56. Skillful and clumsy
"When's First Lieutenant Hawkeye's birthday?" Ed asks shyly and Roy is momentarily caught off-guard (Fullmetal speaking with civility! To him!), so much so that it takes him a moment to process the question.
The truth is, embarrassingly enough, that he doesn't know when Hawkeye was born. Women like Hawkeye are not born; they exist, immutably. Roy doesn't even know if Hawkeye has a favourite colour, so distant she appears for common humanity.
So he flips through her personal file, which is perhaps not strictly allowed and passes the date over the Ed with fewer wisecracks than is usual—Hawkeye is genuinely fond of the kid and Fullmetal is only trying to do something nice in return, after all—and then he retreats to his office to think. It seems so strange, that there can be so much between Hawkeye and himself and yet no tangible exchanges.