FMA -- The Christmas One
Title: The Christmas One
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Miles/Alfons, Roy/Al, possibly Ed/Lan Fan but no one knows
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,184
Warnings: language, Al is a saucy little bugger
Prompt: It’s Christmas, but who cares really. Playing videogames/watching movies/tv-shows in undies is Christmasy enough right?
Summary: [Further tales from the Modern!AU, following Classifieds, Boy, We're Free, Sometimes Shit Happens, and Ultra-Best-Ever.] If Christmas with the Elrics and their attachés was ever ordinary, the universe would explode.
Author's Note: A Christmas fic for Phindus - broest of bros, adorablest of artists, and everything I ever could have wanted from a Tumblr friend. I hope I've been able to brighten your 2013 at least a little with all my silly crap, and here's to a 2014 full of MOAR HEIMILES - and more laughs and more conversations and more awesome. You rock my world, dude. ♥ (Also, dear readers: if it seems like I'm deliberately sidestepping a Roy-and-band confrontation to maximize the catastrophic potential, that's because that is exactly what I'm doing. :'D)
THE CHRISTMAS ONE
“Aw, jeez,” Al says two steps into the apartment. “You could at least put some pants on, Brother.”
“I could,” Ed says from where he’s sprawled out on his stomach on the living room carpet, without even pretending to look away from his laptop screen. “But this is a pants-free zone.”
“Our legs have been liberated,” Lan Fan says from where she’s lying opposite Ed, equally pantsless. “We’re putting an end to the tyranny of trousers.”
“The subjugation of slacks,” Ed says.
“The brutality of britches,” Lan Fan says.
“The oppression of outerwear,” Ed says.
“Down with dungarees!” Lan Fan says.
Graciously, he thinks, Al gives them a moment to high-five before they glue their hands to their mice and keyboards again.
“Did you practice that?” he asks. “It’s very nice.”
“Thanks,” Ed says.
“Roy,” Al says, “you’ve met Ed.”
“Hey,” Roy says.
“S’up,” Ed says.
Al gestures to Lan Fan, trying not to look directly at the place where her panties have ‘BAMF’ shamelessly emblazoned across the butt. “And this is Lan Fan, his…”
The problem is that Al can’t tell whether Ed and Lan Fan are actually just gaming buddies who share deep and passionate loves of both real-time strategy games and boycotting civilized clothing; or whether they’re also having a lot of wild sex on the side. Al can always tell. And it’s twice as frustrating to be bamboozled out of his sixth sense for other people’s feelings by someone as completely transparent as Ed, who has the approximate emotional capacity of an overlarge dust-bunny.
“…friend,” Al finishes lamely.
“Hello,” Roy says.
“Nice to meet you,” Lan Fan says, and at least she has the bare minimum of social graces required to glance up and smile. “Are you the officially-unofficial guy?”
Al never should have said that; Ed takes to bad catchphrases like Alfons to striped cardigans.
Roy’s eyebrow quirks, joined by the corner of his mouth, and God, he’s gorgeous. “The one and only,” he says.
“Where’s Alfons?” Al asks.
“He and Band Dude went ice-skating,” Ed says. He puts out a preventative hand before Al can work up a good sputter. “He knows you’re cooking! He said they’ll only be out a little while, and to tell you they’d love to help if you need it, and as long as they get to watch some Game of Thrones later, they’re cool.”
“Gratuitous beheadings are definitely the first thing that comes to mind when I think ‘festive’,” Al says.
Ed shrugs, but Al can see him trying not to grin. “Hey, whatever floats their boat and keeps the cupcakes coming.”
“Everyone celebrates holidays differently,” Roy says, which makes excellent sense, of course; Roy is so reasonable and smart and articulate and… “I think that’s part of the fun, especially if you get the opportunity to experience several. Every family has developed their own traditions over time.”
“I guess that’s true,” Al says, trying not to sound too breathless, because Ed will give him crap about it for the rest of eternity if he lets the infatuation overwhelm him. “What are yours?”
“Oh,” Roy says, grinning sheepishly now and waving his hands, “I just steal other people’s. I’m like a magpie. For instance, my best friend’s wife always makes far too much pie-” He lifts the brown paper grocery bag in his right hand. “-and my ex-girlfriend, whose brother is currently a colleague…” He smiles ruefully at the way Al cringes, and they’re talking without words, and it’s so glorious Al could weep from sheer delight. “Their family asks that everyone who comes on Christmas brings a new ornament for the tree.” This summons the plastic bag in his other hand, and Al tries to tamp down his curiosity before it makes him look childish.
