Warm
Roy wants to pick up where things left off, but Riza isn't so sure.
He should have been dishonorably discharged, this time around. He had abandoned his post, usurped the command of higher officers, endangered the lives of military personnel and citizens alike, and consequently saved Amestris from complete and total destruction. He should have been eating gruel in a cold jail cell, alone with the other criminals.
Instead he was finishing a reheated serving of shepherd's pie (leftovers, Gracia had said, but they were exquisite after soldiers' rations) in a warm, comfortable spare officer's room while Hawkeye made tea in the kitchenette. She set the kettle on to boil before taking two tea bags and two chipped ceramic mugs out of the dingy grey cabinets. These she left on the counter, before sitting down opposite Roy at the tiny table wedged between the chest of drawers and the kitchen space. Immediately she melted into the chair, slouching into it and letting her head loll back to stretch the muscles of her neck. It was the first time Roy had seen her sit down in almost forty-eight hours. Unaware that Roy was watching her, she unbuttoned her coat with one hand, the other hanging limp over the chair's arm. She shrugged out of it, pulled herself forward to rest her elbows on the tabletop, and rubbed the back of her neck.
Riza looked up then, and caught his eye. He knew he must have looked like a dim, love-struck fool with the fork poised halfway between his mouth and the plate as he watched her.
She raised an eyebrow at his blatant staring, and settled back into the chair. He finished his dinner in embarrassed silence as she stared past him out the window to the ruined city.
"I should be mad at you," she said suddenly, eyes still focused on the wreckage of her home. Roy froze, unsure of how to respond, then rose from the table and removed his empty plate and dirty utensils to the sink.
"You're not," he observed casually as he poured their tea (two sugars in his, milk and one sugar in hers).
"No," she agreed, taking the cup he offered as he returned to the table. "No, I'm not."
"I missed you," he said honestly, taking a sip of his tea. He'd let it steep too long: it was bitter.
Either she thought he was lying or her tea was as bad as his: she took a sip, and frowned at her cup. He was being truthful. He had missed her. Of course he had also missed Gracia's cooking, the warm weather, his depth perception, and many other numerous things he had left behind in Central, but he valued his life too much to say so.
She had always been a woman of few words, but her continued silence troubled him. It had been nearly six months since they'd seen each other, twice that since they'd shared a bed – more than a bed. Frankly, Roy had been expecting to be well into ripping each other's clothes off by this point in the night.
Well, if she wanted to do the silly, domestic, female thing and talk it over, he was more than willing to play that game. As long as she wasn't brandishing firearms at him, he was happy.
She took another sip of her tea, made a face, and sat it on the table. Roy noticed she'd taken to chewing her fingernails again.
"Do you still have that desk job?" he asked by way of starting a conversation. He knew she did. Only paperwork made her chew her nails.
"Mostly," she answered predictably. "We both know that field work is for the lower-ranking officers. Corporal."
"Ouch," Roy said, chuckling as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "I thought you weren't mad."
"And I thought you missed me," she replied levelly.
"That's why you're so quiet?" he asked disbelievingly. "Because I haven't… man-handled you yet?"
Riza blushed at this, in equal parts embarrassment and anger, but said nothing.
"Talk to me!" he exclaimed in the ensuing silence. "Don't do that woman thing and expect me to know what's wrong when you won't tell me! It's been a long day, and it'd be nice not to have to excuse or explain myself to the one person I thought would understand."
"Understand what, Roy?" she demanded. "That you're having trouble coming to terms with the fact that they haven't reinstated your rank yet, or the fact that I didn't just jump into your bed?"
"Both, as a matter of fact!" he yelled across the table. "I just saved the country - again! - and-"
"And what?" she interrupted, doing a wonderful job of sounding angrier than Roy at half the volume. "You haven't been laid in six months, so I might as well just fall backwards and oblige!"
Roy's pride demanded that he appear to give the question serious thought. While he did this Riza climbed to her feet, snatched up her coat and marched to the door. He had just started after her when she turned and said, "You'll be happy to know that Parliament intends to address your case sometime over the next two weeks, and that they're in favor of promoting you."
Roy stopped and smiled at this good news, reaching out to draw her back into the room, all grievances forgotten.
She sidestepped his advances, adding, "I am going back to my apartment! You can stay here! Alone!"
