FMA -- Right as Rain
Title: Right as Rain
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed, Al/cats
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 9,400
Warnings: language; smutty(/slightly kinky) implications and plentiful innuendo; major spoilers for Brotherhood; h/c-y angst; what a crap title even by my standards
Summary: Surprises come in several varieties, and all of them are illuminating.
Author's Note: A return to the Leading the Blind 'verse! This one is for akaineechan. ♥ …I meant to post this yesterday, but I just couldn't edit it for the life of me. So, uh, first fic of 2015, not actually written in 2015 at all! XD''
RIGHT AS RAIN
Roy hates the rain, not just for the reasons he used to, which he’ll maintain until the day he dies have always been valid-not for the reasons that never failed to make Breda snicker and Havoc grin and Fuery offer an umbrella with the solemnity of a monarch offering a knight a sword. Not for the reasons that summoned the wordlessly eloquent eye-gleam from Riza and the then-Fullmetal Alchemist’s brashly derisive laughter.
The old reasons were easier to swallow; the new ones jab and rankle all the way down.
Rain leaves him all the blinder, now. The sound of the drops landing obscures most of the little sounds he uses to judge distance and gauge locations; his mental map of the world around him muddles into a nightmarescape of jagged, uncertain lines and question marks and frigid, sluicing water waiting to splatter on him from above. Cars’ tires spit and splatter through the wet; the sound is deafening, and every time a gust slaps droplets on the windowpane, he startles like he’s been struck. The wind wakes him. Uneven pattering follows him through the graying contours of his stumbling dreams.
And… Ed.
The cold and the humidity alike put Ed in staggering amounts of pain, but it was always his expression that gave him away-always an almost-melodramatic screwing-up of all his features; always the wince or the grimace or the grinding of his teeth. He’s made a habit of keeping it quiet, these days, because he knows he can hide it that way. Roy doesn’t have the slightest idea until he reaches out and finds Ed’s shoulders tensed so tight they’re shaking.
There’s also the delightful detail that Hitomi hates getting wet. It’s really rather funny, in an abstract sort of way-snow she loves like it’s the greatest thing that climate patterns ever summoned; rain makes her huff and whine and shift her weight in agitation as she tries to get her damp paws off the ground. It makes him agitated, and with the rain running down his spine and the constant, thrumming pulse of the concern for Ed-touch him first thing, touch his face, touch his hair, talk to him softly, sit him down, run your hands under the hot water tap and lay them on the muscle around the port to warm it up before you start in kneading-
The long and Ed-sized of it is that the Führer of Amestris feels jittery, unsettled, and misplaced in the process of a task as simple as walking across the street from Central Command at lunchtime.
He’s not the only one who thinks the cafeteria food is perhaps the greatest evil remaining of the old regime-he’ll get to exorcising it one of these days, but things like, oh, you know, foreign policy and governance of the greater nation-state tend to take precedence-but one benefit of the rain is that it reduces the foot traffic on the sidewalks somewhat.
He’s developed an extremely honed sense for Hitomi’s emotions-perhaps it’s better not to think too much about the metaphorical implications of how deeply he is in touch with a dog-and she’s sulking even though he’s holding his umbrella mostly over her, at the sacrifice of his left sleeve. He can’t really blame her; she’d only just finished drying off and warming up, and he dragged her back out into the ceaseless wall of water.
Generally, he takes these excursions with a partner-almost invariably Riza, who is the only one who ever volunteers to spend one of her extremely limited off-hours in the presence of her boss. Having a sighted person in tow presents several tactical advantages: for one thing, it looks like courtesy when he lets his companion pick the venue, but in truth of fact, Hitomi’s vocabulary isn’t quite up to “The sandwich shop, but not the first one; the one with the red awning”, and he couldn’t bear to stop a stranger and ask to be led by the hand through the doorway. They say pride goeth before a fall, but Roy has found that it sticks and lingers in the strangest corners of his soul, and embers of it flare and choke him with the smoke. Some days he thinks it’s going to suffocate him.
Today, though, there’s too much small-scale chaos all around them for him to focus on the inner torments. He’s struggling to listen for the wet swish of clothing, for the sniffling breaths, for the slap-and-splash of shoes on the streaming pavement; Hitomi will do her best to guide him past the strangers, but she doesn’t know that umbrella’s spokes have sharp ends-
He hears commotion, but not the clamorous volume of a line out the door, and he touches Hitomi’s ears and turns towards it. She makes Ed’s favorite noise to imitate-whuff-and leads the way inside, steering him around two other patrons on the way towards what must be a long counter, where they’re waiting behind one person, maybe two, by the distance of the cashier’s voice.
It sounds like they’re in the Cretan café, by the names of the dishes. That was a rather good random selection on his part.
He asks the girl at the register what’s good, and she rattles off a list of suggestions. She’s startled when he tells her to choose for him, and then she’s sort of pleased, and then she promises he’ll enjoy whatever combination it is that she’s picked out. He sorts out the cash-it’s all so automatic now; his muscle memory does the math for him, and he counts out the bills so quickly she might not understand why they’re all folded into different shapes.
“Is there a table open?” he asks her next.
“Umm…” He imagines her stretching, standing on her toes, bracing her hands on the countertop to peer over the people and whatever objects are standing on the counter, obstructing the flow of air from ahead and to the left. “There’s one in the corner-you see it?”
She’s probably pointing. He pockets his wallet, lifts his right hand, and waves it in front of his eyes. He smiles.
“I’m afraid not,” he says.
“Oh,” she says, sounding shocked and mortified in equal measure; and then, “Oh,” a revelation; and then, “Holy-you’re the Führer.”
He can feel the prickle of eyes fixing on him. “Last time I checked, yes, but democracy is a fluid thing.”
“Oh, God-I’m so sorry; I knew I recognized you from somewhere; I-”
The tragedy of it is that he used to love being looked at. Stares used to sustain him; glares used to fuel him; wistful gazes used to stroke his ego until it purred. Attention was a critical part of his concept of himself.
He supposes he still has an ‘image’, of one sort or another; it’s not a voluntary matter when the perception is imposed on you by the public, is it? You can feed it, of course, and guide its course, and alter its trajectory, but you’re not driving it. The end result is handed to you.
He wonders what they think, these days-what they think of blind Roy Mustang and his unattended hair; of the tufts of dog fur clinging to his uniform as avidly as the badges marking out his rank; of the longer, yellower hairs that sometimes find their way onto his collar or inside the cuffs of his sleeves and drag silkily along his fingertips as he tries to work them free.
If they disdained him entirely, they wouldn’t have elected him, but the matter of Ed came to light after they’d already granted him the government. He can’t help thinking that the average Amestrian might well approve of his political choices and abhor his personal ones, and that the latter could sink him at the reelection. He can’t watch people’s faces anymore. He can’t find the pulse of the populace to pin it underneath his fingertip.
“It’s really all right,” he says.
“Your dog!” the girl is saying. “You even have the dog… oh, God, I’m gonna get fired.”
“What?” Roy says. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t know who you are, and you’re the freakin’ Führer, and I just recommended you food, and you might hate it, and-”
“I’m sure I won’t,” he says. He sort of wants to say I have a very broad palate, but that would sound… what? Saucy? Ed is such a terrible influence; the day he discovered innuendo was the end of Roy’s ability to say anything with the remotest double-meaning without receiving a snicker and a huge wink. He settles on: “I love the food here,” and judiciously does not add, And I would love for this scene to be over so I can get back to my pathetic little life.
He can hear Ed’s voice in his head, the brat-Modesty doesn’t suit you, Mustang. It’s a big pathetic life. You have the most publicized pathetic life in the whole country, for fuck’s sake!
Someday Roy is going to marry that little shit.
And that’s the beautiful thing, isn’t it? Just the thought of Ed, Ed in his life, Ed being his-the mere thought stabilizes him instantly. He’s sailing blind through storms that have scuttled lesser men, but he’s a ship with a rudder again-even-keeled.
“Really?” the girl says. The relief is rolling off of her in heady waves. “Well-just-”
“Here,” a man’s voice says. “Let me take you over to that table, sir.”
“Thank you,” Roy manages, and there’s a foreign touch under his elbow, and he fights the urge to flinch. Hitomi dances out of the way of his knee and then nudges her head at his trailing hand, looking for reassurance that this is all right-his body language must be tenser even than he thought. He strokes a fingertip behind her ear and lets the unknown, unseen individual lead him eighteen steps and then guide his right hand to the back of a well-worn wooden chair.
It would be rude to say You’re a journalist, aren’t you?, so Roy bites it back and swallows it down. One of his few regrets is that there was never any way to prepare for the endless insincerities-even if he’d kept his sight, even if he’d planned for a thousand years, he would still be surrounded by suck-ups and yes-men; nothing he could have done would have stemmed the tide of opportunistic liars. Everyone wants to cozy up to the Führer of Amestris. Everyone wants to offer him empty generosity and false kindness in the hopes of a kickback someday. There was something of a gradual falling away of genuineness as he climbed the ranks, but nothing could have prepared him for the absolute impossibility of trusting at the top. He counts himself a very, very lucky man to have found so many friends and fostered so much loyalty before he got here. He couldn’t do it now-couldn’t start it from this point. He’d never survive. The snakes would strangle him while he cast about for someone to hold onto who wouldn’t drop him for a price.
A chair on the other side of the table creaks softly with the weight of his mystery benefactor. Hitomi shuffles in close by his leg, trying to shy out of the way of the crush of people in the little restaurant. He thinks his back is to the window-with the cloud cover, he can’t feel the faint warmth of the sunlight; he’s guessing based on spatial recollection of this establishment alone.
“That was very kind of you,” he says. Presumably it wasn’t; an act of charity would be to deposit him and then to walk away without expecting an exchange, but the man sat down. He wants something. “Forgive me if we’ve met, and I don’t remember.”
“Oh, no,” the man says-is he young? His grip was firm, and his voice is smooth, but there’s really no way of knowing with so few details to go on. “I’ve only ever seen you in the papers, to be honest. And if you’ll pardon my saying so, they really didn’t do you justice.”
He’s tuned his ears to tones and undertones, but he’d give just about anything to be able to judge facial expressions again. He keeps his voice as flatly neutral as he’s capable of. “I can only hope that the primary motivation of our newspaper photographers is to capture a moment accurately, rather than to flatter a government official.”
The man-he does sound young; Roy’s wagering on it now-laughs merrily. “They’ve also failed entirely at capturing your sense of humor.”
Roy knows for a fact that that’s not true, because Alphonse does a passable imitation of Roy’s ‘Ultimate Sarcasm Voice’ every time he reads an article at the dinner table.
“Again,” Roy says, putting on his blandest smile, “I must confess that comes as a relief. I’d rather be publicized for policy than for wit.” Now, if you’ll excuse me is a touch too direct. “Didn’t I interrupt your order and make you lose your place in line? I’d hate to ruin your lunch.”
“Trust me,” the man says. “You’ve already improved it more than I could have hoped for.”
Damn it.
Roy dons an even milder expression and reaches down to scratch gently behind one of Hitomi’s ears. She doesn’t relax-is his agitation obvious, or is it just that she can smell it on him by now?
“Perhaps I should start hosting diplomatic meetings here,” Roy says. “If this restaurant has such an inspiring effect on an Amestrian citizen, I like to think it might make delegates significantly more pliable.”
He can hear the grin-its broadness, its corners, the lowered eyelids. There’s a soft sound of flesh and cloth against the table-an elbow, to rest the chin on the hand? Possibly; the voice is closer. “I am definitely feeling pliable, sir.”
Damn it. Damn it.
