Let It Go

Tension. It radiated off him, knotted up his muscles, creased the lines in his forehead, made a few golden hairs turn an unpleasant silver all too soon. It contorted his emotions, made everything tense and biting like the icy wind that rippled through the cracks in the walls come November and stay ‘till April. If not cursed with anger, he was greeted by silence pierced with melancholy.

Melancholy.

Perhaps that was the best way to describe things. The droop in his shoulders, the limp and messy ponytail, the lilt in his voice when it turned soft and spoke of distant realms and supposed memories.

Edward Elric was not the type of guy to cry, he looked too tough despite the frailty of his height; although, he sometimes looked as if a good cry would rid him of all the sadness he fought to keep from the world.

Tension and melancholy.

That was the persistent atmosphere that permeated the small apartment, leaving the air stifling.

Heiderich often tried to lighten the atmosphere. “Tell me about that place again. Wasn’t it called Ametris or something?” He laughed, knowing he’d gotten the name all wrong.

“Amestris,” Ed would correct him, the melancholy becoming more prevalent again in his voice of smooth velvet. He turned his head, looking up at the youthful face of Heiderich. Ed had clued in long ago that the man never believed him.

XXX

Edward Elric once remarked he felt like he was living in a dream.

He had been highly talkative when they first met—or literally, collided—and a shocked Ed had been even more shocked when bright, oval, piercing blue eyes had met his gaze and his first thought was that they were the wrong color. Life wasn’t perfect, and this damn well proved he was always striving for what he couldn’t have.

He was living in a dream. Heiderich wished he would wake up.

XXX

It was lonely. He’d never felt so lonely, he wasn’t surrounded by people, but in the same sense he was. Surrounded by people who cared and asked and were all too familiar that it haunted his days and nights and wouldn’t let him rest but plagued him with an aching sense of lonely.

Hughes was too kind, too much of a father he’d never had even when he did have a father who turned out to have contributed more than just sperm and ended up taking care of him when he first landed in this hellhole of a place. But with another pang, he wished he didn’t have to hear Hughes’s gentle advice to be good that day or stay out of trouble. Hughes was the one who needed to stay out of trouble, or he’d end up like the last, dead, cold, leaving a Gracia behind because he was too noble to be selfish for once in his life and think of himself over others.

Gracia herself was too kind, too much of the mother he still yearned for and briefly thought he might meet in this world. He wished he hadn’t thought that when he did, for he forgot of his own mother, stone cold, killed twice over although the first hadn’t been by his hands. Either way, she new one was a replacement and nothing could replace his mother.

His arm was such a burden in this world.

XXX

Things were as peaceful as they would get, what with the failing economy, inflation, resentment over the treaty, a cramped apartment, and a roommate who was on the edge of breaking his façade.

He almost found himself pining after the man, looking wishfully at him as Edward stared wishfully out the window at who knows what. That was if he was even looking at something real at all, and not lost in one of his day dreams.

In obvious ways Edward was… no, Edward was everything. Everything he wanted, everything he wanted to be, everything he craved in a friend, companion, more and yet he seemed so… out of reach. Unattainable, not for his gender, not for him being Edward, but precisely for him being Edward to his being Alfonse like there was an invisible barrier Ed had erected to keep them close but far apart enough that it ached and burned in his heart when he thought about it.

Pushed away, silently, without a word, without a gesture. No, I can’t, his body language seemed to say. But why? The question would linger. Ed never answered it, Heiderich wouldn’t believe his answer: he knew Ed would have some excuse from “his” world.

Heiderich would have found it easier to deal with if he hadn’t cared so much.

XXX

Conflicted was an understatement. A far understatement in the style of the English literature the Victorians were so fond of. The kind that was supposed to be funny back then but now read more serious. Ed had never understood literature like that, but he felt like a character in some far off romance, only the romance was precisely what was missing.

He couldn’t decide if he wanted leave the romance, damn himself, or take the romance, damn it all.

Damned either way.

XXX

One would have thought he’d been abused, and he very well might have: Ed would always flare up at the mention of his father, but Heiderich doubted something like that had really gone on.

Still, the way the guy clung to touch, to contact, even to a genuine smile, was perplexing. Edward was so cold, brash, and rude it seemed out of character for him to snuggle up to the warm body beside him in bed when the weather got too cold for them to sleep alone.

Heiderich had suggested it, more out of necessity and a desire to scrimp on heating—or lack thereof—and had been in no way suggesting anything past that, but Ed had wrapped his arms around his waist and silently brushed his lips across Heiderich’s neck in a silent plea, prayer, motion that he never figured out.

He wasn’t sure if it was an invitation, but Ed relaxed and let him. Heiderich was too embarrassed to offer more than a heated kiss.

Ed didn’t kiss back.

XXX

Edward never spoke of his family. Or he at least tried not to, avoided the topic, danced around the question, buckled, gave in, and gave the tiniest bit of knowledge that whet the tongue but never satisfied the curiosity of his roommate.

Touchy subject.

He whisperings of siblings, no, a sibling, the other a close friend, Ed had to remind even himself, although Al would have done just the same thing.

He shut his thoughts about then. Turned off his brain, numb, cold, wrenched his thoughts away as if he was forcibly tearing himself away.

It was hard to tear away from what’s not there.

XXX

He figured it out. It was easy enough. Simple. Shoved in his face and it made sense, but he wished it was a confusing jumble like all the modernist thought was at this time.

Ed hung his head, not ever trying to make up for it. He couldn’t. Not much to say. Hard to apologize for the truth, stark and stabbing as it was.

