"I hate Christmas," Ed muttered. "Bah humbug to you too." Roy murmured back. Ed had sellotape stuck to his forehead, and his wrist, and the bottom of his shoe, and probably in his hair. Wrapping presents was a bitch and completely fucking pointless anyway, they were only going to get opened, weren't they? He considered transmuting the sledge into a cube just so it was easier to wrap. It wasn't like he couldn't transmute it back once it was open. "Central doesn't even have any hills, you know." "I can make 'em," Ed muttered, peeling the tape from his forehead to smack down a cheerfully flapping corner of paper. "How're the lights coming along?" ". . . tangled. But we're getting there." Five minutes of quiet, while Roy unknotted the chain of lights and Ed picked up the ball of red ribbon, reeling off a generous length to tie the parcel up with. He couldn't find the scissors. Whatever, he'd cut it when he was done tying it. Only then it got snagged in his automail, and when he tried to pull it out he unravelled the ball further, and he threw some of the excess ribbon over his shoulder to deal with later while he looked for the scissors, and as he turned that somehow got attached to the tree - He struggled for a moment and then slumped in his ribbony harness and said dully, knowing what would follow this, "Roy." Roy, squinting at the chain of lights, looked up at him and his eyebrows lowered. "What the hell have you been doing?" "Making a fucking Christmas cake, what does it look like? Help me out here." "You are like a five year old sometimes. Maes wouldn't end up attached to- where's the end?" "If I knew I wouldn't be tangled up like this! Stop calling me a five year old anyway, old woman." "Hang on, hold this, I think I've found - if I just keep pulling here -" Ed tried to press his hands together to transmute it all to dust and couldn't swing them close enough; the tree gave a warning shudder and he didn't want to bring it down on top of them both. He glared patiently at the floor while Roy murmured, "This is like some very strange sort of bondage set-up. This ribbon goes on forever, where the hell is the end-?" "Don't talk about bondage in front of your kid's Christmas tree, Roy, that's gotta be some sort of blasphemy." "Lots of ribbon, a bauble gag, and some mistletoe nailed to the head of the bed . . ." Roy mused happily, and Ed gave a warning growl, but Roy had stopped rummaging at the ribbon. "Ah." "Good ah? You found the end of the ribbon ah?" "Ah. I appear to be stuck." Silence, for a moment. "This is the man who runs the country." "Shut up." "Now who's the five year old?" "Just shut up. Where are the scissors?" "D'you think I'd be tied to the fucking tree if I knew?" ". . . there are some more in the kitchen. If we can just . . . both stand up at the count of three -" "- and drag the godddamn tree along with us -" "- I can maybe get us out . . ." Five minutes later, face-down in the hallway with Roy's shoulder blade pressing his nose to the side and a heavy tree poking all kinds of places that didn't want to be poked, Ed muttered to Roy's back, "I hate Christmas." * Gentle tapping at the door and Ed peeled himself out of sleep, blinking hard, screwing his eyes up, because he'd known that stupid story was too scary for Maes, he was only three, all those ghosts and how was being terrified before bed meant to be Christmassy? "Kid?" he mumbled, pressing himself up in bed in the pitch black, feeling Roy shift beside him. "You okay?" Around the crack in the door Maes said, "Is it Christmas yet?" ". . ." It was a little after three. "Not yet, kid." "Okay," Maes said, his voice soft with disappointment, and the door clicked closed again. Ed listened dumbly to Maes padding off back to bed and then slumped face-first back into the pillows and groaned, "I hate Christmas, hate it . . ." Roy nuzzled into his shoulder and mumbled something nonsensical and went back to sleep, and Ed sighed, turned his head to the side, and slowly joined him. * Knock knock. "Is it Christmas yet?" Half past four. "Maybe give it an hour, kid." ". . . okay." Click. ". . . Roy, I hate Christmas . . ." * "Is it Christmas yet?" Twenty-five past five. Ed gave up on sleep, took a deep breath, and sat up in bed. He snapped the bedside lamp on. "Yes. Now it's Christmas." "No it's not." Roy mumbled into the covers, but Maes had already climbed onto the bed and onto Ed's lap and sang, "Happy Christmas!" and - And sometimes it struck Ed, all over again, how much Maes wasn't even meant to exist, how close he'd felt too often to losing him, how Roy and Al, everyone he loved and the universe at large had been wary when Ed had been so determined and so unable, faced with their disapproval already, to show how frightened he really was - all of the pain and struggle and arguments