“I’ll have to make a note for my staff,” Roy says. Did he remember to order a drink? He can never remember which cafes bring water and which expect you to serve yourself; with his luck, he probably passed a jug of ice-cold distraction on his way over, and now he’s stranded in the desert, slowly desiccating.
“The tabloids did get one thing right,” the man says. “They always say you’re… fascinating. Magnetic.”
Fuck.
“I daresay that’s a slight exaggeration,” Roy says.
This is a delicate game-a teetering balance. It always has been, but it’s more precarious now than it ever was before. If he shuts this conversation down too harshly, he’s cruel; if he encourages the behavior without reacting, he’s angling to acquire a new toady; if he responds in kind, he’s vain and frivolous-a flirt. Not to mention a cheater. Not to mention sick to his stomach at the mere thought.
Every move he makes, every word he utters, is subject to the judgment of the public eye. Which is more than a bit unfair, given that he can’t eye them back.
If he tries to extricate himself from this whole situation and departs without his meal, he’s eccentric, and it could be interpreted as a rejection of the fare, or the company, or the café on the whole-the point is, there will be talk. If he lets the tenor of this exchange tilt any more suggestive… there will be talk. He has to find a way to stay entirely neutral now-unwaveringly, unerringly detached-without ever straying into the realm of the aloof. He has to be completely uninterested without seeming disinterested, and he can’t even gauge his own success by the kinds of visual cues-facial features and body language and the precise moment when people turn their heads to watch-that used to make him such a master at this game.
“You know,” the young man is saying, and his voice keeps getting fractionally louder as he moves nearer in, “the tabloids say a lot of things.”
“I believe that is their intended purpose,” Roy says. Hell. Was that too sardonic?
A foot brushes his ankle once, then twice, and then settles against the side of his calf, and it takes every last iota of his willpower to make himself go still instead of startling right out of his seat.
“They say you’re a man of unusual tastes,” the voice says, smoother and lower and even closer now. “A man with rather… particular… inclinations.”
That’s enough. That’s enough of this-enough letting himself be walked all over as he walks on eggshells simply because he can’t see which edges are so jagged that they’ll leave him bleeding. He did not come all this way-he did not crawl through hell and stumble through an almost-apocalypse; he did not cut his teeth on oblivion and dig into the furthest reaches of his soul to make his wretched peace with darkness-to be unsettled by some conniving, power-mongering, social-climbing twit.
He pushes his chair back sharply-just two inches, but in one swift motion, with a crisp shkk of the legs skating over the floorboards-and tucks his feet beneath it, where his enterprising lunch companion would have to flail admirably to find them. He folds his hands neatly on the tabletop, not before rubbing his thumb against his first fingertip just once, and fixes his single coldest glare on the place the young man’s eyes should be.
“That’s none of their damn business,” he says. He tilts his head-just a fraction, just enough for a touch of implication. “Or anyone else’s.”
He sits back, leaving his hands on the table, and raises his eyebrows. Your move.
There’s a long silence, and then the voice returns-with an edge, now; with an edge like the faintest hiss of a vial of acid rising to a boil.
“It’s that kid alchemist, isn’t it?” the voice asks. “That’s what I heard-that Fullmetal kid. Elric. Heard he used to work under you-under you, some people say-and then he quit, and nobody really knows why. Rumor is he can’t do alchemy anymore. Rumor is, maybe it’s your fault-maybe you pity him, maybe he just had nowhere else to go-maybe he got a lot of practice with what you liked when he was a kid-”
There are moments, occasionally, when Roy is glad that he is blind. There are moments when anger would streak his vision white and red and cinder-black if he still had it, and he would think that he could navigate right through it, because he’d be accustomed to the privilege of sight. There are moments when a visual target would be so tempting that he might not be able to speak reason in his own mind loud enough to hear over the wordless roaring of the rage. There are moments when it is good to feel powerless, because it reminds him of what he has to lose.
Ed would shrug, roll his eyes, say Fuck him, he’d be dead if it wasn’t for us, remember? I don’t expect his dumb ass to be smart enough to know that. Funny how appreciation’s never been in style.
Ed is better than him, in that way, because he wants to scald this snake-mouthed bastard’s skin right off and grind his heel into the ashes on the floor.
He stands up, spreading both hands on the edge of the tabletop to steady himself, and bites out nothing more or less than the words “Excuse me.”
He has to hold it in. He has to hold it in. He ha-
A firm hand catches his right wrist, and he tenses so abruptly that he feels his own shoulder jerk hard.
“He’s still a kid,” the voice says. “If you ever want a man, you let me know, and I will show you things you’ve never seen that you’re never going to forge-ahh.”
The last syllable is presumably in reaction to the fact that Roy is prying those fingers from around his wrist-slowly, deliberately, and rather forcefully-one by one.
“I will thank you,” he says, and he doesn’t need to see to know just how far back you can bend a knuckle joint without damaging it, “not to touch me, or speak to me, or speak about me, ever again.”
He doesn’t wait for a response; Hitomi is up and waiting at his knee, and he turns them towards the direction he believes the counter is, at which point she does the rest. He pauses just to the side of the line until he hears the girl from before:
“Oh! Um-sir?”
“I’m terribly sorry,” he says, “but is there any chance I can get my order to-go?”
If this is the most blatantly that he ever leverages the clout of his supreme political power, he thinks he can live with himself.
“Of course!” she says. “Yeah, just-hang on one second.”
There are some assorted noises-objects moving; she gets someone’s attention; paper bags crinkle.
“Okay,” she says. “It’ll just be another minute. Um. Sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Thank you,” he says, and tries to melt back against the side of the counter to stay out of the way.
He’s listening hard for pursuit or persistence-without a look at his harasser’s face at that critical final moment, he can’t be confident that he’s properly estimated the measure of the man. Is he sulking quietly in the corner, having accepted rebuke and defeat-or is he the vengeful type? Even just a guess at the clothing would have been helpful; Roy should have been listening more closely. Sometimes these things don’t end when the incident is over.
But there are no further interruptions before there’s a shuffling by the counter, past the girl taking the orders, and a new voice calls out, “‘Really-truly-actually-Führer-Roy-Mustang-I-mean-i…’ oh. Oh, for the l-I-sir.”
“Thank you,” Roy says, urging Hitomi forward towards the source of that voice, and then reaching out an uncertain hand. “Forgive me, I…”
“No, no, not at all!” The rolled top of a paper bag greets his fingertips, and then he grips it. “Thank you, sir, um-please enjoy.”
“I know I will,” Roy says, and then-at last, at long last-it’s possible to escape.
Except-
He remembers just as they step over the threshold that he leaned his umbrella against the counter when he ordered, and there’s no way in hell that he’s going back.
He hopes Hitomi will forgive him someday.
The rain has let up a fraction, which is a fraction of a blessing-it’s like a heavy mist now instead of a downpour, although the ambient dripping and splattering from store awnings and rooftops is still wreaking merry hell on Roy’s projection of the world around him. Hitomi is dog-pouting-silently, but he can tell. He’ll have to make it up to her by drying her with a warm towel when they get back to the office. Maybe he can scrounge up some time to brush her later if he reads through the latest of the wretched paperwork fast enough.
He spreads one hand underneath the bottom of his takeout bag, trying to assess the structural integrity of the paper with his fingertips. Is it damp enough that the weight of the food will tear through and splatter his hard-won lunch all over the wet pavement? He can’t decide whether or not that’s more ridiculous than the premier politician of Amestris trying to tuck a lunchbag inside his overcoat to protect it from the rain.
After a brief internal debate, he decides that he prefers a dry lunch to the tatters of his dignity and bundles it in. One of the delightful things he’s learned about shame over the years is that if you simply refuse to display any, the onus of embarrassment transfers to your observer. He utilizes this strategy as he strides through the gate at Central Command, listening for the change in the clicking of Hitomi’s nails when she moves from cement onto flagstones so that he knows when to start treading carefully with his wet boots.
He hears the faint tmp of sharp salutes, almost immediately followed by the brisk thud of boot heels meeting.
“Good afternoon, sir,” two soldiers say in unison.
“At ease,” he says, still clutching his lunchbag to his chest like a treasure.
He counts the steps across the courtyard, and then the stairs. When they step into the hall, he takes the bag out of his coat and carries it by his side instead, resisting the urge to shake water out of his hair. Ed is wrong-absolutely, categorically wrong-about him ‘picking up habits from the dog’.
Speaking of Hitomi, though, she knows that he’s comfortable enough walking this space that he barely needs her guidance, and she trots alongside him a little further from his knee than usual. She’s probably soaked, poor thing. He’ll have to ask someone to get him another umbrella-someone other than Ed, unless he wants “USELESS TODAY” emblazoned across the front. Do they still have that little electric heater in the office somewhere from that time Fuery got the flu and insisted on coming to work anyway, but his mother wouldn’t let him leave the house until he’d sworn up and down that he’d plug it in next to his desk…?
Ed mentioned something glum about errands this morning, just before Roy started kissing along the lines of his shoulder-blades. And then something about having no idea how Roy managed to be lascivious at six in the morning as he kissed lower. And then something about how he shouldn’t stop, and the somethings devolved into delightful incoherence from there.
…the point is, if Ed has a long, quotidian scavenger hunt-as his errand trips invariably become-planned out on top of a regular workday in this remarkably persistent rain, he’s going to be miserable by the time he eventually straggles home. Roy should call ahead and conspire with Al-have the hot chocolate waiting for when Ed steps through the door; douse it with cream liqueur to dull the pain just slightly; wrap him up in blankets and drop a cat into his lap…
Hitomi huffs softly when they reach the office door, shifting her paws on the carpet, but she doesn’t lead him away-something’s off, but it’s not a threat?
Or it’s not something she recognizes as a threat.
He really doesn’t have the energy for this today.
He really doesn’t have a choice.
He puts his lunch down on the floor. There’s an ignition glove folded up in wax paper in the breast pocket of his shirt, well-sheltered from the rain. He undoes just enough buttons and catches to wrangle it out, slips it onto his left hand, and turns the doorknob with the right.
It’s unusually dark in the office-he knows he left his door open; he should be able to see a faintly pale square from the window-and it’s bizarrely quiet.
It isn’t silent, though, because he can just detect the sound of a number of people… breathing.
His first thought is Assassination; his second is Oh God what happened to Riza; but he doesn’t have time for a third, because-
“Surprise!”
Hitomi retreats behind his leg, making a discontented noise in the back of her throat. People she knows are acting in a strange way, the human who feeds her has frozen into an extremely undignified statue, and she’s wet-all in all, it’s a crowning moment of confusion on a generally lousy sort of day.
Meanwhile, Roy is struggling to think of something to say more befitting of a national figurehead than ‘What the fucking fuck?’
That’s when a banner lights up in phosphorescent blue, just bright enough for him to read the words Happy birthday in the field of undifferentiated dark.
If he procrastinates any longer, this is going to get extraordinarily awkward, so he clears his throat and settles on a simpler iteration of the question that he really wants to ask:
“What?”
“Happy birthday, sir,” Riza says. “Come in and close the door. Hitomi, come here-come here, girl.”
Roy fumbles to find his lunch and then obliges, and Hitomi’s tags jingle as she does likewise; they both know better than to ignore a suggestion-command from Riza Hawkeye.
“Thank you all for being here,” Roy says, despite having nothing more than a general estimate of how many people ‘you all’ encompasses right now, “but I’m afraid it’s… not my birthday.” He has a terrible thought, and he turns back towards the origin of Riza’s voice.. “…is it?”
“It is, sir,” she says. “I checked the personnel records to be sure.”
He opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again in order to unleash some brilliant rhetoric: “Oh.”
