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Madame always tries to list out suggestions — commands — in increasing volume. No matter that Roy is technically, as far as the law is concerned, her son — he is required to help around the place. Sweep under the tables, Roy-boy, mop really well around the bar, they always spill so much alcohol, the floor is so sticky. Dip that rag in again, don’t be sloppy. Go talk to that man, Roy-boy, ask if he brought flowers this time, and that other one. No, not those.
Those always referred to the men in blue. They come more often than anyone else, in bigger groups, and are some of the only people to enter the establishment when evening is not near. “Don’t you have jobs to do, gentlemen?” Madame would ask, and the answer would always be a laugh, loud and boisterous.
While he was a child all he took notice of were how shiny the earrings of the women here were, how Madame didn’t let him go out and play for days after he walked into a room when she and other women were talking or when she was on the phone, how they all liked to ruffle his hair and tell him to go upstairs and sleep when it got past eight — and who sleeps at eight, anyway? There’s always a flurry of movement in the bar. Now that he’s growing…
Now that he’s growing it’s hard to ignore hushed words and whispers and the fact that the storage room in the back of the building has a trap door under the carpet. Even harder to ignore that the girls — and he can now see that not all of them are women — sometimes cry and cry and cry for hours, sometimes personal and sometimes not. Take Bri right now: she’s hunched over the back and Roy has just gone to switch the sign at the door to ‘CLOSED’. Madame soothes through hearty pats on the back and glasses of liquor and not many words. Roy finds that a little useless.
“Will she be alright?” he asks, not directing the question at Bri herself. Not like she’s in a state to answer, and the shafts of tawny light make the blotches of colour on her face all the more apparent. Roy digs a nail into the wood at the edge of the bar.
“Now that’s something certain,” Madame says to him, then to Bri, “Why don’t you rest for today?”
Bri nods, wipes her eyes with the cloth Madame has been using to wipe the counter. Roy is left watching her trembling shoulders as she leaves.
“She had family in Riviere.”
“What’s in Riviere?”
Madame takes back the cloth and resumes wiping. “Don’t act like you don’t know, I saw you going through my folders.”
“You saw me?”
She pinches his cheek, not appearing fond but close. “You’re not sneaky enough yet.”
“But you are?” He climbs onto a stool. He doesn’t have the full picture — he’s seen the photos, the painted July 1588 on walls. Who cares for something this old? He thought the population there would be settled into Amestris by now.
“Me? Oh, no.” She laughs. “I’m noticeable.”
Roy can’t disagree with that. “So?” He leans on his elbows, looking up at her.
“Don’t you have books to pore over?” At his continued smile, she says, “We’re short a girl tonight, and Bri’s your height. Go on, then.”
He doesn’t yet know to be ashamed of the memory of slipping her dress on.
At the academy he salutes awkwardly but he studies hard and his comings-and-goings are witnessed but not noted. There’s plenty of shoving going around. Roy reminds himself that this is in service of the similarities. Kind of like subatomics, different proton numbers that form the same parts found across living and nonliving subjects. Just one more way for him to interface with others.
Maybe he doesn’t have to blend in. Maybe he can just pretend at learning the etiquette of how people are supposed to interact with each other in this context, rather than the context of him being a student and Master Hawkeye yelling at him for getting stoichiometry wrong and causing the wrong compound and the reaction’s fizzling out, or the context of him being fitted into what used to be Madeline’s old clothes, half of which is the shade of blue that he finds makes him look sickly pale and that Madeline herself finds infinitely charming. Maybe the people here don’t need to know the real him, all he needs to do is smile prettily.
He finds it funny, in a bleak kind of way, that all those years at the bar did not manage to dislocate the military man doxa for him.
The issue with being around military men is that he now knows how easily military men find out about anything.
“Madame,” he greets happily when the line connects, “you should quit.”
She hangs up on him, probably still hasn’t forgiven him for enlisting.
