He sat back panting as sweat rolled down his bare skin. His dark eyes staring down at his current conquest, his mind still numb from his prior activities a mere few minutes ago as he felt an odd leaden weight settle in the vicinity of his chest. It's still there. He didn't understand why, but in the recent past five years or so he had began to change his usual playboy habits in an effort to fill the void in his heart.

He had gone from wham-bam-thank you-ma'am after a long stressful day of work to wanting his bedmate's to stay, cuddle, and talk to him. Of course he never said it aloud. That would be stupid and give the cheap whores that he spent his evenings with far more hope than even he felt that they deserved.

After all, it wasn't as if he could actually date or even settle down with one of them.

Besides, most annoyed the hell out of him once they opened their damned mouths. And yet still, that oddly overwhelming feeling that he was missing something- no that wasn't quite right- it was more like he was missing someone important in his life, continued to persist until it had damned nearly driven him insane.

Yet even now, after bringing home a different woman and messing up the bedsheets until the two of them were sated and having a hard time catching their breath, the feeling was still present. Still persistent. Still nagging at him.

Scrubbing his face with his hands, he bit back a snarl. Goddamn it! What the fuck did he have to do to make this feeling go away? How damn hard could it be to find a woman? He wondered as he dropped his hands away from his face with a groan and then shifted so that he could climb off of the bed and get dressed.

The woman was out and the hotel room was paid for for the night, so why not let her sleep while he slipped out?

Once off of the bed, he began bending down and snatching his clothing up off of the floor and began the task of jerking the articles of clothing on and straightening his clothes somewhat to smooth out the wrinkles before slipping on his shoes and walking over to the bedroom door before pausing just long enough to pull out his wallet and place a few crisp bills on the bedside table before turning back towards the door and slipping out of the room.

Outside, the sun was barely beginning to set as he shoved his hands into his pants pockets and began walking back towards his home.

A nice four bedroom, two in a half bath two story brick house just a block or so away from his current location. He'd always loved going home after one of his encounters, and simply cleaning up and sitting down in his study next to the fireplace and drinking some aged scotch and reading a nice book until he got hungry enough to attempt cooking.

However of late whenever he entered his home, he couldn't help but feel that odd feeling in his chest become more and more pronounced. He got half a block when his mind finally registered that he wasn't anywhere near his home. For some reason he seemed to have gotten himself turned around.

Either that of he simply didn't want to return home just yet.

It was at this time that he felt something tug at his senses, something somewhat vaguely familiar to him. Though he couldn't quite place it until he came to a stop outside of a new flower shop that he had heard just recently opened several months ago.

The owner of the shop was a nice enough girl, she was drop dead gorgeous if somewhat on the young and mousy side. But every time he came by the shop, he always seemed to find himself stopping just to see if he could catch a glimpse of her.

Why? He didn't know. He couldn't even begin to fathom- until... he saw her coming out of the shop with an arm full of sweetly fragrant roses to refill one of the barrels she kept her flowers in outside, and noticed that even though it was just barely there- hidden underneath the scent of the roses- he could smell her sweetly floral scent.

Once again that weird feeling began nagging at him. Trying to place the scent clinging to her skin as she greeted him in her low husky sounding voice.

The same voice that had his body tightening in the same way he had just spent several hours trying to get rid of. How is that even possible? With the way he had gone at his latest girl back at the hotel, his body shouldn't even be reacting in any way remotely sexual for at least a month or more.

"Hello sir." She greeted, her voice damn near sending his hormones into a frenzy as he gave her a smile and muttered a slightly less enthusiastic sounding hello. The gears in his mind churning so quickly that he was surprised that he didn't have flames licking at the inside of his skull.

"How are you today Sara?" He asked when he caught her shoot him a slightly puzzled glance from over her shoulder. She shrugged as she carefully placed the roses in the barrel and then straightened his spine.

Sara was a twenty two year old, valedictorian from the local college. She had graduated about a year or so ago and then went straight to work on finding a nice place to open her own flower shop at, and had even moved a good distance from her family just to do it.

