Disclaimer: I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist or its characters. I do, however, own Henry Fitzwilliam, his family, and the Unnamed Psychologist.

Notes: Here we go, a proper look at our military buds. Hurrah!

Chapter Four:

The whole office looked exceptionally tired the next day. In fact, all of Headquarters did. The only people who had managed to get a relatively undisturbed night of sleep were the Fuhrer and a handful of his generals. It had been the duty of every commanding officer to make sure that his own people were safe, and so even officers with their own houses had been roused – that is why Mustang and Hawkeye had been dutifully present, beyond Mustang's fire-extinguisher duties of isolating flames from oxygen to starve them of their energy supply.

Heads bobbed slowly in time with the pace of the hand writing on or signing the forms beneath it. Every now and then a head would droop a little, but usually a loud voice or a kick from the next desk over would bring it back up, so that it could return to its bobbing.

The day was filled with boring monotony, until there was a knock on the door of the Mustang unit's office, and a delivery boy came in with a small bouquet of flowers.

"Uhh, is there a Miss Hawkeye here?" he asked, consulting his clipboard.

A few heads lifted up to look at the boy curiously.

"Chances are she's the only woman in the room, Junior," Breda advised sharply. He wasn't as tactful as usual when he'd been up half the night before.

"Oh, right." The boy's ears turned red. Everything about him from his nervous stance to the way he clutched at his clipboard as though it was a floatation device and he was in the middle of the sea during a storm just screamed that he'd been working at the florist's for a week at most. He took Breda's advice, however, and approached Hawkeye. With a slight stutter, he asked if she was Miss Hawkeye.

Still frowning in confusion, as she had been when he asked the room the first time, she said, "Yes."

With a sigh of relief, the delivery boy asked for her signature to say the delivery had been made, and handed over the flowers. He left as quickly as he could without running and closed the door behind him.

Hawkeye held the flowers at arms' length away from her face and stared at them, still frowning. When she looked up to ask if anyone knew where they came from, she found five faces watching her, equally bamboozled.

"Is . . . Is there a card?" Havoc asked, when he puzzled out that her expression meant she had no more idea than they did.

Twisting the bouquet around, Hawkeye caught a glimpse of a white card poking out from between some stems and plucked it out. "'Miss Hawkeye,'" she read. "'Our meeting last night was brief, but I forgot to thank you for saving my life. –Henry Fitzwilliam.'"

"The photographer," Mustang said with a tone of realisation. He had been watching just as interestedly as the others, if not more suspiciously. "He was probably too busy thinking about where he could get a good shot to think about anything else then. Nice of him to come around to our way of thinking."

"What happened?" Feury asked, eyes wide.

Mustang gave a short laugh and shook his head in disbelief as he recounted the event. "He was standing right next to this burning wall, too busy taking his photographs to realise the thing is coming down. Lieutenant Hawkeye spotted him while I was damping the flames down on the barracks' east side, and goes sprinting off to tackle him away just before the whole wall collapses on him. When I realised what was happening I wandered over to tell him he was an idiot for being that close to a burning building–"

"How charming. I wonder why he didn't send you flowers, too?" said Breda, with a smirk.

"–and then we escorted him to where the soldiers were waiting, and got back to our job," Mustang finished, with a roll of his eyes directed towards the pudgier of his Second Lieutenants.

"So he gives her flowers," Havoc said, redirecting everyone's attention back to the bouquet still held awkwardly in Hawkeye's hands. He grinned at the frown that had returned to Mustang's face. "I suppose that's nice of him."

Feury got out of his seat and wandered over to look at them. "What sort are they?"

Hawkeye had opened her mouth to say that she really didn't know, when Falman made use of his encyclopaedic knowledge and said, "Those two in the middle are irises – a symbol for friendship, faith, hope, wisdom and valour, meaning 'my compliments' – and those ones your hand is on are pink carnations – meaning 'you're unforgettable'."

The office became silent for a moment, and then Breda, Havoc and Mustang all let out chuckles and snorts of laughter at the same time. Falman was hiding a smile by pretending to scratch his nose, and Feury's eyebrows had shot up to the ceiling.

"Oh, shut up," Hawkeye said sourly, putting the flowers off to the side of her desk and giving them a wary look.

"Next thing you know, he'll be asking you out to dinner," Havoc joked, setting off another round of laughter.

Hawkeye scowled. "Get back to work."

By the end of the day, the office was back in the same weary state it had been in earlier. Only the occasional grin at the tidy little bouquet marked any difference in action.