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It’s ridiculous that such a little thing would break their months-long impasse.
“Ah, well, it’ll be like the bad old days,” Roy comments, meaning the war and the desert and sand-eaten tents where they could have never imagined this future; he goes to settle the heavy valise of papers over the desk, giving the bed a look of honest amusement.
Hawkeye doesn’t make a judgement either way, moving rapidly to leave the rest of their things in a corner, tidily. She seems as nonplussed as him by the turn of events. They both had had to deal with sharing their sleeping quarters with other people before and during Ishval, and sometimes with each other. It had been an adjustment at first —they are both only children, both quite protective of their privacy— but by now it’s not something they have to think twice about. Hell, they have slept against each other on various means of transportation on the very journey here.
A bed should be no different. And their host on this stop in their journey —former military, but someone who had left a long time ago, someone Roy knew never was in King Bradley’s pocket, someone trustworthy— had barely apologized for the misunderstanding when he opened the door, as if it was a minor thing.
It is a minor thing; a source of amusement between them, more than anything. Despite their… impasse. Honestly, more than the inconvenience of sharing a single-sized bed with Hawkeye, what's breaking Roy’s heart is not having hot water until the morning.
"Seems clean enough," Roy encourages (Hawkeye, himself, he's not sure). He gets a distracted "mmm" for reply.
He looks around the bare guestroom; it’s the first time they lodge with civilians on this trip and he finds it a bit disconcerting, after weeks of barracks (uncomfortable, but familiar). They could have stayed in any of the garrisons they’re bound to visit this week, but this village is the perfect spot, equidistant to all of them, from which to operate without having to move everything each time.
They’re calling it “the fall of Bradley” now, many months later, the impulse to mythologize barely suppressed at this point, and Roy has a lot of explaining to do in remote outposts like this one; places that have only gotten the official panicked telegrams, the aseptic briefings when it was all over. Lots of lies to tell, Roy reminds himself heavily. The soldiers won’t be dismissed entirely (there’s a lot to do, maybe years of it, before the whole institution can be dismantled), but they’ll be told the situation and encouraged to think about a future outside the army. It’ll still take time; Roy himself knows there’s no getting out of his uniform in a couple of years at the least, in a hurry as he is to do so.
He guesses they could still ask around the village for some alternative accommodations but it’s late, and Roy can sense weariness winning out against what little decorum might remain between him and Hawkeye after so many years. He doesn’t need to ask her what she wants to do — she looks just as spent as him.
Hawkeye keeps her stoic façade (and it is only that) against the inconveniences of the journey a little longer, but she too lets out a grateful sigh as she sits on the bed for a moment, working her boots off and massaging the aching heel, while Roy takes out a stack of papers from the bag, dividing them up into smaller stacks, organizing them by importance on the desk, knowing he’ll have to wake before sunrise to get them in shape for the week ahead.
“Breda is going to want those couriered back as soon as possible,” Hawkeye reminds him, gesturing at one of the piles. Preliminary field studies for future communication networks. Impressive that she can know which pile is which, or maybe his system has become oh so predictable.
Roy moves his neck to one side, hears a faint crack. The collar of his uniform itches like he’s wearing one of those new recruits' lesser quality pieces.
“Well, Breda can move his ass here to the northwest of nowhere if he’s so eager to—” he realizes his tone by the expression of concern on Hawkeye’s face. “Sorry, long day. Sleeping on something other than the floor of a cart should do the trick. I’ll send for a courier in the morning.”
“Don’t forget the backseat of a car,” his companion offers.
“Oh I’m not forgetting. With these roads, I’d rather take a cart again.”
They need to get a railway line over here asap, he reflects. He’s not coming this way ever again without it.
Hawkeye nods, then adds. “You’re allowed to be tired.”
More like exhausted, Roy thinks. And it can’t be any better for Hawkeye. They’ve been glued together for the last three weeks.
“We are allowed to be tired,” he tells her, a bit more seriously now. He waves his hand. “I’m fine. I was just hoping for a hot shower.”
“Me too,” she agrees, with a dreamy expression, her lips pressed together imagining the pleasure of such a luxury. It’s quite sensual and Roy finds himself staring at her openly, smiling a bit.
“Tomorrow,” he promises. He’s only relaying their host’s promise but god he hopes he keeps it. He’s not fastidious by nature, and he’s been through a war, but the last leg of the road here was never-ending and cold and wet and Roy thinks he has mud in parts of his anatomy mud has no business touching.
