I Dare You

          “Spin the Bottle!”
          “You can’t play spin the bottle with just girls.”
          “Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board?”
          “Naw, that’s not as fun as it sounds.”
          “We don’t have to play some juvenile game here you know.”
          “That’s the point of a sleepover, silly!”
          Three young women sat in a circle in the living room; all dressed in pajamas and placed atop multicolored sleeping bags. Strewn about the grouping were backpacks and clothes worn that day. Long-abandoned reading material lay messily thrown on the couch: Popular Mechanics, five library books, and another book with its cover hidden and spine faded to the point of being illegible.
          “Well then, Winry, what do you suggest?” the first woman said. Her eyes were of a hazel coloring; they went quite well with the blonde hair flowing down to the center of her back, and the silky cerulean sleep-wear dressing her person. A crimson sleeping bag was her seat.
          “Yeah,” said the second. Short hair, most of it behind her ears, a little darker than the first woman’s eyes hung to just below her neck. Her own eyes, protected by the lenses of a pair of glasses, were a forest green to match her sleeping bag and to compliment her light-blue cotton pajama ensemble.
          “Elementary my dear Riza and Czieska,” replied the third. Her hair was also long and blonde, with two, thick strands falling down the front of her shoulders. Azure pupils perched on a matching sleeping bag looked, smirking, over the group. Her pajamas consisted of an opaque, white nightgown.
          “Truth or Dare.”
          “Isn’t that game for little kids?”
          “Well if it is, than we’ve got our bases covered. Ow!”
          “Say that again and you’ll get worse than one punch!!”
          “Now, now, you two, we’re here to have fun not kill each other.”
          “Aw, that games not as fun with no ladies.”
          “Mind on girls as always, I see…”
          A group of men were gathered in a circle in another living room not far from the first. No sleeping bags could be found-for they would either stay awake or end up sprawled out anywhere. A couple of empty pizza boxes were in the middle, with the final piece being devoured by a red-haired man.
          “Well I’m in, I can dare Mustang to do anything,” the man with a blonde braid grinned, showing his teeth, and chuckled maniacally; his golden eyes narrowed with mischief and thoughts of revenge. His pajamas were loose black tank-top and turquoise boxers.
          “Bring it on, Fullmetal,” a black-haired man, with pupils to match, turned to the blonde with a challenging expression. Unlike the blonde, his chest was uncovered, but his legs were covered by a pair of black pants going down to his ankles.
          “How did I know this would happen,” a man with dark eyes as well, though his had glasses in front of them, sighed. He, like the first, wore a loose black tank-top and, like the second, had a pair of black pants to match.
          “Nothing you can do about it, Furey,” the red-head, now henceforth known as Breada, laughed. He and another blonde-one with short hair, blue eyes and the name of Havoc-began laughing in unison at the visible lightning of battle flashing between Edward and Roy. Havoc slept bare-chested and in shorts, while Breada wore a brown t-shirt and a matching pair.
          “So,” Furey began, “who’s first?”
          “I’ll go!” Czieska smiled.
          “Truth or dare?” asked Winry with a small smirk.
          “Uh…Truth!”
          “How many dates have you been on?”
          Her green eyes looked sheepishly to her sleeping bag and she mumbled her answer with warming cheeks.
          “That few!?” Roy laughed along with the others, minus Edward.
          “Shut up!” Havoc shouted, pointing an incriminating finger at the uproarious Mustang. “It’s just because you take ‘em all before I get a chance!”
          “What can I say, Havoc,” he shrugged with a flip of his hair, “When you got it, you got it.”
          “Grr…Your turn, sir! Truth or dare?!”
          “Dare!” Winry answered quickly.
          “Alright then,” Czieska tapped her chin. “I dare you to…lick your oldest wrench!”
          “Do what?!” Winry’s voice cracked.
          Czieska began to giggle, while Riza chuckled beside her. “You heard me,” the green-eyed girl snickered.
          Groaning, Winry went to her workbench and lifted an old wrench with a blanket of dust-bunnies covering the rust. She returned to the circle with a gulp and-
          -stuffed the glove into his mouth. He didn’t bother to chew, just swallowed the fabric whole. Laughter exploded in the living room.
          “How’s it taste? As bad as it smells?” Edward clutched his side and wiped a tear from his eye.
          “You just wait, Ed,” Roy scowled. “It’s my turn now and I bet you can guess who I’m picking.”
          “Give me your best shot!” Ed cracked his knuckles.
          “Truth or dare?”
          “Dare,” Riza said with a grin.
          “Alright, Ed, I dare you-”
          “-to go to the house next door and-”
          “-kiss whoever answers the door!”
          “What!?” her eyes shot open and he almost choked on his drink of water.
          “But not just a peck,” the simultaneous players grinned. “It’s gotta be a deep, genuine, full-out lip-lock. And you have to hold it for one minute.”
          “You’ve got yourself a dare!” he and she both nodded determinedly.
          Edward came outside first, pausing to let the others out before shutting the door. This was probably the single weirdest thing he’d ever been asked to do. He supposed he didn’t particularly mind the kissing, that concept wasn’t too bad. But the ‘whoever answered’ had him extremely wary. Houses generally had more than just girls within them. Just thinking about who or what might answer made him a little nauseous. Swallowing hard, he tapped the wood with his knuckles, while loud snickering could be heard from the men on the front lawn.
