Cost of a Secret

Review Replies: radcat, I'm glad you're enjoying this. There is definite angst here. I'm glad you liked the part with Havoc. I may be using him more in the past. Loqui, I'm curious what you think the secret is. Thanks for reading. SpaceCate, thanks for reading. You'll get to see more of the secret later, and this chapter, you'll get hints of what happened with Ed and Al.

Chapter 4

When the Morning Comes

By seven the next morning, Roy Mustang was on a train to East City. He had left a note telling Ed where he would be, but it wouldn’t matter. When he returned home, there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Ed would not be there. He rested back against the seat of the train. He’d thought that by going this route, he would have avoided a sleepless night, but he’d gotten little rest between the concern for the young man he’d come to love despite himself and the twisting knot of anticipation of this trip and Liam’s welfare.

He had dressed in something casual, fairly comfortable, but he wasn’t feeling that at all. The alchemist was shifting around in his seat. He wondered if paying the extra for the nice seat this first time around had actually been worth it. Realistically, he knew he needed to be as well-rested as possible, but it didn’t seem to matter where he was, if it had been in one of the packed coach cars or in his current sleeper. He was not going to be getting any real rest, even if his exhaustion from the night before would catch up to him. It would be sleep, but not rest. His mind was not ready for rest.

The major general touched at his eyes and was surprised to find them wet. He wasn’t entirely sure for whom his eyes were tearing up. Was it Liam? Karen? Ed? Himself? He just didn’t know. Maybe all of them wrapped into one.
Stretching his body across the fold out in the compartment, he sighed. He’d have an ulcer by the time he returned with Liam to Central. If he didn’t already have one, which he was almost certain he did.

He groaned, knowing he really could have handled everything so much better, but the time to have done that was long since passed. Ed thought it was last night, but Roy knew better. The words of Ed’s ultimatum had boiled down to: tell me or lose me. The truth of it was something very different, but Ed didn’t know that. Obviously, he couldn’t, or none of this would have been an issue. Roy knew that the truth of Ed’s options were: lose me following a long, heated argument or lose me quietly.

Roy had been a coward and taken option two.

He hadn’t asked for this, to have someone fourteen years younger than him to befriend him, to pick up where Maes had left off and then some. He hadn’t expected Ed to fight at his side during the battle with Drachma, to protect Roy at all costs. How could he have been anything but blindsided by it as they had effortlessly eased into a friendship, one where Roy could openly discuss his latest female—and occasional male—conquest and Ed could rant about his lover?

It had been sometime around midnight when Ed came to Roy’s door, pounding on the thing so hard the older man was certain all that would be left would be red-painted splinters.

“It is very late, Ed,” Roy said, opening the door. “What are you doing?”

“James and I split,” the young man said, coming into the entrance of Roy’s home. It was snowing out, and Ed looked as though he’d been in it all night, the young man’s hair was plastered to his face and his cheeks were red from the cold and blowing wind. “I spent the last two damned hours arguing with the son of a bitch.” He looked up at Roy. “Your place was closer, and I’m cold.”

“Can’t take the cold?” Roy asked with the ever-present smirk clearly on his face.

“No more than you can handle the rain, buddy,” Ed said, heading to Roy’s downstairs bathroom, the smallest of his three. “Cold and two hunks of metal attached to your body just don’t mesh.”

Roy nodded, having forgotten about that little aspect of Fullmetal.

Ed chuckled. “You really don’t even see them, do you?” he asked. “Don’t know if that makes you blind, ignorant or really great.” Ed opened the door to Roy’s bathroom. “Could I get a hot shower?”

“Of course. I’ll get you something to change into.”

Ed thanked him before shutting the door to the bathroom. The older man went upstairs, looking for something he thought might fit the teen. Ed was smaller than Roy in both directions, and it was a near guarantee that if the clothing had any loose threads, they’d catch in the automail.

Finally, Roy found a set of sweats with a drawstring waist on the pants. He brought them down to the bathroom downstairs and dropped them just inside the door.

Ed finally came out of the small room and into the kitchen.

“So, what was it?” Roy asked, already brewing coffee and setting the sugar bowl on the table for Ed, as he would use nearly half of it in his cup.

“Did you know they’ve developed silicone covers for automail?” Ed asked. “You just get them molded to fit right over?”

“And you’re looking into them?” Roy asked.

“Hell no! But James apparently was. I tried to explain that if I had something covering my automail like that, I’d ruin it the first time I got in a fight. I use the automail as ingredients when I fight.” Ed shook his head. “Do you have any idea how many white gloves I go through as it is? Or how often I have to repair the sleeves of my shirt? And these things cost a hundred cenz each, with fifty extra for the first one.

“Well, that just started a big blow-up about me being in the military, when I wouldn’t even let Al join, and he drug up some nasty ass stuff about the way I am with my brother. Yeah, I know it’s a shit relationship, but I knew it would happen when I wrote that stuff about Al.

“Then he actually had the nerve to complain about my nightmares. Said they’re the reason he doesn’t like to spend a night with me. Like I can control the damned things for my own pleasure and attention-seeking habits! I mean, of the two of us, I sure as hell wasn’t the ‘drama queen.’ He said the nightmares disturbed him and his night’s sleep. Well, what the hell did he think they were for me? A walk in the park?”

“I’m sorry, Ed,” Roy said. He really wasn’t because he’d never cared for James much and had always thought the teen deserved better. Maybe even that he could make a much better partner for the blond young man. That thought going through his own head actually managed to shock him so much he almost missed that Ed was still talking.
Ed shrugged. “Six months I wasted with that halfwit dipshit.”

