Chapter Text
“I can’t believe I forgot them,” Gracia said, for the tenth time at least, fumbling for her keys in the depths of her purse.
“It’s really not a problem,” Riza said. “It’s a lovely day. I don’t mind the extra walking, and you can’t very well try on the dress without the right shoes.”
“Exactly. See, only another woman would understand that. Maes would just tell me it’s perfect no matter how it actually looks.”
“Mmm. He’d probably mean it, too.”
Gracia giggled. “He would, but I’m not sure whether that’s because he’s completely blind to my flaws or because he has terrible taste in clothing.”
Riza raised her eyebrows, but she looked like she was holding back a laugh. “I’m sure it’s not my place to speculate.”
“It’ll just be a minute.” Gracia opened the door and placed her purse on the side table. “I had them in a bag and everything, right on my dresser, and—” She stopped speaking at a strange noise that came from somewhere deep inside the house. It sounded almost like an animal, but they had no pets. Having a toddler was hard enough. “What was that? Did you hear that?”
Riza was tense beside her, gun already out from some secret hiding place. Gracia didn’t want to know why Riza had brought a gun on a girls’ shopping trip, but she supposed it was like Roy bringing his ignition gloves everywhere, even to Elicia’s birthday parties. Old habits, Gracia thought, only slightly hysterical.
“I heard it.” Riza edged out of the foyer toward the front hallway, cautious and completely silent.
They heard another noise, this time the dull thud of something hitting the floor or a wall and a muffled cry. “Someone’s in the house,” Gracia whispered, terrified. “Oh my goodness, someone’s in the house, we have to get out and call the police …”
But then they heard the noise again, the strange cry, not quite so muffled, and it was … strange, because it sounded like, it really sounded just like … oh, Gracia thought distantly, mind suddenly gone blank and dull with shock. That was. That was Maes. But Maes was not home. Maes was out with Roy, “catching up,” he’d said, as if they hadn’t just seen each other a month ago, and didn’t speak on the phone several times a week. Maes was out with Roy, catching up, and Gracia was spending the day with Riza, whom she hardly ever got to see, and there was no one else who could be in the house, doing things that … that would mean making noises like that.
Gracia took a few steps down the hall on instinct, then felt a hand on her arm that shook her momentarily out of her strange fugue. She blinked a few times before her eyes focused on Riza, gun disappeared back wherever it came from.
“Gracia,” Riza whispered calmly. Her voice was hardly more than a puff of air, her expression inscrutable. “Maybe you should let me go check it out.”
Then they heard Maes again, groaning, in pain or … well. Not pain. Then another thud. A bed hitting the wall, Gracia thought, detached and analytical. That is what that noise is. A bed hitting the wall in my house while my husband is groaning in something that is not pain. Her face flamed. “No,” she said. “It’s my …” house, husband, life “… concern. I’ll go.”
Riza looked unhappy but nodded, and Gracia drifted down the hall as if she were in a dream, expecting — hoping — to wake up at any minute. All along the walls were pictures of her life with Maes, mostly random snapshots caught by him with his cursed, ever-present camera. The photos blurred as she passed. Closer to the bedrooms, she could hear better, and now there was no mistaking the noises for what they were: groans and moans, Maes panting and murmuring like he would occasionally when he was particularly enthusiastic during sex, and the damn bed banging against the wall in the guest room — at least it wasn’t their bedroom, she thought, suddenly blisteringly furious. Maes had someone in the house, in their house, in their home, he’d brought some trollop home and was having sex with her in their home; worse, he’d gotten Roy to cover for him, so Roy was complicit in this … this … this whatever it was, a tawdry one-time fling or some scandalous ongoing affair. Worse, Gracia thought darkly, Maes was being unusually, shamelessly noisy, ridiculously noisy. The woman wasn’t making a sound, was probably just lying there letting Maes rut at her like a dog and she wasn’t even enjoying it; maybe she felt too guilty to enjoy it. It served her right for daring to have sex with Gracia’s husband in Gracia’s home.
But then she heard, “Maes,” low and desperate, and she froze, body and brain locking up simultaneously. That was no woman moaning. That was a man. That was a man Maes was with. Maes was having sex with a man in their guest room.
She processed it, glacially, point by point. Maes was having sex with a man. Who was the man? That was easy. The man was Roy, because who else other than Roy would Maes want to have sex with? It must be Roy. Yes, it must be Roy, because if it was not Roy, then Roy had covered for Maes having sex with another man, and that was simply ludicrous. Roy would not do that to her, even for Maes. The thought of Maes having sex with Roy was equally ludicrous, but not quite as ludicrous as the thought of Maes having sex with some other man entirely. So it must be Roy, it must be Roy and Maes she had heard. She hadn’t heard a woman moan because there was no woman at all to hear, just Maes and Roy. Maes wasn’t being ridiculously noisy with a guilt-ridden silent woman; what she was hearing was Maes and Roy being noisy together. She was hearing Roy and Maes have noisy sex in the guest room.
