untitled
Paperwork
Ten jets of hot water hit whitewashed bricks and he wonders at the waste, when in Ishvar they never had enough. But then the military forgets easily. Which, after all, is why he’s here to begin with.
Waiting for the water to heat up, Kimberly rubs a dirty hand across his dirtier face. Grit from his palm grinds against his skin. He’s stripped off now, naked but not cold, steam off the cool bricks making his tensed muscles relax for the first time in what feels like years. It is years.
They came on the train, he and Archer, directly from his leave-taking of the monster and the subsequent chaos. His clothes, his hair and skin were covered in that grey, greasy ash that only comes from exploding human bodies. He’d washed in the tiny station bathroom, rubbed a towel over his face and neck and hair and hands, but that stuff never comes off. What he had been wearing before, that ugly suit, was his only set of clothes – Archer gave him a spare uniform he’d brought for the exact purpose of making Kimberly blend in on the train and then make me wear that mask, good one, Archer, blending in now sir yes sir – not that he cares, because the monster gave it to him. When he wore it he felt like he was kept, which he supposes was the idea. Anyway, he has new clothes now.
He turns his head to look at them, on the chair in the corner away from the steam. He hasn’t got tired of looking at them yet, or at the name tag sewn into the neck of the jacket – whose job, to sew his name into a jacket? Did they know what it meant, as they did it? – or at the stars of his rank on the shoulder.
Clean up, Archer said when they’d arrived, and someone, one of his baleful men, shoved a towel at him and pointed, and that was all before Archer turned sharply (on his heel; Kimberly had never seen anyone actually do that before) and walked away, as if he couldn’t bear to be near anyone this physically dirty. He gets the distinct feeling Archer values a clean body. He's yet to find out about the healthy mind.
In the shower Kimberly enjoys taking his time. He scrubs himself twice with rough yellow soap (god, the smell of that stuff, seven years and it’s exactly the same) and rubs it through his hair, too, which he didn’t realise he had so much of. Maybe someone’s going to try to make him cut it. He hopes so, just so he can show some pencil-pushing idiot his patented flat refusal stare which used to work so well on his commanding officer, that pansy, back in the day. . . He grins, tips his head back under the strong hot current. What with prison and then Greed, it’s been a long time since he’s been able to shower without looking constantly over his shoulder, without people getting in his face, or to be more exact –
‘Lieutenant colonel, I thought you would have been finished by now.’
Spoke too goddamned soon. The corners of his mouth turn down automatically in his best fuck-off-and-leave-me-alone expression, his only concession to the urge rising in him to snap and bite and blow something up. The things, in short, he did to make Greed leave him alone. Not that it worked, usually. His hands clench reflexively.What’s happened to him? He used to possess this reassuring, immovable calm, no matter what, no matter if he was knee-deep in corpses (some in his unit called it eerie and some psychotic, though never to his face); he used to never even raise his voice, used to speak politely as a matter of course, and everyone was doubly unnerved by it. It provided an excellent screen from the higher-ups. In the constant company of all those freaks in that pit of a bar, he’s probably become something not quite human himself. But it’s different now; it’s a different, ordered world now, and living in it again is going to take some getting used to.
He turns, making his face neutral. This is something he’s always been very good at, and a very useful non-talent it is, too.
Archer’s standing in the door with his arms folded, looking like he’s been ironed twice, watching him.
‘Sir,’ he says politely – he’s good at polite, too, it really does seem to put people on edge – and gives a soapy salute, leaning his weight on his right leg, cocking his hip.
‘What’s taking so long?’ Archer asks, maintaining steady eye-contact, which not many can or will. ‘I don’t recall saying we were finished, do you? There’s a stack of paperwork for you to fill in.’
‘I was pretty dirty. Sir,’ he adds, after a beat. Out of practice. Have to work on that. Archer’s cool blue stare slides over him. Kimberly looks back, flatly, but there’s a weird prickling all down his spine, a not unpleasant sensation of being inspected like new merchandise and found favourable. He sure as hell isn’t embarrassed, if that’s what Archer wants, coming in unexpectedly like that, standing here dripping and naked with the water still striking his back, with Archer in his unnaturally pristine uniform looking him up and down.
Such a strange one, this Lieutenant Colonel Frank Archer, who makes a point of setting his mouth and putting his shoulders back and looking him in the eyes, challenging him, as if to prove he isn’t afraid to face death. Pleased to meet you, he’d said the first time they met at South, in that voice that dripped money and good manners and breeding, and smiled, pointing his pistol at Kimberly’s forehead.
