he's trans!

[I really want to write this whole fic but it would be long as hec k and I just don’t have the time so here’s a kind of shorter version?? //sweats//]

It all starts with their need to find the absolute. cheapest. house. since they spend all their student money on food, books and Ed’s increasingly expensive chemistry experiments.

Which leads them to Roy’s Estate Agents office. The company is fairly new, so they’ve only managed to acquire cheap, junky houses that the larger firms don’t want. (Roy’s starting from the bottom, but he’s got plans ok, this estate agents firm will be the biggest in the city, just you wait.) 

After Ed insisting that they really do want their absolute cheapest property and Roy scoffing that they really won’t want this one. (’Look, we’re not picky. Just show us the cheapest one you’ve got and we’ll take it. How bad could it be? It’ll be fine as long as it’s got a roof,’ Ed breezes.) (’And a kitchen!’ Ling adds.) 

Roy eventually agrees to show them the very cheapest property they own just to get this whirlwind of weirdness out of his office. (and definitely not out of some childish streak the two boys seem to have brought out of him.) They can get what they wish for then, Roy thinks smugly, setting up his Office Team Leader, and wife, Riza to take them to a viewing. She shakes her head in disapproval.

They’re taken to this freaking huge old style mansion of a house, which would be more impressive if it didn’t look like something out of a horror movie - some of the grimy windows have been smashed, weeds are growing out of control in the front garden and poking through some of the brickwork on the house itself, it looks like some of the roof tiles are missing and Ed’s foot goes straight through the first rotten wooden step on his way up the porch. 

Inside is not much better - a thick layer of dust covers all the old furniture inside, as do a multitude of spider webs, and weeds have actually began to grow inside the house too… But the space is huge, there’s a ridiculous amount of rooms, and there’s a giant kitchen at the back. There’s even a library! Though it’s debatable how many of the books haven’t been destroyed by rot and damp. 

After realising that the boys are totally sold on the house (despite it being a wreck) Riza tries to warn them that the reason the firm even got a house like this on their books in the first place was because it passed through a number of different estate agents and homeowners and never stayed sold. Anyone brave enough to take the place on put it back on the market shortly after. Any attempts to knock the house down resulted in the machinery shutting down mysteriously. It’s said that owners of the house over the years reported objects flying around rooms, their possessions going missing and screams in the middle of the night.

Ed and Ling consider this, but Ling raises his eyebrows and shrugs and Ed nods at him. “So just how cheap is this place anyway?” He finally asks.

Sold!

Roy expects they’ll last as long as anyone else in the house. (’Give it a few days, Riza,’ he laughs to her over their breakfast table the next morning, ‘they’ll be begging me to take it back.’)

The two boys persuade, bribe and emotionally blackmail their family and friends into helping out with smartening the place up - Al’s in his first year of college and shakes his head when he sees the wreck his brother and his friend have bought, (’And somehow I’m not even surprised this is your house, brother,’ he chuckles as he attempts to dust off the once-expensive looking dining table and chairs) his girlfriend Mei is more disparaging and just straight up calls it a dump. Ling isn’t bothered by his half-sister’s remark and dirty looks she throws the place, and helps his friend Lan Fan with scrubbing the kitchen clean. Ed’s busy trying to fix the rotten floorboards and staircase while his fiance Winry works on the ancient electrics and heating. The small group work tirelessly and get it looking… less grim. Which is a bonus! They’ve even dusted and cleaned the sheets on the beds - somewhere to sleep! Extra bonus!

But… when they get up the next morning some of the stuff they unpacked around the house has been moved or gone totally missing, and there’s a coating of white powder over everything they spent the day dusting in the kitchen and living room (they find the empty bag of flour on top of the dining table) (’I just bought that, it was a brand new bag, what a waste’ Ling laments). “If Roy thinks we’re going to give up this house because of a few demons or ghosts or whatever, he has another thing coming,” Ed declares.

After that, the stubbornness of the boys, their desire for a cheap place to stay, and their uncanny ability to just Get On With It, means that all of the strange goings on in the house are completely passed over, ignored or adapted to. The clanking pipes are no big deal, the screams are a nuisance but that’s what headphones and loud music are for, things going missing is irritating too, but the stuff is always hidden somewhere in the house so it’ll turn up at some point? and things being knocked over or turned upside down just isn’t spooky. Try Harder??

