A/N: Hello everyone, welcome to my new story. Now, please be aware I will be working on my other story same time as this time. But when this idea came to me, it was to funny and epic to ignore.

So please read, review, and enjoy the story.

Chapter 1
-The Hunger for Touch

The full moon had shined over the Central Command of Amestris like a full white diamond. Its pure translucent rays shining down like angels' arms. Veiling the city beneath with a matching hue as white as snow. Everyone slept peacefully from within their beds, blissfully lost in their dreams as they waited for the morning sun.

But amongst the general, one particular individual did not sleep. A suit of gunmetal colored steel armor that stood about 7ft was wandering through the streets, his walk as lifeless as his empty shell of a body. His heavy spiked booked clanked against the black coded concrete streets, surprisingly making little sound despite someone of his weight and size. The moon's rays had coated him in white, almost giving him the appearance of a red eyed snowman with fangs.

Alphonse Elric, younger brother of the famous Fullmetal Alchemist Edward Elric, was once again wandering through the streets, with no idea of where his feet carried him. Not that the aimless walk bothered him, no one was around to see him, so not like he'd scare anyone.

He sighed, the empty suit housing his soul giving a slight metallic echo to his soft voice. Even at eighteen years old, his voice had changed very little. But what did change, was his hunger for touch. A large gauntlet was pressed to his unfeeling forehead. Metal shoulders clanking despairingly as the young man desperately tried to remember what hot and cold felt like.

The trees lining the roads like giant body guards shivered from the apparent 3 AM breeze, budding leaves rustling loudly. Making it apparent that spring was just around the corner.

He tightened his fist, ten years of being trapped in this armor, he had forgotten what it was like to be human. As he felt himself start to fall into the pit of despair, a tiny band of gold shimmered in the corner of his red eyes. Glancing down, he noticed the familiar golden ring snuggly wrapped around his leather finger. A wave of joy melded with sadness crashed over him.

"Mei…" Al whispered, his voice croaking. Remembering the young Xing girl who he had proposed to. The utter shock he felt when she presented him a ring she had been saving was still fresh within his mind. Despite not being able to blush, he could feel a typhoon of warmth wash over him. It was such a joyous feeling, so beautifully human, it made him want to wrap his hulking arms around Mei's body and never let go.

What touched him the most, was that she had dreamed of marrying him even when he was still a suit of armor. The moment her honeyed words left her silver tongue, it swooned the armored alchemist over, making him fall head over heels as she had been for him since the beginning.

He chuckled, feeling a certain kind of heaviness to his eyes, mimicking the feel of a tear building up. If he could cry, he would've. He had always been a bit more emotional than his loud-mouthed abrasive brother, but Mei Chang loved that about Al. She loved everything about him, because she still saw him as human.

Al raised his left thumb and massaged the reflective surface of the engagement ring housed on his right index finger. Its design obviously of the Xing culture, with a well-crafted serpent dragon looping over the surface and wrapping its mouth around a small red emerald on the top. Though the Xing symbols written in he couldn't fully interpret, Mei had explained some of it when first presenting the love momentum to him.

'In my culture, it's traditional for one partner to craft a ring of their own making and present it to the one they have chosen as their mate.'

Her words relayed in his helmet. He looked at the dragon's body well drawn around the ring's loop.

'The dragon is a symbolic element of life within my culture, it means strength. When I welded the gold into your ring, I crafted the dragon into it myself. It means how strong my love is for you.'

Then he looked at his favorite part of the engagement ring, the red ruby the dragon seemed to be viciously protecting in its toothy maw. He recalled asking if the ruby meant anything special, and boy did it.

'While anyone can design the ring however they like, I chose the dragon to be guarding the crimson ruby, because it's the same shade as your eyes. The eyes I first fell in love with.'

It was like Mei Chang was his dragon, her spirit so insanely guarded his own in her protective wings, and it made him feel so safe. Despite him being the seven foot metal giant and her being a small girl.

As Al slowed his walk, his thoughts drifted away from the ring and back to Mei. It had been a year since he proposed and she presented the ring. Though it was not the time lapse that bothered him, it was the fact Mei Chang had been called back to her country. Like his big brother, she had been assigned to be become a dog of her own country's military. A war had broken out between the clans, and Mei had volunteered herself to fight for the emperor, her half-brother Ling, alongside his bodyguard Lan Fan.

Al would have never believed it, but now two people that meant the world to him were now tagged and collared dogs belonging to the military. While his respect for Mei and Ed as soldiers was unfathomable, it now made his soul quiver with double the worry.

It was bad enough Al was always racing to save his older brother from trouble his big mouth landed him into; but now he had two people to worry for, and one was in a completely different country.

The suit of armor groaned, it drove him damn crazy. Not only did he have to wait on his brother, but now his future wife. Plus, it didn't help knowing that the battles of Xing were known to be bad, if not more vicious, then the Ishvalan war itself. It made his soul shed invisible tears, because he was way across the desert, helplessly waiting. Hoping for her safe return.

Thus which brings him the present. He hadn't seen Mei in a year since the proposal, but he has gotten letters from her. It relieved the armored alchemist to know she was alive and okay, but when he would ask about injuries, her letters seemed to go silent.

He didn't know it, But Al's endless thoughts had somehow brought him back to the location that he had left hours ago; the hospital. Hobbling up the stairs, he pressed two large leather hands against the metal doors and whooshed them open. The people lined in the waiting room tensed up at the intimidating sight of the bulky suit of grey armor.

