FMA -- A Day Is Going to Come
Title: A Day Is Going to Come
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,850
Warnings: teeth-rotting fluff of the domestic bliss variety; major spoilers for Brotherhood; Ed is a potty mouth; editing? what's editing?
Summary: Roy has a crap day, and Ed does what he can to un-crapify it a little. Also, Roy is incapable of shutting up.
Author's Note: Had an itching need to finish something, and also needed some unrepentant crappy fluff. X'D Fortunately, the crazy-talented Umeko gave me a perfect excuse! :D
A DAY IS GOING TO COME
Ed wakes up-with a book on his face, and his whole right arm numb where it’s dangling off the side of the couch-to the click of the front door fitting into its frame. Roy’s boots come off, and then his footsteps move measuredly up the stairs.
No one has ever accused Ed of being an emotional genius (Al may or may not have once uttered the words “not an empathetic bone in your entire and entirely too rational body”, but who’s counting?), but it’s not that he doesn’t care; it’s just that other people don’t always make a whole lot of sense.
What does make sense is observation, followed by conclusion. For instance: when Roy Mustang is frustrated or upset after a bad day in his stupid, crummy office dealing with the stupid, crummy brass, he slams the door and/or kicks off his boots and/or heaves a big, histrionic sigh. Then he’ll come and wrangle a play-struggling Ed into a just-too-tight hug, bury his face in Ed’s hair, breathe deeply, possibly rant for a while, and do his damnedest to let go of the worst of it.
Ed removes the book from its roost on his nose, cheeks, and forehead and sets it aside, confirming that the lights are still on here in the living room-which Roy would’ve seen from the foyer. Roy knows he’s here.
If Roy comes in silently, doesn’t greet Ed, and traipses right upstairs to change, that means that he can’t stand to see the uniform on his own body anymore.
That means something is seriously wrong.
Ed swings himself up off the couch, massaging absently at the juncture of the automail on his thigh-the sky was threatening damp weather again, the son of a bitch-and then knuckling at his eyes. He finishes with the mandatory pat-the-chin drool-check on his way up the stairs, and as he tops them, he can feel his own pulse beating softly against the little circle of gold around his finger.
Roy didn’t quite shut the bedroom door behind him; there’s a gap of a couple inches, and as Ed pushes on it gently, he can feel the weight of what must be Roy’s uniform hanging from the hook on the other side.
The man himself is sitting on the edge of the bed, looking-as always-smaller and a touch more delicate in his plainclothes. He’s holding his right hand in his left, rubbing with his thumb at the thick white scar in the center of his palm.
“Hey,” Ed says, and it comes out kind of more hushed than he intended, and his feet seem sort of reluctant to move out of the doorway. It feels like he’s intruding-even after all these years, Roy is vulnerable so infrequently that it almost seems sacred. “Can I get you anything?”
“No, no,” Roy says softly, “but thank you.” He draws a deep breath, lets it out, and runs his hand through his hair. Ed has dedicated many, many hours to biting his tongue and not telling Roy how adorably ridiculous it looks when he does that, because it always ends up sticking up funny, which makes him bear a strong resemblance to an unruly six-year-old.
“Okay,” Ed says, despite the obvious fact that it’s clearly not just yet. He hesitates for another second, and then Roy’s eyes flick to him, and he can see it in them-the ravenous hunger Roy gets sometimes for physical contact; that need he has to be touched to know he’s still real.
Ed starts to cross over to the bed, lifting his arms up a little bit as he goes, and Roy meets him halfway, sinking to his knees, and they collide in the middle of the carpet, and Roy’s fingers curl into the back of Ed’s shirt, and he buries his face in Ed’s chest, and it’s so fucking warm and perfect Ed’s not really sure how he ever lived without this.
Roy sighs quietly, and his grip on Ed’s shirt tightens.
“Am I doing the right thing?” he asks.
“Yes,” Ed says immediately.