One slender eyebrow lifts, minutely – invitation? Maybe; Kimberly doesn’t wait, but takes a sudden step forwards. Archer flinches and Kimberly sees it; he can feel his grin stretching his mouth wide like a snake’s.
‘See anything you like, sir?’ he asks, pushing home his advantage, barely three feet away from Archer now with that frozen stare locked on to him like a laser sight, face tight with rage or fear or something else, Kimberly can’t tell.
‘My office,’ Archer just says in a voice so cold Kimberly actually stops grinning. ‘Three minutes.’
One of the many aggravating things about living in that place was that no one in the monster’s crew set much stock by knocking. Kimberly, however, is a civilised man – now; again – and he knows without having to ask that Archer values his privacy, so he knocks on his office door and waits for his curt ‘Come’ before he walks in. He stands directly in front of the desk, makes his salute, puts his deadly hands in his jacket pockets.
Archer is sitting at a wide desk bare of clutter with a neat stack of papers in front of him, dead centre and at a right angle to the corner. He doesn’t react to Kimberly’s entrance, but keeps writing on the topmost sheet of paper. Archer’s certainly taking his time to acknowledge him, but being made to wait doesn’t bother Kimberly in the slightest. It’s meant to make him uncomfortable: the silence in the room made more with the soft tick-tick of Archer’s plain wall clock; the fact that Archer’s pretending he’s not there, hasn’t returned his salute (as far as he can recall, that’s a clear sign that you’ve done something wrong). Seven years in the dark means that Kimberly can’t be out-waited by any living soul.
Finally, Archer looks up.
‘I barely recognise you,’ he says without preamble, ‘clothed. Well,’ he amends, indicating with a small jerk of the chin Kimberly’s unbuttoned jacket, his rolled-up sleeves. ‘Just about clothed. This kind of scruffiness won’t do, lieutenant colonel. And you will stand to attention when you enter my office.’
Kimberly’s mouth twitches into a half-smile. They’re still testing each other. It’s amusing how Archer keeps pushing him in interesting little ways; the man’s feeling him out, seeing how far he’ll let himself be pushed before he flips and tries to murder his commanding officer, as his record suggests he must have. He knows Archer wants him desperately on his side – Archer is ambitious and grasping and opportunistic, Kimberly has known that since that train journey, since they met. Archer spoke to him during the journey, when the train first started to move. He spoke for three quarters of an hour in a low steady voice that did not carry: what he would do when they got back to headquarters; what Kimberly would do; what he could be allowed. When he could expect to get his hands dirty.
And Mustang, that sweet little idiot. He’d been sitting across from them the whole time, glancing at the masked man every now and again, but with no real suspicion, just idle curiosity and something like sympathy, probably thought it was a facial injury or disease or something. Mustang had always been about as intuitive as cold soup. And that had just made it all the more amusing when he’d taken the mask off, watching Mustang unblinkingly through the selective vision of eye-holes as he did it, not wanting to miss a second of his reaction. And it was sweet, it was, when Mustang twitched backward in his seat as if he’d been wired to a current; big dark eyes went wide and pretty mouth went slack with shock. Seeing him laid out like that gave Kimberly a thrill he didn’t know he could feel without laying his hands on anyone. It was the same acute pleasure; the same sense of winning, but over whom and over what he could never say.
Looking at Mustang, speaking to him, having him speak back: it was the same play he’d seen a thousand times during his time out from the world, on the screen of the darkness in his cell. Momentarily, with the new bright anger, shock and yes, sweetly, fear in Mustang’s almost-black blue eyes warming his soul, he’d forgotten the interesting new guy sitting next to him with his icy manner and cold good looks. Just like that he’d snapped back to Ishvar, to the haze of killing, to the spare, taut existence and the rush of murder spilling over from him into Roy – twenty-year-old Roy pinned only half-willingly under him, feverish with desire and disgust and need, this brilliant war-shy murderer of women and children they’d called the Flame Alchemist burning up under his mouth and hands and cock. . .
They stared at each other, Roy with horror and Kimberly with his wide grin, both listening with half an ear as Archer explained, indicating his new lieutenant colonel with one careless pale hand.
