1 | fullmetal alchemist © hiromu arakawa
2 | 'salt skin' – ellie goulding (title); 'never gonna leave this bed' – maroon 5
3 | i don't care when this is set.
4 | two billion thanks to vrangr for reading this first in case there was anything wrong.

Lying on her belly, face buried in her pillow, she cracks an eye open when she hears the sheets rustling, and he quietly, carefully slips away from her side.

Eyes slowly getting used to the darkness, she watches him sit on the edge of the bed and rub his eyes, his back to her—as scarred as her back is, she knows he has some scars of his own, invisible little lashes all over for every year he's punished himself for imagined sins. Inch by inch, her calloused fingers creep through the bed, closer to him, to his back—she wants to map their shared history spread across that wide plane—but she falters, fingers curling into her hand, when he gets up.

She watches him slowly drag himself across the room, footsteps getting heavier the farther he goes. He makes his way to the bathroom, and when he gets there, he fumbles for the switch for a while. When the lights finally flicker on, she slams her eyes shut. Slowly, she flutters her eyes open again and lets them adjust to the bright light. She immediately spots him hunched over the sink, hands resting on the side.

He stays there unmoving to stare at his reflection—she can't see him—his face hidden by his shoulder and part of that pale back facing her again. In the harsh glare of the light, his scars are not as invisible as she thought—she sees cities, people and dreams etched onto it; she sees Ishval and Amestris, the faces of her father, Hughes, his team and the Elric brothers, herself and her own back. She sees him becoming Fuhrer one day, and the calm that follows when he assumes the position.

Spellbound, hypnotized, awestruck by the scenes drawn on his canvas, she doesn't notice his hand reach for the switch, and just like that, it's gone. She can't see him anymore, but when she closes her eyes and feigns sleep, she feels him moving around—from the curtained windows behind her back to the drawers near his side of the bed. She feels him linger in each spot. The weight on the bed shifts; she now feels him sitting right next to her.

She doesn't anticipate his hand reaching for her burnt back, but she doesn't flinch. Fingers lightly trace the complex circle, thoughts going places in her head like trains on an endless track. The last time he touched her back had been when he burned it; since then, it seemed to her that he was completely avoiding it. Whenever they had sex, whenever he fixed his whole self on her—hands running through her hair, caressing her, stroking her—he would never, ever lay a finger on her back.

But he had always been so, so close.

She feels his hand hover away from her, and the weight on the bed shifts again. Tired of pretending to be asleep, she lies on her side and opens her eyes. The world that she had seen on his back was now veiled by the dark of the room, but she now sees more than she ever had before—cities sleeping, streetlamps glowing, familiar faces smiling, spiral galaxies overhead flying past. She sees the simplest of his dreams, what he is always reaching for—the voices of old cities, people he's known and his dreams.

And she could feel him wearing thin.

She inches a little closer to him—cities on the edge of turning to dust, faces and figures blowing away in the wind like sand—and presses her forehead on his warm back. Uneven breathing frozen, skin stretched tense over muscle—she feels him tremble. She brings her lips close to his salt skin; he flinches, and she whispers.

"I'm here."

Her hands finally lay themselves on his back, and he crumbles under the gentle touch of her hand gliding across his back like clouds over a field. She breaks down his castles and rebuilds them; she molds and breathes life back into the grey faces of his history. She takes his burdens and his nightmares with her, and he breathes easily, his hopes and dreams put back into place. Only she knows what he has unsuspectingly bared to her tonight, what she has seen in him, but she also knows those are unimportant now because she is here.

She is here, in his city, among the crowd, in his dreams.