Fic - "And I Shall Be Thy Succor"

[raj]

Title: And I Shall Be Thy Succor
Author: raja815
Characters/Fandom: Jean Havoc and Roy Mustang, Fullmetal Alchemist
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3067
Warnings: Manga spoilers for chapter 40. Hurt/comfort.
Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist is © Hiromu Arakawa. I will make no capitol benefit from this.
Author's Notes: Mangaverse fic. For prompt #8, "Tears," at 10_hurt_comfort. A fic I started last November (and shelved because chapter 89 made me too happy to go on with it at the time. XD) Title based on a fake bible verse from my favorite British sitcom, "The Vicar of Dibley." (It was part of a very amusing running gag, but I always thought that fake verse was a lot more beautiful and evocative than most of the real ones.) Also, I don't see them being romantically involved in this fic, but it can work as the first step in a buildup toward a romance, if you like. :)



As soon as he heard the boot heels, Havoc did his best to pull himself out of his slump and be cheerful for Mustang’s visit. Depressed and uncomfortable as he was, he was afraid if he let on how miserable he felt, Mustang wouldn’t come back. The Colonel had way too much to worry about without having Havoc’s miseries about pressure sores, kidney infections, ugly nurses with incredibly cold hands, aches and pains from physical therapy, and any of the other half a million little unpleasantries that didn’t sound like much at all until you took into account that Havoc hadn’t even a hope of escaping them anytime soon, piled onto him as well. And Havoc was too lonely to risk Mustang, who he knew only came at all out of a misspent sense of obligation, deciding to stay away. He’d been between roommates for three weeks now, his ma couldn’t afford the train fair more than once or twice a month, and Heymans was far away in the South. Sometimes Havoc thought, only half-jokingly, that if Mustang's visits stopped he might kill himself.

He’d known it was Mustang coming, even though he hadn’t expected him, when the other man was still halfway down the hall. It was the heavy slap of the military boots against the hallway tile that gave him away. Havoc had gotten to be quite an expert in the sound of footwear over the last four months; the brisk whispery squeak of nurses’ rubber shoes, the doctors’ arrogant but somehow exhausted strides in their thick leather soles, the nervous patter of high heels from visiting wives and mothers. Very few military personal ever came to the long-term wing during visiting hours, and none of the others that did had the cadence of Mustang’s poised, purposeful stride. It always gave him a moment of warning, just enough time to hide the tired despondency and put on a halfway cheerful grin.

“Hey there, Chief,” he said when the doorknob turned and Mustang entered. He immediately felt a little pang; calling Mustang ‘chief’ didn’t feel quite right anymore, now that he was no longer working for him. A taken pawn can’t bow to his king.

“Hello, Havoc,” Mustang returned. He smiled, reveling a few new tired wrinkles around his eyes. “Doing all right?”

“Fine, just fine.” The lie felt like bile in the back of his throat. “They say I’m making real good progress.” They did say that, actually, but it seemed doctors and laymen had very different ideas about what ‘real good progress’ was, which was sometimes the most depressing thing of all.

“Good, good. I’m glad to hear it.” But he didn’t ask for elaboration. Havoc suspected Mustang himself had an idea about the relative nature of the term ‘progress.’ His interior happiness meter slipped another notch or two.

“How about you? Saved the world yet?” He meant it as a joke, a callback to the good-natured banter and teasing that had once been their conversational modus operandi, but it came out sounding stark and sarcastic in the bleak little hospital room. He immediately regretted it.

“I’m working on it.”

“Anyone can do it, it’ll be you.” Still sounding more bullying than jocular, and this time Roy actually winced a little before he could cover it.

You're really on a role here, Havoc, Havoc thought, he still thinks it’s his fault Brigadier General Hughes is pushing up daisies, why don’t you make fun of him for that, too? A wave of frustrated sadness bubbled up from Havoc’s stomach, and he bit his lips together. All he wanted was a few minutes of feeling for god’s sake normal with Mustang again, why couldn’t he do it?

Mustang, for his part, seemed to understand the effort, and made himself smile.

“Heymans told me that the last time he was here, they were trying to wean you onto filtered cigarettes. I see it’s made you even sunnier than I could’ve hoped.”

“Actually, they gave that up. One of the night nurses said she was afraid I was going to bite her.” Still sounding flat instead of funny, but at least he no longer felt like he was verbally slapping the only visitor he’d had in a week. “If I’m only getting one smoke a day, it better be a man’s smoke, ’s all I’ve got to say.”

“I figured as much.” Mustang dug around in the pocket of his overcoat, which Havoc realized with another little pang he hadn’t bothered to remove yet, a sure sign of a quick, cursory visit. Not that Havoc blamed him. Not even a little bit did he blame him. “By the way, I brought you something. I wanted a smoke with my coffee this morning, and there’s no way I’ll finish the pack. Would you like it?”

