Greed almost walks in without knocking, but then he remembers, just in time, and doesn’t. That could have been nasty. His knuckles hover centimetres from the door of the room which Kimberly says is his now. Way up here on the fourth floor, all by itself. Everything up here is covered in white dust sheets: this floor is haunted by glacier ghosts. It would be spooky, Greed supposes, if you were scared by that sort of thing.

He knocks, and waits. It feels funny.

He almost walked in just now because he’s used to just walking in. Around here no one minds. His people are always happy to see him. It makes a guy feel pretty good, to walk into a room and see people’s faces go all relaxed and easy and pleased. It’s like having proper friends, in the human sense of the word. Friends who do exactly what he says at all times, but friends nonetheless. It’s something he’s still getting his head around.

Kimberly is not friend or foe. He’s been here three days and Greed still doesn’t know what he is. He’s mutating into a problem more than anything else, what with that business with Dorochet and the stray the other day. With his finger and thumb Greed pinches the bridge of his nose and frowns. It’s a human gesture, this, and one of his favourites: shorthand for weariness and exasperation. Martel says he does it very convincingly.

So here’s the thing, exactly how Dorochet told him it last night. There used to be this dog which hung around the alley by the Nest. Yesterday it found its stupid way downstairs. It went to Dorochet, because dogs always do, dragging its mangled leg behind it. It put its nose in Dorochet’s lap, because dogs always do that, too, intrigued by his smell or something. Dorochet rubbed his fingers into its kinked neck and it whined with pleasure. Dorochet got up to feed it, because it looked starved.

He'd forgotten that Kimberly was starved too.

The Crimson Alchemist might have reached out a hand to the dog. It might have sniffed at him, then come forward, grinning a doggy grin, tongue lolling. Dumbly trusting the man with the yellow eyes and the marked hands.

When Dorochet came back with a plateful of yesterday’s scraps the dog was gone. Kimberly was sitting at the bar with his back to him. Without wasting words (it was no secret what Dorochet thought of Kimberly joining their group) Dorochet asked Kimberly where the dog was.

Kimberly swivelled on his seat. There was blood all over his face and hands and shirt, a fine gory spray, like paint from a nozzle.

‘I’m sure I have no idea,’ Kimberly said to Dorochet, and grinned.

Greed found it kind of hard to care that much about some mangy stray, but he cared about Dorochet all right, and it was equally hard not to care when Dorochet told him that story last night in bed, when he’d just finished caring-about-Dorochet in a major way. There were tears in Dorochet’s eyes as he talked. And sure, Dorochet has a sentimental streak as wide as a Labrador’s, but that doesn’t change the fact that Kimberly hurt one of Greed’s people on purpose.

He’s an anomaly, a danger, a risk. His very presence upsets the others. He could turn on them at any time. Greed can sense the longing in him for blood, any blood. He won’t take orders, won’t shut up, won’t cushion his blows, won’t be good and properly grateful to his ... rescuers, said Greed while Kimberly muttered abductors with this cutting disdainful look around him which said he’d prefer anything, like he’d prefer another ten years in the slammer to this. Ungrateful bastard.

Ex-officer Z. J. Kimberly, by all accounts, does not give a tuppeny damn about anything. He’s selfish and he’s vindictive and he’s cruel for the sake of being cruel to the only people Greed calls friends.

Greed is, of course, utterly fascinated by him. He actually found himself lying next to Dorochet last night going through all the ‘Z’ names he knew to see if one fit, but none did. Another mystery. It adds to the appeal. He’s always been an admirer of a good old-fashioned bit of enigma around a person.

Greed has met people who say they don’t care what others think of them, but who still modify their behaviour and what they say and how they say it, the better to fit in with those others they supposedly don’t give a damn about. With Kimberly, though, it’s the real deal. He has two modes: coldly indifferent and flat-out hostile, both served with a side dish of crazy. He schizos freely between the two, bringing out the viper in Martel and the mad dog in Dorochet and the worst in everyone except Greed. No – Greed just watches, spellbound, as Kimberly screws up the dynamic of a tightly-knit group just by existing. He loves that Kimberly simply doesn’t care, that he’s as liberated from human social niceties as Greed himself. The guy just does not give a fuck about anyone. Except Z. J. Kimberly, of course.

And why not? Why not? Puppies will trample their runty sibling to get at the milk. Nature tells animals to survive: Kimberly is just more honest about it than everyone else. On the second day, when Kimberly exploded a greenhouse’s worth of glass in a surge of – temper? Frustration? Boredom? – Greed tried to tell Kimberly that he understood, that he understood him, because they’re almost the same, really, if only Kimberly would care to see it. But Kimberly had just looked at him with his weird depthless yellow eyes and laughed, a bitter bark of a laugh, a lone Ha.

‘You don’t,’ he said, and, ‘You can’t,’ he said, with different emphasis, a dig at Greed’s humanity, or lack thereof.

