Disclaimer; I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist

A/N: Thanks, again, to my lovely and long-suffering readers, particularly those who reviewed, I'm very grateful! And now, some answers about the mysterious Roy Schlachtross...

xxx

The lecturer's voice had long since become a meaningless drone when Ed glanced at the clock for the seventh time, chin propped on his hand, eyes drooping with tiredness. Of all the things for Roy to be right about, the goddamned hangover was the absolute worst. He sighed, wincing as his stomach attempted to leave his body via his throat, and swallowed hard to keep it in check. The other students were being very careful not to invade his personal space, which had apparently extended to about a six foot diameter; he must look an absolute fright. You're beautiful when you're angry.

Ed swore under his breath, the recollection driving heat into his cheeks; of all the people to find him, nearly paralytic with whisky and misery because it was Al's god-damned birthday. Still, at least it meant he'd woken up in a bed this year, even if it was someone else's. Waking up on park benches was not something he'd ever wanted to become accustomed to. That sort of agonising stiffness was almost enough to convince him that the whole damn mess wasn't a dream at all.

And just why had Roy let him spout all that bullshit about the Gate without batting an eyelid? How insane did he think Ed was? All Alfons had ever done was laugh at his stories of alchemy so fast it was almost like magic, alchemy that burned...Ah, so there is a Herr Mustang? Of course there was a 'Herr Mustang', stupid Roy, he'd been calling the bastard's name in bed for long enough, but Roy hadn't looked surprised, from what Ed could remember, he'd just accepted it, as if he'd already known he was a substitute.

The alchemist wondered, for a moment, who he was a substitute for, and determinedly did not think about the hatred in Officer Hughes' eyes.

xxx

"Edward."

Ed paused in hanging up his coat, his mind still foggy with lack of sleep and worrisome confessions, then turned to face his flatmate. The day after Al's birthday, and here was Alfons, his face twisted with something that looked like misery. "Not like you to miss a lecture, what's up?"

Alfons hesitated, fidgeting. It was unusual for him to skip a lecture, but the heavy dampness of late Spring seemed to have settled uneasily in his delicate lungs; he looked paler than usual and he wasn't even dressed, a blanket slung over nightshirt-clad shoulders, and his voice sounded rough with sickness. Worry coiled, restlessly, in Ed's stomach. "Alfons, are you-"

"Your friend, Roy," Alfons blurted out, hurriedly. "I don't think you know...Edward, he's not what you think, Hughes came to talk to me and he's not just some...You...You need to know..."

xxx

He punched before he could think about it, before he could even begin to process the image that met his eyes, then hoisted the groaning recipient up from the floor by his collar, ignoring his frantic protests. "Get the fuck out," he snarled, fury white-hot as it thundered through his veins, and the dark-haired man flinched away from him, up and running as soon as Ed released him.

"That," said a voice from the bed, breathless but utterly unconcerned, "was incredibly rude, Herr Elric."

Ed span with a growl, fist clenched so tight his fingers ached, and glared at the man on the bed. "You're a whore."

"Does it surprise you?" The cocky tilt to his jaw was mocking, challenging. "You said I looked good on my back."

"But…I…you," Ed couldn't help the stuttering, his mind was tripping over words too fast for his tongue to wrap around them.

Roy, still naked and splayed on the bed, still hard, leaned up on his elbows. The curve of his lean body drew Ed's eyes, willing or no. Slowly, deliberately, his gaze never straying from Ed, Roy stroked down his chest and to his hips to trace the red marks of the other man's hands, marks that would be bruises. Ed winced as Roy dug his nails into the marks and arched his back, groaning helplessly. The proud cock twitched in response, already wet with precum, flushed red and painful-looking. Instead of taking it into his grip, however, the dark-haired man curled over on himself, framing his dick with his arms as he reached lower, between his legs to the stretched muscles of his anus, which he massaged with his fingertips, then panted heavily as he plunged two fingers inside himself.

The room swam dizzyingly before Ed for a moment as lust swamped him, he was floating on a strange light-headedness as blood surged to his groin and he took several steps towards his lover before he realised what he was doing. Horror at his actions and betrayal and rage at Roy's made him forcibly control himself, reel in his lust and leash it, the intensity of it making him grit his teeth and sway. "Why did you let him touch you for money?" the blond managed to growl, harshly.

Ignoring him, Roy continued to pleasure himself, his hips beginning to rock, his face spasming briefly as he let out a groan. From the angle of his wrists, Ed could guess what he had found within himself, and the thought made him squirm with want. "Roy!" he barked angrily, clenching his eyes shut. "Just fucking stop, you bastard, stop!"