Roy knows that-he does, deep down, in his guts and his bones; he knows, or he wouldn’t be killing himself trying-but sometimes he needs to hear it, too.
Roy’s silent for a long moment before he speaks again-levelly, but with the enforced steadiness he uses for speeches and rhetoric and shit.
“Today is an Ishvalan holy day,” he says. “A group of religious authorities submitted all the forms and permits and followed every rule to the letter so that they could have a ceremony and a small parade in a public square four miles north of here. I did signage. I did ordinances. I did PR and advertisement and walked the space and signed every piece of paper, and I set up a security detail of people I knew personally, and I cordoned off the streets, and I promised them…”
He sighs into Ed’s chest.
Ed swallows. “What?”
“That things had changed,” Roy says. “That it was all precautionary, because Amestris wasn’t like that anymore.”
Ed doesn’t even want to know, but it’s not like it won’t be smeared across the front page of every newspaper tomorrow if it’s half as bad as he’s begun to fear.
“What happened?” he asks.
“There was a protest,” Roy says. “A protest of a completely harmless gathering-not even a demonstration, just…” He takes a breath. “The protest became a mob, and the mob became a riot, and two people are dead, and a dozen are in the hospital, and in thinking we are better than this, am I actually making it worse?”
“It’s not your fault,” Ed says.
“It is,” Roy says. “I let this happen-I encouraged this to happen; I facilitated it-and the noblest of intentions could not change the fact that two human beings are in the morgue because of me.”
“Roy-” Ed says.
“I want to believe in them,” Roy says. “I want to believe this country has a heart and a soul underneath all the old bruises; I want to believe we can come together and save ourselves and be more than some cobbled-together patchwork of territories that despised each other-I-”
“I know,” Ed says. “I know, but you have to keep-”
“Is it worth it?” Roy asks. He looks up-urgently, desperately, and his right fist is still clenched in Ed’s shirt, and the other hand’s pressing its fingertips just a little too hard against his ribs. “What the hell is the point? They just keep-we just keep… People, Ed, humanity, this is all we amount to, isn’t it? This is it. This is all we’ve got. Blood in the streets of the city we live in because one of us brought in prayers and clothing from another tract of dirt. What the hell difference can I make when this is all we are?”
“Shut the fuck up for a second,” Ed says, getting a handful of his hair and tugging gently.
Roy presses his face into Ed’s chest again. “Your eloquence astounds.”
“I said shut up,” Ed says. “Just listen for once in your life, stupid.”
“That’s ‘General Stupid’ to you,” Roy mutters.
More like General Incorrigible Bastard Who Still Isn’t Listening, but if Ed starts that, they’ll derail right into the insult game, and that’ll end in fake-offended cuddles and shit, and they’ll fall asleep before he makes his point.
“It is worth it,” he says. “You know that. You are doing the right thing. You know that, too. You matter. You are changing shit. Change isn’t fast, and it isn’t easy, but it’s possible, and you are making it possible.”
Roy looks up again, and his eyes and his smile are tired, but at least the smile’s there. “God, Ed, I hope you never change.”
Ed play-smacks him upside the head. It’s helpful not to have a metal hand when you want to do that. “I’m not done. I was talking to Falman the other day about statistics-violence statistics. Specifically, racially-motivated violence. Charming topic and shit, I know, but-you are already changing it, Roy. You’re making this dumbass country better. You’re making it safer, and nicer, and you’re showing people that sometimes they can trust the douchebags in the uniforms with the snappy alchemy and shit.”
“‘Sometimes’?” Roy says, blinking up at him and starting to frown. “I-”
Ed grabs his shoulders and shakes him, mostly-gently. “Listen. You’re the one who taught me to pick my battles-why? ’Cause you can’t win ’em all; you can’t; there’ll be days you lose, and there’ll be days you lose bad, and those days are going to be shitty, and there’s nothing you can do about that. But that doesn’t mean you get to quit. You have to save your strength for the war; you have to keep believing that you can win no matter how many times you get your ass kicked. You have to keep fighting, ’cause a day is going to come when it is all worth it. A day’s going to come where you look back and thank yourself for not giving up even when nobody would’ve blamed you for it. A day’s going to come, Roy. You just gotta get there. And I’m always, always gonna have your back.”