Ed looks up for a generous moment, thoughtfully. “I think we should make no pants our tradition,” he says.
“Yeah!” Lan Fan says.
This is hopeless.
“Our tradition,” Al says, “is wearing all of the ribbon from the gifts for the rest of the day.”
“You mean you guys tie each other up in bows and stuff?” Lan Fan asks. “Kinky.”
Al opens his mouth to protest, but Roy breezily says, “Quite.”
And then his brain doesn’t seem to be working very well.
“It’s kinda fun,” Ed says. “Somehow Mom always managed to make ’em stay on with Mom Magic, but we usually have to use tape.”
“Did you remember to buy tape?” Al asks.
Ed looks at him like he’s spontaneously started speaking Portuguese.
“Oh, darn,” Al says. “I hope we have enough.”
“Chill,” Ed says. “It’s Christmas, Al. It’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Al says. He takes a slow, deep breath and considers ways to be chill and cool and go-with-the-flowy, since imperturbability is something of a hot commodity in culture these days. “…we’d better start the food, though, or we’ll never finish in time.”
“Your brother is adorable,” Lan Fan says to Ed.
“Don’t encourage him,” Ed says.
“He’s extremely adorable,” Roy says, and Al’s heart sings operettas. Roy transfers both bags to one hand, slides an arm around his shoulders, and shepherds him towards the kitchen. “What would you like to start on first? I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time.”
Even though Lan Fan generally has a very calming effect on Ed’s temper-which extends to his insane overprotectiveness, in the case of his much-beleaguered, lifelong-suffering angel of a little brother-Al waits until he and Roy are into the kitchen and well out of earshot before he looks up through his eyelashes and says, “Maybe we should participate in a pants boycott.”
Al only has fifteen years and ten months (and six days, and a handful of hours) of experience, but he’s fairly confident nonetheless that there’s nothing in the world quite so satisfying as turning Roy Mustang’s perfect face faintly pink.
“That might not be wise,” Roy says. “In the past I’ve found that cooking naked tends to end in burns that are difficult to explain more often than in anything pleasant.”
It’s Al’s turn to succumb to a bit of heat in his cheeks. “Well-it wouldn’t have to be-”
Oh, jeez, now he’s thinking about perfect Roy bending down to open the oven in nothing but an apron, and in another second he’s going to have to flee to the bathroom and get a grip on himself.
Not-like that-
Oh, dear.
Intently, with the sort of stony single-mindedness that the Elrics are famous for, Al thinks his cold-shower-est thoughts. He has a fairly large collection in a tightly-locked compartment in his brain for moments like this-and for all the times when he’s in calculus class, and the smooth dip of an integral sign reminds him of the curve of Roy’s back-and all the times in English when the blank space between the lines of pentameter, with the faint imprint of the previous page’s backwards letters, makes him think of the way the lightest touch from Roy feels like it’s leaving inked brands of every color on his skin-all the times when lying in bed, cold and lonely, sees him trying to conjure Roy’s mouth, Roy’s forearms, Roy’s fingertips-
This is not going so well.
“I suppose we should start with the meat,” Roy says. “What’s the Elric party line on Christmas dinner-turkey? Ham?”
Men, Al thinks.
He doesn’t actually manage to speak the syllable before he finds himself on his tiptoes, both arms wrapped around Roy’s neck, with his mouth to Roy’s and his heart overflowing.
“Merry Christmas,” he says, panting a little when they draw apart. “Um-I’m-just so glad you’re here; it’s… we’re… weird.”
“You’re not,” Roy says, smiling softly as he brushes Al’s hair back from his forehead; Al could just purr right now. “It’s really wonderful to be here with you. Although I think I’m going to have to bow out of the no-pants cooking. Spending Christmas in the emergency room is not especially cheery.”
“I suppose we should avoid that,” Al says. He glances towards the living room and lowers his voice. “Maybe we could cook something up later, without pan-”
Roy kisses his forehead. “Sixty-eight days. Another fun and exciting way to end up in the emergency room would be encouraging your brother to break my face.”
Al should have sent a six-page wishlist to Santa where every item was Please just let me get laid. He looks up into Roy’s extremely perfect wistful smile.
