Fullmetal Alchemist/Supernatural - Haircut [RoyEd]

[scriveyner]

Title: Haircut
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist/Supernatural
AU: Mashup
Characters/Pairing: Ed, Al
Rating: T
Length: 1456
Summary:



"Ed," Al said patiently as he sat outside the closed bathroom door. "It's not as bad as you think it is." He leaned his head back against the door, legs folded nearly to his chest in the cramped, tiny entrance hallway to the room. There was no response and Al sighed, wrapping his arms around his knees. "You're not impressing anyone with your sulking," he called.

"I'm not sulking!" Of course THAT warranted a response. Al rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

"You're totally sulking, and it's not becoming of you," Al called back. "It could have happened to anyone, hell, it could have happened to me. Do you think I'd be in there sulking if the reverse had happened?"

The door opened with startling swiftness and Al almost fell back into the open doorway, catching himself on the door frame and looking up into Ed's glowering stare. "You," Ed growled, hair hanging over his shoulders and curtaining around his face. He grabbed at a chunk of it, dismayed, and tugged. "This is ridiculous," he wailed, retreating back to the toilet. There was an astonishing amount of blond hair puddled about it, and Al realized Ed must have been cutting it non-stop since they returned to the motel room.

He scooted around so he could watch Ed use his knife as a scissor, cutting a clean path through the hair. He took a good six inches off of it, and he had hardly blinked before it grew back to the length it was at a few seconds prior.

Al couldn't help it. He snickered.

"And now you're laughing at me," Ed said.

"How is it not to your feet by now?" Al said instead of responding, managing to stifle another snicker.

"I don't know," Ed tugged at the ends miserably. "It seems to keep growing to a set length, then stop. I don't know what it means. It's too fucking long, that's what it means." He grabbed his hair with both hands and tugged, scowling. "I look like a girl."

"We'll figure out how to de-hex you," Al said soothingly. "Don't worry, I'm sure it's pretty simple. I'll call Bobby and see if he knows anything we can do."

"We can kill the witch," Ed said darkly.

"I think her dark magic already did her in," Al said patiently as he tugged himself to his feet. "I'll call Bobby. Since it doesn't seem inclined to grow any longer than where it's at, might I suggest-" he watched Ed cut another six inches off and before the lock of hair could hit the floor it had already grown back. "-maybe stop cutting it? It's obviously not helping."

Ed sighed and looked at himself forlornly in the mirror while Al pulled out his cell phone and moved absently toward the beds.

#

"Good news," Al said. "Bobby thinks he knows how to fix it." He stood in the doorway as Ed tugged on his bangs morosely, they now fell to a little past his chin.

"Good, great. Let's get it fixed." Ed straightened, looking at Al expectantly. Al hesitated, and Ed saw it in his eyes. "What?" he asked carefully. "What did Bobby say?"

"The only way to lift a dying hex," Al recited dutifully, "is under the solstice moon."

"The solstice moon," Ed repeated.

"Yeah," Al nodded his head.

"Al," Ed said slowly.

Al threw up both his hands. "It's not that bad, it could be a /worse/ hex-"

"The solstice is almost a month away!" Ed was tugging on his bangs again. He turned frantically to the mirror, still tugging on his bangs. "I look like a GIRL," he said. "Tell Bobby to look harder!"

"I'm not going to tell Bobby to look harder, it's - Ed, it's not that bad, we'll pull it back from your face and things will be fine." Ed was tugging at all the hair now, pulling from his scalp as if pulling it out was going to make things better. Al grabbed at Ed's hands. "You're going to tangle it Ed, dammit it's going to be hard enough to deal with with you having a conniption every few seconds- let me get a brush, we'll pull it back-"

"No!" Ed swatted at Al. "No brushes, no ties, no fucking little girl pig tails I'm going to go find that witch's body and burn it to bones, then salt it and burn it more!"

Al had one of Ed's wrists in his hand. Ed glowered at Al from underneath a curtain of bangs and Al let out an exasperated sigh. "There's no point in burning the body," Al finally said.

"It would make me feel better," Ed mumbled.

"We'll put this town behind us and head over to Bobby's tomorrow," Al said. "The solstice isn't as far off as you think, and besides there are a few herbs and incantations and general things that need to be gathered in order to put on the ritual."

Ed tore his wrist from Al's grip and stalked out of the bathroom, flopping face-first on his bed. Al groaned and looked at all the blond hair on the floor, before turning off the light and retreating to where his laptop sat on the table, screen gone dark from inactivity. It was going to be a long, long month.

#

Al was up before Ed, as usual. He was brewing coffee in the cheap yellowed pot the room had left and the smell of solid black coffee got Ed out of bed. He groaned, his hair a tangled mess and obscuring most of his head and shoulders.

"Morning, Cousin It," Al said, holding out a mug to Ed.

"Fuckin' hate you," Ed groaned. He tried to tug his fingers through the hair and gave up an inch or two from his scalp. He sat on the bed and stared into his coffee as Al fished through his duffel bag, coming up with a brush. Ed eyed him suspiciously through matted bangs.

"Turn around," Al said, dragging a chair to the side of the bed. Ed looked at the brush in his hand and winced, but did as he was told, fishing the remote out and turning his attention to local morning TV.

It took the better part of twenty minutes to work all the tangles out of Ed's hair. When it wasn't a rat's nest of knots it lay flat against his back, the tips falling to his shoulder blades. Al continued to brush it well past the point of working all the knots out, and once he was certain Ed was completely distracted by the TV, started working the fine gold hair into a heavy plait.

He tied it off and flicked the end of it. Ed looked over his shoulder in surprise at Al, then twisted his head a few times in confusion, the weight laying against his back in a strange manner. "What'd you do?" he asked in confusion, and Al draped the braid over his shoulder.

"Just pulled it out of the way," he said. "Now it won't blow if you want to ride with the windows down."

"Oh," Ed said, and looked at the braid. He craned his neck but the one mirror in the bedroom wasn't at a good angle to see, so he got up from the bed and retreated into the bathroom to look at it. "It doesn't look that girly," he said happily. "Where'd you learn how to do that?"

"Mei," Al said, packing his clothing and other miscellany into his duffel. "She wears long braids, and she likes help getting things braided again if she takes them out." Al realized what he'd said a moment too late and glanced up at Ed, who was giving him a sideways glance.

"I've never seen Mei with her hair down," he said thoughtfully.

"Uh," Al said dumbly, but then Ed's cell phone rang. He exhaled as Ed answered it.

"About seventy miles outside of Greenville," Ed said, and looked around, before grabbing his watch off of the dresser, fastening it on while he balanced cell between shoulder and ear. "Nah, we're not in the middle of anything. We can be there in seven hours or so." He nodded once or twice, then hung up the phone. "Roy needs some help with a hunt, he thought it was something small and it turned out to be a werewolf pack. Full moon's in a few days."

"I thought you didn't want to be seen," Al said, and Ed shrugged.

"A hunt's a hunt, besides it's on the way to Bobby's," he said practically.

Al slung his duffel over his shoulder. "Let's get on the road, then."