FMA -- Orange-Vanilla
Title: Orange-Vanilla
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Ed/Al
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,600
Warnings: language (thanks, Ed!); major end-of-Brotherhood spoilers; mild sketch; angst-fluff ratio of approximately 1:3
Summary: Ed kinda hates winter and really loves Al. Like. Y'know.
Author's Note: Late birthday fic for Hales! ♥ Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it and/or co-dependent brothers hooking up. :'DDDD
ORANGE-VANILLA
There are a lot of things to like about winter, but there are also a lot of things to hate, and Ed can’t really help it if he’s struggling with the balance. He doesn’t do so well with balance these days-physically or philosophically; halving the weight of your right arm and selling the skill you built your life around will do that for you.
But he wouldn’t change it. Oh, hell; nothing in the universe could make him trade it back; he’d die first, in a hundred-thousand terrible, terrible ways. Because Al’s nose goes pink in the cold; and he’s got a scarf in every color, and they all look like they were made for him; and he stares up at snowflakes with his eyes huge and his mouth open, and then he starts to grin; and the sensation of shivering makes him laugh; and sometimes he still gets a glimmer of tears in his eyes when he runs his fingertip down along the spine of a cat.
Ed thinks about it a lot-whether he was offering up more than just the immediate factor of the clap-and-remake crap. Probably the potential of it counted, too-all the things he could and would have done with alchemy over the course of the rest of his life, however long that works out to be.
But when he looks at what he took back, he can’t believe that dumbass trick worked at all, because for once he got the good end of the deal.
Now if only he could figure out the equivalent exchange for an apartment in Central that isn’t fucking freezing all the goddamn time.
“Oh, dear,” Al says, emerging from his bedroom to find Ed already cocooned in three blankets on the couch, reading with fingerless gloves on and side-thinking about if there might be a way to turn pages with his nose. Maybe if he invented a device you could trigger from the safety of the warmth beneath the blanket… “Let me put the coffee on; that’ll help. Is the heat not working again?”
“What heat?” Ed mutters.
“Ah,” Al says.
As Al clatters around the kitchen, Ed buries his nose in the edge of the blanket and sets the book down on his chest for a minute. It might be worth it to get a cat just to have an extra heat source, but they’d still have to keep it the rest of the time, probably. You can’t just rent cats for winter, can you? Maybe he should start a cat rental company. Al would be over the freaking moon.
He opens his mouth, realizes that this is the nefarious work of half-frozen neurons, and shuts it again before he gets himself into a veritable shit-ton of trouble. And cats. A veritable shit-ton of cats.
Just thinking about the hairballs makes him shiver in a way that has nothing to do with the sub-zero temperatures around here.
Momentarily, though, Al is humming quietly in the kitchen and then sauntering in with two steaming mugs of coffee-which Ed can almost smell with his frozen nose-and carefully handing one over. He settles down on the couch and nestles in close against Ed’s side and closes his eyes to draw in a big, deep breath before he sips.
And that’s just-Al, right? Al’s always been really affectionate, and really unreserved about it, and really… sweet. Al just always wants people to know they’re loved. He’s still getting used to physical sensations, and he likes being close to people, and… and hell, he’s probably freezing his ass off, too. That’s all it is.
Which is why there’s a hot anchor’s weight of guilt dropping into Ed’s stomach when he just can’t stop himself from looking at Al’s eyelashes, and his jawline, and his throat, and the tiny peek of collarbone permitted by the undone button of his pajama shirt. It was easier to justify, at the start-when he had the whole Well, he only just got those eyes back; of course I wanna stare into them for a while spiel to fall back on. Back when he had an excuse.
Five months later, he ain’t got jackshit except…
This. Whatever this is. Al curled up against him, warm and breathing and smelling so fucking good he just-
This thing in him, in his guts and his chest and the back of his head, all the hastily-stifled thoughts like little insects he can bat away when they come one-by-one-but when he sleeps, and he dreams, and the swarms come for him-
It’s stupid. It’s so stupid. He’s gotten everything he ever asked for-more; a million times more; he’s made out like a fucking bandit-and here he is, staring into his perfect coffee and trying to pretend his cheeks aren’t burning, wishing with every last guilty goddamn fiber of his being that Al wasn’t just the best baby brother in the vast reaches of the giant fucking world.
Wishing he wasn’t so fucked-up in the one department where he thought he had a snowball’s chance of being ordinary.
Wishing Al was in love with him, too.
He’s such a fucking disaster. When’s Al going to realize that? He darkens every door he ever pauses at; chaos never fails to follow in his wake. He’s a misery machine. Anyone who ever takes him in gets fuck-all but heartache in return.
And he’s never, ever going to have the balls or the nobility to tell Al that he should think about that, and make Ed leave.
What’s going to happen when Al gets some cute girlfriend? It’s only a matter of time. People look at him constantly, and it’s not like Ed blames them, ’cause, c’mon, Al, but-all the same. One of these days he’s going to see somebody he likes, and he’s going to look back. And then…
And then Ed’s going to lose him in a whole new way.
Slowly. Inch by inch. One drop of shared blood at a time.
Just thinking about it makes him want to walk out there, right down the path to the sidewalk, and on and on and on-out of the city, off through the hills-and never, ever stop.
“Brother,” Al says, blowing coffee-breath in his ear so that it tickles, and he squirms, “you think too much.”
“Shut up,” Ed says. “What do you know?”
Al winks at him, all sunshine-grin. “More than you think, Ed.”
Ed executes a series of complicated maneuvers to extricate himself from the blankets without either spilling his coffee or dropping his book. He flips the whole blanket-mound onto Al, who eeps in a way that is truly horrible for its bone-crushing cuteness, and then goes to put the book back on the shelf.