Greed stares at the door behind which lies the sulking source of all this internal strife. He chews the inside of his cheek and frowns. (Another good one, that – Martel says he looks pensive, a fancy word, Greed thinks, for the face one wears when wondering what the hell to do now). At the moment, it’s Kimberly who is undoubtedly (and the old hag used to say this, way back when) the wrench in the works. He wants to know what he could do to make it better for Kimberly, if anything; if there’s anything Kimberly wants, he’ll do his best to get it for him. Greed takes care of his own. And whether he likes it or not, Kimberly’s one of them now.

Greed knocks, again, and waits, again.

‘Kimberly,’ he says after a minute, loud enough that the alchemist will surely hear it. ‘Kimberly, it’s me.’

No reply. Not that he particularly expected one, but....

Ah, fuck this. He’s done being polite. ‘I’m coming in,’ he says, already turning the doorknob and pushing the heavy worm-ridden door inwards, scraping the cheap floorboards, following the shiny swathe curved through dust lying thick as carpet. What’s the worst Kimberly can do? Throw a tantrum? Kill him? Big deal. ‘Hope you’re decent, dearest. I wanted a little word with y—’

Greed stops when he sees the bed, and who’s on ... in it. Because for the first time in three days, Kimberly is actually asleep. The storm has raged itself out and here he is, lying here at the top of the house, dead to the world.

It would be cruel, not to mention stupid and reckless, to mess with him like this, when he’s so vulnerable. It would be the right thing to do, to leave him alone to recuperate.

Greed sits down on the bed.

He used to see that dog which hung around the Nest – the one which met its untimely end at the hands of this man – asleep in the alley outside, curled up into the smallest possible ball it could manage while still keeping its internal organs intact. Even though the bed’s a double and is more than wide enough for the alchemist to have stretched out luxuriously to all four corners, Kimberly is curled up on its very edge; his shoulders are pulled right up to his ears, his hands tucked under his head, his knees pulled up to his chest. Even asleep he looks as if he expects to be attacked. Prison and a lingering paranoia clings to him like the rags he escaped in. He’s still so awfully thin.

Greed touches his shoulder but Kimberly doesn’t tense or glare or curse or do any of the Kimberly things he usually does when touched. He remains limp and warm and asleep, even when Greed rolls him gently over on to his back, easing him carefully out of his foetal ball –

And stares.

‘Well, look at you,’ he says eventually, under his breath.

What he really wants to say is something really dumb like Why Kimberly you’re beautiful. Kimberly has hacked the hanging hair out of his eyes and dragged the rest back into a tight thin braid which curves over his shoulder like a pet snake. Without all the straggly hair in his face – Greed reaches out to touch before he realises and catches himself, because that’s what he does when he sees something he wants, he has to touch it – you can see how lovely his face is: all feline elegance with high cheekbones and slightly slanted eyes. Exotic, almost. He’s so very attractive right now, asleep and vulnerable and pretty, and Greed can’t take his eyes off him. His hand reaches out by itself again and now he’s touching his alchemist’s face, doesn’t even care if Kimberly wakes now. Butterfly touches on cheek and freshly shaven jaw and delicate paperthin eyelids.

He’s not sure if the power of the pull he’s feeling towards Kimberly right now is because of his beauty or his vulnerability or the sheer human warmth radiating from the nest of blankets, or all of the above. Truth is, Greed hasn’t touched a real human being in a long time. His chimeras are close – sure, they’re human in almost every way that counts and he thinks of them that way, humans-plus – but they’re cold, deep down; he can feel that coolness, that same inhumanity which he can feel in himself, every time he’s with Martel or Dorochet or when he looks into Law’s face. They’re close – sometimes they’re even better than the real thing – but they’re not like this.

He lifts the blankets off. Kimberly’s not wearing anything under them. Why would he? He brought nothing out from the Fifth with him, after all, and he’s far too proud to ask for pyjamas. Greed eyes him up. A tight soldier’s body, unslackened by prison, a bit too thin, of course, but still leanly muscled and fit. He’s narrow through the waist and hips and –

Okay, yeah, whoa, he is half-hard.

Must be having nice dreams. Though from what he knows of Kimberly, ‘nice’ may not quite be the word.

He never knows what part of his brain it is which stimulates this kind of suicidal impulse. Probably the same part which reminds him every time he’s about to do something dangerous, that he’s immortal, or as good as.

Greed leans over Kimberly and slides his hand gently between his thighs.

Kimberly stirs, shifts, drifts his right hand across his forehead, fingers spread. The tattoo on his palm is like a round eye. A half-smile flickers across his face; it stays, teasing his mouth. Greed leans carefully over him, mirrors that smile, close to his face, and begins to stroke to the ticking of the clock. Tick – up… tock – and down. Long, gentle strokes. Kimberly sighs, turns his head into the pillow, mouths something. His thighs ease apart and he makes a little ‘ah’ sound, and his tongue moves over his upper lip. His hips roll into the rhythm and he must wake up soon, swimming up through the layers of consciousness to blow Greed’s fucking head off.

