Fullmetal Alchemist (Nightbreed) - Left Behind [RoyEdRian]

[scriveyner]

Title: Left Behind
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
AU: Nightbreed
Characters/Pairing: Roy/Ed, Roy/Rian
Rating: T
Length: 1137
Summary: And the worst of it was, he couldn't even fault either of them for it.

Edward stared at the door to their bedroom. It was closed, as it had been for days. There was no change there, and Edward laid his head back on his folded arms, staring silently at the ceiling. The apartment was quiet, almost too quiet - he could hear the background hum of electricity, the refrigerator running in the kitchen, and the occasional movement from the apartments above. He could turn always turn on the television, but every time he rolled to look at it he would see the blinking green light on Rian’s game system. Edward did not look at the television stand, but kept staring at the crack in the ceiling near the bedroom door.

His stomach hurt. When was the last time he’d eaten? Days, probably. He was to the point of picturing his meat raw and bloody, torn warm from the carcass and if he did not eat soon, he might go a bit crazy. He himself had helped put down a few werewolves who had gone too far from the blood sickness. He could not afford that route himself. He sighed, and shifted, sitting up on his elbows.

Daylight was creeping in under the curtains. It was cold and bright, and when he pushed aside one curtain it made his eyes hurt. How long had it been since he ventured outside during the day? Usually he would spend this time curled in bed, snuggled tight against Roy. Edward let the curtain fall, and could not restrain his urge to glance once more at the bedroom door.

Despite his best efforts, it had come to this. It was his fault, all of it - if he had been quicker on the uptake, if he had realized that they were being led into a cunning trap designed to kill them both - but he had not caught on. Winry felt terrible for her part in it, there was that small relief that she had not known of the coven’s plots, but she had made her apology in absentia, over the phone lines. She didn’t even dare to be seen near them. They were not meant to survive this, and they had. Edward did not know if it was worse living in ignorance of the plot against them, or now knowing that there were Breeds out there who wanted them - who wanted him, specifically - dead.

The latch clicked a little when he opened the door. He had hesitated, but it was the middle of the day. Roy slept like the dead, it took a full scale frontal assault to even wake him during his sleeping hours, and that was if Edward wanted to put the time and effort into rousing him. Edward paused in the open door, as his eyes adjusted from the wan light of the living room to the almost total darkness that the bedroom existed in. Just the way Roy needed it - daylight was not fatal to vampires (another in a long line of false mythology laid carefully down over the centuries by vampires wishing to throw hunters from their trail) but it did give him a terrible headache. Fortunately Edward’s eyes were just as adapted to the night as a vampire’s, for a similar reason - night was the best time for hunting prey.

Roy was lying on his side, curled in toward the center of the bed. Edward grinned despite himself, he slept with one arm tucked under his head, and the other -

- the other was thrown over the blanket-covered lump where Edward should be.

Swallowing around the sudden lump in his throat, Edward moved silently into the dark room, in search of his wallet and keys. The metallic tang of blood was heavy in the air, it cloaked most of the other scents in the room. He did not linger on the scents, he knew their origin intimately. He had seen the summoned beast tear Rian’s throat out - the snarl built in his throat almost automatically, and despite his best efforts, a growl escaped him. It was a terrifically inhuman noise coming from a human throat, and Edward froze.

Roy did not move, or even shift in the slightest. However, the blanket-covered lump shifted slightly. Edward swallowed, but Rian did not move further. Collecting his wallet and keys, Edward crept out of the room and shut the door behind him, before leaning against it and swallowing hard again. Scrubbing his hand over his eyes he fought gamely against the burning in his throat. When he felt like this all he wanted to do was shift, to put his head down and paws in the dirt and run without thought, to surrender to his baser nature and vanish into the labyrinth of the city. But he was stronger than that, Edward knew that he was. He ran the water in the kitchen sink and, for want of a cup, leaned his head down and drank straight from the faucet. The little voice he had been fighting against for days was back in his head, taunting him quietly that the room had smelled like sex and what did Roy need with him, now that he had sired another vampire? Edward almost broke the spigot turning the water off as hard as he did.

What was the worst, the absolute worst was that he couldn’t even hate either of them for it. If Roy had not done what he did Rian would be dead. Edward could not wish that on the teen no matter what, he himself had grown to care for the kid over the past year. Rian was almost like the kid brother he had never had, there had been no younger cubs in the pack, he and Al had been the youngest, so he never really got to look after the pups. And it was Edward’s fault that he got killed, it was Edward’s fault that his relationship was crumbling around him and he really had nothing left.

Edward gripped the counter and looked over at the table, where his cell phone lay next to the junk mail he’d brought in the day before. He flipped the old phone open and looked at the last call received and then looked back through the kitchen to the closed bedroom door. He turned his back on the door as he hit redial and put the phone against his ear. “This is Elric,” he said, his mouth dry when he heard the other line pick up. “I think I will take you up on that offer after all.”