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Accidents Happen
Author: Sleeps with Coyotes
Rating: PG
Genre: Humor, Romance, Yaoi
Pairing: Ed x Roy
Status: Complete
Summary: "Here, Ed--hold Fluffles."
He almost snapped awake when he heard someone moving around the guest
room until he recognized the voice and the poke on his shoulder.
"Here, Ed--hold Fluffles."
He meant to say 'whatever' or maybe 'five more minutes,' and he knew he'd
mumbled something, but he forgot what almost instantly. Rolling over
onto his back, he slid his arms around the warm, furry thing Alicia
deposited on his chest and started to drift back into dreams.
He was just about to accept the key to Central City and the leash to Mustang's
collar from a crowd of grateful citizens when the crackle of an alchemical
reaction pulled him back to wakefulness once more.
Ed sat bolt upright as the first sparks crawled up his arms, but by then
it was far too late.
Hughes wasn't a man who hesitated often, but listening to the panicked gibbering
on the other side of that door, he found himself strangely loathe to turn
the knob. The fact that his daughter was standing sentry between him
and the door had nothing to do with it. Really.
Beside him, Gracia cleared her throat, one hand resting on her stomach as
if she'd felt the new baby kick already. Of course, she did that every
time Alicia got up to mischief these days. When he'd asked why, she
said it was to remind herself to quit while she was ahead. "Alicia,
honey...do you know why Edward's so upset?"
"We were just playing, mommy!" Alicia protested, turning huge green eyes
that fairly glowed with innocence on her mother. It probably wasn't
that bad...Ed was high-strung, after all.
"Playing what?" Gracia asked gently.
"Um...we were playing alchemists."
Gracia's eyes widened. "I thought Ed was taking a nap...?"
Alicia nodded reluctantly, peering up at both of them through her lashes.
Hughes winced. The eyes were one thing, but when she used the lashes
too, it was a fair indicator of trouble. Time for him to pull his own
weight in this discussion.
"And...why were you playing alchemists?" he asked, knowing better
than most how to get a female talking. Asking 'what' would only get
you so far. 'Why' could write a book.
"You said I could have a brother! But mommy says it's going
to be a little brother, and I wanted a big brother, like Ed and Al.
So I thought I could make one."
Hughes' jaw dropped as Gracia gasped, both of them struck speechless for
a moment.
"Make...one?" Gracia asked faintly.
Alicia nodded emphatically, a big grin stretched across her face. "Yeah!
I read Ed's notebook while he was sleeping, and I've seen how Al does it,
and it's just like the books I got from the boring library," she said, making
a face to remind them how she felt about being banned from First Branch where
her 'big brothers' and her 'Uncle Roy' got to play. "I wasn't trying
to make a brand new brother--making people is bad, unless you're a mommy.
I just wanted to copy him so we could have an Ed of our own."
"Copy?" Hughes managed after a few false starts.
"Only it asked for a lot of ingredients I didn't know," Alicia admitted with
a pout. "I had to imp...impro...."
"Improvise?" Gracia squeaked.
Alicia beamed. "That's it! See, it's equillivant trade."
Hughes shook his head, wide-eyed. If only he could blame this on Roy.
"'Equillivant?'"
"Uh-huh. If you want to make something, you have to use the same kind
of something to make it, and no take-backs. But see, if you want to
make something alive and you use something else that's alive--well it should
have worked...."
Hughes had a very bad thought. "Um...Alicia? Where's your pet
rabbit?"
Dropping her eyes, Alicia dug circles in the carpet with the toe of her shoe.
Hughes clapped a hand over his mouth. Since Gracia didn't nail him
in the ribs with her elbow, he supposed he'd done it quickly enough to look
properly horrified, not as if he was holding back a howl of laughter by the
narrowest of margins.
Ed was never going to forgive them. Especially not if Hughes took pictures.
"There's been an accident," Hughes began as soon as he opened the front door,
and though Roy kept his expression neutral, his pulse hammered with instinctive
dread. Eyes flicking past Hughes, he relaxed slightly when he caught
sight of Gracia and Alicia standing by the couch--although Gracia was unusually
pale, and Alicia's face was a portrait of misery.
"What kind of accident?" he asked slowly, looking back just in time to catch
Hughes' face twist in a confusion of expressions, from stifled hilarity to
honest consternation.
"It's Ed," Hughes admitted with a cough. "He's been...that is, Alicia
was...she's just a kid, Roy, she didn't know any better--although she must
be a genius to have done it! Wow! My daughter, the great alchemist!"
Planting a hand in the center of Hughes' chest, Roy pushed him out of the
way and stalked through the door, making a beeline for Gracia and reminding
himself to ignore the man, just ignore him, because setting him on fire never
helped. Gracia swallowed hard as he approached, and he tried
to amend his scowl before he started barking out questions, but he suspected
the attempt fell far short of the goal. He was just opening his mouth
to ask her--politely, he hoped--what they'd done to his...to the rather important
young man left in their care for less than half a day when something slammed
into his legs and grabbed on tight.
"I'm sorry, Uncle Roy! I didn't mean to, honest! Don't
be mad! I'll never do it again, never, ever, ever!"
Roy took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling for a moment before looking
down at the little girl currently attached at his hip. Soulful green
eyes magnified by tears, she was the epitome of remorse, and stronger wills
than his had crumbled beneath that face. Sighing, he dropped a hand
on her head and managed a strained smile. "I'm not mad," he lied, "but
what happened to Edward?"