But that could not be right, she thought numbly, though she could find no flaw in her logic other than that her conclusion was impossible. She had made a mistake and she was not hearing what she thought she was hearing; she was not hearing Maes and Roy have noisy sex in the guest room. She was not. She was not. She was …
“Oh fuck … ”
Gracia twitched. That was Roy, because that wasn’t Maes, and so it must be Roy, even though she’d never heard his voice drop into that register, never heard him curse at all, because he was always so careful and polite in her presence. That was Roy, cursing and groaning in her guest room, groaning in the guest room with her husband and the bed banging against the wall. “Like that, god, Maes, fuck …”
Roy groaned again, and Maes groaned too, his voice so low and needy it made her shudder.
Her hand was on the doorknob before she even realized what she was doing, but she stopped herself before she opened it, because it would creak when she opened it, and if it creaked, Maes and Roy would look over and see her, and she could not imagine what would happen past that point, what any of them would say if she walked in on Maes and Roy having sex in the guest room. She stayed there, frozen in place by the specter of the creaking door until she remembered dimly that the door no longer squeaked. The door no longer squeaked because Maes and Roy had fixed it a few months ago. Roy had been visiting and Maes said he would put him to work by having him help fix the creaky guest room door, which was only fitting since Roy was the only one who ever stayed in there. Then Maes had sent her and Elicia out of the house for the day because he and Roy were going to be banging and making so much noise … Roy had grinned when Maes had said that, a tiny little smirk that he’d wiped off almost as soon as it had hit his lips, and Maes had grinned too but turned laughing to Gracia, spun her around in the hallway and said, “We don’t want to hurt your precious ears, darling,” and she had believed him.
He had lied to her. He had looked straight at her and lied to her, and naturally she had believed him and taken Elicia out for the day, and left Maes and Roy on their own to fix the door. They’d fixed it, of course, and had showed it off when she came home, both of them grinning goofily, so proud of themselves for accomplishing a minor home repair in five hours. “See,” Maes had said, opening and closing the door again and again without a single creak, “we did it!”
Gracia felt dizzy. She’d been so stupid.
Then she stiffened her spine, twisted the doorknob and opened the door that no longer creaked just enough to look in and see what she didn’t really want to see, for confirmation she didn’t really want. And there was Maes, her beloved, and Roy, whom she also loved, and they were tangled up together, Roy on his back and Maes on top, thrusting, thrusting, strong and fierce, as if to prove beyond any possible doubt what they were doing in case she’d still held out any hope.
“You like that?” Maes said, grinning down at Roy, and Roy let out a completely inarticulate sound of agreement that had Maes laughing. Maes laughed and laughed, delighted, like he would sometimes when Elicia would do something brilliant, like count to 10 or draw a stick-figure family. “Let me,” he said, and he rearranged Roy’s legs, hooking one over his shoulder and wrapping an arm around it, gripping Roy’s hip with his other hand. He thrust again, hard and deep, and Roy threw back his head against the pillow and groaned long and loud and filthy.
“God,” Maes said, like it really was a prayer, staring down at Roy, entranced. “I love you like this. I love you. God, I love you so much …”
Roy shuddered once, hard, then shifted and levered up, one arm behind him for support. “Shut up,” he said, desperately, “shut up, you can’t say that,” and he grabbed at Maes with his other arm and pulled him close for a kiss, shaking.
“I can’t help it,” Maes said, forehead to forehead, after he’d broken away. He thrust his hips once and they both groaned. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”
Roy was beautiful, of course, in an unearthly, ineffable way that drew everyone’s attention to him always, an incontrovertible fact of his existence that he’d used ruthlessly to his advantage over the years, but had never used with Gracia. Gracia had seen Roy’s beauty, obviously — she wasn’t blind — but it was just something there, something to acknowledge but not obsess over, because Roy was never going to be hers, and she didn’t want him anyway, not when she had Maes. Now she looked at Roy again, trying to see him as Maes did. He was all hard muscle and flat planes where she was soft and curved, pale taut skin marred with scars from a war he’d fought before she ever met him. Gracia could not deny that he was beautiful even with the scars. Maes was scarred too; no one had come back from Ishval unmarked. There was a scar on his bicep and a scar on his lower back and a scar on his left buttock that she’d felt but never actually seen until now.
Oh, Gracia thought, brain stuttering to a halt. She processed again, just as slowly. There was a scar on her husband’s left buttock that she’d never seen, because they had sex at night in the dark under the covers, and when Maes came out of the shower he always wrapped a towel around his waist. She’d felt the scar but never seen it, but it hadn’t been important. It hadn’t mattered that Maes had a scar she’d felt but never seen because they always had sex at night in the dark. It mattered now, though, because it was the middle of the day and Maes and Roy were having sex in the guest room with the sun hot and brilliant throughout the room, staring at each other, and she could see every scar on both of their bodies, including the scar on Maes’s buttock that she’d felt but never seen before.
