Dicslaimer:I don't own FMA.
An ENORMOUS thank you to everyone who has kept me going through this fic...all the reviews, faves and alerts, it honestly does mean so very much!
I'm sorry for the latness of this update but I have left the familiar shores of the UK and I'm currently travelling in the USA! so I don't have a lot of time to write but I will try to be quick as possible :D
ENJOY! and review if you have time...
Jean paused on the door step. He'd barely slept all night. His head was pounding and he had large bags under his eyes. All he could think about was Roy's expression and the way he'd acted before disappearing into the house the previous night. He touched his purple jaw tenderly at the memory and the familiar cold sinking feeling settled in his stomach...he hoped to God that Riza and Maes were alright, if Roy had hurt them in any way...
His hand lifted and brought the metal knocker down hard three times before waiting for someone to answer. To his relief, Riza pulled the bottle green door back and offered him a small smile, "Hi Jean," she said softly.
"Morning, I came to check you were OK," he said, suddenly feeling very sheepish. He lifted a brown paper bag he'd been carrying in his free hand rather awkwardly, adding, "I brought croissants."
Riza smiled again and stepped aside to let him in, her hair had been roughly brushed and pushed back into a pony tail and she had on an old military academy t-shirt with a scruffy pair of trousers. She took the bag from him and walked into the kitchen, proceeding to lay the buttery pastries out on a try and place them in the oven to heat. Jean watched her closely, looking for any signs of unease or nervousness.
When she finally turned and offered him an awkward smile he felt a wave of relief pass through him, she was obviously OK but then it occurred to him...where was Roy and Maes? Riza must have seen the look of slight puzzlement pass across his features and she offered him another smile, "They're upstairs...Roy can't take his eyes off of him. He's been sat with him pretty much all night and Maes seem to like having him there."
Jean nodded numbly and shifted awkwardly on his feet. Eventually he lifted his head and whispered, "Are we going to tell him?"
Riza glanced back at him as she checked the croissants in the oven, "Tell him what, Jean?"
"You know what I'm talking about, Riza. Are you going to tell him about 'us'?" He took a step forward and placed a hand on the back of the cream dining chair. Riza found his motion fascinating and seemed to stare intently at his hand gripping the pale painted wood.
"There's nothing to say," she said finally, looking up to meet his eyes. Their gazes met and they held it, both calculating and trying to decipher how the other was interpreting the situation.
"Fine," he practically bit out, "if that's how you see it. It's good to know that he just has to waltz in here and everything goes back to being 'normal'. Honestly, Riza, I thought you had more back bone."
"JEAN!" She hissed back at him, "You've been a huge help to me over the last two years, I honestly couldn't have done so well without your help, support and friendship...but that's all it is...friendship. I'm sorry if I led you on or you thought there may be more but you should have known...I can't..."she stopped and diverted her gaze, going back to the oven with a red baking oven mit to extract the steaming croissants.
Havoc scrutinized her every move and found the whites of his knuckles begin to match the colour of the cream chair it was gripping. Riza turned to face him, and everything isn't 'normal', as you put it. Roy and I are not together. We've discussed our situation and feelings. He is entitled to be Maes' father," she set her piercing gaze on him, "despite how you may feel about Maes, Roy is his father and has agreed to act as such. Seriously Jean, you have to see how they are together, I've never seen Maes bond so quickly with anyone and this will be good for Roy...he finally has a reason to turn himself around."
"So after everything he's done he ca-" Jean's rebuttal was cut short as a pale faced Roy marched into the kitchen, he opened his mouth to tell Riza something but instead his eyes made contact with Havoc's and the two men straightened, gazes locked and both were enveloped in steely silence. Riza glanced between them uneasily and she placed the plate of pastries on the table in the hopes it would divert their attention. Her wish was not fulfilled.
The Kitchen remained locked the the grips of icy silence until a after a few moment's Riza's sharp hearing locked onto the soft wail of her son, she was suddenly torn between thanking her son for his good grace to offer her a reason to leave the situation and terror at the thought of what might happen or be said in her absence. She reasoned that she couldn't leave Maes crying in his cradle so quietly excused herself and slipped out of the room,hastily moving up the hallway stair case.
Roy was the first to break the intolerable tension between them, "you never told me."
"She made me promise not to," Jean replied curtly.
"Convenient," Roy's voice dripped with malice, "so you were free to play happy families."
