Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/410202. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Underage Category: M/M Fandom: Fullmetal_Alchemist Relationship: Alphonse_Elric/Edward_Elric Character: Edward_Elric, Alphonse_Elric Additional Tags: Incest, Armorsex Stats: Published: 2012-05-22 Words: 3232 ****** spikes ****** by CurryJolokia Summary an introductory survey Brotherhood-compliant First, there was paradise. "Al?" "Mmm, niisan?" "We'll always have this. We will!" "Mmhmm! We'll grow up and marry girls to bring home to kaasan and have great big families and we'll still always have each other." "Good. I'll just tell Winry that she has to share!" "M-matteyo, who's sharing who, niisan?" "Haha. I won't share! I won't share anything except with you." "So we can share Winry?" "That wasn't what I said…" *  Then there was hell. He woke with his throat already raw, Pinako and Winry holding him down to the bed. The afterimages remained in his head: eyes and organs open to the air, a bloody, ruby-red glaze covering every wrenched curve of muscle. In the center of the transmutation circle, Alphonse lay in pieces, skull inverted, reaching with the last electric muscle twitches toward his brother. "Ed! Ed, calm down! You'll reopen your wounds!" "Al, Al! Al!  hanashite , let  go  of me, I have to find--" "Niisan, niisan, I'm right here. It was a nightmare. Niisan!" The hands of a huge gauntlet took his own between them, cold black leather curved around his one remaining palm in a reassuring clutch. "Niisan. I'm here. It's okay now." There was warmth in those strange eyelights, Ed knew. Warmth and concern, displayed in relative values to the neutral expression of the steel face that held them. It wasn't the face Ed knew so well. It wasn't the face Al was born with, or that Al deserved. It was the face Ed had given him. He's alive. He's alive and he's here. Remember that you brought him back. It was small comfort, but in those first weeks after the transmutation, that small comfort, and the pain, were all Ed had. * Next came purgatory. Al had a lot of 'least favorite' parts about his new body -- the way he couldn't move without noise; the weight that not only pressed down, but  decimated  the grass underfoot wherever he walked; the height that put him so much above Winry and Pinako. Initially, he couldn't measure how much taller he was than his brother, with Ed flat on his back in Pinako's hospital bed for the first month. When Ed graduated to his wheelchair, Al got a better sense of just how much distance, real and figurative, there now was between his body and his brother's. Al towered over Ed's chair, and it was only too easy to guess how much taller he'd still be once Ed had regained his legs. And while Ed waxed poetic about the metal he would soon augment his body with, Al privately wished Ed could take some of Al's own. Still, there were less grim points. They started - and quickly expanded - their lists of things to do and eat once they got their bodies back, and Winry's company was soothing, in its own sometimes-frustrating way. After Mustang- taisa's visit, ablaze with the new determination it had given him, Ed spent his days poring through alchemy texts, always seeking more and more knowledge. Al saved his corresponding reading for the night; while Ed slept the deep, often disturbed sleep of the haunted and exhausted, Al sat vigil at his bedside with texts of his own. But if he was honest with himself, he was rarely able to focus on the books, densely academic as they were. Usually he watched his brother sleep. With his new body, it was much easier than before to hold perfectly motionless for hours at a time. The creaks and clanks that sounded every time he moved were an excellent reason to keep still, wearing away the measureless hours of night with forced patience. Al watched Ed as he slept, dreamed, and cried in his sleep, wishing with all his blood-bound soul that there was a way for him to give Ed even just one ounce of comfort. But even if he had known the way, Al couldn't imagine what he could possibly offer in exchange. * * * After months of healing, a week of focused preparation, and two gruesome days of surgery, Al sat beside Ed's bedside late in the evening, listening to his brother's labored breathing. “Niisan?” Al shifted his shoulder, making an intentional clunk as the metal plates shifted against each other. In the bed, Ed didn't really respond, just coughed and drew another pained breath. The point of juncture between his breastbone and the metal pauldron that would become the anchor for his new arm was red and irritated; the freshly placed bolts securing metal to bone were circled with bunched-up tissue that would surely