Work Text:
Ed hooks his fingers into his brand-new collar and hauls at it, which doesn’t help at all.
“Honestly,” he says, “I don’t know how any of you ever get anything done while wearing this shit.”
All of the usual suspects at the table in the middle of the office slowly turn to look at Hawkeye.
She looks back, but there’s a flicker of a smile breaking through the steely expression. She’s not immune to the ten-minutes-to-five elation either.
“Really?” she says. “I don’t just have to do everything around here, I also have to make the joke about how I’m the only one who does anything around here? None of you will even do that?”
“You have to hand it to us, Captain,” Breda says, grinning at her. “If nothing else, we’ve all got an extremely well-developed sense of irony.”
Falman mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “You’re still using that word wrong.”
“Am I?” Breda says brightly. “How ironic.”
“Wow,” Ed says, shoving an actually pretty impressive paperclip chain aside to rest his elbow on the tabletop. The wool pulls in a weird and uncomfortable way when he does that, too. “I sure did miss all the ferocious productivity and loving camaraderie around here. Good to be back.”
He tenses instinctively at the sound of standard-issue boots in the hall. He hasn’t even gotten around to listing to all of the things that are wrong with the boots yet; he might have to save that for tomorrow.
The door swings open, admitting the king back into his little castle full of layabouts. Roy takes one step over the threshold, tosses his hair, lifts his shoulders in preparation for a melodramatic sigh, and then looks over at them sprawled around the conference table.
More specifically, he looks at Ed.
And he goes completely still.
It only lasts for a second—then he’s moving again, fluidly, and finishing the hair flip in perfect time as he saunters over towards his office.
“I see that the quartermaster got you fitted, Major Elric,” he says, like nothing even happened. “Apparently people do work in this building. Who would have thought?”
“Careful, sir,” Hawkeye says calmly.
Ed has to bite the inside of his lip to stop himself from smiling, though, because he knows what he saw.
Before Ed had been banished to the dark corner of HQ where the brass sequesters the quartermaster—presumably to guard against any contingency of the poor schmuck discovering that there are clothes in existence that don’t involve stiff, stuffy, itchy blue wool and unnecessary misery—Roy had told him that they’ve already got a thick file of missions lined up. For all the talk and all the showiness, Roy’s not a procrastinator when shit’s actually important, so Ed bides his time for the last few minutes of the day: he knows that Roy’s going to call him in sooner or later.
Plus it turns out that you can make a lot of interesting shapes with a paperclip chain this long.
“Elric,” Roy says, moments before the stroke of five, just like Ed expected. “Do you have a minute?”
“For you, Mustang,” Ed says, slinging himself up out of his chair, “maybe even two.”
“Your generosity astounds,” Roy says, shuffling all kinds of papers around on his desk to look busy as Ed comes in. “As I mentioned—we’ve had quite a few cases come up that would benefit from your expertise.”
Ed grabs the folder that he offers and shoots him a sharp grin back. “It’s just me, Mustang. You can say ‘Go fix this’ and leave it at that.”
Roy smiles thinly and folds his hands on the desk. It must be a stroke past five now—the team is saying their goodbyes out in the other room, and chairs are getting manhandled as everybody makes a run for the door. “How about ‘Go fix this, please’? It is only your first day back.”
“Whatever shines your boots,” Ed says. He flips the folder open and pretends to skim the first page. He will not be shining his boots. The quartermaster will have to hunt him down and hurt him to change that, and he’s still pretty damn hard to hit. “Hey, question for you.”
“Fire away,” Roy says, which he probably thinks is hilarious.
Ed looks up from the file and grins with teeth. “How do you like the uniform on me?”
For a split-second, Roy looks like Ed just caught him wrist-deep in the cookie jar at midnight.
Then he’s back under control, propping his elbow on the desktop and his chin on his hand.
“To be honest with you,” Roy says, “I never dreamed that I would miss that godawful coat, but you look a bit… uncomfortable.”
“Well,” Ed manages. He knows what he saw; he knows what he saw. He’s seen it twice now. He has to ride this one out. “I mean—it is. It’s shit. How are you supposed to reach up and get a box out of the supply closet if you can’t lift your damn arms above your damn shoulders?”
Roy smiles like a cat. Al would be so proud. “Most of us don’t have to reach quite as far as you do, Ed.”
Two can play this game, and Ed is still the master of bending all the rules.
