After Hours
Everyone changes after hours. Sometimes it just takes a little incentive.
Everyone in the newly refurbished office had to stop and stare when Lieutenant Hawkeye dropped the last box of junk from the old office and muttered, "I need a drink." An amused silence settled over the room, and when she looked up there were four pairs of eyes staring at her as if she had suddenly sprouted another head.
"What?" she asked them, somewhat irately, using her boot to shove the box over against its seven companions – each the exact same size and shape, filled with the exact same mish-mash of personal knickknacks and office supplies.
Havoc snickered, and muttered, "Too bad the Colonel's not here." Everyone went back to work when she started frowning.
A knock on the door provided another welcome distraction, and then Winry stuck her head into the room.
"What are you still doing hanging around here?" Havoc asked, chewing on the end of his cigarette. He'd taken a liking to the girl that was only slightly inappropriate. "Don't you have a world famous automail shop to run?"
"Couldn't get a train out," Winry answered as she entered the room, closing the door behind her. "The stationmaster said there wouldn't be any trains running for at least three days, so I'm stuck here."
"Wasn't Scieszka keeping you company?" Riza asked, kneeling beside one of the boxes to rifle through its contents.
Winry laughed, and dropped her bag by the door. "She's been commandeered to recreate some of the more important documents that got destroyed in the battle." Hoisting herself up onto one of the mostly empty desks, she continued, "Looks like I'm gonna be all alone for a few days."
She tilted her chin when she looked at Riza and found the other woman gazing back at her with an expression somewhere between interest and what looked suspiciously like wariness.
"Something I can do for you, Lieutenant?" she asked when the Riza had been staring at her for longer than was generally considered polite.
Riza shook herself, and then returned her gaze to her box. Winry shrugged, then Riza cleared her throat – was she nervous - and said, "Actually, yes. Do you want to go get a few drinks when I get off? My treat?"
Havoc nearly swallowed his unlit cigarette to keep from chuckling, and Breda, somewhat angrily, demanded, "Is there any particular reason why you don't ever ask us to go out with you?"
"I don't get paid enough to put up with all of you after hours," Riza replied with absolute sincerity.
Winry almost fell off the desk laughing.
After four drinks, the tiny little bar looked much bigger (and not quite so dingy) as it had when they'd entered. After six drinks, it looked like a veritable palace. After that, Winry lost count. It didn't help that the bartender kept taking the empty glasses away, or that she kept ordering different kinds of drinks, only to drink half of them and then force the rest on Lieutenant Hawkeye (though why she was still thinking of the other woman as a lieutenant was a bit mystifying, considering Riza was out of uniform).
"It's just," Winry began again, for the umpteenth time, barely slurring, "it's… it's just, I can't… it's just that I can't… I can't remember what I was going to say."
Riza snorted into her drink, then tossed it back like a shot to polish it off. "Edward," she said as she set her empty glass down. "You were gonna say… about Edward."
"Right!" Winry exclaimed, the awful grammar going unnoticed. "Right! I was gonna say about Edward. About Ed… I was gonna say… What was I gonna say about Ed?"
"You were telling me how much you love him," Riza supplied, waving the bartender over for another round. He raised his eyebrows at Winry's shrill exclamation of "I do not!" but as Riza could still put words into coherent sentences – barely – he didn't offer to call them a taxi.
"You do too," Riza maintained, grabbing a stale cashew out of the dish nearby and flicking it at Winry, nailing her right in the forehead. "You can pretend you don't, but it's all over your face. I'd know that look anywhere."
"Do you see it in the mirror every morning?" Winry griped, grabbing a handful of mixed nuts and chunking that at Riza. Most of them went wide, and bounced off her shoulder. A peanut landed in her drink.
As she was fishing it out, Riza said, "We're talking about your AWOL alchemist, not mine."
"My alchemist," Winry mused, propping her chin up on her hand, elbow leaning on the grimy countertop of the bar. She watched as Riza searched through her drink for the stray peanut, then asked rhetorically, "What's wrong with us?"
"Well nothing's wrong with me," Riza answered easily, pulling the peanut out and flicking it at Winry. Again, it struck her precisely in the middle of her forehead. "I've got a decently paying career with ample room for advancement, perfect aim with peanuts as well as guns, aaand-" she paused dramatically, but ruined the effect when she took a gulp of her drink and choked on it. Instead of continuing, she just gulped down the rest of it as quickly as possible, once she was done coughing.
