He drinks hot chocolate in bed, waiting for Roy to come, and has second, third, fifth thoughts.

This is a bad idea. The chocolate curls hotly in his mouth, a dry sweetness, the powder not entirely dissolved. This is a bad idea. He's not thirsty; it burns going down. The blankets are softer than he's used to, unfamiliar on his skin. His skin is too bare. Everything is unfamiliar. This is a bad idea. He blows steam from the top of the mug.

Roy enters, and even he is unfamiliar in that moment, dressed in a soft-looking woolen turtleneck, in dark gray slacks. They make the outline of him change from what Ed has only seen before, the thick shoulders and short torso the uniform gives him, the rounder hips provided by the coattails. Roy looks different now, an odd combination of soft and sharp, and Ed shifts his gaze back to the hot chocolate. It's halfway finished, and he doesn't remember having drunk what's gone.

"Fullmetal," Roy says, voice low, and Ed relaxes at the name.

"Yeah."

Roy sits beside him, runs a hand over bare shoulders, and his expression is one of muted surprise. Ed's not sure at what. Finding him in bed, finding him naked... finding him naked in bed? "I thought this was what you wanted."

Silent, Roy runs a hand over Ed's back again, from the touch-blind spot of his automail to oversensitive flesh to regular skin and back. "Yes," Roy says eventually. "I wanted you."

Fuck. Ed puts the hot chocolate down on the bedside table. "I'd better go."

"No, stay."

"I'll stay." He stares down, at the blankets folded over his legs, wishes he hadn't challenged himself, wishes he'd kept his boxers on, and his tanktop. He hates being bare, hates exposure, hates everything right now.

Roy leans in slowly, presses his lips to Ed's neck. Ed shivers, makes no move to touch Roy. After a moment, Roy sits back again.

"Do you want me to go?" Roy asks.

"This is your house," Ed points out. And his bed. And his sheets. Ed fists his fingers in them, looks down at flesh and metal. "I don't want you to go," and it costs him to say that.

Roy owes him, he tells his knuckles, silently. Roy owes him. Roy is casting about for words, for something to say that he can give equal value back without becoming sentimental. Ed grits his teeth, can't look at him.

"Well," Roy says, finally. "I forgot."

"Forgot?" Ed asks, and he looks up, drawn out of resentment with startlement. "Forgot what?"

Roy shifts to face him, and trails slow hands over Ed's shoulders, up his neck, down his shoulders, a relaxing gesture. "Not knowing what to expect. Climbing under bedsheets, wanting, waiting. Scorn's an option," and his voice is thoughtful. "Scorn, perhaps the other person will change their mind."

"You never had a first time," Ed snorts "Or if you did, it was so long ago that you can't remember. Everyone knows your reputation."

Hands pause, then move again, over the shoulders, up the neck, over the shoulders. "I was twelve," he says. "I met a woman of twenty-one --"

"I don't care about your women," Ed says, and his voice surprises even him.

Roy is silent again, but his hands keep moving, smoothing gently over Ed's collarbones, stroking his shoulderblades - what was left of them. "When I was seventeen," he continues after a moment, "I joined the army. Quite different reasons from you; I prefer your drive to my blind idealism."

"You? Idealistic?"

A shrug. "At seventeen, I was younger than you were at eleven."

Ed lets his head fall forward, lets hands drift over the knobs of his spine, lets them run over the muscles of his chest. "What happened?"

"I moved into the dorms," Roy says. "And didn't know what to do with myself. So, as with most young men, I took to frequenting bars, drinking. There was an officer there I had a few drinks with, at one point, and he invited me back to his apartment for coffee."

Ed does not look at the hot chocolate cooling on the nightstand. "Coffee, huh."

"So he claimed," Roy says. "Instead he undressed me in the hall, and kissed my neck. He had stubble here." Roy runs a thumb along Ed's jawline. "I didn't know what to do with the feeling. It was too different from what I had known for years. I couldn't tell him that. I was so nervous I made myself ill and had to claim it was the drink."

Smirking a little at his hands, Ed says, "Killed the mood?"

"He rubbed my back until I was done. I remember being desperately grateful that he took my excuse to heart." Roy's eyes are distant, face calm. "I felt better when I was done, though."

"You went home."

"I let him take me to bed," Roy corrects, and his hands are drawing shivers from Ed that he'll deny if Roy asks, fingers ghosting over his chest, drawing nipples into hard nubs. "He was fairly understanding of the situation, I think. Gave me plenty of opportunity to claim illness and leave, wasn't very demanding."

Breathing is difficult, air tight in his chest, and his lips feel like they are buzzing with every breath that passes through them. He tugs the blankets, bunches them a little more in his lap, decides that Roy won't notice unless he wants him to. "Ever see him again?"

"We were lovers for six months," Roy says, and the words come surprisingly easy. "Then he got called away to a skirmish on the northern front."

Ed knows, then, how things ended between them. His body burns, and he scowls at his lap. "God, Mustang," he says. "You really know how to kill the mood. What's up with that depressing story, huh?"

Roy chuckles ruefully, and it's okay, really. It's fine.

"I can't imagine you being nervous, anyway," Ed continues, because it seems to work like this. "Did you make all that up, shithead?"

A shrug. "People look different when naked," Roy says. "Women less so - it may be some of the styles of the age, or perhaps I was so young when I started that I've simply forgotten the impact, as you said. But I remember then, the difference in seeing a cleancut officer in uniform and seeing a young man with a hard body and obvious desire." He shakes his head, and fingers dip beneath the blanket, stroke along Ed's erection. It's an ache, a burn, a tightness that spreads through him like wax spilled on skin. "People simply look different when naked."

