Bouquet
[drabble challenge for Arionchan]
"Flowers," said Roy Mustang.
Maes nodded enthusiastically. "Roses, actually."
"Flowers," Mustang repeated himself, and raised an eyebrow. "Alchemy isn't something convenient for you to impress your girlfriend with, Maes."
"Come on," Maes wheedled, drumming his fingers on the table. "It's too cold for them now, and the hothouses cost too much. Just this one favor, whadaya say?"
"What about that Major you hang out with?" Roy turned back his drink. "What's his name, Armstrong? He's a State Alchemist too; I'm sure he'd be glad to help."
Maes looked pained. "I just want a dozen roses," he said, "not an arrangement so large that she can't even fit it through her door."
Roy considered this, and what little he knew of Armstrong. He thought of the young cadets he'd found the man terrorizing the other day--not through reprimands or scolding, but simple brute force of personality--then nodded. "All right, perhaps not."
"Roses from daisies can't be that hard, right?" Maes leaned forward, eyes glittering behind his glasses. "And if you do, I could fix you up with that secretary you've been eyeing."
One of Roy's eyebrows arched. He almost smiled. "Oh?"
"It's what you alchemists call 'equal trade,' isn't it?" Maes laced his fingers together and smiled beatifically over their mesh. "She's a friend of Gracia's. I could put in a good word for you."
"I'll think about it," Roy allowed, and saw by the grin that spread across Maes' face that it had been translated as Yes. Maes got to his feet.
"I'm meeting Gracia at seven tonight," he said. "I'll be by your place at six-thirty to get the flowers done. Be there, you bastard; I know enough about you to make your life miserable."
Roy snorted. "Such words, for the man doing you a favor."
Maes leaned forward, so that his mouth was less than half an inch from Roy's ear. "The secretary? Her name's Elizabeth Eiderson."
And then he strolled away, hands tucked into his pockets.
***
Gracia was waiting under a streetlamp when he arrived, adopting a casual saunter that did not quite match his mood. Under his gloves, his palms were sweating.
She rose up from the bench as he approached and turned towards him. Her smile lit up her entire face, and he thought, whimsically, of descended angels. (Not fallen, naturally. Gracia was far more likely to have come down to Earth because she saw she'd been needed, rather than any transgressions on her part.)
"Maes," she said, and he felt his smile turn silly at the sound. She blinked at him when he did not remove his hands from behind his back, though, leaning forward to kiss both her cheeks without holding her. "Is there--?"
Deliberately, he coughed. She fell silent, watching him with an expression somewhere between mild concern and warm amusement. The light on her pale hair did not help with the angel metaphor.
With great ceremony--he'd been taught that this was an important thing for girls, and intended not to fail in this, of all things--he went down on one knee and presented her with the roses. Her eyes lit up as she took them, eyes wondering as she lifted them to her face.
"For you," he said, then coughed into his fist again. "And, also, this."
He'd not mentioned this to Roy, when he'd claimed the flowers in exchange for Elizabeth Eiderson's phone number (willingly given, naturally); something like this needed to be a secret until the two involved knew to speak. And if Gracia's eyes had been bright at the flowers, they were luminescent at the ring, which she stared at as though she'd never seen such jewelry before.
"It's, uh," Maes said, and resisted the urge to cough again. "It's not much, but I'm being promoted soon, and--"
She cupped his face in both hands, tilting so that he was looking her straight in the eyes.
"If you think that matters to me, you silly man," she said, "keep your silly roses, and give me my ring."
Then she kissed him under the streetlamp, with the roses falling to the cold ground--but Maes found he didn't much care.
--end--