Even before Roy said ‘Kimberly?’ with that totally priceless expression, Archer had obviously sensed something was going on. The corners of his mouth had turned down, a tiny frown appearing between his eyebrows, his face retaining the expression for the rest of the journey. Why, though? He probably expected Kimberly to betray him, probably, like he did Gr— like he did before. There was nothing for him to worry about, though, if he was expecting a repeat performance. Especially if Archer thought he was about to get up and swear undying allegiance to Roy, god, he almost laughed out loud. The monster wasn’t a commanding officer and its hole wasn’t the military, and what Archer’s forgetting, what everyone forgets, is that Kimberly wasn’t jailed for mutiny, but for doing his job.
Kimberly takes his hands from his pockets and lets them hang loosely at his sides, arrays clearly visible, far from at attention. He doesn’t bother saying anything. Silence unsettles people – normal people, people who aren’t him – more than anything else, he’s found, particularly when they’re expecting sound and fury. Even the monster used to get frustrated when he wouldn’t talk. Archer meets his eyes for a long frozen minute, and Kimberly wants him to get angry, to bring this out into the four feet of desk and carpet separating the two of them, to see what he’s made of, to see if he knows what he’s really dealing with –
‘I need you to sign these,’ Archer says, spreading papers out on the desk facing him, leaning over to hand him a pristine fountain pen. Kimberly hesitates only for a second – trick, trick, going to shoot you between the eyes – before reaching for it. Archer’s fingers are cool and dry.
‘What am I signing?’ He glances up. He doesn’t particularly care, but equally he doesn’t want Archer to think he’s credulous enough to sign anything the military puts in front of him. That would give the wrong impression entirely.
‘Uniform,’ Archer says, getting up from his leather desk chair and walking around the corner of his wide desk, ticking off on his fingers. ‘Two sets, including boots, two pairs. Basic personal information. Medical registration certificate. Agreement to abide by the National Secrets act. Loyalty pledge.’
It’s Kimberly’s turn to raise his eyebrows.
‘Purely a formality,’ Archer says, with a smile thin and sharp enough to draw blood, coming to stand beside him. ‘Desertion, for you, will most certainly be a capital offence.’ He lets this sink in for a moment. ‘Oh yes, and the legal release, of course. Meaning if you die, the military is not held responsible. Your family can’t demand reparations.’
No danger of that, Kimberly almost says aloud, but decides against it.
He begins to read the topmost form, just out of curiosity, wondering what papertrap they think they’ve designed for him in lieu of concrete and steel bars. I, the undersigned, agree that my life is forfeit to the great cause of Peace and Justice in these united lands of Amestris and all who are subject to her.
‘Do you actually belie—’ He lifts his eyes with the comment only half-formed as the cold touch of steel on the back of his neck makes the hairs on his arms rise. There is a small click; his soldier’s brain reacts instinctively and he ducks, or tries to, but Archer has him tightly by the upper arm, holding him in place with one hand in an incredible grip – it’s like being stuck in an industrial vice – and holding the same forty-four to his head as he did when they first encountered one another.
‘Multitasking, sir?’ Kimberly says, hardly breathing out with the words, still holding the pen in his left hand. That’s what he’s got to fight Archer with, if it comes to it – not that he needs man-made weapons. ‘Really impressive.’
‘Shut up for once, lieutenant colonel,’ Archer says evenly, and jerks him round then pushes and lets go so that Kimberly stumbles inelegantly back against the desk. His head snaps up, and he knows there’s murder in his eyes, can feel it simmering in his veins; he’s going to turn this motherfucker inside out, pressing his palms together without thinking and feeling his alchemy kick in response – and in a heartbeat Archer’s pistol is levelled exactly between his eyes, thin strong fingers wrapped like prison cord around one of his wrists, pinning his hand palm-up against the desk.
They’re both breathing hard, staring at each other. Archer smiles, very slightly, not relaxing his grip for a second. Moving forward an inch, he presses the barrel of the pistol against Kimberly’s forehead. Kimberly swallows his rage because he knows he has to if he wants out of this alive but he can still taste it at the back of his throat, making it one of the hardest things he’s ever done, to keep being polite, to stop his eyes narrowing to slits and still calling this backstabbing fucker sir.
More than anything right now Archer needs to let go of his goddamned wrist. He can’t stand people touching his hands. He feels so fucking vulnerable and Archer knows it, the bastard knows it.
