Hello again. Here we are for another shipping event, one that isn't my area of expertise at all, but I tried. I can only hope this won't be a general disappointment for all lmao

Enjoy!

i: do you even have to ask?

"I had hoped that, by now, you would know that you're not exactly the best cook in this part of town... Sir."

Or in all of Central and East combined. Hell, maybe even in all of Amestris. Roy and cooking do not mix, and for someone that sprouts flames from his fingertips with an effortless snap, he has no control over them whatsoever on the stove or the oven. Everything either burns or is served undercooked, hence why the only things that fill his cabinets and fridge are bread and an assortment of cheese and ham for quick sandwiches.

Roy, on his part, chooses to ignore her comment and huffs indignantly off on the side of his kitchen, arms crossed and hip leaned onto the counter as Second Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye tries to salvage the chocolate ganache he had been trying to prepare before he called her for help. Whatever had possessed him to cook his best friend's favorite dessert as a birthday gift? Maybe the fact that Hughes and his fiancé have been supportive ever since they returned from Ishval. A homemade gift can convey his gratitude better than any store bought cake, so he decided to recreate it from memory.

The lady at the store explained to him how to prepare a good ganache. I did not seem so hard, yet he managed to get the heavy cream stuck to the bottom of the pan. Whom else could he call if not Hawkeye? If it were not for her, no one in her childhood home would have anything to eat in any of the meals. She is a good cook, though she does not have as much free time as before to spend in the kitchen stirring a pot full of stew or bake her marvelous duck pie.

She looks so different from the girl she was in her father's burial, and from the young woman he met in the frontlines. The shadows under her eyes are long gone, but the hard lines of her face hardly soften to give him a glimpse of that bright smile she used to give him back in the day. His eyes trace the high collar of her shirt and dip to her back where he imagines the charred skin of her shoulder blades. Riza turns her body to pour the concoction inside a bowl, effectively blocking it out of his sight, but he has already memorized both the tattoo and injuries he left on her.

"What else?"

He moves away from the counter to retrieve a carton of ice cream from the freezer, setting it on the marble between them. Riza scraps the last of the ganache from the pan and passes it to him so he can put it in the sink and fill it with water.

Roy dips his finger into the pan and carefully gathers some of the ganache on the tip, wrinkling his nose as it heats his skin enough to be unpleasant, but not burn. "Do you still like chocolate?" He licks his own finger, trying not to let his gaze focus on her back again.

"Yes." She pops the carton open and sticks a spoon in the vanilla ice cream. When she turns around, he has a finger in her face, a generous dollop of ganache resting atop it. Her eyes cross as they focus on the item so close to her nose.

"Have some." He waggles his finger, taunting. When she remains still, he presses on. "Come on, Hawkeye. Just a little bit."

"I'm not here to eat." Riza furrows her brows at him.

"What? You thought we wouldn't scrape the bowls clean?" Roy stretches his arms further until the ganache touches her closed lips. "Eat."

She does. Her lips wrap around his finger, tongue swiping up to the digit, their gazes locked together. Hers is beginning to show traces of annoyance, his is playful and growing befuddled with every second that passes. By the time her actions register in both of their minds, Riza releases the finger with an unholy pop, horror and embarrassment plastered on her face, and Roy is gaping at her openly, wide eyed and all.

Riza digs the heels of her palms into her eyes until she sees spots behind her lids. "Sir, I'm so sorry." Her voice is laced with frustration and agitation starts coursing through her body. It only adds to the mortification swelling inside her and makes her even more anxious, which in turn triggers a fight or flight response. "I didn't mean to do it."

Roy stops her by taking hold of her chin. Her arms fall to her sides and she stares up at him with a mix of emotions he does not bother to dissect. Instead, he spreads ganache all over her parted lips, both hearing and feeling as her breath hitches, and closes the gap between them to kiss it clean. There is a brief, initial moment when she remains tense under his touch, and just like the chocolate she added to the heavy cream earlier, she melts under him without putting up a fight or resisting. His tongue caresses the seam of her lips and they part to grant him entrance, her own tongue eagerly finding his.

He hoists her up on the counter, inching up her long skirt so he can settle comfortably between her thighs. Riza does not protest and locks her ankles together behind him to pull him closer, moaning into his mouth. The chocolate makes his head spin faster and he wants to kiss her until he cannot taste the cacao anymore. That being said, Roy pulls away for long enough to smear his own mouth with the concoction before diving in for more.

She is gripping his biceps tightly, his shoulder, his neck, his sides. Wherever she touches leaves a tingling sensation and he squeezes his fingers around whatever part of her body he has his hands on. He feels her ribs through the cotton of her shirt and decides he does not want it standing between them. Riza helps him remove it and throws her head back, banging it on the cabinet behind her, but she only hisses in pain and pleasure as he kisses his ways down to the swell of her breasts. Her skin is soft. It is easy to assume she would be otherwise when what he sees daily is a firm set of shoulders and the blue military uniform.

Roy unhooks her bra expertly, a simple model of a bland beige color, but still the best thing he has seen all week. He withdraws to study her, skin flushed from head to shoulders, chest heaving for air. His chocolate-dipped fingers travel over the column of her neck and collarbones and his tongue hungrily laps up at the mess he has made. Her sighs fan his black unruly locks and moments later her fingers comb through it.

