Do It Yourself

By: Catherine A. Graham

Disclaimer: Maes Hughes and Roy Mustang, as well as any and all things and/or places recognizable, do not belong to me.

Author's Note: I'm not asking for too much leniency, but this is my first FMA fanfic, and, more importantly, my first yaoi and/or slash fanfic. What can I say – I'm not usually big on romance.

Maes Hughes, for one, had never been drawn into the "Do-It-Yourself" craze that had swept Amestris during his teenage years. While his father had crouched underneath six lengths of plywood that supposedly resembled the frame of a picnic table, Maes had watched from through the patio doors, clinking around the ice in a cold glass of his mother's lemonade.

Deciding exactly how peg A fit into slot B never held much interest for him. Besides, everyone who knew him agreed that he was the intellectual type, and when the optometrist had announced his need for glasses, Maes had felt a surge of excitement at the unreadable quality the lenses gave his eyes, never worrying that someday, while on his knees screwing a bolt into place, they would slide down his nose and crack on the pavement. He had tried that only once, per the instruction of his father, who needed an extra set of hands for said picnic table, and as soon as his glasses had been replaced, had sworn off all such projects indefinitely. (Later incidents that sent him back to the optometrist in need of new glasses usually involved an attacker, a gun, a crouch and roll escape, or at the very least a less-than-ideally controlled flame.)

Maes lived by the ideal that, if you could buy it already assembled, there was no reason to break a sweat (or your glasses) putting it together yourself.

Which is why those who knew him questioned his choice of Roy Mustang as a friend. Maes had to admit he didn't exactly trust his judgment in this case either. Roy had entered the military academy around the same time as Maes, looking two years younger and already acting infinitely older than Maes thought a boy his age should have. Xingian features concealed something much too Amestris idealistic for a military officer, and Maes knew he would sting for it later, more than he was stinging now for the insults teenagers threw at him regarding his slanted eyes and too pale skin. He would have liked to ignore it, but Maes ached with the suspicion that if he were to pick Roy up and shake him, he would be able to hear the broken parts rattling around inside.

In short, Roy was a walking "Do-It-Yourself" project.

It started as a keen interest, with a careful knowledge not to get too close because he was not the one to fix Roy Mustang. Leave it to someone who could wield tape like he could wield his knives.

But, if there was one thing Maes could do, it was sell himself on any idea that made its way into his mind (and, Roy Mustang had definitely done that). After all, it wasn't really physical work, a long shot from the fiasco with the picnic table. And, he did want to work in Intelligence – wasn't making sure someone like Roy stayed put together just practice for puzzling out the minds of terrorists, spies, and soldiers about to go AWOL?

Maes decided one night, making his way into Roy's dorm room (devoid of tape but with plenty of good intentions), that his reasoning was damn sound.

He could never have imagined that looking back, entering Roy's dorm room would seem just as necessary to him as it was to Roy.

As Roy's tongue plunged into Maes' mouth, he thought that there were a lot of things he wanted to do to Roy himself. And, later, the dimly heard crunch of his glasses as they slid off his face to lodge between his chest and the white stucco wall didn't faze him as much as it once would have. It wasn't surprising – Roy had a way of changing the way Maes thought about things.

Finish