Who: Roy Mustang and Marco Where: Roy and Riza's house/room/whatever When: Nov. 29th, after Alphonse's entry What: Roy's an affectionate drunk Rating/Warnings: PG - Cuddling? Status: Completed.
Roy was drunk. Of course he was, because being drunk let him exist in that transitory stage between unfeeling and oblivion. Why? Because it was easier to function there. He’d stumbled his way back from the bar, mercifully without incident, and came back to the Inn where he and Hawkeye--no, now he and Marco--were living. It was a tiny space, uncomfortably cramped, and it had raised Roy’s anxiety about ten thousand meters the first time he learned he was supposed to live there. He’d balked at the idea. He’d mostly gotten used to it since then. Stepping through the door, he closed it behind him, leaning back against the surface while his dark eyes found Marco.
He was here. Good.
He was also cleaning.
A small smile crossed Roy’s face. He didn’t question it. He didn’t question the lightness in his chest at having someone here when he came inside. Roy didn’t like living alone. Having someone to come home to was wonderful.
Roy didn’t say anything, he just pushed himself away from the door and approached the boy, pulling the blanket he was folding out of his hands so he could wrap his arms around him.
Roy was drunk. A drunk Roy let himself feel.
***
Marco didn’t even know why he was folding blankets. Well, other than he knew that if he didn’t, that would be the hour Riza showed up and wondered why they weren’t folded. And she would never say anything, because she didn’t expect him to take care of Roy like she did, it would just make her more hesitant to leave again in the future, and those two needed less co-dependence, not more.
At first he was going to ask why Roy was hugging him, but then he smelled the alcohol all over Roy.
He patted the man’s back and gave him a fake pout, “You went drinking without me! No fair!” He joked, touching the man’s hair.
It was nice that somebody let him touch them. Nobody really touched Marco at home unless everybody was at a party and they were hitting on him or trying to get him to do anything stupid.
Even if Roy was too tall.
“What’s wrong? Was one of the other children mean to you at school today?” Marco asked.
***
He didn’t respond immediately, he just pressed his face into that ridiculously curly hair and breathed the boy in. “Sort of just happened,” he said. At least he wasn’t too drunk to formulate proper sentences. He wasn’t slurring. Pulling back just a fraction, Roy pushed Marco’s hair from his face, an oddly intimate motion. But then he let him go and sank bonelessly back onto the bed.
From that position, Roy stared at the ceiling, only slowly gathering the required energy to turn so he could look at Marco, watching the boy watch him.
“I talked to Alphonse,” he said. “I want to strangle him. I would strangle him if I didn’t think it’d crush his idiot brother.”
The Elrics were important to Roy, he just wished sometimes that they’d be less significant to him.
“Why don’t they understand?” He didn’t explain what, but he was drunk. Give him a break.
***
Yeah, Marco knew how that went. So he exhaled and squeezed Roy a little bit, then blinked his brown eyes when Roy pushed away his hair. It made him uncomfortable, but not in a bad way. Just in a ‘people don’t treat me like this’ sort of way. Like he meant things. It was weird and it made him want to hide.
Luckily, he didn’t think about it too much, instead snorting when Roy became one with the bed. Marco threw the blanket on top of him and perched on the other side, turning to look down at the man.
Ah.
“Let me guess. He gave you some advice that was well-intentioned and full of sunshine and ‘the world will get better’ and then he didn’t get it when the world doesn’t work like that.” Marco said with a roll of his eyes.
He liked Alphonse, but he was kind of… too optimistic. Like York.
“Now you know why I wanted to strangle Cassie so often.” He grinned, then got up and got a glass of water, setting it and some ibuprofen on the table next to the bed, because Roy was going to want that later.
*** Roy smiled slowly, pulling the blanket up higher as if he might actually burrow under it. He didn’t, not completely, just covered himself enough where he’d be warm and could still watch the boy. How come no one understood why Marco was so significant? He suspected Hawkeye did. She wouldn’t encourage him to stay around otherwise.. But the rest?
He sighed softly.
“He tried talking to me about Hawkeye,” who was the second most topic in the world to make Roy have a bad reaction. Hughes was the first. “He said I was hurting her, and that I could stop hurting her if I could just stop being me.” He smiled wryly.
Roy closed his eyes for a moment, “He told me…. That I should remember my priorities. As if I don’t.” He did. He put the whole world before he put himself. What else was he supposed to give that he hadn’t?
