Roots to Branches
This is most likely a multi-parter since I have some ideas of where to go with it. The plan had been to write a RussellxEd smutfic, but it wasn't meant to be. I will leave that to the masters =)
Title:
Ed breathed a heavy sigh as he flopped a book shut, dust puffing off its cover and closing with a loud thud.
“Shhh!” Russell hissed with a frown.
“What?”
“Can’t you be quiet? We’re reading.”
Ed glanced around the table at Russell and their brothers. The two youngest boys also looked disturbed, though Al was pretty good at hiding it. Maybe Ed had been fidgeting too much.
“Okay, okay. I’ll be quiet.”
Russell turned back to his book with a satisfied smirk.
Ed sighed again, this time more quietly and glanced around the empty library. The light was far too dim, there in the farthest corner, to be proper light for reading, but it had the comforting feel of reading at home in front of the fire place. Ed missed Rizenbol and he missed reading in his own chair and in front of his own fireplace. He missed his family. But, glancing around at the bowed heads and their focused concentration, he felt that this was a nice substitute.
The last thing he felt like doing, however, was joining in on the reading. He was antsy, swinging his legs like a child, unencumbered by bothersome adult-length legs that could brush feet against floor. He pushed his sleeves up. He pulled them back down. He re-braided his hair. And he stared.
He stared at the boys who filled out the table for four. Russell at his side, the two younger boys sitting across from their respective brothers. Ed drummed his fingers on his metal arm and made funny noises with his lips. When Russell’s head rose from its studious position, his too-long bangs brushing the bridge of his nose as he turned an annoyed glare on Ed, the older boy ceased his puffing and tapping and rocking in his chair. Instead, he expelled an annoyed grunt.
“Edward!” Russell snapped, then calmed. “Please...this is important.” ....
Ed rolled his eyes when Russell looked back down. He followed the younger boy’s stare, hoping for something interesting. Oh. Just plant stuff. Far too boring for him to care. What could you do with plants, anyway? Good-for-nothing weak organisms dependent on human care to thrive. And he’d seen the Tringham boys fight. Plants were not very useful in battle either.
Yet, he couldn’t look away from Russell’s notes. The gentle sweeping ink marks that filled the delicate arrays were in stark contrast to the hard, geometric designs in Ed’s notes. Creeping down the page, thick black tendrils vined themselves around the curved lines traversing the circle. They looked like roots, of a tree maybe. Thick and long, trailing the diameter of the array, connected at lines that Ed supposed were mimics of branches. A delicate invention of continuity and infinity. Roots to branches and branches back to roots. Ed smiled softly in the dim light.
This was the graphic illustration of the difference between the two boys. Russell’s goals consisted of a circular pattern, much like his arrays, much like the plants in which he could lose himself for hours. A constant drive to increase their knowledge, only to reapply that knowledge to knew problems which would lead to greater knowledge. In short, the Tringham brothers sought after no hard goal. They researched and experimented. And they would never stop researching and experimenting because there would always be new things to learn.
Ed, on the other hand, had had a simple goal. Not so simple to achieve - though he had - but simple in structure. He had only wanted to return his brother’s body, to regain what had been taken from them. This goal had been met. And now, after hitting a very concrete, tangible wall, the Elric brother’s had to seek out a new path. It would have been very easy to fall into plant research with Russell, very easy to spend days locked away in the greenhouse, sitting close to his lover as they stared into microscopes and colorful elixirs. But plants weren’t Ed’s thing.
Ed knew little about the workings of Russell’s research, and he knew even less about the workings of their relationship, but it didn’t really matter to them. They’d fallen into their routines together so seamlessly. Sort of like the roots and branches of Russell’s array. The plant alchemist kept him grounded while Ed had strived and worked for his goals. Russell patiently waited for him to return from every mission and even waited the two years it took for him to return from the gate. Along with Al and Fletcher, Russell hadn’t given up hope of Ed’s return. He had accepted the homecoming of the older alchemist with feverish embraces and warm, moist kisses, and too many tears. Those had been their first together.
