Roy Mustang gave a long sigh and cast his lover a thoroughly displeased glance in the rearview mirror.
Said lover crossed his arms and glared back petulantly from the back seat.
"YOU were the one who told me to wear a costume," he reminded Roy, for the third time.
"That was because I thought—" Roy began, before stopping himself. As Edward Elric and the word "reasonable" didn't often belong in the same sentence, it probably wasn't going to get the conversation anywhere.
"I thought you might consider the evening's itinerary when making your choice," Roy said instead.
Edward spread his arms out in outrage, strips of ragged cloth fluttering as he did so.
"What the hell do you mean, I did! You said we were going to a party with a costume contest, and then going to your place! I look fucking awesome! It's a piece of cake, Roy, I'll win in five minutes!"
"And then we'll go back to my place…with you dressed like that."
"So what?!" Ed cried.
Roy gave another sigh as he pulled into the parking lot of the party hall, turned off the engine, and twisted in the seat to look properly at his severely-romantically-impaired lover, or as properly as he could through the dim light of the car.
"Edward. You've been absent on assignment for two months. Tonight we finally get to see each other again, and I have been so bold as to ask you directly to come to my apartment to stay the night, foregoing the whole song and dance of pretending you are going to stay in the hotel with Alphonse—which Alphonse finds very tiresome to go through every time, by the way, though you seem not yet to have noticed—"
Ed's mouth dropped open, surely to object to the implication that he spent every night he was in Central at Roy's apartment (though he did), but Roy didn't give him a chance to start.
"—and with all that in mind, out of every possible idea that your genius brain could have concocted, you come dressed as…." Roy gestured down Ed's body, every visible inch of it covered in some shade of brown, red, green or black.
"A rotting corpse."
"Zombie," Ed corrected.
Roy gave him a look, but Ed would not be deterred this time, pressing on about the amount of research on stages of decay and makeup methods had gone into his costume, which Roy didn't doubt at all—not only because of the man's personality, but because he looked truly grotesque.
As Roy half-listened to him continue his rant, he gave an internal sigh, trying to reconcile himself with the fact that after two months of looking forward to it, he would not get to seduce a young professor, or fondle a knight still half in his shining armor, or defrock a priest, or play incorrigible patient of a brilliant doctor, as he had hoped. He recognized, of course, that in the end it was his fault; if he had wanted Ed to dress as something conducive to bedroom play, he should have done it the grown-up way and given Edward a hint of what he was looking for. He had just been unable to resist the element of mystery, of surprise, because Edward was so gorgeous, and looked so delectable dressed as absolutely anything at all…
Except for a rotting corpse, that is.
Ed had finished his rant and fallen silent, and Roy realized he must now be overdoing it with his not-amused face, because Ed was biting the inside of his cheek and had a look in his eyes, the one that said he was backing a step out of the proverbial China shop to re-consider whether or not he was at fault. It was a skill that had developed as Ed blossomed into his twenties, and was definitely not something to be abused.
"Now, you listen to me," Roy said, softening the expression on his face with the lustful tone of his voice. "You are going to go in there, make the rounds while traumatizing as few generals' children as possible, win the contest, and then take yourself and your winnings back to my apartment in the car."
He dropped the vehicle key into Ed's outstretched graveyard-dirt-encrusted hand, carefully not coming into contact with it.
"You will then scrub every bit of fake rot from your entire body and be ready when I come home to have vigorous sex in the bathtub at least once before we move to the bed," Roy asserted. "Are we clear?"
Edward looked from the key in his hand to Roy's face, and then contemplatively over his form.
"I don't know," Ed drawled. "Pretty bossy for a butler, aren't you?"
Roy Mustang felt a smile begin to spread slowly over his face as he saw the challenge beginning to spark up in the golden depths of his lover's eyes. He was dressed in tails as an old-time statesman, but Roy certainly had no intention of stressing the details when they had just managed an abrupt turn for the better onto the right track.
Not quite the one Roy Mustang had in mind, not even one he had given much thought before, but one that he was now finding irresistibly inviting….
"Looks like we might need to have a discussion about that when we get home, eh, Mustang?" Edward said, tilting his head to one side and managing with great aplomb to look down on him even while physically having to look up at him.
"Yes, sir," Roy breathed, feeling a pleasant shivery tingle run down him to skitter across his thighs, and suddenly vividly regretting telling Ed to make courtesy rounds at the party.
"Good," Ed said, and then abruptly left the car, leaving him to scramble out after him. Clearing his throat, Roy straightened his tie as he tried to focus despite not being able to tear his eyes away from the short blood-matted blond form proceeding into the building.
It looked like this was going to turn into one very good night despite it all….
"Happy Halloween to me," he smirked, and strode through the dark toward the bright colors and lanterns of the hall.
