KissMeDeadlyT-T: I realized that I write so many of my drabbles taking place at Roy's house but that I've never really given much insight as to how I picture it looking aside from a few random sentences. So, since I'm bored and stuck in the middle of the countryside of Alberta with no means of transportation to go anywhere and do something productive, I spent like, two hours yesterday drawing it out, and now I'm gonna write a little drabble thing from Ed's POV on it.
It's not concrete, though, sometimes I switch it up, and the spare room is on the second floor, or the living room looks different, or some shit. But this is how I usually picture it, more or less.
If you want to see my shitty-ass drawn floor plans, I put a link on my profile to a DeviantArt account I made for the sole purpose of posting those. I have this thing where I really like to picture settings in everything I read, so, I figured maybe some of you might like to see..? I don't fuckin' know lol. They're there if you want to see them.
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Title: What makes a home
Rating: T but only because it's from Ed's POV and he's got a potty mouth.
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His house isn't big. It's nothing grand, no fancy columns or elegant balconies, no expensive brick detail or rich, graceful trim— but it's cozy, and it's warm, and when I'm there, it's familiar and welcoming (even though sometimes I'm sure he wants to throw me out on the welcome mat and flick the bolt shut behind me) and it's home.
I'm not really sure how it came to be that way, but it is what it is, right? I guess I've just spent so much time there that I got used to it and sort of… became a part of it, so to speak. I haven't had a real home for a long time, and I'll admit, I was a bit scared of allowing myself that familiarity, but it just happened without my even realizing it.
Looking at the front of the house, you would never guess that it's a place I'd ever settle down living. The siding is a light blue, the roof a simple gray, the front door white and wooden with a giant window smack in the middle of it. The house is right off the sidewalk, with a black, iron-wrought gate lining the front of the patchy green lawn, with a little gate that squeaks in the wind and screeches holy hell at you if you open it too far. There's a little path made of cement squares that goes in a L shape, straight down to the middle of the house, towards the bay window, then to the left to the front steps; one of the squares is cracked from the time we dropped the new dresser he ordered straight onto the corner or it. Needless to say, that dresser became material for his non-flame alchemy attempts, and he ended up just keeping his old mahogany one. The lawn is a mix between slightly overgrown grass (yeah, we're both lazy, so what?) and a garden, which Hawkeye and Fuery like to look after more than either of us, and random patches of flowers and the like dot the grass, products from Roy's practice with alchemy that isn't fire. It doesn't look the best, but hell, it's buttloads better than some of our fuckin' neighbors who I swear haven't even mowed their lawns in like, a century.
In the wintertime, the front door has trouble opening, so you have to smash it inwards with your hip if you don't want to be stuck outside and freezing your ass off. Sometimes, on a particularly cold, frosty day, it'll even take both of us; whoever is inside the house will yank ferociously while whoever's got rotten luck and is stuck outside will continuously body slam it. It sucks, a lot, actually, but he refuses to fix the door hinges because according to him, it gives the house personality. A shitty fuckin' personality, if you ask me, but I guess I'm not the one paying the bills most of the time, so I never argue. Even though sometimes I'm really tempted to 'accidentally' ram the door into his head until he agrees.
The entryway is pretty simple. When you walk in, there's a little table where we put our keys and shit to the right, and a little flowerpot on it that's gotten knocked over more times than I can count, and a little mirror on the wall hanging above it. There's also a small picture frame of us, next to that flowerpot, but last time it got knocked over I left it like that because it was the one time I was forced to wear a military uniform and gate, I look all dignified and shit. Roy loves it, but it just makes me want to tear my hair out every time I look at it. Not my cup of tea, thanks. Anyway, to the right, there's a couple of hooks. One's rusting because I always throw my wet stuff onto it, and Roy's smacked the back of my head a couple times for that one, but I don't see him doing anything to fix it, so whatever. The ceiling here isn't quite a ceiling because it's underneath the stairs, but luckily we're both yes both too short to hit our heads.
