It'd been five years since Edward had returned from Germany. Nobody knew he was back, except Al and Winry and Grandma. Edward had requested they not tell anyone so he could have his privacy. He was mourning the loss of Alfons, he didn't want happy reunions.

It was after an almost-attempt at human transmutation that Edward finally started doing more than drinking and living a half-life without his partner. He blew the dust off the memories of rocket diagrams, fuel formulas, and approached Winry about making flying machines. She was the engineer, not him, but he knew the designs, the fuels, the theories. Winry happily dove into work with him, focusing on the new projects between automail patients.

After they got their first flying machine off the ground, they sent letters to the university in Central, to the military department, anyone who might be interested in their designs.

The military answered first, with the highest bid for their work. So they packed up their things, Al in tow, and headed for Central for a long-term stay, leaving Grandma to hold down the home front. Edward wasn't sure he wanted the military to have these designs, but as in Germany when searching for sponsors, you had to go to who had the money to fund the project.

"You two go back to the hotel," Edward told his brother and sister-in-law after they'd eaten at a small diner near their hotel. "I want to take a walk."

"Want me to come with you , Brother?" Al asked.

He shook his head. "Naw, I'll be fine. I just need to stretch my legs. Keep your wife warm, she'll appreciate it."

Winry laughed and shook her head. "If you're sure, Ed, I'll take advantage of the invitation." She gave Al a suggestive look, then took his hand and started in the direction of the hotel.

"Don't stay out too late, Brother," Al told him as he was led away by his wife.

Edward gave them a weak smile before turning away, walking down the sidewalk aimlessly.

It'd be known soon that he was back, as soon as the public got whiff of his foreign designs that would send mankind flying. He wondered idly if any of his old friends would try to contact him. Mustang, Hawkeye, Armstrong, any of them. He knew they'd be angry that they'd never been told of his return, but it'd been by his own choice; he wanted the privacy to adapt to a home missing someone and had failed spectacularly at it for five long years.

It was time to move on.

"Ed?"

Edward stopped, hearing his name, and looked around for the source. The voice was familiar, maybe a bit deeper than he'd last heard it, but he remembered it. He finally spotted the eldest Tringham brother just up the block a ways. He forced a smile he didn't feel, one that felt pathetically weak and barely there. "Hey, Tringham."

Russell hurried over to him, staring in dumb wonder at Edward, as if he were some strange creature caught under glass. "Where- I thought you- how long-" He made a rude noise, then ran a hand over his hair. "Where the hell have you been?" he demanded. "You never came back from that city, everyone thought you were dead."

Edward shrugged. "I spent a couple years in hell, then managed to find my way home. That was five years ago. I just didn't want anyone to know. I wanted my privacy."

"Your privacy?" Russell snarled, then whapped Edward upside the head. "At least tell people you're alive, then ask them for privacy, you don't just let us think you're dead! Damnit, Elric, your logic does not resemble any logic I've ever seen."

Edward didn't have it in him to argue, so he looked down at the ground and mumbled an apology.

For a moment, Russell was silent, watching him. "So what're you doing in town?" he finally asked, obviously keeping something else to himself. He'd taken too long to deliberate on what to say next for Edward to think there wasn't something else he'd rather ask.

"I'm here with Al and Winry," he said. "We're selling designs for flying machines to the highest bidder."

"Flying machines?"

Edward's lips quirked into a small smile. "I wasn't kidding about spending a couple years in hell. I found another world entirely that I spent two years in. They had flying machines, and I was helping with working on them. I helped Winry come up with the designs for them."

Russell's face looked vaguely like a kid who just got told Santa was coming to visit. "You gonna show me these designs?" he asked. "Make up for scaring the life out of me?"

"When did I do that?" Edward asked, once would've demanded but lacked the strength to argue that much.

"When you walked down the street like you'd been there all along when the world- including me- has been thinking you're dead," Russell replied. "Now show me these designs."

Not feeling like fighting, and a tiny bit lonely for the company of someone who wouldn't fuss over him and his depressive fits the way Al and Winry did, Edward shrugged. "The hotel we're staying at's this way," he said, turning and walking back, not looking to see if Russell was following or not.

Russell was keeping pace with him. "Leave it to you to bring back new science. So where was this other world?"

"On the other side of alchemy," he said, trying and failing to describe it.

"What?"

"Alchemy's regulated by a Gate. There's a world on the other side of it. I spent two years there, then came home and retired to Rizenbul for awhile. Just spending time with Al, you know? Then he and Winry got married, and he had less time for me, so I stole his wife with these designs. Just to get back at him."

Russell laughed. "That sounds like you. Just, next time, remember to tell the rest of the world you're back, Pipsqueak."

"I'm not that short anymore," he protested without much heat.