‘Why Kimberly,’ Greed purrs right in Kimberly’s ear, because he has to say it and it doesn’t matter now because Kimberly’s waking already and Greed’s fucked anyway, hand right in the cookie jar, ‘you’re beautiful.’

Because it’s Kimberly, there’s no slow realisation, no gradual floating down to consciousness. He wakes with a violent physical start, a jerk of his entire body. Yellow eyes snap open and for a second he’s beautifully confused, beautifully vulnerable, and then bang he’s fully awake and it’s Kimberly again, vicious and senselessly angry as a roused snake. In a second his hands snap palms-flat to Greed’s neck and his thighs clench, trapping Greed’s hand.

‘What the hell,’ he whispers, almost quaking with that special unfocused rage. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

‘I was just admiring the new you,’ Greed says persuasively, trying to work his hand free.

‘With your hand between my fucking legs?’ Kimberly grips harder round his hand with his thighs and Greed can’t not think about how he would be, laid out under him properly – hungry and demanding and wild. He hasn’t had something like that in a long, long time.

‘Well, yeah.’ Greed winces. His fingers – still flesh and bone, still bruisable, he doesn’t want to spook Kimberly more than he has to because the guy’s so fucking unstable – have started to go numb. ‘Let go and we’ll talk?’

Kimberly, hands thrumming the beginnings of power against Greed’s neck, just laughs. ‘I could blow you into bits right now.’

‘Not if you want to keep your cock.’ Greed flexes his fingers as best he can. Not much room, but he thinks he’s made his point.

Kimberly scowls. ‘I’m not letting go.’

Greed sighs. ‘Please yourself.’

‘I always do,’ Kimberly says, with a sardonic smirk.

So Greed concentrates and here it comes: the shield slides shiny and smooth up from his fingertips like oil spreading black and impure across water. Fingertips to elbow is marble-hard and statue-cold in the time it takes the soft look of fascination to flicker across Kimberly’s face and then go out.

Kimberly makes a furious little sound, a moaned curse from the back of his throat. And no wonder, Greed thinks, sharp cold hard new fingers digging into the untried skin of Kimberly’s inner thighs. He tries to kick, to squirm up and back and away without releasing his grip, without losing, but Greed can feel his fingers slicing millimetre by millimetre into Kimberly’s flesh. And millimetre by millimetre Kimberly’s taut human flesh gives as he struggles – Greed could peel him like an orange, coils of Kimberly on the floor – and the layer of insulating fat gives way to muscle and nerve and now Greed’s inside him in a way and Kimberly almost cries out then, almost, but coughs it back and thrashes.

‘Stop it,’ Greed says calmly. ‘I wasn’t going to hurt you. You’re not in danger with me.’

‘Fuck you.’ Kimberly’s forced himself still, but every muscle is actually quivering with the effort. His jaw is clenched and he breathes like a wounded animal, dragging in furious trembling breaths and hissing them out from between gritted teeth. ‘Fuck off and die, you freak.’ A trickle of blood glides down the inside of his left leg, a little forked stream of red like a snake’s tongue against the pale skin.

‘I’d oblige you, but as you know, that’s impossible.’ He lets go of Kimberly’s wrists, and, faster than Kimberly can try to explode him, he uses both hands to wrench Kimberly’s thighs wide apart. The flesh fingers of his right hand smear the blood, leaving fresh red fingerprints on the white skin. He rolls to lie between Kimberly’s legs, using his own body to lever them open. His weight on the wounds makes Kimberly hiss in pain; distracted, his hands slip from Greed’s shoulders. Greed takes his chance and grabs Kimberly’s thin wrists, pins his hands above his head, linking his dark sharp fingers with Kimberly’s unwilling ones. His mouth is close to Kimberly’s, close enough that he can feel the alchemist’s angry short breaths on his face.

‘Get off,’ Kimberly spits, bucking under him. ‘Get off now.’

‘Are you flirting with me?’

‘Fuck you!’

‘Oh, you are flirting, aren’t you?’

Kimberly gives a wordless growl, a noise of pure impotent rage. Under Greed, he’s actually quivering with anger. His flat stomach moves in and out, fast, with his quick shallow breaths.

And, against his stomach, Kimberly’s cock is hard.

‘Interesting,’ Greed says, meeting Kimberly’s eyes. He lets go of one of Kimberly’s hands and moves his own slowly, experimentally, keeping his eyes locked on his alchemist’s. He wraps his fingers, dark and alien and hard as diamond, around Kimberly’s cock. The fingers of Kimberly’s free hand curl into a fist.

‘Get. Off,’ Kimberly says, low and through his teeth. ‘I’m not that desperate.’

