The words have been on the tip of his tongue for years.

He has bitten them back, swallowed them, buried them in the same place in his mind that he has reserved just for her. At the same time, he wants to know what the words would feel like in his mouth, past his chest where an ache always grows as they threaten to spill out. It's almost laughable how he, the great Flame Alchemist, could be so powerless against three little words and yet so protective of them at the same time. Were words not arbitrary and random, even meaningless?

Roy has never needed words as far as she was concerned. They have their meaningful glances, their body language, their names in code. They have their teenage years behind them and a future with a common goal ahead. Three little words wouldn't make a difference.

What would be the harm in saying them, then?

And so, on one long, tiring night with just himself and his adjutant working overtime in his office, without thought or intent, he finally says them. He closes his eyes and rests his forehead on his steepled hands, and he says them—soft, below his breath, but certain.

"Sir?"

Roy looks up from his hands with a small jump and finds her getting up from her desk, folders in hand. She looks at him questioningly, shoulders slightly tense. He feels a nervous drumming in his chest—did she hear me?

As casually as he can manage, Roy asks, "Something wrong, Hawkeye?"

"No, I thought I heard…"

Riza's face has taken on a strange, unreadable expression. She lingers for a moment, blinking at him, before she shakes her head. As she turns to leave, Roy watches her silently, confident that he has kept his secret for now, content that he can simply let what has just happened sink into him for a while, fill him, until the words feel like more than a dream.

But then she pauses in the doorway, and his heart skips a beat. She looks over her shoulder at him; her face lights up with the sweetest smile he's ever seen.

"You should work on your whispering."