"It wasn't like that, She needed some one to help her and support her," Havoc let the next few words sit in the void between them, "someone had to be here for her."
Roy opened his mouth to reply with a string of profanities and comments on loyalty and friendship when Riza re-entered the room carrying a squirming Maes. The little boy wriggled relentlessly in her arms until his eyes fell on Havoc, he then squealed with joy and flung himself towards Havoc with such enthusiasm Riza almost dropped him. Havoc grinned, feeling a sense of triumph at having the little guy squeal for him and not Roy, who sat seething at the kitchen table as he watched them, shovelling a croissant into his mouth.
Riza glanced between Roy and Havoc and then back at Roy. Shed had enough of this already and it looking like it had only just begun. She sighed and decided to take a stand on the situation. She walked over to where Havoc was tossing Maes and took the little boy back with a little more force than she had intended. She had to repress the urge to chuckle at the identicle expressions of confusion now worn by all three boys in the room. She clung Maes up onto her hip and pointed at Roy, "You," she began, "go and sort things out at headquarters and then start looking for that new flat you promised. You," she turned her finger and gaze on Havoc, "go and help the clean up in Central and collect the paperwork from our office, I'm sure the General has a lot to catch up on." She then turned to Hayate, "You, are coming walkies with me and Maes."
The dog barked happily in agreement and Maes gurgled something along the lines of, 'I like the idea of a walk with Hayate, Mum.' The dog scrambled off and Riza turned to find both men begrudgingly collect their belongings and a croissant for the road. She grinned to herself and then proceeded upstairs to dress and change Maes before they embarked for the park.
To Riza's surprise, Roy has managed to find a small house near her neighbourhood within a month. It wasn't as big as her house and didn't have a garden, even though she knew he earned a lot more, she had a sinking suspicion that it was because he didn't intend to live there for very long. He'd managed to move most of his items out of storage and she'd brought Maes over the weekend he moved in. Maes had been fascinated by all the boxes and buzz of people moving around. Gracia, Elysia, Fuery, Falman and Breda had all helped him move his items in and around. Gracia brought a plethora of shopping bags, knowing Roy's destructive behaviour sometimes meant he forgot to shop properly.
Maes sat on his little multi-coloured mat in the living room and gurgled at passers by, desperately enquiring in his little creative tongue as to what everyone was doing. Hayate sat loyally beside him, barking every time Maes began to crawl off of his mat or began to smell suspicious. The pair had become inseparable since Maes had started to become more mobile and Riza welcomed the help of her canine friend in keeping an eye on her monkey of a son.
Hayate had started to bark again and Riza sighed from her place in Roy's kitchen, where she had been unwrapping his pots and pans from their storage boxes. She crossed the hallway and through the double doors that led into the large white magnolia room that would one day, when boxes and furniture were organised, be Roy's living room. Maes can crawled from his mat and had pulled himself up against one of the large boxes, proceeding to peek over the side to glimpse at the treasures within.
"Maes Berthold Hawkeye," she sighed, "what am I going to do with you?" At the sound of his mother's tired and exasperated voice, Maes turned his large hazel eyes on her and gave a small cheeky smirk before losing his balance and plopping down on his nappy clad bottom.
Maes gurgled something incoherent again as Riza bent to pick him up, as soon as the small bundle was balance on her hip she scrunched her once. Hayate slinked backwards, recoiling from the waft that had emanated from he baby in her arms. Riza knelt on the living room floor and sat Maes firmly on his mat. She then reached across looked around the room, damn I left the bag on the back of the pram.
Riza let another sigh escape her lips but just before she could pull herself to her feet she saw a shadow cross the hallway in her peripheral vision. She snapped her head around to catch Roy entering the hallway from his room, where he, Breda and Falman and been lifting furniture and boxes, and go to collect his keys for the car still downstairs. "Roy," she said loudly and firmly, a voice he knew better than to avoid.
Roy Mustang turned to look at the woman sat in the middle of his living room floor, apprehension trickling through his nerves, "could you pass me the green bag on the back of the pram? The one with all the baby stuff in it?"
Roy let out a breath he didn't realise he'd been holding and went to the pram that was parked up beside his front door. He bent down and retrieved the back pack from it's hanging place on the racing red handle bars and moved back to his living room. Riza smiled thankfully and took the bag, letting it drop down unceremoniously beside her, she yanked open the sipper and pulled out a roll up baby blue mat, a plastic bag, a nappy and some wet wipes. She rolled out the mat in front of her and then strategically placed the items around the mat. It looked as though she were setting up a model for their next invasion strategy.
