:Author's Note:
This piece was written as an entry in a fic contest for the prompt "
The last thing Riza expected of Roy was to see him rising early on a day he did not have to work, so when they initially parted that morning, it was only because she was too hungry to further postpone breakfast for herself, and he was still thoroughly asleep.
For the moment, Riza was granted time alone with her thoughts only. Briefly, she allowed the hated question to surface: had she done the right thing? A chorus of dissention and torment rose in answer, threatening to tear her as such doubts had the night previous—but when she glanced back into her room to see Roy there, peaceful the way he was, having gathered up all of the covers around himself in her newfound absence, looking as if he could possibly belong nowhere else, these thoughts quieted immediately. Not a thing, no single thing she could ever regret, she was sure.
In the kitchen, she pulled out a pan, deciding to prepare a couple of omelets for breakfast. She never broke from her morning habit, despite the presence of her guest and the newly-dispelled cloud of doubts that had accompanied him. There was no reason for anything to be different. Just because one small aspect of her life had changed did not imply that everything else had to be thrown into chaos, as well.
This line of wandering thought led her somewhere unexpected: would Roy feel the same way?
He had always been the one wanting to push their relationship further, to explore this aspect of "love" beyond "camaraderie" and "companionship"—and Riza had always resisted, citing professionalism and social regulation. When she allowed the developments of the previous evening to occur, she ensured that they took this new step together, equally and exactly how they each wanted it. But—what if she had been careless?
It was so easy, so terribly easy to see things crumbling that way. There were so many pains coloring Roy's life, surrounding him— engulfing him. Truly, his dark moods came so swiftly and regularly that they began to seep into his predictive behavior; no one was surprised when he stayed after hours anymore, nursing a drink and a dangerous absence of company. They had come to characterize him—the stoic colonel, the unwavering heavy hand and bitingly sharp voice. The man whose smile meant rue, a lamentation for others, and a powerful reflection of himself. It was a painful thing to watch.
Riza was the one he came to—in his own particular way, of course. This meant little things, like requests to bring over papers he could get himself, excuses for the simplest of interactions, no matter how ludicrous. This also meant terse conversations about anything-in-particular, harsh and tumultuous words as he would appear suddenly by her side, and she would put him in his place. This also meant the odd cold distance that Riza always discounted, without fail. She would hardly call herself his "go-to gal," but she was the best thing he had. She knew that, and so did he.
Being like this—it was hard to say if she could do that for him anymore. She would be there for him as she always chose to be, keeping his temerity in check, reminding him that a world still existed outside of the melancholic clouds that plagued him. Of this, she was sure.
It was so easy, so terribly easy. Roy could become that person everyone else thought they knew, that person Riza struggled to defeat out of sheer love.
The pan sizzled with abandon, and for a time, Riza thought she was hearing only that. When the opposing sound asserted itself as footsteps, however, she tensed a little, and glanced over her shoulder. Her guest and the subject of her recent thoughts—was it really so uncommon?—stood framed in the doorway, sleepy-eyed and slouching.
Roy said nothing right away, his voice drifting away from him as their eyes met. A smile worked its way crookedly into his lips, and his eyes began to wander, faintly. Riza breathed a sigh of calm—she suspected timidity, but detected no shades of regret. Of course her thoughts would never venture to such a conclusion, but in fact his wavering gaze was following the swaying of her hair at her back. Such an easy explanation for the subtle redness that crept into his countenance!
"'Morning," he mumbled, quickly searching about for something else to look at.
Riza returned her attention to the omelet she was busy with, reassured for the moment. "Good morning."
Her guest opened his mouth to say something else, only to realize a moment later without speaking that there were more important matters to discuss. "Oh… you're making breakfast," he trailed, this evidently occurring to him just then. "I'll just get myself something—"
"It's for you, too," Riza corrected him with hints of a much warmer smile, the corners of which threatened to burst. For fear of exposing this, she only looked back at him for a moment. "I won't have you starving."
The implication in this statement hung heavily in the air: if Riza had not risen early to prepare a breakfast, Roy probably would have forgotten to eat a morning meal altogether, and was certainly so incapable of cooking that he would surely starve outright. So weighty, for so few words—this was the manner in which she spoke, and Roy was acutely aware of it. He offered no defense to the unspoken assertion, merely chuckling sheepishly.
The pan demanded her attention once more with a raucous hiss, which piqued Roy's interest in a rather canine manner. He crept over to ascertain the identity of their breakfast, in a way he hoped would be surreptitious and therefore unobtrusive. Unfortunately, his carefully-laid plans were discarded the moment he saw what Riza was preparing—real homemade food, though he wasn't sure what else he had been expecting—and he gasped in boyish surprise, alerting the other to his presence.
"You're going to get oil on your face," she scolded, but she offered no further protest—surprising herself thoroughly.
She could excuse herself, however— it had become something of a rarity, to see Roy acting like this. It was a wonderful thing: to see him taken with such a simple happiness, for one whose melancholies are so complex, running so deeply and darkly…
Before he could give in to the terrible temptation to hold her, Roy backed off, perfectly pleased with watching and feigning helpfulness. The omelets were finished in short time, and Riza gave Roy his choice of the results, which he was all too happy to take.
Roy plopped himself down at the table, his selected lightly-steaming omelet before him, appearing so impossibly content as to make Riza suppress a giggle purely by virtue of being swept up in the euphoria he exuded. To imagine him in any other way seemed, for the moment, impossible.