This one-shot was written by J as a companion to our story Against All Odds, but can be read as a stand alone one-shot as well. It does contain some minor spoilers for the most recent chapter of the story, so if you've been following Against All Odds and want to be surprised, read the new chapter before you read this.
If you're reading this first and you want to read entire story from Roy and Riza's POV, Against All Odds is a multi-chapter fic that starts when Roy and Riza are teenagers and goes through the aftermath of the Promised Day. It can be found in the rated M section. The final chapter was published earlier today and the epilogue will be up later this week.
Enjoy!
Maes Hughes was the first. He knew before Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye had even admitted it to themselves.
To him, it was obvious. He saw it in the way Roy's face would light up when he got a letter from her at the academy or when he talked about her during the war. At the academy, when Roy had thought his roommate was sleeping, he'd hear him scribbling away late at night, penning his letters to the girl he'd left behind, and he'd roll his eyes, wondering why he didn't just tell her he was in love with her and save himself the misery.
Hughes knew Riza felt the same way about Roy the first time he met her amidst the dunes of Ishval. It had been their first time seeing each other in person in over two years and their eyes had said far more than their words.
Winry knew the first time she met Colonel Mustang and his Lieutenant. At the age of 11, she knew nothing of the military's anti-fraternization laws and it had seemed obvious to her that the two were a well-matched set, even if she had disliked them at first due to their military ties. Riza Hawkeye had been the soldier who changed her opinion of the military. She had thought Riza was beautiful and had admired her strength, courage, and loyalty.
She'd known immediately when the Lieutenant had spoken of protecting someone, that she'd meant the military man in the next room and Winry had decided he couldn't be all that bad if someone like Riza saw something in him.
Ever since that first day she met them, she never saw the one without the other and even when she was old enough to know a relationship between the two wouldn't be allowed, she never wavered in her opinion that they were obviously made for each other.
It was an accident that Fuery found out. Afterward, he'd wondered how they'd all missed it for so long.
He'd been in the surveillance truck, listening to the wiretap he'd attached to the Colonel's lapels before he and Hawkeye had entered the mansion on an undercover mission where they had to pretend to be a married couple. He'd found their act to be quite convincing as he listened in, but things took a turn for the unexpected when they were cornered, and a stray bullet caused an explosion beneath the mansion.
Havoc, Falman, and Breda had all rushed in to evacuate the civilians and he'd been left alone in the truck, the only point of contact. He'd listened in horror as Havoc came upon the scene of the explosion and found the roof caved in with no sign of either superior officer. They'd thought for sure they were dead...until Fuery heard Riza's voice over the crackling of the damaged wiretap. She sounded distressed and was calling out to the Colonel. Fuery alerted the others and they set to moving the rubble to get to her.
That was when he'd heard far more than he had bargained for. He'd quickly set about erasing the tapes, rewinding them back to the moment he'd first heard her alive and recording over the rest with silence. If anyone ever asked, he'd claim the transmitter had miraculously survived just long enough for them to find out she was alive before it gave out.
He felt like a fool for not noticing it sooner and it seemed obvious in hindsight. He wasn't sure if anyone else knew, but he knew the risks if anyone found out and he vowed to himself to never say a word to anyone about what he knew.
Falman was always the observant one. There was no single moment when he'd just known, but he'd seen it in the way they could communicate across a room without ever uttering a single word and in their body language when they always stood close to each other or angled themselves to be able to see the other across the room. He'd seen it in their fierce protectiveness of each other in battle and in the way he'd sometimes see them speaking together in hushed tones when they thought no one would notice.
He noticed, but he never said a word.
As far as Olivier Armstrong was concerned, it didn't take a genius to see there was something going on between the two.
The first time she'd met Riza Hawkeye at a training exercise between the East and North, she'd been surprised to find a soldier of her skill working for someone like Mustang. When an opening for a Captain had come up at Briggs, she'd even offered it to Hawkeye, but the other woman had politely declined. Armstrong watched Hawkeye's military career more closely after that and knew that the soldier had been offered other promotions that she had turned down.
There was only one reason General Armstrong could think of for a woman of Hawkeye's caliber to consistently turn down promotions that would have taken her out of Colonel Mustang's unit and that was love.
As far as Armstrong was concerned, romance was the death of ambition and that was why she'd never had any interest in it herself.
It took Havoc longer to figure it out than he cared to admit, though, perhaps that was because he hadn't wanted it to be true.
