FMA: Envy/Wrath: Bird In the Hand: NC-17
Bird In the Hand
Full Metal Alchemist
Envy/Wrath
NC-17
Dealing with age, superstitions, screwing around with the image of Santa Claus, story telling, and groping the guy who’s not really the guy you want to be groping but smells enough like him to not matter. Contains Envy/Wrath vaguely kinky smut that makes use of their unusual abilities and mental conditions. Possibly more disturbing than anything else, but hopefully educational as well since…well. Actually, never mind.
For laylah yaoi_challenge's prompt.
***
If you hold a bird gently, the bird will stay. If you hold it too hard, it’s eyes’ll bug out. And then the pet shop owner won’t let you hold the mice and animals anymore.
--Rose Nyland (Betty White), The Golden Girls
***
The others forgot how old he was. He made an effort to make sure they never remembered how old he was, how much older than they, how much older than even the cities and government that sprouted up out of the ground after the old structures and metropolises burned out and died off.
Envy was in the habit of getting anything he wanted, and the late teenager role was his: youthful, smart-ass, friendly, understandably moody, and all-around everyone’s friend and companion in the dark moments when the homunculi didn’t quite know who they were, why they were here… Stupid moments, boring moments that were still worth sharpening up and giving a sound polish before dipping through their bodies slowly and letting them die slowly, never too fast so it’d happen and they’d revive, and never so slow that they’d recover. It was something to pass the time with.
It was fun, being the youngest and silliest without being too young, too stupid. Even Greed, the best monster the old woman had pieced together since him, fell for it and died for it (died for him, because Greed had been scared of what Envy could do to him). Greed had been one hell of a conman too, and hadn’t seen it coming until it hit--if that wasn’t flattery, nothing was.
Every once in a while, though, he’d feel old.
There was a wide variety why he hated working with Wrath. Alone. Without Sloth or Lust to temper the kid; it was worse than Gluttony. It was worse than Pride.
One, he went through ammo a lot faster: the boy ate lead like potato chips. He wound up killing the kid more times than he killed humans, with the difference that the brat didn’t actually stay dead. It made Envy’s nerves feel a little better, but since the kid never actually learned not to piss him off, it didn’t make much of a difference. And then Envy didn’t have anymore spare ammo.
Two: he hated company.
Three: Wrath was loud. Excessively. High-pitched. Over-enthusiastic. Hyper. Made Envy want to vomit. Ate ammo and didn’t stay dead.
Four: Wrath smelled. He was never sure how since Wrath was dead, cold if not stiff (and too young to understand the innuendos, to be shamed or blackmailed or insulted), but Wrath smelled a little like a wild animal, a little like fur all greasy and mite-filled, especially when wet. When hot, Wrath smelled like new blood. Not old blood--that wasn’t new, Lust smelled a little like old blood when hot, and so had one of the earlier Prides--but new blood, fresh blood. Living blood, in fact.
You’re not really like us. It had to be the right arm and left leg. Had to be. Drove Envy’s nerves to the borderline. But you’re not really like them either.
The urge-the over-urge, the impulse that made his fingers spasm painfully and his eyebrow twitch-to kill Wrath was insane. It made it hard to even look at Wrath without his blood freezing, heavy in his veins, clogging up the arteries with sludge and snow and it hurt.
The saving grace-the restraint Envy yanked down on, not for the bastard but for him-was that Envy hated the impulse more than he hated Wrath.
In the old days, one killed what wasn’t quite human, or normal. Those times had been hard on science, and murdered the alchemists in truckloads for altering God’s will (shame only the Ishbalans did that now). There were variations on what was sin and what wasn’t, depending on the village and who slept with who’s husband, but the crimes had never really interested what-had-been-before Envy, but the punishments remained in his mind long after he got out of the habit of eating, of needing to sleep.
There were public hangings or stoning, the slow iron closets and being buried still alive. Modern thinking had no respect for being burned at the stake; generating a fire powerful enough to char the body all the way through was hard. The public duckings and/or drownings had their good points, depending on how hard the criminal struggled. Whatever happened, it was always important that events were public--pain was harder to endure when it was mental and physical, when everyone knew and saw and no one cared. In the old days, there were a million and one ways for a young inquisitive boy without much of a home life to get up close and personal with death without every dirtying his hands.
One of the Prides had wondered, once, where Envy got his ideas. Only Dante would know, and Dante was only a few decades older than he was.
Wrath made him feel old. And Wrath was so young, so unforgivably childish, that he didn’t even realize he was doing it.
He hated working with Wrath. He hated being close to Wrath, having to see and hear him, smell him. It made him nauseous, made him remember and realize, and so Envy wound up being a lot more…accommodating and amiable to the fucker than he’d ever been to Gluttony or the others, with the possible exception of Greed.
“So why did they do it?”
“For luck,” Envy’s eyes were half-lidded, his face more serious than the others ever saw because Wrath was seriously, sincerely too stupid to be properly charmed by the young-beautiful-and-coy act, and not clever enough to act on the insight-Wrath didn’t have the mental gears for betrayal or blackmail. There wasn’t any danger there.
As for Envy…well. There was no point in acting out a role if no one was going to appreciate it, and the intelligent-gorgeous-mentor role wasn’t so bad, at least not when Wrath kept his mouth shut for the majority of the time and stayed curled up on the opposite train bench and kept on staring at him wide-eyed like Envy knew the secrets to the universe. It wasn’t quite adoration, but it was pretty close to it. Good enough for legal work.
Besides, he killed the boy more times than he could count already, for being smelly or standing in the wrong spot. That sport had lost its fun, for the moment. And it was better having the kid hang on his every word than the brat yanking on his hair and bouncing off the ceiling.
“Leave a bowl of milk on the porch at night, and they wouldn’t come inside,” Envy picked the old superstitions out slowly, half-surprised at how many he remembered. “They wouldn’t kill you when you went into the woods with a willow branch, and wouldn’t steal the baby if you kept red string tied around their necks.”
Wrath huddled deeper behind his knees, eyes comically wide and innocent. Damp snow splattered the train’s window while the wheels rattled and thudded underneath. Acres and acres of nothing but dark gray snow flowed past the window, studded every now and then with a spindly grove or a single tree, growing darker as the sun set. The low yellow lamps dotted along the aisle swung gently with the train’s movement.
The energy the half-stones fed them wasn’t affected by temperature, but it seemed easier for homunculi to get tired in the deep winter. Envy blinked sluggishly, and let a small, worm-sized smile form on the edge of his lips: the mention of babies always shut Wrath up or freaked him out. If he freaked out enough, he’d leave Envy alone.
“Now up north, further east, the humans had another way to make them stay away,” the smile vanished, but Wrath had seen it and pressed further away. Envy kept his voice cool, crystalline and level. It sounded older than he liked, and sensible. “They took a child, newborn, and set it away in a tent. They fed it better than the other babies, let everyone else starve while the one baby got fat. They never let it out of the tent, never let it see daylight, never let anyone touch it.”
Envy paused and pretended to shift his arm, the leather seat creaking underneath his weight, his eyes on Wrath’s face.
“When it reached the age of five, they lead it outside for the first time with a piece of rope tied around his-or her--neck on the longest night of the year to the bonfire, and showed it to the rest of the village.”
Envy paused again. There was always the chance Wrath could mention this to Lust or Pride, could mention how much Envy knew and this wasn’t information he really wanted going public. Not his age, not the old ways. They could use that against him, carbon date him.
