Title: All Color and Light
Author: Tiamat's Child
Series: Fullmetal Alchemist Manga
Word Count: 250
Rating: K
Characters/Pairing: Ross, Broche
Summary: A change in Ross's environment catches her eye.
Warnings: None!
Notes: Written for fma_fic_contest at Livejournal, prompt 42, "sparkles".
All Color and Light
When Major Armstrong arrived in a wave of refracting light, Ross barely noticed.
But she did start to wonder when she went out and found Lieutenant Briars working the switchboard in a haze of purple and gold. Briars made the effect seem stylish. Sophisticated. Grown up and sexy, like the chignon she wore her hair in, or the precise fall of her uniform skirt.
Ross brought her back coffee from the canteen, but went tongue tied at the last moment and didn't speak.
When Broche returned from his run to the archives, a file folder clenched in his teeth and mingled silver and blue about him, she acted. "What's with the sparkles?" she asked, taking the folder from his mouth.
"Thanks," he said. "Aaah. You remember when Lieutenant Colonel Hughes' daughter discovered crayon?"
"Yes," said Ross. It was impossible to forget.
"And when she learned about fingerprints? Oh, but this is more like the frosting. You remember the frosting?"
"My memory is not degenerating, Broche."
"No, no!" He tried to raise his hands in surrender, but the rest of the file folders got in the way. "It's only – The new milestone is glitter."
"Glitter."
"Glitter."
"Ah haaaaa," said Ross, who saw it now: the Lieutenant Colonel's desk, awash in sheaves of paper, and Hughes himself, accosting all passersby to show them his angel's latest genius, reliably marking whoever'd come in contact with him. "Right. These for the Kistner case?"
"Should be everything," Broche said, and they got down to work.