He'd met Riza long before he met Roy. The two had had a bit of a rivalry in their early days at the military academy. They'd consistently been back and forth at the top of the class rankings. She'd beat him in target practice every time, but the other subjects were always up in the air and depending on what tests they'd had in a particular week, they were constantly knocking each other out of the top spot from one week to the next.
It wasn't until he and his friend Trevor had run into Riza and Rebecca Catalina at a bar one night a few months into their time at the academy that he had started to see her as something other than a rival.
They'd slowly become friends over their time in the academy and when the Fuhrer himself had come to speak to the second-year class seeking volunteers willing to leave the academy early and go to Ishval, they'd both signed up without any hesitation. The night before they departed, they'd both had more than a few drinks and he'd kissed her. She had pushed him away and he apologized the next day on their train trip to Ishval. They'd agreed to put the incident behind them and Havoc was grateful to have at least one friend going off to the battlefront with him.
They hadn't been there more than a few weeks when he first met Roy Mustang, the famous Flame Alchemist. He and his friend Hughes had been talking about their near scrape with an Ishvalan soldier and how they'd been saved by an unseen sniper.
The sniper herself had appeared moments later and it was clear that Mustang and Hawkeye knew each other prior to the war from their reactions. It wasn't until much later that he recalled how she had anxiously asked Trevor the night at the bar about the wellbeing of a soldier in Ishval and that the soldier's name had been Mustang.
After the war, he and Riza were both assigned to Colonel Mustang's unit and he watched over time the way Riza and Roy acted around each other. He saw how they moved as one on missions without any words spoken between them and how natural they looked together on the dance floor at the Hughes wedding.
He hadn't wanted to admit what it all meant at first, because he'd still harbored a bit of a thing for her himself, but eventually there was nothing for it except to admit the obvious.
Al knew the day they faced Lust beneath Lab 3.
It was the only time he'd ever seen the Lieutenant fall apart like that. In her grief, she'd been ready to give up her own life when she'd thought the Colonel was dead.
He'd also noticed the way she reacted the moment she'd heard his voice and knew he was alive. Even in his untiring armor body, it had been a struggle to keep a hold on her and keep her from rushing to the Colonel's side before the danger had passed.
When he recounted the day's events later for Winry and to his brother, he'd left all of that out.
Ed first had his suspicions when he'd returned the Lieutenant's gun to her at her apartment and they'd talked about what happened in Ishval.
She'd made a casual comment about how he wanted to protect Winry because he'd loved her. At the time, he'd been too busy trying to deny her words that he hadn't made the connection. She'd told him that she had become a soldier to protect someone and the implication had been that she meant the Colonel, so by her own logic regarding his feelings for Winry, that would mean she loved the Colonel.
As he'd left her apartment that night, he noticed the only photo in the entire place. He'd only caught a brief glimpse of it, but he'd be willing to stake his remaining limbs on the fact that it was a photo of Hawkeye and Mustang around the age he and Winry were now...and they looked far happier than he'd ever seen them.
His suspicions were further confirmed on the Promised Day when he'd witnessed her talking him down from killing Envy. She'd been the only one who could get through to him
In that moment, he'd known without a doubt. He never spoke it out loud, though. They'd both done everything they could to keep the secret of his and Al's bodies and to get him the opportunity to become a state alchemist at such a young age. Keeping their secret was the least he could do for them.
They all knew, but no one ever said a word. They all knew...except for Breda, that is.
Though he was an intelligent man, Lieutenant Heymans Breda never realized what was going on practically right in front of him despite the fact that he had more reason to suspect than almost anyone.
He'd seen them embracing after their near-death experience in West City and wrote it off as them just celebrating being alive.
He'd walked in on them just after their New Year's Eve kiss at the Hughes's home and excused Lieutenant Hawkeye's flushed face as the result of too much alcohol.
Once, while looking for a pencil in the Colonel's desk, he'd even found the wedding bands the two had worn on an undercover mission stored safely in the top drawer more than a year after the mission and he assumed they were being kept just in case they had to go undercover as a couple again in the future.
Still, he suspected nothing. Even after hearing Havoc's theories on the matter, he'd dismissed them and bet against the other man.
Well, he'd certainly lost that one.
Breda's jaw nearly hit the floor when he saw them kissing in Dr. Marcoh's office after the Colonel's sight had been restored and he'd looked around in disbelief to see if everyone else was seeing it too or if he was just imagining it. No one else looked the least bit surprised by this shocking new development, but Havoc was watching him gleefully with his palm outstretched.
"Pay up."