Love like salt

(He knows all-too well how to define the way she has slipped so effortlessly and unknowingly into his brain; she is a living and breathing example of denouement.)

They were on a train, traveling to Central when he looked up from his notebook to see her sitting in the seat across from him, her faithful head bent over a folder that he knew instinctively she would make him review later. A shaft of light fell through the restless and patterned window, illuminating her. For the first time, Roy noticed how impossibly lovely she really was. He is surprised by the devastating hurt that the realization causes. It will not be the last time.

---

Roy often thinks it unfair—her unapproachable nature and guarded eyes. He watches her from the corner of his vision, neglects his paperwork; as always there is a girl for him to pass the evenings with. Outwardly, it is as if he has not changed in the slightest.

(He wonders idly, during a date with one of the numerous pretty girls, why they are what they are. Part of their attraction is in their youth, certainly. But they are wide-eyed, perfect, and something about them that suggests innocence, ignorance, and frailty. They are nothing at all like capable Hawkeye, who is a woman, all the more keenly aware. These exquisite dolls will never think of becoming something like her, so strong and horribly aware of the world that exists outside of Amestris.)

---

For someone who knows so much about him—indeed, Hawkeye is almost as fluent in the ways of Roy as Hughes is—Roy is occasionally astounded and grateful that she does not notice him noticing the fair and celestial proportions of her body. Hawkeye moves beautifully, with sparse gestures. Her speech is just as elegant: precise consonants and unexaggerated vowels and it is very hard indeed, Roy realizes, to pay attention to what she is saying. He would rather be focusing on her bright lips, the curve her cheek took on when she pronounced the names of foreign countries, the smooth column of her unadorned throat.

---

He is not a sentimental man, really. He is too scientifically minded for that.

But still, he sees her face in the pale moon overhead. In all of his textbooks, the delicate strands of cell proteins that the sparse illustrations depict could be love poetry.

He could be a fool, and in fact he is uncomfortably aware that a fool is the only really true name for someone like himself. He loves her. He does not understand. She does not realize that his restless eyes are seeking her and not freedom from his desk.

---

Once, he startled her; they were leaving the office and he had caught up with her. On an impulse that he thought he might regret later, he caught hold of her arm.

"Look this way," Roy told her, gesturing to the horizon. Hawkeye moved to follow his gesticulating hand with her eyes. As she faced him, the sky beyond them turned the brilliant colour of a mouth. She let slip something that was not quite a smile before walking away into the almost sunset.

Roy watched her go and realized she was the most beautiful secret that he would ever keep.