[FIC] my body aches to breathe your breath (Fullmetal Alchemist)

[prodigy]

You can always tell when I'm trying to get something done on an actual project, because fanfic suddenly happens.

Title: my body aches to breathe your breath
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Characters/Pairing: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Rating: R/NC-17
Summary: She is the Colonel's man.
Wordcount: 1283
Notes: Can also be found at AO3.

She is the Colonel's man, at the beginning and end of all things. Lieutenant Hawkeye knows that much: that's the first thing he makes clear to anyone under his command, and what dwells on her mind when she idly sweeps the cut of his uniform with her eyes and pictures the lines of his body under it is that as long as that remains true, her thoughts have no place here. That's one thing he's also made clear to her, whether he's meant to or not, just as whenever she's in his presence she thinks of herself as Lieutenant Hawkeye and that's the name she responds to. As long as Roy Mustang is her commander and she is Lieutenant Hawkeye, her desire is an uncomfortable stranger in the war room. And she knows what comes first. As long as she answers to him, that's the end of that.

(When it's over, she'll stand easy and she'll shrug him out of his coat. She won't hurry -- he's finer than that, he deserves finer than that -- she knows how it slides off his shoulders and how to fold it over her arm so it doesn't rumple, like a gentleman with a lady's stole. He will shiver. He is always hot under the weight of his uniform, his skin gives it away, and he won't be used to the weight of it gone. She's already anticipated that, though; and she'll step in to warm him and brush her hands through his hair.)

She'd never dream to compromise what they're doing. What he's doing. It's all what he's doing, to her, to Lieutenant Havoc, to all of them. When she salutes him and calls him sir, she means it; she cares about her career, about duty, but she cares about him and that's what keeps her in the business of picking up his dreams when they fall out of his hands. So she knows her job can't be compromised with lust or love or daydreaming or anything else, and those stay out of the office and the uniform -- Lieutenant Hawkeye doesn't think about those things. Lieutenant Hawkeye is the Colonel's man.

But she is flesh and bone like anyone else, and not all of being a woman is staring at the ceiling and weeping; so when her uniform's in the closet and her head is on her pillow, Riza thinks.

(He's not the handsomest man in the corps; everyone's aware of that, with Jean Havoc around. No matter. He's the most beautiful man she knows and when she kisses him he'll be warmer than any she's kissed before: his hands will be graceful and certain in her hair and on her buttons, almost as certain as hers. It's not possible to be as certain as hers.)

Her hand is strong, but his would probably be stronger -- through the fabric of her briefs, though, she can press hard enough to blot that out, she can press hard enough to forget where she is. She's still on the mattress, not a furtive girl any more, but damp under her fingers. She does.

(She'll press her lips to the hot hollow of his neck and his mouth will open for her. She knows how to undo his belt and won't fumble. He's been wounded before.)

This is always over too quickly -- she breathes her release into the pillow before she's even gotten anywhere with the fantasy, but thinking about him a little is always too much, and -- a little wryly -- this is yet another area of her life in which she's, maybe, a little too competent.

(He draws off the stiff white fabric of his gloves, one by one. Salamander aligns with salamander and flame with flame as he folds them, neatly, one on top of the other. Then he sets them aside.)

It keeps this out of the war room, though, and out of their long blue silences in the office together, and that's what counts. Allow her her little excuses.

(When they're on the bed she'll take his name for her own again -- Roy, and she's not going to have to give it back. He'll use hers too, but somehow she glosses over that in her imagination; when she kicks off her trousers she'll murmur it again into his collarbone, breathe it into his ear as she disentangles him from the starchy white of his shirt. His name. Her name. It'll only incense him further when he hears it, and he'll want it, want her, want to hear her again; she'll feel that hard enough in her hand and Roy will arch his back a little and she'll wrap her arm around his waist.)

Her relationship with Colonel Mustang is professional: strictly so, no one would say otherwise.

It used to be that she envied Maes Hughes, though. A little. Before. She was a professional, but there he went waltzing around dressed like a candy, chattering and draping his arm around Roy Mustang's shoulders, putting his hands here and there like it was nothing; not that she would have implied anything, but it drove her to gritted teeth over her paperwork now and then, and she only had to wonder, did he know what he was doing? Probably not, and that was a terrible thing to think, but she was maddened and sometimes he caught her eye and smiled sideways and she thought he probably did. Well, at the time, she thought: Major Hughes will be Major Hughes. Major Hughes will be a friend and a flirt and a flighty little damned fairy on a flower for all I care, but I am Colonel Mustang's man.

Then she didn't any more, and there was a hollow where that maddened feeling used to be. But she never said anything then, so it absolved her of having to say anything now. She left the Colonel alone with his grief -- but with the door cracked.

(She's going to cradle him between her knees and pull him close with the muscle of her legs and take him that way first, with her hands on his face and her nose to his nose and her lips to his mouth -- after they get everything they want she'll be damned if she'll have him like a tolerant secretary having a late night with a guilty manager, she'll have him like a woman has her lover. Her own lover. With his mouth on her breast until she keens and draws her pleasure smoothly into his back with her fingernails. With his hand between them and then her hand between them. They won't be quiet.)

She opens his mail and shuffles the contents into drawers, smoothly, though it's not her job. She pours him a glass of scotch, though she's a trained sniper of the Amestris State Military with a commission and medals. Her fingers don't come close to his hair; Lieutenant Hawkeye would never make her commander uncomfortable.

(She'll give him his release with his dark head spilled back over the pillow and her knees straddling his body -- he'll take it with her name, sweetly, and maybe some unprofessional little obscenity. And she'll grind her own into his hips and she'll say: I love you. I'm yours.)

Riza Hawkeye sometimes thinks she would like to make her commander a little uncomfortable, someday.

(She doesn't sleep well with people in her bed. Never liked lovers spending the night. But she'll nestle her face in his hair and be absolutely still.)

Fancy is fancy; he is the man he is, not the one she'd like him to be. Lieutenant Hawkeye doesn't think of these things at the office, or out on the field. She is the Colonel's man.