The two-year timing doesn't really fit with this fic, soooo it's not exactly canon-compliant (but it will be once we hit it with a hammer a couple times). Listen. There's no way Al wasn't in the hospital for at least a year. No way. You don't have your body sitting and atrophying for four years and then manage to walk home through the countryside.

There were a thousand and one guidebooks in existence that detailed exactly how to make a patient adjust to having automail. There were tested and proven methods, techniques, exercises, and even assurances on what experiences were totally normal and what actually should be looked at by a doctor. Adjusting to automail wasn't easy, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was at least standard. You knew when it was working and when it wasn't.

There wasn't a single guidebook in the world that covered rehabilitation for someone who had gotten their arm back.

Truth be told, Ed had never really expected to have any problems if he had happened to get his arm or leg back. Of course, he hadn't even really been expecting to get anything back in the first place, but still. It was supposed to just be his arm. The same arm he had been using for over a decade before he'd been separated from it. Why would he need to learn how to use it again?

In some ways, Ed was kind of jealous of Al. Sure, there wasn't some sort of guidebook laying around called "So You Got Your Body Back From the Gate: What Now?" But Al being unused to his own body after an extended period of not using it wasn't too different from coma patients or people who had been bed-bound for a long time. Everything Al was going through was something that was expected on some level, even when Al got hand tremors or developed a stutter. Together, Ed and Al (plus Winry on the phone) managed to cobble together a good idea of what Al's recovery would look like by comparing notes with similar cases. That didn't cover the weird little quirks like how Al still always ducked his head every time he walked through a doorway, but it was at least enough information to know when they were on the right track. It was at least enough to make Ed not feel completely lost when a doctor explained the next test or therapy they were going to subject Al through.

Ed, however, was in completely uncharted territory.

Of course, he tried to brush it off and say it wasn't a big deal. Because his arm wasn't a big deal to him when Al was hardly able to walk or even eat a full meal. Meanwhile, Ed had gotten his arm back and had been able to immediately use it to punch god in the face. His problems didn't seem like problems in comparison to what Al was going through.

(Was he going to be saying that line to himself for the rest of his life?)

The doctors hadn't had any idea what to do with him other than generic orders for physical therapy. Ed almost wanted to laugh when the therapist led him through the exercises he was supposed to do. If he'd known a good way to explain it, he would have told the therapist that he didn't need to keep reminding Ed of the exercises. All of it was so familiar to Ed from automail rehabilitation that he could have done the exercises in his sleep. Funny, that you ended up doing the same exercises regardless of whether you'd lost or gained a limb.

But there were still so many little problems, so many times where he wondered if what he was going through was his body having an appropriate response to something weird, or if it was just the first sign of things going very wrong. And to make everything worse, it wasn't as if he could just explain the situation to anyone who would potentially have insight, not when it involved basically admitting outright to human transmutation. So he ended up calling Winry and checking in with her, since she was the only one he could think of who would have a clue what might be happening.

The first time he had called her had been from the phone at the hospital. It had taken him hours of talking himself up to calling her, afraid to even admit his struggle to her. But she really was the best person he could think of for the job aside from Pinako. And when it came down to it, he would rather deal with an angry or embarrassing reaction from Winry over Granny.

"So, ah, Win, do you have any exercises for people whose arms are too light?"

Winry's snort was clear across the phone. "I give people metal limbs, Ed. Why would I give them exercises like that?"

"I don't know, maybe someone switched to a lighter model or something. And maybe, you know, hypothetically, they apparently happen to talk with their hands and maybe kinda accidentally smacked their sick younger brother in the gut."

"Edward!"

"He's fine! I'm not capable of doing as much damage these days anyway!"

"That doesn't make it better!"

"Well, that's why I'm asking you for advice!"

Winry gave a deep sigh from her end of the phone and paused long enough that Ed began to wonder if she was actually going to give him any advice. Finally, she said, "Do you know how to sew?"

"Yeah," Ed said with a snort of a laugh. "Teacher insisted we learn stuff like that so we weren't too reliant on alchemy."

"You ought to send her a thank you card," Winry said with a snort.

"Trust me, I already thanked her enough in person. A thank you card at this point would just be annoying." Ed then adopted his best impersonation of her to say, "Kid, if I get one more thank you from you, I'm gonna think you're buttering me up for something!"

