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"You don't look right," Roy said. "With your hair down."
Riza's spine straightened of its own accord and the look she gave him was narrow. "Oh?" The ice in her voice would have stopped most of the men in Central. She'd cultivated her reputation carefully for a reason.
He wasn't afraid of her; he never had been. "I just mean I'm not used to it. It's not how I usually see you." She didn't startle, but did unbend a little. Roy reached over her shoulder and gathered her hair with one hand, clumsily, at the base of her neck. His fingers folded it up in a familiar way, over and under and over again, at the back of her head, and then tilted his head critically and said with entirely too much panache, so that she knew he was playing: "There. That's better."
She slid sideways, so that her hair fell out of his grip and back over her shoulders, her hip bumping against the bed. "I suspect you'll find that you become accustomed to it," she said dryly, and he laughed, his voice rusty.
Riza still had nightmares about it, in which the man she found slumped on the Fuhrer's steps was not merely unconscious but dead, dead, dead in a pool of his own blood, dead because she'd come too late to protect him—or worse, dead by her own hand, dead by the bullet that had gone through Archer and into him. Every night she dreamed that nightmare she woke up cold, covered in sweat that clung to her like the water that beaded on the outside of a frosty glass. She was cold, she had always been cold, and yet when she clutched her legs to her chest and breathed through the aftermath of the nightmare she didn't feel cold but hot with the fires of relief and regret.
She did not tell him about the nightmares until the day he touched his eyepatch and told her, "You know, I'm almost grateful for it. Otherwise I'm not sure I would have believe what I saw, in that house."
"Don't say that," she said, and she could hear the glacier-ice crack of her own voice, the warning signs. He either didn't hear them or didn't care.
"Really," he said, "it was worth it, you know, it would have been worth it if I had died, although I'm glad I didn't—"
"Don't say that," she said—not because she wanted to deny that it was possible that he could have died, but because he hadn't died, she had made it in time, he had survived, and that was more worth dwelling on —
"It worked out all right in the end," he said, sounding bemused, "didn't it? I don't understand—"
She cut him off with anger, with the fire in her belly, the fire of the dreams: "Damn you for scaring me," she said, her voice hoarse and shaky but her eyes dry. "Damn you, sir."
He didn't say anything at all, which surprised her, because he always had something to say. His hand settled on her upper arm, and rubbed from her shoulder to her elbow, soothingly. With his gloves off his hands were soft, soft because they had been protected behind ignition-cloth every day for years, just as her hands were not soft because she couldn't be bothered to put on gloves every time she went to the range. The pads of his fingers felt like luxury on the back of her elbow.
Knives were almost as good as guns (though not quite). She peeled apples for him because it took enough of her attention: she could very nearly slice the skin off in one single piece, one long curling strip of red or green or yellow. Very nearly, but not quite; that was the challenge.
To reciprocate, once he was well enough to be up and around, he made tea for her. The first time, he turned on the gas and snapped his fingers to light the pilot, as he had always done. But the loss of his eye had damaged his depth perception and therefore his aim; he nearly blew up the stove. She found him staring at it with horror.
She wanted to ignore it, wanted to pretend it hadn't happened; didn't want to burden him with what was and no longer is. But to ignore it would be to assume, and to imply, that he could not deal with these changes, that he should not be held accountable for them because they were beyond his control. So she pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth, and then said, aridly, "Please don't burn down my apartment."
The look he gave her, lowered-brow narrowed, was wry and plaintive and baleful and him, and she hid her smile as she turned to hand him a dish towel, to mop up the soot.
"Make him eat," the doctor had said, wagging his finger at Riza as though she was not merely his ex-subordinate and his protector, but as though she were his family or his friend. (How odd, to be seen as his friend in the eyes of others, rather than as his aide. It felt alien, as though she had traveled to another country and was just learning the customs there. It also felt good.) "Don't let him sulk and refuse food. Vegetables, meats, breads—it will help his body rebuild. See if you can interest him in any of it. That will make it easier."
So she took him to the market, where farmers from the outlying districts brought their wares: a whole ham and a string of cured sausages, hung by the tentpoles; bloody cuts of beef, wrapped in paper; cheeses, hard and yellow or soft and white and ripe-scented; stack upon stack of ruffled romaine, clean-scented parsley, perfumy basil; round red tomatoes, ripe from the sun; peaches, gold and blushed, softly furred; the purple tint of turnips, the uneven mealy brown of potatoes. She filled the basket with them as if at random, and whenever Roy paused, to smell a tomato or finger the edge of a basil leaf, she bought it. It wasn't so much to please him as it was to please herself. His growing appetite delighted her.
He was a better cook than she was. In the evenings they chopped vegetables together, put them in a pot with water, and let them cook into soup, which they drank with beer straight out of bottles, and didn't think about the future.
She did not allow him to seduce her, though she knew he would have tried, given even half a note of encouragement.
She did not allow him to seduce her because that would have put this—this whatever-it-was, this thing between them—into a territory familiar to him. He had had many girlfriends, many lovers, and he had seduced them with his smooth words, his good looks, his charm. She did not care much for any of those things. His charisma made her roll her eyes or snort or laugh, or grow angry, depending on her mood; she had seen his pretty face in the office every day for years and was inured to it—often she had been annoyed by it, by his smirk, by his unruffled placidity, as he evaded work and slithered out from under her requests. She had no desire to be one of the women who fell like conquered armies before the advance of his charming words. Even if they were very charming.