Quicksilver fast, far too fast for the temperature, Envy’s arms uncurled outwards, towards Wrath, and the twin bronze swords that had-magically-appeared out of nowhere slid through the bench’s leather back like hot butter. Dark feathery bits of Wrath’s haystack-hair landed on his bare knees.
“A goat on parade. About your age.” Wrath flinched unconsciously, his eyes wide with terrified delight. Envy smiled friendly, then slipped his form down into something smaller, chubbier, with an unkempt wild brown mass of hair, naked with light blue eyes. He was a little smaller than Wrath now, bigger than a five year old but with the same lost sick hopeful smile and gleam in his eyes.
Envy reversed his grip on the swords, and drove them inside deep. The wet shocked noises he made when the bronze slid between his ribs, the second through the soft spot between his shoulder and neck, may or may have not been faked. The pained weak sobs and whimpers coming out of his throat probably were. So were the tears that flowed slowly down either side of his face while Envy fought a losing battle to keep smiling, trembling, eyes pained and liquid. He didn’t stop until they were all the way in, his body making soft wet sounds as it yielded to the metal. Then he looked up again and smiled feebly.
Wrath froze half-getting up, his eyes wide. Whether he had planned to attack or stop him wasn’t certain, but it was a nice reaction, all the same.
Envy sat back easily, slipped back easily into something long angular and darkly beautiful without missing a beat, the swords and tears melting back into the rest of his body’s matter. He slouched in his seat casually and brushed his hair back. He didn’t bother to smile-the same act, the same persona, got boring after a while.
“Then the humans burned the body,” could he simulate burns like that? Probably. Wouldn’t be as fun though. His fingers traced his bare stomach absently. “The ashes and bones were wrapped in a skin and deposited in the forest for the other ones to find. It was supposed to protect the humans for the rest of winter.”
Wrath hadn’t sat down yet. Envy began ticking the points of the formula off on his finger, “Stabbed, burned, and abandoned until spring came. If no one died of sickness, the remains were kept in a box and the humans worshipped the box. Sometimes the other ones came after the humans anyway, but people don’t do things like that anymore.”
Wrath straightened slowly, started to curl back up on his seat.
“Now it’s just the alchemists,” Envy watched his eyes with disinterest, just a little bit bored.
He’d been the one to find Wrath, to bring him over without forcing him. It didn’t make Wrath any more loyal to him or less satisfying to kill, but it was…academically interesting, watching Wrath develop, knowing the scrap he’d started out as. Then again, he’d been the one to find the second Lust and first Pride, had watched all of them start off weak and fumbling, learning to walk and kill with inhuman skill, and then watched them all die. The numbers changed, but the formula didn’t. He looked out the window as his fingers went for a weapon he didn’t have, and tried not to feel as old as he was.
“You’re lying,” Wrath hissed softly. Envy had hit a soft spot. He hadn’t been sure how sensitive it would be.
“Maybe,” Envy shrugged airily, because it didn’t make any difference. He kept his eyes on the wet streaks of ice and dirt on the boxcar’s window. “It’s down in books,” the old-old books, “but you can’t read anyway.”
The leather squeaked as Wrath stormed off, bare feet stomping on the tatty carpet. Envy eyed the slope of Wrath’s back below the ugly cut-off shirt and down his ass outlined in blue-black spandex. Envy grinned his grin razor-sharp once, then kicked his face back into cool boredom without missing a beat.
“Even if I’m lying,” Envy called out lazily, slouched comfortably over the bench, his voice chilly and creamy, “You know it’s the truth.”
Filmy bits of snow had stuck to his windowpane so it wasn’t interesting to look about but since he looked so handsome and debonair doing it that really didn’t matter. It was everyone else’s reaction that mattered, and Wrath had stopped dead in his tracks. Envy choked another smile down, but his right foot twitched and swirled delightedly.
The silence dragged, then Wrath asked a little shakily, “Did they really do that?”
“You betcha. You know how they are.”
“But they don’t do stupid things like that anymore?”
“No,” Envy never stopped staring out the window, for some reason seeing thin blond hair and rage, and grinned faintly, as if he were sharing a secret with someone else. “They do different stupid things now.”
Something metal squeaked as Wrath leapt back on his bench, eyes a little wild and shivering despite himself. His mouth was stretched out in a nervous grimace, and he kept on blinking fast. The boy giggled, stilted and anxious. Then he hugged himself tightly.
Envy blinked slowly and his own smile faded as the laughter grew more hysterical and higher, then a full-out maniacal cacophony. His right hand twitched dangerously, and underneath the skin a nerve throbbed warningly, but didn’t actually strike out. He hated Wrath, but he hated other things more.
“Mm,” Wrath purred when he was done, grinning lopsidedly. “Humans are dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. Stupid!” Wrath giggled and rocked. “Hey. Tell me another one? Please? Please please please please!”
One killed what wasn’t human. Wrath was stupid. And either irrevocably insane or immature. He hadn’t noticed how still Envy had gone-he wasn’t breathing slowly, wasn’t breathing at all, and not even the iris around his pupils were expanding or contracting. His right hand had frozen with two of the fingers curled in, his right foot frozen mid-twitch at an angle. There was a moment.
He was old enough that nothing surprised him anymore. Not anymore. There had never been a homunculus with the power of alchemy, a creature that could stand on either side of the Gate and survive. It didn’t matter that if the creature could survive sane or not, what was impossible was that it survived at all.
What would Hohenheim of the Light say about that? About Wrath?
Wet white snow frosted the glass, and there were a million things he could’ve done. Very few of them would’ve surprised anyone.
“You want another one? All right,” Envy grinned and settled back, and settled into something red and white and less comfortable, the gold belt buckle glistening. One arm was flung over the bench and patting it. “C’mere.”
Not even Lust was stupid enough to get close to him when he was moody, not even if she needed it and Envy was being friendly. Well, she wasn’t stupid enough anymore, and Greed had never cared how the bloody the sex was as long as he got the lion’s share of whatever was happening. Wrath bounced next to him and jabbed his side with his finger, losing it up to the knuckle in thick red fur.
Envy had forgone the beard. And the fat. And the big voice. There was craftsmanship and then there was fucking dignity, so he only looked about twenty, trim and tall, his hair white and silky but still long over his red shoulders and down his back.
“Close to middle winter they started to go crazy. Humans are naturally crazy, and they get crazier when you keep ‘em locked up in the dark all together. They attacked each other, and sometimes they died. This stuff,” Envy tapped the window, noting how Wrath pressed closer and wrapped himself in the folds of the heavy red robe, petting it with his fingers, “kept anyone from leaving. Like the Gate.”
Wrath froze instinctively, and Envy tensed his arm, ready to yank the boy closer and snap his neck open.
“They got tired of dying that way. Seeing crazy. So they got a guy to break into the houses throughout the village-and everything was villages back then-and take someone away.”
Envy let his hand drop from the window and stopped, leaning back. His eyes were still on the smeared dirt and ice on the window, on the low lamplight reflecting gold off the snow. The image of the fat man in the red suit still hung around some of the human cultures, but the paranoia had been turned into something gentler, moralistic observation instead of staking out take-aways. The tradition of taking-away had also been lost; now it was only getting and getting, and not losing. Of course, electricity and science and damn alchemists were the reasons behind that change as well.
No one remembered. Dante didn’t give a fuck. No one else knew.
Wrath frowned, “I don’t get it.”
No one understood the old ways now. No one even believed them, not even a brainless hybrid bastard of a monster and idiot.
“He dressed like this,” Envy’s neck swung gracefully, thin white hair that could’ve been blond sliding over his shoulder to hang against his thin cheek gracefully, “and he took something, and left something else. Equivalent trade, even way back then.”
