Shorn

By Kay

Disclaimer: I shall own FullMetal Alchemist if I have to sell the crumbly bits of my soul still resting in my tummy to do it! But for now, no, I don't.

Author's Note: Roy angst! (Maybe a little Hughes/Roy implication?) I think I may have overdone it this time—it's awfully melodramatic. I'm just now getting around to posting this from my livejournal, but… erm… yay? It doesn't make sense very well, but then again, it's not really supposed to. Enjoy!

When Maes Hughes knocks on the door, there is no answer.

He only bothers to wait for a few minutes of silence, in which no footsteps come to greet him from the other side, and tests the brass knob. It twists slightly and jerks in his hand; sighing, the man stretches up with one arm and brushes his fingers along the top of the doorframe. He squeezes his green eyes shut for a moment— 'he couldn't have moved it since Tuesday'— and lets out a breathless sound of triumph when he touches a small silver key hidden there.

He brings it down and fits it in the lock. Then, carefully, he opens the door and steps into the apartment.

It is completely dark except for the yellow streams of lazy light drifting through the window blinds, falling across the floorboards and streaking across the furniture. Maes stands there for a moment in the doorway, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dimness. He can almost taste the dust lingering in the air, his tongue curling with the heaviness of it. He lets out a slow, rough breath, and then, stepping forward, begins to scan the apartment for movement.

"Roy?"

This is a dance they have moved to many times—when there is no answer, he merely makes his way to the kitchen, pausing for a moment to place a book teetering on the edge of the coffee table onto the sofa.

"Roy," he says, and this time it isn't a question. The kitchen is a complete mess that smells of charred linoleum and stale air that's been cooked too long. The yellow countertop has been completely hidden under piles of papers and books, scrawled diagrams pasted recklessly against the walls, and he almost steps into a pot of cold coffee that sloshes when its jostled. Barely glancing down, he moves around it.

The dark, slumped figure in the kitchen chair shifts a little. Maes bites his lip harshly when he sees how stiffly it moves, but the sharp bite of relief at seeing his friend dulls the words that come immediately to his lips. He is almost gentle when he murmurs, "You should answer your telephone calls. Or at least your door. Gracia is worried about you."

Wrapped in a blackened quilt that looks frayed at the edges, Roy raises his head dully. His dark eyes gleam in the dim kitchen's lights, almost inhumane in the way they widen at him—they are slightly red around the edges, sore from too many days of staying open. "Maes."

"Yeah." He carefully pulls up another kitchen chair so that he can face the man, gingerly sitting down and reaching out. He touches Roy's face first; the pallor and strain ingrained into it worries him, and he smoothes out the harassed wrinkles patiently. Roy's dark eyes continue to watch him silently. "Yeah, it's me. I'm here."

His lips are chapped. Roy licks them momentarily. "Oh. Really?"

Maes nods soundlessly. His face is grave, but his fingers are infinitely soft when they push messy black bangs out of his friend's face. "Really, really."

Beneath the blanket wrapped around him, Roy is wearing nothing but his work shirt—stained across the shoulder and wrinkled to the point of ruin—and boxers that are two days old. He wraps the cloth around him tighter, his fingers clenching until the knuckles are dead-white, and shudders for a while. Maes waits, until the shaking dies down again and Roy's inhales are deep and even, before touching him again.

His fingers play across the curve of his ear. "Look at you. You're such a mess."

A tiny, strangled laugh escapes Roy's throat. It sounds dry and hoarse, and incredibly loud in the stillness. "You don't sound surprised, though."

Maes sniffs somewhat indignantly. "It takes a lot to surprise me, remember?"

The crack of his bones makes Roy wince as he sits up straight, a flash of pain working over his gaunt features. "Ugh. I feel like hell, Maes."

"You look like it, too," his friend tells him, affectionately. He flicks at the curve of his ear again, smiling indulgently when Roy glares at him for the gesture.

"I thought I locked the door."

