Work Text:
Riza has never broken up with someone before. At this rate she never will, because there’s only one person on earth who she has any interest in dating, and that is decidedly not going to happen.
It’s been two weeks since Roy was promoted to Colonel. A lot has stayed the same: his lingering glances, darting between her eyes and her lips; his hands brushing hers for a bit too long every time they exchange a stack of papers; the way he leans too far into her space when he comes over to her desk to ask her for something. Their fingers brush when they walk down the hallways of Eastern Command together. Riza aches constantly with the urge to touch him, but on the rare occasions that their skin makes contact, she feels the impossibility of them like a stab in the gut. It’s too much.
It’s twenty-two hundred hours when she works up the confidence to walk into his new office, alone, and present herself in front of his desk. Of course they’re both still at work. He’s determined to prove that he’s worth the promotion, even as he pushes harder at the lazy womanizer image he’s so determined to project. Riza’s the one actually doing a lot of the work, but deeper down she is desperate for the extra hours spent at his side, as if they haven’t had enough before now. The thought distracts her as she clutches a clipboard to her chest and stares down at her commanding officer, until she has to bite her tongue to center herself again.
She’s never done this before, and already she knows she’s not good at it.
“Hawkeye,” says Roy, grinning up at her. He’s twisting a paperclip into implausible shapes with one hand and slowly sorting through a stack of papers with the other; it’s late enough that he might as well do something productive, if he’s going to be here. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Riza attempts to take a deep breath without it being visually obvious in any way, but she can still see the way his brow furrows in concern. She remembers the way he would watch her when they were teenagers, perplexed and doggedly curious. Even in Ishval, as their shared hardships drew them closer together, he couldn’t read her like this. Now, it’s too late to keep secrets from him, and him from her. “Sir,” she finally manages, wincing at the way his easy smile has fallen to a wavering frown. “I need to—this needs to stop.”
His face spasms, and Riza has to fight to keep from reacting as he sets down his papers and sits forward in his chair. Already, the guilt is threatening to swamp her—they’ve been through so much, together and apart, and she can’t let him have this much, even? She shuts the thought down before it can go any farther, because if she follows that train of thought, she ends up in the dark corner of her brain that begs her to just throw herself into his arms, his home, his bed, their future be damned. In front of her, Roy steeples his fingers and leans toward her. “What are you talking about, Lieutenant?”
“You know what,” she replies, forcing herself to keep her voice above a whisper. Every word is forced. “This. Us. If I may be honest, sir, I can’t go on like this.”
Roy’s eyes crinkle at the corners, and while Riza knows it’s a minute expression of pain, part of her fears that he’s mocking her. “Us? There’s nothing happening between us. Unless I had way more to drink at our celebration dinner than I remembered.”
Nothing happening between us. It’s the first time either of them has spoken so frankly about… this, whatever it is that they share. Riza makes no secret of the fact that she’s committed to him, his ideals and his protection and his excruciatingly slow takeover of the Amestrian government. She’s not open about their shared past, per se, but she doesn’t take pains to hide it, either. What she steadfastly refuses to acknowledge is the teenage crush on her father’s apprentice that, despite her best efforts, has only grown into something so deep and so monstrous that it threatens to tear her apart. It would feel tepid to say that she’s in love with Roy. She passed that point years ago. Now, as an actual adult with supposedly better decision-making faculties, she spends her days fighting the urge to consume him, because nothing else will ever bring them close enough for what she craves.
“Exactly,” she manages at last. “There’s nothing happening. I—I apologize if I haven’t been as disciplined as I should be in remembering that.” A faint flush rises up her face, remembering a moment earlier in the day when she pressed a gentle hand to Roy’s shoulder blade while reminding him to leave the office and get lunch already. “I believe that we need to be more firm in our boundaries. Especially now that you’ve attained this level of recognition.”
“What are you if not disciplined?” Roy teases, though his smirk doesn’t reach his eyes. Then his voice softens, and Riza’s stomach churns with longing. “We’ve been through a lot together, Lieutenant. It’s to be expected that we’re close.”
She presses her lips together, fighting to keep her voice even. “I’m sorry that I’ve added so much of my own burden to yours, sir.” The words have been bubbling in her mind for years now, guilt and shame that she forces down every day, for all the things that never should have happened between them. Showing him her back. Following him to Ishval. Asking him to burn her back. Following him here, where every day they come closer to challenging the higher-ups in ways that could lead to their destruction. Most days, it’s easy to tell herself that this exchange is mutual. Equivalent, Roy would say, with that particularly devilish grin he uses for a bad joke or an obnoxious pickup line. Still, despite her better judgment, she can’t keep her darker thoughts from spilling out of her mouth. “I should never have made this—”
“Hawkeye.” He shuts her down with one palm flat on his desk, then rises out of his seat. “What the hell are you talking about? Your burden?”
“The—the Flame Alchemy, and following you to war, and… and…”
Roy scowls as if she’s insulted him, and for a moment she thinks he’s going to reach out and grab her, but he stays put. “I would always choose to have you at my side,” he interrupts, his words soft but precise. “Always. No matter how much your history— our history—weighs on us both. Never apologize for being part of my life, Hawkeye.”