Russell stopped and started at him. "You really have grown up. That barely got a reaction outta you."

The look Edward gave him was dead. "Shouldn't I have grown up some?"

"Well, it's a bit disappointing I can't tease you that way anymore," Russell admitted, starting to walk again.

"Too bad for you," Edward said as they entered the hotel. Russell was silent as they took the elevator up to the sixth floor where Edward and his family were staying. Winry and Al's room was right across the hall from Edward's was. He was staying alone, so there was nobody to disturb as he unlocked the door and led Russell in.

"I'll get out the blueprints in a second," he said as he shucked his coat and put it on the coat rack.

"I can be patient," Russell said, taking off and hanging up his own coat. He took a seat on the edge of the bed at Edward's invitation as Edward dug into his suitcase and pulled out a couple rolled up blueprints. Edward joined Russell on the bed, sitting cross legged across from him, and spread out the designs for Russell to see.

Russell spent a few minutes staring at them, eagerly taking in this new science and committing it to memory. "This is amazing," he said, running a hand over the paper, smoothing it down and almost caressing the formulas and calculations. "It'd take a lot of room to get her up in the air, though," he noted.

"Yeah, the military will have to build an airfield with runways for take off," Edward admitted.

Russell looked up disapprovingly. "The military?"

"They were the highest bidders," Edward said with a shrug. "I don't really care what they do with it, either. I just want Alfons's hard work to be seen by someone."

"I thought you got this from the other side?" Russell said. "This is Al's design?"

Edward froze, going first cold pale, then hot red as he ducked his head. "No. Not Al. Someone else I met in the other world."

For a second, Russell didn't say anything. "I'm guessing 'met' is not used casually? You were close to him?"

Fighting back tears and mentally snarling at himself for his slip in letting Alfons come up at all, Edward looked up at the ceiling as if lost in thought. "Yeah, something like that."

"I didn't take you for being interested in guys," Russell admitted.

Edward shrugged. "Nobody took me for being interested in either gender," he pointed out. "I was too obsessed with my work. And I almost was too obsessed with getting home to notice him, but he was helping me get there, and my roommate, so it was hard not to, I guess. But that was a long time ago, it doesn't matter now."

"Why do I get the feeling it matters a lot more than you're saying?" Russell said, voice hushed. "Fuck, Elric, I saw that look on your face when you realized you'd brought him up. You still miss him, and if I had to guess, that's why you didn't want to face this world for the last five years. Am I right?"

Edward closed his eyes, fighting back tears of grief and rage. "It's none of your business," he snapped. "You never knew him, anymore than Al or Winry ever did, so don't any of you have any right to tell me how to handle his death, got it?"

"I'm not telling you anything," Russell said. "Or at least, I wasn't. But I do know, thanks to you, that you can't dwell on the past." He rolled up the blueprints while Edward forced his breathing into an even pattern. "Ed, I'm sure your brother's said more than I could, he obviously knows more and he knows you better than I do. If building these machines helps you move on, great, but you can't keep him to yourself forever. We may not have known him, but we see the effect he had on you, and that's something your friend and family want to know about. Nobody's digging at your privacy, we just want to know that part of you."

"There's no reason for it," Edward protested. "It's just making me run over old painful ground."

Russell grabbed Edward's shoulders gently. "No, it's celebrating a life that meant something important to you. Talking about things helps, Ed, at least that's what I've been told."

His self-control was starting to scatter to the four winds as his grip on his emotions wavered. "I'm out in the world, I'm doing something to affect it, I'm not just hiding away anymore, isn't that enough?" he demanded through tears that refused to be reined in.

"It's a step," Russell said. "Maybe you should try getting in touch with the others? See how people are doing?"

"Maybe some other time," Edward replied weakly. "I don't even really feel like dealing with you right now."

"Too bad." Russell put his hand under Edward's chin and lifted his head to look at him. "Hey, I'm not trying to poke a raw nerve, but this kind of grief, for this long, it's an infected wound, not a healthy mourning. You need to get it out before it kills you."

"It almost did," Edward admitted, almost under his breath, wondering if Russell would even hear.

"What did you do?" He had heard, goddamnit.

Edward sighed, blowing his bangs out of his eyes as Russell dropped his hand. "I nearly tried to bring him back, okay?" Russell drew back, staring at Edward with horror, then anger, anger that Edward interrupted with his own. "Al already slugged me and yelled at me for it, I don't need you to, too."

"That's too damn bad," Russell snapped, smacking Edward upside the head. "What would your family have done if you'd gone through with it, huh? And fuck, did you even think about any of us who were missing you? We thought you were dead once, iI/i thought you were dead and that it was my fault for showing you that stupid city in the first place!"

Edward's defensive stance shattered, confusion setting in. "Why would you think that? It wasn't your fault, what happened, and I had to get Al back somehow."

