Fic - "I Got Time"
Oct. 16th, 2007 04:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rajTitle: I Got Time
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
raja815
Pairing/Fandom: Jean Havoc/Roy Mustang, Fullmetal Alchemist
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1748
Warnings Descriptions of illness and violence. A bit of fluff.
Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist is © Hiromu Arakawa. I will make no capitol benefit from this.
Author's Notes: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ficalbum for "Fallen Angels." Lyrics here. Set pre-series during the Ishbal rebellion, could be considered AU.
He was sick. God, he was sick. He hadn’t even opened his eyes yet and he was writhing on the filthy cot, fingers squeezing the hem of his boxer shorts, eyelids trembling with the effort to keep clenched shut. Nausea washed over him in crippling waves, intensifying when the rotten smell of the medical tent—of blood and piss and vomit and wounds and unwashed bodies all festering in the desert heat—hit his nostrils.
Heatstroke? Fever? Hallucinating? Fluids, lots of fluids—
Roy had heard the words without understanding them when Maes had carried him in—how long ago? Minutes, hours, days, weeks?—and left him on one of the corner cots. He remembered the battle, he remembered collapsing into the sand, he remembered the dizziness that crept up behind his eyes and made him sob, and then dimly the frazzled medics giving him sips of some kind of liquid before rushing off to the hundred others who needed them more urgently, and nothing else after that but spiraling darkness and scattered bits of terrifying dreams.
I’m sick. I’m so sick. I’m so sick and I’m scared and I’ve done horrible things—
The light that seemed to burn his eyes even through the closed lids intensified as the tent flap was opened, bringing with it a draft of hot wind that stirred the rank smells, mixing the odor of the medical tent with the fatty, ashy smell of burned bodies that still clung to his own skin. His stomach rolled and, like a premonition, from across the tent he heard someone retch.
His stomach wrenched again and a horrible taste came into his mouth. He tried to swallow it down but couldn’t seem to control his throat. He grimaced, gritting his teeth together, and held his breath. Anything to block the stench and stop the nausea. He didn’t want to vomit; it would hurt, burn his chapped skin, and he’d have to lie in it in the boiling heat until someone could spare a moment to come clean him off. It would putrefy and reek and there’d be flies and he’d be humiliated…
Don’t let me be sick. Please don’t… I’m a man now and I’m a soldier and please don’t let me puke in my bed like a kid…
But he didn’t feel much like a soldier. He felt like a sick, scared boy and he cursed the day he’d first traced a transmutation circle in the margin of his father’s encyclopedia.
Roy could hear faint screaming and combat, and the waves of heat felt like the washes of hot air from the wall of flames he’d put up over the Ishbalan insurgents. A miserable moan wrenched at his throat, but he didn’t dare open his mouth to voice it, resulting in a strangled grunt. The room spun, his limbs trembled, his stomach rolled, and the grit of ash and burned fat slid against his fingers as he desperately clamped a hand over his mouth.
Make it stop. Oh, please, make it stop, I can’t take it…
And suddenly there were fingers—strange, big, blessedly cool fingers—grazing his forehead.
“Take a breath, boss. You’re not doing yourself any favors, holding it like that. Only make you sicker.”
He didn’t recognize the voice, but it seemed solid against the dizziness behind his eyes, gentle against his pain, and in his desperate weakness he trusted it completely. The fingers stroked down his forehead, over his burned and aching skin, and closed over his wrist and pulled his hand away. “Shh, s’okay,” the voice soothed when his lips curled into a painful, protesting grimace. “Just breathe.” And slowly, Roy did as he was told.
“That’s good,” the voice murmured, “that’s real good.” The fingers closed over Roy’s wrist, squeezed his pulse point between thumb and forefinger, and rotated gently. The motion was soothing, and Roy risked a deeper breath.
The air around him, while still far from fresh, had improved somewhat. The stranger had brought in both the faint hint of the cleaner air outside and the faintest edge of what might have been cigarette smoke, and while neither smell was exactly pleasant, it at least helped mask the rotten stench of the hospital air. He pulled in another deep, calming breath and to his immeasurable relief the nausea began to abate.
“Good,” the voice repeated. “You’re fine, Sir. Heatstroke’s nasty, but you’ll pull through.”
“Heatstroke,” Roy heard himself repeat in a barely discernable croak. That made sense; he’d spent hours in the sun… and the fire… but that thought made the nausea ripple again, so he pushed it aside. Instead, he focused on the fingers still rubbing his wrist and the sound of the voice.
“My roommate got it first day of basic, poor guy. Lots of guys in our unit did. I got pretty used to the heat from working at home, though. They got me in here to help in between my training sessions. Can’t get enough medics to stay, they’re pulling in anyone they think knows what he’s doing. Protocol’s all shot to shit… how you holding up, Sir? Any better?”