She stood at five foot six inches, weighed just under one hundred and twenty five pounds, had nearly waist length blue black hair that she usually kept up in a pony tail or twist style while she worked. And though she had a beyond stunningly beautifully angelic face, he had never seen the color of her eyes, nor what kind of body she had since she tended to favor baggy clothing that wasn't the least bit flattering to her person.

Even so- Roy estimated that she was fairly petite with a nice hourglass figure, and decent sized breasts. Well, not to small and not too big. Much like her waist.

How did he know all of this about the woman? Simple, the moment she had moved in and opened her shop he had had her investigated out of sheer boredom.

It was a terrible waste of military resources, he knew, but sometimes he liked to throw the boys a curve ball by doing something totally unexpected. And how much more unexpected can one get than to investigate a civilian woman that no one had ever met before?

"How was work today?" She asked as he saw her pick up one of the most flawless looking flowers he had ever seen before in his life and begin to use her fingers to de thorn the stem. How she managed to do so without pricking her delicate fingertips, he would never know.

But as he stood there watching her hands work to rid the flower of it's thrones, he felt his mouth suddenly go dry and had to clear his throat several times just to answer her.

"I-It was good."

"That's nice."

"What about you? How was your day?"

"I had to kick a few people out for harassment." She said as she finished de thorning the flower stem and accidentally snapped the stem when he asked,

"I wasn't aware that anyone was bothering you. Are you alright?" His dark eyes gave her a slow once over, seemingly looking for anything that he hadn't noticed before. Like injuries. Bruises and such. If he so much as heard on the street that this woman got hurt because of some assholes, he fully intended to hit the street and hunt down the person/person's responsible for hurting her and put a few bullets in the bastard/bastards.

"I'm fine. Nothing a good night's rest won't cure."

"Look Sara if someone hurts you, you know that you can always come to me. Right?" He sounded like an overprotective boyfriend even to his own ears. But he couldn't help it. Despite how seemingly boring Sara may seem to others, he was thoroughly intrigued by her.

He took a step or two closer to her and reached out with one hand and gently shackled her wrist in his hand to stop her nervous fidgeting. Because that was what she was doing with the flower, he realized. Nervously fidgeting.

"Stop," He said gently as he ran his hand along her wrist to her hand to take the flower from her before she started pulling off it's petals or something. "Now look at me." He commanded in an oddly soft tone once he'd taken the flower from her grasp. She hesitated for several seconds before seeming to decide to listen to him and tilted her head back to look up at him.

Roy couldn't help himself from wrapping his free hand around her throat for a moment, the second that he saw her eyes something clicked in his mind. A long forgotten memory from ten years prior. When he'd been on the front lines during the Ishbal war.

Finally the nagging feeling in the back of his mind gave way and he realized, the scent that he'd smelled on her before. It was the sweet scent of peonies and vanilla.

His breath caught in his throat, his lungs and brain...well, they sort of checked out for a few seconds as he gazed down into the same unwavering stare that he remembered from so long ago.

Her eyes would always be a dead giveaway to who she was, there was simply no one else on earth with such eyes. They were such an unfathomably deep, electric turquoise blue.

He lowered his face a bit so that his breath was fanning her face for a moment and mouthed the name he'd clung to for the past ten long years.

Angel.

It was the name that they had given her, himself and Hughes. They hadn't been sure of what else to call her since she hadn't known her name back then. But she had been such a raw talent on the battlefield, that she had cut down casualty rates for both their soldiers and the Ishbalians as much as one, incredibly sneaky and devious minded eleven year old child could.

She didn't react to him calling her by the name that he and his friend had given her. So either he had the right girl and she didn't remember or he had the wrong girl and in a second he'd be eating pavement. So he waited and when she didn't do anything but stare at him with those beautiful blue eyes, he had all the confirmation he needed at the moment.

He let his fingers slowly ghost over the skin of her throat for a moment before he quickly pressed his lips against her own soft pink ones before then quickly removing himself from her presence and walking down the street away from the shop and the young woman as quickly as his damned hard on would let him.