Lily: the mac daddy make ya! JUMP! JUMP! - -'''
So! I'm back! With! Chapter! TWO! Clap for me!
Love like a Lemon is love that is both sweet and sour at the same time…it's like eating a lemon, sometimes it can get too sour so you want to stop, but then you taste the sweetness and you want it to continue. It's something that you can either really hate or become addicted to and love forever. Love like a lemon can be refreshing and zesty but also bitter. It's like a two sided coin, a good and a bad, a Jekyll and Hyde, and so on and so forth. Anyway, sorry for the error with Sheska's name, I fixed it in this chappie. I hope you like it.
Lemon 02: In which there is plotting
"Do you think he's dying?"
"No idiot he can't do that"
"Why not?"
"Because then the bet would be off!"
Fury and Breda sat in the office throwing glances at Havoc every so often. In the past week, Havoc-the-recently-dumped had slowly become Havoc-the-mindless-vegetable. Not having a girlfriend was really taking the life out of the chain-smoking lieutenant and everybody, even Mustang-the-Oblivious-woman stealer, noticed.
"What's wrong with him?" Hawkeye peered into his unfocused eyes and waved a hand in front of his slack face.
"He hasn't had any female comfort for a whole week…he's going into withdrawal" Breda said carelessly. Hawkeye immediately drew back, a disgusted look crossing her features before returning to her usual impassive face.
"Very well, as long as he makes up his work later on…" she said a little stiffer than she usually would have. Breda shrugged and turned to his own work.
"No, that won't do at all!" everyone (but the halfway comatose Havoc of course) turned to Mustang who had suddenly slammed down his hand on his desk and begun to talk.
"Warrant Officer Farman!" he cried, Farman stood at attention,
"This has gone on long enough! If Havoc is too pathetic to get a woman on his own then, for the sake of his work, you must find him one!" Roy pounded the desk again for emphasis.
"m-me…sir?" Farman asked,
"YES! This is a mission!" Roy sat back down in his chair, picked up his paper, and began to read.
"b-but sir…" Farman tried to protest, Roy rattled the paper warningly and Farman straightened and saluted,
"Permission to begin mission sir!" he said miserably. Fury and Breda snickered behind his back and Hawkeye cast disapproving looks at them.
"Permission granted…oh and, you have the rest of the week to do this, I'm sure Lieutenants Fury and Havoc could do your papers…" Roy responded absently. Farman fought to contain his smirk and gathered his things. Coffee shops were always good places to er…."start missions" (aka get a late breakfast).
Sheska groaned and dragged a hand through her hair. It had been a terrible morning. She had stayed up reading three or so books and had only gotten half an hour of sleep since she forgot that she had to wake up earlier than usual and open the office for some higher-up in the military…some Archer something. So she had awoken to the blaring of her alarm and had hurriedly thrown on some clothes and brushed her teeth promising to take care of everything else during her lunch break.
Now she was slumped tiredly over her desk, face greasy and wan, hair a bristle bush sticking up from her scalp, and clothes a wrinkled and sloppy mess.
The clock chimed twelve and her tired eyes shifted eagerly towards the noise.
"Ah! Thank goodness! Now to run back home!" she cried and dashed out of the office.
Farman sighed and sat back to enjoy his tea. Sometimes Mustang's natural "evade-doing-actual-work" instinct could really come in handy. Finding a girlfriend for Havoc wouldn't be any problem. There were so many young women in Central who would probably love to date a handsome young man like Havoc, it also helped that he was in the military. All he had to do was proposition one innocently enough and show them a picture of the blonde and they would instantly be love (or lust) struck.
"Havoc that lucky bastard…the pretty ones really do have it easy" Farman muttered, sipping his tea.
"IIIITTTTAAAAIIII!" a crash and the sound of several books, and perhaps a human body, falling disturbed the quiet atmosphere of the café. Farman looked over and nearly spit out his tea when he saw what was going on.
On the floor were several heavy books and some papers, and along with them, desperately trying to save her precious treasures form getting dirty, was Sheska. The man she had bumped into was scowling down at her,
"Hey little girlie, you should watch where you're going!" he snarled, his friends joined in with a chorus of affirmative grunts.
"If you like to read so much, read up on how to make yourself prettier!" he continued, his friends roared with laughter and he smirked.
"Yeah! Ugly girls like you should have to wear masks or something!" one of the man's goons said, and the whole group of them erupted in cruel guffaws again. Farman frowned, never one to encourage bullying, especially bullying of a girl, he found the situation deeply upsetting. He could see the beginnings of tears in Sheska's eyes and marched over.
"Excuse me gentlemen, is there a problem over here?" he said in his best imitation of Mustang when he was mad. At once the men's leers disappeared and the one who had started all the mockery nervously stepped back,
"We weren't doing anything sir…" he said, beady eyes looking anywhere but Farman.
