Thank you Transparent Space for taking the time to write me a review! I'm more than happy to know you enjoyed and that the hints of comedy reached you!

Apparently, I'm a sucker for them getting caught... ':D

Where Riza Surprises With Tenderness

The wind howled through the corridor when the waggon's outdoor entrance opened and closed. The night was chilly but rather bright with the waning full moon outside the window. Everyone was weary from the week's work, the packing up and saying goodbye to their friends and colleagues in East City. They were all stressed and excited, slightly uneasy and more irritable than usual. Mustang was by far the most irritable of them. In fact, he was irritated most hours of the day, every tiny inconvenience seemingly piling up on his endless list of misfortune; or so he called it.

Ever since his friend's death – the murder of Brigadier General Maes Hughes – the Colonel had been on edge nearly twenty-four hours of the day. He suspected people unreasonably, accused some more or less openly, growled more than he spoke and practically killed the mood of any room he entered, tension thickly strangling the air with him so much as giving a sigh.

The team did its best to endure with Hawkeye leading the way. One could not say she was as if transformed, her ever calm and stoic attitude remaining, but it had a different aura to it. She was seldomly the victim of his tantrums but on occasion, even she would become a target, bearing it most gracefully, tactfully throwing in an additional 'Sir' where he would need the reassurance of respect. Perhaps to remind herself that it was nothing personal, too.

Other times, there was nothing he would accept but her words; her comfort. He never even sipped the countless cups of tea she prepared for him after an outburst or sleepless night, though the mere presence of it and the knowledge of her caring beyond a superior-subordinate relationship soothed his raw nerves to a tolerable extent.

She was his salvation, his lighthouse in a stormy night, his tower of strength when he was at the end of his own. One late afternoon, he had been so mentally exhausted that, in his frustration of not finding what he had been looking for, he had carelessly slammed his head into shelf when her quick reaction had interfered, catching his crash with her shoulder instead. He must have been aware but there had hardly been enough will to keep standing, so the Colonel had rested his forehead there for a while, the stars of her uniform imprinting into his skin. And she had let him. Continuing with the report she had been reading, flipping over page after page, the Lieutenant had stood her ground, showing a rare moment of affection when thinking the rest of the team to have lost interest, a hand having come up to stroke down her defeated superior officer's back.

There were steps outside the compartment now, dragging and tired. Havoc opened his eyes slot-wide, spotting both Hawkeye and Breda to be doing the same. They all closed again when it was only the Colonel, entering after spending half the night outside in the cold, staring out from the end platform of the carriage, brooding. Even Havoc had retreated hours ago, his last cigarette bud tossed into the darkness.

Poor Fuery, he now thought to himself. He was on the bunk below Havoc, though not for long anymore. Falman was the luckiest of them all, having been the quickest with packing and catching an earlier train, probably already snug in his new apartment in Central. Havoc had calculated this situation, of course, the countless experiences of sharing a room with the team having driven him into taking the upper bunk. He assumed Breda to have acted out of a similar wit, and even if both felt sorry for their youngest comrade, the mere notion of sleeping on the rucking, dirty floor of the train compartment made the hard bunks feel like fluffy clouds.

Hawkeye was below Breda, eyes already closed again and breathing rhythmical from what Havoc could tell. She was the only one the Colonel would never kick out, they knew. She was the safest apart from Black Hayate, who snored quietly where he was curled up in his dog bed, right beneath his owner.

Now toeing off his boots where he discarded them in the corner with all of the others, Mustang shrugged off his coat, then military uniform's jacket, the ornaments clinking softly.

Feeling eyes on him in the dark, Havoc glanced ahead to meet an equally sympathetic gaze as his own. Breda had definitely been planning as much as him, not yet back asleep until the ordeal was over. Pursing his lips, he waited when the Colonel leaned with one hand onto his bunk, almost giving the impression of actually going to the length of seizing the upper one. Havoc almost snickered at the relieved sigh from Breda when the Colonel let go.

It got stuck in his throat when Mustang did not turn to Fuery's bunk, but his First Lieutenant's instead. A little clumsily, especially considering the amount of brightness they were granted by the moon, the Colonel leaned down to fit under Breda's sleeping place. He accidentally nudged her legs while lifting his own over them and instead of the anticipated scold, she retracted hers as if automatically.

With her eyes not opening once for a quizzical look, Hawkeye scooted closer to the edge to create the space he needed. With more shuffling and a brief struggle to get under the blanket, Mustang finally slumped down behind her, a jaded sigh deflating him. Havoc stared at how she turned her head to glance over her shoulder, her eyes so tender, so empathic, it almost melted him just by looking at how she regarded the man now cuddling in behind her.

The lump of Mustang's arm where it had wound around her midriff shifted, her own joining. Then her hand emerged from the blanket to where it had been on the pillow before. It appeared bigger now, and it took Havoc a moment to realise it to not only be hers, but the Colonel's, too, fingers interlaced, her palm to his dorsum. Lifting it a tad further, Hawkeye gently pressed his knuckles to her lips, enticing another, this time softer sigh from her superior. Leaving his hand there with hers, she heaved up her lower flank for what Havoc presumed the Colonel's other arm's digging beneath her waist to be, the lump from before returning beneath the sheets, if smaller.

The noise stilled, steady breathing filling the by only wind and train rattling sounds interrupted silence. Havoc had not noticed himself to have held his breath, only realising when Breda finally dared to let out his. The latter was as if frozen to the spot, too afraid of Hawkeye's fury should she become aware of him leaning over the rim of his bunk to sneak a glance at the spectacle. Now Havoc really wanted to laugh.

Keeping it to himself, he playfully twinkled at Breda, then closed his eyes to follow in his superiors' example and drift back off. They would arrive soon enough and then the cycle of unpacking, getting to know the new office and colleagues as well as working tirelessly would repeat itself.

With poor Breda frozen into place until he deemed Hawkeye to be soundly asleep, peace returned to the Mustang Unit, if only for one night. One night of grateful sleep and lifted tension by the only one to ever truly appease the Colonel's never-ending struggles – the one to unquestionably love him with all her heart and despite everything.