A/N: I'm generally terrible at writing fanfic for anime and manga, it being a different medium altogether. This fic is more a series of images, like the panels of a comic; I hope it works. The title comes from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, but it doesn't relate much to the story. (Someday I will write a fic whose title is both original and entirely relevant. In the meantime, please enjoy.)
Disclaimer: I own neither Full Metal Alchemist nor Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Dogs in the Night-Time.

1.

He steps into the hall through the front door. One arm already out of his uniform coat, most of the gel gone from his hair. The streetlight falls around him, casting a tall black-and-amber silhouette in front of his feet. Through the gloom he can see rooms, windows, furniture. On the far wall, ghosts of younger strangers smile out of yellowing photographs.

He stands there a moment, in the orange rectangle of the doorway, waiting for everything to change. Nothing moves.

2.

He kicks off his shoes, tosses his coat and hat somewhere near the door where he might find them in the morning. There will be wrinkles in his uniform. Hughes will tell him off.

Would have.

3.

He walks down the hall without turning on the lights. Slipping through slices of shadow and window-light like a thief. Halfway down the hall he stops, realizes that he's left his keys in the doorknob outside. He considers leaving them there. Somebody might take them, of course. But it can't be so hard to transmute the lock. He can make the key whatever shape he chooses.

4.

He yanks the keyring from the knob.

Somewhere in the orange night, a siren is wailing. Speeding towards some distant disaster. The couple downstairs are arguing again. He can hear them as if there were no walls, no floor. Their newborn shrieks on and on.

God only knows why soldiers marry.

5.

In the kitchen he pours himself half a tumbler of brandy. After a moment, he tips it into the sink and fills the tumbler with tapwater instead. Then he dumps the water, too. He fills the tumbler with brandy again and stands watching it in the sickly sodium light.

In a moment, he will down the drink in a single mouthful. He will go to the bathroom and shower, shave, wash his hands in hot water, carefully, like a surgeon. He hopes something in there might make him feel partly human.

6.

The brandy's surface ripples with pale infinitesimal waves. Reflecting off each other with dictated precision. Their shadows soaring like tiny birds at the bottom of the glass. Colliding without ever touching. Blending together and dying away without a trace.