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“Hey, Ed, wake up.”
Ed stirs and looks up to see Roy leaning over him, wearing the fucking record sappiest expression.
He glances at the clock. One in the morning. “Roy, what the actual fuck. Why are you awake?” He sits up and looks for any tear tracks on the older man’s face. “Did you have a nightmare or somethin’?”
He reaches out, feels for any wetness on those gorgeous cheeks; looks for any puffy skin that would tell him the reason of being woken up this late during the working week.
Even though they’re not in Central. Which sucks.
Some General ranked higher than Roy, or the Führer himself for all Ed cares, had decided that sending their team down to South City had been a brilliant idea. Fuck them.
At least they had been allowed to stay at one of the military’s house accommodations as a team rather than being allotted dorm rooms in various stages of decay (South City wasn’t exactly known for high-quality military lodgings).
To be entirely honest, Ed doesn’t have the faintest clue of what they’re doing here, and Roy’s not telling. Maybe they’re lying in wait for something major to happen in the district.
Roy shakes his head. “Don’t worry, love. All I wanted was some alone time with you. It’s been rough, having to hide and restrain myself around the others. Sometimes, the urge to just hold you threatens to shred my sanity to bits.”
Ed grins because even though he’ll never say it, he loves the sappy parts of Roy to hell and back, and he should know.
“It’s a starry night,” Roy says and leans in to gather Ed in his arms. “Would you like to go outside with me? Just for a small while?”
Ed hides his face in the crook of Roy’s neck and sighs appreciatively at his boyfriend’s romantic-as-fuck tendencies. Sitting and watching the stars? Hell yes.
While in Central it might’ve been something he’d say no to, the South is warmer and the nights are pleasantly chilled, perfect for laying down in the grass to look up at the universe.
And they’ve had no time together since boarding the train five days ago.
“Sure,” Ed says, pulling away from the place before holding out his arms. Mismatched, one of them gleaming in the moonlight through the window. Roy takes them and kisses each wrist before pulling him up.
Ed’s a bit unsteady because the last months have been hectic and he hasn’t had sufficient time to take care of his automail. It’s stiff and it’s almost to the point where he has to take the cane back out of the closet (but not yet. Not until his leg is completely uncooperative.)
“Once we get back to Central, I’m putting you on a train to Rush Valley, Ed,” Roy says once he’s let Ed go. “Your leg is causing you trouble and I will gladly grant you a week off to have the leg checked out than having you be put on sick leave for weeks due to having a new leg made.”
Ed grabs a jacket and his shoes. Socks are still on his feet (which is only because he’d fallen asleep without remembering to take them off).
All the lights in the house are off, because even if they’re not in the office, plenty of paperwork had been packed with them to avoid the massive backlog that would plague them and to deal with it, they had established a semi-schedule based on the usual workday, considering they were still being paid for being here.
Rather than it being a one-on-one project, however, they established a sort of relaxed atmosphere in the dining room, with prioritising and reading and talking.
The kitchen door is the door leading out to the garden, and the door only creaks a little when they sneak out. There’s a spot behind the giant oak tree that lets them sit on a top of the hill to look out over meadows, and at the horizon, South City.
It’s beautiful.
So is Roy, with the bright white light moon lighting up his face and streaking his hair with silver to the point where it’s like it glows in the dark.
Ethereal is the word poised on Ed’s tongue, ready to be spoken into the night, ready for Roy to hear.
The grass is damp under them, but Ed couldn’t care less. It adds another layer to the sensory experience of being out here with Roy.
It’s the first thing resembling a holiday they’ve ever had, apart from the two-day trip they’d taken up to Briggs to conduct an examination of two of the state alchemists stationed there.
But Briggs isn’t a holiday location, not like South City is. Not like this.
Ed leans backwards and melts into Roy’s chest because it’s warm and firm and the arms crossed over and around him are basically perfect.
“Me, Al and mom used to do this,” Ed says, his voice soft-spoken as to not disturb the night. He can feel Roy breathe in sharply behind him because it’s not often that Ed talks about his mom or about his home life in Resembool.
