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A chill wind swirled into the cabin as the door slammed open. The two chimera hurried inside, stamping the snow from their boots, and turned to shut it out again. They'd left that morning for a routine foray into the nearest town, and now returned beaming, their red-tipped faces radiating with unprecedented, and frankly quite suspicious exuberance. Greed glanced between their cheery expressions and the sacks hanging limply off their arms, and narrowed his eyes. As a rule, he'd rather his subordinates bring back provisions than good spirits. "You come bearing fuck all."
"Yeah well, there's a reason for that." Darius grinned, his bustling presence warming up the diminutive space as he shed his hefty coat, almost bowling Ed over in his efforts to toss it over the distorted wooden panel serving as a rudimentary coat stand. "Get this - it's Christmas day."
"What, now? Today now?" He pushed himself forward, propping his chin on interlocked fingers. That was quite the surprise, he had to admit. They'd wandered further off-grid than he'd imagined, then, to lose track of time like that. He would have placed them somewhere in the region of late-November, early-December ish, if he'd had to guess. That was something else he'd forgotten about immortality: the way time flies when you don't want it to end. They'd sail right past the Promised Day at this rate.
Ha. If only.
"Uh-huh." Heinkel shrugged off the first of his many layers, setting down the bag with a thunk that reassured him it wasn't completely empty. "Realised after we came face-to-face with the second shuttered storefront. Everything's closed, of course, but the shopkeeper saw us poking round, and you can't - morally speaking - tell someone in need to sod off, not today, so he fixed us up with a feast off his own table." He upended the bag onto the bed, and Greed darted forward to catch a mutinous bottle of mulled wine as it made a break for the floorboards. A feast was, perhaps, a bit of an overstatement - Ling would consider it a slightly modest breakfast - but he found himself unwilling to sully the day with cynicism, and nodded his gratitude to the chimera. "God bless the festive spirit."
"'S a miserable Christmas," Ed remarked, the window fogging up where he rested against it. Flurries of snow caught on the glass outside, dragging themselves through the air and making the path impassable to anyone of a lesser stature than the chimeras. Poor kid had been trapped inside for a few days now, and irritation was quick to wear through any amenability he might affect.
"It's a white Christmas," Greed corrected, almost unconsciously, the sentiment an echo of… he wasn't exactly sure. A soft voice glistened on the periphery of his memory; bright, indistinct eyes framed by snow-laden lashes.
"You've changed your tune." Ed's eyes slid over him, his voice tinged with resentment, as though contemplating the loss of an ally. "Thought you were sick of this bloody weather."
"I am." He was well aware of the contradiction, but it was easy to dismiss as he stepped closer to his sulking alchemist, wrapping his arms around him from behind so they could gaze into bleak obscurity together. "But it's Christmas, apparently. Season of goodwill, and all that. Which does not include slouching around feeling sorry for yourself." Ed made eye contact in the reflection, the skepticism he was making every effort to exude heavy and disheartening. Fortunately, Greed was not one to be easily disheartened. "Come on! It's only noon - we've got plenty of time to make a proper celebration of it."
"Oh yeah?" He shifted on the window seat, the gesture allowing Greed to slip his hands further down his chest. "Don't know what celebratin' you're intending on doing when we're stuck in this shack. No presents, no tree… no point, really. We don't even have the silly paper hats."
"Who cares about any of that?" His head dipped lower, nuzzling against Ed's ear. "Forget all that materialistic shit. Christmas is about… spending time with the people you love, isn't it?"
"Huh? The hell did you get that from?" He twisted round to face him, the question glinting with genuine surprise, which Greed - self-proclaimed advocate of materialistic shit as he was - couldn't exactly resent. "The ghost of Christmas past?"
"What? No, it was…" He swallowed, his eyebrow twitching with a repressed grimace, but perhaps whatever was up there took pity on him, because the blurred memory sharpened into picture-perfect clarity. "It was Dolcetto, actually. His favourite holiday. He used to, um, get the bar all decked out weeks in advance, and - ha - Roa always got dragged outside to put the lights up because he couldn't… Anyway." He pressed his tongue to the top of his mouth. He was beginning to learn that, while forgetting hurt like hell, remembering brought its own ramifications. He could reminisce later, when he had time to deal with them in full. Right now, he couldn't let himself get distracted from the vitally important imperative of cheering up Edward Elric. "Point is, I know what I'm on about."
"Oh..." he murmured, sullenness curdling into a dismay that sounded suspiciously like guilt - which was ridiculous and counterproductive and altogether not something the Homunculus was prepared to allow. He tilted his chin upwards, meeting uncertain, beautiful eyes, and fixed him with a wilfully jovial stare.
"And you can make the silly paper hats."
