Accidents Will Happen
By Rurouni Star
Summary: That poor credenza.
Chapter 1:
"Isn't she just the most adorable thing you've ever laid eyes on – and she rides that bike like a pro, soon she'll be able to go without training wheels-"
"Hughes!"
"-she'll be winning gold metals one day, I tell you! Can you imagine her all grown up, not only gorgeous, but talented, too-"
"Hughes!"
"Yes, Edward? Did you want to look at the photos more?"
The so-named groaned and put his face in his hands. "Hughes," he muttered through gloved fingers, "I don't know how much you learned about what happened in Aquroya, but so help me, if you tell the colonel-"
Hughes laughed and handed him a picture. "Don't worry," he said. "I already talked to the colonel."
Ed froze, choking. "A-and?" he asked.
The older man grinned. "I may have mentioned something about you spectacularly losing an alchemical battle because you got distracted by-"
"Don't even mention it!" Ed said in a panic, eyes wide. "There's people around here, you know!"
Hughes regarded him curiously for a moment. "Come now," he said. "It's not all that bad. It's just part of being a man."
Ed's hands twitched, and Hughes imagined that he was probably wishing they were wrapped around his throat. However, he settled for simply muttering, "You're an idiot."
"Would you like to see the pictures of her last birthday again?" he asked with an easy grin. "There were some of you in there, too…"
Ed made a quick beeline for the door.
-----
"Why does everyone feel like torturing me today?"
Hawkeye heard the hopeless sigh from around the corner and almost felt a pang of sympathy; Ed really did get the short end of the stick (not to make a horrible, possibly life-threatening pun).
She almost felt sorry for him But then again, he had destroyed her favorite credenza the other day.
Or had that been the colonel?
It was hard to remember. Between them, they usually managed to force her to pull her gun at least once a week. More on Ed's side of things if it happened to be raining.
Ed stormed past her as she walked toward the colonel's office, paperwork in hand. He was hunched over and muttering to himself, hands stuffed sullenly in his pockets.
She stopped and blinked, however, and turned around to look at Ed again.
Was it possible…?
"Ed?" she said curiously.
He turned his head and raised an eyebrow.
She decided quickly that she didn't really want to ask what she'd thought of asking. "Nothing," she said.
As he pushed his way down the hall, though, she thought of how very close she'd come to setting him homicidal. And it was, of course, silly to think that he had actually gotten shorter.
-----
"…so in short, you really ought to get yourself a wife."
Mustang twitched.
"How did we get from setting surveillance on Fullmetal to my marital status?" he demanded.
Hughes laughed – it came both from the phone and from just outside his door. "I'm just giving you some advice," he said. "It did wonders for me, let me tell you. I'm so happy these days, it's stupefying!"
"It's stupefying, all right," Mustang muttered to himself, not really caring if Hughes heard it on his end. "Is his phone tapped?" he said in a louder voice.
Hughes was silent for just a moment. Then, with something that sounded like very carefully suppressed laughter, he said: "Roy, all the phones here are tapped."
The colonel froze. Then, the memory safely repressed (because obviously Hughes couldn't have listened to certain calls he'd recently made) he continued. "And who could we have following him? He knows most of the people at the office. It would be incredibly obvious if any of them were to follow him everywhere he went."
He had the strangest impression that Hughes was grinning.
"It's already taken care of."
At the thrill in his voice, Mustang almost felt sorry for the older Elric.
Almost. But then again, Hawkeye now blamed him for the credenza Fullmetal had accidentally dispatched.
-----
