Ever After from the mpregverse that was never meant to be. For the timeline . . . Maes must be just five, not that he actually features here. Unbeta'd. Rating: PG-13 for cussing alone. Honestly very innocent. *glances at Ed and Roy* Innocent-ish. Disclaimer: They're Hiromu Arakawa's characters, all I own is the strange splicing of their genetics. Summary: Making it work, whatever it takes. He'd come so quickly to love these summer mornings waking up with her, from the very first one. A small foot running down his ankle, her stretch and wriggle in the sheets. The sun prodding eager fingers through the curtains, the day raring to get started, ecstatic with light, and her fingers scratched playfully at his cheeks, she whispered, "Shave," before she kissed him and smiled against his mouth. He kept a spare razor in her bathroom. In a strange way it was the most grown-up thing he'd ever achieved. There were always the hollow gauze-ghosts of stockings hanging over the edge of the bath to dry. He loved them, loved their tops and toes and seams. He loved her bottles of scent and that ugly flowered bag she kept lipsticks in. He loved Alisa in slip and stockings, blouse flapping open, clipping her hair back, pen in her teeth, "I have a piece due in in two hours, how do you always make me late-?" "It's my overpowering animal magnetism," he said, as she shimmied into a skirt and threw his uniform jacket at his head. "It's your deeply pathetic puppy dog eyes, I feel like I'm kicking a kitten if I say no." she snorted. And then, "You are coming this Saturday, then?" ". . . ah." This Saturday. The almost-argument over dinner, the increasing snippiness, this Saturday, driving into the countryside to see her mother. To see her mother. Ah. "'Ah'?" Alisa said, buttoning her blouse. "I . . . uh, I mean, I can see if I . . . uh." He hated when she glared like that. "Is there even any point in me asking for a simple yes or no?" "Well it's not - I mean, I have to check if-" "Oh my god," she snapped. He hated it when she snapped. "Yes or no, Jean, though if the question is 'do you have a pair' then clearly-" "Well, excuse me for taking two seconds to think and not working to your immediate schedule-" "To think about what, some excuse for weaselling out of meeting my mother?" "I - excu-? Weasel?" She'd stepped into her shoes, shrugged a jacket on, spritzed her throat with perfume while he was spluttering. "I think I can piece my answer together out of that," she snarled. "Lock the door behind yourself." The door banged behind her. And Jean stood, lost with his jacket in hand, quietly hating the summer morning outside the windows. * "Strictly speaking," Roy said, "this meeting was supposed to be about the state of the country, not your love lives." The pen wagged sulkily up and down in Havoc's mouth, Fury was still near tears because Breda had said he was completely giddy for the Xingian ambassador (and he had been, Roy thought with some weariness, for years) which had prompted him to explode with the announcement that he had never had one unchivalrous thought towards Miss Yao and he respected her greatly and Heymans stop laughing and Hawkeye had sighed, and then Falman had offered the information that the woman he was seeing had broken up with him because he couldn't see her on her birthday (he always spent Sunday cleaning his flat) and she had taken offence to the suggestion that they simply hold her birthday on a more convenient day. "I mean, why does she have to be so unreasonable?" Havoc said, pen cracking a little between his teeth. "I need more warning than that before I have to go face down her mother-" "-utterly professional and have never, never once have I-" Fury spluttered, so red Roy wondered if it hurt. "Women are deeply irrational," Falman murmured. Hawkeye finally glanced up from her papers, eyes narrowed at Falman. Breda was grinning like he hadn't had this much fun in years. "If we could perhaps put all this complete nonsense behind ourselves and get on with the business of the day-" Roy began. "Oh, of course we can't expect any sympathy from you," Havoc muttered, propping his head on his hands. "-a wonderful, intelligent, kind and thoughtful woman and I would never, never dream of-" "-from me?" Roy said, puzzled. "Kain, shut up." "-even looking at her with anything but the utmost respect and professional-" "Kain, shut up." "Well, why would you care about our love lives crashing and burning all around us?" Havoc said bitterly. "Yours is always sunshine and roses, it's hardly fair." Roy stared at him. "Roses? Do you honestly-?" "It's true, sir, the way Ed looks at you - what did you do to him? Have you been drugging him all these years?" Breda said, and Roy looked at him with his eyes narrowing from surprised to glaring. "Heymans." "Why do you