"He ate Fluffles!" Alicia wailed and hugged him harder. Roy looked
up in shock. Ed didn't seem the type to go around killing and eating
people's pets, although with a father like Hoenheim, who knew? Gracia
shook her head quickly when he met her eyes.
So. If Ed hadn't killed Alicia's rabbit, and if the accident
had been an alchemical one, then....
Oh, surely not....
"Do you mean to say," Roy asked softly, "that Ed's been...merged with...?"
"We don't know," Gracia said guiltily. "He won't open the door.
Alphonse has been trying to talk him out for the last hour."
Hughes coughed again at his back, but Roy didn't dare look. He wasn't
sure himself whether the sight of his best friend trying not to laugh would
inspire him to join the man or murder him.
"Right," Roy said. "I'd better go talk to him."
Not that he expected to have any more luck than Alphonse, but never let it
be said that Roy Mustang walked away from a challenge. Especially if
he was sleeping with it.
"Please, brother! It can't be that bad--"
"Like hell it can't!" Ed shouted back from the other side of the closed door,
and Al sighed dispiritedly. His brother had a point, after all, and
they both knew it. It was an 'accident' that had lost Ed his leg and
Al his entire body, just like it was an 'accident' that had restored Al's
body a year ago. The Law of Survival applied very well to alchemy,
he thought glumly. Sometimes you're lucky, and sometimes you're lunch.
It was too bad no one had warned them rabbit was on the menu for the day.
"Look, whatever it is, I'm sure it can be fixed," he tried instead.
"If we reversed the process--"
"We don't even know if there was a process to reverse!"
"Well, we would if you'd just come out and talk to us...."
Ed didn't answer in words, exactly, but there was no way to misinterpret
it as agreement. Al thumped his head on the door a few times, gritting
his teeth. His brother could be so childish sometimes.
"I can transmute this lock, you know," Al warned without looking up.
"Try it, and there'll be another 'accident!'"
Banging his head again, Al pushed himself away from the door and threw up
his hands. "Come on, Ed! Even if you won't come out, why
won't you at least let me in?"
"Because I'm a freak!" Ed shouted back, his voice crackling with panicked
mortification.
That was it. There was no way he was going to leave his brother alone
if he was thinking like that. Raising his hands to clap, Al
jumped a foot instead when a sharp voice rang out behind him with the weight
of command behind it.
"Are you still sulking? I expected more from you than frightening
little girls and worrying their parents. Oh, poor Edward--no one's
ever been transmuted unexpectedly before, have--"
Al was too busy being shocked at the Colonel's tone to watch for the guest
room door opening, so when a red-sleeved arm shot past him, he staggered
back in surprise instead of grabbing hold of it. The next thing he
knew, the Colonel was being dragged through the door, and he wasn't sure
what worried him most--that the man was letting himself be dragged, or the
cocky grin the Colonel gave him just before the door slammed shut again.
Well, hell.
"Bro-ther!" Al yelled, pounding on the door with his fist. "That's
not fair! I could be mean and abusive too, you know!" Ed didn't
even answer this time, and Al couldn't hear so much as a peep from inside.
"I'm really feeling loved, here!"
Nothing. Fine. They could sort it out themselves.
And to think he'd bothered to keep a straight face when Hughes explained
the problem to him.
Dragging the Colonel inside, Ed swung him around and pushed him hard up against
the door to close it, fisting both hands in the man's uniform. "If
I even see a hint of a smile from you," Ed snarled, "I won't be the
only one with a new look."
He almost wished Roy would smirk at him--it would have been better than the
grave expression on the man's face, the one that meant actual trouble.
Besides, then he'd have an excuse to punch the man, and Roy damned well deserved
it. Ed knew better than most what it was like to have your body changed
against your will, and implying otherwise....
Oh, hell, had he just upset his brother?
"Al's worried about you," Roy said as Ed froze, using that intermittent
telepathy of his to set Ed's newest fear to rest. "He was about to
try the lock anyway before I stepped in."
"Fuck," Ed muttered, shoulders slumping though he didn't loosen his hold
on Roy's uniform. "I don't want him to see me like this. I'm...I'm
a...."
"Chimera," Roy said succinctly, eyes never wavering from his.nEd growled.
"Chimera, hell. I'm a fucking joke!; I mean, if I had
to be a chimera, why couldn't it be something cool and dangerous--and taller?
Look at me--I'm...it's...."
Roy didn't say anything for a long moment, but his eyes went up...and up.
Moments later the man's hand followed, and Ed nearly jumped out of his skin
when he felt fingers stroking the silky fur of his long....white...ears.
"Cute," Roy murmured, so seriously it didn't quite register at first.
"You're cute like this."
"Argh!" Ed howled, fingers clenching white as he shook, teeth bared
with rage, but Mustang's other hand was smoothing down his stomach in slow,
soothing passes, and it felt so good, so hypnotic, so....
"Hm. I always thought it was a myth."
"Un?" Ed managed blearily, slumped against Roy's shoulder with his eyes half-closed.
Something was knocking at the back of his mind for attention, something about
calming a rabbit by petting its stomach, but--
"Nothing. Feel up to looking at this problem logically?"
"Mmm...."
Roy chuckled. His breath was warm on Ed's ears, and he burrowed closer
without thinking, wanting Roy to keep petting. It distracted him from
the twitching of his ears and the maddening urge to dig, and...other
things. Admittedly, Roy and sex seemed to go hand in hand, but even
so....
The hand that wasn't petting his stomach stroked his ears for a moment then
slid down his back, pulling him closer. "So," Roy purred softly, "what
other stories about rabbits are true?"
Ed had no idea, but he was almost looking forward to finding out.
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