He drops the folder back down on the edge of Roy’s desk, undoes the annoyingly fiddly clasps on the jacket as swiftly as he’s capable of, and rolls his shoulders ostentatiously as he shrugs it off.
The quartermaster had asked him if he wanted some slightly looser black shirts for wearing underneath. He’d said he didn’t. The quartermaster had asked him again. Ed had given him a look, and the quartermaster had held both hands up and backed away to muddle around with gold braiding some more.
The fwump of the jacket hitting Roy’s office carpet is even more satisfying than Ed had imagined. At least the damn thing is good for something.
“How about this?” Ed asks, stretching his arms behind himself to broaden his chest. Roy has managed to keep his boardroom-ready neutral expression intact, but the way that his eyes track up and down Ed’s torso tells enough of the story. “Better?”
“For a certain meaning of ‘better’,” Roy says, in that same old I sure do have a clever answer to everything voice that has lingered in Ed’s dreams for longer than he’d care to confess.
Roy unfolds and re-folds his hands, jaw working, and Ed realizes that time is—damn it—short.
“Ed,” Roy says, but Ed’s already moving—striding forward and swinging around the corner of the desk, the better to lean back against it, kick one leg over the other at the ankle in a fake-casual pose that Roy ought to be proud of, and cross his arms over his chest.
To Roy’s credit, he holds his ground, managing to continue to look completely disaffected.
Ed looks the bastard right in the eyes and lets as much heat as he dares seep into his smile. He arches an eyebrow.
“Roy,” he says, letting it roll very, very slowly off his tongue.
That makes Roy’s face shift—subtly, but Ed’s watching close enough to see it. Roy blinks slightly sooner than he did the last time, and his fingers curl on the desktop. His gaze flicks down to Ed’s waist and hips, and then Ed’s ass against the edge of the desk, and Ed can almost—almost—hear the If you’d like to be even more comfortable, you could always try throwing the rest of your uniform on the floor.
“It’s only your first day back,” Roy says, as if Ed could possibly have forgotten that for a single second. With what appears to be a concerted effort, Roy succeeds in meeting Ed’s eyes again, instead of raking his gaze up and down the display. “If you… If—there will be… better… occasions.”
Roy’s eyes follow him closely as Ed unfolds his arms and pushes his palms against the desktop to lever himself up to his feet. There are two steps left between him and Roy’s chair, and he takes one of them, angling his hips and his shoulders enough that the movement probably qualifies as a swagger.
“I don’t know what you’ve been up to lately,” Ed says, which is a little bit of a lie, “but if I’ve learned a damn thing in the past few years, it’s that the best occasion for anything is the one that you’ve got. If you don’t do shit in the first moment that you’re brave enough to, you risk never doing it at all.”
The way that Roy’s eyes soften is extremely interesting. His shoulders relax slightly, and he leans back in his chair, swiveling it to face Ed directly and setting his elbow on the arm.
“It’s no secret,” Roy says, “that you’re a braver man than I am.”
Ed has learned a couple of other things, too. He doesn’t step forward yet. “Hey, I’m new here. Is that a ‘Permission to seduce freely’, or not?”
If Ed is being honest—which he probably shouldn’t be—he missed Roy’s laugh more than just about any other part of it.
“C’mon,” Ed says. “How about if we give it a shot and see how it goes?”
“Ah,” Roy says, looking disproportionately relieved. “Shot. Good idea.” He reaches past Ed for the second desk drawer, draws it open, and extracts an unmarked bottle of amber liquid and a shot glass. “Do you want one?”
Ed opens his mouth for If it’ll get me laid, I’ll drink whatever swill you want, and then remembers what Al always tells him about sometimes not saying the very first thing that comes to mind.
“Sure,” he says instead.
Roy reaches deeper in the drawer and finds a second shot glass. Al also always tells Ed not to ask questions he doesn’t want the answers to. That’s been pretty good advice so far.
Roy pours for both of them, hands Ed one of the glasses, and then clinks the rim of his against it.
“Welcome back,” Roy says, eyes so hotly intense that the drink is starting to sound remarkably appealing, actually.
“Cheers,” Ed says.
Ed slugs his drink the same way that he knocks back cold medicine, letting as little of it as possible actually touch his tongue, and then smacks the glass back down on one of the few bits of the desk blotter visible around the folder piles.
