FMA Fic, "Collared: Chapter 2: Expectations of Reality", Roy/Ed, PG-13

[dragonimp]

Title: Collared: Chapter 2: Expectations of Reality
Author: dragonimp
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, master/slave
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Summary: Since when was the military nice?

Ed surveyed the room with growing dismay. He'd been too distracted the day before to notice the state it was in. "When did you say you last cleaned in here?"

Mustang waved the remark away, looking over the room with apparent detachment. "I've been busy."

Ed scowled. That seemed like an awfully handy excuse.

"But now you're here, so it doesn't matter." He sounded entirely too pleased. Ed flinched away from a touch on his hair, but the colonel continued undaunted, carefully extracting some strands that had gotten tangled in the chain. "I've sent for cleaning supplies. In the mean time, you can . . . neaten up."

He jerked his hair away and moved a half-step to the side. "Why the hell should I have to—fuck." He cut himself off mid-rant when he realized the answer was obvious. "You're a fucking slob," he said instead.

Mustang looked down his nose at him and Ed had to bite back a smug grin. The man was usually so impervious, it was nice to see a jibe could hit home after all. "The responsibilities of a field commander hardly leave time for things such as housework."

"Meaning you're a slob."

Mustang stared down at him for a moment more, then smirked, an expression the teen was really starting to hate. "Then it's good that I have you now, isn't it?" He closed the small distance between them and leaned in. Ed turned away but held his ground, refusing to be intimidated. They were close enough that he could smell the coffee on the other man's breath. "If you're a good boy and do your job well, you might get a reward."

Ed's fist shook at his side with the urge to punch that smug expression right off his too-pretty face. Only the weight of the collar around his neck made him think twice. He snarled. "I don't want any fucking 'reward' from you."

"No?" The soldier straightened, and hooked the chain with a finger, sliding it over the young man's shoulder and letting it slither down his chest. "I would have thought you might want some time without having to worry about this thing snagging in that pretty hair of yours. But in that case—"

Ed smacked the hand away. "I'm not some girl."

"No. You're definitely not."

Ed choked on whatever he'd been about to say next. Had the man just . . . purred at him? He quickly turned away under the pretense of kicking at a pile of shirts, hoping the blush he could feel rising in his cheeks wasn't too noticeable. "Fine, whatever, I'll clean it. It's not like I have a choice."

"Mm. I suppose not."

The neutral tone gave him no clue how to respond, so Ed waited, watching out of the corner of his eye. After a moment, Mustang turned and headed for the door, his military boots tapping out a sharp rhythm against the stone floor. "I'll tell the cook to send some lunch around noon."

With that, the colonel left, leaving him alone. In a room that really did need a fair amount of cleaning, now that he was looking.

Ed fingered the padlock that was welded onto the end of the chain. If he had his automail, he could've broken it. Maybe. On the other hand, if the military went to all the trouble of creating a disruption array, it probably figured out some way to make the physical part of the restraints tougher as well. He pressed a finger against the keyhole and tried to figure out something he could use to pick the lock. Utensils? Far too big. Needle or pin? He wasn't sure where he could get one. Tooth of a comb? What he needed was a piece of wire or something.

"Fuck." Ed dropped his hand. Who was he kidding? He'd always used alchemy to get past locks, he had no idea how to pick one. He remembered Winry bragging about how she'd taught herself, but he'd never had any interest.

He winced and cupped his hand over his empty port. Thinking about his mechanic made him realize—she would most likely come after him with her wrench for letting someone take his arm. No, she definitely would. Not that he'd really had a choice, but that wouldn't matter to her. And when she figured out the clumsy way it had been detached—"I'm fucking dead."

The door rattled and Ed jumped, whirling around and falling into a defensive crouch.

"Take it easy, kid," the soldier mumbled around a cigarette as he shouldered the door open and swung a mop, broom, and bucket over the threshold, dumping them just inside. "Here y'go." The man straightened and pulled the cigarette out of his mouth. "Colonel says to be sure to get the bathroom."

Ed wrinkled his nose, but edged over to get a look in the bucket, holding his hair out of his face. Scrub brush, toilet brush, some rags, and a couple bottles of some kind of cleaning solution. "Fuck. Fine." He shook his head. "Bastard better not've left anything nasty in there."

It wasn't until the soldier chuckled that Ed realized that might not have been the best thing to say. But all he did was take a drag on his cigarette, and remark, "Well, all men shit, as they say. The rest is none of my business."

"Uh. Yeah." He shoved his hair back again and peered at the man. People in uniform all tended to run together, but the tall man with scruffy blond hair looked a bit familiar.

The soldier gestured to the young man's hair with the cigarette. "Won't that get in the way? I thought you had your hair was pulled back."

