Chapter Three: Elope
Pairing: Havolina (Side: Royai)
Characters: Rebecca Catalina, Jean Havoc, Riza Hawkeye, Roy Mustang
Rating: High T/Low M
Summary: Jean and Rebecca's relationship changes drastically

"Marry me."

Wait- what?!

Rebecca Catalina turned around, jaw dropped as she stared at Jean Havoc, who was standing a few feet a way from her. His face had a classic 'Oh shit, what the hell just came out of my mouth!?' expression, and Rebecca was fairly certain hers had a similar one as well.

"What... did you just say to me, Jean Havoc?" Rebecca said, raising an eyebrow up in utter confusion.

Might as well keep on digging that hole you're standing in Jean.

Jean gulped, before repeating himself. "Marry me."

And then he waited. Waited for Rebecca Catalina to do something- anything. Yell. Scream. Punch him in the gut. Slap him in the face. Laugh until she ended up wetting herself.

But she just... stood there.

Her brain was trying to process the all the information at one time.

Jean Havoc, former Second Lieutenant and recovered paraplegic, whom she had known for over five years, who'd called her insults like harpy and shrew during the majority of those five years, who- at best- only dealt with her because they were both close friends to one Riza Hawkeye- had asked her to marry him.

You know, most normal men asked the girl to become his girlfriend before asking them to become his wife.

"Oh hell Rebecca, say something. Please. Don't just stand there! People are starting to stare as they walk by!" Jean groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Jean! You dumbass mother fucker. You meant to ask her out on a date! You know what a date is, don't you? Coffee at a café, breakfast at a diner, drinks at a bar, dinner at a nice restaurant- those are dates! Hell, going to a gun range can be considered a date! Lord knows Riza and the Chief consider that to be a date. Shit, in a few years they'll be able to bring their daughter with them and call it a Family Outing! Asking a girl to marry you is NOT the same as asking her out on a date!

He didn't care what she said to him, he just wanted her to say something. Nothing that could come out of her mouth would surprise him.

"Yes."

Except for that.

"Huh?" He yelped, looking at her.

He was surprised to see her now standing in front of him, as he hadn't noticed her walking towards him during his mental freak out.

"Yes. I'll marry you." She repeated.

"You know I don't have a ring, right?" He gulped.

"Well no shit. I wasn't expecting you to have one." She laughed, a smile on her face.

"Any particular style ring you'd like, Becca?" He asked.

Rebecca thought for a moment, all the styles she'd seen flashing by in her mind. All the different band colors and carat sizes and gem cuts could easily overwhelm her, much less him.

So she decided to make it easy for him.

"As long as the band doesn't turn my finger green and the diamond is real, I don't care what it looks like. You have a week to pick something out for me, or else this... umm, agreement, is off." She said, shrugging her shoulders before giving him a quick peck on the cheek.

"Now, if you'll please excuse me, I'm late for a lunch date with Riza." She said, quickly turning around and walking away.

"Tell Riza I said hey." Jean yelled after her.

"Will do."

Rebecca decided on the way to meet Riza to not inform her of Jean's completely random marriage proposal and her accepting it.

She figured it would be best to wait and see if he was successful in finding a ring before mentioning it to anyone.

"She still teething?" Rebecca asked, as her Goddaughter shoved a spoon in her mouth, gnawing in it.

"Like a demon." Riza sighed, balancing her seven month old daughter in her lap so she could also eat her food.

"Hey Reez, can I ask you some questions?" Rebecca asked.

"About?" Riza asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You and Mustang's... relationship?"

"It's not much of a relationship. We were lucky no one found anything that can be considered fraternization while I was under his command back when Bradley was still alive. That's honestly the only reason why we both have jobs and if it wasn't for her, I doubt we'd still able to work together." Riza sighed.

Rebecca frowned, remembering the disciplinary meeting her and Roy had to go through a few months prior. She hadn't even been in the room and could still hear Grumman's very angry warning to them.