Roy woke with notification that the dining car was now open for breakfast. Remembering Ed’s words, he wondered if the young man would think something similar about their relationship.

Despite his feeling from the very beginning that it would probably end, Roy couldn’t see himself considering it wasted time. His eleven months with Ed had been nerve-wracking, crazy, passionate and meaningful.

********

Ed stretched as he woke. He’d actually slept the whole night curled in a ball on his side of the bed. His whole body ached. As he rose from the bed, Ed was determined to curse his older lover not only for the fact that his body hurt, but for his throbbing headache.

Looking at his side of the bed, the young man was surprised to see the fact that very little was disturbed on his portion of the bed he loved so much. He hadn’t moved, despite the fact that Ed had a tendency to take up a huge portion of the king-sized mattress.

He began to make the bed and couldn’t help but noticed Roy’s side. It appeared that the only person to ever share the older man’s bed had been alone in it last night. Ed folded his arms and frowned. He had wished that Roy might have at least managed to sleep with him last night, that there might be some sign of hope for them.

Ed shook his head and walked away from the bed, noticing that there was something taped to the bathroom door. His stomach lurched as he neared the piece of paper and the door. His feet made just the faintest uneven sound on the floor, the dullest tone of the pat, thunk that his normal gait sounded elsewhere. Finally reaching the door, he lifted an unsteady hand to snatch the paper down from its place so that he could read it.

“Ed, Left at 6 a.m. Will be back in about a week. Roy.”

Ed crumpled the paper in his hand, then pitched it as far away as he possibly could manage. It didn’t matter that there was a wastepaper basket at his feet. He pitched it to the dresser at the side of the room, which it rolled under, far out of his sight. Ed hit the hardwood door with his right fist. He managed to knock a few splinters in the door, but had not hit it hard enough to actually destroy the thing.

“That damned bastard!” Ed growled out to no one. Roy hadn’t even acknowledged their argument or anything that the young man had said the night before. “Where the hell does he get off?”

Ed stormed around the bedroom for some time, too angry to actually go into the bathroom to take care of the usual morning routines. He deserved something that wasn’t more formal than Riza Hawkeye writing a duty report. He couldn’t believe the man had actually omitted a single word, let alone an apology, about last night. Ignoring it wouldn’t make it go away. He had to know that.

And then, Ed froze, eyes wide, and hands no longer clasped in fists at his sides. The strands that had pulled loose through the night swung in opposite directions from the long ponytail where they belonged. By saying nothing, Roy had actually acknowledged their argument. The note was to inform Ed just how long he had to follow through on his ultimatum. Roy was avoiding the subject of last night because he recognized it as the end of their relationship.

Ed fell back on the bed, sitting on the top of the low footboard. Roy still didn’t trust him enough to tell him why he was going, and expected Ed to leave. But the young man didn’t want to. He wanted to stay. He wanted to find out what it was that Roy felt he had to keep a secret from him. It was obvious that just wasn’t going to happen.

Looking back at his relationship with James, the civilian librarian, or even the brief fling with the warrant officer who worked with Falman, Ed knew he wouldn’t have tolerated this from either of them. Roy obviously didn’t trust him, and it killed Ed. There was a possibility that the man was cheating on him with someone else, and Roy at least knew that was what Ed suspected. He’d never argued that it wasn’t the case even to ease the young man’s mind. But Ed kept mentally defending him, even when he didn’t know why.

“Because I still love the son of a bitch,” Ed said. He’d known it for a long time, and he felt certain that Roy had felt the same way about him. After all, why would he have let Ed move in with him just two months into their relationship because the military would not let the then newly-appointed lieutenant colonel live in the dorms with the enlisted men.

Ed opened the door to Roy’s bedroom and headed over to the large, soft-looking bed. He made his way across the room, his feet shuffling in the thick carpeting.

“Even the floor in this room would be more comfortable than that guest bed,” he muttered to himself. He could see Roy shifting in his bed. Ed didn’t really want to wake him, but if he did, the man would deserve it for putting him in that awful guest bed. Reaching the bed, he pulled the covers down and climbed into the unoccupied half of the bed.

“Ed…” Roy croaked. “What are you doing here?”

“Sleeping. That bed in the other room isn’t fit to sleep on.”

“It’s supposed to be that way,” Roy said, sitting up. The man’s black hair was sticking out at odd directions. In the dark, the clear whites of his bleary eyes stood out. “I don’t like for anyone to spend the night. It only gets a few hours of use when someone’s here.”

“You gave me your sex bed?” Ed asked, looking over, indignantly at the older man.”

“Maybe,” Roy said. “I don’t like people sharing my bed with me.”

“Well, get used to it. You’re going to have it happen today, buddy.” Ed relaxed against the pillow, and he waited for Roy to argue with him.

“Goodnight, Ed,” he said, much to the younger man’s surprise.

“Goodnight, Roy.”

Ed stood and headed back to the bathroom, starting the shower. He knew the instant he climbed inside, he would probably begin crying, as he had during his travels with his brother. It was the best way to hide the sound to the brother in the armor who seemed to know all. It was the easiest possible way to ensure that Al didn’t see all of Ed’s weaknesses or uncertainty.

Ed then remembered his brother. Poor Al, coming back to Central when this was Ed’s state of mind. The older brother shook his head. Here, Al was coming back with the possibility of repairing the rift Ed had intentionally created between them and the blond was in the middle of breaking up with his lover.

And somewhere between the remorse for what he had done to keep Al from getting into the military where he didn’t belong and realizing that his relationship with Roy definitely was over, Ed broke down and cried long before he made it in the shower.