“Brother,” Al says slowly, “are you okay?”
“What?” Ed asks as he scans the spines. Al has this chronological order thing going, and he doesn’t want to fuck it up, even though it makes pretty much zero sense. “I’m always okay.”
“That doesn’t really answer the question.”
“Yes, it does.”
“I’d somehow forgotten how delightfully illuminating it is to argue with you before you’ve had caffeine.”
Ed gives him the finger without even looking.
“Case in point,” Al says.
Ed rolls his eyes, goes back to organizing books, and neglects to point out that Al has dropped the original question.
So that’s that.
The problem with Sunday afternoons is that they’re irrevocably tainted by the inevitability of the imminent Monday morning.
Ed has planned that sentence out in detail in case anyone ever asks.
Al nudges a toe at his right foot where he’s sprawled out on the carpet with a book over his face.
“Do you want to come get groceries with me?” he asks.
“No,” Ed says. He peels the book off of his face and gets up anyway.
Al has his latest model of slightly off-kilter, utterly unreadable smile on. “Make sure you bundle up, Brother. I don’t want a repeat of last time.”
“I was getting frostbite,” Ed says. “I wouldn’t lie about something that important.”
“Lie, no,” Al says mildly, sauntering off to what he has dubbed ‘the coat closet’, even though it’s mostly full of… books. Like everything else. “Heinously exaggerate? Well…”
“Are you this much of an asshole in class?” Ed asks, limping after him, because the right foot helpfully went partly numb.
“Only when they’ve really earned it,” Al says, turning to grin at him and hand him the warmest wool coat they’ve got. “You get the best of me.”
Ed takes the coat and tries to think of something to say and… can’t.
Al gets excited about grocery stores. Al gets excited about everything.
“These apples are so pretty!” he says. “Brother, look!”
“They’re nice, Al,” Ed says automatically.
Al must’ve been wearing this coat last, because it smells like him-some kind of combination of soap and vanilla and… citrus, maybe? Like an orange-vanilla, or something. Kind of soothing and also kind of bright. Ed doesn’t even want to think the word zesty. His brother smells zesty. He wants to go bury his face in the potatoes and never come out.
“Brother, peppermint bark with dark chocolate!”
He settles on hunkering down into the coat a little bit. Who’s going to blame him? It’s chilly in here. He doesn’t have any other reason. Obviously.
He takes a deep breath of Al smell and sinks simultaneously into comfort and despair.
He is so, so fucked.
His right arm is still kinda wonky, but at least it’s up to hoisting grocery bags now. When they first dragged their scrawny asses-well, Al’s scrawny ass; Ed’s scrawny arm-back from the Gate, he could barely even carry crap. He still gets really weird phantom sort of tingles through it, and occasionally an inescapable feeling like it’s bigger than it is. He mentioned it to Winry once, and she just gave him this sort of helpless shrug and reminded him that he’s probably the first person in the history of the universe who’s ever replaced their automail with a regular limb again. Kinda funny-the last crazy precedent he’ll ever set. At least he went out with a bang.
“Holy crap, Al,” he says as they unpack the bags on the counter. “How much hot chocolate did you get?”
“Being cold makes you sad,” Al says matter-of-factly, lining the tins up in the cabinet above the stove. “And I don’t like it when you’re sad, so evidently I have to take measures to prevent you from getting cold. It’s really very simple, Brother.”
Ed blinks at the wall built of little bricks of different hot chocolate brands. “…right.”
There are a few things that really are simple-first, that Ed would do anything for Al, up to and including laying down his life without a second thought. Second, that that is the reason Al embarks on virtually no errands alone-because Ed always insists on coming, no matter how little interest he has in the endeavor at hand, because bad things happen out there. Al’s still not quite recovered from half a decade of hanging at the Gate, and Ed’s not as good at protecting people as he was, but he’ll die trying if he has to.
Third, that they’re going to be swimming in hot chocolate for probably the rest of their lives. He can’t complain about that one too much.
“Let’s try this one first,” Al says, selecting a little cardboard box from among the hoard. He draws out two little gold-foil packets. He has such beautiful fingers-all long and slender and tapering. Piano-player’s fingers, probably. Mom might’ve said something like that.
Ed leans back against the counter and looks intently at the floor until his stomach stops roiling. Can’t think about Mom. Can’t think about what Mom would think of him.
“Do you think we can get you sugar-high enough that you’ll forget to whine about having to go to work tomorrow?” Al asks, grinning again to soften the slight.
“You and I both know there’s not enough sugar in the world,” Ed says.
It’s not that he doesn’t kinda like-or at least not actively despise-his job most of the time: teaching a bunch of dumbass university students basic physics and chemistry and shit is several orders of magnitude less crappy than he expected, and it sure as hell beats the ever-loving crap out of the military gig. As a bonus, they were willing (after a letter and a phone call or two from Mustang, whom Ed has to grudgingly admit has been staggeringly helpful with all of this readjustment business) to hire him on at Al’s top choice for study, which makes it about a thousand times easier to keep an eye on him.
It’s just…
Tough.
Tough to get used to the idea that he’s just another guy. Tough to get used to the idea that his days of changing the fate of the world-let alone the fabric of it around him-are well and truly over. Tough to get used to the idea that Al is going to glory in this for a little while, maybe for a couple years if Ed’s lucky, and then swan on to something newer and more exciting-something with other people than his lame-ass has-been brother, who’s just going to stay here, slowly molding, until he eventually runs out of days.
Tough to get used to the idea that he’s peaked, and Al’s only just getting started.
Tough to get used to the idea that the focal point of his whole existence is about to outgrow him.
Just… tough.
And shitty.
