Work Text:
“Hey. Where are you going?”
Ling’s voice reaches up from within Greed’s ribcage like a cold wind.
Greed smiles to himself, hands in his pockets as he walks through the dimly lit back streets of East City. It’s well past midnight, and every step he takes brings them further from the main road. When he speaks, it’s directly to Ling nestled in the confines of his body. “We’ve been on the road for weeks. Aren’t you hungry?”
He can feel Ling’s surprise like a ruler snapped onto his own back. “I thought you were Greed, not Gluttony.”
Greed laughs quietly. “We all have common interests. It’s what makes us family. You think Gluttony is the only one who enjoys his food? Or Lust was the only one capable of desire?”
Ling’s presence is like a simmering pot of water. “I’ve certainly seen your share of pride on display.”
Greed saunters down an alleyway, knocking lightly on an inconspicuous door with a flower carved into the wood.
“They won’t let a teenager do this,” Ling warns from within. “And we can’t afford to get in trouble with the cops right now.”
The door pops open, and a woman leans up against the frame, giving the edge of her silky nightgown a tug. “Can I help you?”
“Yes,” Greed tells her, trying not to grin. It’s not from the sight of the slender woman propping the door open with her bare knee, but from Ling’s shock radiating up from inside his chest. “I think you can.”
She holds her hand out with a pleasant smile, and Greed drops some money into her open palm. With a quick count, she opens the door wider and steps inside. “Welcome. I have a couple girls free for the night, depending on how much more money you have in those coat pockets.”
“They… can’t tell?” Ling’s voice is a whisper, and Greed wants to laugh at how quiet it is, but he restrains himself in front of the woman.
She leads him into a plushly decorated living room with a few of the aforementioned girls hanging around. Something about Ling’s attitude feels like a thorn in Greed’s foot, but he shuts it out as he walks over to one of the girls. She meets his gaze with a beautiful smile and raises her hand up, which Greed takes firmly in his.
“Nice to meet you,” she says, leading him toward a set of stairs.
“You’re really going through with this,” Ling mutters from inside. “Is selfishness one of your vices too?”
Greed studies the woman’s shiny ponytail swaying with every step. “We don’t have a lot of time tonight.”
She gives him an amused glance at the top of the stairs. “We?”
“Sorry,” Greed grins at her. “I’m technically royalty. It’s hard to shake the habit.”
“Oh, my liege,” she says with a slight bow and a wink. “Right this way.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Ling protests. “If Ed realizes we’re gone, he won’t let us come back!”
He’s got a fist of anxiety clenched around Greed’s heart. Even without a body, Greed can feel Ling’s individual fingers tensing up. He might be a prince, but he’s got the calluses of a fighter and Greed can at least appreciate that. He’s spent enough time with Ling to know that he’s not the type to willingly leave the hard work to others— a trait Greed can admire, even if he knows it can also be a weakness.
Pushing away pesky philosophical debates, Greed lets the girl pull him along. Something unfamiliar is radiating stronger and stronger from the center of Greed’s chest, but if Ling is upset, he doesn’t say anything about it. In fact, he’s unusually quiet despite the strong energy, and Greed is almost surprised that they’re not fighting about this. He half expected tonight to be the night that Ling confessed his love for that girl they left behind, but Ling doesn’t utter a word as they step inside a small bedroom.
Greed has done this dance before. Even if this iteration of him doesn’t have distinct memories, the feeling is familiar enough. He knew before he’d even made the choice that this was part of who he was: avarice for all things in equal measure. One thing he is grateful for is that he can’t remember much about the physicality of any of his former bodies. When he took on Ling, they became roommates in this body, and so it reflects aspects of both of them— a fusion of their souls.
When his companion invites Greed to take off all his clothes, Greed is equally curious about their form as he is about the girl inviting him into bed. This, too, is new. Their journey so far hasn’t allowed for detours like this one, so Greed looks down at himself to see what desire looks like on this body. Taking up his own cock with one hand, he speaks directly to Ling inside himself.
“Not bad, kid.”
That taut energy inside of him goes razor sharp, and the projection of Ling that Greed speaks to opens his eyes to give a strangely panicked expression. It’s not the look Greed was expecting to see, but something about it fills him with satisfaction.
