Fic: When I Have Fears (1/1)

[yixsh]

Title: When I Have Fears
Pairings/Characters: Alfons/OC, Edward
Rating: M/R
Genre: Drama, Angst
Spoilers: Spoilers for the whole series and the movie.
Word Count: +/- 6300
Warnings: Language and brief mentions of sex.
Summary:  Alfons Heiderich tries to balance love and lust and fame and time -- and finds it a very hard thing to do.

Notes: I read the poem that this fic is named for sometime in February and immediately broke into a fit of nerdy giggles at how well it fit Alfons. For those of you reading that took the AP Senior English test, you know that it was actually featured on a question in the essay section (which was awesome, because I had already been analyzing the poem for about a month by that point). For those of you that don't know who John Keats is, he is actually an amazing poet that Alfons could probably sympathize with given that he died of tuberculosis at the age of 26, and this poem is a perfect expression of how deeply the illness affected his life. Please read the poem before the story.

This was written for fma_exchange (I won't tell who for, because there haven't been any reveals yet).  It was late, but what else is new.

Enjoy!

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

“When I Have Fears”

John Keats (1795-1821)

He felt a tap on his shoulder when he bent over to tie his shoe one morning. He looked up with a sharp sort of impatience, expecting to see Edward there urging him on because they were late enough for work already, but the trail of Edward’s ponytail was just whipping around the street corner when he straightened his back. In Edward’s place, though, was a pretty girl, probably around his age, with wide, searching, blue eyes and full, pink lips. She licked them upon meeting his eye, clasped a grocery bag filled with plump apples to her chest.

“Hello,” she said finally, tucking a piece of honey-blond hair behind her ear.

“H-hello,” Alfons muttered back, hand rising absently to rub at his neck.

“I was just wondering if you knew where this address is.” She pulled a piece of paper out of the shopping bag, and he saw a tidy little address scrawled there. Surprisingly, it was the address of a room in his apartment building, and he told her as much.

“My grandfather lives, there,” she said.

“I just moved in with my friend,” he responded.

“Your friend?” Her eyes sharpened at the words, going slightly narrow and dangerous. Alfons’ heart throbbed a bit harder in his chest.

“My roommate,” her expression remained a bit dubious. “My male roommate.” He couldn’t have made it more obvious if he’d tried. She smiled at his bluntness, twirling an enchanting little ribbon of hair around her index finger.

“Perhaps I’ll be seeing you around here often, then.”

“Yes, perhaps - ”

“Alfons!” Edward appeared at the corner again, yellow eyes flashing and mouth tight and thin. “We’ve only been working here three days, we’re not allowed to be late yet!”

“Ah - I’ve got to be going, but I didn’t catch your name?”

“It’s Elke.” What a pretty name.

“Alfons!” Edward swept his arms around the corner, huge and impatient. Elke turned briefly to look at him and giggled gently as she turned back.

“Your roommate?” Alfons nodded sheepishly, and she giggled again. “I’ll see you later - Alfons.”

“Yeah. Later.” She brushed past him then, and he felt her skirt breeze by the leg of his pants.

Elke.

Alfons, scientific and logical to a fault, felt the strange urge to write poetry.

He saw her again the next day as he was leaving for the market, and there was a basket under her arm filled with flowers. Inside, Edward yelled at him to remember the apples as Alfons slammed the door and deftly swiped his hair back from his face. It sprung back to its sloppy skew on his head though, falling stubbornly into his eyes. Elke giggled behind a dainty little hand, and Alfons tried his best to make it seem intentional - dashing.

“Hello again,” she said.

Alfons’ grin then was a little sloppy and dazed. “Hello. I trust you found your grandfather’s?” Her eyes narrowed slightly in confusion and the corners of her lips turned down gently. The flowers under her arm stood bright and colorful against the milky whiteness of her skin and blouse. Then, she seemed to realize and laughed again, almost a coo.

