Worlds Collide

A/N: The Candy Made Me Do It, yeah, Frank was hurting, a lot, but he’s a big boy, he can take it. Kuragari, thanks. Malcara, thank you. I appreciate the compliment. Amethyst-eyed Koneko, I don’t know what it is about phone sex either. It can be overly corny because both are trying a bit too hard to be sexy. What? Frank needs a friend:) Yes, not married, but Falman and Raine are living together. I figure Ed gets bored and irritated, he’s going to start creating things. (The orange juice keeps frozen bananas from getting all brown in the freezer). Sig did help, as did Nicholas. Dante and Eckhart pretty much are allies only until they don’t need one another. Nicholas can be sweet when he wants to. Where Aideen is more booksmart, he’s learning to be more adept at picking up on things about people—otherwise, he’d never beat her in a fight. Yeah, Aideen even worries Nicholas with how serious she is.

Chapter 20

Idiot

It was still early when the train pulled into the main station at Central. Roy stepped off of the platform, realizing the early hour, and asked his guards to follow him to the main office in Central. Though he wanted to see his family, he knew at this hour they would still be asleep, so it made more sense to get done the few things he needed to do at the office and be done for the day to spend it with Ed and the twins.

Walking through the hallway, Roy passed by the main secretary, who looked at him in surprise.

“Fuhrer, Sir, I didn’t see you go back through. Did you forget something?”

“Um, no…” Roy figured that she was simply tired, since her shift was about to end in an hour. Deciding that he hadn’t gotten much in the way of exercise the last few days, Roy took the stairs up to his office. Feeling just a bit winded when he reached the top, Roy thought to himself that he would need to do a bit more exercise if he had any intention of keeping up with Ed.

He reached his floor, making his way to the door to his office. He’d just started to open the door when a young lieutenant who guarded the floor approached him. “Hello Sir,” the lieutenant said, with a bit of a salute, and a hint of a blush on his cheeks. He looked even younger than Ed, particularly as he grew more and more embarrassed.

“Hello, Lieutenant.”

“Are you just now home in Central, Furher Sir?”

“Yes, lieutenant. I thought I’d get my work finished and get home.”

“You deserve it, um, Sir.” The young man looked uncomfortable, or at the very least, nervous. “I would hate to see you overwork yourself, Fuhrer, sir.” The man reached out a hand and adjusted a button on Roy’s lapel. “Crooked,” he said with a smile and deeply reddening cheeks. “Wouldn’t want you to look less than perfect.” At that, the young lieutenant saluted and left at a pace Nicholas would even admire.

Roy chuckled to himself as he opened the door further, curious to find a light on in the room. Much to his surprise and bewilderment, there was a man already at his desk with tussled black hair, eyepatch and one of Roy’s uniforms. The man was looking over something on the desk, his hands in a steepled position. Roy froze, eyeing what was essentially himself, though the facial features were just a bit off, and the eye that looked up from the documents on the desk was a piercing blue.

“I suppose now that you’re here,” Frank said, “you’ll be wanting your seat back.”

“H-how?”

“I used to do this for a living, Roy.” Frank smiled a bit conceitedly. “You’d be surprised what people will overlook, if the image they’re presented with is realistic enough. I learned quickly how to imitate you. There are several newsreels that feature you. Thankfully, I can even imitate your voice, since you aren’t exactly a tenor.”

That last bit gave Roy chills with how closely it mimicked the natural inflection of his speech. Even Havoc, who had posed as Roy on a few occasions, had not managed so close an impersonation, and they had known and worked together for years.

“What are you doing in my office?” Roy couldn’t fight his anger at the impertinence, the sense of violation, and the resemblance to the Archer he'd known. It was a feeling that Roy had been so sure he’d overcome getting to know Frank.

“I suspected there was something more that made you uneasy around me than just your eye.” Frank stood, removing his eyepatch—inadvertently revealing a fading yellow bruise—as he pointed down to the folders laying open on Roy’s desk. “And I found it.”

He rubbed at the white temples, knocking out whatever substance he’d put in them, finally pushing his hair back with his hand.

Looking at an exact replica—save for some wrinkles and the bruise—of Archer as Roy remembered him, the fuhrer walked forward to his desk to better see the folders and their contents.

“Those are my and Frank Archer’s personal files. They are confidential, and you have no business looking in those.”

“Then arrest me. But I think I at least had the right to know that you and I—the other me—had a history.”

