Beautiful

"Yes Maes, I know she's beautiful ... " Mustang sat at his desk, phone to his ear, drumming his fingers impatiently.

Hawkeye and Havoc walked into the staff room at just that moment. She had accepted his invitation to practice with him at 0830, and by the time they had finished, cleaned up, and gotten over there, it was a little after nine.

"No, of course, I couldn't possibly turn down a chance ..." Mustang pursed his lips. "Maes, are you planning on letting me say anyth-" Apparently, Maes wasn't, because Mustang went back to keeping his silence and drumming his fingers.

Jean stole a glance at Hawkeye at the word "beautiful." Objectively speaking, not really. She was pretty, but he wouldn't call her beautiful. Still, "pretty" was all Jean really asked for in a woman. He was a breast man, though. The uniform jacket did a good job of hiding a woman's shape, but as Hawkeye went over to her table, he remembered what she'd looked like back on the range in the black turtleneck after she'd taken the jacket off. Not quite as built as he liked, but she'd do. Definitely.

He sat down at his table and glanced at his desk calendar and to-do list to make sure he hadn't forgotten about anything he needed to do first thing. But mostly, he listened to Mustang's phone call and thought about Hawkeye. She outranked him and was second in command, but Mustang was the officer he reported to, not her. For purposes of the fraternization regs, she was a peer, not a superior. She wasn't off limits.

Vato waited impatiently for the new aide to show up. He had a schedule and to-do list typed up for her and had planned on doing a file review with her starting at 0900. He'd expected her to get in at 0830 and had actually allowed an entire half hour for her to get settled first.

When she came in with Havoc, he realized he'd miscalculated. Of course, he thought. They're both marksmen. The range.

He couldn't even go to his backup plan because the Lt Colonel was stuck on the phone with Major Hughes again. He imagined the Major's wedding plans were a major cause of inefficiency throughout the military right now and it was just his luck that Lt Colonel Mustang was going to be his best man.

"Second Lieutenant," he said, going over to her table after she'd had a chance to sit down, "it looks like I presumed on your schedule. Is there still a chance we could at least start going through some of the files at 9:30 or 10:00?"

Riza had nothing whatever planned herself. How could she? It was her first day. "Just give me a chance to get my coffee. We can start sooner than that," she said, realizing how important his schedule was to the man.

"I'll get it, sir," said Falman. "With one milk, right?" He remembered from yesterday lunch.

"That's right, Warrant Officer," she said. "That would be very kind of you. I'll be ready to go when you get back."

That was good. They'd only be fifteen minutes past when he'd wanted to get started, then.

As he left the staff room to get the coffee, he thought about Mustang's conversation with Hughes. "Yes Maes, I know she's beautiful." If Vato hadn't known it was Hughes' fiancee he'd been taking about, it would have been easy to think about Second Lieutenant Hawkeye. Which he supposed he was doing right now, come to think of it.

Do I think she's beautiful? he thought. Attractive, definitely that. And I've at least gotten out of the enlisted ranks. She's not off limits, not according to the regs, anyway. I wonder what her legs look like.

He'd never dated anyone who'd outranked him. Not that he'd ever specifically ruled it out. It was way too soon to think about anything like that, though. He'd just met her yesterday and they hadn't even established a work relationship yet. He filed the thought away for future consideration.

Kain was just browsing through a tech journal when Havoc and Hawkeye came in, and looked up just as Mustang was saying "she's beautiful" on the phone. It was impossible not to try to apply the words to the new aide. Kain thought she was pretty, and if a guy was in love with her, he'd probably think she was beautiful. But she was too old for him and as an officer, definitely off limits.

Besides, she was kind of scary. Like Havoc had said at lunch yesterday, killing had been part of her primary job description in Ishval. He sort of thought it was still pretty important in her current job description. He knew that officially she was Mustang's aide and another ops officer, like Havoc. But Mustang, Havoc and Falman all said she was going to be the Lt Colonel's bodyguard. And she'd even shot children, something he was still trying to wrap his head around.

Roy finally got off the phone with Hughes. Amidst the gushing about Gracia and the wedding preparations, Maes had also managed to let him know about someone he thought he should check out for his team: a second lieutenant who'd gone to the West City Academy called Breda. He'd also dropped a totally unnecessary hint about Riza's, no Second Lieutenant Hawkeye's, feelings for him.

That must have been some conversation, thought Roy. Of course, Maes always could read people better than anyone else I've ever known.

He looked at her going over Falman's schedule for her while the Warrant Officer got her coffee. Ishval had ruined a lot of things and their relationship was one of them. She didn't hate him, at least. She still, somehow, believed in him. She'd work for him, watch his back, keep him from another disaster like Ishval. But she'd never be his. Not that way.