A/N So here's the plan: finish my essay, draw my fanart, write this chapter, and ROYAI UNTIL MY BRAINS BUST!!!
Has anyone else ever used Royai as a verb?
If it wasn't one before, it is now!
Chapter Seven: Bright and Early (Part II)
XXXX
And now it was Riza's turn to be annoyed, watching the rain beat down on the window of a little diner several blocks from the hotel.
The dress rehearsal—not that it could be a real dress rehearsal without their uniforms—passed as an eternity of military-manufactured words which Riza failed utterly to be interested in. She dripped all over the floor through the hourlong production, consciously ignoring dagger-filled glances from the hotel's cleaning staff. Maybe it was time to buy an umbrella. Maybe it was time to grow a spine and resist the puppy-eyes of an insistent, whining dog wanting to be walked at five o'clock in the morning.
As soon as the head of ceremonies—a severe-lipped woman with a sharp bark of a voice and a veritable scythe of a glare—announced that they had finally perfected the sequence in which they were to enter, the Colonel had pounded out into the hall, where he'd coughed and snapped something about 'lunch' which implied immediate obedience. Then he'd stomped off to the cars, taking fastidious care that the group was following, and guided them here, where Riza had ended up sandwiched between Breda and the wall, with two men in between her and any possible leg room.
Across from her, Mustang was perusing the menu, the happy little smile on his face a sudden contrast, like a glimpse of the sun in this weather might be. He hadn't even asked about the dry cleaning, Riza thought. She wondered if he even remembered.
"The clothes weren't done, Sir," she announced with her customary soft bluntness. "The dry cleaners said that they would be ready by tomorrow, though."
Roy didn't look up from the menu. "That's good," he said easily. He was too lazy to examine the source of the happy vindictiveness that had settled over him like a cloak, instead preferring to stretch his tight temper a little in its luxury. No one, not even he, needed to know its source. It was enough that it was there.
"Thank you, Sir," Hawkeye said, sharply. Roy looked up then, but her face was suddenly buried in the menu. His happy feeling contracted a little. The rain pounded on the window, not quite drowing out the sounds of his other subordinates discussing the properties of milk…
"Hey," Havoc was saying, "Doesn't the Fullmetal kid hate milk or something?"
"Yep. Alphonse told me about it once..." Fuery smiled slightly. "They used to battle to make him drink it when he was in the hospital. Said it would make him taller."
Riza peered over the top of the unfolded paper menu at Mustang.
The other men burst into laughter. "That little shrimp probably murdered someone," Breda said, scratching his head.
"If he were here right now…" Havoc started.
At that moment the Colonel interjected: "That's enough, Havoc. I'm going to be eating soon."
"Geez, Sir, what's stuck up your—"
"I'm an officer!" Roy erupted, as though the annoyance that had been festering in his chest all morning had to do with this. "I'm trying to enjoy my vacation and I WON'T let Fullmetal ruin it!"
"That's pathetic! " Havoc, of course, immediately retaliated. Nothing like a good argument to clear the mind, Roy thought happily—err, angrily—
Riza squashed herself into the corner of the booth and tried to ignore them, once again failing in her mental effort. She endured only about thirty seconds, fighting amusement—well, honestly—and embarassment, since the other customers were starting to stare at the commotion. Embarrasment won, and she shoved her way into a standing position and reached into her jacket pocket.
Click.
Roy and Havoc looked up from their shouting match automatically at the sound of a pistol being cocked precariously close their heads. "Colonel, Second Lieutenant, please calm down," First Lieutenant Hawkeye said frostily. "You're making a scene."
"Um, excuse me," mumbled a voice from the side of the table, where an ungainly young man wearing a red uniform was peering at the three of them from behind a tray of drinks. "Have you decided yet?"
Riza smiled. "Number three, thank you," she recited, putting her gun back into her pocket.
The waiter stared, gulped, and asked Mustang, in a quavery voice, what his order was. "What?" The colonel said; his voice choked off, and he coughed and looked at the menu. "Ri-ight."
"I'll come back to you, sir," squeaked the waiter, and took the other men's orders while Mustang gulped water. Riza watched him with an unexpected discontent—usually she felt quite justified mopping up the men's little escapades with her gun. She sat back down again and listened quietly to the hum of normal conversation, adding her own opinion when she felt like it—mostly just listening, like she always did, fading into the background.
