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The thing about automail is that it's heavy. It's so much heavier than a normal limb, and that weight takes its toll. A toll so large that many decide the artificial limbs aren't worth it at all. Truly, it’s only those with the most to gain from the surgery, the rehabilitation, the ongoing maintenance, and the lifetime of chronic pain flare ups that actually decide to take on the burden.
Because for a tool meant to help, it is a burden.
Roy isn't so naive as to say that he knew that better than anyone – but he has had a front row seat to the silent suffering that automail brings with it. At first through his association with various soldiers who'd lost their limbs on the battlefield and turned to a steel salvation, and then through his much more indefinable relationship with Edward Elric. No longer Fullmetal, and no longer something Roy could call just a subordinate, or even, just a friend.
Which is why he keeps wheat packs in his kitchen cupboards, or in his desk drawers, ready to be heated at a moment's notice, should a storm threaten on the horizon. It’s why he removes his scratchy uniform jacket when meeting Ed at the pub, should the boy need a shoulder to lean against as they sit side by side in a booth. It’s why he always drives to pick Ed up when they attend lectures together, should the fatigue leave him unable to walk home without pain.
And it’s why he isn't in the least bit surprised when he finally puts down his pen on a stretched Friday afternoon and leaves his desk, only to find Edward sitting quietly in a borrowed chair in the outer office, pressing the palms of his hands against the join of skin to metal on his left thigh.
He stops in the doorway and drinks him in for a moment, in the quiet of the office, whilst nobody else is around. He always looks handsome, but with a setting sun as his backdrop his good looks elevate to something religious: even marred by the sweat on his brow, and the bow-string tension in his shoulders, that gives away how much pain he's in. Then Roy crosses the office, stops in front of the other man, and bends to his knees. Edward looks at him from behind long, sandy eyelashes, and says nothing. Nothing needs to be said. This isn't the first time Roy's done this, and it won't be the last.
He doesn't need to ask what the plan of action is to alleviate the pain. Ed wouldn't have come to the office if he was just after drugs, or heat packs. He had all those things at home and was more than capable of looking after himself. If he'd braved the journey into HQ it was to get something that he couldn't achieve himself. Something Roy has been doing for him for years, and something Roy secretly held as a dear reminder of his own usefulness. He holds out his hand for the kit, and after the usual moment of hesitation in which Ed debates his life choices, Roy’s ex-subordinate hands over a small case. Inside is a measured dose of morphine, in an auto-injector.
It used to be worse. It used to be that Roy had to measure out the drug himself, prep the syringe, and try and keep Edward calm whilst the needle glinted menacingly. Now they had auto-injectors, and the needle part is neatly covered so that Ed never has to see it. But that does little to stop his irrational fear.
Once upon a time Roy had even found that funny. That Ed could survive automail surgery, and military service, and being impaled by rebar, but freaks out at the sight of a tiny pinprick of a needle. Now, he simply takes the pen and does his job. A quick wipe of an alcohol soaked cloth over the other man’s exposed thigh, Ed turns his head to the side with his brow and nose screwed up in adorable worry, and Roy holds the pen to scarred skin, and depresses the button to inject. Ed whimpers from his seat slightly above Roy, and Roy makes a vague shushing noise that he doesn’t have to hope is soothing, because they’ve done this dance enough times that he knows that it is.
A moment later Ed gains his breath back, the pain ebbing quickly thanks to this last resort treatment, and he looks down at Roy, who has yet to get himself up from his knelt position. The younger man truly looks ethereal from this angle, and Roy is loathe to give up that view so quickly. It only gets better when Edward’s lips twitch into a smile that wouldn’t have been possible before the shot of morphine.
“Thanks,” he breathes out, and Roy nods his acceptance of the words, even though thanks are not needed.
“Any time,” he mumbles. Anything, he adds in his head.
He’d long ago accepted he would do quite literally anything for this shining boy. But he’ll admit that this quiet task he loves the best. The fact that Ed trusts him to do it. That he is one of very few people Ed does trust to do it. That in the aftermath of the pain Ed’s brow begins to ease out, and his colour begins to return to his cheeks, and Roy knows that he was the one to help. It is healing for Ed, but Ed doesn’t know how healing it is for Roy too. That he gets to see these vulnerable moments, and relieve some of that pain.
He hates that Ed has to live with the burden of automail. But he loves that it is a burden he gets to ease.
“Drink?” he asks, and Ed nods so enthusiastically Roy’s heart swells in his chest.
The post-treatment time they spend together is definitely a bonus, too.