Nothing had felt more right. When he had returned to the doorstep the four of them would eventually shared in Rizembol, nothing seemed out of place with such a passionate greeting from the boy who had previously been only a grudging friend. Ed had tried to tell himself that he hadn’t really heard Russell scream “Come back alive” when he’d descended into the underground city. But it was one of the memories that sustained him while he was gone.
It seemed that the Tringham boys hadn’t just sustained him, but his brother as well. They had helped keep the memory of Ed alive within Al during the separation. They had helped him remember things that the gate had stolen from him. They’d put in a small vegetable garden at their home in Rizembol, as much for sustenance as for playful experimentation. It had surprised Ed upon his homecoming to see tilled earth behind a newly erected home, one very near the ashen ruins of their old dwelling, but not in the same place exactly. In reverence, Ed thought.
Maybe it was Al’s way of not yet moving on from their memories altogether. Maybe if he kept the ruined home site where it was, he wouldn’t be closing the door on their journey, he wouldn’t be admitting that it was over, that Ed wouldn’t be coming back. But he had come back. He had come back to Al and to Russell and to Fletcher. He had come back to a new home and to Winry and Pinako and Den. And he had come back to that thriving, green garden.
He remembered the first time Russell had taken him out there. They had knelt in the soil while the younger boy explained the workings, both alchemical and biological, of the green shoots. He had gently pulled up a carrot plant, brushed the dirt off the thick orange root (“yes, the root,” he had ensured Ed), and placed it in a collection basket. Ed had assumed that the garden was the Tringhams’ thing, not something in which he would ever be expected to participate.
He had been wrong. With no pressing quest forcing him away from home, what with Al being pliant flesh once again, he sat nervously at home. He had been sitting in a chair, anxiously bouncing his knee up and down, staring out the window with one eye, the other fixed firmly on the telephone that hadn’t rung since he had been back (save once for Winry to call and check on her automail). Russell had innocently suggested he help in the garden. They did need to harvest the potatoes, after all. And by absent-mindedly nodding to the request, Ed had secured himself a position as weeder, waterer, aerator, and general workhorse.
And he hated it. Hated the feel of the dirt on his fingers, hated the bugs that ate the plants he was expected to care for, and hated the bugs he was supposed to leave.
“Couldn’t we just alchemize these in the lab?” he’d asked Russell one day. The younger boy had simply rolled his eyes.
This just wasn’t Ed’s forte. He hated the sun on the back of his neck, the wetness of mud on his knees, the weeding, and the damn...gentleness....of it all. Definitely not his thing. He was more blow-stuff-up-and-find-his-solution-amongst-the-rubble. He hated this caring for things bit. Why couldn’t they just clap their hands and - poof - plant?
Ed smiled again. Perhaps the Tringhams did have a natural knack for the plant alchemy. They seemed to understand the idea of roots and branches and nourishment and life so thoroughly. They had nurtured the depleted Al, had brought his memories back from withering behind the gate. They happily remained as a home base for the wandering brothers, letting them reach their branches wherever they needed. The Tringhams seemed to understand that the concept of “home” was a bit foreign to the Elrics and respected their need to explore.
When Ed slipped a hand onto Russell’s knee, the younger boy frowned at him but didn’t say anything and, almost grudgingly, slid his hand on top of Ed’s. Russell returned his gaze to the book in front of him but Ed was content in knowing that he had discerned the buds of a smile growing at the corners of his companion’s mouth.
When Ed leaned over to kiss Russell’s cheek, he refrained from even the slightest hints of a frown and instead closed his eyes and leaned into Ed’s lips. The younger brothers across the table giggled at each other, causing a smirk to slowly slide up Russell’s unoccupied cheek. Ed slid a marker into Russell’s book and closed it quietly.
“I’m bored,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Russell smiled and shook his head. “The attention span of a gnat.”