She realized with a shock, just as their food was being passed out, that this was annoying her too.
The Colonel was obviously in a better mood by the time lunch was halfway over, because in between bites of bleeding steak sandwich, he coughed slightly and said, "Hmm. I just remembered my dream."
"Your dream, Sir?" Riza asked, when the rest of his subordinates gave him their usual funny looks. Men, she thought again. At least some of them appeared to have feelings once in a while—though looks were deceptive. The Colonel continued.
"I was in these suburbs," he said pensively. "Everything was all...cheerful."
"Was it sunny?" Fuery asked, almost rapturously. Riza knew the feeling. Imagining the sun was difficult at the moment.
"Probably the only reason he remembers it at all," Breda grumbled.
"Well, I think it was a town or something," Mustang said. He swallowed another bite of sandwich and coughed matter-of-factly. "My old girlfriend was there."
Riza nodded into her water glass in agreement. It was really raining hard outside—the droplets spattered dully against the glass that spread between the diner's open red curtains. There was a little stain on the side of one, she saw now, where the fabric crunched together in a fold. She wondered absently how the dry cleaning was doing.
Breda twitched a little. "Which one, Colonel? One of the weeklong ones, or the one-night stands?" he asked with a grimace of long-suffering.
Mustang's face warped. He scratched his head. "This one was important," he said intently, brandishing his half-eaten sandwich. "I think her name was…uhh…it started with an I…or maybe an A…anyway, she had long, light brown hair—it was almost red."
The other men exchanged glances; Riza saw them out of the corner of her eye as she was picking delicately at her salad. She'd never noticed all the different variations that lettuce had in it. "What were you doing that made it so interesting, Sir?" she heard Falman ask briskly.
"That was it, really. I think I was protecting a house or something like that. Dunno why I remembered it now." Roy said, giving a little shrug-eyeroll at the ridiculousness. He stuffed the rest of his sandwich in his mouth. Not Iorra…Not Ashley… Aliena. That had been her name…
Havoc, Breda, Falman, and Fuery watched as Mustang trailed off and stared vacantly at Hawkeye, who was staring vacantly at the lettuce she neatly and mechanically shoveled into her mouth. Sighing in collective resignation, the group subsided back into its normal mode of entertainment.
"Whaddya bet she uses up all her ammo by the end of the week?"
"…Firing at him? Let's make it twenty."
"Not the First Lieutenant. I don't think she'll use any. Wastes bullets, you know?"
"Twenty-five that Roy gets her to shoot at least once."
"At this rate, it does seem likely," Falman admitted, setting down his fork.
"Hey, Havoc, didn't you bet Breda something about us getting sick chasing the dog?" Fuery asked.
"Uh…I think so. Why?"
The Master Sergeant smiled. "Oh, no reason. But I wouldn't forget about it if I were you."
"Yeah, yeah." Havoc snorted as the waiter came by to collect their empty plates; First Liuetenant Hawkeye looked up almost automatically to receive the bill, squeezing past him on her way to the restaurant's front desk. "Aw, geez, no smoking?" Havoc added, seeing the sign hanging over their heads. "Someone wake the Colonel up so we can get outta here."
Mustang was still sitting at the table, washed in greyish half-light from the window, by the time all the other men had gotten up and shrugged on coats over their ordinary, off-duty clothes. Hawkeye came back at about the same time.
"Colonel," she said briskly to his still-vacant stare, "How long are you going to continue examining the table?"
He looked up at her, face briefly registering confusion before subsiding into its usual apathetically annoyed expression. "I wouldn't ask," she added flatly, "But we're ready to leave."
Roy stood up and yawned, stretching elaborately. "It's vacation!" he moaned, by way of explanation. "You'd think they'd let us get a little more sleep!" He'd almost dozed off there. After all, he'd stayed up until one last night.
"Can someone get the check?" he asked, pushing through the group of his subordinates toward the diner's door.
"I billed it to the military, Sir," the First Lieutenant said, following, her voice muffled by the sudden loudness of the pounding rain as he opened the door. The downpour had slackened since morning, but water droplets were still falling steadily from the pewter-cast sky.
"Thank you, Lieutenant." Hot damn. The woman could practically read his mind. But he'd known that forever…
"You're welcome. Sir." Finished, Hawkeye slipped archly past him in the doorway at a swift walk, deftly avoiding the puddles on the cold sidewalk, and let herself quite gently into the driver's side of the car.
