T for language and underage drinking. Crossposted on AO3

Ed stuffs his hands in his pockets and trudges forward. His red coat isn't quite thick enough to cut through the sharp chill of the mid-Autumn weather, but he hadn't been thinking about the temperature when he stormed out of the apartment. He hadn't been thinking of much at all except move and leave. He just knew he had to get out of their tiny lodgings before he did or said something else he regretted.

He'd been a careless asshole; his heart still sped and the adrenaline of the fight left him feeling like shit. He and Al never fought. They couldn't afford to. It couldn't be Ed and Al against the world if it was Ed and Al against each other, which they established early on. But they were just so damn tired. And Ed was a careless asshole. He'd always been a careless asshole.

"If you get kicked out of the military, what do you think is going to happen?"

"Oh, come on, Al, we don't need these bureaucrats or Colonel Bastard or––"

"We've learned more in the last six months than we have in years! How could you just pretend like that doesn't matter?"

Because he was fucking exhausted, that's how. He was tired of being treated like a child by the very people who decided he could be a soldier, he was of needing their resources, and he was tired of having them held hostage while he fought Mustang's battles. Colonel Bastard just had to make sure that everyone knew that he had the youngest State Alchemist in history, that he was the one with the fucking child prodigy on his team. He'd been having trouble sleeping, too, on top of everything. He'd lie in bed for hours listening to Al clank gently and rustle pages in the next room over. He could never bring himself to get up and talk to his brother, to pass the time together, because he had no real reason for not sleeping. Not like Al. His brother would just chastise him for not taking care of his body, Ed knew he would.

The wind blows sharply into his eyes, making them water, and he brings his shoulders up to his ears to hunker against it. He was tired and sore. The missions knocked him around and his automail was heavy and pulled on his body and on bad days his ports ached. Ed wondered if this all excused him from being a careless asshole. It's true, he didn't have it easy, but… but at least he had a body, one that could hurt and feel exhaustion and feel.

He sighs quietly when the military building comes into view. Command headquarters looms at the end of the city block, grey and imposing. He wanders in and despite his best efforts, eventually makes it up to Mustang's office.

"He's in a meeting," the new receptionist tells him. Her eyes are bright and her hair carefully coifed, and Ed wonders if Mustang's fucked her yet. He feels awful immediately after thinking it, then reasons that the Colonel doesn't truly come off as a man who'd fuck his secretaries: he seemed like the guy who would fuck someone else's secretary.

Ed scratches the nape of his neck under his braid. He's not ready to go back to the dorm, but wandering aimlessly around East City will just make him feel even more pathetic. "Do you know when he'll be back?"

"It shouldn't be too much longer. You're more than welcome to wait for him." She gives him a slight smile.

"Thanks."

He pushes the door open and throws himself down onto one of the couches. He thinks briefly about trying to nap but the thought of Mustang catching him sleeping embarrasses him so he gets up and does laps around the modestly sized room. He stops in front of one of the bookcases, pausing to read the titles, pick up knickknacks, run his fingers over heavy bookends. He wonders if Mustang has even read any of these books, or if they're there to make him seem smarter than he really is.

Ed recognizes more titles than he'd thought. Many of them are basic and intermediate volumes on alchemy and its study, but many more are about the military – its policies, ranks, procedures – as well as military and Amestrian history. Then he gets bored, because he stares at books all day, so he drops into the chair behind the desk. It's a little messy, with a few piles of paper out scattered across its surface and an uncapped pen, like Mustang had forgotten about the meeting and had to be reminded. Ed snorts, unsurprised by that idea. He doesn't appreciate how… slight… the straight-backed chair makes him feel, so he tosses his feet up on the edge of the desk, his automail leg clunking. He just sits there for a few minutes and tries not to think about Al or their fight or their research or his metal limbs, so he cycles though the names of elements, then alchemic equations. His hands twitch. He doesn't care for the silence of the room.

