34. You can put your cold feet on me.Vi! Bless you for giving me this long ago. I needed a good interlude/practice after writing horror HAHA. I hope you enjoy this fluffy af Almei, you wonderful bean. <3
She never experienced the cold like this. It wasn’t frigid and biting frost from the Amestrian North. It wasn’t the depressing chill after a rainshower staring at an empty hearth, wet and shivering and alone. May closed her eyes and she could hear the river’s stream splashing against rocks. The breeze carried over a misty gust over their campfire. The ember struggled. She didn’t have to see it, she felt it on her feet. Restless, she turned on the cloth separating her and the ground; it’s cool surface temperature indicating the return of winter and the welcoming of autumn. Around this time, what seemed like a lifetime ago, the clans of her municipality held mid-autumn festivals, appreciating and offering sacrifice to the moonlight. Her own clan of meager resources meant their offerings were scant. This cold was different because her family was warm and fed at last. Thriving, and not just surviving. May opened an eye . She was here, on the ground and at the wind’s mercy, because of the alchemist. Inquisitive and curious Alphonse Elric sat with a book on his lap and a rock at his back. The light of a small lantern illuminated his choice of literature that night and it cast a flickering shadow over his right side. Eager and astute Alphonse Elric wanted to know all that he could about Xing and the secret behind the five ley lines written in his ancient tome, hoping for a scientific explanation for the Dragon’s Pulse. The ley lines were things of legends - folklore, May knew, but Alphonse Elric was the type to chase after legends tirelessly. As did she. Five years had gone by since Promised Day, she’d seen impossibilities firsthand and she couldn’t discount the shred of truth hidden in each myth.A gust of the stubborn wind flew into his lantern and snuffed out the flame, leaving him with only the light of the moon. He mumbled something about “well, that’s that” and placed his closed book to the wayside. He flattened himself on the ground a few feet away from her. She watched him as he situated him, tossing once - twice, to find a comfortable spot on the soil before he settled facing her. “Hey, are you asleep?” May brought her eyes to open completely and caught the brightness in his gold eyes, the smile on his face. He did that a lot, smiling. It was very hard to tell with a suit of armor, but May figured he’s making up for all the lost years. Embarrassingly, she couldn’t help the hiccup in her heart when it was shot her way. A dilemma for her as it happened frequently since they started travelling across Xing six months ago. Failing at suppressing her own smile, she answered, “Barely, it’s hard to with the wind.” Her awkward smile turned into a smirk, “But I think you’re blocking it now.” “Glad I can be a human shield for you,” said Al, laughter tugging at every other syllable. “Wouldn’t be the first time.” A distinct silence fell over them, branches bristling in the distance and water babbling. She shivered involuntarily with the gust. “Are you cold?” He sounded concerned. “No,” she choked, rubbing the soles of her feet for warmth. “My feet are just-. Fall is early this year.” “Here,” he said, probably not thinking about what he was saying, and flapped open his blanket. Wiggling his toes, Alphonse continued, “You can put your cold feet on me.” May chuckled, but it sounded more like a squawk. “No, really. I can just put my slippers on.” “Nonsense, that’s not very comfortable” He scooched in closer to him, lifting her excuse of a blanket. Her cheeks flared with heat without any fire. Her eyes widen, she was rendered speechless as the extra pair of his feet tangled with hers and momentarily thanked the warmth they brought to her. May breathed out slowly, if only to control the thumping in her ribcage, but she didn’t mind.“Mine were cold too,” he confessed softly.
Now I'm curious... what were you thinking for the meta type stuff for that Frozen au?
For the record I may have a vaguely incorrect idea of what meta means and so may have used it incorrectly.
That said, I was mostly going to go on about casting and how the story would need to change, so I’m glad to do that since I didn’t get to put a lot of it into the short thing that I wrote.
