Fic - "Sticks and Stones"
Dec. 13th, 2007 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rajTitle: Sticks and Stones: Relief of Pain Triad
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
raja815
Character/Fandom: Roy/Havoc, FMA
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1927
Warnings: Illness, injury, some fluff.
Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist is © Hiromu Arakawa. I will make no capitol benefit from this.
Author's Notes: These are the results of three weeks worth of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
15_minute_fic prompts, with a self-imposed sub-prompt of hurt/comfort of physical pain. For prompt #1 "Injured," at 10_hurt_comfort. The fics are unrelated to each other except on a thematic basis. Individual titles and prompts are under the cut.
Taste Redux
Prompt: "Impose"
Note: A continuation of my old fic A Little Taste.
Havoc knew he really should’ve been sick of this by now. He’d never been all that keen on playing nurse, and surely any novelty would’ve worn off by the third day or so, and certainly after the third day he’d just lived through. Especially after some combination of pain medication and scrambled eggs—too much of one and not enough of the other, although exactly which combination it was still wasn’t clear—had left Havoc scrubbing vomit off his quilt and Roy groaning pitiful apologies with a pan propped up next to his mouth. Especially after Roy was so weak from the medication, puking, and pain that he couldn’t manage the short walk to the bathroom and Jean ended up kneeling on the floor by his bed, holding up an empty bottle and doing his best to look the other way while Roy damn near filled the thing to the brim. Especially after he’d spent the entire afternoon coaxing Roy to finish a glass of water so he wouldn’t dehydrate and pass out.
After a day like that, he should have been pacing the small apartment, biting on a cigarette and wringing his hands in an effort not to chuck his incapacitated Colonel out the window, near death experience be damned.
But he wasn’t. He wasn’t anywhere near that. In fact, the weird mix of relief, elation, and… well, affection that he felt whenever he saw his Colonel, hurt and sick but alive, hadn’t done anything but increase. He’d been smoothing the slightly frayed wool blanket he’d covered Roy with (the quilt was still drying) while the other man slept, noticing his skin and the way his eyelids still looked bruised, when he brushed a strand of his hair away and realized all at once that his skin was clammy with drying sweat after being sick all morning. He felt a sudden rush of guilt for not realizing sooner that his Colonel was probably uncomfortable.
So he heated water in his kettle and met Roy with soap, fresh bandages, and a nervous smile when the older man started to stir from his nap.
“Thought I’d kinda… help clean you up a little, before I change your bandages. If you want.” Havoc said, voice low, grinning but not quite masking a nervous tremor of his voice. “I don’t want you to itch and start rubbing your stitches.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Roy croaked in a drugged and sleepy grind of vocal chords. He gave a doubtful glance down to his bandaged hands. “I can try to take a bath…”
“Not for a couple more days. I don’t mind, Boss, really.” Havoc replied, and a strange look he couldn’t quite read flitted over Roy’s face. “Boss?”
There were a few moments of no reply, which made Jean nervous, and then Roy’s lips twitched into a grimace, which made him feel worse.
“Boss…?”
“I hate this,” Roy murmured, glancing down at the bandages and bruises, trying to clench his hands into fists and wincing in pain when he couldn’t. “I can’t stand being like this, I can’t stand making you—”
“Hey,” Jean tried weakly, “I don’t… I really, I don’t mind—”
“I hate this,” Roy said again, “I don’t want to—“ and he looked so miserable that Havoc did a stupid thing and leaned down and kissed him.
He knew it was stupid from the first spark of movement that made him drop the kettle and lean forward. Knew he shouldn’t do this, that it was going to make everything worse, told himself to stop but couldn’t, and found his lips pressed against Roy’s for the second time that week, tasting sweat and the faint bitterness of medication instead of blood or chocolate, chin itching from unshaved stubble, snaking a hand under his shoulders, losing it in heat of his body, stroking his hair and loving every greasy, tangled strand, afraid to stop because once the moment ended he’d have to face the consequences. Stupid, stupid, stupid…
He finally made himself pull back, afraid he’d been choking his Colonel. Warm water from the spilled kettle was soaking up from his knees, and the sensation battled the cold drop of his stomach. He dropped his eyes to watch the faded denim darken, afraid to look anywhere else.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled when the silence got too heavy. “I’m sorry, I—”
A blunt, scratchy pressure grazed his forehead and he looked up to see Roy’s bandaged hand hovering before him. It rested at his temple and pushed gently, not enough to force movement, but enough so that Jean moved on his own, leaning closer, down, until his head rested lightly on his Colonel’s shoulder and his eyes met Roy’s.
