Roy watched the snow fall outside the window and tried not to think about sneaking through the white haze like a ninja, or laughing over a flask taken straight from a superior's coat, or a slew of pictures of a little girl that celebrates her birthday in the cold.
He'd managed to escape the creeping despondence for most of the week, managed to bury himself in the work of a newly appointed General and the paperwork that came from passing on his previous duties and the rush at the end of an extended alchemical murder investigation. Even when the snow had started four days ago, there had only been a brief moment between one piece of paper and the next when he looked out the window (his new window, the one that wrapped halfway around his office and wouldn't let him not see anything) and ached.
It was Saturday, now, and everything was tainted with white, the snow falling with a leisurely type of a storm, it just – kept falling. Roy had done all the work he'd brought home with him, and then checked and checked again that he'd done all the work he'd brought home with him, because he would have sworn that he'd brought enough for three days, to be certain. And now he was here, pointedly ignoring the decanter of whiskey across the room because one glass wouldn't be enough tonight and – sitting, watching the snow.
The fire cracked and jumped beside him – too close, probably, but he felt cold all the way through, and his gloves were right there on the desk if the chair caught fire, anyway. It cast the study in shifting light, made the shadows dance out from the corners over the walls, and Roy could almost imagine that everything else was just a dream.
Until it intruded with a loud knock, jarring through the silence and the shadows.
Roy blinked a moment, eyes unconsciously following a wet flake trace a path down the window – or maybe more than a moment, because the knock came again, louder and more jarring.
The flake paused for a breath – and then slid down to the sill like a harsh exhalation as Roy rose from the chair and moved to the door.
The last person he expected to see on the other side of it was Edward Elric.
The not-quite-man(-not-a-boy, you bastard), stood on his doorstep, looking up at him from barely a pace away, because Edward Elric didn't take the polite step back when he knocked on doors. No, not Edward; for all the impossibility of his achievements, basic human courtesy still seemed to completely elude him.
"Are you gonna let me in or what?" He demanded, never mind the fact that his proximity was rude and potentially intimidating and denied Roy the chance that he might even be able to breathe. "It's snowing, you know."
Predictably (and god he hated being predictable, but he couldn't seem to help it with Ed), Roy stepped aside, and felt his mouth curve into some expression he wasn't sure he wanted on his face.
"Amazingly, I had noticed, yes." He murmured, and – Ed stopped in the process of shaking himself like a dog, slanted a look up at him with those devastating eyes.
"If you want me to go, you can just say so." He warned with one coat sleeve (subdued brown, now, instead of bullseye-red, but somehow no less lethal on that body)shrugged empty at his side and some non-emotion that surprised Roy so much it was gone before he'd finished staring. "There's no need to be a sarcastic prick."
Roy... sighed.
"That wasn't what I meant." He said, and then, because somehow Ed's presence was worse for his tongue than alcohol, "You startled me."
Ed continued to hold him pinned with that narrowed angry-not-hurt gaze, and Roy thought he was going to –
But then he just gave an indelicate snort and turned to finish shucking his coat, tossing it with casual accuracy onto the rack.
"You're a weird bastard, Mustang." He concluded, grinning wide like nothing had happened at all and sauntering past Roy into the kitchen like he owned it.
Which wasn't entirely untrue, Roy supposed, but no one else should know that.
"You're in the study, right?" Ed called back with the familiar sound of rummaging through Roy's cupboards, and he could mean don't put yourself out on my account, I don't want to intrude on whatever you were doing. But it was Ed, and so Roy translated it more accurately as I'm not a kid and I don't need you waiting on me like I am, so go back to whatever you weren't doing. Bastard.
"Yes." He affirmed belatedly to the empty hallway, by now resigned to Ed's uniquebrand of charm. Without receiving a reply (besides the familiar grunt Ed made when he'd finally grabbed something he'd had to extend his whole body to reach), Roy moved back into the study and the not inaccurately described nothing that he'd been doing before he'd opened the door to an irresistible blond.
---
"Close your eyes." Not a question, not even a suggestion, and Roy lifted his eyes to – Ed, leaning close over him with his hands on the arms of the chair and his legs spread a little around Roy's knees and no thought for Roy's personal space at all.
"Excuse me?"
"Close your eyes." He repeated, like he could stand there repeating it all day until Roy gave in.
"Why?"
Ed huffed, though it didn't seem particularly irritated.
"I got you a present." He said, in the same way someone else might say can't you pick up your own damn socks? "Now close your eyes."
Roy – stunned into compliance – did.
A low hum that could have been, "Good," and then the lingering chill of Ed's body was gone, replaced by the much warmer air of the room, the familiar sound of Ed's uneven gait as he moved away and Roy's own breathing, carefully deep and slow in the imposed dark.
And Roy didn't particularly like the cold, or the snow, but between a cold, snowy Ed and the shifting heat of the fire...
The footsteps came back then, and Roy's only warning was a hushed, "Keep them closed," before there was a hard and a harder cold pressing against either side of his knees and a weight settling on his lap, as casual as a handshake. His eyelids twitched with the instinct to flare wide, but he kept them closed, didn't think about Ed with his legs spread wide to straddle his legs, kept them closed, waited.
After a short eternity of shifting and blatant obliviousness to the way Roy could feel the hard muscles flexing in his thighs (and god, his arse) and the fact that he was sitting in Roy's lap, Ed said, "Here," in a voice soft and low. In a voice that would have been a seduction, if it hadn't been Ed.