Usually this bothered Al, but tonight, he was to mentally drained to fret over the stares. He drug his feet over the carpet, leaving scuff marks as he sluggishly moved past the front desk and down the endless white hallways. Though he couldn't smell, he could practically sense the level of cleanliness the air and sterilized walls took on. Any whiter and it would've blinded someone. Watching bitter doctors with equally white clothes skulk past him almost made it feel more like an Insane Asylum.

Shaking his head, he forced his focus back onto the door that sat mockingly in front of him. Grabbing the knob in a kung-fu tight grip, he hesitantly pushed it open, its wooden frames squeaking on the metal hinges. Peaking around the corner, Alphonse saw the sight that made him dry heave.

Ed, his treasured older brother, laid on the bed, sun gold eyes shut with dark circles looping beneath his black eyelids. His skin viciously pale, it almost matched the surface of the full moon, Al thought. A big beige bandaged was tightly wrapped around his forehead and neck, with a hidden bandage fitted across his middle section beneath his shirt. His body looked so defeated and broken, so—unEdward.

Painfully, he forced his way towards his older brother. He tried to move as quietly as possible, but the clanking of his armor could've probably woke the dead. He froze, the word 'dead' swarming his mind like a hoard of pissed hornets. Ushering those awful thoughts away, he finally reached his brother's bed side. Grabbing a lonely stool sitting in the corner, he laid his hefty metallic hindquarters on it. The wood bending ever so slightly before adjusting to his weight.

Once comfortable, Al felt a hidden force magically pull his hand up and rest it on his brother's face. It'd been five months since Ed had been seriously hurt. He'd been called away so suddenly to assist in a desperate military attempt to restore order in a town stirred up by rogue alchemist. It was going smoothly, till a grenade went off. Roy Mustang had barely been able to pull Ed away before the flames engulfed him.

Al remembered that horrible day, sitting at the military compound alone in their apartment. He was in the middle of writing his fifth letter that month to Mei to check her progress before the phone rang. If Al would've known the words that awaited him, he might've lost the courage to answer the call. He had been in almost near hysteria when learning the fate that had befallen his brother. So panicked, he actually ran all the way to the hospital, the thought of calling a cab not even crossing his mind.

Ed had fallen into a coma, the shockwave of the blast had broken a few ribs and fractured his skull. While the broken ribs didn't worry him, it was the damage the sharp chunks of bone happened to cause among shattering. One rib had somehow bent back and stabbed right through an artery that transported most of the blood to his heart. In short, he lost more than half his body weight of blood. To the point his heart bad been ruptured, causing the lack of oxygen to shut down his brain.

Al gripped his brother's hand, mentally willing him to wake up. Even though he was deemed stable, his heart monitor had went off one to many times for anyone to be comfortable. The doctors' were forced to inform Al that Ed's chances of survival were now 50/50. They done all they can, now the rest was up to Ed.

Al quivered a breaking breathe as he felt his helmet become too heavy for his back. He slid forward till his elbows were firmly planted to his knees. Armor clanking from his quaking despair as he pressed a flesh hand to his face, hiding his broken eyes. If his brother didn't wake up, he had no idea how he could go on.

Mei Chang was the only one who kept Al's sanity tethered to reality. So many times had Al fallen into a deep depression, Mei or Ed were always the ones that pulled him back up. His brother always had the uncanny gift of restoring his hope, something Mei seemed to pick up on when they were around each other.

But now, both his support beams were breaking. One already fallen while the other was endanger of meeting the same fate. Al felt his body fall forward, his knees hitting the floor with the stool clattering to the floor from loss of balance.

"Brother," he wept, invisible tears pouring down his steel molded face. "Please, don't die."

While Ed never had a track record of believing in God, Al had always found himself praying when he was brought to his knees. He never told his older brother, but tonight, just like every other night since the beginning of this mess, he prayed. Praying for some form of higher power to come down and relieve him of this heavy pain.

The sudden twitch of Ed's figures had Al rocketing back to reality. Shooting an alarmed look to his brother, the armor swore if he could, he'd be sweating bullets. Reaching his leather hand up, he brushed his brother's messy blonde bangs from his stitched up forehead. It was apparent Ed was fighting to wake up, but just as quickly as it began, his movement died down and went back to being as stiff as a board.

Tightening his fist, frustration overwhelmed the boy, causing his fist to the meet the wall with his other hand still grasped tightly to his brothers. It wasn't fair! He was supposed to protect Ed and Mei, why of all times, was he helpless?

Halting his rage, Al turned and crawled back to his brother. A new feeling beginning to surface as he tightened his hold on his brother. He just wanted to crawl up on the bed, hold his brother, and let the dam building up his watery sorrows release the tears. It was a yearning to touch his brother, to be reminded what he felt like. To know what warmth of intimacy was.

He desperately clung to his brother, braving up to actually stand up and move his steel arms carefully around his brother. Moving the hundreds of IV needles that doctors stuck him with like a mutated lab rat. The sight made Al sick, but he knew those needles and plastic tubes were the only things keeping him alive.

Once he managed to get Ed in a position that closely resembled a cockeyed hug, he kept himself there. Al sat himself on the edge of the crisp white sheets, watching the covers fall away as he held the only remaining family he had left.

"Please, don't die." He repeatedly whispered for the rest of the night.