Chapter Text
Are you sure you don’t mind covering tonight?
Hot date?
You’re joking, right?
Riza would fucking end me.
She made me promise to stay single through the holidays
Wow. Buzzcut dude made an impression.
Buzzcut dude doesn’t even count as a date.
He was an accident at best. A brief diversion.
An afternoon adventure.
Don’t you mean afternoon delight?
Horrifying, thank you.
Look, I’m just waiting for you to bring home someone who makes the Whips and Furs mocktail a reality. I’ve already got the menu art.
Absolutely not. I do have taste, Edward.
That’s the biggest lie you’ve told all day.
Speaking of, what’s this not-date, and why are you definitely lying to me right now?
It’s not a date!
I swear, I wouldn’t make you work a Thursday for a date.
I know, I know, chill.
Vanessa is in town for the night, and wants to have dinner.
Awwwwwwwww
Fuck off.
You don’t get to throw houses in this glass rock, Thursday Night Dinner.
Me? Throw houses? In this economy?
Really, though, it’s fine. Al and Winry are gonna bring Mei to the bar, they’re gonna make fun of me in my place of work, it’ll be good.
Only if you’re sure.
Vanessa is in town like twice a year, go have fun with your sister, seriously.
Leave the bar to me. We’ll see if your Thursday night crowd can handle someone who knows how to pour something other than a shot.
Maybe I can and choose not to?
Nice try, but Riza sent me a video of the last time you tried to make a martini.
How do you fuck up the easiest drink in the world?
I can’t believe Riza hates me. This is such a betrayal.
Betrayal? In your bar? It’s more likely than you think.
James Bond orders it shaken.
James Bond is a goddamn idiot, and so are you.
Stop stalling, get out of the office, go to your fucking dinner, and let us handle the bar for the night. I promise, I’ll only burn it down a little.
Edward.
It’s been five years, moron, I think I can handle a night. Okay?
Now LEAVE.
OK
Love you
Bye
Wait shit
Don’t read that
Fuck
Ed?
Edward?
Delete that
Can I delete that?
Fuck.
Roy dropped his phone on his desk like it was a live snake, and stared at it apprehensively, but there was no welcoming light in response.
Fuck.
If he hadn’t freaked out immediately afterwards, he probably could have played it off as a joke, or a mistake, or a reflex. He had spent the day texting Vanessa. If Ed didn’t know that Vanessa would make fun of him for years for signing off with an I love you, it could plausibly be a text meant for her.
Of course, Ed did know, and Roy did freak out, and now he was sitting in his office, painfully aware that Ed was either already in the kitchen, or at the very least enroute to the bar, and that the only reason that he hadn’t fired back half a dozen texts in response to Roy was because he had something to say in person.
He sank further into his chair.
It was a dumb mistake. It wasn’t even something that he’d spent a lot of time thinking about, it wasn’t a secret that he’d been hiding, exactly. It was a slip of the tongue, and it just so happened to also be true.
He loved all of his employees, of course. Most of them had started life as his friends, people who’d had his back in the trenches—sometimes literally—years before he’d decided to make them part of his professional life. It was one of the ways he distanced himself from his time in the military, both as a soldier and a consultant, and it might have been a dangerous way to run a business, but it made life infinitely better when he surrounded himself with people that made him happy. He liked the freedom that the bar gave him, to give jobs to people who needed them, and to create a low-stakes environment where he could hire, recklessly perhaps, the people that he loved.
Ed was a rare outside hire, but he was also Roy’s best friend, the best decision he’d made in the last five years, and the first person to really shake Roy out of his endless dating-charming-failing-dumping cycle that he’d gotten himself into. His point, about Roy’s dates being entirely unlike the people Roy surrounded himself with, was something that stuck with Roy in a way that none of Riza’s poking or Maes’ prodding had. It made Roy want to sit up and pay attention to his life for the first time in a long time.