          “Perfect timing,” Riza muttered, placing her hand on the knob and turning it with a quiet, “Yes?”
          Ed had closed his eyes as soon as he’d heard the door open, deciding against facing the mystery resident. Using only estimation, he found the cheeks of the one who’d opened it and pulled this stranger into a kiss; a deep, genuine, full-out lip-lock.
           Riza’s eyes however were open, and widening by the second. Everything seemed to freeze, her muscles, her lungs, and even the passage of time. In fact, the only thing she could be sure wasn’t completely shut-down was her heart, and even that became harder to verify with the incoherent tick of an unseen clock.
          No one could tell who was more surprised: Edward because the stranger had made no move to get him off, Riza because of whose lips she suddenly found herself feeling, or the groups on either side of them by who they’d chanced to find.
          The designated time passed, though it felt much, much longer, and Edward pulled away. “Alright, Mustang, you got your kiss,” he didn’t open his eyes until his back was turned to the unknown recipient.
          Silence greeted him on both sides.
          “What…?”
          Someone in Ed’s group raised a finger and mouthed the words, ‘turn around’.
          “Oh, yeah, I’m sorry…about…” his sentence went unfinished. Fighting for balance in front of him was, flustered and flabbergasted, Riza Hawkeye. Edward gasped, and threw his hands over his mouth. No one was breathing, no one was moving; they were too shocked even to blush.
          “Hello…Edward…” Riza barely managed to say after an eternity.
          “He-hey there, Riza,” Edward’s hands slowly fell to his sides.
          Blood rushed like a backwards waterfall up into their cheeks; turning each of them a matching shade of crimson that became brighter and hotter the longer they looked at each other. It wasn’t only their minute-long contact that had them so embarrassed, their mortification burned deep into their skin when each realized they were wishing very much another sixty ticks of the second hand.
          Havoc and Breada were the first ones to break the silence; they both fell to the ground howling as Roy hugged his stomach. Furey, not one to laugh at other people’s expense, had to catch his glasses before they were shaken to the ground in his mirth, while Winry was using Czieska for support. Edward and Riza, still very much in a daze, were the only ones quiet.
          “Riza,” Winry whispered with a snicker into her ear, “you know, you still have a dare to complete.”
          The three women looked at the men across from them; now moving around the red-faced blonde, as had Winry and Czieska around Riza, and giving him about as hard a time about what had happened as was humanly possible. They could see Edward shout something angrily in protest-along the lines of further confirming it was done on a dare and he didn’t know who it was until after it was finished. However, the exact phrases were lost to the majority’s amusement and firm belief that he wanted to do it again outside of games and with full knowledge of identity.
          “Point being? I believe I was told to kiss whoever answers the door,” Riza’s features were calm, calm as they could be when dyed red, as she could guess what Winry was suggesting. “Not anyone s-specific,” she wasn’t so calm as to completely hide the chagrin in her voice, however.
          “So what!? Then I’m changing the dare! Hey, Ed!”
          “Winry!? What-?”
          It was the other men who heard the call first, it seemed their laughter wasn’t too loud as to overpower the beginning dialogue to bring on more, and they informed him of his desired attention. Blushing another shade deeper, Ed turned to face the three-minus-one smirking, giggling women, “Uh…Y-y-yeah?”
          Riza, still calming her visage, stepped across the lawn to him, “You all were playing Truth or Dare, right?”
          “Oh…Oh, yeah! A-and that’s all it was; just part of a game, I swear! It was just some dare and you happened to be here and, uh, well,” with her increasing proximity came a decreasing ability to speak clearly.
          “Ah,” she smiled slightly, taking another step closer. “We were too; just in the middle of my own dare.”
          “Yeah?” he shifted one foot back a bit.
          She nodded, “And, uh, actually, I kinda…need your help.
          “W-well, I wouldn’t mind, I guess. What do you need?”
          Riza took another step closer-he might’ve moved back had he still the feeling in his legs-and placed an index finger on her chin. “I just need two things,” she said in a whisper.
          Ed flinched nervously and swallowed hard beneath her gaze. “Y…yes?” he barely managed to breathe.
          “Stand still,” Riza leaned down, already scarlet cheeks turning a deeper shade, “and close your eyes.” And with that, she tipped his head up and pressed her lips to his in exactly what the dare entitled plus her own extra, secret, loving, pressure.
          As was asked of him, his eyes did close, though could still be felt bugging out under his eyelids. Everything was as deep and genuine as the first kiss, but there was one big difference: The one on the receiving end was pressing their lips right back against the others.
          It lasted the same time as the first, and the pull-away was mutual. They opened their eyes and looked at the other; gaze no longer shocked and embarrassed, but loving and passionate.
          “Hey, Ed, since we’ve both fulfilled our conditions, that means it’s our turn. Truth or dare?”
          “Truth.”
          “Do you feel the same about me as I do for you?”
          “If you love me, then yes. And that’s the honest truth. And you? Truth or dare?”
          “Dare.”
          “Kiss me again!”