Roy Mustang was used to cutting corners. Had been doing it, in fact, all his life. He took a shortcut to his mother's love, took a shortcut to his father's pride, took a shortcut, even, to his friends' loyalty.
"Manipulation," Maes says, glaring lazily across the table.
For an eighteen-year-old, Roy thinks, he is pragmatically perceptive. "You're just a bastard, that's all. And I'm more of a bastard, so I'll help you."
"It's for a good cause."
"This fucking war is for a good cause," Maes says, putting down his mug with a soft thunk against rotting wood. He is drunk.
Roy looks at the small scars that the table was covered with. He fumbles for his own dagger in his boot and snaps it open. "That's what they say."
"That's what..." Maes trails off, forgetting his sentence. "Another beer."
"You've had enough," Roy counters, resolutely going about the business of vandalizing what little smooth area of table there was left. He jams the dagger in, pulls it out, jams it in, pulls it out, jams it in pulls it out jams it in pulls it out jamsitinpullsitoutjamsitinpullsitout--
"Shut up, Roy."
"Right."
"You'll be seventy by the time you get there," Maes warns. He waves at a non-existent waitress who never comes. Around them, the wind picks up again, and Roy smells dried blood and feces.
"No." Maes pauses before making the correction. "You'll be--Where's the fucking waitress?--you'll be dead and cold in your grave before you get there."
Roy folds his dagger and puts it away. There is a rip in his pants, one coated with his blood and starched with dust. He fingers the edge of his wound, feels no pain, and prods it with his fingernails until he feels a tinge crawl slowly up his spine. There.
"You'll have to exercise. A lot. And eat healthy."
Roy reaches out to the mug, hoping to catch the dregs of the beer. The foam was what he had been waiting for, the lingering taste of old beer in old mugs. Maes slaps his hand away. "You have to eat healthy," he repeats. "No beer."
"Why am I eating healthy?" Roy asks, slightly hurt, but too tired to demand ownership of the mug. Meas was the one who saw it first, anyways.
"So you can live," comes the explanation. Maes drains the beer, stares woefully inside the hollowed out mug before waving for the waitress again. Roy follows his motion and sees the waitress, slouching against the bar-chairs, her feet resting lightly on the floor. She has no face. Has, in fact, no arm or leg either. Just the moving, ghost outlines of appendages made entirely of actively buzzing flies, feasting on her insides.
"So you can live," Maes says, giving up on the waitress, "Until you are dead and cold in your grave."
"I think I can do that." Roy thinks for a second and, finally, finds fault in Maes' logic. "You didn't have to hog the beer."
"I wasn't hogging, Roy," Maes drawls. He flips his tongue on 'R' and draws out the 'o' until the sound of Roy's name melts into the buzz of flies around them. "Merely laying claim to what territory I have conquered, that's all." He waves expansively at the bar they've taken. An entire side of the building is burned down, the other smudged with dark, black spots. There are bodies littered around the bar. Seven of them. Maes counted.
Roy looks at the man who is sacrificing his intestines for the welfare of a half-dead dog. He lazily pulls on his gloves and rubs his middle-finger and thumb together, remembering the act of snapping. It comes slowly, and when it finally does, there is a slow sizzle in the air before the dog begins to yelp and draws back quickly from the frothing body. It limps pathetically to the other side of the bar and noses its way through a mob of flies before getting to the remains of a leg.
"That's disgusting, Roy."
Roy points at the mug of beer that Maes had drowned a few seconds ago. "No. That," he says, remembering when Maes had calmly stalked over to a dead body, still bent over the beer, and pried the mug away from its stiff fingers. "That was disgusting."
"You wanted it too," Maes defends, getting up. He picks his way over the debris, and Roy follows a moment later, staring at the insides of the dead man. He had burned away the liver, and intestines. The remains of a shriveled stomach and pancreas--green, now, with a strange growth--are still there.
When they both stumble out and walk a few hundred feet away from the bar and into the dry, clean, and heated embrace of the desert, they see, in the distance, moving shapes. Ignoring the rising dust in the horizon, they turn around and consider their shelter of four days.
"Burn it down," Maes suggests. "They're dead in there anyways."
Roy considers. "You sure there's no more beer left?"
"Dead positive," Maes counters, and snickers at his own pun.
"Well." Roy rubs his fingers together again before snapping his fingers. There is a short-lived snap of color inside the bar, and a few seconds later, a dark cloud moves out, and the exodus of the flies begins. Roy carefully increases the temperature, waiting for the last of the survivors to come out.
When the place begins to burn down, the ceiling is the first to fall with a crack and then a muted thud. Against the hungry snapping of a feasting fire, Maes hears the rumble of cars.
He turns around and considers the approaching tanks and jeeps while Roy watches his fire--his fire--at work. "You'll be dead by the time you get there," Maes says again.
When the dog still doesn't come limping out of the building, Roy gives up hope and turns to watch the advance of his squad's mobile unit. It is a slow approach, one that takes time, and by the time he can see the clear outline of guns mounted on each vehicle, the heat has already sipped away at the sweat on Roy's forehead.
He feels dry, inside and out, and licks his lips. There is no moisture. Getting drunk when dehydrated, he thinks a little belatedly, was not a good idea.
"I guess I'll just have to cut corners, then."
End of Cutting Corners