Two to be Steady – Part Six

I

Normally Maas liked to visit Roy’s office. Since his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel he had started to collect a permanent staff of his own and they were entertaining people.

Today, though, he couldn’t quite settle down to provoking Hawkeye, who Maas thought was much too serious, or sparring with Roy, or even gossiping with Havoc, who Maas swore inhaled the latest juicy fruits of the grapevine through his cigarettes without bothering to do anything as energy intensive as listen.

At last Roy dragged him off, allegedly to have company with his coffee but more probably to prevent Hawkeye from expressing her frustration with Maas’ restlessness too directly. He’d already collected three, increasingly irritated “Junsa”s.

“So what’s up today?” Roy asked as they sat down. “Gracia break a date?”

Maas fiddled with his cup. “No. Kind of… the opposite.”

Roy was looking more amused by the moment. “Gracia demanded a date?”

“She wants…” Maas took a deep breath. “She wants to get married.”

“I’m not surprised at all. Congratulations.” Roy sipped his coffee with, Maas felt, completely insupportable calm.

“Married, Roy! She wants to get married! To me!”

“Well, I didn’t assume she wanted to marry me,” Roy murmured. “No accounting for taste I suppose.”

Maas growled, and Roy finally broke down laughing. “Maas, stop jittering for a minute.”

He glared, but did settle a bit if only because Roy so rarely addressed him that informally in public.

“You’ve been courting Gracia for months. You love her, I know you do because you mention it several times a week. She loves you, or at least Hawkeye says she does. Surely you’ve been thinking about this?”

“Well, yes, but not seriously,” Maas protested. “I mean, not this fast.”

Roy shrugged callously. “Gracia is a determined woman. When she decides what she wants it’s a reasonably foregone conclusion that she’ll get it.”

If anyone should know, Maas had to admit, it was Roy. Kindred spirits. “All right, all right, I’m resigned, I’m resigned. In a very good and happy way!”

“Probably just as well,” Roy noted.

It wasn’t until they were leaving that Maas collected himself to ask about the other thing that had been making him a bit nervous.

“Roy. When Gracia and I are married… will you stand up with me?”

Roy stunned him with the open smile that almost no one ever saw on him anymore. “Of course I will, Maas. Thank you for asking me.”

“Who else would I ask?” Maas wanted to know, relaxing.

“Armstrong?”

Maas attempted to chase Roy down the hall but was laughing too hard to catch him.

II

“Hey, Roy, you’re still trying to find that Elric guy, aren’t you?”

Roy looked up from his interminable stack of paperwork. Maas was leaning in the door. “Not that it seems to be doing much good, but yes.”

“Well, this letter came for Herbert, with his name on in. Herbert happens to be in the field, so I thought you might like to see.”

Roy found that the envelope had already been opened, seal carefully left intact. Maas was nothing if not good at his job. When he’d read the letter he simply sat for a while, gazing out the window, until Maas finally prodded him.

“So? What’s it say? And why would a man who took that much trouble to disappear write openly like this?”

“It isn’t from Hohenheim. It’s from his sons. They also seem to be looking for him.”

Maas made a face. Roy’s mouth quirked, he having already heard extensively from his friend on the subject of the responsibilities entailed by having children. He rather thought Gracia had decided to have one soon.

“I think,” Roy said slowly, “that I’ll pay a visit to the Elric family. There might be… possibilities.”

End