Author's Notes: Welcome to my hell. I didn't mean to start this huge on-off series about Riza and Roy's son that I created, but it keeps happening and I've given up on stopping myself. For once though, someone actually asked me to write this. The prompt was Riza and Aidan + "Boo" and I was so happy to write this, even if I made myself sad in the process. Timeline-wise, this is set some months before Drabble 100 ("Until that Day") in my 100 Royai Drabble series, "you pull me through time," and a little over a year before my three-chapter fic, "i would part the sea".

Disclaimer: I don't own anything except for my OC and even that's probably stretching things. The Havolina kids belong to stupidsexymustang.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Unbeknownst to most people outside of her inner circle, Riza had always secretly enjoyed baking. She'd done it from an early age, mostly making pies or cookies. Roy had accused her of trying to make him fat when he'd been her father's alchemy apprentice, but that hadn't stopped him from eating batches of baked goods. As a teenage boy, he had been capable of eating a lot of cookies. Even now, she continued the habit, though not nearly as much. She'd bring in cookies for Roy whenever he was in the hospital, which was too much for her taste, and to the office whenever it was one of her teammate's birthdays. Rebecca had somehow managed to rope Riza into making her birthday cake every year since they'd roomed together at the Academy. Her best friend had a horrible sweet tooth

These days, baking had taken on another level, one that she couldn't deny made her happy. She liked domestic life outside of the military, though very few would expect that considering her focused and strict demeanor at work. Anyone that visited her apartment would've been shocked, her teammates included. She still remembered how confused Edward had been the first time he'd come to her apartment; for a moment, it had looked like he was about to accuse her of not being the real Riza Hawkeye. She wasn't the best of decorators, but she liked to keep things light and there was plenty of natural sunlight.

Today, the smell of cookies in the air. No pre-made store-bought cookies for her. She always made them from scratch, not even needing a recipe anymore. There was something about it that helped her feel better, like she had control, but also things were up in the air. Sometimes even a tried and true recipe that she knew by heart could turn out unpredictably. The cookies had an even higher chance of doing that now that she had a little helper giving her input every now and then on what else should be added to the cookies. Speaking of which…

Riza was just about to call out when she felt something bump into the back of her legs and shout, "Boo!" Upon looking down, she found a white blob standing next to her, or more specifically, someone in a white sheet. Black Hayate sat to the side, panting and lolling his tongue out, looking quite accomplished at having followed the white sheet around and making sure it didn't hurt itself.

"Oh, what's this?"

"Look, Mommy; I'm a ghost!" Aidan proclaimed.

At three years-old, her son already had a wild imagination. He liked to tell stories - though he surprisingly lied very little - and played pretend often. Whenever he played with his toys, he always came up with personalities for them and created plays for her to watch. He always colored in the lines in his coloring books, but not with the typical colors. Clouds would be pink, birds green, trees blue, anything he could think up. Even his favorite stuffed animals, a tiger that Roy had given him upon his birth and an alligator, had separate, distinct personalities already and he liked to talk to them as if they responded back.

Aidan was very obviously Roy's son in her mind.

With Halloween coming up, he had taken on a new level of imagining things. He wanted to dress up whenever he went to daycare. Well, there was nothing wrong with being a cowboy at daycare and Riza had actually ignored the disapproving letter one woman had sent back with Aidan a few days before. Roy got a huge kick out of the fact that Riza was acting "rebelliously," but honestly if her son wanted to dress up like a puppy or a ballerina, she didn't care and would support him in his imagination no matter what.

"Well, if you're a ghost, shouldn't you be invisible?" Riza asked curiously. That was one of the new words that he'd recently learned upon listening to shows about ghosts and other spooky things. Yet again another sign that he was very much Roy's child.

"Not all the time, Mommy," Aidan pointed out as he threw the sheet off the top of his head. "Then people wouldn't see the ghosts and know they're real!"

Riza laughed. "You got me." She picked him up, the sheet long enough to touch the floor even as she held him, and nuzzled noses with him. He giggled in response. She would miss the days when he was too small to do things like this. It made her wish that Roy could be here as well; she knew how much he hated the fact that he couldn't be here all the time and missed so much of these precious moments in Aidan's life. "How did you get so smart?"

"From you," Aidan said, like it was the most obvious answer in the world.

No, from your father, Riza thought as a small, regretful smile appeared on her face.

Although more in tune with emotions more than most children his age, especially hers, Aidan was focused on the task at hand - or rather, the raw cookie dough before him. "Lots of chocolate?" She nodded her head. He loved chocolate and wanted double of it in every sweet he got. After Roy got him hooked on double chocolate ice cream, that had been the end of that story. "Can I eat it?"