Ed tastes his own noises on his lips, thrusts into the heated circle of Roy's hand. "Get undressed," Ed orders, and though it means Roy has to let go, Roy does.

The soft sweater vanishes to the other side of the bed, and the slacks. Roy's moving slowly, not making any sudden movements, a carefully languid way to undress. He's like watching liquid in motion and the irony's not lost on Ed; it never has been. Roy's the cold fire alchemy demands and he's both solid and liquid at once.

Ed keeps his eyes on Roy's face when he's naked. He's heard people talk about drinking lovers in with their eyes, but he can't imagine Roy as his lover, and the inside of his skull feels too small, looking at him. Beautiful, well-muscled, strong, erection bobbing as Roy walks the few steps back over. Not Roy, it's not Roy, and it is, at the same time.

He understands what Roy was trying to say, and it's dumb, he thinks, that he'd have to go through the same train of thought.

Roy gathers him close, and he's stupidly grateful for the blankets still being between them somewhat. The feeling of flesh on flesh is as unfamiliar and as attractive as the finely-woven cloth of Roy's bedsheets. He can hear the own hitch and catch of his breath, loud in the room, as Roy strokes him.

"Look," he says, and it comes out lower than usual, huskier than usual. "I don't need you to rub my back as I hurl, okay? You don't have to be careful like that. I'm not that type. Fuck me." The words come uncomfortably easily. "That's what I want. I know what's involved, I've read up on it. I just don't-" and he can't say the last part. There's no good way to say I just don't want to look at you.

He wishes there were a good way to say it. It's not personal. He knows that if he can make it through this time, his paradigm can shift just fine. It's getting there that's the problem, and Roy's too hard to look at.

They wouldn't be there if there hadn't been something, at least, and Roy doesn't push. He nods, fishes in the bedside drawer for lubricant. The blankets get drawn back and Ed doesn't look at Roy looking at him. He lets Roy help him to his knees, frowns furiously at a pillow as uncomfortable fingers probe uncomfortable places. There is no way to make that seem normal, he decides, and counts the weave in the pillow, silently. There is no way to make that seem familiar.

Good, yes, he decides some moments later, as fingers twist hotly inside him, as he thinks he can feel his own spine curl. But not familiar.

More fingers, more heat, the initial discomfort changing slowly to a stretched ache, and that's not a bad feeling. "You're taking too long," Ed manages, and his voice is awkward, unfortunate. "Just - damn it, Mustang, I'm not you."

Roy is, perhaps, shaken by this revelation. He tugs fingers free and Ed groans, because it's not familiar, but it's his, now, and he wants it back.

"Yes," Roy says, and then blunt, pressing heat.

Too much; he's stretched too far, he's aching and hot and twisting against it, slow and inevitable. His breath chokes in his lungs, his pulse drones out a rhythm they can't yet reach. "Please," he says, and doesn't know what he's begging for.

His head falls forward as Roy slides further, deeper, thicker, settling into him. He wants to move, aches with it, but he's frozen into stillness as he sees Roy's arms behind his own. Their tone is olive, compared to his, and lightly dusted with dark hair.

The contrast is blinding and he groans again behind clenched teeth, shuts his eyes with determination. Easier like that, split open and hot and blind. Easier.

Perhaps this is why Ed is here, now, going through with this, but though Roy can't see his face, Roy somehow understands, a silent moment of communication. He shifts back, sitting on his heels, pulling Ed with him, and Ed makes a strangled, garbled noise at the way it moves Roy inside him. The position's worse like this, Ed kneeling on Roy's lap, leg on either side of Roy's, and he grabs onto Roy's knees to steady himself, shoulders hunched.

Roy's hands move up to Ed's eyes, cover them, and it's dark.

Ed relaxes. Grateful, he moves, lifting up on his knees uncertainly, shifting back. He hears Roy sigh, soft behind his ear, a familiar noise.

They are movement, and they are heat, a thick curling pleasure, ache, burn, Roy's palms sweaty on Ed's face, thumbs slowly carressing his cheeks in time with the thrusts.

Ed can smell Roy's sweat, can taste it, and he burns, tightens, catches fire in one sudden burst, his spine sparking, a stuttering brilliant light behind his eyelids as he cries out, presses his hips back hard. He can't see, but he can feel the heated splash of his semen against his skin, and groans again, thinks he might be drawing blood from Roy's knees with his grip.

"Fullmetal," Roy gasps, and his hips speed up, hard, fast, drawing shaking afterbursts, sunspots behind his eyes at the quick thrusts.

A sharp, unexpected heat spreads, and Ed tries to say something, hears it come out garbled and useless.

And it is done, Roy relaxing against him, hands peeling themselves from Ed's face. Ed opens his eyes, blinks away thickness. He winces, pulls himself up, off, curls forward, then turns to look up at Roy.

Roy is as Ed has never seen him, sweaty, legs spattered with come, hair wild, eyes languid and steamy. He stays on his knees, looking down at Ed, silent, still breathing hard.

Ed smiles at him, a lazy, sleepy, pleased smile. "I'm gonna sleep now," he says, and holds up an arm. "Are you coming?"

He doesn't doubt for a moment that Roy will come, and the pause is just that: a pause.

"Goodnight, Fullmetal," Roy murmurs as he settles beside Ed and pulls the covers up.

As he drifts to sleep, Ed finds that he is looking forward to waking up.