Roy smiles faintly up at him for a long moment-Roy looks damn good from this angle; a guy could get used to this-and then takes Ed’s left hand in both of his and kisses Ed’s palm right underneath the ring.
“Thank you,” he says.
“For the last time,” Ed says, “I told you to shut up. Go get your stupid pajamas on.”
Ed pretends not to hear Roy’s knees cracking a little as he stands. “You love my stupid pajamas.”
Ed is struggling with the fact that Roy can’t obey the command to don pajamas unless he releases Ed’s hand. “That’s beside the point.”
“In every way,” Roy says softly, “you love me far more than I deserve.”
“Yeah, well,” Ed says, “I’m dumb like that. Are we going to bed, or what?”
Roy kisses him-warmly, gratefully, adoringly, and then… with heat. “I vote ‘or what’.”
Ed eyes him. “Is it gonna make you feel better?”
Roy’s face is pure innocence, and Ed has to swallow the snicker wriggling up his throat. “It can’t hurt to try.”
“All right,” Ed says, like it’s a sacrifice-which it’s really, really not. “After that, you can put on your stupid pajamas, and then you can do the stupid thing where you pet my hair for a quarter of an hour like I’m a needy cat.” He peels his shirt off and reaches for the hem of Roy’s.
On the upside, this shit’s way easier to get off of him than that damn uniform, with its thousand buttons and catches and traps.
“Jeez,” he says as he runs his right hand’s fingertips slowly over the scar tissue on Roy’s bare side. “The things I do for love.”
“Mmm,” Roy says, tipping his face up to kiss him again, and again, and again- “And the people.”
“I said shut up,” Ed says, but he can’t hold back the laugh this time.
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Roy/Ed
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,850
Warnings: teeth-rotting fluff of the domestic bliss variety; major spoilers for Brotherhood; Ed is a potty mouth; editing? what's editing?
Summary: Roy has a crap day, and Ed does what he can to un-crapify it a little. Also, Roy is incapable of shutting up.
Author's Note: Had an itching need to finish something, and also needed some unrepentant crappy fluff. X'D Fortunately, the crazy-talented Umeko gave me a perfect excuse! :D
A DAY IS GOING TO COME
Ed wakes up-with a book on his face, and his whole right arm numb where it’s dangling off the side of the couch-to the click of the front door fitting into its frame. Roy’s boots come off, and then his footsteps move measuredly up the stairs.
No one has ever accused Ed of being an emotional genius (Al may or may not have once uttered the words “not an empathetic bone in your entire and entirely too rational body”, but who’s counting?), but it’s not that he doesn’t care; it’s just that other people don’t always make a whole lot of sense.
What does make sense is observation, followed by conclusion. For instance: when Roy Mustang is frustrated or upset after a bad day in his stupid, crummy office dealing with the stupid, crummy brass, he slams the door and/or kicks off his boots and/or heaves a big, histrionic sigh. Then he’ll come and wrangle a play-struggling Ed into a just-too-tight hug, bury his face in Ed’s hair, breathe deeply, possibly rant for a while, and do his damnedest to let go of the worst of it.
Ed removes the book from its roost on his nose, cheeks, and forehead and sets it aside, confirming that the lights are still on here in the living room-which Roy would’ve seen from the foyer. Roy knows he’s here.
If Roy comes in silently, doesn’t greet Ed, and traipses right upstairs to change, that means that he can’t stand to see the uniform on his own body anymore.
That means something is seriously wrong.