"Wait!" Roy called after, barely avoiding catching the door with his face as she threw it open.
Of course, she did not wait.
"Would you hold on a minute?" he exclaimed, grabbing her arm and dragging her back into the apartment, using his weight to throw her behind him while he slammed the door and threw the dead bolt.
When he turned to face her, he found himself staring into the face of what he was certain was his own death: calm, collected Lieutenant Hawkeye was gone, and she had been replaced by a scorned woman.
Riza was nowhere near matching Roy in strength, but she was quicker on her feet and much better at grappling and hand-to-hand than he had ever been. He could not stop her without hurting her. If she wanted out of the room that badly, she was going to get her way.
And he was going to get his ass kicked.
Roy had backed himself into a corner. When she finally sprang, all he could do was close his eyes and pray.
When his jaw did not dislocate itself against her closed fist, Roy had a moment to reevaluate the situation: what should have been excruciating pain felt oddly like a soft body pressed close and rough lips against his own. The doorknob was digging into his hip, but he had forgotten it somewhere between her hands fisted in his collar and the heat of her mouth. The room was growing warmer.
In one swift motion Riza hooked a leg around one of his own, pulling it out from under him. He stumbled forward, and she caught all of his weight, using the momentum to turn them around, so that her back was to the door. Her mouth continued to work furiously against his.
When Riza finally let him go he took an involuntary step back, as if afraid of burning himself. He watched her breath for a few moments, eyes caught briefly by the rise and fall of her chest. She was smirking.
Then her right fist connected solidly with his nose, and he tumbled down to the floor, landing firmly on his backside.
When Roy had climbed to his feet Riza was down the hallway and out of sight. Something warm and sticky was running from his nose, and it tasted suspiciously like blood.
"Hell," Roy muttered as he tipped his head backwards and shuffled to the bathroom.
After a virtually sleepless night spent lying on his back so as not to jar his swollen nose, Roy rose early and made his way to the physician's clinic. He gulped down a cup of bitter, black coffee while in the waiting room, and then followed a chubby, middle-aged nurse back into a cold room to await the doctor. His nose was nearly broken ("nearly" the doctor had said, because it wasn't really broken but it "sure as hell felt like it"), and they prescribed him some better pain medication.
He went straight home, took three of the little white pills, and went back to bed -
- only to be woken up hours later by the distinct sizzle of something cooking in a skillet
The clock showed that it was nearly 6:00pm, and there was no longer any bright sunlight spilling through the closed curtains. The light from the kitchenette was on, and either Roy was hallucinating (the doctor had warned him about the pills), or Riza was making what smelled suspiciously like dinner. She stood before the stove in his kitchenette, clad in a pair of brown slacks and a white blouse. Her hair was still twisted up in its clip, and her feet were devoid of shoes. Her socks were turquoise.
He rolled himself out of the bed, stumbled sleepily over his boots, and came to stand behind her. In what would be considered a rather bold move, especially given what had occurred the previous evening (though in all truth, Roy was too drugged to care), he wrapped his arms around her waist and laid his on her shoulder. He had closed his eyes and was more than ready to go back to sleep on his feet when she shook him off (gently, he noted with some smugness) and moved over to fish through the cabinet above the sink.
"Do you have any cayenne?" she asked, rifling through the scant contents of his cupboard.
Roy wasn't even sure he'd ever eaten cayenne, so he just shook his head and gave her a bleary smile. "I barely thought to buy salt," he offered when she made a small noise of discontent.
"Well, I suppose it's ready then," she said with a sigh, and put a hand on Roy's shoulder to steer him toward the tiny table where all the trouble had started last night. He plunked down into his chair like a dead weight, and promptly laid his head down on the table. It was cold, and he couldn't find an angle that didn't hurt his nose, so he sat up again a few moments later.
Riza sat two plates down on the table, and took the other chair. Roy was facing the window tonight. Cuts of pork had been fried with onions and green peppers, and then served over brown rice. To Roy, who had not eaten all day, it smelled wonderful. When he picked up his fork to take a bite, he was pleased to discover that Riza's cooking skills had not waned during the time they had spent apart.
They ate in silence, Roy doing his best not to look pathetic and starved, and Riza trying not to stare at the damage she had done. Neither was really succeeding.
