Not to Think

Not to Think

Roy was walking through the streets of Central late that night. It was raining, and while Hawkeye would probably shoot him for walking around in this downpour, it felt right. It suited his state of mind tonight.

When he arrived at the door of his friend’s former home, he stopped. He hadn’t intended to go this far and certainly hadn’t intended to go here.

“My home is always open to you, Roy.”

Roy stopped at the beginning of the sidewalk that led up to the once warm and familiar home. There was a light on, even though it was after ten. He could go and knock, he knew, but at this hour, it seemed inconsiderate. At any hour, it seemed inconsiderate. Really, what could he say? “I’m sorry, Gracia, that while pursuing my goals, I managed to get your husband killed?”

“You need someone beneath you to push you up through the ranks.”

Roy scoffed. What good was that now? He saw a curtain pull back in the living room and realized he’d been caught. He started to move away, hoping not to disturb the woman inside or his own mental punishment. He just couldn’t face her. The one time he’d tried, he’d failed to say anything of use and Elysia had actually hidden from him.

“Roy, she’s a baby, your niece, as far as I’m concerned. She isn’t going to bite you and she isn’t going to break. Hold her. It will be practice for when you get yourself a wife.”

The colonel was walking away when he heard a voice. “Roy?” He looked over his shoulder to find Gracia standing at the front door. “Roy, is that you?”

He turned around, looking at his friend’s wife.

“She’s a beautiful woman, Roy. My Gracia is the most perfect woman in the entire world. You’ll just have to settle for second best.”

Maes had been right. Even as tired and sad as she was, Gracia was still beautiful, and her presence still exuded that sense of home.

“Roy, come inside,” she said. “You need out of that rain.”

He nodded numbly as he walked back to her.

“You’ll catch a terrible cold,” she chided. “Go into the bathroom and get off those wet clothes. There are some towels in there you can dry off with.” Roy obeyed. “I’ll get you something to change into.”

“And she takes such good care of me, too. I’m telling you, there has never been a better wife or woman.”

Roy stripped down to his boxers, putting the wet clothes in the bathtub. His entire body broke out into goosebumps as the chill of the evaporating water hit him. He shivered before looking at himself in the mirror.

“I look like shit.”

“You look like shit, Roy. You can’t keep dwelling on it. You need to move forward, toward your goal.”

“Here you are,” Gracia said, holding out a black shirt, olive green pants and white socks. They were His, of course.

“Thank you,” he said, taking the clothes from her, unable to meet her in the eye. She nodded and left.

Roy saw she’d also included a pair of boxers, new from the looks of them. Looking down at the blue and white cloth sticking to his lower body and leaving next to nothing to the imagination, Roy realized that Gracia really did think of everything. He quickly changed into the clothes given him, noticing as he pulled the shirt on that it smelled like Maes, not that he’d gone sniffing his best friend. It was just something very familiar he’d never really noticed until it was gone.

The clothes were too big for him, naturally. Maes had always been taller, just like so many had.

“I don’t know why you pick on Ed so much, Roy. You weren’t that much taller when we were at the Academy. And I still say you keep him around not because he’s brilliant as an alchemist but because he makes you feel tall.”

Roy pulled tight at the cord around his waist. The last thing he needed was for him to accidentally de-pants himself in front of his friend’s widow.

He sighed. She was too young to be a widow.

Finally, he was dressed and he went to find Gracia in the next room, all the while tugging at the clothes that were too big for him. His friend’s wife had taken a seat on one of the sofas in the livingroom. He took the smaller loveseat opposite her.

“Roy,” she said, “why were you out there on a night like this?”

Roy thought on that for a while, trying to decide what the answer was, when he honestly didn’t know. “Gracia I… I don’t know. I just felt like I needed to walk, then it started to rain, and even then it didn’t feel wrong to be wandering around.”

The colonel lowered his head, putting his hands over his face. He was surprised when he felt the woman now sitting beside him.

“Sometimes, Roy, I think you don’t have the common sense that most people are born with.”

“That is so dangerous, Roy,” Gracia said. Her eyes grew wet with unshed tears. “With what happened… it is such a risk.”

“I’m not going to get myself hurt, Gracia. I just… I needed to get away.”

She put her hand on his. “And yet, you ended up here.”

“This was always where I turned up when I was worried or in trouble. I guess I shouldn’t expect that to change.” He looked over at her. “I mean, I consider you my friend as well.”

She squeezed his fingers. “I know, Roy.”

“You’ll just love her, I know you will. And you have to promise me, Roy, if anything happens to me, you’ll take care of her. She’s so special.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t been over aside from Riza dropping me off.” He sighed. “And one time I do manage to come here, it’s out of my own misery.”