Much better, actually. So much better that he opened his eyes for the first time since waking up in the military hospital and, once he’d adjusted to the glare, looked up.
The source of the voice was a young man, probably still in his late teens… but then, Roy himself wasn’t really that much older. He was wearing the modified uniform of an enlisted man not yet officially finished with training—like he’d said, the military was getting desperate, pulling in any help it could. His hair had been cut short, but his bangs appeared to be growing back at a much faster rate, giving him an oddly shaggy appearance. The bridge of his nose was slightly pink with sunburn, and there were faint remnants of acne at his temples.
What really struck Roy, though, were the man’s eyes. Blue eyes were fairly rare in Amestris anyway, and this man’s had an unusual glint to them that made Roy think of water and coolness. When those eyes noticed Roy’s slowly opening ones, a lopsided grin, much too large for him, spread across his face.
“Hey,” he grinned, giving a strange little wave. “Must be better. Wasn’t sure if you could hear me, there, Sir.” He lowered Roy’s hand back to the cot, but when an odd noise emerged from Roy’s throat he seemed to think better of it, and resumed his circular rubbing. Instead he reached down with his unoccupied hand and brought up a metal cup. “Feel like drinking something? They told me I wasn’t s’posed to leave until you’d got some fluids in you. Left you alone too long as it is.”
As he spoke he lowered the cup long enough to help Roy roll to a slightly more upright position, then held it to Roy’s lips.
The liquid was cool and faintly sweet, and it banished the awful taste still lingering at the back of his throat. Relief washed through him, and he rose slightly, trying to gulp it faster, but the man pulled away with a gentle smile.
“Easy, boss. Gonna have it all back up if you do that. Slow, okay? All the time in the world.” He let Roy sip it, slowly at first, letting him take longer draws as they went, and all the while rubbing at Roy’s wrist. After a while, he let Roy take it from him, received a promised grunt that he wouldn’t gulp, and rubbed Roy’s face and chest carefully with a wet towel while Roy sipped, idly murmuring encouragements and assurances as he did so. When he finished, he grinned down at Roy again, gave his wrist a final squeeze, and laid it down on the cot beside him. He saluted and moved to stand.
“There, okay? You should be fine soon. Just sip on that for a while and—”
“Don’t go.” The liquid in he cup dribbled down Roy’s chin as his hand spasmed in a sudden panic. He caught the young man’s hand and gripped it tightly.
“What’s wrong, Sir?” He seemed suddenly concerned, taking the cup from Roy’s hand and peering down at him, glancing all up and down Roy’s face as though performing some sort of examination. “That stuff making you queasy again? I told them they didn’t mix it right—”
“No, I…” he started, and found he didn’t know what to say. The spiral of terror and guilt threatened at the edge of his mind, from where it had been held at bay the entire time the soldier had been at his side. But he didn’t know how to phrase it; not to someone who looked at him so kindly… much too kindly to know what Roy had done to the hundreds of people on the battlefield with a single flick of the hand he’d been rubbing so tenderly.
“I… I’ve done terrible things,” he whispered, wincing at how obtuse it sounded. He expected the other man to laugh—of course he’d done terrible things, it was a fucking war—but he didn’t. Instead he nodded slowly, returned the cup, and once again took Roy’s wrist between his fingers.
“Just rest for a while, Sir,” he murmured, and once again, Roy felt himself complying, eyes sliding closed as he swallowed the final drops of liquid. “Don’t worry. I got some time.”
---------------
“Roy? You okay, Roy?”
Jean’s concerned voice cut through the fog of fever and brought him back to the present. Not Ishbal, it wasn’t Ishbal. He was tucked into his own bed and the air was clean, and that was proof enough. He was sick, he was very sick, but it wasn’t Ishbal.
“Roy?” Jean repeated, and his hands were on Roy’s forehead, still big, still calloused, but after seven years no longer strange. His voice was deeper now, raspier after too much indulgence in his nicotine habit, but no less soothing. His eyes were still startling and blue, still cool like water, and even now he knew the truth they looked down at Roy no less kindly.
“Don’t you have to be at work?” Roy whispered, his sore throat not wanting to form the words. Jean smiled, held up a glass for Roy to sip, pulled back the blanket and curled up beside him. He wrapped his arms around him, massaging the aches in Roy’s back with his thumbs.
“Don’t worry,” he murmured. “I got time.”
Well, I was actually working on a PWP, and took a little break from it. During that break, I wrote this instead. XD; The plot is a little bit of a stretch, so it's a bit AU, but damnit, this bunny would not go away.