‘What’s up, sir?’ he asks as evenly as he can, staring into the blue eyes, searching for the murderous intent to match his own – did he kill Archer’s parents, his best friend, his lover? Who can ever tell? Statistically it’s possible – but he finds nothing, nothing but an intense, amused calm, but his mind runs on regardless: maybe this inhuman coolness is just a front and Archer’s secretly insane in the way they used to keep telling him he was supposed to be, and surely if they wanted rid of him they could have killed him long before now, why bother getting the uniform made?
Getting no answer, he swallows and goes for it. ‘If you’re going to blow my brains all over your desk, sir, why did you bother getting me the uniform?’
Archer actually laughs, a not unpleasant sound, and in an instant his face is that of a handsome carefree young man with all the money and time and privileges in the world. ‘Why on earth would I kill you? Is that even remotely logical, after all the red tape I went through, all the trouble you caused me getting you here in the first place?’
Kimberly pauses. ‘Personal vendetta.’
‘Nothing of the sort,’ Archer says with a smile just as cold as everything else. ‘Such grand ideas you have, lieutenant colonel.’
Kimberly grits his teeth. If there’s one thing he could never, ever stand, it's being patronised. He could swear Archer knows what buttons to push.
‘No,' Archer goes on, 'seeing you come in just now, it occurred to me that we should get a few things straight between us before we embark upon our working relationship.’
Kimberly attempts a light tone. ‘I would rather we got things straight without your gun in my face. Sir.’
Archer smiles. ‘Do you think I’m completely stupid, lieutenant colonel?' he says gently. 'Now turn around.’
‘What?’ It comes out as a disbelieving laugh, and Archer’s eyes go narrow and evil – there’s no other word for it – and Kimberly’s own meet his and can’t look away. There’s a small stirring in the pit of his stomach that he recognises with an inward shudder as the same feeling he used to get when it looked at him like that, with calculation and hunger and the knowledge that even with all his cunning and power and lack of conscience and unearthly talents, all the other things that repelled human beings, he would be pinned under in the next ten minutes, helpless as a butterfly on a board.
Slowly, finger by finger, making a point of it, Archer lets go of his trapped wrist. ‘I said turn around,’ he says softly, ‘and, lieutenant colonel, don’t ever make me repeat myself again.’
Kimberly obeys. He realises he has never heard Archer curse – extremely odd for a military man; even that wet blanket Hughes could light a blue streak when he was roused – and he suddenly has the urge to hear Archer say fuck, just once, if only to prove he’s human.
‘Lean over the desk,’ Archer says, his voice incredibly close now, almost in Kimberly’s ear. Kimberly strokes his thumbs over his palms, mind working fast, maybe he can if he’s quick enough, maybe he can … But then he pictures it, pictures the brief delight of the deconstruction followed by the alarms and the escape and standing in front of that disgusting bar again with nowhere else to go, clenching his fists and gritting his teeth and steeling every nerve for the abasement of self and ego to have to go crawling – no, no, he’ll die before that. He knows he could never live with himself with the knowledge that he’d gone crawling to things that aren’t even human.
‘Lieutenant colonel,’ Archer is saying and the cold hard pistol is pressing through the cloth of his new uniform into his spine, ‘Do you have a hearing problem?’
‘No sir,’ Kimberly says, and for some goddamned reason his pulse is up, beating twice as fast in his wrists, in his hands hanging useless at his sides, so hard he can feel it pulsing in his throat. As requested he bends over the desk, spreads his legs for balance, places his hands flat and waits. The heavy cloth of his jacket is making him sweat.
Behind him Archer is silent, not touching him, not doing anything, not even breathing, just pressing the pistol hard into his back.
He’s never been pretty in a please-fuck-me way like Mustang (and god knows he remembers Mustang’s please-fuck-me thing), but he knows he comes over as proud and dangerous and consciousless – and he should, he’s worked hard for that – which is why people like Archer and the monster try stuff like this. On some level, they’re scared of him and they hate his unnaturalness, they're threatened by it. They want to see him on his knees, bringing the man with the inhuman talents down to something they can understand. If he's honest, he knew all along he was going to have to do something to pay Archer back apart from kill, which Archer knows is no hardship for him. There’s no denying the debt he owes.
‘Sir,’ he begins, hoping to speed things up a bit and get it over with, to let Archer know that if this is all he wants they can get right to it for all he cares, but Archer just reaches around him without saying anything and puts the pen carefully in the middle of the top sheet of paper.
‘Print your name and then sign next to it, where I’ve indicated,’ he says.
