DISCLAIMER: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist, and I am in no way affiliated with the author(s), producer(s) or publisher(s). I am writing strictly for entertainment purposes with no material or monetary gain.
The List
"Remind me again why I'm here?" Edward grumbled, looking around the room with a sour frown.
"To reclaim what is rightfully ours," Havoc said in a hushed voice, stepping carefully around a stack of paper on the floor.
"Like I said…remind me why I'M here?"
A blue-sleeved arm snaked around his neck and pulled him into a close huddle.
"Come on Ed, you can't back out now! We're in this from beginning to end!" Lt. Colonel Hughes hissed at him from far too close, in Ed's opinion.
"He didn't take anything of mine," Ed grumped, straining back against the arm keeping him captive. "And why are you both whispering? There's nobody here."
"SHHHHH!" came the immediate response, making Ed roll his eyes. This had to be one of the most harebrained operations he'd ever been suckered into, though fortunately there was no real danger. For all their cloak-and-dagger, the worst that would happen was for Mustang to come back early and kick them out.
"Will you just hurry up and find it?" Ed growled, ducking from beneath Hughes' grip and stepping away. There really was no reason for him to be there; all they had needed him to do was get the lock open, which had been a piece of cake. Mustang had apparently thought he was quite clever to set alchemic spring-traps on the door, but they'd been child's play for him disable. Ed smirked at the thought of what Mustang's face would look like if he could have seen Ed break into his fancy-schmancy house in two minutes flat.
Hughes pushed his back impatiently from behind, and Ed was turning around to give him a piece of his mind when Havoc grabbed him by his shoulders suddenly.
"Watch it!" he snapped, and Ed looked down in time to see one of the tall stacks of paper on the floor lean dangerously before finally settling. The three of them let out a breath of relief, and continued toward the center of the room more carefully. The place was appalling, stack after stack of paper and junk littering the floor, and leading to the huge mound that was once the colonel's desk. This room, the study, was in such stark contrast to the rest of the spotless house it was hard to believe they were in the same world, let alone the same building.
When they reached the middle of the room, Hughes and Havoc had a hissed conversation about on which side of the desk each of them would search ("You can't call it 'splitting up' if you're four feet apart," Ed had said in exasperation, and was promptly shushed), and then headed for the respective sides, leaving Ed there in the middle to look on the desk proper. With an exaggerated sigh he turned his attention to the disaster in front of him, wondering how anyone who was so immaculate in appearance could be such a pig. The man even cleaned his own office windows occasionally…he had seen him do it. Jacket discarded, shirtsleeves rolled up his wiry arms, top few buttons of his shirt undone to expose the smooth skin covering his collarbones….
Edward shook his head and peered down at the desk. There was no point in wondering at the methods of someone so obviously a hopeless bastard. Lifting a magazine which fortunately didn't have any naked women on the front (Ed certainly didn't think it below the hornball), Ed found some papers that looked less dusty and more recent. He supposed here was as good a place as any to start looking for the stuff Mustang had filched, but he'd have to be careful not to disturb anything too much.
"What kind of paper was the number written on?" he asked in the general direction of Havoc, ignoring Hughes' insistence that he lower his voice.
"Pretty paper..." Havoc sighed. "It had little flowers on it. It came out of her planner." Ed nodded, shifting the top few papers to the side and resisting the urge to sneeze as dust was kicked up.
"The picture was an 8X10…Alicia had just—"
"I heard you the first six times," Ed growled, "I know what the damn picture looks like." He recognized the colonel's handwriting, which was surprisingly absent in the sea of printed papers, and unearthed the sheaf, brushing the surface with his hand and grimacing as the dust clung to his white glove.
"You know, Ed, if you expect to be able to come to Alicia's birthday party you'd better clean up that language," Hughes lectured, but Ed wasn't listening, attention riveted to the paper in his hand. It had been folded many times, it seemed, perhaps to fit in a coat-pocket or to be slipped into a briefcase. To the left of each line of handwriting there was a space for a check-mark; some were filled and some unfilled, though the majority seemed to be filled. His eyes began scanning down the list, hardly noticing when Havoc clapped a hand on his shoulder to peer at the paper as well. Hughes was saying something beside him, but he couldn't stop staring at the names.
Names…it was a list of names, some checked and some unchecked.
Edward gasped, explosively loudly in the quiet room, and the two officers beside him jumped, causing a pile of something elsewhere in the room to collapse with a clatter.
"This…this is…." Edward began in a hushed voice, eyes wide as he looked up at the faces of his companions. Realization bloomed on Havoc's face, and he shoved to get a better position beside Edward to see the relic.
"What?!" Hughes demanded, leaning more heavily on Edward's shoulder, unhappily not the metal one. "What is it?"
"This is really it? …The List..." Havoc said in awe.
"Or a part of it, anyway," Edward speculated, eyes moving further down. Most of the names he didn't recognize, though some of them he thought he'd heard around headquarters.
"What list? What are you two talking about?" Hughes asked irritably, forgetting completely about his own mandate to be quiet.
"It's the colonel's bang-list," said Havoc, still sounding surprisingly reverent.
"Bang?" He considered that for a moment, and then said warily, "You mean…the list of people he's…."
"Done, or wants to do," Ed said with a nod. "That's why some of them aren't checked off…yet."
"Holy shit!" exclaimed Havoc, pointing with a shaking finger to a spot near the top crease. "Julia Waster! I can't believe it!"
"You mean General Waster's wife?!" Ed asked in horror.
"She's the biggest MILF in all of the East," added Hughes, until the other two looked up at him. "Or so I've heard…" he said sheepishly.
