A/N: This one is a little piece about the first few months returning from the war. They weren't always so good at maintaining their professionalism.
It wasn't always easy, keeping his distance from her. During Ishval, they never really talked about it. About them. Then again, wartime is a completely different beast. The rules on the battlefield are blurred and the need to survive overrides everything else. When the war ended and they returned to normal life, there were some adjustments that had to be made.
First things first, they couldn't use their first names. Calling her Riza warmed his throat and felt like a song as it rolled off his tongue. It always surprised her, when he called her that. He would see the way her eyes would cloud with emotion and he would long to touch her until the only thing those amber depths would reflect what he knew he felt.
Which was another thing, he recalled. They couldn't touch. Mercifully, their uniforms were much too long for any accidental skin-on-skin contact. Roy wasn't sure what chemicals her alabaster skin was made of, but it wasn't something normal humans were made of. Every time his calloused hands grazed hers, it was like an electric current that burned him in ways his fire never could. She would pause, as if processing the way he felt. It was like it was some rare gift to feel him against her, even if for only a moment in the tiniest of ways. He supposed they would have to take what they would get.
Gifts. He couldn't give her personal gifts, either. During her first birthday after Ishval, he had pulled her aside and handed her a small box. She had gasped, her fingers handling the delicate necklace. The way the tears sprung to her eyes and the way she let out a little puff of air sent delicious shivers down his spine. Even her frown as she berated him for getting her something so wonderful filled him with pleasure. He did not realize, in the days afterward, how much he would want to unbutton the top of her uniform to see if he could see the metallic gleam of the honeysuckle pendant against her black turtleneck. He would sit, mesmerized, when she touched her collarbone as she worked if she was thinking about him. He thought about her. He always thought about her.
He thought about her late at night, which is why she would have to stop showing up at his place at midnight, her features drawn and her strong shoulders weighed down by ghosts from sandy ruins miles away from Central. Roy didn't know if she had chosen the tight, revealing top and shorts to torture him, or if it was the only thing that was in the general vicinity of her bed as she left her apartment. She claimed Black Hayate needed a walk. He conveniently forgot that the small dog only went to the bathroom at 6am and 6pm, as militaristic and disciplined as his master. He conveniently forgot the last time he saw so much of her thigh or how empty his bed was at the moment. He settled with a cup of tea and the sound of her voice against his skin.
She'd have to stop bringing up Ishval. Roy refused to talk about it when he didn't have to. The guilt ate away at him, like a festering wound. Late at night, he couldn't run from the vivid memories of the war. Riza's cup quaked in her hand as she brought up Kimblee's words, the very words he imagined stirred her from sleep. He felt too vulnerable, too weak to resist her. She had asked him if he could reconcile it – the pride of the power they wielded and the shame of how they were forced to use it. It was a question they had both struggled with since they returned. He still didn't know. Her hand found his, rousing him out of his daydreaming. If Ishval was the wound, she was the salve. Her lips sterilized his mind and her embrace cleansed his soul.
If they wanted to maintain a professional relationship, they would certainly have to stop sleeping together. The sex was amazing. He'd always known it would be. There was something entirely different about his experience with her than every other woman he'd known. They clung to each other in the darkness, letting the nightmares ebb away under the white hot heat of their bodies meshing. They did not speak; she did not whisper his name in the throes of their passion. Somehow, they both understood that by doing so, it would ruin whatever they had. This couldn't continue and they knew it, so they lost themselves in each other while they could. Maybe then, when they went back to work the next morning, they could imagine it was just another stranger in their bed the night before.
He would have to stop bringing up, then, when he spotted her in the restaurant downtown with some guy he'd never met before. Roy didn't know what he expected to hear her say when he asked about this person who dared to know her as intimately as he did. He certainly didn't want to hear her clipped tone as she explained that the guy's name was "Robert" and he was "a wonderful man." Roy also didn't want to know that she was going on a second date with him that night. The jealousy that tasted like bile in his throat was a hard thing to temper. He was as volatile as the fire he commanded, and it was difficult to hide his irrational anger from his team in his office. He could not tell what was more troublesome – the way Riza hummed the next morning as she walked into work or the way the sight of him wiped that rare smile off her face as quickly as it had come.
He rarely argued with her in any serious manner, but when he brought up their future, their fragile calm had snapped. Roy would never forget the way she whirled on him, her eyes bright and her teeth bared. Much later, when he had stopped seeing red, he would know she was right. He had no claim to her, no right to own her heart. Not when he chose to follow his ambitions before anything else. She cried, not the obnoxious, nose-running sobs. He almost would have preferred that. It would make it easier to convince him she was being unreasonable. But the single stream of tears that spilled over her face stripped him raw. He knew what he asked of her. She would follow him to hell, but that didn't mean she didn't have her own needs. His dreams to shape the country would not keep her warm at night. He could not ask her to wait for him, to remain chaste until after he attended to his other priorities. The deafening silence that stretched between them was almost too much to bear. Riza left him that night, and Roy could only think that he had given her yet another scar she would have to heal on her own.
Above all, Roy would have to stop apologizing. He would look at her, her frustration brimming just beneath the surface with tight lips. All she had to do was open her mouth and he would crumble. The tattered remains of his sanity clung to the hope she could forgive him. He wanted to reach out to her, just to hold her and taste her again. He wanted to buy her gifts that would make her sob that obnoxious, nose-running type of cry. He wanted to throw down his walls and lay everything that was housed in his heart on the table for her to see. He wanted to tell her that there was no one else but her and she was his life, his everything, his Riza. He wanted to banish all other thoughts from her mind so she could just begin to understand the extent of his love for her. Instead, he muttered a useless "sorry," unable to even look her in the eye. She did not speak until he flicked his gaze back up to her face. She had looked so beautiful then, the anger dissipating from her like a candle being doused. "I know," she replied. Roy realized, then, that she did. Perhaps she always had.