The Wants of the Few

Disclaimer: I own nothing

Chapter 15 – Similarities

The ride to Roy's apartment didn't take long and soon Riza found herself on his doorstep. Though, nothing could prepare her for what she found inside. The entire place reeked of leftovers, mold, unwashed clothes. The two females glanced around his living room with disgust. Several military uniforms and dress shirts decorated the floor and furniture. What part of the floor wasn't covered in clothes was covered in books and loose pieces of paper. Most of the books were alchemy oriented and several of the papers had circles drawn on them. Black Hayate tenderly sniffed at a discarded uniform and sneezed loudly. This place could definitely use a woman's touch. As Roy went into his bathroom to take a shower Riza wandered around the apartment picking up clothes and straightening furniture. In her cleaning she found several clean pieces of paper and a pencil and let Elysia sit at the table and draw while she tried to fix the apartment up a bit. After just a few minutes she had the front room picked up and most of the kitchen clean. She wandered her way into the bedroom. The hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention as she entered his room. It smelled smoky. Like the front room there were several piles of clothes lying on the floor, Riza began picking them up and folding them. The sound of the shower continued in the background. When she'd finished folding the clothes, she put them on the bed and glanced around for something else to straighten. The nightstand caught her eye. Assorted items littered his nightstand and she carefully inspected each of them. The most prominent piece that caught her eye was the sleeping pills. She read the label, the prescription was dated a week or two after Maes death... Those weeks after the murder had been so hard on him…she would have given anything to have been able to comfort him then. At the time, she wasn't sure he'd have let her.

The nightstand had a drawer and she opened it to put all of the little odds and ends into, but something stopped her. Just inside the drawer was a familiar face. It was a photo of Riza. In the photo she was bent over a ledger, hard at work. It was taken at an angle and she could only see part of her face. It was strange. It appeared as if someone had snapped the shot in attempts to keep her from noticing. She couldn't remember ever having her picture taken…well at least not since that day the entire unit had their group photo taken. As Riza tried to think of when it was taken, the shower turned off. Riza didn't notice. She flipped the photo over and read Maes' familiar handwriting on the back 'She's not as cruel as she seems…'

"It's not the best photo…" a voice said from behind her. Her breath choked her. Slowly she turned around to see Roy dripping wet in only a towel. "We've got to stop meeting like this." He said seductively as he pulled her to him and gently took the picture out of her hand. She was too stunned to really say anything. It seemed today they had a flare for being in the most awkward situations. Riza's breath had still failed to come back to her as his face slowly moved toward hers. His lips pressed themselves to hers and his tongue lightly caressed the inside of her mouth. Riza had forgotten how good this felt. After only a small taste in her bedroom, she'd forgotten how complete she'd felt. The feeling rushed back to her and filled in all the empty spaces in her soul. He enveloped her completely and she found herself being pushed gently backwards…toward the bed. She couldn't think…her mind was in a blissful fog. Suddenly she was broken away from his kiss as the back of her legs hit the bed and she fell back onto it. She looked up at Roy from where she lay on the bed, a sly smile on his face. She couldn't help but smile back at him as he leaned over her, as if to kiss her again. His lips stopped just centimeters from hers, "I'd love to continue," he whispered, the breath from his words softly hitting her lips, "but there's a four year old that we've got to get to a birthday party." He gave her a gentle kiss and stood up once more. Riza watched him go back into the bathroom to change. Her heart felt slightly emptier without him, but the memory of his kisses stayed with her and gave her the strength to go back into the kitchen with Elysia.

Elysia looked up from her drawing, "Why are you all wet Miss Riza?"

'Wet?' Riza thought confused. The answer came to her quickly when she looked down and saw that some of the water that was still on Roy's body when he kissed her had gotten her wet. She blushed a little, "I was washing my hands and I wiped them on my clothes." She didn't like lying to a little kid, but some things just needed to be explained by a parent.

"Okay." The little girl replied without much thought on the subject. "I drew you and Uncle Roy a picture!" Riza smiled and looked over Elysia's shoulder at the drawing. It was of two blob looking people holding hands. The blob that she guessed was the woman was holding flowers and had something on her head. The man had a big bowtie on that was much bigger than his head.

"See, this is you," she said pointing to the female blob, "and this is Uncle Roy." She pointed to the blob with the bowtie. "It's at your wedding. See you're wearing a really pretty dress and one of those see through thingies on you head and I drew you a bunch of flowers." Riza smiled uncontrollably. "I like Uncle Roy's bowtie the best" she continued, "I wanted to draw Black Hayate next to you, but I'm not good at drawing doggies."

"I'm sure you can draw great dogs." Riza said.

"Do you like it?" Elysia asked, innocence radiating from her eyes.

Hawkeye nodded, "Very much."

"Do you think Uncle Roy will like it?" the child asked.

"I'm sure he'll love it." The woman said, giving the small girl a hug.

"What am I going to love?" Roy said as he walked in the room, towel drying his hair.

"Lookie!" Elysia said jumping up from the table and showing him the picture. "It's you and Miss Riza."

He studied the little drawing for a moment. "Miss Riza looks really pretty in her wedding dress and I like my bow tie." The last comment made Elysia grin. "You can have it Uncle Roy." She said handing it to him.

"Aw, thank you so much Elysia…I'm going to put it on the refrigerator right now." Roy hunted down a few magnets and proudly hung the little picture on his refrigerator. The three stood for a moment admiring Elysia's hard work.

Need more Royai and don't mind some angst? Check out my new fic "Living on Borrowed Time"its sad, but it's going to take a turn for the interesting soon ;)

Oh...and I'm still not completely done with this fic...we've got 3 chapters left :)