Winry laughed, and Ed found himself leaning into the sound. Damn, he had forgotten what it was like to joke, to actually joke from a place of happiness instead of as a last-ditch effort to make the endless dark seem a little brighter. He had forgotten what it felt like just to see Winry laugh and fully enjoy it, without being terrified that any minute something would come to destroy that happiness. Well, maybe he still had a little of that fear, but he could see past it for the first time he could remember in what felt like a lifetime.

Actually, it had been a lifetime, he realized. And now he had a whole new lifetime stretching ahead of him.

"Anyway, here's my idea," Winry said once she had stopped laughing. "Sew a little pocket on your right sleeve, and then put a bag of rice in it. Don't make it as heavy as your automail, just heavy enough to make you notice a little. When you're not flailing around as much, get rid of a little more weight until you don't need any."

"Huh. I bet that will help balance out my arm muscles a little too."

"Wait, your muscles are unbalanced?"

"Oh, yeah, didn't I tell you that?" Ed found himself grinning and leaning into the phone like he was back at home instead of standing in a hospital hallway. There was just something about listening to Winry's voice. "My right arm is puny compared to my left. I mean, not quite as puny as I would expect, not anything like what Al is going through. But my exercise is going to be all out of balance for a while until righty catches up."

"Ugh! See, this is exactly the sort of stuff I would know if I was there!" Winry said with a huff. "What's up with you telling me not to visit, anyway?"

"You need to finish your apprenticeship," Ed murmured into the phone. "I mean, you don't want to have us come home and then you immediately have to leave again, right?"

Really, the order had come from Al, a nervous request he had made while twisting his bony fingers in circles. He didn't want Winry to see him like that, wanted to have a chance to get healthy so she could see him the same way she remembered. He wanted to look normal when she saw him again, didn't want to forever be imprinted in Winry's mind as the sickly skeleton he currently was.

And damn, Ed couldn't say no to that, even if he personally wanted to have Winry come out immediately. He had so many nights he couldn't sleep, and he wanted to spend them chatting with Winry until the sun rose, not anxiously pacing and counting the minutes until the hospital would let visitors back in. It had been different when he had been a patient himself, even if he and Al had been in completely different wards. But now that he was "recovered" and Al was still on long-term care, the nights tended to feel endless.

"You're not... mad at me, are you?"

"What?" Ed stopped leaning against the wall by the phone, suddenly upright and alert. "No, no, Winry, of course not!"

"Then why—"

"Al." Ed sighed, and it was so quiet it was almost a whisper. "He... It's... It's hard to look at him, Winry. The doctor says he'll be fine with time, but... I mean... It's easier for the people from headquarters because they haven't seen him before, but—"

He was cut off by the sound of someone clearing their throat behind him. So much for Ed's justification that the fifteen-minute limit on the phone didn't matter as long as no one was waiting. Ed sighed into the phone.

"Hey, Winry, I'm going to have to go. There's a time limit on the phone here."

"Oh, okay." She gave a deep sigh, no doubt wanting to talk more about the big emotions Ed had just dropped on her. Ed couldn't blame her for not wanting to hang up. He didn't want to hang up either. "You'll call me the next time you have any other questions about your arm, okay?"

"Wait, you want to hear about that?"

"Of course I want to hear about it!" Winry said, and Ed nearly laughed at how she almost sounded angry over it. Only a friend as close as Winry would get angry at the thought of him not bringing his problems to her. "Edward Elric, I helped you adjust to your arm missing, and I'll be damned if I don't help you see it all the way through!"

"Okay," Ed said with a soft chuckle. "Thanks, Winry. I'll talk to you later."

Thanks barely even began to cover how Ed felt over Winry making sure he knew to call her whenever he had questions. There were even a couple of times where Winry was busy and had to talk with a customer, which meant he had to leave a number for her to call him back. Which meant that for the first time, Winry actually had a way to call him herself, whenever she pleased. Which meant that soon their conversations changed from strictly arm rehab questions and more to just friendly chats. Sometimes Winry liked to just call Ed and have him talk while she worked on some of the more boring parts of automail.

Ed found he actually didn't mind at all, to the point that he found himself grinning when the phone in his room rang. He found he didn't even mind when Al suddenly worried about his arm and ordered him to go ask Winry if it was okay. Once, Ed knew he would have been upset giving up any of his limited time with Al, but Ed found himself kind of grateful for an excuse to call her instead.

"So... Is it a problem if someone has one hand always colder than the other?"

There was a hum from the other side of the phone. "Your right arm is cold? Like how?"

