Just a funny thought I had one day while sitting here, bored, at home.
Just Admit it.
Flipping through a half-assed report, Mustang glanced up over the top of the papers. "So who was the girl you were with while you were there?" He smirked out of the line of vision of the Fullmetal Alchemist.
Edward sighed. "If you just keep getting people to follow me, what's the point of putting together a report?" He outstretched his arm, referencing the piece of paper the Colonel was reviewing.
"You call this a report?" He laid it flat in front of him. "I get you to do the reports to keep up appearances, and just so I can track progress you're making with the stone. You are in the military, I have to make it look like you're doing actual work for us."
"Sure. If that's the case, keep personal stuff off the table." Ed folded his arms and sunk back into the hideous green sofa that was always in the Colonel's office. Al sat at his side, as usual.
"Edward, you had interactions with this girl during the time you were suppose to be collecting research, so she was impeding on your job. That's not personal."
"Impeding? Her folks run the library, I just ran into her while we were there. There was no impeding." Ed huffed.
Alphonse nodded. "I was there the whole time, we were mostly working, with the odd break."
"You could be covering." He directed his attention back to Ed after deflecting Al's defense.
"Covering for what?" Ed was beginning to lose his temper.
Not uttering a single word, Roy reached into his desk and emerged with a paper. Flicking his wrist to open the bound papers, he began to read. "Meadow, petite, blond, pretty, sixteen years old...see where I'm going with this Ed?" He laid the paper down on his desk for Ed to see. The report that had been issued to Mustang, by sources unknown, showed a picture of he and this girl enjoying a walk in a semi crowded side of town. The girl had an ice-cream in hand and it looked as though Ed was talking very enthusiastically with a wide smile. "It's written in red."
"How come I don't remember this?" Al reached for the paper to examine the photograph more closely.
"You weren't there." Ed said, his apparent discomfort shining through.
"When did it happen?" He glanced to his brother then back to the picture. He flipped though a few more pages of scenes without him. "And these."
Edward seemed to become a little jumpier. "They all happened on the same day." He composed himself with his usual 'angry defense'. "She asked me to walk with her because she had to carry a couple of boxes from a friend's house. I was gone from the library for all of two hours."
"What?" Al said in disbelief. "You didn't tell me you were leaving?"
"Sounds like you're hiding something." Roy rested his cheek on the palm of his left hand.
"You stay out of this. I didn't see it as being a big deal if I left, so I didn't want to bother you with it, you were concentrating. We got a lot of research done, you can see that from the report. It shouldn't be an issue."
Roy pointed his finger down on top of the file. "Let's not keep kidding ourselves by calling this a report ok? We need to deal with the issue at hand. You were on a date with this girl here weren't you?"
"No! Why do you have no pictures of me carrying a box?" He grabbed the report from his younger brother's hand and began to frantically through it to see if there was any physical proof to what he was claiming actually happened. "It happened right after waiting for a bus..." That's when he saw it. "What..." He stared at the picture in disbelief.
"I didn't get that far." Al was confused as to what was making his brother so upset. "Let me see." Prying the small booklet from the hands of his brother, he saw a picture of Edward and Meadow sitting in front of a fountain, on a small stone bench, and he was leaning over giving her a kiss. "That's what I should be saying. What's this now?"
Ed took the picture back. "That did not happen." He pointed at the offending photograph.
"Pictures don't lie Ed." Roy sounded cocky as ever.
He was stumped. Taking one last look at the photo, he noticed something. "Wait a second." He looked at the 'kissy' photo, and the one right before it on the previous page. "These pictures were taken from two entirely different angles...you had more than one person following me!"
"Three actually." He smirked.
"It's nice to see you're spending your time and military resources wisely." Ed allowed the pictures back into Al's hands as he got up and slammed his palms down on Roy's desk. "Why do you take joy from tormenting me?" He squinted at the older man.
"Brother?" Al said calmly.
"Can't you see I'm trying to chew him out?" Spoken through his teeth in a low frustrated tone over his shoulder.
"Yes...but..." He held up the 'kissy' picture. "This is just taken on an awkward angle." He tilted it back his own way to examine it better. "Yeah see, it looks like you see the bus down the road here and are just turning to look at it."
"Can't be fixed huh? So who was it you had tail me?" As if from nowhere, Falman, Kain and Armstrong appeared behind Ed and Al, all with camera's strung around their necks. Ed turned to face them all, doing his best to avert his anger with casual conversation, he made a subtle observation. "Major Sergent Fury, that's a very nice camera."
"I put it together myself." He smiled proudly. "Photography's a hobby for me. Normally I just shoot birds, but the prospect of getting a shot of 'love birds' was too good to pass up." He stifled a laugh.
"So was it you who took the picture?" Making an educated guess at the person who had the 'talent' for taking such a 'clever' shot, he assumed the one with the nicest camera would be the best choice.
"No, it was I." Armstrong stepped forward to take credit. "There's nothing more beautiful than young love." He pulled Edward towards himself with a powerful arm around his shoulders. There was no hope for escape. "Wouldn't you agree? It's so touching!" He said, pressing the small alchemist further into his ribcage.
"Not if it's a lie." He managed to say loud enough with what little air he had left.
Armstrong let him free. "But what if it could be?" He rubbed his chin. "Have you never wondered about love Edward? So tragic."
"Where do I have time to worry about things like that?" Ed turned to Roy. "An out of town girlfriend isn't on my mind. I travel too much, she'd just get lonely, I'd hate to see that happen." His expression darkened slightly as he reminisced about his own mother and how his father made her feel like that. "Besides." He brightened up a little. "I already make one girl worry about me, why wold I do that to another one?"
"Oh." Roy seemed to act more nonchalantly than normal. "Loyalty is an admirable trait."
"Wait a minute." Ed didn't think that was a good way to accurately depict what he meant.
He quickly gathered up his papers into a neat pile. "It's nice to see some honesty, this was only a test after all." He placed the papers in his desk.
"Test of what? That's not what I meant." Ed was becoming frantic again.
The Colonel shut his desk tightly with a quick thud. "Dedicating yourself though you're still on the road. Admirable. I like that." He folded his hands.
Ed stood there, dumbfounded momentarily, the three who were behind him were mysteriously gone and Roy was coming up with a very crazy accusation. "I think you're having a different conversation with me than the one I'm having with you."
"You said that you didn't want to have an 'out of town' girlfriend on the road to worry about you because you already have one, Winry." Roy summed up all that he perceived.
Ed face palmed.
"I guess you sorta did say that in a round about way, brother." Al had done his best to keep quiet, but the dust was settling so he decided to step back up.
"Stay out of this Al." He thought. "Are we done here?" He questioned, frustrated with the Colonel's uselessness.
"I suppose. Carry on Fullmetal." Roy swiveled his chair to face away from him.
With a ruthful salute, Ed turned and left the office. Walking down the hall, he stretched his arms behind his own neck. "The nerve of him, wasting military time, my time and making me feel like two cenz."
Al walked along behind, his heavy metal feet hit the cold marble floor, making an echo sound in the deserted hall. "So you're never going to admit to him you love Winry."
Ed scoffed. "I'd never admit anything to him if I didn't have to."
"So." Al continued. "You love her, you just won't tell Roy?"
He stopped dead in his tracks and turned on his heel. "I don't know who's worse! You or him!" Ed stormed away.
"You're impossible." Al chuckled to himself. "Just say it brother!" He took up a jog went to catch up with his disgruntled sibling.