FMA Fanfic: The Naming IV
The Naming IV. [all parts]
by arcanewinter. R 5223 Roy x Hughes. Fullmetal Alchemist. Continuation of a Hughesmunculus AU.
After their brief night in the bar of the small town where Hughes lives, neither is ready for the visit to be over.
These characters do not belong to me. I do not profit from this. You, and not I, are responsible for your offense if you choose to read what follows.
It wasn’t often enough.
It wasn’t often enough that he was able to come here, and he could never stay for very long. They had been robbed long ago of the small but significant comfort that was the nearness of the other. This distance, this secrecy felt like a sham, a mock portrayal of what used to be, but there was nothing else for them.
The door of the bar clicked shut as it left his fingers. A gust of wind collided with his thoughts, but they were not easily dismissed as he turned towards the train station.
Not everything was merely an imitation. He was sure of that, even if he couldn’t say when he’d decided it for good. After all, even the cells that comprised his own body–his only physical identity–had been replaced countless times since his birth. And if Roy could say he was still Roy, then . . .
He pulled his black trench coat more tightly closed over his civilian clothing as he continued on, every step difficult because it was a step further away. The murmur and occasional ruckus of the bar faded more quickly with the rush of the wind in his ears as though it would erase his memories of it too soon.
But the sound of his friend’s voice could not be masked.
He stopped. He knew the train would not wait for him; he knew time would not halt. But he pretended it would.
He turned, and the face that met his gaze could only have been saying, “Take the morning train.”
* * * * *
His answer was predictable, right down to the way he couldn’t look at him until he’d closed the door behind him. It was a small but polite town: the girl at the desk didn’t question his brevity or the companion whose face she didn’t see.
But he saw it, now that they were alone. The street lights outside were all he had, but he strained to make use of them. Long resigned to singular vision, he could make out almost clearly the conflicted expression on his friend’s face as he came forward. He let him pull open the trench coat, and he almost sighed to feel him slip his arms under it, surrounding him.
It only took a moment before he shrugged out of the coat himself, letting it drop to the floor so that when his arms stretched up and around the taller man’s shoulders, there was one less layer to separate them, and one less task ahead of them.
But even as he held him he tried not to lean too heavily into him. His rational mind told him it was because he didn’t want to show his weakness, his need, but a deeper voice told him it was because he was afraid of the body on the other side of the embrace.
“How long?” Roy murmured, speaking over the indecision in the back of his mind.
“How long’s it been?” There was some cheer in Hughes’ response, close to Roy’s ear, but it faded as he went on. “Or how long do we have?”
Roy smiled, an expression that was by now almost completely owned by his cynicism. “It’s been almost thirty years. That part I know.”
Hughes said nothing before he drew away, just one step audible as he turned his back. He shook his head. “I didn’t know if I’d take them. I told her I’d be back in the morning, to be safe.”
Roy’s gaze dropped, scanning first left, then right before his attention settled on the scant drawstring dangling from Hughes’ pocket.
He could have taken them anywhere. They were small, convenient, discreet. Even if the whole town saw them, no one would guess they were more than something pretty; no one would suspect how many lives–young and old, guilty and innocent–had entered into that depraved exchange.
He could have taken them home if he wanted to.
But he was Hughes.
Roy sighed quietly, moving past him to sit on the edge of a bed he could hardly see. It was a sad irony that this would happen to Hughes of all people, Hughes, who seemed to live for the benefit of others, but who now lived at their expense. And it was no small expense: it overwhelmingly outstripped the good a single man could do in his short lifetime.
Anyone who knew the man for five minutes could deduce how painful this knowledge was for him, and Roy knew it better than most. A part of him wished he could convince him not to take it so hard, but the rest of him clung to this unfortunate quality in Hughes. It meant, for better or worse, that he was there.
Opening his own jacket, Roy found the buttons of his vest to undo them, fingers not quite as agile as they used to be. He’d rather have reached for Hughes’ clothes, but the light from the window missed this side of the room completely. He had to work with the familiar, or he’d fumble even more.
“Still wearing that old suit, Roy?” Hughes teased, but Roy was too distracted to defend his attachment to it. He couldn’t even see what he was wearing himself, right now. But Hughes could.
