[elricest; pg] To Comprehend a Nectar
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist Title: To Comprehend a Nectar Author: emilie_burns Pairing: Ed/Al Elric Rating: PG Word Count: 350 Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) is copyrighted by Hiromu Arakawa/Square Enix. Warnings: Incesteous overtones Author's Notes: Written for littleduchess for the First Kiss Meme. 'Shipped or not, these two are in what I can only describe as a platonic romance. The only line between canon and a 'ship is the nature of expression. Title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem. Summary: Then again, could a fallen sinner, cast out of Paradise, banished from Eden, really be a good judge of right and wrong?
To Comprehend a Nectar Success is counted sweetest By those who never succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.
Society told him it should have felt wrong and unnatural. Maybe it was, but he couldn't feel it. Then again, could a fallen sinner, cast out of Paradise, banished from Eden, really be a good judge of right and wrong? He couldn't even be sure of where he was, not anymore, because if that world so alike and yet so different from his own had been his own personal hell, how could he still be there, and yet be as close to a heaven as he'd ever been? It felt like he'd forgotten how to breathe at the moment when he realized Al's hand was no longer there for him to grab.
But he was breathing now. Breathing, clinging, holding onto a body warm and soft and real and alive, his fist tight on Al's shirt, pressing his lips to his, greedy and needy, like a drowning man who'd only just broken the surface, lungs tight and burning, gasping for that first precious lungful of oxygen.
Hands moved, traveling, feeling, marveling at what was beneath his fingertips. There was warmth there. Flesh, soft and yielding, a pulse. Not a ghost, a convoluted product of a broken mind that he'd talked to so many nights there in Europe. Not an empty suit of armor, cold and hard and unliving. It was him. Al. He could feel him, taste him, feel his pulse, his breath, his life. He'd done it. His brother was alive, and there, and real and it was a nightmare gone on far too long -- five years of purgatory, two years of hell -- that he could barely believe he'd woken up at long last.
There. And Ed clung to him, holding on for dear life, a lifeline to sanity, a way out of hell, or maybe it was the other way 'round and Al was clinging to him. He couldn't tell. It didn't matter. Al was there, and the rest of the world could be worried about in due time. He was alive again. They both were.
The victory and kiss seemed all the sweeter for the price they'd paid.
-end
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