Production #3478, [FMA]: "Metamorphose, part 1" (ZOMG ELRICEST WTF?)
I really don't know why I'm writing this. I guess I'm just on a creative burst from having finished "Noesis"... I really need to stop naming these fics after Gackt songs, even if the titles ARE eerily applicable.
[EDIT]: I was going to wait until part 2 was finished to post this, but part 2 is coming along ABSURDLY SLOW and apparently there isn't a lot of other fic around on LJ today, so. Here it be. *small sigh*
Title: ::: M E T A M O R P H O S E ::: - (pygmalion, loathing their lascvicious life) [part one]
Author: Demidevi. (devils_devotion)
Rating: Oh, for the fuck of fuck. Since this is my first fic with the pairing, I'll try my damndest to make it porn. @.@;; NC-17.
Genre: FUCKITY FUCK FUCK FUCK Um, sorry, that's not a genre. ^^;; Angst, as always. WTF?, as always. Slightly creepy homosexual incest complete with glaring mythological references? XD;; Well, not so 'always'.
Pairing: Elricest. In this case, I take a break from the typical 'Edisjustasuckerforhisbrother'!Elricest and write it as Ed/Al. For a fact, if you kind of squint at it really hard, it's almost a matter of...dubious consent. LOL.
Summary: "I'll see you on the other side," he murmured determinedly, eyes practically burning with intent. "...Al."
For: kaltia. Hey, Kaltia, who else besides the Sins and asidian write decent Elricest, anyway? O.o I wish I was more familiar with your side of the fandom. *emo* Anyway, written for Kaltia because...I don't write anything for her. Ever. This is pretty angsty, you wonky Brit, but don't worry, I give you a happy ending. ^_____^
Comments: A whole bunch this time around. This is one of those "endoftheseriesisirrelevantsoEdrestoresAlwithoutcreepyexistentialism"!fics; namely, Ed uses the Philosopher's Stone to MAKE his brother a new body, as opposed to just...retrieving...it...from the other side of the Gate. O.o If I didn't write it in this way, the story probably wouldn't make much sense, so. (Ed has a Pygmalion complex.) ANYWAY, there's no real glaring spoilers in this, as it's AU from most of the latter half of the series. Warnings for bizarre mental states in general and tons of pathetic fucked-up angst. And...this is my first time attempting honest-to-God ELRICEST, so go easy on me, okay? ^^;;
Music: When I write the addendum to this, you'll get yer music then. :P
'Only children and fools speak the truth, Fullmetal', he remembered the colonel telling him loftily, lecturing sharply in some form of another, and the blonde took a deep breath.
"Don't worry, Al. Everything'll be fine."
---
10:362 And carv'd in iv'ry such a maid, so fair,
10:363 As Nature could not with his art compare.
---
He sat with his brother for a moment in the circle, despite his fear of it - if Al had to do it, then he could, too! - and rubbed at the burn marks on the floor, ever wary of the armor's presence beside him, comforting despite it's appearance and size. They'd run oil along the floor in a series of perfect circles, forming that array - then, with the strike of a match, they'd set those perfect circles aflame, illuminating the corners of the abandoned church with shadows and sparks. Al had liked the church, or so he'd said, with his typical innocent candor, and had ran his leather fingers along the cracks in one of the pews with reverence, mindful and cautious with his pressure.
"You've lived too long in that goddamned armor, Al!" Edward had declared at that, kicking the pew to splinters with his automail in a fit of anger, annoyed that his brother had become accustomed to moderating his steps and his touch, annoyed that he'd become adept at it, as well, and through no fault of his own.
Al had only regarded him solemnly, at that, and rubbed anxiously at his chest plate, where they had been storing the Philosopher's Stone.
The Stone itself was a paltry thing; a garish red ruby that throbbed like a pulse and oozed like an infection, but they'd stored it in the armor's chest plate where the younger Elric's heart should have been, and Al would sometimes swear, seriously, that he could feel the warmth emanating from it from his helmet all the way down to his toes. Edward himself could hardly touch it - even with automail, it was so goddamned hot, like the fire of the sun - and he didn't want to touch it, for that matter, if only because the thing seemed to scream in anger whenever he grew near, and give off crimson flashes of blinding light; he'd left the task of guarding it to his younger brother, who couldn't understand just why he seemed to loathe the thing so.
('Yes, but where did New Optain go?' the colonel questioned him relentlessly, with his palms caging in the blonde on either side, preventing escape.)
"Brother..." Al started as the elder Elric stood, dusting off his palms and inhaling sharply, smelling the oily metallic tang of his brother's physical form and nearly trembling in anticipation for the moment that that smell would be gone. But whatever the armor wanted to say was lost, then, in the face of Edward's dazzling smile, and in the sight (not sense, dammit, but not yet!) of mismatched arms being laced tersely around the juncture of his shoulders and helmet.
"I know what I'm doing, Al," he whispered fervently, lips against that angled visor, chest bent over that immovable back. "Trust in me. I know that that's what I said the last time, too, but please. I won't fuck it up again, not this time." Unbidden, the tears started to roll down his cheeks, but he caught them with the palm of a hand, watchful of the burnt circles beneath them.
Ever since the Stone had been stored in his body, Al's eyes had begun to glow not their unblemished white, but instead, a violent red.
"You won't, will you," he replied, and it wasn't a question.
---
In two neat pans they'd laid out their rebirth - carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, liters of water to melt the mixture into a graphite sludge - and though one of the pans was considerably smaller than the other (built for an arm and a leg, instead of any other thing), Al had insisted that they both be there, lying next to him in that complicated array, almost comical in their mundacity.
Edward didn't care much for restoring himself, and probably wouldn't put forth any active effort into doing it, but he wasn't loathe of the idea, either, and pondered fashioning for himself new limbs if the opportunity arose, and, most importantly, if his brother's restoration was successful; considered briefly his life without the cumbersome automail, and how he could at last enjoy the winter, and no longer dread the cold.
But it wasn't a priority, and it was a thought that he hardly indulged in at all, today of all days notwithstanding. Today...
Well, it seemed strange to say that today was the day he'd finally restore his brother, but Al was there lying in that array watching him anxiously, and the wind howled through the broken windows of that abandoned church, and he thought dizzily that he could still hear the screams of the Philosopher's Stone, even if it was only in his head.
"Al... Alphonse," he called from a distance away - the last distance they would ever have, he would make sure of it - and the fact that his voice cracked on the syllables was something entirely out of his control. "It's okay to admit that you're afraid."
"The same goes for you, too, Brother!" Al shot back, teasing, and the blonde forced a grin onto his uncooperative face.
"Yeah, well..." He'd meant to leave it at that, but his expression crumbled into one of despair, and the words that slipped out of his mouth in a strangled shout - (voice shattering like that pew he'd dismantled with his automail) - were entirely outside of his design.
"I... I love you, okay?! You're my only brother, you know?! Please, Alphonse...please! Come back to me!!!"
His brother sang out a reply, as well, but the words were lost to Edward against the pounding of his traitorous heart, and he narrowed his eyes, before he lost his nerve, and clapped.
---
The first thing he saw, predictably, was the Gate. It loomed over him, all gnarled stone and All-Seeing Eyes, and he felt a shudder begin to wrack through his frame. Next he saw his brother, dark and prone, and unnaturally still, and Edward stood over him protectively with the intent to guard him with his life.
"I said that I'd be the one to take on the burden of our sins," he whispered reassuringly, the words loud in the ominous silence of the Gate. Next to him, he saw the large vat of composite minerals necessary to form a human body and, next to it, the smaller vat contained the ingredients form an arm and a leg, and shook his head. "Just let your big brother take care of everything."
He bent over, and opened the chest plate with shaking hands, nearly blinded for a moment by the flashing crimson of the Philosopher's Stone at war with the neverending white noise of the Gate, but he managed to fumble the Stone into his shaking hands and swivel forward, just in time to see the large otherworldly doors of the Gate begin to creak open, slowly.
"I'll see you on the other side," he murmured determinedly, eyes practically burning with intent. "...Al."
At the first startling synchronization of those Eyes being fixed hungrily on his hands, Edward sucked in a shaking breath, reared back with all of his strength, and hurtled the Philosopher's Stone into that glaring abyss.
What followed was phenomenal.
---
He was floored instantly by the screams, heart-wrenching shrieks of agony and despair, the city of New Optain rising from the dead for a final symphonic suite, a chorus line of destruction and death, and Edward opened his eyes weakly from his place on the...floor? (Midair? It was impossible to tell...) Beside him lay Al, still armor and still dark, and just past that was the charcoal of the array and the base materials for his brother's body. He made his way, crawling, to the left side of the circle, hearing an infant's cries caterwauling in his ears, and hearing the unearthly snickering of the denizens of the Gate in his heart. He paid no heed to their struggle of life and death, paid no attention to their satisfied moans as they devoured the Stone with their scrabbling claws, but instead weakly struggled to his knees and brought his palms together, nearly sobbing with the effort and the regret - 'He was the one who activated the array, colonel! I drew it, but I never had the intention of using it!' - and focused.
In the resulting light, he was absolutely certain that he couldn't see, but at the same time, things were flashing through his mind as clear as day - he was reminded instantly of the first time he had attempted to fashion another human body from a colorless mass of clay - and those things were his tools, the artistic instinct he needed in order to keep going.
The sensation was that like one of sculpting, though he sculpted not with tools, but with his mind, all aesthetics and recollections of memory; Al's face, his hands, his ears, all lengthened and distributed to that of the appropriate age, and he fancied that he could almost see his brother, stretching from that emptying pan to coil unnaturally in midair, but it was hard to concentrate when there were those infinite voices wailing curses into his ears.
"Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!" Edward howled, shaking his head frantically with his body bent over that array, never lifting his palms from the circle, never faltering from his work for an instant. "He's worth it, you'll see! The lot of you...you'll see!"
Head, hands, heart. Heart. Before his eyes, his brother was forming - skeletal, eerily skeletal, and from the inside out - but despite the typical incongruence of an incomplete form, there was something so terribly wrong about using metals and proteins to make a heart, and he felt like he was going to be sick. This was his brother, all flesh and blood and bones? His heart a muscle that served a function, utilitarian and blank? Edward was a scientist, for certain, but when it came to his brother, he'd always been more of a poet, and he gripped at his chest as though he could possibly rip out his own heart and offer that, instead.
He had studied the construction of a human body so thoroughly, but the soul...now that had come entirely by instinct. He'd only had his blood and his intent - his blood, which was his intent - but he had no idea how to activate that intent, to breath life into the grisly beginnings of his work of art, and felt the world give then an awe-inspiring whirl.
