Somewhat Clear

deerna
somewhatclear

Rating: SAFE
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Relationship: Roy Mustang / Riza Hawkeye
Tags: Suicidal thoughts, post-canon, ptsd/trauma recovery, actually less dark than it looks
Wordcount: 698
Notes: written for Lee

Summary:

Excerpt:

“Today Edward was bored, so he invented flame alchemy again,” Roy says, picking at an unraveling seam on his pants. He’s at the shooting range with Riza, and he wasn’t planning on telling her like that, but he figures it’s as good a moment as any. Actually, he might have accidentally picked the best moment for it—the fact that she’s doing something she loves might soften the blow, and if it doesn’t, she already has a gun in her hand and maybe she’ll finally just shoot them both.

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“Today Edward was bored, so he invented flame alchemy again,” Roy says, picking at an unraveling seam on his pants.

He’s at the shooting range with Riza, and he wasn’t planning on telling her like that, but he figures it’s as good a moment as any. Actually, he might have accidentally picked the best moment for it—the fact that she’s doing something she loves might soften the blow, and if it doesn’t, she already has a gun in her hand and maybe she’ll finally just shoot them both.

Riza turns around, takes the ear muffs off and looks at him with a question mark printed on her face.

“Did you say something?”

Of course, she didn’t hear him. Roy hesitates.

Nothing, he might say. He wasn’t planning on telling her like that, but he’s been looking at her back and it’s hard not to think about flame alchemy when he’s doing that, when he can almost see the edges of the scar through her clothes.

“I said that Edward came to the office today,” he says, taking several steps back, looking for words that don’t make the whole thing sound as unhinged as he felt when he saw that fucking circle sketched on scrap paper in Edward’s preternaturally precise free hand, graphite smudged at the edges.

“What did he want?” She sounds surprised. Edward rarely comes to the office these days.

“Showed me a new circle he’d been working on. He wanted to know if he got it right.”

Riza is smart. Her face turns into glass and chalk. Roy still wants her to kiss him, or to kill him. “Really?”

“Really. Accurate down to the last sub-routine. I thought he’d found the damn thing somewhere.” Which was impossible, of course. Roy had been so careful. In more ways than one. The flash of fear and panic that had swallowed his gut had been real.

“What the fuck,” she murmurs, sitting down more heavily than she would normally, and starting to take her gun apart.

“He wanted to see if he could,” Roy mutters.

“What the fuck.” She’s angry. Roy didn’t know he’d wanted her to get angry, but he’s glad she is now.

He didn’t get angry at Edward then. He couldn’t; Edward wasn’t at fault, there. He was just a bored genius who was still in love with the one thing he couldn’t touch. Roy couldn’t get angry at him, because Edward’s golden eyes had searched Roy’s and saw the panic there and he’d understood he crossed a line.

“What did you tell him?” Riza wants to know. Her gun is back in one piece, gleaming and clean.

Roy shrugs. “Edward is smart. I didn’t have to tell him.” He laughs a little. This is the part he really wanted to tell, because it was just as ridiculous and unreal as some goddamn kid pulling forbidden alchemy out of his brain by accident. “He ate the paper.”

Riza gets knocked out of her anger. “What?”

“He ate—” he wheezes. “He ripped the paper up and shoved it in his mouth.” Roy laughs as Riza stares at him. “He chewed and swallowed the fucking thing, Riza. Who does that?”

“Someone who can re-invent forbidden knowledge from thin air, apparently.” Riza’s smile is wry and incredulous.

Roy smiles back, dusts off invisible dirt from his uniform pants, and gets on his feet. “What do you want to eat tonight?”

Riza puts her things away, lets Roy help her shrug into her coat, then she links her arm through his. “Not paper.”

They let themselves laugh as they go out in the cooling evening air, the sun hitting the horizon, setting it on fire. He can feel her shiver a little against his shoulder; he doesn’t know if she’s cold or if she’s also feeling the old ache of panic deep in her bones, but it doesn’t matter. He focuses on the smile on their faces, the tired wrinkles at their eyes.

They’re fine.