He sits on the one chair and copies Hawkeye’s gesture, undoing the laces of his boots. It feels good to be out of them. It makes him feel old, of course, but that’s no bad thing, if being young means being impervious to filth and injury.
“We should freshen up anyway,” Hawkeye is saying, up on her bare feet. “I don’t want a bed full of mud.”
Roy makes a grimace at the idea. “Me neither. You go first.”
At least the room has its own, if small, bathroom. Roy can hear the faucet running and Hawkeye splashing her face. He pinches the bridge of his nose with an exhausted growl and he closes his eyes for a moment — he must have drifted off a bit where he is, because the next thing he knows Hawkeye has already finished and is standing in the middle of the room folding her jacket and shirt and putting them back into her bag, along with her belt.
“Better?” Roy asks her.
At least she looks more comfortable down to her undershirt and trousers, her impressive muscled shoulders always a welcome sight where Roy is concerned. She has her back to him, and Roy can see damp hair sticking to her nape.
She nods without turning, looking at him over her shoulder. “There’s only one towel, though,” she comments.
“I’ll ask our host tomorrow,” he tells her, making a gesture that could mean anything from I’m too tired to even climb down some stairs to we know each other too well for awkwardness. In fact, he can’t help a little joke. “We’re already sharing a bed.”
“Yes,” Hawkeye replies, in a curiously neutral tone.
Instead of prodding, Roy goes to freshen up himself, eyeing the shower with longing as soon as he’s alone in the bathroom. He’s tempted to just wash himself cold but the weather is not ideal and he’s far too busy to catch pneumonia. He scrubs his neck and armpits as much as his weariness allows, comfortable in the knowledge that familiarity between him and Hawkeye will make enough allowances for lowered standards of hygiene. They’ve had each other’s blood all over, Roy reflects grimly.
“It’s not modesty,” he explains when Hawkeye notices he’s put on his shirt again, miraculously mud-free except for one smeared cuff that Roy has rolled up into a semblance of cleanness. “I’m cold.”
She gives him a soft look.
It is cold out, but Hawkeye is usually a furnace of a woman, always radiating heat around him, or so it seems to Roy. This has been a great source of comfort on train seats, long drives and the back of carts, Roy often stretching the line of propriety a little too far, on the verge of snuggling a subordinate, just to get a shred of that warmth. Hawkeye never seems to mind, not even the pretense of minding. Suddenly the prospect of sleeping next to her on a proper bed on such a night seems like a boon rather than a bother.
“You take the side against the wall,” he says, pointing. “It’s bound to be warmer, and I don’t want to wake you if I get up to advance some paperwork.”
His current diligence in all matters bureaucratic these days is making Roy feel much older than cramped muscles or achy bones. It's disappointing.
Hawkeye throws back a strange, suspicious look of hesitation, then a sideways glance at the door. Roy chuckles a bit when he understands. He touches her shoulder from where he stands above her, the skin slightly wet from where she must have washed her neck in the same efficient manner Roy did.
“Relax. No one is coming to murder me during the night, you can take the wall side,” he tells her with a gentle smirk.
Hawkeye looks at him like she’s about to ask how he can be certain of that, but she keeps her protests to herself. She mutters a polite “excuse me” and climbs under the bed sheets, and then slides to the far side of the bed, her face turned towards the wall, eyes fixed on the pale lime wallpaper as she waits for Roy to join her.
“I’m putting out the lamp,” he announces.
The whole process is very unceremonious.
It’s a clear night, the moon big and close, so snuffing out the flame doesn’t plunge the room into darkness, but a strange kind of blue-ish glow. It’s easy for Roy to find the edge of the bed in this half-light. He flinches as the frame creaks a little under the weight of a second occupant.
The sheets smell musty, of closed rooms, but they smell clean in any case. Blissfully clean. There’s little room, but with Hawkeye on her side, there’s enough for Roy to lie on his back for a couple of minutes, looking at the ceiling while he coaxes his bones back into place, stretching until his spine aligns into a semblance of untension. He imagined he’d be out as soon as his body hit the mattress, all things considered, but after a couple of minutes like that Roy feels frustratingly more awake than half an hour ago.
