Roy Mustang found keys still in the lock of his house and frowned as he opened the door. While he didn't live alone - hadn't for two years now - he did prefer their house wasn't open to all and sundry. He took Ed's keys with him as he headed inside.

"Edward?" he called, shutting and locking the door behind him.

"Library!" Ed's voice drifted back, and Roy started up the stairs.

Of course Ed was in the library; he spent nearly all his free time there, and that was fair; it had been the selling feature. One year into his affair with Edward, skirmishes with Ishbar had increased dramatically and enrollment matched that. It was good leadership to clear the dorms for active recruits if he could, and it seemed to be a way to make their interests coincide. He'd mentioned Ed's access to his personal library, naturally, because Edward was Edward; he couldn't and wouldn't allow himself to be happy when his brother was not yet restored. Not without an ulterior motive.

Al, he recalled, had been horrified; they'd had a fight right in front of him, and it had been hard to restrain himself when Al had put his foot down and refused to let Ed sell himself any further. Ed had snapped that he wasn't opposed to it, which was the closest he'd ever come to a confession. It was only typical that it had been made to Al in front of Roy rather than any other way.

And the moment Roy had ushered the brothers into their new home, Ed had headed for the library and not come out for fourteen hours.

Roy leaned in the library door and watched Ed. He had a pile of books to the left of him and a smaller pile to the right, with his face buried in one. "Where's Alphonse?" Roy asked.

"Shopping for dinner. Left a note in the kitchen."

"What are you reading?"

Ed glared at him over the top of the book. "Research."

Raising both eyebrows, Roy meandered over. "So I see. But mythology?"

Ed was clearly resisting the urge to hide the cover of 'Cretan Mythology: Gods and Heroes' . "I've been reading up on symbolism," he growled. "I mean, the Philosopher's Stone was just a legend, right? I'm finding lots of human substantial changes and death-resurrection cycles." He gestured. "Got into it from a note that the alchemical phoenix may have been borrowed from the Xingian firebird god, empress of their so-called gods."

Comfortably, Roy took a seat beside him. "And symbol of transformation, crossing the barrier between death and life."

"Yeah." Ed leaned against him, idly propping the book up on Roy's knee. "Anyway, that got me looking into other countries' gods for any hints. Hit a motherload in Creta's gods."

Roy watched Ed's face, intent on the book. He ran a finger down Ed's cheek, slid it over the youth's soft lower lip. "Yes?"

"Utterly, I-" Ed's eyebrows drew down as Roy slid a finger into his mouth. He closed his lips around it, sucked firmly, and Roy felt his stomach flutter, his throat clench as Ed slowly drew his head back, scraping his teeth along Roy's finger until it came free. Then Ed gave him an irritated look. "Would you stop that? I'm talking."

Chuckling, Roy raised Ed's own hand to his lips, kissed Ed's fingertips. "My apologies."

"You'd like Creta," Ed said, dry. "They considered sleeping with boys fifteen years their junior one of the ideals of manly virtue."

Roy smirked against Ed's fingers. He murmured, "'I delight in the prime of a twelve-year old, but a thirteen-year old is far more desirable. He who is fourteen is a still sweeter flower of the Loves, and one who is just beginning his fifteenth year is even more delightful. The sixteenth year belongs to the gods, and as for the seventeenth year not for me is it to seek, but for Zeus. But whoever desires still older ones is no longer playing, but seeking a lover who says "Now let me do it to you."' So speaks Strato," he added. "An ancient Cretan poet and philosopher."

Ed stared at him and kept staring as Roy sucked Ed's index finger into his mouth, carressed the first joint with his tongue. "I guess I should know better than to inform you about pederasty," Ed said, finally. "You freak."

"Mm," Roy agreed, nipping at Ed's fingertip.

"I guess that means I'm a bit too old for you," Ed said, nabbing a bookmark and shoving it in before putting the book precariously back on the pile. He'd had his eighteenth birthday a month back.

Roy raised eyebrows at him blandly, letting Ed's hand drop. "That depends what I'm seeking in a lover, doesn't it."

Ed smirked, straddling Roy's legs, a knee on either side of his hips. "I guess so." He swiped his tongue across Roy's lips in a lewd open-air kiss and Roy opened his mouth into it, hands finding an ideal handhold and tugging Ed more tightly against him. "But you know what I'm looking for?" Ed kissed Roy again, biting on Roy's lower lip.

"What's that?" Roy murmured back, tonguing the corner of Ed's lips.

