FMA -- Good Soldiers
Title: Good Soldiers
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairings/Characters: girl!Roy/girl!Ed, dude!Hawkeye/girl!Roy, girl!Al
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,219
Warnings: language, mild sexytimes, confused feminism, sheer lack of tact, plentiful cocaine
Summary: Ed is even easier to offend as a girl; Al, likewise, is even more put-upon; Roy is even more evil as a chick; and Hawkeye is even more patient as a dude.
Author's Note: So originally, this was inspired by a kinkmeme prompt asking for "bitchy girl!Roy/girl!Ed." Then it got distracted. Then I dragged it closer to the target again. XD It is, of course, influenced by Flame Vs. Fullmetal - Revisited, which epitomizes all of the glorious, addictive batshittery that is FMA genderswap. :'D …it's also totally eltea's fault. TOTALLY. Special thank you to icequeenrex, powdered_opium, and koneko_zero for listening to me read out the first part. XD ♥;
GOOD SOLDIERS
Al hates her sister’s meetings with Colonel Mustang. The colonel herself clearly cherishes them.
“I’m telling you-” Edwina grinds her teeth. Al has reminded her several thousand times that that’s bad for her jaw. “There’s nothing else to do in the East, for your purposes or ours. Station us somewhere else.”
Roza Mustang steeples her fingers and arches one elegant eyebrow. “A good soldier-”
Ed half-laughs and blows her bangs out of her face. “Even you aren’t delusional enough to think I’m a good soldier.”
Al elbows her gently. “Sister, hush.”
“A mostly competent mercenary who wants to get her research budget renewed,” Mustang amends idly, “must be sure to finish everything she starts. You’re going back to the East to check in at every city you visited the first time-remind them that their heroine, and by extension the military, still has their best interests at heart. How long that takes is up to you, and then you may choose your next assignment from a list of my selection.”
Ed mouths Conniving ho very distinctly at Al. Al despairs.
“Well, then,” Mustang says, arching her back as she stretches. Ed twitches a little and unconsciously crosses her arms tightly. “The tone of this conversation has gone distressingly flat, and, frankly, I’m bored. Just keep me abreast of any news, and when you’re in areas we’ve annexed recently, keep an eye out for hints of cleavage. Play it close to the chest, and make sure this one isn’t a bust, won’t you? I live in hope of the day that my cup runneth over with reports of your successes, Fullmetal.” She pauses and looks pointedly at Ed’s torso. A vein is throbbing in Ed’s temple, and Alison can hear the automail creaking as her sister’s fist clenches tighter. “I also live in hope of the day that they start calling you ‘Fullshirt.’”
“That’s it-”
Al throws her arms around Ed’s waist just in time to catch her flailing sister in the air, halfway to launching herself onto Roza’s desk and presumably ripping everything to shreds with her well-nibbled fingernails. To be very honest, this is actually better than the alternative; for most of the duration of that monologue, Al feared that Sister’s head would actually explode.
Roza takes a compact mirror and a tube of lipstick out of the top drawer of her desk, applying the latter while looking in the former, ignoring the fact that Ed’s arms are waving wildly enough that the air currents ruffle the papers on the desktop.
“I’d rather be three and four-fifths inches shorter than the average for my height and modestly-endowed than be a nymphomaniac with a power kink!” Ed howls.
Roza snaps the mirror shut and smiles, looking immaculate. “I’d suggest that you try it my way, but that seems to be a lost cause. In the meantime, if you don’t stop writhing around like an aggravated house-cat, I’m going to have to get one of my men to escort you out and make sure you don’t damage any particularly low-lying objects.”
“When you say ‘one of your men,’” Ed snarls back, squirming against Al’s grip; “do you mean one of your officers, or one of your conquests, Colonel Skankface?”
“I’m not sure what you’re so outlandishly angry about,” Roza says, though her smirk really rather belies her. “But I can assure you that I’ll repay you for this childish behavior. You know how it is, Fullmetal-tit for tat?”
Over Ed’s ear-splitting scream of “You bitch!” and the colonel’s unsettlingly evil laughter, Al drags her sister out of the room and manages to kick the door shut without putting her armored foot through it this time.
