Quiet Night :: by Aif
On a desolate Christmas Eve in Ishbal, Roy finds the peace of the season in the surprise appearance of an old friend. Roy x Hughes.
-
There was no snow.
Roy missed it. Funny, that he missed it now. When snow fell down thickly on Central last winter and buried the city in snowdrifts that blocked doors and stopped cars, he had groaned at the sky and silently cursed the damper that four feet of frozen water put on his fire alchemy.
Ishbal was a desert. The dryness of the climate made many of the soldiers irritable, but Roy felt comfortable in it. Drought was an amplifier.
As one of his bunkmates, Havoc, had accidentally discovered, one little dropped and forgotten cigarette left alone resulted in a three-acre conflagration that destroyed rooming tents and Ishbalite mud houses alike.
It was cool at night, for which Roy was glad. He blinked away his sleepiness and looked down, patted the cool sand he was sitting on. If he ran his fingers through the sand, he would find the tiny creatures that bid their time all day until midnight, when the land was cool enough to be habitable.
"Even in the desert there's life."
A passing private stopped. He was small, with short black hair and thick glasses, and he was looking at Roy curiously. "Lieutenant Colonel?"
He blinked. "Oh. Nothing."
"All… all right," the private said. "Oh! The mail came in an hour ago, Lieutenant Colonel. I think they were holding something for you."
"Very good. Carry on." Roy watched the soldier hurry away. When the coast was clear, he stood up; stretched, yawned widely. Then he sprinted down the sandy path toward the central clearing.
Roy slowed down a few tents from the gathered clump of loudly talking men. One of the lieutenants saw Roy and waved a white package at him. He gestured at the thick crowd, and a minute later, Roy felt a very heavy box thump him in the chest. Roy looked down and saw a scrawled message on the side of the box. Happy Christmas.
He grinned to himself, and jogged towards his bunker.
Once there, Roy lifted the canvas door flap and peered inside. When he saw that it was empty, he nodded to himself in satisfaction and flopped down on his bed.
"Come on," he whispered, feeling under his bed for a knife. He took a blade and carefully cut down the center of the mess of rope, tape and white packing paper. A few tears later, the package was undone.
Roy smiled at the photos- the many, many photos that fell out. "Hughes, you nut," he muttered, "I ought to have that camera taken away from you." The military office workers that appeared in the pictures did look rather annoyed at being interrupted… time after time… after time.
Hughes had even managed to get a picture of Farman that wasn't obscured by the ubiquitous newspaper.
Carefully setting the envelope aside, Roy turned to the rest of the box. There were a few bars of chocolate, and some revolting-looking Christmas cookies. He picked up a green one and bit into it.
"Ugh."
Maybe not.
There was a letter there, too. Roy unfolded the paper and discovered four pages of Hughes' crooked, cramped handwriting. Licking at a piece of chocolate, he spread out the first page and started to read.
Hi Roy-
Can't believe you're skipping out on our second Christmas "together". (Bet you made a face at that, you unfeeling block of coal). Hey, what am I supposed to talk about in a love letter, again?
We all got surprised last week by a blizzard. Usually doesn't snow a flake until Christmas around here. Guess you don't have much snow over there? Hell, can't say I pity you. Snow's probably pretty nice when you're sitting in a cozy house and you have the heater going. If you don't even have a heater, period, it gets on your nerves.
Oh, right, speaking of houses I was taking a look at the neighborhood around headquarters. It's a nice one. (That means they're going to wonder why two men want to buy a one-bedroom). Prices go through the fucking roof. I think that means we're going to invest in an apartment instead.
Right? You said you'd move out with me, right? I can get my commanding officer to get us the OK. He does some paperwork in rooming-board.
Did I mention that my fucking fingers are freezing off right now? If you were here, at least we could have some kind of damn fire. Oh, well, next year. That means you're coming home sometime in this next year, you HEAR me? If you can't wing it, get yourself kicked out or something.
Sorry. That was me being an ass.
I miss you, though. Things aren't as fun when you're not around. There's only so much I can do to make me laugh when I'm by myself, and when…
Roy paused. He saw the little blotched circles marring the paper, and he saw how some of the ink ran on the page. "Hughes, you ass, don't tell me you were crying while you were writing this," he muttered.
"Would you slug me if I told you I was?"
Roy looked up, and his heart stopped in his throat.
"It's impossible," he breathed.
Hughes grinned. "Nothing's impossible-" he stopped, when Roy crashed into him and they fell to the ground. "Hey, get inside the tent," he gasped.
"Oh." Roy looked around.
"Damn, well, no one saw us. Come on."
When the men were settled on the bed, and the fabric of the door had been melted and sealed to the tent, Roy finally looked at Hughes again.
And how he looked. He breathed in, deeply, smelling Hughes' mixture of tobacco and travel dirt, while he bent to stare at the fabric of Hughes' traveling coat. He rubbed the tweed of Hughes' pants, and unfastened the leather of Hughes' mud-caked boots.
