Siren and Wave, Echo and Fade

Title: Siren and Wave
Pairing: Alfons Heiderich/Edward Elric
Rating: NC-17
Genre: PWP

***

There is something about the way Edward sits in his father's old chair, curled up around his notebook with one leg folded up nonchalantly, that keeps drawing his eyes back over and over.

He looks up every so often over the edge of his own book, considering, a faint heat in his cheeks as he tries to dissect the problem. Certainly it is not the chair itself. It was not much of an inheritance that he received from his parents, mostly furniture, odds and ends that could not be got rid of when his mother's house was liquidated, and the few pieces that he kept have all seen better days. The chair itself is a squat thing with old wooden feet; perhaps the leather was once in fact colored chestnut, but now it can only charitably be described as "reddish". He never really knew his father and so he kept the horrid thing because it's the only tie he has to him, but most days it is just that, a thing. An invisible piece of furniture in the background, until Edward comes and breathes life into it.

He feels a familiar tremor lace down through his belly and he shivers a little, as Edward idly shifts just enough to spread his legs wider. Indents in his lips where he bites down on them, intense eyes devouring text, and there is something - that intangible something - about the way he sits that drives Alfons mad sometimes, that brown and gold against the faded leather.

He wants to do things to Edward that he barely understands, and sometimes it's enough to get his heart doing loops. He drops his eyes back to the page he was reading, but he can't remember what sentence he was on anymore, let alone understand these suddenly irrelevant words. It is frustrating because in many other ways he and Edward work so well together. They have an easy habit of ignoring each other a lot of the time, sustaining themselves on the written word and then surfacing to argue when they're done; this violates that casual, friendly rhythm. He started watching Edward and now he's starting to want to touch Edward, and it manifests itself in a physical ache pooled between his own legs, worrying in how little it makes sense. He has read enough medical texts to know about the dangers of hormones, but none of that ever prepared him for the stark, strange reality that his seem to run at counter-purpose to the natural world. Alfons wants to bury his face in Ed's crotch, Ed's thighs loosely clamped to the sides of his skull, boxing him into that nice warm spot.

He stands up.

Edward doesn't seem to notice that Alfons has vacated the couch; the old leather chair is where the man lives, rather literally, most of the time. If it gets too late he curls up beneath his jacket and spends the night there, and although Alfons has offered him the couch (something about giving him the bed that is just entirely uncomfortable) Edward never accepts. He always swears he's going to go home to his father's flat; in the meanwhile, Alfons's chair has started to grow an Edward-shaped depression in it. Alfons drops to his knees in front of the man and looks up at him, cheeks flushed ever so slightly, but now that he's close he cannot bear to look away.

Edward's eyes flick to him briefly but then quickly return to his page. He affects indifference, although Alfons notices his crooked knee trembles just a bit. Alfons does not smile the way a part of him wants to, instead he remains preternaturally serious.

"May I?" he finally manages, after a time. Glacially, he reaches out one hand to place it on Edward's false left knee, the leg that is hanging down off the chair.

Edward pauses in his book and looks down at him, and Alfons feels his face heat under the scrutiny. He looks away. Out of the corner of his eye and above him he can see Edward, ever so slightly, nod.

"Sure," Ed says at last, and it is unclear what he is thinking, or where his level of desire is. Maybe he is simply indulging him. But Alfons doesn't mind... it's not that he feeds off the ambiguity, but as he opens the front of Ed's pants and slips the tips of his fingers inside, he is just grateful that these needs don't get him shunned.

He has tried his luck only very rarely, the first time when they were both also trying being drunk (he had only pretended to be smashed, himself; a part of him likes to hope that Edward wasn't really that out of it either, because that means that it really was Edward's decision to start this.) He still isn't even sure what "this" really is; just that occasionally he will come to him and Edward won't say no. Edward shifts a bit toward him as he fumbles his way through fabric, and he keeps his eyes resolutely on what is in front of him, too afraid to look up. Edward wears his heart on his sleeve always, it is one of his more endearing qualities, and Alfons is too terrified to look up and see what the man really thinks of this. Disgusted? Bored? Patronizing? Or indulgent, excited? Either way, he keeps his eyes on the relevant anatomy.

And then, through the flap of Edward's roomy striped undershorts (too big for him, like everything seems to be) - they both hiss as his hands dive in and find what he's searching for. He is not sure why it is so fascinating, another man's cock, but Edward's he could look at all day and he has gotten to where he's memorized how it looks, dark and often an angry red at the tip. He tugs it out and slides his hands against it, his mouth, licking at the thing in a haphazard fashion that Edward seems to like. He can actually feel it spring to life beneath his tongue and fingertips.

His own cock is tight inside his underpants, and he squirms a little so that he is not kneeling with his legs pressed so uncomfortably close together.

