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Roy honestly hadn’t been expecting the polite knock on his door so late at night and was even more surprised to find Ed standing there on his stoop, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but there.
He was in the awkward growing phase of being a teen, on the cusp of fourteen and he’d hardly grown since he’d been assigned to Roy’s command.
“What’re you doing out so late?” he asked him, staring blankly at the boy.
“I-um-don’t want to worry Al,” Ed said with a wince, “but I also don’t want to go to the hospital.”
That made Roy’s eyes sharpen and then he pitched his face into his hand, muffling a groan. “Edward, what’ve you done?”
“It’s not my fault!” Ed’s voice rose until it cracked and it was like a punch to the chest to be reminded of just how young Ed was, young enough that his voice was still breaking as he grew.
Roy squinted at him suspiciously. “Right, sure,” he said dryly. “Come inside, you cretin.”
“Don’t be such a bastard!” Ed fired back hotly, but he still sidled past Roy and his attention focused in on how Ed moved, because he knew the kid very well by now.
Ed stomped loudly and made his entire presence as abrasive as possible. He might’ve been small, but everything else about him was large in comparison. So it said something that Ed was moving so gingerly, like he was afraid of jarring something.
Injuries on the kid were par for the course, it was honestly rare that he didn’t come back from an assignment without an injury, though most of them were pretty mild, cuts and bruises. The worst had been Ed literally passing out on Roy’s carpet after crossing an infected blade. He’d quailed in the hospital bed as Al reamed him to filth and then Al had turned him over to Roy’s fierce glower. Ed had just had to sit there and take it.
Ed winced as Roy flicked on all the lights.
“All right, show me.”
Incredibly reluctantly and uncomfortably, Ed shrugged his coat off and then his jacket before struggling with his shirt.
Roy knew better than to offer him any help; Ed would’ve refused it. It was only once the shirt came off that his heart fell right down to his stomach.
Burns.
Red and angry enough that he had been able to note them against his darker skin, faint blisters forming in certain spots.
Horror sank into Roy’s bones. “Where did you get these burns?” he asked hollowly.
His first thought was inexplicably of flame alchemy, because Roy knew that it fascinated the brothers, and he went impossibly cold at the thought of either of them figuring out how to reverse-engineer it.
But Ed’s next words calmed him.
“There was a burning building that Al and I were trying to help put out…I always forget that I have metal prosthetics when it comes to heat and fire.” The boy grimaced. “Winry is going to beat me with a socket wrench.”
Roy didn’t smile. “Is it just your shoulder and chest or is it your leg too?”
Ed blinked before pressing his flesh hand against his thigh before it met his port. Roy knew enough about his automail to know that he didn’t have a lot of feeling at his stumps, except pressure. “Not the leg,” he decided after a moment of consideration, squeaking as Roy’s fingers probed behind him, over his back and shoulder, looking for more burns and blisters.
“Looks like it was your back and posterior shoulder as well,” Roy muttered, more to himself than to Ed. “I’m guessing it’s a second-degree burn…did you pop any of the blisters?”
“Um, just one,” Ed mumbled, clearly thrown off by the intensity of Roy’s focus as he catalogued the state of his injuries. “Why? Is it bad?”
“Blisters protect the skin from infection and they can help with the healing process, if you get blisters, you leave them alone, got it, kid?”
Ed gave a jerky nod, looking pretty miserable.
“Sit down, I’m going to need to clean the area before I apply a salve.”
He didn’t stick around to make sure Ed had complied, already moving to one of his closet cupboards that he kept all his burn supplies from when he was still learning to throttle the flames and kept accidentally lighting himself on fire -Ed would get a kick out of that story while Al would say “Oh, Colonel, I’m sure it wasn’t that bad”- bringing it back to Ed’s side before filling a basin with warm soapy water and wringing out a rag.
“I’m going to try to be gentle, all right?” Roy said. “But it might not be comfortable.”
Ed tensed up with a wince, his automail fist creaking as he stiffened up. Roy could almost see him at eleven, white-faced and gritting through the port placement.
It took a lot of effort to gently sponge against burned skin.
“Have you at least learned your lesson?” he asked Ed archly.
“What lesson?” Ed retorted, tone strained.
“Maybe avoid active fires would be a good lesson for you to learn,” Roy said dryly.
“Well, I should avoid you like the plague, then!”
Roy rolled his eyes, standing once more. “Lean forward, I need to get at your back.”
Ed complied with a short hiss.
His back wasn’t as bad as his front but the blistering was worse around where his automail met his flesh.
“Okay, time for salve.”
Ed blinked owlishly at him when he pulled a sealed jar out of the basket he’d brought out. “What’s that?”
“Aloe vera, we don’t have a lot of it in Amestris, but I’ve cultivated it. It’s a handy burn treatment,” Roy explained, carefully smearing the gel over the worst spots, taking care not to burst any of the blisters.
A surprised noise escaped Ed at the immediate cooling sensation.
“I’m guessing you’ve never burned yourself bad enough to require treatment before,” Roy presumed as he pulled out the bandages next.
Ed made a movement like he’d been about to shrug, only to abort it with a wince. “Never got close enough.”
The closest he’d ever come had been when Roy used his flame alchemy, and even then he’d been only close enough to feel the heat against his skin.
“So I guess I’ve learned my lesson.”
Until a short year later when Ed was left cartwheeling back to avoid Roy’s snapped blaze, but he would have to learn that the hard way.