A Fair Price

Title: A Fair Price
Pairing: ArcherxRoy, implied ArcherxEd
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: non-con, knife play, blood play, bondage, breath control, mental fuckery
Feedback: Please Read & Review
Disclaimer: Don\'t own FMA, ain\'t profiting. S\'all good.


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Roy awoke slowly the next morning as the inn room brightened with the rising sun. He was exhausted from the night before, both physically and mentally, and was vaguely aware of where he was and what he had done. He shifted on the mattress among his discarded uniform, eyes yet to open, and groaned as his head began to pound. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast the day before. His mouth was uncomfortably dry, his lips, cracked.

He muttered something unintelligible, licking his lips thickly in an unsuccessful attempt to ease his discomfort. His entire body ached; it was a feeling he hadn’t experienced since Ishbal, since drill at the military academy in his youth. He felt the tight tug of dried blood clinging to scabbing wounds and the sticky slickness of grime and sweat over his skin. He needed a shower. He needed a drink; he was painfully dehydrated.

He sat up suddenly and immediately wished he hadn’t. Every part of him screamed in protest in their own language, his head spinning, his skin burning and his muscles cramping. He gripped his head with one hand and hissed, flailing with the other for support as he swung his legs down to the floor. He vaguely remembered Archer leaving the night before, but made quick survey of the room just to make sure. The bastard’s things were gone, he heard nothing in the bathroom and there was a folded sheet of paper on the nightstand.

Transfer order…

He stretched his arm to pick up the paper and grimaced. His shoulders were particularly unhappy with him at the moment, having been restrained and overused the night before, but he refused to let himself become incapacitated by that slimy bastard and snatched the paper off the table indignantly. He closed his eyes and sighed quickly before opening them and attempting to read the small text, but he couldn’t focus. Fuck, did his head hurt; reading would have to wait.

He tossed the paper back onto the bed. With one hand gripping the metal headboard and the other gripping the edge of the mattress, he made his first attempt to stand, which proved a bad move. Leaning forward to do so shifted his weight directly onto an extremely tender part of his body and the language of its protest consisted of searing pain and spotted vision. He should probably see a doctor, but he knew he couldn’t. How could he explain that? Really, how could he explain any of it?

Pissed off wasn’t even the term for it. Archer knew he would be able to get away with what he did and that made Roy positively seethe, which was something he really didn’t have the strength for.

Ignoring the pain with gritted teeth and clenched eyes, he pushed himself to his feet and staggered dizzily into the bathroom. Luckily for him, the lighting was low and the mirror dirty, because the last thing he wanted to see was his own reflection. He didn’t want to face himself for what he’d done, nor did he want to see what he had been reduced to – matted and clumped hair, his face splotchy and pale, shining with caked on sweat. A bruise was forming along his jaw from where he struggled against the neck brace and there were rusted-colored swipes of blood – his blood – along his neck and around his mouth, smeared there from Archer’s lips.

He avoided the dirty mirror with his eyes anyway and he turned on the sink tap for a drink. With a groan of the plumbing, water spurted forth and he offered the metallic-tasting liquid to his lips. It reminded him entirely too much of blood and his stomach lurched at the association.

Head hung over the sink and hands gripping its sides, he clenched his jaw and resisted the nausea roiling through his abdomen. He would not. He would not!

Eyes unfocusing and refocusing over the caked, red and pink lines on his bare thighs, he fought the heaving and the rising bile.

NO! Roy’s fist flew into the wall with a sickening thud and he panted over the sink through the pain. It really was just one more complaint to add to his list of aches, but it was worth it to know that that son of a bitch had not gotten under his skin.


What was one lie, anyway?


He pushed off the sink and staggered to the shower, stepping into the stream of water before it had a chance to warm. The cold was punishing against his strained muscles and his skin rippled with tremulous shivers. The water stung his wounds like acid, but he knew it was a pain that he needed to swallow. He was his own doctor now; no one could know about this and he was not, under any circumstance, going to let his immune system be defeated as easily as he was.

No. I was not defeated…


Two lies? What are two measly lies?


The water warmed and he turned his face up to the stream, letting it pound rhythmically over his forehead and cheeks and wash away the dirt, both real and subjective. He soaped his hair and his body with the cracked cake of soap provided by the inn, delicately but thoroughly cleaning his wounds before tending to his most painful area -- the area between his legs, the area that had been forcefully and painfully penetrated the previous night. He feared the inevitable pain that would come from nursing it, but he soaped his hand and reached down to inspect and wash it carefully.

Pain surged up his spine and his knees buckled. Torn. He was definitely torn, and swollen painfully. A small clot of blood slid down his leg and then the drain from where it had been dislodged by his touch. His stomach rolled violently at the sight as well as its implication.

He doubled over, one hand on his knee, another fruitlessly sliding over the slick, tiled wall as he vomited up the little water he had swallowed earlier. Three, four, five heaves and he sobbed from the pain of his muscles – all of them – contracting involuntarily. He fell to his hands and knees dizzily and collapsed onto the cramped floor of the shower, panting as the water pounded onto his side and swirled around his cheek.


If it were possible, he thought, he would have never gotten up.

But of course it wasn’t.


He finished what was left of his shower on autopilot after regaining his strength and forcing himself off the shower floor. He needed to move on, forget about the whole business and look at the bright side – Fullmetal was out of harm’s way. That was the point of it all, right? Not attracting additional attention to himself from the higher ups and taking care of his own oversights alone? By atoning for the sin of forgetting the fragility of the young boy he tainted when he coerced him into military servitude for his own selfishly selfless gains?


His own body for Edward’s, a fair trade. He deserved this. He needed to swallow it and move on.


He toweled dry quickly as he emerged from the bathroom, stepping over his crumpled uniform pants on his way to the bed where he had tossed the transfer order earlier. He still felt like he had been spit out by hell, but at least he was awake enough to focus. The water and heat from the shower moisturized his wounds and soothed his muscles too, making it less painful for him to maneuver. The main focus of his violation, however, would only take time to soothe; of this he was literally painfully aware.

He ran the too small towel messily through his hair with one hand as he reached for the paper with the other, taking care to not get it wet while he opened the fold to read.

As his dark and tired eyes ran over the words, the towel slowed to a stop and dropped to the floor.

…on the fifteenth day of May in the year nineteen fourteen…

The paper quivered in his shaking hand.

…Colonel Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist, has hereby been granted his request of ten days paid leave of absence from Amestris military servitude…

The paper crumpled and flew across the room as a strangled howl burst forth from the frustrated colonel\'s throat.