Just a quick drabble set just after the end of the series, so obviously there's a minor spoiler warning. If you haven't seen the last few episodes though it probably just won't make sense. :D
FMA belongs to its rightful owners and I just borrowed it for like two minutes.
There was something utterly satisfying in a full day's worth of strenuous training; the gratifying feel of lean muscles taut and heavy, face flushed and damp with perspiration...It was something Al could savor. He would run small, calloused hands through his sticky bangs again and again, fingertips pausing here and there to tug at loose snarls.
There were also those days he'd lay flat on his stomach in some bright, dusty room where bars of buttery sunlight slipped around and underneath the curtains, head propped in his hands as he poured over faded tomes of alchemical rituals and hundreds of complex arrays. He enjoyed the feel of the pages, worn smooth with the weight and pressure of so many hands, and the sweet, musty scent of the book itself when he woke from a brief nap. He found himself this way quite often, warm cheek pressed against the end of some insightful chapter and nose pointed towards the next.
Alphonse liked these things. In Pinako-baasan's linen closet were thick woolen blankets and down comforters behind all the frayed towels and stained rags (for scrubbing ports and buffing automail, no doubt), and he would bundle himself tightly within their folds. It was a warmth to fill some void, some chilly place within him...but never was it a conscious desire. He simply needed it, after being empty for so long.
But the boy wouldn't have known that. He couldn't have.
Why should he? Hadn't it...always been this way?
Here was a warm place to stay, with a brother to look up to and to look forward to meeting again, and a family with an old dog that he'd known forever and friends to share his smiles. He was flushed with youth and vigor, and he would never again have to watch another's pain and somehow suffer through a lack of understanding and unwanted apathy.
After all, he wasn't supposed to remember.
R&R, please.