“Someday,” Ed says, storming down the front stairs, a small whirlwind of hot-pink cheeks, blood-red coat, and wounded self-esteem, “I’m going to get my revenge by sabotaging all her contraceptives, and then she’ll have seven million babies to take care of. Bet she won’t be so sarcastic when she’s got seven million diapers to change.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Al asks, clanking after her sister and twisting at the hem of her apron. She’s never told Ed that it was actually their mother’s; Ed thinks she got it from Pinako. “Wouldn’t that just mean there were seven million more people in the world with her genes?”
Ed pauses in mid-step and starts to look greenish instead of pink. “Oh, shit. I think I’m going to be sick, Al. Can I throw up in your armor?”
“No!” Al says.
“C’mon,” Ed says, grinning now. “It’s the best place for it!”
“Your stomach acid will dissolve the blood seal!”
“But I’m so sick; would you really leave your sister in pain?”
“You’re sick, all right!”
“Come here! Just a little bit of vomit-”
“You’re going to have to catch me first, Ed!”
Roza files a slightly sharp corner off of her right index fingernail.
“Was that really necessary?” Lieutenant Hawkeye asks, shading his eyes to watch out the window as Edwina chases Alison down the steps and across the lawn.
Roza holds her hand up against the light. “The last thing I want is a fifteen-year-old major who’s aware of her own appeal,” she says. “The day that Edwina Elric starts to think she’s capable of using sex as a weapon is the day that we’re all doomed.” Hawkeye is giving Roza that little soft smile that makes her toes curl. Accordingly, she sets an elbow on her desk and tosses her hair. “I, on the other hand, have perfected my technique, as I know you must have heard. Are you sure you don’t want a practical demonstra-”
“I intend to make an honest woman of you someday, sir,” Hawkeye says calmly. “Until then, I know better than to step within range of your well-practiced wiles.” He considers. “And I’m getting you tested before our wedding; if you have any STDs, the deal’s off.” He smiles warmly. “Now let me fetch those files, sir.”
Roza collapses onto the desktop and lolls around miserably. She’s in so much agony that it takes her a good while to realize that she’s smeared lipstick all over Fullmetal’s latest report.
Ed is feeling profoundly uncomfortable, and she doesn’t like it. There are various kinds of discomfort that she recognizes and knows how to manage-excruciating nerve pain; phantom limb symptoms; nightmare aftershocks; the indescribable jolt every time she remembers that she’s the one who condemned Al to this; the greedy knowledge-hunger that always itches at the back of her skull; the sixth sense of People and/or Things That Want to Kill Her-but this is a new one, and it’s different. She and Al were sparring on the parade grounds, because much of the East is a dust-heap, and if Colonel Slagamuffin is sending them back there, she wants to be prepared for the terrain. And they got hot, obviously-well, she did, obviously-so she ditched everything except her shorts and her undershirt, and… people started looking. Soldiers did. Looking at her. Differently. And she could feel their gazes on her like little barbed needles pricking at her skin; she could feel curiosity and judgment and interest and some revulsion. She was being processed-weighed. Evaluated, not for her merit, but for her skin. For her body-not what it can do, not how admirably she was holding her own against Alison’s incomparable skill and inability to tire, but what it looks like. She was being reduced to an image, an appearance, something two-dimensional and easily dismissed. It makes no difference whether some of those gazes approved of what they saw; the fact of the matter is that they identified her as an object, not as Edwina Elric, not as the Fullmetal Alchemist, not as everything she abandoned her previous life to prove.
Uncomfortable.
She’s pretty sure that if she tells Al, heads (or balls) will roll, though, and that makes her feel better. All the same, she felt that she needed a couple minutes alone to kick at the dust bunnies that lurk in the corners of Central’s halls and despise the shallowness of human beings.
She’s chasing down an especially large and spectacularly elusive specimen (of dust bunny, not of shallow human being) when an unmarked door opens, a hand clasps over her mouth, and she’s dragged backwards into darkness.
Before she can do anything other than wonder vaguely if the dust bunny will set aside their differences and go for help, someone is pushing her up against the wall of what is apparently a closet and kissing her hard.
It’s just that kind of day.
Ed doesn’t know much about kissing, so she can’t tell whether this individual is actually an expert or just thinks so. Either way, scientifically speaking, it’s sort of an interesting sensation; Ed has never taken a particular interest in books that don’t involve (a) alchemy, (b) outlandish violence, or (c) both, but from her limited experience of literary romance, she doesn’t recall there being much prose about attempting to eat somebody else’s mouth. Somehow it’s still kind of enjoyable, at least insofar as the gentle pressure of her assailant’s tongue grazing her bottom lip and then slipping in to toy with hers.
