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In the epic battle between sleepy and hungry, sleepy always won. Hungry, though, was like a siege engine. It waited outside the gates, biding its time.
Ed awoke suddenly, aware that his stomach was growling. He exhaled, putting his hands over his abdomen to muffle the sound. It didn’t help much. He turned over, careful not to disturb Roy. If I can just get back to sleep, Ed thought, I won’t even notice how freaking hungry I am.
He closed his eyes. Roy’s body was warm and pliant beside him, and every now and then his fingers twitched at his sides. Probably pulling a trigger in his dreams, he thought. Ed focused on the sound of Roy’s breathing, and synchronized his own to it, their chests rising and falling together. After a minute or two of this, his stomach actually snarled, startling him out of the vaguely zen-like state he’d momentarily achieved.
Damn, he was hungry.
Rolling over onto his insistent stomach, Ed started tapping Roy on the shoulder blade.
“Roy.”
The man didn’t sleep; he hibernated.
“Roy.” He started poking lower, his index finger following the curve of Roy’s ribs.
“Prime Minister Mustang. Wake up.”
Roy snorted in his sleep, and then woke with a groan. “What?”
“Are you awake?”
“Quit fucking poking me. Yes.”
“I’m starving.”
“I’m sleeping.”
“Yeah, well, not anymore. I’ve got to get something to eat.”
Roy blinked, his face illuminated by the faint light from the alarm clock. “It’s almost three in the morning.”
“I know. Come on.”
Burying his face in his pillow, Roy cursed into it, his words muffled. All Ed could make out was ‘fucking bottomless pit…Minister…no respect’, though he had little trouble determining what the other words might be.
“You just want me to lay here hungry?”
Roy turned his head, his hair in his eyes. “Yes.”
Ed pursed his lips. “If it were you, I’d go without complaint.”
“Lies.”
“Fine, but I’d still go.”
“That’s because you have to.”
“Shut up. If that’s how you want it, I’ll just lay here and waste away.”
Ed lay silent for several moments, and then his stomach growled again, this time long and plaintive, like the sound a cat makes when left outside in the rain. The noise lingered in the quiet room.
Roy groaned. “All right.”
Grinning in the dark, Ed stood, reaching out to offer Roy a hand. “You’re a sucker.”
Roy ignored it, taking a moment to run his fingers through his tousled hair. “You need to eat more at dinner.”
“I wasn’t hungry then. I am now.”
Sighing, Roy fumbled for his robe, which was, as usual, thrown on the floor by the side of the bed. Ed pulled on an old shirt of Roy’s over his pajama pants. It was cold in their room, and the chill made his joints ache a little.
They opened the door, and Ed nodded to the guards at the top of the stairs, who didn’t even blink at the late night appearance of their country’s leader with his bodyguard/lover in pajamas. It was expensive to hire discreet help, but it was worth it. “We have an elevator, you know,” Roy said, covering his mouth to hide a yawn.
“Is the great Roy Mustang afraid to be seen nancing about in his robe in the middle of the night?” Ed said, laughing.
“Where do you learn ridiculous words like that? And no, I have never nanced once in my life, you asshole.” Roy shoved his hands in the pockets of his robe. “I’m saying it’s freaking late and I’m tired and not in the mood to climb stairs.”
“You’re always so cheerful at this hour.”
“There are only two things that are appropriate to do at this hour. One is sleep. The other is fuck. Everything else is out of the question.”
Ed resisted the urge to kiss him on his pouting mouth and instead led the way into the kitchen, hissing quietly as his bare foot met the cold tiles. He flicked on one of the overhead lights, which barely illuminated the enormous kitchen, but made Roy curse nonetheless. “Let’s see what we’ve got…” Ed pulled open the refrigerator door, and its clean light fell across his face, displaying a five-star restaurant menu’s worth of choices.
“God, I love living here,” Ed said, throwing Roy a smile, which Roy, quite predictably, did not return. “Come on. If you’ve come all this way, you should have a snack too.”
Roy padded towards him, the belt of his robe trailing across the floor like a leash. “I don’t want a snack.”
“Yeah, you do.”
Mumbling came from behind him, and Ed craned his neck to look back at Roy. “Are you complaining about being over thirty again?”
A slight tinge crept over Roy’s cheekbones. “I’m not a fucking teenager anymore. I can’t eat like one.”
Ed rose to his feet, slipping his hand beneath Roy’s shirt. “You can eat however you want. You’re the Prime Minister. Plus, your pants are hanging off you as it is.” He tugged on Roy’s waistband as evidence.
Roy quickly pulled his pants back over his hips. “I’ve been a little distracted. I had to eat at the hospital a few weeks back while visiting you, if you recall, and no one can finish their meals. It’s just another thing I need to add to my list of things to make better around Amestris.”
