Oh, and look. I'm rambling again.
Chapter 6There was an echoing noise of the ball rolling, a few bounces off the gutter rail, and then a resounding crash. The whole room echoed more in the middle of the day, when no one was about, Roy reflected as Ed bounced up and down, waving his arm and trying not to use words Al objected to.
"The ball will not go straight!" He screamed. "It just slides, no matter what I do!"
Roy extracted the orb from the pit it had rolled back to. "And no wonder. Look at it – see how shiny? It's a hooking ball. You need a dull ball to practice with; those will go straight better."
"But is shiny." Ed objected.
"You need a dull ball to practice with." Roy repeated, and strode off with the old ball held captive to get a new one.
"I really don't see how you do it!" Ed shouted after him. Roy didn't answer, but returned shortly with a new, much more boring-looking ball.
"Hold it – no, like this." He demonstrated. "And then let it go back first. So it can get more momentum." He grabbed Ed's arm and tugged at the fingers. Unfortunately, the fact that they were metal meant Ed had to consent and figure out what he meant first. Roy found himself bent over Ed, tugging at the arm, for considerably longer than he had meant to. It was uncomfortably close. Or it ought to have been uncomfortably close, but Roy rather enjoyed it.
"There." He disentangled himself, trying not to show it was reluctantly. Why should it be reluctantly? It didn't make any sense. "Now back… and drop." The ball managed not to hit a gutter rail, although it only knocked two pins down. "Better, you see?"
"You still do better." Ed objected.
"That's because I've been practicing for years." Roy informed him. "You can't beat an expert the first day you start everything. Al, you want to give it a shot?"
Al declined. He'd been sitting on a far away bench since they arrived, reading. He said the sound got in his head and stayed there for forever. Ed had shrugged and gone on with Roy; they'd been where Al wanted to go, they'd been where he wanted to go, and they were going to stay where Roy wanted to go. Al could wait.
He had to admit, it was nice having Roy to himself.
Even though Roy was Al's he reminded himself for the umpteenth time. It still kept coming up.
"Ready to try again?" Roy asked. "Here's your ball. No! No! I just showed you – you don't hold it like that."
Ed's fingers were malleable this time, but they kept retreating back to their old positions. Roy snapped at him once, and Ed snapped right back that it was difficult to remember how to do this – harder since the arm was automail.
That was something Roy liked about Ed – he never cowered under the force of superiority, like Roy did. No, if Fuhrer Bradley himself were to make a comment about the young alchemist's height, Roy was quite sure Ed would deliver as volatile a rant as to anyone else. It was a fault, true, but quite endearing.
"Let's try it with your other arm, then." Roy suggested. This hand was as least as reluctant, and it was warm. Roy disentangled himself as quickly as he could. It wasn't good for Ed's form, but it felt so weird that Roy had to get away from the boy. Sure enough, Ed tossed the ball off strangely and it bounced between the gutter rails.
"You need to – "
"Go make lunch." Ed sulked. "I'm no good at the moment. I need to cook. We can come back later." It was lunch time anyway. And cooking sounded right. "I want to cook lunch for you." Ed's mind raced. He always liked to have lunch ready by one. If they got back in fifteen minutes, he'd have a little over an hour to cook, which meant he'd be in a big rush…
Unlike most cooks, Ed liked being in a rush. He tended to bounce from surface to surface. Al had commented that cooking left his movements a blur – rather like when he was dodging things, actually. The fact was, Ed was chronically hyperactive, and cooking in a rush tended to take the edge off things.
This lunch had to be something difficult. Something impressive. Something very tasty. Ed liked meatloaf, but meatloaf was easy; besides, it took too long to cook. Pancakes were a breakfast food, he had no idea why they had entered his head. Popovers were simple, fast, and fillings… or a variation… a sort of pie…
Roy looked strangely at the Fullmetal Alchemist. His face was weird. Strangely dreamy and yet like he was going to get a sugar rush momentarily.