Frank took off the coat that had been modified to fit his slightly broader and longer frame. “I started reading these to find out why I was so different from the asshole that everyone here remembers. Our childhood, the area we grew up in, our schooling, it all seemed so similar, except this Archer got to know his father.”

“You didn’t?”

“He died a few weeks before I was to start school. It held me back for a year and I had to work to prove that I could be moved back up with the other children my age. But even afterwards, our lives took similar paths, even if we were already different people by then. And that’s when I came across the accusations he made against you. He said when you were promoted directly to the position of major, you tried to force him to have sexual relations with you to ensure his continued service in the military as well as earn the possible chance at a promotion.

“So I found your file, trying to see if this was true. You painted a different story. That of two friends who used one another for regular one night stands. You claimed that he decided to use your relationship, whatever it was you wanted to call it, against you to force you to help him to the top.

“You won, but the remark remained on your record. And I was left here to decide who I believed, you or myself.”

“And who won?” Roy asked, eyeing Frank closely.

“You. Not because I think you’re a great guy. You remind me a lot of the weasel I knew, but you won because you left it in here.” Frank closed the two folders. “This is a definite black mark on your record, no matter how the cort martial proceedings went. “And despite this, you leave that record in here.”

“It happened, not the way he said it did, but why wouldn’t I leave the court martial in there?”

“Because you’re the fuhrer and you can alter your country’s history just by editing it if you so choose. Yet you left this in here.” Frank held out his wrists. “Arrest me if you need to, but I only thought it fair since you already know just about everything I can tell you about myself, but this key bit of information was left off of what you told me.”

“We should have told you. That is true, but you didn’t have any right to break in here.”

Frank walked around the desk, removing the gloves that were near replicas of Roy’s and throwing them on top of the folders. “So was I any good?”

Roy tried not to squirm at that question. “What do you mean?”

“I mean we had sex almost twice a week sometimes three times for two years. I couldn’t have been too bloody bad.”

“No, but you were selfish,” Roy blurted out. “That makes for a lousy top.”

“Was I now?” Frank rubbed his finger over the button that the lieutenant had adjusted. “Good thing I’m not the same man.”

At that, Roy found Frank heatedly pressing his lips to Roy’s own, and before Roy knew it, the older man had spun him, ripped off his gloves, pulled out a knife and held it to his throat. “Let me go!”

“You just don’t get it now, do you?” Frank whispered in his ear as Roy struggled against him. “I am not even an alchemist and all I had on me was a knife, but you let your defenses down, just like you always do when you think someone is flirting with you.” Roy felt the blade of the knife against his neck, though it never broke the skin, while Frank’s grip on his arms grew tighter. He was not only a bit stronger than Roy, but he had his arms bent back in a position that wouldn't allow them to move without possibly driving the blade into his skin. “I could have my way with you right now, show you who’s selfish. I could also kill you. I could find a way to blackmail you, or show how easily you let me kiss you to Ed. But I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t even want to hurt you, but from the observations I’ve made watching you on those reels and the stories I’ve heard, I want to know why you continue to let perfect strangers come up to you, flirt with you, even kiss you. You’re supposed to be the fuhrer, someone who understands the military and leads the country with the attitude that he should expect anything.

“You’re just damned lucky no one tried this before.”

“Get off me, now!”

“Not until I’ve made my point.” The blade pressed deeper. “Maybe your Ed doesn’t need protected like Edward did, but did you know there were three people this week alone who claimed to be having your child? One of them was a man and claimed that you had super sperm, or something like that. Another, Ed didn’t know. But the third woman, Ed had seen kiss you in public. There were even images of the two of you, her lips against yours, your arms thrown up in the air. Now Ed might not be fragile like Edward was, but you weren’t there to see the look on his face.

“And let’s just top it off with the fact that when someone starts flirting with you like that little lieutenant in the hallway, your guard drops and allows people to do what I’m doing right now. They could kill you in front of Ed, even your children. They could use you any way they want, just because you have a weakness for flattery. You need to realize that.”

Then, with a smirk in his voice that Roy couldn’t see, Frank added, “You also need to recognize the back of a knife when it’s against your throat.”

Realizing that his life wasn’t in danger, and that Frank was even daring to mock him, Roy pulled away and punched him directly on the bruise that had started to fade at his eye. “Hit me all you want, fuhrer, but the fact is that I’m right.”

Roy stood, fists clenched, chest heaving in anger. “You son of a bitch.” Roy didn’t know what he was more furious about, the fact that Frank had done what he did, that Roy had allowed it to happen, or that Frank was right.