Riza had not bothered to turn another light on, and the harsh glare from the fluorescent lighting of the kitchenette cast strange, deep shadows on her face while she ate, eyes fixed firmly on her food.
"Is it broken?" she asked when the silence had grown too tense to endure any longer.
Roy started, and then had to think for a moment to figure out what she was referring to. "No," he said presently, when he had swallowed his food. "Nearly, though."
"Nearly?" Riza asked, looking at him for the first time all evening.
"Nearly," he replied. "It only feels like it's broken. Nearly."
She swore softly, and put her fork down on her plate.
"It's alright," Roy said, trying to send her a reassuring, if rueful, smile. "I probably deserved it."
She gave him a look the said "Please don't lie to make me feel better." This was oddly disarming, because he usually got such a look from a woman when she asked him if a dress made her look fat and he responded with an enthusiastic negative.
"Maybe you over-reacted," he digressed finally. "A little."
The look persisted.
"Okay, a lot. Did you have to hit me in the face?" he asked stonily. "A nice elbow to the solar plexus wouldn't have been good enough? A steel-toed boot to the knee cap?"
The drugs were wearing off slightly, helped along by the food, and Roy realized something: Riza had cooked dinner.
This had happened before, of course, but it had been when Roy could barely walk, let alone prepare his own meals. For the first few weeks after Pride's defeat, she had not only cooked all his meals, but fed them to him as well. She had returned to work when he was strong enough to walk, but had always left him a sandwich in the refrigerator, in case he got hungry during the few hours she was away, and when she returned home she made them dinner. Then one evening she had walked in to find him frying a piece of meat in a skillet with some soy sauce and vegetables, and she had not cooked for him since.
Roy would have snickered if it hadn't hurt so much: she was trying to apologize.
"Is there anything for dessert?" he asked cheekily, fighting away a grin at the little scowl that leapt to her mouth.
"As a matter of fact," she answered with a grudging smile, rising from the table.
Roy twisted in his chair, watching as she stacked the dishes in the sink and removed a round tin from the refrigerator. Roy knew that tin: it was a pie tin.
And she'd even thought to buy ice cream.
When she sat the plate down in front of him it was all Roy could do not to grin like a child. "You made me a pie," he said evenly, something in the gesture striking him as just a bit too domestic for Hawkeye.
"Please," she said with a snort. "I don't like anyone that much. It's from Gracia."
"Well, you did some of the work," he said, gesturing toward the confection. "You walked it over here. And put it on plate."
"I even put ice cream on it," she added with a self-satisfied nod before grabbing the fork off his plate and taking a bite.
"There's a whole pie in there," Roy said irately, grabbing the fork back and taking a bite himself. He had never tasted a better apple pie in his life.
While he munched happily away, Riza walked to the window and drew back the curtains. There were more stars visible than had been seen above Central for ages, due to the street lamps that had been destroyed in the battle. The moon was a waning crescent low on the horizon.
She made a quaint little picture standing there in the half-light from the moon.
"It's funny," Roy said suddenly. "After all those nights of being alone, I'd forgotten how pretty you are."
It was strange for him to say pretty when he usually preferred such adjectives as "gorgeous" and "exquisite". He had heaped these on the other women he had dated, but not once in memory had he said even half as much to Riza.
She turned to stare at him as if he had suddenly grown a third eye.
Her consternation only goaded him into continuing, "Especially there by the window, standing in the moonlight… out of swinging range."
She scowled at him; a motion ruined by the deep blush in her cheeks, and crossed the room to retrieve her coat from where she had thrown it over the other chair.
"Cold?" he asked, trying to gather up the last bits of pie with the side of his fork.
"Leaving," she replied. "You need to get back to sleep, and I have a manila folder full of damage reports waiting for me at home."
"I'm not tired," Roy countered, rising from his chair to intercept her on her way to the door. He prayed things would go much better tonight, and vowed that he would not sleep alone. "Your reports can wait," he continued, reaching out and pulling her into his arms: she didn't resist, but she did not return his embrace.
"Roy," she said gently, placing a hand on his chest as if to keep him at bay. "I really shouldn't."
To Roy this meant one of two things: she was afraid, or she was no longer in love with him. Both options seemed highly unlikely, especially given that she had made him dinner not thirty minutes ago.