She should not be watching this, she realized. If she was not going to confront them now — and there was no way she was going to confront them now — she should shut the door as quietly as she’d opened it and leave. What good could come from her watching Maes and Roy have noisy sex in the guest room, banging the bed against the wall?
No good could come of it, just more nightmare fodder, but still she stood there and she stood there, hand on the doorknob, watching and listening, feeling stupider and sicker with every passing minute.
“Fuck, I could do this all day,” Maes said, panting, lifting his head up and wiping his mouth. Then he grinned once and swallowed Roy back down and Roy arched up with a cry, and Gracia was still frozen with her hand on the doorknob. Walk away, she thought dimly, just shut the door and leave, but it was like one of those dreams where her legs wouldn’t move and she was trapped like a fly in molasses.
Finally, after far too long, she came to her senses when Roy was atop Maes, straddling him, and Maes was groaning louder and louder. “Oh fuck,” he said, voice strained and breathy, “oh fuck,” and she realized he was about to … to orgasm within Roy. But the room was bright with sunlight and if she stayed she was going to be able to see his face as it happened. She’d never seen his face at that moment; they always had sex at night in the dark, and though she knew what he sounded like as he finished, she’d never seen his face as it happened. She couldn’t … the first time she watched him come couldn’t be when he was with someone else.
She shut the door silently, not that they would have noticed if she’d slammed it, the way they were wrapped up in each other, and she crept back silently down the hall to the foyer where Riza was waiting, scowling at some pictures on the wall. “It’s … it’s Roy,” Gracia said, and saying it out loud was enough to send tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. Saying it was worse than watching it. Saying it to someone else made it real.
“I figured as much,” Riza said, frowning. “What do you want to do?”
What Gracia wanted most was to wake up from this horrible dream, to wake up next to Maes and feel secure in the knowledge that he loved her. “Let’s leave,” she said. “Let’s just go. I can’t be here right now.”
Riza nodded, face set, and they slipped out the door together.
She could not blame Roy for wanting Maes. How could she? Everyone wanted Maes. Maes was handsome and joyous and optimistic. Maes was warm and giving and loved the whole world with his whole heart. Maes was everything anyone could ever want in a husband and lover. So no, she could not blame Roy for wanting Maes. But she blamed Roy for having Maes. Everyone wanted Maes, but they wanted Roy more. As handsome as Maes but more exotic-looking, more fit, more driven, more charming, more confident, a war hero, the war hero, the Flame Alchemist. Roy could have anyone he wanted, woman or man; all of Amestris would spread their legs for him and thank him for the privilege. Out of all of those millions of people available to him, why did he have to take the one who belonged to her?
I love you like this. God, I love you so much .
And Roy had surged, had risen up, helpless, devouring and devoured. You can’t say that, he had said, shaking, and shut Maes up the only way he could.
She dropped her head into her hands, shivering. She had it backwards.
Roy didn’t have Maes. Maes had Roy.
What was she going to do? What could she do? Confront Maes, tell him she knew the truth, demand he stop seeing Roy?
God, I love you like this, Maes had panted, urgent and desperate. Maes had never said anything like that to her, was always so contained in bed, unfailingly gentle, courteous, considerate, affectionate; she’d have said he was passionate until this afternoon, when she saw him truly passionate for the first time. He’d been so frantic he’d been trembling. He was never frantic with her.
Come on, come for me, he’d urged. You’re so fucking beautiful. He never cursed in bed with her, either, never lost his self-possession to that point he also lost his hold on civility. Never cursed, not once.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, he’d said, and groaned as if he were dying.
If she made Maes choose between her and Roy, she had a sickening feeling he wouldn’t pick her.
Gracia twisted her wedding ring on her finger, around and around and around. Riza had led her to a small park a few blocks away, and they were sitting on one of the benches on the opposite side of the pond from the playground. It was a beautiful sunny day, the sort on which Gracia might have brought Elicia here to play with the other children, if Maes hadn’t suggested they send her to Mrs. Penza, since Riza had come to town with Roy. “Have a girls’ day out,” he’d said, and it had sounded so lovely that she’d agreed without thinking twice.
“I thought,” she said, faltering. Around and around went the ring on her finger. “I would understand if he’d … it would have made sense if he’d hadn’t done anything other than … ” Penetrating, she meant; it would have made sense if he hadn’t done more than play what she thought of as the male role, but she couldn’t say that. She didn’t even have the vocabulary for this, not to say aloud. “But then, but then he … they … when Roy was about to, to … then he, Maes, he.” Her cheeks were flaming, and she couldn’t look at Riza. “He used his, his mouth. To finish him. So he … so there wouldn’t be a, a mess.” Hadn’t wanted any telltale stains on the sheets, is what Maes had said, so Gracia wouldn’t realize when she did the laundry.
