FMA -- Flying Horses
Title: Flying Horses
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,600 (of 20,000 in total)
Warnings: brush your goddamn teeth after consuming; periodic PG-13 language and themes
Prompt: AU for Roy/Ed Week ♥
Summary: The carousel attendant puts a hell of a twist into Roy's and Elysia's serene little Saturday routine - but Roy Mustang isn't likely to strike on happiness until barnyard animals take to the summer skies.
Author's Note: Soooooooo about twelve years ago, it was Silver's birthday, and I was like, "Hey, an excuse to write one of my irrepressible kidfic plotbunnies!", because for some reason Roy adopting Elysia after the Hugheses die in a horrible accident is, like, my jam. I am messed up. It's true. :'D ANYWAY, the park depicted in this fic is about a mile away from my apartment, so I can always hear the train whistle when I take a shower on the weekends, and it sorta got away from me from there. I mean that. The majority of this is utterly superfluous marshmallow fluff. XD Buuuuuut I hope my cinnamon roll Silver gets a smile out of it, in any case! ♥
FLYING HORSES
It’s overcast, and the chill in the air has kept most of the local families inside-which suits Roy just fine; it means there’s no line at the carousel. He’d be riding fairly high even if they’d arrived to a horrendous crowd, however; the swimming classes after school are having their intended effect of obliterating Elysia’s energy reserves, and she slept in until a record-breaking nine fifteen this morning. In addition, he was able to explain to her that UV light can’t be stopped by something so flimsy as a couple of clouds, and she let him slather her face in sunscreen with a minimum of nose-wrinkling, which makes this Saturday altogether something of a coup.
There’s no one waiting between the wrought-iron partitions where the line for the carousel usually forms, although the carousel itself is running, serenading them with the brassy circus tones; even with today’s dim weather, the mirrors and the brightly-polished paint catch sparks of sunlight.
Elysia only has eyes for the shifting horses. Roy wishes he could say the same-there’s no telling if today’s attendant of the ride is even legal, let alone receptive to the greedy eyes of weary thirty-something single fathers with no time to do anything more than look.
But it’s hardly his fault, is it, when the kid’s got bright gold hair swept up into a long ponytail that trails down from the back of his logo baseball cap; when his eyes are too honeyed to be called brown; when he somehow makes scuffed black jeans and the employee polo look like runway fodder-like a tease, a torment, for hiding the graceful angles of his body underneath?
It’s hardly his fault when the kid flashes a huge grin at Elysia and crouches down to hold out his hand for her ticket, and Roy can’t pretend to ignore him.
“You know which horse you want?” the kid asks.
Elysia nods vigorously, then fixes her eyes on the spinning ride; her favorite comes rolling into view, and she points with straight-armed, sharp-fingered certainty.
“Good choice!” the kid says of the horse carved with medieval armor, accented with red silk and plumes of black feathers. “That one’s my favorite. What do you think its name is?”
Elysia eyes him for another moment. Her face relaxes visibly as she deems him worthy of her trust-he has good taste in carousel horses, after all.
“Cassandra,” she says. “But she goes by Cassie.”
“I always called her Nightshade,” the kid says, “but I really like yours, too.”
Elysia considers the carousel as it slows before them, unfathomable fundaments creaking softly. “She can have two names.”
The kid grins again. “Cassie Nightshade,” he says. “That’s awesome.”
Elysia grins back.
“All right,” the kid says as the carousel shudders to a full and complete stop. “Hold that thought for just a second.” He glances up at Roy for the first time and tilts a smile. “You riding too? She got the best horse, I dunno if there’s much point.”
Roy smiles, and-it’s extraordinary, the flicker in the gold-flecked eyes, the faint tightening of the muscles in his jaw. Roy’s used to having an effect on people, but he’s not used to his facial expressions being such an obvious imposition.
That was the oh shit he’s hot look-no mistaking it. Not after all this time.
It’s a pleasant daydream; he’ll file that one away.
“We can share,” Elysia cuts in. She grabs Roy’s sleeve. “We can share, if you want.”
“She’s all yours,” Roy says. “I’ll watch. Just promise me you’ll wave when you go by.”
Elysia’s eyes are huge and solemn as she nods again, slowly. “Promise.”
She looks more like her mother every day, but her mannerisms tend so strongly towards Maes sometimes that it takes Roy’s fucking breath away and leaves an arctic wind in place of it-a glacier in his chest; ice-water in his veins-
“Sounds good,” the kid says brightly, and then he jaunts over and jumps up onto the carousel platform, where he weaves through the stilled horses, rearranging the abandoned belts and patting wooden heads and flanks as he walks by. When he’s made the circle, he hops down again, returns to the gate, opens it, and gestures grandly. “You may select your noble steed, my lady,” he says.