It was easy enough to trade a life for another life, but just what the hell did one have to give up in order to bind a soul?
Slowly, slowly, he turned back to the Gate, and to the Philosopher's Stone. "Fuck," he swore, and stood unsteadily upon his feet.
A piece, he only needed a piece of the Stone to fashion his brother a heart, to fashion his will and life and soul to that sinewy statue of a body, and he started forward, hesitantly.
Those Eyes fastened on him instantly, hungrily, but their claws and legs and mouths were fastened insatiably upon the Stone, and though they watched his every movement with fascination, they made no move to stop him, not even when he drew level to the throng and pushed at one lightly atop the head. They were a frantic jabbering of noises, and their claws scratched repeatedly against the crimson glow of the Stone, feeding through osmosis, and as Edward watched in detached despair, the Stone itself grew smaller, and the glow began to recede.
That was the process of equivalent exchange. He would give them the Stone, give them enough lives to satisfy, and in return, they would give him the time he needed to create a new body for his brother. So he'd believed, so he'd told himself, over and over again as he read the newspaper articles about the mysterious descruction of the city of New Optain, and to come so far, only to discover that he needed the Philosopher's Stone to bind his brother's soul? It was agonizing, agonizing to move, agonizing to breathe, under the stare of those Eyes, but he saw his brother's unfeeling armor out of the corner of his eye, and gave out an almighty howl.
"I won't lose!" he screamed, and lunged.
It was impossible to tell if he'd succeeded at first, succeeded at wrestling through those infantile beasts and snatching that infinite energy source into his hands, because there were other hands, hands everywhere, but he felt the fire of that living red rock scalding his fingertips, felt his clothes ripped, shredded to ribbons, felt the tie and a chunk of his hair torn from his scalp, and felt the air on his face as he suddenly burst free from the throng, and pounded desperately to that intricate array. There was nothing to be done for the armor; they were flooding towards it, intent on taking the last of the life left in their vapid, empty Place, and all that was left of life was the blood array drawn on the inside of that armor -
- ripping the edges of the Stone down his forearm, coating the object in blood and smudging a desperate eight-pointed star into the center -
All that was left of life was that living statue of a man.
Edward spared those Executioners a cursory glance, and though it hurt to see his brother torn apart like that, it wasn't his brother, not anymore - not anymore - and he slammed that godforsaken element of a Philosopher's Stone into the center of the body's chest, right between the ribs and where the heart should be, and clapped, yet again.
He had no idea if he had succeeded or not. He only knew one thing.
"ALPHONSE!!!"
---
He awoke to a deathly quiet and a stabbing pain in his forearm. Sitting up, Edward was startled to find himself inside that abandoned church, with a pairing of mourning doves hooting up in the rafters and sunlight streaming in through the open patches in the roof - daytime now, and the transmutation had started at midnight - and the floor beneath him was stained in blood.
"Alphonse!" he shrieked, high and bestial, and whipped his head around in a fervor to find his brother. His eyes passed the rows of pews without seeing, zeroing in on the smudged charcoal of that goddamned transmutation array, and -
There. There.
Lying in the center, graceful and prone, was the warm and living body of his beloved younger brother.
Edward sobbed in relief.
"Al, Al, Al..." he choked out, over and over again, crawling across the dusty floor to where his brother lay, and collapsed atop the taller form, revelling in the feel of heated flesh, yielding to his weight, and breathed deeply of the scent of skin. "Al...phonse..."
It was a quiet moment, and a precious moment, and it was entirely theirs, but...
But.
There was something implacably, and entirely, wrong.
Stiffening, feeling his heart go dead, Edward pulled himself up and sat back on his knees. His eyes widened and the pupils contracted nearly back into the irises; his lips drew back a bit to show his teeth bared in disbelief, and his forehead wrinkled, understandably, in a mixture of shock and pain.
"Wha... What the fuck is this?"
His brother was blank, devoid of feature or design, an empty template of a man, the drawing board of an honest human being, the mannequin the two of them had used to see in the city department stores, and at the sight of that impeccable peach flesh, Edward felt the color leave his face and he turned to the side abruptly and vomited. No...no. Half-formed, without smiles or sadness, without...fuck, without eyes, or a nose, or ears; he was a mound of flesh with what was supposed to pass for limbs sticking out, he was...
He wasn't, and at the knowledge of that fact, the blonde threw up again, and started to cry.
"Al, Al, Al, Al, Al..."
He'd been interrupted, so of course it had ended up that way, but there was such a fucking injustice to nature's design that he wanted to slap himself stupid with the morbidity of it all; oh, his brother had gotten his body back, all right, but it was a malformed husk, a lifeless chunk of flesh with the screaming innards of a soul -
Soul...?
Yes...of that he had no doubt. Unbelieveably, his brother's soul was intact - cursed Philosopher's heart beating in time with Edward's own - but what good was a soul without seeinghearingfeelingbreathingtastingtouchingsimplybeing?, and fuck; fuck, fuck, fuck! Yet again he had made his brother that way.
'Give him back to me! Whether it's my arms, or my leg, or even my heart... I don't care, just give him back to me!!!'
For a long time he lay there, crying, and pounded the floor of that church over and over again, cursing God, cursing alchemy, and above all else, cursing his own indigence. The doves landed, and hooted obnoxiously around his head, all annoyance and irritation because of their blissful uncaring, of their freedom and their forms, and Edward swung out with his fist at the lot of them, letting out a primal howl and becoming blinded for a moment with the swirl of their feathers all around him, hearing the whisper of their wings as they took flight, hearing a distant clatter as they landed on something no more than ten feet away.
Something...?
Sobs turning quiet and almost dry, and practically dizzy on his own delerium, Edward turned, slowly, caught sight of the sturdy metal pans that contained the rest of what should have been his brother's body - one half-empty and the other entirely full - and looked back to that lifeless slab of flesh, and thought a bizarre thing:
If you don't give him lungs, then he's going to die.
Without thinking, he dragged the pan closer.
---
10:372 Art hid with art, so well perform'd the cheat,
10:373 It caught the carver with his own deceit:
10:374 He knows 'tis madness, yet he must adore,
10:375 And still the more he knows it, loves the more.
---
His brother's skin was like wax, meant to be molded and sculpted into perfection, and with the simple clap of hands and a flash of light, the wax would harden as though exposed to the cold, and no amount of sun could make it soft again. It was arduous work, and Edward's unbound hair fell into his eyes and his arm ached like fire, but at the same time, it was utterly fascinating work, and nothing short of reverent; the first on a list of living ways that he could show his brother his affection.
He started from the bottom, tweaking his brother's toes and using the curve of his automail to make a perfect arch. He stared at his own toes as he did so, boots and socks strewn across a neighboring pew with reckless abandon, marking the lines and wrinkling, mimicking the dusting of hair down the top. The nails were new and pink, and the ankles were round and smooth, only the barest juts of bone. It took him nearly a half an hour to do the feet, to look down at his work and admit grudging satisfaction, because after all, no body was perfect enough for his brother, and to make one with his own hands was a high standard that he wanted so very desperately to complete. But the toes were toes, and the appendage itself would function beautifully, like a well-oiled machine, and unbidden, the blonde smiled to himself in pride.
Clap.
The legs were a bit more awkward, due to the fact that Edward's own legs weren't an accurate guide - unfortunately, his brother was always going to be taller than he was - and so he stared at his own limbs and thought best how to compensate. The calves were leaner, almost more delicate, and the knees were a touch more knobbly, despite his best efforts to straighten them out. The thighs were virtually the same, all bristly hair turning to down on the inside and muscles flexing against the skin at everyday movement, and in sync, the blonde ran one hand up the inside of his own thigh, and his other hand up the skin of his brother's. The sparks that followed from nothing more than that simple skin-to-skin contact were sensational, and he sucked in a ragged breath.
Clap.
Hips were made not square, but slightly curved, like a woman's, and though Edward had first hesitated at the decision to change, he had looked down at the end result and felt a strange compulsion, a leery attraction that made him start, and blush furiously for even thinking of his brother's body as nothing more than an aesthetic creation, but still, the hips remained, soft and slightly feminine, at odds with the lean musculature of the body's legs, and strangely all the more beautiful for that. The juncture of leg and pelvis was an impeccable crease, a swooping V that leapt and dove like a bird in flight, shapely and unequaled; a flawless body, befitting of art, and...
Very pointedly, Edward ignored the area below his brother's back, and between his brother's thighs.
Clap.
It was almost entertaining to create the chest, to meld skin along the curve of thick ribs, to shape an artistic collarbone and weld a spine, and against his will, the blonde smiled to himself through his sheen of dripping sweat. It was pleasing to watch hair sprout up from underneath his fingertips and dribble in a lazy line down to the direction of the navel, and once - just once, briefly - he laid his head down atop the ridge of his brother's sternum and listened passively to the beating of that Philosopher's heart.
It thudded in his ears without the rush of blood, which was disconcerting, but it was a rhythm as steady as the other blonde had been in life, and he felt himself being lulled, felt his own heart ease down from adrenaline and slow only to a mild arhythm.
He had a moment of uncomfortable strangeness when he raised the skin to make his brother's nipples - considered forgoing them, really, because what use did a man have for them, anyway? - but perservered against his awkwardness, focused on science and sculpture and shape until even that too had melted away into unabashed inclination, and rolled the tip around between his thumb and forefinger, eerily...fascinated by it, and it's ultimate design. He toyed with one of his own for a second, as well, before starting at the sudden jolt of pleasure - shit, his brother wasn't a fucking masturbatory device!, he realized belatedly - and getting apologetically back to the task at hand.
But... Wait, had his brother stirred, just then?
Edward stared for an indeterminable amount of time, even whispered the name aloud deferentially - 'Al...?' - but when there was no answer, and much more work to be done than time to waste, he simply shrugged, and let the matter go.
All that was left was the navel, which he hollowed out with his tongue, feeling a strange curling sensation in his stomach at the act, feeling the sweat on his face start to surface from an effort of a different sort.
Clap.
He kneaded his knuckles into downy armpits, rolling the shoulders with his hands and rubbing, fucking rubbing; forming muscle and flesh and bone, streaking his finger across the inner bend of the elbows as though he were a painter boldly brushing with his oils, using his nails to wrinkle the skin of the knuckle, mindful of the incongruence of his own hands. Arms were squeezed and shaped to perfection, angled perfectly from the bone, far more flexible than any arm had the right to be, and the fingers were long and strong; capable hands, fighter's hands, though had Edward scoffed disdainfully at the notion and told himself that their days of fighting were over, over at last.