He drops his legs and begins to open and close drawers at random. He expects them to be locked, but to his surprise, they're not. Dumbass, he thinks fondly. Most of the drawers are full of papers, binders, forms, notebooks, and pens. The last one he opens is full of more of the same, but a gleam in the corner catches his attention. Eyes wide, Ed pulls out a hefty square glass bottle three quarters of the way full of amber liquid. He grins and almost laughs out loud. So, the Colonel has vices like everyone else, despite that perpetual stick up his ass. Good to know bastards are people too. He goes to put the bottle back but stops. Ed's never tried alcohol before. He's never had a chance or reason to, and despite Pinako allegedly having been Hohenheim's old drinking buddy, her house was as dry as the great desert.

It's not even that big of a bottle, really. The pockets of his coat are roomy. He's not really expecting the bottle to fit, but it does, and the outline isn't even noticeable. His heart rate picks up a little and he quickly closes the drawer. His eyes skim the surface of the desk, looking for any obvious disturbances, and he takes a careful seat on one of the couches.

Only a few minutes later, the door opens to Colonel Mustang looking like he's barely containing heavy annoyance. Ed wouldn't be surprised if it were directed at him, but when Mustang catches sight of him, the tightness around his eyes lessens, and he sighs.

"Fullmetal." He nods in greeting and makes his way across the room to his desk. "Apologies to keep you waiting, but perhaps in the future you may be inclined to call ahead. How can I help you?"

Ed simmers. He doesn't get up until Mustang's seated, but the Colonel doesn't comment on it. Ed approaches the desk and digs a crumpled piece of paper out of the pocket not containing the pilfered booze. "My report," he says, handing it over.

Mustang's lips thin. Ed buries his hands in his coat pockets while his superior officer looks it over.

"Adequate," he says finally, placing it down amongst the other papers. He looks up and narrows his eyes. Ed hates being caught in that gaze and stares firmly back. "Next time, however, maybe you could find it within yourself to hand it in sooner."

Ed almost rolls his eyes. "Yeah, I could try. Why do I have to write these things anyway, if we just have a debrief?"

"The military lies to keep records, for reference and posterity."

"It's stupid."

"It's necessary to have as much evidence and documentation as possible, if anything gets called into question."

"I guess."

"As someone who spends all his time researching, I must admit I'm surprised by your disregard for documentation."

"That's different. That's important."

Mustang just raises his eyebrows in response. Ed scratches the back of his neck. He hates doing these damned reports.

"Are you well, Fullmetal?"

Ed snaps his head up. "What?"

"You seem…" Mustang looks him over. Ed prays the bottle in his pocket goes unseen. "…Distracted."

Ed just shrugs. "I'm fine. Well. You have my report." He turns to leave before Mustang can ask him another question or get a better look at him. "You know where to find me."

Just before the door shuts behind him, he swears he hears Mustang sigh.

Ed enters their apartment with trepidation, but Alphonse isn't there. There's a short note in his brother's hand resting on the table in the small front room: I'll be back before supper, it says. Don't do anything stupid.

Ed crumples it into a ball and throws it against the far wall. He wants to throw something heavier, feel something break under his flesh fingers, hear something break and shatter. Instead, he sets the bottle down hard and peels off his coat, leaving it on the floor. He stares at the bottle for a moment before unscrewing the cap and taking a cautious sniff. It smells like ink and the disinfectants the hospital always smells like. He has a brief thought that maybe he should get a glass before he takes a sip.

The booze burns all the way down and makes him wince and cough. "What… the fuck?" Ed looks down at the shiny label. Adults are fucked up, he thinks, but takes another swallow. It still burns, but he figures if he got through the forced removal of two of his limbs, the automail surgery, and subsequent grueling physical therapy, he could stand drinking enough putrid alcohol to get properly drunk.

It's right after his third or fourth mouthful that he realizes the only think he's had to eat today has been toast from breakfast, before the fight, before he went to see Mustang. He wonders if that will mean something. He takes another swig and decides it's too late to do anything about it now. He caps the bottle and stands, intending to head to his bedroom; there's something about being in the front room that makes him feel too exposed, and he's paranoid about Al coming back early, though his brother isn't due back for at least a couple more hours.