Envy ran his fingers over the curve of the kid’s face, still round and soft with youth. There was still a touch of blue in the kid’s eyes too, a hint of something that was too human to be like Them but not enough for legal work.
“I still don’t get it,” Wrath moved away from his fingers irritably, but didn’t move away from him. “How’s that bad? That’s not scary.”
Envy paused, then smiled warmly. That was right-the kid thought he was telling ghost stories, not history. Not the future. Little bitch. Ah well. “Do you know what he did with them? The one’s he took? They never came back. What would you do with people, if you had a lot of them?”
“I’d kill them,” Wrath didn’t even think about it, didn’t grin or snarl predatorily, but recited his lessons perfectly. Young, stupid and so detestable. “He killed them?”
“Their families knew. It was all legal. Now,” Envy’s fingers slid lightly down the boy’s right arm, tanned and warm to the touch. Wrath froze, but that was expected: Wrath was just smart enough to not trust him (thank God), but not smart enough to stay away. “You have something I want.”
The smile stalked across his mouth like a shark, and Envy leaned closer, eyes gleaming.
“And I have something,” he switched forms without changing his smile, without changing the expression in his eyes, because Sloth would never be able to pull off his expression and that was the fun part. The kid would see her and know it was him, and the lovely thing was, the kid probably wouldn’t even… “I think you’d like.”
Not-blue not-completely-violet eyes blinked twice in confusion, then Wrath whined, “That doesn’t work if I see you do it, it doesn’t work--”
Envy leaned down the remaining-what? Two inches? Three?-and pressed his lips lightly against the boy’s cheek, smelling something a little like milk and blood, and held the position for a while. When he moved back, Wrath remembered to breathe again, remembered that it wasn’t Sloth doing this because Sloth would never ever in a million years--
“No,” Envy agreed. “It doesn’t work when you see me do it. You know, and I know,” he spoke slowly, rhythmically, and never stopped brushing his fingers against the boy’s arm, “But that doesn’t mean it won’t feel good.”
“What.” Wrath’s eyes were fixed on his collarbone, on the right side of his breasts. He’d left the red Uroborus off, kept it on his thigh. His voice had gotten unaccountably small. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve seen how you look at her,” Envy whispered conspiratorially. “I’ve seen how you run to her. You don’t try to hide it. I’m just trying to be nice. If it’s not something you want, just say so.”
Envy leaned back a little, shifting his shoulders against Sloth’s spaghetti straps. There was always the chance he could be wrong; there was always the chance the sun would slam into the earth and kill everyone without warning in an explosive fiery death. The arm wrapped around the kid’s shoulders slid mysteriously to the kid’s waist, and trailed its fingers along his spine. Wrath was shivering-not continuously, not even hard, but in light gentle bursts and he kept on blinking rapidly. The kid had-mysteriously-also wound up almost in Envy’s lap. Envy waited a while longer.
“But. Why? You’re. You’re not. Uh. Nice. Very often.” Envy was too surprised to be insulted-the kid was actually questioning and thinking intelligently, even if he still couldn’t form complete sentences. Wrath was getting a little intelligent. Homunculi usually did, the longer they were conscious, and the kid was about a month or so old now. “So. Why? At me? I--”
“I can be nice when I want to, you know,” Envy smiled disarmingly to take the sarcasm off the words. Something in his chest constricted and Wrath looked down surprised when his fingers spasmed. “When I want to be.”
With time, with the kid’s knack for alchemy, Wrath might actually grow up to be a problem. Possibly. Greed and Lust had been sharp from practically the beginning, aware of their surroundings and existence even while they were smelly gobs of mucus and bones slapped together, but then they’d died a lot older than the kid. With the kid’s alchemic ability, his ability to be Us and Them at the same damn time, he could grow to be a real pain in the asshole if he ever became slightly intelligent, ever learned to think for himself and mature beyond his mommy-complex.
“And right now I want to be. I’ve got the time for it. And besides that,” something damnable and hateful inside of him wondered if Greed could’ve done this better, smoother and faster, “you’ve got something I want. I’d like to make a deal. If you don’t want to though, that’s fine.”
Wrath blinked. His eyes followed the liquid slide of Envy’s-technically Sloth’s-black hair against his shoulder as he leaned back. He could force the kid, but that wouldn’t be as fun. Would practically defeat the purpose.
Soft pale fingers moved over Envy’s thin ones, touched his arm and hair inquisitively, and Envy smiled because Sloth never reacted when she was touched. Sloth never cared about anything. “So. What. What do you want? From me?”
“I’ve never seen anything like you,” Envy admitted, his voice not quite Sloth’s languid roll but not his own light cheerful banter. “Your body can do things I haven’t seen before. I’m curious. I want to know what it feels like.” Envy tried not to look at Ed’s arm, tried not to touch the skin that was almost warm and softer than the rest of Wrath. “That’s all. Trade for a trade. All right?”
Wrath blinked again, his eyes staring just a little too long on the weak gentle smile in Sloth’s eyes, on her lips, and swallowed hard. “Promise you won’t tell her?”
Envy managed not to smile. It was a magnificent effort, but he managed. “Promise.”
Later, of course, he’d wonder if the kid really realized what he was getting himself into, if he actually thought of his ‘mommy’ that way, or if he just didn’t know better. Or maybe because it was Envy and so didn’t count…or something. He’d wonder later, be pissed at Sloth for not caring or even reacting when he told her, but at the moment he was more interested in the taste of the kid’s mouth, the taste of his skin.
Humans tasted nasty-too warm, too salty, with the faint yet aggravating aftertaste of coppery/rust of living blood and saliva. The homunculi tasted a little like ice, a little like bone, with the gum-splitting acidic fiery tang from the half-Stones. Wrath tasted normal, felt a little too soft, too small, with a vague aftertaste of warm shining metal.
The curve underneath his chin was dry against Envy’s-technically Sloth’s-long slow tongue, his fingers still trailing slowly over the kid’s spine, underneath the raggedy shirt. The kid’s fingers curled around his shoulder as his breathing got a little shaky; the kid was still shivering a little too. Envy smiled to himself, against the kid’s ear with the grungy black fur brushing against his face and fighting a wince, freezing when he tasted warm salty sweat. His fingers clenched instinctively against the alchemic node on the kid’s back and while it didn’t feel anything like it would’ve if an alchemist would’ve touched it, the kid still jerked in his grasp.
It took effort, to remember not to bite, that he was supposed to be gentle and caring, to remember not to draw blood or claw Wrath’s eyes out when tiny soft kisses began fluttering against his collarbone, his jaw, and Envy’s breathing was ragged and strained more from the stress than anything.
“Want you,” he kissed the tiny right fingertips, forced his hands not to snap the wrists and yank the arm out of it’s socket. “Want you, sweetheart. You’ll give me this, right?” Envy rubbed the knuckles against his cheek, looking at the edge of Wrath’s mouth instead of his eyes, smelling Ed and tasting a half-breed monster.
“Momma,” the word sounded odd as Wrath said it, tasted it out and found while it wasn’t really right it wasn’t bad, and it was good enough for now. Ed’s fingertips brushed against Envy’s shoulder feather-light and fearful. “Momma.”
When he wanted to, Envy could move slowly. He could kiss like glass, fragile and cool, and even though his body was only a little warmer than outside the body in his lap still curled into his. His lips were still gently pressed against Wrath’s temple. “It’s all right. Relax; just give it to me, don’t worry about it.”
Wrath shuddered. “Don’t. Don’t take though. Ok? Don’t take it.”