And tough.
But he’s been through worse, and he’s going to get through this, too.
Al starts humming as he makes the first of many, many cups of cocoa, and Ed goes and faceplants on the couch.
They really need to get the damn heat fixed around here. Al keeps having to huddle up against Ed’s side for warmth every time they sit down with a hot drink, which probably sucks, because the automail pretty much just radiates cold, and Ed’s all bony and scarry and not very soft. And he probably smells like machine oil. And desperation.
Al nudges his chin at Ed’s right shoulder. “Brother.”
Ed has read this sentence six times and still has no idea what it says. “What?”
“Are you okay?”
Fuck. Ed closes his eyes, summons his willpower, and forces a grin. “’Course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Al sighs. Hot chocolate breath in the face should be gross, but it’s not. It’s really not. Ed hates everything.
“It’s just that the more settled we get,” Al says, “the sadder you seem to be.”
Count on Al to see straight through him. He should’ve known. He should’ve known he could run and dodge and duck and weave all he wanted, but hiding was out of the goddamn question from the start.
“I mean,” Al says, tracing an aimless little loopy design on Ed’s right knee, which tingles at first and then starts to burn, “I know this isn’t… exciting. And it’s probably a big letdown from how things used to be. But-I don’t know. I just want you to be happy. So if this isn’t working, maybe we should try something else.”
Ed stares at Al’s hand on his knee in abject terror for a long moment-and then he’s struck by inspiration.
“It’s just the weather,” he says. “The automail’s been really bad this year.”
Al pouts at him, prodding his knee in an exasperated sort of way this time. “Well, why didn’t you say something? Here, shift.”
Ed’s brain is having trouble keeping up with anything other than the sound of that bullet ricocheting off the wall behind him. “Huh?”
Al hops up, grabs Ed’s mug away from him, and gestures. “Shift over, dummy.”
“Don’t sass your big brother,” Ed says, scooting down the couch and taking his blanket mountain with him.
“You’d be bored out of your mind if I didn’t,” Al says, plopping back down on his left.
Ed scowls at him. “What’s your point?”
“That was my point,” Al says.
Before Ed can come up with a scathingly witty retort, Al is slipping his hand under the blankets and settling it right at the edge of the automail port on Ed’s thigh.
Ed’s breath stops. And his heart stops. And if he dies right now, from the sheer surprise as Al’s knuckles dig into the aching muscle in an all-too-tender place, that is such a crock of shit.
Except the problem is the same problem that it’s always been-he wants too much. He has something good; he has enough; but he wants more. He has a brief and beautiful reprieve from the not-insignificant pain and a gorgeous dose of generosity; he has the perfect brother doubling as the best friend he could ever ask for, and he wants-
He wants.
He wants those fingers still kneading deep and hard at the knotted muscle in his leg, but he wants Al-sweet, bright-eyed, dimpled-grinning Alphonse Elric, the objective of his fucking life-between his knees and dragging down the zipper on his jeans-
No. Nope. Not happening. This isn’t fucking happening; it’s not; he won’t let it.
He slips carefully out from under Al’s curled fingers before he rockets off the couch towards the hallway, because if he hurt that kid, he’d never forgive himself.
“You’re right,” he says as he makes a run for it. “S’just-tension. Gonna-take a shower. See if that helps.”
It won’t, because he’s going to take a cold shower, because people who get off in the shower thinking about their own fucking brother-about fucking their own fucking brother-go to a special, special hell regardless of whether they believe in it or not.
Al’s calm voice trails him down the hall:
“Don’t you want to finish your hot chocolate, Brother?”
He shuts the bathroom door.
Work sucks, not because working sucks so much as because the details are all crap and more crap, and in general it’s sort of a bad deal. For instance, an inexhaustive list: the lecture halls are fucking freezing. Every clomping step over to his little office, where he can kill time until Al’s classes are over, sends spears of sharp pain up through his tortured spine. His good bookbag is starting to split down the main seam, but he can’t fix it with a clap of his hands anymore, and he doesn’t know the first thing about sewing needles except that they’re probably just as bloodthirsty as the hypodermic kind. No one ever comes to his office hours, which leaves him with ninety minutes in an unheated closet-room to throw pencils at the ceiling until Al’s class lets out.
On the upside, his pencil design is starting to look pretty fucking cool. He was originally just going to do a sort of abstract spiral thing, but then it started turning into a dragon, so he’s running with it.
Fifteen minutes after he sits down, the phone on his desk rings.
Which never happens.
Or at least is never actually for him.
He picks it up and cradles it against his shoulder, aiming the next projectile. “Gonzalo’s Pizzeria-we’ll cheese you if it please you. What can I hurl in our hellishly hot fire-roasting oven for you today?”
“It’s been a while since I saw your menu,” a very familiar voice says. “Do you have anything with shrimp?”
Ed manages to stay in his chair, but it’s a close thing. “Mustang?”
“Good afternoon,” Mustang says. “I didn’t realize checking in on you came with a free pizza, but I can’t say I’m disappointed.”
“Shut your trap,” Ed says. It is a pure fucking delight to be able to say shit like that to Mustang. Not that he didn’t say shit like that to Mustang before, but he usually had to follow it with ‘Sir’. “What do you want?”
“I just told you,” Mustang says, infuriatingly calm as fucking always. “Although now I want pizza, too. I think it’s fair to say that’s your fault.”
“What does ‘checking in on me’ mean?” Ed asks. “I’m not doing anything illegal. I mean-not that I used to. Depending on who you talked to. Which, in your case, was always the wrong people. I am well and truly fucking boring now, Mustang. You must be so damn happy you’re peeing yourself; you can finally sleep through the night without wondering what I’ve fucked up now.”
