All it really took was a single picture, and while stopping the engine he thinks to himself what a wonderful story this will make to their future grandkids.
You see, I was out of town, when my dear, dear friend (and your uncle ) Jean Havoc send me a picture of your mother dancing on the table in the sinfully short skirt that exposed her sinfully gorgeous legs, that I really wanted to have wrapped around my…
Okay, maybe he'll skip this part.
Anyway, it is all kinda crazy, he's got to admit that. He was already halfway home and just made a coffee stop at McDrive when he got this text from Havoc. There was a lot of cursing included and also a lot of whining about how Rebecca doesn't want him back ( surprisingly smart of her) but there was also a picture.
The picture that almost instantly made him turn the car around and come back to New Hampshire as fast as possible without risking to be caught by the police.
And how could anyone blame him? Like, Riza Hawkeye as her usual, serious self was appealing enough to drive a man mad, with her blonde hair, sparkling brown eyes and curves accentuated by what has to be an entire collection of turtlenecks. But Party Edition Riza Hawkeye, wearing high heels and showing off her lacrosse-toned body… it would be a sin not to see it with his own eyes.
Roy used to be a good Catholic boy; he knows a lot about sins. This is definitely one. Probably even one of the Deadly Seven, however, he cannot decide which.
So, as he is making his way across a parking lot, he tries to come up with some clever explanation why he's back at the campus on Friday night after telling everyone and their grandma he won't be back until Monday at least. And also invent some intelligent, cool pick-up line to charm Riza to the point when she will gracefully swoon in his arms and let him ask her out. Although that may be a little greedy of him.
She might be letting her hair down tonight, but Riza does not swoon. He knows her well enough to know this.
Well, hello darling, nice to see you here. You look so cool, maybe you need someone to warm you up?
Fucking perfect Mustang, that will surely sweep her off her feet. To the floor, where she will be laughing at you.
He pushes his hands in the pockets of his winter jacket. Oh fuck, putting lame pick-up lines aside, this night is really frigid as hell. As he moves closer to the dorms, the frozen grass is breaking underneath the heels of his boots, with every step Roy's losing more and more confidence. It was so stupid of him to come here. Maybe if he turns back now, he will make it home till dawn, he just won't make coffee stops, maybe embarrassment alone will keep him awake-
He stops abruptly when he notices some small figure curled on the steps to the building. He wonders for a moment if he shouldn't straight up call an ambulance, but decides to hold on until he talks with her.
Damn, she must be really drunk. Freezing concrete is probably not the best place to rest.
He's just about to gently tap on the girl's shoulder, when his eyes register the familiar shade of blonde and familiar legs – wait, what?
"Uh- Riza?" he manages to stutter, eyes wide and gaping at her decidedly un-attractively. He can name at least fifteen different people prone to getting so wasted that they could, theoretically, pass out on the emergency staircase in front of the dorms. Riza doesn't make it into this pool. She doesn't even qualify in the other fifty most likely colleagues of him.
And still.
As the girl raises her chin up and her round, toffee eyes meet him, his stomach does a triumphant somersault. Even drunk and underdressed for the weather, with her hands and cheeks pink, she has an effect on him that no other can even wish to match.
Her mouth forms a perfect "o" and her eyebrows shot up in confusion. Just when he is about to ask if she's okay ( and maybe offer to carry her back to her room or give her a jacket at least), she gasps loudly, her hands flying up to cover her mouth.
"Oh no, it's not you! It can't be you!"
He wonders if he should feel insulted, but then he notices how deep the pink glow of her cheeks became. Almost scarlet, against her milky complexion.
Almost like a blush.
She's staring down now, her eyes glued to the piece of concrete between her feet, the bare one and the one with a shoe still on. But he can still see that; this color traveling up to the roots of her hair and creeping down her neck.
A tentative sparkle of hope blooms in his chest and he can feel the smile forming on his face.
"Well, I guess I can." He tries to joke lightly and, when she doesn't respond, he kneels down to be at her eye level. She's still not looking at him, insistent and so, so stupidly, incredibly cute. He wants to punch himself in the face to just fucking get over all of those sappy thoughts forming in his idiot head.
But he cannot so, after a second or two of hesitation, he gently raises her chin up. There it is, that face. Those eyes. Those lips, still inviting and tempting even when they are pale and chapped from the frost.
"Hi, Riza." He says, trying not to sound too moony. He doesn't want to scare her off. Meeting her on those stairs suddenly seems like a grand gift from the universe and he is not going to waste it.
"Hi, Roy." She replies, her voice a little more high-pitched than usual, but still ringing in his ears like a melody. He has spent two years of listening to her at classes and during those precious, rare meeting with a group of friends, but she has never spoken his name before. Or at least, he has never heard her say it like that; hesitantly, paying attention to every syllable as if she was tasting it on her tongue. It makes him breathless, she makes him breathless, has been ever since he first saw her on a lacrosse field, hair pulled in an up-do at the back of her head and barking orders to the rest of her team.
"Are you having fun?" he asks slowly and watches as she scrunches her nose adorably and the wrinkle appears between her brows. She shots a quick glance at her bare foot again. Then she looks down at his hand, his fingers still lightly touching her chin. Ultimately, she settles on shrugging in response, pursing her lips as if she was saying well, you can clearly see how much fun I'm having.
