Title: Goodnight, Moon

Part: 2/?

Pairing: Ed/Al --Roy

Rating: PG-13 for now

I Warning, spoilers for the end of the series. Also, warning that I don't own these characters and thus I might actually have a very bad and confused grip on them XD; /I

lj-cut text"Goodnight, Moon 2"

Even though Al didn't know it, or perhaps he was too busy to really pay it much mind, Roy always did something with his chair when Al decided to go and research inside the Central City's Headquarters. It was quieter inside the Fuhrer's huge office, and he himself had an extensive library, so when Al was feeling up to it, he would go in and study. This was when he was in one of his better moods--when he was more "Al." But even then, very few words were exchanged between Roy and Al, perhaps because Al regarded the older man still as a stranger.

Which is the reason for the whole chair thing. At first, Al had been so uncomfortable with Roy that he would sit at the edge of the office, close to the door. So close, in fact, that when Hawkeye came in to hand the Fuhrer the rest of his papers for the day, the edge of the door had nearly taken off the boy's knee. Thus, Roy had no choice but to "tame" Alphonse. It sounded almost like he was faced with a wild animal--but from the place that Alphonse originated from, Roy sometimes had to wonder if all the children were like this.

It was a simple process, really. Roy first put a chair of moderate quality in the office that was more mobile than the large armchairs and couches in the office, proclaiming it "Alphonse's chair." The chair was placed only a few feet away from the door, a comfortable distance from Roy's desk--far. Al sat in it without question, and the day was spent with Roy signing papers and Al mumbling under his breath the words inscribed on the pages of the volumes he had borrowed from the library. The next day, Alphonse had felt good enough to come in and study in the office again (most because he was still not used to the city life), and didn't say anything about the chair being moved a couple of inches closer to Roy's desk. First Roy had pulled the distance in at inches, but now he's moved up to a few feet at a time. But usually after Alphonse had gone through one of his "moods," he would come in and note, with a sharp eye, how far exactly the chair had been moved, and drag it back to the position it was in yesterday--or even further.

That would be the explanation of why, today, Alphonse was sitting in a position that was about three yards away from Roy's desk. Just a week ago, the last time Al came to visit the office, he had been sitting at half that distance away from Roy's desk, but due to the "fiasco" (Hawkeye had claimed that he was really overreacting) that Roy pulled last night, Alphonse had immediately yanked the chair across the carpet to three yards away. Even though the task was quite hard with five huge volumes tucked under his arm, Alphonse refused any help from anyone, especially Roy. Now he was reading silently into the heavy books he borrowed from the library, his two hands holding the spine of the book--the way he would hold it. Sometimes Roy caught him scratching at his chin the way that Edward would when he read, but whenever he looked up to catch Alphonse doing that, the boy would return his hand to the spine of the book once more.

The skies have been gray recently with the looming presence of a cold winter, and today's temperature--stepmother's breath. It was hard to tell exactly when they were during the day, and it was even harder to tell when there was so much paperwork to do. Roy pulled his silver pocketwatch out and glanced at it, satisfied to see that it was lunchtime. He looked up at Alphonse, who was digesting his third book of the day, and slid out from his large desk chair.

"Alphonse," Roy called out (careful not to use the shortened version). "What do you say we go out to lunch?"

The boy blinked, once, twice, then the irises of his eyes skimmed over what seemed like two more lines, and then Alphonse stood up. The edge of his lips twitched unsuccessfully for a brief second, then finally broke into a smile, and Roy took that as forgiveness from the boy (since he had not even glanced at the man this morning as they were leaving the house). Roy grabbed his jacket and then handed Alphonse his own, which Alphonse put on with another light smile. He was in a good mood today.

The two of them went to a small restaurant that was close to the headquarters, since Roy didn't think that his papers (as much as he hated them) could wait for a really long and extravacant lunch. He could catch up with a good and expensive dinner later.

"So how's the studying coming along?" Roy inquired after the two of them received their drinks.

"It's going all right," Alphonse answered. Polite, but vague. Roy nodded, trying not to feel offended, and took a sip of his drink. In the months he'd spent with this boy, he tried not to feel too offended when Alphonse didn't look at him, or when sometimes he questioned without receiving a really exact answer. He figured that this was how the boy really was, or that something was wrong with him. Reasoning being that when they had first met, Alphonse had been a suit of armour, and after that his brother's eccentric personality had mostly overlapped Alphonse, making it hard to get a true feel of what Alphonse's personality was. The second reasoning was that sometimes, by habit and his memory lapses, Alphonse would just stare off into space and do anything, much less answering or looking at anything. In fact, Roy had known something was wrong right from the get-go when Alphonse showed up at Central City saying that he could not meld into a world where the world had sped up some four years without him. Roy had thought that the boy was stronger than that, but he wasn't in a position to speak, really.

Across the table, Alphonse fiddled with the silverware and picked at the tablecloth, not too used to the semi-rich settings of the restaurant (Roy wondered, with mild amusement, whether or not he'd bolt if he took him to the ritziest place in town). When the food was served, Al accepted it with a smile and a small nod, both hands receiving the plate. It was a pasta dish with fried shrimp on the top, a strange combination.

"It was Niisan's favourite when he came to this restaurant in Central City," Alphonse admitted with a small grin.

"So you remember that much already?" Roy asked as he began to cut his steak. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Alphonse nod across the table. "What else do you remember?"

Al's eyes went distant for a bit as he tried to remember, and he put his knuckles to his chin to think, but then nodded when he pieced together a memory.

"A huge oceanliner sank...tons of people died, but I don't think Niisan really paid attention to it."

Roy's brows furrowed and he looked up. "When was this?"

"1912."

Roy couldn't say that he was a real expert in history, but then again, he also couldn't say that he knew exactly what an "oceanliner" was. From the compound word, it sounded like a huge ship...he'll have to check later.

Al poked at his food and bit into a few pieces, enjoying them merely for their smell and the small, initial taste. He wasn't too hungry right now, so he figured that he'll pack the rest up. He'd never been too hungry when he came to Central City, and he tried to credit that to the city climate that was making him unused to the environment around him, making his appetite go. But he couldn't really understand why he was so fascinated by just the taste and smells of things sometimes--hadn't he always experienced these senses? He figured that it must have been because of what Winry had told him before about how he'd spent some four years as a gigantic piece of armour. Maybe that's why he would go insane with some really new or intense sense that rushed to him, and maybe that's why he couldn't figure out why he would feel satiated by only a bit of food, enough that he could actually eat only for pleasure on some days.

He also tried not to think about another thing that ate for pleasure.

/lj-cut

Points to those who can figure out the small references in this chapter/