“Don’t worry,” Mustang says. “I never let your extremely unique definition of the word ‘legal’ interfere with my rest.” He clears his throat. Ed can just see him steepling his hands, like this is another stupid chess game. “So how are you?”
“Fine,” Ed says. “Like you already know, ’cause you have spies everywhere, and you probably pay people to stalk me just for fun.”
“Do you mean that I pay them to stalk you for their entertainment, or for my own?” Mustang asks. “Actually, don’t answer that. I suppose it’s probably impossible for you to believe, but I really did just want to say hello.”
Ed holds the phone away from his ear to squint at it suspiciously for a second, then brings it back.
“Okay,” he says. “Hi.”
Mustang sighs.
“That’s why you called,” Ed says. “You just miss doing that. And nobody else brings it out in you like I do.”
“While that is, fortunately or unfortunately, entirely true,” Mustang says, “I called because I… care. About you. And about how you’re doing.”
“Fine,” Ed says. “I’m doing fine. We’re doing fine.” He could leave it at that, or he could say a lot of other shit-most of which is not especially charitable, some of which he’d even mean.
Or he could… not. He could try maybe making up for just a little bit of it all.
“And I know a lot of that is owed to you,” he says, slowly, but the words don’t really stick the way he expected, “so… thanks. Thank you. For that, and for all the other shit you did that you didn’t think I’d notice.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mustang says smoothly.
“Yeah,” Ed says, “okay. ’Cause the Central University hiring committee just overlooks a total lack of formal education on a regular basis.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I recognize your handwriting, Mustang.”
“I have no idea wh-”
“I’m hanging up on your ass in five… four…”
“You know where to find me,” Mustang says, and puts the phone down first.
At least some things-some goddamn motherfucking bastardly-as-hell things-never change.
Weirdly, putting up with Mustang’s shit has kind of left Ed in a good mood. There’s also the fact that his pencil-ceiling dragon is coming along really nicely. It’s probably mostly the dragon.
Point-pencil-point, haha-is, he’s feeling sort of… not especially pissed off at the universe as he stumps off to go collect Al from his last class. It looks and smells like it’s about to start snowing, and the deep throbbing in Ed’s joints vociferously agrees. It’d be nice if the stupid sky would get it over with.
The tall, stately white marble building comes into view right as the students start pouring out the doors and careening down the steps like a bunch of maniacs. Most of the kids have streamed all the way down and off towards their destinations by the time Al emerges, surrounded by girls-and a couple guys-who are raptly intent on whatever it is he’s saying.
Except then he spots Ed, and his eyes light up, and he waves hastily, breaks away, and races down the stairs. His adoring fans just keep on gazing after him.
Someday, he’s going to look at somebody else like that-isn’t he? And maybe that’s… right. Maybe that’s the way it should be. That’s what they were fighting for, really, all along-a second chance. Al’s got one now. And he doesn’t have to drag his washed-up, banged-up, half-broken older brother along behind him forever. Ed can accept that. Ed can make his peace with how things ought to be.
It’s easy to say that when he hasn’t gotten the proverbial pole through the abdomen yet.
“You gotta be careful,” he says as Al comes scampering up to him, beaming. “You’re gonna fall and crack your head open one of these days.”
“Am not,” Al says warmly. He links his arm through Ed’s right and pats Ed’s elbow. “C’mon, let’s go home. I’m starving. So what did you teach about today?”
It starts to snow just as they reach the front walk up to their apartment, and-for the first time since they started walking well over a mile ago-Al releases his grip on Ed’s arm and goes skipping off into the little yard.
“Look!” he says. “Brother, look!”
“I’m looking,” Ed says.
And he is-just not at the thickening curtain of pale flakes, or the soft glow of the streetlamps against the dark sky, or at the treeline or the lit windows or… well, at anything but Al, really.
There isn’t anything but Al.
Al, who has the kindest soul and the biggest heart of anyone he’s ever known-Al, who can forgive people like Hohenheim, people like him-Al, who scrunches his nose up over the crossword puzzle in the newspaper and smiles at every dawn like the day outside is a beautiful gift ripe for the unwrapping-Al, who will chip away at his stupid brother’s stupid moodiness with hot drinks and dumb jokes and little hugs until it melts away to nothing-
Al, who is currently spinning around with his arms spread, tongue out to catch snowflakes.
Al, who proceeds to squeak, bounce up and down once, and then come tearing over towards Ed, attempting to cry “I go’ ’n!” without putting his tongue back in.
Al, who is catching two handfuls of Ed’s scarf, bright-eyed and breathless, and saying, “Here! Taste it!”
Al, who has just sealed his mouth securely over Ed’s.
Al, who-
Is-
Drawing back and inhaling sharply and swallowing hard as Ed just stares.
Ed’s breath mists between them, stark white in the space, and he can see the dissipating cloud reflected in Al’s enormous eyes.
Al tastes better than he smells, and feels better than he tastes, and has always-always-looked like home.
He cups Al’s face in both hands and drags him back in.
Maybe it’s five minutes later; maybe it’s ten; Ed doesn’t know and can’t even pretend to care-Al nudges him away and calls a time-out to pant until he gets his breath back. His mouth is swollen and gleaming wet from all the attention, and his eyes are fucking sparkling, and there are tiny dots of snow in his hair, and he just won’t stop grinning.
“Brother,” he says, “you are the dumbest genius I have ever met.”
“Don’t sass your big brother,” Ed says.
Al latches on to the trailing tail of his scarf and starts towing him towards the door. “Lucky for you, I love you anyway.”
Ed’s five remaining toes are frozen, and he can’t feel his ears, but he can definitely feel the grin trying its damnedest to break his face.