“Ah, I’ve been visiting my grandfather here for years - I just wanted an excuse to talk to you.” Alfons felt the blood rush to his face and suddenly, he was glad to have his hair to hide behind. The embarrassment stole his breath from his lungs, and he coughed a little into his hand. Elke didn’t seem fazed though, her grin went wider and she curled a piece of straight blonde hair around her index finger in the same way that had stolen his heart when they’d first met. He was glad. In a world where tuberculosis hung solemn and predatory over everyone’s heads, an ever-looming threat, a cold like Alfons’ was often hideously misconstrued.

And it was just a cold. The changing of seasons always did it to him, and now, deep in October, his chest quivered with the sting of newly-nipping air.

Elke let the hair fall from her fingers then and reached down into her basket to remove a sweet autumn flower, deep purple and dark around the edges, as if the frost had nipped it there, so close to Winter. Alfons could smell the fragrance from across the short distance, and it only grew stronger when he took a tentative step forward to accept it. He didn’t know whether it was the flower or Elke by the time he was just a short breadth away from her, but the sweetness didn’t dissipate when she took a chaste step backward and gave a sly smile from beneath her fall of hair.

And the smell was still there, in the hallway, as she side-stepped him wordlessly and skipped down the stairs.

As autumn wore on and faded darkly into winter, he saw more and more of Elke, and he suddenly found himself enjoying her company over the company of his schematics and equations. She wore muted browns in the cold, scarves and long over-coats with big buttons and muffs around her ears. She still managed to smell of flowers though, even in these dead, dreary months, though Edward never seemed to notice it. He only seemed mildly annoyed by her intrusion into the sanctity of their apartment on the occasions where she brazenly came knocking - two men and one woman in an apartment, how scandalous, how the neighbors would talk. But Alfons was ever a gentleman, and Edward was enough of a gentlemen in all the ways that really counted in civilized (if not polite) society.

On a day deep into November, she stopped by on her way to her grandfather’s in the very early morning and Edward was sleeping, minus one leg, on the couch. Alfons was used to him falling all over his books by that point, and yesterday evening, he’d routinely pulled a blueprint from its place beneath Edward’s chin. He’d learned early on that Edward’s drool was a terribly damaging thing.

That, at least, seemed to bother her a bit. She had seen Edward enough before, but he was usually dressed to the nines and steady on his false appendage. He didn’t blame Elke though, because it had been off-putting to shelter a cripple at first to him, too. It wasn’t something the German people generally condoned, though it wasn’t, at this point, any sort of crime, either.

When Elke stepped into the kitchen, she still looked vaguely lost, an adorable little wrinkle crinkling her brow. “He’s a cripple?”

“He lost his right arm and left leg in the Great War.” She nodded a little vaguely, worrying her lower lip.

“I hadn’t realized,” she whispered. As if his missing leg changed his character entirely, as if she had only just realized that a long-time friend was really a murderer in disguise. He wasn’t sure if she was disgusted or pitying, but he knew that Edward wouldn’t appreciate either.

“He works, then?”

“Oh yes, he works.” As if there was a day he ever even considered not working.

“Hm. Have you considered living...without him?” He must have looked a little stricken then, because she rushed to explain. “It’s not - just that he’s a cripple. It’s - well he doesn’t treat you very well, does he? Yelling all the time, ranting about. And...” she leaned in conspiratorially, as if she could wake Edward from his dead sleep, halfway across the apartment. “He just seems like a bit of a loon. I heard him talking about another world last week, when you invited me to dinner. You were at the stove, and he was on the couch just - muttering. Perhaps he would be better off in an asylum, Alfons, dear.”

Alfons - didn’t know how to react. Because, as he’d said, early on it had been off-putting living with a cripple, but he’d stopped thinking of Edward as such a long, long time before. He was brilliant and proud and strong, and even though he was perhaps a bit eccentric, his storytelling was a part of his fascinating character, and Alfons wasn’t about to crush the fantasies of someone who seemed to have endured so very many hardships.