His hand emerged from his pocket, holding a mostly full pack of cigarettes, the cheapest, most tar-ridden variety sold in Amestris, which also happened to be Havoc’s brand of choice. In fact, there was exactly one cigarette missing from the otherwise immaculate pack, and Havoc would’ve bet a thousand sens that the one missing cigarette was whole and unsmoked in Roy’s other pocket. Probably along with a receipt from the newsstand directly next to the hospital, so new its ink was still smudgy.

Havoc looked at the package, expecting immediate happiness and relief at the familiar label, and got neither. In fact, to his horror, he suddenly felt ready to cry. Not from gratitude or anything like that—he doubted men ever really cried for such a silly reason as that, or at least not men who’d slogged their way through seven years of military training and service—but from any number of small, painful facts that swelled up in his throat like blisters. The fact that he couldn’t be normal with his friend anymore. The fact that said friend had to disguise the fact that he’d gone out of his way to do a nice thing. The fact that he’d gone out of his way to do a nice thing in the first place. The fact that he didn’t even know what to call Mustang anymore since their relationship had changed so fundamentally. The fact that he was so constantly tired, embarrassed, homesick and lonely that he didn’t even notice it anymore unless someone who wasn’t all those things showed up. And most of all, the fact that he was such a useless piece of leftover humanity that even the sight of a package of cigarettes couldn’t make him smile for real.

“Sure, thanks,” he made himself say. “Can you light one up for me? They won’t let me have a lighter.”

Roy’s hand dropped and his eyebrows knit in an expression Havoc immediately hated himself over. It was a guilty, compassionate look meant for both of them in equal measure.

Don’t pity me, Havoc wanted to snap, don’t you dare pity me. I can’t take it. I can take anything else, I think I’ve proven that, but for god’s sake, Sir, I can’t take your fucking pity. But at the same time part of him did want it. The little part of him that cried out for comfort and was so constantly denied was fairly screaming for pity, which was thin and sickly comfort but better than no comfort at all, and Havoc’s mind was such a mess that he wanted to put his pillow over his face, like a child in the throes of night terror.

“Havoc?” Mustang said. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Desperate, Havoc pulled the first thing out of his head that even halfway resembled a coherent thought. “My back. Just my back. I’m stiff from therapy, and my shoulders are cramped. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be cranky.”

He turned his head, wanting to hide his face as casually as possible for as long as possible. The hot, prickling feeling in his eyes worried him; he was afraid if things kept on like this, he wouldn’t be able to keep himself under control. Focusing his attention on the small stack of dog-eared adventure fiction magazines that he read during quiet hours when he couldn’t have the radio on helped a little, until he remembered that most of these magazines, with their diverting stories of excessive violence and unabashed sexuality, had been gifts from Heymans and Mustang. Feeling suddenly panicky again, he turned back the other way.

While he’d been focusing on the poorly painted pirate ship on the foremost magazine’s cover, Mustang had taken off both his outer overcoat and his uniform jacket. They hung like retired flags, folded neatly over the back of the visitor’s chair against the wall beside him. Now he was unbuttoning the cuffs on the starched white shirt he always wore beneath it, rolling them up, baring his wrists. The strip of skin revealed between his white gloves and his white cuffs looked dark and almost tanned by comparison.

“Where is it hurting you?” He said simply.

For a moment Havoc didn’t dare speak at all. He’d found he had a sudden achy lump in his throat to contend with as well as his hot, stinging eyes.

“Shoulders… b-… between,” he finally managed, in a gruff, strangled voice.

To Havoc's amazement, as Mustang nodded he began to strip off his gloves. He’d so rarely seen his commander’s hands without them that he felt a sudden surge of voyeuristic discomfort, as though he’d unwittingly caught a female friend changing her shirt. The hands were even paler than his wrists, their whiteness marred only by a few thin, pinkish, strangely circular lines of scar. The scars that saved my life, he realized, his head whirling. He’d never seen them before; they’d been bandaged when they’d been hospitalized together, and in the small period of lucidity he’d retained from the night in the warehouse basement—the moment of painful, burning shock that had woken him from near death—the cuts had been fresh and running with blood. He watched them, confused, aching, until Mustang was right beside him and his hands moved out of Havoc’s view.

He should have expected what was coming, but he was so blindsided by the sight of Mustang’s hands that the sudden feel of them against his neck was a complete shock.

Rigid with surprise, for a moment he couldn’t even draw breath. His former Colonel’s fingers, their pads hard and calloused, braced themselves against his shoulders. His thumbs moved back and down, in circular, meandering lines, down the triangle of skin the hospital pajamas and the dangling hood of his bed jacket left exposed.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been touched skin to skin.

The doctors, nurses, and orderlies wore rubber gloves as insurance against the infinite number of infections one could pick up in the hospital at all times, even when they bathed him. When his mother visited she wore her best kid leather dress gloves, the ones with the black pearl buttons, even as she squeezed his hand and touched his cheeks. Heymans still offered the same affectionately manly punch to Havoc’s shoulder he always had, but now the fabric of the bed jacket obscured the skin of his old friend’s knuckles. It all made perfect sense; there had never been a conscious denial. But the moment he felt Mustang’s fingers, the warm roughness of their skin raking over the tiny hairs on his neck and making it tingle, the realization of how deprived he’d felt came down like a fist into his stomach.