"If you two conceive one more child together while you're both in the military, the two of you will be dishonorably discharged! I don't care if you're under the same direct command or if one of you decides to transfer to Briggs with Major General Armstrong! You'll both be dishonorably discharged immediately! Do I make myself clear!?"

"Your Grandpa was terrifying that day. I've never been scared of the man before." Rebecca shivered.

"Me either." Riza sighed.

"So how exactly do things work for you guys?"

"Right now, we're so scared to do anything that can cost us our jobs, that we're basically co-parenting. We can't be a couple- we can't even live together." She frowned.

"How often does Roy even get to see her?" Rebecca frowned.

"Oh every day. Half the time I take her to work with me- perks of being the adjacent to the man in charge of Eastern Command, and Roy's apartment is right next door to mine. We're basically in a... gray area, so to speak."

"So it's basically no different then it was before you got pregnant?" Rebecca asked.

Riza blanched. "Excuse me?"

"Oh please! I refuse to believe that my precious little Goddaughter was the result of a one time thing. But if that's the story you guys are sticking with, then so be it." Rebecca smirked, earning an eye roll from her blonde best friend.

"You know all of your issues with your relationship will change if you quit right?" Rebecca reminded her.

"I know that. So does Roy. But I don't want to quit yet and he knows if he makes me quit I'll spend the rest of my life hating him for it. There are still things we need to do before either of us can quit, too many goals that need to be met. I still need to watch his back." Riza sighed.

"You need to be concerned with your daughter." The brunette told her. "Who cares if you make the world a better place for her if you or Roy aren't there to watch her enjoy it?"

"Sometimes I feel like I don't deserve to be her Mom..." Riza said quietly.

"Oh geez. Riza! I know you still have PTSD from Ishval. I get it. I understand. But quit acting like you and Roy don't deserve to have any type of happiness, that having a family- a child- of your own is selfish. Because it's not! Yes, if you combine both your kill counts, you and Roy killed thousands of Ishvallan's during the war- but less then a year ago, you both helped save millions of lives- Ishvallans included! In my eyes, that's earned you that happy feeling you get whenever your daughter's eyes light up because she sees you two. Because guess what? Sophia. Doesn't. Care. She doesn't care that you're a hell of a sniper or that Roy is basically a mass murderer disguised as a war hero. She only sees her mommy and her daddy. That's all that matters to her." Rebecca told her.

"Now let's lighten the mood and talk about your sex life." She grinned.

"What sex life? We're too busy dealing with work, restoring Ishval, and raising a now mobile and teething infant." Riza sighed.

"So sex is pretty much on the back burner?" Rebecca asked.

"It's not even on the stove right now. Hell, it's halfway out of the kitchen at this point."

"Ouch."

"This is the longest I've gone without having sex since the Academy." Riza groaned, causing Rebecca to cackle loudly.

"I'm serious Becca!"

"You know I would be more then willing to babysit for a weekend, let you and Roy have some quality time together." She smirked, clicking her tongue.

"As much as I appreciate the offer, I'm pretty sure we'd just use the time to catch up on some sleep. We're more desperate for a full eight hours of sleep then we are in having sex. We're both running on fumes and coffee grinds at this point. Did you know two years ago, when I'd see Roy sleeping at his desk instead of doing his paperwork, I'd get so irritated at him. Now I see him napping at his desk and my brain goes 'Oh that looks like a great idea!' once I even took a nap at my desk. Me?! Napping at work!? This is what motherhood has done to me." Riza huffed, a drained look in her eyes.

Rebecca frowned, and decided that she needed to know the answer to her next question, even though there was a chance she'd regret hearing Riza's answer.

"Riza? Do you... regret keeping her?" She asked quietly.

"Nope! Not even a little." Riza smiled, her mood immediately changing as she gave her daughter a kiss on the cheek, earning a delightful squeal from the infant.