"Wow," said Ed, turning back to study the paper again. "I wonder if Hawkeye's on here? We could know once and for all--" he began, but Havoc suddenly snatched the paper out of his hands.
"We probably shouldn't be looking at this," he said, and began to try to bury it under the other papers. "It's not what we're looking for, after all--"
Edward gasped loudly again, and this time Hughes was right there with him.
"You?!" Maes cried, pointing an accusatory finger at the lieutenant as Ed attempted to wrestle the paper away from the man.
"I don't know what you're talking about!" Havoc shrieked in panic, struggling to keep Ed's Automail hand (and his other one, for that matter) away from him.
"There's no reason you'd hide it from us if you weren't on it," said Ed, ceasing the struggle and instead holding out his hand expectantly. "Give it up, lieutenant!"
Havoc gave a whimper, but eventually extended it.
"I can't believe he got you," lamented Ed, scanning down the list until he found Jean's name and the dooming checkmark beside it.
"How did it happen?" Hughes asked. "At least I had a reasonable excuse."
Edward looked up at him in shock.
"You, too, Hughes?!"
"Ishval," the man said grimly, "Long before I met Gracia. Actually," he added rather apologetically, "I think you might be the only one in our office who didn't know about that."
Ed shook his head and tried to wrap his brain around the fact that two of his friends-- his male, seemingly straight friends—had slept with Mustang.
"Well it wasn't like it was my fault!" Havoc said hotly, ignoring the conversation between the two. "It was after that promotion party, we were both pissed drunk…at least, I thought he was drunk, until he--"
"I don't need details!" Ed announced loudly, in a high voice he'd rather not admit was his own. Clearing his throat, he turned his attention back to the list, cheeks a bit red. "Honestly, that guy's a menace to society. How does he always get away with doing this?"
There was a slight pause.
"Well…" said Havoc and Hughes in stereo, and Ed slammed the paper back down on the desk, sending a huge poof of dust into the air.
"Forget I asked!" he gasped in panic.
"It's all right, boss, take a deep breath," said Jean, patting him on the back, only to cough on the dust himself.
Hughes picked up the list and began to read names aloud.
"… Jerrica Sterling, Maddison Trench…."
"No," groaned Havoc in despair. "Not Maddison!"
"…Alyson Peterson, Margaret Beckett…."
"Lieutenant Beckett?!" Ed said in outrage. "She's a lesbian!"
"How do you know that?" asked Jean skeptically, but Ed waved a dismissive hand.
"She's Al's friend, tells him everything. I met her girlfriend, but they broke up."
"Broke up?" repeated Hughes. "Do you think….?"
Ed's mouth gaped open like a fish.
"That bastard! Is nothing sacred?!"
"You should talk, boss."
"You know what I mean!" he shouted, flailing angrily. "A general's wife, two guys and a lesbian? Is there ANYONE he can't get?"
"Hawkeye," said Havoc suddenly, pointing to Hughes. "Is Hawkeye on there?"
Ed ducked under Hughes' arm and grabbed the sheet further down, unfolding the bottom so they could search in tandem, frantically scanning.
"Maria Ross," Hughes said sadly, and Ed made a noise of distress.
"Not Hawkeye," he begged no one in particular.
"Sarah McClintock."
"Not Hawkeye!"
Ed's eyes flew down the page, though he couldn't keep himself from double-taking at the sight of Maes Hughes scrawled between the nearly countless women. That was still hard for him to completely comprehend. He'd known they were close, but apparently--
"Hawkeye! I found her!" Ed called, stabbing his Automail finger at the page.
"Is she checked?" someone asked, and he traced her line quickly to the left, where there was—
An empty space.
"No," he sighed in relief. "No…he didn't get her."
The others sighed as well, and Ed slumped into the chair before the desk. There was silence for a few minutes, heavy with thought, until Havoc picked the paper up out of Edward's lax hand.
"Why am I so far down the list?" he grumped, leaning against the desk for a moment, but quickly getting back up when it groaned dangerously.
"Why do you think?" Hughes snickered.
"Well at least I'm higher up than you!" he shot back, and the grin quickly disappeared from the Lt. Colonel's face. "Now THAT would have been depressing."
"Well you're below that hog-faced Bethany, so don't get too cocky."
"Says the guy under Mary Porpington!"
Hughes snatched the paper away from Havoc and gestured angrily at it, keeping Jean away with his elbows as he talked.
Edward rolled his eyes.
"Alright, alright…" he began, but they were already too far into the argument, so he just let them go at it. After all, it was no skin off of his nose if they never found the number or the picture, or argued right up until Mustang came home and walked in on their little breaking-and-entering party. Ed smiled at that thought, and wondered exactly what the colonel would do if he caught them. He was almost inclined to leave some sort of evidence that they'd been there, but on second thought, he didn't want to give the colonel a heart attack for the sake of his amusement. There probably were people who tried to break in for far more sinister reasons.
It was too quiet. Looking up, he noticed that the others were still and silent, staring at the paper between them.
"Guys?" Ed asked. Neither moved, still as statues, and Ed sat up in the oversized chair (damn that tall bastard) nervously. "Guys? What?"
Slowly, they turned to look at him, faces wearing the exact same mix of horror and disbelief.
"What?!"
"Boss…" Havoc said faintly as Edward stood to look at the list himself. "…The top spot…."
Ed realized that there was another section, folded above the one he'd seen initially, that he hadn't noticed. It appeared to be the very top of the list, the only thing above it a scribbled date. His eyes shifted downward to the first name in the table, and he blinked at it.
There was a short silence.
"Ed, now, take a deep breath."
There, in that annoyingly careless handwriting…
"Boss, you've got to breathe."
Was the last name he could have expected—
"Havoc, catch him!"
His own.
To be continued. 3