Elsa:
Roy Mustang. I honestly don’t know if I want him to have ice powers. I suppose it has to be that way for the plot to work, but for some unknown reason, in a lot of my own personal headcanons and aus, Roy has power over poisonous plants, meaning he’d build a castle made up of...interwoven vines of poison oak, nightshade, etc. He decorates the castle with oleander flowers, dangerous red berries and mushrooms. But for the sake of having the story make sense, I’m leaving all that behind (*sigh*) and sticking with ice.
Kristoff:
Riza Hawkeye. Kristoff will probably have to change the most because I’m royai trash and need it to happen. In the beginning of the snippet I wrote for the original ask, I quoted a part of the movie where Kristoff admires Elsa’s handiwork, remarking that the ice is “flawless”. I’m working off of that where Riza’s initial attraction is to the strange sorcerer who can create ice so beautiful, and then sees him decked out in his icy dress robes and kinda...forgets that the ice is supposed to be the good looking part. Anyway, though. Black Hayate would probably take the part of Sven, though he’d have to be enormous. I can’t really stand the thought of turning Black Hayate into a reindeer, so instead I’m going to turn him into a Miyazaki-style enormous wolf. Because reasons. Riza can be a beautiful, Princess Mononoke-type wild child who uses her attunement with nature to get some major awesome cubes of ice. I love her.
Anna:
Edward and Alphonse Elric. I’m splitting Anna into two people because of two reasons. First, there’s two Elric brothers, and second, I think that Anna could have afforded to harbor a little more bitterness towards her sister, and so I’m throwing Edward in to have abandonment issues while Alphonse handles more of the “unconditional trust” type thing. In this au, Edward received the initial wound from Roy’s ice powers, though it was a little more serious than Anna’s streak of white hair. He ends of losing his arm and his leg to frostbite when Roy’s magic hits him, and both he and Al are wiped of their memories. He gets automail somehow, but I’m not sure where I want to put Winry in this. Alphonse is the one injured by Roy’s blast of self-doubt in the ice palace, the way Elsa freezes Anna’s heart in the movie. The frost spreads throughout his entire body, much the way his entire body is taken away in the transmutation.
Hans:
I’m using an oc for Hans. I didn’t necessarily want Hans to have any romantic attachments to any of the characters (real or imagined) so I’m going to call him Ed and Al’s half brother. In this au, Roy’s mother (Trisha) ends up marrying Hohenheim, who had a son of his own, and then gives birth to Ed and Al, making both Hans and Roy half-brothers to them (though not related to each other). Technically, I could say that Hans is 03 Envy, but I wasn’t particularly fond of that development, so I’m just going to have him be miscellaneous half-brother Hans, possibly named Skyler (I have a lot of weird aus, and in one of them Ed and Al have a half-brother named Skyler, but he’s nice so idk about using him here).
General plot stuff:
Hohenheim doesn’t leave, and Trisha doesn’t die of an illness. They die the way Elsa and Anna’s parents do. Roy particularly misses Trisha, because though his step-father is kind, Trisha was most understanding about his ice powers, and it was Hohenheim’s idea to “conceal don’t feel”, while Trisha had some doubts about that method.
Hans/Envy/Skyler/whoever is the son of Hohenheim, who married into the royal family after Trisha’s husband and Roy’s father died. Skyler (I’m gonna use Skyler because using Hans is confusing) wants the throne not because he has a ton of older brothers like in the movie, but because he’s jealous that Roy is the crown prince even though Skyler himself is technically the eldest. Turns out having a parent marry into royalty doesn’t give you many royal rights. Skyler shows up at Roy’s coronation, and quickly becomes a bit of a role model to Ed, who sees him as the older brother who did everything he could to be present for him, as opposed to Roy who shut himself away. Technically Skyler didn’t even show up till now, but Ed just needs support and so doesn’t think much of it. Skyler’s excuse is that he was away at school and didn’t even realize that Ed and Al were all alone till he arrived for the coronation. Sketchy but semi-believable. Unlike Hans, Skyler actually remembers about Roy’s ice powers, because he was there when Ed was injured, and didn’t have his memory wiped. His plan is to antagonize Roy until his ice powers are revealed, forcing him to flee the country, then to use Ed and Al’s deferment to his judgment to get himself crowned king.