He rolled the fingers in his mouth, one by one, hardly aware of what he was doing, and softened the pads with his tongue; shaped the palm with the pressing of his lips, and carved out the curve of the wrist with his teeth. He was used to working with his hands, but the idea of using his mouth was so much more personal, more intimate, and he found he preferred it when faced with his brother; his pride, his family, his treasure. His stomach coiled oddly in heat, and he itched, from somewhere between his legs, but he paid the process no mind. Al, he was focusing on Al.
Clap.
He didn't like shaping his brother's neck, because honestly, his hands were in a position much like that of choking, and the implied violence behind that act was uncomfortable and disgusting, and he petted his brother's chest reassuringly the entire time he was doing it. Still, the neck pivoted downward at a beautiful slope, melting into the shoulder as naturally as a candle melted into wax, and the cords, and the tendons, and even the jawline were worked with at with adept perserverance. He nipped out an Adam's apple with his teeth, seeing in his head the inner throbbing and thrumming of the bobbing voicebox, and his teeth rolled back and away into a mild kiss, sucking with his eyes closed, for a moment, placid in his ultimate idolatry. Ears were interesting, and done delicately, because the smallest bones in the entire body were in the ear, and he certainly didn't want to do anything to damage his brother's hearing. The ridge of the ear was separated from the inside shell with gentle teeth, and the lobes were drawn down to proper length with rolling lips.
For every aspect of his brother that he reinvented, he also memorized - used his tongue to note the beating rise of those navy veins, used his hands to tap upon the ribs that caged that relentless heart - and pressed himself as close as he was able, mindful not to forget his weight and alter the inevitable design, but at the same time wanting to feel, wanting to put a bit of himself into his work, into that work of art.
Clap.
The blonde sighed in satisfaction with the task complete, and pondered the options. He wanted to save his brother's face for last, wanted to savor the moment and take his time, to sculpt in tune with the rise and fall of that constructed chest, but at the same time...
He colored crimson, and caught the neuter area between his brother's hips and thighs, and decided that maybe there were some other things that could wait for last, instead.
Still, he took an hour or so with the face, closing his eyes and working solely from memory, conjuring up the image of his brother smiling at him from over a stack of books, or scowling at him from beside the river, and his hands moved of their own volition, and his mouth murmured words that he couldn't comprehend.
The cheeks were made slimmer, without the roundness of baby fat, and the lips fuller, with the voluptuousness of age. Still, his brother's jaw retained it's typical softness, and his eyes were still as large and innocent as they had been the day he was born, blinking up at his big brother from inside of the bassinet. His chin was almost weak, but his nose was narrow, and the hollows of his eyes weren't as set as they were when he'd been a boy; determined and fine.
Edward felt rather strange, making the eyes, feeling them push and roll underneath of his fingers like jelly, but it wasn't so terrible as long as he didn't have to see, and when he felt the sweep of long lashes underneath the pad of his thumb, he let out a sigh. Eyes were a luxury his brother had never been allowed during the last four years of his life, arms and legs and life notwithstanding - simply shut off his lantern lights in a parody of sleep, ever mindful of the world outside - and to take his brother from darkness back into the light was an intense gratification, a pleasure deeper than physical sensation, and he relished it, felt the skin of his brother's eyelids with the pads of his thumbs, and with his tongue.
The forehead was small, and mostly covered with soft and shaggy bangs, hair a darker bronze than Edward's uncharacteristic gold, but kept short and tickling just below the ears, a clean-cut style and an innocent smile. His brother's teeth were small and square, and dazzlingly white, and his tongue was small, and slightly forked, ensuring that he would forever speak with that strange echoing lilt. Eyebrows were elegant arches of dusting gold, tilted slightly as though in mild yet perpetual surprise, and the temples curved in, a gentle slope that defined his eyes.
The elder Elric brushed his fingers over his brother's head in a cursory last-minute check, tucking the digits inside his brother's mouth, curving them behind his brother's ears. Letting out a sigh of either criticism or contentment, he sat back on his palms, relaxed his shoulders and relaxed his pysche, and opened his eyes.
His brother's face took his breath away.
Impossibly beautiful, a stunning sculpture of innocence and class, imperious in the way his nose tilted towards the air but humble in the way his hands were clasped across his chest, ankles crossed neatly in their turn and ribs moving up and down in syncopated rhythm - his eyelashes fluttered as he breathed, and the muscles of his abdomen flexed as he exhaled. There was a pulsepoint visible through the creamy skin of his neck, and the glittering sweep of a hairline past his ears, but there were no other blemishes on that perfect form, and the blonde's breath came that much quicker because of it. The genderless, unfinished section of his brother's physique did nothing to take away from his grace, and Edward could only stare in mute fascination at the impeccable statue that he had just created.
After a moment or so of unrecognizable reverence - he had just made his own golden idol, shaped the face of his very first god - he lowered his hands to that ethereal body, and touched.
He didn't transform, or create, as he had originally been wont to do, but simply sensed; simply felt the skin stiff and slightly taut beneath his hands, simply stared at the push of muscle against his prodding fingers, simply allowed himself indulgence to roam, with his tongue and his teeth and his palms, and breathed of his brother's breath as though it was a substitute for air. Saliva was his signature, left in shining trails down those rolling sides, his hands ghosting lightly over arms and legs and lips, barely brushing as though he was afraid to leave a mark.
He laid along the length of his brother's body, arms sprawled in an awkward embrace, cradling that bronze head to his chest gently in a mimicry of rest, though admittedly, his time for rest was far from being near, and he sighed, nearly heady with the sense of elation and accomplishment. Unimportant to his attention, there was a throbbing between his legs and the push of an erection against his thigh, and though he didn't spare it much thought, admittedly, at the same time, he felt a sort of detached inquiry as to why it was there, and he moaned, softly, moaned into that honey-colored hair.
Finally; slowly, and reluctantly, he sat up.
Clap.
A single breath, and a single set of palms, and that immortalized beauty was forever set in stone...or rather, set forever in skin, and it was his now, his to taste and touch and take, his and his brother's, and the contiguity of that notion was enough to nearly make him swoon. He was exhausted, and pleased to no small measure, but there was still one final thing left to be done, and so Edward looked at his brother, consideringly, looked down at himself, and began half-heartedly to take off his clothes. He was dismayed but not really surprised to be reminded of the heat of that erection against his belly, and though he honestly couldn't care less about it, one way or another, it was still a hindrance in the goal of using his own body as a reference, and so he gripped himself with the icy chill of his automail and thought of those Executioner's Eyes focused on him, intently, and eventually the swell of his flesh settled down, and the pigment of his skin went back to normal. Straddling his brother's hips, and facing away, he lowered his hands.
It was only on this part of the anatomy that he wavered, looking dubiously between his brother and himself and thinking absurdly that to make such intimate organs in such an impersonal fashion was a sin nearly as grievous as using blood and muscle to make a heart, and he found it intensely...difficult...to keep his mind focused to the matter at hand. He rolled the flesh between his hands as though it was dough, remniscent of the pretzel-makers in Rizenbul during the country fairs, and the memory of his brother with mustard dripping haphazardly down his chin was enough to make the blonde's heart ache, enough to steel his resolve.
He considered closing his eyes, but something told him that a penis wasn't something best constructed from memory, and so he kept them open, narrowed fixedly into slits, kept his hands moving and his head down low, and recalled another memory from that fair, of he and his brother playfully tumbling down a hillside in a pinwheel fashion, only to land at the bottom in a tangle of arms and legs and hearts, and at the recollection of the warmth of that wriggling body pinned beneath him, he let out another moan.
As the blonde's memories grew more raw, like the rip of an open wound, his technique began to grow more fierce.
In that manner, fashioning a cock really was alarmingly like masturbation, all stroking and thumbing and pulling, and though Edward told himself that it was strictly for scientific comparison, he couldn't resist touching himself, as well, closing his eyes and his ears and his heart and focusing only on dual sensation, on the size and the shape and the shaft, opening only his mouth in a belated reminder that he needed to breathe, and fisted his hands on his brother in a manner that was more...pleasureable, oddly, than it was practical.
The skin seemed to sweat under his hands, and his brother seemed to stir, but it was clearly a desire that was meant to be in his head, and so he notched a slit in the head with his fingernail and curled his fingers slowly to make the balls, touching himself in tune with his sculpting, hips jerking into empty air and stomach clenched into aching knots of both exhaustion and arousal, and no small measure of disgust.
Filthy pervert, desecrating the blood of New Optain to use your brother's flesh for a purpose as vile as this!
He caught himself just before climax, pinching hard across his head and hissing sternly at himself to keep an eye on the task at hand, looking down to see what he had made, and he was both disgusted and amazed. Longer than his own, though not as thick, and undoubtedly tender - pink and smooth, with no noticeable veins, which was a curious contrast. It was discomfiting, because that organ was the defining pillar of his brother's masculinity; it turned him from a sexless statue into a living being, a being not of wax but of warmth and naivete, of sensitive skin and smoldering eyes, and Edward groaned, despite himself. Before he lost his nerve entirely, he turned around and snaked his hands behind his brother's back, feeling the other's chest rise against his own, hearing the other's quiet breathing, and he groaned again, part agony and part...something else.
There really was no justification for why he slithered down to his brother's knees and took that newborn cock into his mouth, no real reason why he plastered it to the roof of his mouth with his tongue, and no real reason why he moaned through it all, moaned through all his fervent sucking, half desire and half despair. Something inside his consciousness screamed for him to stop, but the other half queried as to how he could stop, when he was so desperate and his brother's new body was so divine, and so he gave neither excuse nor lament, but focused instead on intent. His hands, hooked around narrow hips, found finally his brother's ass, and began to knead it into shape, curving the flesh into something delectable and sliding his finger up and down gently to make the crack, to separate one side from the other, and he choked at the same time, choked on the size of that cock, choked from taking it too earnestly and too deep down his throat, but he didn't dare stop, didn't dare deny his brother this final and absolute adoration.
It wasn't necessarily shaping that drove him to suck so wantonly, but rather, the urge for that almost painful sensation, conjoined at head and hips like twins, attempting to coax that waxy flesh into stimulation, into life, and he wondered crazily if it was arousing because it was for his brother, or if it was arousing because it was his brother.
