Fic: Serving Up Smiles - Part Two
Title: Serving Up Smiles
Beta: ladyshadowphyre
Genre: AU, gen
Characters: Edward Elric, Roy Mustang, Alphonse Elric
Non-pairing, so far. Looks like it might stay that way.
Rating: PG, to be safe.
Spoiler: None, that I know of.
Timeline: Complete AU, set several months after part one.
Warning: None, that I can think of. If you see anything I should add or change here, let me know.
Part one.
When Roy came home that evening, Ed and Al were already together in the living room. The younger Elric was curled in the fetal position, head in his brother’s lap, and Edward was dragging his fingers through Alphonse’s hair, smiling faintly as he watched his sibling sleep. “You didn’t have work today?” Mustang asked, taking a seat beside the blond on the couch.
Golden eyes lifted from studying the younger Elric, apparently surprised to find that he was no longer alone. “I worked this morning.” He answered quietly, before returning his gaze to the form in his lap. “Al started dinner not too long ago, it should be ready soon.”
“Does he always sleep in the middle of the day?” Roy asked, noting that Alphonse’s mouth was opened just slightly in his unconscious state. Thinking about it, he imagined that Edward probably didn’t look much different when he slept.
Ed smiled, fingers stilling as he nodded. “Sometimes. He has a lot to make-up for.” The blond answered. One of Al’s cats chose that moment to leap into the General’s lap, causing both men to jump a bit in surprise.
After a moment, the older man cleared his throat. “Edward, I’ve been meaning to ask about this for awhile, now...” Dark eyes lowered to the hand that had resumed stroking through the younger boy’s hair. “Does that... Feel any different? From before, I mean.”
The blond looked at his hand in silence for a moment, taking his time to reply to Mustang’s inquiry. “Reactions are the same, responses to things...” He murmured, eyes half-closed as if he were no longer in the present. “The brain sends out signals, and the automail reacts like any flesh limb would...” Ed clenched his hand into a fist, watching as he turned his wrist slightly. “Sensations are different though. The feeling sensors weren’t necessarily in the most sensitive parts of the arm, or leg.” He brought the fingers of his left hand to his right wrist, watching them ghost over the vein there. “There was... a bolt here.” He continued to explain, smiling suddenly, and still seeming to be off in another world. “And, the elbow-“ he motioned to his arm, indicating exactly where he meant, “didn’t feel much at all.” The sudden grin that the blond expressed surprised the older man, and Edward actually laughed then. “It’s... good to be in the flesh, again.”
“I’m sure Al agrees,” Roy mused, noticing that Ed seemed to have returned to the present, once again. “I never doubted that you’d get him back to normal, you know,” he added with a small smirk.
Edward opened his mouth to respond, when the timer in the kitchen went off. “I better get that,” he muttered, shifting Alphonse from his lap and fleeing the room before Roy could protest his lack of a response. Now that they were on better terms, Mustang was seeing a different side of the older Elric. A side that was soft, quiet, and patient. He’d caught glimpses of these traits in the past - mostly as a spectator when Edward was dealing with someone else - but on a rare occasion, even in conversation with him, there’d been a hint of this other personality. So, this is the Edward Elric that friends and family got to know, the older man thought to himself. He certainly couldn’t say he didn’t like it, even if provoking a rant from the blond was still enjoyable on occasion.
It had been Alphonse that had accepted his invitation to move in. By then, the three were seeing a lot of each other, and he’d reasoned with his older brother that the General had a large house and splitting costs three ways was better than the little apartment they had shared until then. Roy had spent the first few weeks after they’d moved in staying out of Ed’s way, especially when - not long after the move-in - Al also got a job. Edward’s main reason to agree to moving in was the fact that it wasn’t any further away from his job than the Elric’s previous residence.
Roy was smiling at the memory of their first day living together when the younger of the two brothers stirred in his sleep, beside him. Edward had been absolutely livid, swearing that the bastard was probably trying to find some loophole to get him back into the military until Alphonse reminded him that the two of them being in the military and living together wouldn’t be beneficial in the least. If anything, it would cause suspicion and probably get both of them in trouble. Ed had then spent the rest of the evening in silence, occasionally glaring at Mustang as if to assure that he still didn’t trust the man one bit.
