tdei
in
springkink
Fullmetal Alchemist (Greed/Roy)
Title: Number 77
Author/Artist: tdei
Rating: PG
Warnings: n/a
Word count: 1834
Prompt: Fullmetal Alchemist, Greed/Roy: abduction as seduction, claiming - Greed has always lived up to his name.
A/N: Sorry about the slight lateness. :X I'm terrible... T_T But I promise-- even if I'm late, my claims will eventually be done! D: (With heartfelt apologies for the lateness.) Well, here is the first fic, hope it's alright. (And I haven't read the other version of the same claim yet, but I just saw that I have also eeriely echoed the same phrase in mine version. o_o Cool!) Thanks to Mati for her help! :) ♥
---
If he’s desperate enough, the thing that was once Roy Mustang thinks he can remember something before this 10 by 12 by 7 foot cell, but the memories are filled with ashes and blood, thunder and fury. Anything else is a mere blur.
Between his involuntary stay in this enclosed space that drives him inch by inch into insanity and a past filled with death, Roy feels, most of the time, thinking of times before the dimness and shadow interspaced with pain is worse. Sometimes, he wishes he remembers why.
Most days, Roy is afraid of his own sanity because as long as he has it, he knew he suffered. Somewhere in his growing madness remains a spark of lucidity that endures with the defiance that had destined him for this fate. It helps him remember who he was and what happened to him. How the military brass had charged him with treason during the Ishvaran War and secreted him to this institute lab. How the scientists here had done unspeakable experiments on him and made him into something inhuman.
He is a success, according to the lab scientists. Roy doesn’t understand how, but it lets him live longer, so he doesn’t care. Since his alteration, the institute wanted many things from him.
They want, but Roy never lets them take.
What they want, they had to obtain through force or deception. Roy understands he makes his imprisonment worse by failing to make things easy for them, but he knows nothing he does can make it better. Obedience is the last thing Roy has that his pride refuses to yield for the sake of a little less pain. The researchers quickly understand that and punish him for his defiance the worst way they knew how.
They boxed him from the sky.
The cell they shut him in is designed to be too small and the one wall that opens out into a hall faces a blank wall through thick, narrowly spaced metal bars. Steel stripes, sterile white, and innumerable shadows are all Roy sees except when he is dragged away for more experiments. Even these, Roy can’t always touch as they bind him. It drives him crazy. It makes him desperate. But he endures.
The Flame Alchemist knew better than anyone how to create an inferno from a spark.
Time streamlines and Roy often thinks everything is one long hallucination. But one day, a shadow in his cell comes up to him and does something none have done before. It speaks and Roy hears it outside of his head.
Until it speaks, Roy doesn't remember that the thing watching him is called a man. Or something that is pretending to be a man. His instinct had been good and now, augmented with a second sense, it is phenomenal. The raptor instinct has him feeling down to his now partially hollow bones that the thing before him is wrong, wrong, wrong.
It is dressed all in black, Roy realizes, after a moment of thinking its skin was actually all black. Roy dismisses his first look as a mistake as he sees how pale the thing’s skin is.
The black had caused Roy's numbed mind to mistake it for just a shadow at first. All the other men Roy sees now wear white lab coats or pastel colored hospital gowns.
It isn’t very tall although it is taller than Roy. Its spiky tuft of hair adds a few inches. Its face is angular and strong. Something about it screams predator. Roy almost half-thinks raptor-- but his purple eyes are flat like a shark's. His teeth, revealed by an amused smile, are as sharp as one’s.
The thing stretches out a corded hand. "Nice to meet ya, I'm called Greed."
Roy's strange gold eyes track the limb. Roy knows better than to believe that Greed reaches to offer him salvation. It reaches to drag him further to damnation.
"Come on,” says the slit-pupiled thing. “We're going."
Going...? Out? Greed would take him out?
Roy’s defiance wavers before the one thing that can persuade him, even though it’s the lie the researchers had promised him many, many times.
"Why?" Roy rasps, disused voice a grating whisper.
Greed's smirk is too pure to be lustful and too keen to be gluttonous. "I want," the monster says, greed resonating from every cell, devil's eyes on Roy.
It's all it says, but Roy needs nothing more to understand.
Want. Take. Have. It is an inhuman thing's straightforward logic.
"That's all?"
“My policy is to never lie."
Instinct has Roy believing it. Everyone looked at him like the means to an end, but Greed looks at him as an end. So, the chimera once known as the Flame Alchemist follows when the monster beckons.
When Roy sees the sky the first time since the scientists took him apart and remade him, he freezes for a moment in disbelieving shock. His heart nearly explodes from the sudden giddiness and a spark in him burns hot at Greed's sharp grin against the blue of open, wide, wide skies.
Roy lets Greed take, but Roy doesn't let Greed have.