scar. Even in the cooler evening air, his skin was slicked with sweat. His hair was matted down with it. “Niisan?” Al tried again. “ Daijobou ?” “I'm fine, Al.” Ed's voice was gritty and sounded distracted. His eyes were closed, brows drawn down in concentration. “I'm excited. I've been waiting...to get my limbs back, all year. Of course...everything's fine.” “You don't sound fine, Brother,” Al said, worried. “It sounds like it hurts a lot.” “It does,” Ed rasped. His chest juddered unsteadily up and back down, air hissing through his clenched teeth. “A lot. But...it's nothing. It's not important. I can...push through this.” “Niisan!” Al's eyelights narrowed, armor clanking as he put his hands on his hips without a thought. “You shouldn't push yourself so hard. Pinako-obaasan said you're already so far ahead of schedule even for how much you wanted to rush it...” "It's already been too long," Ed grumbled, pushing the words out through another pained breath. "Nearly a year. I need these limbs, Al. I'm gonna get your body back, and I gotta be able to walk and clap for that. I can't slow down no matter what." "Niisan," Al sighed, his young voice ringing lonely in his armor's broad chest. The pair were silent for a while, listening to the night sounds and Ed's breath. When Al spoke again, it was haltingly, but sure. "Do you remember...how we used to spend nights like this?" His eyelights winked into blackness, eyes closed in either memory or a search for mental equilibrium. In the bed, Ed opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling, mouth pressed into a firm line. After a moment, he sighed. "You mean why Pinako-obaa never had to wash more than one set of sheets for us at a time?" He threw his left arm over his eyes, then groaned as the motion pulled muscles in his sternum and back, disturbing the fragile stillness of his fresh stitches, bolts, and scars. Al winced, reaching one hand out reflexively with a clank. He paused with one arm half-extended toward his brother, then withdrew it slowly, gaze fixed on the tough, fat leather fingers of the gauntlets he now called his hands. "Don't hurt yourself, Niisan," Al scolded, but the words didn't have much heat and Ed brushed them off with a sigh. Al echoed the frustration, and after a moment, amended his words. "...Pinako-obaasan still won't need to wash more than one set of sheets for us for a long time." "Stop it, Al," Ed said quickly, uncovering his eyes. The rich gold of his eyes was intense as he met and locked with his little brother's gaze. Al's eyelights narrowed, returning Ed's glare, just as stubborn. After a moment, Ed gave up the contest with an irritated noise. "Tch. You're still my brother, even if you look like that. Don't go and assume things." Al blinked, then  stared . "Niisan, do you mean you still...?" "Of course I do. Come here and I'll prove it to you." Al shook a little, the armor rattling lightly with his shock. After a moment, Ed impatiently gestured with his single arm, beckoning Al closer. "Come here already, Al. I can't move, so you have to help me out here." Al's armor clanked loudly as he stood, rising from the sturdy little stool at Ed's bedside. Once standing, he hesitated, wavering until Ed's gaze - and glare - drew him closer. Bracing one hand on the mattress beside Ed's head, Al slowly bent over his brother, eyelights flickering in uncertainty. Ed smiled as Al drew close, reassurance in his gaze. When his brother was close enough, the broad apex of his chestplate just barely touching the point of Ed's sternum, Ed clenched his teeth and lifted his head off the pillows. His whole right side screamed protest, as the motion pulled on the tender, freshly created junctions between metal and skin, but Ed just ignored it and closed his eyes, pressing a gentle kiss to the flat plane of Al's chest just below his gorget. Al stuttered, a catching sound in his voice that would have been hitching breath had he been flesh. "N-niisan..." he stammered, anxious. One big gauntlet cupped the back of Ed's head and neck to support their weight. "I-I..." Ed fell back to the pillows with a tight sigh and a smile on his lips. He peeked one eye open, wincing a little, to grin at Al. "Warui ne...that's all I can manage right now. But...wait for me to get better, okay, Al?" "Y-you mean...?" Ed snickered, turning his cheek into the big palm of his brother's hand. "I can hear you blushing, Al. You're funny." Al pulled back, sitting down on his stool with an almighty series of clanks. "Don't make fun of me!" His eyelights narrowed, frowning. "I'm not, Al," Ed soothed him. "Wait til I get better. Then we'll be just like we used to be, when Pinako-obaa only needed one set of bedsheets for us