Nether of them said anything for a long while, but they looked, stared quietly and waited. Roy’s pulse thudded against Jean’s and gradually they evened out and matched each other. One of Jean’s hands stopped shaking enough for him to rest it on the portion of Roy’s chest he knew was uninjured.
The puddle Jean was kneeling in was all but cold by the time he dared to moved again, closing his eyes, parting his lips, tilting his chin sideways and upward. Roy met him halfway.
Behind the Bushes
Prompt: Shiver
Note: Episode 43 expanded scene.
The ground was spongy under his knees, and moisture from the moss and the moldering carpet of last year’s leaves soaked into his uniform. A twig from the large tree he was resting against was poking into the small of his back, and his hand from the wrist down was a pulsating mass of fractures, bloody bones and pain, but somehow none of that seemed to matter even half as much as it should have. Even the humiliation at his uncharacteristic misfire and the resulting trip to the hospital that would soon follow were buried at the moment.
Roy was kneeling in from of him, his own uniform likely becoming as equally mussed from its exposure to mulch, carefully steadying Jean’s hobbled arm with one hand. The other held a roll of gauze, unwinding it with slow precision around Jean’s hand, covering the cotton he’d already pressurized the wound with, wrapping the reddening strips of white over and over until his skin felt tight and his blood seemed to give up and stop soaking through. His actions were quick and controlled as always, but the fingers holding Jean’s arm were much too gentle for the Flame Alchemist’s normal brisk countenance.
The Colonel ripped the gauze with a quick snap of teeth that made Jean notice his lips and ignore the pain of the change in pressure as Mustang tied it off, leaned back, examined his effort, frowned. All at once, he ripped off another strand of gauze and tied it into a loop, slipping it under Jean’s hand and over his head. A small, warm shiver played at Havoc’s neck as Roy adjusted the knot of the jury-rigged sling, moving and settling it under Jean’s collar while rubbing his thumb in slow circles at the first bump of Jean’s spine.
“This should work for now,” he said, lowering Jean’s hand gingerly to hang at his chest. He met Jean’s eyes, not quite smiling, but with an almost imperceptible quirk of his eyebrows that was as good as, if not better.
Jean chuckled, the pain in his hand momentarily overcome, and grinned at the expression Roy’s eyes betrayed. “Thanks, Boss.”
“Don’t be so careless next time. I can’t baby-sit my men.”
“Of course, Sir. I’m sorry. Won’t let it happen again.”
“Well, you’d better not,” Roy said, and shoved his usual façade away for a few precious seconds and leaned forward to brush a kiss over his Lieutenant’s lips.
Cramped
Prompt: Forms
The temporary office space their unit inhabited while Fuhrer Bradley and his entourage set up camp in Mustang’s quarters was laughably small. So small that Breda had only half-jokingly suggested they clear out a broom closet and use that instead. He’d accompanied the words with a small hand gesture that ended up smacking poor Fuery, who was inching his way toward his seat at the time, in the face, which only lent credit to Breda’s claim.
The first day was bad, the second day was hell, and the third day defied description completely. The growing humidity in the area and the Colonel’s rather dismal mood after his mock battle with Fullmetal weren’t helping much, either. On the forth day, when Hawkeye approached with the usual stack of morning forms, plus what looked like five or six additional reams of paperwork, Havoc groaned.
“If you bring all those in here, there won’t be any room left for us!” But his protests fell on deaf ears as the First Lieutenant’s swift, efficient fingers ticked off his portion of the stack and piled it on the few square centimeters of tabletop he was currently calling his “workspace.”