That feels a bit strange, but she doesn’t get a chance to analyze it, because a warm hand spreads itself over her right breast and squeezes gently, and unusual instantly becomes unacceptable.
Her boot connects, reassuringly solidly, with someone’s midsection, and then she’s the one forcing someone against the wall-by way of the blade on her arm, of course, rather than something stupid like a guerilla-attack-kiss.
“Those are actually nicer than they look,” a horrifyingly familiar voice says, “although I suppose that’s not saying much, since you can’t normally see them without a magnifying glass.”
“Mustang?” is all that Ed can manage. Her lips are throbbing, her cheeks are burning, and the world has finally gone completely mad. Given all of the buildup, she really hadn’t expected the last few threads of sanity to snap in a hall closet in Central after being molested by her superior officer.
…wait a fucking minute.
“You bitch!” Ed screams. “I’m going to file a harassment suit so big even your ego will fit in it!” She fumbles for the door latch with her left hand, keeping Mustang pinned to the wall with the automail. “I mean, I knew you were a sick sex freak, Colonel, but this is psycho even for you!”
“It was a test,” Mustang says, as if that makes it okay that she just got her filthy slut-hands and equally filthy slut-tongue all over Ed. “…which you passed.”
All right. Ed’s not above a shred of morbid curiosity, and since the door-handle is rivaling the dust bunnies for evasive tactics, she might as well ask.
“Pray tell what in the fucking fuck that’s supposed to mean.” She pauses. “…sir.”
“It is never,” Mustang says, “ever going to be easy to be a woman in the military-not for us, at any rate; not in our lifetimes. Men with power are going to want yours as well, and the easiest way for them to take it and to humiliate you into silence at the same moment is by sexual domination. The unfortunate fact is that you’re going to be lucky to find anyone who’s capable of looking past your gender, let alone willing. I’ve probably lulled you into a false and dangerous sense of security by letting you deal with my team; part of the reason they are my team is that not one of them looks twice at what’s under my uniform.” There’s a pause. “Except for Havoc, and when he’s having a bad day, or I’ve turned another one of his girlfriends into a lesbian, I don’t mind letting him stare a little.” She taps a few of her fingernails on Ed’s arm-blade, which is still angled towards her jugular. “This is what I wanted, Fullmetal. This is what you have to summon every time someone makes assumptions because of your sex-this outrage, this retribution. They’re not going to play nice, Ed. They’re going to try to tear you down, and they’re going to use any weakness they can get their hands on. You have to make sure they can’t find one. If it comes down to it, you have to cut them to ribbons before they rip you to pieces. Don’t let them intimidate you. Don’t let them touch you. And whatever you do, don’t ever let yourself believe, even for a second, that what they think about you is true. You’re the only person who knows you inside and out, start to finish. Fear nothing. Doubt nothing. Rise above the bullshit, Fullmetal-that’s an order.”
Ed pauses. She swallows. She blinks, not that it matters in the dark.
“That was the lesson?” she asks. “You dragged me into a closet and violated me to teach me not to let people drag me into closets and violate me?”
Mustang laughs. Ed considers it a testament to her own willpower that she doesn’t slit the crazy bitch’s throat right here and now.
“Duly note as well that this was a gentler preview,” she says. “If this were to happen again, at the hands of someone with intent, it wouldn’t be nearly so nice.”
“Nice?” Ed demands. “It felt like getting my mouth attacked by an eel or some shit. If that’s what kissing’s like, Al and I are just going to be celibate forever.”
By the sound of it, Mustang has raised an eyebrow. “Good luck.”
Ed tenses a little more. Her automail is going to kill her for this later. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Looking like you do? People will get interested, and you’ll get curious. You’re a scientist, after all.”
Ed snorts. “What, and it was scientific curiosity that made you cop a feel off me? I’m pretty sure science has nothing to do with it, Colonel, and-and depravity has a lot more effect.”
Mustang laughs again, merrily, and Ed’s thisfuckingclose to just killing her and accepting the consequences.
Oh, all right, no, she’s not. Ed could never… in close quarters like… a person, a human being, even if that living, breathing, thinking, feeling creature is Colonel Bitch McEasy… there’s only one kind of anger in the world sufficient to motivate that, and it’s the kind that surges through every fiber of Ed’s form when someone comes after Al.