He looks back up at Roy triumphantly, but Roy is… wincing.
“You’re supposed to sip it,” Roy says. He demonstrates by taking a measly little sample of what Ed naturally assumed was an emergency stash for either rough nights or clogged drains, given the lack of a label and the size of the glasses.
“Yeah?” Ed says. He keeps his hand braced on the desk and leans his weight onto it, eyes fixed on Roy’s. “Well, you’re supposed to be easy. What happened?”
Roy’s laugh continues to be the worst part—it makes Ed’s spine tighten and his guts heat, sets his heart to flittering like a guttering fire, and draws him in every single time.
There’s just one step left between them. Roy takes another sip of his stupid drink, and Ed crosses half of the space, which brings him close enough that his knee will knock against Roy’s if he breathes too hard.
“I mean it,” Ed says. Behind the rim of the stupid little shot glass, Roy looks amused and receptive—and maybe like he’s holding something back.
Ed holds his breath for a fraction of a second, steels himself, and takes the leap of faith.
He hikes his right knee up and plants it on Roy’s chair, to the outside of Roy’s thigh. He leans forward until he can smell the brandy on Roy’s breath, and their hair is almost mingling, and he can nearly feel the brush of Roy’s eyelashes every time the bastard blinks.
“What gives?” Ed says.
Roy’s free hand flattens on his thigh—to steady him, not to push him away.
“It’s not quite that simple,” Roy says, very softly, like maybe that’ll change the way his fingers curl around Ed’s leg.
Ed reaches over his shoulder, grabs onto the back of the chair, and brings the automail leg up, too, so that he’s straddling Roy’s lap.
Roy’s other hand darts out to deposit the shot glass on the desk, and then it wraps around Ed’s waist in a way that’s half protective, half possessive, and utterly purgatorial.
“Huh,” Ed says, looking down, pointedly, at how close their bodies are, and then back up. “Why not?”
Roy swallows, and Ed has to fight mightily to resist the urge to chase the movement of it with his teeth. “That’s… there are… quite a few fraternization regulations to consider. For your safety, Ed.”
“Not really,” Ed says. “Because I don’t technically report to you.”
Roy pulls back far enough to stare at him with a fascinating mixture of suspicion, arousal, confusion, and dismay. Roy’s always been complicated. Ed’s always been a sucker for it. “Yes, you—”
“Dotted line,” Ed says, dragging his fingertips down Roy’s chest, slow enough to summon up a shiver. “I technically report to Major General Louvon, because he technically supervises all of the contractors—with dotted-line reporting to you. I made them write that in before I signed the papers.”
Roy continues to stare at him for three very, very long seconds.
Then Roy licks his lips, which doesn’t help at all with the current situation in Ed’s stupid, stuffy pants.
“I refuse,” Roy says, “to take responsibility for teaching you to think that way.” He clears his throat. “On the other hand—”
“Finish your drink,” Ed says, leaning in to nip at the shameless grin that just chased away the last of Roy’s attempts at reticence. “And then welcome me back properly.”
Roy’s hand ghosts up and buries itself in his hair, fingers curving firmly around the base of his skull, and pulls him into a kiss—a real kiss, deep and desperate and wet and slow and meaningful.
It’s so much more than Ed used to dream about, and so much more than he prepared for, that it feels a little bit like drowning even as he tries to savor it. Ed’s not used to things going according to plan in the first place, let alone going so damn well that they exceed every single cautious expectation, and he ends up with Roy’s hands in his hair and Roy’s tongue in his mouth and both of his fists curled in the front of Roy’s jacket. What the hell are you even supposed to do with that kind of a success?
Roy draws back, panting a little, and Ed reluctantly opens his eyes. Maybe he came on too strong after all. Maybe Roy could hear him overthinking. Maybe he’s just a shitty kisser. Maybe—
“For the record,” Roy says, “I do still give the orders around here.”
“After hours?” Ed says, trying not to make it too obvious that he’s way the hell out of breath. “To a dotted-line report who never listened to you in the first place?” He grins, and tightens his grip on Roy’s jacket. “Good fuckin’ luck, Mustang.”
Roy grimaces—but only for a second before it gives way to another smile, and he leans in again.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, breath hot against Ed’s mouth. “I suspect I’m going to need it.”
Unfortunately, Ed can’t snicker at him and kiss him some more at the same time.
He picks the second one.