Greed first hears of 'Number 77' from scuttlebutt, the lifeline of the Devil's Nest's operations. To his bemusement, the whispered rumors didn't come from random nobodies somewhere far away but from his own subordinate chimeras at his bar. He begins to notice the continued gossiping only after the number is whispered over and over from multiple lips in situations where the most interesting of secrets are told.
Eventually, Greed's attentions are won and Greed asks his more reliable followers about the rumor.
Number 77 turns out to be a chimera. One who was a special success kept under enforced lock and key and who had not gotten to escape with the others in previous breakouts from the military labs. His subordinates tell him it is so supposedly unique that Greed's curiosity compels him to search for it to have a look.
Greed finds it. When he sees it-- him-- after breaking into the lab, his greed demanded he have him. So, Greed stole him away.
The chimera was smaller than most of the other chimera, with unruly uncut black hair and gold eyes. He looks more human than most of the others, but not indistinguishable like Martel and Dorchette. What sets him apart from other young men were the large black patterned dark grey wings folding from his back, the tiny black feathers sprouting at the nape of his neck instead of hair, and the sharp tips of his fingers that were closer to talons than nails. And, because the chimera was unusually lighter than he should be for his size, the fact that he could fly.
Peregrine Falcon, Martel had told Greed, was what his new acquisition had been merged with.
Alchemist, Greed discovers, was what the bird had been merged to. One fucking hell of a find.
In attack, or its stoop, the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on the planet. In offense, or defense, the Flame Alchemist is one of the worst enemies in the world.
As a chimera, Roy Mustang is fucking amazing and Roy is his. His subordinate.
Greed would still take the institute researchers apart for hurting what was his, but he couldn't help but admire their work.
See. Chase. Kill. Roy's predatory elegance can be cut down to those three words. He could cut a man down with only words, almost as fast as he could cut down prey when he dived. He could vaporize city blocks with just two fingers. And despite what looked like a fluffy hump jutting out from his back, or the fashion disaster of a partially feathered cape he wore to conceal it, he remained ridiculously popular with the ladies.
That's the only thing about him that annoys Greed, just a little.
One day when Roy throws himself to Greed's defense even though the homunculus never needs it from anyone, Roy leans close to Greed to assure himself that Greed was fine, afterward. It'd taken a very long time before Greed earned Roy's loyalty to the point where Roy attacked in Greed's defense of his own will without being ordered to. Greed had thought nothing of it, but Martel had said it was amazing, all considered.
Sometimes, like this time, he imagines he gets what she is on about.
It's when he catches one protective, feral eye with his own as he feels Roy's warm breaths against his chin that Greed has an epiphany. For a few seconds his greed is satisfied. The revelation leaves the homunculus surprised enough that when Roy starts to shift away the sudden want that strikes Greed is utterly uncontrollable. It is then Greed realizes his annoyance is not only at how Roy takes away some of the ladies' attention from him, but also at how the ladies take away Roy's attention from Greed.
Greed catches Roy's wrist above a gloved hand before the falcon chimera moves. "Hey."
Roy raises an eyebrow questioningly, composure unruffled and attire immaculate. Roy is, Greed and his gang found shortly after they appropriated him from the illegal lab, a strangely controlled man for such an uncontrollable creature.
"I think," says Greed, blunt as Roa's sledgehammer, "I want you."
"Oh?" The velvety monosyllable is cutting. Tell me something new, sneers its undertone. Roy cocks his head to one side, trying to appraise what Greed is playing at.
"In the 'for real' kind of way," Greed clarifies, realizing Roy misinterpreted his declaration for his usual levity.
Roy's expression wrinkles slightly before it smoothes out to unreadable as he gets what Greed is saying. His face tells Greed nothing but his slightly flared wings give away his mild discomfiture. Greed knows Roy thinks Greed is incapable of wanting in such a way. "Impossible," Roy tells Greed curtly.
But it is possible, Greed thinks, proof pulsing with his heart. "There is no such thing as no such thing." Greed is sure Roy's instinct could read the sincerity in his intense stare.
Between this heartbeat and the next, the homunculus sees the cool expression on Roy's face flicker. Before the crack could seal, Greed moves against it. He raises Roy's hand to his lips and bites down on the tips of Roy's spark-cloth gloves, quirking an eyebrow devilishly and slowly tugs them off Roy's hands, stripping him of his power. Of his defenses.
Roy tenses like many times before. Greed pauses, feeling slightly thwarted as he patiently waits for Roy to glare at him and step back from the invasion of his personal space like Roy always does, but Roy doesn't glare. He doesn't move at all.
When Roy's fingers finally tighten slightly around Greed's own, resisting the desire to pull Roy closer never crosses Greed's mind.
He sees the turmoil in Roy's black-ringed, black-flecked gold eyes, but Greed doesn't care about uncertainties and complications.