“You’re quaint,” Mustang is saying. “It’s kind of sweet-and I’m glad that after everything you’ve been through, there’s a part of you that’s still stone-cold innocent.”
On second thought, Ed can definitely wreak bloody vengeance without killing her in the process.
“You’re crazy,” she says for now. “A minute ago you were practically telling me to lock my virginity in a bank vault, and now you’re on about curiosity and shit like it’s shameful that I’m not a total ho like y-”
“You’re missing the very important distinction I made,” Mustang says, “which is what you want, when you want it and no sooner. Call the shots. Trust carefully. Don’t believe promises that won’t be kept.”
Ed bares her teeth-it could just be her imagination, but she’s pretty sure she can still feel the imprint of Mustang’s mouth on her lips. “Oh, like ‘Well, Fullmetal, now that I’m your commanding officer and all, I’ll protect you, and I’ll never, ever perpetrate violative acts on you personally’? Because that one was pretty convincing for about two minutes.”
Mustang sighs. Distressingly, it is not a sigh of abject surrender or even underlying fear.
“Edwina,” she says, knocking Ed’s rigid automail arm aside, cupping her flaming cheeks with two cool hands, and brushing a kiss across her forehead, “my promise to protect you was, and still is, entirely valid; and it will be until the day I die.” Her damp breath makes Ed’s bangs dance lightly on her skin, and then there’s a crack of blinding light in the doorway, into which the colonel slots her curvy silhouette. “In recompense whereof, I would appreciate it if you would never, ever speak of this again.”
Ed hisses at the indistinct smile on Mustang’s shadowed face. “Fat chance; I’m gonna sue your ass so hard you won’t walk for weeks.”
“If that’s what you want,” Mustang says, starting down the hallway doing her favorite sashay-saunter thing, “all you have to do is ask. Consider me your bosom buddy, Fullmetal.”
Ed goes after her with the knife-arm, but Mustang runs surprisingly fast in those dominatrix boots.
Hawkeye is clearing everything up for the day when the colonel bursts into the office, slams the doors behind her, leans against them, and commences panting heavily. Her hair is tellingly disheveled, and her grin is positively devilish.
“What is it this time, sir?” Hawkeye asks, not entirely sure he wants to know-rather, fairly sure he’s better off not knowing. He’s certainly better off not fantasizing, which is a difficult task indeed when one shares an office (and practically a life) with Roza Mustang. He focuses on aligning the sheaf of papers, knocking the edges on the desk to straighten them.
“You wouldn’t approve,” the colonel says brightly.
That’s a very familiar answer. It’s also Hawkeye’s least-favorite.
“Legal, or illegal?” he asks.
Colonel Mustang considers, pursing her lips in that maddening way that makes Hawkeye just-
These papers are dreadfully unruly.
“Of dubious legality,” the colonel says at last.
“I am not harboring you again, sir,” Hawkeye says.
Mustang moves over with that breathtaking, tongue-thickening, brain-addling litheness that she can summon at the drop of a hat, as if there’s a switch she flicks somewhere between the narrow waist and the dangerous swell of hips. “Lieutenant…” she says.
“No, sir,” Hawkeye says.
“You have such a lovely couch. And an even lovelier bed, by the looks of it, though I’ve never had the good fortune of-”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“I’ll make it worth your wh-”
“Not a snowflake’s chance in the ninth circle of hell, sir.”
Mustang wrinkles her adorable nose. “She’s going to cut my heart out, skewer it, and serve it to me. She might even be justified.”
Hawkeye has a horrible thought. He has long since discovered that, with Colonel Mustang, the more horrible the thought, the more likely it will be true.
He braces himself for the worst. “Sir, please tell me it wasn’t Fullme-”
“You’re all prudes,” Roza Mustang says, and she stalks back out the door.
Hawkeye allows himself a moment of head-hanging, hand-wringing, and imploring the merciless heavens.
Then he organizes the rest of the papers and settles them into his bag, because the colonel will be back in five minutes, having remembered that her puppy eyes have not once failed to wear down Rian Hawkeye’s famous resolve.
He supposes, with a sense of half-amused resignation that he’s grown quite accustomed to, that it fits to reason: the Flame Alchemist is simply too hot for her own good-and certainly for anyone else’s.
