#the numbers tangled with drivers always makes me baffled like

[souvenir116]

youre kidding me

[writing-royza]

Two Hundred and Forty-four - Hair, 3.0

A/N: Happy Sunday, everyone! Updating a few minutes late this week; it’s just as well we have a holiday tomorrow and I don’t have to get up and go to work! Little brat cat will still wake me up early but I hope he’ll at least hold back a little. In the meantime, have adorable Team Mustang being nice to their boss(es).

I do not own FMA.

Two Hundred and Forty-four - Hair, 3.0

It arrived around the same time every year: the day that Lieutenant Hawkeye spent with her chair pulled over to the Colonel's desk, assisting him in the mind-numbing, baffling stack of forms that constituted the office tax return. Even as close as they had worked for the past number of years, this was the one day a year where tension and friction seemed to run the highest. The one day the men usually avoided speaking to either superior unless absolutely necessary.

And this year seemed to be the worst one yet.

As an added precaution, Havoc had blatantly requested that the Colonel hand over his gloves, and that Hawkeye give him any weapons she was carrying or had stored in her desk. Both had relented with slight humour, but now the men wondered if it hadn't been one of Havoc's wiser ideas.

Hawkeye looked ready to empty every clip she owned into her superior, who likewise seemed about to turn her into something beyond ash.

“And the total for those seven lines gets entered on line two-forty-one.” Hawkeye’s voice was as perfectly even as always, but she kept her eyes on her string of calculations instead of her usual comfortable directness around the Colonel. Roy, for his part, accepted what she told him with a silent nod, though his jaw was visibly clenched, and his left leg bounced continuously beneath the desk.

“That should be the last of it.” She set her clipboard on her lap, gathering the small stack of papers and files she’d brought over from her own desk. “If you like, sir, you can leave the return on my desk before you submit it and I’ll look over it one last time to make sure we got everything.”

A certain tension came to the Colonel’s shoulders as Hawkeye got to her feet. “…It’s okay, I can help. Two heads are better than —“

Havoc had been watching surreptitiously, and caught the warning glint in the blonde Lieutenant’s eye. Before Roy could finish the sentence, he jumped in.

“Actually, sir, there’s something else that the rest of us need your help with.” He nearly faltered as both officers looked in his direction, but it was too late to stop now. “Major Armstrong mentioned that the Lieutenant is perfectly capable of handling the review on her own, and that he’d be around to help her if she needed it.”

“Why don’t you go ahead, sir,” Hawkeye said quietly. “A good leader needs to support all his subordinates.”

He looked from the men back to her, clearly weighing his options. And as his eyes landed on the stack of paper in her arms, the decision was clear. “All right.” He turned to face Havoc again. “What did you have in mind?”

———————-

With the peace allowed her by the others’ absence, going over the tax return - even with a fine-tooth comb - only took Riza a few hours. Armstrong had stuck his head in briefly to check on her, and promptly left as he spotted her annoyance at being disturbed. In the back of her mind, Riza made a mental note to speak to him the next day, to make sure he wasn’t offended. Likely not, since he knew she preferred to work alone, but all the same….

She had just placed the return back on Roy’s desk for submission when the telephone on his desk rang.

A frown furrowed her forehead, and — wondering who could possibly be calling this late — she lifted the receiver. “Colonel Mustang’s office.”

“Good, you’re still there!” The relief was evident in Breda’s voice, along with the effect of alcohol. “I’m really sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a little problem down here, and you’re really the best person to deal with it.”

Recovering from her initial surprise, Riza lifted an eyebrow. “And would that little problem happen to be a drunk Colonel?”

“A very drunk Colonel,” the redheaded man confirmed. “We brought him out to keep him out of your hair for a while, but we forgot that he really shouldn’t drink when he’s stressed out. He always takes it too far.”

“Usually without meaning to, but you’re right. Where are you? And can you keep him there until I get there?”

“Yeah, we’re at the Gainsborough Street Tavern.” Humour crept into Breda’s voice. “Keeping him here won’t be a problem…. He’s been face-down on the bar for fifteen minutes.” ———————-

The barroom was warm and well-lit when she stepped inside, in contrast to the dark night outside with snow attempting to fall. Almost immediately, four hands lifted into the air near the bar, waving to get her attention.

They were all in varying states of inebriation, Falman the least, not being much of a drinker, and Fuery in fourth place, being the token lightweight. Roy was, mercifully, no longer ‘facedown on the bar,’ but awake and leaning against it, with Havoc keeping a close eye on him. Dark eyes stared mostly into space, as though deep in thought, his fingers toying with a pretzel, with no seeming intention of eating it.

