Fullmetal Alchemist, Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye, 2/4: Weapons, "All Work and No Play"
Title: All Work and No Play
Author: Sofipitch
Set + Theme: Set 2, Theme 4: weapons
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing(platonic or romantic)/Character/Threesome: Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye, Romantic
Rating: G
Genre(s): Romance/Friendship
Warning(s): none
Word Count: 1,418
Disclaimer/Claimer: Sadly, none of this fandom belongs to me.
Summary: She never stopped working and wasted time. Roy feels the need to change that.
A/N: Sorry, this a little late, but I’ve been sick with that terrible flu (Get yourself that flu shot!) and missed the deadline by a few days.
She was always working. He had yet to see her stop and play a game with friends, or read a book, or do something which could be considered non-productive. She was constantly working on either school work or cooking and cleaning around the house, since her father did neither of those chores. It wasn’t until he realized that she didn’t really have any friends to hang out with did he realize why she did not go out even when she appeared to have a little bit of free time.
Once when he did ask her to go out with him and some friends from school, she rejected the offer. When he asked her why she couldn’t she said that she had work to do, as if it couldn’t wait for just one night. He pretended he didn’t notice and shrugged saying that maybe she could another time. She gave an uneasy nod in response. But as he continued to offer to go out and as she continued rejecting the idea, Roy begins to notice the worried glances she would send classmates of hers way whenever he asked and the looks of malice being sent her way. They didn’t want her around, and defiantly not near the hot-shot of their class.
When he realizes this he decides on two things: not to include or be around other people when asking her and to give her absolutely no choice.
He caught her just as she was leaving to go to the market to buy some food for dinner. He carried with him his weapons of choice in his pockets-pockets wide enough to carry many of them.
The baseball came closer to her than expected, but it didn’t hit her. It bounced off the door frame behind her instead. She jumped when she heard the ball make contact with the wood; she made a sound that sounded to him like a yelp. Wow, another first for him.
Riza looked up at him in bewilderment. “What in the world?” Her voice sounded higher than it normally did. He couldn’t help but feel a little pleased with her scared reaction. It was funny, and very different from her usual demeanor.
He gave her a lazy smile. “Come on, play with me.” He pulled another baseball out of his pocket. “Catch?”
The shock began to erase itself from her face, but her voice didn’t lose its high pitch. “Are you nuts?” Then she shook her head as if exasperated. “No, I can’t play; I have to go to the market.”
“There’s a box of spaghetti in the pantry and a can of tomato sauce and some milk in the icebox. You can go tomorrow.”
Her eyes narrowed, only by a little, but enough for him to know she was suspicious of what he was planning. What there was to be suspicious of, he had no idea, but adults never seemed to trust ‘reckless youngsters’ like him. Riza always acted like an adult herself. She stared him down before blowing out of her mouth in exasperation and rolling her eyes. She appeared tired. “Yes, but you don’t understand-“
“There’s nothing to understand, just play with me. You’re always working, you need to stop and act your age. Play.” He casually tossed the ball in his hand up in the air. “Just once.”
She shifted her feet, surprisingly looking a little meek. “And if I don’t know how to play your game?” She still hadn’t agreed, and it seemed as if she were trying to make her situation more difficult for him, but Roy took her question as a yes.
He tossed the ball again, this time in triumph. “It’s not really much of a game. It barely has any rules. It’s just a game of ‘catch’, where you throw the ball back and forth between each other.” He gave her a wry smile. “There’s really nothing complicated about it.”
“That’s all?”
“You could talk to your opponent while you’re at it. That’s what most people do anyways.”
She looked at the produce bag hanging balanced from her shoulder before setting it down at house’s front door entrance’s stone flooring and walking out onto the front lawn. “Fine. I’ll play your game, but just for a little while, I have to begin cooking dinner soon.”
Roy looked at her position and realized that she was standing, although slightly far away from, in front of a window. If he were to throw too hard and she weren’t to catch it the ball could very easily break the window, and destroy his chances of ever doing something with her ever again. He gestured for her to move over to the right a little before moving in that direction himself to stay in alignment with her. Now, with only an unflinching brick wall behind her, he turned to his body sideways, taking a stance used by many pitchers in baseball to throw.
But before he could throw the ball, she asked him a silly, yet quite endearing question. “Do we need gloves to do this? Because the people I’ve seen playing this game have had gloves on.”
You need to get out of the house more, was his first thought, but Roy thought such thing would be rude to say to someone who had asked an honest question. He didn’t know her well enough to feel comfortable teasing her often yet. Sometimes, but not often; not as friends would. Not yet. “I don’t have any. I hope you have a strong grip.”
Roy could hear when the ball connected with her hand, which made him flinch, thinking he had hurt her. Riza though, didn’t seem to have any reaction that expressed pain at all. She threw the ball back at him before he could even register that she was okay. He wasn’t prepared for it, so when it came towards him he moved his head to the side and let it hit the grass behind him instead of his head. He stared at Riza, at the ball, then back at Riza.
He picked the ball back up. “Damn, some throw,” he muttered quietly to himself. “Hey are you okay? The ball hit your hand pretty hard,” he asked Riza, in normal, audible tone.
She looked confused. “I’m fine.”
Shrugging, he threw again. She caught it beautifully and threw it back with perfect force and aim, although a little lower than before. The ball hit him square in the chest. “Umpf.” He stumbled backwards but very luckily-luck which saved his ego--caught himself with one step extended backwards.
Riza let out a short gasp before running over in front of him. “I’m sorry! Are you okay?”
“Damn.” He put a hand on his chest and rubbed, as if that would help reduce the pain. She was slightly shorter than him so he had to look down when looking at her. He smirked. “Either you’re an amazingly fast pitcher or I need my eyesight checked. To save me the humiliation, I’ll go with the later.”
She gave him a blank look till realizing that the smile on his face indicated that he was joking with her. For the first time that he had ever seen, she smirked. “I’ll take that as a compliment. And a sign that you’re not hurt too badly.”
He bent down and picked the ball up off the ground and moved to hand it to her. “C’mon, let’s continue.”
She didn’t take the ball. “You want to continue?”
He gave her an indifferent look. “We only just started, and you just clarified that you didn’t hurt me that badly.” He backed up to where her standing point used to be, leaving her over at his. “And either way,” the lopsided grin on his face seemed to hold evil intent, “I have to catch something you throw before I give up.” He threw the ball her way.
She seemed to simply snatch it out of midair. She stared at the little white sphere in her hand before looking up at Roy. “You are a very strange person Mustang,” she said before hurling the ball at him.
His fingertips grazed the ball but failed in capturing it. It continued sailing through the air till it hit the brick exterior wall of the house. He went over to pick it up. “So I’ve been told,” he tossed the ball back at her with hopefully the same amount of force as she had been using, “and it’s Roy.”