Pathetic.
Sloth wasn’t busting out, not like Lust, not even like Envy the few times he felt like being female for a few days or hours, but the kid’s hand was still tiny against his chest, trying to cup Sloth’s breast and squeezing gently. Envy twitched and hid his face in the prickly-soft shaggy hair, then groaned as something not really him and not exactly the brat touched his skin, touched his self, and pushed gently inside his chest, inside the alchemized cells of his body, through his bones and meat without ever actually breaking them, just pulling them along the movement.
The feeling wasn’t too odd--something moving inside his chest that wasn’t him, wasn’t exactly pleasant but not actually painful, weird and stomach-turning as anything. Something not him was moving inside of him, as close to being alive without being human as any of them could ever hope to get. What would this feel like for a human? For Ed? Would it kill him? How long would it take? How much could he take?
One hand scrabbled over Wrath’s back, over the nodes and knobby spine and squeezed his thighs and ass, seeking purchase. Envy kept his teeth buried inside his own arm, not hard enough to draw blood but enough to keep the names ambiguous, muffled. Not even the kid was that dumb, probably.
Warm. So damn warm inside. Like having real blood again…
Envy moaned again, voice cellophane thin and weak in this body, and ran his fingers over Wrath’s bare stomach, the soft angles of breastbone and ribcage and (fucking damn it hard not to dig his claws in, not to draw blood and the kid wasn’t either) nudged his knuckles against Wrath’s crotch and spandex, not really registering the change in Wrath’s breathing, in his voice.
It should have hurt more than it did-having the formula and coding of another array inside his body, overlapping the commands and functions of his own body cells, touching the decentralized cores of his stones. It should have hurt and it did hurt enough to kill for.
Instead of actually speaking, Envy spent his time mouthing Ed’s right shoulder, drinking the sweat too heated and metallic to be dead, still seeing thin blond hair in the window’s reflection and hooked a finger in the hem of the bastard’s too-short spandex shorts and slipped them to the kid’s knees with a plastic snapping sound.
The hand-a kid’s hand but not the kid’s hand-slid through his chest downwards, to the base of Sloth’s stomach covered with the dark purple suede material. Wrath’s hand slowly fingered his intestines, his guts and tubing. Then it started to pull out.
Envy’s breathing caught and slowed and his eyelids fluttered, “Are you still all right?” The thing between the boy’s legs was tiny, warm and sweaty but not really hard, not quite yet. It was easy to forget sometimes that Wrath was a child, still new, but after boning Greed and Pride off and on the last two hundred years or so besides the odd mad alchemist, Envy had gotten used to a certain quality in sex. “Wrath?”
Now that he paid attention, the brat’s breathing was frightened, clammy. Envy blinked languidly, tasting the alchemy in the back of his throat a bit back another moan, “Sweetheart?”
The arm around his neck tightened and the boy’s forehead pressed harder into his neck. The hand inside his body tightened briefly on a kidney, only since the boy’s physical definitions were blurred and confused inside Envy-it felt like his blood was warm, tasted like Ed-it wasn’t unnerving. It probably should’ve been, but over the kid’s shuddery terrified gasps Envy only blinked slowly, remembered to stay in character and pressed a soft kiss against Wrath’s ear, down the thin trembling neck.
“It’s all right,” Envy murmured in Sloth’s calming drawl, stuck on the heady smell of Ed’s sweat and blood perfectly mixed with the charred chemical tang of the homunculi. “It’s all right, what’s wrong? It’s--”
“Don’t leave me,” the kid was actually crying. Not hard, not wet sobs or anything, but definitely little panicked hiccups. Envy’s body shuddered, but he didn’t think the brat could hear him laughing since he kept on talking. The hand tightened inside him, fisted and Envy held back on losing it right then and there. “Please. Don’t leave me. I don’t want to. Don’t want. Don’t take it.”
“You don’t have to,” the sincerity, wet and a little chilly, was real, as real as anything Envy had ever made. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Want you. I’ll stay with you.” His hand fondling the kid’s cock (didn’t even really feel like touching someone else’s sex, felt more like handling a baby animal) gentled and warmed, used only the soft parts of his palm curled up. He continued to dot Sloth’s pouty full kisses along the boy’s bare neck, on the soft part behind his ear. Gradually, the infant in his hand jerked and twitched warmly, sweating. “Just give me what I want. Want you. That’s all. That’s all.”
The boy-Wrath, not the other one, not the other always outraged furious idealistic one he really wanted-continued to shiver in his grasp, and Envy managed not to squeeze too hard.
“Ok,” Wrath’s face rubbed against his chest, against Sloth’s breasts. “Momma. Momma.” Envy tasted enamel off his own teeth as his jaw clenched.
The hand still petting Wrath’s spine, his skinny ass and bony shoulder blades slid into the chilled milky skin like chilled milk, sliding through the back of Wrath’s ribcage without a hitch. It was hotter, more compact and alive than he’d ever imagined. More than…he even remembered.
Envy focused on his breathing, on the child squirming gently in his hand and his lap. He couldn’t remember wanting to fuck something so bad since Greed loss whatever charm he had, since the last time he’d broken the Fullmetal Bastard’s arm again. His fingers twitched uncontrollably, and he wasn’t quite sure what it was they wanted to do now.
Ed. He could smell him, taste him, and he’d only come this close when he was beating the crap out of the shrimp. He could taste the alchemy, the life.
I should’ve been you.
If Wrath was ever allowed to mature-ever grew a cock worth sucking or fucking-he really would be a problem. He didn’t have Ed’s personality, the Elric essence but he had some of the humans’ power, and with time he might actually cultivate the Elric talent, if not genius. The last thing the world needed was another fucking Elric with their power, their beauty and immortality, and if anyone had both worlds it should’ve been him!
Envy’s teeth scraped gently against the kid’s neck, tasted sweat and metal and tears with a hint of blood. The animal in his palm, still too young, spasmed once gently and Wrath gasped, surprised. Inside, something in Envy blinked slowly and sneered, feeling all four hundred years heavily: the kid had barely lasted ten minutes.
Youth. Fuck it. He’d forgotten all about it. What it meant to be new. What it meant not to be bored with everything, to be the only one who remembered the old stories and ways. To be alone.
Gently, so very gently he’d wonder on it later, Envy pressed their lips together again. He tasted ice and salty water and warmth. Wrath clung to him still gasping, his fingers looping in Sloth’s spaghetti straps and liquid black hair, and breathed in deeply, shakily. Then, out of nowhere, he began to giggle. Envy closed his eyes, concentrating on the feel of living organic warmth inside his chest, and pictured Wrath just a little bit grown up. Pictured Ed a little bit older. Wrath began to giggle harder.
His teeth tore through the kid’s throat easily, tasted blood and snapped the brainstem clean off. Envy flowed back to his original form, the shape he’d chosen above all others, and tried to pretend the blood was Ed’s.
***
If you hold a bird gently, the bird will stay. If you hold it too hard, it’s eyes’ll bug out. And then the pet shop owner won’t let you hold the mice and animals anymore.
--Rose Nyland (Betty White), The Golden Girls
***
A/N: Today’s Notes: Whaaaat?
I can’t do kink. I remembered this, like, four hours after trying to write the fic weeks ago and not doing it. Bad. laylah, sorry the thing was so late. I wrote it three different ways before hammering this one. Argh. 0o
The kobold-story (sword baby) borrowed from Neil Gaiman’s wonderful American Gods novel. Most everything else I made up. Got to reference Care and Feeding, so was geekily amused and satisfied.
