Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist.
Warnings: Yaoi (malexmale).
His coffee is cold, the same coffee from last night -- a world away, and yet he can see its traces in the mug, sitting on the kitchen counter, the barest hint in the air and the dust that someone else was here, once upon a time.
It's only half a cup, with milk and sugar in it already -- Hughes normally prefers it black, but Roy insists on adding milk -- and he picks it up and sips from the red mug, the smell of Roy ingrained into the cold liquid. Slowly, because when he finishes the cup everything that is left of (this side of) Roy will be gone, a distant dream.
And it's funny how Roy himself can create and manipulate fire and yet his coffee was able to become so cold, listless. Hughes watches a few particles of dust float around in the blinding stripes of light passing through the windowshade, and entertains the thought of heating the coffee up, of pretending that nothing is gone.
But the light itself reminds him that this is morning, not night, that he is alone in his house and that Gracia will be home from her trip soon. That he will not walk back into his bedroom and find Roy, looking none less out of place than Gracia amidst Hughes'; blue cotton bedsheets.
His phone rings, once, shrilly, and there is such a silence that Hughes thinks whoever it is must have hung up. But it rings again and he makes his way over, lifts up the black reciever, "Hello?"
There is something tired in his own voice that makes him wince and wish he hadn't spoken. He can hear the breathing on the other end and knows immediately -- Roy -- and he presses the phone to his ear and closes his eyes and for one second Roy is here with him.
"Hughes?" His last name, but he can't erase last night's heavy whispers from his mind, Maes, "They're moving me to East. I thought you'd want to know." Maes, please.
And something in Roy's voice is amused about this, is challenging him to do something, anything, but Hughes finds his voice lost, and odd sensation, and he closes his eyes and swallows once and opens them again, and even though he would never want Roy to see him like this he still curses the barrier between them, the force that is pulling them apart.
"Good luck."