If the homunculi were supposed to be imitations of humans, why were they capable of so much more?
“Where’s the lamp?”
Hughes stepped towards the head of the bed, his arm vaguely silhouetted as he reached for the light. But he stopped, his arm returning to his side. “Do we have to have it?”
Gracia wouldn’t be the type to leave it on, either, Roy thought. Hughes must have been able to avoid this since the beginning.
Roy frowned, but still he reached in that direction, fumbling in the dark until a quiet click heralded the light at last. For an instant it lit up Hughes’ face before he turned it away, an instant just long enough for Roy to see the closing of his pupils.
“I need it,” Roy murmured. The subtle shame that crept into his voice made it his apology.
Hughes seemed to accept it, crouching in front of him and reaching to push the vest off his shoulders. “You’ve had this since the war,” he continued, his smile never giving up.
Roy snorted quietly, but Hughes’ expression had softened him. “The real point of interest here is that I can still put it on.” The barest smile tugged at his mouth, this time genuine. If anything hadn’t changed between them, it was the way Hughes undermined his stoicism.
“You’re the same as the day you got your uniform.”
“Nice try.”
Hughes shook his head, hands reaching to unbutton Roy’s shirt. Roy glanced away, but even his own self-consciousness couldn’t keep his attention away for long.
“You’re just like she is,” Hughes said, eyes lifting to Roy’s face as he tugged the shirt out of Roy’s trousers. “Too hard on yourself.”
But Roy couldn’t take the verbal comfort; he never did. Instead, he reached for the overcoat, customarily dark but never black, and opened it, pushing it down shoulders so much broader than his own.
They’d always been. Even when Hughes was young his build had been so solid, so strong. After all, this was the body that had culled Roy from his many girlfriends in the very years of his life when girls should have mattered most.
This was that body. There were two lifetimes between those years and now, but here under his hands, under the clothes, there was no record of this passage, though he pulled at the shirt buttons impatiently as though desperate to find it.
He had barely pushed the fabric from his friend’s neck, barely glimpsed the bareness of his skin when Hughes gripped his wrists to stop him.
Roy fell still, his attention lingering on the edge of a bold red ring before returning to a face that wouldn’t look at him.
“And I’m the one too hard on myself,” Roy murmured.
In the absence of a response, he merely watched the tension in Hughes’ brow, tension he could only see because of the light he demanded to have.
Roy finally withdrew his hands, one receding far enough to rub the band of his eye patch at his forehead. He barely registered the habit anymore, but in his vague awareness of it he curled his fingers under the band and slowly pulled it from under his hair.
He brought it down to the bed, resting his hand on it as though unable to let go of it completely. But it was off, and no longer serving its function of protection and concealment. It was a function it had never failed to serve in the presence of others since the day he received it.
He watched as Hughes’ eyes settled on the patch, then endured the slow travel of his gaze–up his arm, across his shoulder–until it reached his face.
Hughes’ expression froze briefly in empathy, but his gaze sharpened again as he frowned. “You think this makes us even? You have a scar and I–”
“This is all of it that I can show.”
Roy studied his friend’s face, trying to ignore his own embarrassment and finding this all the more difficult when Hughes lifted his hand and gently moved Roy’s hair aside. His palm rested against the wound, old but badly healed from a rushed operation.
It was both his handicap and his crutch. It was the only hallmark of a damage that could not be seen, no matter how great. It explained who he was better than his sparse conversation.
But Hughes’ fingers had begun rubbing his temple where they rested, dismissing Roy’s thoughts of anything else. His other eye nearly closed as he leaned into the touch, one hand coming up to Hughes’ as the other reached to clasp the back of his neck.
“Yeah, Roy: too hard on yourself,” Hughes was saying, an echo of confirmation.
“Stop coddling me,” Roy commanded, but his voice was weak as he drew Hughes closer, needing more than just the touch of his hands.
He paused as Hughes’ forehead rested against his, listening to his own heart as it beat faster, lips already beginning to part as though he could already take him in from this distance. His stomach jumped as Hughes’ hands brushed his shirt open, fingertips fanning out along his sides and making him sit up straighter for the air he needed.