both." "O-okay," Al stammered, shifting nervously. "But...how...?" Ed grinned. "We'll figure something out." * * * Years later, they remembered their first time in their new bodies with fondness. It had been awkward, experimental, and sweet. The subsequent times - and there were a lot of them, celebrated as punctuation for happy events and victories, comfort and escape after tragedy - were not always gentle, and were not always as slow, and sweet, and tender as it had been the first time. This did not mean they were less fun. The broad plate of Al's armor was wider across than Ed's whole body, and nearly as tall alone as his whole torso. With Al laying on his back, stabilizing and guiding Ed's already exceptional balance with his hands, Ed could spread his much smaller body across Al's chestplate and cover most of it with his own. This method was the best they'd discovered for bringing their bodies together closely; Ed could cuddle the smooth metal free of buckles, welds, and seam lines, saving his own skin from unintentional wounds, while still remaining close enough that Al could see him over Al's own chest. (Comments about the instrumentality of Ed's height in creating this visual difficulty were, tactfully, avoided.) "Al! Al, h-hold still, oh,  oh ." Ed's chest swelled with a deep lungful of air, the tendons of his throat tightening like cords beneath his skin. His expression was one of intense, distant concentration as he shifted his position, abs flexing tight to draw the small of his back straight, roll his hips forward. The resultant motion made him gasp, bite his lip; gold hair untied from the usual ponytail slipped over his shoulder with a soft sigh, catching and sticking in the sweat on his nape. The tension fell out of his thighs, the angle of his knees collapsing, and his calves hit the backs of his thighs at the same moment his ass landed hard, spread and completely filled, on the cold metal of Al's chest. Beneath his brother, Al gasped, and his hands jerked up reflexively to grip the curves of Ed's thighs, one metal and one flesh. "N-niisan," Al managed, embarrassed still after all the years of making love to his brother - first in his flesh body, and now in his armor body. "You should be careful, it's not---" "Not thick enough," Ed panted, jaw slack, bottom lip red where he'd been biting it. He lifted his hands from Al's chest where they'd been braced against his weight, slipping the flesh one between his legs, under his hard, red cock. Just behind his balls, an alchemised spike of smooth, cold steel jutted out of Al's chest and deep into Ed's body. The tip was rounded and the whole spike was tapered, beginning with a small circumference and quickly broadening to the kind of girth that Ed could, after two years of practice with his brother, take into himself with great pleasure. Ed slipped two fingertips back and under, rubbing the rim of his hole where it stretched around his brother's smooth metal, and soothed some of the burn that had come from burying Al so deep and so fast into himself. What he found there satisfied him, because Ed looked up through sweat-sticky bangs with a happy, confident grin at his brother. "I can do it," he said, and even as Al's eyelights widened in shock, Ed had pushed himself upright again, gasping with pleasure, and lifted his automail hand from Al's chest. Ed could sense Al's conflicting emotions, able to read the nuances of his brother's mannerisms no matter the body he inhabited. If he'd been flesh, Al would have been licking his lips, watching Ed with alarmed but magnetized gold eyes, eager and embarrassed, petrified to move even though his hard cock was buried to the hilt into his brother. Ed savored that mental image, clapped hard, and brought his palms down with an eager strength on his brother's chest. The alchemy rippled through Al's chestplate, stretching the girth of the metal cone that Ed had alchemised in place on its center. The elder of the Elric brothers cried out, palms leaving his brother's chest as he arched back, hair slipping past his shoulders and getting caught between his lips, thighs spasming tight against Al's chest. Hungry, Ed writhed in place, trying to drive Al's spike deeper into his ass, but he was already pressed flush to the solid steel of Al's chestplate. "Niisan," Al gasped, hands tightening around Ed's thighs. His voice was hungry too, just as eager for Ed's body as Ed was for his own. "Niisan, t-try to move," he suggested. Even the metallic echo that overlaid his voice didn't detract from the earnesty of it, nor from his excitement. "You look... You...um..." Ed grinned, showing teeth. His gaze was intense when it met and held Al's, gold eyes and pinkish eyelights exchanging