[roy/riza; r] Remember Themes: #1 - First Night in Ishbal (Royai_Fiction) (also themed for #28 - Beneath These Hands for 52_Flavours; #30 - Aesthesiogen for 30_Romances; #4 - Cold Body for 30_Smiles) Characters: Roy Mustang x Riza Hawkeye Series: Fullmetal Alchemist Rating: R Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) is copyrighted by Hiromu Arakawa/Square Enix. This is a work of fanfiction for personal entertainment only. Both concrit and comments welcome and desired. Notes: Four themes, four communities, one fic. While poking around for another way to interpret the first night in Ishbal, I decided to up the difficulty factor. I'm not interpreting the first night in a literal physical sense here. There's other firsts to be had. Title: Remember Author:emilie_burns Word Count: 1182 Summary:She had always felt cool to the touch, smooth, like marble with just enough warmth to be living. Original LJ Post Date: October 23, 2005 @ Royai_Fiction
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Remember "Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always." -- Dante Alighieri
She had always felt cool to the touch, smooth, like marble with just enough warmth to be living. Roy Mustang fought off sleep as long as he could when he was with her, those rare, too-short nights. He knew once he did drop off, he would awake to find her gone, out of the house and away from the dangers of discovery and rumors before the sun could find them.
He held the temptation to close his eyes at bay while Riza slept, while he watched the even, slow rise and fall of her breathing. The sheet which they shared had slipped down, partially exposing one breast as she lay twisted toward him, not quite on her back, nor exactly on her side. In the dim light from the half-moon through the window, her exposed skin reflected alabaster, seeming as smooth, white, and cold as the moon itself.
He wondered if she would feel warmer to the touch in the sun.
Even in Ishbal, she had felt cool beneath him, beneath his hands. But the desert nights were a sharp contrast to the day. His fingers kept him awake, giving him something to focus on as they traveled down her body, the touch gentle. He took care to avoid waking her, although sometimes she would stretch and sigh, her motions as languid as a cat in a sunbeam. He smiled faintly as she frowned in her sleep, her fingers curling in a lazy batting gesture at the stray lock of hair which had fallen over her face. He brushed it back, smiling a little wider at the thought of her reaction if he ever told her how cute and harmless she looked when asleep.
He nuzzled her cheek and kissed it gently, content to hold her. The heated fever of desire had been sated earlier, in a tangle of quiet, desperate touches, kisses at once both intense and reverent. Their voices stayed hushed, muted by their own fears of discovery as they greedily hoarded each moment, each sensation, each sigh, each kiss, each stroke to carry them through the long stretch ahead before they could risk another encounter.
Now, he just focused on remaining awake, committing everything to memory; the sight of her, the smell, the feel of her skin under his fingers. There was an interruption in the smoothness, one of many, like rough flaws in polished marble. Just above the rise of her hip, a rough line puckered her skin, long since faded white and dead to sensation.
Some of the scars his fingers would encounter on their travels made his heart twist in guilt, others stoked fires of hidden rage. Some were curiosities, their origins undisclosed, so old they were faded almost out of existence. But one, just above the swell of her hips on her side, that one was his favorite. Where he would so often kiss, tickling the sensitive skin around the dead scar with his lips and tongue before traveling lower, listening to her choked moans.
Every story held its own beginning. He considered that white line theirs. Their lives began long before Ishbal, of course. Their paths were chosen before then. Even after she was assigned to his command on the field, he did not consider that the start. No, it came later, at night, stolen moments away from prying eyes.
As he traced the outline with his fingers, a memory echo, ghost pain long since gone, throbbed in his shoulder. Shared scars from the same bullet, a prelude to the beginning. He leaned forward and closed his eyes, softly kissing her shoulder, tasting salt, breathing in the scent of her, still musky with sex. The beginning of them was as easy to remember as yesterday.
It had been a week after the shooting, when they were verifying their assignment had been secured. Someone had either survived the brutal firestorm that ravaged the town, or more likely, a rebel sneaked in once the ashes ceased radiating unbearable heat. Either way, they never found the answer, because his lieutenant's aim had been true even as she hit the ground, bleeding.
If the bullet hadn't killed him, then the fire did.
It had been meant for the Flame Alchemist. It was ironic that her own movement which placed her unawares in the bullet's path had led to her crying out, causing him to move as well, and the bullet struck high in his left shoulder, missing its intended target by almost twenty centimeters.
He was back on the field the next day, his left arm in a sling, his right hand still more than capable of sparking his lethal brand of alchemy. She remained in the medical tent, her side debrided, stitched, and bandaged. The bullet had passed through her close enough to the surface that it missed anything vital, but she was placed on restricted duty and kept at the base. It would be a short time until the wound closed enough to avoid contamination from the blowing sand which seemed to permeate everything.
The next run took several days before he could make it back to the base camp, and she came by to see him that night. She still moved with caution, her side stiff and tender from the injury. At first she had apologized for not seeing the rebel, then she apologized for not being out there to watch his back. A soft gasp of pain when she turned to sit down at his word caught his attention. When he realized the injury was hurting her more than she was willing to admit, he tried to order her to return to the medical tent. At her insistence that it was just ordinary discomfort, that nothing was wrong, he refused to take her word for it until he saw the severity or lack thereof for himself.
Back then, it had been too much death and not enough life, simple chemistry, the feel of flesh on flesh that had accelerated their pulses and pushed reason and clear thought out the door. When he realized he was touching her with hands that never looked clean of blood in his mind, touching near a wound she sustained because of him, it was his turn to retreat, to find blame on himself. He would have continued retreating if she had not caught his hand with her own.
She caught his hand, and led him into that first night. It was not just their first night spent as one in Ishbal; it was the first night of their lives intertwined. When she drew him back to her, it felt as if something human had been restored, something she kept bringing back every time he felt it whithering again.
To the eyes of all of Amestris, save for a select handpicked few, he was the one who led them all as he kept rising in the ranks. And no one, not even Riza herself, knew just how often she pulled him back from the edge, starting with the first night she placed her combat-roughened hands in his bloodstained ones.