The change is definitely noticeable. His head feels physically heavier, but his brain feels lighter. He walks to the bedroom without stumbling or veering or anything. Once he's seated on the edge of his bed, he opens the bottle and takes a large gulp. Then he grits his teeth and takes another.

Screw those stupid reports, honestly. They're such a monumental waste of time. Half of them Mustang makes him fix for either not telling the whole truth or telling too much truth or because he thinks he's "exaggerating". Ed thinks he just does it to fuck with him, because he has to do them, because he has to do what Colonel Bastard says, because those are the rules of the military and he's their Dog. He's their fucking dog. He takes another sip.

But still, Ed figures he should have known better than to complain about it to Al.

"Sometimes I think about just telling Mustang to shove these reports directly up his ass," he'd said this morning over breakfast, toast in one hand and a pencil in the other, fixing up the report for what felt like the eighth time. "It's like he's got nothing better to do than fuck with me." He had sighed and put down his toast. "You know, Al, I don't even think we need these military fucks. We're slowed down by all this paperwork and bureaucracy."

Yeah, maybe he had gotten caught up in the moment, but his knee was still bruised and slightly swollen as a result of the last mission, the mission whose damn report Mustang kept making him rewrite, and if he couldn't complain about it to his own brother, what was he supposed to do?

He had powerfully punctuated a sentence, piercing the page with a period and kept talking. He hadn't noticed how Al stopped reading and was watching him from across the round kitchen table. He just kept on talking. "Oh, I'm sure Mustang would just love if I deserted." He had said it with relish. "Couldn't manage to keep a teenager under his command, and he'd lose his precious fuckin' prodigy." He had even laughed.

"Brother." Al had put his hand down on the table hard enough the rattle Ed's plate. "You can't talk like that. You'd be a criminal!"

"Al––"

"If you get kicked out of the military, what do you think is going to happen, Edward?"

"Oh, come on, Al." He had been annoyed, and tired, and in pain. He had raised his voice, just slightly. "We don't need these bureaucrats, or Colonel Bastard, or––"

"What do you mean? We've learned more in the last six months than we have in years! How could you just pretend like that doesn't matter?"

Ed had smacked his flesh fist down on the table hard, harder than Al had smacked his. Because he was annoyed and tired and in pain. "I can't take being bossed around by these assholes, Al! Do you think they actually care about us? They know we're desperate, and they only care about what I can do for them––"

Al had stood up suddenly. "What you can do for them?"

"You know what I mean––"

"You promised we'd get our bodies back! You promised! No matter what, Ed!"

"And we are! But we can do it without the fucking military!"

"No, you think you can do it without the military, but you don't know that. And until––I'm––I'm like this!" He slammed his hands against his chest. A loud, hollow clang rang through the room. "So just––write your report."

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This just wasn't fair.

The bottle slips out of his hands and hits the floor. Ed snatches it up before too much can spill out and takes a sip. He feels hollow inside and wonders if this is how Al feels, and then he hates himself for thinking something like that. He smacks the bottle against his forehead. He doesn't know how much he's drank and how much he's spilled, but the level is much, much lower from when he first pulled it from Mustang's desk. He didn't realize he'd feel the alcohol's effects this fast, or that being drunk would feel like this: like his thoughts are spinning and his head is spinning and the room is spinning and his stomach is spinning.

"Gahh." He puts the cap back on but he turns it the wrong way first before he catches himself. He puts the bottle on the bed next to him, then he picks it up and leans forward and slides it under the bed. All the blood rushes to his head and when he sits back upright, he's dizzy. Really dizzy. "Shit," he breathes. "Oh, fuck. Wow."

He thinks he gets it now, sitting there on the edge of his mattress, staring out into space, staring at his feet, still in his boots. He thinks he gets why everyone is always asking each other to get drinks, why the bars and pubs are full on weekend nights, why Mustang has a bottle in the back of his desk.

His stomach lurches and he presses one hand to his middle and the other to his forehead. His face is hot. He's hot all over. The heaviness in his head has multiplied and he's tempted to just lie back on the bed, but he doesn't, because he doesn't know if he'd get up again. He stands up before he even thinks about doing so. I'm fine, he tries to think and takes exactly one step towards the bathroom door.