Ed swings himself up off the couch, massaging absently at the juncture of the automail on his thigh-the sky was threatening damp weather again, the son of a bitch-and then knuckling at his eyes. He finishes with the mandatory pat-the-chin drool-check on his way up the stairs, and as he tops them, he can feel his own pulse beating softly against the little circle of gold around his finger.
Roy didn’t quite shut the bedroom door behind him; there’s a gap of a couple inches, and as Ed pushes on it gently, he can feel the weight of what must be Roy’s uniform hanging from the hook on the other side.
The man himself is sitting on the edge of the bed, looking-as always-smaller and a touch more delicate in his plainclothes. He’s holding his right hand in his left, rubbing with his thumb at the thick white scar in the center of his palm.
“Hey,” Ed says, and it comes out kind of more hushed than he intended, and his feet seem sort of reluctant to move out of the doorway. It feels like he’s intruding-even after all these years, Roy is vulnerable so infrequently that it almost seems sacred. “Can I get you anything?”
“No, no,” Roy says softly, “but thank you.” He draws a deep breath, lets it out, and runs his hand through his hair. Ed has dedicated many, many hours to biting his tongue and not telling Roy how adorably ridiculous it looks when he does that, because it always ends up sticking up funny, which makes him bear a strong resemblance to an unruly six-year-old.
“Okay,” Ed says, despite the obvious fact that it’s clearly not just yet. He hesitates for another second, and then Roy’s eyes flick to him, and he can see it in them-the ravenous hunger Roy gets sometimes for physical contact; that need he has to be touched to know he’s still real.
Ed starts to cross over to the bed, lifting his arms up a little bit as he goes, and Roy meets him halfway, sinking to his knees, and they collide in the middle of the carpet, and Roy’s fingers curl into the back of Ed’s shirt, and he buries his face in Ed’s chest, and it’s so fucking warm and perfect Ed’s not really sure how he ever lived without this.
Roy sighs quietly, and his grip on Ed’s shirt tightens.
“Am I doing the right thing?” he asks.
“Yes,” Ed says immediately.
Roy knows that-he does, deep down, in his guts and his bones; he knows, or he wouldn’t be killing himself trying-but sometimes he needs to hear it, too.
Roy’s silent for a long moment before he speaks again-levelly, but with the enforced steadiness he uses for speeches and rhetoric and shit.
“Today is an Ishvalan holy day,” he says. “A group of religious authorities submitted all the forms and permits and followed every rule to the letter so that they could have a ceremony and a small parade in a public square four miles north of here. I did signage. I did ordinances. I did PR and advertisement and walked the space and signed every piece of paper, and I set up a security detail of people I knew personally, and I cordoned off the streets, and I promised them…”
He sighs into Ed’s chest.
Ed swallows. “What?”
“That things had changed,” Roy says. “That it was all precautionary, because Amestris wasn’t like that anymore.”
Ed doesn’t even want to know, but it’s not like it won’t be smeared across the front page of every newspaper tomorrow if it’s half as bad as he’s begun to fear.
“What happened?” he asks.
“There was a protest,” Roy says. “A protest of a completely harmless gathering-not even a demonstration, just…” He takes a breath. “The protest became a mob, and the mob became a riot, and two people are dead, and a dozen are in the hospital, and in thinking we are better than this, am I actually making it worse?”
“It’s not your fault,” Ed says.
“It is,” Roy says. “I let this happen-I encouraged this to happen; I facilitated it-and the noblest of intentions could not change the fact that two human beings are in the morgue because of me.”
“Roy-” Ed says.
“I want to believe in them,” Roy says. “I want to believe this country has a heart and a soul underneath all the old bruises; I want to believe we can come together and save ourselves and be more than some cobbled-together patchwork of territories that despised each other-I-”
“I know,” Ed says. “I know, but you have to keep-”
“Is it worth it?” Roy asks. He looks up-urgently, desperately, and his right fist is still clenched in Ed’s shirt, and the other hand’s pressing its fingertips just a little too hard against his ribs. “What the hell is the point? They just keep-we just keep… People, Ed, humanity, this is all we amount to, isn’t it? This is it. This is all we’ve got. Blood in the streets of the city we live in because one of us brought in prayers and clothing from another tract of dirt. What the hell difference can I make when this is all we are?”