Once Al gets frozen (haha), Ed becomes determined that, per the troll’s instructions (which definitely did not come after a musical number in which a troll who probably wasn’t Maes Hughes tries to get Riza and Roy together), Skyler will be able to un-freeze him. Ed doesn’t consider himself as an option because he has Issues and doesn’t believe himself capable of the type of pure love that will save his little brother (he is, obviously, but like I said, Ed has Issues). Once they return, Skyler decides that the death of the younger, beloved prince would be a good way to solidify Roy’s fall from grace, and leaves Al to die by locking him in Roy’s old room. Edward comes to find him (sorry Olaf fans out there, Ed is not Olaf, and Olaf is not in this au, but someone has to pick up the one piece of plot he’s responsible for) and, after he discovers self-deprecating notes that Roy has written to himself to remind himself to “conceal don’t feel” in order to protect his precious little brothers, becomes convinced that Roy had loved them all along and tries to drag Al back out to Roy in one last, desperate attempt to save his life. On the way, Ed’s automail acts up because of the cold, and he ends up collapsed on the frozen lake, with Skyler about to strike him down. Alphonse throws himself in front of Edward, as Roy, who had broken out of prison in an attempt to save the brothers he cares so desperately about, attacks Skyler with his ice powers, immobilizing him (do I want him to die? I don’t know. Depends on what you want it to be rated).
Because of the self-sacrifice, Al unfreezes, and Roy is convinced by his brothers that there is still love in their family, and uses it to end the eternal winter that he had unwittingly started. He and Riza forge a tentative friendship-that-will-probably-turn-to-romance, and everyone lives happily ever after.
This got really long, sorry. Thank you for the ask, though! I’m glad I got to expand on it.
Royai demon/angel au, Roy is the angel and Riza is the demon
Roy is assigned by the higher-ups in Heaven to find the mysterious demon simply known as The Angel Killer.
Angels and demons live in their own realms, but plenty of them walk the Earth as normal people, and usually those are the ones who are soldiers or spies for their respective sides. Angels worked to keep the world in order, while demons tried to tear that world apart. The two sides were on the brink of a war already after a few years of peace, and this Killer was making it harder to keep either side from retaliating. Roy was a high-ranking officer in his military, and had a faithful team of humans and angels to support him, so it made sense for him to be the one to lead the expedition to find the Killer.
None of them knew who the Killer was, though. But Roy had ties with the Underworld, and knew a shunned demon who would have a better clue of who it could be than he would.
He enters the restaurant late at night, when the only sounds are the bells ringing on the door, mild chatter, and a slow, warbling jazz song playing on the radio. He finds her easily in the crowd.
When they had first met years before during the war, he mistook her for an angel rather than a demon because of her golden hair and skin that was unusually pale for a demon, convinced she was fighting on his side; it didn’t take long before she defected and joined his team in the war, not because he convinced her and changed her mind but because she knew the Underworld’s ideas were unjust from the beginning. That was why she defected and why she was exiled for treason. She had been an important soldier and spy before her betrayal, and Roy knows she will have more intel and a better eye for who it could be than he could ever hope to imagine. They knew the Killer had been a soldier – Riza may have known him.
After being exiled to the human world, Roy had to stay in Heaven to help keep the peace, even after his heroic pursuits he couldn’t choose his own fate. Roy hasn’t seen Riza since she kissed him goodbye, months after the war, when he had extended his stay on Earth longer than he should have. That had been six years ago.
He approaches her from behind, where she’s already eating her dinner and keeping to herself. She had agreed to meet there, and it doesn’t surprise him that she is there before him already. Roy stretches his hand across the back of the chair, giving himself away when his thumb accidentally brushes against her back. Riza stops her movements, glancing up and over at him.
“Riza,” he says, getting used to the name being back on his lips.
“Long time, no see, Roy,” she says back, and even if she sounds sarcastic, Roy can still see the tiny smile that makes it’s way onto her face.