Ed waved his arm. "I can hardly braid it with only one hand!" he snapped. "And those assholes took my hair tie."

"Right, right, that would make it hard." He stuck the cigarette between his lips and started searching his pockets. "Y'know, you're pretty scary with that blade-arm. Especially for a little guy."

"Who are you calling so microscopic he couldn't strike fear in—" His arm caught the chain and jerked the collar, and Ed's rant choked and died in his throat. He yanked his arm free and stepped back, mentally cursing himself. Normally he didn't care who he pissed off, but normally he wasn't chained and crippled.

The blond soldier had jumped back, startled, and was now blinking at him, and it might have been comical except that one hand had dropped to his gun. Ed grit his teeth and swallowed his pride enough to turn away, trying to indicate that he wasn't a threat. He remembered him now as the guy with the rifle from the day before, the one he'd disarmed just before he'd been captured.

The man took a long drag on the cigarette and shook his head, scratching his fingers through his hair. "You're something else. How'd a kid like you end up in this?"

"You're fighting civilians, not an enlisted army," he muttered.

"Yeah, but you. . . ." He waved a hand, then finally finished with, "You're not a local."

"So?"

He sighed. "Never mind. Come over here and I'll do something about your hair."

Ed glanced up in surprise, but after a moment stepped over and turned his back. He wondered if it wasn't some sort of trick, but all the soldier did was gather his hair into a crude ponytail and tie it off with a piece of string.

"That'll do it. Might not look like much, but it should keep it out of your way."

"Um. Thanks."

"No problem." He grinned, waving the cigarette toward the room. "Don't let the colonel give you too hard a time, you hear?"

After the soldier left, Ed frowned at the cleaning supplies, absently rubbing at the skin beneath the collar. What the hell had that been about? He breaks the guy's gun yesterday so today he's being all nice? Since when was the military nice? All right, so not everyone in the military was exactly the same, but it was still weird. The jerkasses who took his arm were more like what he expected.

He pressed his hand against his bruised ribs, but his mind was not on the POW guards. Instead, he was remembering fingers brushing over his side, pressing just hard enough to test for cracked ribs but not enough to hurt badly. For a bastard, he had been kinda considerate.

Ed sneered and snatched up the broom. He'd needed to figure out how hard he could work his new slave, that's all. And all this niceness was just to get him to drop his guard, it had to be.

He wasn't going to fall for it.

* * *

Roy walked slowly along the line of assembled guards, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. "I would hope," he began, "that I don't have to remind you that these are Amestrian citizens." He scanned their faces, gauging reactions. "I would hope that I don't have to remind you that these are your fellow countrymen. I would hope," he turned at the end of the line, "that I don't have to explain that they will remember how they are treated. That the way they are treated today," he paused to stare down one particular guard, "will shape how they view the government. And I hope," he stepped back to address the guards as a whole, "that I don't have to explain that the quickest way to bring about another, potentially worse situation—is to treat them poorly!"

The guards stood at attention, glancing at each other out of the corners of their eyes, waiting for a direct question or a command, anything that meant they could answer yes sir or no sir and be on their way. Roy would let them wait a while longer. His surprise inspection of the POW camp hadn't turned up any overt cruelty, but the devil was ever in the details. Chains that were kept too short. Food and water rations that were just so much smaller than regulation. Too many prisoners with abrasions on their necks. Prisoners who were obviously not being allowed to bathe adequately—and evidence that some had not been allowed a proper place to relieve themselves. At a cursory glance the camp looked fine, but the deeper truth was appalling.

The colonel had no doubt that this had been acceptable, even encouraged under General Hakuro. Most of the men and women here were legacy from then. Roy had thought—hoped—that the way he had emphasized regulation and keeping everything up to code when he had arrived would have told them that his expectations were different.

"There will be daily inspections until conditions here are satisfactory," he informed them, his voice calm and low. "And then weekly inspections, to make sure they stay that way. Tomorrow one of my staff will deliver a clear list of regulations. Anyone," he let his eyes travel over the line of guards, "who does not adhere to those regulations . . . will be disciplined. Are we clear?"

After the chorus of yes sir he dismissed them back to their duties.

Hawkeye stepped up beside him as the guards hastened out of the room. "You won't win yourself any favor like that," she murmured. "Not with them, or the Brass."

"Then it's a good thing I'm not looking to." He suppressed a sigh. Normally that sort of thing was one of his highest priorities, but here there were much more pressing matters. "Parliament didn't press for my transfer here because of my popularity with the generals."

"Just don't give the generals anything more to complain about."

He gave her a tight smile.

Just then the door swung open to admit an infantryman, flushed from exertion. "Sir," he panted. "The supply trucks—there's a problem, sir."