By now, Riza’s breath is fluttering in her throat, and her eyes burn with restrained tears. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Don’t.” He leans back from his desk, visibly forcing himself to release some of the tension from his body, before pacing around to stand in front of it, next to her. “Now, you were saying we need to set better boundaries. I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
Every word out of Riza’s mouth strains the depths of her conviction. “We… touch, sir. A lot. People are starting to talk.”
“People have always talked,” he corrects her. “It’s to be expected, with the image I’m presenting, and more so with a woman like you.”
“A woman like—what’s that supposed to mean?”
Roy’s eyes widen as he apparently realizes the many less-than-savory interpretations of his words. “It means you’re gorgeous, Hawkeye. Objectively. Of course these jealous old men are going to talk, when they all want you for themselves.”
Her face, which was definitely pink to begin with, goes so hot that Riza has to fight the urge to hide it behind her clipboard. “This is exactly what I’m talking about, sir. It’s not professional to tell your subordinates… that kind of thing.”
“I talk to every woman who comes through this office the same way, Lieutenant, and you know that.”
It would overwhelm her with jealousy, to hear that, if it were true. He’s an enormous flirt, at least with his words, and he’s careful to maintain the habit anywhere he could be seen by his enemies. But unlike many of the other men in Eastern Command—and even more in Central, she’s sure—Roy shows a respect for the women he meets that’s so deeply ingrained that he can’t act his way out of it. He can joke about the length of their skirts and come up with all kinds of stupid pet names and epithets, but he still looks them all in the eyes and addresses them with their titles. His “dates” with his informants look more like schoolgirls gossiping at a sleepover than a man desperate to get laid. He expects nothing but frustration and annoyance from the women he hits on, Riza included. It took mere days in the military academy to learn that most of the men in her profession, when speaking to her, expect a blush and a giggle at the least, and often react with verbal violence when she meets them with a stony glare. She has never feared any repercussions for shutting Roy down, in public or in private.
He doesn’t treat her like other women, though. Behind his playboy act is a genuine understanding and compassion that can only have come from his upbringing. When no one is watching, he treats his informants and sisters and friends like a knight; the way he flirts with, talks to, even looks at Riza, he feels more like a disciple.
So, sure, she’s jealous of the women who get to go on pretend dates with him, who get to hold his hand and bat their lashes and drape themselves all over his arms just to whisper state secrets in his ear. That jealousy runs deep, but she knows that this thing between them—whether or not it’s actually there—runs far deeper.
“You know that’s not true,” she finally manages. He’s too close to her now, his expression more concerned than upset, and she knows that if he touches her at all she’s going to melt. All she wants is to embrace him. “We can’t attract any suspicion of an actual relationship, Colonel. If someone were to find evidence—”
“Which they won’t, because there’s nothing there to find.”
“Then act like it,” Riza snaps. This conversation is going to kill her. How is she supposed to convince him that they’re too close when all she wants is to be closer? “All I want is to see you succeed, sir. I can’t let my own feelings get in your way like this.”
Recognition dawns on Roy’s face so painstakingly slow that Riza has time to run through every mistake she’s ever made in her life, leading up to this one. “Your own feelings?”
A thousand excuses come to her lips, but when Riza forces herself to look up into his eyes, black and endless, she knows that he won’t buy any of them. For years now, she’s been operating under the assumption that these feelings are mutual and mutually known, because she hasn’t exactly been subtle, at least by her standards. But Roy is studying her like a tactical briefing, or a pinned insect, or an insect pinned to a tactical briefing, and her mouth is suddenly dry and her stomach roiling and she wants to shut herself in her apartment and never speak to him again. Except for the part of her that wants to kiss him right now, which is screaming for attention as he brushes a few strands of hair out of his face as if he can’t stand them obstructing his view of her. “To be fully transparent,” she says at last, once she manages to put one word in front of another, “I thought I was very obvious.”
His eyes go wide. “Riza,” he breathes, his hands twitching as if he’s violently restraining himself from touching her.
“Please don’t call me that, sir.”
“Hawkeye. How long has this been going on?”
She can’t do this. She can’t talk about this. Something in her chest is shattering, and she’s not sure whether it’s the distant childish hope of being with him someday, or any remaining sense of privacy that she entertained while working with someone who knows her so completely. “That… depends. In one way or another, since we… since I was sixteen. I think. But I’ve been—I have been very discreet about it, sir, if you didn’t realize what you… what was happening. All I’m asking is that you extend the same courtesy to me.”
Roy’s mouth hangs half-open, and as Riza watches, his face transforms—unguarded first, tender and almost hopeful, before hardening into something painful and betrayed. She sees the realization hit him, of everything she sacrificed by joining him in the military and following him all the way here. Everything that could’ve been his, too. If they were both very different people. “Do you regret it?” he asks at last.
“No.” Never. Not in Ishval, and not now, as much as she wishes she could sacrifice her own life for every one she took. She would relive every excruciating moment to protect him. “It was the only choice I ever had, sir.”
He knows that it would be wildly unfair to point out her own mistakes, when he was the one bringing her father’s alchemy to war in the first place. Riza knows that he knows that. But Roy is nothing if not a dreamer, and her heart nearly stops as he shutters his face and brushes past her, grabbing his coat on his way out. “I hope you can find some happiness in it, then. Goodnight, Lieutenant.”
“Goodnight,” Riza whispers to the empty office, once he’s gone.