“Lucky for me,” he says.
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing: Ed/Al
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,600
Warnings: language (thanks, Ed!); major end-of-Brotherhood spoilers; mild sketch; angst-fluff ratio of approximately 1:3
Summary: Ed kinda hates winter and really loves Al. Like. Y'know.
Author's Note: Late birthday fic for Hales! ♥ Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it and/or co-dependent brothers hooking up. :'DDDD
ORANGE-VANILLA
There are a lot of things to like about winter, but there are also a lot of things to hate, and Ed can’t really help it if he’s struggling with the balance. He doesn’t do so well with balance these days-physically or philosophically; halving the weight of your right arm and selling the skill you built your life around will do that for you.
But he wouldn’t change it. Oh, hell; nothing in the universe could make him trade it back; he’d die first, in a hundred-thousand terrible, terrible ways. Because Al’s nose goes pink in the cold; and he’s got a scarf in every color, and they all look like they were made for him; and he stares up at snowflakes with his eyes huge and his mouth open, and then he starts to grin; and the sensation of shivering makes him laugh; and sometimes he still gets a glimmer of tears in his eyes when he runs his fingertip down along the spine of a cat.
Ed thinks about it a lot-whether he was offering up more than just the immediate factor of the clap-and-remake crap. Probably the potential of it counted, too-all the things he could and would have done with alchemy over the course of the rest of his life, however long that works out to be.
But when he looks at what he took back, he can’t believe that dumbass trick worked at all, because for once he got the good end of the deal.
Now if only he could figure out the equivalent exchange for an apartment in Central that isn’t fucking freezing all the goddamn time.
“Oh, dear,” Al says, emerging from his bedroom to find Ed already cocooned in three blankets on the couch, reading with fingerless gloves on and side-thinking about if there might be a way to turn pages with his nose. Maybe if he invented a device you could trigger from the safety of the warmth beneath the blanket… “Let me put the coffee on; that’ll help. Is the heat not working again?”
“What heat?” Ed mutters.
“Ah,” Al says.
As Al clatters around the kitchen, Ed buries his nose in the edge of the blanket and sets the book down on his chest for a minute. It might be worth it to get a cat just to have an extra heat source, but they’d still have to keep it the rest of the time, probably. You can’t just rent cats for winter, can you? Maybe he should start a cat rental company. Al would be over the freaking moon.
He opens his mouth, realizes that this is the nefarious work of half-frozen neurons, and shuts it again before he gets himself into a veritable shit-ton of trouble. And cats. A veritable shit-ton of cats.
Just thinking about the hairballs makes him shiver in a way that has nothing to do with the sub-zero temperatures around here.
Momentarily, though, Al is humming quietly in the kitchen and then sauntering in with two steaming mugs of coffee-which Ed can almost smell with his frozen nose-and carefully handing one over. He settles down on the couch and nestles in close against Ed’s side and closes his eyes to draw in a big, deep breath before he sips.
And that’s just-Al, right? Al’s always been really affectionate, and really unreserved about it, and really… sweet. Al just always wants people to know they’re loved. He’s still getting used to physical sensations, and he likes being close to people, and… and hell, he’s probably freezing his ass off, too. That’s all it is.
Which is why there’s a hot anchor’s weight of guilt dropping into Ed’s stomach when he just can’t stop himself from looking at Al’s eyelashes, and his jawline, and his throat, and the tiny peek of collarbone permitted by the undone button of his pajama shirt. It was easier to justify, at the start-when he had the whole Well, he only just got those eyes back; of course I wanna stare into them for a while spiel to fall back on. Back when he had an excuse.
Five months later, he ain’t got jackshit except…
This. Whatever this is. Al curled up against him, warm and breathing and smelling so fucking good he just-
This thing in him, in his guts and his chest and the back of his head, all the hastily-stifled thoughts like little insects he can bat away when they come one-by-one-but when he sleeps, and he dreams, and the swarms come for him-
It’s stupid. It’s so stupid. He’s gotten everything he ever asked for-more; a million times more; he’s made out like a fucking bandit-and here he is, staring into his perfect coffee and trying to pretend his cheeks aren’t burning, wishing with every last guilty goddamn fiber of his being that Al wasn’t just the best baby brother in the vast reaches of the giant fucking world.
Wishing he wasn’t so fucked-up in the one department where he thought he had a snowball’s chance of being ordinary.
Wishing Al was in love with him, too.
He’s such a fucking disaster. When’s Al going to realize that? He darkens every door he ever pauses at; chaos never fails to follow in his wake. He’s a misery machine. Anyone who ever takes him in gets fuck-all but heartache in return.
And he’s never, ever going to have the balls or the nobility to tell Al that he should think about that, and make Ed leave.
What’s going to happen when Al gets some cute girlfriend? It’s only a matter of time. People look at him constantly, and it’s not like Ed blames them, ’cause, c’mon, Al, but-all the same. One of these days he’s going to see somebody he likes, and he’s going to look back. And then…
And then Ed’s going to lose him in a whole new way.
Slowly. Inch by inch. One drop of shared blood at a time.
Just thinking about it makes him want to walk out there, right down the path to the sidewalk, and on and on and on-out of the city, off through the hills-and never, ever stop.
“Brother,” Al says, blowing coffee-breath in his ear so that it tickles, and he squirms, “you think too much.”
“Shut up,” Ed says. “What do you know?”
Al winks at him, all sunshine-grin. “More than you think, Ed.”
Ed executes a series of complicated maneuvers to extricate himself from the blankets without either spilling his coffee or dropping his book. He flips the whole blanket-mound onto Al, who eeps in a way that is truly horrible for its bone-crushing cuteness, and then goes to put the book back on the shelf.