Elysia looks starstruck, and Roy can’t exactly blame her.
He tips the kid another smile (and reaps a slightly less strained expression of poorly-stifled, reluctant approbation this time) and follows Elysia over to Cassie Nightshade, where he hovers within arm’s length while she clambers up the bronze steps hanging from the horse’s side and struggles to hike her tiny body over into the seat. There’s a second when her little pink sneaker starts to slip, and she starts to pitch rightward, and-he’s there, gentle-handed, righting her carefully, and then she clasps her tiny hands around the golden bar and beams at him, and he wonders how it came to this but can’t find much cause for regret.
She holds her arms up while he wraps the soft-worn leather belt around her (is she always going to seem so small? Like a tiny doll, and porcelain’s so fragile, and what if-?) and buckles her in securely, at which point the attendant kid swings by and tugs on his handiwork-either for good measure alone, or because of liability obligations; either way Roy’s rather glad of it, all told.
“Awesome,” the kid says. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
They step down together, and the kid moves over to the square plastic casing on the wall that covers up the lit buttons that run the ride. He flips the top back and pushes his thumb into the green one, and the music crescendos, and the gears grind, and the whole beautiful construction starts to turn.
The kid leans back against the wall, shoving his hands in his pockets, and smiles. Elysia is patting the horse’s mane and talking to it quietly as she swivels out of sight.
“Does she want one for real?” the kid asks.
“At least one,” Roy says. “She has names picked for half a dozen by now. We had a talk about how horses are much more difficult to take care of than the cat, and that if she’s still sure she wants to learn to ride in a few more months, she can start helping out with the chores to help us afford the lessons-and then we can think about whether she wants her own someday.”
The kid grins again-a grin like a slice of starlight, like a knife unsheathed, like a breath of undiluted oxygen. “Nicely done, Dad.”
“Oh,” Roy says. “Well-”
“Uncle Roy!” Elysia calls, waving madly as she comes back into view. He waves back, albeit a touch less avidly; he did unspeakable things to his elbow that way once.
The kid is waving at her, too, bless him. “She doesn’t look like you, but I didn’t want to assume.”
“I’m her godfather,” Roy says. “Which, let me tell you, doesn’t make adoption any easier, whatever’s in the wills.”
The kid wrinkles his nose. “Don’t I know it. Had that with my grandma. Well, my sorta-grandma. It was really bad because my dad just fu-screwed off, so he was technically still our guardian to start, only nobody could get a hold of him or anything, and… well. Yeah. It was a pain.” Elysia comes around, waving again, and they raise their arms in perfect unison to reciprocate. “But-y’know. Water under the bridge and whatever.”
“Quite,” Roy says. “A Class 5 whitewater rapid, likely, but-nonetheless.”
The kid laughs-loud and genuinely, from deep in his chest. “Yeah, you could say that. But hey, teaches you how to swim.” He shrugs-a motion so fluid Roy can’t help wondering all sorts of things he shouldn’t. “It’s all good. Great thing with my grandma is, because her company’s in her name, working for her isn’t going to look like nepotism on my CV for grad school.” His face splits into a grin so bright it’s blinding for a second. “Can’t complain about that.”
Roy gestures to the ambient child-centric chaos. He has to be sure; he owes that to both of them. “Summer job, then?”
“Yeah,” the kid says. “Sort of ended up doing it on accident-my brother and I were here one time over spring break because he had a craving for snow cones, and there was this one little kid who was just sitting on the bench over there crying, and we tried to help him find his mom and stuff, and we went to the office to ask for help, and the guy in charge basically just offered us jobs on the spot.” He grins again, shrugs again, wraps Roy’s heart up in his fist and squeezes tight. “Should’ve worn my stupid collegiate shirt that day; maybe I’d be getting more than minimum wage.”
Oh, sweet glorious hallelujah; that’s one less tally mark scraped down the screeching chalkboard beneath the column titled Go to Hell, Go Directly to Hell, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200, and now Roy can admire this kid’s ass in peace.
“He’s off today,” the kid says. “My brother. He part-times at the animal shelter, too, so he doesn’t have a whole lot of time left for these animals.” He jerks his head towards the lawn and, presumably, the kids running amok upon it.
“You’re really good with them,” Roy says, meaning it. “Or at least with her.” This round, Elysia is too focused on communicating with Cassie Nightshade to remember to wave.
“I guess so,” the kid says. “It’s just, like… they’re people. Kids are people. I think a lot of grownups forget that and treat them like they’re stupid, which isn’t true at all; they just think about stuff differently. You just have to take them seriously; that’s all.” He smiles ruefully. “Guess you probably know that.”
