InsaneJournal

                                                                                       
                                                                   Just the Way You Are

“Hey,” Edward said, coming into the kitchen to find Roy drinking his morning coffee. “You’re back.”

“I took the overnight,” he replied, folding his newspaper and setting it down. He took another sip from his mug before turning to properly greet his housemate.

Roy choked and sputtered for a few seconds before managing to swallow what was still in his mouth, coughing hard into his hand. He was looking at the face of someone he’d known for years, but he could hardly recognize him.

“Ed,” he croaked. “What the hell did you do to your hair?”

“Excuse me?” he snarled.

“Are you hard of hearing?” Roy spat. Ed threw him a glare.

“I curled and dyed it,” he responded in annoyance. “What does it look like?”

“‘What does it look like?!’ A disaster, that’s what.”

“But you said last week that curly hair was sexy!” He objected in outrage.

“On women, Ed! On WOMEN. What the hell were you thinking?!”

“You said you liked brunettes!”

“You call that brunette? I call it shit-brown! Please tell me that stuff’s not permanent.”

Ed seemed at a loss for words for a moment, eyes and mouth wide in shocked betrayal.

“Screw you!” he finally shouted, and stormed into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

*          *          *           *         *

Half an hour later, Roy braved opening the bedroom door. Since he didn’t immediately find an Automail fist in his face, he assumed it was okay to come in, and closed the door behind him.

Edward was flopped down in the bed, half under the covers, turned on his side toward the wall.

As Roy approached the bed he noticed Ed’s hair was back to normal, and the large dark stain on his carpet told him where he had left the dye he transmuted out of it. He crawled up in the bed until he was sitting beside Edward. He gently ran his fingers through his hair, glad to see it back to gold.

“I’m still pissed at you,” came Ed’s sulky warning.

“I know,” he said softly, brushing some of the locks spilling over his shoulder to the back again.

They stayed like that for a while, until most of the angry tension in his body had been removed by Roy’s slim fingers on his scalp.

“I’m sorry I said that about your hair,” Roy said finally.

“You were a jerk.”

“I was.”

There was another silence.

“Why did you change it?”

He shrugged.

“…I thought you would like it.”

“I like yours better than those women’s hair,” Roy said. “You know that.”

Ed grumbled something too quietly for him to hear.

“What was that?”

Edward sighed.

“I said you never call me sexy.”

“I don’t?” He asked, smile tugging at his lips as he lay down behind him. “Never?”

“Well, not a lot,” he conceded, allowing Roy’s arms to come around his waist.

“Well then I apologize,” he said. “You’re very sexy.”

“I don’t want you to say it just to say it,” he said unhappily.

“I’m not, I mean it. Why would I want you to look like someone else when the only one I want is you?” he asked softly. “I like your hair the way it is, Ed. I like all of you the way it is.”

Edward turned around to face Roy.

“Me, too. I like you the way you are, even your grey hairs.”

“I do not have grey hair,” he insisted, glaring at the boy in the bed with him.

“Sure, not after you pull ‘em out.”

Roy growled, but Ed just laughed.

“Get used to it, old man.”