He reaches for the bowl of ganache and stops, lifting his head from its place over her bosom. Riza blinks her eyes open in a haze, shooting him a confused look as he stretches his arm as far as it can go without having to step away from where he stands. Her warm, clouded amber eyes shoot open when something cold touches her left breast. Looking down, she finds a dollop of vanilla ice cream slowly making its way down the slope, making her nipple grow impossibly stiff, body shuddering in response. He licks it in earnest, earning a short cry for the deeds his tongue does on her burning flesh. The ice cream leaves a trail between her breasts and she sighs his name.

"I like the sound of that." He groans against her mouth, lips cold. Riza grips the edge of the counter and lifts her hips when he hooks his thumbs over the waistband of her skirt. "Do it again."

"Roy..." Riza shivers when she is exposed to the cold air of the kitchen. Completely bare now, she clings to his hair when he continues to smother her body with sweets only to kiss everything clean.

He licks her flat, toned stomach until there is no more trace of chocolate and ice cream, and spreads some on her inner thigh, making her jump. She is responding to his every touch and he can hardly form a coherent train of thought, but he is seeing clearly. In fact, his sight is so well honed now that he can see every muscle twitching beneath his mouth and fingers. Roy feels tempted to spread ganache in her folds, but knows it is a bad idea. Still, his tongue dips into that very place, his ears picking up the new way she moans his name in a sinful tune.

Her juices are not as sweet, but Roy finds he likes them better anyway and laps them up with a hum of contentment of his own as she begins to shift her hips. Riza tugs uncertainly at his hair, torn between pulling him closer and pushing him away. "Roy," he silences her with a twirl of his tongue around her clit, but she continues once her mind clears enough. "Roy, please, not in the kitchen."

Roy gives her a few more licks for good measure before standing upright, his thumb disappearing between her legs to pick up from where he left off. "Why not?"

She swallows at his husky tone, but meets his eyes unwaveringly. "Do you want to have sex where you eat?"

"Do you ever eat in the bed you're supposed to sleep?" He quips back with a raised eyebrow. Riza only stares back at him. "Okay, fine. Not in the kitchen."

He picks her up, feels her warmth and wetness below his navel, and takes her to the adjacent hallway, squeezing her against the wall to keep her in place as he fumbles to free his erection from its confines. Probably not the setting she had in mind, but he has no patience to walk the extra steps to his bedroom. He thrusts into her just as she catches up on what he is doing, cutting her sentence short with a torn gasp as her nails sink into his shoulders. He pulls his hips back and forward again, a hand barely tracing her curves as the other helps support most of the weight. If anyone had told Roy that he would hold his Lieutenant this way and on top of it all take her in the hall of his apartment, he would have laughed at them. He thinks he sees the lone decorative painting shaking with every thrust, but is not sure.

Fingertips touch the scar on her back accidentally, the skin coarse compared to the smooth expanse of her stomach and legs. He has seen the burns and injuries, but never the scars that were left behind, and now he is touching them deliberately, so gently as if he is afraid it still hurts. Afraid he will hurt her again. She whines when he stops and catches his chin between her fingers when he will not stop tracing that patch of skin. Desire dances in his eyes mingled with a sudden sullenness, and she does not know how to react.

"I'm sorry," he says in a barely audible tone. If they had not been so eerily quiet for the last seconds, Riza might have missed it. "I don't think I ever apologized for this."

"There's nothing to apologize for," she says steadily, her own finger imitating the pattern he is drawing on her back on the planes of his chest. "I asked you to do this."

"That you did," his smile lacks its usual humor and he kisses the corner of her mouth. "Do you... Want me to stop?"

Riza responds by lacing her arms around his neck and kissing him slowly. "Not here," she whispers into the curve of his jaw and holds on tight as he maneuvers them through the apartment.

The old springs of his mattress creak beneath them, the headboard banging incessantly into the wall, the repetitive action chipping away the paint. Some of the urgency has died, allowing their emotions and feelings to surface and take over. The kisses are passionate, still tasting of chocolate and vanilla, hot tongues tangling with each other as he slowly and steadily drives her to the edge. Her back arches off the bed, his name a mantra on the tip of her tongue, a prayer full of affection and devotion she whispers only for him to hear. He says her name into the hollow of her collarbone, pressing their joined hands into the mattress on each side of her head.

It is not that he thinks she hates his guts after all he did with her father's research (though he sometimes believes she should, in all honesty), but Riza has always been so mindful of where they stand. Once he was her father's apprentice, now he is her superior. Very rarely, she would call him by his name and not Mister Mustang. She always has a way of getting close to him, but not really, as if the titles are the only things keeping her from opening up to him completely.

Roy lies beside her in the aftermath, pressing kisses to the scars on her back. He might never forgive himself for this, and somehow Riza does not hold this against him. There is a chance he will never truly know how her mind works, but she has called him by his first name a handful of times in the past hour. She turns around and tucks her head beneath his chin, her lips curled in a smile against the base of his throat. A contented sigh leaves them both and he closes his eyes, nose buried in her golden hair.

It is a start.

a/n: if you're wondering, the dessert is one my mom made. idk where she got the recipe tbh, but it's vanilla ice cream, chocolate ganache and kitkats layered in a dish.