"Maybe… not?" he thinks, then realizes he actually spoke out loud, and then he realizes he's drunk. "Oh, that's weird." He's never had a different brain before.

He doesn't so much as walk as he does stumble forward. Everything feels too close yet far away at the same time. The floor seems so far away, down there next to his feet, but then it's under his hands, so much closer than it ought to be. His knee hurts, but it feels like that pain is happening in a different body, to a different Edward Elric. His stomach lurches and rolls over and he maneuvers his misbehaving body into a somewhat sitting position just a few paces from the bed and he holds his head in his hands. Everything spins.

"You really are pathetic, Fullmetal." His tongue sticks to the top of his mouth. His words ram into each other and slide messily over his teeth and lips.

Pathetic. He couldn't save his mom. He couldn't bring her back. He dragged his baby brother into performing a human transmutation ritual and lost his entire fucking body in the process. Al's body. Al's body. His whole body––gone. He turned his own brother into an animated suit of armor. A metal man. No, not a man. Al's a kid. He's just a little kid.

Ed's not really surprised that his hand comes away wet when he rubs it against his face. It just proves the fact that he's pathetic. He chokes into his metal fist. Half his limbs are gone. But so is Al's whole body.

He really, truly, is just a careless asshole.

Ed's barely coordinated enough to reach for the bottle under the bed. He flops forward onto his stomach, hand outstretched, but he can't quite reach. Saliva pools in his mouth. The room is spinning and his stomach is spinning and he really, really doesn't want to puke on the floor. He sleeps in this room. Swallowing thickly, he forces himself upward into the direction of the bathroom again, but only manages a few feet before he's back on the floor, knee hollering. He drags himself over the threshold and has barely enough time to shut the door before the alcohol comes back up. It burns worse this time. He hopes most of the puke made it into the toilet but he's too drunk to notice or care. He attempts to lean his spinning, aching head on the edge of the toilet seat but misses and ends up back on the floor.

You really are just a careless asshole.

The door slamming shit and Al's clanking rouse Ed from his stupor. Shit shit shit. He thought he had more time. He was supposed to have more time.

"Brother?" Al calls. "Brother, are you home?" He doesn't sound angry.

Ed remembers the coat he left on the living room floor. He wishes he had it now. He's so cold. At least he remembered the shove the bottle under the bed.

"Brother?" There's a knock at the bathroom door.

Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He's still so drunk. He's fucked. He turns his head and vomits onto the floor. If he lived through this, Al was gonna kill him for being a careless asshole. Mustang was gonna kill him for drinking all his booze. The door opens and there's nothing he can do.

"Edward!"

The next thing he knows, Al's steel arms are wrapped around him, pulling him up, and Ed tries to tell him no, to step back, that he's gonna get puke all over his armor, but the only thing that comes out is a moan and a choking sound. For a sudden, horrific moment, Ed is stupidly, selfishly glad that Al has no senses and can't smell the stink of vomit and sweat and booze. He hates himself so much for thinking that. Al lifts him up and the change in altitude is disorienting. His head and stomach roll over.

"Al," he tries to say, but words are hard. Getting his mouth and brain to communicate and cooperate is hard.

His brother's voice is quick and panicked. "What happened? What's wrong? You––I––I need to call a doctor––get to the hospital––"

"No."

Al places him on the bed. Ed rolls onto his side. His knee hurts. "No, Al, I'm okay. I'll be okay."

"Edward, you're not okay!"

Ed could laugh. "No hospital," he tries to say, but it sounds like "nahspittle". "No."

He hates how he feels cold and hot at once and he hates that Al is so concerned over his stupidity and he hates how his mouth tastes like puke. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course he drank way too much. Of course Al came home early. He makes a mess of everything, every time.

"I gotta… I can't just do nothing!"

I wish you would, he thinks. "Al." What he wants to say is: there are some things you can't fix. What he says instead is: "No hospital."