Riza was silent. When Gracia had composed herself enough to look up, Riza was staring at some trees on the other side of the park. “In my experience,” Riza said, emotionless, “men who are willing to do that are not simply acting out of desperation or convenience.”
Gracia could not disagree. It had certainly not been convenience. It might have been desperation, but not the kind Riza was talking about. Maes had not been willing to do that. Maes had wanted to do that, had gone down on Roy like Roy was giving him a gift by letting him. Maes had been grinning and playful and had drawn it out, teased Roy until Roy had come with a shout and a curse. And then Maes had licked his lips and crawled up the bed and up Roy’s body and kissed him, wet and filthy, kissed Roy even athough he’d just … and Roy had kissed him back, hadn’t even flinched, and then he’d pushed Maes off and down on the bed and climbed atop him and Maes had stared up at him like he was a star that had fallen out of the sky. Roy had stared back equally star-struck, and fucked Maes liked there was nothing in the world he wanted to be doing more.
Oh. She had just thought the word ‘fucked.’ She was 27 years old and had never thought that word before. But that’s what it had been, that’s what she had seen. Fucking, frantic, base and animal. Like they couldn’t have stopped if they’d wanted to, and clearly they hadn’t wanted to.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, Maes had said as he’d fucked Roy, barely coherent, and Roy had keened and moaned, body straining, all scar tissue and hard muscles, and he’d reached for her husband with hands that had killed a thousand men, and her husband had gripped him back hard enough to bruise. Maes never bruised her, had never even kissed her neck hard enough to leave a mark. “I’d never want to mar such perfection,” he’d say with a grin, and kiss her so softly it was like flower petals dusting over her skin, but now she thought all that meant was that he didn’t love her enough to mark her as his own the way he marked Roy.
Gracia didn’t say any of this to Riza. She didn’t think she had the words to properly describe it anyway. “Did you know?” she asked instead, because she could not imagine that Riza did not.
“I thought it had stopped,” was all Riza said, the words falling slow and reluctant from her lips. “After Ishval.”
“After Ishval,” Gracia said, and then again, as if repetition would make it make more sense, because to have stopped after Ishval meant it had been happening during their time there. So this had been going on for years, before she and Maes had married, even … was it better or worse, she wondered, if instead of losing her husband she was simply learning that she’d never really had him in the first place? Oh, part of him she’d had for sure; she did not think she’d been entirely imagining his love for her nor his devotion to Elicia, but she’d never had his whole heart like she’d thought. Maybe not even most of it.
God, I love you like this.
“A lot of soldiers … hmm. Partake,” Riza continued, voice flat like she was discussing the weather. “Nobody talks about it, but everybody knows. But for most, it lasts only so long as they are at war. Then they come home and pretend it never happened.”
“Not Roy,” Gracia said bitterly. Not Maes, she couldn’t bring herself to say.
Riza tilted her head in a half nod. “Roy …” she said. “… and Maes. I think, for them, this ...” She paused and frowned, looking for a word, then, finding one, set her face and kept on, resolute. “I think their relationship preceded Ishval. So far as I know, Roy has never taken another male lover, not during the war, nor any time thereafter.” Her expression went slightly sour. “Though perhaps I wouldn’t know if he had. I don’t delve into his personal life, and he is very good at eluding me when he truly wants to.”
Preceded Ishval. Which meant this affair stretched back to their Academy days. It had been going on for as long as ten years, perhaps. Ten years, and still Maes looked at Roy and trembled. I could do this all day. Gracia thought of the countless stories that started, “Did I ever tell you about the time Roy and I …” Story upon story began that way, after one there was always another, to the point that she would sometimes wonder if Maes even remembered anyone else from the Academy, someone who’d existed outside of the bubble he’d shared with Roy. Did I ever tell you about the time Roy and I fucked? That story, she’d never heard. There’d never even been a hint that such a story existed to tell. Did I ever tell you about the time Roy and I fell in love?
Gracia was not entirely naïve. She knew it happened, men fucking men, men loving men. She had just never thought one of those men would be her husband.
God, I love you. Come on, come for me. You’re so fucking beautiful. She thought she might be sick, and put a hand up to her mouth as if it could dispel the nausea. Riza looked at her, eyes shuttered, then away, emotionless and poised. Did she think Gracia was weak for not being able to accept this? Was Gracia supposed to be able to accept this? Is that what military wives did? Did other women just close their eyes and pretend it wasn’t happening the same way they pretended their husbands never woke up screaming in the middle of the night, that they returned from war the same people who’d gone there? “I can’t decide,” Gracia said finally, “which is the worse betrayal. That Maes is having sex with him, or that he loves him.”