Hawkeye’s breath hasn’t even out yet, like she is waiting for him to fall asleep first, or say something at least. Roy chances a glance at the shape of her, cut against the lightly colored wallpaper, perfectly delineated with the light falling through the window. He looks at the back of her neck, the line of her shoulders, and doesn’t realize what he’s looking for until it’s too late to stop. Of course the tattoo is not visible, not even with Hawkeye down to her undershirt, but Roy can always see it anyway. It’s this dark thought that brings him back to the reality of what it means —could mean, specially— for them to share a bed.
And the awkwardness of it all hits him like a slap.
He lets out a strained half-laughter.
“What?”
So close to her, Roy can decypher every note, every unintended modulation of her voice.
He half-turns towards Hawkeye, getting his bearings.
“This is smaller than I anticipated,” he says, now staring openly at Hawkeye's back, trying to guess what she’s thinking by the way her shoulder blades carry the motion of her breathing under the fabric of her shirt.
“Yes,” she says simply.
“I should have double-checked our sleeping arrangements.”
“Yes,” she says again, but some humour seeps through her tone this time.
Roy sighs, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. He’s in danger of letting the whole thing turn into a sleepless night at this rate, and they can’t afford that.
“You’re pitiless,” he tells Hawkeye.
He thinks she might have already fallen asleep when she doesn’t reply, but then he notices the way her shoulders keep tense. Have been tense all this time, he realizes. Roy can notice it in the air around them, too. It almost tastes differently.
She’s restless.
That won’t do, Roy thinks.
It’s one thing to have his own head filled with his own inability to move forward and the same fantasies as always, but he can’t allow for Hawkeye to be distressed too. He's never been able to stand to see her upset.
“Hey,” he suggests, and though the command should be intelligible for anyone else Hawkeye immediately knows what he means by that one word and by that tone and she turns on her back and then towards Roy, lying on her side until they are face to face.
Face to face and their faces so close on the pillow that Roy feels he might have miscalculated here, losing his grounding a bit, her face bright and alluring even under layers of weariness, cheap soap and now this other tension. He shifts a bit, correcting their positions so they are on a level and Hawkeye doesn’t have to look up at him nor he down at her.
It’s unnerving, but exciting too, as Roy knew it would be. He had just assumed the exhaustion from the trip would have dulled the exciting part to an afterthought and sleep would come easily. But this is Riza Hawkeye, so of course nothing can dull what that does to him.
He searches under the covers for her hand. He finds it easily and draws it towards him, coaxing Hawkeye to shift closer with the movement, until they really are too close. She draws an audible breath.
“Roy…”
He can’t help a pleased smile.
“I think I’m going to like that about civilian life.”
“What?” she asks.
He draws her fingertips up to his mouth. Warm and calloused and Roy is certain the trembling is not all his. He can feel Hawkeye tense at the gesture —he can feel it in the way the bed moves under them, how wonderful, this closeness where nothing can be hidden, nothing is concealed— but she makes no attempt to pull her hand away.
“You calling me Roy more often, instead of sir or Colonel or whatever the hell my rank is these days,” he says. He kisses her index. “Though I’m not sure I’ll be very good at it.”
“At what?” she asks after a moment, uncharacteristically slow. Affected.
When he smiles at her he lets it falter, he lets Hawkeye see it falter.
“At being Roy. Just him. I haven’t had much practice.”
He waits for Hawkeye to chastise him for his self-pity —he wants to do that himself, but she’s normally more effective, cutting right to the heart of it. But she does nothing of the sort.
“I know what you mean,” she says.
Of course she does. She went from being her father’s aide to the military’s attack dog to Roy’s pawn. She hasn’t had much of a life for herself, either. Why should she have more of a clue about what to do with civilian Riza Hawkeye than Roy? It bothers Roy that she might be just as troubled by it, but it makes him feel a little less alone. Because of course Hawkeye wouldn’t leave him alone, not even in this.
“You do, uh?”
She nods. “But I can see why it’s harder for you,” she gestures with her head across the room, her eyes making a sweep of the place, of the world, of everything Roy still has to achieve. “Roy. I’ll help you practice.”
He arches an eyebrow.
“Careful what you say while sharing a bed with your superior.”
He doesn’t know why he does it, pulling back like this. He’s been doing it every time he and Hawkeye have been alone since the so-called fall of the Bradley, since they miraculously escaped from the climax of the Homunculus master plan. And Roy knows all the carnage and close calls of those last days should have been a lesson, or a warning. But. He keeps doing this. Letting himself be tugged by the same kind of gravity that had always bound him to Hawkeye, only to turn away from it the next moment, leaving a wider gap between them than before. Hence the impasse.