“Shut the fuck up for a second,” Ed says, getting a handful of his hair and tugging gently.
Roy presses his face into Ed’s chest again. “Your eloquence astounds.”
“I said shut up,” Ed says. “Just listen for once in your life, stupid.”
“That’s ‘General Stupid’ to you,” Roy mutters.
More like General Incorrigible Bastard Who Still Isn’t Listening, but if Ed starts that, they’ll derail right into the insult game, and that’ll end in fake-offended cuddles and shit, and they’ll fall asleep before he makes his point.
“It is worth it,” he says. “You know that. You are doing the right thing. You know that, too. You matter. You are changing shit. Change isn’t fast, and it isn’t easy, but it’s possible, and you are making it possible.”
Roy looks up again, and his eyes and his smile are tired, but at least the smile’s there. “God, Ed, I hope you never change.”
Ed play-smacks him upside the head. It’s helpful not to have a metal hand when you want to do that. “I’m not done. I was talking to Falman the other day about statistics-violence statistics. Specifically, racially-motivated violence. Charming topic and shit, I know, but-you are already changing it, Roy. You’re making this dumbass country better. You’re making it safer, and nicer, and you’re showing people that sometimes they can trust the douchebags in the uniforms with the snappy alchemy and shit.”
“‘Sometimes’?” Roy says, blinking up at him and starting to frown. “I-”
Ed grabs his shoulders and shakes him, mostly-gently. “Listen. You’re the one who taught me to pick my battles-why? ’Cause you can’t win ’em all; you can’t; there’ll be days you lose, and there’ll be days you lose bad, and those days are going to be shitty, and there’s nothing you can do about that. But that doesn’t mean you get to quit. You have to save your strength for the war; you have to keep believing that you can win no matter how many times you get your ass kicked. You have to keep fighting, ’cause a day is going to come when it is all worth it. A day’s going to come where you look back and thank yourself for not giving up even when nobody would’ve blamed you for it. A day’s going to come, Roy. You just gotta get there. And I’m always, always gonna have your back.”
Roy smiles faintly up at him for a long moment-Roy looks damn good from this angle; a guy could get used to this-and then takes Ed’s left hand in both of his and kisses Ed’s palm right underneath the ring.
“Thank you,” he says.
“For the last time,” Ed says, “I told you to shut up. Go get your stupid pajamas on.”
Ed pretends not to hear Roy’s knees cracking a little as he stands. “You love my stupid pajamas.”
Ed is struggling with the fact that Roy can’t obey the command to don pajamas unless he releases Ed’s hand. “That’s beside the point.”
“In every way,” Roy says softly, “you love me far more than I deserve.”
“Yeah, well,” Ed says, “I’m dumb like that. Are we going to bed, or what?”
Roy kisses him-warmly, gratefully, adoringly, and then… with heat. “I vote ‘or what’.”
Ed eyes him. “Is it gonna make you feel better?”
Roy’s face is pure innocence, and Ed has to swallow the snicker wriggling up his throat. “It can’t hurt to try.”
“All right,” Ed says, like it’s a sacrifice-which it’s really, really not. “After that, you can put on your stupid pajamas, and then you can do the stupid thing where you pet my hair for a quarter of an hour like I’m a needy cat.” He peels his shirt off and reaches for the hem of Roy’s.
On the upside, this shit’s way easier to get off of him than that damn uniform, with its thousand buttons and catches and traps.
“Jeez,” he says as he runs his right hand’s fingertips slowly over the scar tissue on Roy’s bare side. “The things I do for love.”
“Mmm,” Roy says, tipping his face up to kiss him again, and again, and again- “And the people.”
“I said shut up,” Ed says, but he can’t hold back the laugh this time.