Roy's head cock the one side as he watched her lift Maes and lay him on the mat. Maes instantly gurgled and grinned and gripped both his feet in his pudgy little hands. His head rolled back and his eyes met his father's with a look of unadulterated glee written on his features. Roy cleared his throat which made Riza glance up at him, "something wrong?" she asked.
"Are you going to change him?" he asked tentatively.
Riza's eyebrow lifted questioningly, "yes," she stated matter-of-factly.
He rubbed the back of his neck with his right hand and walked closer to her, "can you...show me?"
Riza bit her lower lip, resisting the urge to laugh at the odd request and the look of fear that flickered across Mustang's dark features, "sure," she finally chirped and turned her attention back to their son, who by this point had begun to roll around on his mat in an attempt of escape.
In one fluid motion she whipped off the little blue denim jeans he's been wearing with his red striped top. She folded them in half and laid them beside the wet wipes on her right. She then peeled back both bits of tape on either side of the nappy with a little force, they released the sodden bundle of cloth and tape on to the mat. Then with skilled and practised hands, Riza gripped her son's ankles between her middle and ring fingers and thumb, hoiking the little boy onto his shoulder blades, causing him to giggle and clap his hands. She whipped the nappy out and ripped a wet wipe from the packet with her free right hand. She efficiently mopped up the mess and then twirled the used nappy and wet wipe together into a neat bundle and deposited them into the plastic bag. Within seconds Maes had a fresh nappy, his trousers back on and an even wider grin to show his new found pleasure at the clean underwear.
Roy sat dumbfounded. "Did you get that?" Riza asked him, standing up with the plastic bag and taking it over to the bin. She waked her hands and turned back to the living room, noticing how Roy still sat trying to recall what he'd just watched. Meas had already crawled off of his mat and was how trying to climb into Roy's lap. Roy allowed him up and wrapped his arms protectively around him while Riza began placing the items back into her green sack.
"So I..."
"Trousers off, nappy off, wipe up, place in plastic bag, new nappy, trousers, bin, wash hands...it's really not hard, Roy."
There was a chuckle from behind them and both adults turned towards the doorway, Gracia stood in the doorway watching the whole scene, "His face is identical to the one Maes senior pulled when I showed him how to change Elysia for the first time." She walked into the room and sat on one of the arm chairs that had been haphazardly placed to the side of the room, "you'll get it soon enough, Roy. Riza's just had more practise."
She saw Roy face sour slightly at the comment about Riza having more practise and Gracia instantly regretted her choice of words. Riza placed the green bag back on the pram in the hallway and sat on the arm of the chair Gracia was sat in, her eyes gazing at the sight of Roy and Maes both sat on the carpet, Maes seemed to be infatuated with Roy's bigger hand.
Gracia's face suddenly lit up, "I have an idea!" She stood from the chair so that she could face both adults, both of whom wore expressions some where between curiosity and dread, "Riza's barely had a break from Maes, our little group of you, me and Maria haven't gotten together in months, and Roy desperately needs some time with Maes to practise and learn some basic parenting skills, not to mention bond with his son."
Riza's face darkened, "What are you getting at, Gracia?"
Gracia cleared her throat, "What I'm saying is this Friday night you're going to come out and have dinner at a nice restaurant with your friends and possibly go dancing and Roy is going to care for Maes all Friday afternoon and evening...alone."
Roy grinned, "sounds like a great idea!"
Riza's eyes had widened, "But...but...no!"
"Why not?" Gracia and Roy asked in union.
"Because..."
"Riza," Roy started, standing up with his son in his arms, "Maes and I will be fine...as Gracia said, I need some time to bond with him as his father and to learn to be his father and I can't do that with you breathing down my neck the whole time."
"But I only just showed you how to change a nappy!" she said incredulously.
"And as you said...It's not that difficult." Riza chewed her cheek from frustration at him using her own words against her. She glanced between the hopeful Gracia and the cocky Roy and sighed, "Fine..but I want to a restaurant nearby and if anything, ANYTHING, goes wrong you have to send for me immediately."
"Done," Gracia and Roy said in union again. Both wearing matching grins and causing Riza to question whether they were possibly related.
Oh the trouble I have in mind...HAHAHA...please review and thanks for reading :D