"Right, lezgo." Ed buzzed. The rush had arrived.
(0.0)
Ed could cook well. Roy was never full, yet he sat, warm and happy and just wanting to put his feet on his desk, some hours after having eaten, and wanted to beam at everything. The food had been really good. Some sort of thing in a crust; Roy had been apprehensive. And there hadn't been much, by Roy's standards, yet he felt satisfied. Al told him that this was called 'protein' and that he wasn't eating enough of it. Ed volunteered to bring him lunches in future.
Roy resisted beaming at the other person in his office. It wasn't his usual style, for one thing, and there wasn't really any reason to smile. It just felt right. The proper response to being warm and full.
Roy dealt with the man's problem, and some other people's, and did some paperwork. Then he lounged around the office. He spent some time lining everything up so it was in the proper position, either parallel or perpendicular to everything else. Then he surveyed the position of the furniture and decided he didn't like parallel and perpendicular and settled down to some nice adjustments, all sorts of tasteful angles.
His subordinates could always tell when Roy had an easy day by the grating of furniture on floor that came from his office.
At last, the clock allowed Roy to leave, and he did so. He was walking home, thinking dismally of the stupidity of the parallel and perpendicular design of his apartment and the horror of getting dinner, which wouldn't do any good anyway, when he remembered lunch and decided to drop in on the Elrics.
He just knew their furniture arrangement wouldn't bother him.
(0.0)
Ed raised his frying pan higher. "I'll get to it in a minute!" He bellowed at Al.
"That's what you said yesterday! And the day before! And the day before! For weeks. You're cleaning, and that's final!" Al shouted back at him.
The surrounding area was a wreck, Ed had to admit. "But I'm cooking!" He objected.
"You don't need to cook! You always end up giving it to Fuery anyway. You cook too much. There's food everywhere. If you would just – "
"Food?"
The argument stopped. Ed lowered the frying pan in stages, deciding not to dent Al after all. Colonel Mustang was standing in the door, looking strange in… well, in not-military clothes. Like, off duty stuff.
"Colonel? Why are you here?"
"Food." Roy repeated. There was a brief silence before he enunciated. "That fluffy pie-stuff was good, Elric, so I thought I'd beg dinner off you, too." He tried to make puppy eyes, but was distinctly out of practice, and Ed mentally scratched that off the list of expressions he intended to learn from Roy. Vigorously. "It sounds like you have plenty, anyway."
"He can eat the part you always try to force on me." Al suggested. "Like that lasagna. There's way too much lasagna."
Roy was unfamiliar with the word, but he soon came to associate it with the savory beauty that a combination of cheese and tomato could deliver, when mixed with noodles, and some sort of thing that gave it a nice crunch. Al identified it as celery, which almost made Roy spit the stuff across the room. Celery, as far as he knew, was one of those awful green things he'd sworn off the moment he'd joined the military and had soldiers to back him up on this.
"You have to teach me this." He mumbled at Fullmetal.
"Well… I dunno…" Ed tried. "We're both kind of busy…" He caught sight of Al's pleading face. "All right. Let's see where you are. Plan a meal."
"That fluffy-crust thing and lasagna." Roy declared promptly. Ed wrote these down and looked patiently back up at him. "Um… spaghetti?" He guessed.
"Roy!" Ed was scandalized."What about a vegetable?"
Now Fullmetal was calling him Roy, too. Maybe there was something to Fuery's proclamation that he was not a Mustang sort of person. "Vegetables suck." Roy declared, and explained to an increasingly horrified Ed how he had sworn off them as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
"You mean… but… you just… it can't… broccoli…" Ed stuttered. He took a deep breath. "Right. Let's start really, really basic. Do you know the food groups?"
Roy thought hard. "Vegetables." He decided. It was a reasonable guess, considering discussion of them had led to this subject. "Protein?" He hazarded after a moment, remembering Al's comment earlier.
Ed groaned and clutched his head.