absolute trust in a split second. "Nnnnh, Al, I want more. Want you." Ed punctuated this by rising up, toes braced on the floor below them, calves straining, and as he slid upward Al's attention was captured by the way Ed's body refused to let go of the spike on his chest. As the low evening light caught it, the metal shone like glass, liquidy slick with fluid, lubrication, and trace, slick lines of Ed's red blood. Al twitched a little at that last bit. No amount of Ed's reassurances, and he'd given plenty, could completely convince Al that it was okay to make his brother bleed. Ed always reminded him that it was  Ed  who shoved himself so quickly and fiercely onto Al, but the younger brother still felt a twinge of guilt at the sight. Maybe sensing Al's preoccupation, or just noticing what Al was looking at, Ed struck up a conversation as he sank back onto Al's spike. His automail hydraulics hissed smoothly, gracefully, as he lowered himself onto the metal, legs splayed wide to each side of Al's broad chestplate. His ass, with legs pulled wide by his extended stance, his entrance stretched open by his little brother's girth, parted for Al's spike as Ed slid back down without a murmur of protest. Ed hissed in satisfaction, eyes half-closed, face upturned, in bliss. "Remember that time that I'd broken my automail again? But I just...couldn't wait? Remember what I did?" He smiled, brow creasing in concentration as he again rose and fell, impaling himself on his brother's steel, flesh hand twisting a slick rhythm on his own cock. Al answered, eyelights at a sleepy, overwhelmed half-mast as he watched his brother pleasure himself. His voice caught, as though on a faintly-drawn breath. "Y-you...used my shoulder spikes," Al said shyly.. "I...was worried you would hurt yourself." "I…made you blunt the tip....first," Ed chuckled. Rising and falling faster now, his thumb swiped the tip of his cock to smooth precome down his length. His whole cock, wet and dark red, shone just as tantalizingly as Al's steel spike did, and Al reaffirmed to himself the need to put  that  back into in his mouth, first thing, when he had his body back. A lot. And before he'd even bothered with Winry's apple pie. Ed groaned and shivered as he sank downward again, thighs sliding across Al's chestplate with cool friction on one side, sweat-sticky reluctance on the other.  Al didn't move, not only well-practiced at the art of stillness, but because silence helped them forget about the joints that needed oiled, the leather flanks that needed repair, the weld joints and the rest of the difficulties inherent in Al's new body. Silence, broken only by their shared short breath and needy sounds, reminded them of the soft curves of Al's belly and hips, the muscled, smooth curve of Ed's knee and calf, and the soft and strong tendons that backed all of their hands, now lost. Though they'd long grown accustomed to the new bodies, steel and other metals replacing organics, Ed's pocketwatch was still a powerful symbol for them both. They wanted their  old  bodies back, no matter how much pleasure as they had learned how to derive from the new ones. And as they made love, had sex, or sometimes just plain old  fucked , dirty or sweet or slow or hard, metal on metal and metal on skin, they would have sworn they could feel not the bodies they were stuck with, but the ones they wanted, fingertips reaching through the skin to the soul. The truth beyond the truth of their relationship was tied up in their quest and their love equally. As Ed's hips snapped forward and down, driving the rounded point of Al's smooth, phallic spike straight into Ed's prostate, blanketing his senses in a final burst of white pin-sharp pleasure before he came across both their chests, memories of nights long gone surrounded them like wisps of mist, barely seen, barely noted, present still. Ed collapsed onto Al, breathing hard, heart hammering, hair stuck to his forehead and throat, eyes closed in bliss and skin cooling quickly on the metal of Al's chest just above where his heart would be. Al quietly clapped and pressed his hands to his own chest, gently sliding his spike out of his brother's body and smoothing it back into the metal plane of his chest. Ed bonelessly sprawled across him, his cheek cuddled against Al's, his whole body sticky from fluid and cum everywhere. Al whispered his brother's name with respect and love in every iteration, wrapping one arm across the small of Ed's back to hold him close. Their pleasure was no less true and no less precious than the pleasure they'd once found between their shared bedsheets, in the dark of their bedroom at Pinako-obaa's house.     Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!