Comments are love!
Author:
raja815Pairing/Fandom: Jean Havoc/Roy Mustang, Fullmetal Alchemist
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1748
Warnings Descriptions of illness and violence. A bit of fluff.
Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist is © Hiromu Arakawa. I will make no capitol benefit from this.
Author's Notes: Written for
ficalbum for "Fallen Angels." Lyrics here. Set pre-series during the Ishbal rebellion, could be considered AU. He was sick. God, he was sick. He hadn’t even opened his eyes yet and he was writhing on the filthy cot, fingers squeezing the hem of his boxer shorts, eyelids trembling with the effort to keep clenched shut. Nausea washed over him in crippling waves, intensifying when the rotten smell of the medical tent—of blood and piss and vomit and wounds and unwashed bodies all festering in the desert heat—hit his nostrils.
Heatstroke? Fever? Hallucinating? Fluids, lots of fluids—
Roy had heard the words without understanding them when Maes had carried him in—how long ago? Minutes, hours, days, weeks?—and left him on one of the corner cots. He remembered the battle, he remembered collapsing into the sand, he remembered the dizziness that crept up behind his eyes and made him sob, and then dimly the frazzled medics giving him sips of some kind of liquid before rushing off to the hundred others who needed them more urgently, and nothing else after that but spiraling darkness and scattered bits of terrifying dreams.
I’m sick. I’m so sick. I’m so sick and I’m scared and I’ve done horrible things—
The light that seemed to burn his eyes even through the closed lids intensified as the tent flap was opened, bringing with it a draft of hot wind that stirred the rank smells, mixing the odor of the medical tent with the fatty, ashy smell of burned bodies that still clung to his own skin. His stomach rolled and, like a premonition, from across the tent he heard someone retch.
His stomach wrenched again and a horrible taste came into his mouth. He tried to swallow it down but couldn’t seem to control his throat. He grimaced, gritting his teeth together, and held his breath. Anything to block the stench and stop the nausea. He didn’t want to vomit; it would hurt, burn his chapped skin, and he’d have to lie in it in the boiling heat until someone could spare a moment to come clean him off. It would putrefy and reek and there’d be flies and he’d be humiliated…
Don’t let me be sick. Please don’t… I’m a man now and I’m a soldier and please don’t let me puke in my bed like a kid…
But he didn’t feel much like a soldier. He felt like a sick, scared boy and he cursed the day he’d first traced a transmutation circle in the margin of his father’s encyclopedia.
Roy could hear faint screaming and combat, and the waves of heat felt like the washes of hot air from the wall of flames he’d put up over the Ishbalan insurgents. A miserable moan wrenched at his throat, but he didn’t dare open his mouth to voice it, resulting in a strangled grunt. The room spun, his limbs trembled, his stomach rolled, and the grit of ash and burned fat slid against his fingers as he desperately clamped a hand over his mouth.
Make it stop. Oh, please, make it stop, I can’t take it…
And suddenly there were fingers—strange, big, blessedly cool fingers—grazing his forehead.
“Take a breath, boss. You’re not doing yourself any favors, holding it like that. Only make you sicker.”
He didn’t recognize the voice, but it seemed solid against the dizziness behind his eyes, gentle against his pain, and in his desperate weakness he trusted it completely. The fingers stroked down his forehead, over his burned and aching skin, and closed over his wrist and pulled his hand away. “Shh, s’okay,” the voice soothed when his lips curled into a painful, protesting grimace. “Just breathe.” And slowly, Roy did as he was told.
“That’s good,” the voice murmured, “that’s real good.” The fingers closed over Roy’s wrist, squeezed his pulse point between thumb and forefinger, and rotated gently. The motion was soothing, and Roy risked a deeper breath.
The air around him, while still far from fresh, had improved somewhat. The stranger had brought in both the faint hint of the cleaner air outside and the faintest edge of what might have been cigarette smoke, and while neither smell was exactly pleasant, it at least helped mask the rotten stench of the hospital air. He pulled in another deep, calming breath and to his immeasurable relief the nausea began to abate.
“Good,” the voice repeated. “You’re fine, Sir. Heatstroke’s nasty, but you’ll pull through.”
“Heatstroke,” Roy heard himself repeat in a barely discernable croak. That made sense; he’d spent hours in the sun… and the fire… but that thought made the nausea ripple again, so he pushed it aside. Instead, he focused on the fingers still rubbing his wrist and the sound of the voice.
“My roommate got it first day of basic, poor guy. Lots of guys in our unit did. I got pretty used to the heat from working at home, though. They got me in here to help in between my training sessions. Can’t get enough medics to stay, they’re pulling in anyone they think knows what he’s doing. Protocol’s all shot to shit… how you holding up, Sir? Any better?”