The furious order had quite the opposite effect. Roy let out a guttural moan, then the tense atmosphere filled with wet, obscene noises. Ed had heard those sounds often enough to know, even with his eyes closed, that his lover was fisting his slippery cock frantically as he fucked himself on his fingers. Disgusted, aroused, helpless, the alchemist span on his heels and stormed from the room, slamming the door with an almighty crash and striding to the bathroom. He wrenched the door shut behind himself and stood in upright, trembling fury for a few seconds before dropping to his knees and scrabbling with his trousers. His stomach roiling with nausea, Ed jerked himself off in quick, short, desperate yanks, then sank to the floor, pressing his hot face to cool tile and scrunching his eyes tight shut.

Moments later, the door opened quietly behind him. He didn't move to cover himself, or the evidence that was wet and sticky on his palm, across his belly. A familiar hand hauled him upright and he collapsed bonelessly on Roy, his cheek hitting the thin, ratty material of his robe. "How many people do you sleep with a week?" he asked, dully.

"Not as many as you might think, the rent is fortunately low."

Ed snorted. Roy's voice was flat, with no inflection to suggest his emotions. The Colonel, again. "Hughes was right. You're a cheap fucking pervert slut."

"I resent that. My charges are, in fact, quite high, given the discretion with which I provide my services."

Ed's eyes burned. "Why?"

"Why?"

"Why do you fuck people for money?" Ed's rage flared, bright and sharp as a knife blade, then banked as familiar hands stroked up and down his back.

Roy shifted. "Does it matter?"

"Of course it fucking matters!" Ed spat, his fingers curling into tight fists, clenching into the material of Roy's robe. "For weeks, months, we've…you, I, we've…and, and now this…I could understand if you liked them, fucker, you think I wouldn't have others? But, but, for money…"

There came a wry, humourless choke of laughter. "And what would you have done, had I told you? Would you have granted a second look to a filthy, male prostitute, or would you have kicked me aside like the esteemed Officer Hughes? Am I not to select my lovers occasionally, to sleep with someone because I choose him? Haven't I been a good lover to you, Edward?"

"But…but you're not stupid, you don't have to do…do that, you're clever enough to be a scientist or, or a lawyer…"

That harsh laughter interrupted him again. "Oh really? Clever enough? But that's such a lofty dream for the bastard son of a Jewish whore. A scientist, a dark-haired, black-eyed scientist in this pure, 'Aryan' Germany? Why would I waste my time when I've known how to pleasure a man since I was younger even than you?"

Swifter than a finger snap, the blond's white-hot anger cooled to a lump of hard steel in his gut, like a molten sword blade plunged into water. "Younger?" He felt sick.

Roy shrugged as best he could whilst holding Ed upright. "And now I like sex, so at least there's some benefit."

"You…you…"

"It's okay, Edward." The older man had never sounded so serious, never reminded Ed of the Colonel so strongly that he ached for him, for the Roy Mustang whose shoulders held the weight of the world, but whose eyes danced with a fire that Ed was beginning to understand. "I'm not some damaged child anymore, or helpless victim. I have some choice in my tortures, these days."

"That's…not right," Ed managed to choke out eventually. "If…if it's money, I could…"

Arms about him gripped tighter. "No. You're barely living as it is. I'll take your bed, your time, your cock, but not your pity. If I wanted someone to care about me, I'd have found them by now."

"Then what-"

He couldn't see the smile, but he heard it in the next words. "You're my friend, Edward. I like you, I especially like to sleep with you, and I like those heart-breaking stories you tell. I've never met anyone with eyes as sad as yours. One might almost fall in love with those eyes."

He couldn't have stopped the bitter laughter if he tried. Roy didn't seem inclined to stop him, just let him shake in nigh-on hysterical paroxysms until he slumped, exhausted. Only then was he pulled back and a kiss pressed to his forehead. "Come, now. The bathroom floor is no place to be having such a discussion. There's no room for you to swing when you hit me."

Ed growled. "Not going to hit you."

"No? Perhaps you should."

"Don't fucking tempt me."

Roy's arms loosened, dropped, and he looked up to see the man's mouth settle into a tight, thin line. "What are you going to do, then?"