Greed runs his claws ever so lightly over the head of Kimberly’s cock and Kimberly hisses. ‘I thought you wanted action.’

Kimberly’s thighs clench round him in a spasm of frustration. ‘You promised me blood.’

And he did, he has, promised Kimberly that and everything else – the bodies of all the bastards who locked him into that laboratory to play with and blow up and revenge himself on – but for now this is what Greed wants, and that will always take priority, and frankly the sooner Kimberly learns it, the better. ‘You can go with this for the moment.’

‘I don’t want to go with this!’ And suddenly it’s far from anything even resembling banter as Kimberly gives his whole body an almighty wrench in a way Greed didn’t think the human body could move. It surprises Greed enough that Kimberly manages to twist himself away completely, yanking his wrist free and scrambling halfway across the bed on his knees before Greed can even react.

But Greed is Greed, for fuck’s sake, and Kimberly, for all his unearthly talents, is only human. Greed lunges, whips out a hand, seizes him by the shoulder and flips him over on to his back again. He forces him down, slowly, and Kimberly’s cursing and spitting and scratching like a rabid stray the whole time; his nails rake Greed’s face once, twice, three times. Each time the bright sting of pain is only momentary before the scratches heal over completely.

‘Get off get off get off get off —!’ Kimberly’s almost screaming now – his voice cracks on the last word. He’s frenzied in his fighting now, all teeth and nails on Greed’s arms and face and his body all sharp knees and elbows in Greed’s stomach and sides. But slowly Greed is still winning – Greed always wins – and he’s forcing him down, on to the bed, with all his weight. Kimberly jams his knees between them but already he is shaking with the effort, shaking with adrenaline and exhaustion, and they both know he can’t hold him off any longer. Finally his knees give, part, and Greed is there, flush against him. Kimberly finds some reserve of rage and uses it to buck once, twice, kick, bring his heels down crushingly on Greed’s back in spasms of uncontrolled rage – a child having a tantrum – but nothing works, nothing will ever work. Greed smiles patiently.

‘I hate you,’ Kimberly half-sobs, breathing hard. ‘I hate you. I hate your monsters. And I hate this fucking place.’

‘More than prison?’

‘Yes!’ They both know it’s not the truth.

‘I could arrange to get you back to your cosy little cell, if you like. If you hate us all that much.’

‘Like you’d ever let me go,’ Kimberly says bitterly. His yellow eyes fix on Greed’s violet ones. ‘You need me.’ The vicious tone betrays nothing, but Greed knows it’s partly a question, a question Kimberly desperately needs answered.

‘I do need you,’ Greed agrees readily. ‘I need you very much.’ Slowly he releases one of Kimberly’s wrists, reaches out equally slowly – it’s like petting a mad dog, one that’s still foaming at the mouth –, and strokes his sweaty hair. He’s prepared to lie here for as long as it takes for Kimberly to calm down and relax. Minutes and hours, after all, are but drops in the vast ocean of a hundred and forty years. ‘I think you’re very talented,’ he goes on, and Kimberly’s still utterly tense under him, but at least he’s not actively fighting him. At least he’s listening. ‘I also think the new hair suits you.’

‘Had it like this in the army,’ Kimberly mutters. ‘Only way they wouldn’t make me cut it.’

‘Do you miss it? The army?’

‘No,’ he says immediately, and then pauses. His mouth opens slightly as if he’s about to say something else, but then he averts his eyes from Greed’s and just mumbles, ‘Uptight fuckers, the lot of them. Changed their mind all the time. One minute it’s kill them all, the next it’s jail for Kimberly the war criminal. And they called me fucking crazy.’

‘Mmm.’ Greed makes his agreeing noise. This is the most Kimberly’s ever said about his time in the military, and Kimberly talking about himself is still novel enough to be interesting. He rests his hand on Kimberly’s warm forehead for a moment before delicately changing the subject. ‘Are you bored here?’

‘Of course I am.’ Kimberly snorts. ‘You say you need me, but for what? I haven’t had the chance to do anything.’

‘It’s only been three days.’

‘So?’ He turns his head away with a bad-tempered jerk.

‘You’re my secret weapon.’ Greed strokes his free hand down Kimberly’s cheek, down the long neck. ‘I’d be stupid to bring you out too soon.’ That little scuffle with Kimberly – feeling his alchemist writhe and kick and buck under him, hissing obscenities and panic and pain – piqued his interest and whetted his appetite. He doesn’t plan to stop this any time soon.

But when his hand reaches Kimberly’s stomach and makes to go lower, his alchemist draws a deliberate breath and says, with remarkable control, ‘You’d be even more stupid if you thought that fucking me would change anything. Don’t lie,’ he snaps, when Greed opens his mouth, even though Greed had no such intention. He doesn’t lie, in general – not because it’s wrong or anything petty and human like that, but because he doesn’t care enough to lie. Kimberly obviously has no patience with liars, because he himself prefers the bald stinging truth. The more Greed gets to know Kimberly, the clearer he sees himself in him. ‘I know that’s what you want.’ Well, he’s got that right, at least. ‘God knows you fuck everything else that moves.’

