Warnings: Dark angst. M for mature content, violence and sex. Mature audiences only, please.
(I almost never write in this tense, sorry for any mistakes.)
Wet wood pops almost as loudly as flesh does. Sometimes, if the sap content is right, it burns as brightly, too. Roy stares at the flames and sees faces in the blues and reds. It isn't always this way but something will happen and the thoughts will be triggered and then suddenly, those faces are all he can see.
Sometimes, they're screaming.
Sometimes, their mouths are open in blunt shock and they can't make a sound.
He throws another log on the fire and hears the water and the sap burst and hiss. Heat hits his legs and burns; he's sitting too close and he doesn't try to correct it. Tonight, it feels just.
Bedsheets rustle. Roy barely hears it. He's caught in the fire. The flames cast ghosts upon the walls and give faces hollow cheeks. Bruised eyes. Flames. All they do is take. Take and turn to ash. He looks at his hands. Without gloves, they look just like everyone else's. With them bare, he can touch Riza. With his gloves on, though, he smells the flint and the smoke and imagines they stink of flesh, too, of life cut short.
The thoughts are dark and they have a powerful hold on him. Flames cast their ghosts upon leather and steel. That has a powerful hold on him, too.
The steel is warm in his hands and cold against his temple. It snaps like the wood does, the hammer falling into place. The screams in the flames never get quieter, though. That only happens when hands close around the steel and take it away. The gun goes back into its holster.
Riza returns to him and approaches this the same way she does every time. She's scared but fear's never controlled her. She invites herself to his lap and puts herself between him and the flames. She's aglow and she's warm, pressing her palms against his cheeks, like the fire but also different. Real. Kind like the flames never could be.
"Look at me."
Her voice holds a command that he wants to ignore. "Go."
"No. Look at me, Roy. Look at me."
Roy lifts his gaze. Riza's eyes are dark and full of gentle understanding. "You'll always be that man." The one that killed so many just because he was told to. She kisses his mouth. His lungs are tight. Riza moves her fingers from his cheeks into his hair. Her breath is warm breaking across his lips, imparting in a whisper, "You will always be him. Always. But that's not the only man you can be."
"What if it happens again?" He's seeing Lust then. He's burning her over and over again. She is screaming and he is cold.
Riza shatters the image with her calm and strong voice. "I'd never let it be. You know that." She touches his temple and Roy imagines she's visualizing just how she could put his ghosts to rest.
"Promise me."
"I promise," she says. It's the hundredth such promise and its delivered with the same sort of conviction as it was the first time it was ever spoken. Roy believes her just as much now as he had then. He trusts her.
She kisses him again and this time, Roy kisses her back. It's a frustrated melding of lips, needy and tortured. Riza never scolds him for needing the intimacy after an attack and Roy never apologizes. She keeps him honest and she keeps him human and he always gives her something to focus on. Riza is happiest with something to fix.
Riza needs no invitation. She removes her plain white shirt and drops it aside, and stands and does the same to her thin pajama pants. She pulls her hair from its braid. The firelight looks kinder on her skin. Soft now. No longer furious. Seeing her in his home the first time without her military uniform was a strange thing. Seeing her without her clothes on even stranger. In a beautiful way, though. Since day one, Riza had been the ocean on a tepid summer's day, calm on top, a riot of life beneath; her sniper's tranquillity a well-worn façade cast aside with a few well-placed finger strokes. It was, in a strange way, majestic, and though years have passed, the majesty her skin holds on him has never faded.
She comes for Roy and pulls his shirt up over his shoulders. His pants she pulls down around his hips just enough. She climbs back into his lap and kisses him again. Roy wraps his arms around her. The fire stops sizzling so menacingly, his heartbeat slows and his mind and his ghosts quieten.