Edward Elric’s genius would probably lead him to a place in textbooks, too - record books, even - and that certainly wasn’t hurting their cooperative relationship at all.

However, it was in that moment, with Elke eyeing him warily from across their rickety kitchen table, blue eyes bright and focused above her muted browns, that Alfons realized he was falling for her. Because Alfons liked to believe he was noble in heart and intentions and character, for all that he had never done anybody wrong, and he never had failed to stand up for his friends before. To anyone else telling him to send Edward to a looney bin, he might have walked out of the room or he might have attempted to explain Edward - not that he could, not that anyone could - but for Elke, he just had the urge to agree.

I’ll leave him, of course I’ll leave him if you’ll be with me -

He could almost see himself saying it, and it disturbed him at the same time it made him a little bit elated. He could spend the rest of his life with this woman, he really could. At age eighteen, he’d never before been presented with the opportunity, but other strapping young men his age were finding women and settling down while Alfons still had his eyes set skyward. But here, here in these blue eyes and those beautiful lips, and those straight white teeth, and that little waist, and those flaring, perfect hips - there was some sort of future.

Alfons coughed slightly into his hand, a little bit harsh and dizzying, but it must have just been the realization, it had to be the realization, and he thought I can’t ruin this now, and for Edward of all people. Elke made textbooks seem almost, almost inconsequential.

Through the torrent of emotions, all Alfons said was, “Perhaps.”

The force of her smile was breathtaking.

Close to Christmas, his and Elke’s first together, his cold got worse, and he spent a few cloudy days in bed. Edward went to work for them both - he was carrying most of their ideas anyway - and Elke came to the apartment to fix him soup and bread. She had long ago stopped coming only because of her grandfather two apartments down, and she didn’t even knock when she came in hefting a giant soup pot and a loaf of bread in a brown bag.

“Alfons, my poor baby,” she cooed as she shut the door, and in his bedroom, Alfons closed his eyes contentedly against the pillow. He heard her shut Edward’s bedroom door with just a bit more force than necessary (it was the prosthetic legs, she’d said once; all the false feet standing proud and still and dead in the air “gave her the shivers”).

“Has Edward not been taking proper care of you?” In his bedroom, Alfons opened his mouth to respond, but it was easier, at that point, not to. Since that dreary day in November, Elke had seemed absolutely hellbent on forcing Edward away from her dear Alfons and into some sort of insane asylum, but Edward was stubborn and bull-headed and having none of it. Alfons could tell that he was hurt by it though, if only because he didn’t go out of his room without his prostheses, now, and he always took special care to walk fluent and straight-backed when Elke came to visit.

“Here we are,” she said, suddenly appearing backward at the doorway, easing the door open with a shapely - gulp - perfect rear and hefting a tray bearing soup and bread. Alfons blushed so hard that Elke just cooed again, harder, when she saw him. “You must have a fever!” She set the tray on the bedside table and then the mattress dipped gently with her weight beside him. Then she was leaning over him, pressing her cheek to his forehead, laying her body along the length of his. He inhaled deeply, smelled her flowery, feminine scent, and cherished the feel of her firm - gulp - breasts against his chest.

“Poor baby.” Then she busied herself with arranging the pillows so that he could sit up comfortably. It was almost too much when she started spoon-feeding him then, but Alfons obediently opened his mouth when she told him to because he could live with this woman, honestly, he could live with her and she would treat him like this, and it would be paradise.

The first gulp of soup was delicious and thick - Elke was a most fabulous cook - but it burned strangely down his throat where the coughing had torn at it, and Alfons sputtered a bit. Elke just cooed at him again, leaned in and murmured something about her poor Alfons.

“Alfons I was thinking,” she said, after the cough had dissipated and she’d dabbed at his mouth with a napkin until she was sufficiently convinced of its cleanliness. Alfons perked his ears, because Elke thinking usually - wasn’t particularly conducive to Edward’s continued relationship with him. She surprised him though, by continuing with, “Don’t you think it’s about time you got a real job?”

