It Had To Be You.txt

It Had To Be You
It Had To Be You, a Letterverse fic.
Rating: R - sex happens, but mostly offscreen
Disclaimer: Hiromu Arakawa's characters walk a different path; these have simply been borrowed and pushed into bed.
Warnings: Movie spoilers! But otherwise nothing much.

Summary: After Faithfully, early in the relationship and before the (worst of the) fighting starts ^^; Fumbling their way together and sooner or later, someone's going to have to *say* something . . .


Note: That pretty much is my ultimate Ed/Roy song, yeah ;)




Gently, gently, everything began to fall into place.

They had a bar. They had a table, even, and Ed had a particular smile for the moment he looked up from his drink and saw Roy approach (Roy had a particular clench of the inner muscles at the sight of it, which he tried not to let onto his face). They had in-jokes, and every shared acquaintance had been told, they had Alphonse's blessing - the most important thing of all - and they had each other. They had a relationship. All those years they'd both spent apart, the time spent facing each other like nervous animals, all the walls and words they'd hid behind and now - strange thought, strange beautiful thought, like a rare breed of butterfly, like the first leaf of spring - they had a relationship. They talked, kissed, shared their time. They had a relationship.

They had not, yet, had sex.

Ed had even stayed the night once, falling asleep on Roy's sofa after they'd talked and talked and talked. But Ed had never initiated anything further than a kiss (a kiss is just a kiss, even when you have to peel your brains and bodies apart again afterwards) and Roy wasn't about to initiate anything before Ed. Ed's all or nothing was Ed's choice, and Roy's role in life was now that of facilitator to Ed's wishes and desires, if Ed was ever going to admit to having those . . .

Roy cooked, and while they ate Ed kept his foot pressed underneath the table to the inside of Roy's foot. Roy kept his face, his voice, calm. Ed met his eye and occasionally nudged his foot; towards the end of dinner, Roy began to nudge him back.

"I cooked, you can wash up."

"Fuck, you act like we're married." Ed muttered, but pushed back from the table and began stacking plates anyway. Roy shifted out his suddenly lonely foot, and watched Ed's hair flick behind him with his movements. "You're drying."

"If you like. Did you visit that laboratory today?"

"Yeah . . . yeah. Dunno. I still like the first one best, I think. Sounded like they wouldn't get in my way so much."

"Your employer telling you what to do. How dare they."

Ed dumped dishes in the sink with a clattering crash - he'd never much worried about breakages - and shot hot water over them. "Fuck you, obviously. You still haven't-"

"What?"

"Given me the military's revised pitch. Thought you'd want me where you could, you know, keep an eye on me an' control everything I do."

Roy watched how his shoulder blades moved underneath his waistcoat, watched his drop his gloves to the side and roll back his sleeves, broad golden forearm, ridged silver automail. "Maybe it would be better if you weren't in the military," he said, and Ed flicked a glance over his shoulder to him. "So long as we're together you couldn't be under my command, and . . . I find I don't like the thought of you being under anyone else."

Ed smirked. "Lucky you then, 'cause that's never gonna happen."

*

Later, in the living room, Roy stretched out on the sofa with Ed stretched out against him, pressing on his side and chest, moving in a steady rise-and-fall with each breath. Edward, really Edward, really being quiet and lounging against Roy like he felt safe there. Roy closed his eyes and kept an arm around him and thought -

I have gone insane and I'm hallucinating this and I don't give a flying fuck.

Ed slid a hand over Roy's, slipped their fingers to fit, tilted their hands about and stretched their fingers together as if trying to find the best angle to admire them at. Roy watched his intent face, smiled, but Ed didn't look up and the smile faded off, slowly.

"You're quiet, tonight."

Ed blinked, looked up at him, smiled and squeezed his hand. "Huh. I know. Sorry." Pause, his face still as he thought. "Been . . . packing stuff today. Al moves out on the weekend."

Oh. "Do you need help moving?"

"Nah. Not much stuff to move anyway, we've both been livin' out of suitcases since . . . forever. S'mostly books an' we keep arguing about who they belong to anyway."

Roy stroked Ed's knuckles with his thumb.

"So I guess I'll have the place to myself." Ed said, shrugging like it was just whatever, nothing really, his muscles a little stiff against Roy's side. "Never had a place to myself before, guess, guess I can decorate or whatever you do. And . . ." Slowly, with a slow hand squeeze, "if, if Al's not there, you can come over . . ."

