Wild! Chapter 25

[meredavey]

Title: Wild
Author: meredavey
Series: Brotherhood (although it can stand on its own)
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: NC-17
Word Count for this chapter: 2,035  (31,311 overall)
Summary: Ed decides he wants to find love, something wild, something vibrant and above all something passionate.

Ed landed with a splat in the sewers and he swore. He heard Roy and then Adam jump in after him. They held up the light as they looked around. The sewers were damp and dark. They smelled badly as well and the walls were covered in blue-green algae. Ed was disgusted. He wrinkled his nose as he moved further along the tunnel. “So where is this path to the tunnels?” he asked.

“It is quite a ways in,” Adam told him as his boots clacked on the stone floor. “It’s easy to miss. Both you and I will probably have to duck,” he told Mustang a bit wryly, “Ed, you’ll probably be fine.”

Ed scowled and waved his hands around but didn’t say anything. All was quiet except for the dripping of the water in the tunnels. Ed could hear the puff of their breath in the quiet and the occasional plop of some animal jumping into the water and he shivered again.

Everything was making him nervous as of late, and Roy, wonderful Roy, seemed to sense his thoughts because he dropped back to walk with Ed and squeezed his hand.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly.

Ed shook his head. “No. It’s…weird,” he said, “it feels…it’s a weird sensation. Maybe I hung out with Ling too much, but this feels like –” Ed paused nervously, “almost homunculus like.”

“It’s not possible though, is it? Making another homunculus?”

Ed rubbed his arms. “I’m not sure, my father is dead, the bearded bastard is dead, all the homunculi are dead aside from Pride who is a child right now…”

Ed lost his voice and it wavered, Roy’s hand tightened on his. “I’ll call Grumman when we get to the surface. Just to check.”

“I don’t think…but I don’t know either.” Ed scrubbed his face with his hands a little anxiously. “I feel like I can’t trust anyone, everything seems wrong. Just…wrong, and I’ve felt it almost since we’ve gotten here. I don’t like it, Roy, it makes me nervous and without my alchemy…”

Roy nodded. “I got it. We’ll be extra careful  from here on it. We’ll double check everything. We won’t leave a single stone unturned.” His eyes flashed. “I’ll protect you if I need to.”

Ed’s eyes had flashed and he’d opened his mouth to protest…if I need to. So, Roy would let him fight on his own, he didn’t want to be protected, yet, why was he so mad that Roy had said if I need to? He heard Roy sigh, and he looked up apologetically.

“I’m sorry, I know I’m a brat sometimes but…”

Roy was tempted to roll his eyes. “I know, Ed, what you’re feeling. You hate they you might have to be protected and you want to be able to fight on your own, but you like the idea that I’ll have your back if you need it even if you don’t want it.”

Ed grinned sheepishly, “Exactly.”

Roy gave his hand one last squeeze and bent down to whisper against Ed’s ear, “If you sense anything out of the ordinary, if anything makes you uncomfortable, tell me. Also, be sure not to let Adam in on any of this. We already revealed far too much.”

Ed nodded and let go of Roy’s hand.

Adam nodded as Roy walked at his side again. “You were once his commanding officer once, right? I heard that you never got along, yet now you are…what changed?”

“Don’t all relationships evolve or devolve? Things are never stagnant.”

“I suppose, but if you really hated each other,”

He didn’t get to finish because Ed broke in. “We disliked each other even though we were allies. We like riling each other, but now, we’re close because of that. We still argue of course, we aren’t very good at backing down, we’re both stubborn but we work well together because of it. Anymore questions?”

Adam looked them over. “I can tell there’s a bit more than friendship brewing beneath those masks of yours. I also know I still don’t know the full truth of whatever is going on here. I don’t appreciate it, but I can live with it.”

Ed looked a bit apologetic. “You really don’t want to be involved with this. It could mean death.”

Adam whirled around and snarled, “And you didn’t feel fit to tell me that! Maybe I didn’t want to get involved then!” his face was inflamed with anger. He yanked his pack off his back and pulled some papers out, shoving them into Ed’s hands. “Maps. I’m going back, I have no desire to get myself killed!” he snapped.

They watched as he moved into the darkness. Soon they couldn’t hear his footsteps anymore.

Ed turned to Roy. “He’s going to follow us, isn’t he?”

Roy nodded. “We’ll have to be careful, and I can use my alchemy to stop him. I highly doubt he’ll know how to decompose that wall.”

They moved along the corridors, Ed reading off directions as he navigated with the map.

Every few feet they stopped to make a mark on the wall and take inventory of where they were and to listen to the footsteps of the man following them.

“You’d think,” Ed told Roy, “that he’d be sneakier than that. It’s as if he wants us to know that he’s there.”

“Maybe he does, maybe he knows something he’s not telling us.”

“Good point, well, we’ll keep letting him follow us and see where it leads.”

They slowly charted a path through the sewers carefully. Roy could tell Ed was getting bored, he was fidgeting more and more often, looking behind himself and twisting himself up into knots.

Finally, exasperated with his partner’s fidgeting, Roy spoke, “What do you want to do when we get back?”