"But if Roy ever gets me pregnant again, I will shoot him in the balls." She hissed.

Jean was not expecting to see Rebecca at his apartment the next day.

"Hey Becca." He said nervously.

"Hey. Can I come in?"

Jean nodded, standing aside so she could enter. Rebecca was quiet as she looked around his living room. Couch, chair, coffee table, bookcase, and a gun cabinet in the corner. It wasn't a lot of furniture, but it was more then the last three guys she dated had.

"Everything alright?" Jean asked.

"Uh huh. I was having lunch with Riza yesterday- don't give me that look, I didn't tell her anything- and the thought occurred to me that I need to know a few things about you before we continue on with... this." Rebecca told him, sitting down on the couch.

"Okay. What do you wanna know?" Jean asked, sitting next to her.

"Do you want kids, when, and if so how many?"

"... Yes I want kids, not right now but preferably in two or three years, and at least one. I don't care if I have thirty, I want a bare minimum of one. What about you?"

"Two maximum. I grew up with five sisters and three brothers- you couldn't pay me all the money in the universe to get me to have more then two." Rebecca winced.

"Oh man- I thought having four sisters was bad." Jean laughed.

"Also, we need to have sex." Rebecca said out of the blue.

"Not that I'm complaining about having sex with you- or in general for that matter- but why?" Jean questioned.

"So we know if it's bad or not, and if it is bad, we need to see how bad so we know if it's fixable or not!" Rebecca cried.

"There's no such thing as bad sex!"

"Maybe for guys there isn't, but for girls? Trust me, bad sex does exist for us!" She groaned, straddling his lap and kissing him.

Turns out Rebecca had nothing to worry about. The sex was that great.

An hour after she entered Jean's apartment, she found herself in his bed, under his comforter as she laid on top of him, both panting and covered in a layer of sweat.

"Holy shit." She gasped. "Why haven't we done this before?"

"I believe it's because you said that my smoking was a way of compensating for what I lack in my pants." Jean smirked.

"Make sure I apologize for that when I catch my breath." Rebecca sighed, feeling his arms wrap around her.

"If you're that good in bed, and Mustang was still able to steal all your girlfriends, then ho boy. No wonder Riza got pregnant."

Jean laughed loudly at that.

"Half the time he didn't even do it on purpose. We'd run into him in public, he'd say hi, and when he'd walk away they would follow after him like he was a piece of steak. And he'd be dressed! I've seen the man shirtless before, Becca. I'm not surprised Riza got pregnant, either."

It was Rebecca's turn to laugh at that.

"If she finds out we said this, she'll kill us." She mused, kissing his throat.

"Slowly, viciously, and painfully." Jean added, rolling them over so Rebecca was on her back.

"Hey Dad? How did you pick out Mom's ring?" Jean asked his dad, entering their family's general store.

It'd been three days since his... proposal... to Rebecca, and he didn't know what kind of ring to get her. And he was running out of time to get her one.

He wasn't sure when he stopped hating Rebecca Catalina. Possibly sometime between her requesting his help for his role in the Promised Day and bonding in the hospital after Dr. Marcoh had healed him.

But something told him that this relationship was going to work. He just had to put in the effort to ensure that it wasn't him who screwed things up.

"Why?" The elder Havoc patriarch asked, counting the cash in the cash register of the family's general store. Jean grimaced, and then explained the situation.

His dad blinked at him twice, before bursting out in hysterics.

"Gail! Gail! Come here and listen to what our boy just told me!" He cackled loudly, calling for Jean's mom.

"Daaaaad!" Jean groaned.

Gail Havoc entered the store from the back room with a sigh, wiping her hands on her apron, their oldest daughter Chloe following behind.

"What is it, Mason? What did Jean do this time?" She asked.

"He asked a girl to marry him. A girl he's never been on a date with."

"Ah hell Dad. Don't word it like that! You make it sound like I don't even know her, and I've known her since the Academy." Jean cried.