* * *

With all the confusion of people running this way and that, it took Roy a moment to figure out why the trucks looked so odd. All four tires of both trucks were flat, and the air was filled with the acrid stench of burnt rubber, but it was more than that. The tires all seemed to have sunk into ground by an inch or more.

Most of the soldiers scurried out of the way when they saw him approaching, giving him a clear view of the jagged potholes that had spontaneously grown beneath the vehicles. From the smoke and fumes still lingering around each one he guessed that the tires had been ruined by flares, but that left even more questions.

Havoc was standing behind one of the trucks, scratching the back of his head. "How the hell did they do that?"

"False bottom." Breda pried at the edge of one of the potholes with the tip of his pocketknife and a jagged piece popped up. "Or a false top, in this case. We're not heavy enough to break through it, but when the trucks stopped—" He turned the knife point down and jabbed it into the ground a few feet to the side of the truck. It met with resistance initially, then dropped like it had hit empty space. "I bet this whole courtyard is like this."

"Okay, but—how?"

Roy knelt and picked up the piece the lieutenant had pried off, rubbing away the dirt and sand. "How indeed," he muttered.

He closed his hand around the fragment and stood. "Who's in charge of supplies here?"

A harried-looking captain stepped forward. "Sir."

"The supply trucks have a regular schedule, is that right?"

"More or less, Sir."

"And do they always stop in this courtyard?"

The man sighed. He had clearly gone along this same train of thought. "Yes, Sir. It's—it was—convenient."

"Seems it's lost some of that convenience. Inform Central Command of this . . . mishap, if you haven't already, and then I would like an inventory of our current supplies. Lieutenant." He turned to Hawkeye. "How many contract alchemists do we have on hand?"

"Two, Sir."

"Have them go over this courtyard and clear any booby-traps. Carefully."

"Sir, if I may?" One of the drivers interrupted. "I don't think Central will be too eager to replace these trucks. Unless you have some extra tires. . . ."

The colonel raised an eyebrow at the supply master, who shook his head. "Very well. Be sure to mention this in your report to command." He started to turn away, then stopped. "Lieutenant, on second thought, have the contractors meet me in my office first. And send lunch."

Standard procedure was to use civilian alchemists for anything menial—anything considered "beneath" a state alchemist—but Roy was uneasy having them near a battlefield. They weren't soldiers, they were merely civilians who wanted to practice alchemy, and if it weren't for the law that required all alchemy be monitored by the state he doubted most of them would be anywhere near the military. He'd sent most of the contractors back to Central after he'd been transfered here, but Command had required that he keep a few. They would probably be glad for something to do besides repair work. But because he used them so little Roy had no idea what the breadth and depth of their skills were.

First, however, he wanted to check on his new roommate.

He'd tried to make sure everything in the room was benign, but that kid seemed like the crafty type and he didn't know what to expect. He also wanted to make sure he'd been fed properly this time.

When he opened the door he was greeted by a cry of "apples on the left, dammit!" and then silence, punctuated by a quiet snore. Roy blinked at the figure sprawled out on the cot, then turned to shut the door, chuckling to himself.

A quick scan showed a crumb-covered food tray on the table, and a room that had been cleaned, though sloppily. The corners could use better attention and the window was streaked, and he hesitated to look beneath the bed, but the effort had been made. A glance into the bathroom showed a streaked but wiped sink and a bathtub that had been scrubbed if not quite scrubbed clean.

Roy started to step back out, but then stopped and did a double-take at the mirror. Drawn in soap was a caricature of what could only be the kid himself, judging by the twig of hair, scowling and sticking out its tongue. The little show of juvenile anger made him smile. Strictly speaking, he knew he should discourage such behavior, but it was harmless enough on its own. If anyone challenged his decision, he could justify it: anything that let a prisoner relax, even a little, increased the likelihood of that prisoner opening up. There was no reason to elaborate on his true motivations, not to the higher-ups.

The colonel looked down at his hostage, sleeping splayed out in the midday heat with his metal leg dangling off the side of the cot. Like this, he looked like nothing more than an ordinary teenage boy. One who had no business getting tangled up in a war.

He reached down and brushed some hair out of the young man's face. The kid snorted and rolled onto his side, wiping drool onto the pillow, but slept on. "Everyone has secrets," Roy muttered. "But are yours really worth a collar and chain?"

* * *

Havoc craned his neck to see around the trucks, hoping to catch a glimpse of the contract alchemists—or rather, the cute one. Chick like that shouldn't be in a war zone, Havoc figured it was only gentlemanly to look out for her. And if that meant talking with her a little bit more, he was willing to do that.

"Oi." Breda elbowed him in the back and he stumbled against the truck hatch. "Would you get your mind back on the supplies? I'd like to be done before supper."

