Disclaimer: I do not own Roy or Riza or Fullmetal Alchemist. However I do own this random teddy bear balloon here hovering in front of me. If you absolutely hate this story you can totally blame it on this balloon.

Summary: She had never liked balloons, after all, how was one supposed to admire a depressingly happy floating piece of worthless plastic? Nevertheless, Roy always did have a tendency to change her opinions.

BALLOON

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To Riza, superficial unnecessary things like balloons were about as appealing to her as a casualty. Really, they were wretchedly over-happy colours. They floated in the air like undecided matters. They hosted cheesy smiles and then they shriveled up into a pulp or popped with a startling pop! sound. Either way their deaths were uncalled for and totally depressing. AND they were overpriced. Honestly, they were blown up plastic!

Riza Hawkeye hated balloons.

There were many other things she could spend her money on. She could save up for a new gun, or some cartridges of ammunition. She could buy protective wear or something else that was productive. She would not, under any circumstances, buy a balloon of her own free will.

After all, how was one supposed to admire a depressingly happy floating piece of worthless (and stretchy) plastic? It even smelled happy, but falsely so. Generally, Riza left controversial matters like balloons alone in the office, but when Roy inquired her opinion on whether he should impress his niece on her birthday with a balloon, she had very calmly offered him advice that balloons were about as useless as he was in the rain, save that they were useless in all situations.

To which he had replied that he could not give his six year old niece a gun, as much as he was sure her mother would appreciate that.

She had sulkily given him a glare, commenting that she did not care either way whatever he chose to gift his niece with. He had chuckled, leaning back casually with his ebony hair flopping in a rather charming manner over his eyes, letting a cat-grin stretch over his face.

She turned away, absolutely refusing to admit the way a little scarlet had crept onto her cheeks. The day had passed more or less usually, if 'usual' was indeed what you could call their particular little department.

Of course, she had been none too happy when, after lunch break, she had been not so pleasantly surprised to find a yellow heart shaped balloon floating above her desk. She had also not been pleased to find that the Colonel was missing from his desk while the rest of their subordinates lounged at their desk grinning knowingly at her. Even Maes, who had been formerly advised to come in to check out Roy's latest office gift to her had managed to skip out on work to read Roy's little 'For my heart-stealer' note left stuck onto the balloon with a corny heart shaped sticker.

She also did not appreciate stickers.

Typically of him, he had showed up at her house after work with more balloons his arms could hold, grinning at her behind a curtain of strings holding onto the balloons. "Hey Rize, broughtcha some gifts."

"So I see," she commented wryly. Really, sometimes she wondered why she even dated the man. He was a goofball who said and did all the wrong things at all the wrong times. Of course, he had a way of making his mistakes seem perfectly romantic and he was an absolute idiot. But a handsome one.

Of course, when she arrived at home at the end of their date, returning to a roof-full of floating, various colour and shaped balloons, her first thought had been, 'And what am I supposed to do with all these balloons?' Hayate, having comtemplated and coming to the decision that they were UFO's of that sort, settled on barking and jumping (not very successfully) off the couch up to paw at them.

Once, a low floating balloon just within his reach had end up underneath him at the end of one such attempt. He had hovered in mid-air for a split second before tumbling in a rather undignified manner to the floor. After this particular incident, he'd settled for simply barking at them.

And as little as she liked to admit it, though they were superficial and completely unneccesary, she rather liked balloons when he gave them to her with a kiss and smile.