The day after Al's birthday and the dream was a nightmare, once again. Ed sat up, tugging himself free of Roy, and straightened his clothes as best he could, ignoring the unpleasant stickiness. "I need to think," he said, shortly, and clambered awkwardly to his feet, fumbling the prosthetic leg. He didn't look back at Roy, hunched at his feet with debauchery written across his skin. "Don't fuck anyone whilst I'm gone," he added, the cruelty dropping carelessly from his lips, and with that, he left.

xxx

Dawn light, soft and golden, stroked insistently at Ed's eyelids as he swam groggily up from the darkness of sleep.

He yawned, keeping his eyes closed, and stretched, wringing the last remnants of sleep out of his limbs. The customary warmth behind him let out a rumble of protest as he shifted and a long pale arm emerged from the blankets to hook around his waist, rolling him onto his side so that his back was pressed to Roy's front. Contented breaths wafted against his hair, which made him wriggle, and Roy nuzzled at the back of his neck, dropping a kiss to his hairline before relaxing back into happy repose.

Ed yawned again, opening bleary eyes and wrinkling his nose as the overlong hair of his bangs tickled his face. It was early. The chill in the room, coupled with the heaviness of his limbs and eyelids, was enough to tell him that.

Blinking sleepily, Ed snuggled back into the warmth offered by the bed's owner. Roy murmured something unintelligible and his arm tightened. They weren't particularly cuddly, excessive physical contact wasn't something they did, but he could be excused for taking advantage of comfort when his lover was too unconscious to do anything about it.

He was just contemplating, in tandem with his morning erection, the pleasant business of stroking Roy awake then demanded payback from the man's oh-so-talented mouth when memory careened into him like an out-of-control steam locomotive.

The alchemist was out of the bed and pressed against the opposite wall faster than the oxidation of hydrogen. Memories clamoured for attention in his mind's eye, the hulking figure of a man on top of his lover, Roy's moans as he pleasured himself, the confession, the long, weary hours of trekking through faceless Munich streets trying so hard to understand, then wandering back, like a battered dog, to the cause of his distress.

He glared at Roy's slumbering form and, in need of relief from his enraged energy, threw a picture frame at it.

Roy jolted upright, then looked dazedly around, rubbing his shoulder where impact had been made. He caught sight of the snarling, furious Ed and let out his breath in a resigned sigh, flopping back onto the sheets as if every ounce of energy had been drained out of him. He tossed an arm over his eyes. "What?" he asked, testily.

"You're a prostitute," Ed accused, pointing a wavering finger that Roy couldn't see anyway.

"Ah, he has the capacity to learn."

"Don't start with me, yoyo pants, you have no damn right-"

"Edward, if you are going to storm out, could you simply get on with it without all of the screaming? It is inhumanly early."

The deflated Ed's sails a little and he subsided for a moment, his righteous anger checked by Roy's sleep-fogged inability to recognise the danger he was in by Elric-baiting.

"I just don't get it," the blond said, in a plaintive tone, after a moment's pause.

That seemed to surprise Roy. He sat up in bed, the sheets pooled at his waist (Ed tried, tried, not to flick his eyes down) and rubbed at his eyes, focusing them on Ed once they were clear. "There's little to explain, you heard it all last night," the man said, slowly.

"No, you don't…I get what you're doing, I get why you have to be so secretive about it, I just don't get…Why do you keep doing it? Don't spout that 'poor little racially-impaired me' bullshit, Schlachtross, you're more than clever enough to circumvent any prejudice, and you've got to be making a tidy profit from all of those fat, rich Generals and," a split-second hesitation because even now that word had power over him, "Colonels, there's no reason why you shouldn't just drop it and train for something better."

If anything, Roy seemed amused by the idea. "'Just drop it'? Do you have any idea how powerful these men are, Edward? Do you think, for even a second, that they would let me move on to a different life, with the filthy, degenerate knowledge that I have. I'd have to move cities, countries, maybe, and I really cannot face another chunk of my life as a fugitive refugee."

Ed's eyebrows shot up in disbelief. "You're not changing your life because you can't be bothered?"

"Please, lower that pitch, the neighbourhood dogs have suffered enough abuse already."

"Roy."

The man scratched his hair, brushing the sleep-dishevelled mop out of his face. His eyes, Ed noticed, looked tired, worn, the lines about them as deep as the Colonel's. "I have never expected to be happy," he murmured, his voice, for once, weighted by bare honesty, "and to be content? That's more than I had ever hoped for. I am no worse off than anyone who is struggling for a living in this butchered, starving cur of a country. Life is the moment of pleasure we snatch between beatings, you should know that, with your miserable, miserable eyes; you've seen darker than I have."