They are both studying late into the night, a week after they’ve moved in, and Ed’s coffee cup mysteriously drags itself to the end of the table and falls onto the floor (’Seriously?’ Ed groans, ‘I’m trying to study, can you not right now?’) “Are you kidding me??” a raspy voice answers “Howww are you both not bothered by any of this? Are you really that dense? You’re being haunted. By Demons!”  Envy shimmers into being in front of them as they speak, throwing their arms in the air. “Oh great,” they continue ranting, “now you can see me because I spoke to you.” 

Ed and Ling are less bothered by this revelation than they should be, which only irritates Envy more. Ed is more bothered about finding out all the Hows and Whys and the science behind it all, and Ling wants to know more inane questions like wondering if being a demon is like being a ghost, because it sure looks like it? do ghosts even exist? they said ‘demons’ plural so that means there are more of them in the house?

Envy is a petty thing and takes every opportunity to get them to move out by trying to be spooky and ‘threatening’, though now stealing things and hiding them round the house is made harder by the fact the boys can see them (”Envy, will you get out of my room? And put my phone charger down! Hey! Get back here!”)

It isn’t long before Envy’s more corporeal presence in the house makes the boys feel like they have an extra roommate (though it’s one that doesn’t eat or sleep and is constantly making hissed insults at them at every opportunity). In the end, one by one, the other demons reveal themselves, either on purpose or by accident, and their house number goes from two to nine, including the seven demons. They’re not bad housemates on account of the fact they never use any of the hot water, electricity or food, but they each have their own… quirks. 

Pride is a little petty brat just as bad as Envy, and will loudly declare often that the reason the boys haven’t been scared away is because he hasn’t tried his very hardest to get them out yet. He likes to bang pots and pans against each other in the night sometimes. (”Pride! Knock it off!” Ed will burst out into the night above the clanking.) (Ling thinks of Pride as a tiny dog that yaps to get attention and make himself seem scary.) There is a darker edge to Pride though, that the boys sometimes see in his eyes. He’s a little nuisance, but something tells them to remain wary.

Lust is one of the nicest of the demons, though that’s only after about a week of her trying to unsuccessfully seduce them both. But Ed is devoted to his fiance (’I love her, and besides, she’d kill me if I so much as looked at another woman, demon or not.’) And she’s just not Ling’s type. (’You’re certainly beautiful, but you’ve got this whole Praying Mantis kill-you-after-I’m-done-with-you vibe going on, and I’m just not into that, sorry’). She gives up on them (after asking if they have any good looking friends they can bring her to play with) (they tell her no way) and she usually ends up reigning in Envy’s antics when they get out of hand, and keeping Gluttony from destroying everything in the kitchen.

Gluttony is no trouble at all and usually sticks by Lust’s side. Unless he gets hungry. Sometimes he forgets he’s a demon bound to the house and feels the phantom sensation of being hungry. He can’t eat anything so he just destroys all the food in the kitchen in a tantrum instead. Ling comes up with inventive locks and hiding places for their food, though he suspects Envy goes in and unlocks the cupboards from time to time…

Sloth lives in the basement. He’s just a hulking mass of muscle that sleeps in their basement, no big deal. Occasionally he snores and it sounds a little bit like someone’s turned a chainsaw on down there.

Wrath is the only one that can make Ed and Ling’s skin crawl. He was the last to reveal himself, and it only happened because he decided it was time. As far as they’re aware, he doesn’t ever do anything to their possessions or the house, he just observes. Disconcerting. And Ed has seen him conversing with Pride on occasion, though it was always too quiet to hear what they were saying. Hmm…

Sometimes Ed and Ling forget Greed isn’t actually another housemate, as he enjoys to watch crappy movies on their laptop with them into the stupidly late hours of the night, he tells the most ridiculous stories about his exploits as a demon of greed that may or may not be true, but they’re great to listen to, and he’s always telling Envy and Pride to quit being such little shits. If only he had a less tacky sense of fashion, and stopped stealing things and hiding them away in his own little stashes (’Them’s the rules, kid, I find it, I own it.’) (’You didn’t find anything, Greed, this is my shirt!’) it’s a little weird that he does it to Ling more than Ed…

Roy comes to check on them after a month or so, ready to gloat over the boys being fully traumatised and ready to quit (but he’s definitely not childish, he reminds himself) but finds them in a cleaned up, fixed up version of the wreck he remembered. He reevaluates his views on the stubborn resolve of broke college students. Riza wishes them good luck.