Alphonse gives him an aggravated sigh. "You better not die while I'm gone!"

He runs out of the room, leaving the door open. Ed hears his brother's voice travel from the front room and cycles through all the people he could be calling. He prays to nothing that it's not Mustang. The thought of Mustang rushing to their tiny apartment, called in a panic by Alphonse, who thinks his brother is dying, and merely finding a very, very drunk Edward, drunk off his own stash, no less, causes him to lurch upward, which makes the room spin, which makes his stomach spin, and soon he's puking over the side of the bed. It's only bile and booze and it burns.

Al hurries back in just as Ed collapses against the pillow, sweating and panting.

"What did I just say!"

"'M not dead," he protests, but he kind of feels like he should be.

It should have been me! he thinks. It should have been my body, it was all my idea, my fault, it should have been me. It should have been me. "I'm sorry," he says with a sob. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He curls up, back to the edge of the bed, back to the puddle of puke, back to Alphonse. He scrunches up his face.

"Brother…"

He doesn't see Alphonse reach out to touch him, but he feels the mattress depress with his weight.

Ed barely registers the knock at the door. Alphonse jumps up to get it, calling, "No dying!" at him as he leaves. He tries to focus on the voices and words.

"Brother and the Colonel don't really get along, but he said no hospital, and I didn't… I didn't know what else to do…"

"Alphonse, it's alright. You did the right thing."

Well. At least Hawkeye is better than Mustang.

"Ed?"

His stomach is roiling but there's nothing left. "Nhh." He hears her quietly tell Al to wait outside in the living room.

"Ed, what happened?"

He knows she must smell all the fucking booze. Hawkeye's not an idiot, she knows exactly what happened. "Nothing." He just wants to be left alone.

"Your brother is really worried about you." She steps further into the room, stopping on the far side of the puddle of puke. "He's scared. He thinks that you're dying."

Ed could laugh. "You know I'm not."

"Tell me what happened." She skirts around the sick and stands by the foot of the bed. He's still facing away.

"If you're gonna kick me outta the military, you may as well kill me."

"Edward." He voice adapts the firm, no nonsense tone she uses for business, for work. "Tell me what happened."

He does. "Me and Al had a fight."

"And you thought––" She stops suddenly. She must realize that she's talking to a boy who thought the best way to cope with his mother's death was to attempt alchemy's most unforgivable taboo at the age of eleven. "Do you two fight often?"

He shakes his head, but that's a terrible idea, so he stops. "No. Never. Barely."

"Mm."

"Not like that."

"Mm." The mattress sinks as she takes a seat, much less than it did when Al sat by him. "If the military kicked out every soldier who got too drunk a few times, I'm afraid we'd be out most of our men."

"That's war, I guess."

"Yes. Yes it is."

Riza gets him to drink a couple of glasses of water and he only throws up one more time. The worst part is that Al has to see, the worst part is that Al insists on cleaning up the mess, but at least there's a bucket now.

Al and Hawkeye sit in the room while he sweats and pants on the bed, Al next to him and Riza in a chair one of them brought in.

Before she told Al it was okay for him to come back in, Hawkeye made Ed tell her where the booze was. She pocketed the bottle. "You can die from drinking too much," she told his prone form. "You can choke on your vomit, or inhale it, or you can fall and hit your head, or your heart can stop."

She had told Al that Ed probably caught the bad stomach bug that was going around, and that she was happy to sit with them for a few hours. Ed can hear the two of them speaking quietly over him as he lies in a drunken state hallway between sleep and wakefulness. They talk about research and the military and Black Hayate in particular. Al tells her about growing up in Resembool and Den and Granny and Winry. Ed falls asleep to stories of home.

When he wakes up, Hawk is gone, and he still feels like shit. Al makes him drink some water before he goes back to sleep.

Ed hands him back the empty glass. "Al." He hesitates. Al stares back with his soul-fire gaze and Ed feels dangerously close to crying again. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay, brother." With incredible gentleness, Alphonse brushes Ed's sweaty bangs back from his forehead. Ed sighs into the touch.

thanks for reading!