“What?” Ed asked surprised.

“To the town, to Central, whichever, pick one.”

Ed mulled this over as they continued the stroll down the tunnel. “Well, after we get to the town depending on what we find here I want to go to those mountain ranges and talk to those mountain men and solve this mystery.”

“Agreed.”

“And then,” Ed continued, “when we’re back in Central you’ll take me to dinner, woo me, take me back to my apartment and –”

Ed cut off as they reached a small entryway.

“And what?” Roy prompted but realized quickly he wasn’t going to get an answer until they were out of the tunnels.

As usual, Ed had opened the door and already scrambled to the other side.

When Roy had gotten through himself Ed commanded, “Close it, would you?”

And the door shut behind them. Ed didn’t look back, but instead charged forwards into the darkness. They were met with a rather large dirt tunnel and Ed looked to his left, then to his right and pulled out a compass.

Roy wondered where Ed had gotten that from, but he’d rather not ask for fear of the answer. Ed turned towards what Roy guessed was north and headed off at a steady pace. They quickly came to a blocked passage whereupon Ed looked at Roy.

Roy got the message loud and clear, Ed wanted him to unblock the passage, but the further along they got in the more Roy began to realize that they were slowly approaching an area which seemed to have almost been hurriedly abandoned. Ed realized it too because his pace slowed down and he looked about himself much more carefully. They could still hear Adam’s footsteps and Roy had grown very suspicious of the man.

They stopped in the corridor and Roy placed his hands on the adjacent wall, but Ed shook his head. “This is the end. There will be no more corridors.”

Roy looked up with his eyebrow raised in confusion. Ed pointed around them. “Just look…they all left their tools here.” And his hand slowly trailed to a corner where Roy could see skeletons. “They died here too.”

Roy stepped in a small circle to survey where they were and found his senses were telling him to run.

“Let’s go, Roy. Adam was a lying asshole. He knew there was nothing to these tunnels. They all just dead end. I’ll bet you Abigail knew too.” He was snarling. “Adam just followed to keep an eye on us.” Ed’s fury was radiant. “I think we’re going to need to have a nice long chat with those two.”

They maneuvered themselves out of the small cavern and closed it up. “Adam must have removed all the stone and placed it back, or rather, the town blocked up the tunnels. They’re hiding something…something big.”

Roy had the same feeling and he didn’t like where it was going. “I’m thinking that Abigail truly thought no had explored the tunnels,” he said, “Adam probably knew, he’s an alchemist. He found something he didn’t want anyone else to find. I highly doubt the whole town is suspect.”

Ed conceded with bad grace that it was unlikely the townspeople would cover up old deaths like that. “But what is he hiding? Could it just be gold?”

They met Adam blocking their pathway. “You’re right Ed. There was tons of gold down here. I found it, so I thought I’d keep it. But there was something strange about it. It fell apart not too long after. Weird stuff it was.” His eyes closed. “So I decided that I needed to keep it a secret. In case any more came back.”

Ed snorted. “Gold doesn’t just grow.”

“I know that!” Adam snapped, “But, still.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want you getting your greedy paws on it, you military bastards. You’d arrest me simply because I took it.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t about to go to jail for something I didn’t do. But these tunnels gave me the creeps so I closed them off. That’s it, nothing illegal.”

Ed’s eyes were still narrowed. “Okay, so, I was trying to turn stone to gold, which I sealed off down here. It didn’t work.”

Roy sighed. “I won’t arrest you – but I warn you,” his eyes flashed, “I better not hear of anything strange coming from here again or I will be back,” he threatened.

Adam held up his hands. “I promise, nothing else will happen. I’ll behave.” His nose twitched. “You said you wanted to talk to the mountain men?”

“I knew you were listening!” Ed hissed.

Adam shrugged. “I wanted to know what you were up to.”

“Now you know – so what about the mountain men?”

“Just mention me by name, I help them out every once in a while. Tell them I’ll do them a favor. In repayment for your not reporting me. Equivalent exchange.”

Ed held out his hand and Adam gripped it. “I suppose I should thank you, but…somehow I don’t want to.”

Ed pulled the maps out of the pack he was carrying them and laid them on the ground. “Can you burn them Roy? We don’t need anyone else coming down here. We’ll seal up the entrance permanently, I’ll even tell you how to booby trap it to warn off curious parties.”

Roy laughed and lit a small spark with his gloves and Adam dove for the maps but Ed caught him in the chest with his foot. “Oh no you don’t, not even you will be able to get back in here.”

Adam scowled as he watched his work go up in flames. “Come on,” Roy pulled Adam to his feet. “Let’s get out of here.”

Ed led the way out to the door and once they made sure Adam was out of reach Ed scrawled an array on the wall for Roy to use. Mustang dutifully followed Ed’s instructions and created a nearly impenetrable barrier. No one could get in unless they knew the arrays used. Roy quickly destroyed the evidence of the array Ed had drawn.

Adam was scowling. The door that had once led to the tunnels now looked like part of the sewer wall.

There was no going back.

Roy and Ed ushered Adam back to the surface and when they emerged they found it had stopped raining.