It couldn't be traced back to a single definable moment. Rian had tried, he had wracked his brain thinking about it, staring at blank papers spread in front of him as he tried to put the pieces together. It had been so gradual that he hadn't even noticed it happening until it became this big huge thing that consumed his every waking thought.
He just couldn't get the colonel out of his mind.
It was aggravating as fuck - he was aggravating, and arrogant, and loved to piss Rian off for the sake of pissing him off. The colonel's newest favorite weapon was making Rian play courier. Rian disliked useless missions the most, and being a glorified mail carrier - no matter the sensitivity of the documents - was the most inane task the colonel could assign him.
And despite that he would spend the entire train ride thinking about the way the sunlight glinted in the colonel's hair, or the way he chewed on the tip of his pinky finger when he was engrossed in a report, or even the fact that if you were quick enough and quiet enough you might catch him sleeping at his desk after lunch.
These thoughts would worm their way into Rian's head and then he would be completely useless for hours. It was almost infuriating their resiliency to Rian's efforts at banishing them. He would check out the most difficult and esoteric text he could get his hands on from the library and immerse himself in archaic alchemy lore, only to wonder what the colonel's take on the theorem would be. Rian would throw the book in anger and flop on his bed and try to think about anything else.
It was making him completely useless, to the point where he almost wanted to beg for a mission that would take him out of Central for weeks at a time, following up some random scrap of information about alchemy abuse or illegal chimera transmutation.
He knew he had it bad when his adopted brother caught him staring off into space when they had their weekly lunch. Anthony had enlisted in the military around the same time Rian was taking the State Alchemist exams, but instead of going into the corps, once he got out of basic training he went into the academy with the intention of joining the military police. Rian didn't know how much truth there was to Anthony's enlistment - he still hadn't shaken the thought that he had been followed to Central and this was Tony's way of keeping an eye on him - but his adopted brother knew him better than anybody. And when he saw Rian staring off into space, he'd poked his brother with a straw and wanted to know who he was mooning over now.
Rian couldn't very well tell him that he was mooning over his own superior officer, so he self-consciously made up a story about some secretary from the typing pool. They both knew he was lying, but Anthony at least had the courtesy to let him continue with the lie.
The worst part of it seemed to be the fact that the colonel didn't look at him back. Not that anything good could come of Rian's burst of infatuation. He would just bury these feelings down, wait for his contract to come up and not re-certify. That would solve everything.
Rian sighed deeply and put his forehead on his arms. What hot mess had he gotten himself into, here?
When Edward opened the door to the filing room, he hesitated. The lights were on, which meant someone was using the room for something. He had an arm full of folders to file - he had been about to put them on Hawkeye's desk when she had given him one of her patented Looks and Edward decided maybe it would be wiser if he went ahead and filed them himself.
It only took a few minutes to file the folders properly - the most recent batch went to the cabinet nearest the door - and Edward hesitated a moment, feeling the urge to shirk his duties a little longer and see who else was using the oft-forgotten filing room.
Around a corner he found the culprit, one State Alchemist by the name of Rian Martin, cheek pressed against his arm as he slept soundly atop a mess of papers.
Edward paused, one hand on a filing cabinet. In this light, with his shaggy dark hair falling over his eyes in such a way, he looked just like...
It struck him unexpectedly at times, that lump in his throat that he could never quite swallow down. Edward moved forward quietly and lifted Rian's jacket off of the back of his chair, settling it carefully over the other alchemist's shoulders. Rian sighed in his sleep but didn't wake.
Edward smiled and slipped out of the filing room.