A/N: I'm in a terrible RoyEd mode, and this is one of my favorite stories I've written. Parts inspired by A Cup of Truth by Cephied Variable, A Blurring of Lines by Demus, Who They Were by Erythros, and Unsaid by Spirix. Enjoy.

By the way, Daedalus is the father of Icarus, who made the wings of wax the latter later on used to fly too close to the sun.

There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don't know how.

Oasis, Wonderwall

It's who they are.

They are military; fire and steel bled into their waking consciousness, like the most hardened of flames. They are dogs of the army, and they are also the best the state has to offer, and they really ought to have better restraint.

It's once a year, for once a death, and today it's him that subjects as company for the Colonel's self-decay. It begins with mourning, minutes of minute sobs floating abashed and unclaimed in the stale liquor air, but it changed and he knew it couldn't have possibly stayed the same.

"You know, I probably shouldn't think you're as beautiful as I do."

Mustang has a wavering smile, and Ed holds onto it with a wavering stare.

"W-what?"

Black shimmers like the shells of tiny black beetles. Maybe dangerous, or poisonous; maybe ticklish with a sprinkling of breadth legs.

"You're beautiful, Edward."

The words husk on velvet, slurred with a quality of being bitten back for too long a time. Certainly his cheeks bloom petals like a fucking spring (pansy, daisy) rose. "You're drunk."

Yellow lamps and yellow hearts, molten and tied with alcohol strings. He was; they were.

"I'm more honest when I'm drunk."

A stumble, a bit of wildness and a flutter, a thousand butterflies fighting against him and a thousand more pinning him to the ground. A palm, damp and gentle, cool on the goose bumps of his neck.

"Let me? I won't ask for your heart, or your soul—just your smile, sometimes, and your moans as you come… and a little of that sadness in your eyes."

It's too much, too sugary like overripe fruit or oversweet pancake syrup, and he pukes a little in the rise of his throat, but Mustang's—no, Roy, for this moment—Roy's mouth covers his and maybe its his tongue that wrestles the bile back down.

And then it's just salt, and bitter, bitter lo-- And no, he doesn't say it, and soon Roy just tastes like Roy.

Horizon passes them like bygone people and bygone clouds on those grueling tracks; the Brother's been left behind in Central, the Lieutenant's in the bathroom, and it's a scenery for only two and that's how it's always been.

Chin on knuckles, lashes on cheeks, curves upturning lips, and—

"Look, Colonel, about—"

Trickles of a chuckle through touching teeth; Ed stops and it's all he can do to listen.

"As always, you worry too much, Fullmetal. No one has to know, will ever know; and it won't happen again, unless…"

Unless? he trails quietly, but speaking isn't easy and neither is asking Mustang anything.

Mustang shakes his head, muscles and tendons craning against each other to brush a thought away, even before it stains coherency.

"Just promise me you won't try and love me, Fullmetal?"

He jerks his face away, scowls like the invisible war paint smudged across his brow. "Yeah, yeah, I promise."

Mustang looks at him and smiles—not smirks, smiles, kind of whiskey-flavored like last (when?)… and he can't continue it, even in his own head—so he just tries in vain to smile back.

"With an answer like that," Mustang leans back and crosses his legs, memoirs of knotted kites and knotted thighs. "It's almost like you want me gone."

He bites at the insides of his cheeks and they tear, like flimsy homegrown sunflowers. Oh god yes yes but I will never breathe again.

He can't tell him that, though, his pride doesn't allow him to, and instead, "Don't flatter yourself, Colonel. I don't think about you that much—if I ever think about you at all."

Mustang has this grin that doesn't quite settle on his lips, and Ed wants to strip it off him, smother him, but Hawkeye comes back, and everything's almost normal, only not. Because it's too late, too late to take back what he said; he's already broken it.

Light creeps, an everglow, through sunken window elbow rafters; lies across the crinkles of unwashed sheets. Inconceivable bright, useless warmth already given by bleach-roughed cloth and miles of imperfect skin.

Ed breathes, little flurries of hair streaming the squints of his eyes. He tossturns, a tangle of metal and bone, and settles against the imperceptible ribs beneath pale, lukewarm flesh.

And it was never supposed to be like this, and neither of them should have ever had this; but then again, any of this could never belong to anyone else.

He wonders how they somehow go that weirdo angel lady smiling luck down on them.

Intangible moments later Roy—yes, that's his name—Roy's eyes flutter and murmurs sleep into his ear. The flush is warm and moist and he pushes him away, delight littering the air like a most unspoken secret.

He stumbles out of bed, nearly becomes intimate with the wooden splinters on the floor, and plays audience to Roy's morning laughter. It's airy, unguarded; would have swept him from his feet had he been standing (cli-fucking-ché).