Parental Roy with Ed & Al for "I swear my house is haunted" if you want to!
Here you go, my friend! This isn’t what I had started it as but THIS WORKS TOO. Enjoy! Also: an Ishvalan AU
It was 2:30 in the friggin’ morning, and he was awake. He had to be up early for work, but apparently his body decided it wanted to screw him over. So he was awake. At 2:30 in the friggin’ morning.
Roy had been living by himself since leaving the academy at 19, about ten years, besides his time in Ishval. In that time he had gotten used to the feeling of his space, so he knew what it felt like when things in his space were off. And something… something was off.
He reached a hand over and smacked about until he located his gloves, then slipped them on and climbed out of bed. A quick glance around revealed nothing out of the ordinary yet. Something was definitely off though, he felt it in his heart and the feel of the air. Had someone broken in, somehow, quietly enough that he hadn’t woken? Surely they wouldn’t have come here to steal anything. He had nothing of any worth in his threadbare little excuse for an apartment. Ms Matlow, just upstairs, was loaded, why couldn’t they have gone to her…
He shook his head. He was a State Alchemist, it was better that they come for his place; he had the legal right, and the prowess, to take on and arrest any thief who broke in.
Moving swiftly but quietly, Roy slipped out of his bedroom and into the hallway. He looked around… something was definitely off.
The picture of he and Hughes, for instance, that he had on his accent table in the hall lay face down on it.
“Wha—?” No thief would do something like that. So what…?
Roy took the picture and stood it back up, pushing it back against the wall just in case something else came after it. It was a good picture, after all, and he didn’t want to see something that embodied so many memories get broken. That done, he moved on.
He stepped into his living room and glanced around. The drapes were pulled shut—not fully, but enough to block light from the couch. Besides the blanket that he kept on the chair in the corner, there didn’t seem to be anything missing as far as he could tell in the low light. No thief. Then what was wrong? Something was definitely off, and his instincts hadn’t been wrong before…
His eyes, just for a second, caught on a dark thing in the corner facing the couch, opposite his blanket-chair. The thing, whatever it was, just stood there, still as fallen snow and just as silent. It was like a dark, heavy presence, there to deliver his doom.
“…I think my apartment is haunted.”
The words came out before he really even thought them. Even just saying them, he felt ridiculous. Haunted? Seriously? Fuery was someone that he expected to believe in ghost stories like that. And besides, he had never heard anything in the eight years he had been living here, and back when he moved in, he had never heard of anything like that from the other residents. If the place was haunted, arguably the whole building would be haunted. But all that he had ever heard of this place had been great things, praising the state of the buildings, the appliances, and the landlord, all of which had proven true.
It was 2:30 in the morning. That was his only excuse. It was 2:30 in the morning, and he really needed to sleep.
Still, his need to know what was going on and be in control overrode the need for sleep, so he slipped further into the room towards the couch. In front of the couch there were two bulky shapes of he-couldn’t-tell-what. He crept around to the side of the couch, looking first down on those shapes and then, when a light shifted through the curtains outside and shone off something on the couch, he looked right at it.
The light flashed off metal.
“Wha…?” He crouched down and got a good look at it. His eyes were adjusting to the dark, so he could vaguely see what was probably a long metal something resting atop something on his couch. What could it—
He frowned and brought a hand around, not to attack but for some light. He was either about to put himself in very real danger… or get a good look at what had disturbed his rest. He snapped, a flame eating up the oxygen around him for a portion of a second, but that was more than enough time to see the long white hair and dark skin, and the bright red coat.
Edward. That was Edward, his Ishvalan subordinate. But what was he doing here?
The mass in the corner, the dark presence, suddenly shifted and clinked. Roy started hard and shot to his feet, hand out to attack. Whomever this was—
“…Alphonse?”
“Colonel?” Yeah, that was definitely Alphonse’s metallic voice.
Roy squinted, hoping to see better, but frowned instead and fumbled somewhere up near Ed’s head for the lamp. He flicked it on and squeezed his eyes shut as the room flooded with light.