“That’s my job, isn’t it?” the woman asks with the hint of a smile, drawing Greed’s focus as she moves to pull his hand away.
With a smug smile, Greed lets her closer, standing in front of where she’s perched on the bed. She’s pretty, slender features and a spark buried under the coy expression, but Greed immediately loses the image of her face when she takes him into her mouth. He closes his eyes on instinct, wanting to focus in on the pressure of soft lips and the warmth of a wet tongue, but that leaves him staring directly at Ling. He’s in that same cross legged position that he’s always in, but Greed sees him slap a hand over his mouth, his own eyes clamped shut as well.
When Greed laughs, both the girl and Ling hear him. Her hands resettle on his hips, and Greed opens his eyes again, gaze drawn to her black ponytail as it sways with the movement of her head. He can tell in this moment just how inexperienced this body is. Despite the fact that Greed can anticipate this escalation, the skin he shares with Ling is like handling a bolt of lightning. As soon as Greed has the wandering thought that Ling might be a virgin, his legs nearly buckle from the sensation ricocheting up his spine.
He catches himself with a hand on the headboard, leaning over the girl’s head with eyes gone hazy. For a brief moment, he actually feels selfish for making Ling experience this in the backseat. Ling probably would have preferred something with a little more emotion to it, but at least this girl is good. Her ponytail is sort of hypnotizing, and he has the passing urge to grab onto it, but he digs his fingers into the headboard instead.
It kind of looks like Ling’s hair. Their hair. He doesn’t always attribute this body’s features to himself, not when he still has Ling buried inside him. It’s Ling’s ponytail, and if Greed were to put his hand through this girl’s hair, he’d be disappointed that it wasn’t Ling’s face glaring up at him. He’s come to anticipate that same fierce expression Ling always gets whenever Greed suggests they do something Ling doesn’t approve of. Ling certainly wouldn’t approve of sucking Greed’s dick, but the image of it sends his thoughts scattering like shattered glass, and his gaze fixes back on that ponytail. He can picture it— Ling opening his eyes just to stare daggers at Greed with his mouth all the way full. A shudder passes over him, and Greed jerks his hips ungracefully.
The woman releases him with a smirk and an elegantly arched brow. “Been a while?”
“Yes,” Greed says the word with a hissing breath. His cock is so hard, he feels like his fingers are going numb.
“Good to know you’re enjoying yourself,” she says.
He’s usually better at this, playing the part and laughing along, but something about Ling’s prolonged silence is driving him to impatience. When she asks what he wants, she doesn’t look remotely surprised when he takes her from behind. She keeps her hair up without being asked, and Greed stares at it like a man possessed.
Her face doesn’t look a thing like Ling’s, but that doesn’t stop Greed from thinking about him. Greed and his siblings usually default to the same set of bodies, the shape their souls prefer to take, and Greed knows he has preferences that feel as familiar to him as the sight of a blue sky. Something about picturing Ling’s face while he’s balls deep in a pretty girl feels wrong, especially when he’s wondering what it would be like if Ling had her body. It would probably bother him a lot more if he weren’t so desperate to come, but it’s not getting any easier to deal with when he wonders if Ling would feel this smooth if Greed fucked him too.
The way his thighs almost sting from the oncoming waves makes him think Ling is definitely a virgin. Greed buckles, hunching forward to grab his waist— her waist, not Ling— and give a stuttered curse. He needs to know, so he closes his eyes to look inside. The sight of Ling with his hands braced on the ground in front of him puts a wicked smile on Greed’s face. Ling’s mouth is open, panting from a phantom pleasure he can’t actually feel. It must be torture, to feel the ecstacy from an orgasm he’s not allowed to have.
Ling groans, dipping down lower to touch his forehead to the ground, and Greed feels like he’s burning up from the inside out. Staring at the slope of Ling’s back, Greed tightens his hands around the girl’s body, held taut between the vision of Ling slowly crumbling, and the hot-heeled orgasm threatening to overtake him. Ling scrapes his foot behind him, and he makes a sound so raw, Greed can only think he tried and failed to keep it down. There might have been a portion of his name buried in that sound, but it’s hard to tell.
