Word #87

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

Your word for the week!

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Today's word is: raining

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<b>Title:</b> <b>Fandom/original:</b> <b>Characters:</b> <b>Rating:</b> <b>Word count:</b>

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[raja815.livejournal.com]

Title: All I Needed Was the Rain
Fandom/original: Fullmetal Alchemist
Characters:Jean Havoc and Roy Mustang
Rating: PG
Word count: 559


It was raining when everything became all right again.

Jean Havoc was beside the counter, where he could reach the telephone. His smoking paraphernalia was arranges on his armrests, and there was a small leather grouch bag in his lap that contained various bills and coins for making change. His wheelchair didn’t fit into the small space between the counter and the wall, and even if it had, he couldn’t reach the big brass cash register. Usually his ma did that, but she was out for the afternoon, and he was on his own. Jean didn’t mind. The familiar feeling of the small store he’d spent so much of his early life in kept any loneliness or depression that the pounding rain might’ve brought on at bay.

He had smoked a cigarette about halfway down (‘to the good part,’ as he and Heymans had said back in the day) when the small bell on the front door jingled, announcing a customer. It surprised him a little; the roads out here were all hardpack dirt that turned to impassible mud in hard rain. He hadn’t had a customer since the storm had really begun to pick up around two, and hadn’t expected another, at least not until things began to dry out again and people could drop by on foot.

“Hello, need any help?” Jean called up. The layout of the store and the tall counter often hid him from view at first glance, and he preferred not to let himself be overlooked.

There was a thump of boots against the whicker mat by the door, thick dripping sounds as mud and water sloughed off and pattered to the floor, then quick, heavy footsteps made their way around the shelves of rope and hardware, the barrels of pickles and the bolts of patterned calico and stark muslin, until they faced Havoc’s little nook.

The smoke he’d inhaled seemed to catch in his throat.

“Is this where I come to settle my bill?” Roy Mustang said. “I’ve always hated to be in debt.”

The wooden spokes of the chair’s wheels creaked as Roy knelt over his lap. Jean’s shirt and the blanket he kept over his thighs to hide how diminished they looked grew cold and wet as the rain dripped off Roy’s coat and hair. The cigarette was plucked from his lips. He didn’t care.

They’d had tens of thousand of kisses over the years, and had hundreds of thousands more afterward, but ever afterward it was these that Jean remembered best and most fondly. The memory always seemed as crisp and clear as the air after a storm, even years later; the soft, wet sounds of lips on lips merging with the patter of rain on the windows, the sweet smell of dried corn and old cedar boards mixing with those of wet wool and skin, the unfamiliar scratch of beard against the smooth, pale chin, the feeling of old aches being finally soothed… all as vivid as if they were happening over and over again.

“I think you’re all paid up,” Jean murmured when they paused for air. He pressed his face into Roy’s neck. The water there had warmed, and felt like tears against Jean’s cheek.

“Then consider all the rest a personal favor from a grateful patron,” Roy whispered, and curled his arms around Jean’s chest.