always get all the luck? All the women you ever wanted and then-" "Now you're making me sound like some kind of . . ." "- Edward waiting at home for you every night and wagging his tail every time he sees you-" "-that's hardly -" "-but please don't ever tell him I said that," Havoc added quickly. Roy blinked at all the faces around the table, Fury's mouth working without words in restrained rage, Breda's lazy raised eyebrow, Havoc's sullen resentment, Falman's . . . unreadable face, Hawkeye's silent glare. "Do you honestly all think that my love life is some kind of fairy tale affair of endless happily ever after?" Silence. "You do all know Edward, don't you?" Roy said weakly. Everyone just continued staring at him. He took in a slow breath through his nose, sighed it out. "Vato, as soon as this meeting is over you will call your lady friend and tell her that this Sunday you will be escorting her to the opera and you will be sitting in the Fuhrer's box, it's not like Edward will ever agree to go with me. Jean, you will be going straight to the flower shop and you will be buying purple hyacinths, stop looking at me like that, you can usually guess a woman's favourite flower from her perfume. Kain, come the next diplomatic ball you will be escorting Miss Yao that is an order Fury and Heymans -" Roy paused. "I don't believe I have ever heard you speak of a significant other." "Married to the military, sir." Heymans said cheerfully. "Hawkeye and I will be old bachelors together in the military retirement home." "I'm afraid not," Hawkeye said, straightening her papers primly. "I'm engaged." Silence. "What?" Havoc said. "To who?" Heymans said. "Laurence, you did meet him at the last diplomatic breakfast." Hawkeye said. "Are we ever going to actually get on to the actual business of this meeting?" "Laurence -Laurence Eliot?" Breda said. "Laurence 'my family have been hanging around with the Armstrongs since they invented good breeding' Eliot? Laurence 'my father owns a quarter of the West' Eliot? Laurence who also happens to be really rather incredibly muscled and bronzed Eliot?" "That is his name," Hawkeye said briskly. And the corner of her mouth almost smiled. "Though it's closer to a third of the West, actually." "Were you actually planning on informing us?" Roy said, feeling a bit light-headed after all this. "I had assumed that you would all grasp what was happening when the wedding invitations arrived." ". . . well. Well. Well." He sounded like a stuck record. "Congratulations." "Thank you. And now could we perhaps move on to the rest of the country, sir?" * Ed was folding clean sheets into the airing cupboard, practised, almost military movements of snapping the sheet, folding once, folding twice, flipping over a final time and laying on the shelf. Roy stood a little further down the hallway, watching him in silence. He'd read to Maes, turned his nightlight on, left him to sleep, and now the evening was just for him and Ed, and . . . "Well?" Ed said, not even pausing between sheets. Roy took a slow breath. "When was the last time we went out together?" "Went out?" Ed's eyebrows folded to match the sheets. "Like teenagers?" "Went out like - I took you out somewhere, like . . ." Ed glanced across at him, arms full of bed linen, mouth quirked as he tried to work out what Roy was aiming at. "There was that stupid military thing a few-" "Not for work, nothing for work . . ." ". . ." Ed stared at him thoughtfully, suspicious sharp-soft golden eyes. "Does our wedding count?" "No," Roy said weakly. "Then I guess I don't remember. What's the problem, what are you getting at here?" "Am I a good husband?" Now his eyes widened, eyebrows shooting up as if filled with helium. "Well," he said, less sure now, and Roy loved still the husk on the edge of his uncertain voice. "You haven't walked out or fucked anyone else yet, so I'd say you've done alright." "Ed, I'm being serious." "I guess so'm I. What the hell is this about, Roy?" "I don't . . . know. I . . . was talking to some of the staff today, we were discussing . . . they seem to think we're living out some kind of fairy tale." He tried to smile. Ed just stared. "Hawkeye is engaged, by the way." That made him blink. "What? Who to?" "Laurence Eliot." "Who?" Roy sighed. Ed never read a newspaper, never remembered anyone he met at a diplomatic event. "He's incredibly wealthy, incredibly attractive, and actually a very charming and intelligent man." "Well," Ed said, "he'd better be, hadn't he? Huh. That's good though. I guess I'd better congratulate her next time I see her. And you're still staring at me funny, by the way." ". . . I do love you, Edward." . . . and slowly his face softened, and he smiled a little as he dropped the last little hea...
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