Heiderich clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palm, just plain hurt laid bare across his body as bare as everything else, hurt to his core. Edward should say something, at least own up to it instead of sitting in awkward, agonizing silence that was worse than a heated argument. He should admit it had never been him, he was jus a reality Ed was running away from to flee to shattered and hopeless dreams.

Heiderich extended his hand to Edward. He’d run, trembling, to the living room and curled up on the couch with only the sheet, shivering in the cold but too ashamed to go back and ask to be given his half of the bed.

Ed took his hand, eyes wide with surprise at his roommate’s calm smile.

He didn’t deserve his disgust.

XXX

Ed had called him Al. No, said. No, not even that. Moaned it, slipped the syllable from his lips as his mind was overpowered with the pleasant throb, the fire that spread and wouldn’t stop, the painful but whole, complete, full feeling that enlivened him for the first time in a year.

Then it all came crashing down.

A nickname? No.

Ed had a brother named Al.

XXX

Edward said nothing. For three weeks. He nodded his head to everything, agreed with whatever Heiderich wanted. Never asked for anything special or different, just went with whatever they did, ate, saw, with a distant look in his eyes.

In voicing his desire, he’d realized his dream had always been just that.

XXX

Mourning. That was what Heiderich settled on Ed’s actions being. Whether it was from unrequited love or not, he had no idea nor any wish to ponder, think, spend time on that issue, but he watched Ed go through the motions as if he himself was the dead. His hair seemed duller, his face more haggard, the absence of even his melancholy voice was painful to not hear.

Ed’s soul had died, taking a little of Heiderich’s with it.

XXX

To say he wanted to die would be incorrect. Edward Elric explicitly did not want to die. He was too attached to the human world, life, the things it held, and he didn’t want to even remotely think of having someone deal with his death again.

Dying once had really been enough.

He wanted to leave… Just walk out the door and never come back. Leave this world and its false illusions, teasing faces, off color, militaristic ways. He wanted to go away, find somewhere new, anywhere was better than this but anywhere was never as good as there.

There.

He was beginning to think he could never go back.

XXX

Why did he bother? He angrily slammed his fist on the counter, a rare outburst of anger coming from the usually passive and pacifistic Heiderich. Why did he care so much he got himself worked up about everything when it wasn’t his fault he had a sinner for a roommate, a sinner for a friend, and a sinner for the guy he’d fallen for too hard, too fast, and the exact thing he didn’t need to clutter his thoughts and toy with his heart.

He was on the point of breaking. Just breaking, leaving the pieces, taking what he could scrape together, and leaving. Leaving it all behind for the guy to deal with his own pathetic mess and the sin he kept festering in his heart.

Broken. Imperfect. Those were the parts he longed to mend, fix with a little love, guidance, whispered words of forgiveness. He was seeking forgiveness too, in the arms of a blonde little angel who was too broken to flare up at a tease about his height, too broken to talk, express himself if he even knew how at this point.

But it was the broken, fractured pieces of Edward he loved most.

Heiderich went right back to cooking the sausage.

XXX

“I want…” Ed began, speaking for the first time in a month. Heiderich was startled, more so by Ed’s presence in what had returned to being “his” bed, than by his roommate’s sudden advent of speech.

Ed paused, clearly thinking over what to say, to perfect the words that felt strange on his tongue, make them right so they wouldn’t be wrong. “I want…” he began again, but stopped when he felt the warmth of Heiderich’s hand encase his real one. Heiderich’s gaze was steady under his blush that gave his face a pleasant rosy glow and made Ed smile warmly and forget for just a second all the pain in his soul.

This time, it was Ed who pushed him onto the bed and lavished praise.

XXX

Heiderich’s hair was too blonde. Platinum, not bronze. His eyes were sapphire, not copper. He blushed while Al squeaked. He was nervous, timid, while Al was meek but brash. He was soft spoken while Al was quick to flare or cry after a period of simmering.

Heiderich really wasn’t like Ed’s brother after all.

XXX

Heiderich felt good the next morning. Better than he’d thought, more than he’d hoped, but just right in perspective of all those things.

He shifted in the bed, turning over on his side, taking care to not wake the sleeping Ed who had curled around him, just close enough so that he could remember the absence of clothes on his body.

He was greeted with a sleeping Ed, snoring rather loudly, arms splayed out in a sloppy fashion. The image was humorous, a tad annoying at how Ed had once again slept with his stomach out, but Heiderich was at ease.

It was reassuring to wake up and find Ed still there.

XXX

In giving up one, Ed had gained another. Equivalent Exchange, just like he always repeated to the point of monotony and rhetoric and disbelief at times when the principal really did seem fake.

Reality.

XXX

They fanned out, golden, from the large brown center, stretching towards the sun. The leafy green and thick, fuzzy stems supported the large heads, weeping pollen on the table. They were gathered, bright and shining, in a vase, perhaps borrowed from Gracia downstairs, where he suspected Ed had bought them.

Sunflowers.

Such a luxury—extravagant even—on their budget, although Heiderich knew, somehow when he looked at the smiling flower, that it was just Ed’s money that had funded the present.

“I-I… love—“ Ed couldn’t even get it out, just rushing at Heiderich to clutch at his shirt, burying his face in his chest and sob.

Sob.

Edward Elric was finally crying over something, over nothing, over everything.

Heiderich held him, smoothing his hands through Ed’s hair and down his back in comfort, letting the man get it out like he so desperately needed.

“I love you too, Ed,” Heiderich said at length, once Ed’s sobs had stopped, his tears had been kissed away, the tremors wracked from the body.

Edward always had a hard time expressing his feelings, but when he did, he always got the message across.