"And?" Winry prompted, when it didn't appear Riza was going to finish.
"What?" the older woman demanded, forehead crinkling as if she were bothered.
"Good job, perfect aim, and?"
"Oh," Riza murmured, looking down at one of the rogue almonds that had landed on the bar, before exclaiming, "Oh! Aaand!" She paused again, smiling and nodding as though congratulating herself on a job well done. "I slept with Roy last night."
Winry was unimpressed. She'd slept with Ed lots of times when they were children. It really wasn't anything to brag about.
Riza started snickering when she said so.
"What?!" Winry demanded, banging her closed fist on the counter as the other woman continued to laugh. "It's not like it's any big deal! Lot's of kids sleep in the same bed when they're young, but… you didn't know the Colonel when you were little, did you?"
Riza shook her head, still laughing.
"And," Winry went on, turning pink, "and you probably weren't sleeping last night, were you?"
"Not for the first few hours," Riza murmured, staring into her empty glass with a small smile. At least she had the grace the blush.
"Hours?!" Winry exclaimed loudly, her eyes going wide as saucers. "I thought… I though it only took thirty minutes; forty-five tops."
Riza made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a giggle, and asked, "Is that based on second-hand accounts or personal experience?"
This time it was Winry's turn to snort, but she only got as far as, "Well Ed used to-" before she cut herself off abruptly, turning bright red. Riza laid her head down on the counter because it was too difficult to sit up straight and laugh.
Winry finished her drink, then ate a few peanuts. She ordered two more whiskey sours, and sat patiently, waiting for her companion to stop cackling long enough to pull her head up off the bar. She started smoldering when she finished her drink and Hawkeye's shoulders were still shaking in barely contained mirth.
"All right," Riza said finally, lifting her head up and wiping at her streaming eyes, "I think I've had enough!" She called to the bartender for the bill, and grimaced at it when he laid it down by her last – still full – drink. She sighed and shook her head, then pulled a few bills out of her pocket book and laid them on the check. Then she grabbed the whiskey sour, gulped it down with only a little coughing, and stood up.
She tried to, anyway. Unfortunately gravity and vertigo both took that moment to make themselves known, and she stumbled into Winry, who fell off her stool and would have ended up on the grimy floor if she hadn't gotten wedged between her seat and the gentleman sitting on her other side. She was very still for a few moments, staring up into the scowling face of the handsome, middle-aged man she had just assaulted. He only looked more affronted when she began to pick herself up and had to ask for his help. Riza seemed to have reverted back to office behavior: she watched in barely concealed amusement and made absolutely no move to help (this was, of course, because she was barely on her feet – moving would have been most unwise).
When Winry was finally standing, she tottered over to Riza, almost fell over, and wrapped an arm around the older woman's waist to keep herself upright.
"Do you think you can walk home?" Riza asked, dropping her spare arm around Winry's shoulder. "I think I've got enough money for a cab if one of us gives the driver a hand job."
Winry giggled and blushed and drawled, "Nah," before pulling Riza toward the door. " 'm fine! It's nice out. Let's walk!"
It was a beautiful night out. The air was cool, and even though the wind was a little stronger than was generally considered pleasant it only served to blow away the dust and smog that had been hovering over the city for the last week. The sidewalks were clear of all pedestrians save those who were also tottering out of bars and nightclubs. Since much of the city was still in ruins there were even fewer people than usual, but neither woman minded. They stumbled along, laughing over exchanged stories about the two men who were forever running in and out of their lives.
After twenty minutes of stumbling, Riza looked around and mumbled, "This isn't my street."
Winry disconnected herself from her companion, and stumbled a few feet to the gutter where she groaned, "I think I'm gonna be sick."
Riza did not appear to hear. She was standing on the corner, glancing down all four cross streets as if one the signs might suddenly leap to life and tell her where she had taken a wrong turn.
"Really," Winry intoned, sitting down heavily on the curb.
"Put you head between your legs and breathe," Riza ordered, still glaring around at the landmarks.
" S'not working!" Winry exclaimed, flopping over backwards on the concrete and throwing her hand over her eyes. "Oh god, I think I'm dying!" Then, because it was such an ingenious idea, she pulled her wrench out of her jacket pocket, and laid it on her forehead. The cold metal felt amazing, and the small was more than a little comforting.