“This isn’t even my department,” he grumbled. But he went to it anyway, further scowling as trying to write with the limited elbow space made his wrist ache. By lunch, his whole arm was a white-hot cramp of blinding pain. Writer’s cramp to end all writer’s cramps, and wouldn’t you know it would happen on the day he’d scheduled time at the practice range after his shift ended.
He hung back when everyone else squeezed out of the room, trying to rub some of the ache from his hand so he could at least unlock his hand enough to dig his lighter out of his breast pocket. He hadn’t succeeded in doing more than pressing in just exactly the wrong spot, making his whole hand explode in hot pain, when the door opened and the Colonel, clutching a mug of tea in one hand and a newspaper in the other, reentered.
Each was a strange a sight to the other; Mustang usually spent his lunches in one of the smaller cafes near base, in the company of some charming secretary or other, or else napping in the office supply closet, and Havoc always retreated to the large oak outside their usual office to chain smoke enough to get him through the afternoon.
They sort of stared, not moving or remarking, until another twinge of pain brought Havoc’s attention back to his wrist and he winced, gingerly pressing at the tortured joints, trying to force them to unfreeze.
“It won’t loose up,” he mumbled, half a complaint under his breath and half as some sort of explanation to his Colonel, who was still watching him from the door.
“I see,” Mustang responded, and Havoc winced as once again he hit the wrong spot and sent the muscles into spasm. He was waiting for this to pass with gritted teeth when a small clink of porcelain and the rustle of paper caught the edge of his attention, and all at once he found his cramped wrist under the touch of rough white gloves.
He didn’t say anything, just watched in somewhat shocked silence as Mustang pressed and kneaded. The white gloves were so scratchy, he mused, how did Mustang manage to write with them on? His fingers must bleed at the end of the day. No wonder he never does his paperwork…
“There,” Mustang said, and Havoc’s eyes widened as the cramp vanished, leaving his hand with the pin-and-needle tingling of returning blood that stung and itched in a pleasant sort of way. He flexed his fingers in wonder.
“Thanks, Sir,” he said, looking up in bewildered gratitude. Mustang shrugged.
“Don’t mention it, Lieutenant.” He opened his paper and took a long sip of tea.
Because there's no love like Roy/Havoc love when you're feeling down, as I've been over the last few weeks. Comments make my face smile.
Author:
raja815Character/Fandom: Roy/Havoc, FMA
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1927
Warnings: Illness, injury, some fluff.
Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist is © Hiromu Arakawa. I will make no capitol benefit from this.
Author's Notes: These are the results of three weeks worth of
15_minute_fic prompts, with a self-imposed sub-prompt of hurt/comfort of physical pain. For prompt #1 "Injured," at 10_hurt_comfort. The fics are unrelated to each other except on a thematic basis. Individual titles and prompts are under the cut. Taste Redux
Prompt: "Impose"
Note: A continuation of my old fic A Little Taste.
Havoc knew he really should’ve been sick of this by now. He’d never been all that keen on playing nurse, and surely any novelty would’ve worn off by the third day or so, and certainly after the third day he’d just lived through. Especially after some combination of pain medication and scrambled eggs—too much of one and not enough of the other, although exactly which combination it was still wasn’t clear—had left Havoc scrubbing vomit off his quilt and Roy groaning pitiful apologies with a pan propped up next to his mouth. Especially after Roy was so weak from the medication, puking, and pain that he couldn’t manage the short walk to the bathroom and Jean ended up kneeling on the floor by his bed, holding up an empty bottle and doing his best to look the other way while Roy damn near filled the thing to the brim. Especially after he’d spent the entire afternoon coaxing Roy to finish a glass of water so he wouldn’t dehydrate and pass out.
After a day like that, he should have been pacing the small apartment, biting on a cigarette and wringing his hands in an effort not to chuck his incapacitated Colonel out the window, near death experience be damned.
But he wasn’t. He wasn’t anywhere near that. In fact, the weird mix of relief, elation, and… well, affection that he felt whenever he saw his Colonel, hurt and sick but alive, hadn’t done anything but increase. He’d been smoothing the slightly frayed wool blanket he’d covered Roy with (the quilt was still drying) while the other man slept, noticing his skin and the way his eyelids still looked bruised, when he brushed a strand of his hair away and realized all at once that his skin was clammy with drying sweat after being sick all morning. He felt a sudden rush of guilt for not realizing sooner that his Colonel was probably uncomfortable.