“She’d wake us up in the late summer and take us outside to lay on blankets and look up at the sky until we fell asleep and it suddenly became morning.” Ed smiles at the memories because so many of the times had ended in a well-played prank. “Once, Al didn’t wake up— because he’s a really heavy sleeper. Like, heavier than me. And he just didn’t wake up. He got so sunburnt from it.”
Ed stops and turns to face Roy; places a soft, chaste kiss at the corner of his mouth. “He used to have scarring from it, a constant skin colour difference right at where his t-shirt collar had been. This new body doesn’t have it, but we can’t tell if it’s the same body or a newly constructed one that just took the same genetics, but not the same experience.”
Roy’s so fucking gorgeous, and when Ed tells him that, as blunt as ever, Roy laughs, quiet and carefree.
It only makes Ed laugh too, and then he fists his hands in Roy’s sleep shirt and drags him closer, impossibly close and their lips meet and it’s fantastic. This kind of closeness is something Ed craves and when they’re alone, he will find a way to snake around Mustang as much as possible, what with two hard, metal limbs.
Something in the bushes behind him rustles and before Roy is alarmed, Ed leans even closer to place a chaste kiss to Roy’s cheek, a little too low for it to be entirely innocent. “We’re being watched,” he whispers, close enough to Roy’s ears that he should hear it, but way too quiet for anyone else to hear unless they’re sitting three inches away. “I’ll deal with it.”
He removes his mismatched hands’ grip on Roy’s shirt and quietly claps them together in a way that it doesn’t make a sound before pressing one hand to the ground as if to use the leverage to move closer to Roy, to press him up to the trunk of the oak tree.
The reaction is a delayed one because alchemy is fucking fantastic and Ed can make it more to his smallest wish. The energy travels underground, turning the dirt inside out and upside down without making a dent in the grass. Then, everything explodes as the reaction unfolds at the blink of an eye.
It’s beautiful and glorious and judging by the various yells and screams coming from behind them, his plan has worked out perfectly. He turns, and by using Roy’s shoulder as a momentary place to stabilise, he limps over to where the team (Sans Riza, who’s standing further away looking blankly at the rest of her office mates) is covered to their bellybuttons in dirt and grass.
He levels them all with the blandest look he can muster (stolen directly from Roy). “Seriously?”
By the way Havoc’s cigarette drops from his mouth (honestly, who smokes a cigarette when they’re attempting an incognito watching of two lawful citizens. Hasn’t the military taught him better?)
Nobody says anything, and Ed’s tempted to just go back inside and back to bed and leave them here encased in dirt. But he’s not an asshole (or not enough of one), and with a clap, they’re all free.
He points to every single one of them. “Seriously, y’all? I’m the youngest of us and even I know that eavesdropping and watching people without their knowledge and consent is unacceptable. What are you, children?”
“We— we,” Havoc sputters.
“You what.”
“We thought something was going on and we— we thought it would be smart to check it out,” Havoc says hesitantly. “But— we didn’t realise that…”
“No, you fucking didn’t,” Ed says through clenched teeth because when he takes a moment, he realises that he’s actually pretty fucking angry with them for ruining his spare few moments with Roy. He turns to Roy now, teeth still gritted. “You fucking deal with them. I can’t.”
He stomps away (as much as one can stomp with a stiff knee that doesn’t really cooperate) and looks up at the sky while doing so.
It’s still beautiful out, and in his mind, he clearly sees the stripes of moonlight carding through Roy’s hair and the way the love had shone from his eyes.
Gorgeous.
When Roy later joins him in bed and pulls him flush against his chest, Ed sighs, because it’s exactly this closeness that he’s been craving, that the team had stolen from him earlier.
Maybe he should thank them, honestly, because it’s thanks to them that Roy’s in his bed now, holding him close and whispering sweet nothings into his hair.
Ed succumbs to sleep’s tight yet gentle grip, lulled into rest by Roy’s calming voice.