“I think maybe you need a vacation, Chief,” Havoc says. “Dibs on driving so I can have one, too.”
“Cheater,” Breda says.
“Ow,” Havoc says, and Roy is left wondering whether that was an elbow to the ribs, a toe-stomp, or something altogether more creative.
His wondering time cuts short when tiny, hazy blue dots of light start wavering towards him.
“I know you’re not overly fond of cake,” the last voice he expected to hear in his office says, “but last time I made blueberry pie, I remember you had two slices-”
“Lord, woman, put that down,” Roy says, and the lights move aside-someone must be taking the dish out of her hands-and he steps forward and pulls her into a hug. “Thank you,” he whispers, as if it could possibly be adequate. “You have always been better to me than I deserve.”
“You have always been full of it,” Gracia says, patting his back. “You’d better blow out the candles before they melt all over your pie, Führer Mustang.”
He looks at the alchemically-augmented lights in not-entirely-mock despair. “How could you desecrate such a perfect pastry by jamming obviously no more than twenty-nine candles into it?”
He gets some chuckles for that, none of them forced, which is a thousand times more reassuring than loud, obedient laughter would have been. He then hears Falman mutter, “But there are thirty-seven.”
However many there are, Roy manages to extinguish the stragglers on his second attempt, after the first is subverted by choking when Breda says, “Talk about a blow job, eh?”
Once he’s stopped coughing, Roy reaches towards where he thinks Gracia’s arm should be. His fingertips brush what feels like the sweater he recently pressed his cheek against. “Tell me Elysia’s not here to have heard that.”
“She’s at school,” Gracia says, patting his hand. “This was our only chance to ambush you. I made you a second pie to take home to the boys, though, and I tried out a recipe for dog treats, although I wasn’t quite brave enough to taste-test them to see if they were any good. Come by this weekend; there’s more where that came from.”
“And people say I have too much power,” Roy says.
“Exactly who says that?” Riza asks, taking his wrist and putting a plate into his hand. She then takes the other hand and puts a fork into it.
“Alphonse,” Roy says.
“I would have suspected Edward,” Gracia says.
“He’s still holding it against me that I don’t create national holidays at will,” Roy says. “He doesn’t see the point of holding office if you can’t enact an Amestris-wide extension of the weekend when it suits you.”
“Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it, Chief,” Havoc says. “And give me a heads up when you do, so Becky and I can go out of town.”
“Where are we going?” Rebecca asks.
“I dunno,” Havoc says. “Anywhere, just as soon as our Great and Powerful Leader instates a day off.”
“I don’t think he ever said he would,” Sheska’s voice cuts in.
“He didn’t,” Breda says. “But bribery and blackmail are both storied and venerable political traditions.”
“Good luck,” Roy says. He does his best to keep whatever portion of pie he has managed to stab with his fork on top of the tines as he lifts it to his mouth. It is, unsurprisingly, spectacularly delicious.
“You’re not understanding the complexity of the plan, sir,” Breda says. “It’s in two parts, and we’re not bribing you.”
“That’s nice to hear,” Riza says idly.
“We’re bribing Ed. Who’s going to blackmail you in ways I’m not gonna describe in front of Sheska and Mrs. Hughes, if you know what I mean.”
“Never mind,” Riza says.
“If you think I’d be scandalized by the prospect of Roy and Edward having sex,” Gracia says, “you may have a fundamental misunderstanding of the process of bearing children.”
The rather odd, wet noise that follows sounds suspiciously like Breda choking on pie.
Roy turns in Gracia’s direction. “Have I told you lately that I adore you?”
“That’s another reason you should come by more often,” Gracia says.
“What are you going to bribe Ed with, anyway?” Fuery asks. “He has everything he wants. He even says so.”
Roy is deeply, deeply touched for a shining moment.
A very brief shining moment.
“Stepladders,” Havoc suggests.
“Decorative items that are in exceedingly bad taste,” Falman says.
“Primary involvement in an anti-milk campaign,” Breda says.
“Books,” Sheska says.
“Spaghetti and beer,” Rebecca says.
“You’re thinking of me, babe,” Havoc says.
“No,” Rebecca says, “I’m thinking of men.”
“She’s got a point,” Breda says.
“I dunno,” Fuery says. “I think that in order to really get anything out of Ed, you’d probably have to kidnap Al.”
“Excuse me,” Roy says. “What am I, chopped liver?”
“Diced, probably,” Havoc says.
“Foie gras,” Rebecca says.
“You’re missing the point,” Breda says. “That’d be double-blackmail, not bribe-and-blackmail. It’s not balanced. Besides, trying to blackmail Ed just ends in black eyes.”
“Perhaps a petition,” Falman says. “There’s a decades-old law that was never rescinded whereby any petition with over a thousand signatures must be reviewed by the head of state.”
“I’m right here,” Roy says. “The least you could do is relegate the treacherous plotting to occasions when I’m out of earshot.”
“We could just pass notes,” Breda says. “You’d never know.”
“You’re walking a very thin line, Lieutenant,” Roy says. “On one side of that line is this nice, cushy desk chair you have, and your lovely apartment in Central City. On the other is an important international delegation meeting at the end of a very, very long walk to Xing.”
“Here, sir,” Breda says. “Why don’t you let me get you another slice of pie?”
The smirk spreads on Roy’s face without his permission, but he has to admit that it feels good. “That’s more like i-”
Either something explodes, or the door slams open and rebounds off the wall.
“Führer Mustang!” Armstrong’s voice bellows, which favors bets on the latter. “What a magnificently fortuitous da-oh, Mrs. Hughes, is that blueberry pie?”
“Hello!” Maria Ross’s voice says brightly. “We brought cookies. These are for the office, and these are for Ed and Al.”
Sometimes Roy sincerely wishes that the Elrics could see-both literally and figuratively-how often and how highly everyone here still thinks of them.
Then again, given the things Breda comes out with sometimes, Ed’s absence has probably saved all of them at least one busted eardrum each.
When he lets himself in at home, while he’s still trying to figure out how to remove his boots without dropping either the umbrella in his right hand or the wine bottle in his left, Ed calls “Yo, gorgeous!” from the living room.
He thought that might lose its luster after a while, but it hasn’t. It hasn’t at all.
He ends up moving the umbrella to the right hand with the wine, using his newly-freed left hand to feel around for the end table and determine whether there is sufficient unoccupied space to put the wine bottle. Shifting some knickknacks ensures as much, at which point he takes up the bottle in his left hand again and deposits it carefully on the tabletop.
“What’re you banging around in there for?” Ed calls next, which is not quite as inspiringly romantic as the previous outburst, but Roy will take it anyway.
“Apparently it’s my birthday,” he says, leaning back against the door in the hopes of prying a boot off without falling over. “And apparently the Armstrongs have been cultivating a stupendously artful vineyard for generations.”
“Duh to the birthday,” Ed says, and there’s a creak of the couch, and then the unmistakable soft-hard cadence of his footsteps comes clomping over. “What the hell to the vineyard. Have you already been into that wine, or are you just trying to look drunk so I’ll take you to bed early?”
Alphonse clears his throat so remarkably loudly in the kitchen that Roy can hear it from here.
Charitably, he feels, Roy lowers his voice. “Does your use of the word ‘early’ in that sentence imply that you were planning on it later regardless?”
Ed’s fingers push gently at his to prompt him to relinquish the umbrella, and then Ed’s other hand clasps around his shoulder to steady him so that he can finally take off his damn boots.
“Roy,” Ed says slowly, as if talking to someone very young and not particularly bright, “it’s your birthday.”
“So I’m told, b-”
“You always get sex on your birthday.”
Roy tries to think back as he nudges at the boots with his toes, hoping that he’s shepherding them more or less out of the way of the main passage to the door. “…do I?”
“Jeez,” Ed says. “Just ’cause you’re getting too old and senile to remember doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.”
“I’m not-”
Ed’s fingers curl into his collar and tug him downward, and then Ed’s mouth smothers the rest of that sentence.
“It’s just that we have so much sex,” Roy murmurs against Ed’s lips when there’s a fraction of space between them, “that I don’t usually remember the reasons. Especially since most of the reasons are variations on themes such as ‘you are impossibly amazing’ and ‘your brother isn’t home’.”
“You’re lucky you’re such a smooth fuckin’ talker,” Ed says, breath hot on Roy’s mouth, and his tongue flicks across Roy’s bottom lip; “that you can talk your way back into a smooth fuck.”
Roy catches Ed’s hip with one hand, cradling it for just a moment before sliding his hand around the small of Ed’s back and walking his fingers slowly up Ed’s spine. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather that it be a little… rough.”
“Well,” Ed says, hips hitching against his, and God- “It is your birthday.”
“Dinner, children!” Alphonse calls from the kitchen. “Please keep your hands to yourselves while we eat!”
“Oh, hell,” Roy says as the thought strikes him. “Gracia baked an extra pie, but I left it in the car.”
“Al!” Ed says, slipping free of Roy’s arm, his footsteps thundering off down the hall so suddenly that Hitomi makes a startled sound. “Call Havoc! It’s an emergency!”
They conclude an excellent meal with the dutifully-returned pie (Havoc kindly refused the offer of a large slice for his trouble, and then not-so-kindly admitted that he’d probably had a full quarter of the one in the office), and then one or other of the Elrics whisks Roy’s plate out from in front of him as they both start in on the dishes with a vengeance.
“You know,” Al says faux-thoughtfully as Ed plunks back into his chair at Roy’s right, “I think I might just go thank Mrs. Hughes personally. And stay there. For a while. Maybe, y’know, all night. How about if I just go pack some things, and I’ll just head off to class from there tomorrow?”
Roy reaches over with the intention of patting Ed’s knee and ends up caressing a thigh, which is just as good-better, really. “I see he’s finally inherited your gift for subtlety.”
“You don’t see shit,” Ed says.
Roy kneads his knuckles right at the edge of the scar tissue, and Ed makes a contented noise in the back of his throat. “Touché.”
“Yeah,” Al says slowly. “I’ll just… be going. Do you think Mrs. Hughes and Elysia would mind if I rescu-I mean, brought-the cats?”
Roy presses harder, and Ed growls low in his chest.
“Never mind,” Al says. “They’re on their own. I’m sorry, babies; this is an act of desperate self-preservation. I know you’ll forgive me someday.”
“Don’t forget to bring a change of socks,” Roy says.
“Don’t forget to clean up the carpet when you’re finished,” Al says, voice trailing off in the direction of the hall.
Ed’s guttural noises of approval take on a slightly less-approbatory tone. “We barely ever mess up the carpet. And if he’s so fucking worried about the carpet, he can alchemize it back to… nngh. Oh, shit, right there-”
Roy considers crossing his legs and decides there’s no point. Alphonse will momentarily be running out the door without a single look backwards; and where Ed is concerned, it’s not like there’s anything to hide. Perhaps it might be slightly embarrassing for an apparently-thirty-seven-year-old leader of a nation to own up to the way his lover brings out the teenager in him, but most thirty-seven-year-old leaders of nations don’t have to listen to the borderline-pornographic noises Ed makes in the midst of a massage.
A few minutes pass. Ed continues to make the noises. Roy continues to be unreasonably turned-on. Sounds which are either banged dresser drawers or small gunshots emanate from Alphonse’s room. Footsteps proceed back out into the hall.
“Okay!” Al calls. “I’m leaving! Goodbye! Have fun! Not too much fun! ’Bye, kitty. ’Bye, kitty. ’Bye, Hitomi. I don’t know how you do it, girl. Okay, I’m going!”
A groan building in Ed’s throat metamorphoses on its way out into: “Later, Al.”