Much better, actually. So much better that he opened his eyes for the first time since waking up in the military hospital and, once he’d adjusted to the glare, looked up.
The source of the voice was a young man, probably still in his late teens… but then, Roy himself wasn’t really that much older. He was wearing the modified uniform of an enlisted man not yet officially finished with training—like he’d said, the military was getting desperate, pulling in any help it could. His hair had been cut short, but his bangs appeared to be growing back at a much faster rate, giving him an oddly shaggy appearance. The bridge of his nose was slightly pink with sunburn, and there were faint remnants of acne at his temples.
What really struck Roy, though, were the man’s eyes. Blue eyes were fairly rare in Amestris anyway, and this man’s had an unusual glint to them that made Roy think of water and coolness. When those eyes noticed Roy’s slowly opening ones, a lopsided grin, much too large for him, spread across his face.
“Hey,” he grinned, giving a strange little wave. “Must be better. Wasn’t sure if you could hear me, there, Sir.” He lowered Roy’s hand back to the cot, but when an odd noise emerged from Roy’s throat he seemed to think better of it, and resumed his circular rubbing. Instead he reached down with his unoccupied hand and brought up a metal cup. “Feel like drinking something? They told me I wasn’t s’posed to leave until you’d got some fluids in you. Left you alone too long as it is.”
As he spoke he lowered the cup long enough to help Roy roll to a slightly more upright position, then held it to Roy’s lips.
The liquid was cool and faintly sweet, and it banished the awful taste still lingering at the back of his throat. Relief washed through him, and he rose slightly, trying to gulp it faster, but the man pulled away with a gentle smile.
“Easy, boss. Gonna have it all back up if you do that. Slow, okay? All the time in the world.” He let Roy sip it, slowly at first, letting him take longer draws as they went, and all the while rubbing at Roy’s wrist. After a while, he let Roy take it from him, received a promised grunt that he wouldn’t gulp, and rubbed Roy’s face and chest carefully with a wet towel while Roy sipped, idly murmuring encouragements and assurances as he did so. When he finished, he grinned down at Roy again, gave his wrist a final squeeze, and laid it down on the cot beside him. He saluted and moved to stand.
“There, okay? You should be fine soon. Just sip on that for a while and—”
“Don’t go.” The liquid in he cup dribbled down Roy’s chin as his hand spasmed in a sudden panic. He caught the young man’s hand and gripped it tightly.
“What’s wrong, Sir?” He seemed suddenly concerned, taking the cup from Roy’s hand and peering down at him, glancing all up and down Roy’s face as though performing some sort of examination. “That stuff making you queasy again? I told them they didn’t mix it right—”
“No, I…” he started, and found he didn’t know what to say. The spiral of terror and guilt threatened at the edge of his mind, from where it had been held at bay the entire time the soldier had been at his side. But he didn’t know how to phrase it; not to someone who looked at him so kindly… much too kindly to know what Roy had done to the hundreds of people on the battlefield with a single flick of the hand he’d been rubbing so tenderly.
“I… I’ve done terrible things,” he whispered, wincing at how obtuse it sounded. He expected the other man to laugh—of course he’d done terrible things, it was a fucking war—but he didn’t. Instead he nodded slowly, returned the cup, and once again took Roy’s wrist between his fingers.
“Just rest for a while, Sir,” he murmured, and once again, Roy felt himself complying, eyes sliding closed as he swallowed the final drops of liquid. “Don’t worry. I got some time.”
“Roy? You okay, Roy?”
Jean’s concerned voice cut through the fog of fever and brought him back to the present. Not Ishbal, it wasn’t Ishbal. He was tucked into his own bed and the air was clean, and that was proof enough. He was sick, he was very sick, but it wasn’t Ishbal.
“Roy?” Jean repeated, and his hands were on Roy’s forehead, still big, still calloused, but after seven years no longer strange. His voice was deeper now, raspier after too much indulgence in his nicotine habit, but no less soothing. His eyes were still startling and blue, still cool like water, and even now he knew the truth they looked down at Roy no less kindly.
“Don’t you have to be at work?” Roy whispered, his sore throat not wanting to form the words. Jean smiled, held up a glass for Roy to sip, pulled back the blanket and curled up beside him. He wrapped his arms around him, massaging the aches in Roy’s back with his thumbs.
“Don’t worry,” he murmured. “I got time.”
Well, I was actually working on a PWP, and took a little break from it. During that break, I wrote this instead. XD; The plot is a little bit of a stretch, so it's a bit AU, but damnit, this bunny would not go away.
Comments are love!