Al awoke just as Roy decided to go help Edward get dinner ready, in the kitchen. Sitting up the youngest resident of the Mustang-Elric household blinked at Mustang before turning his gaze to the doorway of the living room. He sniffed at the air, and opened his mouth to speak when Ed appeared in the threshold. “Dinner’s ready,” the blond announced with an apologetic grin.
“Brother,” Alphonse groused, rubbing at an eye with the back of his hand. “You were supposed to wake me when the timer went off.”
“I had it under control. Besides, Al- you need your sleep.” Edward’s smile had evaporated into a look of concern then, and Roy cringed inwardly in anticipation of the argument that usually followed conversations of this nature.
“You don’t have to baby me, Ed,” Alphonse responded, as he got to his feet. The cat in Roy’s lap jumped down, then, watching Al for his next movement. “I can take care of myself, I took care of both of us for long enough-“
“Yeah, I know,” the older blond cut him off. “I’m sorry, Al, but you started dinner, I thought that I could finish it.” Edward turned to head back into the kitchen, his sibling fast on his heels and the cat not far behind. Roy waited, watching from the couch to see how far this conversation was bound to escalate. “Equivalent Exchange, Al. If you took care of us for four years, isn’t it time that I gave something back? Besides, I’m the older brother - I should be the one taking care of you.”
Mustang watched through the doorway as the younger Elric tugged on his sibling’s ponytail. “We’re supposed to be taking care of each other,” he corrected, ignoring the yelp of pain his brother emitted. “The General, too, now that we all live together.”
Edward scowled, pulling a roast from the oven, and Roy smirked as he made his way into the kitchen then. “He can take care of himself,” the blond snapped, setting the meal down on the table and looking at the older man as if daring him to argue.
“Of course I can, Ed, but then I wouldn’t get to see your little housewife routine,” the older man countered, before Alphonse could respond. The brothers could fight over the General’s importance - among a million other things - for hours if left to their own devices and Roy wanted to sit down and eat in some manner of peace within the next ten minutes.
He crossed the room to get the silverware and help Al set the table when Ed retorted, “Don’t take it out on me that you can’t commit to a woman for more than a night, nevermind long enough to get married.” The older man did his best not to stiffen at the words, only smirking as he passed the older Elric on his way to the table.
“Brother, that’s-“
“It’s all right, Al,” the General interrupted, giving Edward a long steady look. “You know nothing about my personal life, Ed,” he answered the blond’s response, calmly.
“We would if you told us,” Edward snapped back, golden eyes narrowing. Roy opened his mouth to speak, but Ed continued. “You knew everything about us, for how many years? We live with you, and what do we know? I bet you still have ways to track everything I’ve done since I left the military. Sure, you acted surprised t-“
“Edward,” Roy interrupted, genuinely caught off guard, when Edward actually stopped talking. “Contrary to whatever you may believe, I haven’t been spying on your every move. Now, can we sit down to dinner before it gets cold?”
Amber eyes glared daggers as Ed seemed to put serious contemplation into his answer. After a strained moment of silence, the blond flopped into a chair and grumbled under his breath, “You’re still a bastard…”
Too relieved that Edward had complied to bother worrying about anything else, Roy nodded, “Yes, I’m well aware of that fact, Ed - you remind me every day.”
“Well, you are,” the blond answered automatically, before passing him the rolls. Alphonse seemed to be waiting for the argument to continue, but Roy just laughed and turned the dinner conversation to more pleasant things.
- - - - - -
Shortly after dinner, Alphonse groggily excused himself from the table and Roy frowned at Ed. "He does need a lot of sleep, doesn't he?" The Elrics had been living with him nearly a month now, but he hadn't seen the younger need to rest as much as he had been, the past few days.
Edward smirked as he got up to clean the table off. "You haven't seen him this tired often, huh? Yeah... It's been a few years, but he was in that armor a long time. He's working his first job, and still stubbornly trying to do all of the house work he used to do to keep busy in my absence. Today's a perfect example of how sometimes... he just forgets his own limits." The blond shrugged, turning the faucet on as Roy brought the rest of the dirty dishes to the sink. "I'm sure he's just waiting for us with that book. He knows it's not a good idea to sleep right after eating."