Roy doesn't even try to stop laughter from escaping from his mouth. Drunk Riza is such a delight. He mentally despairs that she lets herself party so rarely.
The booming music coming from the party upstairs served as a background of their conversation and as such went unnoticed, and so, when the beat goes softer suddenly, it almost throws Roy off guard. The tempo slows down and instead of electronic sounds, sweet ukulele appears. It's almost ethereal, this feeling that this song creates as it is echoing on the empty staircase, in the winter night. He and Riza feel like the only people in the world.
He involuntary starts to hum along with the rhythm. So here they are, alone. Make your move, Roy. It's now or never.
This moment is straight out of the dream and it feels like a chance, like an opportunity to seize. His eyes come back to Riza's face. She watches him, staring at his face bashfully; eyes soft and cheeks still pink, lips slightly opened. He keeps on thinking how happy he would be to look at her looking at him for the rest of his life.
"Wanna dance, Riza?"
A walk back to her dorm is – fun.
She falls asleep through the second song, with her head pillowed on his shoulder and her feet resting atop his boots. He, with the best intentions of being valiant, covers her with his jacket and tries to carry all the way to her bedroom bridal style ( good practice, duh), but. But. Riza is not a delicate straw of grass, but a lacrosse player and he is well, a physics nerd, not a physical nerd. He stays in shape, thank you very much; however, gym two times a week and an occasional run to classes don't prove to be enough in this situation.
He ends up half-carrying, half-dragging in a rather un-gallivant way, with every step being more and more grateful that it's late and everyone is either drunk or asleep. She is a warm weight in his arms; golden hair spilling through his fingers, face serene, not a single worry line on her forehead. A princess, even when she's, lamentably, handled like a sack of potatoes.
It takes him a while to fish out the magnetic card from the pocket of her skit – thank god she didn't stuff it into her bra – without letting her fall on the floor and as they enter the room he's already panting heavily. If anyone saw him, they would probably take him for a total creep who tries to take advantage of an unconscious girl, but the corridor is blissfully empty and quiet.
Riza's half of the room is easy to identify – her bed is neatly made, a duvet stretched out on the mattress in a meticulous, military way. He looks around, curiously; everything surrounded by this silvery glow, bathing in the moonlight. She has some cacti on the shelves, which he notices with a wave of warmth in his stomach. A glass bottle filled with supermarket roses on her desk. A few comfortably-looking pillows scattered at the headrest.
However, getting to this safe zone is yet another challenge, as Rebecca's mess keeps spilling through the border line, with sweaters and underwear spread on the carpet, tangling in between his feet. He slips on a pair of something that looks like a lace thong and curses, making Riza stir in her sleep. That turns him into a stone statue- balancing on one leg, left shoulder leaning on the wardrobe and throbbing painfully from the impact, a girl in his arms. After a second or two, she buries her face in his chest and falls back into a deep slumber and Roy can breathe out.
Setting her down on her bed feels strange, like a reverse scene from Sleeping Beauty. He takes off her shoes and hesitates for a moment, before glancing at the leather skirt that has run up her tight during the whole ordeal and a black top with a lot of straps. It doesn't look especially comfortable and so, he braces himself and, with cheeks red and hands shaking, gently peels the clothes off her.
She's still asleep. Roy half laments and half marvels at that.
He also wonders how any guy might find unconscious girls sexy. It's a little like dressing a doll; her limbs keep of slipping from his hold as he pulls a worn-out, too big t-shirt on her. It falls to her mid-tight, just like her skirt and for a moment his eyes stay transfixed to her legs. She is so graceful, even when she's laying asleep like that. The hair, the lips. The skin so smooth underneath his touch.
Smudged eyeliner around her eyes, smudged lipstick around her mouth.
His sisters' never-ending stream of conversations about the dangers of falling asleep with make-up on loop in his head suddenly.
He looks around the room ( creep, creep, creep; where is the line between simply caring and caring too much drawn exactly? Rom-coms really should be more explicit in this distinction), decides that Rebecca probably won't notice if he'll move a few of her things around and finally manages to dig out a half-full package of make-up wipes that he gently cleans Riza's face with. It's like he restarted the clock; she suddenly looks so much younger. For all the time he has known her, she was always serious, concentrated, focused. Soft and opened like that, she enchants him even more, but it also feels like intruding and leaves an unpleasant taste in his mouth. He tears his eyes away from her to look out of the window instead; a winter full moon, round and pretty. Very faint sounds of a distant party.
He sets the wipes on Riza's bed table and clasps his hands together. How much will she remember tomorrow? Probably not a lot, if anything at all. And he doesn't plan on filling the gaps or staying with her longer.
To see Riza Hawkeye vulnerable… he hasn't earned that yet. Tonight was just a fluke, a particularly lucky coincidence. A reminder of what the real prize is, a goal he is going to strive for.
As he closes the door behind him, leaving Riza sleeping soundly – lips slightly parted, hair turned silver in the moonlight, covered in two blankets to shield her from cold – he promises himself that the next time when they'll be dancing, she will remember that.
This is the sort-of sequel to 'nothing matters when we're dancing' from Roy's POV so, if you like this story, make sure to check out the other one too! ;)