“Sir,” Hawkeye replies, an octane too cold.
Of course she’s been doing exactly the same, maybe following his lead, maybe out of her own doubts.
Roy has often caught her with a strange look in her eyes, as if she wanted to say something to him. Something private, something more.
“No, wait, that’s not—” he shakes his head. Somehow he hasn’t relinquished Hawkeye’s hand just yet, and so he squeezes it a bit between his fingers.
He doesn't let the gap widen, this time.
Something about tonight is making it harder than usual to pull away. Probably the bed, already making it impossible to physically do so. He shifts closer still, trying to turn back the clock a couple of minutes —or maybe push its hands forward.
Forward, forward, that’s a good direction, Roy decides, drawing as close on the pillow as it’s possible while still on the side of fixable, if he discovers he’s making a mistake. Hawkeye widens her eyes in the most minute tiny way, but Roy knows it’s not from distaste. She watches Roy move towards her as if entranced. Their noses are almost touching now, the warmth of closeness comforting on a cold night. It’s frustrating, these last tendrils of tension between them, but not exactly awkward as he had feared, these last moments before the moment.
And Hawkeye looks expectant and Roy can’t believe there are people who find her enigmatic, impenetrable. Seldom has he encountered such an open book as his subordinate. It gives him a bit of a push, to have his own feelings reflected back at him in such a naked manner, in such familiar eyes.
“Practice, yes,” he says. “We are in dire need of practice.”
“Like what?” Hawkeye asks, almost, almost challenge in her voice. And if not challenge, curiosity.
Roy can work with curiosity.
“Like this,” he breathes against her mouth.
And it’s quite easy, after all the fuss. To let himself be pulled by it, by the way their lives have been magnetized to each other since the moment they met.
After all these years, all those moments when this could have happened —in the despair of war, or the heat of a battle, the way it could have been stolen from the jaws of danger, or in the relief of a hospital room, or the rush of feeling the other almost die in your arms. All those would have been fitting; they could have had this be spontaneous, or desperate.
Instead it’s an unremarkable guestroom, in peacetime, with all the time in the world and with the lowest stakes, the lightest brush of lips against lips to start with.
Roy does it again, pressing a second ghost of a kiss against his friend’s mouth, so it doesn’t look like the first was a mistake, or an accident, or anything he wishes to take back. Her lips are cold from the hours on the road, after all, and for some reason that makes Roy smile as he draws his own away. He thinks about the promise of a hot shower, and all the moments after this moment, a future of new and shining railway stations built luxurious as a President’s mansion, a whole world and a whole life that would never have come to be without the person he’s just kissed now, seeing it all through by his side.
He pulls back slightly, holding Hawkeye’s hand against his chest, hoping he hasn’t made the wrong call. He knows what he means to her, he’s not worried about that. Maybe he’s messed up the timing, the scenario, so he searches her glance for any trace of disappointment.
But Hawkeye just looks relieved, and Roy realizes she’s been as frustrated by their impasse as he has. Perhaps even more so, judging by the open, hungry look in her eyes, and Roy feels smug, privileged and oh so fucking endeared to this strange woman.
And a bit guilty, too. For having made her wait.
He lets go of her fingers and moves his hand to her neck, chasing the stray locks of hair under her ear.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know how to do… this.”
“It wasn’t just your responsibility,” she corrects him, leaning into his touch with a haste that speaks volumes as to how long she has imagined Roy’s hand touching her skin like this. A strange way of putting it. Responsibility. But Roy guesses she’s right — they’ve always been responsible for one another, in some kind of indefinable yet iron-clad way. She speaks again, looking as guilty as Roy has felt one moment ago. “I could have said something. I was sure you knew but—”
“Yes, yes, I knew,” he rushes to tell her, but not out of arrogance. He’s sure he’s been as much of an open book, and they’re both too old for youthful insecurities — except on the odd moment where it feels too much of a lucky turn, to have found one another. “I’m not sure what I was waiting for. It wasn’t a one-bed room in the middle of nowhere, when we’re too busy to do much about it.”
Hawkeye nods at the underlying implication. Maybe if there had been hot water tonight, maybe after a shower. Roy guesses that’s a too-practical, unromantic way of looking at it. Hawkeye deserves the romance, of course, but also the practicality.