“Fair point,” he says reluctantly. “Let’s not spend Christmas in the emergency room for any reason, no matter how tempting.”
Alfons is going to spend Christmas in the emergency room.
He has to look on the bright side of this, or he’ll burst into tears-at least Miles is in the impressively uncomfortable crappy plastic waiting room chair next to him, gently stroking a hand over and over through his hair.
“God,” Alfons says. “I’m sorry.”
Miles tucks a curl behind his ear. “What? Why?”
Burying one’s face in one’s hands loses some of the effect when one only has a single hand to utilize due to the incapacitation of the other wrist, but Alfons tries anyway. “I ruined Christmas!”
“You did no such thing,” Miles says. He lowers his hand and starts rubbing gently at the back of Alfons’s neck instead. “I’m just sorry you got hurt, babe; I should’ve been…”
“Carrying me?” Alfons asks. “Predicting that I was going to take a dive in hopes of winning the medal for Clumsiest Person on Earth? Knowing in advance that my shit luck was going to make sure I was the one person in a million who manages to fall on the stupid rink and fracture something?”
“No,” Miles says, smiling faintly. “I mean-just… holding your hand tighter. Looking out for you. Not asking for one more lap around even though you were tired, just because they were playing ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’, and the way their lights hit your skin makes me lose my mind.”
Alfons tries not to grin a little, but Miles always transcends all of the crap in his life-all of the worry; all of the whispers in the back of his mind, and the front of his mind, and the middle-ground, and the cheap seats; all of the They’re not going to give you hours at work if you’ve got a cast on, if you can even afford a cast without insurance, which you probably can’t.
“Besides,” Miles says, leaning his head in against Alfons’s and taking his useful hand. “All I wanted was to spend Christmas with you. And I’m getting that. I don’t care about the details.”
Alfons nuzzles in against Miles’s neck a little. It’s just that he always smells so good-which is even more comforting than usual juxtaposed with the sterilization-chemical scent ambiance that hospitals seem to favor.
“Being stuck in ER limbo is kind of a big detail,” he says.
Miles kisses his temple. “Well, other than all the people bleeding profusely, and the screaming children, and the stretchers, and the general chaos-and-injury atmosphere… it’s basically like a quiet night at home, right?”
“Uh,” Alfons says, fighting not to mirror the grin he feels as Miles’s lips curve against his cheekbone. “Sort… of…”
Miles’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and he fishes it out. The phone screen shows a candid of Olivier backstage, curled up around a notebook she’s scribbling in, looking uncharacteristically unaggressive-peaceful, almost-and the name displayed is ‘Liv Fast Die Young’.
Alfons doesn’t really know how Miles ninja-snags the pictures for his contacts; the one of Alfons is a shot of him about to take a drag on a cigarette, although it’s so flattering he’s almost unrecognizable. His “name” in the phone is ‘Gorgeous’, and someone who didn’t know him might believe it.
art by the incomparable Phindus, originally posted here
Miles swipes his thumb across the phone and raises it to his ear. “Hey, stranger.” Alfons can’t quite hear the other end of the conversation over the low hubbub of people in pain. Miles’s fingernails scratch gently at his scalp. “No, I’m in the ER… No! I’m fine, it’s-Liv-no, Alfons fell.” There is an eyeroll long enough for several sentences to be uttered. “Will do. Yes. I am still perfectly capable of performing.” He cradles the phone against his shoulder to free up a hand for pinching the bridge of his nose. “Y… es. I’ll… suggest it. I actually did, but it’s at home. Are you drunk already? Liv, it’s, like, four in the afte… No kidding? Okay, you have my blessing. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. You, too. Talk to you later. Drink some water. ’Bye.”
Alfons tries not to blink too expectantly, but he does want to know.
“Olivier,” Miles says, “sends her condolences about your arm. She also says Merry Christmas. She also hit the eggnog so hard the chickens felt it, but apparently Alex is into family caroling this year, so I can’t say I blame her. She also insists we spend part of next Christmas there, because apparently it’s not the same without me, especially since Buck and Karley disappeared into the backyard ‘hours ago’ and don’t seem to have left a trail. I got an ornament for their tree, but I forgot to bring it by yesterday.” He pauses, massaging Alfons’s shoulder-blade now. “And by ‘forgot’, I mean, ‘I knew that if I even slowed the car down in front of the house, someone would drag me out of it and tie me to the fireplace with tinsel, and I’d never get away’.”