Ed flinched at the accusation and Roy's face softened. His next words were in a gentler tone. "Not everyone has a burning ambition to feed their lives to. Some of us are just living."

"But-"

Roy closed his eyes and tilted his head back against the wall. "No more. Germany is awash with whores, you shouldn't be so surprised. Come back to bed, Edward."

What are you doing, Edward?

Ed stood his ground, unmoving, as his lover shuffled back under the covers and laid his head on the pillow. He couldn't claim to understand this, couldn't claim to approve or be comfortable…but it was very early, and Roy was so warm…

He trod cautiously back to the bed and slid under the sheets, hesitating for a heat-beat before he reached out to touch Roy's shoulder. The man visibly relaxed at the contact, and rolled onto his side to lay his head on Ed's chest.

They breathed together.

Ed cleared his throat, awkwardly, and said "So, you're what, a rent boy?"

A snort. "Courtesan, please. They have to wine and dine me before I'll suck their cock or let them bend me over a pool table."

A pause, then, weakly, "Pool table?"

"Some of the gentlemen like a game of billiards after dinner, whilst they drink their brandy and bore me with insufferable stories about their wives or their career or the state of the country."

"Huh. Can't imagine you playing something as sophisticated as billiards."

The smirk was wicked. "And this after you experience my prowess with balls."

"…You did not just say that." Ed was somewhat relieved- that arrogant, flirtatious tone, that was the Roy he knew, not the odd, hurting stranger of a few minutes ago.

Roy chuckled, curling onto his back like a satisfied leopard, and looked at Ed through lowered lashes. "I'm wounded," he purred, looking nothing of the sort, "I shall have to give you a thorough demonstration of my skills."

"That really won't be necessary, we're still having this discussion and I'm not going to let this go just because you're a shameless slut with ohgod don't stop."

This time, the chuckle was muffled, and its vibrations were enough to make Ed whimper.

xxx

"You…you're still..."

Ed rubbed his eyes, closing the door behind him and feeling the weight of his tiredness for just a moment- tired of this grey world, tired of Roy's lies, his smile, tired of Alfons, and tired of being tired of Alfons, who was his friend, who had been so good to him. "Yeah," he admitted, softly. "I'm still with him."

Alfons recoiled, slightly- Ed heard his breathing change.

"I don't care what he is," the alchemist said, slowly. "I don't care. When he's with me, he's enough."

A hand touched his shoulder, startling-sudden and hesitant. "Then I'll say no more."

xxx

Of course the knowledge made it different. The sex was never quite the same again.

Ed had never considered that Roy was exclusively with him- but for lack of offers, he wasn't exclusively Roy's either- but finding out that his lover auctioned off the same body he fucked and stroked and licked was a touch perturbing, to say the least. Now, when he traced the smooth curves of Roy's shoulders, he wondered how many times, how many different ways, the man had been caressed there. He wondered how many lips had ghosted their way down his throat, how many fingertips had found the ticklish spot below his belly button.

Did Roy's 'clients' just wait for him to bend over and get straight in there? Did they seduce him, or expect to be seduced? How many cocks had the man sucked, staring up through lust-hazy eyes with swollen, spit-shiny lips and hollowed cheeks?

Unsurprisingly, the last thought primarily occurred when he was a tongue-flick away from orgasm. That, in turn, meant he was getting very mixed signals from his own body about how he genuinely felt about the situation. Whilst part of him wanted to sink his teeth into Roy's neck so the other men would know they were trespassing (poaching? Rustling? Plundering? Ed honestly didn't have the right word), there was a much darker, much darker part that taunted him with images of Roy on his back for another man but his eyes fixed on Ed, or of Ed fucking the prostitute on his hands and knees and looking along the planes of that pale back to see Roy's mouth and throat stuffed full of cock, utterly, helplessly used.

Waking up from that particular flight of imagination, hard and breathless, made him seriously doubt what little was left of his sanity. It would drive him to drink, if Roy didn't do enough of that for both of them.

Irritatingly, Roy was completely aware of it. He wasn't exactly helping matters either. Every now and then he would stare at Ed (from across the room, across the table, across the narrow gap bridging their eyes between kisses, over his shoulder) with the barest hint of his hyena-smile and say, "If you wanted to, I'd make sure he was handsome," before laughing at Ed's stricken look.

Invariably, Ed responded with a scowl, or an extra-harsh thrust to make the man's eyes roll, or a kiss that was all teeth and violence. Sometimes 'oh fucking hell no' just wasn't clear enough.

xxx

A/N: Yes, it's a cliché, but it's a fun one, right?