Final question: Did I actually follow the prompt?
And then it got weird.
Full Metal Alchemist
Envy/Wrath
NC-17
Dealing with age, superstitions, screwing around with the image of Santa Claus, story telling, and groping the guy who’s not really the guy you want to be groping but smells enough like him to not matter. Contains Envy/Wrath vaguely kinky smut that makes use of their unusual abilities and mental conditions. Possibly more disturbing than anything else, but hopefully educational as well since…well. Actually, never mind.
For laylah yaoi_challenge's prompt.
***
If you hold a bird gently, the bird will stay. If you hold it too hard, it’s eyes’ll bug out. And then the pet shop owner won’t let you hold the mice and animals anymore.
--Rose Nyland (Betty White), The Golden Girls
***
The others forgot how old he was. He made an effort to make sure they never remembered how old he was, how much older than they, how much older than even the cities and government that sprouted up out of the ground after the old structures and metropolises burned out and died off.
Envy was in the habit of getting anything he wanted, and the late teenager role was his: youthful, smart-ass, friendly, understandably moody, and all-around everyone’s friend and companion in the dark moments when the homunculi didn’t quite know who they were, why they were here… Stupid moments, boring moments that were still worth sharpening up and giving a sound polish before dipping through their bodies slowly and letting them die slowly, never too fast so it’d happen and they’d revive, and never so slow that they’d recover. It was something to pass the time with.
It was fun, being the youngest and silliest without being too young, too stupid. Even Greed, the best monster the old woman had pieced together since him, fell for it and died for it (died for him, because Greed had been scared of what Envy could do to him). Greed had been one hell of a conman too, and hadn’t seen it coming until it hit--if that wasn’t flattery, nothing was.
Every once in a while, though, he’d feel old.
There was a wide variety why he hated working with Wrath. Alone. Without Sloth or Lust to temper the kid; it was worse than Gluttony. It was worse than Pride.
One, he went through ammo a lot faster: the boy ate lead like potato chips. He wound up killing the kid more times than he killed humans, with the difference that the brat didn’t actually stay dead. It made Envy’s nerves feel a little better, but since the kid never actually learned not to piss him off, it didn’t make much of a difference. And then Envy didn’t have anymore spare ammo.
Two: he hated company.
Three: Wrath was loud. Excessively. High-pitched. Over-enthusiastic. Hyper. Made Envy want to vomit. Ate ammo and didn’t stay dead.
Four: Wrath smelled. He was never sure how since Wrath was dead, cold if not stiff (and too young to understand the innuendos, to be shamed or blackmailed or insulted), but Wrath smelled a little like a wild animal, a little like fur all greasy and mite-filled, especially when wet. When hot, Wrath smelled like new blood. Not old blood--that wasn’t new, Lust smelled a little like old blood when hot, and so had one of the earlier Prides--but new blood, fresh blood. Living blood, in fact.
You’re not really like us. It had to be the right arm and left leg. Had to be. Drove Envy’s nerves to the borderline. But you’re not really like them either.
The urge-the over-urge, the impulse that made his fingers spasm painfully and his eyebrow twitch-to kill Wrath was insane. It made it hard to even look at Wrath without his blood freezing, heavy in his veins, clogging up the arteries with sludge and snow and it hurt.
The saving grace-the restraint Envy yanked down on, not for the bastard but for him-was that Envy hated the impulse more than he hated Wrath.
In the old days, one killed what wasn’t quite human, or normal. Those times had been hard on science, and murdered the alchemists in truckloads for altering God’s will (shame only the Ishbalans did that now). There were variations on what was sin and what wasn’t, depending on the village and who slept with who’s husband, but the crimes had never really interested what-had-been-before Envy, but the punishments remained in his mind long after he got out of the habit of eating, of needing to sleep.
There were public hangings or stoning, the slow iron closets and being buried still alive. Modern thinking had no respect for being burned at the stake; generating a fire powerful enough to char the body all the way through was hard. The public duckings and/or drownings had their good points, depending on how hard the criminal struggled. Whatever happened, it was always important that events were public--pain was harder to endure when it was mental and physical, when everyone knew and saw and no one cared. In the old days, there were a million and one ways for a young inquisitive boy without much of a home life to get up close and personal with death without every dirtying his hands.
One of the Prides had wondered, once, where Envy got his ideas. Only Dante would know, and Dante was only a few decades older than he was.
Wrath made him feel old. And Wrath was so young, so unforgivably childish, that he didn’t even realize he was doing it.
He hated working with Wrath. He hated being close to Wrath, having to see and hear him, smell him. It made him nauseous, made him remember and realize, and so Envy wound up being a lot more…accommodating and amiable to the fucker than he’d ever been to Gluttony or the others, with the possible exception of Greed.
“So why did they do it?”
“For luck,” Envy’s eyes were half-lidded, his face more serious than the others ever saw because Wrath was seriously, sincerely too stupid to be properly charmed by the young-beautiful-and-coy act, and not clever enough to act on the insight-Wrath didn’t have the mental gears for betrayal or blackmail. There wasn’t any danger there.
As for Envy…well. There was no point in acting out a role if no one was going to appreciate it, and the intelligent-gorgeous-mentor role wasn’t so bad, at least not when Wrath kept his mouth shut for the majority of the time and stayed curled up on the opposite train bench and kept on staring at him wide-eyed like Envy knew the secrets to the universe. It wasn’t quite adoration, but it was pretty close to it. Good enough for legal work.
Besides, he killed the boy more times than he could count already, for being smelly or standing in the wrong spot. That sport had lost its fun, for the moment. And it was better having the kid hang on his every word than the brat yanking on his hair and bouncing off the ceiling.
“Leave a bowl of milk on the porch at night, and they wouldn’t come inside,” Envy picked the old superstitions out slowly, half-surprised at how many he remembered. “They wouldn’t kill you when you went into the woods with a willow branch, and wouldn’t steal the baby if you kept red string tied around their necks.”
Wrath huddled deeper behind his knees, eyes comically wide and innocent. Damp snow splattered the train’s window while the wheels rattled and thudded underneath. Acres and acres of nothing but dark gray snow flowed past the window, studded every now and then with a spindly grove or a single tree, growing darker as the sun set. The low yellow lamps dotted along the aisle swung gently with the train’s movement.
The energy the half-stones fed them wasn’t affected by temperature, but it seemed easier for homunculi to get tired in the deep winter. Envy blinked sluggishly, and let a small, worm-sized smile form on the edge of his lips: the mention of babies always shut Wrath up or freaked him out. If he freaked out enough, he’d leave Envy alone.
“Now up north, further east, the humans had another way to make them stay away,” the smile vanished, but Wrath had seen it and pressed further away. Envy kept his voice cool, crystalline and level. It sounded older than he liked, and sensible. “They took a child, newborn, and set it away in a tent. They fed it better than the other babies, let everyone else starve while the one baby got fat. They never let it out of the tent, never let it see daylight, never let anyone touch it.”
Envy paused and pretended to shift his arm, the leather seat creaking underneath his weight, his eyes on Wrath’s face.
“When it reached the age of five, they lead it outside for the first time with a piece of rope tied around his-or her--neck on the longest night of the year to the bonfire, and showed it to the rest of the village.”
Envy paused again. There was always the chance Wrath could mention this to Lust or Pride, could mention how much Envy knew and this wasn’t information he really wanted going public. Not his age, not the old ways. They could use that against him, carbon date him.
Quicksilver fast, far too fast for the temperature, Envy’s arms uncurled outwards, towards Wrath, and the twin bronze swords that had-magically-appeared out of nowhere slid through the bench’s leather back like hot butter. Dark feathery bits of Wrath’s haystack-hair landed on his bare knees.