The last of his work was almost embarrassing, or at least should have been embarrassing, but it was strangely satisfying to curl the first two of his fingers in to the depths of those buttocks, stretching and prodding that hole, swirling around the sphincter, and there was no doubt about it; at the penetration, his brother hitched in a shuddering breath, and moaned.
Edward sat up almost instantly in surprise, dully amused at the comical pop that resulted from the other blonde's cock slipping so suddenly out of his mouth, and hastily lifted his hands.
Clap.
For a long time afterward he sat there, breathing deeply of sweat and skin and filling his vision with marble and bronze, watching the rise and fall of his brother's chest with abject fascination, feeling his erection ebb but not fade, sitting uncomfortably with his legs spread and his knees bent in the speckled sunlight of that ruined church. The birds sang above them brightly, and when they landed in the rafters, even the dust that fell down onto their upturned faces couldn't dampen his desire.
His brother hadn't stirred since then, hadn't opened his arms or his mouth or his eyes, and the scientist in Edward began to think, began to ponder if perhaps a stimulation was necessary to strike that spark of life, if perhaps only abject idol worship was the way to awaken the god.
"Al," he whispered at last, hoarsely, voice unused to such a long period of silence, "in of all the stupid fairy tale stories, the prince has to give the princess a kiss in the name of true love to wake her up, okay? I don't really think I'm any sort of prince, and I really don't think you're a princess, but...but...I'm going to wake you up now, okay? True love is true love, right?"
He said the last as though trying to convince himself of that fact far more than anyone else, and lowered his head to capture those parted pink lips with his own.
It was an affection that was, more than anything else, an addiction, and though it had started in innocence, before he knew what he was doing, his lips had traveled across Al's forehead, his cheekbones, his nose; down to his jaw and then his neck, nibbling behind his ears and sucking on his neck, lipping that beautiful collarbone as a horse would hay, breathing loudly and frantically out of his nose in an attempt to still his raging heart. There was the taste of salt in his mouth, and the smell of stone in his nostrils, a bizarre tempest of endearments and entanglements in his head, flashing white along the backs of his eyes, and it made it hard to move, hard to think.
Curiously, his brother seemed to come alive at the touch; skin that had formed alchemically to the composition of cool wax warmed and yielded under his hands, and he could practically taste the blood beginning to pump beneath his lips - a metal that wasn't metal, but instead mortality - and he kept those kisses going, kept lapping ardently at every inch of the other blonde that he wanted to bring back to life.
He traveled lower, still lower, to nip at his brother's exposed ribs, to trail his tongue down that rippled abdomen and swirl it sloppily in that ticklish navel, and paused with his teeth bared against Al's pelvis, contemplating. He kept his hands moving, and his liturgy strong - ('Al, if you can hear me, if you're awake, please let me know') - and recalled a book he'd stumbled across while performing his neverending extensive research on the male anatomy. Oh, it had been anatomically correct, for certain, if not slightly mind-boggling, but as he knelt there and felt his brother's cock stir and nuzzle interestedly at his cheek, he started to wonder if it really was as dubious as he had originally thought it out to be.
Some illogical part of him screamed out, possessively, that his brother was his, that he had made him that way, and that it was only proper to put his finishing signature on his work of art, but to say it that way seemed cruel, and so he blamed it all on lack of life and the overflow of love, and brushed Al's hair back from his face affectionately. More than anything, more than his own morbidity or desire, he wanted to see his brother's eyes; see them, and forget his Executioner's own.
('Hey, did you hear the news? Bizarre story...it seems like the entire city of New Optain's been demolished in a day!')
He took a deep breath.
"Hey, Al. I'm sorry...if this hurts." Groping around, Edward located the oozing black motor oil they'd used to burn the array onto the floor, and sloshed a generous amount of it over his hands. He scowled, openly, at having to mar his brother's flawless complexion with that sour black stain, but his displeasure was no match for his desire, and there was no hesitance at all in the way he lifted those long legs.
Penetration was slow and savory, a minute hum trickling from his throat and a single finger twisting languidly back and forth, eyes focused and watching in fascination, hips slowly grinding against the other's legs and digging in to yielding flesh; a buzzing pleasure and a burning intent. In this state, his brother was so pliant, and so lax, and opened easily before him in invitation; for a moment wax again, all warmth and give to those insistent hands, and the feel of it made him moan.
He added another finger with greedy fervor, pistoning them back and forth and watching the muscles around that area move; watched them relax and then contract, saw in his mind's eye the edge of his brother's tailbone and the ridge of his spine in that skeletal half-life, and shuddered against his will.
"I wouldn't have subjected you to that, not ever, Al," he swore feverishly, but knew that deep in his heart, he feared solitude far more than he feared a skeleton, and wouldn't have hesitated to condemn his brother to yet another half-life, and the knowledge made him sick. Almost as though to make amends, he took out his fingers and jerked them along his cock, watching the oil spread like a foul stain, feeling his own desire spike in glee.
"Come back to me, Al," he pleaded, and threw his arms around his brother's neck in a desperate embrace, kissing warm dry lips with his own, and using the leverage of his knees to bury himself deep inside, craving his brother's touch, needing that lilted voice to drown out those torturous screams. At the first recognition of that exquisitely tight heat, he groaned, and nearly sobbed in both craving and relief, and uttered the words again.
"Al, Al...come back to me, please..."
And...
And.
Miraculously, below him, Alphonse stirred, and opened his eyes.
---
10:442 He would believe, but yet is still in pain,
10:443 And tries his argument of sense again,
10:444 Presses the pulse, and feels the leaping vein.
10:445 Convinc'd, o'erjoy'd, his studied thanks, and praise,
10:446 To her, who made the miracle, he pays:
10:447 Then lips to lips he join'd; now freed from fear,
10:448 He found the savour of the kiss sincere:
10:449 At this the waken'd image op'd her eyes,
10:450 And view'd at once the light, and lover with surprize.
---
If the other blonde was at all surprised by the situation of waking up to find himself being thoroughly fucked by his elder brother, he gave no evidence - instead smiled, ecstatically, and returned the kiss with ardor.
The feel of it was alarmingly amplified by the knowledge that Edward had shaped those lips that way, had slid them under the pad of his thumb until they were just right, had stroked the skin of those fingers that were hooking relentlessly into his back to just the right length; had fashioned for his brother the body that was finally allowing him to feel the cause of his moans, and the essence of the kiss was fever and sea, a hot wetness that caused the both of them to shudder, and to inhale as one, and tangle their limbs in an entrapment that suggested that neither of them would ever have the intention of breaking away.
Still.
"We did it," Al breathed as they broke apart for air, voice high and trembling, and Edward could almost visualize the muscles of his vocal chords thrumming and pulling as he spoke; "We did it."
They clung to each other in relief and rapture, in exhaustion long past due and in physical gratification never spent, and appropriately, the heart of the elder alchemist and the heart of his brother beat symphoniously in tune. Breaths were mingled and tongues entangled, endearments passed and apologies returned, and the two of them sat up, still joined together by the act of passion, and embraced, half-laughing, half-sobbing, and cried shamelessly into each other's necks. Tendons were taut under the elder blonde's hands, and his cock savored the puckering heat of that shapely rear as they moved, and for a moment the two of them were lost entirely from the mortal plane, hidden even from the view of those goddamned All-Seeing Eyes, and New Optain had finally been laid to rest in that trembling chest.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry; you must really be wondering what the fuck I'm doing - " Edward began breathlessly, so drunk off of his brother's scent that it was making his head spin, so blinded by his own achievements that he thought he would die.
But Al cut him off, affectionately, bumping his forehead into Edward's own, and put both of his hands on the sides of his brother's face gently, rubbing reassuringly with his thumbs. "It's okay, it's all right; it's fine," he assured the other softly, all hair and hands and honest heart, and he kissed his elder brother again, as though for good measure. "I was lost," he whispered solemnly, before he smiled again, and rubbed noses with the shorter blonde, tip to tip. "It was dark, and I couldn't see. All I could feel were your hands, Brother, guiding me - guiding me back to light. It doesn't matter how you did it, or what others would think of you for trying. You led me home," he finished worshipfully, an almost pathetic idolatry shining out of his amber eyes, and startlingly, Edward noted that they weren't their former color of slate grey - they were instead bronze, like his hair; a tainted color of an alchemical failing, perhaps, or just another reminder of their shared heritage - but it was all right. They were no less expressive, and therefore, Al was no less beautified.
"But if I hadn't - " Edward started to say, but was cut off yet again by the weight of his brother filling his arms, by his choking inhalation of coin-colored hair.
"Exactly," the younger Elric admonished him, murmuring into his ear, nuzzling the nape of his neck. "If you hadn't."
If I hadn't... Edward pondered, for a moment confused, and stroked his brother's back as the answer came to him in increments...he wouldn't even be here. For all of my other failings, he would have fallen on that February day and been lost to my memory if I hadn't bound his soul, and that's...that's good enough for me. That's all I need; that's enough to make up for...well, for everything, I guess.
And Edward, brightly, began to smile.
---
It was impossible to tell which of the two of them moved first, because it seemed as though they moved in sync - belatedly, they remembered the physical intimacy of their situation, and flushed awkwardly at the clarity - but they still pressed close to one another, and when Edward pushed his younger brother back gently onto the floor, Al held fast to his shoulders and dragged him down, as well.
It wasn't slow, nor particularly gentle - once they realized how substantial (and how important) the situation had turned out to be, and how long that it had been in coming, neither of them were at all inclined for patience - but they seemed to be made for each other (and oh, how some sick part of Edward had screamed out that his brother had been made, been made solely for him by him), and their shouts sent the mourning doves scattering from the rafters in a flurry of flush and feathers.
"To... To be able to feel this, finally, and know that it's real," Al breathed, and his eyes rolled up alarmingly into the back of his head, all shaking and satisfaction. "I feel like I should just be waiting to die."
For a moment Edward slowed, and eyed the other blonde with concern, but there was nothing at all morbid about the way his brother latched onto an automail wrist, and yanked it needily down to his own cock to satisfy.
"But I've seen death," Al clarified, hips bucking wildly, and for a moment his eyes seemed to stare past his brother's face and onward into oblivion, "and let me tell you, it's not this. This feels more like heaven," he groaned, and his solemn expression morphed into one of pleasure as he came.
Though inside his head, he heard something entirely different -
- ('Don't; for the love of God, don't! If you do that, you'll destroy the entire city...!') -
- Edward climaxed, as well - almost in rhythm - but didn't know how to tell his brother that he didn't believe in heaven, but rather...