Kimberly stares at the forms, picking up the pen, slowly, and scans the print without reading it, buying himself time to think. Where the hell is this going? He hates not being able to see Archer, not knowing what he’s doing, what expression’s on his face, where that gun’s pointed now.
Once, during one of their – games, he doesn’t know what else to call it, with him and the monster and its various cures for his boredom which all boiled down to the same thing – he’d allowed his hands to be tied. His wrists, tied together at the small of his back. Just once. He doesn’t know why he allowed it then and never before and never since. But it had him on his knees, face down, twitching, shuddering, helpless in every sense of the word, that unique feeling of insane arousal coloured with rage and panic and the sense of being at the very edge of his own strong self-control – an addictive and dangerous sensation, he’d found – and then, suddenly, with what he didn’t know and still doesn’t, it blindfolded him. And he’d panicked. He remembers it, every sensation. It felt like as a child being tickled to the point of actual pain, when the other person couldn’t understand that you were sobbing, not laughing. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t move, spat the filthiest words he could string together to pathetically try to cover his abject terror of being immobilised in the dark, again, ever.
It actually almost apologised to him, after. Almost.
Archer’s hand strokes his hip, a firm decisive movement, not in the least bit tentative, and Kimberly’s back at the desk in front of these meaningless forms, about to be welcomed back by his new superior officer.
ZOLOF J. KIMBERLY, he writes in careful block capitals next to Archer’s first neat little X. He makes his signature very slowly, kind of enjoying the ritual of it – when was the last time he had to sign anything, anyway? – drawing the pen through the Z and the J and all the way through to the long loop on the tail of the Y. Interesting that he actually remembers his own signature and can recognise that it looks just a little bit off, a bit too careful and neat, like copied characters written by someone who doesn’t understand what they’re writing.
Kimberly moves his pen over the page, seeking the next X. He only pauses for a fraction of a second when Archer reaches for the stiff new buttons on his uniform trousers and skilfully undoes them, one-handed, as if he’s had a lot of practice. Seeing his name written down always makes him think that if his mother were alive he would kill her again for leaving him with this legacy. Sometimes he was teased at school about having a girl’s name. Until he persuaded everyone to leave him alone, that is. He was always pretty persuasive. Zolof J Kimberly, he writes again, a bit more confidently this time, with something approaching a flourish. Such a stupid fucking name. Thank god for small mercies that no one ever found out what the J stood for. He’ll take that to his grave.
Quick and sudden and unexpected, Archer’s hand is in his trousers and between his legs, slender-fingered and cool as a reptile’s. Kimberly’s back stiffens a bit; he didn’t think Archer would bother with this. He doesn’t particularly like being touched, still doesn’t, no matter what his sojourn with the freak may have done to him. At least it gave him lots of practice at removing himself, no matter what it tried, not to let himself get hot for it. He used to do it just to provoke it. He wants to provoke Archer. He signs his name again, hand steady as Archer strokes him, puts the completed uniform receipt form aside and prints his name at the top of the next.
‘Should I keep going, sir?’
‘Come along now, lieutenant colonel,’ Archer breathes in his ear, and drags the gun across his hip, sharp muzzle pressed freezing cold into bare skin, scoring a faint white scratch, and then the pistol is touching him, colder than ice, and he stares at it there between his legs, alien gunmetal silver next to skin, and like a switch is flipped he’s hot, he’s hot all over. The words come along and – he’ll never get tired of hearing his own rank as long as he lives – lieutenant colonel echo loud in his ears and Archer gives a kind of sigh of satisfaction but says, very softly indeed, all business, ‘If you take your hands off this desk, lieutenant colonel,’ and Kimberly swears Archer knows what hearing that does for him, ‘I’ll shoot you in the spine. Clear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Kimberly breathes, and the threat has just made him harder than ever. Archer only gets partial credit, though, obviously. Seven years not even being able to jerk yourself off and your libido tends to be pretty damn high. Time to get this thing back on track, he decides, can’t have Archer thinking he’s in control, and he pushes back hard, suddenly. Archer sucks in a breath, gun slipping, obviously surprised at his about-face to willingness and at the fact that he’s not intimidated in the slightest by this bizarre initiation.
If only he knew what kind of initiation Greed had given him, Archer would understand. With the ghost of a smile he signs his name for the fourth and final time and then lays the pen down. If he’s perfectly honest he’s still not sure where exactly this is going now, what type of thing Archer’s really into, even with the interesting addition of the pistol.