“I should have done something about it sooner,” he curses, thinking back on Hawkeye’s flat and afternoons spent over coffee mugs, drawing up plans for this trip, or just idling their time together away, playing with Black Hayate, the way Roy felt at home in her space, comfortable and safe. All those hours wasted pulling away from… this.
“I could have helped,” Hawkeye says, ever so… helpful, he guesses. “I could have been more… encouraging.”
He can tell she regrets the choice of words as soon as they’re out of her mouth. Roy wants so badly to tease her. He does, a bit.
“Aw, Riza, that is so cute of you.”
He feels it the second it happens. He feels it under him, the whole bed reflecting it back, the way Hawkeye’s body goes limp with tension for a moment. Roy looks up and sees it, a brief flash of heat like a shadow passing her glance. She freezes, looking caught. She knows —she knows Roy has seen it. What a wonderful misunderstanding, this business of one bed where there should be two, forcing them into honesty.
“It gets to you, too?” Roy asks.
She gives the barest of nods, but her wordless admission sets something on fire in Roy’s spine. He closes his hand around the back of her neck and pulls her closer, kissing her again. More of a proper kiss now, feeling like a first. Riza opens her mouth under him, easily, like she has been waiting, and they both moan when Roy’s tongue touches hers, perfectly in match.
He does not dare move their bodies closer, he wills his legs to stay put when what he really wants to do is tangle them with Riza’s; he keeps his finger under her jaw, stroking her cheek with his thumb, unsure how else to hold his hand back, like trapping a bird that might fly away. But then Riza lifts her hand and grabs Roy’s shoulder, digging like she is trying to find an anchor.
Not an anchor, Roy realizes when she uses the grip on his body to pull him over her side, closer, deepening the kiss in the process. Not an anchor. A hook.
He melts into Riza’s gesture, body still disciplined enough to stay still, but trembling as he opens up to his old friend.
He's almost above her now, bodies still cautiously separated on the mattress, but Roy's hold on her name is as desperate as her grip on his shoulder and he's pushing her into the pillow, licking the roof of her mouth and Riza is twisting her hand into the his shirt, twisting the fabric into immodest wrinkles that will stay there for days and the idea makes Roy whine against the touch. He draws a long breath to keep kissing and there’s that musty, closed-room smell again, and Roy remembers where they are and remembers mud stuck to his skin and a heartbreaking lack of hot water. Suddenly (he's not sure he's back into his senses enough to make the conscious choice) he steadies his hand on her neck and draws himself away, Riza leaning to chase after him for the briefest, most beautiful of moments.
It’s a miracle he finds his voice after seeing that.
“We need to… we need, Ri—” he stops himself, not wanting to make things worse. “We need to stop.”
He needs to put it back. Her name. At least in his own head. At least until tomorrow.
“Yes,” Hawkeye agrees, her voice so soft and so hoarse that Roy almost forgets about practicalities. “Enough practice?”
“Precisely,” he jokes back, ducking to feel Hawkeye's nose brushing his forehead. She releases her almost-painful grip on his shoulder and Roy wishes he could have slept trapped between those fingers. “For now,” he corrects himself, overeager and pathetic and shameless about it. “Practice will resume… tomorrow night?”
“That is acceptable, sir.”
She gives Roy a conspiratory smile at that.
He kisses her again, chaste and sweet, before eventually letting her go, her eyes half-closing in a wince of yearning as Roy’s fingers drag away from her neck. He turns his back to her quickly, lying on his shoulder as far from her as the narrow bed will allow. In case either of them fails in their resolve.
Resting his face on one hand —the hand that was just touching Hawkeye, touching Riza, just a moment ago— Roy closes his eyes and notices how the tension burdening the tiny bed with a third presence hasn’t exactly gone away. But it has morphed into something else, boneless and radiating promise.
There’s comfort in it —sleeping next to someone who is waiting just as much as you do, desired and desiring. And the night is still cold, but Roy is warm all over. His nerve endings feel that more than anything else, lulled out of their aching numbness by the sudden jolt of arousal.
Roy doesn’t feel the tug of sleep just yet, but he knows he soon will.
He listens for Hawkeye’s breathing while he waits, knowing it’ll be easy to follow her if she falls asleep first, and that he’ll feel safe enough to doze off, if he’s the first to go.
“Goodnight, Roy,” he suddenly hears behind his back.
He turns his chuckle into an acquiescence, into a wordless thank you. Ah, yes, he could do with some help getting used to that.
And his subordinate is —ever so helpful.