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"What?" Edward hissed, and Alphonse's eyes widened as he darted forward to tug his coffee out of angry-arm-sweeping range.
"Oh," Al said. "That."
"What?" Edward repeated, and this time his eyes were lifted from the newspaper.
"I was going to warn you - I just forgot 'cause Margery made those cinnamon rolls and stop making that face, Brother, no, no don't get up-"
"I'll kill them," the Fullmetal Alchemist hissed, and Alphonse quickly ate the last of his cinnamon roll so that he could follow his older brother out the door.
So, it all went better than expected.
The headline hit newsstands on Monday morning. It was nice and bright, and Alphonse felt the urge to skip down the street except he was a grown man and while that might have been acceptable as a suit of armor, it wasn't as a Lieutenant, and there was that whole spiel about disrespecting the uniform. So, in an attempt to not make a mockery of himself, he stopped by a nearby newsstand to wait out his giddiness.
As he skimmed over the collection of newspapers, his brother's title caught his eye - probably, he thought immediately, something to do with Ed's recent trip up to Drachma (which hadn't gone well and ended up with Drachma loosing an entire platoon of soldiers and retreating hastily back north, the peace treaty somewhere in ash mixed in the snow of the Briggs Mountain Range). Alphonse abandoned his romantic periodicals and picked up the newspaper, flipping through it.
"Oh," he said out loud, and carefully pulled out his wallet to buy the issue. "Oh, shit."
"I don't understand," Roy said, and read over the article again. It was only slightly troubling because there was nothing like seeing some of the more tentative private issues of your life headlining page six, but there was nothing bad about what was in front of him. It was actually - it was actually really good. Really good. A better response than he could have expected.
"How can you not understand?" Edward hissed, and the Prime Minister of Amestris flinched and threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
"The desk, Edward, it's mahogany-"
Edward's automail hand tightened around the lip of the desk. Roy's jaw shut with a 'click'.
"They called me your boyfriend."
Roy raised an eyebrow. "That's because you are."
"They know we're living together."
"We've…never really kept it a secret."
"They said we were a good match."
Mustang faltered and look back to the article. The actual quote was 'Could there be a better match than the People's Alchemist and our new Prime Minister? If anything this proves that Prime Minister Roy Mustang truly cares about our country, and our families - and if he doesn't, I'm sure his current attached will have something to say about that!'
To be honest, he wasn't sure he'd ever thought about the possibility of the people's approval of him in office going up because of his relationship with Edward. In fact, he had been prepared to keep it quiet until he had retired, but it seemed like that notion had decided to pull the rug out from underneath him.
"Is this a bad thing, Edward?" Roy questioned, flat out, watching Edward slide from anger, to irritation, to some sort of pale realization, to a growing horror, and suddenly he was sinking into the two office chairs that Roy kept around his desk.
"Our life is tabloid fodder," Edward said into his hands, and Roy narrowed his eyes in confusion.
"Our lives have always been tabloid fodder-"
"No," Edward cut off. "My life has been tabloid fodder, your life has been tabloid fodder. Our lives have been tabloid fodder. Our life is now tabloid fodder."
It took a second for it to click (and Roy really hated pronouns after a certain point). "Ah," he said, eloquently, and stood up to walk around the desk and kneel next to Edward. "You wanted to keep this private."
"I wanted to keep us private," Ed muttered. "I don't care if they hate us or love us, I just wanted - it's no-one else's business except ours."
For a moment, Roy felt horrible. "I'm sorry, love. I'm sure - we could put it back under wraps. Falman and I still have quite a few contacts with the press. With a few strings, this'll be old news by tomorrow."
Ed's mouth twisted. "Fury said that your popularity numbers rose since this morning."
They were still rising. Roy was quickly becoming the most loved man in Amestris, well, second-loved, (third) to the Elrics. Still, he didn't necessarily need the popularity, not if it upset Edward.
"Well," he said, after a moment, after some careful debating and sentence structuring. "Yes."
"Ugh," Ed moaned and threw his head back against the chair. "The things I do for you - fine. Not like I read the newspaper anyway."
Roy blinked. "Edward, are you completely sure?"
"No," Ed stressed, and cracked open an eye to glare down at him. "But, it works, doesn't it? Everyone likes you now, which compared to yesterday when no-one liked you, is a huge improvement."
"Thank you, darling, for the vote of confidence."
"Shut it, bastard, you know what I mean. I just..." Edward trailed off and glared at nothing. "Fine, rules. No pictures, no interviews, and if you even try to use me as an excuse to get out of something, I'll kill you. But - I mean. Fine."
"Fine?"
"Fine."
Roy leaned upwards, placed both hands on the chair's arms, and kissed Ed quite soundly. Ed pulled back, a delightful shade of red, and scowled. Roy gave him an indulgent smile. "What would I do without you?"
"Probably still be a fucking Brigadier General," Ed groused. "I'm hungry. Let's get dinner."
"Ah," Roy said. "I'm - in the middle of-" He cut himself off when Ed turned to glare at him. "Dinner, then? Let me grab my coat." He stood and slung the greatcoat off of the hook and threw it over his shoulders. He paused in front of the door as Edward climbed out of the chair and stalked towards him. Ed blinked up at him when he realized he was staring. "Do you know I love you?"
Ed blushed, again. "Yeah, yeah, bastard, show me by feeding me, come on - I think the diner around the corner is open still…"
Roy watched Edward round the corner and start down the hallway, before tucking the newspaper underneath his arm. He'd buy another copy when he got home, the one under his arm nearly mangled by Ed's automail. He wanted a pristine copy to keep in his desk.
'A romance for the ages that warms us all down to the cockles of our hearts, for sure. We only have one question for the Prime Minister and our favorite State Alchemist - when's the wedding?'
Well, hopefully, Roy thought as he checked to make sure the small box was still carefully hidden away inside of his pocket, soon.