“Looks like I missed quite the party,” she commented, stopping just on the edge of the group. Fuery, just to her right, looked up in happy surprise and promptly lost his balance. She caught him by the arm before he could fall off the stool.

“Hawkeye!” His smile turned serious. “I think you need to call yourself and ask if you can come pick up the Colonel. ‘Cause he’s pretty drunk and you know you can trust you to get him home okay.”

“…I’ll certainly consider it.” Moving her hand to his shoulder in case of any further balance issues, she looked to the others. “Is anyone making sure he gets home?” Falman raised a hand. “Good. Now — how did you all get this far in in three hours?”

“Trying to keep up with him,” Havoc said, jerking a thumb in Roy’s direction. “Like Breda said, Boss shouldn’t drink when he’s stressed.”

“‘m fine,” Roy muttered darkly under his breath. “Guy stays up too late one night and falls asleep at the bar the next, and you jump all over him….”

Breda gave her an apologetic look. “Sorry, Hawkeye, we really were just trying to keep him out of your hair for a while. Especially after a day like you guys had.”

She smiled reassuringly, tightening her grip slightly on Fuery as he started to lean a little too far to one side. “It’s all right. You were trying to help, and you did. I finished anything I needed to do, and maybe you helped him relax a little.” Motioning Falman over to take her place, she patted Fuery’s shoulder before moving toward the bar.

“Come on, sir. You should go home and sleep this off.”

He watched her with concern as she nudged him to stand. “You finished going over the tax return? I was going to go back and help you….”

“And I told you I would look after it. Besides, I’m not sure how much help you would be, with the state you’re in.” His ever-present black overcoat was still on — how, in this warm bar, she didn’t know — meaning it was a straight shot to the door and the car. “Let’s go, sir; I’m not going to tell you again.”

They said their goodbyes, and made their way outside. Roy’s eyes lost their glassy quality the instant the chill February wind hit his face, his steps becoming a little surer. He settled into the passenger seat of the car, waiting as Riza moved around to the driver’s side.

“Hey.” He looked over as she reached to put the key in the ignition, head leaned back against the seat and his hand resting palm-up between them. “I’m sorry for everything today. I don’t know why taxes piss me off so much…. But I shouldn’t let it show around you. I wasn’t mad at you, I swear.”

She inserted the key, but didn’t turn it, instead dropping her hand to squeeze his. “I know. I didn’t think you were. And I’m sorry I was angry too, but it wasn’t directed at you.” She smiled. “I don’t mind paperwork, but I draw the line at taxes.”

Roy grinned. “If it didn’t mean having to do it all over again, I’d burn every tax-related thing I could. If it’d make you happy.”

Riza opened her mouth to turn him down… and then paused. “…Not with this year’s tax information. But I know for a fact that there are two boxes in Archives from five years ago that are due for destruction….”

His eyes lit up at the prospect. “…The guys said they took me out tonight to keep me out of your hair.” The light took on that purposeful, halfway mischievous glint it always did when he knew they were entirely alone. His hand freed itself from hers, rising to playfully flick at her bangs. “But when you talk like that… I think maybe I’d like to get tangled up in it again.”

Ducking away from his hand, Riza started the engine, her own smile just as devious as his. “Sober up first, and I just might let you.”

[sending-the-message]

The Passenger by Orphanology

I pick her up near the airport, but not too close. She walks over, acts like she isn't going to my car. I sit in the driver seat and pretend to check my phone. There are some texts on there from the client asking how soon. I don't answer them. I don't even read them. As soon as this is done I'll get a new phone, trash this one. Why people send messages about something like this is a thing I'll never understand.

She grabs the door and slides into the passenger seat. She's tall, very light skinned. I feel like if I stare long enough I could see her veins. Little blue rivers. I don't say anything. Neither does she. I put the car in drive and drift out into the city traffic.

It's afternoon, right before rush hour. I ask her if she's hungry. She shakes her head. Some of her hair is in her mouth. She chews the long blonde strands absentmindedly. My gaze drifts down to see her hands against in her stomach, cradling its swollen surface. If you saw her you'd think she was almost nine months pregnant. That's what you would think, at least.

We drive through the tangle of airport traffic without talking, heading out of the tourist section, with its statues and government buildings and restaurants and reliable electricity, into where high-rises grow and the cops don't go unless they have to. Even though the passenger doesn't say anything, she looks nervous. I see her close her eyes.

