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It had taken, frankly, an embarrassingly long time for Hohenheim to realise that Trisha was interested in him. For her part, Trisha had realised that she was interested in him from pretty much the first moment that she saw him properly, and she had been fairly certain that the feelings were reciprocated.
What was the word they used in all the old-fashioned romance novels? Swooned . Yes, Hohenheim had definitely swooned when he had first been introduced to her. Yuriy and Sarah, firmly convinced that swooning was reserved for the female half of the population, had put it down to the fact that Pinako had dragged him out to a social event for the first time in years and he was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people there, but Trisha knew better. Yes, Trisha was certain of the swooning. The word suited him somehow.
Trisha herself, always down to earth no matter what might be going on around her, was definitely not the swooning type, but she couldn’t deny that there was definitely something inside her that had started to turn somersaults when Pinako had introduced them. For all of about ten minutes, she had wondered if it was just the thrill of the exotic, because she had certainly never seen anyone who looked quite like Hohenheim before. After about ten minutes, she was convinced that no, it wasn’t anything to do with that - he was just a very attractive, very socially inept nerd and she wanted to jump his bones.
When Hohenheim finally, finally realised that she was interested in him and yes, she was indeed asking him out on a date, his first reaction was somewhat… underwhelming.
“Me?” He looked around for anyone else that she might have been talking to, but there was no one else in the vicinity, and Trisha managed to stop herself from laughing. His complete confusion was rather endearing.
“Yes, you, Van Hohenheim. I would like to go out with you.”
He looked around again. “Are you sure?”
Trisha nodded. “Yes. I’m very sure.”
“I’m not exactly… normal, you know.”
“I know.” Hohenheim’s lack of normality was not really a secret in Resembool. There was, of course, the fact that the town’s older population, who had known him off and on throughout his travels for several years, could swear up and down that he had not aged in all the time that they had known him. There was the fact he was constantly talking to himself in three different languages (sometimes all at the same time, which was interesting). There was the fact that no one really knew where he came from or where he went on his long absences from the village. There was the fact that he seemed to be living in cloud cuckoo land most of the time and only occasionally came down to the real world. All of this was well known to Trisha, and none of it scared her off.
“Are you sure?” he repeated. He sounded rather pained.
“Yes. I’m sure I would like to go out with you. Would you like to go out with me?”
“Well…” The expression he was wearing could only be described as ‘rabbit faced with a fox’, which, admittedly, was not normally an expression associated with being asked out on a date, but this was Hohenheim, so ‘normal’ didn’t apply to him.
Trisha laughed. “It’s a fairly simple yes or no question.”
“Yes,” Hohenheim said, and the immediate lack of hesitation let her know that the desire was genuine. “It’s just that nothing’s ever a simple yes or no question with me.”
“You do like to overcomplicate things, don’t you?”
“Everything about me is overcomplicated, it kind of comes with the territory.” Hohenheim’s face fell. “I would like to go out with you. I think you’re wonderful. I just…” He trailed off, looking around frantically as if he was hoping that Pinako would come out of nowhere and continue the conversation for him. For all Trisha knew, Pinako and Yuriy were hiding behind the hedge next to them and keeping close tabs on what was going on in order to force them to do something about the unresolved romantic tension between them once and for all and to jump out and intervene if necessary. She really hoped it wouldn’t be necessary; they were getting there on their own, just rather… slowly.
“You just…” Trisha prompted him to go on, in the hope that they could soon actually get to the logistics of going on a date.
“I’ve never really… dated before.”
“Is that all you’re worried about?” Trisha shrugged. “Everyone has to start somewhere and I can assure you, it’s not a very difficult skill to pick up. In fact, we can start right now if you want.”
“Erm…”
“Unless you’ve got somewhere else that you need to be, of course.”
For a moment, she thought that he was about to make a garbled excuse of having to go and iron his kettle or check he’d taken his dog off the stove and run off down the road away from her, but then he shook his head.
“No, I haven’t got anywhere else to be.”
“Perfect. Shall we go for a walk then?”
“Ok.”
They set off down the road, and Trisha resisted the urge to glance behind her to see if Pinako and Yuriy popped up from behind the hedge and scuttled away. For a little while, nothing was said, and although the silence was somewhat awkward, Trisha certainly couldn’t fault the company. After another couple of minutes, they fell into small talk, and by the time they reached the edge of the town proper from the country lanes that they had settled down into easy conversation, Trisha thought that they hadn’t done too badly for a first date. Of course, it took a little persuasion on her part to get a second one out of him, but that was par for the course.
It was only when she tried to kiss him for the first time that it all came out. She’d worked out early on that he was evidently a very touch-starved person; not averse to it entirely, but always startled whenever she did touch him, only relaxing into it after a moment of fright and stillness, which had been difficult at first, Trisha being a naturally tactile person who would always hook her arm through her companion’s if she was walking somewhere with someone, who liked to hold hands and show affection through touch. He was getting used to it, she thought, but when he had walked her home one night and they were saying goodbye outside the garden gate and she had gone on her toes to kiss him, he’d backed off with a squawk of alarm.
“Trisha, I don’t think… I mean, before you… I mean…” He sighed. “I think that there’s something you ought to know before we go any further.”
“Yes?”
He glanced towards the front door. “It’s a long story. I mean, it’s a very long story.”
“How long?”
“Four hundred years, give or take.”
Trisha blinked. “I think you’d better come in and I’ll put the kettle on.”
She was certain that he would have protested had she not grabbed his coat sleeve and pulled him through the gate with her, but he seemed resigned to his fate.
He had not been lying when he said it was a long story. A long and, if it had been anyone but Hohenheim, unbelievable story, involving long-gone countries, half a million souls and weird alchemy experiments.
Once the story was over and he was off on a somewhat rambling tangent mainly consisting of apologies for being so weird and completely understanding if she never wanted to see him again, Trisha took a couple of moments to make her decision.
“If I kiss you, will you shut up?”
There was silence for a minute.
“Pardon?”
“Will you stop talking if I kiss you?”
Hohenheim looked at her as if she’d grown a second head.
“You want to kiss me?”
“Yes.”
“After everything I just told you?”
“Yes.”
The silence continued on for another minute.
“Yes, I suppose I would stop talking.”
“Good. Because for someone who doesn’t normally say a lot, you talk way too much when you get going.”
She scooted in closer to him on the couch, gently placing her hands on his shoulders and leaning in to press her lips against his. He was stiff at first, unyielding, but then he relaxed into it almost like a surrender. Trisha smiled against his mouth.
“There,” she said once she broke away. “I’m still perfectly fine and the world hasn’t ended.”
“Yeah.” Hohenheim sounded slightly stunned. “Huh.”
She would never admit to anyone the little frisson of pride she felt at having kissed him into speechlessness, but it was a feeling that stayed with her for the rest of her life.