“It took some figuring out,” Roy says, pushing his hair back from his forehead and then letting it fall as he sighs lightly. The kid’s bright eyes don’t miss a damn thing; it’s perfect. “I would certainly not say I was cut out for this from the start.”
“I dunno if anybody is,” the kid says. “I dunno if anybody is at anything, really. I think mostly you just sort of work it out as you go.”
This is getting a bit profound for a foray into flirty banter. There is a distinct possibility that the kid does not realize this is a foray into flirty banter, which is why he’s musing on life lessons instead of eyeing the sliver of skin that shows where Roy’s first two shirt buttons are undone.
Then again-then again; then again; the sound of his heartbeat, more or less. Then again, who is he to assume that anyone, let alone a stunning young thing with a blond ponytail and a grin that could murder a lesser man, must be interested in him? Statistically speaking, the vast majority of the male population simply isn’t, or at least not enough to be willing to pursue the possibility that he could slide their Kinsey score a little further on the scale with just the pressure of his tongue.
Besides, what’s so wrong with a pleasant conversation for its own sake? He can fall into those eyes as many times as he likes; he doesn’t have to make a fuss about it.
“I think you’re right about that,” he says, softly.
Fuck it all, that smile-that one, small and sweet and curled up at the edges, gentler than any of its predecessors, ever so slightly asymmetrical on the right side-
…God, it’s been too long since he got laid. There just isn’t time anymore, not with work and more work and Elysia’s mostly-symbolic-but-still-extremely-time-consuming “homework” and the cooking and the cleaning and the making of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches with heart-shaped cookie cutters and the reading aloud of Narnia books and…
It’s a bit stupid to ask when exactly he became a walking caricature of a suburban single father, because he knows precisely when it was, and pinpointing the moment has not alleviated the effects.
“So what do you do?” the kid asks. Elysia waves this time. Roy wonders how many revolutions there are per ride; most likely the young man standing next to him could answer down to the fraction of a rotation. “When you’re not being Model Dad at the park, I mean.” He flushes hotly. “I mean-exemplary, although-I guess I wouldn’t-be surprised-if you were a model.”
The plot thickens-as does Roy’s blood, as does his breath, as does the quantity of teeth in his grin.
“I teach political science,” he says. “At Fairfield.”
He could have-he would have-gone into politics for himself, for the world, for real, instead of applying his acumen to the local community college’s transfer program. Then again, then again…
For everything else that can be said, for all the vitriol that he’d deserve, for all the wormwood that he’s choked down throughout the years-he never resents a goddamn thing when Elysia lays her head on her rose-pink pillow and goes to sleep content.
“No kidding,” the kid says, looking like he wants to fan at his own cheeks. “That’s really cool.”
“Where do you go to school?” Roy asks, pretending-with all the utmost angelic innocence that he can muster-that he hasn’t noticed the kid’s current state of systemic vascular distress.
The kid jerks a thumb in a northerly direction. “Berkeley. Full ride with work-study. Pretty sweet.”
“Very,” Roy says.
The carousel is slowing, which is a damn shame-he doesn’t get too many breathers anymore; he can’t afford to set too many minutes aside for selfishness, and with the creaking of the horses and the gleam of the tall twisting poles, this delightful little liaison is drawing to a close.
This isn’t about him-today, weekends, the park, his life now. This is about the little girl petting the carved curls of her horse’s mane as it shudders to a stop.
Two years ago, he would have tilted his hips, tossed his head, winked broadly, and asked for the honor of a cell number-and he almost certainly would have gotten it. Then he would have unleashed the precisely-timed barrage of flirty texts varying from excruciatingly coy to downright salacious; and he would have coaxed this lovely creature into his bed one way or another, tagged him, and released him into the wild.
But it isn’t two years ago, and he isn’t that man anymore. This isn’t about him. He resists the urge to savor another eyeful of the kid’s exquisite ass, focusing on the little embroidered nametag on his left chest pocket instead.
“Well, Ed,” he says, “nice to meet you. Thanks.”
Ed doses him with another shot of that devastating sunshine grin. “Sure thing. You, too.”
The man he used to be acquired a hell of a lot of practice detecting other people’s eyes on him, and Ed’s don’t leave his back as he climbs up onto the carousel, unbuckles the huge leather belt, and lifts Elysia down.
“What do you want to do next?” he asks.
She gives it a long, solemn moment of thought, standing stock-still in the middle of the field of frozen horses before she makes her choice: “Can you please push me on the swing?”
He holds his hand out, and she wraps all five of her tiny fingers around his thumb. “You got it, Princess.”
