Work Text:
“It would be raining.”
Riza shifts to poke him in the shoulder. It’s deep afternoon, light the color of a grapefruit at the foot of the bed.
“So your fantasy is where you’re useless,” she points out. Roy rolls his eyes.
“Just after rain, then.”
“All right, that sounds nice. So what are we doing? Candlelit dinner, forcing me to dance…?”
Roy reaches behind his head to twist a pillow for better support. All Riza’s pillows are too downy-soft, the kind you drown in. Her mattress is hard. He drums his fingers on his bare chest.
“I haven’t thought much about the dinner part yet,” he says, still foggy.
“You better start. I’m a nasty date if I’m hungry.”
Roy laughs. He runs his thumb along the side of Riza’s waist, damp with cooling sweat. “You still eat like you just came home after weeks of military rations.”
“God, those were terrible.”
“Weren’t they? Those biscuits…”
“Hard and filled with weevils. Disgusting. We’re killing the mood, by the way.”
Roy grins all not-sorry and clamps his hand around her ribs. The room is clotted with sun, and Riza stands to open the window, and her body cools with November air. The leaves outside are half-gone, half browned and clinging to branches. Riza wonders if anyone can see her all undressed from seven floors below. If they can, godspeed, enjoy.
She climbs back into the bed and winds her limbs against Roy’s side.
“Where do you usually take girls?” she asks.
“Oh, I don’t know. Juniper, Marzano’s, Claudia’s…”
Riza crunches up her mouth. “I went to Claudia’s once on a date. It was the most expensive mediocre cocktail I’ve ever had.”
Roy lifts a brow. “Your date didn’t buy?”
“I always split the bill the first time. I insist.”
“How am I supposed to woo you, then?”
“I condemn you to be creative.”
Roy exhales a laugh and sucks his teeth. There’s a little piece of steak wedged against his canine, some of the takeout from earlier, but his preferred tooth-picking hand is underneath Riza’s shoulder. He looks at her.
“You’re difficult even in the hypothetical realm,” he tells her, and she beams. He tips his head back. “All right, so, no to Claudia’s.” He pauses, chews his lip. “I can’t picture us in a very fancy restaurant.”
“But you still want me in an evening gown,” Riza says.
“Well, obviously. That or a mini skirt.”
She rolls her eyes and taps her forefinger on his chest. “And you’d be wearing…?”
“What do you want me in?”
She first thinks to say something ridiculous, but if they keep disrupting they’d never get through their imaginary evening. And so she’s honest:
“That brown coat you have, the suede one. It’s all creased and warm and scented with layers of all your different colognes.”
“So you keep track of my colognes, huh?”
“Yes,” Riza says, “so I know when you’re stealing from me.”
Roy laughs, squeezes her a little. He thinks of her medicine cabinet, all lined up with bottles, amber and dark green glass, every scent perilously close to the heat and wet of the bathroom. He’s told her to move them (no moisture! no direct sun!) but she doesn’t, and so he can’t help but dab them against his neck and wrists after early early showers.
“You have good taste, what am I supposed to do?” he says. “Women I’ve dated before always smell like vanilla, or roses, or oranges, or…”
Riza flattens her palm on his chest, lightly twirls the sparse hair with her ring finger.
“Are you saying I’m not like other girls, Roy?” she says, lips pursed and eyes fake-big. Roy raises his shoulders in defense.
“Well, objectively, you’re not, because you can deadlift more than me and you smell like a spicy forest,” he says.
“You haven’t spent much time among the other academy women, I take it.”
He shoots her a look. “Not in the way you have, no.”
She smiles, drifts her eyes to the ceiling, curls into the bed.
“What was her name again? Mm, Jacqueline Faber…”
Roy flicks her forehead with his third finger and thumb.
“Not allowed to reminisce about past flings while we’re planning our fantasy date,” he says, and she puts a kiss to his shoulder.
The evening stretches like a cat at their feet, warm light shreds the floor. It smells like dry leaves and baked concrete through the window, musk through the bed. Construction hums in the distance and Riza wishes she hadn’t lent her favorite records to Rebecca. She nestles her head in the crook of Roy’s arm.
“Okay, so: it just rained, I’m in an evening gown, and we’re not at a fancy restaurant.”
“Yes,” Roy nods. “No. Scratch the evening gown, especially if I’m in suede. We would clash.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you, Roy.”
He laughs and tips his head in thought. Some strands of Riza’s hair cling to his stubble and he brushes them away.
“That big coat you have,” he says, finally. “The tan one.”
“From mini skirt to ankle-length coat?” Riza says.
“Well, the mini skirt would be underneath, obviously,” he tells her, pushing the tip of his finger into her forehead. “And those sheer stockings you sometimes wear.”
Riza stretches. “You’re pushing your luck. I hate those.”
“Fine—whatever stockings you want. But I love how you look in that big coat. I always want to hug you when you wear it.”
Riza peers up at him, taps his lower lip with her thumb. “Aw.”
“No, like, in a sexy way.”
“Too late,” she says over his scowls, “you’re adorable.”
“Goddammit.”
Riza shifts to her back and scoots a pillow beneath her shoulders. Cold air drifts in and she pulls her comforter across her hips.
“What about that diner on Fourth Street?” she says, and watches Roy’s brow soften. He glances at her from the corner of his eye.
“Getting sentimental, are we?”