"Well we've never met her!" Gail snapped, arms crossed at her only son.

"Oh yes you have, Ma! She uh... did that." Jean muttered, pointing to the damage in the wall Rebecca had caused when she'd shown up to request his help for the Promised Day.

"Yo Ashtray!" Rebecca hollered, slamming the front door open, the doorknob causing a decent sized hole to from in the drywall, that she either ignored or didn't notice.
"How would you like to help out Mustang and your old Team this April?" She beamed.

"Oh I like her! She's gonna fit in great!" Chloe, who had been there in the store with Jean that day, cackled.

"You three aren't helping." He whined, pouting.

Gail sighed. "Are you serious about this, Jean?"

"Yes Ma'am. I know it's... insane. But something's telling me this is gonna work." Jean admitted.

"Did she tell you what kind of ring she wants?" Chloe asked.

"She told me that her only requirement is that the band doesn't turn her finger green and that the gem is real." Jean said.

Gail was silent for a moment, taking in what her only son had told her. Her next move surprised him, her husband, and one of her daughters. She slipped off the engagement ring that Mason had given her over thirty years before, and placed it in Jean's hand.

"Ma...?" Jean gawked at her.

"Since you're the only boy in the family, I've been planning on giving this to you whenever you found the right girl. If you think this Rebecca girl is it, then give it to her." She told him, a smile on her face.

"Just don't let her pawn it if things don't work out with her." Gail joked.

Rebecca relaxed against Jean's sheets, her stomach against the fabric as he trailed butterfly kisses down her bare back, enticing gasps and moans from her.

"I went to see my folks yesterday." He mumbled, his lips between her shoulder blades.

"What'd they say about our... arrangement? I mean, I'm assuming you told them." Rebecca asked.

"My old man laughed so hard I thought he was gonna wet his pants. My oldest sister Chloe remembers you when you first showed up at the store. And my Ma..." Jean trailed off, not sure how to explain that his mom had given him her engagement ring to give to her.

"Isn't a fan of her only son being engaged to a woman she's never met before?" Rebecca sighed, shutting her eyes, hoping this wasn't going to lead to an argument.

While she knew what they were doing was utterly insane, she was happy. Her and Jean hadn't had a full blown fight in months, and the sex over the last few days was fantastic.

Rebecca could see herself falling in love with him, and felt that she already had.

"Not... entirely." Jean admitted, reaching over her to grab the ring from his nightstand drawer, holding it in front of her.

"Jean..."

"It's the ring my Dad gave her. I don't know if the diamond is real- neither do they, apparently- but the band is real silver." He told her.

"It's beautiful." She gasped.

"My Uncle is a jeweler just outside of Central, so if it doesn't fit it won't be too hard to resize it." Jean said, slipping it on her finger.

Rebecca twirled the band around with her thumb, admiring the ring his Mother- a woman she'd never so much as laid eyes on- had given him to give to her.

"A little looser then I prefer my cocktail rings to be, but as long as it doesn't slip off it should be fine." She said softly, rolling over to kiss him on the lips.

Jean rolled over on top of her, his lips trailing down her neck as he leaned over to grab another condom.

"What kind of wedding do you want to have?" Jean asked, as Becca laid her head on his bare chest.

"I figured we'd just elope, honestly. Don't have to worry about everyone and their cousin trying to stop us." She said, snuggling closer to him.

"What about you? What kind of wedding do you want to have?" Rebecca asked.

Jean laughed lightly. "My sisters have ingrained into my head that the only say the groom has is whether he decides to show up or not." He admitted.

"That sounds cruel. The groom should have some say in the day. It's his wedding, too." Rebecca sighed.

"Meh. I've honestly never really cared either way. I'm just happy to even be getting married." He told her.

"Are you sure? Because we can have an actual wedding if you want one."