There’s much more of a crowd the next weekend, but Roy supposes one can’t win them all. Come summer, this place is going to metamorphose into a veritable moshpit of sticky children and their haggard accompanying adults-picnic blankets will sprout up like fungal growths in every patch of shade; the playgrounds will swarm with scrambling bodies decorated with scraped knuckles and skinned knees; wailing tears and giddy laughter will echo in stereo from every side. They probably have a month left of relative peace if the gloomy weather holds.
Apparently famished from the five-hundred-foot trek from the parking lot, Elysia calls a halt the second they hit the lawn so that they can have their unsweetened yogurt and obscenely overpriced organic granola (it’s not that Roy’s one of Those People who throws a hissy fit at the mere mention of high-fructose corn syrup, but… well, why not give her the best of everything for as long as he can?). When the snack gets boring, she makes him a crown out of the little white-petaled weeds-chattering all the while about how Evan taught her how at recess, and he’s probably her best friend except for Lola, who’s her best friend when it comes to what they like to read, because Evan doesn’t like ponies, which is inconceivable, but she still nobly strives to treat him well despite his faults…
Roy wears his gift with more pride than the fingerpaint stains on his good suits, but slightly less than the beaded bracelet she made with his name on it in arts and crafts.
By the time they reach the ticket kiosk, she’s moved on to discussing how she’s worried about Jack (full name, Jack Sparrow-Slayer-Roy might not have been entirely sober back when he christened the cat, but since the cat in question preceded Elysia moving in, he just took to abbreviating a little) because he’s been doing “something weird” with his tail lately. Roy is more than a smidgeon embarrassed to admit that his heart pirouettes upon seeing Ed in the wide-open ticket window, offering up yet another iteration of that terrible grin.
“Hey, there,” Ed says when they get close. Blessedly, there’s no one else in line; they get him all to themselves. Well. Roy gets him mostly to himself; he doesn’t suppose Elysia is quite as invested in attractive strangers at five as he is thirty years on down the line. “How’ve you been?”
“Excellent, thank you,” Roy says, and he mostly even means it. Every day is a grand gift he does his damnedest not to squander. “You?”
“I’m good,” Ed says.
Roy reaches down, hefts Elysia’s as-yet-fairly-insubstantial weight, and slings her up onto his shoulders with a leg dangling on either side. She immediately starts adjusting her flower crown opus in his hair.
Ed grins up at her. “How are you? Are you back for more time with Cassie?”
Roy can’t contort his neck enough to see her facial expressions from this angle-a knowledge attained through excruciating experience-but he’d bet both hands that she’s nodding solemnly.
“And we’re gonna ride the train,” she says. “It’s really loud, but Uncle Roy covers my ears for me, so it’s okay.”
“Uncle Roy seems pretty great,” Ed says, and Roy’s heart just about fucking stops when those bright eyes turn to him, and one of them winks.
Elysia pauses, reorients a wayward lock of Roy’s hair, and then says “He is” as if it’s the single most obvious thing in the whole of the world.
Ed’s grin only broadens. “Guess so, huh? So that’s one ticket for the carousel, and two for the train?”
Making a child happy for a grand total of six dollars is almost inconceivable these days, which is part of why they’re always here. “Yes, sir,” Roy says, fishing the cash out of his wallet.
“You want to come on the train with us?” Elysia asks as Ed takes the money. “You could cover Uncle Roy’s ears.”
A touch of rosy pink dusts Ed’s cheekbones as he fumbles to put the bills in the register. “Y’know, it’s really nice of you to ask, but-I mean, I gotta work. Maybe another time.”
The universe is full of wonders in every shape and size, but few quite as extraordinary as the fact that Elysia has not only inherited her father’s meddling matchmaker habits, but begun to exhibit them at the age of five.
“Okay,” she says. Something lifts from Roy’s head, snagging slightly, and he thinks he knows what comes next. “Do you want this? Can I give him this, Uncle Roy? I’ll make you another one.”
Ed’s not wearing the logo baseball cap today, which makes him a prime flower crown target. Roy would have warned him, but there simply wasn’t time.
“Of course, sweetheart,” he says, giving Ed a you’re doomed, pal sort of a grin. “Whatever you like.” He leans down so she can hold it out to offer.
“Heck, yes,” Ed says, making a face back at Roy. “That’s so awesome-you made it? I’m gonna wear it all day. Everyone’ll be jealous-should I send ’em to you if they ask for one?”
Elysia plants it crooked on his head because she’s giggling too hard to keep her hands steady, and Roy thinks he’s going to say something very stupid if they stay here any longer, because Ed is patting it into place and standing up straighter and turning to show his profile and saying, “How do I look?”
“Great!” Elysia says.
And Roy just barely bites his tongue on Like you could break my heart into a thousand pieces just by drawing breath.
“I do believe you do it justice,” he says instead.