‘Now,’ Archer says with a barely-there hitch in his nice upper class voice, ‘read that officers’ declaration. And then when you think you’ve understood it fully, you will sign on the dotted line.’
‘Sir.’ Kimberly skips over the paragraphs and is about to scrawl his name at the bottom, messily, to piss Archer off because he just knows it will, when Archer’s hand shoots out, grips his wrist. ‘Read it aloud.’
Kimberly shrugs as best as he’s able and clears his throat. ‘I, Zolof J Kimberly, having been appointed an officer in the Army of Amestris—’ and then he stops abruptly because Archer has suddenly jerked his trousers down over his hips and he feels incredibly exposed now, despite himself – it’s worse being partly clothed than fully naked. Archer reaches slowly in front of them both, turns the little silver key in the lock of the top drawer. It’s almost empty inside, only a spare magazine, some cleaning equipment for that pistol. Archer feels around for a moment then brings out the small plain plastic tub labelled Standard Issue Handgun Lubricant and no, no fucking way – he starts up off the desk, but Archer shoves him down hard with an elbow to the middle of his back before the words What the hell is this can even make it out of his mouth.
There’s a click and a snap of opening plastic and a small sucking sort of noise. He jerks when it drips on to the small of his back, freezing cold with a liquid stickiness. He flushes with helpless anger, directed more at himself than at Archer; even with – because of? – the knowledge that Archer’s planning to fuck him with the same lubricant he uses on that gun, he’s still hard. Harder.
‘Is there a problem, lieutenant colonel?’ Archer asks smoothly, the cold of the gunmetal stroking down his spine making him arch a bit away from it but Archer’s other hand is there, warm for the first time purely by contrast, on his backside. ‘I didn’t ask you to stop reading.’
‘Sir,’ Kimberly says between teeth locked down over the rising tide of his temper, always uncontrollable and fearsome, but he can’t afford to lose it now, when he thought he’d buckled it under, not when he’s wearing the uniform he’s wanted for almost eight goddamned years (wearing half of it, at any rate). I can make it happen, Archer said, and make it happen he did, he had. Kimberly remembers meeting Archer for the first time and hearing him say that, dangling the prospect of power and uniform and universally condoned carnage before him. And against all the odds, Archer had come through. And now it’s time to pay him back.
Prison has taught him well, and Kimberly understands bargaining. You never get anything for free. And he knows instinctively that Archer wants him to lose it, that it’ll be ten times better for Archer if he has to fight him for this, just like Greed, god, they’re exactly the same, and he nearly laughs aloud at the bitter irony of it all.
‘Lieutenant colonel?’ Archer taps the barrel of the gun gently against Kimberly’s hip, walking lazy wet fingers down his backside. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Sir,’ Kimberly says again, collecting himself. ‘No, sir.’
‘Then I suggest you continue.’
Kimberly clears his throat again, and begins: ‘I do solemnly swear and or affirm that I, Zolof J. Kimberly, will—fuck!’ The expletive is jolted out of him and he nearly chokes as with no warning whatsoever Archer shoves two slick fingers inside him, and it hurts, it hurts incredibly, and heat washes up over him from the base of his cock like a caress and he’s suddenly, unexpectedly rock-hard again. And then Archer twists them, the fucking bastard, twists his fingers inside him, hitting him just right before fucking him with them, fast, stabbing at that same good spot again and again, making him shudder and bite hard on what could just about be a moan. Over his dead body he’s going to moan for this arrogant prick, but he can’t focus, he has to keep reading this goddamn thing, come on, come on. ‘That I will – that I will s—s— haa – support and defend, nnn, the – the –’
‘The…?’ Archer prompts, pressing the pistol against the small of his back, sliding his fingers out, waiting a fraction of a moment, just enough to make Kimberly push back, needing it, then he shoves them back in, deep, and Kimberly bucks at the cold of the pistol and the insane depth of sensation, his forehead pressed against his forearm on the desk; god he wants to jerk off, fuck Archer’s games, he needs to come and he could, now, right now. . .
