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[1st-time-caller]

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[1st-time-caller]

Hey I heard you people like your Royai to be irresistibly endearing, and I don’t have the practice to feature the whole gang but I can try deliver the Royai.

At a Time Like This

Riza has always hated her dress blues. The jacket especially hangs weighted on her shoulders, making her perfect military posture more effort than habit. It reminds her of her ceremony after the war, heavier still with the medals and her commitment to minimum four years of active duty. She hasn’t worn her Ishval medals since that day, but the connection can’t be untangled in her brain. Still, she has stood proudly all day in them, back stiff from the cold and old scar tissue itching.

Riza is seeing constellations behind her eyelids, her thumb and forefinger pushing into her eyes so hard that the stars begin to look like a radio’s static sounds.

She slides her hand to the bridge of her nose instead, but it doesn’t offer the same catharsis. She refuses to open her eyes.

“Sir—” she says into the static.

“Yeah, that’ll be the first thing we’ll have to work on.”

“I don’t—you do realize how difficult you’ve made everything.”

“Difficult?” He sounds wounded, but mostly affronted by the accusation. “I think it’s rather simple. Really, there are only two ways it can go.”

Riza takes a deep breath, letting her shoulders sag under the weight of her dress blues. She opens her eyes and looks down. She almost looks away again immediately. He looks almost pathetic, his face open and vulnerable in a way she hasn’t seen since he was blind, except now he is trying to mask it with a sheepish smile.

“For the past year,” she starts, willing her voice to be steady. “You’ve had advisers telling you again and again to marry.”

“Advisers,” Roy scoffs the word back at her. “What do they know?”

“Do you know how much extra work we had to do for your campaign?”

“Yes! You’ve been indispensable, Captain. Which is exactly why I needed you to keep your position.”

She scowls at how lightly he’s taking this, at the ease with which he shrugs off what should feel like a justified fury. Partially because he is good at mediating conflict when given the opportunity, but mostly, she suspects, because he’s planned multiple iterations of this conversation.

She wants to sigh, but something about it would feel like concession, so she holds it in and crosses her arms instead. She looks him over, his new uniform he was destined to wear, ceremonial sword jutting out and slid on the ground in its scabbard. Looking every bit a leader, except he is knelt before her as if she is the one with the power. He’s giving her that power, but he doesn’t look worried at all as he waits to see what she’ll do with it.

“You were given multiple options,” she reminds him, as if he’d forgotten. She certainly hadn’t—she remembers her own name being thrown into the hat. Jokingly, by Breda, but the room went deathly silent right after. A collective baited breath. “I distinctly remember you saying that you didn’t want to marry anyone.”

His face falls, self-assured smile vanished. “You don’t think that included you, do you?”

She did, for a moment, before she reminded herself that she shouldn’t think like that.

They shouldn’t be here, in an empty office with only the desk light on. There is a party downstairs, outside, through the main streets of Central, and he’s supposed to be front-and-center. When he asked her to follow him for a private conversation, she should have given the idea some pause. Instead she was glad to get away from the noise of it all, for a few moments. To let her jacket pull her shoulders down and her weight to shift onto one leg. To relax, in that simple way civilians get to relax, with an old friend.

But she’s not a civilian, and he’s not just an old friend, and people will come looking for them any moment now. A silly part of her wants to turn off the desk lamp, to make the office as inconspicuous as every other room on this floor.

A smarter part of her speaks. “We should get back to the celebrations.” His smile returns, wider this time. “I was just thinking that myself. I don’t want to rush you, but my knees aren’t what they used to be.”

How can you joke at a time like this? she means to ask, but instead what comes out is “Why aren’t you afraid?” The question is scratchy, forced through a lump in her throat as her brain finally catches up to the original question, asked less than a couple of minutes ago but finally clearer in her mind through the fog of panic.

“Afraid of what?” he asks, gently. “I figure that if you were going to say no, you would have said it already.”

That wasn’t what she meant by afraid, and he knows it, but he has a point. “Why now?” she tries again. She thinks she means why on this day? But his face softens, his smile almost disappears completely, and this time she knows that he can tell what the real question is.

Why not months ago? Why not when you were handed the offer on a golden platter?

Or, if she’s being fully honest; Why not before Ishval?

He doesn’t have a quick comeback this time. He pauses, brow crinkling as he tries to word his response carefully. Eventually, he sighs, and when his eyes meet hers again, they shine. It’s the same determination she’s seen snippets of before. When they were young, and he talked about alchemy. When he talked about joining the army. When he first told her that he would be fuhrer.

“I wanted to be worthy,” he admits, with a simple shrug.

The honesty feels physical. It practically winds her, robbing the breath from her lungs and tightening her shoulders, like bracing for a blow after it hits.