"That would be your motivation," Havoc grumbled as he slid one of the boxes to the edge and hefted it.

"Better than being motivated by long legs and tits," Breda shot back as he disappeared into the warehouse.

"Watch your mouth!" Havoc called after him. He paused inside the doorway to let his eyes adjust to the relative dim of the warehouse. "This isn't some dockside hooker—she's a classy lady!"

"Nah, she ain't." Breda grunted as he shoved his load onto a shelf. "She just wants us to think she is."

"Who, the contract alchemist?" Fuery looked up from his clipboard tally sheet.

"Of course the contract alchemist," Breda jumped in before Havoc could answer. "Who else has Havoc been mooning over lately?"

"I'm not—" he paused to hoist the box onto a shelf, "—mooning. Over anyone."

Fuery grinned at him. "Just 'being friendly'?"

Havoc glared at his friends while they snickered. "All right you two, stop trying to make this into something immoral. She's a civilian and it's dangerous here, that's all—"

"Sure, sure, Hav." Breda waved him off with a laugh as he went back out to the trucks.

"If Lyra had her way, she'd be a state alchemist already," Fuery pointed out as he moved to another row and continued his tally. "She told me she's hoping to take the test later this year—huh."

Havoc sniffed. "Well, until then she's a civilian—what?"

The sergeant glanced over, then pointed his pen at the far back corner of the room. "This was a store of some kind before the military commandeered it, right?"

"Yeah, a general store. Why?"

"Well, normally I'd chalk any extra items up to leftover stock, but—"

Havoc joined him and peered into the shadowy corner. "What the hell?"

Fuery shook his head as he flipped through his supply lists. "It's definitely not ours, but—why would a general store have a suit of armor?"

"Was that always there?"

Cross-posted at fma_yaoi, fmayaoi, steelandsparks, impishclawmarks and dragonimp

Comments

[nochick-fics.livejournal.com]

I couldn't go to bed until I read this, so if I'm tired tomorrow, it's all your fault. :P

Ed choked on whatever he'd been about to say next. Had the man just . . . purred at him?

Roy is such a delightful tease. I love it.

Things are getting verrrrry interesting in this story. Now you've got me wondering about a lot more things besides Roy boffing Ed.

Excellent update!

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

(I was kinda afraid I was taking a chance posting so late ^^; ) Roy is so damn fun to write here, I have to be careful of him taking over!
Thanks!

[hellbentllama.livejournal.com]

YAY avenger!Al!! ^^ please update quicker this time!!

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

heh - I'll try! Thanks!

[nightoperator.livejournal.com]

I love the plot - the appearance of Lyra (Dante? Not sure at this point) was fantastic and is that Al???? Ahhhh, so intriguing.

You have such an excellent grasp on Roy and Ed. It's so like Ed to leave a drawing of himself on the mirror and Roy's concern for him and the camp is as noble as we know he is. I can't wait to read more <33

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

At this point she's just Lyra, I haven't quite decided how I'm going to handle Dante/Father/Big Bad c_c;. Ah plot...

Thanks!

[sara-the-lazy.livejournal.com]

YAY more Dragonimp writing! *cheers*

Ahem. Sorry. I just really like your writing and was happy to see a new chapter of this fic!

I really like Roy in this... Yay for caring about the prisoners' well being, whether out of concern for them or concern for the ramifications of them not being treated well (more reason for dissent, etc).

Also, Ed's doodle on the mirror made me grin, as did his blowing up at the "short" comment. It was neat to see him back as less mature after reading Mother Arc a short while ago.

Whee!

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

Adolecent Ed has been a fun change to write ^_^ he's such a cute little brat.

Thanks!

[amethyst_koneko]

^_^ I can totally see Ed drawing that caricature of himself on the mirror! XD Sounds like Ed got a lot of cleaning done inspite of only having one arm so Roy should definitely cut him some slack. :) A mysterious suit of armor has appeared I see! Al to the rescue! XD

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

Ed did do a lot of cleaning. Not very *well*, but the effort was there ^_^. I think Roy's in a mood to be tolerant.

Al's been giving me a bit of a headache, because I need him to NOT rescue Ed quite yet c_c. But there's no way he'd sit by and do nothing. Arg, plots!

Thanks!

[halighfataliter.livejournal.com]

Sounds promsising :) I'll be keeping an eye out for the next chapter. Thanks for sharing.

[lazylamia.livejournal.com]

Poor Ed is confused a little - he was treated in civilized way and Roy seems to be quite opposite to the previous commander - but Ed can't afford to be imprudent - he has to wait and see.

re: Chapter 2

[(Anonymous)]

If Havoc wasn't a smoker (and fictional...) I would be climbing him like a tree. I like how mellow he is.