Work Text:
Riza Hawkeye jolts awake, gasping as whatever nightmare has chosen to torment her tonight rips her out of sleep. Her hands fumble about the mattress- roaming, checking, panicked.
No one's here.
She lets out a sigh. Her brain tries to remember the nightmare. It should be about Ishval, and usually it is, but sometimes it's about the horrible things that happened before that, too. Berthold Hawkeye has been dead for eight years, and yet she remembers the sound of his voice too clearly, and feels his open palms and closed fists even better than that.
She decides that she doesn't want to remember the nightmare, actually. Most nights, she would sit and wrack her brain to remember every fine detail, be that the horrible acrid scent of burnt corpses or the pressure of her father's frail hands bruising her skin. Tonight, she is simply too exhausted to bother with the self-punishment and lets the dream fade from her mind in the midst of her waking up.
Her gaze flitters to the alarm clock. The numbers are blurry, but she can just make them out. 11:20pm. Usually, she'd still be up, but she's been so exhausted lately that she crashed sometime after getting off work without eating dinner, still in the t-shirt and briefs she'd gone to work in. Her bra, uniform pieces, socks, and boots are abandoned in a pile on the floor next to the bed. She does her best to avoid them as she rises from the mattress. Its creaking unsettles her, yet the silence that follows when she stands unsettles her even more.
Noise makes her panic. Silence makes her panic. But she's become good enough at masking that and does so to trail through the dark into the kitchen with her blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders. It's heavier than she remembers it being.
Her throat is dry, and the walking around at night makes her remember that she is in fact alive and real and not trapped in the nightmares, so she goes to the kitchen for water. She almost fears that if she turns the lights back on, she'll find herself younger again, standing in Hawkeye manor with her hands shielding herself. So, she continues to move through the darkness until she feels her hip brush against a counter. The cups are in the cabinet above the sink, so she opens and reaches for it when-
Something shatters. Her heart stops. And somehow, her mouth becomes drier than it already was.
Riza has adjusted to the dark just enough that, with the help of the moonlight pouring in through the slants in the kitchen blinds, she's able to see it. The edge of the blue blanket on her shoulders is stained with brown liquid- tea or coffee, maybe- and the mug that said liquid was in has hit the tile floor and shattered. An embarrassingly loud gasp claws up her throat. The shards have surrounded her on the floor, and her feet is bare. She can't even remember where the broom is. Not anywhere in reach, that's for sure.
Roy's voice calls out to her from across the apartment.
"Riza!" She'd almost forgotten that he would be here. That she's here. Since they started dating, they've made the horrible habit of having Riza stay at Roy's so frequently that his place feels as much like home as hers does. They live in the same complex, have the same layout, so much so that Riza legitimately thought she was back in her own apartment. She remembers now, him driving her here because she was so damn tired, following her into his room and tucking her into bed before retreating back to the makeshift study in his living room to finish leftover paperwork from the office. She looks at the mug again. It's Roy's; his favorite, one that he'd gotten on a trip to Xing, handmade and expensive. "You alright?"
A memory comes to mind, unbidden. Or rather, what must be a dozen memories blurring into one another- spilling or dropping something, her father's yelling, her father's cold yet furious eyes, her father's hands, the hot wetness of tears and snot streaming down her face as she'd clean up the mess in the midst of being torn down.
"I'm fine," She calls back on instinct, though she is very much not fine. She's gripping the counters for dear life, just trying to stay upright as her knees wobble with the weight of her panic. It's so stupid. She's here, panicking over a broken mug when she's been beaten, burned, and so much more. "You don't need to come in here, it's- it's fine."
Of course, Roy takes that as an invitation to come into the kitchen. Riza hears footsteps, followed by the click of the kitchen light being turned on. He stands in the entryway in a sweatshirt and boxers, slippers on his feet. The bags underneath his charcoal eyes are even worse than usual. Her stomach sinks with guilt- she should've dragged him to bed along with her.
"Stay still and don't move," Roy orders. Her eyes are still too foggy with sleep to fully read his face, and his voice is always so loud. Exhausted and weak, Riza flinches on instinct yet follows his instructions. Her eyes close. Her heart continues to pound. She shouldn't expect him to hit her. She would beat him within an inch of his life, probably even shoot him if he had the audacity to lay hands on her within the context of their relationship. He's never wanted to hurt her, let alone so forcefully, the only time he ever has being when she literally begged him to burn her back. But her eyes are screwed shut and her body is frozen in wait for the inevitable blow, and of course, the yelling. "Are you alright?"
Riza isn't actually sure how long she's been uselessly standing by the kitchen counter by the time that Roy's hand rests on her shoulder. She braces herself for something awful to come of it. Nothing does. His hand simply stays, his calloused thumb gently rubbing the tension out of her sore muscles until she's able to will her eyes open again. The question, even after all this time, is somehow one that she wasn't expecting. Her gaze flitters down to the floor. The shards from the mug have been swept into a dustpan that sits neatly in the corner.
"I'm sorry," She breathes the words and tries to feign composure, though it's already too late. Roy is looking at her with soft, almost fearful eyes- because he knows. He was there for so much of it that he had no choice but to know. "I didn't mean to interrupt what you were doing."
"Are you serious?" He laughs at her apology like it's ridiculous. It probably is. His hand, so slowly that it's almost unbearable, slides up her shoulder to her neck and then behind her head. Gentle fingers play with her hair until she's finally able to let out and inhale what feel like substantial breaths. She doesn't even recall taking the time to let her hair done. He must've done it for her after she fell asleep. "I'm just glad you didn't fall or cut yourself. It was my fault for leaving that mug out on the counter, anyway. I can put it back together later," The reassurance isn't enough to fix Riza's pounding heart and wobbly knees, but it is enough for her to let out a shaky sigh of relief and lean into his palm by the time he's using it to caress her face. "You are fine, right?"
"Of course."
They both know that she's lying. As is usually the case, neither of them address it- not when it comes to this- because talking about it won't fix the fact that it happened, just stir it up again when their lives are already so volatile. Still. She appreciates that he bothers asking at all.
"Good. Go back to bed, alright? You need the rest," He says that as if he doesn't need the rest just as badly, maybe even more. Riza stares at him for a long, long moment before simply raising an unimpressed brow at him. Sheepishly, he looks away, offers the smallest of smiles, and takes on a softly spoken- "I promise I won't be long."
Roy doesn't wait for a response, either, and simply leaves to go back to the living room.
Riza shakes her head and makes them both a glass of water.