Colonel Roy Mustang hated his birthday.
There were balloons, banners, cards, presents, and subordinates acting like idiots. Havoc, Fuery, Breda and Fallman seemed to think it was their civic duty to make his life hell on September 25th, and no amount of death threats would stop them. Riza had never gotten herself involved in the birthday crap besides telling him to have a happy one, but now that they were married and she had left the military, he supposed that she would notice in some way.
He was right, of course. She was mysteriously quiet over breakfast, as though she were planning something big, and when he started to leave for Central Command she pulled him back and whispered in his ear. "Don't let those idiots annoy you today, honey. After all, I've got something big planned for you when you get home." Her voice was low and seductive, and Mustang felt his whole body perk up at her words. They had not done something big in quite some time, and he was absolutely ready to start again.
Of course, his idiot subordinates only heightened his anxiousness to get home. Havoc and Breda immediately started to sing when he entered the room, and to his horror Mustang saw that there were presents on his desk. Presents! The nerve of his subordinates.
There was some sort of ridiculously fancy lighter from Fuery, a book on the nature of fire and how to deal with it from Fallman, which he'd already read, and a subscription to a really dirty magazine from Breda and Havoc. And of course when he had finished thanking everyone for the gifts, despite the fact that he hadn't wanted anything at all, they all began singing again. The worst thing was that the only one who could hold a tune was Havoc, and by the time his subordinates were finished with the twelfth round of "Happy Birthday," Mustang was quietly contemplating setting his office on fire to save the rest of the world from the voices of Breda, Fallman and Fuery.
Lunch arrived, and Mustang fairly sprinted from his office to avoid having to sit with those lunatics in the cafeteria. He retrieved his lunch and headed back to the office, as he knew for a fact his subordinates hated to eat anywhere but the cafeteria, and who should he pass but Major Armstrong. He tried desperately to slink past the Major, but Armstrong had eyes like a hawk. A large, muscled, sparkly and utterly terrifying hawk.
Mustang was immediately surrounded by Armstrong's giant arms, and nearly burst his eardrums as the Major sobbed into his ear and wished him the happiest of birthdays. Mustang would have ordered the Major to let him go, but there was no air left in his lungs to make any sound at all. Fifteen minutes into the hug and Mustang became sure that Armstrong's sparkles would wear off on him, and that he would be the world's only sparkling Flame Alchemist.
Eventually the Major released him, and Mustang slunk off in the foulest of moods, back to the office. He opened the door and his eyes widened in horror at the sight of the Sergeant Denny Brosh and Second Lieutenant Maria Ross standing at his desk, waving streamers in the air. At the sound of the opening door, his subordinates leaped out from behind the desk, laughing uproariously and screaming, "SURPRISE!" Armstrong grabbed the Colonel in a hug from behind and began to sob again, and Mustang had to bite his tongue to keep from screaming.
They sat him in his desk chair and proceeded to eat cake, laugh, talk and joke in his office, spilling punch on his memos and making jokes in his expense that he did not find funny. Ross and Brosh had pooled their resources and bought him a silk polka-dot tie, which they proceeded to loop around his neck above his uniform. Armstrong whipped out a set of honest-to-god fur underwear for the Colonel, and he had had to order everyone away from him to keep them from getting him to try the underwear on.
Colonel Mustang had never been happier to see the end of a work day. He bolted from his chair, stripping off the ridiculous pointy party hat Ross had slipped on when he'd been distracted by Armstrong trying to get him to model the underwear, and fled the office, to the surprised laughter of his co-workers. He was in a frenzy to get home; foaming at the mouth for Riza's surprise.
The walk up to their apartment took forever in the Colonel's mind. He had to hold back from bolting up the stairs like an excited toddler. He realized that he didn't look quite as suave as the surprise Riza had in mind required, and went to combing his jet-black hair with his fingers. It was a shame he was in his military uniform, but it wouldn't ruin the mood for long. There was no clothing required with Riza's surprise.
He made it to his landing and paused for a moment. He looked well-groomed, cool and absolutely sexy in his uniform, despite the fact that on most people it was baggy and shapeless. So what if he'd tailored it a little to show off his physique? It was in moments like this one when he could appreciate how utterly clever he was.
He knocked on the door, not wanting to barge in on the off-chance that Riza was still preparing herself for his surprise. To his delight, she answered the door immediately. Her long blonde hair was trailing down her back, and she was wearing a red sheath dress with a plunging neck line. Mustang felt his heart stop. He'd been waiting for this moment all through his hellish work day, and now it was finally here.
"Are you ready to get started?" Riza purred, hugging him tightly around the waist. He grinned.
"I'm always ready," he said. Riza laughed at this and pulled him forward, towards the kitchen, which they had to go through to get to the master bedroom… Wait, why were they stopping?
Riza spun Mustang around and laughed in delight. "Here it is!" She said. "Happy birthday, Roy!"
Mustang stared. There, on the table, was a lumpy, misshapen cake with (oh, the horror) a design of flames on it in orange icing.
"I bet you weren't expecting that!" Riza chortled. "I surprised you, Roy, didn't I?"
Mustang nodded and swallowed. "Oh, yes," he said nervously. "I am really surprised." He picked up a fork from the table and poked at the cake. It hissed at him.
"Let's eat it while it's still hot!" Riza said, running to get a fork. Roy had quickly learned in a few months of being her husband that she was mysteriously impervious to her… creative cooking. He sighed and swallowed again, staring at the cake. It seemed to be deflating, although that could have been the result of Mustang's now highly overactive imagination.
He ate his slice, and had seconds, to make Riza happy. And then, to top it off, after he'd run to the bathroom with severe nausea, Riza had banished him to the couch on the grounds of preferring her bed vomit-free. She'd gone into the room wondering aloud what on Earth could have given Roy stomach problems on his birthday, and Mustang wasn't going to be the one to tell her.
Staring up at the ceiling, stretched out on the uncomfortable couch, Mustang silently cursed whoever it was that had come up with the concept of celebrating ones birthday. It was a ridiculous notion; who cared what day you were born? The fact that you were alive and well years after the date of your birth should have been enough of a celebration. Roy suspected people just wanted an excuse to eat cake. Not that he would ever be eating it again after tonight's fiasco.
He smiled, though, in the dark. People could be annoying as hell, but he had to give them credit: they still worked their hardest to make the birthday of a complete asshole like him a happy occasion. Maybe next year he'd try a bit harder not to be such a jerk. He closed his eyes and laughed quietly. Yeah, right. That was half the fun of birthdays. Then he closed his eyes and dreamed of dancing cakes and presents until, at twelve, his birthday was finally over, and he could relax. At least until next year.