Greed only cares he had wanted and now he knows he has.
Author/Artist: tdei
Rating: PG
Warnings: n/a
Word count: 1834
Prompt: Fullmetal Alchemist, Greed/Roy: abduction as seduction, claiming - Greed has always lived up to his name.
A/N: Sorry about the slight lateness. :X I'm terrible... T_T But I promise-- even if I'm late, my claims will eventually be done! D: (With heartfelt apologies for the lateness.) Well, here is the first fic, hope it's alright. (And I haven't read the other version of the same claim yet, but I just saw that I have also eeriely echoed the same phrase in mine version. o_o Cool!) Thanks to Mati for her help! :) ♥
---
If he’s desperate enough, the thing that was once Roy Mustang thinks he can remember something before this 10 by 12 by 7 foot cell, but the memories are filled with ashes and blood, thunder and fury. Anything else is a mere blur.
Between his involuntary stay in this enclosed space that drives him inch by inch into insanity and a past filled with death, Roy feels, most of the time, thinking of times before the dimness and shadow interspaced with pain is worse. Sometimes, he wishes he remembers why.
Most days, Roy is afraid of his own sanity because as long as he has it, he knew he suffered. Somewhere in his growing madness remains a spark of lucidity that endures with the defiance that had destined him for this fate. It helps him remember who he was and what happened to him. How the military brass had charged him with treason during the Ishvaran War and secreted him to this institute lab. How the scientists here had done unspeakable experiments on him and made him into something inhuman.
He is a success, according to the lab scientists. Roy doesn’t understand how, but it lets him live longer, so he doesn’t care. Since his alteration, the institute wanted many things from him.
They want, but Roy never lets them take.
What they want, they had to obtain through force or deception. Roy understands he makes his imprisonment worse by failing to make things easy for them, but he knows nothing he does can make it better. Obedience is the last thing Roy has that his pride refuses to yield for the sake of a little less pain. The researchers quickly understand that and punish him for his defiance the worst way they knew how.
They boxed him from the sky.
The cell they shut him in is designed to be too small and the one wall that opens out into a hall faces a blank wall through thick, narrowly spaced metal bars. Steel stripes, sterile white, and innumerable shadows are all Roy sees except when he is dragged away for more experiments. Even these, Roy can’t always touch as they bind him. It drives him crazy. It makes him desperate. But he endures.
The Flame Alchemist knew better than anyone how to create an inferno from a spark.
Time streamlines and Roy often thinks everything is one long hallucination. But one day, a shadow in his cell comes up to him and does something none have done before. It speaks and Roy hears it outside of his head.
Until it speaks, Roy doesn't remember that the thing watching him is called a man. Or something that is pretending to be a man. His instinct had been good and now, augmented with a second sense, it is phenomenal. The raptor instinct has him feeling down to his now partially hollow bones that the thing before him is wrong, wrong, wrong.
It is dressed all in black, Roy realizes, after a moment of thinking its skin was actually all black. Roy dismisses his first look as a mistake as he sees how pale the thing’s skin is.
The black had caused Roy's numbed mind to mistake it for just a shadow at first. All the other men Roy sees now wear white lab coats or pastel colored hospital gowns.
It isn’t very tall although it is taller than Roy. Its spiky tuft of hair adds a few inches. Its face is angular and strong. Something about it screams predator. Roy almost half-thinks raptor-- but his purple eyes are flat like a shark's. His teeth, revealed by an amused smile, are as sharp as one’s.
The thing stretches out a corded hand. "Nice to meet ya, I'm called Greed."
Roy's strange gold eyes track the limb. Roy knows better than to believe that Greed reaches to offer him salvation. It reaches to drag him further to damnation.
"Come on,” says the slit-pupiled thing. “We're going."
Going...? Out? Greed would take him out?
Roy’s defiance wavers before the one thing that can persuade him, even though it’s the lie the researchers had promised him many, many times.
"Why?" Roy rasps, disused voice a grating whisper.
Greed's smirk is too pure to be lustful and too keen to be gluttonous. "I want," the monster says, greed resonating from every cell, devil's eyes on Roy.
It's all it says, but Roy needs nothing more to understand.
Want. Take. Have. It is an inhuman thing's straightforward logic.
"That's all?"
“My policy is to never lie."
Instinct has Roy believing it. Everyone looked at him like the means to an end, but Greed looks at him as an end. So, the chimera once known as the Flame Alchemist follows when the monster beckons.
When Roy sees the sky the first time since the scientists took him apart and remade him, he freezes for a moment in disbelieving shock. His heart nearly explodes from the sudden giddiness and a spark in him burns hot at Greed's sharp grin against the blue of open, wide, wide skies.
Roy lets Greed take, but Roy doesn't let Greed have.
