After Tomorrow
Title: After Tomorrow
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed (pre-slash)
Summary: The morning would bring blood. It might not be his hands boiling their life’s blood, but it was his orders. His only consolation was that only soldiers would die.
He hated this place. He hated the cold and he hated the snow and he hated the way it crept under his clothes no matter how many layers he wore. It was different than sand and grit everywhere, but Roy Mustang wasn’t sure which he hated the most.
The first war he had been young and stupid and unable to do anything about his orders. Now, he was the one giving orders to kill.
Dusk set heavily in the sky as he walked towards his tent. Their tent. No one had their own, even a general. Most nights, he was grateful for the warm body that slid between his blankets and shared heat with him. He could almost feel it now and he would beg, damn it, if he shared a tent with anyone else.
Instead, he’d go back, remove a few outer layers, and huddle under his blankets and furs and do his best to keep from freezing until his tentmate finally gave in and crossed the distance of his own volition. Some nights it took longer than others.
A few soldiers saluted as he walked along and he grunted out appropriate responses and saluted back, cursing the cold with each white-frosted breath.
He threw the tent flap back and closed it quickly behind him. It was warmer inside the tent but nothing would ease the cold. Not really. Two rifles sat, ready to use, by the desk that had been set up between the two cots. That was the concession to being a general around here. A desk to review things in private when everyone else slept.
He dumped his overcoat onto the back of the chair and tossed his jacket with it. It was the most he would remove tonight. He wouldn’t sleep more than an hour or two anyway, if at all.
The morning would bring blood. It might not be his hands boiling their life’s blood, but it was his orders. His only consolation was that only soldiers would die.
He kicked his boots off and snapped his fingers, sending a flare of heat around the tent. It wouldn’t last long but it took the edge off for a moment. Especially for his tentmate.
He curled into his blankets on his cot - a slightly larger than usual one since he was a general after all and that meant something right? - and had barely settled when he heard the rustling from the other side of the room.
“About damn time, Bastard,” his tentmate complained as he pushed the blankets aside and pushed Roy onto his back. Roy complied as he did every night and let Ed rearrange him and both their sets of blankets until they were cocooned. It was almost too hot with all the layers of clothes but for just a few moments he could almost remember what the warm summer days of Amestris felt like.
All too soon his body would adjust to the added heat and realize he was still cold.
“You should have been back an hour ago. If I’d known you were staying that long I would have too.”
Roy sighed. “To do what? Guard me?” That was exactly what Fullmetal meant. Ed wasn’t his bodyguard but he rarely left Roy’s side for that exact reason and they both knew it. Ever since Hawkeye had been sent home, taking a bullet to the shoulder to protect him, Ed had taken her ever watchful place.
Even worse because at least Hawkeye hadn’t joined him in his tent. Ed’s care never stopped. He didn’t give Roy the respect of personal boundaries.
Roy didn’t know how to be grateful for it, but he was.
“If someone puts a bullet in me tonight, it would be too late anyway. The orders have been given and the battle begins with the dawn. I don’t even need to be here.”
“Then why are you?”
“Why are you, Ed?”
Ed had stayed true to himself in this war, in his own way. He’d killed men but he’d refused to do so with alchemy. He was a far better shot with a rifle than Roy had ever wanted him to be though and more than once, blood had run down the length of his transmuted blade.
Ed burrowed in closer to him in a feat that seemed impossible a moment before. Roy wrapped his hand around part of the metal port on Fullmetal’s shoulder. It was the worst part for his subordinate. That joint ached constantly in the cold and there was nothing he could do about it. His hand was only another layer against the cold, but it was something.
“I was ordered here, Bastard,” Ed answered. “Same as every other soldier.”
“And you were ordered to leave once your area of expertise was exhausted.” No matter what anyone else had to say, Roy refused to let the State Alchemists be used as weapons again. That didn’t mean they didn’t have a way to contribute to a war though. Roy had burned supply depots to the ground, cut troops off from reinforcements, and burnt bridges that gave their enemies lines of retreat, but he hadn’t so much as snapped a finger at a person. People died, but they were never his actual target.
It was enough to appease his conscience.
“My area of expertise expanded when Hawkeye took a bullet.”
“She never meant you to stay in her place,” Roy lied. Ed was one of his best men, he couldn’t deny that, but he had too many feelings about having Fullmetal on the front lines.
“Bullshit,” he called.
Roy just dropped his chin and turned his head ever so slightly into Ed’s hair. Holding him like this at night was more calming than he ever wanted to admit. Roy had taken lovers from all over the world, but nothing had ever touched him the way Ed curled up against him for warmth did.
There was nothing sexual in it, but sometimes, Roy felt a promise.
“Tomorrow will end this,” Ed said softly. “One way or another.”
“I know. They have the numbers, but what you’ve come up with…”
It would kill a lot of soldiers. It would demoralize the Drachman army. It would kill another part of Ed and Roy’s fingers bit a little harder into Ed’s hip as if he could keep him from rising from the bed the next day to see what he’d created.
The plan was brilliant. The caverns dug would cave as Ed planned. Amestris’ northern border would probably never be questioned again. And the Drachman army, men who were only there to serve their country, would be decimated.
There were no monsters this time. No half men-half animals, no psychotic lab rats thrown out among the sheep. Just men with families that would wonder why they didn’t come home, and an underground river that would wash away the evidence that they’d ever been there.
“After tomorrow, we’ll go home.” Roy said.
“And then I’ll have to learn to live with this.”
There was so much defeat in his voice, so much self-hate, but Roy understood that. He understood what it was to be a monster in your own eyes. In your own heart.
Roy closed his eyes and said what he shouldn’t. What he felt, in his heart.
“Then I suppose after tomorrow, you’ll have to come live with me. We’ll learn how to live with this together.”
They had never crossed a line from subordinate and superior to anything else. Ed warmed his bed because it was simply too cold to do anything else. There was nothing to make him think Ed would even welcome a favorable glance from him. Their relationship had always been antagonistic, even if the last few years had seen more humor than anger between them.
But Ed had stayed. Ed had picked up the damn rifle. Ed had planned and plotted and picked out the best possible solution. Ed had been at his side through it all.
No line had been crossed except in Roy’s heart.
He felt the intake of breath against his neck at the offer and he knew Fullmetal understood. He felt the barest brush against his skin, the almost touch of lips, and a heavy sigh.
“We have a lot to do, after tomorrow.”
Now, if they survived to the next night, the day after tomorrow, seemed to hold a world of promise.