Greed smiles, razor-sharp. ‘You misunderstand.’

‘Oh, I think I understand you just fine,’ Kimberly replies, with a tight smile of his own.

‘You don’t. I don’t want to change anything. I just want to fuck you.’

Underneath him, Kimberly goes utterly still. But it’s a temporary stillness, a momentary pause; Greed can feel the lean muscles of his legs and shoulders all tensed and ready to fight again.

‘I just want to fuck you,’ he says again, more softly, putting every ounce of sincerity he can into the words.

‘Why?’

Greed stares at him, with the delightful feeling that Kimberly is being serious. How can he not know? If you’re hot sex, you know it, don’t you? But oddly enough it is sexy, Kimberly not knowing just how damn pretty he is. Greed smoothes his thumb over Kimberly’s cheekbone and those weird yellow eyes lock on to his. ‘It’s my nature to want pretty things.’

Beneath him Kimberly relaxes. Just a little, but it’s a start.

‘Nothing’s going to change,’ Greed promises. Kimberly will still be here in the morning. So will he, so will all of it. ‘Haven’t you missed it, Kimberly?’ He speaks the words directly into Kimberly’s ear, as he worries the lobe with his teeth. Kimberly makes a small sound, perhaps of assent. ‘Haven’t you missed jerking off, Kimberly,’ Greed drops his voice even lower, to a whisper, and he barely whispers the words, wetly, working his hand as best he can between his alchemist’s unyielding thighs, ‘or having fingers tight up your ass and getting off, Kimberly, coming so damn hard you can’t fucking see straight and it’s so good—’ Greed’s almost purring now, picturing it, and Kimberly makes a little helpless sound in the back of his throat, ‘—so good you never want it to stop, Kimberly, you’re fucking beautiful….’ Kimberly’s thighs part perhaps half an inch but it’s enough, and Greed can worm his hand between Kimberly’s legs again and part them properly and begin to stroke his steadily hardening cock, which twitches at his very first touch. Yes. Kimberly’s eyes are lidded and his mouth is half-open.

‘You are so sexy,’ Greed breathes. He leans down to kiss him – Martel and Dorochet are always hungry to be kissed – but Kimberly twitches back to reality, jerks his head right back, an outright rejection of that proposed little intimacy. Greed doesn’t force the issue. There are other ways to taste him.

But now Kimberly is studying him: not smiling, not frowning, not anything. The corners of his mouth are drawn down in the vaguely dissatisfied look that Greed has come to recognise as his default expression.

‘If I let you do this,’ he says, and there’s no if about it, not when Kimberly is this hard against Greed’s stomach, ‘it doesn’t mean anything.’

‘No.’ Greed moves slowly against Kimberly, exerting the subtlest of pressures against Kimberly’s cock.

Kimberly bites down hard on a groan. ‘It doesn’t mean I’m yours.’

‘Of course not,’ Greed says soothingly.

‘I’m not like them.’ They both know who he means. Disdain drips off each word like rain off a tin roof.

‘I know,’ Greed says. This at least is the truth. Kimberly’s no stray looking for a master. But once he gets to fuck Kimberly and thus establishes that as part of the deal, it will be an excellent way to learn exactly what pushes Kimberly’s buttons. If he can’t own Kimberly like he owns Martel and Dorochet and Law, he reasons, he’ll learn everything about him, inside and out. It amounts to the same thing. ‘I know you’re not.’

Kimberly nods tightly. Something in him has obviously been satisfied, now that he thinks they have the ground rules straight, now that he thinks he’s in control. ‘All right.’ He opens his legs fully, suddenly, around Greed, spreading his knees wide apart. His weird eyes are lit with challenge. ‘You show me why you go round looking so smug all the fucking time.’

‘What makes you think it’s not my innate sense of self-worth?’

He enjoys immensely Kimberly’s second of wide-eyed shock when he makes his clothes sink into his skin and disappear. The alchemist reaches out to touch before he can help himself, but draws his fingers back at the last moment and snorts. ‘With the noises I had to listen to last night? I highly doubt it. Do you ever sleep?’

‘Do you?’ Greed shoots back. ‘I heard you up last night too.’ Prowling around downstairs in the dark, with only the empty glasses for company. The others say it creeps them out.

‘Yeah, well, I don’t sleep too good at night. Never did. Get used to it.’ Kimberly gives him a pointed look. ‘But remind me – who was it that woke me up just now?’

