He hadn’t wanted to bring her home. He never did. He couldn’t. No matter how they batted their lashes or pursed their lips to pout, he couldn’t bring them home. If he brought them home they would expect to go to bed with him, and he couldn’t. Not that he didn’t want to - he enjoyed the touch of a woman, he always had - but because they couldn’t see him. And if they went to bed with him, they would. He couldn’t do it.

But she hadn’t taken no for an answer. And he hadn’t want to tell her no - not this gypsy woman with her strange violet eyes and her seductive smile. He had felt nothing for her but sexual desire, but that was how it always was. He had loved once and he had loved deeply and that had been enough. But there was something about this gypsy woman. In a time and place where women bound their breasts and wore men’s trousers, she flaunted her shapely figure and came to him dressed in flowing skirts. Something about her spoke of sin and decadence and earthen pleasures.

It was only supposed to be dinner. It was always only dinner. A good meal and the company of a beautiful woman, that was all he allowed himself. Sometimes he felt a pang of guilt, but it passed. Life, as they said, went on. And he had always been captivated by women. She had drank wine with him, her lipstick staining the rim of the glass. She had laughed and spoke of science and poetry in the same breath, and he found himself drawn to her mind as well as her body. She was intelligent, this strange gypsy woman who didn’t quite look like a gypsy.

“Hohenheim.” She purred his name. It fell from her lips like a lover’s caress, and she smiled a secret smile when she said it. “Take me home with you.”

No pleading, no pouting, no entreaties. Only a simply spoken statement, one that clearly allowed for no argument. And he, caught up in her eyes and the way her slim fingers felt against the back of his hand, had nodded ‘yes’ without thinking.

And here they were. And she kissed him and touched him and when he pushed her hands away from the buttons of his dress shirt she didn’t protest. She only smiled that secret little smile and moved on, leaving his clothing as it was. She removed her own, instead. He offered a silent thanks to whatever gods were listening as she pushed him onto the bed, his trousers undone but nothing more. She made love to him that way, riding him slowly and with a quiet passion. It was hot and stifling, to do it fully dressed this way, but he didn’t care. And he felt guilt as she called his name in passion - and in anger, he thought for one confused moment - and then it was over and she lay beside him on top of the sheets and curled up to him like a cat.

Watching her lay there, tucked against him, Hohenheim felt - though he couldn’t say why - that her content expression wasn't the result of satiation after lovemaking; that it had little to do with their coupling. There was something about her eyes, it called forth an uneasy feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. It spoiled the afterglow of love making, tainting it with sickly sensations and doubts. Hohenheim watched her, followed her eyes, tracing the line of her gaze to his own body. And then he saw that the edge of his sleeve cuff had rolled up, and the gypsy woman was looking at the patch of rotting, diseased skin above his wrist.

And smiling her secret little smile.