********

Ed was blissfully unaware any of this had gone on as he slept, sprawled out in the double bed as he had every day he didn’t need to share it.

“Ed, move,” Ed thought he heard. “Ed, can I at least have some of my half of the bed?”

A single gold eye opened, and seeing the dark-haired man standing over him, still wearing a white dress shirt and boxer shorts, Ed grabbed hold of the shirt and tugged Roy into the bed.

Humming a bit in his half-asleep state, Ed looked at Roy. “You’re home.”

“Yes, and I stopped off at the office, so you have me for the entire day.”

Arms and legs snaking out to latch onto Roy, he held onto him in a total body embrace, tucking his head underneath the older man’s chin.

“You’re so much more affectionate when you’re nearly unconscious,” Roy teased as he returned Ed’s hold, kissing the top of the braided blond hair. “I love you.”

“’ve you too,” Ed mumbled, really wishing his husband-slash-pillow would be quiet and let him go back to sleep. He could feel that Roy wasn’t entirely relaxing, and it was bothering his sleep, so Ed looked up at Roy, annoyed. “What?”

“I’m an idiot.”

Ed pulled back, thoroughly awake. He didn’t like when conversations started with Roy accusing himself of being an idiot. “Why, aside from the usual?”

“Frank kissed me.”

“What!” Ed pulled completely away, bolting upright and looking down at his husband. “I’ll kill him.”

“He did it to prove a point, and he proved it well.” Roy reached up to brush aside Ed’s bangs. “I let people flirt with me too easily. I encourage it even, and I leave myself open for attacks of all kinds. And I hurt you.”

“I’ve been telling you that for years.”

“That’s why I’m an idiot.”

“Did he do anything else?”

“Aside from immobilize me and hold a knife to my neck to prove just what kinds of attacks I could face, no.” Ed trailed his hand down to Roy’s pale neck. “He used the back of the blade. It was only to make his point more clear.”

“So he didn’t try anything…” Ed couldn’t help but think back to Roy’s thirtieth birthday, which would have been ten years ago in another three weeks. He remembered the other Archer kissing Roy, announcing to him now that they were equals in rank, that perhaps they could resume where they’d left off after the academy.

“Nothing. Said I look too much like the weasel he knew.” Roy smiled up at him, and Ed thought back to what that kiss had brought on, Roy stepping over the picnic table bench on the front porch to stand in front of Ed, who had been cradling the cat. The poor thing had nearly been crushed as the two of them sought to wipe all memory of Frank Archer from Roy’s mind with a kiss that had left Ed more than a bit weak-kneed.

Ed leaned down and kissed Roy, drawing the slightly dry bottom lip into his mouth and lightly teasing it with his teeth. Releasing the lip, he all but forced his tongue into the mouth of the man below him, feeling Roy’s smooth hands running along his left arm. Ed broke off the kiss and looked down at Roy.

“Trying to mark your territory?” Roy teased.

“Damned right,” Ed leaned down once again, moving to kiss every inch of what was his, mouth, face, neck. Every part of it was his, and he was grateful that Roy had finally realized it.

“You know,” Roy said as Ed unbuttoned the white dress shirt. “I think I’m going to have to enlist Frank into our military. Anyone who can so easily disarm me, I want on my side.”

Ed nodded, as he looked slightly put off at the undershirt beneath the dress shirt. Slowly he pushed the offending item up to expose the still-toned stomach beneath. He wanted those last words to be the last coherent thought Roy had for a few hours, and with that thought in mind, he expertly dipped his tongue inside the fuhrer’s naval.

Unfortunately for Ed, there was the sound of footsteps in the hall outside their door. Hearing them, he pushed Roy’s shirt back down and waited for the assault.

The door swung open and the twins came bursting through the doorway, running to the bed and jumping on top of their father. “Papa!” Aideen said, not realizing her elbow was painfully pushing into Roy’s stomach. “You’re home!”

“Is the war over?” Nicholas asked as he hugged onto Roy.

“Completely over. We signed a treaty, an agreement that we’re not going to fight any more.”

“So you’re going to be home for a while?” Aideen asked.

“Of course, sweetheart.”

With that, the twins nuzzled up beside him, Ed laying on his back, reaching his right arm over Nicholas’s head to curl the mechanical fingers into Roy’s dark hair.

“Ah, the joys of parenthood,” Ed muttered.

“What, Daddy?” Nicholas asked.

“Not a thing,” Ed said. “Not a thing.”