I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.
Hands
It was past dawn, and Roy Mustang was asleep.
Riza Mustang turned her head on her pillow and stared sleepily at Roy's face. Sleep had softened the resolute line of his mouth into something like uncertainty, and his eyebrows were furrowed over his closed eyes. The untidiness of his hair – the short, dark locks were tumbled messily into his eyes and over his cheeks – combined with the almost worried expression on his face gave him a slightly incongruous boyish look. His left hand lay on his pillow beside his head, palm-up and half-clenched.
Riza propped herself carefully up on her right elbow and gazed down at her sleeping husband, with her eyes half-shut against the glare of the sunlight that was shining through the thin curtains. She could see that he was breathing: the blankets rose and fell almost imperceptibly with every breath; and his right hand, half-covered by the sheet, gave one tiny flexing movement and then was still again.
Roy's hands were pale and nondescript; they were neither large nor small, neither plump nor thin, neither fleshy nor bony; the blanched fingers with their short nails were neither long nor short, neither blunt nor tapering; they were unremarkable hands.
How strange, thought Riza.
Neat, middling, indistinct hands. One would not think, to look at them, that these hands could be immovably firm and indescribably gentle by turns. One would not think, to look at them, that these sun-starved hands never fumbled or shook, or that they had a grip as strong and unrelenting as iron. One would not think, to look at them, that a single abrupt movement from these pale fingers could spell death for scores.
How melodramatic, thought Riza.
Her own hands were smooth, slim, and the fingers tapered; they were unmistakably the hands of a woman, despite the calluses on her palms and the long, puckered scar that ran diagonally across the back of her left hand, its whiteness contrasting oddly with her pale brown skin in much the same way that Roy's blanched hands contrasted with her healthy brown ones when they touched.
The Fullmetal Alchemist's hands, now – well, one of them was scarred and (usually) dirty; his hands were strong, healthy, and curiously careful – when he was thinking about what he was doing. His brother ... it had been months now, and Ed was always pressuring him to eat more, but Al's hands were still almost dead white and painfully thin, the sharp shapes of his bones and the bluish lines of his veins showing through the virtually transparent skin. Al's hands were delicate, like a sick child's, or an invalid's hands.
Winry's tanned hands were unexpectedly reminiscent of Ed's: smaller, plumper, but crisscrossed like his with tiny scars, and callused; Winry's hands were small and strong and deft.
Fuery's hands, dimpled and fumbling like a child's; Havoc's hands, angular and peculiarly elegant – a daredevil's hands, of course; Armstrong's burly hands, with their bony, rough knuckles; Breda's hands, beefy and clumsy-looking, but actually capable; Falman's hands, thin and dry. Hughes' hands, long-fingered, dark-haired, and quick...
And Roy's hands...
Roy's hands, as inexpressive as Roy's dark eyes. They would have been extraordinary by reason of their being so completely unremarkable, so very characterless, if it had not been for their paleness. They looked oddly small without their neatly embroidered gloves; Riza thought fleetingly and incoherently of Kimbley's tattooed palms ... ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you ... Roy's palms were callused; he had insisted on repairing everything in their home by hand, without alchemy.
Roy's hand lay limply on the pillow, white except for the gleaming band of gold on the ring finger. Riza lowered herself back down onto her side, and placed her own hand on it, and her ring clinked quietly against his. Roy stirred and sighed, and his hand closed around hers. They fit together, palm to palm, fingers intertwined, sallow-pale against pale brown.
Riza smiled and went back to sleep.
Finis
A/N: ...Umm ... so, I seem to have a thing for hands now. I can't imagine why. I apologise for inflicting this senseless piece of unreasonableness on you. I think I meant it to go somewhere when I began it, but if I did, I can't remember where it was I meant to go.