So she did not allow him to seduce her, but made the first move herself—unwise as it was—and he bowed to her desire so willingly that she grew drunk on it, and on the lines of his scars and what they symbolized. Perhaps, then, she was the conquering army, but she did not want to overthrow him. She wanted to stand with him on the same level, for once, both steady on their feet.
"Riza," he said, when she kissed him (which was not a good idea, but which was the only realistic thing she could have done), "ah, I've wanted . . . "
She drew back, and felt the movement of his mouth against hers. "What?"
"You," he said, baldly, and the honesty and bluntness of it made her shiver, "but I didn't want you to think I had kept you as my subordinate because I wanted you in my bed, and I didn't want to jeopardize your career . . . ."
Or his own. "Hardly," she said, and then hid her face in the crook of his neck, and hid her insecurity with it. "I would more likely have believed that you invited me to your bed because you wanted to ensure my loyalty as your subordinate."
He was silent a moment; his fingers raked soothingly through her hair. "You don't have enough faith in your own beauty," he said, which made her shiver and squeeze her eyes shut. "Or your value, or your strength. You are the best thing the military ever did for me. Maybe the best thing that happened to me, period."
"I doubt that," she said, thinking of Maes. "Still . . . ." Still the flattery was welcome, and unusual, and she kissed him again, to mask how unsure she was, and how pleased.
They did not go to bed together immediately. It seemed wrong, to leap into it hurriedly, as though they were desperate for time. (They were not, she thought. They had been desperate for many years, for many reasons, but now they had time, and freedom, and she clung to that knowledge with all the strength she had.) In the end, three days later, they came together in her bed. They lay together for a time, breath to breath, hand to hand, legs touching beneath the sheets; but even she was not sure that she would make a decisive move until she reached down to stroke his erection through his underwear. He was gratifying hard in her hand, and he groaned softly in her ear and said, "Ah, sweet Riza."
She kissed him, and sucked his lip into her mouth and nipped at it, and then said, mouth to mouth with him, "I am not sweet. I never have been."
"You are," he said, "sweet like mountain air is sweet, sweet like cold water is sweet, sweet like ice in the desert."
She kissed him again. He was not sweet, not cold-clear sweet as he named her. He was hot and musky and alive, and she tasted him to confirm it, again and again. "Flattery," she said, "I never asked for your smooth words—"
"But you have them," he said, "as you have all of me." He lead one of her hands again to his groin, the other to his heart.
He was not fully recovered yet. She was afraid to straddle him, to put pressure on his leg and hip, so she rolled herself over and pulled him atop her. His weight felt good against her, between her legs. He was not her first by far, but it had been a long time since she had had the time, the luxury for assignations. She was more eager than she would have guessed.
He rocked against her, rubbed against her and made her catch her breath, a slow practiced motion. He said, "We have too many clothes on."
"I think that's a problem well within your ability to solve."
He stripped her, slowly, and then himself, and by the time he was done she was wet and aching and warm through, as though she had had too much wine with dinner. He mouthed her ear and said, "Sweet Riza," and she did not feel obligated to correct him.
He used his fingers on her, stroking her clitoris to make her wet, pressing his fingers into her to open her up. She made small noises in his ear, and was unashamed of them, while with her own hands she fumbled in her bedside drawer for a preventive. (She had bought them when he came home with her, broken in body but healing in heart, and was glad that her hope had not been foolish or unfounded.) He reared back to roll it on, and she traced his touch with her own fingers, not so much helping as just feeling the warmth of his body. Then she drew him down to her, uncompromising, despite his sound of protest—forgoing whatever foreplay he had in mind, at least for now. He sank into her and she arched her back and said his name, and he made a noise against her throat.
She was the one who set the pace. It was not slow; she was not one for coddling, in this or anything else. So he was fast, as she wanted it, and she was uncompromising, tightening around him; he made her toes curl, her body tense, and she cried out high and thin and rocked her head back onto the pillow.
It wasn't perfect. He was not yet healed, and it had been a long time for her. They never did find quite a good steady rhythm. Yet when she caught his wrist he took her meaning, pressed his hand between their bodies to stroke her clitoris, and she tightened up around him, once twice again until he cried out—rough and rusty-voiced—against her shoulder, and bit her. She raked her toes up the back of his calves, and shuddered, and rocked hard and fast until she came against him, wailing into his shoulder. It was good in a way she would never have predicted. It did not make her see stars; she saw him instead, the hungry tension in his face, his good dark and heavy and intent on her, and that was better.
Afterward, she could feel the weight of sleepiness building soft and heavy in his body, and she could feel him fighting it—not one to roll over and go to sleep right away, she thought, and smiled in the darkness. Still, she reached for him and drew off his eyepatch, and in the half-light that filtered in through her window she could see the dense network of scars and thickened tissue that had replaced his eye. He looked as though he wanted to flinch away from her scrutiny, but he didn't. Instead he yawned, and said, "I think you wore me out."
She smiled, and drew his head back to the curve of her shoulder, stroking his hair. "Sleep," she said. "I'll be here in the morning."