Roy scratched his head, lingering in the relative safety of the doorway a moment longer. He'd been feeling better now than earlier in the morning; but maybe…
"Lieutenant Havoc," Roy said to the blonde man, who was in the process of stepping out the door himself, "Do you think the First Lieutenant is acting…out of sorts?"
Havoc stopped walking a few feet from Roy. His newly lit cigarette, which he was sheltering from the rain with one hand, nearly dropped from his mouth as he started to laugh.
"What's so funny, Second Lieutenant?" He was an officer, Roy told himself for only the third or fourth time today, starting out after his subordinate. He shouldn't have to deal with this.
The taller man snorted, moving again; when Roy caught him up, he was facing the other way, cigarette twitching between his fingers.
"Second Lieutenant," Roy repeated, quietly, reaching into a pocket. Now where had he put his gloves…?
Havoc shoved the cigarette back in his mouth. "He-ey, no offense, Colonel. I mean—well, even I know not to talk to women about my ex-girlfriends, Sir!"
XXXX
Riza kept her eyes straight on the road and her expression lightly on her face during the drive back to the hotel, even if it meant ignoring the fact that Colonel Mustang kept peering at her surreptitiously around his sleeve with the pretense of looking at the scenery, which was all conveniently concealed by sheeting rain. It was nearly three o'clock by the time they arrived, dashing up the stairs into the dry, warm dullness of the hotel's lobby, where Gloria waved to them. A male receptionist was manning the front desk; the brunette girl was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor near the stairs.
"Wow, Gloria," Fuery said as the group approached. "What did you do to your boss this time?"
"Oh, nothing much," she said, gritting her teeth over the sponge. "Someone had a nosebleed…"
"This is your fault?" Havoc asked, leaning back against the banister.
"No, but I suppose she thinks so," Gloria said.
"Talk about bitchy!" "Well, I can see one reason—"
"Only if the person was like certain men I know," Riza cut in, glancing at the two languishing around the banister. Gloria giggled; Falman and Breda rolled their eyes in uniform; Havoc waved his hand in the air at Riza and Fuery grimaced, abashed. Mustang opened his mouth to speak, but coughed into his elbow instead—
"I have work to do—I'm going upstairs," Riza said, before anyone had a chance to convince her otherwise. Well, she was going upstairs, she reasoned, sweeping up the aforementioned steps without a backward glance. Besides, by many people, reading a whole novel in one sitting was considered work. This was supposed to be a vacation, so she'd remembered to pack a few books to entertain herself if she could ever find an hour or so to spare.
And she'd taken pains to ensure that thinking need not be involved.
Several steps below already, she only barely comprehended that Mustang's voice was directed toward her: "First Lieutenant—"
Riza turned and regarded him with as much apathy as she could muster. She didn't want to talk to the Colonel right now; all she wanted to do was read enough brain-draining pulpy fluff to kill a teenage girl until she could sort out her own inconsistencies. "Yes, sir?"
The dark-haired man at the base of the stairs coughed. "Don't kill yourself. You went to sleep late enough last night—I don't suggest you make it a weeklong affair."
"It's only three fifteen, Sir," Riza said calmly, ignoring a poke from her conscience. "There's plenty of time for all of us to do what we need to before bed."
An unwarranted smile cracked his lips. "So one would assume," Roy said, in certainty that, no matter what she said, she was about to disappear again. He swallowed the annoying itch in his throat. "But keep it it mind, Lieutenant. Tomorrow comes…'bright and early', as they say. Don't forget."
"Do you really think you need to remind me?"
She went upstairs.
XXXX
A/N—
Okay, so I've been writing this about 3 sentences at a time, with what time I can scrape from homework, various things I do, and swim practice/meets. Therefore, I apologize for its dischord….at least, I think it's dischord… and the lameness. Okay, you're free to judge that for yourself, but suffice to say that I would like a little more consistency.
Feel loved... I stayed up late enough doing homework to have to get up in five hours, so i just had to finish this. I thought, what the heck? what's a few less minutes of sleep??? I feel Riza's pain at the moment…
I have a feeling I'm ranting, so I'll stop. Too bad I didn't get to go on my Royai rampage; I might have stopped drawing so many fanarts…..XD yep. Too-o-o late for me.
Well, until next chapter then! —AA-M
