A/N: Just a random little thing :) Mostly just what the title says, with a hint of Elricest at the end. Enjoy!

Reading those books, really, what was so bad about narcissism? His slender fingers brush over the diagrams of self-pollinating flowers.

But his fingers are shaking, because he was always a bad liar, and apparently he can’t even lie to himself. Blunt nails and calloused fingertips scrape on the paper, too loud in the library, and he feels guilty for just studying these angiosperms and pistils and stamens in these dusty pages, and thinking of those strange, strange things.

His wrists scrape under his eyes, salty tears smearing because this feels like arrogance, and he wants to be a better person — not worse!

But that doesn’t stop him, and the fact that it doesn’t he finds scary, making cold creep up his spine.

He creeps into the bathroom while Ed is gone, guilt written on his face, carved into him. Or out into the fields in the rain, sitting under an apple tree next to the creek, and feels the burst of tartness on his tongue, the red skin breaking under his teeth, and it remains the whole time, even after he licks cum from his fingers and tromps back through the mud, and the rain washes away everything but the guilt that gnaws into him as if he is the apple, getting chewed through to the core and then digested.

When he gets back, Edward worries over him and sends him to bed with heat pads and a blanket and the forgiveness he craves.

A few minutes later the blond settles down next to him in the bed with a sigh and unbelievably comforting warmth of hot skin through the sheets.

And he wonders if Ed knows.

A/N: This is what happens when a plotbunny is unleashed while I’m taking science notes. It was scribbled down between definitions. :D Review please!