Greed smiles, doesn’t answer. He shifts his weight fully on top of Kimberly and drops his mouth to Kimberly’s long slender neck. When he presses his shark’s teeth against the soft skin, a threat and a promise in one, Kimberly’s initial noise of annoyed protest fades into nothing. Silently he tips his head back, bares his throat to Greed. Just like Dorochet, and Kimberly would kill him if he knew he was making the comparison. And the best reaction comes when Greed uses his sharp teeth to nip, just a little, at the place where he can feel the slow beat of Kimberly’s pulse. Kimberly’s fingers dig suddenly into the mattress; his back arches. What would have made Dorochet shrink into the bed makes Kimberly press up hungrily for more. Greed strokes his face, presses his fingers into Kimberly’s warm wet mouth. Kimberly bites – of course Kimberly bites – and blood runs down from the corner of his mouth. Greed wants to kiss him and taste it but Kimberly licks it away, almost shivering with pleasure. His thighs relax and suddenly skin meets skin and Kimberly is actually welcoming him, gripping with his hard thighs. His mouth is smeared red.

He’s amazing, this fucked-up alchemist he’s found, beautiful and strange and just aching, just dying to be hurt.

‘Baby, I’m gonna make you come so hard you won’t stand for a week,’ Greed says with almost a purr. Kimberly rests his head back on the pillow, grins savagely at the ceiling for a second, then looks at Greed again.

‘If you’re going to do that,’ Kimberly wriggles the fingers of his captured hand, ‘you’re going to need a couple more hands, aren’t you? Or can you do it with just the one?’

‘Tell me,’ Greed says, smiling involuntarily. He’s starting to really like Kimberly. ‘What are you going to do if I let you go?’

Kimberly gives him a really beautiful smile in return. ‘Blow you into a million little pieces,’ he says. ‘Obviously.’

‘Obviously.’ Greed looks around. Is there something he can tie him to? Unfortunately he hasn’t had the need for restraints lately. He’ll have to get some, and make things really fun. If they were at Kimberly’s place – if Kimberly had a place – he’d bet Kimberly would have everything they’d need and then some. ‘Here, sit on me.’ He grabs Kimberly’s thin wrists together in one hand – he’s got big hands, it’s relatively easy – and sits up, pulling him smoothly on to his lap.

Kimberly smiles into his eyes and shifts to get more comfortable. It's like cradling an adder. ‘So now what?’

‘So now I get to examine my new ... weapon.’ He almost said ‘toy’, and he knows that would have made Kimberly go ballistic. Carefully holding Kimberly’s hands far apart, palms up, he brings them close to his face. He traces the solar array tattooed on Kimberly’s right palm with his thumb. Kimberly’s breath goes very quiet as he watches him, crocodile-still. His hand is warm and light in Greed’s, innocent-feeling. He doesn’t even try to pull away.

‘Did it hurt?’ Greed asks. ‘Getting this done to yourself?’

Kimberly looks down at his hands and a smile spreads slowly across his face. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think you should keep them, lovely as they are,’ Greed kisses his palm, ‘out of my way for a while.’

‘How long do you plan to be?’

‘As long as you like, sweetheart.’ Greed bares his teeth proudly. ‘I can go for miles.’

‘You’ve got twenty minutes.’ Kimberly puts his hands behind his head, interlinks his fingers. ‘And if you’re not done by then, I blow you up. Ready or not.’

‘So I’m supposed to trust you to keep your hands there until then?’

Kimberly looks down at him, feigning hurt. ‘Don’t you trust me? I thought we were on the same side.’

Greed runs his hands down his sides, to his hips. ‘I might trust you more with my cock in you.’

‘You’re just pure class, aren’t you? You’ve got nineteen minutes and forty seconds, by the way.’

‘No fair starting without me!’

‘When I give a flying fuck about fair I’ll get back to you.’

‘Better get on with it then, hadn’t we?’ He holds Kimberly’s hip with one hand and with the other reaches into the bedside drawer for the lube he knows he left here the last time he did Dorochet in here, on that chair over there covered in the dust sheet. Ah, good times. ‘Can never find it when you need it,’ he mutters, scrabbling through all the useless junk in there. ‘Fucking typical….’

‘Nineteen minutes.’ In his lap Kimberly stretches, rolls his head on his neck.

‘I can’t believe you’re putting me under this sort of pressure.’ Greed’s fingers touch something smooth and glassy. Is that—? He tugs it out from the skeleton of a broken alarm clock. Finally. He wastes no time in unscrewing the lid and pouring a generous slick on to his fingers. Some gets on the bedclothes and some on Kimberly’s legs, but things are going to get a hell of a lot messier anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.

‘Think of it as a test of your skill.’ Kimberly flinches slightly when Greed pulls his thighs wider apart, opening him up, spreading him wide, and moves him directly over his cock, perfectly positioned for when it’s time for that.

‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ Greed says.

‘Stop telling me that,’ Kimberly says, low, and there’s such hunger in his voice, damn, this is going to be— Kimberly shifts in his lap, pressing down hard, deliberately, and the blunt unslickened tight tight heat just around the head of his cock is almost too much, already.