“A goat on parade. About your age.” Wrath flinched unconsciously, his eyes wide with terrified delight. Envy smiled friendly, then slipped his form down into something smaller, chubbier, with an unkempt wild brown mass of hair, naked with light blue eyes. He was a little smaller than Wrath now, bigger than a five year old but with the same lost sick hopeful smile and gleam in his eyes.
Envy reversed his grip on the swords, and drove them inside deep. The wet shocked noises he made when the bronze slid between his ribs, the second through the soft spot between his shoulder and neck, may or may have not been faked. The pained weak sobs and whimpers coming out of his throat probably were. So were the tears that flowed slowly down either side of his face while Envy fought a losing battle to keep smiling, trembling, eyes pained and liquid. He didn’t stop until they were all the way in, his body making soft wet sounds as it yielded to the metal. Then he looked up again and smiled feebly.
Wrath froze half-getting up, his eyes wide. Whether he had planned to attack or stop him wasn’t certain, but it was a nice reaction, all the same.
Envy sat back easily, slipped back easily into something long angular and darkly beautiful without missing a beat, the swords and tears melting back into the rest of his body’s matter. He slouched in his seat casually and brushed his hair back. He didn’t bother to smile-the same act, the same persona, got boring after a while.
“Then the humans burned the body,” could he simulate burns like that? Probably. Wouldn’t be as fun though. His fingers traced his bare stomach absently. “The ashes and bones were wrapped in a skin and deposited in the forest for the other ones to find. It was supposed to protect the humans for the rest of winter.”
Wrath hadn’t sat down yet. Envy began ticking the points of the formula off on his finger, “Stabbed, burned, and abandoned until spring came. If no one died of sickness, the remains were kept in a box and the humans worshipped the box. Sometimes the other ones came after the humans anyway, but people don’t do things like that anymore.”
Wrath straightened slowly, started to curl back up on his seat.
“Now it’s just the alchemists,” Envy watched his eyes with disinterest, just a little bit bored.
He’d been the one to find Wrath, to bring him over without forcing him. It didn’t make Wrath any more loyal to him or less satisfying to kill, but it was…academically interesting, watching Wrath develop, knowing the scrap he’d started out as. Then again, he’d been the one to find the second Lust and first Pride, had watched all of them start off weak and fumbling, learning to walk and kill with inhuman skill, and then watched them all die. The numbers changed, but the formula didn’t. He looked out the window as his fingers went for a weapon he didn’t have, and tried not to feel as old as he was.
“You’re lying,” Wrath hissed softly. Envy had hit a soft spot. He hadn’t been sure how sensitive it would be.
“Maybe,” Envy shrugged airily, because it didn’t make any difference. He kept his eyes on the wet streaks of ice and dirt on the boxcar’s window. “It’s down in books,” the old-old books, “but you can’t read anyway.”
The leather squeaked as Wrath stormed off, bare feet stomping on the tatty carpet. Envy eyed the slope of Wrath’s back below the ugly cut-off shirt and down his ass outlined in blue-black spandex. Envy grinned his grin razor-sharp once, then kicked his face back into cool boredom without missing a beat.
“Even if I’m lying,” Envy called out lazily, slouched comfortably over the bench, his voice chilly and creamy, “You know it’s the truth.”
Filmy bits of snow had stuck to his windowpane so it wasn’t interesting to look about but since he looked so handsome and debonair doing it that really didn’t matter. It was everyone else’s reaction that mattered, and Wrath had stopped dead in his tracks. Envy choked another smile down, but his right foot twitched and swirled delightedly.
The silence dragged, then Wrath asked a little shakily, “Did they really do that?”
“You betcha. You know how they are.”
“But they don’t do stupid things like that anymore?”
“No,” Envy never stopped staring out the window, for some reason seeing thin blond hair and rage, and grinned faintly, as if he were sharing a secret with someone else. “They do different stupid things now.”
Something metal squeaked as Wrath leapt back on his bench, eyes a little wild and shivering despite himself. His mouth was stretched out in a nervous grimace, and he kept on blinking fast. The boy giggled, stilted and anxious. Then he hugged himself tightly.
Envy blinked slowly and his own smile faded as the laughter grew more hysterical and higher, then a full-out maniacal cacophony. His right hand twitched dangerously, and underneath the skin a nerve throbbed warningly, but didn’t actually strike out. He hated Wrath, but he hated other things more.
“Mm,” Wrath purred when he was done, grinning lopsidedly. “Humans are dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. Stupid!” Wrath giggled and rocked. “Hey. Tell me another one? Please? Please please please please!”
One killed what wasn’t human. Wrath was stupid. And either irrevocably insane or immature. He hadn’t noticed how still Envy had gone-he wasn’t breathing slowly, wasn’t breathing at all, and not even the iris around his pupils were expanding or contracting. His right hand had frozen with two of the fingers curled in, his right foot frozen mid-twitch at an angle. There was a moment.
He was old enough that nothing surprised him anymore. Not anymore. There had never been a homunculus with the power of alchemy, a creature that could stand on either side of the Gate and survive. It didn’t matter that if the creature could survive sane or not, what was impossible was that it survived at all.
What would Hohenheim of the Light say about that? About Wrath?
Wet white snow frosted the glass, and there were a million things he could’ve done. Very few of them would’ve surprised anyone.
“You want another one? All right,” Envy grinned and settled back, and settled into something red and white and less comfortable, the gold belt buckle glistening. One arm was flung over the bench and patting it. “C’mere.”
Not even Lust was stupid enough to get close to him when he was moody, not even if she needed it and Envy was being friendly. Well, she wasn’t stupid enough anymore, and Greed had never cared how the bloody the sex was as long as he got the lion’s share of whatever was happening. Wrath bounced next to him and jabbed his side with his finger, losing it up to the knuckle in thick red fur.
Envy had forgone the beard. And the fat. And the big voice. There was craftsmanship and then there was fucking dignity, so he only looked about twenty, trim and tall, his hair white and silky but still long over his red shoulders and down his back.
“Close to middle winter they started to go crazy. Humans are naturally crazy, and they get crazier when you keep ‘em locked up in the dark all together. They attacked each other, and sometimes they died. This stuff,” Envy tapped the window, noting how Wrath pressed closer and wrapped himself in the folds of the heavy red robe, petting it with his fingers, “kept anyone from leaving. Like the Gate.”
Wrath froze instinctively, and Envy tensed his arm, ready to yank the boy closer and snap his neck open.
“They got tired of dying that way. Seeing crazy. So they got a guy to break into the houses throughout the village-and everything was villages back then-and take someone away.”
Envy let his hand drop from the window and stopped, leaning back. His eyes were still on the smeared dirt and ice on the window, on the low lamplight reflecting gold off the snow. The image of the fat man in the red suit still hung around some of the human cultures, but the paranoia had been turned into something gentler, moralistic observation instead of staking out take-aways. The tradition of taking-away had also been lost; now it was only getting and getting, and not losing. Of course, electricity and science and damn alchemists were the reasons behind that change as well.
No one remembered. Dante didn’t give a fuck. No one else knew.
Wrath frowned, “I don’t get it.”
No one understood the old ways now. No one even believed them, not even a brainless hybrid bastard of a monster and idiot.
“He dressed like this,” Envy’s neck swung gracefully, thin white hair that could’ve been blond sliding over his shoulder to hang against his thin cheek gracefully, “and he took something, and left something else. Equivalent trade, even way back then.”