Ed was right. The people Roy dated were, at best, pale imitations of the people that he really loved, and what was more, when Roy took a step back from romance and stopped messing around with new people for a month or two, he found that he wasn’t really missing anything vital in his life.
He still wanted to find love, but he wasn’t missing the close camaraderie he’d come to associate with romance, he didn’t find himself turning towards someone who wasn’t there, he didn’t craft messages with nowhere to send them. He didn’t miss any of the people he’d dated, he didn’t even miss the idea of them, because every time he had something to say, he turned to say it to Ed. He’d been doing it for years, he’d realized, which did explain some of the breakdowns in his longer relationships. He didn’t rely on his girlfriends or boyfriends for any kind of emotional support, he didn’t open himself up to them in any significant way, because he didn’t have to. He already had someone that filled that role.
The realization was a startling one, but not one that ultimately changed much. So he was a little bit in love with Ed. Wasn’t everyone? For that matter, wasn’t he a little bit in love with all of his best friends, in their own ways? Ed was unattached, unlike Maes and Gracia, and he hadn’t already tried and failed to have a relationship with him, like Riza, but ultimately it was no different. He refused to let it be different. Ed was a cornerstone of his life, both professionally and personally, and there was absolutely no reason to change it.
If, sometimes, he sat at the bar and watched him laugh and joke with other customers, and noticed that he was absolutely, utterly, breathtakingly beautiful, that was beside the point. Ed was his friend, and friendship was good enough, it was important on its own, it didn’t need anything added to it to be good, be great, be absolutely wonderful.
There were three sharp knocks on his office door, the kind that could only be made by a metal fist, and then Ed was in his office, and Roy had run out of time to make a break for it.
He thought, distantly, as he stared up at Ed’s face, that their friendship would probably survive this. His friendship with Riza had survived their ugly, messy breakup, after all, even if it did involve a seven year gap where he’d enlisted in the army, served two tours, got discharged with honors, and became a raging alcoholic. It was different than it had been, there was a distance that hadn’t existed when they were children, but they’d been children. Of course they were different. Of course there were things that lay in the barren ground between them that could never return. That was what it meant to grow up.
He would survive this. It would hurt, but he would survive it, and if he was very lucky—and he considered himself to be a very, very lucky person—Ed would stay. At a distance, perhaps, but he would stay nonetheless.
“What the fuck,” Ed said. For once, his every thought wasn’t emblazoned across his face. His tone was almost calm, and his eyes were steady as he looked at Roy, arms crossed but mouth not yet set in a scowl. Something about his careful quietness was far more frightening than yelling and shouting would have been.
“Edward,” Roy said.
Ed’s face spasmed, and settled into a frown. “Don’t Edward me. Not right now.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Roy sighed, and rubbed a hand over his face. “Would you believe it was a slip of the tongue?”
“If that was a verbal conversation, sure. I used to tell the pizza place I loved them every time I hung up. It happens.” Ed was staring, Roy was fairly sure, into his very soul. “It’s harder to do with text, though.”
“It is.”
“I gotta say, OK Love You Bye is a good drink name.”
Roy laughed, a little hollow thing, but there was some bitter hope underneath it. Surely, if Ed was joking this quickly, surely it would be fine. Surely they could keep the same traditions, surely they could continue making strange drinks with stranger names, surely it would be okay. Ed never made drinks about the things that really hurt, he’d never made a joke about Riza, so surely, this wasn’t going to ruin them.
Ed’s eyes sharpened while his stance loosened. His arms dropped to his side, and he meandered over to Roy’s desk. Roy tried not to flinch.
“Do you think I’m here to beat you up?” he asked, casually.
“I’m not sure,” Roy admitted.
Ed rounded the desk and sat on the edge of it, perilously close to Roy’s chair. Roy had to lean back to continue making eye contact, though it didn’t do much good. Ed had gone back to being blank-faced and terrifying.