Roy is surprised to note that most other cadets aren’t men. He’s seen groups of military people on the street, but—
It’s a little hard to believe, most of the bar’s patrons definitely belong to one sex. He feels a bit like the cardinal that made its nest so close to his windowsill, how the constantly improved by new designs buildings — and his expertise is in atmospheric alchemy, but he can’t help but admire how everything-proof the new ones are, a marvel of alchemical engineering — shoving a bird with a nest usually conspicuous to accept all eyes on it.
At the cafeteria, he sits opposite a girl he remembers from his class. Melody, he thinks. Yes, because he recognises her, but also because her table is empty except for her, and she feels somehow safer than the louder ones, with eight people gathered all around them.
“They went hard on us today, huh?” he asks.
She doesn’t even bother looking up from her tray.
“Um—”
He doesn’t get to finish. A cadet whose name he doesn’t remember slams his tray next to Melody.
“Trying to steal the beauties, Mustang?”
“I wasn’t—”
He laughs. “Of course you weren’t.”
Melody glares at both of them, still says nothing, and gets up and leaves.
Roy deflates. He’s not used to being around women who don’t consider him alike — it’s like he’s getting the rulebook all wrong in trying to be something more than a worker at his mother’s bar, something the country needs. Someone able to protect it, and in turn protect his family. They shouldn’t need to trade in secrets anymore.
The cadet raises both eyebrows. “And there goes my chance at having fun tonight. She can go embroider, or whatever, can I have your water if you don’t want it?”
“Stop,” Roy says, the knuckle of his thumb white where he’s pressing it hard onto his palm as a distraction. Bewildered the cadet looks back at him.
With the same emotion and with his appetite gone, Roy leaves.
He remembers the first time he got told to be useful, voice lovingly annoyed, in a way that didn’t involve cleaning.
“See the gentleman that’s just left?” Vanessa asked him as he was sweeping the back, preparing for closing for the night.
“Yeah. What did he want?”
“Nothing.” Madame interrupted, exhaling smoke.
Vanessa waved a hand. “To find his missing sister.”
“I said no,” Madame said.
“Why not?” Roy asked. “You could help.”
“We’re entertainers, not investigators.”
Roy had to laugh. Madame can’t think him to be this blind. “But we are. I know we are.”
Madame shushed Vanessa before she could speak. “You know nothing,” she said to him.
“Madame—” said Roy and Vanessa in unison.
Madame exhaled smoke again, but this time like she was saying ’such idiots’. “Vanessa, take his measurements and go over the mock dialogues. You can take him with you on the train next week.” Vanessa squeezed his hand when Roy gasped. “First lesson,” Madame continued, “practice at keeping a stupid smiling expression, like you’ve just seen a fly buzz around your head. It’s harder to betray your thoughts.”
Propriety and safety demands he has few ties to the bar and Roy personally wishes he had fewer ties to his mother’s disappointed sighs; he only visits when he knows she’s gone, visiting other hostess bars or putting herself in danger. The girls close the shop for a few hours when he lets them know and retired and working women both come together to relax with him.
They shove all tables to the side. There are two radios - one bought, one that Roy made as one of his first alchemical attempts - and they tune both to the same station, loudest setting. The speakers hung on the corners of the room blare the kind of sombre music the Madame hates and that Vanessa and Diana enjoy most of all, snobby about their taste precisely because of that dislike. They move at its antithesis, the short heels of their shoes clacking on the floor on the shadows between the notes, following a progression of notes that doesn't exist.
The first time he meets Heymans Breda Roy was being the sweetest girl. Madeline complimented him on his manners three times that day. Three! He’d come such a long way from questioning why they keep getting all their outfits from one place (the seamstress sews recording devices in them) or why they’re not following the people who skip town with information they want (because Madame knows more people than she could count) or why not just threaten some of these people, it’s faster (”Because gracing people with your cunning makes you smug!” from Madeline, and “Because violence doesn’t solve all the problems!” from Vanessa, and “Because we’re not aiming to be tried for treason.” from Madame).
So when he approached the bulky man just sitting and doing nothing else he didn’t expect to be blown off, but Breda looked at him like he’d be crazy to think of spending money to enjoy good company.
Fine. Plenty of other choices.
The second time he meets Heymans Breda he’s getting beat at chess and academy grades.