***
Watching a grown man with his eyes peeping over a blanket was hilarious, and Marco couldn’t help but snort at the sight. It was ridiculous. The only thing that would make it better would be if it were a really embarrassing blanket… like if it had the Teletubbies on it or something. Marco flopped on the other side of the bed (usually he let Hawkeye and Roy take the bed, but since she wasn’t here he had no problems sharing).
“Well, that’s stupid. You two are hurting each other because you can’t communicate for beans,” Marco said, raising a dark eyebrow, “I think she’d be more hurt if you tried to stop being yourself. All of it. She’s a pretty decisive person, she wouldn’t have stuck around if she didn’t believe in what you were doing, so stopping would make things shitty too. Let me guess, you’re supposed to just be a person.”
Because you could totally turn everything off. That was how it worked.
“Alphonse is one of those people who benefits from your choices and then shits on them.” Marco said bluntly, “Cassie’s the same way.”
He put a hand on the top of Roy’s head, resting it on his hair, “What are your priorities here? Not at home, I know those, even if you guys won’t explain it to me.”
Which was annoying.
***
He was going to ask Marco to lay with him, but the boy flopped down before Roy had to ask, which was nice. He opened the blanket to let him under it.
Hawkeye was one of the strongest people Roy knew. She was fierce and smart and determined. She was also a manipulative bitch that could pull Roy’s strings easier than a puppet master. Everyone thought Roy Mustang was a conniving, manipulative asshole--but he had nothing on Riza Hawkeye. She played him like a fine tuned instrument.
And somehow Roy still found himself in a position of being the one that had to change his ways. Which, okay, maybe they were right.
Marco was right too, though. Hawkeye stuck around because she wanted to. There was no force in the world that could make the woman do something she didn’t want to. Well, except Roy, because she’d go where he went no matter if it was right into hell.
His eyes closed again when Marco touched his hair. He liked that. He liked being pet. “Be a person. He wants me to be a person I haven’t been in years, since before the war. That’s who she fell in love with. I’m not him.” He leaned into Marco’s touch, reaching out to pull him closer.
“I do these things so they don’t have to,” he said, “and this is what I am because of it.” Marco was right about that too. Alphonse did shit on his choices but also had the luxury of holding himself above them because his Roy Mustang let it be that way. He’d told Roy just the other day he was stronger and better than him, unbroken and capable of leading a world where Roy couldn’t. Who gave him all of that confidence and room to grow? Roy Mustang.
A Roy Mustang who was now too broken to fix.
But of course, just be a person, Roy.
“You all are my priorities. The people I love. I’d do anything for you.” He looked at Marco. “Anything in my power to protect you.”
***
Marco took the opportunity to pull the blanket completely over their heads and then grin at Roy in the darkened blanket tent. “Blanket fort.” He explained with a smile. Most people would find this ridiculously weird, but to Marco it wasn’t any different than sleeping in the same bed as Jake at the end of the war (or at least next to him on the ground). It kept them… well, not sane exactly. Functional?
“So she fell in love with you when you were different. So? She was different then too. Do you want Riza to go back to being what? 13?” Of course not, that was stupid and retarded. He laid next to Roy in a position that if they weren’t them would be called ‘cuddling’, “You can’t just turn off half your life. It doesn’t work like that.” Marco said.
He was quiet when Roy talked about doing things so they wouldn’t have to.
“Yeah.” He said, “Me too. And Rachel. And Jake. And freaking nobody gets it. The only reason you get to be so oblivious are other people making the hard choices.”
“You’re fine.” Marco told Roy seriously, “They just don’t get it.”
He rubbed his face before he stared at the man and blinked in surprise.
“Careful, Roy,” Marco said, his good cheer covering up his actual emotions, “I might get the impression that you love me or something.”
***
Buried in the dark, under covers, and pressed close to the boy who had come to mean so much, Roy Mustang was silent. He said nothing, he just existed in that moment listening to a young man tell him things that no one in the world said to him since Maes Hughes had died. He was fine. He couldn’t turn off half his life. He couldn’t just hide the parts of his being that sucked. That he wasn’t trying to hurt those he loved on purpose. He was just trying to make it through every damned day of his life so he could keep doing the things he needed to do! He couldn’t explain to Alphonse that if he stopped and let himself just be, that he’d put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. That was the reality of who Roy Mustang was. The only way to function was to move forward with purpose. And the only way he could move forward was if he buried things and held onto the vices that let him be even halfway human.
If you took away the crutches and didn’t give him anything to stand with, he’d fall.
Find a new plan? It was the only plan he had. No one was stepping up to take the weight off his shoulders. He had to carry it alone if he wanted it to succeed.
And Hawkeye thought he was weak. Okay. Fine. Alphonse thought he was horrible, that he could just change his ways and be better if he tried hard enough. Sure. Alright.
