#but instead here

Roy’s seen plenty of women in his life, maybe more beautiful than the stubborn girl with her calloused hands and stubborn chin and skin that spoke to his.  Kissed a few of them, slept with some.  But no one’s ever taken his breath away quite like her, in this inappropriate moment to be breathless.

Even the red of the tattoo--a pretty bit of alchemy if he’s ever seen one, he has to admit, a life’s work condensed into a circle and a few notes--matches perfectly with her skin, as if her father chose the color to flatter her.  

It’s an unfairness, Roy decides suddenly, that the symbol of her father’s disinterest in Riza Hawkeye save as an alchemist, or failing that as an alchemical notebook, is beautiful.

“Thank you,” Miss Hawkeye says, and it takes Roy a moment to realize what she’s thanking him for.  For keeping the secret, of course.  

“Your father would be furious with you for giving it to me, Miss Hawkeye,” Roy says, taking refuge in formality.  He’s never quite been able to call her Riza.  A slippery slope he spends far too much time on the brink of, that slide into familiarity.

“My father is dead, Mister Mustang.  I’d prefer that you have any tools you need not to follow.”

She says it with absolute assurance.  She’s always been so assured.

“All right,” Roy says at last.  “Then if you wouldn’t mind lying down so that I can have a closer look.”

All through Ishval, Roy never lets anyone except, once, Maes see his back.  Maes squints at it and says, “I think you need a girlfriend, Roy.  Alchemy won’t love you back.”

Roy freezes, about three days too exhausted to have even thought about stripping his shirt off.  It takes a moment before he can laugh and write it off as an alchemist’s version of a drunken mistake.  Too many shots to celebrate his new watch and rank, see, nothing more.  His aunt would be proud of him.

Maes is smarter than most people give him credit for--talking to him is a masterclass in playing the fool, and Roy’s never taken the man offguard even once--and he never brings up Roy’s tattoo again.

It’s like a flashback, standing behind Hawkeye--just Hawkeye now, Cadet and then Private and then higher, the Hawk’s Eye, his guardian in the shadows--with her shirt on the ground and his fingertips on her back.  Roy knows what a flashback feels like, now.  He trails his fingers over the red lettering and feels the strangest pressure in his chest, as if he’s about to cry for those younger selves, Roy who wasn’t yet the Flame Alchemist and Miss Hawkeye.

“Are you sure?” he asks, barely more than a whisper.

“I’m sure,” she says.  “You know the secret.  No one else should ever have it.”

She’s not wrong.  

Roy is unique, in all the state alchemists who marched on Ishval.  He can count the soldiers lost from his unit on his fingers, and two of them were to a desert flu that ravaged the camp.  The rest were to personal error on the part of the soldiers--wandering alone through violent regions, or falling asleep on guard.  Because where other alchemists turned out with gunmen at their sides, or left such massive collateral damage that they were as likely to kill their own soldiers as Ishvalans, the Flame Alchemist’s men were safe.  They stood back and--snap, snap, snap, Roy leveled villages.  His soldiers went home to their families, with the memory of what the death of thousands smelled like on the wind.

The secret to flame alchemy will die with Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye, if they have anything to say about it.

Roy just hates the reality of how to ensure it.

“Lieutenant Colonel,” Hawkeye says firmly.  “I’m sure.”

Roy lets out a slow breath.  “Okay,” he says, feeling a familiar sort of numbness settle in his chest where he should be sick instead.  “Sit down in that chair, with your back toward me, and find something to put in your mouth.”

Hawkeye produces a belt and clenches the leather between her teeth as if she’s already thought this through.  Then she locks both hands around her wrists, threaded through the back of a sturdy wooden chair so that her chin hangs over the headrest.  She looks like a woman bracing for torture.

“Take a deep breath,” Roy says, and grips her shoulder with one hand, briefly, the only thing he can offer her.  They’ve never said I’m sorry to each other and he suspects that she would ignore him if he said it now.  Then he takes his hand away and pulls on his gloves, and says, “Try not to scream.”

His first burst of flames, oxygen-rich to force the heat higher and as obsessively controlled as any he’s ever used, sears away the top two layers of her flesh.  It’s like trying to do surgery with a hatchet--too deep and he’ll risk her life, too shallow and he won’t take off the tattoo, and it all has to look accidental while covering up the vital parts of the array.  Roy lets the first burst fade and the room is silent except for Hawkeye’s ragged panting.  She hasn’t made a sound.

“Just one more,” he tells her.  

She nods, a sharp jerk of her head, and doesn’t so much as whimper as he snaps again and obliterates the vital part of the equation.

The flames flicker out and Roy stares at Hawkeye’s back, tries to think if anyone would be able to make out the lettering anymore.  If he destroys the writing on her back, his own should follow, even though scars don’t carry along the bond--it just has to erase the ink.  He thinks it’s probably good enough.

She’s trembling, he realizes with a crack in the numbness.  She probably can’t control it--her back is already starting to blister seriously at her left shoulder, and the room smells like burning skin.  There’s no charring, though, and no white bone even at the vulnerable line of her shoulder blade, and the tattoo is, if not unreadable, at least useless without half the circle and all the vital information.

“All right,” Roy says quietly.  “We’re done.  Let me get some gauze.”

The next time Maes sees Roy shirtless, it’s half an accident again--hungover, not exhausted, this time, because Maes insisted that Roy be his best man and therefore match him drink for drink at the bachelor party.  Fortunately, Roy’s alcohol tolerance is about two shots superior to Maes’, so he’s usually the level-headed one.

Usually.

This time, Maes doesn’t crack a joke.  Here, in the relative security of Roy’s apartment, he just observes Roy’s back while Roy eyes him in a mirror.

“Looks like some nasty scarring that took out that tattoo,” Maes says.  “Who’s got the marks?”

Roy considers, just for a moment, telling the truth.  Not one living human being knows--Maes, he thinks, suspects, but Roy’s never admitted it, and Hawkeye would tell him if someone got it out of her, he knows it without a doubt.  But...

Maes is his best friend, the second most trusted person in the world to Roy, and just for once, just for one moment, Roy wants nothing more than to turn around and talk about his soulmate, who is competent and kind and beautiful and perfect, perfect in every way, who he trusts with his life, to save it or take it as needed, and who trusted him to turn his flames against her bare skin and then to tend her wounds in the weeks that followed.  He understands, for a split second, the way Maes talks about his wife-to-be, because he wants that.  He wants to tell someone all the things he loves about Riza Hawkeye until they hate him for it.

Roy turns around with a sincerely apologetic half-smile and lies to Maes’ face.