He scowls, all dull fangs and counterfeit frowns, and pulls fabric on over his legs. He tries not to shiver when nimble fingers hide and seek their way to his waist, helps him fasten the cusp of his pants. He draws the line at Mustang doing his braid for him, though; a gargantuan embarrassment it would be to reach his peak just because of Roy's simple rakes across his hair.

They're not unlike a crimson sea, parting separately from Roy's government-issued apartment after a wasted night; the inescapable gossip mill as their dividing rod. Mustang—he's that again, now—strides into his office with the laze of scruffy tree sloths, somewhat polished in his disarray. Hawkeye glances over, upon the usual stack of unsigned paperwork, and delivers her classic threat with a laced safety and the happiest trigger finger in Central.

Around mid-afternoon, Ed barges through the heavyweights of the door, loops everyone's necks to attention as he marches to the Colonel's desk, a rant balanced precariously on his nose. Everyone is used to this, and with knowing looks that don't really know anything, treads carefully on seamless carpet to the outside halls.

"They'll be onto us, soon."

"Sticks and stones…" Narrowed slanted eyes, and it's mischief, the best anyone can portray it. "…shortstuff."

He jolts ablaze, pounds on the table as if he means it (jury decides). "Fuck off!"

Mustang—Roy, oh, who cares—lifts himself to the challenge. "That would be… a horrendously bad idea." Swift hands, a flame ignites in the air behind Ed, and the heat lurches him forward; swift lips, now hovering over his.

"I won't do anything you don't want me to, but it really looked like you wanted me to do that." Hard distance between them, palms gripping his upper arms with tender command. He shakes his head, and his Adam's apple betrays him.

"Oh no? Maybe I thought wrong, then," he voices mock innocence, lips teasing Ed's. "You don't want me to kiss you?"

"You can't get enough, can you? Bastard," he snarls in tendrils of curses, nose pushing up against Roy's in retaliation.

Roy only chuckles, shifts to blow on the hollow below his chin. "That is true. And I'd still very much like to kiss you."

He climbs onto the desk and kneels—nearly towering over the other in this position, he relishes the boost to his height—reaches his arms around the man's abnormally lean hips and performs a process that locks the door behind him.

"That's 'cause you have a problem with your brain," he explains dryly, mouth already parted and eager.

Roy's chest rises, and doesn't fall, his lungs immobile against the press of Ed's frame. He exhales, "ah, but what use is my brain… when my mouth can do this?"

Ed's lips move not of his own accord, and his heart swells, feeling the most content it's ever been since Mom first discovered him using alchemy, since the blue glows lit up her face in place of Hohenheim never coming home. It's not right to keep secrets from his brother when he's the only family he's got left; especially not right when it's his superior officer who serves as the secret, and they're defying rules like there's no tomorrow. Maybe this wouldn't even last until then, but his heart swells, and it bursts, and that was certainly not of his own accord.

Sky's a pretty orange, dandelions colored with polluted bee guts, and below it cities are dead and they did it for their nation for their home for the laws they never kept.

And it's not as beautiful as he imagined, the stone. It's imperfect and it doesn't even shine like it ought to, and it's just a rock and it's red; strange that something so taboo is their salvation.

Chalk brittles like hallucinogens on the ground, tracing patterns forgotten and scarred in wise, cranky, dog-eared papers, and dust settles on his hair like the blood of people he'd never even seen.

Al's beside him, silent slivers of armor with torn seals and whispered faces, somewhere besides here. They were supposed to go together, brothers 'til the end, but maybe Ed can catch up if he hurries. If he stops the tears from clouding the circle's exact shape in his memories, if he stops thinking that Al's gone and he can't get him back this time. He looks at Mustang... no, Roy, always Roy now—and everything about this is wrong.

They're two kind of damned (Icarus disapproves), and they pretended they had love, or pretended they didn't, and they fucked like starved savages who ate at another's will to live—and they're supposed to be saving people, but instead they made a stupid rock from souls that were leftovers of sweat and tired battles. They used this blood, used each other, and somehow they still can't let go.

"I should leave." He claps, a void and gasping sound. But I would rather stay.

"I won't stop you." Roy's gaze wounds like the slowest bullet. Because I know you can't, and I don't blame you.

The rock—the Philosopher's stone—their lives, a million others' more—brightens. There's a flash, and the transmutation's too blinding and loud for them to hear anything less.

I love you.

I love you more.

He forgets to look, a final time, then it's white like a leper's disease, like a blind man's sight, and he doesn't know any better.

It's white and it feels like death; but what does one do when life doesn't end when it seems like it's over?

They come at him with their hands and feet and shiny eyes, and Roy's the only thing on his mind then. Only for a moment, somewhere forever doesn't exist...

But it's in that moment that he hates the world, hates the war—

Hates themselves—

For being who they were.

A/N: Please comment. Part two coming soon.