And Marco here, telling him he was okay. He was fine how he was. That it was okay.
He looked at him in the dark.
“I do love you.”
***
Marco’s first reaction was a knee jerk one: To tell Roy ‘no, you don’t’, but he remembered how annoyed he was when Ed said it didn’t matter how he was doing and he didn’t want to be like that. But he didn’t really know what to say or do either.
He wished he was drunk.
Oh, that’s right. Roy was drunk. So he probably didn’t mean it. He was just drunk. Marco exhaled, he would just have to keep that in mind. He sighed and stroked the man’s hair some more.
“Yeah.” He said quietly, “Okay.” He was clearly uncomfortable; people didn’t tell him things like that. Well, Riza, but she probably loved everything she thought was helpless.
“Careful, telling me you’ll do anything for me might go to my head, and I might go mad on the power.” Marco teased.
***
Yeah. Okay.
That was better than silence. Or a flat out no, you don’t. Hawkeye had pretty much ignored it the first time Roy had told her. What had she said? Me too?
Besides, he didn’t expect the boy to say it back. Far from it, actually. They weren’t professing undying love here, he wasn’t announcing that he was in love with him. Just that he did indeed love him. Acceptance of that was okay.
If he were sober he’d have seen Marco’s hesitation at the fact, but he wasn’t. So he didn’t. Instead he just nodded. Maybe you should say these things while sober, Roy. The people you told would probably believe you more.
But Roy didn’t say meaningful things if he didn’t mean them. He rarely gave compliments, he gave even fewer hugs, he didn’t say the words often at all. He showed his feelings through action and by the very fact he was standing at the fore protecting the people he loved. It wasn’t enough for most of them. But it was all that Roy could reliably do.
Marco teased him, Roy laughed a little, he leaned in there in the dark and kissed those stupid curls.
“If it makes you happy,” he said, “I want to make you happy.”
***
It felt nice. That made Marco feel guilty, because Roy should be doing these things with Riza, not him. And that made him feel weird, because it wasn’t like this was sexual or anything and even if it was Roy was obviously sleeping with other people (Marco didn’t understand that aspect of their relationship at all), so it shouldn’t make him feel guilty, but it did, and he didn’t know why.
He sighed.
He’d figure that out later or, more realistically, just ignore it.
Instead he just smooshed his face into Roy’s shirt to buy himself a few moments where he didn’t have to say anything, because he didn’t know what to say. It was so nice, but… he wasn’t used to it? He didn’t know what you said to that. He had to think about it.
Marco finally pulled back, “You do. I mean, you’re the first person I’ve felt comfortable with that isn’t one of us since… forever.” He said, “And I like alchemy.” There was a bit of bafflement and wonder in Marco’s voice, “I didn’t think I could like anything anymore. It’s weird.” He confessed with a small laugh.
Sure, he could enjoy things (mostly things that distracted him), but like? In the sense that he thought about them and wanted to do them for the sake of doing them? Just because something was fun? That’d been a while.
***
With Marco’s face pressed against his chest, Roy curled his arms around thin shoulders and held him there. He listened to Marco. For all his faults, Roy Mustang did actually bother to stop and hear what his people were saying to him. He stroked his fingers through Marco’s curls slowly, so as not to tug them, taking a moment to gather his own thoughts, wading through the heaviness of his drunken state to find them.
“I’m glad,” he said. “I want you to trust me,” he told him. “I know what it’s like to be numb inside, I don’t want you to feel that way.”
He wanted Marco to be happy and alive and enjoy the moments he could. But even more, Roy wanted to be there while Marco did. “Stay with me,” he told him quietly.
When Hughes died, Roy lost his only friend. He’d finally found someone that could fill the hole. Not as a replacement, but as someone that Roy needed most.
***
Trust. Did Marco trust Roy Mustang? He wasn’t sure. He’d never had to yet. Marco had been a trusting person, once upon a time, but that was a long time ago. He wasn’t like that now. So he didn’t know about that.
Marco sighed in the man’s arms, “Yeah, I don’t want to feel like this either. I just… do.” One nice thing with Roy was that he knew he didn’t have to explain how he felt or that sometimes things were just the way they were. That was how it was. War was fucked up.
They were fucked up.
The thought made Marco snort and he looked at the drunk man who was holding him like he was a life raft, “Of course I’ll stay with you, you moron.” He said fondly, “But no complaining about your hangover tomorrow. I made your bed, you lie in it.” He rested his head back on Roy’s chest.
They were fucked up, but at least they were fucked up together.