The usual fluffy royai goodness. I'm always a fan of Roy and Riza at parties, so here's one from their younger years. RR!
"The summer masquerade is a big deal, Jules! Everyone goes!" The girl with the pigtails, done up in bright red ribbons, squealed, tugging at the arm of a clearly exasperated boy.
"Maria, the summer masquerade happens every year," the boy, Jules, pleads, "can't I miss it just this once?"
"For what? That stupid alchemy convention of yours?" Maria huffs, pigtails bouncing back and forth across her soldiers, "All you care is about alchemy. You don't care about me at all!" She drop Jules' arm as if the appendage were diseased and leaves him behind.
"Wait! Maria!" Jules, who is barely holding on to dozens of shopping bags, struggles to keep up with her pace. "Wait!"
Picking up a loaf of bread from a nearby stall, Roy Mustang chuckles quietly under his breath. Ah, youth. He remembers how only last year he had begged Master Hawkeye to let him go to that very same "stupid" alchemy convention. He had saved up just enough money for a roundtrip ticket to Central by doing odd jobs around town for a year but Master Hawkeye had been stern and adamant: Roy could not miss even a single day of lessons. To this day, Roy still does not know why Master Hawkeye relented in the end and let him go, though he suspects Miss Riza had something to do with it.
Roy picks up a dozen eggs, a sack of potatoes, some flour, and two squares of chocolate before heading back towards Hawkeye Manor. The sun had nearly completed its journey west by the time Roy arrives at the gates.
"Miss Riza!" He spots her standing atop a grassy knoll by the gates, her pale blonde hair dyed crimson by the fading sunset. She gives him a quick wave and trots downhill to join Roy on the dirt path towards the main house. Cradled in her apron are plump blackberries, some so swollen and tender that they are already staining her starch white apron.
"Those stains aren't going to come out, Miss Riza." Roy knows this because he's the one who does the laundry every week and he doesn't know how to get rid of half the stains he encounters. Gertrude, the Hawkeyes' former maid, had a way with getting stains out that Roy simply does not. But with Master Hawkeye's coffers dwindling year by year, most of the servants had to be let go.
"Ah," her voice barely a whisper, "I guess it is alright to leave them then." She gives him an apologetic smile, "Let's make blackberry pie, Roy."
Roy's heart skips a beat at those words and he almost drops the groceries. He collects himself just in time to respond, "Yes, Miss Riza, of course." He breathes a mental sigh of relief that the eggs are still intact or there would be no pie, blackberry or otherwise, tonight.
He peels potatoes for tonight's stew, absentmindedly watching Miss Riza roll out her piecrust on the kitchen counter, pushing the rolling pin away from her one side at a time. Roy doesn't remember when the ache in his chest first appeared, but, at this point, the dull thudding had been there for so long Roy takes its breathless hold on his heart for granted whenever he and Miss Riza are alone.
Of course, whatever his feelings are towards his alchemy master's only daughter, Master Hawkeye would never condone any courtship between he and Miss Riza, much less some romantic relationship, or marriage. Roy's mind wanders furtively down the corridors of what courting Miss Riza would be like and before he knows it, the tip of his knife digs a three-inch gash across his palm.
"Roy, you're bleeding!" Riza drops her rolling pin with a thud and races across the kitchen. Without even blinking, she grabs a clean rag from the counter and wraps it around his injured hand. "Keep applying pressure. I'll get bandages."
Dumbfounded, Roy manages a grunt in response, holding the rag tight against his bleeding hand.
She brings a medical kit to dress his wound, her fingers moving deftly across his hand, applying gauze and bandages. He tries to memorize her touch, each brief moment of contact, the smallest sensations where their hands would meet. When she goes to return the medical kit, Roy realizes that this, standing side by side in the kitchen, with his dumb, bleeding hand in hers, was the closest they had ever been.
"Please be more careful, Roy. You really could have hurt yourself with that knife." She chides him, looking over his hand one last time.
"Sorry, Miss Rizza," he responds sheepishly, his throat and mouth dry, "I will."
"If you hurt yourself and weren't able to study alchemy here anymore…" she trails off and brushes a strand of her behind her ear. Without meeting his gaze, she adds quietly, "I just don't want you to leave…"
Roy is not sure if he hears those last words correctly and, for the sake of his pounding heart, he hopes he imagined them.
With his left hand out of commission, Roy sits in the kitchen with an alchemy textbook for the rest of the night, half reading, half watching her cook. So much for helping Miss Riza make pie.
Maria, for all of her squealing and huffing at Jules, was right: everyone goes to the summer masquerade. Even Roy Mustang.
While Miss Riza drew an endless parade of suitors each year, all of whom she declined politely and graciously, girls in town never seemed to pay much attention to Roy, Master Hawkeye's apprentice-turned-servant-boy. So, in the weeks leading up to the masquerade, Roy – who knows he will go alone – guards the dull ache in his chest zealously as he watches Miss Riza's various suitors come and from the Hawkeye Manor.