“Gre— ah.”
Greed comes so hard it pulls him out of that inner space and back into their body with a moan. His vision goes spotty as he mindlessly tries to chase the edges of that bliss, rolling his hips a few more times like he’s got anything more. If he were alone, he might be self conscious that it went by so quickly, but he can feel Ling’s presence buzzing in his chest.
The girl is good natured about him acting like he’s in a rush, and he gives her more money before he slips out of that little room. He feels drunk and full and restless and empty all at once, walking the streets back to where Ed and the others are staying. Ling is heavy inside him, like a boulder at the bottom of a lake.
“Not so bad, was it?” Greed asks him directly.
Ling is quiet for long enough that Greed thinks about knocking on his own chest, but finally he says, “Got what you wanted?”
Greed sticks his hands into his pockets. “You know that’s not how it works. You feel it just as much as I do. Avarice never stops wanting. ”
Ling makes a dismissive sound, and Greed can’t stop himself from smiling.
“Jealous?” Greed asks.
No response. Greed returns them to the inn where Ed and the chimeras are holed up, taking the steps as quietly as he can. It’s an effort to ignore the adrenaline he’s riding that makes him want more activity, more excitement, more, more, more. When they’re safe in their room without notice, Greed strips down for a hasty wash after their ‘date’, and goes back to their room to stand in front of the floor-length mirror, dressed back in their shirt and pants.
“Alright, then,” Greed says. “You take over, since I seem to have pissed you off.”
He feels Ling unfurl within him, alertness coming back like cool water on his skin. Ling doesn’t need to be asked twice, and jumps to take the offered reins from Greed, who falls into that shared space in Ling’s place. Without a real body of his own, Greed simply fills that void with his presence, lurking just beneath Ling’s control as he now stands in front of the mirror. Greed can see out of their eyes the reflection of Ling’s face staring back at him.
Ling touches his own shoulder, brows knit, eyes open. His head tilts, and he strips their shirt off, touching the waist of the pants they’re wearing. His fingers skim over their abdomen, and back up to their chest.
“What is it you want, kid?” Greed asks.
Ling gives an almost imperceptible startle, but Greed can feel his body twitch.
“Nothing,” Ling says, closing his eyes again.
He cedes control without another word, and Greed takes over their body once more, scowling at himself in the mirror. “You’re joking.”
Turning inward, he finds Ling sitting cross-legged again, and he shrugs at Greed. “Not everything you want can actually be attained. You know that, don’t you?”
“Hmm?” Anger sparks wildly up through Greed’s soul as he looks at Ling. Sinking down to his knees in front of the mirror, Greed shuts his eyes so he can fully focus on Ling’s haughty expression. It feels like a challenge. “Tell me what it is.”
Ling turns his head away. “Why bother? You’re not my king.”
“Brat,” Greed growls at him, filling the space all around Ling and catching his eye once more. “I took you on and you accepted me. You are a part of me, and that makes you my prince. Your greed is mine, and if I can’t give something to you, that’s a failure on my part, as far as I’m concerned.”
Ling folds his arms, looking like he’s actually considering it, then gives a bitter laugh. “You still aim to be king of the world.”
Greed smiles at him. “With a prince on my side, it’s never been more attainable.”
Ling gives a ghost of a smile in return, but quickly stamps it out. “Doesn’t change the fact that what I want is impossible.”
Greed sighs. “If you want your own woman, I’ll get one for you. I’ll even give you control to fuck her.”
Ling’s eyes pop open, a rare look of surprise that Greed relishes for the seconds Ling allows it. “It’s not a woman. And I don’t need your help for that!”
Greed pushes in closer, manifesting hands in that nebulous space to place on the ground in front of Ling. With their faces level, Greed studies the embarrassment burning Ling’s expression, and Ling leans away from the scrutiny, turning his cheek.
“You’re wasting your time,” Ling says.
“No, you are wasting my time refusing to answer a simple question.” Greed looks him over, really looks at him in a way he hasn’t since they fused. Ling just keeps his eyes closed, arms and legs crossed in his usual pose. This projection of his body still wears his old clothes, and as Greed is staring at him, he is struck by the frustratingly obvious answer.