Believed only in hell.
( ::: M E T A M O R P H O S E ::: (pleased with his idol, he commends, admires) - [part two] )
[EDIT]: I was going to wait until part 2 was finished to post this, but part 2 is coming along ABSURDLY SLOW and apparently there isn't a lot of other fic around on LJ today, so. Here it be. *small sigh*
Title: ::: M E T A M O R P H O S E ::: - (pygmalion, loathing their lascvicious life) [part one]
Author: Demidevi. (devils_devotion)
Rating: Oh, for the fuck of fuck. Since this is my first fic with the pairing, I'll try my damndest to make it porn. @.@;; NC-17.
Genre: FUCKITY FUCK FUCK FUCK Um, sorry, that's not a genre. ^^;; Angst, as always. WTF?, as always. Slightly creepy homosexual incest complete with glaring mythological references? XD;; Well, not so 'always'.
Pairing: Elricest. In this case, I take a break from the typical 'Edisjustasuckerforhisbrother'!Elricest and write it as Ed/Al. For a fact, if you kind of squint at it really hard, it's almost a matter of...dubious consent. LOL.
Summary: "I'll see you on the other side," he murmured determinedly, eyes practically burning with intent. "...Al."
For: kaltia. Hey, Kaltia, who else besides the Sins and asidian write decent Elricest, anyway? O.o I wish I was more familiar with your side of the fandom. *emo* Anyway, written for Kaltia because...I don't write anything for her. Ever. This is pretty angsty, you wonky Brit, but don't worry, I give you a happy ending. ^_____^
Comments: A whole bunch this time around. This is one of those "endoftheseriesisirrelevantsoEdrestoresAlwithoutcreepyexistentialism"!fics; namely, Ed uses the Philosopher's Stone to MAKE his brother a new body, as opposed to just...retrieving...it...from the other side of the Gate. O.o If I didn't write it in this way, the story probably wouldn't make much sense, so. (Ed has a Pygmalion complex.) ANYWAY, there's no real glaring spoilers in this, as it's AU from most of the latter half of the series. Warnings for bizarre mental states in general and tons of pathetic fucked-up angst. And...this is my first time attempting honest-to-God ELRICEST, so go easy on me, okay? ^^;;
Music: When I write the addendum to this, you'll get yer music then. :P
'Only children and fools speak the truth, Fullmetal', he remembered the colonel telling him loftily, lecturing sharply in some form of another, and the blonde took a deep breath.
"Don't worry, Al. Everything'll be fine."
---
10:362 And carv'd in iv'ry such a maid, so fair,
10:363 As Nature could not with his art compare.
---
He sat with his brother for a moment in the circle, despite his fear of it - if Al had to do it, then he could, too! - and rubbed at the burn marks on the floor, ever wary of the armor's presence beside him, comforting despite it's appearance and size. They'd run oil along the floor in a series of perfect circles, forming that array - then, with the strike of a match, they'd set those perfect circles aflame, illuminating the corners of the abandoned church with shadows and sparks. Al had liked the church, or so he'd said, with his typical innocent candor, and had ran his leather fingers along the cracks in one of the pews with reverence, mindful and cautious with his pressure.
"You've lived too long in that goddamned armor, Al!" Edward had declared at that, kicking the pew to splinters with his automail in a fit of anger, annoyed that his brother had become accustomed to moderating his steps and his touch, annoyed that he'd become adept at it, as well, and through no fault of his own.
Al had only regarded him solemnly, at that, and rubbed anxiously at his chest plate, where they had been storing the Philosopher's Stone.
The Stone itself was a paltry thing; a garish red ruby that throbbed like a pulse and oozed like an infection, but they'd stored it in the armor's chest plate where the younger Elric's heart should have been, and Al would sometimes swear, seriously, that he could feel the warmth emanating from it from his helmet all the way down to his toes. Edward himself could hardly touch it - even with automail, it was so goddamned hot, like the fire of the sun - and he didn't want to touch it, for that matter, if only because the thing seemed to scream in anger whenever he grew near, and give off crimson flashes of blinding light; he'd left the task of guarding it to his younger brother, who couldn't understand just why he seemed to loathe the thing so.
('Yes, but where did New Optain go?' the colonel questioned him relentlessly, with his palms caging in the blonde on either side, preventing escape.)
"Brother..." Al started as the elder Elric stood, dusting off his palms and inhaling sharply, smelling the oily metallic tang of his brother's physical form and nearly trembling in anticipation for the moment that that smell would be gone. But whatever the armor wanted to say was lost, then, in the face of Edward's dazzling smile, and in the sight (not sense, dammit, but not yet!) of mismatched arms being laced tersely around the juncture of his shoulders and helmet.
"I know what I'm doing, Al," he whispered fervently, lips against that angled visor, chest bent over that immovable back. "Trust in me. I know that that's what I said the last time, too, but please. I won't fuck it up again, not this time." Unbidden, the tears started to roll down his cheeks, but he caught them with the palm of a hand, watchful of the burnt circles beneath them.
Ever since the Stone had been stored in his body, Al's eyes had begun to glow not their unblemished white, but instead, a violent red.
"You won't, will you," he replied, and it wasn't a question.
---
In two neat pans they'd laid out their rebirth - carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, liters of water to melt the mixture into a graphite sludge - and though one of the pans was considerably smaller than the other (built for an arm and a leg, instead of any other thing), Al had insisted that they both be there, lying next to him in that complicated array, almost comical in their mundacity.
Edward didn't care much for restoring himself, and probably wouldn't put forth any active effort into doing it, but he wasn't loathe of the idea, either, and pondered fashioning for himself new limbs if the opportunity arose, and, most importantly, if his brother's restoration was successful; considered briefly his life without the cumbersome automail, and how he could at last enjoy the winter, and no longer dread the cold.
But it wasn't a priority, and it was a thought that he hardly indulged in at all, today of all days notwithstanding. Today...
Well, it seemed strange to say that today was the day he'd finally restore his brother, but Al was there lying in that array watching him anxiously, and the wind howled through the broken windows of that abandoned church, and he thought dizzily that he could still hear the screams of the Philosopher's Stone, even if it was only in his head.
"Al... Alphonse," he called from a distance away - the last distance they would ever have, he would make sure of it - and the fact that his voice cracked on the syllables was something entirely out of his control. "It's okay to admit that you're afraid."
"The same goes for you, too, Brother!" Al shot back, teasing, and the blonde forced a grin onto his uncooperative face.
"Yeah, well..." He'd meant to leave it at that, but his expression crumbled into one of despair, and the words that slipped out of his mouth in a strangled shout - (voice shattering like that pew he'd dismantled with his automail) - were entirely outside of his design.
"I... I love you, okay?! You're my only brother, you know?! Please, Alphonse...please! Come back to me!!!"
His brother sang out a reply, as well, but the words were lost to Edward against the pounding of his traitorous heart, and he narrowed his eyes, before he lost his nerve, and clapped.
---
The first thing he saw, predictably, was the Gate. It loomed over him, all gnarled stone and All-Seeing Eyes, and he felt a shudder begin to wrack through his frame. Next he saw his brother, dark and prone, and unnaturally still, and Edward stood over him protectively with the intent to guard him with his life.
"I said that I'd be the one to take on the burden of our sins," he whispered reassuringly, the words loud in the ominous silence of the Gate. Next to him, he saw the large vat of composite minerals necessary to form a human body and, next to it, the smaller vat contained the ingredients form an arm and a leg, and shook his head. "Just let your big brother take care of everything."
He bent over, and opened the chest plate with shaking hands, nearly blinded for a moment by the flashing crimson of the Philosopher's Stone at war with the neverending white noise of the Gate, but he managed to fumble the Stone into his shaking hands and swivel forward, just in time to see the large otherworldly doors of the Gate begin to creak open, slowly.
"I'll see you on the other side," he murmured determinedly, eyes practically burning with intent. "...Al."
At the first startling synchronization of those Eyes being fixed hungrily on his hands, Edward sucked in a shaking breath, reared back with all of his strength, and hurtled the Philosopher's Stone into that glaring abyss.
What followed was phenomenal.
---
He was floored instantly by the screams, heart-wrenching shrieks of agony and despair, the city of New Optain rising from the dead for a final symphonic suite, a chorus line of destruction and death, and Edward opened his eyes weakly from his place on the...floor? (Midair? It was impossible to tell...) Beside him lay Al, still armor and still dark, and just past that was the charcoal of the array and the base materials for his brother's body. He made his way, crawling, to the left side of the circle, hearing an infant's cries caterwauling in his ears, and hearing the unearthly snickering of the denizens of the Gate in his heart. He paid no heed to their struggle of life and death, paid no attention to their satisfied moans as they devoured the Stone with their scrabbling claws, but instead weakly struggled to his knees and brought his palms together, nearly sobbing with the effort and the regret - 'He was the one who activated the array, colonel! I drew it, but I never had the intention of using it!' - and focused.
In the resulting light, he was absolutely certain that he couldn't see, but at the same time, things were flashing through his mind as clear as day - he was reminded instantly of the first time he had attempted to fashion another human body from a colorless mass of clay - and those things were his tools, the artistic instinct he needed in order to keep going.
The sensation was that like one of sculpting, though he sculpted not with tools, but with his mind, all aesthetics and recollections of memory; Al's face, his hands, his ears, all lengthened and distributed to that of the appropriate age, and he fancied that he could almost see his brother, stretching from that emptying pan to coil unnaturally in midair, but it was hard to concentrate when there were those infinite voices wailing curses into his ears.
"Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!" Edward howled, shaking his head frantically with his body bent over that array, never lifting his palms from the circle, never faltering from his work for an instant. "He's worth it, you'll see! The lot of you...you'll see!"
Head, hands, heart. Heart. Before his eyes, his brother was forming - skeletal, eerily skeletal, and from the inside out - but despite the typical incongruence of an incomplete form, there was something so terribly wrong about using metals and proteins to make a heart, and he felt like he was going to be sick. This was his brother, all flesh and blood and bones? His heart a muscle that served a function, utilitarian and blank? Edward was a scientist, for certain, but when it came to his brother, he'd always been more of a poet, and he gripped at his chest as though he could possibly rip out his own heart and offer that, instead.
He had studied the construction of a human body so thoroughly, but the soul...now that had come entirely by instinct. He'd only had his blood and his intent - his blood, which was his intent - but he had no idea how to activate that intent, to breath life into the grisly beginnings of his work of art, and felt the world give then an awe-inspiring whirl.