“Give the Hugheses my best,” Roy says.
Al sighs feelingly all the way out the door.
Roy gives him thirty seconds to get clear of the property before shifting his hand to rub at the inside of Ed’s thigh, with rather different intentions.
“May I jump you now?” he asks.
“Fuck, yes,” Ed says, raggedly, and Roy leans in towards the jagged progress of his breath- “Wait, no.”
Roy freezes in mid-lean. “What?”
“Gotta give you your present first,” Ed gasps out. “’Cause you and I both know we’re gonna be at this ’til midnight either way, and then it won’t be your birthday anymore.”
Roy has been known to say in the office-confidentially, on pain of death-that anyone who thinks council debates are frustrating has never tried arguing with Ed.
“All right,” he says. “As long as that’s a promise about the midnight thing.”
The chair creaks, and Ed’s mouth brushes across his forehead. “You are somethin’ else, Mustang.” He waits until he’s a safe distance away-the little shit-before he goes on. “Aren’t you getting a little old for that kinda thing?”
Roy rolls his shoulders slowly, stretches his back, and then cracks his knuckles.
“Later,” he says, “I’m going to tie you to the bed and show you old. And you’re going to like it.”
Evidently, two can play at this game; Ed’s footsteps come closer, and then his fingertips slither across the back of Roy’s neck and down along his arm. “Yes, Führer Mustang, sir.”
Roy clenches his jaw. “Not to criticize, my dearest love, but you are not currently doing an especially effective job of convincing me to save the sex for later.”
Something narrow, solid, and rather heavy lands on his lap. Ed sounds very pleased. “I never thought about this, but it’s sort of great that I don’t have to wrap your gifts.”
“Please take a moment to imagine me glaring at you,” Roy says. “As vividly as possible. Go on. I’ll wait.”
Ed’s elbow nudges at his arm, and he has to fight down a smile. “Is that your passive-aggressive-ass way of saying you want me to wrap it next time? ’Cause you better be sure before you say that. It usually ends in whatever the present is getting mummified in an entire roll of packing tape, and I dunno how much I trust you with scissors.”
“It’s comforting to know that you’re less concerned about me running the country than you are about me wielding bladed implements,” Roy says.
“That’s gonna be real funny in another minute,” Ed says. His shoulder pushes gently at Roy’s this time. “Go on.”
“What is this?” Roy asks, patting his way up and down gingerly. It’s a slender cylinder, with what feels like a glossy finish; that’s all the can distinguish so far. “Is this a broom? I know I don’t reliably execute a full third of the housework, but considering the circumstances-”
“You are such a dumbass,” Ed says, adoringly. He takes Roy’s right hand and sets it back down on…
“Is this-a horse?” Roy asks, trying to make sense of the contours. It is; he’s sure of it now; it’s a tiny sculpted figure of a horse, shaped in-some kind of metal?
“It’s a freakin’ mustang,” Ed says, “obviously. I thought just having the head on it would be creepy, so I went with the whole thing.”
It clicks in the next instant-that the figurine is a handle. What it’s capping. What he’s holding right now.
His stomach drops-plummets, free-falls-
Seven years, and he hasn’t touched one until this moment; seven years, and he’d always assumed Ed just understood-that he’d explained by omission; that he didn’t have to speak the words; that Ed knew why he’d plumbed every possible alternative to picking one up.
He doesn’t want to be ungrateful. He doesn’t want to be cruel; and Ed is so, so easy to unsettle, to rattle, to shake from the warm contentment of their silly little lives with the slightest implication that he’s done wrong.
But it hurts. It hurts more than he expected-more than he would have expected, if he’d known what to expect, but he never even thought…
“This is a cane,” he says, softly.
“It’s way more than that,” Ed says, and he didn’t see them-the thousand things beneath Roy’s four words-because his own enthusiasm is too bright. “Hang on… here.” He wraps his right hand around Roy’s again, shifting it down an inch or two, where there’s a square cut out in the veneer. It’s just about the size of the pad of Roy’s thumb, which is precisely what Ed pushes against it, with just a bit of force. Something from the inside of the cane shaft makes a faintly resonating click, not quite hollow but not quite solid-and then there’s a slight spring of recoil; the finish hisses softly against the fabric of his uniform-
His instinct is to move his hand back to the figure of the mustang, and-sure enough-it’s extended outward. There’s something else beneath.
This flare of curiosity is much more palatable than the swell of misery looming behind him; he stands up from the table and tries to draw whatever it is that he’s discovered free. There are only so many options, and it seems to go on forever; what in the world could take so long to…
And then he pauses, and moves his thumb again, keeping a firm grip on the handle, and touches steel.
“This is a sword,” he says.
“Well, yeah,” Ed says, as though a sword sheathed in a cane is a perfectly normal thing to purchase for a long-term lover’s birthday. He sounds… excited, still. Cheeky and delighted and so terribly cute that he’d wash away all of the dreck-black guilt oozing slowly down Roy’s chest if only Roy could see him smiling. “I was talking to Falman a while back about how it’s sorta traditional for the Führer to have a saber, even if it’s just ornamental or whatever. So this is sort of a twist on that.”
Humor. Sick, wry humor; it’s always been Roy Mustang’s saving grace. He can salvage this, can’t he? It’s a gentle gesture, so sincerely meant-
He clears his throat and reaches carefully to find the back of the chair he vacated, carefully angling his right hand-and the blade-towards the floor. “You bought your blind boyfriend a sharp object.” He sets the cane-sheath down on the seat of the chair. “That is a… unique… gift idea.”
“Oh, shut up,” Ed says, and fabric shifts, and Roy goes still, as still as he’s able, as still as he’s ever been in a long, sad life full of powerless inaction. “Here.”
It’s Ed’s left hand this time, guiding Roy’s left; of course Edward Elric wouldn’t skewer himself on an unmoving sword-but that doesn’t mean the thought didn’t cross Roy’s mind; that didn’t quell the detailed, all-too-realistic mental image of the smears-of-shape-and-imaginary-colors Ed he knows now, with a splatter of red and a cascade of guts and sinews pouring from between the hips that Roy was kissing yesterday-
It’s been a long day, and he is a tired man, and he hates the stream of vicious pessimism in him, but he just can’t stamp it out. The last time he saw an Amestrian leader, swords like this one were pushing through the palms of both his hands, and Riza Hawkeye was bleeding on a cold stone floor.
Ed presses Roy’s fingertip against a tiny engraved array at the bottom edge of the handle.
The sword lights up-sheer phosphorescence straight down the fuller, bisecting the blade.
Ed leans his head against Roy’s shoulder as Roy stands, speechless-and stares. So rarely does he enjoy the opportunity to stare at something; so rarely-
“I think it’ll go forever if you need it to,” Ed says, “but I guess it’s not all that practical to walk around waving a sword like a torch, so… well, what the hell, you’re the Führer; you can carry a glowing sword around all day if you fuckin’ want to. It’s just… I dunno.” The strange little tug on Roy’s sleeve seems to be Ed picking at it idly. “I-worry about you. A lot. I mean, I know you’ve got Colonel Hawkeye, and she’ll never let anything happen to you, but… She can’t always be there. And I’m not there half as much as I’d like, and even if I was, I can’t really… Anyway. It seems like it sort of gets to you, too, sometimes, and… I kinda want you to be able to protect yourself if you have to. So… I thought this might help.” He pauses, and Roy hears the beginnings of a grin. “Plus, like, you don’t even have to learn how to use it, ’cause nobody in their right mind is ever gonna run towards a blind guy waving a sword.”
Roy turns the blade back and forth. He’s not sure if he can actually make out the gleam of the metal, or if it’s wishful thinking amidst all the brightness.
“Thank you,” he says.
“There’s another array on the other side,” Ed says, “to turn it off.”
Like the illuminated lettering, this is probably too bright for sighted people to look at comfortably-which, in this case, could very well play as an advantage.
Roy feels for the other circle, touches it, and plunges himself back into darkness. He reaches for the sheath and finds it without too much vague, helpless hand-flailing. Carefully, keeping Ed at his back and out of range of his elbows, let alone the edge, he slides the blade back in.
In seven years of blindness, he has not laid his all-too-valuable fingers on a cane.
But why? What stopped him?
Has it been a matter of vanity all along? Did he want to believe he was somehow better than others navigating the same obstacles? When he flirted with the prospect of self-examination, he always let himself believe that he didn’t want the weakness on display-that it was too important to his safety, to his life, to his career to keep it all a secret whenever he had a chance. That if he didn’t demonstrate it, people might not know.
But how much of it has always been a matter of shame?
He is disabled. It is a fact of his existence-just as it has been a fact of Ed’s since he was a child. There is, or ought to be, no shame in recognizing it.
None of his old excuses hold true. There are probably people spread across the world now who couldn’t be called upon to generate his name, but they know that the Führer of Amestris is a man who’s blind. What damn difference does it make if he carries the evidence?
He runs his fingertips over the tiny figure of the mustang.
“I have an important question,” he says to Edward-to the love, to the light, of his life.
“Fire away,” Ed says, and he can hear the grin.
Roy sets the cane’s foot on the floor and tilts it outward, spreading his free hand on his hip and lifting his chin. “How does it look?”
“Dapper as fuck,” Ed says, trying not to laugh and failing miserably. “Next year, you’re getting a top hat and a monocle, and we’re gonna be in business.”
“The monocle is a nice touch,” Roy says. “Thematically unified but pointedly absurd.”
“Thanks,” Ed says. “I think. Hey, that thing’s got another function, too, y’know.”
Roy blinks his surprise, which still feels natural sometimes. “Wonders never cease.”
“You’re damn right they don’t.” Ed’s hand ghosts over his ass, which is positively transcendent as well as startling. “You ever heard of caning in bed?”
Roy cannot be blamed for shivering from head to toe; he lives with an incubus. He hefts the cane with new appreciation, but surely it’s far too heavy to be safe… “Is this really suitable?”
“Of course not,” Ed says. He grabs the cane away, disposes of it somewhere, and takes Roy’s hands instead. “That’s why I got you the riding crop, Mustang.”
Roy’s heart-rate seems to have skyrocketed. How interesting. “You did not.”
“Fuck, yeah, I did,” Ed says. “Just couldn’t exactly leave it lying around, or Al’d be like, ‘But Brother, you don’t have a horse… oh. Oh, gross.’”
“Possibly verbatim,” Roy says.
“Yup,” Ed says. This feels like the carpeting of the hallway; they’re getting tantalizingly close to the bedroom, and Roy’s heart has given up beating altogether and is simply singing now, at an accelerated tempo. “C’mon, we don’t have all night.”
“Well,” Roy says. “We do.”
Ed’s laugh could pull him back from the brink of hell; he knows it. “Good goddamn point.”
“Edward,” Roy says, catching his shoulders to stop him, “I love you.”
Ed stretches up-rising onto tip-toe, presumably-to kiss him, slowly and thoroughly and with a great deal of fire.
“Love you, too, Roy,” he whispers. His mouth against Roy’s skin quirks up at the corners. “No matter how old you get.”
Roy skates a hand slowly down Ed’s side, then runs it back up, sliding it underneath the shirt this time. It’s the longest and most dedicated piece of artwork he’s ever done-the painting in his head, constantly amended for newfound scars and subtly-changed expanses, of what Ed must look like now. He knows he’ll never finish, but he doesn’t find he minds.
“You’re going to pay for that, you little brat,” he says, digging his fingernails in just slightly between Edward’s ribs.
He can feel this grin, too-he thinks he would have felt it from a thousand miles away.
“Lookin’ forward to it,” Ed says.