Alfons makes a valiant attempt to process all of this information. “…but you think that next year we should go there voluntarily?”
Miles pauses. “Good point.”
“Heiderich?” a nurse calls from halfway across the room.
This chair started to make his ass go numb half an hour ago, but suddenly Alfons does not want to get up, does not want to follow her, and does not want to get his arm mummified for about a billion dollars of money he doesn’t even have-
Miles takes his hand, squeezes gently, and smiles. “C’mon, babe,” he says.
Is it a weakness in him-the susceptibility? When does a soft spot start to collapse inward on itself?
He doesn’t know. It’s all new, feeling like this, being so sure that the worst beasts can be bested when this man’s fingers are knitted tight with his.
Miles could lead him anywhere, and he’d go gladly.
So he swallows, and he stands up carefully, and they cross the crowded room.
Christmas always seems too short, to Ed. Maybe it shouldn’t be twelve days long, but it always sort of sneaks up, jumps out, screams about bill payments, and then vanishes in a puff of smoke, leaving only a pile of crumpled wrapping paper and the lingering scent of fir. It used to be sort of magical, somehow-the colored lights and the glittery shopfront windows and the tacky sweaters and the nonstop soundtrack and the cold puffs of breath and the almost-grating cheer used to illuminate something in the core of him. He remembers how it felt, but he just can’t get back to that place anymore. It’s not the same, after you stop being a kid, and the whirlwind picks you up in mid-December and flings you into a snowdrift, and you wake up, and it’s the twenty-sixth, and somehow you missed your chance to feel young again this year.
So he’s trying not to let it slip away too fast. He’s trying to take this last, lonely hour and really savor it.
He starts in the living room, at the tree, which still boasts a pretty impressive blast radius of shredded wrapping paper. The lights wink when he doesn’t look right at them, like they’ve got secrets-or maybe answers. The star on the top is tipping to one side, which was cute this morning, but now it looks like it’s sort of… wilting. Roy brought ornaments-personalized ones, with names on them; a rocket for Alfons, and a baseball bat for Ed, and an anatomically-correct heart with Al’s full name going all the way around. The last of the red and green candles they lit during dinner (“Al, isn’t that Alfons’s favorite lighter?” “…you sound surprised.”) have burned out and given up raising feeble spirals of smoke towards the ceiling. The brand-new slippers Ed is wearing are cozy as hell and also have gargoyle faces on them. He’s still not wearing any pants, ’cause, y’know, holiday.
He pads through the little place they call home, peeking into the bedrooms. Lan Fan passed out on his bed the second her Diet Mountain Dew high left her with the usual heinous crash; he draped a quilt over her when she started with that little cat-snore she has. On the opposite side of the hall, big old Band Dude has his buff-ass arms wrapped securely around Alfons, whose neon green cast he had already decorated with one of those barbed-wire ‘tattoos’ and a ring of X’s and O’s in Sharpie before they even got home. Maybe Ed’s been bribed with cupcakes one too many times, but he thinks he kind of likes how safe Alfons looks with Band Dude snuggled up around him.
Ed has to take a couple deep breaths before he eases Al’s door open and peers through the crack.
Fortunately, nobody has to get messily decapitated tonight, because he can see from here that Al and Roy are both wearing their pajamas. They’re also both still wearing an unreasonable amount of ribbon from the traditional Bow Fight that preceded everyone eating far more than was advisable, followed by pie. Pumpkin the cat is curled up in the tiny space between them, and their foreheads are just barely touching on the pillow so that their hair mingles a bit, and Roy’s arm is draped over Al’s waist.
Carefully, Ed pulls the door shut again. Then he scuffs his slippers along the carpet all the way back to his room, because static lightning will never not be awesome, before he kicks them off and climbs up onto the bed to fight Lan Fan for half of the quilt.
“Pwn you, n00b,” she mumbles.
“You say the cutest shit,” he says.
She grabs two very secure fistfuls of his shirt and buries her face in his chest. Ed gives it two minutes before she starts drooling.
And maybe it’s still not magic like it was-maybe it’s lost all the je ne Santa quoi that made his little heart strain against his ribs back in the good old days-but Ed doesn’t think anyone could argue that they didn’t do Christmas right. ’Cause he’s got a whole house full of happy family right now, and isn’t that the whole point?
He figures it is. He figures they’ve all come ho-ho-home.