It was easy enough to trade a life for another life, but just what the hell did one have to give up in order to bind a soul?
Slowly, slowly, he turned back to the Gate, and to the Philosopher's Stone. "Fuck," he swore, and stood unsteadily upon his feet.
A piece, he only needed a piece of the Stone to fashion his brother a heart, to fashion his will and life and soul to that sinewy statue of a body, and he started forward, hesitantly.
Those Eyes fastened on him instantly, hungrily, but their claws and legs and mouths were fastened insatiably upon the Stone, and though they watched his every movement with fascination, they made no move to stop him, not even when he drew level to the throng and pushed at one lightly atop the head. They were a frantic jabbering of noises, and their claws scratched repeatedly against the crimson glow of the Stone, feeding through osmosis, and as Edward watched in detached despair, the Stone itself grew smaller, and the glow began to recede.
That was the process of equivalent exchange. He would give them the Stone, give them enough lives to satisfy, and in return, they would give him the time he needed to create a new body for his brother. So he'd believed, so he'd told himself, over and over again as he read the newspaper articles about the mysterious descruction of the city of New Optain, and to come so far, only to discover that he needed the Philosopher's Stone to bind his brother's soul? It was agonizing, agonizing to move, agonizing to breathe, under the stare of those Eyes, but he saw his brother's unfeeling armor out of the corner of his eye, and gave out an almighty howl.
"I won't lose!" he screamed, and lunged.
It was impossible to tell if he'd succeeded at first, succeeded at wrestling through those infantile beasts and snatching that infinite energy source into his hands, because there were other hands, hands everywhere, but he felt the fire of that living red rock scalding his fingertips, felt his clothes ripped, shredded to ribbons, felt the tie and a chunk of his hair torn from his scalp, and felt the air on his face as he suddenly burst free from the throng, and pounded desperately to that intricate array. There was nothing to be done for the armor; they were flooding towards it, intent on taking the last of the life left in their vapid, empty Place, and all that was left of life was the blood array drawn on the inside of that armor -
- ripping the edges of the Stone down his forearm, coating the object in blood and smudging a desperate eight-pointed star into the center -
All that was left of life was that living statue of a man.
Edward spared those Executioners a cursory glance, and though it hurt to see his brother torn apart like that, it wasn't his brother, not anymore - not anymore - and he slammed that godforsaken element of a Philosopher's Stone into the center of the body's chest, right between the ribs and where the heart should be, and clapped, yet again.
He had no idea if he had succeeded or not. He only knew one thing.
"ALPHONSE!!!"
---
He awoke to a deathly quiet and a stabbing pain in his forearm. Sitting up, Edward was startled to find himself inside that abandoned church, with a pairing of mourning doves hooting up in the rafters and sunlight streaming in through the open patches in the roof - daytime now, and the transmutation had started at midnight - and the floor beneath him was stained in blood.
"Alphonse!" he shrieked, high and bestial, and whipped his head around in a fervor to find his brother. His eyes passed the rows of pews without seeing, zeroing in on the smudged charcoal of that goddamned transmutation array, and -
There. There.
Lying in the center, graceful and prone, was the warm and living body of his beloved younger brother.
Edward sobbed in relief.
"Al, Al, Al..." he choked out, over and over again, crawling across the dusty floor to where his brother lay, and collapsed atop the taller form, revelling in the feel of heated flesh, yielding to his weight, and breathed deeply of the scent of skin. "Al...phonse..."
It was a quiet moment, and a precious moment, and it was entirely theirs, but...
But.
There was something implacably, and entirely, wrong.
Stiffening, feeling his heart go dead, Edward pulled himself up and sat back on his knees. His eyes widened and the pupils contracted nearly back into the irises; his lips drew back a bit to show his teeth bared in disbelief, and his forehead wrinkled, understandably, in a mixture of shock and pain.
"Wha... What the fuck is this?"
His brother was blank, devoid of feature or design, an empty template of a man, the drawing board of an honest human being, the mannequin the two of them had used to see in the city department stores, and at the sight of that impeccable peach flesh, Edward felt the color leave his face and he turned to the side abruptly and vomited. No...no. Half-formed, without smiles or sadness, without...fuck, without eyes, or a nose, or ears; he was a mound of flesh with what was supposed to pass for limbs sticking out, he was...
He wasn't, and at the knowledge of that fact, the blonde threw up again, and started to cry.
"Al, Al, Al, Al, Al..."
He'd been interrupted, so of course it had ended up that way, but there was such a fucking injustice to nature's design that he wanted to slap himself stupid with the morbidity of it all; oh, his brother had gotten his body back, all right, but it was a malformed husk, a lifeless chunk of flesh with the screaming innards of a soul -
Soul...?
Yes...of that he had no doubt. Unbelieveably, his brother's soul was intact - cursed Philosopher's heart beating in time with Edward's own - but what good was a soul without seeinghearingfeelingbreathingtastingtouchingsimplybeing?, and fuck; fuck, fuck, fuck! Yet again he had made his brother that way.
'Give him back to me! Whether it's my arms, or my leg, or even my heart... I don't care, just give him back to me!!!'
For a long time he lay there, crying, and pounded the floor of that church over and over again, cursing God, cursing alchemy, and above all else, cursing his own indigence. The doves landed, and hooted obnoxiously around his head, all annoyance and irritation because of their blissful uncaring, of their freedom and their forms, and Edward swung out with his fist at the lot of them, letting out a primal howl and becoming blinded for a moment with the swirl of their feathers all around him, hearing the whisper of their wings as they took flight, hearing a distant clatter as they landed on something no more than ten feet away.
Something...?
Sobs turning quiet and almost dry, and practically dizzy on his own delerium, Edward turned, slowly, caught sight of the sturdy metal pans that contained the rest of what should have been his brother's body - one half-empty and the other entirely full - and looked back to that lifeless slab of flesh, and thought a bizarre thing:
If you don't give him lungs, then he's going to die.
Without thinking, he dragged the pan closer.
---
10:372 Art hid with art, so well perform'd the cheat,
10:373 It caught the carver with his own deceit:
10:374 He knows 'tis madness, yet he must adore,
10:375 And still the more he knows it, loves the more.
---
His brother's skin was like wax, meant to be molded and sculpted into perfection, and with the simple clap of hands and a flash of light, the wax would harden as though exposed to the cold, and no amount of sun could make it soft again. It was arduous work, and Edward's unbound hair fell into his eyes and his arm ached like fire, but at the same time, it was utterly fascinating work, and nothing short of reverent; the first on a list of living ways that he could show his brother his affection.
He started from the bottom, tweaking his brother's toes and using the curve of his automail to make a perfect arch. He stared at his own toes as he did so, boots and socks strewn across a neighboring pew with reckless abandon, marking the lines and wrinkling, mimicking the dusting of hair down the top. The nails were new and pink, and the ankles were round and smooth, only the barest juts of bone. It took him nearly a half an hour to do the feet, to look down at his work and admit grudging satisfaction, because after all, no body was perfect enough for his brother, and to make one with his own hands was a high standard that he wanted so very desperately to complete. But the toes were toes, and the appendage itself would function beautifully, like a well-oiled machine, and unbidden, the blonde smiled to himself in pride.
Clap.
The legs were a bit more awkward, due to the fact that Edward's own legs weren't an accurate guide - unfortunately, his brother was always going to be taller than he was - and so he stared at his own limbs and thought best how to compensate. The calves were leaner, almost more delicate, and the knees were a touch more knobbly, despite his best efforts to straighten them out. The thighs were virtually the same, all bristly hair turning to down on the inside and muscles flexing against the skin at everyday movement, and in sync, the blonde ran one hand up the inside of his own thigh, and his other hand up the skin of his brother's. The sparks that followed from nothing more than that simple skin-to-skin contact were sensational, and he sucked in a ragged breath.
Clap.
Hips were made not square, but slightly curved, like a woman's, and though Edward had first hesitated at the decision to change, he had looked down at the end result and felt a strange compulsion, a leery attraction that made him start, and blush furiously for even thinking of his brother's body as nothing more than an aesthetic creation, but still, the hips remained, soft and slightly feminine, at odds with the lean musculature of the body's legs, and strangely all the more beautiful for that. The juncture of leg and pelvis was an impeccable crease, a swooping V that leapt and dove like a bird in flight, shapely and unequaled; a flawless body, befitting of art, and...
Very pointedly, Edward ignored the area below his brother's back, and between his brother's thighs.
Clap.
It was almost entertaining to create the chest, to meld skin along the curve of thick ribs, to shape an artistic collarbone and weld a spine, and against his will, the blonde smiled to himself through his sheen of dripping sweat. It was pleasing to watch hair sprout up from underneath his fingertips and dribble in a lazy line down to the direction of the navel, and once - just once, briefly - he laid his head down atop the ridge of his brother's sternum and listened passively to the beating of that Philosopher's heart.
It thudded in his ears without the rush of blood, which was disconcerting, but it was a rhythm as steady as the other blonde had been in life, and he felt himself being lulled, felt his own heart ease down from adrenaline and slow only to a mild arhythm.
He had a moment of uncomfortable strangeness when he raised the skin to make his brother's nipples - considered forgoing them, really, because what use did a man have for them, anyway? - but perservered against his awkwardness, focused on science and sculpture and shape until even that too had melted away into unabashed inclination, and rolled the tip around between his thumb and forefinger, eerily...fascinated by it, and it's ultimate design. He toyed with one of his own for a second, as well, before starting at the sudden jolt of pleasure - shit, his brother wasn't a fucking masturbatory device!, he realized belatedly - and getting apologetically back to the task at hand.
But... Wait, had his brother stirred, just then?
Edward stared for an indeterminable amount of time, even whispered the name aloud deferentially - 'Al...?' - but when there was no answer, and much more work to be done than time to waste, he simply shrugged, and let the matter go.
All that was left was the navel, which he hollowed out with his tongue, feeling a strange curling sensation in his stomach at the act, feeling the sweat on his face start to surface from an effort of a different sort.
Clap.
He kneaded his knuckles into downy armpits, rolling the shoulders with his hands and rubbing, fucking rubbing; forming muscle and flesh and bone, streaking his finger across the inner bend of the elbows as though he were a painter boldly brushing with his oils, using his nails to wrinkle the skin of the knuckle, mindful of the incongruence of his own hands. Arms were squeezed and shaped to perfection, angled perfectly from the bone, far more flexible than any arm had the right to be, and the fingers were long and strong; capable hands, fighter's hands, though had Edward scoffed disdainfully at the notion and told himself that their days of fighting were over, over at last.