“Honestly, Roy, I’m glad you had to take time to bring yourself to come here. To have seen you again too close to the funeral for any longer than you were here… I don’t know if I could have gotten though it.” She was crying now, and Roy did the only thing he could think of, wrapping his arms around her and holding her as really, she probably needed to be held.

“I miss him so much, Roy,” she said.

“I know,” the colonel said. “I do too.”

“And I just want it to stop hurting so much. I know everyone says how much Elysia looks like me, but when I look at her, I see him, when I look around the house, I see him.” She sobbed. “When I look at you, I remember him with you.”

“You’ll be my best man, won’t you? We’ve been friends forever, so you know that you have to. You wouldn’t dare say no. You’ll be there by my side, won’t you?”

Roy pulled away from the woman just a moment, looking into her teary eyes. He wanted a break from the pain as much as she did. Maes had been like a brother to him, the person who knew him best and knew best how to keep Roy from destroying himself.

Before he thought, because really, this wasn’t a time for thinking, Roy put his lips to hers and held her tightly. He kissed her and felt her kissing back, felt her moving her hand through his dark hair, felt the other grabbing at the sweater at his shoulder. This was about feeling something other than that throbbing ache. This was about feeling her grasping at him, clinging to him as her only lifeline, all the while he did the same to her.

His lips moved to her jaw and neck, her hands moved to pulling the overly large sweater from his back. He fumbled with the buttons on her blouse until her persistence with the shirt forced them to stop until it was removed.

“A gentleman, you know, never kisses and tells, but Roy, you would not believe what it is like with her. Maybe it’s more special because I love her. And I do, no matter the ribbing I’ll get from the guys for admitting that so easily. But, my friend, you need to experience something like that once in your life.”

Roy’s hands massaged over her modest and relatively firm breasts, which were still clad in her plain white bra. All the while, her hands moved over his bare chest and arms until she reached the waist of his pants, moving them down over his hips.

She didn’t try to remove the pants, just pulled them down enough to free his member, and in turn, he didn’t remove her skirt, merely the underwear that was getting in the way.

He moved up to kiss her cheek, tasting new, warm tears as they streamed from her eyes. He could feel his own continuing on their path down his cheeks.

They had done this all in silence, until finally, Gracia spoke.

"Please, Roy. I just don't want to think about it."

The raven-haired man pushed her skirt further up as he spread her legs to either side of his hips. The kissed again, tongues intermingling as their sexes made contact. Roy could only groan at the sensation, even as he continued to deepen their kiss.

One hand still gently rubbing and kneading her covered breasts, he used the other to line himself up to her opening, to the place she had allowed only one other man to explore.

“She was a virgin, Roy! I didn't know... I mean, I was her first, and I don't even know if I was that good. I don't want to be the one to set the bar for that kind of thing.”

He entered her, his mouth covering hers and muffling the gasp she made as he did. His hips moved slowly, but not slowly enough to make this entirely comfortable for her. He pushed as carefully as he could inside of the warm, awaiting heat. Her hands had stilled at his neck, but she was holding him there, not pushing him away.

"Move," she said finally. "Please move." Roy complied, wishing that it wouldn't be as painfully short as he felt it would be, trying in his pain and lust filled mind to remember to make this pleasurable, if sex to feel nothing could be that. He moved a hand beneath the skirt, rubbing at the little nub above where he was currently connected to the woman who represented everything good.

She whimpered at that, and her eyes rolled back in her head, body arching beneath his own. She was such an easy woman to care for as Maes had.

“She told me she saved herself for the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Do you know what that means? She wants me to be that person. I... I don't know what to do. I never thought someone like her would want to be with a goof like me.”

Roy continued to pound into her, harder than really he intended, but only a small part of his mind could recognize that. His brain wasn’t entirely thinking. He was just reveling in how hot, how tight, how soft the woman beneath him was.

“Gracia,” he breathed her name. He could feel his hair matting to his forehead, just as he saw her own was dong below him.

He kissed her again, before erupting in a low moan, spilling into the woman he’d known all these years. She cried out as she reached her own climax, clawing onto him, scratching his back, still crying.

They withdrew from one another, readjusting their clothes and sitting in silence.

It seemed that now, neither could look the other in the eye. Roy pulled the sweater back over his head, smelling the familiar scent again and grimacing this time after realizing what he’d done.

“I should probably go now,” Roy said. “I’ll get my clothes and send these back to you after I’ve wa… um, later. I’ll send them later.”

He thought he saw her nod out of the corner of his eye as he went to the bathroom, picked up his wet clothes and then headed out of the front door.

“Bye, Roy."