Written for my 20 Fandoms Challenge, I wanted to do something with my Olivier headcanons and I thought some Olivier headcanons would serve the world well. Olivier/the Briggs Doctor (that made pronouns fun lmao). Hope you like it!
They all had secrets. All of them. That's why they were Briggs soldiers; no one wanted to come to live in the North, where your bed was always empty and you were so cold you couldn't feel your skin if you pinched it. Secrets were the name of the game, and no one asked each other why they were there. Briggs was a sort of prison, in a way, where the politically unpopular were sent and the outcasts shuffled off to.
That was, it would have been a prison without Major General Olivier Armstrong. Instead they were the Northern Wall of Briggs.
It slipped out, the question. She was bandaging Olivier's arm from a minor (not so minor, really, but the most minor thing Olivier had ever come to the infirmary for) injury sustained when she'd run across a pack of mountain wolves. She wasn't sure of the full story, only that Olivier had survived and that many of the wolves had not.
"Why are you here, Major General?" she said, because the training apparently hadn't beaten the fear of the woman into her enough. The second the words slipped out she felt a chill travel down her spine even the harshest winter couldn't accomplish.
Armstrong turned her head slowly. She had a certain look in her eyes; the one she used when she couldn't believe someone had asked such a stupid question. "I'm injured."
"I meant Briggs," she replied, because while she might have a death wish no one at Briggs did anything half-assed.
The Major General's eyebrows shot up. "You presume to ask me that? If I recall your record is far from spotless."
"All that is sealed with my service here," she replied, running a hand through her short blonde hair- or she would have, ten years ago, when the sanitary instincts of a doctor were not so ingrained in her. "But I'm not going to throw a glove at you and challenge you to a duel for an answer. I shouldn't have asked."
"No," said Armstrong stiffly. "You shouldn't have."
She straightened up, hands behind her back, waiting for the punishment.
"I'm a lesbian," said Armstrong. "That's why I took the Briggs job."
Oh.
"Nothing wrong with liking women," she replied, because Amestris, even Briggs, wasn't a place where you felt comfortable saying 'me too.'
"Not everyone has that opinion," said the Armstrong, lips curving into a smirk. "And I wouldn't say 'like' is the emotion I feel towards women."
She was a professional doctor, one with a fair few sins behind her and a lot of weight on her shoulders, but when her commanding officer said those words with that smile, she filed this away as another Briggs secret and said, "You're not the only one with those feelings for women."
"Oh?" said Armstrong. "You know I have to report woman with those feelings to Central Command, don't you?"
She wasn't nervous now. Armstrong was playing games in the only way she knew how. "Oh? Do you now?"
Armstrong's smile widened. "No, I don't. This is Briggs, after all, and here, what I say goes. Unless, of course, someone rises to the challenge and takes me down."
She could hardly fathom the idea, to be honest, but she laughed slightly and agreed. The Major General was right, of course, even if the concept of someone beating her was beyond this cold weather doctor.
"You know," she said, taking another risk (what was another one at this point; she'd already spent too many nights dreaming of this moment). "Injuries aren't the only reason people visit me."
"Is that so?" said Armstrong. "Yes, that makes sense. You do automail as well."
She'd been sure the imposing, intelligent woman with eyes of steel would get that metaphor. She almost liked that she hadn't. Her eyes narrowed at the bandage on the other woman's arm. She thought about the injury she'd just treated. Much of the blood she'd washed off hadn't even been Armstrong's own; it had almost seemed coated on there on purpose.
"You certainly don't need to exaggerate injuries to visit the infirmary," she said, crossing her arms and smiling.
For a split second, one glorious moment, Armstrong's expression was one of shock. She closed her face off almost instantly and tilted her chin up. "And what else would you have me come for? I'm not missing any limbs."
"I think there are better places than the infirmary for what I have in mind," she said. This is where she would normally have kissed the other woman, but this was her commanding officer, and more importantly, this was Olivier Armstrong.
Thankfully, the other woman strode towards her and pressed their lips together as she enveloped the Doctor in a crushing embrace. She fisted her hands in Olivier's hair, nipping those perfect pink lips before her tongue brushed her bottom row of teeth. They pulled away, but only for an instant before returning to their kiss, Olivier's own hands gripping the front of her lab coat. They were both breathing hard when they separated, a hot heaving feeling starting in her chest and traveling downward, her cheeks surely matching Olivier's own pink ones. She took her fingers out of her hair, sliding one hand down a high cheekbone and strong jawline.
Olivier's expression was almost…soft, her long eyelashes fluttering for a moment as she shot her a lazy smile. She had never seen her smile like that, not ever. It was the kind of smile you gave when you were happy- and not happy that you'd gotten a promotion or managed to get the fox infestation out of the larder. She smiled back and hoped Olivier felt the same strange feeling in her chest that she was having.
"Where was this other place you had in mind?" said Olivier sharply, as though the smile had not happened, as though Olivier's lipstick were not staining the lab coat she liked to wear.
"I was thinking my quarters," she replied. As the physician, she lived alone, separate from the others. It was private, and most importantly, a place where they could get warm. Or, more accurately, warm each other.
"I'll be there tonight," said Olivier with a brusque nod. "I have work to finish tonight." She turned so fast that her hair whipped behind her and left the infirmary, gripping her sword with her supposedly injured arm.
The Doctor wiped lipstick off her chin and smiled. Briggs was a place of secrets, but it turned out that not everyone had to spent the night with their bed empty.