‘Fuck,’ Greed says, low, admiringly.

Kimberly’s mouth twists into a completely unreadable smile.

Greed runs a hand down his velvety neck, his smooth back, twines the thin tail of hair between his fingers. With his other hand he walks lubed fingers down his alchemist’s lower back, leaving a trail of slickness behind. Just as he presses his two fingers against him – not quite in him, not just yet – he tugs Kimberly’s hair hard, jerking his head back. Kimberly draws a quick harsh breath.

‘So you like a bit of pain, huh?’

‘Seventeen minutes,’ Kimberly breathes into his mouth, and he’s so very hard against Greed’s stomach, rubs against him like a cat in heat. Greed takes Kimberly’s shoulder and pushes him back and down and Kimberly sucks in a breath but takes it; he doesn’t just take it, either, but actually presses back on Greed’s fingers and moans. He’s hot and almost virgin-tight around Greed’s wet fingers and in a couple of minutes it’ll be his cock – well, make that one minute, thirty seconds. He’s really not used to being timed.

He works his fingers deeper, curls them inside, beckoning, and he must have hit the spot because Kimberly jerks for him, curses under his breath but tries to push back, demanding. Greed places the flat of his hand on Kimberly’s stomach. The tight skin is damp with a sheen of sweat. He holds him back, impaled, and Kimberly’s breathing hard now, through his mouth. For a second his expression is totally open, need plain on his face. He struggles to move. ‘Let me – you fucker –’

‘Say please and I’ll consider it.’

Eyes narrowed to yellow slits, Kimberly bares his teeth, unlinks his fingers and brings his hands down palm-flat, probably just to push him back but you never know with Kimberly –

‘Ah-ah.’ Greed catches Kimberly’s right wrist with his free hand, holds it down against the bed. ‘Play nice, now. You did promise.’

‘Fuck that.’ And Kimberly writhes with this sensual roll of his hips that obviously hits the right spot, makes him drop his head back and groan and makes Greed freeze.

‘You’re gonna do exactly what you just did on my cock, I hope,’ he says.

‘Fifteen minutes,’ Kimberly says between breaths, and gives a damn sexy little wriggle coupled with a characteristically vindictive smirk.

Fifteen minutes. Smug bastard. Greed pushes his fingers deep, quick, pulls them out slowly. ‘That’s it,’ he murmurs, as Kimberly’s lips part slightly and his eyes close. He keeps it up for a little while, the deep slow fucking, and soon Kimberly starts to make noise for him, starts biting his mouth and almost keening, making these bitten-off little feral noises which sound angry and desperate. Greed pulls his fingers out completely, to the very tips, then thrusts them all the way back in and they glide inside Kimberly and Kimberly tenses tight, tight, fuck, and breathes out in a low, shuddering moan. Greed could watch this show all damn day. It’s so sexy watching Kimberly sitting in his lap getting himself off just on this, just on his fingers, and it really doesn’t take much at all to get Kimberly hot, does it—?

And then he remembers that Kimberly can’t have had consensual sex in a good twelve years.

Holy shit. Better make this good, then.

Kimberly opens his eyes when Greed takes his fingers away. He looks dazed. His gold eyes waver warily over Greed’s face as Greed strokes his cheek with a knuckle. Even like this, hungry for everything Greed can give him, the suspicion is never quite gone from his face. He can’t seem to get his head round the concept that Greed might want to have sex with him for the sake of having sex with him. Greed makes a mental note to plant Kimberly in front of a mirror one of these days and point out, in words of one syllable, the reasons why.

‘Want me to fuck you now?’ Greed says gently.

‘If you want,’ Kimberly says, and damned if he doesn’t sound perfectly offhand when he’s absolutely rock-hard against Greed’s stomach and dripping lube all down his thighs. He shifts, and Greed lines himself up, grips Kimberly’s hips and pulls him down on to his cock in one smooth motion. Kimberly gives a strangled cry. Too fast, too much.

‘Careful, you fuck,’ he says through gritted teeth, holding himself still, face tightly controlled. He’s so tight and so hot, so hot around him. Greed’s lips draw back from his teeth in a grin that’s half snarl. Before he knows quite what he’s doing, the coolness of the change slides over his fingers, his hands, his wrists. Consciously he halts it and slides newly sharp fingers down Kimberly’s smooth back, trailing thin white scratches down down over the curve of his ass and he rolls his hips, shifting his cock inside Kimberly—

‘Ha,’ Kimberly gasps, and his hands unlock from behind his head, clench into fists before grasping at Greed’s upper arms but Kimberly won’t break this promise, not as he melts against him, all that forced stillness trickling out of him. ‘Ha-aah—ah— fuck —’ His hands slide down and grip Greed’s ass and push him up, deeper, against that same spot that makes his body twitch and clench so beautifully around Greed’s cock. Greed holds Kimberly’s slender hips but it’s really Kimberly who’s riding him, moving deep and hard on his cock, biting at his lip.