“What, exactly, was that text supposed to mean?” Ed asked. “It’s just, you really freaked out afterwards, and I figure that if it was an accident, or if you didn’t mean it, you would have just said so.” His brow furrowed slightly. “Unless you really, really don’t mean it, and you didn’t want me to get the wrong idea. But you would have just said that, too.” He leaned further into Roy’s space. “So. What’s going on.”
Roy hesitated. “It was—It was your advice, really, that did it,” he said slowly.
Ed tilted his head, confused.
“About my dating around. That none of the people I picked were actually interesting to me, and you could tell because they weren’t like any of the people I actually like in my life, and I should find someone I actually like spending time with to date.”
“Right,” Ed nodded, still looking puzzled.
“Anyway,” Roy said, throwing in the towel completely, “I realized that it would be pretty damn hard to take that advice, because in about five years there hasn’t been anyone more interesting to talk to, or that I liked being with more, than you.”
Ed’s eyes widened, and he stumbled slightly against the desk. “Oh,” he said, in a stunned voice.
It was Roy’s turn to stare at him. “I mean, what were you expecting me to say?”
He gave a shaky laugh, and ran a hand absently through his hair. Roy was momentarily distracted by the length of it as it spilled over his shoulders, not yet caught up in one of his bar-ready ponytails or braids.
“I figured you’d deny it, or say it was a mistake, or something,” Ed admitted.
Roy shrugged. “It wasn’t, but I understand if you want it to be—” he started.
“No,” Ed said, so quickly that Roy broke off in surprise. “No, I don’t—I would like it—That is. If it was true. I would prefer to know. I would prefer for it to be true.” He said the final part in one breath, staring stubbornly down at Roy, refusing to break eye contact even as his cheeks went a brilliant pink.
“Oh,” Roy said, and it was his turn to be stunned. It hadn’t occurred to him, in any of his frantic imaginings, that Ed might actually say yes in return. He found he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with himself at the moment.
Ed broke the silence with a strained sort of laugh. “How are you so bad at this?” he asked, incredulous. “You have gone on so many dates, you must have done the asking at least once or twice.”
“None of them mattered,” Roy said matter-of-factly, because it was true, because Ed had been the one to point it out, and he didn’t see a reason to pretend otherwise.
Ed buried his face in his hands. “You choose now to be smooth?”
“I don’t think that qualified,” Roy said, and Ed made a grumbling sound.
“At this rate, the OK Love You Bye is going to be curdled milk and horseradish.”
Roy blinked. “You’re still planning on—But you only make a new drink when I fail?”
“You think this doesn’t count?” But Ed stood up straighter, a look of determination on his face. “No, you’re right. We’ll keep it waiting until we’ve put it to the test.” He held a hand out to shake. “No OK Love You Bye until this blows up in our faces, yeah?”
Roy had to laugh, even as he took Ed’s hand. “Deal.”
“Good.” They shook, and then Ed dragged him forward by their clasped hands, and pressed a kiss slightly unevenly to Roy’s surprised mouth.
He sprang off of the desk immediately afterwards, and was halfway to the door before Roy could figure out what was happening. “Go meet with your sister,” he commanded, half in and half out of the doorway. “You can tell me where you’re taking me afterwards. I’m sure you’ve got a bunch of ideas.” He grinned, bright and fleeting, and Roy’s heart did a strange, unsettling twist in his chest, something that had never once happened with any of his other dozens of dates. “Monday?”
“Monday.”
The OK Love You Bye didn’t make an appearance in the bar for years, though both Roy and Ed threatened to bring it into being at various points, during various fights. It was never needed, though, until, after two years of dating and seven years of friendship, mocktail creation, and what Al and Riza both referred to as a tragic lack of awareness of romantic tension—they got along like a house on fire, Roy found to his horror—they served it as one of the options at their wedding reception.
It was not curdled milk and horseradish, and it was a hit.