So he heated water in his kettle and met Roy with soap, fresh bandages, and a nervous smile when the older man started to stir from his nap.
“Thought I’d kinda… help clean you up a little, before I change your bandages. If you want.” Havoc said, voice low, grinning but not quite masking a nervous tremor of his voice. “I don’t want you to itch and start rubbing your stitches.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Roy croaked in a drugged and sleepy grind of vocal chords. He gave a doubtful glance down to his bandaged hands. “I can try to take a bath…”
“Not for a couple more days. I don’t mind, Boss, really.” Havoc replied, and a strange look he couldn’t quite read flitted over Roy’s face. “Boss?”
There were a few moments of no reply, which made Jean nervous, and then Roy’s lips twitched into a grimace, which made him feel worse.
“Boss…?”
“I hate this,” Roy murmured, glancing down at the bandages and bruises, trying to clench his hands into fists and wincing in pain when he couldn’t. “I can’t stand being like this, I can’t stand making you—”
“Hey,” Jean tried weakly, “I don’t… I really, I don’t mind—”
“I hate this,” Roy said again, “I don’t want to—“ and he looked so miserable that Havoc did a stupid thing and leaned down and kissed him.
He knew it was stupid from the first spark of movement that made him drop the kettle and lean forward. Knew he shouldn’t do this, that it was going to make everything worse, told himself to stop but couldn’t, and found his lips pressed against Roy’s for the second time that week, tasting sweat and the faint bitterness of medication instead of blood or chocolate, chin itching from unshaved stubble, snaking a hand under his shoulders, losing it in heat of his body, stroking his hair and loving every greasy, tangled strand, afraid to stop because once the moment ended he’d have to face the consequences. Stupid, stupid, stupid…
He finally made himself pull back, afraid he’d been choking his Colonel. Warm water from the spilled kettle was soaking up from his knees, and the sensation battled the cold drop of his stomach. He dropped his eyes to watch the faded denim darken, afraid to look anywhere else.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled when the silence got too heavy. “I’m sorry, I—”
A blunt, scratchy pressure grazed his forehead and he looked up to see Roy’s bandaged hand hovering before him. It rested at his temple and pushed gently, not enough to force movement, but enough so that Jean moved on his own, leaning closer, down, until his head rested lightly on his Colonel’s shoulder and his eyes met Roy’s.
Nether of them said anything for a long while, but they looked, stared quietly and waited. Roy’s pulse thudded against Jean’s and gradually they evened out and matched each other. One of Jean’s hands stopped shaking enough for him to rest it on the portion of Roy’s chest he knew was uninjured.
The puddle Jean was kneeling in was all but cold by the time he dared to moved again, closing his eyes, parting his lips, tilting his chin sideways and upward. Roy met him halfway.
Behind the Bushes
Prompt: Shiver
Note: Episode 43 expanded scene.
The ground was spongy under his knees, and moisture from the moss and the moldering carpet of last year’s leaves soaked into his uniform. A twig from the large tree he was resting against was poking into the small of his back, and his hand from the wrist down was a pulsating mass of fractures, bloody bones and pain, but somehow none of that seemed to matter even half as much as it should have. Even the humiliation at his uncharacteristic misfire and the resulting trip to the hospital that would soon follow were buried at the moment.
Roy was kneeling in from of him, his own uniform likely becoming as equally mussed from its exposure to mulch, carefully steadying Jean’s hobbled arm with one hand. The other held a roll of gauze, unwinding it with slow precision around Jean’s hand, covering the cotton he’d already pressurized the wound with, wrapping the reddening strips of white over and over until his skin felt tight and his blood seemed to give up and stop soaking through. His actions were quick and controlled as always, but the fingers holding Jean’s arm were much too gentle for the Flame Alchemist’s normal brisk countenance.
The Colonel ripped the gauze with a quick snap of teeth that made Jean notice his lips and ignore the pain of the change in pressure as Mustang tied it off, leaned back, examined his effort, frowned. All at once, he ripped off another strand of gauze and tied it into a loop, slipping it under Jean’s hand and over his head. A small, warm shiver played at Havoc’s neck as Roy adjusted the knot of the jury-rigged sling, moving and settling it under Jean’s collar while rubbing his thumb in slow circles at the first bump of Jean’s spine.