Pause.

Roy said, careful to inflect his voice perfectly neutral, "I already do come over, I've visited the both of you there twice."

Ed swallowed, and squeezed Roy's hand again like he hated him. "I meant - I meant - I meant, like, you can." Another swallow. "Stay over. Maybe."

How was his heart still beating? "In Alphonse's old room, perhaps?"

Ed sat up with a jerk. "Don't be an arsehole about this, you think this is easy? You great big fucking smug bastard, I'm tryin', I'm trying-"

Roy sat up, looked at Ed's face carefully, all of the rage and frustration and confused fear there. "I just don't want to be presumptuous, Edward. What - exactly - are you suggesting?"

Ed twisted his own hands together but didn't look down from Roy's eye, furiously red and clearly hating Roy very hard in that moment. "Why haven't you - touched me yet?"

Roy held his face steady, wondered how they'd turned this into an argument. "Why haven't you touched me yet?"

- but that was the wrong thing to say, because Ed's face broke, the anger fluttered out like a candle flame leaving him only with the fear. "I don't." He closed his eyes, looked down. "Know how. I don't - I left it too long, maybe, I know people're meant to - but I was always, always busy, couldn't, couldn't when Al was - an' then I just had too much on my mind, couldn't go around thinking about fucking when I was, was, an' then I had Al again an' everything was so crazy and, and it just, I just never, I never got around to it and-"

"Ed . . ."

"And now it's you," Ed said at the floorboards, cringing where he sat. "It's you, it had to be you, didn't it?"

"And what exactly do you mean by that?" Roy said flatly.

Ed took a deep breath, let it out, pushed his hair out of his face with a hand, sat back again and opened his eyes dully to the fireplace. "Entire time I've known you you've had something over me, Mustang. Since I was eleven fucking years old. And this is just like - the last thing, you know that? How'm I meant to just put myself on a plate and say - 'cause you know, you know I don't - I - I don't even know how to . . . oh fuck." He squeezed his hands in his lap and forced his eyes to meet Roy's one. "I wanted this since I was something like fourteen, do you . . . ? An' I knew all along - all along - six fucking years I knew I'd fuck it up-"

"You haven't fucked anything up. We haven't done anything for you to fuck up. And for god's sake, Ed, look at you. So long as you turn up and get naked you could not possibly fuck this up. And do you honestly believe that you're the only person here who could be made vulnerable by this? Do you really think that it would just be going through the motions for me?"

Ed said with a twisted smirk, "From what I heard you're pretty familiar with the motions."

"Firstly," Roy said icily, "I am not quite so sluttish as possibly you've been lead to believe. Honestly, the amount of times you were sent chasing your own tail by a rumour, I would have thought you would be more wary of them." 

Ed shot him a look of loathing, bitter and pure, and that flame was one Roy knew and he met. Glaring at each other and halfway through an argument, at least this was familiar territory. "And secondly?" Ed snarled, arms folded over his chest possibly so that one couldn't lash out and punch Roy before he was ready to.

"Secondly," he said coldly, "I love you, you idiot. So yes, I do happen to be putting a lot of myself on the line as well, Edward."

Silence. Ed's face had gone still, his chest had stopped moving. His eyes were fixed on Roy's, stunned and then - searching, nervous, desperate, and Roy didn't understand, and Ed said, "Are you - sure?"

Roy's mouth dropped open. Ed hunched his shoulders as if waiting for the slap, waiting for Roy to - but Roy just slumped back in his seat and dug his fingers through his hair, whispered, "My god, on two planets, Edward, you have to be unique . . ."

"What?" Ed muttered, sullen and uneasy.

"Am I sure. Am I sure. Would you like me to show you that damn hut I rotted in for two years in the middle of snowy goddamn nowhere grieving for you? Would you like me to list the nights - oh god they went on forever - spent completely dead inside knowing, knowing, knowing that we would never have this conversation, we would never touch each other because I would never see you again - would you like me to count the times I cursed you and hated you for turning me into this, for making me fall in love with you only so you could disappear, you felt like a tenfold - thousand fold - revenge for every dumped girlfriend, not just mine but every scorned lover in the history of mankind-"

"Mustang-"

"Yes I fucking love you, you imbecile. Why do you think I didn't push you, pressure you, seduce you? I can't - I need you to be sure of this, I need this to be somethin...