Envy ran his fingers over the curve of the kid’s face, still round and soft with youth. There was still a touch of blue in the kid’s eyes too, a hint of something that was too human to be like Them but not enough for legal work.
“I still don’t get it,” Wrath moved away from his fingers irritably, but didn’t move away from him. “How’s that bad? That’s not scary.”
Envy paused, then smiled warmly. That was right-the kid thought he was telling ghost stories, not history. Not the future. Little bitch. Ah well. “Do you know what he did with them? The one’s he took? They never came back. What would you do with people, if you had a lot of them?”
“I’d kill them,” Wrath didn’t even think about it, didn’t grin or snarl predatorily, but recited his lessons perfectly. Young, stupid and so detestable. “He killed them?”
“Their families knew. It was all legal. Now,” Envy’s fingers slid lightly down the boy’s right arm, tanned and warm to the touch. Wrath froze, but that was expected: Wrath was just smart enough to not trust him (thank God), but not smart enough to stay away. “You have something I want.”
The smile stalked across his mouth like a shark, and Envy leaned closer, eyes gleaming.
“And I have something,” he switched forms without changing his smile, without changing the expression in his eyes, because Sloth would never be able to pull off his expression and that was the fun part. The kid would see her and know it was him, and the lovely thing was, the kid probably wouldn’t even… “I think you’d like.”
Not-blue not-completely-violet eyes blinked twice in confusion, then Wrath whined, “That doesn’t work if I see you do it, it doesn’t work--”
Envy leaned down the remaining-what? Two inches? Three?-and pressed his lips lightly against the boy’s cheek, smelling something a little like milk and blood, and held the position for a while. When he moved back, Wrath remembered to breathe again, remembered that it wasn’t Sloth doing this because Sloth would never ever in a million years--
“No,” Envy agreed. “It doesn’t work when you see me do it. You know, and I know,” he spoke slowly, rhythmically, and never stopped brushing his fingers against the boy’s arm, “But that doesn’t mean it won’t feel good.”
“What.” Wrath’s eyes were fixed on his collarbone, on the right side of his breasts. He’d left the red Uroborus off, kept it on his thigh. His voice had gotten unaccountably small. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve seen how you look at her,” Envy whispered conspiratorially. “I’ve seen how you run to her. You don’t try to hide it. I’m just trying to be nice. If it’s not something you want, just say so.”
Envy leaned back a little, shifting his shoulders against Sloth’s spaghetti straps. There was always the chance he could be wrong; there was always the chance the sun would slam into the earth and kill everyone without warning in an explosive fiery death. The arm wrapped around the kid’s shoulders slid mysteriously to the kid’s waist, and trailed its fingers along his spine. Wrath was shivering-not continuously, not even hard, but in light gentle bursts and he kept on blinking rapidly. The kid had-mysteriously-also wound up almost in Envy’s lap. Envy waited a while longer.
“But. Why? You’re. You’re not. Uh. Nice. Very often.” Envy was too surprised to be insulted-the kid was actually questioning and thinking intelligently, even if he still couldn’t form complete sentences. Wrath was getting a little intelligent. Homunculi usually did, the longer they were conscious, and the kid was about a month or so old now. “So. Why? At me? I--”
“I can be nice when I want to, you know,” Envy smiled disarmingly to take the sarcasm off the words. Something in his chest constricted and Wrath looked down surprised when his fingers spasmed. “When I want to be.”
With time, with the kid’s knack for alchemy, Wrath might actually grow up to be a problem. Possibly. Greed and Lust had been sharp from practically the beginning, aware of their surroundings and existence even while they were smelly gobs of mucus and bones slapped together, but then they’d died a lot older than the kid. With the kid’s alchemic ability, his ability to be Us and Them at the same damn time, he could grow to be a real pain in the asshole if he ever became slightly intelligent, ever learned to think for himself and mature beyond his mommy-complex.
“And right now I want to be. I’ve got the time for it. And besides that,” something damnable and hateful inside of him wondered if Greed could’ve done this better, smoother and faster, “you’ve got something I want. I’d like to make a deal. If you don’t want to though, that’s fine.”
Wrath blinked. His eyes followed the liquid slide of Envy’s-technically Sloth’s-black hair against his shoulder as he leaned back. He could force the kid, but that wouldn’t be as fun. Would practically defeat the purpose.
Soft pale fingers moved over Envy’s thin ones, touched his arm and hair inquisitively, and Envy smiled because Sloth never reacted when she was touched. Sloth never cared about anything. “So. What. What do you want? From me?”
“I’ve never seen anything like you,” Envy admitted, his voice not quite Sloth’s languid roll but not his own light cheerful banter. “Your body can do things I haven’t seen before. I’m curious. I want to know what it feels like.” Envy tried not to look at Ed’s arm, tried not to touch the skin that was almost warm and softer than the rest of Wrath. “That’s all. Trade for a trade. All right?”
Wrath blinked again, his eyes staring just a little too long on the weak gentle smile in Sloth’s eyes, on her lips, and swallowed hard. “Promise you won’t tell her?”
Envy managed not to smile. It was a magnificent effort, but he managed. “Promise.”
Later, of course, he’d wonder if the kid really realized what he was getting himself into, if he actually thought of his ‘mommy’ that way, or if he just didn’t know better. Or maybe because it was Envy and so didn’t count…or something. He’d wonder later, be pissed at Sloth for not caring or even reacting when he told her, but at the moment he was more interested in the taste of the kid’s mouth, the taste of his skin.
Humans tasted nasty-too warm, too salty, with the faint yet aggravating aftertaste of coppery/rust of living blood and saliva. The homunculi tasted a little like ice, a little like bone, with the gum-splitting acidic fiery tang from the half-Stones. Wrath tasted normal, felt a little too soft, too small, with a vague aftertaste of warm shining metal.
The curve underneath his chin was dry against Envy’s-technically Sloth’s-long slow tongue, his fingers still trailing slowly over the kid’s spine, underneath the raggedy shirt. The kid’s fingers curled around his shoulder as his breathing got a little shaky; the kid was still shivering a little too. Envy smiled to himself, against the kid’s ear with the grungy black fur brushing against his face and fighting a wince, freezing when he tasted warm salty sweat. His fingers clenched instinctively against the alchemic node on the kid’s back and while it didn’t feel anything like it would’ve if an alchemist would’ve touched it, the kid still jerked in his grasp.
It took effort, to remember not to bite, that he was supposed to be gentle and caring, to remember not to draw blood or claw Wrath’s eyes out when tiny soft kisses began fluttering against his collarbone, his jaw, and Envy’s breathing was ragged and strained more from the stress than anything.
“Want you,” he kissed the tiny right fingertips, forced his hands not to snap the wrists and yank the arm out of it’s socket. “Want you, sweetheart. You’ll give me this, right?” Envy rubbed the knuckles against his cheek, looking at the edge of Wrath’s mouth instead of his eyes, smelling Ed and tasting a half-breed monster.
“Momma,” the word sounded odd as Wrath said it, tasted it out and found while it wasn’t really right it wasn’t bad, and it was good enough for now. Ed’s fingertips brushed against Envy’s shoulder feather-light and fearful. “Momma.”
When he wanted to, Envy could move slowly. He could kiss like glass, fragile and cool, and even though his body was only a little warmer than outside the body in his lap still curled into his. His lips were still gently pressed against Wrath’s temple. “It’s all right. Relax; just give it to me, don’t worry about it.”
Wrath shuddered. “Don’t. Don’t take though. Ok? Don’t take it.”
Pathetic.