“Brother,” Al says slowly, “are you okay?”
“What?” Ed asks as he scans the spines. Al has this chronological order thing going, and he doesn’t want to fuck it up, even though it makes pretty much zero sense. “I’m always okay.”
“That doesn’t really answer the question.”
“Yes, it does.”
“I’d somehow forgotten how delightfully illuminating it is to argue with you before you’ve had caffeine.”
Ed gives him the finger without even looking.
“Case in point,” Al says.
Ed rolls his eyes, goes back to organizing books, and neglects to point out that Al has dropped the original question.
So that’s that.
The problem with Sunday afternoons is that they’re irrevocably tainted by the inevitability of the imminent Monday morning.
Ed has planned that sentence out in detail in case anyone ever asks.
Al nudges a toe at his right foot where he’s sprawled out on the carpet with a book over his face.
“Do you want to come get groceries with me?” he asks.
“No,” Ed says. He peels the book off of his face and gets up anyway.
Al has his latest model of slightly off-kilter, utterly unreadable smile on. “Make sure you bundle up, Brother. I don’t want a repeat of last time.”
“I was getting frostbite,” Ed says. “I wouldn’t lie about something that important.”
“Lie, no,” Al says mildly, sauntering off to what he has dubbed ‘the coat closet’, even though it’s mostly full of… books. Like everything else. “Heinously exaggerate? Well…”
“Are you this much of an asshole in class?” Ed asks, limping after him, because the right foot helpfully went partly numb.
“Only when they’ve really earned it,” Al says, turning to grin at him and hand him the warmest wool coat they’ve got. “You get the best of me.”
Ed takes the coat and tries to think of something to say and… can’t.
Al gets excited about grocery stores. Al gets excited about everything.
“These apples are so pretty!” he says. “Brother, look!”
“They’re nice, Al,” Ed says automatically.
Al must’ve been wearing this coat last, because it smells like him-some kind of combination of soap and vanilla and… citrus, maybe? Like an orange-vanilla, or something. Kind of soothing and also kind of bright. Ed doesn’t even want to think the word zesty. His brother smells zesty. He wants to go bury his face in the potatoes and never come out.
“Brother, peppermint bark with dark chocolate!”
He settles on hunkering down into the coat a little bit. Who’s going to blame him? It’s chilly in here. He doesn’t have any other reason. Obviously.
He takes a deep breath of Al smell and sinks simultaneously into comfort and despair.
He is so, so fucked.
His right arm is still kinda wonky, but at least it’s up to hoisting grocery bags now. When they first dragged their scrawny asses-well, Al’s scrawny ass; Ed’s scrawny arm-back from the Gate, he could barely even carry crap. He still gets really weird phantom sort of tingles through it, and occasionally an inescapable feeling like it’s bigger than it is. He mentioned it to Winry once, and she just gave him this sort of helpless shrug and reminded him that he’s probably the first person in the history of the universe who’s ever replaced their automail with a regular limb again. Kinda funny-the last crazy precedent he’ll ever set. At least he went out with a bang.
“Holy crap, Al,” he says as they unpack the bags on the counter. “How much hot chocolate did you get?”
“Being cold makes you sad,” Al says matter-of-factly, lining the tins up in the cabinet above the stove. “And I don’t like it when you’re sad, so evidently I have to take measures to prevent you from getting cold. It’s really very simple, Brother.”
Ed blinks at the wall built of little bricks of different hot chocolate brands. “…right.”
There are a few things that really are simple-first, that Ed would do anything for Al, up to and including laying down his life without a second thought. Second, that that is the reason Al embarks on virtually no errands alone-because Ed always insists on coming, no matter how little interest he has in the endeavor at hand, because bad things happen out there. Al’s still not quite recovered from half a decade of hanging at the Gate, and Ed’s not as good at protecting people as he was, but he’ll die trying if he has to.
Third, that they’re going to be swimming in hot chocolate for probably the rest of their lives. He can’t complain about that one too much.
“Let’s try this one first,” Al says, selecting a little cardboard box from among the hoard. He draws out two little gold-foil packets. He has such beautiful fingers-all long and slender and tapering. Piano-player’s fingers, probably. Mom might’ve said something like that.
Ed leans back against the counter and looks intently at the floor until his stomach stops roiling. Can’t think about Mom. Can’t think about what Mom would think of him.
“Do you think we can get you sugar-high enough that you’ll forget to whine about having to go to work tomorrow?” Al asks, grinning again to soften the slight.
“You and I both know there’s not enough sugar in the world,” Ed says.
It’s not that he doesn’t kinda like-or at least not actively despise-his job most of the time: teaching a bunch of dumbass university students basic physics and chemistry and shit is several orders of magnitude less crappy than he expected, and it sure as hell beats the ever-loving crap out of the military gig. As a bonus, they were willing (after a letter and a phone call or two from Mustang, whom Ed has to grudgingly admit has been staggeringly helpful with all of this readjustment business) to hire him on at Al’s top choice for study, which makes it about a thousand times easier to keep an eye on him.
It’s just…
Tough.
Tough to get used to the idea that he’s just another guy. Tough to get used to the idea that his days of changing the fate of the world-let alone the fabric of it around him-are well and truly over. Tough to get used to the idea that Al is going to glory in this for a little while, maybe for a couple years if Ed’s lucky, and then swan on to something newer and more exciting-something with other people than his lame-ass has-been brother, who’s just going to stay here, slowly molding, until he eventually runs out of days.
Tough to get used to the idea that he’s peaked, and Al’s only just getting started.
Tough to get used to the idea that the focal point of his whole existence is about to outgrow him.
Just… tough.
And shitty.
And tough.