Roy winks at-well, towards-him. “I am, too.”
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed, Al/cats
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 9,400
Warnings: language; smutty(/slightly kinky) implications and plentiful innuendo; major spoilers for Brotherhood; h/c-y angst; what a crap title even by my standards
Summary: Surprises come in several varieties, and all of them are illuminating.
Author's Note: A return to the Leading the Blind 'verse! This one is for akaineechan. ♥ …I meant to post this yesterday, but I just couldn't edit it for the life of me. So, uh, first fic of 2015, not actually written in 2015 at all! XD''
RIGHT AS RAIN
Roy hates the rain, not just for the reasons he used to, which he’ll maintain until the day he dies have always been valid-not for the reasons that never failed to make Breda snicker and Havoc grin and Fuery offer an umbrella with the solemnity of a monarch offering a knight a sword. Not for the reasons that summoned the wordlessly eloquent eye-gleam from Riza and the then-Fullmetal Alchemist’s brashly derisive laughter.
The old reasons were easier to swallow; the new ones jab and rankle all the way down.
Rain leaves him all the blinder, now. The sound of the drops landing obscures most of the little sounds he uses to judge distance and gauge locations; his mental map of the world around him muddles into a nightmarescape of jagged, uncertain lines and question marks and frigid, sluicing water waiting to splatter on him from above. Cars’ tires spit and splatter through the wet; the sound is deafening, and every time a gust slaps droplets on the windowpane, he startles like he’s been struck. The wind wakes him. Uneven pattering follows him through the graying contours of his stumbling dreams.
And… Ed.
The cold and the humidity alike put Ed in staggering amounts of pain, but it was always his expression that gave him away-always an almost-melodramatic screwing-up of all his features; always the wince or the grimace or the grinding of his teeth. He’s made a habit of keeping it quiet, these days, because he knows he can hide it that way. Roy doesn’t have the slightest idea until he reaches out and finds Ed’s shoulders tensed so tight they’re shaking.
There’s also the delightful detail that Hitomi hates getting wet. It’s really rather funny, in an abstract sort of way-snow she loves like it’s the greatest thing that climate patterns ever summoned; rain makes her huff and whine and shift her weight in agitation as she tries to get her damp paws off the ground. It makes him agitated, and with the rain running down his spine and the constant, thrumming pulse of the concern for Ed-touch him first thing, touch his face, touch his hair, talk to him softly, sit him down, run your hands under the hot water tap and lay them on the muscle around the port to warm it up before you start in kneading-
The long and Ed-sized of it is that the Führer of Amestris feels jittery, unsettled, and misplaced in the process of a task as simple as walking across the street from Central Command at lunchtime.
He’s not the only one who thinks the cafeteria food is perhaps the greatest evil remaining of the old regime-he’ll get to exorcising it one of these days, but things like, oh, you know, foreign policy and governance of the greater nation-state tend to take precedence-but one benefit of the rain is that it reduces the foot traffic on the sidewalks somewhat.
He’s developed an extremely honed sense for Hitomi’s emotions-perhaps it’s better not to think too much about the metaphorical implications of how deeply he is in touch with a dog-and she’s sulking even though he’s holding his umbrella mostly over her, at the sacrifice of his left sleeve. He can’t really blame her; she’d only just finished drying off and warming up, and he dragged her back out into the ceaseless wall of water.
Generally, he takes these excursions with a partner-almost invariably Riza, who is the only one who ever volunteers to spend one of her extremely limited off-hours in the presence of her boss. Having a sighted person in tow presents several tactical advantages: for one thing, it looks like courtesy when he lets his companion pick the venue, but in truth of fact, Hitomi’s vocabulary isn’t quite up to “The sandwich shop, but not the first one; the one with the red awning”, and he couldn’t bear to stop a stranger and ask to be led by the hand through the doorway. They say pride goeth before a fall, but Roy has found that it sticks and lingers in the strangest corners of his soul, and embers of it flare and choke him with the smoke. Some days he thinks it’s going to suffocate him.
Today, though, there’s too much small-scale chaos all around them for him to focus on the inner torments. He’s struggling to listen for the wet swish of clothing, for the sniffling breaths, for the slap-and-splash of shoes on the streaming pavement; Hitomi will do her best to guide him past the strangers, but she doesn’t know that umbrella’s spokes have sharp ends-
He hears commotion, but not the clamorous volume of a line out the door, and he touches Hitomi’s ears and turns towards it. She makes Ed’s favorite noise to imitate-whuff-and leads the way inside, steering him around two other patrons on the way towards what must be a long counter, where they’re waiting behind one person, maybe two, by the distance of the cashier’s voice.
It sounds like they’re in the Cretan café, by the names of the dishes. That was a rather good random selection on his part.
He asks the girl at the register what’s good, and she rattles off a list of suggestions. She’s startled when he tells her to choose for him, and then she’s sort of pleased, and then she promises he’ll enjoy whatever combination it is that she’s picked out. He sorts out the cash-it’s all so automatic now; his muscle memory does the math for him, and he counts out the bills so quickly she might not understand why they’re all folded into different shapes.
“Is there a table open?” he asks her next.
“Umm…” He imagines her stretching, standing on her toes, bracing her hands on the countertop to peer over the people and whatever objects are standing on the counter, obstructing the flow of air from ahead and to the left. “There’s one in the corner-you see it?”
She’s probably pointing. He pockets his wallet, lifts his right hand, and waves it in front of his eyes. He smiles.
“I’m afraid not,” he says.
“Oh,” she says, sounding shocked and mortified in equal measure; and then, “Oh,” a revelation; and then, “Holy-you’re the Führer.”
He can feel the prickle of eyes fixing on him. “Last time I checked, yes, but democracy is a fluid thing.”
“Oh, God-I’m so sorry; I knew I recognized you from somewhere; I-”
The tragedy of it is that he used to love being looked at. Stares used to sustain him; glares used to fuel him; wistful gazes used to stroke his ego until it purred. Attention was a critical part of his concept of himself.
He supposes he still has an ‘image’, of one sort or another; it’s not a voluntary matter when the perception is imposed on you by the public, is it? You can feed it, of course, and guide its course, and alter its trajectory, but you’re not driving it. The end result is handed to you.
He wonders what they think, these days-what they think of blind Roy Mustang and his unattended hair; of the tufts of dog fur clinging to his uniform as avidly as the badges marking out his rank; of the longer, yellower hairs that sometimes find their way onto his collar or inside the cuffs of his sleeves and drag silkily along his fingertips as he tries to work them free.
If they disdained him entirely, they wouldn’t have elected him, but the matter of Ed came to light after they’d already granted him the government. He can’t help thinking that the average Amestrian might well approve of his political choices and abhor his personal ones, and that the latter could sink him at the reelection. He can’t watch people’s faces anymore. He can’t find the pulse of the populace to pin it underneath his fingertip.
“It’s really all right,” he says.
“Your dog!” the girl is saying. “You even have the dog… oh, God, I’m gonna get fired.”
“What?” Roy says. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t know who you are, and you’re the freakin’ Führer, and I just recommended you food, and you might hate it, and-”
“I’m sure I won’t,” he says. He sort of wants to say I have a very broad palate, but that would sound… what? Saucy? Ed is such a terrible influence; the day he discovered innuendo was the end of Roy’s ability to say anything with the remotest double-meaning without receiving a snicker and a huge wink. He settles on: “I love the food here,” and judiciously does not add, And I would love for this scene to be over so I can get back to my pathetic little life.
He can hear Ed’s voice in his head, the brat-Modesty doesn’t suit you, Mustang. It’s a big pathetic life. You have the most publicized pathetic life in the whole country, for fuck’s sake!
Someday Roy is going to marry that little shit.
And that’s the beautiful thing, isn’t it? Just the thought of Ed, Ed in his life, Ed being his-the mere thought stabilizes him instantly. He’s sailing blind through storms that have scuttled lesser men, but he’s a ship with a rudder again-even-keeled.
“Really?” the girl says. The relief is rolling off of her in heady waves. “Well-just-”
“Here,” a man’s voice says. “Let me take you over to that table, sir.”
“Thank you,” Roy manages, and there’s a foreign touch under his elbow, and he fights the urge to flinch. Hitomi dances out of the way of his knee and then nudges her head at his trailing hand, looking for reassurance that this is all right-his body language must be tenser even than he thought. He strokes a fingertip behind her ear and lets the unknown, unseen individual lead him eighteen steps and then guide his right hand to the back of a well-worn wooden chair.
It would be rude to say You’re a journalist, aren’t you?, so Roy bites it back and swallows it down. One of his few regrets is that there was never any way to prepare for the endless insincerities-even if he’d kept his sight, even if he’d planned for a thousand years, he would still be surrounded by suck-ups and yes-men; nothing he could have done would have stemmed the tide of opportunistic liars. Everyone wants to cozy up to the Führer of Amestris. Everyone wants to offer him empty generosity and false kindness in the hopes of a kickback someday. There was something of a gradual falling away of genuineness as he climbed the ranks, but nothing could have prepared him for the absolute impossibility of trusting at the top. He counts himself a very, very lucky man to have found so many friends and fostered so much loyalty before he got here. He couldn’t do it now-couldn’t start it from this point. He’d never survive. The snakes would strangle him while he cast about for someone to hold onto who wouldn’t drop him for a price.
A chair on the other side of the table creaks softly with the weight of his mystery benefactor. Hitomi shuffles in close by his leg, trying to shy out of the way of the crush of people in the little restaurant. He thinks his back is to the window-with the cloud cover, he can’t feel the faint warmth of the sunlight; he’s guessing based on spatial recollection of this establishment alone.
“That was very kind of you,” he says. Presumably it wasn’t; an act of charity would be to deposit him and then to walk away without expecting an exchange, but the man sat down. He wants something. “Forgive me if we’ve met, and I don’t remember.”
“Oh, no,” the man says-is he young? His grip was firm, and his voice is smooth, but there’s really no way of knowing with so few details to go on. “I’ve only ever seen you in the papers, to be honest. And if you’ll pardon my saying so, they really didn’t do you justice.”
He’s tuned his ears to tones and undertones, but he’d give just about anything to be able to judge facial expressions again. He keeps his voice as flatly neutral as he’s capable of. “I can only hope that the primary motivation of our newspaper photographers is to capture a moment accurately, rather than to flatter a government official.”
The man-he does sound young; Roy’s wagering on it now-laughs merrily. “They’ve also failed entirely at capturing your sense of humor.”
Roy knows for a fact that that’s not true, because Alphonse does a passable imitation of Roy’s ‘Ultimate Sarcasm Voice’ every time he reads an article at the dinner table.
“Again,” Roy says, putting on his blandest smile, “I must confess that comes as a relief. I’d rather be publicized for policy than for wit.” Now, if you’ll excuse me is a touch too direct. “Didn’t I interrupt your order and make you lose your place in line? I’d hate to ruin your lunch.”
“Trust me,” the man says. “You’ve already improved it more than I could have hoped for.”
Damn it.
Roy dons an even milder expression and reaches down to scratch gently behind one of Hitomi’s ears. She doesn’t relax-is his agitation obvious, or is it just that she can smell it on him by now?
“Perhaps I should start hosting diplomatic meetings here,” Roy says. “If this restaurant has such an inspiring effect on an Amestrian citizen, I like to think it might make delegates significantly more pliable.”
He can hear the grin-its broadness, its corners, the lowered eyelids. There’s a soft sound of flesh and cloth against the table-an elbow, to rest the chin on the hand? Possibly; the voice is closer. “I am definitely feeling pliable, sir.”
Damn it. Damn it.