He rolled the fingers in his mouth, one by one, hardly aware of what he was doing, and softened the pads with his tongue; shaped the palm with the pressing of his lips, and carved out the curve of the wrist with his teeth. He was used to working with his hands, but the idea of using his mouth was so much more personal, more intimate, and he found he preferred it when faced with his brother; his pride, his family, his treasure. His stomach coiled oddly in heat, and he itched, from somewhere between his legs, but he paid the process no mind. Al, he was focusing on Al.
Clap.
He didn't like shaping his brother's neck, because honestly, his hands were in a position much like that of choking, and the implied violence behind that act was uncomfortable and disgusting, and he petted his brother's chest reassuringly the entire time he was doing it. Still, the neck pivoted downward at a beautiful slope, melting into the shoulder as naturally as a candle melted into wax, and the cords, and the tendons, and even the jawline were worked with at with adept perserverance. He nipped out an Adam's apple with his teeth, seeing in his head the inner throbbing and thrumming of the bobbing voicebox, and his teeth rolled back and away into a mild kiss, sucking with his eyes closed, for a moment, placid in his ultimate idolatry. Ears were interesting, and done delicately, because the smallest bones in the entire body were in the ear, and he certainly didn't want to do anything to damage his brother's hearing. The ridge of the ear was separated from the inside shell with gentle teeth, and the lobes were drawn down to proper length with rolling lips.
For every aspect of his brother that he reinvented, he also memorized - used his tongue to note the beating rise of those navy veins, used his hands to tap upon the ribs that caged that relentless heart - and pressed himself as close as he was able, mindful not to forget his weight and alter the inevitable design, but at the same time wanting to feel, wanting to put a bit of himself into his work, into that work of art.
Clap.
The blonde sighed in satisfaction with the task complete, and pondered the options. He wanted to save his brother's face for last, wanted to savor the moment and take his time, to sculpt in tune with the rise and fall of that constructed chest, but at the same time...
He colored crimson, and caught the neuter area between his brother's hips and thighs, and decided that maybe there were some other things that could wait for last, instead.
Still, he took an hour or so with the face, closing his eyes and working solely from memory, conjuring up the image of his brother smiling at him from over a stack of books, or scowling at him from beside the river, and his hands moved of their own volition, and his mouth murmured words that he couldn't comprehend.
The cheeks were made slimmer, without the roundness of baby fat, and the lips fuller, with the voluptuousness of age. Still, his brother's jaw retained it's typical softness, and his eyes were still as large and innocent as they had been the day he was born, blinking up at his big brother from inside of the bassinet. His chin was almost weak, but his nose was narrow, and the hollows of his eyes weren't as set as they were when he'd been a boy; determined and fine.
Edward felt rather strange, making the eyes, feeling them push and roll underneath of his fingers like jelly, but it wasn't so terrible as long as he didn't have to see, and when he felt the sweep of long lashes underneath the pad of his thumb, he let out a sigh. Eyes were a luxury his brother had never been allowed during the last four years of his life, arms and legs and life notwithstanding - simply shut off his lantern lights in a parody of sleep, ever mindful of the world outside - and to take his brother from darkness back into the light was an intense gratification, a pleasure deeper than physical sensation, and he relished it, felt the skin of his brother's eyelids with the pads of his thumbs, and with his tongue.
The forehead was small, and mostly covered with soft and shaggy bangs, hair a darker bronze than Edward's uncharacteristic gold, but kept short and tickling just below the ears, a clean-cut style and an innocent smile. His brother's teeth were small and square, and dazzlingly white, and his tongue was small, and slightly forked, ensuring that he would forever speak with that strange echoing lilt. Eyebrows were elegant arches of dusting gold, tilted slightly as though in mild yet perpetual surprise, and the temples curved in, a gentle slope that defined his eyes.
The elder Elric brushed his fingers over his brother's head in a cursory last-minute check, tucking the digits inside his brother's mouth, curving them behind his brother's ears. Letting out a sigh of either criticism or contentment, he sat back on his palms, relaxed his shoulders and relaxed his pysche, and opened his eyes.
His brother's face took his breath away.
Impossibly beautiful, a stunning sculpture of innocence and class, imperious in the way his nose tilted towards the air but humble in the way his hands were clasped across his chest, ankles crossed neatly in their turn and ribs moving up and down in syncopated rhythm - his eyelashes fluttered as he breathed, and the muscles of his abdomen flexed as he exhaled. There was a pulsepoint visible through the creamy skin of his neck, and the glittering sweep of a hairline past his ears, but there were no other blemishes on that perfect form, and the blonde's breath came that much quicker because of it. The genderless, unfinished section of his brother's physique did nothing to take away from his grace, and Edward could only stare in mute fascination at the impeccable statue that he had just created.
After a moment or so of unrecognizable reverence - he had just made his own golden idol, shaped the face of his very first god - he lowered his hands to that ethereal body, and touched.
He didn't transform, or create, as he had originally been wont to do, but simply sensed; simply felt the skin stiff and slightly taut beneath his hands, simply stared at the push of muscle against his prodding fingers, simply allowed himself indulgence to roam, with his tongue and his teeth and his palms, and breathed of his brother's breath as though it was a substitute for air. Saliva was his signature, left in shining trails down those rolling sides, his hands ghosting lightly over arms and legs and lips, barely brushing as though he was afraid to leave a mark.
He laid along the length of his brother's body, arms sprawled in an awkward embrace, cradling that bronze head to his chest gently in a mimicry of rest, though admittedly, his time for rest was far from being near, and he sighed, nearly heady with the sense of elation and accomplishment. Unimportant to his attention, there was a throbbing between his legs and the push of an erection against his thigh, and though he didn't spare it much thought, admittedly, at the same time, he felt a sort of detached inquiry as to why it was there, and he moaned, softly, moaned into that honey-colored hair.
Finally; slowly, and reluctantly, he sat up.
Clap.
A single breath, and a single set of palms, and that immortalized beauty was forever set in stone...or rather, set forever in skin, and it was his now, his to taste and touch and take, his and his brother's, and the contiguity of that notion was enough to nearly make him swoon. He was exhausted, and pleased to no small measure, but there was still one final thing left to be done, and so Edward looked at his brother, consideringly, looked down at himself, and began half-heartedly to take off his clothes. He was dismayed but not really surprised to be reminded of the heat of that erection against his belly, and though he honestly couldn't care less about it, one way or another, it was still a hindrance in the goal of using his own body as a reference, and so he gripped himself with the icy chill of his automail and thought of those Executioner's Eyes focused on him, intently, and eventually the swell of his flesh settled down, and the pigment of his skin went back to normal. Straddling his brother's hips, and facing away, he lowered his hands.
It was only on this part of the anatomy that he wavered, looking dubiously between his brother and himself and thinking absurdly that to make such intimate organs in such an impersonal fashion was a sin nearly as grievous as using blood and muscle to make a heart, and he found it intensely...difficult...to keep his mind focused to the matter at hand. He rolled the flesh between his hands as though it was dough, remniscent of the pretzel-makers in Rizenbul during the country fairs, and the memory of his brother with mustard dripping haphazardly down his chin was enough to make the blonde's heart ache, enough to steel his resolve.
He considered closing his eyes, but something told him that a penis wasn't something best constructed from memory, and so he kept them open, narrowed fixedly into slits, kept his hands moving and his head down low, and recalled another memory from that fair, of he and his brother playfully tumbling down a hillside in a pinwheel fashion, only to land at the bottom in a tangle of arms and legs and hearts, and at the recollection of the warmth of that wriggling body pinned beneath him, he let out another moan.
As the blonde's memories grew more raw, like the rip of an open wound, his technique began to grow more fierce.
In that manner, fashioning a cock really was alarmingly like masturbation, all stroking and thumbing and pulling, and though Edward told himself that it was strictly for scientific comparison, he couldn't resist touching himself, as well, closing his eyes and his ears and his heart and focusing only on dual sensation, on the size and the shape and the shaft, opening only his mouth in a belated reminder that he needed to breathe, and fisted his hands on his brother in a manner that was more...pleasureable, oddly, than it was practical.
The skin seemed to sweat under his hands, and his brother seemed to stir, but it was clearly a desire that was meant to be in his head, and so he notched a slit in the head with his fingernail and curled his fingers slowly to make the balls, touching himself in tune with his sculpting, hips jerking into empty air and stomach clenched into aching knots of both exhaustion and arousal, and no small measure of disgust.
Filthy pervert, desecrating the blood of New Optain to use your brother's flesh for a purpose as vile as this!
He caught himself just before climax, pinching hard across his head and hissing sternly at himself to keep an eye on the task at hand, looking down to see what he had made, and he was both disgusted and amazed. Longer than his own, though not as thick, and undoubtedly tender - pink and smooth, with no noticeable veins, which was a curious contrast. It was discomfiting, because that organ was the defining pillar of his brother's masculinity; it turned him from a sexless statue into a living being, a being not of wax but of warmth and naivete, of sensitive skin and smoldering eyes, and Edward groaned, despite himself. Before he lost his nerve entirely, he turned around and snaked his hands behind his brother's back, feeling the other's chest rise against his own, hearing the other's quiet breathing, and he groaned again, part agony and part...something else.
There really was no justification for why he slithered down to his brother's knees and took that newborn cock into his mouth, no real reason why he plastered it to the roof of his mouth with his tongue, and no real reason why he moaned through it all, moaned through all his fervent sucking, half desire and half despair. Something inside his consciousness screamed for him to stop, but the other half queried as to how he could stop, when he was so desperate and his brother's new body was so divine, and so he gave neither excuse nor lament, but focused instead on intent. His hands, hooked around narrow hips, found finally his brother's ass, and began to knead it into shape, curving the flesh into something delectable and sliding his finger up and down gently to make the crack, to separate one side from the other, and he choked at the same time, choked on the size of that cock, choked from taking it too earnestly and too deep down his throat, but he didn't dare stop, didn't dare deny his brother this final and absolute adoration.
It wasn't necessarily shaping that drove him to suck so wantonly, but rather, the urge for that almost painful sensation, conjoined at head and hips like twins, attempting to coax that waxy flesh into stimulation, into life, and he wondered crazily if it was arousing because it was for his brother, or if it was arousing because it was his brother.
The last of his work was almost embarrassing, or at least should have been embarrassing, but it was strangely satisfying to curl the first two of his fingers in to the depths of those buttocks, stretching and prodding that hole, swirling around the sphincter, and there was no doubt about it; at the penetration, his brother hitched in a shuddering breath, and moaned.