Mustang began to pack away the leftovers as Ed washed the dishes, smirking at the thought that, with the Elrics in the house, the food would be gone by this time tomorrow. "Is it a good idea for him to be working, then? If he's going to push himself so hard, like that... Shouldn't-"
"I couldn't stop him if I tried, and trust me, I have. He hasn't had a job before this one. So as long as he stays healthy, there's no harm... Whatever keeps him happy." Roy watched Ed wash the dishes, almost distracted from the other's words at the sight. The older man somehow managed not to comment on how domestic a scene it was with the blond up to his elbows in soap suds. Edward chose that exact moment to glance over his shoulder, and golden eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Are you just going to stare?" he snapped, but Roy was too busy trying to tell if the younger alchemist was blushing to really notice. "Grab a towel and start drying, or find something else to do."
Unable to contain his smirk just then, Roy got a towel - if only to enjoy several more minutes of Ed cleaning the kitchen - and set to the task of drying the washed dishes and putting them away. Even after several weeks of living with the brothers, some things were still new and others - no matter how many times he witness them - would never seem ordinary.
As the blond began washing the table, the General chuckled, shaking his head. "How many times do I have to tell both of you that I- we have a house keeper, for that?"
Ed quirked an eyebrow as if Roy had suggested something highly inappropriate, glancing at the man over his shoulder. "How many times do we have to tell you that it'd cut expenses not having one?"
"I've had Donna's services longer than I've known you, Ed. It wouldn't be right just putting her out of a job." The older man shook his head again as he spoke, watching the blond scrub at a spot on the table vigorously. "It's not like she makes much anymore, as it is - with you and Alphonse doing so much that I would have left for her."
The younger man fixed him with such a deadpan stare that Roy wondered what he could have possibly said this time. "She comes here twice a week, Roy. It's a miracle this house wasn't a mess before we moved in." Edward tossed the dish rag at the General, and started for the living room before he could respond. Making dinner may have been a production and a half - but the clean up and after dinner rituals seemed set in stone, every day for almost a month, now.
Roy put the rag over the sink and set to making three mugs of hot chocolate. Generally, he and Ed preferred coffee, but after dinner had been soft music, one of them reading a book aloud, and hot chocolate since the first day the brothers had moved in. It was how they unwound after all day of unpacking boxes, and just stuck every day following.
Roy smiled to himself as he followed Edward's path into the living room, hearing the younger Elric's voice announce the title of tonight's reading.
All comments screened for personal reasons.
Beta: ladyshadowphyre
Genre: AU, gen
Characters: Edward Elric, Roy Mustang, Alphonse Elric
Non-pairing, so far. Looks like it might stay that way.
Rating: PG, to be safe.
Spoiler: None, that I know of.
Timeline: Complete AU, set several months after part one.
Warning: None, that I can think of. If you see anything I should add or change here, let me know.
Part one.
When Roy came home that evening, Ed and Al were already together in the living room. The younger Elric was curled in the fetal position, head in his brother’s lap, and Edward was dragging his fingers through Alphonse’s hair, smiling faintly as he watched his sibling sleep. “You didn’t have work today?” Mustang asked, taking a seat beside the blond on the couch.
Golden eyes lifted from studying the younger Elric, apparently surprised to find that he was no longer alone. “I worked this morning.” He answered quietly, before returning his gaze to the form in his lap. “Al started dinner not too long ago, it should be ready soon.”
“Does he always sleep in the middle of the day?” Roy asked, noting that Alphonse’s mouth was opened just slightly in his unconscious state. Thinking about it, he imagined that Edward probably didn’t look much different when he slept.
Ed smiled, fingers stilling as he nodded. “Sometimes. He has a lot to make-up for.” The blond answered. One of Al’s cats chose that moment to leap into the General’s lap, causing both men to jump a bit in surprise.
After a moment, the older man cleared his throat. “Edward, I’ve been meaning to ask about this for awhile, now...” Dark eyes lowered to the hand that had resumed stroking through the younger boy’s hair. “Does that... Feel any different? From before, I mean.”
The blond looked at his hand in silence for a moment, taking his time to reply to Mustang’s inquiry. “Reactions are the same, responses to things...” He murmured, eyes half-closed as if he were no longer in the present. “The brain sends out signals, and the automail reacts like any flesh limb would...” Ed clenched his hand into a fist, watching as he turned his wrist slightly. “Sensations are different though. The feeling sensors weren’t necessarily in the most sensitive parts of the arm, or leg.” He brought the fingers of his left hand to his right wrist, watching them ghost over the vein there. “There was... a bolt here.” He continued to explain, smiling suddenly, and still seeming to be off in another world. “And, the elbow-“ he motioned to his arm, indicating exactly where he meant, “didn’t feel much at all.” The sudden grin that the blond expressed surprised the older man, and Edward actually laughed then. “It’s... good to be in the flesh, again.”