Instead of raging about being called a gnat so small that spiders wouldn’t even expend the effort to eat him, Ed simply helped his lover out of his chair and cradled both of their books in his automail arm.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Far too little smut =(
Spoilers: Spoilers for end of series
Title:
Ed breathed a heavy sigh as he flopped a book shut, dust puffing off its cover and closing with a loud thud.
“Shhh!” Russell hissed with a frown.
“What?”
“Can’t you be quiet? We’re reading.”
Ed glanced around the table at Russell and their brothers. The two youngest boys also looked disturbed, though Al was pretty good at hiding it. Maybe Ed had been fidgeting too much.
“Okay, okay. I’ll be quiet.”
Russell turned back to his book with a satisfied smirk.
Ed sighed again, this time more quietly and glanced around the empty library. The light was far too dim, there in the farthest corner, to be proper light for reading, but it had the comforting feel of reading at home in front of the fire place. Ed missed Rizenbol and he missed reading in his own chair and in front of his own fireplace. He missed his family. But, glancing around at the bowed heads and their focused concentration, he felt that this was a nice substitute.
The last thing he felt like doing, however, was joining in on the reading. He was antsy, swinging his legs like a child, unencumbered by bothersome adult-length legs that could brush feet against floor. He pushed his sleeves up. He pulled them back down. He re-braided his hair. And he stared.
He stared at the boys who filled out the table for four. Russell at his side, the two younger boys sitting across from their respective brothers. Ed drummed his fingers on his metal arm and made funny noises with his lips. When Russell’s head rose from its studious position, his too-long bangs brushing the bridge of his nose as he turned an annoyed glare on Ed, the older boy ceased his puffing and tapping and rocking in his chair. Instead, he expelled an annoyed grunt.
“Edward!” Russell snapped, then calmed. “Please...this is important.” ....
Ed rolled his eyes when Russell looked back down. He followed the younger boy’s stare, hoping for something interesting. Oh. Just plant stuff. Far too boring for him to care. What could you do with plants, anyway? Good-for-nothing weak organisms dependent on human care to thrive. And he’d seen the Tringham boys fight. Plants were not very useful in battle either.
Yet, he couldn’t look away from Russell’s notes. The gentle sweeping ink marks that filled the delicate arrays were in stark contrast to the hard, geometric designs in Ed’s notes. Creeping down the page, thick black tendrils vined themselves around the curved lines traversing the circle. They looked like roots, of a tree maybe. Thick and long, trailing the diameter of the array, connected at lines that Ed supposed were mimics of branches. A delicate invention of continuity and infinity. Roots to branches and branches back to roots. Ed smiled softly in the dim light.
This was the graphic illustration of the difference between the two boys. Russell’s goals consisted of a circular pattern, much like his arrays, much like the plants in which he could lose himself for hours. A constant drive to increase their knowledge, only to reapply that knowledge to knew problems which would lead to greater knowledge. In short, the Tringham brothers sought after no hard goal. They researched and experimented. And they would never stop researching and experimenting because there would always be new things to learn.
Ed, on the other hand, had had a simple goal. Not so simple to achieve - though he had - but simple in structure. He had only wanted to return his brother’s body, to regain what had been taken from them. This goal had been met. And now, after hitting a very concrete, tangible wall, the Elric brother’s had to seek out a new path. It would have been very easy to fall into plant research with Russell, very easy to spend days locked away in the greenhouse, sitting close to his lover as they stared into microscopes and colorful elixirs. But plants weren’t Ed’s thing.
Ed knew little about the workings of Russell’s research, and he knew even less about the workings of their relationship, but it didn’t really matter to them. They’d fallen into their routines together so seamlessly. Sort of like the roots and branches of Russell’s array. The plant alchemist kept him grounded while Ed had strived and worked for his goals. Russell patiently waited for him to return from every mission and even waited the two years it took for him to return from the gate. Along with Al and Fletcher, Russell hadn’t given up hope of Ed’s return. He had accepted the homecoming of the older alchemist with feverish embraces and warm, moist kisses, and too many tears. Those had been their first together.