Sighing, Ed pressed a kiss to Roy’s collarbone, and then turned around, digging around for a plate. “Here. Have some cake. We can worry about hospital food later.”
The makings of a wry smile came over Roy’s mouth. “That’s cheap. You knew there’d be cake.”
“Hell, yeah. There’s always cake.”
Ed contemplated his list of choices. There were platters of fruit, half a roasted chicken, pasta and meatballs, and that was just the first shelf. He had numerous options, but he didn’t much feel like actually cooking anything. Any food that required heating was far more than he was interested in. Avoiding the bottle of milk like a plague, he pulled out a carton of juice and the platter of chicken.
Roy had already cut himself several thick slices of cake, and was now pulling random drawers around the kitchen.
“What are you looking for?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you so clueless about your own kitchen that you don’t know where the forks are?”
Roy glared at him. “Maybe.”
“That one. Over there. That’s got the silver, but the everyday is in the one under the sink.” Ed opened his juice and drank straight from the carton.
“I hope you’re not planning on putting that back.”
Ed wiped the juice from his upper lip. “Oh my God! You mean because of the germs? I never thought about that.”
Though he made a mildly rude gesture in Ed’s direction, Roy swiped the carton from Ed and drank deeply.
Ed leaned on the counter, lazily pulling off pieces of chicken and popping them in his mouth. “We should give the cook a raise.”
“You know, we don’t have to stand around in the kitchen. We could take all this upstairs.”
Ed made a face. “Food in bed? No. I think we’ve been over this.”
“I don’t mean food and sex. I mean just food, eaten on bed, in a bedroom where it’s a hell of a lot warmer than this kitchen.”
Instead of answering, Ed carried his platter back to the fridge and loaded it up with grapes and strawberries.
“Come on, Ed. It’s freezing in here.”
“Fine.” Ed sighed. “Just don’t make a mess. If I find crumbs on my side, I swear I’ll beat your ass.”
“Please,” Roy snorted.
Ed sneered at him. “Don’t choke on your cake.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t.”
They wound their way back upstairs, and the guards did an even better job this time of pretending not to see anything, especially when one of the half-eaten drumsticks on Ed’s plate rolled off the platter and down the steps onto the landing.
Locking the door behind them, Ed crossed to the bed where Roy was already seated, a blissful look on his face as he lifted a forkful of cake to his lips.
“You have to admit this was a good idea.”
Roy licked his fork. “I admit nothing.”
“That’s because you’re a sore loser.”
“Aren’t you glad I won the election, then? I would have been a pain in the ass to live with after that if I’d lost, huh?”
Ed grinned, settling down with his chicken. “What makes you think you’re not a pain to live with now?”
Cocking his head, Roy feigned the motion of dumping the crumbs off his plate into the bed, but then stopped himself before anything actually fell. “I still thinking getting out of bed in the middle of the night for any other reason than taking a piss is a stupid idea, but among stupid ideas, this isn’t the worst.”
“How magnanimous of you.”
Roy smiled as he ate another bite of cake. “This is good, too.”
Ed’s mouth was full of food, so he merely nodded.
After a long conversation about very nearly nothing with much snacking along the way, Ed stacked his plates on the floor and then lay back next to Roy, who was already sprawled out on the bed.
“Oh my God,” Roy muttered, holding his stomach.
“You said it,” Ed said, also putting a hand over his abdomen. “I ate too much.”
Roy laughed, and then winced, closing his eyes. “If that isn’t a metaphor for this administration, I don’t know what is. Feast or famine.”
“Don’t be so fucking philosophical.”
“Fine. We stuffed our faces.”
“There you go.”
Ed groaned as he sat up, reaching over to switch off the light. “Maybe if we go back to sleep, we won’t notice that we’re full to bursting.”
“You know, since we’re both up, we could always—“
“No, we couldn’t. You’d seriously puke on me.”
Roy sighed. “Yeah, you’re right.”
They lay side by side in the dark, sated past the point of discomfort, but Ed found himself smiling anyway.
“What’s your first meeting tomorrow?”
Roy made a slight gagging sound. “Breakfast with the Trade Commission. They always have four kinds of sausage.”
Ed patted his arm. “I’ll call up first thing for antacids and tea.”
Resting his head on Ed’s left shoulder, Roy exhaled. His breath smelled like dark chocolate.
“Just go to sleep.”
Roy mumbled something about being sorry in the morning, but per his usual habit of being able to fall asleep anytime, anywhere, he was already drifting off. For Ed’s part, his stomach was still rumbling, albeit not in a good way, but the time with Roy had been worth it. Also, to be fair, so had the chicken.