#xinge

[lioncubofboone]

I finally finished a lil fic so here ya go

Inspired by this post and by the lovely @firewood-figs

And I know I’ve kissed you before, but I didn’t do it right

Can I try again  

 Winters at Hawkeye Manor were brisk, but snow rarely touched the pale, dying grass of the East. Lightly bundled up, the kids could still run and play as they always had. Roy was still getting used to this idea of playing with Riza, as she had all but ignored him for the first six months of his tutelage under her father.

But he would take what he could get. And today, what he could get was racing each other through the branches of an old oak in the front yard. He was older, his limbs a little longer and a little more coordinated than 11-year-old Riza, so he had a few branches on her when he heard a gasp. He looked down in time to see her tattered dress caught on a branch, pulling her backwards and throwing off her balance. He was not fast enough to catch her by the arm before she tumbled to the gravel below. Little sisters in mind, he expected a wail of shock and pain as he descended but was only met with the Hawkeyes’ trademark silence.

Riza’s jaw was clenched shut, a tear welling in her honey-brown eyes. A quick inspection of the scraped knee showed her pride was more wounded than her skin, but Roy still lent her an arm to lean on as they came inside. He opened the door and was met with another surprise, for the ghost of the manor himself, Master Hawkeye, was padding around the kitchen in a paltry attempt to make himself some tea. Berthold cast them a glance, eyes roaming over Riza’s rumple dress, the blood dribbling down her shin, then turned back to the stove.

Roy blinked. Nothing? Really?

Berthold sighed at the temperamental stove as Roy sat Riza at the kitchen table, her gaze never leaving her father’s back. Roy tried to breath through the muddled emotions clogging is chest: frustration at the man ignoring his father, ire, exhaustion, and sadness at Riza’s face, schooled perfectly blank. He had come to learn that she was not devoid of emotion, far from it. Just extremely good at hiding.

Roy on the other hand, was a tea kettle, forever on the brink of boiling over. Fist clenched, he turned to give Berthold a piece of his mind, sick of biting his tongue, but his Master was already leaving the room, ascending the stairs.

“The stove is being finicky. Riza, you’re far better at managing the thing than I am, you’ll finish preparing my tea, won’t you?” He asked as a formality only, already halfway up the stairs to his study, never looking back to his daughter.

The fire died in Roy’s chest as he turned back to Riza, her expressionless eyes following her father up the stairs, watching the study door long after it had closed. Finally, she pushed herself to her feet and began to hobble to the stove to obey.

“Sit,” Roy ordered. “I’ll finish it.”

Her eyes went between Roy and the now-empty stairs, battling herself. But Roy could be stubborn too, standing between her and the empty tea kettle until she relented and came back to the table. He retrieved a wet cloth and an adhesive bandage from the closet with the door that did not close all the way and knelt before Riza, hands outstretched, waiting for her permission.

“The tea,” she reminded him with a frown.

“He can wait.”

“But... the tea,” she said again, with a little more urgency.

Roy sighed and began to wipe away the crusting blood on her shin, holding her leg steady with a hand across her calf. “If it was so urgent, then he could do it himself. I’m putting your injury above his tea,” he grumbled, not bothering to filter his annoyance.

Riza watched, wide-eyed, and Roy wondered if this was the first time anyone had helped her like this since her mother’s passing. He was a tactile person, instinctively reaching for her like his sisters always had for him. For the first few months, every touch was met with a jump, skittering away from him like he’d burned her. When he’d offered to braid her tangled hair for her she’d stared back, reminding Roy distinctly of the stray kitten he’d found in the alley behind Madame Christmas’ bar one evening, eyes wide like he’d cornered her. But just as Veronica had with the kitten, his patience had slowly rewarded him with a gentler Riza.

This Riza watched silently as he dabbed at the last of the injury and secured the bandage over it. Veronica herself in his mind, he remembered how Madame Christmas would always seal their bandages with a little ‘magic’ as shed called it. Without thinking, he placed a quick kiss atop the bandage. He stood quickly as he realized what he’d done, blush creeping up his neck as he turned to wash his hands and fill the tea kettle. He could still feel Riza’s gaze on his back as he prepared the tea and took it up the stairs, confusion creasing her brow.

 Can I try again

 Roy was always impulsive. He’d tried to temper it, biting sores into the sides of his cheeks as he choked back words that wanted to spill out, emotions that wanted to bubble up from his chest. Watching the silk of his childhood friend’s blouse fall to the floor, seeing the array before him, painstakingly transcribed onto the alabaster canvas of her back, he bit so hard he tasted blood.

First the anger, white hot, scalding his stomach and rising like bile in his throat.

Then the sadness. She was probably so scared, just a child at the time. 

Then the self-hatred, as it always seemed to circle back to that, as Roy realized he’d left her all alone in this house to be mutilated by a ghost of her father.

He closed his eyes against the sight, but found the red salamander burnt into the backs of his eyelids. He’d tempered his impulsiveness for as long as he could and he leaned forward to place a light kiss on her shoulder blade, hoping she felt all his tormented emotions through it so he didn’t have to untangle them enough to speak aloud. She didn’t flinch at the contact, letting her chin fall to her chest to expose the rest of the array, now dimpling with goosebumps that spread down her back.

He swallowed thickly and got to work.

 Can I try again

 He tasted Riza’s blood in his mouth.

He gathered her in his lap, her bourbon-tinted eyes misting with exhausting and fear, and the anger roiling in his gut mixed with the unending fear of almost losing her until it spilled over, a tear tracking through the grime on his cheek. He pressed his lips against her clammy forehead. She was too cold. His hand found the side of her neck, feeling the pulse beneath the patch of ruined skin, and when she flinched everything bubbled within him again.

If he stayed like that, lips against the crown of her head as he held her, no one in those tunnels would have given him any grief over it. There were some things more important than laws.

 Can I try again

Roy felt the fire settling in the pit of his stomach, but this one was welcome. It pooled like lava in his belly, setting his skin aflame everywhere she touched. He’d teased her with chaste kisses all day, ones at the base of her jaw and the inside of her wrist and the place where the lace of her white dress had tapered to expose the tops of her shoulders. “Finally,” he’d murmured into her ear as they were loaded into the waiting car, rice falling from her perfectly-pinned curls and onto his lap and she leaned across to capture his lips in hers hungrily.

He half-expected her to pull back and admonish him as he trailed kisses down her jaw to the sensitive part of her neck, half expected a hardened “Sir.” Old habits die hard.

But when he was only met with a breathy “Roy,” he abandoned the masterpiece of a hickey he was creating to catch those lips again, nudging them apart with his tongue to taste her. She hummed into his mouth, delighted, and for once the only emotion pumping through every vein in his body was love, love you so much, so damn much, and he hoped that she tasted it on his tongue, felt it in the way his broad hands wrapped around her thin waist to hold her against him, heard it in the way he called her “Mrs. Mustang” as he scooped her up and carried her across the threshold of the Furher’s mansion.

He hoped she felt everything he felt in the way he kissed her, but if it wasn’t clear, he’d at least get to spend the rest of his life trying again and again.