Sloth wasn’t busting out, not like Lust, not even like Envy the few times he felt like being female for a few days or hours, but the kid’s hand was still tiny against his chest, trying to cup Sloth’s breast and squeezing gently. Envy twitched and hid his face in the prickly-soft shaggy hair, then groaned as something not really him and not exactly the brat touched his skin, touched his self, and pushed gently inside his chest, inside the alchemized cells of his body, through his bones and meat without ever actually breaking them, just pulling them along the movement.
The feeling wasn’t too odd--something moving inside his chest that wasn’t him, wasn’t exactly pleasant but not actually painful, weird and stomach-turning as anything. Something not him was moving inside of him, as close to being alive without being human as any of them could ever hope to get. What would this feel like for a human? For Ed? Would it kill him? How long would it take? How much could he take?
One hand scrabbled over Wrath’s back, over the nodes and knobby spine and squeezed his thighs and ass, seeking purchase. Envy kept his teeth buried inside his own arm, not hard enough to draw blood but enough to keep the names ambiguous, muffled. Not even the kid was that dumb, probably.
Warm. So damn warm inside. Like having real blood again…
Envy moaned again, voice cellophane thin and weak in this body, and ran his fingers over Wrath’s bare stomach, the soft angles of breastbone and ribcage and (fucking damn it hard not to dig his claws in, not to draw blood and the kid wasn’t either) nudged his knuckles against Wrath’s crotch and spandex, not really registering the change in Wrath’s breathing, in his voice.
It should have hurt more than it did-having the formula and coding of another array inside his body, overlapping the commands and functions of his own body cells, touching the decentralized cores of his stones. It should have hurt and it did hurt enough to kill for.
Instead of actually speaking, Envy spent his time mouthing Ed’s right shoulder, drinking the sweat too heated and metallic to be dead, still seeing thin blond hair in the window’s reflection and hooked a finger in the hem of the bastard’s too-short spandex shorts and slipped them to the kid’s knees with a plastic snapping sound.
The hand-a kid’s hand but not the kid’s hand-slid through his chest downwards, to the base of Sloth’s stomach covered with the dark purple suede material. Wrath’s hand slowly fingered his intestines, his guts and tubing. Then it started to pull out.
Envy’s breathing caught and slowed and his eyelids fluttered, “Are you still all right?” The thing between the boy’s legs was tiny, warm and sweaty but not really hard, not quite yet. It was easy to forget sometimes that Wrath was a child, still new, but after boning Greed and Pride off and on the last two hundred years or so besides the odd mad alchemist, Envy had gotten used to a certain quality in sex. “Wrath?”
Now that he paid attention, the brat’s breathing was frightened, clammy. Envy blinked languidly, tasting the alchemy in the back of his throat a bit back another moan, “Sweetheart?”
The arm around his neck tightened and the boy’s forehead pressed harder into his neck. The hand inside his body tightened briefly on a kidney, only since the boy’s physical definitions were blurred and confused inside Envy-it felt like his blood was warm, tasted like Ed-it wasn’t unnerving. It probably should’ve been, but over the kid’s shuddery terrified gasps Envy only blinked slowly, remembered to stay in character and pressed a soft kiss against Wrath’s ear, down the thin trembling neck.
“It’s all right,” Envy murmured in Sloth’s calming drawl, stuck on the heady smell of Ed’s sweat and blood perfectly mixed with the charred chemical tang of the homunculi. “It’s all right, what’s wrong? It’s--”
“Don’t leave me,” the kid was actually crying. Not hard, not wet sobs or anything, but definitely little panicked hiccups. Envy’s body shuddered, but he didn’t think the brat could hear him laughing since he kept on talking. The hand tightened inside him, fisted and Envy held back on losing it right then and there. “Please. Don’t leave me. I don’t want to. Don’t want. Don’t take it.”
“You don’t have to,” the sincerity, wet and a little chilly, was real, as real as anything Envy had ever made. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Want you. I’ll stay with you.” His hand fondling the kid’s cock (didn’t even really feel like touching someone else’s sex, felt more like handling a baby animal) gentled and warmed, used only the soft parts of his palm curled up. He continued to dot Sloth’s pouty full kisses along the boy’s bare neck, on the soft part behind his ear. Gradually, the infant in his hand jerked and twitched warmly, sweating. “Just give me what I want. Want you. That’s all. That’s all.”
The boy-Wrath, not the other one, not the other always outraged furious idealistic one he really wanted-continued to shiver in his grasp, and Envy managed not to squeeze too hard.
“Ok,” Wrath’s face rubbed against his chest, against Sloth’s breasts. “Momma. Momma.” Envy tasted enamel off his own teeth as his jaw clenched.
The hand still petting Wrath’s spine, his skinny ass and bony shoulder blades slid into the chilled milky skin like chilled milk, sliding through the back of Wrath’s ribcage without a hitch. It was hotter, more compact and alive than he’d ever imagined. More than…he even remembered.
Envy focused on his breathing, on the child squirming gently in his hand and his lap. He couldn’t remember wanting to fuck something so bad since Greed loss whatever charm he had, since the last time he’d broken the Fullmetal Bastard’s arm again. His fingers twitched uncontrollably, and he wasn’t quite sure what it was they wanted to do now.
Ed. He could smell him, taste him, and he’d only come this close when he was beating the crap out of the shrimp. He could taste the alchemy, the life.
I should’ve been you.
If Wrath was ever allowed to mature-ever grew a cock worth sucking or fucking-he really would be a problem. He didn’t have Ed’s personality, the Elric essence but he had some of the humans’ power, and with time he might actually cultivate the Elric talent, if not genius. The last thing the world needed was another fucking Elric with their power, their beauty and immortality, and if anyone had both worlds it should’ve been him!
Envy’s teeth scraped gently against the kid’s neck, tasted sweat and metal and tears with a hint of blood. The animal in his palm, still too young, spasmed once gently and Wrath gasped, surprised. Inside, something in Envy blinked slowly and sneered, feeling all four hundred years heavily: the kid had barely lasted ten minutes.
Youth. Fuck it. He’d forgotten all about it. What it meant to be new. What it meant not to be bored with everything, to be the only one who remembered the old stories and ways. To be alone.
Gently, so very gently he’d wonder on it later, Envy pressed their lips together again. He tasted ice and salty water and warmth. Wrath clung to him still gasping, his fingers looping in Sloth’s spaghetti straps and liquid black hair, and breathed in deeply, shakily. Then, out of nowhere, he began to giggle. Envy closed his eyes, concentrating on the feel of living organic warmth inside his chest, and pictured Wrath just a little bit grown up. Pictured Ed a little bit older. Wrath began to giggle harder.
His teeth tore through the kid’s throat easily, tasted blood and snapped the brainstem clean off. Envy flowed back to his original form, the shape he’d chosen above all others, and tried to pretend the blood was Ed’s.
***
If you hold a bird gently, the bird will stay. If you hold it too hard, it’s eyes’ll bug out. And then the pet shop owner won’t let you hold the mice and animals anymore.
--Rose Nyland (Betty White), The Golden Girls
***
A/N: Today’s Notes: Whaaaat?
I can’t do kink. I remembered this, like, four hours after trying to write the fic weeks ago and not doing it. Bad. laylah, sorry the thing was so late. I wrote it three different ways before hammering this one. Argh. 0o
The kobold-story (sword baby) borrowed from Neil Gaiman’s wonderful American Gods novel. Most everything else I made up. Got to reference Care and Feeding, so was geekily amused and satisfied.
Final question: Did I actually follow the prompt?
And then it got weird.