Al visits often, and loves exploring the house; he’s even found a couple of secret doorways and a hidden staircase. He discovers a small hidden cupboard containing crystals, a knife encrusted with very old brown blood and a bowl of bird skulls. They carefully shut the cupboard, replace the picture that hid the door and leave it well alone. Despite Ed telling him all about the demons, Al is determined, and a little excited, to move in with the friends in his own second year, when Ed and Ling move into their third and final year. (’How exciting! To live with these anomalies! I mean, they shouldn’t even exist, yet here they are!’ He enthuses.) (’Exciting except when they’re being a pain in the ass.’ Ed grouches.)

Envy develops some kind of personal grudge against Ed, and they get great kicks out of pushing his stuff off his desk (like a cat, Ed thinks with frustration) or turning the oven up while he’s trying to cook food when he’s not looking. Pride joins in, and the two act like the bratty younger siblings he has heard about from friends at college. (Al was an angel of a younger brother, so he’d never experienced this before.) One night Lust manages to intimidate them away from bothering him while he’s trying to study and he ends up opening up to her about his family, and how he misses his mom. (She is moved by this, but doesn’t let on.) She decides to return the favour and tell him more about the demons living in the house, what they are, what they represent (aspects of the seven deadly sins, of course) and what little memories they have of how they got to be in this situation in the first place - summoned to the house and bound there, they literally cannot leave. She doesn’t know what purpose this was for.

Ling and Ed still spend alot of time together, studying and hanging out, but Ling also spends alot of his free time with Greed. Ed gets concerned by this.

Ed comes home early from college one afternoon, and stops dead when he goes by Ling’s room and sees two Lings in there on the floor. Ed’s freaking out, then they wake up, and they’re freaking out too. (’Wait, Greed possessed your body? Seriously? And then you both went into campus??!’) (’It was more like we shared my body really. That’s probably why he looks like me now? Got to admit, that’s weird.’) (’You’re telling me! You reckon this is permanent? Shit, my head’s pounding.’) Ling guesses two souls in one body burnt out his energy, which is why Ed found them separated on the floor. Ed thinks he’s being far too casual about it. (’You had a demon, Ling, a demon inside your body.’) (Greed snickers.) It’s been no secret that Greed got on the best with Ling, and yeah, ok, they’re living with demons. but look. is demon possession going too far? Like. that throws up so many unwanted questions about what could happen if the others find out. He’s still a demon, he’s still bound to the house, nothing has changed, except… when they were sharing a body… they went outside. So lets not tell the others. 

Greed’s altered appearance and frequent disappearances from the house is difficult to explain away, and Ed is sure Wrath Knows Somehow. (’Oh, yeah, weird huh?’ Ed stammers, trying his best to lie to the unnerving demon about Greed’s new look, ‘you, uh, know what they say about close friends! They start to look like each other! Completely, exactly, totally alike, because they’re so close you know?’ he laughs too loudly.)

Ed is finally sorting through the last bits of the library he hasn’t been through one day and he comes across a diary from the man who lived there originally. Some of it is damaged from the damp (including the first page where the man’s name is written) but it’s full of occult symbols, theories about demons, and crazy dreams he had. This is another disturbing development.

Winry comes to visit unexpectedly and Ed absolutely does not want her to know about the demons, so he tries really hard to keep her stay as normal as possible. Envy figures this out and tries really hard to make her stay as disturbing as possible. (’What weird noises in the basement??!’ Ed yells over Sloth’s snoring. ‘Of course that drawer didn’t just open itself Winry, the house is drafty and the wind blew it open!’ ‘The screaming?? Uhhh, that’s Ling. He’s watching a horror movie. A really scary horror movie.’)