For a moment, it didn’t process. He could see her lips moving and hear the words, but it simply meant nothing. It was as if she’d said it in a different language before it actually registered and Alfons blinked at her, slowly, doubtfully. “I- I’m a researcher,” he said, pronouncing each syllable with incredibly deliberate clarity. “I’m a scientist. I build rockets. I have a real job.”

Her blue eye shone. “Yes, yes I realize, but Alfons - how will you support a family on that salary?” Alfons - blinked slowly at her again. Family? Who’d ever said anything about family? “This place is a dump, no offense - no place to raise children, and you can only afford it because Edward-” a little sneer “- pays half. Don’t you think it’s time you joined the army, that you stopped living in the stars?” And at that point she crossed her legs daintily and leaned in, her two hands on her jutting knee and her bottom lip pouting out at him. He tried not to look at the way pressing her arms like that pressed her breasts together, tried not to, tried not to -

Edward was such a wonderful roommate, but he did not have breasts like that, no, did not have white, white teeth or a flowery scent or a perfectly round little ass, or that figure or -

Alfons, a soldier? He tried to envision it, tried to see himself patrolling the streets or hefting a gun or, or, or killing anyone. Edward was strong and fierce for all that he was incredibly compact, but Alfons was just pale and quiet and always had been rather sickly. The very idea of killing made him nervous, the very idea of joining the fierce German army simply did not sound appealing. His adoration of Elke made him pause, though - steady his breathing and think again.

Their salary at the research labs really was but a pittance compared to what he could earn, and the career path he had chosen wasn’t a very steady one. In the onslaught of a new war that seemed to be brewing somewhere on the horizon, being a soldier would be so much more practical. And he had said that he wanted to devote himself to Elke entirely, hadn’t he? Didn’t that mean raising a family, didn’t that mean making sacrifices? He looked away from Elke and down to his clenching, white-knuckled fist.

But not many soldiers got their names in history books, did they? Unless the were brilliant army or naval commanders, unless they changed the tides in war - but Alfons would probably remain a lowly enlisted man for most of his life, throwing his existence to the cause that thousands of others did. And how was that memorable?

It wasn’t. But, but, but Elke and her firm round breasts and her blue, blue eyes, and her smile, face, breath so warm.

His groin throbbed at him.

“Maybe,” he said, and it tasted sour on his tongue. She beamed, bustled off to ladle him more soup, and Alfons shifted shamefully onto his stomach.

Alfons forgot Edward’s birthday. On a cold, cold day in January, he left the house early and went to a beer house for dinner with Elke. It was an unspoken pact between Alfons and Edward that they would go out together on his birthday, because Alfons could see that the memories of that day hurt him. He had seen Edward at work all day and they had walked home together, but of course Edward would never mention it, he hadn’t even been the one to tell him the date of his birthday in the first place, and Alfons had just left him sitting at his desk, wrapped in a blanket and looking pained and miserable. He had wondered vaguely at the withering glance Edward cast him as he walked out the door with Elke giggling on his arm, silent and straight-backed, but he had just blamed it on his companion.

That was until he returned home at around ten that evening to Edward drunk and dejected on the couch, still dressed in his work clothes but disheveled now, the buttons on his collar undone enough that the brown of a supporting strap and the paleness of the too-smooth flesh peeking out from underneath it were visible. And then it hit him what day it was, what was wrong, what -

“Alfons,” Edward slurred from the couch, and a bottle of cheap alcohol from their kitchen splashed audibly in his hand. Alfons winced at the choice of liquor and knew that one drank that for the sole purpose of getting drunk because the taste of it was simply atrocious. Ed licked his lips and started again, “Alfons.” His voice cracked.

Alfons, meanwhile, made his way over to the couch with arms outstretched. He made to wrap his arm around Edward’s back, but he was promptly slapped away. Alfons retreated and Edward just leaned his head against the back of the couch dejectedly, his legs flung out limp in front of him like he hadn’t the will to control them any longer.