“I’ll have to make a note for my staff,” Roy says. Did he remember to order a drink? He can never remember which cafes bring water and which expect you to serve yourself; with his luck, he probably passed a jug of ice-cold distraction on his way over, and now he’s stranded in the desert, slowly desiccating.
“The tabloids did get one thing right,” the man says. “They always say you’re… fascinating. Magnetic.”
Fuck.
“I daresay that’s a slight exaggeration,” Roy says.
This is a delicate game-a teetering balance. It always has been, but it’s more precarious now than it ever was before. If he shuts this conversation down too harshly, he’s cruel; if he encourages the behavior without reacting, he’s angling to acquire a new toady; if he responds in kind, he’s vain and frivolous-a flirt. Not to mention a cheater. Not to mention sick to his stomach at the mere thought.
Every move he makes, every word he utters, is subject to the judgment of the public eye. Which is more than a bit unfair, given that he can’t eye them back.
If he tries to extricate himself from this whole situation and departs without his meal, he’s eccentric, and it could be interpreted as a rejection of the fare, or the company, or the café on the whole-the point is, there will be talk. If he lets the tenor of this exchange tilt any more suggestive… there will be talk. He has to find a way to stay entirely neutral now-unwaveringly, unerringly detached-without ever straying into the realm of the aloof. He has to be completely uninterested without seeming disinterested, and he can’t even gauge his own success by the kinds of visual cues-facial features and body language and the precise moment when people turn their heads to watch-that used to make him such a master at this game.
“You know,” the young man is saying, and his voice keeps getting fractionally louder as he moves nearer in, “the tabloids say a lot of things.”
“I believe that is their intended purpose,” Roy says. Hell. Was that too sardonic?
A foot brushes his ankle once, then twice, and then settles against the side of his calf, and it takes every last iota of his willpower to make himself go still instead of startling right out of his seat.
“They say you’re a man of unusual tastes,” the voice says, smoother and lower and even closer now. “A man with rather… particular… inclinations.”
That’s enough. That’s enough of this-enough letting himself be walked all over as he walks on eggshells simply because he can’t see which edges are so jagged that they’ll leave him bleeding. He did not come all this way-he did not crawl through hell and stumble through an almost-apocalypse; he did not cut his teeth on oblivion and dig into the furthest reaches of his soul to make his wretched peace with darkness-to be unsettled by some conniving, power-mongering, social-climbing twit.
He pushes his chair back sharply-just two inches, but in one swift motion, with a crisp shkk of the legs skating over the floorboards-and tucks his feet beneath it, where his enterprising lunch companion would have to flail admirably to find them. He folds his hands neatly on the tabletop, not before rubbing his thumb against his first fingertip just once, and fixes his single coldest glare on the place the young man’s eyes should be.
“That’s none of their damn business,” he says. He tilts his head-just a fraction, just enough for a touch of implication. “Or anyone else’s.”
He sits back, leaving his hands on the table, and raises his eyebrows. Your move.
There’s a long silence, and then the voice returns-with an edge, now; with an edge like the faintest hiss of a vial of acid rising to a boil.
“It’s that kid alchemist, isn’t it?” the voice asks. “That’s what I heard-that Fullmetal kid. Elric. Heard he used to work under you-under you, some people say-and then he quit, and nobody really knows why. Rumor is he can’t do alchemy anymore. Rumor is, maybe it’s your fault-maybe you pity him, maybe he just had nowhere else to go-maybe he got a lot of practice with what you liked when he was a kid-”
There are moments, occasionally, when Roy is glad that he is blind. There are moments when anger would streak his vision white and red and cinder-black if he still had it, and he would think that he could navigate right through it, because he’d be accustomed to the privilege of sight. There are moments when a visual target would be so tempting that he might not be able to speak reason in his own mind loud enough to hear over the wordless roaring of the rage. There are moments when it is good to feel powerless, because it reminds him of what he has to lose.
Ed would shrug, roll his eyes, say Fuck him, he’d be dead if it wasn’t for us, remember? I don’t expect his dumb ass to be smart enough to know that. Funny how appreciation’s never been in style.
Ed is better than him, in that way, because he wants to scald this snake-mouthed bastard’s skin right off and grind his heel into the ashes on the floor.
He stands up, spreading both hands on the edge of the tabletop to steady himself, and bites out nothing more or less than the words “Excuse me.”
He has to hold it in. He has to hold it in. He ha-
A firm hand catches his right wrist, and he tenses so abruptly that he feels his own shoulder jerk hard.
“He’s still a kid,” the voice says. “If you ever want a man, you let me know, and I will show you things you’ve never seen that you’re never going to forge-ahh.”
The last syllable is presumably in reaction to the fact that Roy is prying those fingers from around his wrist-slowly, deliberately, and rather forcefully-one by one.
“I will thank you,” he says, and he doesn’t need to see to know just how far back you can bend a knuckle joint without damaging it, “not to touch me, or speak to me, or speak about me, ever again.”
He doesn’t wait for a response; Hitomi is up and waiting at his knee, and he turns them towards the direction he believes the counter is, at which point she does the rest. He pauses just to the side of the line until he hears the girl from before:
“Oh! Um-sir?”
“I’m terribly sorry,” he says, “but is there any chance I can get my order to-go?”
If this is the most blatantly that he ever leverages the clout of his supreme political power, he thinks he can live with himself.
“Of course!” she says. “Yeah, just-hang on one second.”
There are some assorted noises-objects moving; she gets someone’s attention; paper bags crinkle.
“Okay,” she says. “It’ll just be another minute. Um. Sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Thank you,” he says, and tries to melt back against the side of the counter to stay out of the way.
He’s listening hard for pursuit or persistence-without a look at his harasser’s face at that critical final moment, he can’t be confident that he’s properly estimated the measure of the man. Is he sulking quietly in the corner, having accepted rebuke and defeat-or is he the vengeful type? Even just a guess at the clothing would have been helpful; Roy should have been listening more closely. Sometimes these things don’t end when the incident is over.
But there are no further interruptions before there’s a shuffling by the counter, past the girl taking the orders, and a new voice calls out, “‘Really-truly-actually-Führer-Roy-Mustang-I-mean-i…’ oh. Oh, for the l-I-sir.”
“Thank you,” Roy says, urging Hitomi forward towards the source of that voice, and then reaching out an uncertain hand. “Forgive me, I…”
“No, no, not at all!” The rolled top of a paper bag greets his fingertips, and then he grips it. “Thank you, sir, um-please enjoy.”
“I know I will,” Roy says, and then-at last, at long last-it’s possible to escape.
Except-
He remembers just as they step over the threshold that he leaned his umbrella against the counter when he ordered, and there’s no way in hell that he’s going back.
He hopes Hitomi will forgive him someday.
The rain has let up a fraction, which is a fraction of a blessing-it’s like a heavy mist now instead of a downpour, although the ambient dripping and splattering from store awnings and rooftops is still wreaking merry hell on Roy’s projection of the world around him. Hitomi is dog-pouting-silently, but he can tell. He’ll have to make it up to her by drying her with a warm towel when they get back to the office. Maybe he can scrounge up some time to brush her later if he reads through the latest of the wretched paperwork fast enough.
He spreads one hand underneath the bottom of his takeout bag, trying to assess the structural integrity of the paper with his fingertips. Is it damp enough that the weight of the food will tear through and splatter his hard-won lunch all over the wet pavement? He can’t decide whether or not that’s more ridiculous than the premier politician of Amestris trying to tuck a lunchbag inside his overcoat to protect it from the rain.
After a brief internal debate, he decides that he prefers a dry lunch to the tatters of his dignity and bundles it in. One of the delightful things he’s learned about shame over the years is that if you simply refuse to display any, the onus of embarrassment transfers to your observer. He utilizes this strategy as he strides through the gate at Central Command, listening for the change in the clicking of Hitomi’s nails when she moves from cement onto flagstones so that he knows when to start treading carefully with his wet boots.
He hears the faint tmp of sharp salutes, almost immediately followed by the brisk thud of boot heels meeting.
“Good afternoon, sir,” two soldiers say in unison.
“At ease,” he says, still clutching his lunchbag to his chest like a treasure.
He counts the steps across the courtyard, and then the stairs. When they step into the hall, he takes the bag out of his coat and carries it by his side instead, resisting the urge to shake water out of his hair. Ed is wrong-absolutely, categorically wrong-about him ‘picking up habits from the dog’.
Speaking of Hitomi, though, she knows that he’s comfortable enough walking this space that he barely needs her guidance, and she trots alongside him a little further from his knee than usual. She’s probably soaked, poor thing. He’ll have to ask someone to get him another umbrella-someone other than Ed, unless he wants “USELESS TODAY” emblazoned across the front. Do they still have that little electric heater in the office somewhere from that time Fuery got the flu and insisted on coming to work anyway, but his mother wouldn’t let him leave the house until he’d sworn up and down that he’d plug it in next to his desk…?
Ed mentioned something glum about errands this morning, just before Roy started kissing along the lines of his shoulder-blades. And then something about having no idea how Roy managed to be lascivious at six in the morning as he kissed lower. And then something about how he shouldn’t stop, and the somethings devolved into delightful incoherence from there.
…the point is, if Ed has a long, quotidian scavenger hunt-as his errand trips invariably become-planned out on top of a regular workday in this remarkably persistent rain, he’s going to be miserable by the time he eventually straggles home. Roy should call ahead and conspire with Al-have the hot chocolate waiting for when Ed steps through the door; douse it with cream liqueur to dull the pain just slightly; wrap him up in blankets and drop a cat into his lap…
Hitomi huffs softly when they reach the office door, shifting her paws on the carpet, but she doesn’t lead him away-something’s off, but it’s not a threat?
Or it’s not something she recognizes as a threat.
He really doesn’t have the energy for this today.
He really doesn’t have a choice.
He puts his lunch down on the floor. There’s an ignition glove folded up in wax paper in the breast pocket of his shirt, well-sheltered from the rain. He undoes just enough buttons and catches to wrangle it out, slips it onto his left hand, and turns the doorknob with the right.
It’s unusually dark in the office-he knows he left his door open; he should be able to see a faintly pale square from the window-and it’s bizarrely quiet.
It isn’t silent, though, because he can just detect the sound of a number of people… breathing.
His first thought is Assassination; his second is Oh God what happened to Riza; but he doesn’t have time for a third, because-
“Surprise!”
Hitomi retreats behind his leg, making a discontented noise in the back of her throat. People she knows are acting in a strange way, the human who feeds her has frozen into an extremely undignified statue, and she’s wet-all in all, it’s a crowning moment of confusion on a generally lousy sort of day.
Meanwhile, Roy is struggling to think of something to say more befitting of a national figurehead than ‘What the fucking fuck?’
That’s when a banner lights up in phosphorescent blue, just bright enough for him to read the words Happy birthday in the field of undifferentiated dark.
If he procrastinates any longer, this is going to get extraordinarily awkward, so he clears his throat and settles on a simpler iteration of the question that he really wants to ask:
“What?”
“Happy birthday, sir,” Riza says. “Come in and close the door. Hitomi, come here-come here, girl.”
Roy fumbles to find his lunch and then obliges, and Hitomi’s tags jingle as she does likewise; they both know better than to ignore a suggestion-command from Riza Hawkeye.
“Thank you all for being here,” Roy says, despite having nothing more than a general estimate of how many people ‘you all’ encompasses right now, “but I’m afraid it’s… not my birthday.” He has a terrible thought, and he turns back towards the origin of Riza’s voice.. “…is it?”
“It is, sir,” she says. “I checked the personnel records to be sure.”
He opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again in order to unleash some brilliant rhetoric: “Oh.”