‘Keep going, lieutenant colonel,’ Archer whispers in his ear, ‘don’t give up,’ and Kimberly lifts his head – get a grip get a grip you can’t let it be like this, it won’t be like it was with that thing – and he takes a deep breath and plunges on, ‘… the Constitution of Amestris against all enemies foreign and domestic that I will bear true faith and—’
‘Now you’re rushing.’ Archer strokes the pistol down the inside of his thigh. It’s freezing cold and for a split-second Kimberly has an all-too-vivid image of Archer fucking him with that thing, the utter perversity of the idea lights up his brain like fireworks, and his cock throbs.
Archer withdraws wet fingers and slides his pale hand around to grasp his cock, firmly, finally, and begins to stroke with confidence, achingly slowly. ‘Read … it … slowly,’ Archer enunciates in his perfect rich-boy tones in a voice barely above a whisper, words in time with his infuriating strokes.
Kimberly closes his eyes and bites his tongue and tries to get a fucking grip on himself but it’s nearly impossible with his legs almost shaking with pleasure, the cool firm grip on his cock unrelenting. He hasn’t ever been played like this. Not even the monster has ever broken him down like this, with such delicate knowing precision, but then that wasn’t exactly its style. And it never fucked him at loaded gunpoint, because it didn’t need to; it wasn’t human and vulnerable and killable.
‘… Against all enemies,’ he goes on with an incredible effort, even though the black words are weaving and moving on the white page as the pressure at the base of his cock increases and he knows he could come now if only Archer would let him, ‘foreign and d— aah you! Fucking! Bastard!’
Archer lets go of him suddenly, leaving him throbbing, there was no other word for it, and in one smooth motion presses the head of his cock against his slick ass and just shoves forward, once, hard, and he’s inside Kimberly, all of him, not an inconsiderable thing. Kimberly tastes blood where he’s bitten his tongue with the shock and good, burning pain of the sudden forced entry. He forces his hips back hard, the pain opening up like a bud; both of them insufficiently slick, it feels like he’s being split in two, but Archer surges to meet him all the same and god, god, he hasn’t felt pain like this since –
He almost keens, can feel the sound fighting out of his throat, but Archer hasn’t forgotten, he’s not about to let Kimberly off that easily. ‘Keep,’ he shoves the gun under Kimberly’s chin, forcing his head up, ‘going.’
‘Foreign and domestic.’ He’s gripping the desk hard, knuckles white, whole body thrumming and jerking with Archer’s hard staccato rhythm. ‘That I will bear true faith and aah, allegiance to the same—to—to—’ He barely knows what he’s saying any more, the words didn’t made that much sense to begin with but now, getting fucked like this with nothing he can possibly do about it, and Archer hitting him right and sweet and fucking goddamn hard, his brain feels like it’s being scrambled. ‘Allegiance to—’
‘To me,’ Archer says violently, and his pace doesn’t falter, stays deep and fast and rough, and it hurts but good, and Kimberly sure as hell isn’t Archer’s tame pet and Archer knows that, the gun at his neck is proof enough, but he would rather swear allegiance to this crazy nice-talking bastard who’d had the balls to come and seek him out, him, the mass murderer, than to some faceless Army he doesn’t give a flying fuck about in the first place – and he’s nodding his agreement without even realising it.
Archer’s trembling too, now, pressed against his back, holding still somehow and whispering feverishly, ‘Together we will do great things, Crimson Alchemist, you will do great things.’ Kimberly’s whole body twitches with lust at the thought of just what he can do now, with Archer on his side, with the whole goddamned military on his side—
‘Finish it,’ Archer says in a strangled voice, and the gun wavers to Kimberly’s temple and presses hard against the side of his face, heavy and cold; finally Archer seems to be losing some of his infinite ice cool, so Kimberly takes the calculated risk of moving one of his hands between his own legs and starts to jerk himself off; he’s so fucking close he can’t stand not to.
‘That I take this obligation f-f-freely, without any mental evasion or purpose of evasion,’ he gasps, ‘and that I will well and faithfully discha— aah, god, fuck, fuck me, fuck me damn it fuck me sir—’ and it’s the last word that seems to make Archer lose it at last; he groans through gritted teeth and tenses and begins now to shudder and falter, and he’s pulsing, coming inside him, and Kimberly’s there with Archer’s last few frenzied strokes, ‘discharge the— the duties of the office— upon which I am about to, nnn, haa, enter!’
And on that he’s coming, into his own fist, body jerking and bucking back against Archer, still stiff inside him, ‘So help me God.’
