you should have. I deserve that.” Ed sighed.

“Do you want me to come to Central, Brother? I think Winry could spare me for a while.”

Did he? Did Ed want Al coming to Central?

“If you don’t, I understand,” Al said. “But it would be nice to see some of the familiar faces.”

Ed bit his lip. “I suppose if you wanted to come, but this would be strictly a social visit. Nothing has changed in your permanent record, Al. It won’t.”

Ed mentally kicked himself. Why did he have to bring that up? Why did he have to point out the very reason they hadn’t spoken in so long?

He could hear his brother sigh from the other side. “You know, Brother, I realize your opinion of me as an alchemist isn’t going to change. I’ve come to terms with that. I was just trying to be a decent brother. If you don’t want me to come, then I don’t have to come.”

“I…” Ed’s voice suddenly grew small despite himself. “I’d like to see you.”

“I’ll be there in a few days,” Al said. “I’ll see you then.”

“Goodbye, Al,” Ed said.

There was a click on the other end of the line. Ed hung up the phone, tears stinging his eyes. He hadn’t wanted to hurt his brother like that, but Al had been completely deaf to reason.

And despite it all, despite what Ed had done, his baby brother was willing to come here just because Ed was hurting.

It made Ed want to hit something, but he’d already re-alchemized much of his walls, and was unsure how many transmutations they could take.

********

Roy was sitting in his office. It was nearly lunch, but he didn’t hope that Ed might actually want to join him for the meal as they usually did. Finally, the young man’s appetite had slowed down, though his love for food had not.

He glanced at the photo on his desk, much less humorous than the one Ed kept on his own. It was them on the same trip to the beach, with the blond grinning ridiculously at the camera as Roy held him from behind. The older man hadn’t seen that smile in a long time, and he doubted when it would appear it would be for him. Someone else, more willing to talk and be as open as Ed himself was might make the teen smile like that, but Roy was certain it would not be him ever again.

The phone rang, interrupting thoughts Roy was all too happy to have interrupted. Where they were headed was not going to be a happy place. Though, he suspected that this was not going to be a pleasant phone call, as only a handful of people had the direct line to his office.

“Major General Mustang speaking,” Roy said.

“Hello, this is Dr. Karlsen,” the voice said. “You told us to call you if we noticed the absenteeism continuing—”

“I understand,” Roy said. “I am leaving tomorrow morning, and will be there two days after that.”

“We can talk in more detail then,” Dr. Karlsen said. “I will also bring in Nurse Landry to talk about some of the things we’ve noticed. Will you be coming here before or after visiting Ms. Bradford?”

“Before. After, there will be no time. I’ll be leaving immediately.”

“Good luck, sir,” the woman said. “The judicial system might be against it, but I support you entirely. I will attest to that in court as well.”

“Thank you,” he said before hearing a click at the other end.

He hung up his own phone, wondering if he came to see any of the horrific things he expected to see when he visited Karen, if he could refrain from doing the woman serious harm.