-
They had a good time of it, in the end. Ed did the peeling wallpaper the favour of repurposing it, fashioning intricate paper chains in seconds, and using the leftover scraps to make the promised hats. He'd managed to rip his almost immediately, and the chimeras' had both gotten trampled at some point in the festivities, leaving Greed the only one still crowned - which he took as an encouraging sort of foreshadowing. The turkey slices and only-minorly-squashed mince pies had been scoffed up; the mulled wine polished off - mostly by the chimeras, who were beginning to show the effects of it, launching into chorus after cacophonous chorus of butchered hymns and losing themselves to the hilarity of well placed, largely inappropriate substitutions.
The only tradition he'd failed to translate from the Devil's Nest was the exchanging of gifts around a tree. Pity, that. He nudged the alchemist curled up in his lap. "I'm sorry I didn't get you anything, Ed. It was all too short notice. I would've if I'd had time."
"Hmm?" He rubbed his cheek against the lapel of Greed's coat as he looked up, his eyes shining and drowsy. "Oh, I don't care about that. Would have thought you'd be more upset by not getting anything yourself."
"Ha… not at all." His fingers carded through Ed's hair: silky and precious, like spun gold, and his breath caught on the kid's contented sigh, the way he melted into his embrace. "Course I like receiving gifts; I like the thought behind it, but I don't need 'em. There's very little I can be given that I can't just take whenever I want anyway."
"Yeah… guess that figures."
"You, on the other hand…" He brushed an affectionate, proprietorial thumb across Ed's cheek. "I want to spoil you senseless. When I'm Emperor of Xing, you'll have whatever your heart desires. Wealth and luxury; riches beyond your wildest imaginings-" Through his clothes, he felt the body pressed against him quiver, and it took a second to realise that Ed was laughing at him. "What?"
"My fuckin'... my heart doesn't desire any of that shit. What kind of crap is that?"
"Oh, is that so? It may not be at the top of your priorities right now, but it's still pretty damn good, believe me." He hummed, his fantasies enduring the mockery unscathed. After all, Greed always got what he wanted, and something he really, really wanted was to give Ed everything he deserved.
And it was an ironic, incongruous pair they made: the avaricious Homunculus snatching up whatever took his fancy, making no pretence at deserving any of it because he simply did not care, and the alchemist who deserved the entire fucking world but who, for reasons inscrutable, rejected it all. "You just don't have enough experience to appreciate how beautiful it is to just… have things. With you, everything's about sacrifice and moderation, but it doesn't have to be, you know. I can show you." His hand continued its rhythmic stroking through Ed's hair, his voice dreamlike, and the alchemist listened with a patience Greed knew was purely performative, mentally arming himself for his next rebuke. "I want to show you how it feels... to wrap your hands around something you've always wanted, to hold its weight in your palm and know that it's yours. It's the best feeling in the world, Ed, I promise you, and you deserve only the best." He paused, and then, because it might come closer to a language Ed understood, because in his mind it made perfect sense: "I just want to make you happy."
"You idiot…" He pulled out of his grasp just long enough to rearrange himself, straddling Greed's thighs and wrapping his arms around his shoulders, so they were pressed chest-to-chest. "You already do that." He nudged his nose against his throat, Greed's stiff collar muffling the borderline derisive laugh. "Maybe you really can't be happy if you're not draped in gold leaf or whatever the fuck, but us mortals aren't quite so hard to please. Your friend was right, you know? Christmas isn't about how much shit you get, and neither is anything else. You want me to be happy? Guess what. I'm happy now. I can't … well, apart from the obvious, I can't think of a single thing that could make this moment better. So quit talkin' crap, alright?"
It was so endearing, so very on brand, that the only way Ed could be compelled to such open affection was through the guise of outsmarting his partner - and Greed found himself forced to concede defeat. Perhaps Ed was just different to him - unconstrained by the bounds of boundless desire, capable of achieving a comfortable, domestic satisfaction which was just as rewarding in its simplicity as the highest reaches of world domination would eventually be to him. Or perhaps, Greed thought - as he gazed down at the ruffled expanse of hair fanning over his chest, at the glimpse of tanned skin peeking past Ed's scarlet coat - he was already draped with all the gold he'd ever need. And he'd never really tried before, never paused long enough in his fierce ambition to even attempt to squeeze into the mould of contentment, but now that Ed had planted the idea in his mind… he found he couldn't think of a single way to make this moment better either. So perhaps it was not so much about what he could show Ed, but what Ed could show him.
"Well, if you're so sure I'm all you want for Christmas," he said, and Ed scoffed, lips quirking at the egotistical, entirely accurate interpretation. "You're welcome to as much of me as you like."
"Suppose I better give you something in return then. Equivalent exchange, y'know." His smile was soft and golden, and Greed suspected he'd already been given something of equal value, just in that one look. Still, he tightened his arms around his lover, tilting his head down to meet him halfway in a gentle kiss. What Ed was offering was one of the few things he couldn't just take; one of the few things he had to be given, had to earn - and one day he may even be worthy of it. "Merry Christmas, Greed."
"Merry Christmas, Ed," he said, and it was lovely, really, that he got to enjoy the day the same way he had before. The right way, according to Dolcetto. "I'm glad I spent it with you."