Hello everyone! Sorry for never updating like, ever... if anyone even watches me anyway.
ANYWAY! This fic was written for a friend's fanfiction contest during the summer. I'm still pretty okay with it, so I figured I might as well post it anyway. Beware of Roy/Hughes gen! XD
Bring Me Back Down
It happened to everyone, but that didn't make it pleasant. It didn't happen to Roy often, since he took care of himself, but at that point he didn't care what was usual or what other people thought. He was sick and miserable, and in spite of the fact he had no one at home to adhere to his needs, he knew he would end up spending the entire day with his head on his desk, wallowing in misery and pain - much to Hawkeye's frustration. After a few long minutes of debate in his feverish mind, Roy's logic gave in and he picked up the phone from where it lay on the nightstand next to his bed.
"Good morning, Colonel!" Havoc greeted cheerfully, rather than being as bitter as he usually was when talking about how early he was forced to go in to the office every morning. "You sound like shit!"
"Thank you," Roy groaned, struggling to keep his voice as firm as usual, but it instead came out as a strained whimper. "I'm afraid I'll be unable to come in to the office today. I think I may have caught something."
"Wow," Havoc drawled, shuffling with something on his end of the reciever. "I wouldn't say 'think', Colonel. I feel sick just listening to you!" Roy was about to interrupt with something - he didn't know what just yet - when Havoc's polite laugh silenced him. "Not to worry, Colonel! I'll cancel all of your appointments and push back all of your papers for tomorrow. Just take it easy for now, alright?" For kicks, and with a grin in his voice, he had to add; "do you want me to send Hawkeye over there to take care of you?"
Roy hung up the phone.
He rolled over, throwing his blankets over himself and sighing with relief. He adored his crew - he really did. He could rest without worrying about what was going on in the office. Even if Havoc forgot something, he would at least be able to blame him for it.
It wasn't long before Roy slipped out of conciousness into a feverish slumber that led to a dream that had something to do with Farman and the Fuhrer, but the thought vanished into his mind when he was jolted back into reality. Discovering himself on the opposite side of the bed, Roy felt his stomach lurch and he managed to throw himself from his mattress and run into the bathroom fast enough to purge himself of the contents of his stomach.
Last night's dinner... Roy thought groggily as he cradled the toilet bowl, feeling significantly humiliated. Her name was... Ruth. I'll have to remember not to date her again. This is an omen.
After gathering his breath for a moment and flushing the toilet, Roy became aware of a reluctant knock on the door. It occured to him suddenly that it had been the noise that woke him, and he found himself on his feet and walking toward the door. He thought of Havoc mentioning something about Hawkeye, and he hoped it was just the mailman.
But when he opened the door honestly expecting Riza, he instead discovered himself staring into Hughes' neck. He dragged his eyes upward to meet his companion's gaze only to find the man giving him a sympathetic smile. Hughes gestured something between a wave and a crappy salute. "Yo," he greeted. "You have puke on your shirt."
"Uh...?" Roy hesitated before being able to register what the words really meant, and looked down to investigate his shirt while Hughes laughed.
"This is your lucky day, man! My wonderful wife made you some chicken soup!" He said gleefully, lifting a bag to show Roy, imprinted with the shape of a large container. "Isn't she the sweetest?"
"Maes," Roy asked slowly, noticing that Hughes wasn't wearing his uniform. "What are you doing here?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Hughes asked, gently pushing past Roy and through the doorway into the house. "I'm here to take care of you because you don't have someone else to!"
Roy watched in a silent stupor as Hughes waltzed casually into his kitchen, dropping the soup on the counter and opening the fridge with his other hand on his hip. He gasped. "Colonel! You have no orange juice! You can't have a decent sick day without orange juice!"
"You talk as if I'd planned this," Roy groaned, closing the door slowly and making his way back to his bedroom.
"Yeah, but my wife always buys orange juice," Hughes pouted, watching as Roy walked by. He trailed the man all the way through the dark and shaded house. The place was dark, dank and stuffy. The family man watched from Roy's bedroom doorway as the sick man draped himself down across his bed, burying his face into his pillow with a groan. Even then, he did it all with the grace that was Roy Mustang. Hughes crossed his arms and smiled, amused that Roy was comfortable enough to let him see this side of his usually perfectionistic personanity. The colonel let out a sigh and grabbed one end of his blankets, throwing it over himself as best he could without moving.
"I've never actually seen you sick like this before," Hughes observed as he entered the room to do a better job of alligning the blankets over his friend. Roy grunted his thanks without opening his eyes. "It's really pathetic," he added. Roy just ignored him, and Hughes patted his friend gently on the head. "Sleep well, Colonel! Maes Hughes will take care of you!"
When Roy finally woke with the strength to climb to his feet and walk upright, it was 7pm. He teetered dizzily for a moment, noticing a glass of water that had been placed on his nightstand, and a damp cloth that fell from where it was stuck to his face to the floor. He picked up the glass and sipped on it as he walked out of his room. It was still cool. Not ice-cold how he liked it, but it could be worse.
He noted as he walked out of his room that the house looked cleaner than he'd left it, the windows and curtains were drawn open in anywhere but his room, leaving the house with a cool sensation on his sensitive skin. Roy ran a free hand through his hair as he crossed into the kitchen to discover Hughes, sitting silently at the dining room table with a book on Alchemy open in front of him.
"I never thought I would see you ever reading a book on Alchemy of your own free will," Roy remarked.
Hughes just smiled his quirkly little smile up at his friend, closing the heavy book with a thump. "I already read everything in the newspaper, and I cleaned your house." He shrugged dismissively. "I was bored." He made a show of sighing and scratching at the back of his head. "I didn't really take any of it in, anyway."
