Whenever I see headcanons of royai for some reason it's always Roy doing the silly things and I just... want to destroy the concept that my poor child can't let go and have fun sometimes. So here I'm giving her a break and letting her be the massive dork she is instead ❤
Disclaimer: I do not own FMA
If there's one thing Riza Hawkeye knows how to do, it's to bake lemon-blueberry cupcakes. She bakes precisely 4 batches a year: New Years, Valentine's Day, his birthday, and Christmas. It's something she has carried with her since Roy's apprenticeship, and even if he still has a ridiculous sleeping schedule, and has the tendency to get lost in his head designing a new array, she has abandoned most everything she remembers of her 9 year old self.
The first time she'd baked them was for his birthday. She hadn't known it was his birthday, and probably wouldn't have, if not for the postman coming up to the house at an unearthly hour in the morning, with the largest package she'd ever seen in her life for Roy. The colour of the parcel was a garish pink and yellow, and its surface was splotched with flowers and dabs of perfume. Colour had shot to his cheeks when she'd presented it to him, but in spite of his apparent embarrassment, there was something else in his eyes as well. He loved it.
She'd snuck into his room, later, on the pretext of cleaning it up, even though his space was supposedly his own responsibility. The package sat proudly on his cluttered table, full of abandoned arrays and half-written essays, and pencil shavings and eraser dust.
"Happy Birthday, Roy-Boy!" was plastered over every possible surface on the inside of the box, and upon closer inspection, she'd seen that it was a compilation of the gifts of his foster mother and all his sisters. She'd thought of how nice it would have been to have a large family like that, to make a fuss of his birthday even when he was miles away from them, even when he didn't call or write back as often as he claimed as he was supposed to. She ended up not cleaning anything in his room that day, instead creeping back out and feeling like she'd defiled something in there.
The cupcakes were an apology, ostensibly decorated and served as a birthday present. His entire eyes had lit up when he'd seen the cakes, even though he'd been the one to pick the blueberries from the hedge down below, and he'd been forced to carry up the crate of flour and sugar from the Market weeks before.
He'd quickly proclaimed them his favourite treat, and she'd refused to make any more for him. Christmas morning, there'd been a single lemon-blueberry cupcake on his cleared desk, and a mug of hot lemon tea. She supposes the tradition had just continued from there, those four days a year—even after his apprenticeship ended and he went to the military, she'd baked on those four days, and sat in front of the window facing Central, and chewed through them.
After Ishbal, the first thing she'd wanted to do was not, like most of the rest of the soldiers, to go back home to their loved ones. She supposed hers had been with her all along, even if they hadn't acknowledged it at that point. The first thing she'd done was buy the necessary ingredients, and she'd made up for the loss of all those years the only way she knew how. The next day, sitting in front of Roy's front door, was a basket of lemon-blueberry cupcakes, and a box of lemon-tea sachets. He'd called her then, and she'd answered, yawning, tired—they'd talked for hours after, and even as she thought about the phone bill she'd drawn out their conversation. The nightmares that night had not been so intense, and so real.
Her house had smelt of lemon-blueberry cupcakes for weeks afterwards.
She bakes them now, the batter pale and smooth, the blueberries bleeding as she pours them into their little cups and sends them off into the oven. The calendar hanging off the kitchen wall is proudly decorated with stars and banners and stickers and glitter glue, the glitziest day of the year as declared by Elysia when she'd come by the play, and confirmed by Chris and all his sisters who'd stormed the house one winter morning.
As they cook, she starts packing things up off the large wooden worktable, tossing everything into the sink to soak, and if she's lucky, for him to volunteer to wash. It's a half-accident when she turns a little too suddenly, and the half-full bag of flour falls off the table, and explodes into a puff of white air.
"Oh," she says out loud to herself, and it's strange how large her voice sounds in the empty house. She says it again, and revels in her voice bouncing off the walls. She looks at the flour-stained floors and table top, and down at the bag, which has split neatly down the side and is leaking flour out everywhere on the floor—there is no salvaging it now, and no matter how much Roy claims he can transmute dirt out of food (though she very highly doubts he can), there is no way she's going to allow anyone to eat food that has once touched the floor.
So she sits down on the floor instead, and draws the flour out of the bag, her index finger drawing thick, clear lines in the white coating, a smile spreading on her face. The floor is going to have to be washed and thoroughly scrubbed anyway, and there's really no point wasting so much work.