When Roy felt Hughes tip his head, he knew just how his mouth would catch his lips. He knew how his tongue would part them, tease them as though he were unwilling, then slip further in with another tilt of his head. He remembered it down to the very taste of him, down to the scrape of the beard, down to the nudge of his glasses.
This was the man who had ruined him for any other person. And even when Roy lost him, knowing he’d never want this with anyone else, Roy had wanted to stay ruined.
“Why now, Maes?” Roy murmured against him.
Hughes paused, his nose brushing the side of Roy’s. “Why not sooner?” He finally drew back with a half-smile. “Because I love her, Roy.”
“Then why not never?”
Sighing quietly, Hughes shrugged. “Because waiting this long was the best I could do.”
Roy smirked, bowing his head as he acknowledged this in silence. He shouldn’t have asked, shouldn’t have reminded Hughes of the decisions he made, but he had heard what he needed to.
He lifted his hands again to push aside Hughes’ shirt, but as expected, he was stopped a second time. “Roy, before we do this–”
“I know what’s going to be there,” Roy answered. He waited for the small nod that gave Hughes’ reluctant permission.
Almost reverently, Roy slid his hands under the shirt’s collar, feeling nothing but skin, but as he pushed the fabric further down his shoulders, the red marks stood out in strong contrast. There were two thick red lines that Roy could see, each originating from a ring on both sides of his lower neck and terminating in a ring on each shoulder.
Still crouched in front of him, Hughes shivered under Roy’s fingers as he traced one: around, down, around. He pushed the fabric down further, his hands smoothing over the muscles in Hughes’ arms and feeling them tense as Hughes shifted to let the shirt fall. He was breathing irregularly, stiffly, but he didn’t hinder him or pull away.
He didn’t look at him, either.
Roy slipped forward off the bed, nudging his friend to give him room as he knelt on the floor. From here he could see two more rings, each marking his skin some distance to each side of his navel. Two lines extended backward from both, and Roy didn’t have to see where they went to know that they formed a triangle with a third terminus high on his backbone.
Roy would have touched these, too, if Hughes hadn’t lifted his hand to rub them self-consciously. He finally looked up, discoloured eyes resting on Roy with a certain fear.
“Well,” offered Roy, “at least they’re tasteful.”
Hughes laughed, but it was a far cry from his usual warmth. He stood up with an anger Roy couldn’t place and turned away. Roy stayed where he was.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” he challenged quietly.
“Hughes . . .”
“When you know I hate it. You like looking at it because it’s part of that damned science you’ve always hid behind–”
“Hughes.“
“–and now you’ve got something to study again, even if–”
“I like looking at it because it’s on you, you idiot!” Roy had wanted to stand up with his interjection, but his knees were stiff already from the floor. He got halfway up before he returned his disgruntled weight to the bed, peering at his perfectly young, perfectly healthy best friend.
Hughes, now quiet, had turned to face him again.
Roy’s attention wandered down to the button of Hughes’ trousers before he looked to the floor instead. “Look, we’re both not the same as we used to be. I don’t care what you look like.”
Roy listened as Hughes finally sighed, a footstep sounding before he crouched in front of him again. “I know, Roy, it’s just that . . .”
“I know,” Roy murmured to him, looking him in the eyes again and gently taking his glasses away. Hughes didn’t waver. “I know.”
Bending, his other hand cupped his friend’s chin as he kissed him. He set the glasses blindly but safely aside before that hand descended, running smoothly over his skin no matter its colour, finding the button to unfasten it.
He moved back as Hughes rose, their coordination fluid and practiced as his weight gradually pinned Roy to the bed. As he sighed beneath him, his hands worked to push the rest of Hughes’ clothing down. He knew he was rushing this, but the train tomorrow wouldn’t wait, and this wasn’t the part he wanted to last forever.
Hughes sat up to tug with the same impatience at Roy’s belt, letting it hit the floor as he leaned down again. Roy could feel one hand travelling low, causing his breath to catch, but the other had slipped to his temple again, holding his hair aside and reminding him what was exposed.
He paused, but just as Roy began to frown, Hughes spoke.