If you keep walking forward, and turn to the right, that's the living room. The floor everywhere is laminate wood, except in the kitchen, where it's dark charcoal tiles. Anyhow, when you're walking in to the living room, immediately to your left is a wall with stairs on the other side. Roy's work desk is shoved up against that wall, and for some stupid reason, I always always hit my hip on whenever I walk into the living room. There's like, a permanent bruise. Roy laughs at me, but it's okay because he's the one to always smack his head on the cupboards in the kitchen. Suck on that, bastard. Right behind the desk is the couch, plush and soft and used, facing the giant bay window at the front of the house. There's a little table next to the far side of the couch, then a small, comfy ass chair sitting at a ninety degree angle from it. That chair, though, let me fucking tell you about it. It's so comfortable I've fallen asleep there like a million times and I swear to fucking god or whatever that if Roy ever decides to get rid of it he can very well get rid of his sex life too because that goddamn chair is like, my baby. I'll skin him and use his entrails as Halloween decorations. I'm serious.
Anyway, in the middle of the room, there's a glass table, that's always littered with papers and made sticky with rings of coffee or hot chocolate from his shitty cracked mugs that I really love for some reason. In the far bottom left corner of the room there are two bookshelves, which I found out by accident have a secret stash of erotica novels behind a portrait of his foster mother. Disgraceful, I tell you, but somehow I don't really think Madame Christmas would mind. (The one time I met her, she gave me this once-over and then bluntly told Roy that if he hadn't fucked me yet, she was disowning him. Roy's face was priceless. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard.) There are alchemy books and history books and military books and romance books and everything books and various picture frames of himself, his crew, me (because hell, no one can resist me, I'm fuckin' adorable), and Hughes. I'm always extra careful not to knock those down, because I know how important they are.
The bay window has a little seat in it, big enough for two and no we have totally not ever had sex there if you're wondering. …Anyways there's this plaid red and green blanket that's always crumpled randomly on it, and cushions and pillows strewn about. It's a perfect place to curl up and read, especially when you light the fireplace right next to it. It's particularly nice in the winter, watching snow fall on the patchy lawn and sparkle in the faint sunlight that struggles past the clouds, snuggling in a blanket and reading a book with the fire keeping you even warmer. It's probably my favourite place in the whole world. Besides that chair. That chair is my baby.
The kitchen is adjoined directly with the living room; the only thing separating it is the counter. It's sort of like a bar, with two stools sitting at the living room side of the counter, which is where we usually eat, if we're not in the living room or our bedroom or whatever. There is, however, a little wall at the side of the room, opposite the fireplace, which hides a little cranny where the actual dining room is. We don't use it often, unless there's company, mostly because there's a window facing the front of the street in it, and sometimes our dinners turn into sex on the nearest surface, and, well… there are kids living in this neighborhood. Plus, there are only two of us, so it's stupid to use a big table like that.
Anyway, the rest of the kitchen is really simple, with cupboards that make an upside down, squared 'U' shape along the far east wall, with the sink at the very tip of the inverted 'U' and an oven and fridge on the side opposite the bar-thing where we eat. There's also a window, along that east wall, which I find incredibly pointless because it just points to the neighbor's house and is a bigger pain in the ass than it's worth, since it's always getting stuck when we try to open it. And it's always dirty. Maybe that's because Roy's always cooking, and he's not really neat while doing it. It's really annoying to clean.
Outside of the kitchen, in the same direction as the bar-counter-thing, there's a hall that leads to the bathroom, the laundry room and the spare room. I don't spend much time down there, except to do laundry and I'll pee there if it's really a huge emergency and I can't make it to the master bathroom. Al's stayed down in the spare room a few times, though, and he says it's nice enough, except that the mirror in there freaks him out because it reflects weird on the bed and he says it looks like there's something standing there, but Al's Al and he freaks out over stupid shit all the time.
Parallel to the bar-counter-thing are the stairs, which go in a sort of squared, sideways U 'til the top floor. There's one really annoying stair that makes a creepy groan if you step on it the wrong way so I usually skip that one because I have Roy groaning at me for being annoying often enough, I don't need any shit from a goddamn stair.