[Part II]
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,600 (of 20,000 in total)
Warnings: brush your goddamn teeth after consuming; periodic PG-13 language and themes
Prompt: AU for Roy/Ed Week ♥
Summary: The carousel attendant puts a hell of a twist into Roy's and Elysia's serene little Saturday routine - but Roy Mustang isn't likely to strike on happiness until barnyard animals take to the summer skies.
Author's Note: Soooooooo about twelve years ago, it was Silver's birthday, and I was like, "Hey, an excuse to write one of my irrepressible kidfic plotbunnies!", because for some reason Roy adopting Elysia after the Hugheses die in a horrible accident is, like, my jam. I am messed up. It's true. :'D ANYWAY, the park depicted in this fic is about a mile away from my apartment, so I can always hear the train whistle when I take a shower on the weekends, and it sorta got away from me from there. I mean that. The majority of this is utterly superfluous marshmallow fluff. XD Buuuuuut I hope my cinnamon roll Silver gets a smile out of it, in any case! ♥
FLYING HORSES
It’s overcast, and the chill in the air has kept most of the local families inside-which suits Roy just fine; it means there’s no line at the carousel. He’d be riding fairly high even if they’d arrived to a horrendous crowd, however; the swimming classes after school are having their intended effect of obliterating Elysia’s energy reserves, and she slept in until a record-breaking nine fifteen this morning. In addition, he was able to explain to her that UV light can’t be stopped by something so flimsy as a couple of clouds, and she let him slather her face in sunscreen with a minimum of nose-wrinkling, which makes this Saturday altogether something of a coup.
There’s no one waiting between the wrought-iron partitions where the line for the carousel usually forms, although the carousel itself is running, serenading them with the brassy circus tones; even with today’s dim weather, the mirrors and the brightly-polished paint catch sparks of sunlight.
Elysia only has eyes for the shifting horses. Roy wishes he could say the same-there’s no telling if today’s attendant of the ride is even legal, let alone receptive to the greedy eyes of weary thirty-something single fathers with no time to do anything more than look.
But it’s hardly his fault, is it, when the kid’s got bright gold hair swept up into a long ponytail that trails down from the back of his logo baseball cap; when his eyes are too honeyed to be called brown; when he somehow makes scuffed black jeans and the employee polo look like runway fodder-like a tease, a torment, for hiding the graceful angles of his body underneath?
It’s hardly his fault when the kid flashes a huge grin at Elysia and crouches down to hold out his hand for her ticket, and Roy can’t pretend to ignore him.
“You know which horse you want?” the kid asks.
Elysia nods vigorously, then fixes her eyes on the spinning ride; her favorite comes rolling into view, and she points with straight-armed, sharp-fingered certainty.
“Good choice!” the kid says of the horse carved with medieval armor, accented with red silk and plumes of black feathers. “That one’s my favorite. What do you think its name is?”
Elysia eyes him for another moment. Her face relaxes visibly as she deems him worthy of her trust-he has good taste in carousel horses, after all.
“Cassandra,” she says. “But she goes by Cassie.”
“I always called her Nightshade,” the kid says, “but I really like yours, too.”
Elysia considers the carousel as it slows before them, unfathomable fundaments creaking softly. “She can have two names.”
The kid grins again. “Cassie Nightshade,” he says. “That’s awesome.”
Elysia grins back.
“All right,” the kid says as the carousel shudders to a full and complete stop. “Hold that thought for just a second.” He glances up at Roy for the first time and tilts a smile. “You riding too? She got the best horse, I dunno if there’s much point.”
Roy smiles, and-it’s extraordinary, the flicker in the gold-flecked eyes, the faint tightening of the muscles in his jaw. Roy’s used to having an effect on people, but he’s not used to his facial expressions being such an obvious imposition.
That was the oh shit he’s hot look-no mistaking it. Not after all this time.
It’s a pleasant daydream; he’ll file that one away.
“We can share,” Elysia cuts in. She grabs Roy’s sleeve. “We can share, if you want.”
“She’s all yours,” Roy says. “I’ll watch. Just promise me you’ll wave when you go by.”
Elysia’s eyes are huge and solemn as she nods again, slowly. “Promise.”
She looks more like her mother every day, but her mannerisms tend so strongly towards Maes sometimes that it takes Roy’s fucking breath away and leaves an arctic wind in place of it-a glacier in his chest; ice-water in his veins-
“Sounds good,” the kid says brightly, and then he jaunts over and jumps up onto the carousel platform, where he weaves through the stilled horses, rearranging the abandoned belts and patting wooden heads and flanks as he walks by. When he’s made the circle, he hops down again, returns to the gate, opens it, and gestures grandly. “You may select your noble steed, my lady,” he says.
