The Weight of an Empty Coat Hook FMA: Brotherhood Fanfic by MythboundCal

There’s still a coat on the hook by the door.

Khaki. Pressed. Too stiff to be his. He’s never been that precise.

It hangs like a promise. Like a habit. Like something he forgot to take down and now doesn’t know how to touch.

Roy tells himself it’s for when she visits. But it’s never cold when she does.

The war is over. The new government is still finding its legs, and his title weighs heavier than his rank ever did. He’s got folders to sign, meetings to attend, medals to return.

But the chair to his right? It stays empty.

She said she needed time. Not away from him, necessarily—just away from this. The work. The policy. The tightrope that starts to look more like a noose the longer you walk it.

He understood. Of course he did.

He just didn’t expect time to move so slowly when she wasn’t filling the room with her silence.

The coat shifts in the corner of his eye when he walks past. He never looks at it directly. Not really. But he knows it’s there.

The way he used to know her breath patterns during stakeouts. The way he still pauses when pouring two cups of coffee, even though the second one always goes cold.

Some days, he thinks about boxing it up. Sending it to wherever she is. Some days, he thinks about what he’d write in the note. Most days, he doesn’t write anything.

Because if he does, that means she might not come back.

And he’s not ready to believe that yet.

So the coat stays. Waiting.

Not a uniform. Not a weapon.

Just fabric. Just memory.

And maybe, just maybe—