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Miles/Alfons, Roy/Al, possibly Ed/Lan Fan but no one knows
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,184
Warnings: language, Al is a saucy little bugger
Prompt: It’s Christmas, but who cares really. Playing videogames/watching movies/tv-shows in undies is Christmasy enough right?
Summary: [Further tales from the Modern!AU, following Classifieds, Boy, We're Free, Sometimes Shit Happens, and Ultra-Best-Ever.] If Christmas with the Elrics and their attachés was ever ordinary, the universe would explode.
Author's Note: A Christmas fic for Phindus - broest of bros, adorablest of artists, and everything I ever could have wanted from a Tumblr friend. I hope I've been able to brighten your 2013 at least a little with all my silly crap, and here's to a 2014 full of MOAR HEIMILES - and more laughs and more conversations and more awesome. You rock my world, dude. ♥ (Also, dear readers: if it seems like I'm deliberately sidestepping a Roy-and-band confrontation to maximize the catastrophic potential, that's because that is exactly what I'm doing. :'D)
THE CHRISTMAS ONE
“Aw, jeez,” Al says two steps into the apartment. “You could at least put some pants on, Brother.”
“I could,” Ed says from where he’s sprawled out on his stomach on the living room carpet, without even pretending to look away from his laptop screen. “But this is a pants-free zone.”
“Our legs have been liberated,” Lan Fan says from where she’s lying opposite Ed, equally pantsless. “We’re putting an end to the tyranny of trousers.”
“The subjugation of slacks,” Ed says.
“The brutality of britches,” Lan Fan says.
“The oppression of outerwear,” Ed says.
“Down with dungarees!” Lan Fan says.
Graciously, he thinks, Al gives them a moment to high-five before they glue their hands to their mice and keyboards again.
“Did you practice that?” he asks. “It’s very nice.”
“Thanks,” Ed says.
“Roy,” Al says, “you’ve met Ed.”
“Hey,” Roy says.
“S’up,” Ed says.
Al gestures to Lan Fan, trying not to look directly at the place where her panties have ‘BAMF’ shamelessly emblazoned across the butt. “And this is Lan Fan, his…”
The problem is that Al can’t tell whether Ed and Lan Fan are actually just gaming buddies who share deep and passionate loves of both real-time strategy games and boycotting civilized clothing; or whether they’re also having a lot of wild sex on the side. Al can always tell. And it’s twice as frustrating to be bamboozled out of his sixth sense for other people’s feelings by someone as completely transparent as Ed, who has the approximate emotional capacity of an overlarge dust-bunny.
“…friend,” Al finishes lamely.
“Hello,” Roy says.
“Nice to meet you,” Lan Fan says, and at least she has the bare minimum of social graces required to glance up and smile. “Are you the officially-unofficial guy?”
Al never should have said that; Ed takes to bad catchphrases like Alfons to striped cardigans.
Roy’s eyebrow quirks, joined by the corner of his mouth, and God, he’s gorgeous. “The one and only,” he says.
“Where’s Alfons?” Al asks.
“He and Band Dude went ice-skating,” Ed says. He puts out a preventative hand before Al can work up a good sputter. “He knows you’re cooking! He said they’ll only be out a little while, and to tell you they’d love to help if you need it, and as long as they get to watch some Game of Thrones later, they’re cool.”
“Gratuitous beheadings are definitely the first thing that comes to mind when I think ‘festive’,” Al says.
Ed shrugs, but Al can see him trying not to grin. “Hey, whatever floats their boat and keeps the cupcakes coming.”
“Everyone celebrates holidays differently,” Roy says, which makes excellent sense, of course; Roy is so reasonable and smart and articulate and… “I think that’s part of the fun, especially if you get the opportunity to experience several. Every family has developed their own traditions over time.”
“I guess that’s true,” Al says, trying not to sound too breathless, because Ed will give him crap about it for the rest of eternity if he lets the infatuation overwhelm him. “What are yours?”
“Oh,” Roy says, grinning sheepishly now and waving his hands, “I just steal other people’s. I’m like a magpie. For instance, my best friend’s wife always makes far too much pie-” He lifts the brown paper grocery bag in his right hand. “-and my ex-girlfriend, whose brother is currently a colleague…” He smiles ruefully at the way Al cringes, and they’re talking without words, and it’s so glorious Al could weep from sheer delight. “Their family asks that everyone who comes on Christmas brings a new ornament for the tree.” This summons the plastic bag in his other hand, and Al tries to tamp down his curiosity before it makes him look childish.
