A/N: Hey all! Hope everyone is having a good week. This chapter may look a bit familiar to some of you; it's because it is largely based on a one shot I posted on my Tumblr in December. I knew at the time that it was going to be part of the Lascivious universe, but liked it well enough that I ended up putting it in the fic and on its own. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy! Of course, thanks as always to Kate (rizascupcakes on Tumblr) for beta-ing :)


"I'll need something incendiary," Roy mused, throwing the last pieces of wood into the pit. "If I'm going to bring this into battle. It's all well and good to stand in front of an open flame and move things around, but if I'm going to become a state alchemist the military is going to need to see a more practical application."

Riza sighed over the meticulously copied diagram. With a flush of red to his cheeks, Roy could remember transcribing the information, that excitement of being so close to her bare flesh tinged with a sense of horror due to the circumstances that had lead them there. "Do you need to talk about how you're going to use this to kill people already?"

He fiddled with matchsticks he had pulled from his coat pocket. "Sorry," he said. "You know I don't want to hurt people; I just want to—"

"Protect the people you care about from the people that want to hurt it, I know Roy you've only told me a dozen times." She looked down into the fire pit Roy had carefully assembled in front of them. "It's a noble ambition but always at a heavy cost."

He threw an ignited match into the pit, watching for a breathless moment as it gnawed and consumed the young wood, curling and blackening all it touched until eventually it would die, leaving nothing of the life it had been born from.

But still, Riza's face glowed in the darkness with that uneasy orange of the pyre and he just couldn't help but smile at the illuminated contours of that serious expression.

"How about we focus on the logistics before you make your grand plans, alright?" She said finally. "Becoming a dog of the military is a far off dream until you can actually figure this out."

He carefully checked that the transmutation circle he had drawn around the pit matched the one on his paper. "I just feel like I must be missing something. It shouldn't be very complicated; the fire's here, I have the situation controlled enough that there should be no more outside elements at play, the circle is set. I don't see why we haven't been successful yet."

"Give it another try," she said patiently. "It's a new day, maybe it'll be yours."

Standing close to the dancing flames, he leaned down to touch the transmutation circle. It glowed weakly, as they had when he was a child first learning alchemy from a dusty old textbook he had stolen from Vanessa. The fire quivered faintly.

"Do you want to give it a try?" he sighed. "Maybe it just needs a new set of eyes to see what I'm doing wrong."

Riza took a small step back. "I don't think I'm the person you want for this. Even if I could see what was wrong, I hardly have expertise to realize it."

"I don't think you give yourself enough credit," he teased, and when she didn't relent, "What? Scared of playing with fire?"

"Hardly," she quipped back. "Playing with fire is practically a family tradition." She stepped up the array and Roy could tell she was nervous as she bent before it. Despite her life surrounded by it, she had done her best these past 17 years of her life to avoid alchemy and he could tell it took her a moment to rack her brain for the repressed knowledge.

Despite his love for the subject, Roy could hardly blame her. He knew that alchemy was the rot whose stench still clung to the stuffy air. Slowly, bit by bit, it had consumed the Hawkeye family until it left nothing but Riza, alone in the suffocating tomb of a house that had claimed her childhood. Roy had spent his life watching the flames out of a morbid need to understand the death that had claimed his parents, but Riza had been raised alongside the very thing that had ruined her life. To reject alchemy was to breathe, to escape from that same choking death, while Roy pursued that same deadly knowledge with the persistence of an addict looking to be brought closer and closer to the edge.

For a moment, he almost called for her to stop but she gently placed her calloused, pale hands on the outline of the circle and again there was that faint glow, that brief flickering of the flame.

"I told you; no good." she called. "But actually this gives me an idea."

"I'm listening."

She stood up. "I think we're doing this on too large of a scale. Especially when we have no idea what technique or power is required for this type of alchemy."

Roy frowned in consideration. "What do you suggest then?"

She kicked some of the dirt beneath her boots into the air in absent thought. "Hand me your lighter."

"I don't-"

"And don't pretend you don't smoke." She said. "I've seen you behind the shed in a cloud of smoke and you can't play dumb with me about that."

"I'm quitting," he huffed, but handed her the lighter.