“Is this where?” Mustang asked, rubbing in slow, even circles. His fingers were warming with their motion, and it made their roughness seem softer. “Havoc? Is this where?”

Havoc couldn’t answer. All his control, all his efforts to put on if not a happy face then at least an impervious one, were crumbling at the feel of Mustang’s hands. To his horror he felt tears welling in his eyes. He could barely believe it. Through everything else, the first doctor telling him he’d never walk again; his mother weeping into his chest; the pain of physical therapy; the humiliation of having to be taught a new way to do everything from putting on a pair of socks to taking a piss; even the moment Mustang had left him behind, which had always been the worst of it, he’d kept himself in check. Even when he’d come close, in the end he’d always bitten back the shame of tears. Not since he’d been a kid of seven, when he’d been spanked by his uncle for shamefully bawling when one of his cousins had been teasing him, had he ever let himself cry where anyone else could see.

And here he was, losing it at the feeling of a halfway friendly hand against his back.

Since he had no means of escape left, he bent forward, looking into his lap. It was the only way he could even hide his face. He held his eyes wide open even as his vision blurred, knowing that squeezing them closed would make them spill over. He balled his hands into fists around the thin green hospital blanket.

“Havoc?” Mustang said again. “Does that feel any better?”

Havoc made himself nod. The motion was enough to break the surface tension, and the first tear—heavy, fat, and disgraceful—rolled down his cheek and splattered the pale green blanket pooled in his lap with a darker circle of moisture.

Shit, he thought, fuck…

But there was no more stopping it, and all at once the tears were falling thick and fast, his shoulders shaking, his nose running. His breath went choppy as he fought to at least keep the sobs stillborn. Mortified almost to the point of physical illness, the hot ache in his throat bloomed outward and spread over his face. Part of him wanted to push Mustang away, but he couldn’t have. Not only would doing so rob him of the thin privacy of keeping his face pointed down and hidden, he felt if Mustang left now he might never get a hold of himself again.

For a while he was afraid Mustang might say something about it, maybe admonish him for being so embarrassingly womanish, or worse, ask him what was wrong and make him talk about it. But though Mustang had to have noticed, he said nothing. He only kept up his massage, occasionally moving his hands to rub a different spot. Occasionally he’d murmur, “is it sore here?” or “does this feel better?” but Havoc had long since realized he wasn’t speaking to get an answer, but rather to cover the awkward silence and Havoc’s increasingly shaky breathing.

Havoc didn’t know how long it went on. In some ways it felt like weeks, in others only seconds, but it couldn’t have been more than a half-hour at the very most and likely much less, because he hadn’t heard any nurses outside in the hallway moving around to administer vital sign checks and medications to the other patients in the wing. However long it was, eventually the fit of weeping began to taper off. The tears stopped, his nose quite running, and last of all, his breathing began to slow down and even itself out again. He felt exhausted, empty, and faintly nauseous, as if he’d just been sick. The patch of blanket below him was visibly sodden with spent tears. Ashamed at the sight of it, he closed his eyes and took a long, slow, steadying breath.

Mustang kept rubbing a few minutes longer, his touches growing lighter as Havoc relaxed. Finally, he lifted his hands and placed them gently on Havoc’s shoulders, offering a gentle squeeze. Havoc swiveled his head, looking at the remnants of the array scarred into the hand, and shocked himself by leaning sideways, resting his hot, wet cheek against the pinkish white lines of the long-healed wound. Even more shocking, Mustang didn’t pull away; rather, he lifted his other hand and smoothed Havoc’s sweaty bangs away from his forehead.

“Does your back feel a little better now?” He asked.

“Yeah,” Havoc muttered, voice still too wavery for anything louder. “Thanks, boss.”

“That’s all right, Havoc.”

The lingering feelings of sickness and itchy heat the crying had left in Havoc’s stomach and face were leeching away, replaced with heavier sensations of sleepiness.

“I have a few minutes before I need to leave for a meeting nearby,” Mustang said, voice low and halfway to a whisper as Havoc’s eyes were beginning to cool and droop. “Would it be all right if I sat here until then? Otherwise I’ll have to walk all the way to my office just to come straight back.”

“Yeah,” Havoc said, "that'd be okay." He felt the soft creak of bedsprings and heard the harsh sigh of the rubber mattress cover under the sheet as Mustang sat down, not on the visitor’s chair, but just beside him on the edge of the bed. He did not move the hand from under Havoc’s cheek, but he did move the other, settling it around Havoc’s neck until he held his head cradled against his chest. The faint thrum of Mustang's heart was soothing, like the contented purr of a kitten. He brushed Havoc’s stubbly cheek once with one long finger, smearing the last of the moisture away, and settled into stroking the clipped hair above Havoc's ears.

At any other time, Havoc never would’ve allowed it. He knew they made a damning picture for anyone who might walk in the door and see them like this, with his former Colonel holding him against his body like they were a couple of queers. But just now he didn’t care what he looked like to anyone else.

He didn’t care one little bit.