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairings/Characters: girl!Roy/girl!Ed, dude!Hawkeye/girl!Roy, girl!Al
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,219
Warnings: language, mild sexytimes, confused feminism, sheer lack of tact, plentiful cocaine
Summary: Ed is even easier to offend as a girl; Al, likewise, is even more put-upon; Roy is even more evil as a chick; and Hawkeye is even more patient as a dude.
Author's Note: So originally, this was inspired by a kinkmeme prompt asking for "bitchy girl!Roy/girl!Ed." Then it got distracted. Then I dragged it closer to the target again. XD It is, of course, influenced by Flame Vs. Fullmetal - Revisited, which epitomizes all of the glorious, addictive batshittery that is FMA genderswap. :'D …it's also totally eltea's fault. TOTALLY. Special thank you to icequeenrex, powdered_opium, and koneko_zero for listening to me read out the first part. XD ♥;
GOOD SOLDIERS
Al hates her sister’s meetings with Colonel Mustang. The colonel herself clearly cherishes them.
“I’m telling you-” Edwina grinds her teeth. Al has reminded her several thousand times that that’s bad for her jaw. “There’s nothing else to do in the East, for your purposes or ours. Station us somewhere else.”
Roza Mustang steeples her fingers and arches one elegant eyebrow. “A good soldier-”
Ed half-laughs and blows her bangs out of her face. “Even you aren’t delusional enough to think I’m a good soldier.”
Al elbows her gently. “Sister, hush.”
“A mostly competent mercenary who wants to get her research budget renewed,” Mustang amends idly, “must be sure to finish everything she starts. You’re going back to the East to check in at every city you visited the first time-remind them that their heroine, and by extension the military, still has their best interests at heart. How long that takes is up to you, and then you may choose your next assignment from a list of my selection.”
Ed mouths Conniving ho very distinctly at Al. Al despairs.
“Well, then,” Mustang says, arching her back as she stretches. Ed twitches a little and unconsciously crosses her arms tightly. “The tone of this conversation has gone distressingly flat, and, frankly, I’m bored. Just keep me abreast of any news, and when you’re in areas we’ve annexed recently, keep an eye out for hints of cleavage. Play it close to the chest, and make sure this one isn’t a bust, won’t you? I live in hope of the day that my cup runneth over with reports of your successes, Fullmetal.” She pauses and looks pointedly at Ed’s torso. A vein is throbbing in Ed’s temple, and Alison can hear the automail creaking as her sister’s fist clenches tighter. “I also live in hope of the day that they start calling you ‘Fullshirt.’”
“That’s it-”
Al throws her arms around Ed’s waist just in time to catch her flailing sister in the air, halfway to launching herself onto Roza’s desk and presumably ripping everything to shreds with her well-nibbled fingernails. To be very honest, this is actually better than the alternative; for most of the duration of that monologue, Al feared that Sister’s head would actually explode.
Roza takes a compact mirror and a tube of lipstick out of the top drawer of her desk, applying the latter while looking in the former, ignoring the fact that Ed’s arms are waving wildly enough that the air currents ruffle the papers on the desktop.
“I’d rather be three and four-fifths inches shorter than the average for my height and modestly-endowed than be a nymphomaniac with a power kink!” Ed howls.
Roza snaps the mirror shut and smiles, looking immaculate. “I’d suggest that you try it my way, but that seems to be a lost cause. In the meantime, if you don’t stop writhing around like an aggravated house-cat, I’m going to have to get one of my men to escort you out and make sure you don’t damage any particularly low-lying objects.”
“When you say ‘one of your men,’” Ed snarls back, squirming against Al’s grip; “do you mean one of your officers, or one of your conquests, Colonel Skankface?”
“I’m not sure what you’re so outlandishly angry about,” Roza says, though her smirk really rather belies her. “But I can assure you that I’ll repay you for this childish behavior. You know how it is, Fullmetal-tit for tat?”
Over Ed’s ear-splitting scream of “You bitch!” and the colonel’s unsettlingly evil laughter, Al drags her sister out of the room and manages to kick the door shut without putting her armored foot through it this time.