Held at the mayor's palatial estate, the masquerade itself is the height of luxury and extravagance. Curiously, no one ever wears a mask or disguise. The central attraction is always the enormous feast of rare and exotic gastronomic delights the mayor culls from foreign lands. The mayor's toast is followed by a fireworks display, after which guests head to the ballroom for drinks and dance.
Roy knows, though, Miss Riza never attends the dance. She escapes throngs of suitors vying for her attention in the ballroom to a small garden behind the mansion, where she stays until the dance is finally over and Master Hawkeye's coach arrives to take her home.
This year, just like last year, like clockwork, the mayor gives his toast on the great lawn, an immense pyrotechnic display erupts over the estate as crimson blossoms and silver clusters light up the night sky, and, as soon as the last firework peters out and dies, the party guests flood into the grand ballroom.
And, like clockwork, Riza smiles, bows, and apologizes to suitors up and down the ballroom as she makes her way outside to her garden sanctuary. Year after year, Roy watches her and year after year, he fights the urge to follow her or to take her arm and ask her for a dance, but he never dares.
To do that would be to admit his feelings are real and the thought alone sends panic coursing through his system. He is just some apprentice living at the manor under the good graces of Master Hawkeye. He shouldn't even be having these thoughts about Miss Riza to begin with! In his frustration, Roy, having had possibly one too many already, downs yet another glass of champagne.
Maybe it is the alcohol talking. Maybe he just doesn't care anymore. This year, Roy tells himself, this year will be different. To hell with flame alchemy! And he starts across the ballroom towards the garden.
He finds her sitting on stone bench, head tilted towards the night sky, a pensive expression on her face. Moonlight dances across her features, brushing against strands of her hair, shimmering through the pale blue fabric of her evening gown. She is radiant, awash in ethereal light, a vision from a dream Roy could not even begin to decipher.
The sound of his boot snapping a twig breaks the reverie. "Roy?" Genuinely startled, she leaps up from the bench and backs away from him.
"Miss Riza, I'm sorry." Goddamn it. Goddamn it! "I didn't mean to interrupt—I'll leave. I'm sorry." He does a sharp about face and begins to head back towards the mansion, his face burning. This was a mistake. This was a mistake.
"Wait." She calls out hesitantly in his direction and he hears her clearly this time when she says, "Don't leave."
They sit together on the stone bench, side by side, his hand bumping against her bare forearms ever so gently when their bodies shift.
"How did you know I was here?" She asks, "I always thought I was well hidden."
Roy knows his face is glowing like a beet. He looks away and mutters, "I've been watching you for years, Miss Riza."
"Riza," she corrects.
"I've always known," he dark eyes meet her amber ones, "Riza." The sound of her name is novel and familiar at the same time.
Suddenly she's up, index finger pointing towards the night sky. She jumps a little in her heels, "Roy, look!" Her voice carries an excitement he rarely hears, "A shooting star! Quick, make a wish!"
He scans the sky above her arm and catches the faint flicker of a star dipping below the tree line. I want to be with her forever, his heart whispers. The wish is foolish, a spontaneous yearning, but he means it, he means every word, ever inkling, everything.
"I've never seen one before, Roy." Her ambers eyes are wide and cheeks flush. She laughs a little, "That was amazing!"
In her excitement, she doesn't even notice her body shivering in the cold summer breeze until she feels Roy's jacket on her shoulders. She pulls his jacket – which smells like ash and books, like Roy – tight around her body.
Turning towards him, her hands reach out to frame his face. His skin cool to her touch, she asks, "Won't you be cold now?"
"No," his voice is gone, swallowed by the thunderous cacophony of his heart. She is so close. And her fingertips caressing his face, his chest, stopping right over his heart, his heart beating away with such abandon behind his ribs, the traitorous thing.
Without even thinking, his own hands move to her waist, drawing her body closer to his. He nuzzles his forehead against hers and squeezes his eyes shut. He is so afraid, so afraid to move, to breathe, to even just be, because his mind is still trying to process the sensation of holding her in his arms.
Did her lips brush past his first? He can't tell, but he feels the jagged warmth of her breath mingling with his own short and tortured exhales. Then his lips brush past hers, a touch so gentle neither of them is sure it's real. And then again, and again, and again until they do know and her hands are clutching fistfuls of his dress shirt and his hands cradling her waist, her neck, her hair.
"Roy." His name escapes her body, a breathless, shuddering moan that sends his mouth crushing down against hers. His tongue teasing, probing, pushing with renewed urgency into her mouth. Their bodies melting into each other, hands exploring, roaming every inch of skin, every crevice, until there was nothing left to be said or done between them.
Much to the dismay of single girls and single guys in town, rumor has it that, in the weeks following the summer masquerade, the dark, brooding alchemy apprentice and the dreamy daughter of Hawkeye Manor had become an item.
"Apparently the girls here really go for dark and brooding thing. And here I thought I was just unpopular but secretly they all adored me from afar." Roy chuckles with a devious grin.
"Had I known your ego was this big, I would have thought twice before letting you sit with me." Riza gives Roy a sharp slap on the arm.
"Ow," Roy whimpers, "Well, town gossip is one thing. Master Hawkeye," he gulps, "is another."