Nothing had felt more right. When he had returned to the doorstep the four of them would eventually shared in Rizembol, nothing seemed out of place with such a passionate greeting from the boy who had previously been only a grudging friend. Ed had tried to tell himself that he hadn’t really heard Russell scream “Come back alive” when he’d descended into the underground city. But it was one of the memories that sustained him while he was gone.
It seemed that the Tringham boys hadn’t just sustained him, but his brother as well. They had helped keep the memory of Ed alive within Al during the separation. They had helped him remember things that the gate had stolen from him. They’d put in a small vegetable garden at their home in Rizembol, as much for sustenance as for playful experimentation. It had surprised Ed upon his homecoming to see tilled earth behind a newly erected home, one very near the ashen ruins of their old dwelling, but not in the same place exactly. In reverence, Ed thought.
Maybe it was Al’s way of not yet moving on from their memories altogether. Maybe if he kept the ruined home site where it was, he wouldn’t be closing the door on their journey, he wouldn’t be admitting that it was over, that Ed wouldn’t be coming back. But he had come back. He had come back to Al and to Russell and to Fletcher. He had come back to a new home and to Winry and Pinako and Den. And he had come back to that thriving, green garden.
He remembered the first time Russell had taken him out there. They had knelt in the soil while the younger boy explained the workings, both alchemical and biological, of the green shoots. He had gently pulled up a carrot plant, brushed the dirt off the thick orange root (“yes, the root,” he had ensured Ed), and placed it in a collection basket. Ed had assumed that the garden was the Tringhams’ thing, not something in which he would ever be expected to participate.
He had been wrong. With no pressing quest forcing him away from home, what with Al being pliant flesh once again, he sat nervously at home. He had been sitting in a chair, anxiously bouncing his knee up and down, staring out the window with one eye, the other fixed firmly on the telephone that hadn’t rung since he had been back (save once for Winry to call and check on her automail). Russell had innocently suggested he help in the garden. They did need to harvest the potatoes, after all. And by absent-mindedly nodding to the request, Ed had secured himself a position as weeder, waterer, aerator, and general workhorse.
And he hated it. Hated the feel of the dirt on his fingers, hated the bugs that ate the plants he was expected to care for, and hated the bugs he was supposed to leave.
“Couldn’t we just alchemize these in the lab?” he’d asked Russell one day. The younger boy had simply rolled his eyes.
This just wasn’t Ed’s forte. He hated the sun on the back of his neck, the wetness of mud on his knees, the weeding, and the damn...gentleness....of it all. Definitely not his thing. He was more blow-stuff-up-and-find-his-solution-amongst-the-rubble. He hated this caring for things bit. Why couldn’t they just clap their hands and - poof - plant?
Ed smiled again. Perhaps the Tringhams did have a natural knack for the plant alchemy. They seemed to understand the idea of roots and branches and nourishment and life so thoroughly. They had nurtured the depleted Al, had brought his memories back from withering behind the gate. They happily remained as a home base for the wandering brothers, letting them reach their branches wherever they needed. The Tringhams seemed to understand that the concept of “home” was a bit foreign to the Elrics and respected their need to explore.
When Ed slipped a hand onto Russell’s knee, the younger boy frowned at him but didn’t say anything and, almost grudgingly, slid his hand on top of Ed’s. Russell returned his gaze to the book in front of him but Ed was content in knowing that he had discerned the buds of a smile growing at the corners of his companion’s mouth.
When Ed leaned over to kiss Russell’s cheek, he refrained from even the slightest hints of a frown and instead closed his eyes and leaned into Ed’s lips. The younger brothers across the table giggled at each other, causing a smirk to slowly slide up Russell’s unoccupied cheek. Ed slid a marker into Russell’s book and closed it quietly.
“I’m bored,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Russell smiled and shook his head. “The attention span of a gnat.”
Instead of raging about being called a gnat so small that spiders wouldn’t even expend the effort to eat him, Ed simply helped his lover out of his chair and cradled both of their books in his automail arm.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Far too little smut =(
Spoilers: Spoilers for end of series