[ed/riza; nc-17] The Sum of the Parts Title: The Sum of the Parts Author:emilie_burns Pairing: Edward Elric / Riza Hawkeye Rating: NC-17 Wordcount: 2178 Warnings: Spoilers for manga chapters 57 on up. Assume AUish future, with Ed 18+ in age. Written for: Theme #8, "Straight-backed"; Ed/Riza 30 Themes, as translated by galuxkitty. Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) is copyrighted by Hiromu Arakawa/Square Enix. This is a work of fanfiction for personal entertainment only. Author's Notes: I don't write mangaverse Ed/Riza. I don't. That's galuxkitty's forte and the plotbunny that hopped onto my lap and demanded attention was from her hutch. ...but it was such a cute little bunny, a bunny that swore up and down (and lived up to its word for once!) that it was just a simple, harmless, fluffy PWP bunny and I couldn't ignore it. I think it was bred by the bunny which produced GK's Courage Bared to the Soul. Teaser:She never turned her back to him. Original LJ Post Date: September 11, 2006 @ Chaotic_Library
The Sum of the Parts
"To open your heart to someone means exposing the scars of the past." - anonymous
She never turned her back to him.
No matter the position, once the clothes were off, she never let Edward see her back. She didn't want him to; he knew what was there, but she refused to show him. She refused to let him see the ugliness of the scars, but even more than that, the tattoo. She didn't want him to see her as a tool for alchemy, or to get into a fight with him about the issue. She had no idea how he would react to it.
But even more than that, although Mustang hadn't placed it there, it held the secrets of fire alchemy. A central emblem within was the same one carried on his gloves. For better or worse, it bound her to him in unspoken ways, and she feared if he ever saw it, there would always be that sense of something existing between them, an intangible wall that could never be destroyed.
She didn't even want him touching it when she could avoid it. Touching her back reminded her it was there, reminded her of the secrets and the wall it held. So when his arms slipped around her waist, pulling her closer, his lips seeking hers, she retreated.
"Let's lay down," she murmured, giving him a light kiss even as she backed away, not turning around. Riza didn't feel as if she could break eye contact even if she tried as she sat down on her bed and moved back to lay against the pillows, and her stomach did fluttering flipflops of nervous anticipation at the heat in those golden eyes. Those eyes could make her feel beautiful, even almost perfect, with the intensity they held.
He shed his remaining clothes and climbed onto the bed, but he did not settle himself over her body as she expected, as he had every time before. Instead, he sat next to her, his cold, metal hand caressing her hip. "Roll over," he whispered.
Riza stared at him, frozen, trying to process what he just said. No. No, she couldn't. She couldn't -- wouldn't -- let him see what was there. No. She shook her head.
"Roll over." His voice was louder, firmer now. It wasn't a request.
"Edward, please d--" She was silenced when he pressed a metal finger to her lips.
"Riza." His tone was quiet, but stern. The look in his eyes was calm, confident, almost cool. She would comply. Against her better judgment, she would, and they both knew it. He wasn't someone who could be easily denied.
She hesitated again, then bit her lip, closing her eyes as she turned away from him, rolling onto her stomach. Every muscle was stiff, and she buried her face against her pillow, braced and tense, anticipating the worst. What the worst would be from him, she didn't know. Maybe getting up, dressing, leaving.
Cold metal fingers touched her back, tracing the lines, and she flinched, trying to recoil away, sink into the bed and disappear. She wasn't ashamed of the tattoo, per se. It held all the secrets of her father's work which he gave his life for, and she consented to be the guardian of it. But she knew how Edward could be about fathers, and about people being tools in the pursuit of alchemical advancement.
And there was a rivalry there between him and Mustang, the Flame Alchemist whose array was so like the center symbol on her back, where Edward's fingers now traced, outlining the circle and triangles, the fire, the salamander. It was Mustang who destroyed the array, smearing it out under burns that scarred, rough and ugly. It was a testimony of her devotion to another man, a man she was still devoted to, a man she loved and would die for, even then. Even now. She just didn't love him like that, and there was another she would readily sacrifice herself for to ensure his survival.
But her heart wasn't completely free to give, without reservation or exceptions, to anyone, and the tattoo made that a tangible reality.
So she waited, her face hot with shame against the pillow, her body rigid, her back stiff, straight, unyielding with tension. She waited, half-alert for and half-trying to ignore any signs of his inevitable disgust, or anger, or the quiet, calm dying of any kind of attraction. She waited for him to pull his hand away, to get up, to dress himself, to leave her there, face to pillow, burying any reaction, emotion.
She bit her lip and held her breath, and willed herself to ignore the raw explosion of pain somewhere inside her chest as his hand left her back. As the bedsprings creaked, the mattress shifting, released from his weight as he got up.
Just like she knew he would.
Riza wanted to swear at him then, to demand to know why he made her show him something she knew he wouldn't want to see, but held back. It was part of her, and keeping it from his eyes didn't make it go away. It was living a lie. Sooner or later, he would have seen it, had to see it, and it was inevitable.
Another shift to the mattress almost startled her into raising her head. He was beside -- no, straddling her legs -- over her now, and she gasped at the hot, slick feel of his tongue on her flesh. She shivered as he slowly kissed and licked his way up, following along her spine to the back of her neck. Gooseflesh formed on her arms as her nerves iced over, caught fire, tangled and sparked and crackled away into a liquid heat that blossomed and seeped outward from low in her belly.
