A/N: Here's the Roy/Ed y'all wanted! Once again, it's ridiculously long. Sorry it's angsty, but I liked it. Oh, and sorry about running the words together in the last one, I swear that was FFN and not me! If it does it here, I will be so mad. Wow, I need to update this more often…
Disclaimer: I do not own FMA.
Warnings: Uh, Roy/Ed, swearing, implied violence
You're Never Too Big
The water in the shower had long since turned cold. The only warmth was the wetness on his face, and that wasn't coming from the showerhead. He let it run. It didn't matter.
"Fullmetal! What are you doing? You've been in there for two hours!"
He tried to ignore the voice just outside the door. So what if he'd been there for a long time? It wasn't like Roy needed the shower or anything. He wasn't the one who'd been drenched in blood tonight. He wasn't the one scraping it out from under his fingernails, from in between the joints in his automail. He wasn't the one who was dirty.
It was his own fault anyway for bringing Ed back to his house after the mission when all Ed had wanted to do was go back to the dorms. Roy wouldn't hear of it, though, going so far as to actually throw him into the back of the car. He hadn't found the strength to resist then, just like he couldn't find the strength to get out of the water now, even though it was cold enough to make him shiver.
"Fullmetal, you need to leave before the water level rises above your abysmally small figure and drowns you."
He found he couldn't make a retort. He couldn't even get up the motivation to growl.
"Are you okay, Edward?"
Silence was his only reply.
"I'm coming in."
"What?" That at least, got a reaction. Roy entered to find a very shocked and red-faced (though from tears or embarrassment Roy couldn't guess) Edward staring at him from behind an all too transparent shower curtain.
Immediately taking in the freezing quality of the air filled with drops of ice water and Ed's shivering form, Roy ignored his own answering blush and grabbed the nearest towel, throwing it across the boy's shoulders and hugging him to his chest.
"Ed, you're freezing cold!" With that, he began to vigorously rub Ed's shoulders and back, trying to get some circulation back into the tiny pale form.
"Get off me Roy! It's not your business what I do in the goddamn shower! Roy!"
But the colonel was not about to be dissuaded. Perhaps it was because Ed's tirade was delivered in a voice so broken with tears and shivering that he almost couldn't make out the words, or maybe it was some latent protective instinct creeping up on him, but he was not content to let the young major he had become so fond of lately drown himself in a freezing shower for something that wasn't his fault in the first place.
And that's exactly what he said, well, minus the "fond" part. Ed really wasn't ready for that yet. He probably wouldn't take too kindly to having their carefully balanced relationship turned on its head.
Which was why he was so surprised when the fiery youth gave up easily and started sobbing into his shoulder.
"It will be okay Edward; it wasn't your fault."
"Shut up!"
"You shut up! You think you're the only one who ever makes mistakes? What about my mistakes Edward? What about me sending you on a mission that you weren't ready for when I didn't even know all the facts? What about me using you in a capacity I swore I'd never subject you to? I failed you Edward…I never meant for you to have to kill."
"I've killed before." At least he'd stopped shivering from cold. Now he was shaking with reaction to what he'd done, to what Roy had made him do.
"Completing a mission that accidentally results in a death is quite different than actually killing a human with your own hands, Ed."
"I should have found another way."
Roy sighed. He took so much upon himself. Kind of reminded him of another young alchemist he used to know.
"Edward, you can't save everyone. You're not God. It was that kind of arrogance that got you into this situation in the first place wasn't it? Let it go, chibi-chan."
His statement was met with more exhausted tears. Belatedly, Roy realized Ed was still wearing only the towel, now soaked in freezing water. That would not do.
"Come on, Ed. We need to get you into something warmer."
Roy pulled a bathrobe out of his closet that was usually reserved for his female visitors (who had been very few since he'd realized just how fond of a certain belligerent alchemist he'd become) and hoped Ed wasn't in a state to take exception to its pink color.
With Ed decently clothed, Roy settled the both of them onto the armchair by his window. It was a measure of how heartsick the eldest Elric had become that he only gave a feeble protest to the contact.
"I'm too big to be held on your lap," Ed objected quietly and without conviction.
Roy just ran comforting hands through Ed's drying hair. Who knew? It might be the only chance he'd ever get to do so.
"You're never too big to be held, Edward; you're never too big."
And Roy protected his temporarily subdued young charge the only way he could.
FIN
Have no idea where chibi-chan came from. It seemed to fit.