Riza was quiet and gently reproachful. “You have always known Maes loved him.”
That hurt the most, because she had.
The house was fragrant with strange spices when Gracia came home with Elicia. Riza had gone back to her hotel with some reluctance, a little hesitant to leave Gracia on her own for the inevitable confrontation, but as much as Gracia would have appreciated some support, it could not be Riza at her side. Riza was Roy’s, wholeheartedly; even knowing about the affair, Riza was still Roy’s, and would always be Roy’s. There was a bond between the two that Gracia did not think she would ever fully understand, their lives inextricably intertwined: they were not now nor had ever been lovers, but Roy and Riza were closer in many ways than Roy and Maes. Even now, Gracia still believed that to be true. So Riza could not be the one to stand with Gracia, because in the end, Riza would always stand with Roy.
Gracia dropped her key on the side table and took off her coat, unfastening each button with slow, deliberate movements. She could hear Maes and Roy in the kitchen, laughing.
A burst of nausea swirled in her belly at the normalcy. How could it be so normal in her house, when her entire world had collapsed? The pictures should all be on the floor, the glass shattered, the wallpaper shredded and filthy, every vase broken in pieces on the floor.
Elicia scampered into the kitchen as soon as Gracia had taken off her coat.
“Uncle Roy!”
“Polka Dot!” Roy said, and swung Elicia up in the air while she giggled in toddler ecstasy.
Put down my daughter, Gracia wanted to say. Don’t touch my daughter with the same hands you used to touch my husband, but she grit her teeth and smiled instead.
“Gracia, my love!” Maes swept over from where he had been stirring a pan of something on the stove, and leaned in to kiss her. She managed to turn so that the kiss landed on her cheek, not her lips. She could not bear to be kissed by him, not when she knew he had been kissing Roy earlier— and doing other things with his mouth, too, that she could not think about now, with her daughter there, in the arms of the man Maes loved. “How was your day, dearest piece of my heart?”
“Fine,” she said shortly. She glanced at Roy, who was pointing out the contents of several different pots and pans to a wide-eyed Elicia. How did he feel, she wondered, to hear Maes addressing her this way? Was he so desperate for Maes’s affections that he could disregard all the flowery love that fell from Maes’s lips every time he spoke to her? Or was he so secure in his knowledge that Maes loved him best that it didn’t matter to him what Maes said to her?
“That’s rice,” Roy said. Then his eyes widened comically. “Oh no, I forgot, you don’t like rice at all!”
Elicia looked horrified. “No, Uncle Roy! I love rice, remember?”
“You do?” Roy raised his eyebrows as high as they could go. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure, I’m sure, I love rice! I’ll eat all the rice!”
Roy pretended to be astonished. “You’ll eat all of it? That whole big pot of rice?”
“You will not,” Maes said, coming over to kiss Elicia and ruffle her hair. So then it was the three of them, Roy holding Elicia and Maes leaning in close to them both, and Gracia dug her nails into her palms so she would not start screaming. “Mommy and Daddy and Uncle Roy want some rice too. Maybe if you’re lucky Uncle Roy will show you how to use chopsticks.”
“Um, no he won’t. Uncle Roy doesn’t know how to use chopsticks very well,” Roy said, grimacing. He shifted Elicia to his hip so she could look more closely at the vegetables and chicken simmering on the stove.
Maes looked shocked. “What? How can you not know how to use chopsticks? It’s your heritage!”
“Only half,” Roy said. “And I’m pretty sure my mother was born and raised in Central. We ate with forks when I was little. Then Aunt Chris didn’t know a thing about Xing and didn’t care if I did either. Really, everything I know about Xingese food I learned at Capitol Wok.” He turned back to Elicia, with a pout on his face that had made many women weak in the knees. “That was a Xingese restaurant. They used to make fun of me there if I tried to use chopsticks. That wasn’t very nice of them, was it?”
“No!” Elicia’s eyes were big and green and trusting of this man who might be the one to break up her family. “No, you shouldn’t make fun of people, because it makes them feel bad.”
Maes beamed. “You’re so caring, sweetheart! Roy, isn’t she the most wonderful caring little girl ever?”
“She’s the most wonderful little girl I know,” Roy agreed.
“I won’t ever make fun of you, Uncle Roy,” Elicia said seriously. “Even if you can’t use chopped sticks very good.” Then she gave him a kiss on his cheek, and he laughed and tickled her until she was shrieking.
Gracia could not bear it for one more second. “Elicia,” she said. “Why don’t you go wash up for dinner now? I’ll set the table with Daddy and … and Uncle Roy.” Saying his name was like choking on acid.
“Okay Mommy!” Elicia said, and ran off singing “rice rice I love rice!” as soon as Roy put her down.