and fear that had led to this little boy who was the image of his uncle Alphonse but oh he had his father's eyes and Ed had always loved Al, had come to love Roy so desperately fiercely, but he'd never known that love like this could exist, he'd never known that he could really get anything right, he'd never known that all that immense grief and struggle could be worth it ten times over . . . - and suddenly he loved this stupid holiday. "Happy Christmas, little love." he murmured, his voice just steady, to Maes' pale mop of hair, and hugged him extra tight, and poked Roy's warm body still buried underneath the duvet. "Happy Christmas, dearest, get the hell up already." Roy mumbled something into the pillows that sounded like I hate Christmas. Ed slipped out of bed so he could claim Roy's dressing gown before Roy could and threw his own shorter one at Roy, and said through a fixed grin, "Get up and be merry you miserable old fart, or there's gonna be no bloody mistletoe for you 'til the New Year if you get my meaning." "Blackmail," Roy whined into the pillows, but an arm emerged and began fumbling for the dressing gown. "Good morning, Maes . . ." "Happy Christmas Daddy." "Merry Christmas . . . where's the other arm . . . ?" A question that was bursting to escape from Maes finally made its way out. "Has Father Christmas been to visit?" "Daddy's going to go check for us, kid. Have you been good?" "I tried," Maes said quietly, and Ed rubbed his hair and grinned. "Then you don't need to worry. Do you?" Roy fumbled his way out of the room, making a low grumbling growling noise to himself; it was actually quite a friendly noise, Roy's oh god I have not had enough sleep mumble, and Ed usually liked to burrow back against him when he heard it, feel the vibrations soothe the both of them back off to sleep. But today Roy had to 'go check that Father Christmas had been to visit' - turn the lights on and set the coffee boiling for before Maes came down. "I wasn't always good," Maes said, a truly nervous note in his voice now. "Yes you were." Ed said with firm conviction. "You're perfect." "I accidentally got crayon on the wall of Daddy's room." "It was an accident, kid." The study wallpaper was butt-ugly anyway. "I broke a glass." "I broke like, twenty. It got fixed, didn't it?" Maes pressed his mouth hard and then admitted, "I said a bad word." "What? Where the hell did you learn a bad word?" The bedroom door opened and Roy said in a tired voice, "He's been." and then saw the force of the glare Ed was giving him. "What?" * Roy sat in the armchair, watching Maes over his coffee. Ed sat at his feet, because it meant he got a closer view of Maes, his eyes lit by fairy lights, surrounded by wrapping paper, and his face and suddenly Ed loved this stupid holiday. "What did Uncle Al get you, kid?" Maes was sitting with the box between his feet. "It's all bones. You make a dinosaur out of them and it glows in the dark." "Nuclear dinosaur bones," Ed said happily. Al bought the best presents. Al and Winry had got him a watch, a little gold one on a chain, which had surprised him - he'd gone so long now without wearing one that he'd almost forgotten he ever had. Usually when he needed to check the time nowadays he touched Roy's side and hooked his watch out of his pocket, flipped it open, put it back into his pocket and touched his side again as he wandered off. Roy had seemed disappointed at the sight of the new watch. (He'd already promised Maes a hill in the back garden to go with his new sledge. And snow. Other children didn't wake up to the flat-out promise of snow, but Maes was lucky in his parents.) Roy's legs shifted behind him and then there were arms around him from behind, and he leaned his head back to Roy's smile, and a kiss on the tip of his nose. "You haven't opened mine yet." He hooked the present across the floor by its ribbon, and Maes - who had already constructed a dinosaur skull - paused in what he was doing to watch. Ed stifled a yawn, pulled the ribbon off, shredded the paper - "Oh." "It's a dressing gown." "Yeah, I - noticed." A big plush navy dressing gown, long enough for Roy, let alone Ed. "I have noticed over the years that you like to steal mine." "It . . . yeah." New, unworn, thick flannel dressing gown. He never had taken Roy's because it was longer. He took it because it smelled of Roy. "Thanks." he said quietly, and hated the new dressing gown with a black little corner of his heart. But Roy just ran a hand along his shoulder. "So I thought I could cycle these two and then maybe I would get to wear one that actually fits me at least sometimes." Ed paused, tilted his head back to look up at Roy again - at Roy's smile and he knew, he always knew, the beautiful scheming...
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