"Rebecca, the only thing I want is for you to be there. You don't even need to be in a wedding dress. Hell- you can wear your uniform if you wanna." He told her, kissing her forehead.

"Oh I'm definitely not wearing my military uniform to my wedding. It's bad enough I'm probably gonna have to convince Riza not to wear hers if her and Mustang ever get married." She groaned.

"Should we live once we're married, my apartment or yours?" He asked.

"Hmm... I don't know. Because I like my apartment but hate the area, but I feel the opposite about your place." Rebecca sighed.

"Wanna meet in the middle and just get a completely different place that's ours?" Jean suggested.

"I like that idea. I am going to take a shower. Care to join?" Rebecca smirked, sitting up and climbing out of his bed, walking towards his bathroom.

"Hell yes!" He cried, jumping out of bed and racing after her.

A week later, Rebecca Catalina- now Havoc- entered the Eastern Command Center, marching straight for Mustang's office, intent on finding her best friend Riza Hawkeye.

She pushed open the door, and sighed with relief when she saw Riza was there, placing her daughter back into her playpen that was placed between her desk and Roy's.

"Hey Riza." Rebecca smiled, waving at her with her right hand. She was making absolute sure to keep her left hand in her jacket pocket, to hide her rings from the blonde before she had a chance to explain the situation.

"You seem particularly happy this morning, Catalina. Someone must've had a good night last night." Roy smirked , filling out paperwork as his daughter babbled away.

Rebecca blushed, remembering the night before, when her and Jean consummated their marriage on every surface in his apartment that could hold their combined weight.

"Oh yeah." She chuckled. "That's actually why I'm here. I need to tell Riza something."

"What is it?" Riza asked, not looking up from her own paperwork.

"Me and Jean got married yesterday."

She was met by the sound of two pens simultaneously dropping and rolling to the floor.

"Repeat that?" Riza ordered.

Roy gave no response other then his jaw hanging open.

"Me and Jean got married yesterday."

"Havoc!?" Riza yelped, making sure there wasn't another Jean she didn't know about.

"Yes." Rebecca nodded.

Riza just looked at her, dumbfounded.

"You... eloped?"

"Yes."

"Wow. That's something you expect us to do." Roy said, finally speaking.

"Right?" Riza scoffed.

"I didn't even know you guys were dating!"

"We... weren't... He meant to ask me out on a day, but for whatever reason it came out as marry me, instead. And my brain told me to go for it." She told them.

It was Riza's turn to have her jaw drop.

"Oh dear Lord Jesus Christ." She groaned, rubbing her eyes.

"You and Jean are insane!" Roy yelped.

"You two can't go ten minutes without screaming at each other, and the two of you decide to get married? This marriage won't last a year." He scoffed.

At least me and him have the option to get married. Rebecca thought bitterly, keeping that thought in her head.

The last thing she wanted or needed to do was upset Riza. Despite having a daughter together, they couldn't be a couple unless one of them quit the Military.

"I've been staying at his place for over a week, and guess what? Not. One. Fight." She snarled.

"Ooh. An entire week. Relationship of the year, right there." He cheered, voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Oh listen here you little shi-"

"Oh for fucks sake you guys, knock it off!" Riza snapped.

"Fuck!"

All three heads snapped towards the source of the swear word, eyes the size of dinner plates. Sophia was happily babbling away in her pen, waving around a stuffed bunny, as she occasionally repeated the word she had heard from her mother.

"Oh Sophia, nooo." Riza whined.

"Was... that her first word?" Rebecca asked.

"Yep." Roy sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Every other mom in the world gets a baby whose first word is mama or dada. I get the one who drops the F-bomb." Riza whined.

"Wanna know the best part about this whole situation?" Roy asked, turning to Rebecca.

"The fact that it came out of Riza's mouth, so she can't blame either of us." Rebecca cackled.

Instead of arguing with them, Riza just head butted her desk multiple times.

Rebecca smiled at the odd family. If they could make it work, then so could her and Jean.