whiskeycoffee | "Yet Gentle" (FMA, Roy/Al, 7stages) (Reply)

Title: Yet Gentle
Author: m.jules
Rating: PG?
Timeline: Speculative future of the manga -- when Al gets his body back from beyond the Gate.
Pairing: Roy/Al
Disclaimer: SO NOT MINE.
Notes: This is meant to be more an emotional connection than a sexual one. Sensual, perhaps, but I was trying to stay away from any kind of sexual implications, at least as far as this story goes. I can't say anything for the rest of my claim.

Thanks to

cornerofmadness and

evil_little_dog for looking it over and offering suggestions. :-)

This is for my Roy/Al claim at

7stages: Theme: "Dragon Tears"

It is, Roy thinks crazily, like watching a dragon being born in his living room. A writhing tangle of spindly limbs that belie the power of the soul that is finally reunited with them -- a splay of burnished hair on the rug in front of the fireplace and then that frail body turns and bronze eyes open, scan the ceiling, dim and foggy with awakening, and then find Roy's. They fix on his gaze, snap suddenly clear and cognizant, and just like that, Roy can't breathe.

His chest tightens and his world is suddenly brought into sharp focus, centering on that face, that wild mass of hair, and those unfathomably gentle eyes. Suddenly, he thinks he knows exactly how Maes Hughes felt the first time he saw his daughter, the first time he held her, and he wants to hold this wild creature in his own arms. There is fire moving under that skin -- he can feel it across the seven and a half feet that separate them; it matches the pulse and rhythm of the flames from the fireplace that he started before Edward ever drew the array, the fire that he set to keep this newborn warm upon its rebirth -- but it is tempered. He remembers the snippet of a children's rhyme, one he read to Elicia once when Hughes blackmailed him into babysitting, and it seems so very fitting that his lips soundlessly form the words, "Yet gentle will the gryffin be..."

Then Edward moves between them, breaking that gaze, and Roy drops his head, panting harshly as his awareness returns to his own body instead of the ethereal miracle he's just seen take place. His arms are shaking where they are braced on the floor -- he'd already been sitting there, waiting for the Gate to reopen and Alphonse to return, no longer empty armor -- and he curls his fingers against the floorboards, willing the trembling to cease. He looks up again, and the world doesn't stop -- he can feel it spinning wildly out of control -- but he does, freezes in place, caught by that warm, golden gaze watching him over Edward's shoulder as the brothers embrace after a long separation. Then Alphonse smiles, and the tension binding Roy's chest relaxes as if everything is right with the world again.

Mustang nods, once, and Al's eyes close as he leans his head into Ed's, slender arms enfolding his brother's body, an air of contentment surrounding him. The passage through the Gate must have taxed him because Al is asleep almost instantly and it takes a moment for Roy to recognize, shocked, the twinge in his diaphragm as actual jealousy when Ed gathers Al in his arms, one flesh, one metal, and places him on the couch. Roy is there with a blanket before Ed has even finished laying Al's head -- that face, caught in between the sweetness of childhood and a maturing attractiveness, now lax in repose -- on the cushion, and he tucks it carefully around that too-thin body.

He lets out a slow breath as he and Ed both take a step back and Roy chances a sidelong glance to see moisture standing in the elder Elric's eyes. "Wow," Ed whispers, and Roy thinks that pretty much says it all.