"Of course not," Roy sighed, sitting heavily onto his chair, across the table from Hughes. He placed his glass on a coaster, careful not to tarnish the polished glass surface. He closed his eyes and groaned, leaning his head limply against the back of his chair. "Being sick is so..." he sighed, hearing as his companion rose to walk casually into the kitchen.
"Unproductive?" Hughes chortled, lowering his voice to hit his mocking Colonel-Roy-Mustang-Flame-Alchemist-Extrordinaire tone. "Don't pretend you get so much work done in the office, anyway."
"Perhaps not, but at least it's far more interesting there." He rubbed at his temples and rolled his head along to stare down at his glass. "I feel like I've wasted the entire day, just sleeping."
"You were sick," Hughes replied, returning to the table and placing a bowl of Gracia's soup in front of him. "It happens to the best of us, man."
"Thank you, Maes." Roy said, stirring the soup uselessly for a moment while he watched the gentle steam rolling upward in a hypnotizing way. He wasn't particularly interested in it at the moment, but he knew Hughes wouldn't leave him alone unless he did. Otherwise, he would end up running home and telling Gracia he didn't like her food. Roy raised a spoonful too his lips and blew on it before sipping it off. "That Elric boy just keeps on going," was his arguement. "I doubt malaria would slow him down."
"Ha!" Hughes grinned. "You know, he probably just manages to hide it until he goes on those week-long train trips he loves so much, so no one actually sees him vulnerable except his brother."
Roy hummed his agreement as he took another sip of Gracia's soup. Her food was always amazing. Although Roy liked to cook for himself from time to time, he knew he would never be able to best the efforts of a loving woman, and Gracia defined the term. "This is good," Roy confessed, concealing his smile. "I knew all along that I should have taken Gracia for myself instead of hooking you up with her."
"Aww!" Hughes pouted. "Don't say that! We both know you could have had her if you wanted to. Ahhh, I don't want to think of life without Gracia and Alicia-chaaan!"
"I doubt that," Roy admitted honestly. "I don't think death itself could drag her away from you now."
"Well that's now..." Hughes mumbled, still pouting after growing giddy at the thought of his family. "If she did want to leave me for Death, I'd be jealous, but you're damn right I'd fight for Alicia's custody! I think Death would make a terrible father."
Roy couldn't withstand a cool - but somewhat painful - chuckle at that, and although he wanted to point out the many pieces of defied logic in his friends' statement, he decided he would just let it slide this time. "You know, you could have spent all the time you spent here today with your wife and child."
"Yeah, I know," Hughes admitted with a slight twinge of disdain, his mood somber once more. "...but even though I love spending time with them, I like to spend time with my buddy, too! There's more to friendship than drinking at bars once a week. Besides, I know what it's like to be sick and miserable. At least I have Gracia." After realizing he had been standing next to the table since he had come back from the kitchen, Hughes took his turn to sit down and start sipping at the orange juice he had bought and forgot he had poured for himself. "When Havoc told me you were sick, I felt kinda guilty about it, so I came over. Everyone needs to have someone around sometimes, man."
Roy watched Hughes closely a moment before nodding into his soup. "No wonder you won Gracia over, you're a master of sentiment." Amused, Roy closed his eyes while eating another spoonful of Gracia's soup. "I won't need to get myself a wife if you come over to clean my house every time I come down with the flu."
Hughes just laughed at that. "I'm glad to see you're feeling better, Colonel. Next time, I'll make you eat my chicken soup... but I can't guarantee you'll be able to live through to the next day after that."
Contrary to popular belief, Roy sometimes had difficulty differentiating between work and life. Many members of the military seemed to have the same problem, but - unlike Roy - Hughes had Gracia to bring him back down, and Hughes had taken it upon himself to do the same for Roy on as many occassions as he could afford. It was times like these he remembered what their friendship really was as they talked on into the night until Roy had a new pile of pictures of Alicia, and Roy decided he didn't want to keep his friend away from his family any longer. After making sure that Roy had everything he might need, Hughes hesitated before finally leaving. In spite of being reluctant, Roy knew that his friend was always happy to go home to his daughter and wife.
Every day, Hughes ran eagerly back to them without fail. It occured to Roy that he himself had nothing to come home to. Coming home only meant temporarily abandoning his goals. Although he realized that he - and quite likely all of humanity - wanted something like that for himself. Every moment he spent at home wasn't a moment wasted - it was time treasured.
But Roy decided that there would be plenty of time for that after the country was in order.
When he returned to the office the next day, Roy sat down at his desk and began signing papers. He managed to sign almost half of the gigantic bulk that had formed before deciding that he wanted to have the cleanest windows in the entire building. By the time the evening came, he found himself frowning with distaste at the fact he hadn't recieved a report from the Elric brothers. That had become one of the few things he actually looked forward to in the run of a day. And then, Roy realized something.
"Lieutenant," Roy asked, turning expectantly to Havoc. "Where's Hughes?"
"Oh, didn't I tell you?" Havoc said, an amused look hidden on his face - but Roy could see it in the tiniest quirk of the man's eyebrows. He was sitting on the couch in Roy's office where he was taking a cigarette break, his feet crossed on the table. "He got to work yesterday and his appendix exploded in the lobby after I told him you were sick, but he insisted on walking to the hospital." Havoc hesitated to give Roy an amused, sidelong stare. "He's home today. He says he'll be back tomorrow."
"I see," Roy considered, turning to gaze out of his window. Hughes would be fine. He had Gracia to take care of him, after all. Roy, on the other hand, had a date with a girl named Jillian when he got off of work in about 2 hours. "He'll be fine."