He continued his slow exploration of the part of her she'd kept from him, using his fingers, his lips, his teeth, his tongue, claiming every inch by slow, delicious inch. The fear-borne tension melted and evaporated under the warmth of him, replaced by a different kind. Whenever his mouth moved up to her shoulders, whenever he nibbled on her neck, his breath warm against her nape, she could feel him pressing against her backside, hard and silken hot with need, longing, hunger. She choked back a quiet moan as a shiver scrambled every nerve and melted them, and almost on its own accord, her hips moved, pressing against him, a need of her own, wanting to be touched there, where the liquid heat was slowly intensifying, wanting to feel him fitted inside her.
Riza heard him hiss, a sharp intake through his teeth, and in response, his hips thrust forward and the motion against her backside was slick now, wet with pre-come. His teeth were sharp against her shoulder and she cried out as she dug her nails into the pillow and ground her hips back against him, the endorphins only fueling the aching source of heat. Then he drew back, and out of the corner of her eye, she caught the blue-white crackle of energy, and almost startled as the mattress shifted, creating a gentle, upward arch underneath her hips.
The sudden, unexpected lewdness of her new position made her at once feel both shy and deliciously wanton. Edward moved back and she offered not a single shred of resistance to his touch as he guided her legs apart. Warm fingers, flesh fingers, teased between her legs, moving easily over the now-slippery folds of skin. There was only enough pressure for her to be aware of the contact, and nowhere near enough to even come close to matching what was needed.
She shuddered and released a breath she hadn't been aware she was holding, and it tumbled past her lips in quiet pleading mingled with needy moans. Then his hand left her, immediately replaced by a familiar feeling, the head of his cock pressing against her, and she raised her hips invitingly. She was not disappointed, and the thrust was neither fast nor slow, but somewhere in between as he entered her, his weight shifting to lay across her back, braced on his forearms.
He breathed her name against her hair and skin, lips and tongue soothing the small nips at her flesh as he began to move his hips in a rhythm she knew well by now. Riza moved her legs to better the angle and access, and tightened her hands into fists on the pillow which muffled the strained and quiet hungry noises that caught in her throat. He responded with a harder thrust, more decisive than the previous, and his mouth, his teeth, closed over the back of her neck in a purely predatory, possessive gesture. She lay there, revelling in the paradoxical blend of feeling weak and helpless and powerful and safe all at once, and moved her hips to match the quicker rhythm.
"Do you feel me?" he whispered against her neck, nibbling and licking between syllables. "Inside of you, on you, can you feel me? There is nothing between us, Riza. Nothing."
Not even the tattoo. Not even the scars, the history, the significance. No more than his automail arm or leg was between them.
"Yes," she whispered, and he made a sound almost like a growl, a sound that made her shiver, her nerves tangle and melt and explode into sparks, and then he moved his arms, forcing them between her and the bed, under her, pulling her tight against his chest as he increased the power behind the thrusts.
Riza gasped. The angle and position was new, different, and the way it felt wasn't like any time before. All her senses frayed and sparked and exploded into a molten, heated need that left her writhing on the bed, wanting more, wanting it to stop, too much sensation, not enough to satisfy her. Everything and nothing wrapped into that moment, wrapped around the intensity, the emotion, the poignant significance of what he said, what was done, what they were doing, and she wanted to-- she wanted release. She wanted to cry, she wanted explode, she wanted a white heat to wash over and blind her and stop her heart and curl her toes and take her breath away.
He nipped her neck harder as he thrust again, and she got her wish. Everything spiraled and exploded and there was no ground, no room, no bed, no air, nothing but the feel of him inside her, on her, holding her down, anchoring her to the only reality that existed in those white seconds. He continued to thrust inside of her, and climax merged with climax, keeping her suspended in a place without time, of too much sensation, where the air was too thin to breathe. She wanted it to stop, to let her catch her breath, and she wanted it to last forever.
Somewhere past it, she heard him groan, the sound muffled against her neck, reverberating through his chest pressed hard against her back as he came and thrust into her once more, hard, staying buried as his body tensed and trembled.
Life came back, piece by little piece, as her fractured awareness gradually reassembled. There was the vague discomfort of his automail arm pressing against her ribcage as he held her, the weight of him bearing down on her, the curve of her spine, the stickiness of flesh and sweat and natural lubrication. She smiled, a soft look of secrecy; it never failed to amuse her how much the primal, carnal needs shoved aside nearly all other concerns until their demands were met.
Edward's weight shifted, and then he withdrew his arms, withdrew from her, moving off her, beside her onto the bed, and she watched him as he wearily pressed his hands together, and transmutated the bed back to normal. Riza crossed her arms on the pillow under her head, remaining on her stomach, feeling as if every bone had melted away into something too soft to allow her to move. His automail hand, warm from being trapped against her for so long, rubbed over her back.
She smiled at him, lazy and languid, and he reached up to brush her hair out of her eyes before returning his hand to her back.
"What did you tell me once, when I was trying to keep you from having to touch this hand or my leg?" he said, his voice low. "That you didn't care, that I wasn't my automail or vice versa? That was me you were interested in, and that whether or not I had all my limbs didn't affect who I was? You need to listen to yourself too. You're more than these marks on your back. You don't see my automail when you look at me. And I don't see the tattoo. They're there. It doesn't change us."
Her eyes stung and her heart constricted painfully in her chest. Riza shifted toward him, moving onto her side as he pulled her closer. There was nothing more that could be said; words were inadequate then.