silkendreammaid

Title: Where The Sun Is Mute
Author: silkendreammaid

Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy Mustang/Edward Elric
Rating: PG
Warnings: None

Disclaimer: I do not own, and never will, the characters of Fullmetal Alchemist.
Notes: This is a fic i wrote under another name a long time ago and it's now finished

Chapter 4: To Be Tasted

Edward tastes of salt

Roy Mustang knew the taste of blood and sweat. The salt tang tainted with iron and acrid despair. He disliked the feel of it on his own skin; he absolutely hated tasting it on Edward.

The silent blond sat on his bunk obviously exhausted and to Roy’s eyes, completely dispirited. It had been a hard mission and it showed. Alphonse had submitted the mission report on his own and Roy had left him in Hawkeye’s care and come straight to the boys’ room.

Ed’s clothes were dirty, his boots caked in mud. Automail showed dully through his torn glove, his hair was half out of its braid and as dirty as the rest of him. He didn’t move as Roy entered.

“Al told me,” Roy said softly as he stepped in front of Edward. Pulling off his gloves he knelt down and touched his warm fingers to Ed’s chilled face. “I’d take you to my quarters but I doubt you’d manage the walk. And much as you need to clean up, I think it can wait a bit longer.”

Roy shifted and pulled Ed’s boots off. Ed offered no resistance to the man-handling but no help either and the docility of the young man was slightly disconcerting. Roy kept talking as he slowly undressed him.

“Grego didn’t have any proper alchemical training, Ed. He was a tragedy waiting to happen once he started.” Roy eased Ed out of his red coat and the short black jacket. He dropped them to the side finding them heavy with filth.

“Grego made his own choice to cast that circle in the town centre. You weren’t even there.” Roy told him reaching to pull his hair free its messy braid. Ed twitched and Roy leant close, brushing his lips against Ed’s forehead and tasting salt. The stale salt of dried blood and sweat. “No, it wasn’t your fault. You weren’t late. You could not have gotten there any earlier.” Roy tasted more blood as his mouth travelled down the side of Ed’s face. His voice was impossibly gentle.

“Four people died, yes but forty more survived because of you.” Ed shifted again, his head dropping down and Roy closed his eyes. “You can’t always save them all, Ed. You save as many as you can and that’s what you did.”

Al.

The hard touch of automail pressed the word into Roy’s chest and Roy’s breath caught before he let it out slowly.

“It wasn’t him,” Roy murmured as he pulled the young man close against him. Al had told him of the dead boy who had looked too much like Al had once been and Ed had only just been stopped from another ill-fated human transmutation attempt. “It wasn’t him,” Roy repeated.

Ed shook in his grasp for long moments and when he lifted his head for Roy’s kiss, Roy tasted the sweetest salt of tears.

To Chapter 5