Ed looks up for a generous moment, thoughtfully. “I think we should make no pants our tradition,” he says.
“Yeah!” Lan Fan says.
This is hopeless.
“Our tradition,” Al says, “is wearing all of the ribbon from the gifts for the rest of the day.”
“You mean you guys tie each other up in bows and stuff?” Lan Fan asks. “Kinky.”
Al opens his mouth to protest, but Roy breezily says, “Quite.”
And then his brain doesn’t seem to be working very well.
“It’s kinda fun,” Ed says. “Somehow Mom always managed to make ’em stay on with Mom Magic, but we usually have to use tape.”
“Did you remember to buy tape?” Al asks.
Ed looks at him like he’s spontaneously started speaking Portuguese.
“Oh, darn,” Al says. “I hope we have enough.”
“Chill,” Ed says. “It’s Christmas, Al. It’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Al says. He takes a slow, deep breath and considers ways to be chill and cool and go-with-the-flowy, since imperturbability is something of a hot commodity in culture these days. “…we’d better start the food, though, or we’ll never finish in time.”
“Your brother is adorable,” Lan Fan says to Ed.
“Don’t encourage him,” Ed says.
“He’s extremely adorable,” Roy says, and Al’s heart sings operettas. Roy transfers both bags to one hand, slides an arm around his shoulders, and shepherds him towards the kitchen. “What would you like to start on first? I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time.”
Even though Lan Fan generally has a very calming effect on Ed’s temper-which extends to his insane overprotectiveness, in the case of his much-beleaguered, lifelong-suffering angel of a little brother-Al waits until he and Roy are into the kitchen and well out of earshot before he looks up through his eyelashes and says, “Maybe we should participate in a pants boycott.”
Al only has fifteen years and ten months (and six days, and a handful of hours) of experience, but he’s fairly confident nonetheless that there’s nothing in the world quite so satisfying as turning Roy Mustang’s perfect face faintly pink.
“That might not be wise,” Roy says. “In the past I’ve found that cooking naked tends to end in burns that are difficult to explain more often than in anything pleasant.”
It’s Al’s turn to succumb to a bit of heat in his cheeks. “Well-it wouldn’t have to be-”
Oh, jeez, now he’s thinking about perfect Roy bending down to open the oven in nothing but an apron, and in another second he’s going to have to flee to the bathroom and get a grip on himself.
Not-like that-
Oh, dear.
Intently, with the sort of stony single-mindedness that the Elrics are famous for, Al thinks his cold-shower-est thoughts. He has a fairly large collection in a tightly-locked compartment in his brain for moments like this-and for all the times when he’s in calculus class, and the smooth dip of an integral sign reminds him of the curve of Roy’s back-and all the times in English when the blank space between the lines of pentameter, with the faint imprint of the previous page’s backwards letters, makes him think of the way the lightest touch from Roy feels like it’s leaving inked brands of every color on his skin-all the times when lying in bed, cold and lonely, sees him trying to conjure Roy’s mouth, Roy’s forearms, Roy’s fingertips-
This is not going so well.
“I suppose we should start with the meat,” Roy says. “What’s the Elric party line on Christmas dinner-turkey? Ham?”
Men, Al thinks.
He doesn’t actually manage to speak the syllable before he finds himself on his tiptoes, both arms wrapped around Roy’s neck, with his mouth to Roy’s and his heart overflowing.
“Merry Christmas,” he says, panting a little when they draw apart. “Um-I’m-just so glad you’re here; it’s… we’re… weird.”
“You’re not,” Roy says, smiling softly as he brushes Al’s hair back from his forehead; Al could just purr right now. “It’s really wonderful to be here with you. Although I think I’m going to have to bow out of the no-pants cooking. Spending Christmas in the emergency room is not especially cheery.”
“I suppose we should avoid that,” Al says. He glances towards the living room and lowers his voice. “Maybe we could cook something up later, without pan-”
Roy kisses his forehead. “Sixty-eight days. Another fun and exciting way to end up in the emergency room would be encouraging your brother to break my face.”
Al should have sent a six-page wishlist to Santa where every item was Please just let me get laid. He looks up into Roy’s extremely perfect wistful smile.