“I think maybe you need a vacation, Chief,” Havoc says. “Dibs on driving so I can have one, too.”
“Cheater,” Breda says.
“Ow,” Havoc says, and Roy is left wondering whether that was an elbow to the ribs, a toe-stomp, or something altogether more creative.
His wondering time cuts short when tiny, hazy blue dots of light start wavering towards him.
“I know you’re not overly fond of cake,” the last voice he expected to hear in his office says, “but last time I made blueberry pie, I remember you had two slices-”
“Lord, woman, put that down,” Roy says, and the lights move aside-someone must be taking the dish out of her hands-and he steps forward and pulls her into a hug. “Thank you,” he whispers, as if it could possibly be adequate. “You have always been better to me than I deserve.”
“You have always been full of it,” Gracia says, patting his back. “You’d better blow out the candles before they melt all over your pie, Führer Mustang.”
He looks at the alchemically-augmented lights in not-entirely-mock despair. “How could you desecrate such a perfect pastry by jamming obviously no more than twenty-nine candles into it?”
He gets some chuckles for that, none of them forced, which is a thousand times more reassuring than loud, obedient laughter would have been. He then hears Falman mutter, “But there are thirty-seven.”
However many there are, Roy manages to extinguish the stragglers on his second attempt, after the first is subverted by choking when Breda says, “Talk about a blow job, eh?”
Once he’s stopped coughing, Roy reaches towards where he thinks Gracia’s arm should be. His fingertips brush what feels like the sweater he recently pressed his cheek against. “Tell me Elysia’s not here to have heard that.”
“She’s at school,” Gracia says, patting his hand. “This was our only chance to ambush you. I made you a second pie to take home to the boys, though, and I tried out a recipe for dog treats, although I wasn’t quite brave enough to taste-test them to see if they were any good. Come by this weekend; there’s more where that came from.”
“And people say I have too much power,” Roy says.
“Exactly who says that?” Riza asks, taking his wrist and putting a plate into his hand. She then takes the other hand and puts a fork into it.
“Alphonse,” Roy says.
“I would have suspected Edward,” Gracia says.
“He’s still holding it against me that I don’t create national holidays at will,” Roy says. “He doesn’t see the point of holding office if you can’t enact an Amestris-wide extension of the weekend when it suits you.”
“Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it, Chief,” Havoc says. “And give me a heads up when you do, so Becky and I can go out of town.”
“Where are we going?” Rebecca asks.
“I dunno,” Havoc says. “Anywhere, just as soon as our Great and Powerful Leader instates a day off.”
“I don’t think he ever said he would,” Sheska’s voice cuts in.
“He didn’t,” Breda says. “But bribery and blackmail are both storied and venerable political traditions.”
“Good luck,” Roy says. He does his best to keep whatever portion of pie he has managed to stab with his fork on top of the tines as he lifts it to his mouth. It is, unsurprisingly, spectacularly delicious.
“You’re not understanding the complexity of the plan, sir,” Breda says. “It’s in two parts, and we’re not bribing you.”
“That’s nice to hear,” Riza says idly.
“We’re bribing Ed. Who’s going to blackmail you in ways I’m not gonna describe in front of Sheska and Mrs. Hughes, if you know what I mean.”
“Never mind,” Riza says.
“If you think I’d be scandalized by the prospect of Roy and Edward having sex,” Gracia says, “you may have a fundamental misunderstanding of the process of bearing children.”
The rather odd, wet noise that follows sounds suspiciously like Breda choking on pie.
Roy turns in Gracia’s direction. “Have I told you lately that I adore you?”
“That’s another reason you should come by more often,” Gracia says.
“What are you going to bribe Ed with, anyway?” Fuery asks. “He has everything he wants. He even says so.”
Roy is deeply, deeply touched for a shining moment.
A very brief shining moment.
“Stepladders,” Havoc suggests.
“Decorative items that are in exceedingly bad taste,” Falman says.
“Primary involvement in an anti-milk campaign,” Breda says.
“Books,” Sheska says.
“Spaghetti and beer,” Rebecca says.
“You’re thinking of me, babe,” Havoc says.
“No,” Rebecca says, “I’m thinking of men.”
“She’s got a point,” Breda says.
“I dunno,” Fuery says. “I think that in order to really get anything out of Ed, you’d probably have to kidnap Al.”
“Excuse me,” Roy says. “What am I, chopped liver?”
“Diced, probably,” Havoc says.
“Foie gras,” Rebecca says.
“You’re missing the point,” Breda says. “That’d be double-blackmail, not bribe-and-blackmail. It’s not balanced. Besides, trying to blackmail Ed just ends in black eyes.”
“Perhaps a petition,” Falman says. “There’s a decades-old law that was never rescinded whereby any petition with over a thousand signatures must be reviewed by the head of state.”
“I’m right here,” Roy says. “The least you could do is relegate the treacherous plotting to occasions when I’m out of earshot.”
“We could just pass notes,” Breda says. “You’d never know.”
“You’re walking a very thin line, Lieutenant,” Roy says. “On one side of that line is this nice, cushy desk chair you have, and your lovely apartment in Central City. On the other is an important international delegation meeting at the end of a very, very long walk to Xing.”
“Here, sir,” Breda says. “Why don’t you let me get you another slice of pie?”
The smirk spreads on Roy’s face without his permission, but he has to admit that it feels good. “That’s more like i-”
Either something explodes, or the door slams open and rebounds off the wall.
“Führer Mustang!” Armstrong’s voice bellows, which favors bets on the latter. “What a magnificently fortuitous da-oh, Mrs. Hughes, is that blueberry pie?”
“Hello!” Maria Ross’s voice says brightly. “We brought cookies. These are for the office, and these are for Ed and Al.”
Sometimes Roy sincerely wishes that the Elrics could see-both literally and figuratively-how often and how highly everyone here still thinks of them.
Then again, given the things Breda comes out with sometimes, Ed’s absence has probably saved all of them at least one busted eardrum each.
When he lets himself in at home, while he’s still trying to figure out how to remove his boots without dropping either the umbrella in his right hand or the wine bottle in his left, Ed calls “Yo, gorgeous!” from the living room.
He thought that might lose its luster after a while, but it hasn’t. It hasn’t at all.
He ends up moving the umbrella to the right hand with the wine, using his newly-freed left hand to feel around for the end table and determine whether there is sufficient unoccupied space to put the wine bottle. Shifting some knickknacks ensures as much, at which point he takes up the bottle in his left hand again and deposits it carefully on the tabletop.
“What’re you banging around in there for?” Ed calls next, which is not quite as inspiringly romantic as the previous outburst, but Roy will take it anyway.
“Apparently it’s my birthday,” he says, leaning back against the door in the hopes of prying a boot off without falling over. “And apparently the Armstrongs have been cultivating a stupendously artful vineyard for generations.”
“Duh to the birthday,” Ed says, and there’s a creak of the couch, and then the unmistakable soft-hard cadence of his footsteps comes clomping over. “What the hell to the vineyard. Have you already been into that wine, or are you just trying to look drunk so I’ll take you to bed early?”
Alphonse clears his throat so remarkably loudly in the kitchen that Roy can hear it from here.
Charitably, he feels, Roy lowers his voice. “Does your use of the word ‘early’ in that sentence imply that you were planning on it later regardless?”
Ed’s fingers push gently at his to prompt him to relinquish the umbrella, and then Ed’s other hand clasps around his shoulder to steady him so that he can finally take off his damn boots.
“Roy,” Ed says slowly, as if talking to someone very young and not particularly bright, “it’s your birthday.”
“So I’m told, b-”
“You always get sex on your birthday.”
Roy tries to think back as he nudges at the boots with his toes, hoping that he’s shepherding them more or less out of the way of the main passage to the door. “…do I?”
“Jeez,” Ed says. “Just ’cause you’re getting too old and senile to remember doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.”
“I’m not-”
Ed’s fingers curl into his collar and tug him downward, and then Ed’s mouth smothers the rest of that sentence.
“It’s just that we have so much sex,” Roy murmurs against Ed’s lips when there’s a fraction of space between them, “that I don’t usually remember the reasons. Especially since most of the reasons are variations on themes such as ‘you are impossibly amazing’ and ‘your brother isn’t home’.”
“You’re lucky you’re such a smooth fuckin’ talker,” Ed says, breath hot on Roy’s mouth, and his tongue flicks across Roy’s bottom lip; “that you can talk your way back into a smooth fuck.”
Roy catches Ed’s hip with one hand, cradling it for just a moment before sliding his hand around the small of Ed’s back and walking his fingers slowly up Ed’s spine. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather that it be a little… rough.”
“Well,” Ed says, hips hitching against his, and God- “It is your birthday.”
“Dinner, children!” Alphonse calls from the kitchen. “Please keep your hands to yourselves while we eat!”
“Oh, hell,” Roy says as the thought strikes him. “Gracia baked an extra pie, but I left it in the car.”
“Al!” Ed says, slipping free of Roy’s arm, his footsteps thundering off down the hall so suddenly that Hitomi makes a startled sound. “Call Havoc! It’s an emergency!”
They conclude an excellent meal with the dutifully-returned pie (Havoc kindly refused the offer of a large slice for his trouble, and then not-so-kindly admitted that he’d probably had a full quarter of the one in the office), and then one or other of the Elrics whisks Roy’s plate out from in front of him as they both start in on the dishes with a vengeance.
“You know,” Al says faux-thoughtfully as Ed plunks back into his chair at Roy’s right, “I think I might just go thank Mrs. Hughes personally. And stay there. For a while. Maybe, y’know, all night. How about if I just go pack some things, and I’ll just head off to class from there tomorrow?”
Roy reaches over with the intention of patting Ed’s knee and ends up caressing a thigh, which is just as good-better, really. “I see he’s finally inherited your gift for subtlety.”
“You don’t see shit,” Ed says.
Roy kneads his knuckles right at the edge of the scar tissue, and Ed makes a contented noise in the back of his throat. “Touché.”
“Yeah,” Al says slowly. “I’ll just… be going. Do you think Mrs. Hughes and Elysia would mind if I rescu-I mean, brought-the cats?”
Roy presses harder, and Ed growls low in his chest.
“Never mind,” Al says. “They’re on their own. I’m sorry, babies; this is an act of desperate self-preservation. I know you’ll forgive me someday.”
“Don’t forget to bring a change of socks,” Roy says.
“Don’t forget to clean up the carpet when you’re finished,” Al says, voice trailing off in the direction of the hall.
Ed’s guttural noises of approval take on a slightly less-approbatory tone. “We barely ever mess up the carpet. And if he’s so fucking worried about the carpet, he can alchemize it back to… nngh. Oh, shit, right there-”
Roy considers crossing his legs and decides there’s no point. Alphonse will momentarily be running out the door without a single look backwards; and where Ed is concerned, it’s not like there’s anything to hide. Perhaps it might be slightly embarrassing for an apparently-thirty-seven-year-old leader of a nation to own up to the way his lover brings out the teenager in him, but most thirty-seven-year-old leaders of nations don’t have to listen to the borderline-pornographic noises Ed makes in the midst of a massage.
A few minutes pass. Ed continues to make the noises. Roy continues to be unreasonably turned-on. Sounds which are either banged dresser drawers or small gunshots emanate from Alphonse’s room. Footsteps proceed back out into the hall.
“Okay!” Al calls. “I’m leaving! Goodbye! Have fun! Not too much fun! ’Bye, kitty. ’Bye, kitty. ’Bye, Hitomi. I don’t know how you do it, girl. Okay, I’m going!”
A groan building in Ed’s throat metamorphoses on its way out into: “Later, Al.”