“I should take a picture,” Maes said adoringly. “I haven’t taken a picture of her all day.”
“You’re slipping,” Roy said. “Gracia, where’s Hawkeye? I thought she was coming back with you for dinner.”
“She was tired,” Gracia said. It turned out to be surprisingly easy to lie, to keep her tone uninflected and her expression neutral. This must be what Maes did all the time, just let the lies out like they didn’t mean anything. “She said she’d rather go back to the hotel and have a quiet night before the train ride tomorrow, and that you shouldn’t get all crazy like you always do, because she is allowed to be tired like other humans every once in a while.”
“She’s not allowed, actually. It’s in her contract. I added a provision specifically,” Roy said, at the same time Maes said, “She’s human?” They both laughed, and then Roy shrugged and said, “Her loss. We outdid ourselves today.”
“Did you?” Gracia said, biting her cheek, remembering the way Roy had moaned and Maes had cursed, the way the two of them had stared at each other, as if in that moment there was nothing and no one else in the world that mattered. God, I could do this all day.
Gracia turned to the cabinets to get the dishes, and pretended she wouldn’t rather smash them all to the floor, one by one.
By the time Elicia was in bed, Gracia was at the end of her rope. She could not believe, now, that she had never noticed. How had she not seen the way Maes and Roy were with each other, the way Maes hung on every word Roy said, the way Roy put up with the way Maes touched him all the time, casually, when he never tolerated so much as a pat on the back from anyone else, the way they were always catching each other’s eyes and grinning?
Now that she knew, she felt like an idiot for having been so blind for so long. Fathers and sons were not this close. Brothers were not this intimate. It was there in every little movement that passed between them, every moment they were together. Yet she’d closed her eyes and pretended it was normal, felt blessed that Maes had a friend with whom he had such a deep bond. For god’s sake, she had let Maes have his lover in their house because she could not believe a man who professed such love for his wife and daughter — and showed it every day, in a thousand different ways — could also be in love with someone else. That Maes was in love with a man was … less strange, by nighttime, than it had been during the day; that Maes was in love with anyone else was no less strange at all.
“The one problem with Xingese food,” Maes said, glancing around the kitchen in something akin to despair, “is the mess.”
Roy groaned, head thrown back, eyes closed. Gracia stilled at the sound, but did not shudder.
“Hey, Roy,” Maes said. “Why don’t you develop a spell for cleaning the kitchen?”
“They’re not spells,” Roy said, cracking open one eye. He was sprawled in his chair, shirt untucked, hair even more of a mess than usual. Before, she’d have said he looked relaxed. Now she thought a better word was wanton, loose-limbed and seductive, the untucked shirt and messy hair an invitation to touch even if he wasn’t doing it on purpose — although she couldn’t be sure he wasn’t. “It’s alchemy, Hughes. Science, not magic.”
“Tell that to the nomads,” Maes said. “Hey, Gracia, did I ever tell you about the time Roy and I—”
“No,” Gracia said.
Maes blinked. “But you don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“I’m sure it was a very funny story involving a training exercise in the desert,” Gracia said. “No, you never told me about it. No, I don’t want to hear it.”
Her voice was calm, at least she thought it was, but still Maes shifted in his seat, and Roy opened both eyes and sat up.
“Darling,” Maes said cautiously, “is something wrong?”
Gracia breathed, in and out, striving for tranquility. “Ask me about my day,” she said.
Maes seemed baffled. “We already discussed it at dinner. You said you had lunch with Riza and then you went and looked at that dress you had seen but you didn’t like it when you tried it on. Are you upset that it didn’t fit? There are so many dress stores in the city, sweetheart, and you look spectacular in everything you wear, you’re so beautiful and your body is perfectly proportioned, I’m sure you can find—”
“Ask me,” Gracia said again, icily, “about my day.”
Roy cleared his throat and sat up even straighter. “Um. Maybe I’ll go look in on Elicia.”
“Stay the hell away from my daughter,” Gracia said, though she never took her eyes off her husband and so only saw Roy’s flinch out of the corner of her eye. Nervous anticipation had her stomach in knots, but she could not wait one more minute. It was not fair that she should be feeling like this, confused and betrayed and so angry, while Maes and Roy could be laughing about alchemy and nomads. “Go ahead, Maes, ask me.”
Maes swallowed and his eyes flickered to where Roy was sitting. Even now, she thought, even now he looked to Roy first. God, I love you so much.
“Gracia,” Maes said, very slowly. “How was your day?”
“It was lovely,” Gracia said, with a bright, fake smile, “except that I forgot the shoes I wanted to wear to try on with the dress. So I came home after lunch to get them.”
“You …” Maes said. His face drained of color in slow, steady increments, starting high in his cheekbones and moving down.
“Came home. After lunch. Around 2 o’clock.”
