Chapter Text
It was with no small amount of surprise that, three days after the reopening of Amestrian military offices, four years after the veritable end of the world, Roy finds Edward Elric in front of his desk proclaiming that he’s here to accept Roy’s offer of employment, and that he wouldn’t have been so late if Roy had just sent him a damn telegram, and what’s with that look on his face, what, does Ed have something stuck in his teeth?
It’s not like Roy didn’t want Edward to take him up on his offer, but - the job Roy offered was, in all honesty, more of an overture towards money in exchange for vague services. An offer which Roy was entirely sure Edward would laugh at, one he wasn’t in the the thick of a post-battle adrenaline rush. It was an offer Roy made because he wanted Edward to be okay, especially after Al showed up looking so frail and sickly and happy.
Roy is a man who keeps his word, though, and if Edward wants this job, he can have it.
(Edward could ask for Roy’s life and he would give it without hesitation, but that’s not the point here.)
The point is, Roy is entirely unprepared for the sight of a 20-year-old Edward Elric standing in front of his desk with one hip cocked and one eyebrow arched, asking for a job he never showed any indication of wanting in the first place.
(Roy is also entirely unprepared for how attractive Edward is. The years spent away look good on him in a way that is maybe not entirely unexpected, but still hits Roy like a kick to the sternum. It might, maybe, take Roy the better part of an entire minute to shift his world-view to include an Edward that looks like that, to re-configure his self-control to prevent himself from staring dreamily at Ed’s elbow-length, spun gold hair, or his amber eyes, or the way his automail fingers are nervously, delicately, tracing the length of his flesh arm from wrist-bone to elbow -
See? Roy stopped himself. This will be fine. Everything will be fine.)
“You gonna give me a uniform or not, Bastard?” Edward asks, sardonic smirk curling his mouth up at one corner. He’s still stroking his arm, metal fingers curling around his wrist and giving a little twist before trailing back up to his elbow and back down and - and - it’s obscene is what it is.
With a snap, Roy shuts the folder on his desk and places his pen down beside it. He doesn’t look at Ed when he waves a hand and says, “Colonel Hawkeye will have you outfitted.”
That he feels ferociously proud of himself for how nonchalant he sounds is probably sad, but - well. Roy left his pride on Riza’s doorstep many moons ago, and he knows by now to take his wins where he can get them.
~
In retrospect, getting Edward outfitted in military blues was… an oversight.
“Wow, really Boss? Ed’s back?” Havoc asks, tipping himself until he’s balanced on the back wheels of his wheelchair. He likes to challenge himself to do it with no hands - it ended in a number of undignified sprawls in the beginning, but he’s been pulling it off with impressive consistency as of late.
“It seems that way, yes,” Roy says, feigning casual indifference. He’s quite good at it, he’s told, but apparently his staff is immune to his facades, because Breda scoffs in the corner, and Havoc outright laughs, even while still holding himself carefully balanced in the air.
“Ed’s what, twenty now? It’s hard to imagine him as anything but a kid, even if he never really acted like one,” Fuery muses from his corner of the room.
“Is he still short?” Falman asks from where he is perched on the corner of Breda’s desk.
Does anyone on his staff ever work when Hawkeye isn’t present to supervise their productivity?
Not that he’s one to talk. He is, after all, out here with his staff instead of in his office dealing with the veritable mounds of paperwork that have become his responsibility since the coup-turned-end-of-the-world, when he decided to create an electoral government from scratch to ensure military monarchies would become a myth of Xerxian proportions.
(Considering his experiences with Edward and Alphonse, maybe Xerxes is a bad example. Those myths turned out to be entirely too true for Roy’s tastes.)
The point is, the reason he’s out here rather than in his reasonably comfortable office is definitely because he’s avoiding paperwork, and definitely not because he’s waiting to see what Edward looks like in military dress uniform.
(Edward has never worn blue in Roy’s presence. It’s entirely likely that Edward has never worn blue at all, ever, even before he knew what the military was, or when the association with the military’s authority would have been beneficial to his more humanitarian efforts. That refusal to conform to the Amestrian status-quo is a large part of the reason he was so effective as the People's Alchemist, and that awful red jacket has since become a symbol of something much larger. As much as Roy jokes that he wishes he would have stayed blind, if only to avoid regularly laying eyes on that monstrosity of a crimson pea-coat, Edward and that jacket are so wrapped up in each other that, even all these years later, any slip of red on the street has the tight line of Roy’s shoulders relaxing instinctually.
So, despite its many faults, that red jacket is a comforting reminder of Edward’s frustratingly tenacious nature, and seeing that awful crimson eyesore in his office was more of a relief than Roy will ever admit out loud. It was a reminder that Edward would never change, not really, even if he had grown up. And he had grown up. Wherever he had been before he came back to Amestris was good for him (Xing, Roy thinks he remembers Winry saying). Edward looks confident, comfortable in himself, and though that red jacket is the same as it’s always been, the shoulders that wear it are broader, the arms that fill it are larger, the jaw above it is sharper -)
“Boss?” Havoc prompts, a glint in his eyes. It’s… it’s insubordination, is what it is.