The flour is a canvas for her to work on, and she delights herself in drawing in it, and wiping the slate clean with a quick sweep of her hand. The first time she does this, she giggles, and her laughter reverberating around the house makes her laugh even more. It's been a long time since she's felt so light—she's been so happy since she and Roy became a couple even in name, but this is a different kind of happiness. If it could possibly be distilled into words, she supposes it's that she's found her 9 year old self again, her 9 year old self who would have loved to play like this in her large, empty house, but who could never have dared to have fun on her own. She almost wishes she could show her younger self this, but the oven timer rings then, and she scuttles up to withdraw the cupcakes from the oven, all hot and steaming and delicious.
She turns the oven off and waits for the cakes to cool, wandering off into the house to look for the wireless. Today's the day, she's decided, she's going to do everything her 9 year old self wanted to do so many years ago. The wireless flicks on to the radio, and she hums along in harmony as she sprinkles powdered sugar over the cupcakes. It isn't long before she's singing along, her voice strong and loud and out of tune, as she places them back on the table, and the powdered sugar back into the cupboard where the flour should have gone, too.
She tries to sweep up the flour, to lessen the mess that is inevitable, but as she sweeps and sings, the flour rises up in a cloud around her skirts, and she finds herself coughing and wiping away tears, leaning on the broom for support. She laughs at herself, then, because this is exactly the sort of thing her 9 year old self would have scolded Roy for doing. She can't believe she's forgotten this.
Roy comes back at six in the evening, the smell of her cupcakes tempting him from even outside. He opens the front door and hears the wireless, and walks into the kitchen to see his wife sitting in a mound of flour, quietly singing to herself, hands trailing in the flour, and a dreamy expression on her face. It's been a while since he's seen her so light, and he's glad she's found herself again.
He bypasses the cakes and sits down on the floor next to her, and she turns to look at him, flour smudged on her forehead, her hose, and her arms. Her skirts are an atrocious mess, and he fights the smirk to think of what her temper would be like when she tries to wash them later.
"Happy birthday," she grins at him, and he kisses her. She tastes of plain flour, and sunlight, and he thinks if she could put that in a cake, that would be what she'd be baking instead.
He stands, offers a hand to her. "Dance with me." She complies, and it's not long before his uniform is dusted with flour too—halfway into the dance where he dips her to the music of the wireless, her hand comes out and scoops a handful of flour up, and she gently dusts it on his uniform and laughs as he sneezes thrice in quick succession.
It's nightfall when they finally get around to cleaning things up; he does the dishes in the sink while she pours water and soap around his feet and attacks the quickly caking flour with determination. She discovers she can slide around on the floor using only her feet, and the brush is abandoned as she skids around and pushes the cakes of flour to the draining board. He laughs at her from his place at the sink, and flicks dirty soap suds at her. She maintains that he has it coming as, after the last bowl is put up to dry, she rams a foot into his and sends him barrelling down the length of the kitchen. It takes all his effort to stay upright, and only notices the fridge too late when he hits it.
Her laugh is crystalline and he loves her so much.
"Funny, Riza," he smirks, and throws some wet flour in her general direction. It's one of the grosser things he's experienced, a fact which he quickly remedies as she aims her own projectile at him, and he's reminded, again, of her skills as a sniper. His calls for a truce aren't accepted, and she fires shots after shots at his head—she's truly terrifying now as she was when she was 9, and he doesn't hesitate to tell her so.
At 4 in the morning, their apartment is the only one with the kitchen lights still on, and the wireless has faded to a soft jazz. He sits against the fridge, his soaked clothing sticking to him, and Riza sits against him, her back to his chest. They've managed to get themselves tangled and tired enough to fall asleep then and there, the kitchen half-ruined and still in a mess. The cupcakes sit on the table, and all but one have been hit in the cross-fire, and are weighted down with clumps of wet flour.
When they wake in the morning, the kitchen is one of the messiest sights she's ever seen (and she's including Roy's bedroom when he was an apprentice), and she wrinkles her nose at the cupcakes. They take a quick shower, their sodden clothes left to soak in a concoction of oils and soap (he's learnt not to ask, but to accept that they always work). She pushes the last edible cake towards him, and he splits it down the middle, and they tiptoe out of the kitchen, careful not to step into any mush, each with a split cupcake in their mouth as they lace up their shoes and straighten their uniforms.