“M’dad’s gone,” he slurred. “The bastard. Again.”

Alfons just stammered, “W-What?”

“Was gunna,” he hiccuped, “was gunna call my dad. See if he would, if he would have me back for a little while.” Alfons’ chest promptly went very cold. “But his secretary said he jus’ stopped comin’ to work.”

“Edward...when did you find this out?”

“Coupla weeks ago.” Alfons swallowed, his chest burned, and his hands were very damp and clammy.

“You didn’t tell me.”

“Not important. He’s done it ‘fore.” Edward had - had been keeping this to himself for two weeks? He had been torn apart and devastated and he hadn’t even bothered to inform his roommate...? Edward’s eyes were shining when he looked over.

But no, Edward had been off lately, if Alfons hazarded to think about it - quiet and subdued and private (more than usual). But he had still assumed that was Elke’s doing, Elke, Elke, Elke, that was all he really did think about anymore -

“It is important Edward, it’s very important. Something should be done, we should call someone, tell someone.”

“He’s done it ‘fore,” Edward repeated, and waved his false hand dismissively. “He’ll show up whenever he damn well pleases.”

There was an uncomfortable silence then, Edward still splayed across the couch and Alfons worrying over him from across the wide expanse of cushion because he couldn’t gather the courage to get any closer.

“I should move out,” Edward slurred suddenly, throwing the bottle back again and draining all the bitter liquid.

And as much as Alfons thought he disagreed, he couldn’t bring himself to say so aloud.

“Alfons, dear?” Alfons looked up blearily from a blueprint, cursing the combustion chamber mentally even as he smiled, smiled, smiled at her.

“Elke?”

“You do love me, don’t you?”

He said, “More than anything,” and abandoned the blueprint to join her on the couch.

Alfons woke one night in early February to a nasty twinge in his chest, something tighter than the sullen twist that he had felt in weeks prior. He threw his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up fast, breath coming short and shallow. Distantly, he felt himself lifting a hand to his chest, felt it spread over the pale skin until he tightened it and clawed there, ragged fingernails trailing white from his collarbone. His head spun with the lack of air, his heart had trouble finding a rhythm, and despite the sheen of sweat he could feel on his head and chest, he was absolutely chilled to his core.

It took a moment for him to gather enough sense to climb to his feet and make a slow pilgrimage to the bathroom - his hand never left his chest, and he felt his heart gathering speed as walking made breathing harder still. He took a moment to lean against the window frame on his way over, panting harshly and fogging the pane. Outside, there was a fresh layer of thick, wet snow. On his windowpane, there was a transparent layer of ice.

He stopped again at the doorframe to the bathroom, leaning and clutching at it in white-knuckled agony. Lengthening his inhales, he found that each breath was too cold, too harsh, too painful, so he stopped and tried to make it more shallow again. Just skimming his lungs with air did absolutely nothing for his spinning head though, so he tried to find a happy medium, somewhere between dizzying and painful. It didn’t work very well.

Once into the bathroom proper, tiles surprisingly warm and tingly against his bloodless feet, he could see himself in the mirror, and never before had that experience been quite so humbling. His pallor was disappointing - like paste, he imagined, in that it was a slightly sickly yellow, but at the same time far too white. It was a rather disconcerting combination.

He could see his bloodshot eyes then, getting closer, and the blue in them was hardly recognizable through all the red in there. He shook his head roughly, blinked, but it did little to dispel the pounding, the cold blanch, the red-rimmed eyes. Instead, he just felt nauseous. He sunk onto the toilet seat in an effort to steady his breath.

“Alfons...?” Edward appeared, armless, at the bathroom door. His pajama sleeve slapped softly against the doorframe he had just been clutching like his life depended on it, and he reached up with the arm opposite to rub hard at a sleepy tawny eye. He didn’t sleep much, and Alfons grimaced to see that he’d woken him.