"Not yet," Riza told him. Roy would let him eat the cookie dough raw, if only because he'd do the same. "They have to be baked first, so you don't get sick."

"Mustang says that's a lie and you're just a worry-wart," Aidan told her.

"Does he now," Riza murmured thoughtfully. She was going to have to talk with Roy about that.

It surprisingly didn't sting as much to hear her son refer to his father as "Mustang," not when they'd taught him to do that from an early age, but it still made her stomach sink a little. He did it with such ease now, not even hesitating most of the time. She worried that he forgot that Roy was actually his father - and then was forced to wonder if that was such a bad thing. It would make things easier for now. He'd never asked why he couldn't call Roy "dad" anymore, which had shocked Roy terribly, but she knew what kind of metal her son was made of. He was hers, he came from her, and somehow he'd absorbed her ability to bear hardships very quickly. He didn't ask because she told him; he trusted her completely.

"Let's get these in the oven, so we can eat them after dinner," Riza said as she set him back down.

"But dinner is so far away!" Aidan exclaimed, sounding very distressed.

Riza put a hand on her hip. "And when do we eat sweets?"

Aidan sighed, but nodded his head. "After we eat our veggies."

She very much counted herself lucky to have had such an understanding child and one that seemed to love vegetables almost just as much as he did sweets. Rebecca was still mind-boggled whenever they would go out to eat together and Aidan would happily eat his broccoli while her son Bran fought back with her. Then again, Bran had inherited Rebecca's sweet tooth, so really, she should've expected it. Her daughter Ally wouldn't even touch the foods unless Havoc was the one to feed her. Riza got lucky.

After putting the cookies in the oven to bake, Riza followed Aidan and Black Hayate into the living room. She cringed whenever he almost stepped on the white bedsheet trailing after him, but he finally dropped it in order to climb on the window sill to look out the window at the park. With autumn in full gusto, the leaves had turned orange and were falling everywhere. This was her favorite time of the year. She loved the colors and the cool breeze. It was Aidan's too; every day she picked him up from daycare, he would present her with a new changed leaf that he'd found.

"Speaking of dress up, Halloween is in a few days," Riza said as she sat down on the couch. It had felt strange at first to have Black Hayate not follow her whenever she sat down, but the dog dutifully followed Aidan everywhere, like he was the boy's personal guardian. "Have you decided what you want to be?"

Aidan slowly lowered himself down from the window. Riza immediately detected a hint of nervousness in her son's body language, how hesitant he suddenly seemed. Around Riza, Aidan was typically very open and didn't hide things from her, but she'd begun to notice the way he closed himself off every now and then, even to her. It usually happened after he saw Roy. Deep down, she knew that he had not forgotten who Roy was, not when she saw the way he'd light up whenever Roy came by or when he went to the office with her. She'd watch as he'd struggle with himself to not run towards Roy, the same internal struggle that Roy had in return. He was acting the same way now.

"I want to be an alchemist," Aidan mumbled as he turned around to face her. He didn't look at her though, instead keeping his eyes trained on his dangling feet.

Riza thought she might stop breathing altogether. She knew what he meant - that he wanted to dress up as an alchemist, as non-descript as that might be - but she felt like it was something else, something more. Aidan was a very precocious child. He liked to learn and was already working on his words and reading. Although he never asked her for a story whenever he woke up in the middle of the night and crawled into bed with her, she knew that Roy always indulged him and did so on the rare occasion that he stayed the night.

One day, Aidan would want to do more than dress up as an alchemist for Halloween. She knew that in her heart.

"Oh? Any specific alchemist?" Riza was proud that her voice was so level and light. She didn't know how Roy would react to this news. Excited, pleased - and very wary as well. They both knew the dangers that alchemy provided. The State Alchemist program was still in effect as well. Roy had been relieved that Aidan wasn't afraid of his alchemy and was probably the one of the few three year-olds that could pronounce and spell the word properly.

Aidan huffed and folded his arms across his chest. "Connor is already going to be the Fullmetal Alchemist and he says that no one can dress up as him if he is." Riza smiled to herself. Edward had been terribly smug and rubbed it in Roy's face when he'd found out that kids actually dressed up as him for Halloween. A few kids even dressed up as Alphonse back in his armor suit days, except their costumes were typically made out of cardboard. "I told him that was fine since I know Uncle Ed and he doesn't."