“Fair point,” he says reluctantly. “Let’s not spend Christmas in the emergency room for any reason, no matter how tempting.”
Alfons is going to spend Christmas in the emergency room.
He has to look on the bright side of this, or he’ll burst into tears-at least Miles is in the impressively uncomfortable crappy plastic waiting room chair next to him, gently stroking a hand over and over through his hair.
“God,” Alfons says. “I’m sorry.”
Miles tucks a curl behind his ear. “What? Why?”
Burying one’s face in one’s hands loses some of the effect when one only has a single hand to utilize due to the incapacitation of the other wrist, but Alfons tries anyway. “I ruined Christmas!”
“You did no such thing,” Miles says. He lowers his hand and starts rubbing gently at the back of Alfons’s neck instead. “I’m just sorry you got hurt, babe; I should’ve been…”
“Carrying me?” Alfons asks. “Predicting that I was going to take a dive in hopes of winning the medal for Clumsiest Person on Earth? Knowing in advance that my shit luck was going to make sure I was the one person in a million who manages to fall on the stupid rink and fracture something?”
“No,” Miles says, smiling faintly. “I mean-just… holding your hand tighter. Looking out for you. Not asking for one more lap around even though you were tired, just because they were playing ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’, and the way their lights hit your skin makes me lose my mind.”
Alfons tries not to grin a little, but Miles always transcends all of the crap in his life-all of the worry; all of the whispers in the back of his mind, and the front of his mind, and the middle-ground, and the cheap seats; all of the They’re not going to give you hours at work if you’ve got a cast on, if you can even afford a cast without insurance, which you probably can’t.
“Besides,” Miles says, leaning his head in against Alfons’s and taking his useful hand. “All I wanted was to spend Christmas with you. And I’m getting that. I don’t care about the details.”
Alfons nuzzles in against Miles’s neck a little. It’s just that he always smells so good-which is even more comforting than usual juxtaposed with the sterilization-chemical scent ambiance that hospitals seem to favor.
“Being stuck in ER limbo is kind of a big detail,” he says.
Miles kisses his temple. “Well, other than all the people bleeding profusely, and the screaming children, and the stretchers, and the general chaos-and-injury atmosphere… it’s basically like a quiet night at home, right?”
“Uh,” Alfons says, fighting not to mirror the grin he feels as Miles’s lips curve against his cheekbone. “Sort… of…”
Miles’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and he fishes it out. The phone screen shows a candid of Olivier backstage, curled up around a notebook she’s scribbling in, looking uncharacteristically unaggressive-peaceful, almost-and the name displayed is ‘Liv Fast Die Young’.
Alfons doesn’t really know how Miles ninja-snags the pictures for his contacts; the one of Alfons is a shot of him about to take a drag on a cigarette, although it’s so flattering he’s almost unrecognizable. His “name” in the phone is ‘Gorgeous’, and someone who didn’t know him might believe it.
art by the incomparable Phindus, originally posted here
Miles swipes his thumb across the phone and raises it to his ear. “Hey, stranger.” Alfons can’t quite hear the other end of the conversation over the low hubbub of people in pain. Miles’s fingernails scratch gently at his scalp. “No, I’m in the ER… No! I’m fine, it’s-Liv-no, Alfons fell.” There is an eyeroll long enough for several sentences to be uttered. “Will do. Yes. I am still perfectly capable of performing.” He cradles the phone against his shoulder to free up a hand for pinching the bridge of his nose. “Y… es. I’ll… suggest it. I actually did, but it’s at home. Are you drunk already? Liv, it’s, like, four in the afte… No kidding? Okay, you have my blessing. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. You, too. Talk to you later. Drink some water. ’Bye.”
Alfons tries not to blink too expectantly, but he does want to know.
“Olivier,” Miles says, “sends her condolences about your arm. She also says Merry Christmas. She also hit the eggnog so hard the chickens felt it, but apparently Alex is into family caroling this year, so I can’t say I blame her. She also insists we spend part of next Christmas there, because apparently it’s not the same without me, especially since Buck and Karley disappeared into the backyard ‘hours ago’ and don’t seem to have left a trail. I got an ornament for their tree, but I forgot to bring it by yesterday.” He pauses, massaging Alfons’s shoulder-blade now. “And by ‘forgot’, I mean, ‘I knew that if I even slowed the car down in front of the house, someone would drag me out of it and tie me to the fireplace with tinsel, and I’d never get away’.”