Then it’s over and he’s fallen forward on to his elbows on the desk and Archer’s already pulling out. He doesn’t know where the gun’s pointed now and he doesn’t care. If Archer shoots him after sex that good, then it’s his own stupid loss. His own. Stupid. Loss. God. He closes his eyes, getting his breath back. Behind him, Archer’s breathing hard too. He’s tucking himself in, Kimberly recognises the sounds, zipping up.
And then he feels the cool touch of the pistol tracing up his spine. ‘You’re forgetting something,’ Archer says, and how can he be so calm so soon? He bends over him, putting the pen in Kimberly’s left hand. ‘Sign it.’
Kimberly drags himself to stand and scrawls his signature, a shaky and illegible line with bumps in it. He turns, puts his back to the desk and leans on it, presumably for show but actually for much-needed support. His entire body hurts. His legs are still shaking, too, but Archer doesn’t need to see that. ‘It’s always the quiet ones,’ he says, ‘isn’t it, sir?’
For the first time, Archer actually smiles a real smile. ‘At ease.’ The gun he’s still pointing at Kimberly’s forehead, even though at this point Kimberly doesn’t have the energy to blow up a flaming oil drum, let alone a mind-game-playing superior officer with a supremely happy trigger finger. ‘Get dressed.’ Still, Archer keeps it levelled there even as Kimberly does up his trousers. Already a deep bone-level ache has set in, and damn, he’s going to feel that tomorrow, god alone knows if he’ll be able to sit down, and he likes it, knows Archer knows he likes it, and he knows he’s going to enjoy the next time even more when, no matter what, he’s going to be the one who gets to fuck this cocky son of a bitch.
He meets Archer’s calm cold gaze and feels his mouth pull into a grin despite himself. He always did enjoy a challenge.
‘So we have an agreement, then,’ Archer says, reaching for his signed declaration, folding it neatly in two and making the edge crisp with his thumbnail. Very slowly, he lowers the pistol, but Kimberly notices his trigger finger’s still ready to go. ‘You’ll do what I say, won’t cause trouble for me. You’ll work under me. Answering only to me.’
There’s plenty of time for Archer to realise on his own that Lieutenant Colonel Z. J. Kimberly answers only to Lieutenant Colonel Z. J. Kimberly. ‘Yes sir,’ he drawls, with a lazy salute. ‘Under you.’
‘And in return…’ Archer trails off and looks away before glancing at him again, and those eyes are shocking every time, like falling through thin ice into deathly cold water. ‘Well, I believe you know what your returns will be. I’ve read your file. I know what you can do. What you—’ he breaks off, the first time that Kimberly’s seen him look uncomfortable. ‘What you … like.’
‘What I like.’ Kimberly eyes him. Judging by how hard he just came, Archer seems to know quite a bit about that already. ‘What else does it say, sir?’
‘The short version?’ Archer taps the barrel of the gun gently against his own thigh. ‘That you’re clever, thorough, incredibly useful and –’ he hesitates, as if debating whether or not it’s wise to tell Kimberly this. ‘Incredibly dangerous.’
Kimberly grins, slowly. Hearing that is always an ego boost. He lounges back against the desk on his elbows, new leather of his boots creaking. He wants to stretch and roll over and go to sleep, he feels so fucking good. ‘And what do you think, sir?’
‘I think you’re intelligent enough to understand exactly why I brought you here, and I think you won’t make your presence… troublesome for me. All in all,’ Archer says, and opens the top drawer of his desk, sliding the little pot of lubricant back inside, lining it up carefully with the other items there, ‘I think we understand each other rather well, lieutenant colonel.’
Kimberly watches him perform this fussy little ritual. He’s not so sure. Frank Archer is careful, and prudent, and thorough, and fucks like a machine, and obviously doesn’t trust him an inch (clever boy), but one thing he isn’t is as boring as he tries so hard to make everyone believe.
‘I’d like to read it sometime,’ Kimberly says, standing up and indulging in that stretch after all, grabbing his right elbow with his left hand and pushing his arms back over his head. ‘That file.’
‘I can make that happen.’ Archer gives him a thin, tight smile which Kimberly savours because it means freedom and power and the longest leash he’s ever had for honing his talents; his alchemy needs to be used, it needs to be perfected, and Archer can give him that. Archer can give him everything.
‘It’s a pleasure to be working with you at last, Crimson Alchemist.’ Archer gestures at the door with his pistol.
‘It’s mutual,’ Kimberly says. ‘Sir.’
He can feel Archer watching him all the way to the door.
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