“I’m sure Al agrees,” Roy mused, noticing that Ed seemed to have returned to the present, once again. “I never doubted that you’d get him back to normal, you know,” he added with a small smirk.
Edward opened his mouth to respond, when the timer in the kitchen went off. “I better get that,” he muttered, shifting Alphonse from his lap and fleeing the room before Roy could protest his lack of a response. Now that they were on better terms, Mustang was seeing a different side of the older Elric. A side that was soft, quiet, and patient. He’d caught glimpses of these traits in the past - mostly as a spectator when Edward was dealing with someone else - but on a rare occasion, even in conversation with him, there’d been a hint of this other personality. So, this is the Edward Elric that friends and family got to know, the older man thought to himself. He certainly couldn’t say he didn’t like it, even if provoking a rant from the blond was still enjoyable on occasion.
It had been Alphonse that had accepted his invitation to move in. By then, the three were seeing a lot of each other, and he’d reasoned with his older brother that the General had a large house and splitting costs three ways was better than the little apartment they had shared until then. Roy had spent the first few weeks after they’d moved in staying out of Ed’s way, especially when - not long after the move-in - Al also got a job. Edward’s main reason to agree to moving in was the fact that it wasn’t any further away from his job than the Elric’s previous residence.
Roy was smiling at the memory of their first day living together when the younger of the two brothers stirred in his sleep, beside him. Edward had been absolutely livid, swearing that the bastard was probably trying to find some loophole to get him back into the military until Alphonse reminded him that the two of them being in the military and living together wouldn’t be beneficial in the least. If anything, it would cause suspicion and probably get both of them in trouble. Ed had then spent the rest of the evening in silence, occasionally glaring at Mustang as if to assure that he still didn’t trust the man one bit.
Al awoke just as Roy decided to go help Edward get dinner ready, in the kitchen. Sitting up the youngest resident of the Mustang-Elric household blinked at Mustang before turning his gaze to the doorway of the living room. He sniffed at the air, and opened his mouth to speak when Ed appeared in the threshold. “Dinner’s ready,” the blond announced with an apologetic grin.
“Brother,” Alphonse groused, rubbing at an eye with the back of his hand. “You were supposed to wake me when the timer went off.”
“I had it under control. Besides, Al- you need your sleep.” Edward’s smile had evaporated into a look of concern then, and Roy cringed inwardly in anticipation of the argument that usually followed conversations of this nature.
“You don’t have to baby me, Ed,” Alphonse responded, as he got to his feet. The cat in Roy’s lap jumped down, then, watching Al for his next movement. “I can take care of myself, I took care of both of us for long enough-“
“Yeah, I know,” the older blond cut him off. “I’m sorry, Al, but you started dinner, I thought that I could finish it.” Edward turned to head back into the kitchen, his sibling fast on his heels and the cat not far behind. Roy waited, watching from the couch to see how far this conversation was bound to escalate. “Equivalent Exchange, Al. If you took care of us for four years, isn’t it time that I gave something back? Besides, I’m the older brother - I should be the one taking care of you.”
Mustang watched through the doorway as the younger Elric tugged on his sibling’s ponytail. “We’re supposed to be taking care of each other,” he corrected, ignoring the yelp of pain his brother emitted. “The General, too, now that we all live together.”
Edward scowled, pulling a roast from the oven, and Roy smirked as he made his way into the kitchen then. “He can take care of himself,” the blond snapped, setting the meal down on the table and looking at the older man as if daring him to argue.
“Of course I can, Ed, but then I wouldn’t get to see your little housewife routine,” the older man countered, before Alphonse could respond. The brothers could fight over the General’s importance - among a million other things - for hours if left to their own devices and Roy wanted to sit down and eat in some manner of peace within the next ten minutes.
He crossed the room to get the silverware and help Al set the table when Ed retorted, “Don’t take it out on me that you can’t commit to a woman for more than a night, nevermind long enough to get married.” The older man did his best not to stiffen at the words, only smirking as he passed the older Elric on his way to the table.