"Someone who'll listen when I talk," Ed said, and sat back on Roy's thighs, arms crossed. "You're a distraction, asshole. I'm researching here."

Roy slid his hands under Ed's shirt, felt the shift of muscles under his hands. "Creta's gods, metamorphosis, death and rebirth," he reminded Ed, thumbing a nipple.

Ed's teeth clenched. "Right," he said, unbuttoning Roy's uniform jacket. "In the gods themselves, the thirteenth of their chief gods is this prettyboy, Dionysus Zagreus."

Discarding clothing, Roy nodded. "The wine and sex god?"

"Wine, life, growing shit - whatever." Ed leaned down to bite at Roy's neck. "The point isn't that they HAD one of those gods, but what he was. Their chief god was kind of a oversexed bastard, not unlike someone we both know." He gave Roy a smirk as Roy contrived to look injured, and Roy lost the look fast as Ed unzipped his pants, drew firm hands along the length of his erection. "Anyway, this god slept with the goddess of the underworld, and their kid was Zagreus, but this god's wife was pissed off, something I'm sure you've experienced before."

Roy's breath caught in his chest, but he mustered a stern look. "I'm sure I don't understand what you're implying, Fullmetal."

"Yeah, of course you don't, you shit." Ed's voice was fond as he pushed Roy's shoulders into the floor, kissed him hard. "Long story short, she had the kid killed, but the god either ate the kid's heart or sewed him into his thigh, and nine months later, another child was born, the god Dionysus."

"Lube in the desk drawer," Roy said. He pushed himself up to undo his boots as Ed jumped up, lithe, and headed over. "And this was a fertility god, so he manages to be both a god of life and death?"

Ed nodded, rooting through the drawer. "Plus there're other points of interest; he's a god of transmutation a bunch of times - turns people into grape vines for upsetting him, or into dolphins, or whatever. Aha!" He brandished the container triumphantly and returned, grinning. "He also has a certain amount of human sacrifice in his myths."

Roy raised his eyebrows and spread his legs as Ed sank down to kneel in front of him. "Aha?"

"The type of sacrifice that was given to him was called sparagmos," Ed said. "Watch out, it's cold."

"--Hey."

Ed grinned, fingers twisting in Roy. "What? It was."

"It didn't need to be," Roy muttered. "Sparagmos?"

Nodding, Ed bent to his task. "Um, yeah. Ripping limb from limb, same way the goddess got him killed. Big emphasis on the scattering of body parts."

Roy ran a hand over Ed's automail port and said nothing.

Ed leaned up and kissed him again; for a moment there was silence as Ed kissed, all teeth and tongue, and shucked clothing.

"Yeah," Ed said, breathlessly, and ran a hand along the back of one of Roy's thighs, slinging his leg over the metal arm. "So, I've been, uh, reading Cretan myth. And there's all kinds of human transmutations. Scorned lovers getting turned into trees, or sinners into stone, or whatever." He positioned himself, pressing a kiss to Roy's breastbone.

Roy dug one hand into the carpet. "And do they ever get changed back?"

Ed pressed in, a hard burning ache. "Shut up," he said.

The position was awkward at best, but Ed was good at this, and Roy arched his back into it, shoved back. He tried to keep his tone mild; it came out breathless instead, shaken. "I simply thought-"

"Shut up," Ed insisted, and Roy's teeth clenched around his words. Ed pressed his forehead to Roy's chest, moved fast and hard.

Roy closed his eyes, let Ed move, one hand buried in the carpet, the other flat to Ed's back. Beside them, a stack of books fell, and Roy felt Ed's eyelashes move against his chest, but neither went to replace the books.

Ed sped up, one hand slipping between them, closing to move fast and slick on Roy's cock.

"Fullmetal," Roy murmured.

"God, you never shut up," Ed groaned, and came. Roy's head tilted back as heat spread inside him, and Ed's hand sped up even as Ed groaned into his chest, even as Ed's muscles shook.

Orgasm took him hard, leaving him burning and shaken as it fled.

Ed pulled out and curled against Roy's side, glaring at him, silent.

Roy breathed, breathed again, found enough air to speak. "You know," he murmured. "When the fertility god Dionysus Zagreus chose to settle down, he stayed loyal, and made his wife a crown of stars to show his love and devotion to her."

Ed closed his eyes, turned his face against Roy's shoulder. "I'll find something," he said. "I just haven't looked deeply enough."

Roy put an arm around him. "Yes," he murmured, and pondered missions that would take Edward and Alphonse Elric to Creta.