“I changed you,” Greed says. He reaches with a conjured hand, tracing the sloped shoulders of the Ling in front of him, the Ling from before. Greed can see Ling’s bare chest under his coat, the leaner torso with his knife strapped to it, and narrower hips with a belt clinging to them to keep his pants up. “You want your old body back, is that it? You don’t like what I’ve done to you.”
Ling’s eyes open wide, arms crossing tighter over his chest and Greed feels off-kilter as he recognizes, yes, Ling is blushing as he listens to Greed’s diagnosis. That’s not like him at all, and Greed thinks he must be close, but not quite there yet.
“You kept looking at me,” Ling says quietly. “When you were with her.”
When the pieces align, Greed gives a wild grin, his inner form swelling like wildfire. He takes Ling’s shoulders, shoving him to the ground and looming over him with every bit of wicked glee he’d been saving for when he expected to get some heartfelt confession from Ling about the girl warrior. Ling doesn’t fight back, staring up at him with that same shock, and Greed doesn’t even have to ask.
“You do like our body.”
The surprise on Ling’s face sharpens into frustration and he snaps back, “What good is it if I can’t ever be in the same room as you?”
Greed revels in Ling’s anger, knowing now exactly why it’s so pointed. Even in this shared space, with Greed’s hands on Ling’s shoulders, it doesn’t come with physical sensation. They can move each other, sure, but they’ll never feel it like they do when one of them assumes control. Real feeling only comes from the outside world, and that’s what pisses off Ling.
“You weren’t jealous of me, you were jealous of the girl,” Greed says.
Ling huffs, clinging to his own frustration for a moment before he throws his arms out wide and groans loudly. “I don’t want to be stuck here for the rest of my life while you go out and live it up, touching other people whenever you want. I can’t even…” He doesn’t finish that thought, playing dead with a sigh.
Greed pulls himself further into the space with Ling, molding his inner form into the shape of a person to mirror Ling. “Hey kid.”
Ling opens one eye, mouth pinched, probably suspicious of another taunt.
“What if I told you I could touch you? Up there.” Greed points skyward, and Ling opens both his eyes, pushing himself up to his elbows with a start.
Greed can feel Ling’s excitement reverberating through their body, harmonizing with his own, louder than thunder. He could waste more time wondering if this is something they both wanted independently, or if the fusion of their souls led to this moment, but Greed doesn’t care about that.
Grabbing Ling’s legs with his false hands, Greed pulls half of Ling out of their shared space and into their physical body. Ling watches with awe as the projection of his feet, calves, thighs and hips turn to the deep red color of Greed’s inner form. Up above, Greed feels Ling adjusting their legs in front of the mirror, and he meets Greed’s gaze with a different kind of surprise. Watching him take a deep breath out of sheer habit lights up every bit of Greed’s own hunger. Anticipation suits Ling.
“Watch,” Greed says, returning to take control of the upper half of their body.
Greed opens his eyes in their room of the inn, knowing that when he looks into the mirror, Ling is meeting his gaze from within. He can’t feel his legs, but they shift underneath him regardless, and Greed grins at their reflection.
“I’ve never had a copilot like you before,” Greed says, laying a hand over the front of their pants. “Makes me feel like I have a bottomless stomach.”
Touching himself and not feeling it at all would be more bizarre if he couldn’t hear Ling’s breath from inside his own head. It’s only Ling that he’s touching, Ling getting hard on Greed’s palm, Ling’s warmth emanating through the fabric of their pants. Greed swipes his thumb over the outline of their cock, and feels Ling twitch their hips, knees shifting slightly.
“I wonder if you were out here with me,” Greed muses, finding the zipper of their pants. “What would you let me do?”
Ling huffs from within as Greed pushes the band of their underwear down, marveling at the numbness of his own lower half as he touches what he knows to be his, and yet it’s Ling’s blood rushing to meet his fingertips. If Ling really is a part of Greed, body and soul, that means he already belongs to Greed. Skimming his fingertips over thickening skin has never been so fascinating.
“If I were up there right now,” Ling starts, and he sounds like he’s speaking through grit teeth. “I’d chew you out for keeping the son of an emperor waiting.”