"Just lay there for a minute," Riza said finally, fumbling through her pocketbook for some spare change. "I see a payphone down the street."
Winry made a vague gesture that seemed to be agreement, so Riza dropped her tiny little purse and tripped down the block to the red phone booth, waiting patiently in a circle of light from the nearby streetlamp. She was unsurprised to see that it was empty.
When she'd wrestled the door aside, and dropped a coin in the slot, the only number she could remember was Roy's. Even her own phone number was coming up blank in her mind – as if remembering it would have done her any good. So, since his was the only number she could recall, it was the number she dialed.
After four rings a little tremor of suspicious jealousy worked it's way into her heart, and after six rings the tremor had turned into an earthquake. She was ready to slam the phone down on the receiver and vow to never speak to Roy again, when he finally picked up halfway through the seventh ring.
He mumbled wordlessly, bit back a yawn, and said, "Who the hell-"
"Roy!" Riza exclaimed much louder than she meant to. "What are you doing? Why didn't you pick up the phone?"
Back in his very small, very dark, depressingly tiny flat, Roy was staring at the phone. "Sleeping," he answered slowly, unsure whether or not the woman on the line was really Hawkeye. "It's," he paused to grab his clock off the sideboard, holding it up the sparse light of the outside lamp and squinting at it, "it's two in the morning. People sleep at two in the morning. Are you at home?"
"No!" she scoffed. "No I'm not! Why would I be at home? I have a life, you know! Sometimes. Occasionally."
"Would you stop shouting?" Roy soothed, trying hard not to sound irate. "Why are you calling me?"
"I need you to pick me up," she said briskly.
The phone line was very silent, then Roy sighed, and whined, "It's two in the morning. I'm in my paja-"
"This is an emergency!" Riza interrupted. "It's pitch black outside, I have no idea where I am, and I'm so drunk I'm barely standing! What are we supposed to do if some shady letch decides he wants to have his way with us?"
"You're a very articulate drunk," he responded disbelievingly. "And what's all this 'we' and 'us' stuff? Who are you with?"
"Look!" she snapped. "If sleep is more important to you than Winry's maiden virtue, then go back to bed! But I'm not going to be the one to explain to the Elrics what happened when they finally show up again, you hear me?!"
There was another long pause, then Roy chuckled, and mock-gasped, "Lieutenant Hawkeye! Are you corrupting our country's youth?"
"She corrupted herself," Riza said matter-of-factly. "I did pay, though.
"Is she even old enough to drink?" he questioned, finally climbing out of bed.
Riza was silent for a moment, then she said, "I didn't ask. Neither did the bartender."
"How's she holding up?" he asked as he struggled out of his pajamas bottoms while holding the phone.
"I don't know," she said, glancing back down the dark street towards where the girl was waiting. "I can't really see her. She looked about ready to pass out, though."
Roy fell over while trying to pull his pants on, and dropped the phone with a loud clatter. For a few moments, the only sounds on the line were static and lots of swearing. When he finally picked up the receiver, he yelled, "What?! Why did you leave her alone?!"
"She's fine," Riza answered easily. "She's laying down. No one will see her! God knows I can't!"
Roy clicked his tongue, and muttered, "You are drunk!" then asked, "Where are you?"
"I told you," she quipped. "I don't know."
Roy swore again, and asked, "Well where were you?"
She thought for a moment, then said, "I can't remember the name of the bar," and Roy swore for a third time before she continued, "but it's that dingy little place you always go to when you've had a bad day. That really grimy, seedy little hole in the wall."
"Why didn't you just say so?" Roy demanded, grimacing to think that Riza and Winry were out and about at two in the morning in that particular are of town. He didn't usually worry too much about his lieutenant's safety, but she'd said herself she could barely stand and she was never one to exaggerate. Winry sounded to be in even worse condition.
"Just hold on a few minutes," he said finally. "I don't have a car, so it's gonna take me awhile to get there. Is there any distinguishing land mark around?"
"There's a phone booth," she said, trying to be helpful. Roy wanted to hit something.
"We're gonna have a talk when you're sober," he griped, shoving his arms into his jacket, not bothering to change out of his pajama top.
"Looking forward to it, Colonel," Riza replied cheefully before hanging up the phone.
When she wandered back to Winry, the girl was laying on her side, holding the wrench to her forehead and humming a dreary little tune that Riza vaguely recognized but couldn't put words to.