But he’s been through worse, and he’s going to get through this, too.
Al starts humming as he makes the first of many, many cups of cocoa, and Ed goes and faceplants on the couch.
They really need to get the damn heat fixed around here. Al keeps having to huddle up against Ed’s side for warmth every time they sit down with a hot drink, which probably sucks, because the automail pretty much just radiates cold, and Ed’s all bony and scarry and not very soft. And he probably smells like machine oil. And desperation.
Al nudges his chin at Ed’s right shoulder. “Brother.”
Ed has read this sentence six times and still has no idea what it says. “What?”
“Are you okay?”
Fuck. Ed closes his eyes, summons his willpower, and forces a grin. “’Course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Al sighs. Hot chocolate breath in the face should be gross, but it’s not. It’s really not. Ed hates everything.
“It’s just that the more settled we get,” Al says, “the sadder you seem to be.”
Count on Al to see straight through him. He should’ve known. He should’ve known he could run and dodge and duck and weave all he wanted, but hiding was out of the goddamn question from the start.
“I mean,” Al says, tracing an aimless little loopy design on Ed’s right knee, which tingles at first and then starts to burn, “I know this isn’t… exciting. And it’s probably a big letdown from how things used to be. But-I don’t know. I just want you to be happy. So if this isn’t working, maybe we should try something else.”
Ed stares at Al’s hand on his knee in abject terror for a long moment-and then he’s struck by inspiration.
“It’s just the weather,” he says. “The automail’s been really bad this year.”
Al pouts at him, prodding his knee in an exasperated sort of way this time. “Well, why didn’t you say something? Here, shift.”
Ed’s brain is having trouble keeping up with anything other than the sound of that bullet ricocheting off the wall behind him. “Huh?”
Al hops up, grabs Ed’s mug away from him, and gestures. “Shift over, dummy.”
“Don’t sass your big brother,” Ed says, scooting down the couch and taking his blanket mountain with him.
“You’d be bored out of your mind if I didn’t,” Al says, plopping back down on his left.
Ed scowls at him. “What’s your point?”
“That was my point,” Al says.
Before Ed can come up with a scathingly witty retort, Al is slipping his hand under the blankets and settling it right at the edge of the automail port on Ed’s thigh.
Ed’s breath stops. And his heart stops. And if he dies right now, from the sheer surprise as Al’s knuckles dig into the aching muscle in an all-too-tender place, that is such a crock of shit.
Except the problem is the same problem that it’s always been-he wants too much. He has something good; he has enough; but he wants more. He has a brief and beautiful reprieve from the not-insignificant pain and a gorgeous dose of generosity; he has the perfect brother doubling as the best friend he could ever ask for, and he wants-
He wants.
He wants those fingers still kneading deep and hard at the knotted muscle in his leg, but he wants Al-sweet, bright-eyed, dimpled-grinning Alphonse Elric, the objective of his fucking life-between his knees and dragging down the zipper on his jeans-
No. Nope. Not happening. This isn’t fucking happening; it’s not; he won’t let it.
He slips carefully out from under Al’s curled fingers before he rockets off the couch towards the hallway, because if he hurt that kid, he’d never forgive himself.
“You’re right,” he says as he makes a run for it. “S’just-tension. Gonna-take a shower. See if that helps.”
It won’t, because he’s going to take a cold shower, because people who get off in the shower thinking about their own fucking brother-about fucking their own fucking brother-go to a special, special hell regardless of whether they believe in it or not.
Al’s calm voice trails him down the hall:
“Don’t you want to finish your hot chocolate, Brother?”
He shuts the bathroom door.
Work sucks, not because working sucks so much as because the details are all crap and more crap, and in general it’s sort of a bad deal. For instance, an inexhaustive list: the lecture halls are fucking freezing. Every clomping step over to his little office, where he can kill time until Al’s classes are over, sends spears of sharp pain up through his tortured spine. His good bookbag is starting to split down the main seam, but he can’t fix it with a clap of his hands anymore, and he doesn’t know the first thing about sewing needles except that they’re probably just as bloodthirsty as the hypodermic kind. No one ever comes to his office hours, which leaves him with ninety minutes in an unheated closet-room to throw pencils at the ceiling until Al’s class lets out.
On the upside, his pencil design is starting to look pretty fucking cool. He was originally just going to do a sort of abstract spiral thing, but then it started turning into a dragon, so he’s running with it.
Fifteen minutes after he sits down, the phone on his desk rings.
Which never happens.
Or at least is never actually for him.
He picks it up and cradles it against his shoulder, aiming the next projectile. “Gonzalo’s Pizzeria-we’ll cheese you if it please you. What can I hurl in our hellishly hot fire-roasting oven for you today?”
“It’s been a while since I saw your menu,” a very familiar voice says. “Do you have anything with shrimp?”
Ed manages to stay in his chair, but it’s a close thing. “Mustang?”
“Good afternoon,” Mustang says. “I didn’t realize checking in on you came with a free pizza, but I can’t say I’m disappointed.”
“Shut your trap,” Ed says. It is a pure fucking delight to be able to say shit like that to Mustang. Not that he didn’t say shit like that to Mustang before, but he usually had to follow it with ‘Sir’. “What do you want?”
“I just told you,” Mustang says, infuriatingly calm as fucking always. “Although now I want pizza, too. I think it’s fair to say that’s your fault.”
“What does ‘checking in on me’ mean?” Ed asks. “I’m not doing anything illegal. I mean-not that I used to. Depending on who you talked to. Which, in your case, was always the wrong people. I am well and truly fucking boring now, Mustang. You must be so damn happy you’re peeing yourself; you can finally sleep through the night without wondering what I’ve fucked up now.”