She is, a little. She remembers long evenings at the office, bandaging her fingers from papercuts, saying goodnight to coworkers as they escaped toward home. Closing one file folder, opening another, humming gently and keeping an eye on the door. Waiting for Roy’s silhouette, and then his face in the light, wan and overtired, ready to suggest a cup of coffee—not here, they needed a real break, how about the diner? And then they’d walk a distance apart to Fourth Street, shoulder to shoulder, silent except for weather comments, listening to each other breathe.
“It felt so good to see you out of work,” Riza says.
“I wish we went there more often. If it didn’t look so…”
“No, I know.”
They each look toward the ceiling. The paint is chipped near the moulding. The base of the lighting fixture is loose.
“Once Major Andrews commented that he saw us there a lot,” Roy recalls. “Afterwards I had to take out half the lieutenants in the department on a rotating basis so you and I wouldn’t look suspicious.”
“Oh, I remember that. I knew why you had to do it, but it still…well, it had become a special thing, and I frankly hated sharing it.”
“I did, too.”
Roy breathes slow, his chest tight under Riza’s palm.
“So we’d have to go again,” Riza says. “You’d order the steak and potatoes, I’d get a quiche, and we’d have endless refills of whatever stagnant coffee the’ve had around since morning.”
“It was like dishwater,” Roy laughs. He moves to his side to face Riza. “This time I’d sit in the booth next to you.”
“Adorable,” Riza repeats, tossing in a lovestruck sigh for good measure.
“Shut up,” Roy says, tugging a piece of hair from her temple. He smooths it back behind her ear. “I always wanted to. You used to do this little stretch when you were done eating and get all sleepy, God, I wanted to feel you lean into my shoulder.”
“Like this?” Riza says, and stretches, and Roy envelops her. Yes, like that.
“So that takes care of dinner. We’d split the bill if you insist—”
“I do.”
“—and then I think I’d like to take an evening walk.”
That would be nice, especially after the rain. Cobblestones all shiny, the smell of wet leaves and ozone. If it’s early enough the light would hang yellow like it does after storms; if it’s later, car lights and street lights would reflect red and white across the soaked dark. Riza would walk ahead instead of close behind, and Roy would get to watch her. Some stars would be out, and Roy would mention it, and Riza wouldn’t look up. I trust your word, she’d say simply, and he’d tell her she’s something. If it was a starless night perhaps she’d look. There isn’t a moon, at least, Roy would say. He would slip his hand next to Riza and she’d slow her pace, let her knuckles hit his, let her fingers be entwined. No moon? Should have led with that.
Roy holds Riza close. Her back is cold against the window; her front is warm.
“Then what?” she murmurs into his chest.
“Don’t know,” Roy says, truthfully. Riza pulls back and glances up.
“Would you be overcome by the view?” she asks. Roy is silent. He traces down her strands of hair and heavy eyes and kiss-bruised mouth and back up again.
“I am referring to the stars and no moon, sir,” she continues, and he kisses her.
“You’d think after all these years I’d have a harder time teasing you,” she says when he pulls away. He lands another kiss at her jaw.
“Unfortunately for me,” he says, “any defenses I’ve cultivated pale against your ruthless talent for skill-building.”
Riza smiles. “The secret is practicing every day.”
“I suppose I make an easy target,” Roy sighs. Another kiss at her cheekbone.
“No, you’re a formidable target,” she assures him. “It wouldn’t be fun otherwise.”
“You know, you could get in big rouble for calling the future Fürher your target so openly.”
“Right in broad evening, in the safety of my own home.”
“Surrounded by…well…”
“Perhaps Black Hayate will tell on me,” Riza says, nodding at her dog curled asleep in the corner.
Traffic sounds, going-out sounds, still that construction in the distance. The air from the window is colder now and Roy relents to a cocoon of blankets.
“I could call my security detail,” he tells Riza.
“I’m your security detail,” she whispers.
“Who allowed that? I need to fire my advisor.”
“I’m your advisor.”
“Well, then. It appears I’m surrounded,” he says, and tangles his limbs with hers under the blanket.
Before sunrise Roy will wake up, kiss Riza’s forehead and shower, steal her fragrance, rub the dark circles from his eyes. He’ll pull a fresh shirt from his drawer in her dresser and sniff his uniform pants, eh, they’ll be fine for one more day. He’ll look at Riza asleep for as long as he can manage without climbing back in bed. He’ll grab his military coat from her closet, walk three blocks to loiter outside a bar, and pretend he’s been there all night. Dawn will crawl through Central and Riza will wake, smile at the dent in her covers, breathe in the scents that Roy left behind. She will dress, knot her hair in the back, feed Black Hayate. She will buy two coffees on the way to work, one light roast, one dark with milk. In the office she will tuck the latter into Roy’s gloved hand and tell him good morning, and then turn away. It’s their daily routine, and has been for the months since Roy first pressed his mouth to hers.
But now is not tomorrow morning. Now is November dusk, colors of a bedroom fading into grayscale. It’s edges softening in low light, even breathing under covers, nobody wanting to go and close the window. Roy tosses a flame to the bedside lamp and Riza pretends to be impressed. She holds him and tastes him, and loves him, and feels the rise and fall of his chest.
“Someday we’ll go,” Roy tells her, thinking of her big tan coat against the red diner leather.
“We won’t, Roy,” Riza reminds him gently, and savors him in her room, and holds his hand against her mouth.