“You okay?” Alfons grunted. Edward moved forward into the bathroom on shaky legs. Alfons could see in the sickly light of the bathroom that the left hadn’t been secured properly. The straps that would probably hold it around his thigh flapped loose against the threadbare folds of his pajama bottoms.

“Do you need to see a doctor?”

Alfons deigned to speak to him this time, adamantly and forcefully, a hint of a jagged growl beginning at the back of his throat. “No. Just a cough. I must have caught a chill in the night.”

Edward’s brow crinkled. “Alfons. You’ve been sick a long time. Maybe it really is time you saw a doctor.”

Alfons looked up at him through his bangs, eyes narrowed. He imagined that he looked pretty intimidating in that moment with his red eyes and clenched jaw, because Edward’s eyes widened until he could see stark white all around the gold there. Both of them fell silent, and the silence stretched on so long that eventually Alfons snapped, “What?!” just to keep his sanity.

Edward’s eyes didn’t narrow any, and instead, his right hand ghosted painfully slow up to his chin. He rubbed gently with his index finger at the corner of his mouth, and Alfons, transfixed, reach up to mimic him. His fingers fell upon something wet and sticky, and when he pulled them away from his mouth to look at them, cross-eyed, they were utterly, unavoidably covered in bright, horrible red.

After that, he saw Edward’s lips moving, rapid and nervous, until the world pitched sideways and he went down.

He woke the next day in bed and surprised himself to be waking at all. He felt slow and weak and tired and bloodless. He didn’t even move to lift himself from the bed for a full five minutes of silence at least, because his arms and legs seemed entirely empty and wouldn’t hold his weight when he tried to push them under him.

When he looked out his frost-covered window, he could see that the sun was high in the sky, and he knew that he had missed work again. Edward would be gone because missing work was incredibly taboo to him, and something about that idea stunk of betrayal. He listened hard, because he knew deep down that Edward wasn’t any sort of traitor, but his world was silent, and something in his gut said you left him alone on his birthday before he could begin to pity himself too much.

Once Alfons was able to get his arms underneath him to raise himself to a sitting position, he thought about calling Elke so that she would come and pity him and serve him soup, but then he was casting his eyes about his room from his new vantage and he saw the bathroom door open and askew a few paces over. That was enough for him to recall the red and what exactly the red meant.

His insides went slightly numb, and his vision went slightly hazy.

He didn’t need to see a doctor because he already knew what he had. Deep down, he had known for a long time, but it was the hardest thing in the world to admit. The blood just confirmed it though; a dark, red specter of his own demise hovering in the mirror when he looked there. He couldn’t call Elke now, how could he? He would be contagious, he would infect her he - he probably already had, hadn’t he?

He gave in. With all the strength he could find, he got up from his bed, and he made his way toward the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello? Elke?”

“Alfons! You sound simply awful, are you alright?”

“I - had a rough night.”

“I’m sorry, dear - your cold again?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Listen, have you been feeling alright, lately? No cold or cough?”

“Just fine. You can’t put me out of commission so easily, dear.”

“I.”

“Alfons, are you sure you’re alright? You really do sound ghastly.”

“I.”

He hung up.

He spent the next five minutes, at least, hyperventilating at the phone from a curled position on the couch. He could see Elke, in his mind’s eye, on the other side of the line, maybe still holding the receiver, with her little lips pursed and her dainty eyebrows furrowed. He reached for the phone at least ten times more before he was able to admit to himself that talking to her right then was a very bad idea, because he wanted her there, and he wanted her warm body there, and he wanted her breasts and butt and eyes and mouth there so that he could find solace in someone’s warmth. He ached. But she could not be here because Alfons was coughing up blood, and Alfons was dreadfully, deathly contagious.

He buried his head in his hands just as he heard the door bang open and closed from across the apartment. Edward’s footsteps were uneven as they approached him, but a hand touched his head soon after, and it was warm and calloused and strong.

