Title: Clandestine

Summary: Mistakes like this are best made big, and all at once.

Notes: Sequel to "Understanding".

Clandestine

Most of all, he loves the quiet sound of her laughter against his skin.

"Something wrong, Colonel?" she teases, lips against his earlobe.

"These seats," Roy grunts, pulling back and struggling to work his shoulder loose, "look a lot wider from outside."

Riza laughs, and the hum sends a pleasant ripple up her arms, hooked loosely over his neck. Her lips look bruised in the half-light, dark red against her flushed skin, and he lowers his head to kiss her—once, twice, a third time and she's laughing again.

"Keep your voice down," Roy warns, as her fingers slip beneath the collar of his jacket. "You want the MPs coming around?"

"Imagine the scandal," she says in a purr. "Fuhrer's personal assistant arrested for indecent exposure—caught in clandestine dalliance with disgraced former colonel."

"Shut up," he says affectionately, moving his lips down her chin and neck.

"Is that an order, sir?"

Her hands slip under his shirt, fanning across his shoulder-blades, straining the buttons she can't quite reach, as he kisses lower and lower, dipping his tongue into the hollow of her throat.

And there is his second-favorite sound: the breathy quiet hum of his name balanced between her parted lips. With one hand, he pushes aside the edge of her shirt, baring as much of her skin as he can reach.

"Roy," she whispers, as his tongue laves across the soft curve of her breast, along the crease of sweet-smelling skin beneath, teasing the edges of her dark pink areola. Her fingers snap back to his scalp, tangling in his hair, and her voice is lost to a series of sharp gasps.

He works his way, slowly, from one side to the other, running his free hand gently along her ribcage. He places a soft kiss at the bottom of her sternum and then glances up—and is met with the smoldering glare of a predator.

"Come here," she breathes. He is just as impatient for contact—she busies herself with his belt and buttons, while he outlines her jaw with quick kisses and slowly inches the hem of her skirt up past her hips.

She says his name once more, as he leans back and then in, drawing that miserably sweet friction which curls through the length of him, pooling warmth at the base of his spine. Riza shifts beneath, rolling her hips to accommodate him, hooking one leg up around his hip, pulling him down to kiss her. The car shifts and creaks with the gentle rhythm of their bodies, meeting and separating and meeting again.

He breaks the kiss and buries his face against her neck, and she holds him there, whispering his name like a prayer—and he nearly laughs at the absurdity of this: the biggest, best mistake he's ever made.

They've been meeting like this for weeks—half-disguised, whispered code names, kissing in the backseat of his car like teenagers, recreating a youth they had both been denied. They are only half-serious about not being caught now—Bradley knows everything, so what is there left to lose?

Roy is terrified—for Riza's life, for his own, for the Elrics—and there's something delightfully freeing in that, something which releases him to be reckless and happy, to go to work every day and attend the routine, then to find her, to come back as she always whispers, to make her his center, his point of all reference. If these really are his last days alive, then he has no intention of not enjoying every second.

"Roy," Riza whispers, more urgent. "Roy, come back to me."

He opens his eyes again and leans up. Moonlight lends her face an almost holy glow, and she smiles up at him, dreamy and drunk with sensation. Her hands had drifted down to his chest, pulling a few buttons loose, but they work back up his neck now, briefly cupping his jaw before returning to the back of his head, gently encouraging his lips to meet hers again.

"Don't go anywhere without me," she warns, and he grins, putting all his weight on his left to slip his right hand between their joined bodies.

She gasps and gives a fluttery sweet moan, and her fingers tighten and twist—not that he minds a little hair-pulling, grin widening through the kiss, as he can feel the warmth building somewhere deep inside his gut. She's close—hips falling out of rhythm, tension rippling through each muscle, and she draws him closer, destroying the little distance between them.

"Please," she says, biting her lower lip between gasps. "Please, Roy—"

The tension breaks beautifully across her face—her nails dig into his skin briefly, and then every muscle in her body relaxes—she pulls him back down for a long, lingering kiss until he has followed her. She doesn't mind his weight and welcomes the collapse, cradling his head against the curve of her neck. Exhausted, he feathers a few kisses across her clavicle.

"I'm going to feel that in my back tomorrow," he says, once he's recovered enough breath to speak. Laughter hums through Riza's chest. "I'm too old for this."

"Take me home, and I'll give you a massage. Thirty is hardly old."

"What would you know? Prime of your twenties."