“Brother, that’s-“
“It’s all right, Al,” the General interrupted, giving Edward a long steady look. “You know nothing about my personal life, Ed,” he answered the blond’s response, calmly.
“We would if you told us,” Edward snapped back, golden eyes narrowing. Roy opened his mouth to speak, but Ed continued. “You knew everything about us, for how many years? We live with you, and what do we know? I bet you still have ways to track everything I’ve done since I left the military. Sure, you acted surprised t-“
“Edward,” Roy interrupted, genuinely caught off guard, when Edward actually stopped talking. “Contrary to whatever you may believe, I haven’t been spying on your every move. Now, can we sit down to dinner before it gets cold?”
Amber eyes glared daggers as Ed seemed to put serious contemplation into his answer. After a strained moment of silence, the blond flopped into a chair and grumbled under his breath, “You’re still a bastard…”
Too relieved that Edward had complied to bother worrying about anything else, Roy nodded, “Yes, I’m well aware of that fact, Ed - you remind me every day.”
“Well, you are,” the blond answered automatically, before passing him the rolls. Alphonse seemed to be waiting for the argument to continue, but Roy just laughed and turned the dinner conversation to more pleasant things.
- - - - - -
Shortly after dinner, Alphonse groggily excused himself from the table and Roy frowned at Ed. "He does need a lot of sleep, doesn't he?" The Elrics had been living with him nearly a month now, but he hadn't seen the younger need to rest as much as he had been, the past few days.
Edward smirked as he got up to clean the table off. "You haven't seen him this tired often, huh? Yeah... It's been a few years, but he was in that armor a long time. He's working his first job, and still stubbornly trying to do all of the house work he used to do to keep busy in my absence. Today's a perfect example of how sometimes... he just forgets his own limits." The blond shrugged, turning the faucet on as Roy brought the rest of the dirty dishes to the sink. "I'm sure he's just waiting for us with that book. He knows it's not a good idea to sleep right after eating."
Mustang began to pack away the leftovers as Ed washed the dishes, smirking at the thought that, with the Elrics in the house, the food would be gone by this time tomorrow. "Is it a good idea for him to be working, then? If he's going to push himself so hard, like that... Shouldn't-"
"I couldn't stop him if I tried, and trust me, I have. He hasn't had a job before this one. So as long as he stays healthy, there's no harm... Whatever keeps him happy." Roy watched Ed wash the dishes, almost distracted from the other's words at the sight. The older man somehow managed not to comment on how domestic a scene it was with the blond up to his elbows in soap suds. Edward chose that exact moment to glance over his shoulder, and golden eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Are you just going to stare?" he snapped, but Roy was too busy trying to tell if the younger alchemist was blushing to really notice. "Grab a towel and start drying, or find something else to do."
Unable to contain his smirk just then, Roy got a towel - if only to enjoy several more minutes of Ed cleaning the kitchen - and set to the task of drying the washed dishes and putting them away. Even after several weeks of living with the brothers, some things were still new and others - no matter how many times he witness them - would never seem ordinary.
As the blond began washing the table, the General chuckled, shaking his head. "How many times do I have to tell both of you that I- we have a house keeper, for that?"
Ed quirked an eyebrow as if Roy had suggested something highly inappropriate, glancing at the man over his shoulder. "How many times do we have to tell you that it'd cut expenses not having one?"
"I've had Donna's services longer than I've known you, Ed. It wouldn't be right just putting her out of a job." The older man shook his head again as he spoke, watching the blond scrub at a spot on the table vigorously. "It's not like she makes much anymore, as it is - with you and Alphonse doing so much that I would have left for her."
The younger man fixed him with such a deadpan stare that Roy wondered what he could have possibly said this time. "She comes here twice a week, Roy. It's a miracle this house wasn't a mess before we moved in." Edward tossed the dish rag at the General, and started for the living room before he could respond. Making dinner may have been a production and a half - but the clean up and after dinner rituals seemed set in stone, every day for almost a month, now.
Roy put the rag over the sink and set to making three mugs of hot chocolate. Generally, he and Ed preferred coffee, but after dinner had been soft music, one of them reading a book aloud, and hot chocolate since the first day the brothers had moved in. It was how they unwound after all day of unpacking boxes, and just stuck every day following.
Roy smiled to himself as he followed Edward's path into the living room, hearing the younger Elric's voice announce the title of tonight's reading.
All comments screened for personal reasons.