I slow down when I see the grey building appear on the left. I cut across the lanes and park in front of it, it's lack of height a stark contrast to the tall, sprawling tenements we drive through to get here. This neighborhood is old, with the kind of buildings that no one makes anymore. Buildings like this one, with its stonework and carved details. In between the fourth and floor a sculpted angel spreads its wings. The feathers glow in the grey afternoon lighting. I turn the car off. When the engine cuts everything is so silent. She fidgets in her seat, asks in English if we're already here. I nod because I don't know if she'll understand anything I'm saying. I get out of the car and go to open her door for her but she's already out, rubbing her long thin arms with her long thin fingers.

"I thought it was warmer here," she says without an accent. She's not wearing a jacket, only a t shirt that says I AM THE AMERICAN DREAM. Her stomach bulges against it.

I'm surprised she knows the language but I don't show it. I never show anything. "It's winter. This is as cold as it gets."

"No snow?"

"Nope."

"It was ninety two degrees at the airport in Boston this morning. Can you believe that?" She looks at the reflection of the clouds in the windows of the grey buildings. "It's April. It used to never get that hot."

"Things change."

"Tell me about it. What's that say?" She points to the sign that hangs off the edge of the building.

"It doesn't translate well."

"But if someone were to translate it, even if they would do a terrible job?"

"Hotel Blue Sky, sort of. But like a blue sky that also doesn't really exist. The way a blue sky is in movies. Pretty, but fake."

"Oh." She looks up at the sign, her pale face and bright blue obscured by the shadow of it against her. "That's not what I thought it would say."

"We should go in now," I tell her. "I don't want to be late."

The front lobby is small and smells like old cleaning products. The guy behind the counter gives a salacious look but she acts like she doesn't notice so I do the same.

"Elevator?"

"Broken. Stairs are over there."

"What floor?"

"Fifth."

She has her hands over her stomach, her long fingers interlock. Hands are the first thing that show someone's age. She looks young but her hands don't. "That's a lot of stairs."

"It'll feel like less going down."

"I bet you say that to all the girls."

The stairwell is dark and she follows me. We walk together in the silence, the only sound is of our footsteps echoing against the metal stairs. I slow down a few times for her to catch up but she moves faster than I would think, faster than the last one I brought out here. The weight she is carrying doesn't slow her down.

"Have you taken a lot of girls, like, you know, me, up these stairs?"

"Not a lot. A few."

"Do they all come back?" She sounds nervous, the first time all day.

"Some."

"Most?"

"Some."

"Shit."

The rest of the walk is quiet. When we come to the door for the fifth floor she asks me to wait. I turn back to look at her in the strange lighting of the dim place. Behind her the stairs unfold downward, like a metal piece of origami that would look like a crane or something if only you weren't looking at it from above.

"I'm not sure."

"About what?"

"You know."

I sigh. "It's too late."

"I can change my mind."

"Not now."

"You can always change your mind."

"Until it's too late," I say. "Now it's too late."

I open the door and stand there, waiting for her to walk through first.

The carpet in the hallway is thin. I swear I can feel the concrete under it. Room 555 is halfway down and to the left. Same room number I use in every hotel I take these swollen girls from other countries. The numbers matter to me.

I knock three times on the door, wait, then three more times. I hear someone exhale on the other side and I hear the lock click. The door swings open. Come on in, someone says, with a heavy region accent.

We do.

The room is like all of the other rooms in the building. A bed, a nightstand, a dresser. There's two men in there: the client and a doctor.

The client is fat, with glasses and a mustache like a dead caterpillar on his thin upper lip. Even though the room is cool, in spite of the radiator in the corner's obsessive clanking, he's still sweating. His tan shirt has wet spots when he moves his arms. He rubs his big hands on his pants before our handshake. They're still damp.

"I'm glad you got here. I was worried you wouldn't come."

"Traffic."

He looks at her, but his eyes drops to her stomach. "She's fantastic."

"She speaks, you know," I say. He looks at me, baffled. She coughs and says hello — not in English. He looks surprised.

"I'm going to go," I say. "I'll wait out in the hallway."

"No," the client says. "You can't go."

"I don't stay. I brought her to you. I wait outside."

"What if she isn't enceinte?" He leans into the word, lets me know he's done his research. "Then all the money I pay you is for nothing."

"Im not going to rip you off. Why would I do that?" I'm charging him double for this. But he doesn't know that. Any price someone willingly pays is the market value. "I don't stay in the room." I say and he's already shaking his head.