“That thing I can do,” he mumbled, lifting his hand in a gesture just as he looked away from it, “I don’t use it anymore, you know.” He searched Roy’s face as though it were important that he believed him.
Roy chuckled quietly, hands moving into his friend’s hair to pull him down again.
“By now, Maes,” he murmured, “would you even need to?”
* * * * *
When Roy woke, it wasn’t to his friend’s snoring as he half-expected, but to the unfeeling silence of pre-dawn. The bed shook faintly under him as Hughes pulled on his clothing, still sitting next to him.
Roy pushed himself up as well, reluctantly glancing to the window that was just beginning to let in the cold blue haze of the hour. He wished it were earlier. He wished it were still the dead of night, but he had a train waiting for him, and the other had a wife.
He wanted to ask if this might happen again, but he knew he couldn’t take the answer. Instead, he handed Hughes his glasses when he saw him searching for them.
Hughes paused as he took them, his eyes settling on Roy with more confidence once behind the lenses. He lifted his hand to Roy’s face and smiled, his fingertips grazing his ear. “I woke up first. You sleep heavier than you used to.”
Roy smirked, though he tipped his head into the contact. “I am heavier,” he deferred, dropping his gaze to fall on the edge of an insignia exposed by the open cuff of Hughes’ sleeve.
When Hughes moved to draw back his arm, Roy slipped his hand past the cuff to grip it, symbol hidden under his palm. He used his grip to pull him forward again, one more slow kiss to remember on the morning train, and the train after that, on car rides and on walks and in the silence of his empty house.
They broke contact, but lingered a moment before Hughes drew a sharp breath and stood up. Sighing, Roy begrudgingly swung his legs off the bed and bent down to find his shirt.
He tried to concentrate on his clothing, but he couldn’t help but feel some misplaced panic that these moments were their last, this time around. They couldn’t leave together and Hughes’ home was in the other direction from the train. Roy couldn’t even ask that he be taken to the station: Hughes couldn’t afford a car here.
“I’ll pay for the room,” Hughes offered, closer to the door as he buttoned his cuffs.
“It’s in my name,” Roy answered, reaching for his trousers to pull them on. “I’ll get it.”
“Then I’ll just have to get it next time.”
Roy didn’t answer.
He’d heard the words, but only barely. His attention was instead fixed on the scant string emerging from the pocket of his pants.
“You should have put them in my jacket,” he growled quietly. “You might have made it, then.”
For a moment, Hughes said nothing, but he soon pulled in his breath as he turned from the door. “Roy, look, it’s not–”
“Is this why you wanted me to stay last night?” The bag hit the floor at Hughes’ feet when Roy tossed it, punctuating the question. Hughes looked away. “So you could have another chance to keep punishing yourself?”
“No, Roy, I just wanted you to stay!”
“Then why leave them?”
“I’m always home by dawn. And I can’t bring them with me.”
“So take them now.”
“I can’t!”
“I’ll leave for it.”
Roy watched as Hughes bent down to pick up the bag, but the movement was too quick to mean that Roy had won. Instead, as Roy expected, Hughes tossed it back to him. “I don’t want them.”
Roy caught it, such a solid weight despite the many fractured pieces, and bowed his head with a frustrated sorrow he wasn’t equipped to express. The shuffle of Hughes’ boots near the door signaled his impending escape, but the sound ceased as Roy pressed a finger into the cinched mouth of the bag and widened it.
“Roy, don’t . . .”
He turned it over and let the pieces cascade the short distance into his palm. He knew they were red, but under the blue light of dawn they seemed almost purple.
He could already hear Hughes’ breathing.
“Do you think somehow that what created these can be undone?”
Roy looked up from his cupped hand to watch his friend, his back to the door as he made no answer.
Roy stood up. “What’s lost is lost, Hughes. And we didn’t have anything to do with it.”
The door creaked faintly behind Hughes as Roy came forward. The man was cowering like Roy had never seen him.
“What’s in my hand is somebody’s guilt,” he murmured. “But it isn’t yours, Maes. Just take them.”
“No.” He shook his head anxiously. “Get them away.”
“I don’t want to force you.”
“You are forcing me.” He was trembling as Roy stepped closer.