‘Hands,’ Greed reminds him. ‘Behind your head.’

Kimberly drags his hands up and locks them in place again.

‘Thank you.’ Greed moves his hand slowly on Kimberly’s cock, long, sweet strokes that make him shudder and twitch and swear. ‘Feels good, huh?’ Greed breathes, and he can feel the heat from Kimberly’s skin against his cheek. ‘You could just ride me all day, couldn’t you?’

Kimberly drops his head back and takes a breath. Greed watches his long throat; it moves as Kimberly swallows. Kimberly looks at him then, and his gold eyes are beautiful in the gloom. ‘How close are you?’ Kimberly asks tightly.

‘Close enough.’

‘Well, you’d better hurry up.’

Greed frowns. ‘Why?’

‘Because you’ve got three minutes left,’ Kimberly says, and grins.

‘You just had to remind me, didn’t you?’ Greed rocks forward hard, driving his cock deep and overbalancing them both. Pain chased fast by pleasure flashes exquisitely across Kimberly’s face and like this Greed can go so deep, can put all his weight behind the thrust and he does, five, six times – holy fuck, so good – until he thinks Kimberly might break, might already be broken, the way he rolls his head sideways on his neck, eyes unfocused, mouth open in a silent cry.

‘Are you—?’ Greed is actually trembling, shaking with the effort of being still. ‘Kimberly—’

And it’s only when he stops that Kimberly comes round from his trance; he twines his legs round Greed’s waist and clenches his knees till it hurts, till it bruises. ‘Harder,’ he says and it’s almost a shout, ‘what are you stopping for you cunt you fucking idiot do it harder — would you fucking fuck me goddamnit—‘

So Greed surges into him, holding absolutely nothing back, and hearing Kimberly’s ecstatic moan of pain and seeing his eyes roll back in his head like that almost bring him off right there, but he still has time, and Kimberly is going to come first if it kills him, which it can’t, of course, but –

He works Kimberly’s cock hard and fast and Kimberly gives a sustained shudder and –

He gasps, arches under him: ‘Fuck —’

– and his mouth is open and his eyes are open and his fingers are digging deep into Greed’s shoulders and his back is arching right off the bed in a bow as he comes long and hard and beautifully, crying out as if it hurts him more than anything Greed’s done to him yet, this ultimate loss of control.

Greed pulls them both to sitting again, with Kimberly still twitching, still coming, damn, and each twitch pulls him beautifully tight round Greed’s cock. Greed doesn’t move any more, just lets Kimberly coming bring him nicely off too. When it comes it’s fucking intense, stunning him with its drive and power.

Resting his chin on Kimberly’s shoulder, head aching a little from the fierceness of it, he tries to remember the last time he came so hard. Trust Kimberly to surprise him.

They’re both panting in each other’s ears.

‘How long?’ Greed manages after a moment.

Kimberly lifts his head and looks at the clock on the wall. ‘You made it,’ he says flatly. ‘With thirty seconds to spare.’ The disappointment is clear in his face.

‘Aw,’ Greed commiserates, unable to hide a smile. ‘Sorry, sweetheart. No fireworks tonight.’

‘Shut up.’ Kimberly shrugs him off and makes to slide off his lap, stony-faced, but Greed takes his chin and draws him forward. Kimberly turns his head sharply but Greed isn’t going to take no for an answer this time; he yanks him face-forward again, even as Kimberly shoves at him and growls, ‘Fuck off, I don’t do that.’

The whore’s code. Greed looks into the yellow eyes which can’t quite manage anger, not yet, not so soon after. He presses his thumb against Kimberly’s jaw. ‘I’ve still got thirty seconds.’

He angles his head and presses his lips against Kimberly’s soft dry ones. His alchemist opens his mouth only when Greed bites. Greed kisses him gently and deeply and well for almost half a minute with blood coppery in both their mouths and Kimberly grasping at his shoulders in angry little spasms.

He pulls back, and Kimberly’s eyes are on him, and they’re so very hungry, homunculus-hungry, for something that no human can give him. Suddenly Greed wants badly to give this starving half-mad man something back, something nice, something to commemorate this, their first time together. He touches Kimberly’s thin hands, moves them down against his chest.

‘Go for it,’ he tells him, and Kimberly’s face brightens so much, like a child given a big fucking lollipop, and Greed smiles too because being deconstructed at cell level is worth it to see his only alchemist so very close to happy.

‘Three,’ he says, watching the clock and feeling the prickle of the power in Kimberly’s fingertips probing against his skin, his muscle, his unnatural cells. ‘Two. O—’

He’d swear, just before everything explodes in brilliant hurting white, that he hears Kimberly grind out ‘Thank you,’ and it’s a prayer and a plea and pure pleasure, all at once.

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