Elysia looks starstruck, and Roy can’t exactly blame her.
He tips the kid another smile (and reaps a slightly less strained expression of poorly-stifled, reluctant approbation this time) and follows Elysia over to Cassie Nightshade, where he hovers within arm’s length while she clambers up the bronze steps hanging from the horse’s side and struggles to hike her tiny body over into the seat. There’s a second when her little pink sneaker starts to slip, and she starts to pitch rightward, and-he’s there, gentle-handed, righting her carefully, and then she clasps her tiny hands around the golden bar and beams at him, and he wonders how it came to this but can’t find much cause for regret.
She holds her arms up while he wraps the soft-worn leather belt around her (is she always going to seem so small? Like a tiny doll, and porcelain’s so fragile, and what if-?) and buckles her in securely, at which point the attendant kid swings by and tugs on his handiwork-either for good measure alone, or because of liability obligations; either way Roy’s rather glad of it, all told.
“Awesome,” the kid says. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
They step down together, and the kid moves over to the square plastic casing on the wall that covers up the lit buttons that run the ride. He flips the top back and pushes his thumb into the green one, and the music crescendos, and the gears grind, and the whole beautiful construction starts to turn.
The kid leans back against the wall, shoving his hands in his pockets, and smiles. Elysia is patting the horse’s mane and talking to it quietly as she swivels out of sight.
“Does she want one for real?” the kid asks.
“At least one,” Roy says. “She has names picked for half a dozen by now. We had a talk about how horses are much more difficult to take care of than the cat, and that if she’s still sure she wants to learn to ride in a few more months, she can start helping out with the chores to help us afford the lessons-and then we can think about whether she wants her own someday.”
The kid grins again-a grin like a slice of starlight, like a knife unsheathed, like a breath of undiluted oxygen. “Nicely done, Dad.”
“Oh,” Roy says. “Well-”
“Uncle Roy!” Elysia calls, waving madly as she comes back into view. He waves back, albeit a touch less avidly; he did unspeakable things to his elbow that way once.
The kid is waving at her, too, bless him. “She doesn’t look like you, but I didn’t want to assume.”
“I’m her godfather,” Roy says. “Which, let me tell you, doesn’t make adoption any easier, whatever’s in the wills.”
The kid wrinkles his nose. “Don’t I know it. Had that with my grandma. Well, my sorta-grandma. It was really bad because my dad just fu-screwed off, so he was technically still our guardian to start, only nobody could get a hold of him or anything, and… well. Yeah. It was a pain.” Elysia comes around, waving again, and they raise their arms in perfect unison to reciprocate. “But-y’know. Water under the bridge and whatever.”
“Quite,” Roy says. “A Class 5 whitewater rapid, likely, but-nonetheless.”
The kid laughs-loud and genuinely, from deep in his chest. “Yeah, you could say that. But hey, teaches you how to swim.” He shrugs-a motion so fluid Roy can’t help wondering all sorts of things he shouldn’t. “It’s all good. Great thing with my grandma is, because her company’s in her name, working for her isn’t going to look like nepotism on my CV for grad school.” His face splits into a grin so bright it’s blinding for a second. “Can’t complain about that.”
Roy gestures to the ambient child-centric chaos. He has to be sure; he owes that to both of them. “Summer job, then?”
“Yeah,” the kid says. “Sort of ended up doing it on accident-my brother and I were here one time over spring break because he had a craving for snow cones, and there was this one little kid who was just sitting on the bench over there crying, and we tried to help him find his mom and stuff, and we went to the office to ask for help, and the guy in charge basically just offered us jobs on the spot.” He grins again, shrugs again, wraps Roy’s heart up in his fist and squeezes tight. “Should’ve worn my stupid collegiate shirt that day; maybe I’d be getting more than minimum wage.”
Oh, sweet glorious hallelujah; that’s one less tally mark scraped down the screeching chalkboard beneath the column titled Go to Hell, Go Directly to Hell, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200, and now Roy can admire this kid’s ass in peace.
“He’s off today,” the kid says. “My brother. He part-times at the animal shelter, too, so he doesn’t have a whole lot of time left for these animals.” He jerks his head towards the lawn and, presumably, the kids running amok upon it.
“You’re really good with them,” Roy says, meaning it. “Or at least with her.” This round, Elysia is too focused on communicating with Cassie Nightshade to remember to wave.
“I guess so,” the kid says. “It’s just, like… they’re people. Kids are people. I think a lot of grownups forget that and treat them like they’re stupid, which isn’t true at all; they just think about stuff differently. You just have to take them seriously; that’s all.” He smiles ruefully. “Guess you probably know that.”