But then, he had been gone almost two years and, whether he liked to think about it or not, things had moved on without him. It was possible she had moved on too.
With a sigh he dropped his arms and took a step back. Riza was looking at the floor.
"Is this it?" he asked in a low voice. "Are we… done?"
She looked up sharply at this, though Roy could not tell if she was pleased or dismayed at his conclusion. Her continued silence was not comforting.
He nodded to himself, as if understanding something she would not say, and stepped aside to clear the path to the door.
After a moment of silence Riza took a step. Roy, who was working purely on muscle memory while his brain attempted to rationalize the sudden tightening on the left side of his chest and the ache behind his eyes, stood at attention and saluted.
In the room's silence, her intake of breath was like water rushing over a damn. In a quick, almost violent move Riza had grabbed Roy's right hand and yanked it away from his forehead. He stumbled into her, arms falling around her shoulders as he attempted to save his nose from connecting painfully with the top of her head. She pressed him back against the wall, much as she had the previous night, but there was no passion in her embrace. She was shaking.
"Two years," she said harshly, her voice muffled by his shoulder. "Two fucking years of sleeping alone, and now that you're here all I can think about is what's going to happen when you leave again."
There was no way Roy could respond to this, because she was right. There was no guarantee he would still be in Central beyond the next two weeks. In fact, it was highly unlikely.
"You're not going to slug me again, are you?" he asked lightly, tightening his hold on her just the same.
She laughed a little at this, and shook her head.
"You're sure?" Roy asked again. "Not that the whole wounded veteran look isn't appealing – and don't I pull it off well?- but I think I have enough going with the eye patch."
Riza gave a little snort of derisive laughter, and pulled back to look at him.
"A crooked nose probably would have been a little much," he continued. "My features are much too refined for such a callous injury. Have you looked at my profile?" He turned his head sideways, catching the rather annoyed look she was now throwing him.
"Am I ever going to live that down?" she asked, trying with only a little effort to pull away from him.
Roy gave her a serious, searching look, and then gave the bed a highly suggestive glance. Returning his gaze to her, all pretenses and subtleness gone, he smiled and said, "I think I can be persuaded to forgive and forget."
With the tiniest of sighs, Riza glanced back at the bed. She looked at Roy for a moment, and then shook her head in resignation.
"Can I borrow a shirt?" she asked with a small smile.
"A shirt?" Roy echoed. "What do you need with a shirt?"
"I didn't bring anything to sleep in," she explained, though unnecessarily, because Roy was just nodding and smiling.
"What makes you think you need clothes to sleep?" he wanted to know as he backed her to the bed.
She just shrugged lazily then tumbled rather gracelessly backwards when the edge of the bed hit the back of her knees. Her arms, looped loosely around Roy's waist, were just enough to pull him down with her. The springs of the mattress, old and worn as they were, creaked a little under their combined weight, and Riza gave a small laugh at this, as if she somehow found the whole situation just a little too clichéd. Still, her mouth opened invitingly beneath his own, and her arms drew him in closer. She was warm and welcoming, and Roy realized with a pleasant start just how grateful he was to not be spending another night alone – all the more so that he was spending it with her.
"I do love you, you know," he said matter-of-factly while working down the row of buttons on her blouse.
Riza smiled softly in response, and pulled him up into a slow, thorough, devoted kiss: a kiss that left him breathless and moved him in a way no woman had been able to move him in a painfully long time.
With deft hands he reached behind her and fumbled with the clasp on her barrette. After the third try, when she had laughed and reached back to help him, they managed to free her hair from its confines. Roy tangled his fingers in it and pressed her back into the pillows.
Later, much later, when she was sleeping soundly beside him, back pressed to his chest, her fingers curled securely about the wrist of the arm pillowing her head, Roy realized that if ever he married, she would be the one.
Of course, such a proposition would do him no good. It was too soon, and too fast, and Roy was too scared it would ruin what they already had to think any deeper on the possibility. He just kissed her shoulder, still warm, and then laid his head down beside her.
It was then, with a rather unpleasant jolt of pain, that he realized he would have to roll over onto his back to avoid sleeping on his nearly broken nose.
Fin.
AN: Well, this was fun, and a little bit of a bitch, to write. I hope y'all enjoyed it, cause it gave me hell. Review? Please?