My series of things-written-when-I-should-have-been-doing-something-else continues. I honestly don't know where this came from. The rating was changed for this. I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist.

Code

Sometime after Roy and Riza had been married awhile, Riza happened upon him working on an alchemic equation. Glancing over the notes in his little black book, she couldn't help but grimace. She knew it was all a code, but that didn't mean she liked reading it. She suggested to Roy tactfully that now that he was married, he might want a new code, one that wouldn't make people who somehow came upon his notes think that he periodically cheated on his wife.

Roy had nodded thoughtfully. He saw what Riza was saying. But he was also so used to his code: every element was the name of a girl, isotopes of the same element had different last names, various ways of manipulating elements were coded as forms of courtship. It had all been painstakingly developed. It would be a bother to come up with a new one. He didn't have much else to base his code on. He didn't know anything about cooking, and he didn't travel like Fullmetal. Nor could he recount the details of his family tree (1). He asked himself: what was something he knew about, that other people wouldn't be suspicious of him knowing about? Then he had grinned.

A few weeks later, Riza opened up her husband's little black book. She was supposed to be retrieving a list of locations where Roy knew he obtain get obscure alchemic ingredients. Instead, her eye fell upon a new alchemic equation. Her eyes widened.

"Roy, what is this?" Riza held the equation up to Roy's face.

Roy blinked, and skimmed over the passage.

"It's a method for reducing the effect of flames on objects surrounding the target, mainly by containing the oxygen and surrounding the object with a layer of non-combustible gases—"

"I know what the equation is for. I mean – what is this code?"

"Well – at least no one will think I'm cheating on you."

Riza sighed and started flipping through his book irritably.

"I thought there were only 64 positions. There are more than a hundred elements. How are—"

"Well, I don't work with all the elements. Besides, there's oral, and foreplay, and—"

"And apparently the noble gasses are the different stages of my PMS?" Riza demanded while examining a new page.

"How perceptive you are."

"Roy, this reads like pornography. I can't believe anyone would believe your sex life is this active, or explicit."

"Really?" Roy asked, raising his eyebrows. Riza ignored him. She continued to page through the book, trying to reconcile herself with its new code. She stopped.

Shoving the book up to her husband's face again, she hissed:

"This is not an alchemic equation."

Reading over the page, Roy grinned.

"But I have such fond memories of that night."

Riza picked up a pen and scribbled something in his book, then handed it back to him. Roy read: My wife won't sleep with me anymore because I recorded our activities in this book.

"Try coming up for an alchemic equation for that."