Upstairs is really simple; it's just a bathroom, a walk-in closet and the master bedroom. Like a little suite, just without the mini-kitchen, but I'm sure Roy's working on a way to get one up there. As soon as you get up the stairs, your only option is to turn left into the hall. At the end of it, there's a door, and that's where the bathroom is; it's a simple bathroom, with a tub and a shower, a stupid striped curtain that always makes me trip somehow, a big counter with a sink and a mirror, and a little adjoined room with a sliding door where the toilet and toilet paper is. It's kinda cute, but stupid, if you ask me, how the toilet is hiding in the master bathroom. Like, wow, okay, so we're banging and shit, but god forbid we see each other pee. Insert horrified gasp and swoon here.
That's the bathroom. Back in the hall, if you take the door to the right instead of the one at the end, that's the master bedroom. Now, let me tell you something about this room— it's pretty big, right? It's spacious and majestic as fuck. But I always. Always. Hit that one creaky floorboard whenever I'm trying to sneak up on him. It's like it moves just to follow me. And he always wakes up and sees me before I can jump on him and like, tickle him or some shit, and damn, that's just bullshit! It pisses me off!
Anyway, walking into the room, if you look to your right, there's a chair and a lamp and a bookshelf, which is another place where I spend a lot of my time. The bookshelf is set up against the slanted wall, which is like that because the chimney for the fireplace interrupts the room. I don't mind, though, and Roy doesn't either; it sets up the perfect cozy place for reading, and it also provides just enough space on the opposite side for a queen sized bed and a night table. And that bed. That bed is almost my baby as much as that chair downstairs. It's. So. Comfy. He's got his stupid flat pillows and I've got my fluffy, fat ones, and god, sometimes I just want to lie there and just ignore everything and make love to the pillows, screw Roy. And the blankets, fuck those blankets are beautiful. I don't use sheets, so I kick those to his side of the bed all the time, but then there's the fluffy light brown blanket and the dark blue-gray comforter on top of that, and those— Gate, it shouldn't be possible for something to be that comfortable and warm. Let's just say that.
There are two windows on the far east side, which, again, look out to the neighbor's house, directly into their upstairs bathroom, which is awkward. We usually keep the curtains shut, needless to say. Whatever architect or whatever designed these two houses obviously didn't think that through. He has another desk on that wall, too, and then the dresser next to the walk-in closet's door (there's just clothes in there, so I'm not really gonna elaborate on that) on the north wall, with a mirror, generally a mess of ties and papers and that glass bottle of cologne he wears sometimes (it smells so good I usually spritz some on my pillow, and he shall never know) and the occasional trinket one of us would receive as a gift. Also, picture frames. There are a lot of Hughes. It makes me sad, sometimes, to see his smiling face in so many photos, but it also makes me happy knowing that at least he's missed. There's one really cute picture, though, of Elysia, and when I asked, Roy just sighed and said, "Well, she's my god-daughter, and she really is adorable." I think Hughes should be happy in the next life. Obviously some of his overly affectionate adoration of his daughter rubbed off.
And that's that. That's my home now, and even though it's nothing remarkable, it's special to me. After most of my life without a concrete home, I finally have one— and even with all its imperfections, quirks, and occasional shitty personality (front door, I'm talking to you), it's perfect. And Roy is just the candle on the otherwise beautifully-decorated chocolate cake; because all this warmth and comfort and familiarity stems from him, and this house wouldn't be quite like a home if he wasn't in it with me. It might not be fancy, or huge, or expensive— and fuck, who needs that, anyway?— but it's home. And that's all I need.
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KissMeDeadlyT-T: I've been wanting to write this foreeeeever *falls over and twitches on floor* I'm sorry, I know it's not the same as usual, but I really, reallllyyyy like writing settings, it's like, my favourite thing aside from snarky/sappy dialogue.
So yup! If you guys want to see the layout for both floors, they're posted—the link is right at the top of my profile. And now you guys might have a better image in mind whenever I write a drabble in Roy's house as to what it looks like. :D *flutters about excitedly*
SETTINGS FUCK YEAH