“Fuck,” Roy breathed. He folded forward and dropped his head in his hands, palms grinding into his eyes.
“Yes,” Gracia said. “That’s very appropriate, under the circumstances.”
Maes looked at Roy again. Gracia wanted to hit him, wanted to grab him by the collar and shake him, wanted to yell in his face, look at me, not him, I’m your wife! Instead she sat at the table, surrounded by dirty dishes, in the kitchen of the home where her husband had spent the afternoon fucking his best friend, and waited for Maes to speak.
“Gracia,” Maes tried, but then his speech seemed to fail him. “Gracia, love—”
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t call me that, not now.”
Maes shrank in on himself a little bit and drew in a shaky breath. He looked like he was about to weep. The only time she’d ever seen him cry had been was Elicia was born. “All right,” he said. He was wringing his hands in his lap. She didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone actually do that before. “I don’t know where to start.”
Of course he didn’t. Of course it would fall on Gracia to navigate this situation she didn’t ask for and couldn’t fathom. “Riza says,” she said — Roy flinched again, off to the side — “that this has been going on since the Academy. Is that true?”
Roy’s voice was faint. “Riza knows?”
“She was here with me. She heard some of it. But she didn’t see.”
She’d thought Maes was pale before, but now he was bone white, like a ghost. He looked, Gracia thought, like she felt. “You … you saw us?”
“Mmm,” Gracia said, nodding. “I’m sorry, should I have knocked? I’m not sure you would have heard me anyway over all the noise. You were being very loud.”
“Fuck,” Roy said. “Fuck, fuck, Gracia, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want an apology from you,” she said without looking at him. She kept her eyes on Maes. “I don’t want an apology from either of you. I just want to understand how this happened. Right under my nose, for ten years you’ve been … you’ve been sleeping together for ten years, and you … you lied to me, Maes. Is Roy the only one, or do you have other lovers?” She hadn’t wanted to wonder, but it seemed an obvious question now. If Maes had one lover, why not more? Roy visited only once a month; that gave Maes ample opportunity to have other affairs.
“No others,” Maes said. He looked horrified at the thought. “No one else, there’s never been anyone else.” His voice was sincere, but he wasn’t looking at Gracia when he said it. He was looking at Roy. “I swear it. There hasn’t been anyone else.”
“I know there hasn’t,” Roy said … Roy said. In the space of a heartbeat, Gracia was incandescently furious.
“Shut up,” she said, finally turning to face him. “You shut up, you son of a bitch, I can’t believe you have the nerve to be here, you actually have the gall to sit here and eat dinner with us after you spent the afternoon having sex with my husband? In my house?”
For the first time since she’d known him, Gracia saw Roy Mustang at a loss for words.
“I suppose,” she continued, coldly, “I shouldn’t be shocked. After all, what else would you expect from a man who murders people in their beds—”
“Gracia!”
She ignored Maes’s shocked outcry, staring at Roy in a bitter, cold rage. “It would be stupid to expect any humanity or decency from a man who kills women and children and slaughters babies in their cribs. Why would you see anything wrong with it, why should I expect any compassion from a man who burns people to ashes … ”
Roy vaulted up and out of his chair, pallid and trembling. “I’m sorry,” he said, stricken. “I’m sorry, god, I’m sorry … Maes, I can’t be here, I have to go … ”
“Don’t, she didn’t mean it, she didn’t … Roy.”
But Roy was already gone. The front door clicked shut while Maes was still frozen in his seat. “Damn it,” he said, under his breath. “Goddamn it, Roy—” He was halfway out of the kitchen before he looked back at Gracia. His face was sad — no, he was disappointed, like she’d failed some test. The unjustness of it took her breath away, that he could have the nerve to be disappointed in her, when he was the one had done everything wrong, and her only crime was being naïve enough to believe that he’d meant the vows he took with her.
Maes stared at her for a moment, angry and disbelieving, before his face crumpled into misery. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Gracia, but I can’t just let him leave like that.”
“You can,” she said, more calmly than she felt. “But you won’t.”
His breath was shaky. She’d never seen him so off-balance. “Maybe so.” Then he was gone too, and the front door opened and shut again a minute later, his footsteps thumping hastily down the outside steps.
Gracia put her head down on the table and just breathed for a long time, eyes burning. Maes did not immediately return, nor even return in the age of time it took for her to gather the shattered pieces of her self-possession together again. When she could breathe without thinking she might burst into tears, she rose to her feet and started cleaning the kitchen, slowly and methodically. First she cleared the table, then she washed the dishes one at a time and placed them in the rack. Maes usually dried the dishes while she washed; when Roy stayed for dinner he would help dry the dishes too, standing shoulder to shoulder with Maes, the two of them flicking water at each other and laughing like schoolboys.