Riza chuckled a little. Some people might have thought that Aidan had gained the ability to snappily retort from his father, but Roy assured her that it was all from her. She'd put him in his place on many occasions throughout the years that they'd worked together.

"The Strong-Arm Alchemist?"

"Too big. I don't have muscles and I'm short!" Aidan patted his head, which was topped with the black mop of hair that he'd most definitely inherited from his father. "And I've got lots of hair."

Before even asking him, she'd had a feeling where he was going with this. In his mind, Aidan didn't want to dress up like Armstrong or even Edward because he didn't look anything like them, even if Roy joked every now and then that Aidan was the same height as Edward when he'd been Roy's subordinate. No, there was only one famous State Alchemist that her son would want to dress up as. He was just afraid to say it out loud.

Biting his lip, Aidan looked at her somewhat pleadingly. "I want to be the Flame Alchemist."

Riza's eyes softened. "Oh, Aidan…"

"He's just as famous as Uncle Ed and Uncle Alphonse!" Aidan burst out, a lot more upset than she'd anticipated. He bottled his emotions and kept them under lock as bad as she did. "Sometimes at daycare, we pretend that we're alchemists and Lincoln always gets to be the Flame Alchemist, but I should be him!"

Leaving her spot from the couch, Riza kneeled down in front of her son, placing her hands on his knees. That stilled his swinging feet. He looked at her with those dark eyes of his, so full of determination and need. Roy would talk about how closed off Aidan could be with him, how he couldn't read the little boy at times, but with Riza, Aidan was as open as could be. He'd learned just how to look at her to get what he wanted; he'd learned it, no doubt, from watching Roy. She'd learned to say no to Roy, but she'd suddenly found it very difficult with Aidan.

"I don't know if that's a good idea," Riza told him, unsure of what else to say. Roy would be ecstatic. He wouldn't think of what it would look like, only that his son admired him.

"Why not?" Aidan sounded so hurt. It almost made her wince. Before she could think of anything to say to explain such a complex situation, he quietly asked, "Does it have to do with the fact that he can't be my dad?"

Riza put a hand to her mouth and then reached out to smooth his hair down. "Oh, Aidan, no, it's not like that - he's not–" But of course to a three year-old, that was what it did look like. It wasn't that his father wasn't around; it was that his father couldn't be around, at least not all the time. He couldn't do the same things that other dads did. She still remembered the way Aidan forlornly played with his toy cars on Father's Day after he'd come home from daycare. He hadn't even asked her why Roy hadn't come to visit him like all the other dads. "He's your father. He loves you. Things are just…complicated."

Aidan was only three though. How could she possibly explain to him why Roy wasn't here more often than not? How could she tell him that she and his father couldn't be together, not truly, until certain things happened? How could she tell him that his mere existence was technically against the law? They had promises they needed to fulfill, but she couldn't help but feeling like that was just an excuse now. Were they really doing the greater good when one little boy suffered the consequences?

Pulling him into a hug, Riza wrapped her arms around him and Aidan clung to her. One of the boys at his daycare called him a mama's boy, but it hadn't phased him in the slightest. It had confused him instead. Of course he was. She was his rock, his constant, his mom. One mother had commented that it wasn't healthy how close Aidan was to her or how quiet and reserved he was while another mother had wished that her rowdy four year-old would take notes. Riza knew that she was lucky with Aidan. She worried all the time that he would be angry and resent her for being alone or believe that she was the one keeping his dad away, but he never acted like it.

"How about this?" Riza said as she pulled away. "You can dress up like a soldier when we go trick-or-treating."

"A General?" Aidan asked hopefully.

"Well, that's only proper for a young man of your calibre," Riza responded as she brushed off one of his shoulders like she often did Roy. He let out a giggle and brushed off his other shoulder to mimic her. "But you can keep the white gloves in your pocket. That's what the Flame Alchemist does, after all. He doesn't wear them all the time."

Aidan nodded his head thoughtfully. "True."

"But when we go over to Aunt Rebecca's and Uncle Jean's for the Halloween party after, you can wear the gloves."

"For real?" Aidan asked exactly.

When she nodded her head, the lopsided grin that appeared on his face both made Riza's day and broke her heart. How terribly like Roy. There was no way that they were going to be able to go through this charade for much longer. Any day now, the truth about their insubordination and breaking of the fraternization laws was going to come out and it was going to damage everyone in its path. But for now, she didn't care. She refused to care. Not when a simple thing such as thing made her son light up.

They couldn't do the same things other families did, but she'd be damned if she took away her son's ability to dress up like the man he looked up to, his father.