He rubs his cheek against his friend's erection, charmed by the silky feel of it. He buries his nose in the coarse golden curls around the base, and Edward shivers perceptibly. The man smells like sweat, and musk, and faintly ammonia; he pulls back and closes his lips around the tip and tastes all of that and more, a slippery and vaguely bitter tang that is fast growing addictive; he has always loved salty things and there is plenty of that flavor too. He swirls his tongue around again and again and then swallows Edward fully, intent on devouring him.

Edward lets out an explosive sigh and there, his other leg drops down off the chair, to the other side of Alfons's head, and yes, there, that was what he wanted.

Don't look up don't look up he tells himself firmly and sucks harder, just listens to the sound of Edward's ragged breathing as he plays his lips and tongue and fingertips over the man's most sensitive regions. The way he shuffles his feet against the floor. Edward's thighs are pressing resolutely inward, just the way he likes, and the man is starting to arch up out of the chair into his mouth, trembling, squirming, and Alfons feels like he is drinking in excitement with every clumsy suck.

He can take Edward apart like this and he has never had that kind of privilege with anybody before.

He slows down and savors it once Edward starts to breathe out whimpers, grows daring enough to slip a hand underneath and tug at the man's balls. Edward jerks violently and just comes unglued at that, and the noise he makes shoots straight down Alfons's belly and makes him want to weep. Edward is going to come, it is now inevitability, and that thought alone fills him with so much pride that for the moment he forgets his fears.

He looks up.

And ohsweetmotherofgod-

Edward has his head thrown back and what little he can see of the man's expression is riotous, twisted up to where it almost looks like he's in pain. He is gasping through his mouth, great big shuddering pants, and Alfons is suddenly aware that if he doesn't end this soon one or both of them is likely to have a heart attack, he has dragged this out too long. The front of his own underwear is sopping with how much doing this excites him but he ignores the urge to throw himself bodily on the poor man and closes his lips down instead, sucks harder, faster.

It does not take long.

Boxed in as he is by Edward's thighs, Edward's arousal, he feels the exact instant that the man starts to come, and he exacts every last ounce of what little know-how he has to clamp down and draw it out. Edward's shoes scrape violently against the floorboards and his cock swells and then Alfons looks up at just the right time to watch Edward's epiphany, heaven's serenity crashing over the man one staccato moan at a time.

He likes the feeling of Edward's come hitting the back of his throat too, and that as well he will never understand why.

When Edward's sounds turn to discomfort, he releases him. The urge to jerk off is powerful but possible to resist, and he remains there for a moment, awed, as Edward comes down.

I did this, he thinks, filled with a diffuse, powerful pride. He has never been very good at being manly, bookish as he is, but somehow in this, in kneeling down and making Edward shudder and gasp, he feels like he finally has grasped the concept.

A shaky hand comes down and breaks the moment, and Alfons freezes as Edward threads blunt fingers through his hair, pets him ever so slightly.

"Alfons," Edward sighs, and his eyes, now half-lidded, crack open just a sliver. His nose wrinkles. He seems slightly confused.

"You--" Edward's eyes flick down his body. He suddenly remembers his own cock is hard and probably noticeable.

Nameless disquiet races through him at the thought of Edward seeing him like that, and he struggles to stand up, puts on a bland smile and hastily backs away. He isn't sure what he fears more, acceptance or rejection, and either way, he's suddenly in knots.

"I'll get you a blanket," he says before Edward can say anything, and he does his best to get to the closet without limping. "That's what you wanted, right? It's going to get cold tonight."

Edward watches him dubiously, accepts the blanket but doesn't look as if he's entirely sure he trusts it. Alfons's heart skips a beat and he watches as the man opens that soft, supple mouth as if he's considering saying something.

Closes it again. Shakes his head.

"Thanks," he says simply, and wriggles into his usual position in the squishy chair. He watches Alfons closely as he pulls the blanket up around himself, but Alfons keeps a careful distance. He puts another chair in between the two of them, so that Edward can not see how very much he still has an erection.

"I think I'm going to stay up and do some more reading," he lies, and selects a book from the coffee table at random. Turns tail and flees toward his bedroom.

"Alfons?" Edward calls after him.

"Yes?" he pauses.

"Thanks..." Edward says again, and his voice is a little softer now, still dubious, but also grateful. "For everything."

Alfons isn't sure what he thinks about that, so he does the next best thing. He flees into the sanctuary that is his bedroom and throws himself into his bed, where it is private, and where he can lie there and curl up with his aching erection, the hurt like an old friend, and for the moment shake. There are butterflies inside his stomach the size of kittens.

He does not know what it is about Edward that makes him like this, but a part of him knows very well that if Edward ever touches him back, this feeling he has for him might make Alfons damn well break.

***

::the heart is a bloom / shoots up through the stony ground::