Then, the warmth. It spreads through her body in pulses, makes her limbs feel tingly and her heart beat strong. The constellations come back, but not to her eyelids. They swirl in the back of her skull, a pleasant buzz she can’t remember ever feeling before. She suddenly knows her answer, as surely as he does.

“We’ll talk about this later,” she says, and even her years of practiced stringency can’t fool him. He tries to hide his smile almost as valiantly as she. He dusts his knees off when he stands, and flips the lid of the box she barely looked at closed, pocketing it in his breast pocket, opposite his medals.

They don’t speak again as they walk back to the celebrations. She wants to admonish him for the self-satisfaction rolling off him in waves, but he is not acting outwardly unprofessional, and she supposes it can’t be helped.

She walks two paces behind him, back straight and shoulders back. The heavy dress blues don’t bother her as much anymore. She’s never felt lighter.

go read havoc’s foolproof plan, this chapter of minutiae, and under pressure by 

1sttimecaller if ur in the mood for some good ole royai feat. the mustgang being irresistibly endearing 

anyway i laughed out loud for the first time all month while reading havoc’s foolproof plan so thank you 1sttimecaller, wherever, whomstever you are, if ur on tumblr just know i would die 4 u

[1st-time-caller]

2 days left for pre-orders! 🍌🐟✨✨

This countdown piece was made by the awesome @sodayona

➵ online shop: https://t.co/mhMPapOzaV

[1st-time-caller]

6 days left for pre-orders! This countdown piece was made by the amazing @sunnyisrandom ✨🍌🐟

Online shop:

[1st-time-caller]

PRE-ORDERS FOR "BANANA FISH: STREET SENSE ZINE" ARE NOW OPEN! ✨✨🍌🐟

"A Banana Fish fashion Zine exploring life in New York through the eyes of its models!"

Pre-orders will be open from August 26 until September 30! All reblogs are highly appreciated! Thank you! ✨

[1st-time-caller]

PRE-ORDERS FOR "BANANA FISH: STREET SENSE ZINE" ARE NOW OPEN! ✨✨🍌🐟

"A Banana Fish fashion Zine exploring life in New York through the eyes of its models!"

Pre-orders will be open from August 26 until September 30! All reblogs are highly appreciated! Thank you! ✨

[1st-time-caller]

It’s almost time for pre-orders. Preorders open in one week on Monday, August 26th. 👀 SOON. 🍌🐟

[1st-time-caller]

Preview of my finished piece for the BF Streetsense Zine. Follow @BFFashionZine on Twitter for updates!! . . . . #bananafish #bf #ash #ashlynx #max #maxlobo #preview #zine #bffashionzine #anime #animeart #instaart #instaartist #drawing #fanart #illustration #digital #digitalart

[1st-time-caller]

[1st-time-caller]

❤️❤️❤️✨💥💫🌹✨🥰🥰🥰

Reblog if a fanfic has ever made you cry

[1st-time-caller]

Hey guys! Before we kick off preorders we want to give everyone a shot at a free copy of the zine!

There will be two winners, one will receive a print version of the zine, and one winner will receive a PDF version.

Winner will be chosen at random Friday, August 16th, the day before preorders begin! 🍌🐟✨

[1st-time-caller]

Preview of my piece for @bf-fashionzine ! it’s been so fun to work with such talented artists and writers and I’m really excited for everyone to see the final outcome 💕

[1st-time-caller]

Street Sense Spotlight ✨ introducing @1st-time-caller (wherewouldwebe)

You can read the rest of “Janus” here.

Continue to support writers like Jen by giving them a follow and checking out the rest of their work! 🍌🐟💕

[1st-time-caller]

Send Me A Prompt

I have that problem where I am writing something that a) has the potential to be the best fanfic I've ever written and b) will not be to most people's tastes.

So with that mixture of pressure and ennui, I've just stopped writing. For like, months.

I have free time tomorrow so send me prompts, send me a hug, send me deliverance from this stupid self-inflicted rut

[1st-time-caller]

these shitty "literature hot takes" on twitter are giving me a fucking aneurysm. "nobody should read books older than 100 years old" is easily the most idiotic knee-jerk reaction I've ever heard of but everyone is eating it up because nobody wants to be intellectually challenged by anything more difficult than harry potter

[1st-time-caller]

Bonus:

 Finally had a chance to clean up some Princess Bride crossover doodles that didn’t make it into the first post XD

[1st-time-caller]

‪Street Sense Artist Spotlight✨ introducing: @ivyalive @s0juyum um @chicken-dumplings ‬

‪Please continue to support artists like Ivy, Jojuki, and Jun by giving them a follow and checking out their amazing work! 🍌🐟💕‬

And don’t forget to follow us on twitter for more updates!