Russell took a deep breath, eyes closed tightly as his one hand still on Edward's shoulder gripped harder. "I thought I should've gone with you. I've been thinking what it might've gone differently if I'd just gone with you. Maybe I couldn't have been much help, but maybe I could've, you know?" He opened his eyes, and they were wet with their own sheen of tears.

Edward felt completely off-guard by this emotional confession, felt battered and bruised; Russell had dragged up memories of Alfons, and now he was forcing him back into his own world, where Alfons was gone, and Russell was there, saying he blamed himself for something nobody had blame in.

He gingerly lifted a hand and rested it on the side of Russell's face, trying to be comforting. "Russell, you wouldn't have been able to help, not against what was down there. You needed to be up here for your brother."

Russell turned his face slightly into Edward's hand, closing his eyes and taking a shuddering breath as a few stray tears escaped to wet his cheeks. "Yeah, but we all needed you. Amestris needed you." A pause. "Hell, even I needed you. Who else was I going to pick on for being shorter than me? My brother's no fun about it."

Even I needed you.

Too much loneliness and too much grief piled in on Edward, directed his movements before he could stop himself as he leaned forward and captured Russell's lips with his own. Too many years being too lonely.

A point in Russell's favor, that he didn't immediately shove Edward away, and he made a barely there attempt at returning the kiss, but it had been rather lackluster as Edward pulled back, face on fire and tears of humiliation already following behind the tears of grief. "Sorry," he muttered. "You'd better go now, before I have to kill you for whatever reaction you're going to give me."

Silence stretched as Russell refused to move, one hand still on Edward's shoulder. "If we go this way, Ed, it's for keeps," he said quietly. "I don't do one night stands."

Edward stared at him for a moment before everything inside crumbled. "I don't want to be alone anymore, I want someone who's going to ibe/i there, " he whispered. "That's all. I'm sorry, if it's not what you want, you can go."

Russell brushed away a few tears from Edward's face, then leaned in and kissed him, uncertainly at first, then with more passion than sense.

Edward wrapped his arms around Russell's neck, kissing him like a drowning man finding air, greedily wrapping himself in the sense of another and letting it act as a balm for the loneliness that had been infected for so long.

It was hours later that they fell asleep, and for once, Edward didn't dream about Alfons's death, for once he didn't have a nightmare of any sort, tucked up against Russell's side.

He awoke to an empty bed. Russell and all his belongings were gone. Edward felt too numb to grieve, too numb to be angry, too numb to be anything but passive as he dressed, picked up the blueprints that had been set aside on the night stand and put them back with the rest, all but one that he kept out to study at the desk, throwing himself into his work.

The door opened, startling Edward, who looked up at Russell's entrance.

In Russell's hands were two cups of coffee. The room key dangled from one finger. "Oh, sorry, I didn't scare you, did I?" Russell said. "I figured you'd still be in bed, I decided to get us some coffee." He set one mug down on the desk next to Edward, then set the room key down, locking the door before taking a drink of his own coffee.

"I thought you left?" More a question than a statement.

Russell shook his head. "I told you, I don't do one-night stands." Then he smirked. "Guess what, Elric, you're stuck with me now."

For a second, Edward couldn't react, still too numb from finding himself alone, before a small smile worked its way across his lips. "Goddamnit, I shot myself in the foot, didn't I?"

"Yup!" Russell said brightly, reaching over and brushing some of Edward's hair back from his face. "So here's the next question. Am I stuck moving to nowhere Rizenbul, or can I convince you to leave your family to move to Central with me?"

Edward looked down at the blueprints in front of him. "Winry will be in town often with these things keeping us busy," he reasoned. "Al's outgrown needing me around all the time, he's married, and god knows when they're going to start reproducing. The fun of being the fun uncle is that I get to send them home to their parents, not be stuck with the results of whatever I did." He glanced up at Russell. "Where do you live here in town? With Fletcher, I'm guessing?"

Russell shook his head. "Fletcher moved in with his boyfriend. It's been just me for the last three months."

"Then I can move here," Edward said. "I think it's time both Al and I outgrew needing to be hip attachments to each other."

"Well, I got a two bedroom flat if he and Winry change their minds about being away from you," Russell said. "It'd be a bit cramped, but it'd be doable. Just so you have an out. And hell, I like farmland, if it doesn't work here in Central, we can move to Rizenbul."

An idea occurred to Edward. "You know what? Why don't we go ahead and move to Rizenbul?" he suggested. "We can rebuild my old house, have a place of our own. You'll have access to plants you can fuss around with again."

Russell smiled. "Sounds good to me. Now, for the fun part. Who tells your siblings?"

"I break my siblings' brains and you break yours?" Edward said.

"Deal."