Author's Notes: I couldn't think of anything better, so I decided to just go with the age ole cliché of being trapped in an elevator. Forgive me; I had only been awake for about twenty minutes. My brain was still turning on. The prompt was Roy/Riza + "Looks like we'll be trapped for a while..."
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Privacy
When the elevator lift suddenly dropped a floor, Riza felt as if her heart had leaped into her throat. Maybe that was just consequence of the drop though. It wasn't as if she was afraid of heights or anything - as a sniper, she couldn't afford to be afraid of heights, as it was part of the job description - but the sensation of falling had always thrown her off. Climbing trees as a kid had been one of her favorite things to do, but she'd stopped for nearly a year after a branch had broken from underneath her foot and she'd fallen to the ground.
Trying not to look as if she'd panicked and thrown her hands to tightly grip the rail behind her, Riza pushed away from the wall and stood up straight, regrettably letting go of the rail. What if the elevator dropped again? It could happen, although she wasn't an expert on elevator mechanics. It did seem as if had come to a sudden halt, the brakes screeching in protest and jerking them so hard that it had nearly thrown the two of them to the floor, so that might be a good sign that they weren't about to drop five more floors to the ground level. People could survive that kind of fall in an elevator, right?
For all of the fact that they were standing in a precarious elevator, Roy didn't look that much concerned. He stood in front of the closed doors, one arm crossed in front of him holding his elbow as he held his chin with the other hand, looking quite deep in thought. She didn't know who he was trying to fool. Roy probably knew just as much about elevators as she did, which was little to nothing. He was an incredibly brilliant man, but his mind was focused entirely on a few things. It wasn't like he read manuals on elevators in his spare time.
"Perhaps we can ply the doors open," Roy suggested.
Riza didn't think that would work, but she was willing to try anything. Stepping up next to him, she attempted to grip one side of the door as he did the other and they both pulled on three. Besides opening it up an inch or so, nothing else happened. Whatever opened these doors was doing a hell of a job keeping them closed. Even if they had been able to get the door open all the way, the little part of the outside world that they could see was the stone wall of the elevator shaft. They hadn't fallen to another floor; they were stuck in between two.
"This is absurd," Roy declared as he began to fish his ignition gloves out of his pocket.
"What do you think you're going to do?" Riza asked. Roy shot her an indignant look, one that told her that she should know exactly what he was doing. Oh, she did. She just didn't think that he'd thought the process through yet. "Are you going to blast us out? That could cause the elevator to drop, damage the integrity of the building, or even blow back on us since we're in such a confined space."
Roy blinked, her words hitting his mind immediately. "I…" The moment she'd said them aloud, he knew they were true. They were his thoughts, but fully formed. His hands dropped and he pulled the gloves off to stow them back in his pocket again.
Riza held up her handgun and sighed as she put it back in its older. "Your alchemy is as useless as my guns right now."
Turning his attention back to the slightly cracked open doors, Roy rubbed the back of his neck. "Looks like we'll be trapped here for a while…" He banged against the metal door, spelling out S.O.S. in morse code. It was loud and rang in her ears. Surely someone near the elevator shaft would hear it and wonder what it was. More than likely though, they were going to have to do it a few more times. This particular elevator didn't have a radio installed in it yet. "It can't be too long before they notice an elevator isn't working."
"Hopefully," Riza supplied.
Silence fell over them again for a few minutes until Roy banged on the doors again. Frowning when he didn't get an immediate response back, he fell back against the wall and folded his arms across his chest. She was used to waiting in a single position for hours on end; he was not. They had been given separate military training. He was prone to action; she was prone to lying in wait until a single action was needed. She had a feeling that his impatient nature, one that he tried so hard to hide, would come out tenfold while stuck here.
That and his more…boyish side.
"Well, since we don't know how long we're going to be stuck in here, we should figure out something to pass the time," Roy decided. She gave him a brief look, but didn't deign to give him a response when she saw the grin on his face. He was about to come up with something ridiculous. It was the type of grin he wore whenever he went out with the boys or Hughes, the kind that said trouble was in the air. "You know there isn't a radio in here, no cameras either, no sort of recording device."
Riza didn't even miss a bit. "And what exactly does that mean, sir?"
"For the first time, my dear Lieutenant, we can be sure that we're completely alone," Roy pointed out cheekily.
"A tragedy, for sure," Riza deadpanned.
It didn't even deflate Roy one bit. Instead he laughed, an honest one too. She knew for a fact that he wasn't seriously trying to pressure her into breaking fraternization rules. He may have been suggesting that they flout them and have a go at each other, but he was simply teasing her, if only because he knew that it was what everyone else would assume once they were rescued from their situation. Whenever he was over the top in flirting with her, he was only being silly and never serious. She knew when he was being serious about things like that. Those were the times that a simple unveiled look from him could have her heart racing.
Roy sighed in mock-regret. "It is a shame though. We're trapped in an elevator in a nice hotel, complete with actual privacy for once, and we can't even…" He trailed off. She gave him a sideways look, noting the wistful expression on his face. Suddenly, the regret in his sigh earlier didn't seem so mocking. He'd done it to himself though - started teasing her only to realize the painful irony of the situation. So close and yet so far: the motto of their relationship. He shook his head at himself. "I wouldn't relegate you to some hotel rendezvous."
"Am I not classy enough?" Riza asked.
"You deserve much better than that," Roy told her in a rather sharp tone. When she turned a little pink, he had the decency to smile sheepishly at her and wave a hand in the air. "Unless you're into that sort of thing. Creeping about at night, dressing incognito and going under pseudonyms, coded knocks, pretending to be someone else."
Riza hummed thoughtfully. "Roleplaying does sound kind of fun."
Roy suddenly began coughing. When he regained control over himself, he looked over to give her an incredulous look, but Riza merely continued to look forward with a straight face, seemingly lost in thought. After the incredulity turned into suspicion, Roy looked away from her as well. A tiny, barely visible smile found its way onto her face. She couldn't deny that she was laughing on the inside. Two could play at his game of teasing and she knew all his buttons.