She pulled a pen out of her coat pocket and traced the array onto the back of her hand. "I'm not sure how this will work without the lighter inside the array," she admitted, flipping the lighter open in a small of flame. A moment later, however, and the flame burst momentarily several feet into the air in a swarm of red and orange.

"Riza!" Roy said, astounded. "You did it!"

"We did it!" Riza had a smile that could make angels cry. "Roy, I figured it out!"

Before he knew it she was in his arms. He had never been a tall man but it was enough to pull her from the ground and into the air where she belonged. It had been over a year since he last kissed her but it felt comfortable and warm in this cold night.

"Roy!" She laughed and pulled away. "The lighter's still open; you'll catch on fire."

"Sorry," he said sheepishly. "How did you do that?"

"I'll show you." She grabbed his hand and for a moment lingered like that, just a boy and a girl holding hands before a roaring fire, while Roy struggled to replace what he was sure must be the lamest grin with a cooler expression. It was only a moment though and she soon pulled out her pen and drew the array onto the back of his hand. "So it's pretty simple. Just go through the same process as before, this time just do it as soon as the lighter opens. Take the sparks from the lighter and alchemize it with the oxygen in the air surrounding it to expand the flame."

"Stand back," he warned as she placed the lighter in his hand. The insurgence of flame had been impressive enough for an unpracticed alchemist like Riza and not having fine-tuned it, Roy had no idea what would happen when he tried it. "I would get my ass kicked by Master Hawkeye is he were here to see how many safety procedures we're neglecting right now," he commented as Riza stepped a safe distance behind him.

The lighter flicked open and he could feel the electric surge of alchemy course through his hand, up to the lighter and them beyond until—

The surge of flame knocked him off his feet and slamming against Riza behind him.

"Shit." He said, but couldn't quite stop himself cracking up. He didn't get up, laying across the grass under the stars in a fit of unrestrained laughter. "Nothing caught on fire, did it?"

Still giggling, Riza picked herself up off the ground, brushing loose grass and dirt off of her blouse. "Luckily no, though if we had been even a little closer to my house it might be a different story."

"Damn, I'll have to try again then." He grinned as he sat up. "I say burn it to the ground."

She pretended to consider. "It's a good plan, but with one weak point."

"And what's that?"

"My house will be burned down."

He grabbed her hands in fake earnestness, pulling her down to his level. "Well you'll live with me of course."

"Of course," she laughed. "How silly of me. In Central?"

"Naturally. With a state alchemist's paycheck, I'll be able to pamper you beyond your wildest dreams."

"And when you go to war?"

"Oh, well, you'll cry for me," he told her. "But when I make a hero's return, you'll be so proud you won't care."

"Sounds lovely," she said. "When can we start?"

"Any minute now. Just let me burn this house down."

They sat like that for a moment, underneath the moon and stars like they had only a year before. So much had changed, the year at the academy had given Roy a kind of discipline he'd lacked before and a greater understanding of the importance, as well as impracticality, of his cause. The shadows underneath Riza's eyes had become darker than ever. And yet they never would have known it as she rested her head against his shoulder in a moment of breathless, unsustainable permanence.

"It does sound nice, doesn't it?"

She sighed. "Please don't."

"Don't tell me you don't want that too, Riza. Because we could have that—we could—"

"Dreams… dreams never work out the way you want them to, Roy." She pulled herself away from him. "Do you still have your lighter?"

Hesitantly, he pulled it from his pocket. She took it from him, flicking it open.

"You always go one step too far, Roy." She stared at the tiny flame. "You join the military because you think you can save everyone, you alchemize this tiny little spark into a flame thrower, and you want to vandalize my home and run away with me after being reunited for a week. No one does that, no one has the energy."

"I'm sorr—"

"It's what I love about you." She gently interrupted. "I can't stop thinking about this lighter. This tiny flame, and you, completely from your own natural energy, you made it into something so big and bright I could hardly stand to look." She took a deep breath. "Like you did with me. Before I met you I was trapped in this house with my father; I never thought to look up at the stars. I was so scared to grow, to live. And maybe I still am but… but I'm working on it. And now I know there's something else."

He didn't know what to say as she handed the still flickering lighter to him.

"It is small." He could feel tears in his eyes.

She smiled. "It's your heart."