“Give the Hugheses my best,” Roy says.
Al sighs feelingly all the way out the door.
Roy gives him thirty seconds to get clear of the property before shifting his hand to rub at the inside of Ed’s thigh, with rather different intentions.
“May I jump you now?” he asks.
“Fuck, yes,” Ed says, raggedly, and Roy leans in towards the jagged progress of his breath- “Wait, no.”
Roy freezes in mid-lean. “What?”
“Gotta give you your present first,” Ed gasps out. “’Cause you and I both know we’re gonna be at this ’til midnight either way, and then it won’t be your birthday anymore.”
Roy has been known to say in the office-confidentially, on pain of death-that anyone who thinks council debates are frustrating has never tried arguing with Ed.
“All right,” he says. “As long as that’s a promise about the midnight thing.”
The chair creaks, and Ed’s mouth brushes across his forehead. “You are somethin’ else, Mustang.” He waits until he’s a safe distance away-the little shit-before he goes on. “Aren’t you getting a little old for that kinda thing?”
Roy rolls his shoulders slowly, stretches his back, and then cracks his knuckles.
“Later,” he says, “I’m going to tie you to the bed and show you old. And you’re going to like it.”
Evidently, two can play at this game; Ed’s footsteps come closer, and then his fingertips slither across the back of Roy’s neck and down along his arm. “Yes, Führer Mustang, sir.”
Roy clenches his jaw. “Not to criticize, my dearest love, but you are not currently doing an especially effective job of convincing me to save the sex for later.”
Something narrow, solid, and rather heavy lands on his lap. Ed sounds very pleased. “I never thought about this, but it’s sort of great that I don’t have to wrap your gifts.”
“Please take a moment to imagine me glaring at you,” Roy says. “As vividly as possible. Go on. I’ll wait.”
Ed’s elbow nudges at his arm, and he has to fight down a smile. “Is that your passive-aggressive-ass way of saying you want me to wrap it next time? ’Cause you better be sure before you say that. It usually ends in whatever the present is getting mummified in an entire roll of packing tape, and I dunno how much I trust you with scissors.”
“It’s comforting to know that you’re less concerned about me running the country than you are about me wielding bladed implements,” Roy says.
“That’s gonna be real funny in another minute,” Ed says. His shoulder pushes gently at Roy’s this time. “Go on.”
“What is this?” Roy asks, patting his way up and down gingerly. It’s a slender cylinder, with what feels like a glossy finish; that’s all the can distinguish so far. “Is this a broom? I know I don’t reliably execute a full third of the housework, but considering the circumstances-”
“You are such a dumbass,” Ed says, adoringly. He takes Roy’s right hand and sets it back down on…
“Is this-a horse?” Roy asks, trying to make sense of the contours. It is; he’s sure of it now; it’s a tiny sculpted figure of a horse, shaped in-some kind of metal?
“It’s a freakin’ mustang,” Ed says, “obviously. I thought just having the head on it would be creepy, so I went with the whole thing.”
It clicks in the next instant-that the figurine is a handle. What it’s capping. What he’s holding right now.
His stomach drops-plummets, free-falls-
Seven years, and he hasn’t touched one until this moment; seven years, and he’d always assumed Ed just understood-that he’d explained by omission; that he didn’t have to speak the words; that Ed knew why he’d plumbed every possible alternative to picking one up.
He doesn’t want to be ungrateful. He doesn’t want to be cruel; and Ed is so, so easy to unsettle, to rattle, to shake from the warm contentment of their silly little lives with the slightest implication that he’s done wrong.
But it hurts. It hurts more than he expected-more than he would have expected, if he’d known what to expect, but he never even thought…
“This is a cane,” he says, softly.
“It’s way more than that,” Ed says, and he didn’t see them-the thousand things beneath Roy’s four words-because his own enthusiasm is too bright. “Hang on… here.” He wraps his right hand around Roy’s again, shifting it down an inch or two, where there’s a square cut out in the veneer. It’s just about the size of the pad of Roy’s thumb, which is precisely what Ed pushes against it, with just a bit of force. Something from the inside of the cane shaft makes a faintly resonating click, not quite hollow but not quite solid-and then there’s a slight spring of recoil; the finish hisses softly against the fabric of his uniform-
His instinct is to move his hand back to the figure of the mustang, and-sure enough-it’s extended outward. There’s something else beneath.
This flare of curiosity is much more palatable than the swell of misery looming behind him; he stands up from the table and tries to draw whatever it is that he’s discovered free. There are only so many options, and it seems to go on forever; what in the world could take so long to…
And then he pauses, and moves his thumb again, keeping a firm grip on the handle, and touches steel.
“This is a sword,” he says.
“Well, yeah,” Ed says, as though a sword sheathed in a cane is a perfectly normal thing to purchase for a long-term lover’s birthday. He sounds… excited, still. Cheeky and delighted and so terribly cute that he’d wash away all of the dreck-black guilt oozing slowly down Roy’s chest if only Roy could see him smiling. “I was talking to Falman a while back about how it’s sorta traditional for the Führer to have a saber, even if it’s just ornamental or whatever. So this is sort of a twist on that.”
Humor. Sick, wry humor; it’s always been Roy Mustang’s saving grace. He can salvage this, can’t he? It’s a gentle gesture, so sincerely meant-
He clears his throat and reaches carefully to find the back of the chair he vacated, carefully angling his right hand-and the blade-towards the floor. “You bought your blind boyfriend a sharp object.” He sets the cane-sheath down on the seat of the chair. “That is a… unique… gift idea.”
“Oh, shut up,” Ed says, and fabric shifts, and Roy goes still, as still as he’s able, as still as he’s ever been in a long, sad life full of powerless inaction. “Here.”
It’s Ed’s left hand this time, guiding Roy’s left; of course Edward Elric wouldn’t skewer himself on an unmoving sword-but that doesn’t mean the thought didn’t cross Roy’s mind; that didn’t quell the detailed, all-too-realistic mental image of the smears-of-shape-and-imaginary-colors Ed he knows now, with a splatter of red and a cascade of guts and sinews pouring from between the hips that Roy was kissing yesterday-
It’s been a long day, and he is a tired man, and he hates the stream of vicious pessimism in him, but he just can’t stamp it out. The last time he saw an Amestrian leader, swords like this one were pushing through the palms of both his hands, and Riza Hawkeye was bleeding on a cold stone floor.
Ed presses Roy’s fingertip against a tiny engraved array at the bottom edge of the handle.
The sword lights up-sheer phosphorescence straight down the fuller, bisecting the blade.
Ed leans his head against Roy’s shoulder as Roy stands, speechless-and stares. So rarely does he enjoy the opportunity to stare at something; so rarely-
“I think it’ll go forever if you need it to,” Ed says, “but I guess it’s not all that practical to walk around waving a sword like a torch, so… well, what the hell, you’re the Führer; you can carry a glowing sword around all day if you fuckin’ want to. It’s just… I dunno.” The strange little tug on Roy’s sleeve seems to be Ed picking at it idly. “I-worry about you. A lot. I mean, I know you’ve got Colonel Hawkeye, and she’ll never let anything happen to you, but… She can’t always be there. And I’m not there half as much as I’d like, and even if I was, I can’t really… Anyway. It seems like it sort of gets to you, too, sometimes, and… I kinda want you to be able to protect yourself if you have to. So… I thought this might help.” He pauses, and Roy hears the beginnings of a grin. “Plus, like, you don’t even have to learn how to use it, ’cause nobody in their right mind is ever gonna run towards a blind guy waving a sword.”
Roy turns the blade back and forth. He’s not sure if he can actually make out the gleam of the metal, or if it’s wishful thinking amidst all the brightness.
“Thank you,” he says.
“There’s another array on the other side,” Ed says, “to turn it off.”
Like the illuminated lettering, this is probably too bright for sighted people to look at comfortably-which, in this case, could very well play as an advantage.
Roy feels for the other circle, touches it, and plunges himself back into darkness. He reaches for the sheath and finds it without too much vague, helpless hand-flailing. Carefully, keeping Ed at his back and out of range of his elbows, let alone the edge, he slides the blade back in.
In seven years of blindness, he has not laid his all-too-valuable fingers on a cane.
But why? What stopped him?
Has it been a matter of vanity all along? Did he want to believe he was somehow better than others navigating the same obstacles? When he flirted with the prospect of self-examination, he always let himself believe that he didn’t want the weakness on display-that it was too important to his safety, to his life, to his career to keep it all a secret whenever he had a chance. That if he didn’t demonstrate it, people might not know.
But how much of it has always been a matter of shame?
He is disabled. It is a fact of his existence-just as it has been a fact of Ed’s since he was a child. There is, or ought to be, no shame in recognizing it.
None of his old excuses hold true. There are probably people spread across the world now who couldn’t be called upon to generate his name, but they know that the Führer of Amestris is a man who’s blind. What damn difference does it make if he carries the evidence?
He runs his fingertips over the tiny figure of the mustang.
“I have an important question,” he says to Edward-to the love, to the light, of his life.
“Fire away,” Ed says, and he can hear the grin.
Roy sets the cane’s foot on the floor and tilts it outward, spreading his free hand on his hip and lifting his chin. “How does it look?”
“Dapper as fuck,” Ed says, trying not to laugh and failing miserably. “Next year, you’re getting a top hat and a monocle, and we’re gonna be in business.”
“The monocle is a nice touch,” Roy says. “Thematically unified but pointedly absurd.”
“Thanks,” Ed says. “I think. Hey, that thing’s got another function, too, y’know.”
Roy blinks his surprise, which still feels natural sometimes. “Wonders never cease.”
“You’re damn right they don’t.” Ed’s hand ghosts over his ass, which is positively transcendent as well as startling. “You ever heard of caning in bed?”
Roy cannot be blamed for shivering from head to toe; he lives with an incubus. He hefts the cane with new appreciation, but surely it’s far too heavy to be safe… “Is this really suitable?”
“Of course not,” Ed says. He grabs the cane away, disposes of it somewhere, and takes Roy’s hands instead. “That’s why I got you the riding crop, Mustang.”
Roy’s heart-rate seems to have skyrocketed. How interesting. “You did not.”
“Fuck, yeah, I did,” Ed says. “Just couldn’t exactly leave it lying around, or Al’d be like, ‘But Brother, you don’t have a horse… oh. Oh, gross.’”
“Possibly verbatim,” Roy says.
“Yup,” Ed says. This feels like the carpeting of the hallway; they’re getting tantalizingly close to the bedroom, and Roy’s heart has given up beating altogether and is simply singing now, at an accelerated tempo. “C’mon, we don’t have all night.”
“Well,” Roy says. “We do.”
Ed’s laugh could pull him back from the brink of hell; he knows it. “Good goddamn point.”
“Edward,” Roy says, catching his shoulders to stop him, “I love you.”
Ed stretches up-rising onto tip-toe, presumably-to kiss him, slowly and thoroughly and with a great deal of fire.
“Love you, too, Roy,” he whispers. His mouth against Roy’s skin quirks up at the corners. “No matter how old you get.”
Roy skates a hand slowly down Ed’s side, then runs it back up, sliding it underneath the shirt this time. It’s the longest and most dedicated piece of artwork he’s ever done-the painting in his head, constantly amended for newfound scars and subtly-changed expanses, of what Ed must look like now. He knows he’ll never finish, but he doesn’t find he minds.
“You’re going to pay for that, you little brat,” he says, digging his fingernails in just slightly between Edward’s ribs.
He can feel this grin, too-he thinks he would have felt it from a thousand miles away.
“Lookin’ forward to it,” Ed says.
Roy winks at-well, towards-him. “I am, too.”