Roy looked away, setting his jaw as he steeled himself again. He closed his fist around the stones and thrust them forward. “Then don’t make me.”
Hughes winced, turning his face away with a low growl that was barely audible. His only escape from them now was down, and his back slid down the length of the door to the floor.
“Roy, stop!” he begged, panting.
“I’ll stop when you take them!”
“I don’t want them!”
“You obviously do!”
“No!”
“TAKE THEM!”
Roy brought his fist down as though he would hit him with it, but Hughes stopped him with an inhuman reflex, the force of it jarring Roy’s hand open enough to let a few of the precious stones spill to the floor.
Both men watched them as they collided with the worn wood, catching the faint light and amplifying it as they danced and spun and finally fell as still as they were.
The moment didn’t last. Hughes suddenly released Roy’s arm and lunged forward, hands snatching the scattered stones from the floor and bringing them to his mouth, the sound of them against his teeth causing Roy to cringe through his disgusted fascination.
His heart seized in his chest as Hughes jerked his head up, seeking the rest still in Roy’s hand. His eyes were vibrantly coloured, wide yet blind in his hunger, and anything but Maes Hughes.
He found Roy’s arm and pulled it forward so hard that Roy all but fell into him, barely having the time to open his hand against Hughes’ mouth before his teeth came down. They gnashed against his palm until there were none left, and though Roy held onto him with his other arm, he feared for one terrible moment that Hughes would turn on him for having brought so little.
But he became still, and brief though his stillness was he knew it was Hughes again, Hughes who began to quake with forced silence, Hughes whose skin burned with the lives in the stones, Hughes whose arms simultaneously clung to Roy and pushed him away.
His shame won out. He finally thrust Roy away from him, hard enough to put a few feet between them.
“You had no right to do that.”
He was angry, but there was another quality to his voice that caused Roy’s to stumble when he answered.
“I . . . I had a responsibility . . .”
“You had a sick wish to see what would happen.” Hughes’ glasses skidded across the floor as he tossed them away, his eyes unveiled and sharply clear as he turned them on Roy again. “Since when did I give you control over how I live with this? Since when do you know better than I do what this is like?”
Roy gritted his teeth. “Maes, you have got to stop punishing yourself for this.”
“It’s not a punishment not to be like this all the time.”
“Like what?”
“Like what those things do to me.”
“That’s what you’re supposed to be like now,” Roy growled. “What’s so wrong with it?”
“It’s not what I used to be!”
“You used to be dead!”
“I used to be human!”
“Human!” Roy scoffed. “Human. You know what being human is about? It’s about losing things. Losing your youth and not getting it back. Losing half a face and not getting it back. Losing your best friend and not getting him back. You remember what that was like? I’m sick of human.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t sick of it.”
“You never got that far.”
Hughes glowered at him before he let his head fall back against the door, his eyes closing. He brought his breath in, slowly, and released it, his voice quieter now.
“It’s more than that, though.” He lifted his head, and Roy reluctantly met his gaze. Hughes shrugged. “It’s what my family is. It’s what you are. And what I’m not.”
Roy frowned, gaze falling to study the floorboards in the growing light of dawn. “That doesn’t mean you have to be in such a rush to go first. Your family and I have already been through that once.”
Hughes scoffed gently. “So I’m supposed to live long enough to lose everyone first?”
Carefully, Roy rose to his feet and sighed as he took the few steps to his friend.
“Like I said, being human is about losing things.”
Hughes looked up at him with a frown, then shook his head and took Roy’s hand as he extended it. When he stood, he kept Roy’s hand longer than necessary, then squeezed it before he let it go. He turned and bent to collect his glasses, folding them to slip them into his breast pocket.
It was only now that Roy noticed the black material that covered Hughes’ chest where his shirt was still open. But even as he watched, it receded to reveal his bare skin, and Hughes buttoned up the rest of the way. He slung his long coat over his arm.
“Gotta go,” he said. His hand rested on the door.
Roy nodded to him. “I’ll be in touch.”
When the door closed behind him, Roy sighed and resisted the urge to rest his forehead on it. Instead, he turned to collect the rest of his clothing and pulled it on, his only motivation the knowledge that missing this train would mean a hell of a lot of explanation and cover-up.