“I… don’t recall,” is all Roy has for an answer, because for all he apparently paid attention to the ways in which Edward changed, Roy never actually noticed whether he grew taller.
“Uh huh,” is Havoc’s opinion on that, and Roy has to turn his head towards the window to hide how the tips of his ears go red. By the way Havoc snickers behind him, his deflection fails spectacularly, but it’s the effort that counts.
“Well, the General has always had a thing for blondes,” Breda points out from the part of the room Roy is decidedly not looking at anymore, and Roy twitches before he’s able to physically restrain himself from repeatedly headbutting the nearest available surface.
“Aren’t Generals supposed to be respected by their teams?” Roy mutters, just barely loud enough for his team to hear. “Aren’t subordinates supposed to gratefully defer to their commanding officers? At the very least, they aren’t supposed to personally attack their superiors with incriminating details about their personal lives.”
“What, we’re supposed to respect you now? Shit, maybe I should quit while I’m ahead,” comes Edward’s voice from the doorway, and Roy can’t help the way his head snaps around to look towards his voice.
Even so, it’s Riza that Roy sees first, standing at attention. It is significantly more difficult than it should be to keep his eyes on her as she speaks, rather than letting his eyes skim over her in an attempt to find Edward. “Major Elric has been outfitted with military blues, sir, and as of this moment he is complying with all of the appropriate dress codes of his rank.”
What she’s not saying is that she most likely had to threaten Edward with bodily harm to get him into this strict uniform, and any uniform-related insubordination that happens in the future is neither her responsibility nor her fault.
The faint blush across her nose and high on her cheeks says something far different, though, and it’s not until Roy actually gives in and looks at Edward that he understands.
Edward’s hair - still braided, even now - has been twisted into a tidy bun at the back of his head, leaving his impressive jawline and cheekbones on display in a way that is… unprecedented.
The uniform itself is just as striking as the hairstyle, in a way that leaves Roy more or less desolate. It was a lamentable, luckless truth that Edward was attractive even in that heinous red eyesore, and Roy knew - he knew - that military blues would only make his situation more difficult. Denial is such a sweet mistress, though, and she was so sure that Roy would be fine if he just didn’t think about it.
(Military uniforms create such a flattering aesthetic that even the dustiest blocks of coal have become diamonds by donning the blues. And Edward… he was already well on his way to becoming a diamond.)
Roy is suddenly overcome with the urge to find the on-call tailor and thank them for their service (or to weep at their feet, whichever happens first). They are an essential member of the military mechanism, after all, and they should be appreciated more. With money, or perhaps medals. Many, many medals. One such medal would be dedicated to the way the uniform sits across Edward’s shoulders and cinches in at his waist, another to the way the pants hug his thighs and crease gently at the ankle.
Edward isn’t much taller than Riza, even all these years later, but his presence fills the room in a way that is borderline suffocating; his smirk is all rebellion even as he stands at perfect attention, chin raised just so, big gloved hands folded neatly in front of him.
(Roy wants to compare Edward to Hohenheim, wants to find similarities in the breadth of their shoulders and the stubborn tilt of their jaws, but it seems a shame to do so when Hohenheim was such a… complicated figure in Edward’s life. Maybe he could find Trisha in the tilt of Edward’s eyes, in the slope of his cheekbones, in his delicate wrists, but, well. Neither comparison would be welcome, and they pale in the face of what Edward has become.)
(Dramatically - and though Roy is creative enough to concoct a situation like this - he will make a fortune selling dime-store romance novels if this whole military thing doesn’t pan out - he emphatically did not make this up:
The sun breaks through the clouds outside just as Edward meets Roy’s eyes, and the shaft of sunlight that comes through the window makes Edward’s entire being light up like liquid gold. Without the masses of hair dangling in Edward’s face, his eyes are somehow more striking than they usually are. Maybe it’s because Edward has been gone for so long, but when Roy finally meets Edward’s eyes it feels like he’s been laid bare, or maybe it feels like coming home. Roy's soul is suddenly stretched and vulnerable, ready to be systematically studied at Edward’s leisure. Edward’s eyes, his hair, his skin, he looks like he’s glowing from within and it’s beautiful -
Roy swallows hard and keeps his face carefully neutral.)
“Holy shit,” Fuery breathes, hands stilling on whatever dials he’s constantly fiddling with.
Havoc’s front wheels finally meet the ground again with a sharp thump against the carpet, and lets loose a barely-audible wheezing sound.
Falman is, suddenly, standing very straight near Breda’s desk, and Breda - he could be made of stone for how still he is sitting.
Riza seems to notice the stunned nature of her team and exhales sharply out her nose, like she wasn’t also affected by Edward’s unconscious grace. She is unequivocally better than the rest of them, though, in every way, so it stands to reason that she would be able to regain her ironclad composure much more quickly than they could. “Edward, if you will follow me, I will show you to your desk.”
“What the fuck.” Havoc whispers as soon as Riza and Edward have left the room, incredulous.
“I know,” Roy answers quietly, already utterly defeated.