"You never move the key," Maes tells him, knowing he won't move it even if he hears it. "Anyone would know how to get in your apartment. It's a little dangerous, don't you think? Lt. Hawkeye wouldn't be pleased."

"No, I suppose not," Roy answers dully, rubbing a sore spot on his elbow. He glances at his friend through his tousled mess of hair. "I didn't hear you knock."

"You never hear anyone knock." At this, his friend closes his eyes and sighs softly. "Roy… are you okay?"

"No. Why are you here?"

He ignores the question. It is a soft, painful thing, anyhow, and Maes doesn't want to think about wounds he can't heal—not yet, anyway. Instead he glances down at the table's wooden surface, taking in the carved symbols and alien figures etched into the grains with trepidation. "What's all of this?"

Shame scatters across Roy's face, but he quickly shutters it away. "It's nothing," he says with an unreadable expression. Only the half-starved desperation in his eyes gives him away. "Just… doodles."

The entire kitchen has turned into a warehouse for arrays. Not ones he's seen before—they are not the circles sketched onto Roy's gloves, though there are elements, curves, that are similar. They are nothing he's seen the Elrics draw before, but there is an innate sense of danger that also surrounds the brothers when he looks at them. Feeling that he already knows what they are, Maes sighs and pushes a pile of the papers onto the floor. They fall into a messy heap at Roy's bare feet and his boots.

"You can't do this to yourself," he says quietly. Roy doesn't answer. "You can't do this to me, Roy."

"I wasn't going to do anything. I thought…" The words trail off, an ugly grimace crossing his mouth as though he'd chewed something unpleasant. "I just thought. I would have never done anything. I'm not strong enough."

"Strength has nothing to do with it."

Roy shrinks in on himself uncharacteristically. "But it does. I'm not like the Elric brothers. I can't chase after what I want to fix. I don't have… I'm not strong like that. I can't even strike back at the one who—"

"I don't want you to do it," Maes murmurs, and suddenly he is there, holding Roy's face in his hands and forcing the man to stare at him. "Maniac. This is why I can't leave you to yourself, you know; you end up getting all sorts of twisted ideas."

"No. You can't leave me to myself," Roy whispers, stricken. Maes silently tries to wipe the anguish from his face, but it only struggles forward again. "What the hell am I supposed to do now? There's no one behind me to watch my back anymore. I don't trust anyone else to do it, Maes."

"You'll have to. There are more people out there who would do anything for you, Roy. It's not just me anymore."

"But it is," the man insists, reaching forward as if to clutch his hand. He draws back abruptly, stiffening, as though realizing what he were doing at the last moment. "I mean…"

Maes soothes him quiet again, making sounds he used to make for Alicia when she was having her first nightmares. It is an instinctive thing; there is a lost, confused and haunted look on the man's face that reminds him fiercely of his daughter and her night terrors. He says, albeit somewhat falteringly, "It's been… almost a week, Roy."

"That means nothing."

"You have things to do. Stuff to take care of."

"I take care of everything," Roy protests warily, eyeing his friend tiredly. "This is my weekend, Hughes. Let it go."

"It isn't healthy. What you're doing isn't healthy at all, not to yourself or anyone else. There are things to think about still, you know. Things to do." He pauses, gesturing towards the wildly drawn arrays covering the table. "Not this. Not… promises that mean nothing. I don't want you to do this, Roy."

"It won't leave my head. It keeps circling there," the dark-eyed man whispers, rasping, clutching at his long slips of hair. "What if…? You know? I know it's foolish. I won't do it anymore, Maes. I'll stop."

He touches the curve of his ear again, unable to resist the flesh peeking out of the strands of black. "You need to cut your hair, too."

At this, Roy throws his head back and laughs.

When he finally quiets, his shoulders still quivering with the force of it, he peeks at Maes through his bangs with a shy, almost mischievous smile. It wasn't a face he saw on his friend often, but the odd edge of upset in it is what worries him. "You're not even supposed to be here. I don't supposed you'd cut my hair, would you? Since you're not around to do anything else. Since you're not real."

