Author's Note: So, this is my newest idea. I'd really like to know if it's any good, if it's worth continuing. Please tell me.

The downtown market of Central was a busy and often dirty place. The market was located on a cobbled street lined with bars and filled with dust and the scent of smoke. It was known for its interesting odds and ends, its large collection of used clothing, but most of all for its cheap but editable food. Stall owners came in early on Sunday to set up before the customers showed up. The market could quickly be filled with a number of different kinds of people and occasionally animals, giving it a strange sort of beauty.

Roy Mustang spared no attention to the beauty of the market as he shoved past an old woman out for her weekly shopping, and half ran into the street. He was too late, he knew he was too late, but he pushed forward regardless. If he could only catch a glimpse of the man, that would be enough.

He nearly missed the man in question, but luckily bright golden hair was difficult to miss.

Roy stopped in the middle of the street to stare, ignoring the disgruntled people who had to move around him. He felt absurdly grateful that the man had stopped to buy –what was it- cherries. Actually, Roy thought, studying the scene a bit closer, buy wasn't the right word. The man, Ed (whose name had taken hours of chattering with stall owners to figure out), seemed to be in an argument with the brown haired stall owner about whether her cherries were safe to eat.

Roy took his eyes off Ed for a few seconds to look at the cherries. They looked safe to eat to him, red and round with no strange spots on them, but then he had rarely seen cherries and never eaten them.

Cherries were far less interesting than Ed, though, and Roy's eyes went back to him quickly. With golden eyes, long golden hair, and skin tainted slightly gold, Ed looked exotic and was endlessly fascinating to Roy because of it. He had promised himself that he was going to actually talk to Ed the next time he saw him, but now that he saw Ed again he felt far too nervous to do so. There was a careless confidence that surrounded Ed and made Roy feel like a child. The only reason I'm not going to talk to him right now is because he's obviously busy, Roy thought, knowing it was an excuse and hating it.

He was Roy Mustang. He did not become nervous, and he did not stare. Except that he did, now, and couldn't stop.

"Fine then!" Ed shouted, loud enough that Roy could hear him clearly even half a street away. He turned away from the owner of the stall, his hand gripped tightly around the small basket he carried his food in.

If Roy hadn't been watching Ed so closely he would have completely missed the small movement of Ed's foot that made the tray of cherries fall to the ground. However, even if Roy hadn't been watching closely he wouldn't have missed the bright smile that lit Ed's face afterwards.

"You little brat!" the stall owner screamed as Ed began to walk away. "I – get back here!"

The people around the cherry stall responded to the situation by moving away, and Roy found himself crushed in the suddenly too crowded street. He tried to move to where he thought Ed would go next, but it moving against the flow was hopeless so Roy reluctantly went along with it. Despite thinking only a few minutes before that he wouldn't even get to see Ed, Roy wasn't pleased. If I could have had just a few minutes more, Roy decided, then it would have been okay.

With a heavy sigh Roy prepared to go back home and talk to his mother. She had been the one who had set him the task of cleaning the house, making him late for the market, and Roy had to convince her to let him do his chores on a day other than Sunday. He also had to avoid mentioning Ed because he knew his mom would have no sympathy, and probably scathingly call it a teenage crush. It was, Roy knew that, but he wasn't going to admit it.

Roy frowned and began thinking of reasons why he didn't want to work on Sunday that had nothing to do with stunningly attractive young men at the market. Sometimes Roy was quite certain he hated being sixteen.