Her eyes burned but she did not cry. Would not. If Maes came home, she would not have him find her in the kitchen, crying. If Maes did not come home … well. If Maes did not come home, then she would know the answer to the question she had not yet dared to ask.
She dried the dishes and put them away, then washed the pots that had been soaking, scouring them so they sparkled like new. She dried them and put them away too, wiped the table and swept the floor. Maes was still not back, and there was nothing left for her to do. Usually when Roy visited, after Elicia went to bed they would play cards or board games, the three of them, Maes and Roy bickering and competitive and so distracting in their immaturity that she always lost. Sometimes they would gather around the piano and Roy would play for them, singing in his serviceable but not spectacular baritone. Maes would join in when he knew the words and even when he didn’t; the songs were mostly inappropriate for mixed company as it was, but were worse when Maes was making up the words as he went along. Gracia would sing along with them sometimes, feeling self-conscious but daring when the songs were lewd — which was most of the time, since Roy had learned to play piano in the parlor at his aunt’s bar … brothel. Roy grew up in a brothel, not a bar. She thought she should get used to saying and thinking such things, to being honest about what things were called and what they truly were.
Time passed, and still Maes had not returned. Gracia went to their bedroom, took off her jewelry and placed it away, bathed and removed her makeup, combed out her hair and brushed her teeth, focusing on each mundane activity that she would not have to think of anything else. She pulled out a nightgown from her pajama drawer, pale pink with faded green and yellow flowers round the hem and a low neckline that flattered her décolletage. It had been part of her trousseau, she remembered, a gift from her aunt, who had smiled at her slyly and winked when Gracia had opened the box.
Gracia frowned and put the nightgown neatly back in the drawer, then took out another, plain and white and modest. On the corner of the dresser was the bag with the shoes she’d meant to take with her that morning, when she’d been rushing to drop Elicia off at the sitter’s before meeting Riza for a late breakfast. “We’ll be back around five,” she’d said to Maes, who had climbed back into bed with the newspaper. She’d bent down to brush a kiss across his cheek, and he’d turned his head to catch her lips at the last moment. He’d tasted of toast and coffee.
“We’ll take care of dinner,” he’d said. “Xingese, if I can convince him.”
“Mmm,” she’d said. “You boys have fun.” Then she’d left, distracted and in a hurry, and the shoes had been left behind in the bag on the dresser. If only she’d remembered to take them, she’d have spent the day out with Riza and come home with Elicia at five o’clock. Maes and Roy would have been cooking in the kitchen, and when she asked them how they spent their day they’d have smiled at her and laughed and lied and she’d have never known any different. She’d have had a new dress and a life she understood, instead of no dress and a life she didn’t understand at all.
She took the bag with the shoes and placed it on a high shelf in the back of her closet, and shut the door tight. Then she got into bed in her plain white nightgown and turned on a lamp, picked a book from the pile on her nightstand, opened it at the marked page, and did not read a single word. You boys have fun, she’d said. Like she’d been giving them permission.
You’re so fucking beautiful. God, I could do this all day.
It was past eleven when she heard the front door open. She breathed unsteadily, tense, but did not get up. Momentarily she heard footsteps down the hall, muted voices — which answered at least one question — then the click of the guest room door as it closed. No creak. Maes came into their room a minute later.
“I saw the light was still on,” he said. He looked tired and unhappy, and rubbed the back of his neck where the muscles would get tight when he was anxious or upset. He smelled of smoke. “I’m just going to brush my teeth.”
“All right,” she said. She wondered if she should say something else, but if so, she didn’t know what it should be. She did not know anything. What to say, what to think, what to feel. So she said nothing, thought nothing, and felt nothing when he walked past the bed to the bathroom and shut the door behind him.
She sat in the bed and thought about nothing until Maes came out of the bathroom. He’d washed his face, and the hair at his temples was still damp. He usually left his glasses in the bathroom at night, but he’d put them back on, and he blinked at her from behind the lenses. He looked like a stranger in their bedroom with his glasses on. “Roy’s in the guest room,” he said unnecessarily. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“All right.” Nothing, nothing, nothing.
God, I love you like this. I love you.
Nothing, she thought to herself forcefully, and tried to mean it.
“Gracia,” he said, sighing. “We’ll figure it out in the morning. Somehow, we’ll … we’ll figure it out.”
She did not say anything to that, and he frowned unhappily, took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. She waited for him to say something that might make her feel anything other than deadened. “Good night,” he said finally.
Nothing. Gracia merely looked at him. Even with the glasses off, he still looked like a stranger to her. “Good night.”
He left then and she stayed sitting up in the bed, not moving, until she’d heard his footsteps walk past the guest room without stopping. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, then carefully replaced the bookmark exactly where it had been, put the book back on the nightstand and turned out the light. She lay down on her back, hands flat at her side. Dead man’s pose. Dead woman. She did not think, but neither did she sleep.