"You stay. Or I walk."

I look at him: the quivering mustache, the bright red checks.

"Fine," I say. "I'll stay. But I won't watch."

"You don't have to," he's already unbuttoning his shirt.

"I was talking to her."

"More the merrier," she says. Then she looks at me. "Try to make sure I'm some, not most, ok?" She looks like an animal in a trap right before it chews off its leg.

"It's not up to me."

She doesn't say anything. The doctor steps toward her and she pulls her shirt up so her belly sticks out like a trapped moon.

The doctor is in loose powder blue scrubs and is already wearing his surgical mask and cap. He probably put it on in the hallway before he even walked in here. The doctors always look like this. Disguised. All of us in this try to make sure we would never recognize each other outside of these rooms. For the doctor this afternoon is the side income that pays for his house in the better part of the city, pays for his kids to go to private schools, pays his wife's car, his mistress's apartment. If he does three or four of these a month he's set. The only thing he has to do is try to forget what he sees after he cuts.

She pulls her shirt up. Her swollen, veiny stomach is exposed. I see the surface ripple like the surface of the ocean. All the waves are born and die and get born again but we can't see. All we see is the one big wave.

I turn around and face the wall when I see the scalpel but I still hear it when it goes into her.

Other than an initial gasp she stays pretty quiet. The only real noise in the room is the wet sound of cutting, sawing, her slow breath.

The wall is white. It's been painted over a dozen times but there's still water damage. Whatever it was that had flooded here left scars in the building itself. I touch the part where the paint has buckled, trace the raised edges of it like it's the circulatory system of some bizarre and fantastic animal. Colors are beginning to splash against the wall, scraps of hallucinatory yellow and blue sky white cloud shine. They pulse and shiver in manic delight.

Behind me, the light keeps getting brighter. There's no warmth to the color, just the bright glow. And the smell —like flowers and sunshine. Springtime. I hear the client say something, but he sounds rubbery and far away. it takes me a minute to realize what's he's saying.

Beautiful.

The white moth lands on my shoulder, it's powder snow legs so delicate I barely even feel it. It grooms its tiny milk face with thin limbs. Pearl wings and a soap colored body. It looks like crumpled snow. It takes off again, back into the room. I turn to watch it fly away and I see her.

She is looking at the wall across from her. She doesn't make eye contact with me; she doesn't make eye contact with anyone. The carpet below her is splashed with her blood, torn plastic, some thick clear liquid I don't recognize — whatever they pack it in so it can be transported inside of her.

The client is on his knees on the ground, his eyes closed in rapture. In front of him her stomach is wide open. The moths and lights are pouring from the cut in her abdomen into his mouth.

He's crying, his face aglow. I look at her and she isn't there. Her eyes stay straight ahead, looking at something that isn't there. The hole in her is a road, the hole in her is a temple, the hole in her is a door to somewhere else. The moths look like a bridge between the other place and right her, their white bodies intertwining. I feel I could walk across them and go somewhere no one has ever been.

Noises are coming from the client. He's choking. The doctor cleans his scalpel. I watch the moths fill up the client's mouth until they spill out and dribble down his chin. They're so white. I close my eyes and step outside. The hallway is mute and dim.

The doctor follows me, his mask off, hat pulled down. He turns his head when he passes me and I look away. There's no sound from inside. I figure I'll give her fifteen minutes before I leave but less than a minute later the door opens. She's pulled her hair up and her cheeks are flushed.

"Stairs are better on the way down, right?"

She pulls the door shut behind her.

The sun is shining when we leave the hotel, the last spasms of afternoon before dark. I pull the card out of the cell phone and drop it down a sewer drain. I'll dump the phone somewhere else. I walk to the car but she's not with me. I turn to see her standing on the sidewalk, absentmindedly touching her now flat, deflated stomach.

"Are you coming?"

She shakes her head. "I'll walk."

"To the airport? It's far. Do you know how far it is?"

"I don't mind. Something about being outside..." Her finger trails the edge of cement fixture. "It's nice to be out here."

I don't know what to say. I tell her the money's in her account and she nods and I say goodbye, tell her to get in touch if she wants to try this again, or if she knows anybody. She doesn't respond.

I go to the car and turn the key. The heat comes on. I can see her in the rearview mirror. She's just standing on the sidewalk. She hasn't moved. Her face isn't the same as it was but I don't know what's different.

I drive away, stealing glances in the rearview until all of the sudden she's gone. I throw the phone out the window and watch it fall apart.