With unhappy effort, they disentangle from each other, sitting up to fix hems and buttons. Roy doesn't open the door just yet—their heat has kept the car warm, and Riza curls up against his side.

"Well, in that case, I'd better stop wasting time with old men," she murmurs, slipping one arm around his back and the other across his waist. "How old is Fuery again?"

"Not funny."

They doze off together, long enough for the temperature to drop, but there's still moonlight when Roy opens his eyes. The drive back to her place is slow—the cold keeps him awake but he's sure as hell not going to risk a crash. Riza gives sleepy, teasing advice from the backseat.

His next mistake is staying—he shouldn't have walked her to her door, or followed her inside, or taken off his coat and shoes, but she pulls him down onto her bed and everything about her apartment is so much better than his—and he hasn't slept, hasn't been sleeping, since long before the hospital and its slow sedation.

Havoc had tried to stay up with him, a few times, but he had more to recover from. So Roy would stare at the ceiling, alone, counting the tile cracks and comparing them to every other ceiling he'd ever slept beneath.

But tonight Riza pulls the blankets up, and Roy molds himself to the curves of her body and suddenly sleep comes, dragging him under somewhere deep.

He wakes with Hayate sitting on his stomach.

"Move," he says weakly, nudging the dog aside, and distantly he hears the shower squeak off. Riza re-enters the room in just a towel, hair damp and swept over one shoulder.

"I don't have to go in today," she says, discarding the towel and slipping back beneath the blankets.

"I have to," Roy sighs, "but I don't care."

He calls the switchboard and leaves a message with the new secretary while Riza's unbuttoning his shirt.

"Old war wounds," he says, voice catching as Riza's hands slip into his trousers. "Weather just makes everything ache."

"Yes, sir," the secretary says. "Feel better, sir."

He hopes the operator will hang up for him—he tosses the mouthpiece aside just as Riza plants a kiss on his bare thigh.

"You're dangerous," he sighs, falling back against her pillows.

"You're easily distracted."

Hayate interrupts—jumping up on the bed, barking with concern, and the mood is sufficiently broken for Roy to get up and shower himself. Riza makes breakfast in nothing but a thin shirt, humming along to the wireless. Roy sits at the table and watches, back too stiff for more than trousers.

"I remember this," he says, and Riza turns to raise a brow, spooning butter onto the hot pan. "Not this, exactly, but you—making breakfast."

"You used to stumble down that road like you were coming home from a long campaign," Riza says, smirking. "I can't imagine all the hours you had to work to pay Dad. On top of the little things you'd do to keep the house standing."

"I didn't mind it. I slept on the road."

"On your feet?"

"Yeah," Roy shrugs. "You pick a direction, start walking, and wake up somewhere new."

"Explains how you got through all that marching at the academy."

When Hayate begs, they feed him bits of egg and toast before shooing him away and settling themselves in the living room. Riza helps Roy sit on the floor and then positions herself on the couch behind, starting the promised massage at his shoulders.

"You need more sleep," she says, as his head drops forward and Hayate inches his way towards Roy's lap. "And you need to stretch."

"Calisthenics aren't a requirement of my position."

"I'll make them a requirement," she warns, pressing a kiss to the back of his neck. "You're running yourself ragged. And I need you at your best."

"You are my best," Roy sighs.

"Sweet," she laughs, "but meaningless. I don't want to worry about you for this."

"You'll worry anyway."

"That's my right."

She works at a knot over his left shoulder-blade, kneading with firm pressure.

"I'm serious, Roy," she says. "I want you to sleep more. If that means we have to have sex every night...well, that's a hit I'm willing to take for the team."

He chuckles, passing the affection to Hayate, who presents his belly eagerly, tail thumping. Riza's fingers generate heat that radiates down his back, pulling and teasing and working deep. She moves a little lower, towards the middle of his back, careful to avoid the edges of the burn. The skin there is still too thin and tight—the scars bright red and barely knitted shut.

"You keep this up, and I'll sleep forever," Roy warns, leaning forward.

They spend the afternoon leisurely. She pulls him onto the couch and straddles his lap, and they make love again—although he's too scared to call it that aloud. He protects himself with technical, like she does: sex, stress-relief, reducing tension. She kicks him out around sunset with a long, slow, sweet kiss, half-in and half-out of her apartment door, holding Hayate back with her bare foot.

"Good night, Colonel," she says, smiling as she closes the door.