Laughing, Greed wraps his hand around their cock, reveling in Ling’s caught breath and tensed thighs. Yes, Ling is his, so Greed should be the one to give him what he wants. Smearing his fingers over the gathering mess at Ling’s slit, Greed can feel Ling shiver under his own skin, and he looks into the mirror again.
“Are you watching?” Greed asks.
Ling’s legs shift further apart, and he answers with the fierceness that Greed has come to admire about him. “Yes.”
Despite his spotty memories, Greed is certain he’s never done anything like this. Sharing never quite felt right to him, but this isn’t the same. Spitting on his hand so he can stroke Ling harder, taking his time with it when he knows he wouldn’t bother on his own, this isn’t sharing. This is a gift for Ling. This is Greed proving his right to be the one who gives it to him.
Ling’s breath shakes inside Greed’s chest like a second set of lungs, and Greed feels a fire in his blood that wasn’t there before. Looking at them in the mirror as he pumps his hand over Ling’s cock, seeing Ling shifting their legs with tension only he can feel, Greed starts to laugh. It’s dizzying, like he’s standing at the top of the world and looking down for miles. Ling makes a muffled sound but it fills Greed’s head like steam.
“Listen to me, Prince.” Greed grabs the edge of the mirror, leaning in closer to look himself in the eye where Ling is watching. “I’m going to show you everything this world has to offer.”
The ghost of Ling inside him is taut like a bowstring, and the legs Greed can’t feel are spread wide in front of the mirror. With Ling panting like an animal, Greed fixes on the sight of his hand gliding over Ling’s cock, absolutely certain this is the first time he’s ever wanted to look at himself or any other guy in this way, but he can’t deny: they look good like this.
Strangled sounds of pleasure echo inside Greed’s head— Ling teetering on the edge of a precipice and barely hanging on. Greed peers into their shared space once more, just to see for himself. He finds Ling struggling to keep his eyes open, his face flushed, lips parted, and his hands planted on the ground behind his hips. Greed almost loses his momentum in their physical form as he briefly thinks about climbing on top of this Ling, with his narrow waist and his sloped shoulders. They may share a body, but there are expressions only Ling can make with this face, sounds only he can make with his voice.
When Ling catches Greed watching him from inside, there’s a split second of relief on his face before he shuts his eyes and lets his head loll back. Greed feels his own teeth clenching up above at the fierce desire to put his mouth on Ling’s neck, and he forces himself back into their body so he can finish what he started. Returning to full physical awareness with a renewed urgency as he feels Ling’s back arching from an untouchable place, Greed’s wicked grin melts into feverish determination.
He might be working Ling too hard, unable to loosen his fingers from Ling’s slick skin as droplets of cum drip onto the hardwood, but Ling only moans in response. The first full sound of bliss he’s let himself make all evening, and Greed breathes it in like he needs it. He wants to burn the shape of Ling’s desire into his memory, burn it until every iteration of Greed will remember what this feels like.
“Greed,” the word spills out of Ling, filling the echo chamber of their chest, and it sounds every bit as much like Greed’s name as it does an accusation at that moment.
Greed responds directly to Ling, as close to a whisper as he can get in the shared space of their chest. “Yours and mine, Prince.”
Ling comes with a gasp, his legs twitching beneath Greed as he paints a messy line over the clean glass of the mirror. Greed has a brief moment of regret as he thinks he would have rather felt that warmth on his own skin, but feeling Ling slumping onto his back is worth it. Greed tells himself with a brewing new hunger that there’s always next time.
As Ling withdraws from their physical body, Greed rises up on weary legs, unstable from the switch in control. Swaying forward, he catches himself with a hand on the mirror, then leans his forehead onto it as well, staring into their eyes.
Ling is there too, and suddenly Ling’s need for air is Greed’s, and they’re both panting, breath fogging lightly on the glass. Greed smirks at their reflection, and Ling moves their other arm up to rest beside their face.
“Got what you wanted?” Ling asks him again.
Greed moves their left hand up, and Ling moves their right, until their fingers are touching, slowly weaving together one digit at a time. Half-numb in one hand, sensation gone double in the other, Greed closes his eyes.
“For now.”