Edward sat up almost instantly in surprise, dully amused at the comical pop that resulted from the other blonde's cock slipping so suddenly out of his mouth, and hastily lifted his hands.
Clap.
For a long time afterward he sat there, breathing deeply of sweat and skin and filling his vision with marble and bronze, watching the rise and fall of his brother's chest with abject fascination, feeling his erection ebb but not fade, sitting uncomfortably with his legs spread and his knees bent in the speckled sunlight of that ruined church. The birds sang above them brightly, and when they landed in the rafters, even the dust that fell down onto their upturned faces couldn't dampen his desire.
His brother hadn't stirred since then, hadn't opened his arms or his mouth or his eyes, and the scientist in Edward began to think, began to ponder if perhaps a stimulation was necessary to strike that spark of life, if perhaps only abject idol worship was the way to awaken the god.
"Al," he whispered at last, hoarsely, voice unused to such a long period of silence, "in of all the stupid fairy tale stories, the prince has to give the princess a kiss in the name of true love to wake her up, okay? I don't really think I'm any sort of prince, and I really don't think you're a princess, but...but...I'm going to wake you up now, okay? True love is true love, right?"
He said the last as though trying to convince himself of that fact far more than anyone else, and lowered his head to capture those parted pink lips with his own.
It was an affection that was, more than anything else, an addiction, and though it had started in innocence, before he knew what he was doing, his lips had traveled across Al's forehead, his cheekbones, his nose; down to his jaw and then his neck, nibbling behind his ears and sucking on his neck, lipping that beautiful collarbone as a horse would hay, breathing loudly and frantically out of his nose in an attempt to still his raging heart. There was the taste of salt in his mouth, and the smell of stone in his nostrils, a bizarre tempest of endearments and entanglements in his head, flashing white along the backs of his eyes, and it made it hard to move, hard to think.
Curiously, his brother seemed to come alive at the touch; skin that had formed alchemically to the composition of cool wax warmed and yielded under his hands, and he could practically taste the blood beginning to pump beneath his lips - a metal that wasn't metal, but instead mortality - and he kept those kisses going, kept lapping ardently at every inch of the other blonde that he wanted to bring back to life.
He traveled lower, still lower, to nip at his brother's exposed ribs, to trail his tongue down that rippled abdomen and swirl it sloppily in that ticklish navel, and paused with his teeth bared against Al's pelvis, contemplating. He kept his hands moving, and his liturgy strong - ('Al, if you can hear me, if you're awake, please let me know') - and recalled a book he'd stumbled across while performing his neverending extensive research on the male anatomy. Oh, it had been anatomically correct, for certain, if not slightly mind-boggling, but as he knelt there and felt his brother's cock stir and nuzzle interestedly at his cheek, he started to wonder if it really was as dubious as he had originally thought it out to be.
Some illogical part of him screamed out, possessively, that his brother was his, that he had made him that way, and that it was only proper to put his finishing signature on his work of art, but to say it that way seemed cruel, and so he blamed it all on lack of life and the overflow of love, and brushed Al's hair back from his face affectionately. More than anything, more than his own morbidity or desire, he wanted to see his brother's eyes; see them, and forget his Executioner's own.
('Hey, did you hear the news? Bizarre story...it seems like the entire city of New Optain's been demolished in a day!')
He took a deep breath.
"Hey, Al. I'm sorry...if this hurts." Groping around, Edward located the oozing black motor oil they'd used to burn the array onto the floor, and sloshed a generous amount of it over his hands. He scowled, openly, at having to mar his brother's flawless complexion with that sour black stain, but his displeasure was no match for his desire, and there was no hesitance at all in the way he lifted those long legs.
Penetration was slow and savory, a minute hum trickling from his throat and a single finger twisting languidly back and forth, eyes focused and watching in fascination, hips slowly grinding against the other's legs and digging in to yielding flesh; a buzzing pleasure and a burning intent. In this state, his brother was so pliant, and so lax, and opened easily before him in invitation; for a moment wax again, all warmth and give to those insistent hands, and the feel of it made him moan.
He added another finger with greedy fervor, pistoning them back and forth and watching the muscles around that area move; watched them relax and then contract, saw in his mind's eye the edge of his brother's tailbone and the ridge of his spine in that skeletal half-life, and shuddered against his will.
"I wouldn't have subjected you to that, not ever, Al," he swore feverishly, but knew that deep in his heart, he feared solitude far more than he feared a skeleton, and wouldn't have hesitated to condemn his brother to yet another half-life, and the knowledge made him sick. Almost as though to make amends, he took out his fingers and jerked them along his cock, watching the oil spread like a foul stain, feeling his own desire spike in glee.
"Come back to me, Al," he pleaded, and threw his arms around his brother's neck in a desperate embrace, kissing warm dry lips with his own, and using the leverage of his knees to bury himself deep inside, craving his brother's touch, needing that lilted voice to drown out those torturous screams. At the first recognition of that exquisitely tight heat, he groaned, and nearly sobbed in both craving and relief, and uttered the words again.
"Al, Al...come back to me, please..."
And...
And.
Miraculously, below him, Alphonse stirred, and opened his eyes.
---
10:442 He would believe, but yet is still in pain,
10:443 And tries his argument of sense again,
10:444 Presses the pulse, and feels the leaping vein.
10:445 Convinc'd, o'erjoy'd, his studied thanks, and praise,
10:446 To her, who made the miracle, he pays:
10:447 Then lips to lips he join'd; now freed from fear,
10:448 He found the savour of the kiss sincere:
10:449 At this the waken'd image op'd her eyes,
10:450 And view'd at once the light, and lover with surprize.
---
If the other blonde was at all surprised by the situation of waking up to find himself being thoroughly fucked by his elder brother, he gave no evidence - instead smiled, ecstatically, and returned the kiss with ardor.
The feel of it was alarmingly amplified by the knowledge that Edward had shaped those lips that way, had slid them under the pad of his thumb until they were just right, had stroked the skin of those fingers that were hooking relentlessly into his back to just the right length; had fashioned for his brother the body that was finally allowing him to feel the cause of his moans, and the essence of the kiss was fever and sea, a hot wetness that caused the both of them to shudder, and to inhale as one, and tangle their limbs in an entrapment that suggested that neither of them would ever have the intention of breaking away.
Still.
"We did it," Al breathed as they broke apart for air, voice high and trembling, and Edward could almost visualize the muscles of his vocal chords thrumming and pulling as he spoke; "We did it."
They clung to each other in relief and rapture, in exhaustion long past due and in physical gratification never spent, and appropriately, the heart of the elder alchemist and the heart of his brother beat symphoniously in tune. Breaths were mingled and tongues entangled, endearments passed and apologies returned, and the two of them sat up, still joined together by the act of passion, and embraced, half-laughing, half-sobbing, and cried shamelessly into each other's necks. Tendons were taut under the elder blonde's hands, and his cock savored the puckering heat of that shapely rear as they moved, and for a moment the two of them were lost entirely from the mortal plane, hidden even from the view of those goddamned All-Seeing Eyes, and New Optain had finally been laid to rest in that trembling chest.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry; you must really be wondering what the fuck I'm doing - " Edward began breathlessly, so drunk off of his brother's scent that it was making his head spin, so blinded by his own achievements that he thought he would die.
But Al cut him off, affectionately, bumping his forehead into Edward's own, and put both of his hands on the sides of his brother's face gently, rubbing reassuringly with his thumbs. "It's okay, it's all right; it's fine," he assured the other softly, all hair and hands and honest heart, and he kissed his elder brother again, as though for good measure. "I was lost," he whispered solemnly, before he smiled again, and rubbed noses with the shorter blonde, tip to tip. "It was dark, and I couldn't see. All I could feel were your hands, Brother, guiding me - guiding me back to light. It doesn't matter how you did it, or what others would think of you for trying. You led me home," he finished worshipfully, an almost pathetic idolatry shining out of his amber eyes, and startlingly, Edward noted that they weren't their former color of slate grey - they were instead bronze, like his hair; a tainted color of an alchemical failing, perhaps, or just another reminder of their shared heritage - but it was all right. They were no less expressive, and therefore, Al was no less beautified.
"But if I hadn't - " Edward started to say, but was cut off yet again by the weight of his brother filling his arms, by his choking inhalation of coin-colored hair.
"Exactly," the younger Elric admonished him, murmuring into his ear, nuzzling the nape of his neck. "If you hadn't."
If I hadn't... Edward pondered, for a moment confused, and stroked his brother's back as the answer came to him in increments...he wouldn't even be here. For all of my other failings, he would have fallen on that February day and been lost to my memory if I hadn't bound his soul, and that's...that's good enough for me. That's all I need; that's enough to make up for...well, for everything, I guess.
And Edward, brightly, began to smile.
---
It was impossible to tell which of the two of them moved first, because it seemed as though they moved in sync - belatedly, they remembered the physical intimacy of their situation, and flushed awkwardly at the clarity - but they still pressed close to one another, and when Edward pushed his younger brother back gently onto the floor, Al held fast to his shoulders and dragged him down, as well.
It wasn't slow, nor particularly gentle - once they realized how substantial (and how important) the situation had turned out to be, and how long that it had been in coming, neither of them were at all inclined for patience - but they seemed to be made for each other (and oh, how some sick part of Edward had screamed out that his brother had been made, been made solely for him by him), and their shouts sent the mourning doves scattering from the rafters in a flurry of flush and feathers.
"To... To be able to feel this, finally, and know that it's real," Al breathed, and his eyes rolled up alarmingly into the back of his head, all shaking and satisfaction. "I feel like I should just be waiting to die."
For a moment Edward slowed, and eyed the other blonde with concern, but there was nothing at all morbid about the way his brother latched onto an automail wrist, and yanked it needily down to his own cock to satisfy.
"But I've seen death," Al clarified, hips bucking wildly, and for a moment his eyes seemed to stare past his brother's face and onward into oblivion, "and let me tell you, it's not this. This feels more like heaven," he groaned, and his solemn expression morphed into one of pleasure as he came.
Though inside his head, he heard something entirely different -
- ('Don't; for the love of God, don't! If you do that, you'll destroy the entire city...!') -
- Edward climaxed, as well - almost in rhythm - but didn't know how to tell his brother that he didn't believe in heaven, but rather...
Believed only in hell.
( ::: M E T A M O R P H O S E ::: (pleased with his idol, he commends, admires) - [part two] )