“Unbelievable,” Roy whispers.
“You should pay closer attention.”
“Oh, yeah? Like the attention you’re paying outside class?” Everyone looks at Breda and sees a half-asleep imbecile; if there’s an incident and an aftermath he’s going to notice weeks after it happens, they all think.
Breda tucks the board under his arm and kicks out his leg. Roy expects it to land on his shin and hurt; it barely graces his hamstring. “Try walking a little less like someone used to a higher heel.”
“So, how is everything?” Madeline asks over the phone.
“Fine.”
“What about defraud? Swindling anyone out of money yet?”
“Yes.”
“Roy.”
“No,” he admits.
“Putting what Mr. Hawkeye taught you to good use?”
“No, the State Alchemist exams come after the Academy. You know that.”
“Yeah, yeah. Then, are you learning new things?”
“No.”
“…Want to come home?”
A sharp inhale. “No.” Yes.
On one end there’s Roy, and he thinks himself nice and social although he only smiles with his mouth closed. On the other end there's Maes, who never grins showing anything less than two full rows of teeth.
The more he learns about how things work on both sides — one, the military, two, the information network — the more he understands that he’s being pulled towards two very different directions, and choosing one has to mean the downfall of the other, the same way he built one self up in one corner just to destroy it here.
The phone calls remain much the same. "It's not like you have that many choices, Madame," he tells her.
"I have an armful of them. Just not the kind of choices you'd make."
It’s always going like this: a tug, a push, a tug. The skirmish between all his thoughts lands in a draw. The skirmish between his mother and him ends, always, with him losing.
"Ah."
"Get back safe, kid." She hangs up.
He is acting out a fantasy of others by joining the ranks as much as he is in the hostess bar, even if part of that fantasy is his own.
Maes loops his arm around Roy’s neck, inner elbow to Adam’s apple in an affectionate chokehold. “So!” he says. "There's this bar on the 64th block, you know, the one named after that L-Führer, whatever his name is. I went there once and, wow, never again, they're making those of us training for intel look like first month apprenticeship students. Roy, I almost spilled my entire life story sober. Fully sober, I tell you!"
Roy thumbs the picture of him and Vanessa in his pocket and runs calculations that border on the time he tried to create an antenna attuned to light’s frequency for cutting-edge communication before he speaks: "Oh, so you've met my mother."
"That was your mother?"
Let it never be said that nobody besides Gracia has put this stupid look on Maes’ face. Let it also never be said that Roy cannot burst through the neat compartmentalisation that runs in the blood. Maybe, if one person is to know—
Any not blending in that he’s ever been worried about has been stupid. Even after the academy they include him when they speak their phrases carelessly. All men behave like this and as men, we do that and oh, young man, and Roy bites his tongue on the words because it's not like he has had any example of a man to follow. At least one that hasn’t been either drunk or sickly or both, neither of which are qualities he assumes the military would enjoy while on duty.
Being part of this is as much his identity as it is his fashion, a skill in increasing his exchange value. They nail words on him that he never asks for or adopts.
(At least, most of the time. Under the scorching rays of the sun in the southeast and the inexpiable fire of his own doing, one word does ring true: murderer.)
“Remember how I asked you to stop searching?”
A loud laugh. “Like I could forget the insult. It’s ‘not fitting for an old woman’, wasn’t it?”
“That exact one.”
“I remember. What of it?”
He twirls the cord around his finger a few times before he answers. “I retract my statement. I’m going to be needing your help for… A long while.”
“Oh, Roy.”
It’s getting late. He isn’t going to explain over the phone something this ambitious — something this dangerous — but he can say one last thing: “Thank you, Madame.” For raising him. For teaching him what no part of the military could. For letting him make his mistakes. For making him elusive, passing on the art of talking.
He steps into the shoes of all the external fantasies and cuts the internal. Roy plans on spinning it out for many years even as he prepares for so many future conversations to follow the path of pretending to be at remove, watching from a distance as new patrons and new hostesses and new drinks enter and a bar keeps itself open through all this, a disinclined ouroboros.