"Why do you always carry that around?" Riza asked, sitting down beside her and nodding toward the tool.
Winry rolled over to look at her, then glanced down at the worn, well-loved wrench. "Probably," she mused, "for the same reason you never go anywhere without a firearm."
"Paranoid fear for your life?" Riza responded, laughing.
"You'd be surprised," Winry murmured, dragging herself into a sitting position. "Wrenches make good projectiles."
Riza snorted, and Winry continued, "Seriously. I've chunked this same wrench at Edward so many times I'm surprised he doesn't have a permanent wrench-shaped dent in his forehead."
"Do you get good aim with it?" Riza asked, now more than a little interested. Wrenches were heavy. They could do damage. Maybe she should buy one.
"As good aim as someone like me can have," Winry remarked, using one hand to flip the wrench end over end. Then, giggling, she added, "She flies true!"
Riza blinked at her, and said simply, "She."
Winry shot her a disbelieving stare and asked, "What's you gun's name?"
Hawkeye turned pink and looked the other way.
They spent ten minutes in a silence that was only broken once when Winry groaned and flopped back over to lay on her side and press her favorite tool to her forehead. Winry spent the time chanting a personal mantra in her head (… won't throw up I won't throw up I won't throw…) while Riza tried to see how many different faces she could make before she sprained something. It was an exercise she'd given up at a very early age, and something she'd always missed. She felt more than a little out of practice, and quickly lost interest.
After another five minutes, Riza nudged Winry's leg with the toe of her shoe and received absolutely no response. She repeated the process a bit more violently, and Winry sat up stiffly and glared at her.
"Whaddaya want?" the young woman asked peevishly, passing the wrench form hand to hand as though to keep herself from throwing it.
"Can I see your wrench?" Riza requested, holding out a hand.
Winry was immediately suspicious, and hugged the wrench to her chest as if to shelter it from a storm. "What do you want with her?" she hissed, squinting up at Hawkeye.
Riza laughed, and replied, "I just wanna try it out. I promise you'll get it back in one piece."
Winry didn't seem convinced, but she handed the precious item over anyway. Riza hefted it a few times, feeling the weight and balance of the metal. She moved her hand over it, looking for the grip that would give her the best distance, and finally settled for holding it by its middle. Winry clucked her tongue and muttered, "Bad grip. Won't get any velocity."
Riza frowned, then looked at Winry and said, "Show me?"
Unfortunately, Winry did. Roy would never figure out if they'd meant to hit him or not, but when that (hard, heavy, cold) wrench sailed out of the darkness to connect solidly with his forehead he didn't much care. Caught completely unawares, all he could do was let out a startled shout and go down like a cheap hooker. While he was picking himself up out of the road, two familiar, extremely drunk figures tottered up, holding onto eachother as much for comfort as support, and looking like the hapless victims in one of those scary talkies about mud monsters who went on killing rampages.
Hawkeye noticed him first. She let out a relieved breath, and nearly tripped over a crack in the road as she broke away from Winry. When she was within range, she poked him in the forehead, where a lump was just beginning to form. Roy swore.
"I think you hit 'im," Winry said slowly, nodding with approval. Then she swayed, put a hand to her forehead – again, likening back to the same monster movie – and fell over. Her nose would have connected solidly with the concrete if Roy hadn't jumped forward to catch her.
When he looked back, Riza was shooting him an innocent smile.
"Pleas tell me you can walk," he begged, shifting Winry into piggyback position with more than a little trouble (not that she was all that heavy, but Roy's strong point had never been his physicality).
"Right now I can," Riza answered, stepping in close to arrange Winry's hair so that it wasn't falling all over Roy's face. She smoothed it back fondly, giving the girl a gentle smile. She really was quite sweet, when she wanted to be.
"Come on," Roy grumbled, starting back the way he'd come. "My house is closer. You two can share the bed."
Normally Riza would have protested, but she was fairly certain she couldn't have made the walk home. She was sure to grab up Winry's wrench from where it was laying in the road when they passed it a few moments later. She tucked it into her pocket without a second thought. The weight was oddly comforting – and whether because of the wrench or the alcohol, she couldn't help smiling all the way home.
AN: Omigod all I've written is crackfic! I LOVE FMA! Why would I keep writing crackfic when I could write REAL fic? God help me...