“Don’t worry,” Mustang says. “I never let your extremely unique definition of the word ‘legal’ interfere with my rest.” He clears his throat. Ed can just see him steepling his hands, like this is another stupid chess game. “So how are you?”
“Fine,” Ed says. “Like you already know, ’cause you have spies everywhere, and you probably pay people to stalk me just for fun.”
“Do you mean that I pay them to stalk you for their entertainment, or for my own?” Mustang asks. “Actually, don’t answer that. I suppose it’s probably impossible for you to believe, but I really did just want to say hello.”
Ed holds the phone away from his ear to squint at it suspiciously for a second, then brings it back.
“Okay,” he says. “Hi.”
Mustang sighs.
“That’s why you called,” Ed says. “You just miss doing that. And nobody else brings it out in you like I do.”
“While that is, fortunately or unfortunately, entirely true,” Mustang says, “I called because I… care. About you. And about how you’re doing.”
“Fine,” Ed says. “I’m doing fine. We’re doing fine.” He could leave it at that, or he could say a lot of other shit-most of which is not especially charitable, some of which he’d even mean.
Or he could… not. He could try maybe making up for just a little bit of it all.
“And I know a lot of that is owed to you,” he says, slowly, but the words don’t really stick the way he expected, “so… thanks. Thank you. For that, and for all the other shit you did that you didn’t think I’d notice.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mustang says smoothly.
“Yeah,” Ed says, “okay. ’Cause the Central University hiring committee just overlooks a total lack of formal education on a regular basis.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I recognize your handwriting, Mustang.”
“I have no idea wh-”
“I’m hanging up on your ass in five… four…”
“You know where to find me,” Mustang says, and puts the phone down first.
At least some things-some goddamn motherfucking bastardly-as-hell things-never change.
Weirdly, putting up with Mustang’s shit has kind of left Ed in a good mood. There’s also the fact that his pencil-ceiling dragon is coming along really nicely. It’s probably mostly the dragon.
Point-pencil-point, haha-is, he’s feeling sort of… not especially pissed off at the universe as he stumps off to go collect Al from his last class. It looks and smells like it’s about to start snowing, and the deep throbbing in Ed’s joints vociferously agrees. It’d be nice if the stupid sky would get it over with.
The tall, stately white marble building comes into view right as the students start pouring out the doors and careening down the steps like a bunch of maniacs. Most of the kids have streamed all the way down and off towards their destinations by the time Al emerges, surrounded by girls-and a couple guys-who are raptly intent on whatever it is he’s saying.
Except then he spots Ed, and his eyes light up, and he waves hastily, breaks away, and races down the stairs. His adoring fans just keep on gazing after him.
Someday, he’s going to look at somebody else like that-isn’t he? And maybe that’s… right. Maybe that’s the way it should be. That’s what they were fighting for, really, all along-a second chance. Al’s got one now. And he doesn’t have to drag his washed-up, banged-up, half-broken older brother along behind him forever. Ed can accept that. Ed can make his peace with how things ought to be.
It’s easy to say that when he hasn’t gotten the proverbial pole through the abdomen yet.
“You gotta be careful,” he says as Al comes scampering up to him, beaming. “You’re gonna fall and crack your head open one of these days.”
“Am not,” Al says warmly. He links his arm through Ed’s right and pats Ed’s elbow. “C’mon, let’s go home. I’m starving. So what did you teach about today?”
It starts to snow just as they reach the front walk up to their apartment, and-for the first time since they started walking well over a mile ago-Al releases his grip on Ed’s arm and goes skipping off into the little yard.
“Look!” he says. “Brother, look!”
“I’m looking,” Ed says.
And he is-just not at the thickening curtain of pale flakes, or the soft glow of the streetlamps against the dark sky, or at the treeline or the lit windows or… well, at anything but Al, really.
There isn’t anything but Al.
Al, who has the kindest soul and the biggest heart of anyone he’s ever known-Al, who can forgive people like Hohenheim, people like him-Al, who scrunches his nose up over the crossword puzzle in the newspaper and smiles at every dawn like the day outside is a beautiful gift ripe for the unwrapping-Al, who will chip away at his stupid brother’s stupid moodiness with hot drinks and dumb jokes and little hugs until it melts away to nothing-
Al, who is currently spinning around with his arms spread, tongue out to catch snowflakes.
Al, who proceeds to squeak, bounce up and down once, and then come tearing over towards Ed, attempting to cry “I go’ ’n!” without putting his tongue back in.
Al, who is catching two handfuls of Ed’s scarf, bright-eyed and breathless, and saying, “Here! Taste it!”
Al, who has just sealed his mouth securely over Ed’s.
Al, who-
Is-
Drawing back and inhaling sharply and swallowing hard as Ed just stares.
Ed’s breath mists between them, stark white in the space, and he can see the dissipating cloud reflected in Al’s enormous eyes.
Al tastes better than he smells, and feels better than he tastes, and has always-always-looked like home.
He cups Al’s face in both hands and drags him back in.
Maybe it’s five minutes later; maybe it’s ten; Ed doesn’t know and can’t even pretend to care-Al nudges him away and calls a time-out to pant until he gets his breath back. His mouth is swollen and gleaming wet from all the attention, and his eyes are fucking sparkling, and there are tiny dots of snow in his hair, and he just won’t stop grinning.
“Brother,” he says, “you are the dumbest genius I have ever met.”
“Don’t sass your big brother,” Ed says.
Al latches on to the trailing tail of his scarf and starts towing him towards the door. “Lucky for you, I love you anyway.”
Ed’s five remaining toes are frozen, and he can’t feel his ears, but he can definitely feel the grin trying its damnedest to break his face.
“Lucky for me,” he says.