It is a thinly-veiled barb that sails past Maes and far away. He does not hear the words, but concentrates on the underlying pain. Aching to peel it away, he nods slowly. "Do you have scissors?"

That stops Roy's smile. He pales; flushes and then pales again. "You can't be serious."

"You won't be able to see where you're going if you can't look past your hair," Maes says. And he means much more than what he says.

Five minutes later, Roy is trembling at the table—elbows up on the surface, face buried in his hands—and he tenses when he feels Maes' presence at his back. His best friend just soundlessly reaches forward and pulls his head up, ignoring the way Roy's breath hitches and whimpers, and brushes the hair out gently. The comb is old and generally unused, but it serves its purpose.

"You're a mess," Maes says again, a smile ghosting across his face.

Roy's fingers slowly relax from their tight grip on the table. He leans back into the touch, sucking in air sharply when the man runs his fingers through his matted hair. "I'm sorry. I didn't expect company."

"You'll never pick up any more women if you look like this."

Roy's hand curls hesitantly over his shoulder, as though stretching towards Maes' form behind him. "Not too short… I hate having the sun on my neck."

"I know."

They are silent then, except for the soft snip of the scissors every few moments. Maes starts at the bottom, sluggishly moving his way around the ears and slicing a few strands here and there away. If the man beneath him twitches once, or swallows heavily as though under a terrible burden every other minute, he says nothing. Just continues cutting away until the charcoal black hair litters the floor like ash, brushing against the bare skin of Roy's heels.

He leaves it a little long in the front. To hide his hollowed eyes.

When he is done, he makes no move or sound. Only sets down the scissors on the table with a heavy clunk—and there his hand stays, clutched abruptly by Roy's desperate fingers. They encircle his palm, long and slender, and he can almost feel the pounding rhythm of his friend's heart through the skin.

"Roy," he says gently, as he has always done. "You have to let go."

Roy doesn't answer. Instead, hesitantly—fearfully—he brings Maes' arm to his chest, pressing it tightly below his neck. Now the frantic thudding of his heart is most obviously felt. With his other hand, he slowly reaches out behind him, blindly fumbling for the limb he feels must be there.

Maes gives it to him.

They sit there like that in the darkness for a while, his arms wrapped tightly around Roy's shoulders, the man clutching him tightly with an iron grip. He lets it be like that, just like that, holding tightly in the illusion of the shadows where no one can see the harsh, dry wracking of the dark-haired man's body, or hear his muted and guttural pleas.

"Don't leave me," he begs brokenly.

And Maes lets his chin rest on Roy's head, very carefully, and smiles a bit, though his green eyes are glassy and disheartened. "You're such a mess… of course I won't."

"Don't leave me, Maes."

"Stop crying."

"I'm not crying," Roy rasps, stubbornly, squeezing his swollen eyelids shut tightly. "I'm…"

"I won't leave you, Roy. Not right now."

This is all he needs to hear—giving a last, violent gasp, his body completely stills in Maes' grasp, limp and unresisting. He leans back, eyes going strangely blank until he closes them fully, and breathes in deeply, his shoulders rising and falling. Finally smiling widely, the green-eyed man behind him presses a fleeting, affectionate kiss against the crown of his hair.

"Don't bring me back, Roy," he whispers against it. "Catch up to me when you can. Until then, I'll be around."

With that, he strokes the curve of his ear again, laughing, and pulls away. In his absence, Roy falls back against the chair and frowns, half-deep into sleep from exhaustion. For a moment, his sloe-eyed blink sleepily up, but they flutter shut and stay that way as he slips into slumber.

Maes watches him for what seems like forever. Then, as the night brings a total and all-encompassing darkness, he fades into the shadows that plunge the kitchen into nothingness, erasing them both from existence to the worldly eye. It takes away the human transmutation arrays, the sheared ink-black hair, and the fragile quality of a soldier's breath, leaving nothing behind but a dream and scattered recollections.

In the morning, he is gone, but Roy remains behind. He needs a drink. He needs a haircut.

The End