Greed first hears of 'Number 77' from scuttlebutt, the lifeline of the Devil's Nest's operations. To his bemusement, the whispered rumors didn't come from random nobodies somewhere far away but from his own subordinate chimeras at his bar. He begins to notice the continued gossiping only after the number is whispered over and over from multiple lips in situations where the most interesting of secrets are told.
Eventually, Greed's attentions are won and Greed asks his more reliable followers about the rumor.
Number 77 turns out to be a chimera. One who was a special success kept under enforced lock and key and who had not gotten to escape with the others in previous breakouts from the military labs. His subordinates tell him it is so supposedly unique that Greed's curiosity compels him to search for it to have a look.
Greed finds it. When he sees it-- him-- after breaking into the lab, his greed demanded he have him. So, Greed stole him away.
The chimera was smaller than most of the other chimera, with unruly uncut black hair and gold eyes. He looks more human than most of the others, but not indistinguishable like Martel and Dorchette. What sets him apart from other young men were the large black patterned dark grey wings folding from his back, the tiny black feathers sprouting at the nape of his neck instead of hair, and the sharp tips of his fingers that were closer to talons than nails. And, because the chimera was unusually lighter than he should be for his size, the fact that he could fly.
Peregrine Falcon, Martel had told Greed, was what his new acquisition had been merged with.
Alchemist, Greed discovers, was what the bird had been merged to. One fucking hell of a find.
In attack, or its stoop, the peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on the planet. In offense, or defense, the Flame Alchemist is one of the worst enemies in the world.
As a chimera, Roy Mustang is fucking amazing and Roy is his. His subordinate.
Greed would still take the institute researchers apart for hurting what was his, but he couldn't help but admire their work.
See. Chase. Kill. Roy's predatory elegance can be cut down to those three words. He could cut a man down with only words, almost as fast as he could cut down prey when he dived. He could vaporize city blocks with just two fingers. And despite what looked like a fluffy hump jutting out from his back, or the fashion disaster of a partially feathered cape he wore to conceal it, he remained ridiculously popular with the ladies.
That's the only thing about him that annoys Greed, just a little.
One day when Roy throws himself to Greed's defense even though the homunculus never needs it from anyone, Roy leans close to Greed to assure himself that Greed was fine, afterward. It'd taken a very long time before Greed earned Roy's loyalty to the point where Roy attacked in Greed's defense of his own will without being ordered to. Greed had thought nothing of it, but Martel had said it was amazing, all considered.
Sometimes, like this time, he imagines he gets what she is on about.
It's when he catches one protective, feral eye with his own as he feels Roy's warm breaths against his chin that Greed has an epiphany. For a few seconds his greed is satisfied. The revelation leaves the homunculus surprised enough that when Roy starts to shift away the sudden want that strikes Greed is utterly uncontrollable. It is then Greed realizes his annoyance is not only at how Roy takes away some of the ladies' attention from him, but also at how the ladies take away Roy's attention from Greed.
Greed catches Roy's wrist above a gloved hand before the falcon chimera moves. "Hey."
Roy raises an eyebrow questioningly, composure unruffled and attire immaculate. Roy is, Greed and his gang found shortly after they appropriated him from the illegal lab, a strangely controlled man for such an uncontrollable creature.
"I think," says Greed, blunt as Roa's sledgehammer, "I want you."
"Oh?" The velvety monosyllable is cutting. Tell me something new, sneers its undertone. Roy cocks his head to one side, trying to appraise what Greed is playing at.
"In the 'for real' kind of way," Greed clarifies, realizing Roy misinterpreted his declaration for his usual levity.
Roy's expression wrinkles slightly before it smoothes out to unreadable as he gets what Greed is saying. His face tells Greed nothing but his slightly flared wings give away his mild discomfiture. Greed knows Roy thinks Greed is incapable of wanting in such a way. "Impossible," Roy tells Greed curtly.
But it is possible, Greed thinks, proof pulsing with his heart. "There is no such thing as no such thing." Greed is sure Roy's instinct could read the sincerity in his intense stare.
Between this heartbeat and the next, the homunculus sees the cool expression on Roy's face flicker. Before the crack could seal, Greed moves against it. He raises Roy's hand to his lips and bites down on the tips of Roy's spark-cloth gloves, quirking an eyebrow devilishly and slowly tugs them off Roy's hands, stripping him of his power. Of his defenses.
Roy tenses like many times before. Greed pauses, feeling slightly thwarted as he patiently waits for Roy to glare at him and step back from the invasion of his personal space like Roy always does, but Roy doesn't glare. He doesn't move at all.
When Roy's fingers finally tighten slightly around Greed's own, resisting the desire to pull Roy closer never crosses Greed's mind.
He sees the turmoil in Roy's black-ringed, black-flecked gold eyes, but Greed doesn't care about uncertainties and complications.
Greed only cares he had wanted and now he knows he has.