“Someday,” Ed says, storming down the front stairs, a small whirlwind of hot-pink cheeks, blood-red coat, and wounded self-esteem, “I’m going to get my revenge by sabotaging all her contraceptives, and then she’ll have seven million babies to take care of. Bet she won’t be so sarcastic when she’s got seven million diapers to change.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Al asks, clanking after her sister and twisting at the hem of her apron. She’s never told Ed that it was actually their mother’s; Ed thinks she got it from Pinako. “Wouldn’t that just mean there were seven million more people in the world with her genes?”
Ed pauses in mid-step and starts to look greenish instead of pink. “Oh, shit. I think I’m going to be sick, Al. Can I throw up in your armor?”
“No!” Al says.
“C’mon,” Ed says, grinning now. “It’s the best place for it!”
“Your stomach acid will dissolve the blood seal!”
“But I’m so sick; would you really leave your sister in pain?”
“You’re sick, all right!”
“Come here! Just a little bit of vomit-”
“You’re going to have to catch me first, Ed!”
Roza files a slightly sharp corner off of her right index fingernail.
“Was that really necessary?” Lieutenant Hawkeye asks, shading his eyes to watch out the window as Edwina chases Alison down the steps and across the lawn.
Roza holds her hand up against the light. “The last thing I want is a fifteen-year-old major who’s aware of her own appeal,” she says. “The day that Edwina Elric starts to think she’s capable of using sex as a weapon is the day that we’re all doomed.” Hawkeye is giving Roza that little soft smile that makes her toes curl. Accordingly, she sets an elbow on her desk and tosses her hair. “I, on the other hand, have perfected my technique, as I know you must have heard. Are you sure you don’t want a practical demonstra-”
“I intend to make an honest woman of you someday, sir,” Hawkeye says calmly. “Until then, I know better than to step within range of your well-practiced wiles.” He considers. “And I’m getting you tested before our wedding; if you have any STDs, the deal’s off.” He smiles warmly. “Now let me fetch those files, sir.”
Roza collapses onto the desktop and lolls around miserably. She’s in so much agony that it takes her a good while to realize that she’s smeared lipstick all over Fullmetal’s latest report.
Ed is feeling profoundly uncomfortable, and she doesn’t like it. There are various kinds of discomfort that she recognizes and knows how to manage-excruciating nerve pain; phantom limb symptoms; nightmare aftershocks; the indescribable jolt every time she remembers that she’s the one who condemned Al to this; the greedy knowledge-hunger that always itches at the back of her skull; the sixth sense of People and/or Things That Want to Kill Her-but this is a new one, and it’s different. She and Al were sparring on the parade grounds, because much of the East is a dust-heap, and if Colonel Slagamuffin is sending them back there, she wants to be prepared for the terrain. And they got hot, obviously-well, she did, obviously-so she ditched everything except her shorts and her undershirt, and… people started looking. Soldiers did. Looking at her. Differently. And she could feel their gazes on her like little barbed needles pricking at her skin; she could feel curiosity and judgment and interest and some revulsion. She was being processed-weighed. Evaluated, not for her merit, but for her skin. For her body-not what it can do, not how admirably she was holding her own against Alison’s incomparable skill and inability to tire, but what it looks like. She was being reduced to an image, an appearance, something two-dimensional and easily dismissed. It makes no difference whether some of those gazes approved of what they saw; the fact of the matter is that they identified her as an object, not as Edwina Elric, not as the Fullmetal Alchemist, not as everything she abandoned her previous life to prove.
Uncomfortable.
She’s pretty sure that if she tells Al, heads (or balls) will roll, though, and that makes her feel better. All the same, she felt that she needed a couple minutes alone to kick at the dust bunnies that lurk in the corners of Central’s halls and despise the shallowness of human beings.
She’s chasing down an especially large and spectacularly elusive specimen (of dust bunny, not of shallow human being) when an unmarked door opens, a hand clasps over her mouth, and she’s dragged backwards into darkness.
Before she can do anything other than wonder vaguely if the dust bunny will set aside their differences and go for help, someone is pushing her up against the wall of what is apparently a closet and kissing her hard.
It’s just that kind of day.
Ed doesn’t know much about kissing, so she can’t tell whether this individual is actually an expert or just thinks so. Either way, scientifically speaking, it’s sort of an interesting sensation; Ed has never taken a particular interest in books that don’t involve (a) alchemy, (b) outlandish violence, or (c) both, but from her limited experience of literary romance, she doesn’t recall there being much prose about attempting to eat somebody else’s mouth. Somehow it’s still kind of enjoyable, at least insofar as the gentle pressure of her assailant’s tongue grazing her bottom lip and then slipping in to toy with hers.