“It took some figuring out,” Roy says, pushing his hair back from his forehead and then letting it fall as he sighs lightly. The kid’s bright eyes don’t miss a damn thing; it’s perfect. “I would certainly not say I was cut out for this from the start.”
“I dunno if anybody is,” the kid says. “I dunno if anybody is at anything, really. I think mostly you just sort of work it out as you go.”
This is getting a bit profound for a foray into flirty banter. There is a distinct possibility that the kid does not realize this is a foray into flirty banter, which is why he’s musing on life lessons instead of eyeing the sliver of skin that shows where Roy’s first two shirt buttons are undone.
Then again-then again; then again; the sound of his heartbeat, more or less. Then again, who is he to assume that anyone, let alone a stunning young thing with a blond ponytail and a grin that could murder a lesser man, must be interested in him? Statistically speaking, the vast majority of the male population simply isn’t, or at least not enough to be willing to pursue the possibility that he could slide their Kinsey score a little further on the scale with just the pressure of his tongue.
Besides, what’s so wrong with a pleasant conversation for its own sake? He can fall into those eyes as many times as he likes; he doesn’t have to make a fuss about it.
“I think you’re right about that,” he says, softly.
Fuck it all, that smile-that one, small and sweet and curled up at the edges, gentler than any of its predecessors, ever so slightly asymmetrical on the right side-
…God, it’s been too long since he got laid. There just isn’t time anymore, not with work and more work and Elysia’s mostly-symbolic-but-still-extremely-time-consuming “homework” and the cooking and the cleaning and the making of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches with heart-shaped cookie cutters and the reading aloud of Narnia books and…
It’s a bit stupid to ask when exactly he became a walking caricature of a suburban single father, because he knows precisely when it was, and pinpointing the moment has not alleviated the effects.
“So what do you do?” the kid asks. Elysia waves this time. Roy wonders how many revolutions there are per ride; most likely the young man standing next to him could answer down to the fraction of a rotation. “When you’re not being Model Dad at the park, I mean.” He flushes hotly. “I mean-exemplary, although-I guess I wouldn’t-be surprised-if you were a model.”
The plot thickens-as does Roy’s blood, as does his breath, as does the quantity of teeth in his grin.
“I teach political science,” he says. “At Fairfield.”
He could have-he would have-gone into politics for himself, for the world, for real, instead of applying his acumen to the local community college’s transfer program. Then again, then again…
For everything else that can be said, for all the vitriol that he’d deserve, for all the wormwood that he’s choked down throughout the years-he never resents a goddamn thing when Elysia lays her head on her rose-pink pillow and goes to sleep content.
“No kidding,” the kid says, looking like he wants to fan at his own cheeks. “That’s really cool.”
“Where do you go to school?” Roy asks, pretending-with all the utmost angelic innocence that he can muster-that he hasn’t noticed the kid’s current state of systemic vascular distress.
The kid jerks a thumb in a northerly direction. “Berkeley. Full ride with work-study. Pretty sweet.”
“Very,” Roy says.
The carousel is slowing, which is a damn shame-he doesn’t get too many breathers anymore; he can’t afford to set too many minutes aside for selfishness, and with the creaking of the horses and the gleam of the tall twisting poles, this delightful little liaison is drawing to a close.
This isn’t about him-today, weekends, the park, his life now. This is about the little girl petting the carved curls of her horse’s mane as it shudders to a stop.
Two years ago, he would have tilted his hips, tossed his head, winked broadly, and asked for the honor of a cell number-and he almost certainly would have gotten it. Then he would have unleashed the precisely-timed barrage of flirty texts varying from excruciatingly coy to downright salacious; and he would have coaxed this lovely creature into his bed one way or another, tagged him, and released him into the wild.
But it isn’t two years ago, and he isn’t that man anymore. This isn’t about him. He resists the urge to savor another eyeful of the kid’s exquisite ass, focusing on the little embroidered nametag on his left chest pocket instead.
“Well, Ed,” he says, “nice to meet you. Thanks.”
Ed doses him with another shot of that devastating sunshine grin. “Sure thing. You, too.”
The man he used to be acquired a hell of a lot of practice detecting other people’s eyes on him, and Ed’s don’t leave his back as he climbs up onto the carousel, unbuckles the huge leather belt, and lifts Elysia down.
“What do you want to do next?” he asks.
She gives it a long, solemn moment of thought, standing stock-still in the middle of the field of frozen horses before she makes her choice: “Can you please push me on the swing?”
He holds his hand out, and she wraps all five of her tiny fingers around his thumb. “You got it, Princess.”