– Who leaned forward just slightly on Roy's lap (Roy could feel the movement translated all the way down the-not-boy's torso to his arse and his thighs and oh god), and made him jerk instinctively back at the touch to his lips.
"Don't move." Ed admonished, bringing the touch back, warm and smooth and hard against just Roy's bottom lip. Oh.
Carefully, Roy opened his mouth and sought the porcelain out with his tongue to help guide it in a slow glide over his lip, to capture the first sip of liquid, to –
Oh.
Roy's eyes opened without his (or Ed's) permission, and he found himself caught by gold gold gold eyes that were so intent he forgot he'd ever thought of anything else.
A split second, not even long enough for Roy to finish drawing a sharp breath, and then the grin slowly overtook Ed's mouth, his expression suddenly a lot less focused but infinitely more wicked.
"What is it?" Roy asked before he could stop himself, and Ed grinned a little wider.
"Peppermint hot chocolate." He replied, even as he tipped the cup to spill another small taste onto Roy's tongue. "Mum used to make it for us, after we'd been out in the snow all day. I'd forgotten 'bout it, 'til you mentioned it, actually. Do you like it?" Which meant the same whoever was saying it, but had always meant so much more from Ed.
"Mm." Roy acknowledged the information and answered the question all at once, lifting his hands to cup them around Ed's on the mug and urge it up for a deeper swallow. He recognised it, now that the faded surprise let him taste, and yes it was good – perfect. Rich and sweet and ever so slightly syrupy, but with the clear bite of peppermint offsetting the chocolate. And Ed, of course, offering it to him (from his lap) like a maiden offering wine to her king.
Though that was another thought he'd be guarding with his very life.
Ed would, could only take it one way ("Are you saying I'm a girl?" with eyes flashing bright and dark and dangerous), and the situation wouldn't be improved by Roy explaining that the comparison came more from the innocence with which the offer was made than the sex (or the implications of king, because that was sure to come up before Roy could get two words out) of the characters. Because (however much Ed would deny it with the full capacity of his lungs) there was, had always been, something undeniably sweet about Ed. The way he alchemised toys or flower circlets for young children with no thought to the fact that he was a Genius, the way he contrived to give miners the ownership of their own mine despite having been treated with nothing but hostility. The way he remembered a throw away comment about a years old, years long rivalry with a lost friend over the meritsofpeppermint versus caramel in hot chocolate.
The way he would trudge halfway across town in the snow and the cold, just to do... this.
"Your mother used to make this?" Roy asked after a surprisingly long period of stillness, feeling the twitch in the thighs over his and the hands under his that suggested it had been nearly too long already. He kept the cup close to his lips, brushing the rim as he spoke, and didn't take his eyes off Ed, watched the slow creep of heat as it travelled up Ed's neck and over Ed's cheeks and into Ed's eyes.
"Yeah." Ed said, gaze fixed on Roy's mouth as Roy took another slow sip. Silence, a moment, while Ed forgot he was speaking and Roy forgot he was listening, then, "Only half the time, though," suddenly grinning, easy and honest and addictive. "Al always liked caramel better."
His own laugh caught him by surprise, as it often did with Ed, but didn't try to swallow it or choke it back; he knew better than to try, now. The resulting coughing fit was both undignified and revealing,and – Ed always looked so happy when he just let himself.
"Thank you." He said, meaning it for more than just the drink, more than just being here, more than just knowing – even if Roy kept it mostly to himself, for now.
But Ed shrugged, flushed but not looking away, because even though this was still new and strange and terrifying, they did understand each other rather more than either of them was willing to admit, yet.
"I miss him too, you know." No hesitation, no fear, no pretense, not from Ed. And when everyone else had spent the week skirting around him like he was already broken, avoiding his eyes and skittering away to do as bid without even a petulant remark – well.
"I know." Roy murmured back, watching his thumbs brush a caress back and forth over Ed's fingers. His skin always looked nearly colourless against Ed's darker complexion, but in the firelight the contrast was even more pronounced, like honey on bone, or milk on gold, or snow on sunlight.
"Hey." Ed nudged him with a flex of fingers and thighs, ducking his head slightly to capture Roy's eyes again. Roy didn't know why they were whispering, except maybe because Ed was straddling his lap with an innocent kind of intimacy and looking at him with those inescapable eyes and Roy didn't want to remember the cold and the snow and the world when he had this. "You can miss him. S'not like anyone's gonna know." Quick flit of a smile. "We both know you've got so much embarrassing stuff on me that I won't go blabbing."
"Hah." Tiny, hushed puff of a laugh and Ed smiled – gut clenching and heart stopping and breath catching and somehow even more potent than his grin – before leaning over their joint hands to kiss him. Just quick, just soft, just more intimate than anything he'd ever done with anyone else, and Roy closed his eyes, felt Ed's breath wash over his lips like a blessing as the not-boy never-boy moved back.
"Have your drink." He instructed, still quiet, and gave Roy another fleeting, stunning kiss before untangling their hands and their legs and their eyes so he could turn around and wriggle back into him.
When he finally stilled – after squirming around to get comfortable in a way that made Roy distinctly not – he was sitting half on and half across Roy's lap, with one of Roy's arms curled loosely around his waist and a guilelessly satisfied expression on his face.
And Roy – snorted a breath through his nose, pulled Ed closer against him, and watched the snow fall outside the window with the taste of peppermint hot chocolate on his tongue.