"Then why…" Farman asked, his voice full of Mustang-esque scorn "is this girl crying?"
And indeed Sheska had been silently crying on the floor, shivering over her dirtied books.
"I don't know! Ask her!" the man clearly did not know how to handle the contained fury Farman was directing at him. The warrant officer observed, with an outwards cold smirk, that the man had broken out in a sweat and his eyes were getting dodgier.
"Sir, can I ask your name?" Farman said, injecting menace into his voice and, if possible, directing an even colder glare at the man.
"b-but we weren't doing a-anything a-and" Farman smirked and decided to deliver his last blow,
"Sir…if you won't give me your name then, perhaps you'd like to take a stroll with me…" he said. The man and his friends gave a shout and ran off.
The café erupted in cheers and Farman let his Mustang façade slip off. He smiled down at Sheska,
"Sheska-san…are you all right?" he asked, extending a hand to help her get up. Sheska looked at him, tears in her eyes, and presented him with a slightly dusty book with a scratch in its cover
"L-look! Look at what those jerks did to my b-book!" she said. Farman relaxed, leave it to Sheska to worry more about her books than what people said about her.
"Well, now that I know you're ok, I've got to be getting back" Farman smiled at her once more and turned to leave the café.
It was only when he was in the office removing his jacket and getting down to work that he remembered his bet.
Suddenly he stood up and rushed out of the room.
"Must…find…Sheska!" he muttered. He was so focused on finding her that he didn't pay any attention to where he was going or who strayed into his path. That's why he ended up bowling into someone as he ran and hearing the sound of books dropping for the second time that day.
"AAAAAGFH!" a familiar squeal reached his ears and when he regained his balance he turned and saw, for the second time that day, Sheska bent over picking up a book.
"Gomen-nasai Sheska-san…" he said and picked up her book for her. The bushy haired girl adjusted her glasses and smiled at him,
"No-no, it's fine! Oh! I forgot to thank you for today at the café! You really saved me! Those guys were so scary!" she said. Farman regarded her as she spoke.
Sheska wasn't ugly…not exactly. She could be more accurately described as frumpish, lacking the frills and sparkle that made most other women attractive. Without the layers of makeup and without the hair clips, and shiny things other women wore, Sheska was like a wooden doll that had yet to be painted. But behind her enormous black glasses she had lovely wide eyes of a deep green color, and Farman was sure that somebody could tame the slightly horrifying tangle she called her hair. What was it women did with it? Starking? Starching? Straightening! That was it! He was sure someone could maybe straighten it and brush it…at least so it resembled hair more than a thorn bush.
Sheska also had nice facial features, she would never be beautiful like Winry or Gracia (or even Hawkeye which no one would ever utter out loud for fear of death) but she could be very attractive. The best part about Sheska was that all of her womanly assets were visible and somewhat attractive even without all the lace and frills. Farman sighed, but Havoc was an idiot who needed blatant visual evidence.
'but all that comes later…first he needs to get to know her without dating her…now how to go about making that happen…' he thought.
"Farman-san? Are you okay?" Sheska was speaking; Farman shook his head and smiled at her,
"I'm sorry…am I keeping you from leaving? Actually it's about time you went home right? Got a hot date tonight?" he said, smiling. Sheska snorted,
"I wish!" she said and immediately blushed.
"I MEAN! Er…no, I haven't….I don't have anything to do tonight really so you're not holding me up," Farman felt a smirk begin to creep onto his face and he stopped it. No need to make her suspicious.
"Say Sheska…if you're not doing anything tonight, why don't you go somewhere with me? I'll be bored without anything to do or anyone to do it with," a plan was already forming in his head as he spoke and that smirk was getting harder to contain.
Sheska thought for a minute,
"Okay!" she said happily.
"Well how about we meet at C'est l'amour at 7:00?" he asked and once again she agreed.
"Then I'll be seeing you tonight! I've gotta get back to work so I'll let you go now…" he waved at her and she happily skipped off.
The smirk he had been slowly losing against won its battle and slid across his face.
"Ah Sheska-san…I hate to do this to you but I'm afraid it won't be me you'll be dining with tonight!" he mumbled, a diabolical look in his eyes
"There'll be a surprise waiting at that restaurant tonight; for one frizzy haired Sheska and for our little blonde you-know-who!" he laughed a little and turned back to his office, ignoring the strange looks everyone who had overheard his "internal" monologue.
It was going to be a long night.
Lily: Very long indeed XDDDD
C'est l'amour means "its love" pretty much…do you sense something coming?
Reviews and Questions and Love letters and threats and flames and internet telemarketing and ads and other things are all welcome…by me…perhaps not by love you all reviewers!