“I see you’re alive.”

“Yeah,” he returned weakly.

“They aren’t happy with you at work. They know you skipped out to be with that damned,” he wrinkled his nose, “girl last week - ”

“Elke.”

“Right, yeah, Elke,” he slaughtered the pronunciation. He was too harsh on the ‘k’ sound, treating it like some common English word rather than the name of his beautiful German flower, soft e’s on either side. Elke. “Anyway, they thought you were skiving off again. They said that if you were so sick you should see a doctor - and I said that I told you the same thing but you didn’t listen to me at all, never, why would you listen to them?”

Alfons swallowed hard and said quickly, “I saw a doctor.” A blatant lie. “Today.”

Ed’s eyes widened, and he sad down next to Alfons.

“Well?”

“It’s nothing.” Edward looked down, furrowing his eyebrows like he didn’t believe him, and his ponytail fell softly against his neck.

“That - last night - wasn’t nothing,” then he turned to him, eyes wide in a silent appeal for truth. “Coughing up blood isn’t nothing, Alfons. Damnit, if something is wrong, I have a right to know! I’m your roommate! I thought - I thought we were friends.”

Edward had been lied to before. Edward had known illness like this before, silent and stealthy and deadly, and Alfons could see it in his eyes.

“We are. I’m not lying. It’s nothing,” Alfons repeated clinically. He was careful now, to keep his face away from Ed’s, to breathe his shallow breaths in the opposite direction, because Edward couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t get sick.

Edward just eyed him critically for a moment, up and down like he could see right through his skin and into the rot festering in his lungs, before he patted his knees, rose from the couch, and retreated heavy-treaded to his own room.

Alfons let out a tired sigh as the door closed, and knew he had a decision to make.

Alfons left the house at midnight precisely, chest still thrumming with the strain and aching in the deep chill of the season. But it wasn’t far to the Red Light District from their apartment - seedy parts of town always rented cheaper rooms - and he walked in great strides so that he could get there before he changed his mind.

Almost immediately he found a woman with jet black hair and deep brown eyes leaning against a cold brick wall. Her lips were painted a deep red, and the paleness of her breasts reflected the sickly yellow light from an overhead lantern. When she smiled it was shallow and feline, and her eyes arched with her lips. Her teeth were vaguely yellow, and she reeked of absinthe, but Alfons ignored it and approached her on steady legs.

His mind flashed briefly to Elke and her blonde hair and blue eyes, Elke and her flowery scent and gentle, pearly smile.

Yes. This one would be perfect.

She probably had all manner of diseases, but Alfons was dying and couldn’t have cared less. He also let himself believe that it was alright if he infected her with his own disease too. She would be dead soon. If the diseases she carried didn’t do her in, the streets would eventually.

Her neck was red and bruised darkly. He wouldn’t be her first customer of the evening, then. Alfons flashed her a timid smile, and she smiled back with that same toothy grin.

“Looking for a good time?”

Alfons fingered the money in his pocket, well-worn bills stolen from the rainy day jar atop their kitchen counter.

“I suppose I am.”

The intensity of it was something that he had never experienced, and had he known that he would lose his head so, he might’ve forgone the experience in an attempt to be mindful of Edward next door. But in the heat of the moment, his virgin mind wasn’t concerned with waking Edward through the thin wall, or waking Elke’s elderly grandfather two apartments away, or slamming into the headboard hard enough to dent the walls. His mind was focused on the taste, touch, smell, sight, sound of sex - something he’d thought about enough with Elke in his apartment and something he never thought would happen to him until he was married and settled and having children. But he wouldn’t have time for that now, would he? he thought, dazed. It was something that he could have, should have, would have done with Elke, but there wasn’t time, and - and even if there was.

Even if there was, the image of Elke doubled over and hacking into her dainty little palm, the image of Elke’s little pink lips tinged deadly red, was enough to convince him that sex with Elke was a very, very bad idea.

