Disclaimer: So…I forgot the disclaimer again in the last one. Sigh. I'm too scatterbrained to own FMA…
Shaving
"Fullmetal, what did you do to your face?" asked a slightly bemused Roy when a severely cut up and raw-faced Edward Elric stomped into his office.
He was unable to translate the grunt he received in response into anything that resembled a satisfactory answer, so he decided to push the issue.
"You haven't been sent on a mission lately, Fullmetal, so you can't possibly have injured yourself that way."
Glare.
"Did you lose a fight to one of Alphonse's kittens?"
No, that probably wasn't it, Roy decided as he dodged a well-thrown stapler. He doubted Edward had been bullied by anyone around the office, either, partly because of Edward's famous self-defense skills and partly because the Colonel had made it very clear that Roy himself had a monopoly on Edward-antagonizing rights.
No, it was probably not an outside force that had brought the young alchemist to this condition.
Young…
"Edward, come closer," demanded the Colonel.
Edward, with a carefully dispassionate look, reluctantly did as he was told.
And now that he was closer to Roy and the light of the windows, the Colonel could see the telltale stubble that lingered on Edward's cheeks and the reddened quality of the skin around the cuts.
He was hard-put to swallow a guffaw.
"You didn't do this shaving, by any chance, did you Edward?"
Roy found it impossible to choke down his chuckles when Edward's blush gave him all the answer he required.
The chuckles turned to unrestrained laughter as Edward fled the room.
"Stupid Colonel!" Edward muttered to himself in the dormitory bathroom a number of days later when the returning fuzz forced him to repeat the ritual which had brought so much embarrassment several days before.
What a position to be in. He hated Hohenheim even more at times like this. His father had left before Ed or Al ever had to worry about shaving.
And he couldn't ask Al, for obvious reasons.
The only other person he would feel comfortable talking to about subjects such as this would have been Maria Ross, and she was not only farawayin Central, but she was a woman.
So he couldn't go to her, either, for other obvious reasons.
Thus, he was forced to go it alone in the dorms. At least, that was his intent.
So lost was he in his thoughts he didn't even see Roy enter the room.
"Fullmetal, please tell me you are not about to use that dry razor on your face."
Well that brought him out of his contemplations quick enough.
"Who are you calling so short he…uh…what?"
Roy ignored Edward's reflexive outburst and held out a can of shaving cream. "You have to use water and cream, or else you'll get razor burn again and will be more likely to cut yourself."
"Oh." Ed took the can from Roy and inspected the nozzle, trying to figure out how to get the cream out.
And promptly squirted himself in the eye.
"Ow!" He glared at Roy with his one good eye.
And promptly got splashed with water from the sink.
"Wash your face first, Edward. If you don't, dirt could get into any cuts you get and it'll make it harder for the razor to work."
Edward sighed and did as he was told. Again.
Once he was clean, things went a lot smoother.
"Edward, stop pressing so hard; you're shaving your face, not attacking a chimera. And shave with the grain, not against it."
Okay, maybe not so much.
"What are you talking about?"
He got a sigh in reply.
"Like this, Edward."
Roy applied some cream to his own face and showed Ed how the hair goes different ways in some places and how to change the angle of the blade so that it didn't scrape the skin underneath too harshly.
And the casual observer, seeing the two so deep in concentration in front of the mirror, genially engaged in this time-honored ritual of male bonding, would never have guessed how much the younger boy needed the older man next to him, or how happy the older man was to be there.
FIN
A/N: Well…if it's not Roy/Ed, it's Roy and Ed. This just popped into my head earlier as something that could totally happen to poor Ed. Oh, and I'm a girl, so I may have gotten some of the details wrong…never had to shave my face myself.