He scanned the room one last time as he drew the patch over the right side of his face. His attention lingered just a little too long on the bed, and had there been no train he knew he would have found out how much it still smelled like Hughes.
Frowning at himself, Roy pulled out his pocketwatch–an ordinary one–and cursed quietly to read its time. He slipped quickly out and left too much money with his key at the desk, minimizing his exchange with girl there.
He’d be lucky if he made it in time.
As he pushed his way through the inn doors, he began searching the street for a car for hire. Instead, he found Hughes, leaning against a telephone pole and fidgeting with his glasses as though trying to find a way he could still wear them.
He finally gave up, returning them to his pocket as Roy approached him.
“You shouldn’t have waited, Hughes. I can’t stay.” He glanced down the street towards the station. It was a good few blocks away, but he could make out the train that had already pulled in and might depart again before he could reach it. “I’m sorry, Hughes.” All he could offer was one more look in his direction before he began to hurry off.
“Roy, wait!”
“If I miss this train, we’re both in trouble!”
“It’s not leaving, Roy!”
Roy slowed to a halt and turned back, eyeing his friend. “How do you know?”
Hughes bowed his head with a little smile as he came forward, hand moving to the back of his hair. “It’s delayed. Says so on the schedule above the platform.”
Furrowing his brow, Roy peered again towards the end of the street. But he only knew the schedule was there at all because he’d been there before.
When he turned to face him again, Hughes’ eyes were on him. Roy studied them for as long as he could get away with.
“Delayed how long?”
“Half hour.”
A half hour longer.
Roy bowed his head when he smiled as though less willing to show this than the hands that gripped Hughes’ shirt to pull him the remaining step closer.
But in the strengthening light of daybreak he could only look up at him, always up.
Hughes caught his gaze carefully before he glanced away. Suddenly grabbing Roy’s hand, he took off towards the narrow space between the inn and the building next door.
Roy was against the bricks before he even regained his full balance, Hughes’ mouth on his before he even caught his breath.
His worry and concern for the people who might be passing, who might look, who might see them only manifested in a helpless groan against his best friend’s tongue, his will too weak for reason, his hands too busy pulling to push.
When Hughes released him, finally, Roy didn’t move until he could no longer feel his breath on his lips. Only then did he bother to straighten, regaining some semblance of the soldier and the man that he was.
“I know I shouldn’t have started this again with you,” Hughes said softly, his eyes on Roy’s shoulder. “But she . . .” He frowned as he paused, his brow creasing. “She’s so innocent, Roy,” he said, quieter still, lifting his eyes again for understanding.
Roy smiled cynically as he looked away. He knew what Hughes was saying. She was too innocent to bear the weight of what he was, but Roy wasn’t.
“At least my guilt is good for something,” he said, looking to his friend again and letting his smile tug at the corners of his mouth.
Hughes matched the smile with a shake of his head. “We shouldn’t push our luck with that train.”
Sighing, Roy nodded. He certainly couldn’t run to catch it. “I’ll go first.”
There wasn’t room enough not to brush against him on his way past, but he did his best to ignore it, his hand following a line of bricks towards the street.
He paused before he could release the last brick at the corner as though he couldn’t let go. He half-turned back, his gaze cast down the street. “I’m working on a theory, Hughes,” he said. “I think there are less traumatic ways to bring a person back.”
He chanced a look towards the alley again.
“Bring who back?” Hughes demanded slowly. His anger consumed the short silence that followed before Roy watched his eyes widen, then tighten.
“Roy, you don’t want this.” His warning was quiet, heavy.
Roy shrugged as he scanned the street again. “Having grey hair isn’t as fun as I thought it would be. What can I say.”
Hughes said nothing, though few could have withstood the look on his face.
“No alchemist ever dies in peace, Hughes.” Roy smirked as he pushed away from the building’s corner, lifting that hand in farewell. “Be seeing you.”
The street was still in shadow as he continued towards the station, the sunlight only hitting the very tops of the buildings as the sun climbed a little higher. He knew the same descending light would follow Hughes home in the other direction. He didn’t need to look back to see it.
There was never any point in looking back.
He had learned that, at least.