Sex in general, on the other hand, was quite another matter, because in the wake of it Alfons felt calm and happy, sated and sleepy. He felt able to focus on Elke’s gleaming blue eyes and shining white smile now that she was no longer something he actively, desperately associated with sex.

Afterward, as the dark-eyed whore lifted herself off him and went about busying herself with her clothes again, he reached up to tangle his fingers in her hair. She just looked back at him over her shoulder from the edge of the bed, nostril flaring slightly.

“Do you plan on paying for another hour?”

“No,” he whispered dreamily. “No.”

“Then what’s your problem?” She turned back to lacing her shoe.

He hesitated for a moment, surprised to find that the starts of a shaky laugh were manifesting somewhere in the back of his throat. “I’m in love!” he cried, and Alfons saw her back rise and fall sharply as she snorted a laugh.

“Good for you, kid.” She took the money from the dresser and left. Alfons laid on his side, felt sticky and cold and lonely, and laughed until his lungs gave out.

The fact of the matter was, Alfons’ decision to leave Elke wasn’t based solely on her health. Alfons had tuberculosis. He didn’t have enough time to multitask. His life now was one of complete focus; his life now was one of rockets and stars and ships and fuel. Now, Edward was more important than Elke, and whores could serve as a simple enough replacement for the warmth of a woman against his chest.

That was just the way things went. If his life was going to be short, then he would achieve fame, he would be a researcher, he would build rockets, he would not fight in any wars, he would live his life on his own terms -- because he had already known love, at least.

And it was good while it lasted.

He begged off sick from work again the next day, and Edward did nothing to protest or even suggest he’d been aware of his whore’s presence the night before aside from a narrow-eyed warning glance as he shut the front door. Alfons paid it no mind because he had things to do, and the moment the hollow thunk of the door began reverberating, he was up from his place on the couch and dialing a very familiar number. He had mulled over that particular number for hours the night before after several failed attempts at sleep, he had traced the number into a prostitute’s back, and actually putting it into the phone was a surprisingly giddy, elating thing.

“Hello?” There was Elke’s voice, and Alfons steeled himself.

“I can’t see you anymore.” His chest burned, but at least his nether regions were granting him a moments peace now. The pain of losing Elke was sudden and swift and deep, but he was able to ignore it, mostly. Like that distant throb in the back of his chest. Like that vague realization that drove everything he did, now - you’re going to die, you know.

Yes. Yes. I must work harder.

“I - see.”

“Elke, you just have to trust me.”

“I do. More than anything.”

“It. Just has to be this way.”

“...Can you tell me - why?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

There was silence for a moment.

“I love you, Alfons,” she whispered suddenly. She sounded as if she was going to cry.

“Goodbye,” he said, and put the phone in it’s cradle. He only spared moment then to contemplate his intertwined fingers and allow a single tear, but his life was one of focus now, and there was no time for that either.

He got up, got dressed, and decided that he felt up to work today, after all.

Edward seemed surprised to see him walking calmly into the hangar that housed their latest project, but he gladly accepted the blueprints that Alfons provided. His smile was tentative at first, but it warmed the more Al talked about his rockets, the more he seemed convinced that Alfons wasn’t just trying to make it through the day to spend his evening with yellow hair and blue eyes.

And he wasn’t. There was only black hair and brown eyes - ugly, dark colors - now, even though the brightness of blue and yellow lurked dangerously in the back of his mind. But the black and brown was enough to shroud the brightness, and the dull sex-tinged silhouette put a comfortable haze over everything that wasn’t first priority, now.

He bought Edward two beers at a pub on the way home. He figured he owed him that much. As Edward cheeks were starting to go pink and his movements started going a little sloppy, Alfons said, “We’re moving.” Edward looked up, and his bleary eyes were sharp for a moment, eyebrows raised in weary surprise.

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. I could go f’r a change ‘n scenery.”

He hiccuped, and Alfons’ smile was dark, morose and shallow, and really - there was nothing to be afraid of now.

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