Story Title: When He Says Hi

Chapter Title: Age Six

Word count: 687 (not counting AN)

This is my somewhat crappy attempt at Royai, I'm really an EdWin girl myself but no author should get stuck in a rut! They're kind of like a series of collected oneshots, I think there will be four altogether but maybe more if I get a good response. This particular one is slightly AU because I don't think Roy and Riza knew each other when they were this age. Manga as canon. Riza's POV for all of them. Mercilessly gun me down if I get her character wrong.

Disclaimer: I don't own FMA. (Yet. *laughs evilly*)

Originally, it was our parents that knew each other. Our first meeting was in the middle of our parents meeting up, at his house, and I was nervous because everybody here was either an adult or a stranger or both.

I wouldn't even sit on the couch like my parents—that's how scared I was—I stood stiffly by the door, like a sentry (a word I was proud to say I knew), and crossed my fingers against the hope that Mommy and Dad would be done soon. (I didn't even know why they were here.)

He was only six years old, just like me, but his was his house so he wasn't really nervous and scared like I was, and it didn't seem like he had as much of a problem as I did with strangers, because he talked to me, and since my lips were pressed together so tight I looked violently angry, this can't have been a small feat.

"Hi."

"Hi." Because six-year-olds aren't good enough for 'hello.'

"My name's Roy."

"I'm Elizabeth."

"Your mom called you Riza."

"That's what people call me, mostly."

"Oh." He paused. "Have you ever kissed a boy?" This must have been his way of flirting with me. He's been a womanizer since the cradle.

"No."

"I kissed a girl once. Her name was Mary. She was seven years old," he bragged. A whole year; that made her an older woman by our count.

"Wow. Was she your girlfriend?"

He shook his head, his thick, dark locks falling into his eyes; he needed a haircut. "Nope," he said proudly, popping the P. "My dad said don't get stuck in the rut of monogumy." I found out later that Roy's dad was gone, and that was how come Roy used the past tense, but I didn't know that until much later. I had just assumed his foster parents were his real ones, and he never corrected me.

"What's munagummy?"

"That's when you only love one person for a long time and you get married and stuff. It's real boring."

"But then, aren't princesses and people who live happily ever after munagummy-ers?"

"Yeah, but they're different 'cause those people lived in the mid-evil times, back when everybody had a horse and they didn't use any paper when they went to the bathroom."

"Medieval," I corrected. "It's spelled M-E-D-I-... um, and I forget the rest, but that was one of my spelling words."

"Me too but I don't really 'meberize my spelling words because you don't need spelling to be the owner of a bar and that's what I'm gonna be when I'm bigger. Like ten, I think."

"Why do you want to be the owner of a bar when you're ten?"

"'Cause then I can give free drinks to all of my girlfriends and I'll be the most popular ten-year-old ever."

"Well..." I fumbled for something to beat his story, found nothing, and changed the subject. "My dad's an alchemist, and he's the smartest one ever, and he said he let me have half his smartness and half of my mom's smartness and so that makes me the smartest girl ever so there."

"What's an alchemist do? Boring stuff, that's what. I know what alchemists are, they're just big losers who turn lead into gold when they're broke."

"Nuh-uh! My dad can make big explosions and turn a pile of bricks into a building and do all kinds of stuff that I bet your dad couldn't do 'cause he's not an alchemist!"

"Are you telling the truth?" he asked suspiciously.

I put my hands on my hips and glared. "Are you calling me a liar?"

He seemed to understand that I was a force to be reckoned with, and he backed down. "Uh-uh! I wouldn't call you a liar, you're too scary—I mean, pretty and nice and stuff! And—and—and—when I grow up I'm gonna be an alchemist like your daddy, how's that?"

I bit the inside of my lip to keep from laughing out loud. "Okay, then that's settled."

Translations:

"Munagummy-ers" = Riza means "monogamists;"

"Monagumy"/"Munagummy" = Phonetic misspellings of "monogamy;"

"'Memberize" = Roy is confusing "remember" with "memorize" and dropping the "re-", so it came out like this;

"My dad said he let me have half of his smartness and half of my mom's smartness" = Riza's six-year-old understanding of genetics.

Please review, I'll post the next chapter when I get five of them.