“This should work for now,” he said, lowering Jean’s hand gingerly to hang at his chest. He met Jean’s eyes, not quite smiling, but with an almost imperceptible quirk of his eyebrows that was as good as, if not better.
Jean chuckled, the pain in his hand momentarily overcome, and grinned at the expression Roy’s eyes betrayed. “Thanks, Boss.”
“Don’t be so careless next time. I can’t baby-sit my men.”
“Of course, Sir. I’m sorry. Won’t let it happen again.”
“Well, you’d better not,” Roy said, and shoved his usual façade away for a few precious seconds and leaned forward to brush a kiss over his Lieutenant’s lips.
Cramped
Prompt: Forms
The temporary office space their unit inhabited while Fuhrer Bradley and his entourage set up camp in Mustang’s quarters was laughably small. So small that Breda had only half-jokingly suggested they clear out a broom closet and use that instead. He’d accompanied the words with a small hand gesture that ended up smacking poor Fuery, who was inching his way toward his seat at the time, in the face, which only lent credit to Breda’s claim.
The first day was bad, the second day was hell, and the third day defied description completely. The growing humidity in the area and the Colonel’s rather dismal mood after his mock battle with Fullmetal weren’t helping much, either. On the forth day, when Hawkeye approached with the usual stack of morning forms, plus what looked like five or six additional reams of paperwork, Havoc groaned.
“If you bring all those in here, there won’t be any room left for us!” But his protests fell on deaf ears as the First Lieutenant’s swift, efficient fingers ticked off his portion of the stack and piled it on the few square centimeters of tabletop he was currently calling his “workspace.”
“This isn’t even my department,” he grumbled. But he went to it anyway, further scowling as trying to write with the limited elbow space made his wrist ache. By lunch, his whole arm was a white-hot cramp of blinding pain. Writer’s cramp to end all writer’s cramps, and wouldn’t you know it would happen on the day he’d scheduled time at the practice range after his shift ended.
He hung back when everyone else squeezed out of the room, trying to rub some of the ache from his hand so he could at least unlock his hand enough to dig his lighter out of his breast pocket. He hadn’t succeeded in doing more than pressing in just exactly the wrong spot, making his whole hand explode in hot pain, when the door opened and the Colonel, clutching a mug of tea in one hand and a newspaper in the other, reentered.
Each was a strange a sight to the other; Mustang usually spent his lunches in one of the smaller cafes near base, in the company of some charming secretary or other, or else napping in the office supply closet, and Havoc always retreated to the large oak outside their usual office to chain smoke enough to get him through the afternoon.
They sort of stared, not moving or remarking, until another twinge of pain brought Havoc’s attention back to his wrist and he winced, gingerly pressing at the tortured joints, trying to force them to unfreeze.
“It won’t loose up,” he mumbled, half a complaint under his breath and half as some sort of explanation to his Colonel, who was still watching him from the door.
“I see,” Mustang responded, and Havoc winced as once again he hit the wrong spot and sent the muscles into spasm. He was waiting for this to pass with gritted teeth when a small clink of porcelain and the rustle of paper caught the edge of his attention, and all at once he found his cramped wrist under the touch of rough white gloves.
He didn’t say anything, just watched in somewhat shocked silence as Mustang pressed and kneaded. The white gloves were so scratchy, he mused, how did Mustang manage to write with them on? His fingers must bleed at the end of the day. No wonder he never does his paperwork…
“There,” Mustang said, and Havoc’s eyes widened as the cramp vanished, leaving his hand with the pin-and-needle tingling of returning blood that stung and itched in a pleasant sort of way. He flexed his fingers in wonder.
“Thanks, Sir,” he said, looking up in bewildered gratitude. Mustang shrugged.
“Don’t mention it, Lieutenant.” He opened his paper and took a long sip of tea.
Because there's no love like Roy/Havoc love when you're feeling down, as I've been over the last few weeks. Comments make my face smile.