And indeed, there stood Alphonse, looking a little nervous. He must not have noticed Roy coming in, or maybe he had been waiting to see what he would do. He was staring at Roy’s lifted hand, waiting for him to attack.
Roy sighed and lowered that hand, shoving both hands into his pockets to hide how nervous he had been. “What are you doing, breaking into my apartment at 2:30 in the morning?” He looked down at his subordinate, who slept contently on the couch, balled up in Roy’s favorite flannel blanket.
“We needed a place to stay. Brother really needed to sleep,” Alphonse whispered, hanging his head as if in shame. “We didn’t know where else to go.”
“The dorms?” Roy said. He fought back a yawn and said, “or at least a hotel?”
“We couldn’t afford a hotel tonight,” Al explained. “And the lady at the dorms kicked us out. She said we were probably terrorists.”
Roy flinched hard at that, glancing down to his Ishvalan subordinate again, and then at his Ishvalan younger, armor-laden brother. Ishvalans really weren’t taken well to still. It had been a piece of work, trying to get Edward into the military. Stepping around the Ishvalan ban had only been manageable because, according to records, Ed and Al were only quarter-Ishvalan. There was apparently enough Amestrian in them to run out the old “brutal Ishvalan ways”.
“Ed didn’t show his watch?”
“She said we probably stole it.”
Oh yeah, he was definitely going to have to have a nice, long chat with that woman.
Roy just shook his head, glancing between the brothers. Ed didn’t even seem aware that they were having this conversation. “Why didn’t you at least wake me?”
“Ed thought we would be awake before you were. He thought he was stopping in for a cat nap. Is it… can we stay?”
“Of course he did…” But ‘Plans’ and ‘Edward Elric’ never exactly worked well together. He wasn’t about to kick them out onto the streets, though. Especially not in the chill. “…Yeah, fine. Collect his things.”
“Umm… Okay.” Alphonse crouched to gather Ed’s boots and a small suitcase, watching Roy.
Roy couldn’t stand to leave Ed there on the couch, was all. His couch was little more than some filling atop a box of rocks. The kid would kill his neck… And Roy would hear about it in the morning. Better to nip the problem in the bud.
So, he slid his arms beneath Ed’s legs and shoulders, eased him forward, and collected him into his arms. “Follow me,” he said to Al. “I have a guest room.”
“Really?” Alphonse did, his hollow steps echoing through the small apartment.
Roy glanced back his way, spotting the accent table and his picture of himself and Hughes. “If I can ask,” he said politely but leaving no room for the idea that he wasn’t getting an answer, “was there a reason the two of you turned over my photo? I rather like that one.”
Al flinched, turning pointedly away from the photo. Huh. “Yeah, um… brother just… couldn’t look at him. You know.”
…Yeah, Roy knew. There were some days that Roy had to make himself look away from it. “…I do,” he agreed. He shook himself off, and silently led the way with his burden into the guest room across from the bathroom. “Bathroom’s right there,” he said, nodding back at it. He settled his burden on the bed and worked the blanket out from beneath him. “If Ed wants to shower in the morning, he can. He can help himself to whatever I’ve got in the fridge… not sure how much of it’ll be edible, though.”
Al laughed for a second until he realized that Roy was serious.
“You boys coming in, in the morning?”
“Probably. Whenever he gets up, he needs to report to you.”
Ahh… right. They had just come back from a mission. “…Right. Let’s keep it before noon then, shall we?”
Al chuckled humorlessly. “We’ll try, but you know brother.”
“Heh.” Roy squeezed his eyes shut and turned back around toward the door. “I’m going back to bed. I have to be up early. If I’m not up by nine, and Hawkeye comes to the door… don’t let her in, alright, Alphonse?”
Al laughed quietly in confirmation. “Sure. Thanks again, colonel, for letting us stay. Sorry we woke you.”
Roy waved him off tiredly. “No, next time, do wake me, so I don’t try to kill you. But whatever, I really need to sleep. You’re welcome to the books in the living room, Alphonse.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Good night.”
