InsaneJournal

“It’s just sex; it doesn’t mean anything.”

Riza was pulled out of her anxious thoughts by that simple sentence. She looked up toward the headboard, where Edward was reclining, his well-muscled chest still gleaming with the sweat of their lovemaking. His manner was relaxed, unconcerned, and though he said the words as truth he believed, she knew him well enough to find the hint of pain lying beneath.

“Why do you say that?” she asked, watching his face as he gazed, eyes lidded, at the wall.

He gave a shrug.

“You looked like you were worrying. It’s not a big deal, you don’t have to worry. You don’t have to take care of me.”

But she did, she must—if she had learned anything over the months as his companion it was that. Where would Edward be now, she wondered, had she never become his confidant? That thought was sad and painful to her, and she shoved it aside to pursue the topic.

“No, I didn’t mean that. I mean why do you think sex is meaningless?”

Again the shrug, sleek muscles moving beneath smooth skin.

“It’s just the truth. It’s hormone and instinct-driven. Procreation is secondary only to survival. The chemical processes are beneficial to the body, too. It’s just release of tension, most people think. It doesn’t have any meaning outside of that.”

“Did the general teach you that?” she asked softly, mostly wondering to herself, but as with all of her endless questions, Edward answered.

“Hell no, that bastard didn’t teach me shit. I knew all that anatomy stuff way before I even met him.”

Riza shook her head slightly, but didn’t bother to correct him with her meaning. Mustang was the first and only man Edward had ever cared for, and his first lover. But the general didn’t have his reputation for emotional abuse for no reason, and it had taken years, Riza discovered, for Ed to cope with the fact that Roy did not and would not love him. They had remained lovers- or should she say, sex partners, until Edward had been forced through the Gate. When he returned, Ed had sought out his company again, but the general had refused him. Edward always seemed to have to learn the most painful lessons twice. It was a poor side-effect of his hopeful and forgiving nature, one of his best qualities-- but sometimes Riza couldn’t help but think that as endearing as it was, it did him no favors.

“So you think sex has absolutely no emotional component whatsoever.”

“Well, I mean, you have to like the person well enough. I wouldn’t have sex with someone I hated- and don’t say the bastard,” he headed her off, looking disgruntled that she had taken away his logic without a word. “He doesn’t count. And I do hate him.”

Yes, I know, Edward, she thought sadly. You still “hate” him after all these years….

“You don’t think sex changes anything? Doesn’t affect your friendship?”

Ed looked less certain then, and shrugged again, shifting a bit against the wood. This was a more recent development- Edward was beginning to anticipate her. They had come such a long way from the beginning, where each blindingly absolute “truth” from his mouth had to be battered down by inches to get him to even consider an alternative.

“Well no, not really,” he answered, then was quiet for a moment, and the look on his face told her he was thinking of his old friend, his flatmate. He still carried such guilt, such pain from that time, and it occurred to her that perversely that was likely what Edward had been trying to avoid in rejecting his emotional advances. Alfons had certainly been in love with him; that much had been obvious to Riza very early in Edward’s descriptions of him and the time they spent together as roommates, co-workers, and eventually lovers.

“It doesn’t have to,” he amended finally, and then looked at her and shifted that thought to fit their current situation. “This doesn’t have to change anything.”

“It doesn’t have to or you don’t want it to?” she asked matter-of-factly, and Edward’s beautiful eyes darted away the way they always did when she had struck upon a truth a bit too squarely.

“Can’t we leave off it for a bit, Reez? I just want to lay here,” he whined, but she knew all-too-well this was simply part of the game. Edward was brilliant, and far too much so not to realize how badly he needed Riza and the time they spent together trying to puzzle him out. Her from without, him from within. He had to object, had to deny until she truly pressed, and she had learned exactly when to do it and when to give it up… which knots of pain to loosen slowly, over time, and which to knead into until they broke beneath her calm but unrelenting questioning. It was a burden he had never asked her to carry, but one she accepted with grace.

“You were the one to bring it up,” she reminded him. “Do you want this to change our relationship?”

He met her eyes for a moment, both searching and pleading, and she knew he was trying not to cause her any undue pain. She kept her face impassive; it was not her decision.

“No. Not in the way we do things, or our…our talks.” He said this fairly firmly, as she had finally taught him to do. Assert what he was certain of in his feelings, and not try to hide it from her. “But I do want…I mean, if you do, I would want to do this again,” he ventured.

She gave him a smile as a reward.

“Me, too, Edward,” she told him. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

They sat in silence for a few more minutes, nothing but the sound of crickets singing outside the window, and the occasional rhythmic tapping of the window-shade blowing in the nighttime breeze. Riza thought back over what he had said, and his initial statement. Another sore spot discovered, another harmful coping method found that she needed to dismantle and correct. They had talked about sex through other subjects, but never in and of itself. There was still much material concerning his sexual relationship with Mustang that she couldn’t even begin to touch yet. They had covered his early childhood, and finally, finally managed to completely straighten and conquer his mother’s death and subsequent resurrection, which had lead directly into the quest to restore his brother. So much had been accomplished, so many burdens relieved, but there was still so much left, and Riza wondered if she would ever be able to completely heal the wounds Edward’s first love had borne him. Yet, resolving the emotional issues they already had seemed an impossible task at first, and indeed, more so when mired in the middle.

Riza shifted in the sheets and sat up, crawling upward to sit beside Ed at the headboard.

“Tell me about how your relationship changed when you began sleeping with Alfons,” she prompted, and he sighed. Always came the objection before compliance.

She placed a hand on his forearm, a gentle reminder that she was there, as always. If he were the sun, she would be his moon—following and supporting him, and basking in the light he didn’t even know he shined. They were inescapably in this together.

Edward smiled briefly in acknowledgement, eyes fond and grateful, then took a deep breath and began to speak.

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