There’s much more of a crowd the next weekend, but Roy supposes one can’t win them all. Come summer, this place is going to metamorphose into a veritable moshpit of sticky children and their haggard accompanying adults-picnic blankets will sprout up like fungal growths in every patch of shade; the playgrounds will swarm with scrambling bodies decorated with scraped knuckles and skinned knees; wailing tears and giddy laughter will echo in stereo from every side. They probably have a month left of relative peace if the gloomy weather holds.
Apparently famished from the five-hundred-foot trek from the parking lot, Elysia calls a halt the second they hit the lawn so that they can have their unsweetened yogurt and obscenely overpriced organic granola (it’s not that Roy’s one of Those People who throws a hissy fit at the mere mention of high-fructose corn syrup, but… well, why not give her the best of everything for as long as he can?). When the snack gets boring, she makes him a crown out of the little white-petaled weeds-chattering all the while about how Evan taught her how at recess, and he’s probably her best friend except for Lola, who’s her best friend when it comes to what they like to read, because Evan doesn’t like ponies, which is inconceivable, but she still nobly strives to treat him well despite his faults…
Roy wears his gift with more pride than the fingerpaint stains on his good suits, but slightly less than the beaded bracelet she made with his name on it in arts and crafts.
By the time they reach the ticket kiosk, she’s moved on to discussing how she’s worried about Jack (full name, Jack Sparrow-Slayer-Roy might not have been entirely sober back when he christened the cat, but since the cat in question preceded Elysia moving in, he just took to abbreviating a little) because he’s been doing “something weird” with his tail lately. Roy is more than a smidgeon embarrassed to admit that his heart pirouettes upon seeing Ed in the wide-open ticket window, offering up yet another iteration of that terrible grin.
“Hey, there,” Ed says when they get close. Blessedly, there’s no one else in line; they get him all to themselves. Well. Roy gets him mostly to himself; he doesn’t suppose Elysia is quite as invested in attractive strangers at five as he is thirty years on down the line. “How’ve you been?”
“Excellent, thank you,” Roy says, and he mostly even means it. Every day is a grand gift he does his damnedest not to squander. “You?”
“I’m good,” Ed says.
Roy reaches down, hefts Elysia’s as-yet-fairly-insubstantial weight, and slings her up onto his shoulders with a leg dangling on either side. She immediately starts adjusting her flower crown opus in his hair.
Ed grins up at her. “How are you? Are you back for more time with Cassie?”
Roy can’t contort his neck enough to see her facial expressions from this angle-a knowledge attained through excruciating experience-but he’d bet both hands that she’s nodding solemnly.
“And we’re gonna ride the train,” she says. “It’s really loud, but Uncle Roy covers my ears for me, so it’s okay.”
“Uncle Roy seems pretty great,” Ed says, and Roy’s heart just about fucking stops when those bright eyes turn to him, and one of them winks.
Elysia pauses, reorients a wayward lock of Roy’s hair, and then says “He is” as if it’s the single most obvious thing in the whole of the world.
Ed’s grin only broadens. “Guess so, huh? So that’s one ticket for the carousel, and two for the train?”
Making a child happy for a grand total of six dollars is almost inconceivable these days, which is part of why they’re always here. “Yes, sir,” Roy says, fishing the cash out of his wallet.
“You want to come on the train with us?” Elysia asks as Ed takes the money. “You could cover Uncle Roy’s ears.”
A touch of rosy pink dusts Ed’s cheekbones as he fumbles to put the bills in the register. “Y’know, it’s really nice of you to ask, but-I mean, I gotta work. Maybe another time.”
The universe is full of wonders in every shape and size, but few quite as extraordinary as the fact that Elysia has not only inherited her father’s meddling matchmaker habits, but begun to exhibit them at the age of five.
“Okay,” she says. Something lifts from Roy’s head, snagging slightly, and he thinks he knows what comes next. “Do you want this? Can I give him this, Uncle Roy? I’ll make you another one.”
Ed’s not wearing the logo baseball cap today, which makes him a prime flower crown target. Roy would have warned him, but there simply wasn’t time.
“Of course, sweetheart,” he says, giving Ed a you’re doomed, pal sort of a grin. “Whatever you like.” He leans down so she can hold it out to offer.
“Heck, yes,” Ed says, making a face back at Roy. “That’s so awesome-you made it? I’m gonna wear it all day. Everyone’ll be jealous-should I send ’em to you if they ask for one?”
Elysia plants it crooked on his head because she’s giggling too hard to keep her hands steady, and Roy thinks he’s going to say something very stupid if they stay here any longer, because Ed is patting it into place and standing up straighter and turning to show his profile and saying, “How do I look?”
“Great!” Elysia says.
And Roy just barely bites his tongue on Like you could break my heart into a thousand pieces just by drawing breath.
“I do believe you do it justice,” he says instead.
[Part II]