A smile came shyly through when Al said, “good night, sir.”
Roy nodded and went to his room, closing the guest room door just enough that a crack of light could leak through should they need it. Then he slipped back into his room and climbed beneath the covers. After a moment, he heard Alphonse creep back out to the living room, flick off the light, and sneak back into the guest room, surely with a book or two in hand.
Tonight—or this morning, as it was—didn’t end exactly how he expected it to. Not in the slightest. It was better than the alternative that he was expecting—no one was breaking in to murder him or rob him. They were just breaking in to rest for a few hours. It didn’t matter to him that it was now 2:50 in the morning and he had to be up in just three hours and ten minutes. Well, it did, and he was going to bitch to someone about how little sleep he got, but at least he was losing sleep for a legitimate reason. Not some bullshit reason like a robbery. And he had an actual excuse, and an actual, fair witness if he ended up waking up late in the morning, so Hawkeye couldn’t (necessarily) try to shoot him.
He chuckled to himself before drifting back to sleep. If that worked in his favor, maybe he could “urge” the Elrics to break into his home and cat nap on his couch more often…
Are you using "Paige" at all IRL? This is kind of a weird question but I noticed you used Allison at Starbucks (when you posted that one pic where it got labeled "Elsa*) and I'm just curious
I just started using Paige in my classes this semester. I said Allison to the barista because there is another barista there who already knows me as Allison and she happened to also be vaguely paying attention to me when I was ordering. I felt that social anxiety feel where I didn’t want to cause a confusion so I just went with it.
I’m going to go by Paige at my next co-op job and hopefully that will help me get more used to being called that in person. :)
WAIT IT'S NOT "THE GANGS THEY SLEW" HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN READING THIS WRONG. MY LIFE IS A LIE (I got dramatic but I honestly thought this. How long would it have taken for me to figure this out on my own? I'm not sure I want to know. Have a lovely evening!)
NOPE LOL BUT HONESTLY THAT SOUNDS A LOT MORE BADASS COMPARED TO THE ACTUAL URL WHICH IS JUST A NERDY AF TOLKIEN QUOTE :’D
Fantasy au for "when the broken grass litters the floor" maybe? Any pairing of whatever sort is fine!
Riza lets the shoe she had been running in shatter on the ground, after the other one had slipped off her foot and caused her to tumble ungracefully onto the stairs. She hadn’t wanted to leave, but she knew she’d have to. The prince couldn’t ever be with her anyways, no matter how many times he had met her in private at her workplace after hours and told her he didn’t care if she was royalty or not. The way they had met in the first place was when she had been working at the tailor, when he had gone in as a simpler version of his true self to order the exact outfit he had worn tonight, a charming royal blue jacket and pants to match, the exact outfit she had stitched over a few weeks.
Roy couldn’t be with her, because she was beneath him, and the world never worked in her favor. So she tried to destroy any evidence that she had been with him, that she had been the mysterious woman he had snuck off with during the ball.
A few days pass, and she doesn’t hear from him or see him in that time. She still goes over the night, the one that seemed like a dream and now seems like a fuzzy memory but one she still cherishes. She begins to wonder if anything that had happened to her was even real when she hears the door to the shop her mother had passed down to her when she’d died open. Riza remembers that her father is the only one downstairs, because it’s after hours and no one should barge in like this. She leaves her room upstairs and makes her way to the small balcony that oversees the shop, and her hands clench on the railing when she sees who is speaking to her father.
Roy sees her and it doesn’t take long for him to trail off from his conversation with her father. She notices the glass slipper in his hand, the one she had left behind, and she begins to wonder why he even has it with him. He smiles easily, and Berthold turns when he sees Riza staring down from the second story, a small grin coming across her own face.
“I’m looking for a Riza Hawkeye, Sir,” he says to her father, but keeps his eyes on her.
Riza lets the smile twitching on her face spread, and she has to keep from laughing in surprise, because her father hadn’t known about her small love affair with the future King of their country. She responds slowly, keeping a trained eye on Roy as she answers.