That feels a bit strange, but she doesn’t get a chance to analyze it, because a warm hand spreads itself over her right breast and squeezes gently, and unusual instantly becomes unacceptable.
Her boot connects, reassuringly solidly, with someone’s midsection, and then she’s the one forcing someone against the wall-by way of the blade on her arm, of course, rather than something stupid like a guerilla-attack-kiss.
“Those are actually nicer than they look,” a horrifyingly familiar voice says, “although I suppose that’s not saying much, since you can’t normally see them without a magnifying glass.”
“Mustang?” is all that Ed can manage. Her lips are throbbing, her cheeks are burning, and the world has finally gone completely mad. Given all of the buildup, she really hadn’t expected the last few threads of sanity to snap in a hall closet in Central after being molested by her superior officer.
…wait a fucking minute.
“You bitch!” Ed screams. “I’m going to file a harassment suit so big even your ego will fit in it!” She fumbles for the door latch with her left hand, keeping Mustang pinned to the wall with the automail. “I mean, I knew you were a sick sex freak, Colonel, but this is psycho even for you!”
“It was a test,” Mustang says, as if that makes it okay that she just got her filthy slut-hands and equally filthy slut-tongue all over Ed. “…which you passed.”
All right. Ed’s not above a shred of morbid curiosity, and since the door-handle is rivaling the dust bunnies for evasive tactics, she might as well ask.
“Pray tell what in the fucking fuck that’s supposed to mean.” She pauses. “…sir.”
“It is never,” Mustang says, “ever going to be easy to be a woman in the military-not for us, at any rate; not in our lifetimes. Men with power are going to want yours as well, and the easiest way for them to take it and to humiliate you into silence at the same moment is by sexual domination. The unfortunate fact is that you’re going to be lucky to find anyone who’s capable of looking past your gender, let alone willing. I’ve probably lulled you into a false and dangerous sense of security by letting you deal with my team; part of the reason they are my team is that not one of them looks twice at what’s under my uniform.” There’s a pause. “Except for Havoc, and when he’s having a bad day, or I’ve turned another one of his girlfriends into a lesbian, I don’t mind letting him stare a little.” She taps a few of her fingernails on Ed’s arm-blade, which is still angled towards her jugular. “This is what I wanted, Fullmetal. This is what you have to summon every time someone makes assumptions because of your sex-this outrage, this retribution. They’re not going to play nice, Ed. They’re going to try to tear you down, and they’re going to use any weakness they can get their hands on. You have to make sure they can’t find one. If it comes down to it, you have to cut them to ribbons before they rip you to pieces. Don’t let them intimidate you. Don’t let them touch you. And whatever you do, don’t ever let yourself believe, even for a second, that what they think about you is true. You’re the only person who knows you inside and out, start to finish. Fear nothing. Doubt nothing. Rise above the bullshit, Fullmetal-that’s an order.”
Ed pauses. She swallows. She blinks, not that it matters in the dark.
“That was the lesson?” she asks. “You dragged me into a closet and violated me to teach me not to let people drag me into closets and violate me?”
Mustang laughs. Ed considers it a testament to her own willpower that she doesn’t slit the crazy bitch’s throat right here and now.
“Duly note as well that this was a gentler preview,” she says. “If this were to happen again, at the hands of someone with intent, it wouldn’t be nearly so nice.”
“Nice?” Ed demands. “It felt like getting my mouth attacked by an eel or some shit. If that’s what kissing’s like, Al and I are just going to be celibate forever.”
By the sound of it, Mustang has raised an eyebrow. “Good luck.”
Ed tenses a little more. Her automail is going to kill her for this later. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Looking like you do? People will get interested, and you’ll get curious. You’re a scientist, after all.”
Ed snorts. “What, and it was scientific curiosity that made you cop a feel off me? I’m pretty sure science has nothing to do with it, Colonel, and-and depravity has a lot more effect.”
Mustang laughs again, merrily, and Ed’s thisfuckingclose to just killing her and accepting the consequences.
Oh, all right, no, she’s not. Ed could never… in close quarters like… a person, a human being, even if that living, breathing, thinking, feeling creature is Colonel Bitch McEasy… there’s only one kind of anger in the world sufficient to motivate that, and it’s the kind that surges through every fiber of Ed’s form when someone comes after Al.