Finally… finally… he turned up his head, and looked at Hughes. His warm hazel eyes, with crinkles of a smile at the corners. The strong jaw, the shadow of a beard.
It was Hughes who broke the silence first. "I think you're in shock," he said affectionately.
"Yeah." Roy stared at Hughes. "How in hell did you get here?"
Hughes put a long finger up to his lips. "Classified," he whispered. "Let's just say that all parties involved knew that I was certainly not supposed to be sneaking out to a battlefront."
Roy rolled his eyes. "Fine."
"What?"
"You. You're always so melodramatic."
"What? I am not! I'm just discreet, just like a spy should be."
Roy muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, "half-assed idiot of a spy". Hughes raised an eyebrow indignantly, and tackled him. The springs of the bed creaked as the nineteen-year-olds wrestled around. Finally, Roy groaned and raised a hand.
"Stop," he gasped. "Someone'll hear all the noise."
In response, Hughes leaned towards him and peeled off the white glove. He stared at the pale hand before him briefly, before taking it in his mouth.
Roy muttered something unintelligible as Hughes swirled his tongue around his index finger. He worked the glove off his other hand, and rubbed his thumb on the side of Hughes' cheek. He felt the past days' worth of beard stubble, and past that, the old scar that a passing bullet had left on the soldier with a desk job… on its way towards a soldier with a job that was infinitely more malevolent and antagonistic.
"Stop it, Roy."
"Mm?"
"You're wallowing again."
"Yeah, I know." Roy found a grin. "Ok, I'm over it."
"No, you're not. It looks like you were at it before I got here, too."
"No comment on that."
"Good thing I'm staying the night, then."
Roy jerked his head up to meet Hughes' face. "You are?"
"What, did you think I was going to fuck and run? Consider this another early Christmas present."
"You're too good."
"I know."
"But…" Roy frowned. "Jesus! You're always so considerate, I can't even compete. You know I hadn't even thought of you these past few weeks, until you reminded me."
"Because I didn't come into your mind, or because you were blocking it all out?"
"I don't have a present for you or anything."
"I know." Hughes peered into Roy's eyes with concern. "And I really don't care at all, nor do I want any kind of present. I thought it's mutually agreed that we're past the stage when we have to worry about idiotic little details like that."
Roy shrugged. "Just asking."
Hughes smiled at him, and took him in his arms. "I know what you were asking."
-
The light that the slit of the window let in was still a pale blue when Roy felt Hughes stir against him. The older man had slept quietly through the night, though it was quite arguably Roy who was the one more exhausted. Still, in the hostile environment of Ishbal it was instinctive for him to be on alert, and even the presence of a familiar warm body couldn't tide him through more than five hours in the night.
He wondered, briefly, if any of the drunken soldiers that shared his bunker had tried to wander out of the Christmas revel and into bed that night. Not likely. They'd probably all followed Havoc to "catch some of the broads in that convoy that's going through."
Roy chuckled to himself at the thought. The movement of his chest woke Hughes, whose head was nestled on his collarbone.
Hughes yawned soundlessly, and quietly sat up. The sleep was gone from his eyes as he surveyed the still empty room, turned to Roy, and decided not to comment.
He rubbed Roy's shoulder. "Hey, I'm going, ok?"
"Nn."
Hughes nodded and rolled out of the bed. Roy watched silently as he donned his inconspicuous civilian clothes, and nodded assent when Hughes motioned to cut an exit out of the back of the canvas tent. He stuck out one leg; then the other. His body was almost completely through the hole when he turned to look back.
"Hey… Roy?"
"Yeah?"
"You weren't beating yourself up too badly before I got here, were you?"
Roy considered all the possible answers to the question; eliminated all the most unpleasant ones, which also happened to be the truest ones. "Nope."
Hughes gave him a skeptical look. "Ok, I'll take that for now. Don't get too hung up on guilt, Roy, you're a solider."
"It's kind of a side fact that I'm a person, too?"
"There's a… there's some kind of special mission for you alchemists coming up, I think. In the next few weeks. Roy… don't beat yourself up too badly over anything that's going to happen, ok?"
Roy raised an eyebrow. "And what's going to happen."
"I don't know." Hughes shrugged. "That's for the higher-ups. All I can do is tell you not to worry."
"If that's all you can do, you're useless, then," said Roy.
"Yeah, I know," said Hughes, as he slid his head out of view. "Take care, Roy."
The wall of the tent rustled as the hole was stuck together from the outside. Then there were carefully light footsteps running away from the tent. Roy imagined that he could hear Hughes laughing to himself as he did his favorite trick, outsmarting the guards.
There were new aches in his back, and new worries on his mind. But on Christmas morning, in a year that would later be infamous in history, Roy Mustang smiled to himself, and felt all right.
-
End
-
Author's note
Happy Christmas to all you who are reading this; good wishes anyway, if you don't observe it. Hope you're all safe in front of your computers and you don't spend too much time alone today. And hope you have lots of caring friends and/or family around. Have a good one : )
Aif :: 9:29pmEST :: 12/24/2004