Alfons makes a valiant attempt to process all of this information. “…but you think that next year we should go there voluntarily?”
Miles pauses. “Good point.”
“Heiderich?” a nurse calls from halfway across the room.
This chair started to make his ass go numb half an hour ago, but suddenly Alfons does not want to get up, does not want to follow her, and does not want to get his arm mummified for about a billion dollars of money he doesn’t even have-
Miles takes his hand, squeezes gently, and smiles. “C’mon, babe,” he says.
Is it a weakness in him-the susceptibility? When does a soft spot start to collapse inward on itself?
He doesn’t know. It’s all new, feeling like this, being so sure that the worst beasts can be bested when this man’s fingers are knitted tight with his.
Miles could lead him anywhere, and he’d go gladly.
So he swallows, and he stands up carefully, and they cross the crowded room.
Christmas always seems too short, to Ed. Maybe it shouldn’t be twelve days long, but it always sort of sneaks up, jumps out, screams about bill payments, and then vanishes in a puff of smoke, leaving only a pile of crumpled wrapping paper and the lingering scent of fir. It used to be sort of magical, somehow-the colored lights and the glittery shopfront windows and the tacky sweaters and the nonstop soundtrack and the cold puffs of breath and the almost-grating cheer used to illuminate something in the core of him. He remembers how it felt, but he just can’t get back to that place anymore. It’s not the same, after you stop being a kid, and the whirlwind picks you up in mid-December and flings you into a snowdrift, and you wake up, and it’s the twenty-sixth, and somehow you missed your chance to feel young again this year.
So he’s trying not to let it slip away too fast. He’s trying to take this last, lonely hour and really savor it.
He starts in the living room, at the tree, which still boasts a pretty impressive blast radius of shredded wrapping paper. The lights wink when he doesn’t look right at them, like they’ve got secrets-or maybe answers. The star on the top is tipping to one side, which was cute this morning, but now it looks like it’s sort of… wilting. Roy brought ornaments-personalized ones, with names on them; a rocket for Alfons, and a baseball bat for Ed, and an anatomically-correct heart with Al’s full name going all the way around. The last of the red and green candles they lit during dinner (“Al, isn’t that Alfons’s favorite lighter?” “…you sound surprised.”) have burned out and given up raising feeble spirals of smoke towards the ceiling. The brand-new slippers Ed is wearing are cozy as hell and also have gargoyle faces on them. He’s still not wearing any pants, ’cause, y’know, holiday.
He pads through the little place they call home, peeking into the bedrooms. Lan Fan passed out on his bed the second her Diet Mountain Dew high left her with the usual heinous crash; he draped a quilt over her when she started with that little cat-snore she has. On the opposite side of the hall, big old Band Dude has his buff-ass arms wrapped securely around Alfons, whose neon green cast he had already decorated with one of those barbed-wire ‘tattoos’ and a ring of X’s and O’s in Sharpie before they even got home. Maybe Ed’s been bribed with cupcakes one too many times, but he thinks he kind of likes how safe Alfons looks with Band Dude snuggled up around him.
Ed has to take a couple deep breaths before he eases Al’s door open and peers through the crack.
Fortunately, nobody has to get messily decapitated tonight, because he can see from here that Al and Roy are both wearing their pajamas. They’re also both still wearing an unreasonable amount of ribbon from the traditional Bow Fight that preceded everyone eating far more than was advisable, followed by pie. Pumpkin the cat is curled up in the tiny space between them, and their foreheads are just barely touching on the pillow so that their hair mingles a bit, and Roy’s arm is draped over Al’s waist.
Carefully, Ed pulls the door shut again. Then he scuffs his slippers along the carpet all the way back to his room, because static lightning will never not be awesome, before he kicks them off and climbs up onto the bed to fight Lan Fan for half of the quilt.
“Pwn you, n00b,” she mumbles.
“You say the cutest shit,” he says.
She grabs two very secure fistfuls of his shirt and buries her face in his chest. Ed gives it two minutes before she starts drooling.
And maybe it’s still not magic like it was-maybe it’s lost all the je ne Santa quoi that made his little heart strain against his ribs back in the good old days-but Ed doesn’t think anyone could argue that they didn’t do Christmas right. ’Cause he’s got a whole house full of happy family right now, and isn’t that the whole point?
He figures it is. He figures they’ve all come ho-ho-home.