“You’re quaint,” Mustang is saying. “It’s kind of sweet-and I’m glad that after everything you’ve been through, there’s a part of you that’s still stone-cold innocent.”
On second thought, Ed can definitely wreak bloody vengeance without killing her in the process.
“You’re crazy,” she says for now. “A minute ago you were practically telling me to lock my virginity in a bank vault, and now you’re on about curiosity and shit like it’s shameful that I’m not a total ho like y-”
“You’re missing the very important distinction I made,” Mustang says, “which is what you want, when you want it and no sooner. Call the shots. Trust carefully. Don’t believe promises that won’t be kept.”
Ed bares her teeth-it could just be her imagination, but she’s pretty sure she can still feel the imprint of Mustang’s mouth on her lips. “Oh, like ‘Well, Fullmetal, now that I’m your commanding officer and all, I’ll protect you, and I’ll never, ever perpetrate violative acts on you personally’? Because that one was pretty convincing for about two minutes.”
Mustang sighs. Distressingly, it is not a sigh of abject surrender or even underlying fear.
“Edwina,” she says, knocking Ed’s rigid automail arm aside, cupping her flaming cheeks with two cool hands, and brushing a kiss across her forehead, “my promise to protect you was, and still is, entirely valid; and it will be until the day I die.” Her damp breath makes Ed’s bangs dance lightly on her skin, and then there’s a crack of blinding light in the doorway, into which the colonel slots her curvy silhouette. “In recompense whereof, I would appreciate it if you would never, ever speak of this again.”
Ed hisses at the indistinct smile on Mustang’s shadowed face. “Fat chance; I’m gonna sue your ass so hard you won’t walk for weeks.”
“If that’s what you want,” Mustang says, starting down the hallway doing her favorite sashay-saunter thing, “all you have to do is ask. Consider me your bosom buddy, Fullmetal.”
Ed goes after her with the knife-arm, but Mustang runs surprisingly fast in those dominatrix boots.
Hawkeye is clearing everything up for the day when the colonel bursts into the office, slams the doors behind her, leans against them, and commences panting heavily. Her hair is tellingly disheveled, and her grin is positively devilish.
“What is it this time, sir?” Hawkeye asks, not entirely sure he wants to know-rather, fairly sure he’s better off not knowing. He’s certainly better off not fantasizing, which is a difficult task indeed when one shares an office (and practically a life) with Roza Mustang. He focuses on aligning the sheaf of papers, knocking the edges on the desk to straighten them.
“You wouldn’t approve,” the colonel says brightly.
That’s a very familiar answer. It’s also Hawkeye’s least-favorite.
“Legal, or illegal?” he asks.
Colonel Mustang considers, pursing her lips in that maddening way that makes Hawkeye just-
These papers are dreadfully unruly.
“Of dubious legality,” the colonel says at last.
“I am not harboring you again, sir,” Hawkeye says.
Mustang moves over with that breathtaking, tongue-thickening, brain-addling litheness that she can summon at the drop of a hat, as if there’s a switch she flicks somewhere between the narrow waist and the dangerous swell of hips. “Lieutenant…” she says.
“No, sir,” Hawkeye says.
“You have such a lovely couch. And an even lovelier bed, by the looks of it, though I’ve never had the good fortune of-”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“I’ll make it worth your wh-”
“Not a snowflake’s chance in the ninth circle of hell, sir.”
Mustang wrinkles her adorable nose. “She’s going to cut my heart out, skewer it, and serve it to me. She might even be justified.”
Hawkeye has a horrible thought. He has long since discovered that, with Colonel Mustang, the more horrible the thought, the more likely it will be true.
He braces himself for the worst. “Sir, please tell me it wasn’t Fullme-”
“You’re all prudes,” Roza Mustang says, and she stalks back out the door.
Hawkeye allows himself a moment of head-hanging, hand-wringing, and imploring the merciless heavens.
Then he organizes the rest of the papers and settles them into his bag, because the colonel will be back in five minutes, having remembered that her puppy eyes have not once failed to wear down Rian Hawkeye’s famous resolve.
He supposes, with a sense of half-amused resignation that he’s grown quite accustomed to, that it fits to reason: the Flame Alchemist is simply too hot for her own good-and certainly for anyone else’s.