"Honestly, I haven't noticed it, it just feels like normal to me," Ed said, leaning against the wall as he pressed the receiver against his cheek. He moved the fingers on his right hand in an absentminded manner, watching his own hand as if he couldn't entirely believe it was there. "Or, y'know... 'normal.' But I was hugging Al a bit ago and he said my right hand was like ice."

"Huh. But your left hand wasn't cold like that?"

"Nah. And before you ask, the room wasn't cold either. And I hadn't been sitting on my hand." One common problem they had already managed to figure out was that Ed had a problem with remembering his right arm would fall asleep from certain habits if he didn't remember to regularly move it.

"Sounds like your circulation is a little off," Winry said, and Ed could practically picture the thoughtful frown that probably went with it. "Maybe... Maybe your body doesn't entirely remember that it has to send blood to that arm."

Ed's heart jumped to his throat. "That... doesn't sound good?"

"No, it's... fine. Well, probably. But lots of people have problems with circulation, so it's... normal. I think."

"Your bedside manner could use some work, gearhead."

"You want bedside manner, then talk to one of the dozens of doctors around there," Winry said with a snort. Ed grinned into the phone, grateful that she couldn't see him through the device. She didn't need to know that her teasing didn't actually annoy him at all lately. "Otherwise, I guess just try massaging that arm whenever you think about it. That should stimulate some circulation and remind your body how to do its job."

"So you're saying the problem is that my body forgot how to do its job?"

*"Well, you've got to give it some credit," Winry said, and Ed just knew she was smirking. "After all, the entire body has to share that one single brain cell you have."

Ed didn't even try to hide his amused reaction at that, instead opting to just laugh into the phone, the sound bubbling out of him in an almost unfamiliar way. It admittedly wasn't even that funny of a joke, especially when Winry had been calling out his singular brain cell pretty much ever since she had learned what brain cells were. But something about the joke was so familiar and comfortable, and for once, Ed actually felt like he could laugh. He didn't have to stay serious anymore, didn't have to feel like any laugh was a slap in the face of the pain Al was going through.

A gentle silence settled over them as his laughs slowly trailed off, and the two of them sat in the feeling of just being able to enjoy one another's presence without the same pressing anxiety and guilt that had been hanging over their heads for so long.

"I miss you."

"Ah, come on, it hasn't been that long since we last saw each other," Ed said with a scoff, grinning even as he said the words.

"It feels like forever! How much longer until Al gets released from the hospital anyway?"

"Not long. The doctors say he's doing a lot better." Ed smiled into the phone, wishing he could somehow reach through the phone line and put a hand on her shoulder. He knew waiting like this was eating her up inside. "I told you, you'll be the very first person to know."

"Well, if Al is fairly healthy now, maybe I could just come up for a quick weekend, bring some apple pie..."

"No, Win," Ed sighed. "Let him have his dramatic homecoming. Besides, you're busy."

"I'm not so busy that I can't handle a little visi—" Winry sighed, but was cut off by a crash and the sound of muffled voices that Ed couldn't quite make out. Winry turned away from the phone and shouted something about how she was on the phone and someone apparently needed to wait just five minutes, please.

"You hear that, Win? That's the sound of the entire universe coming to disagree with you," Ed said with a chuckle and shake of his head. She was way more pressed for time than she cared to admit, but it honestly made it that much more special to Ed that she made the time to handle his superficial complaints anyway. She had patients who actually needed automail maintenance, were sitting in her shop with a broken limb, and he was calling her because boohoo, I got my arm back and it's cold sometimes, poor me. And she had never once teased him for it.

"You know, I should probably let you go," Ed said as Winry paused to give further instructions, even as there was a chaos of voices and something that sounded suspiciously like a lot of metal parts falling. Ed had a feeling it was going to be a pain to clean up from the irritated sigh Winry gave before turning her attention back to him.

"No, no, Ed, don't go, it's totally fine. Things are crazy here, but— Oh for crying— Please don't lift that over your head!"

"It's fine, Winry," Ed said, laughing and raising his eyebrows as he heard another round of something falling as Winry yelled. "I'll have plenty of chances to talk with you anyway."

"Wait, Ed, don't—"

"I said don't worry about it," he insisted, already pulling away from his slouch against the wall. "I'll talk to you later, okay?"

"But—" Another crash from the workshop, and Ed wondered if it was just that the new assistant was honestly that clumsy, or if they had decided to do something that just had a much higher chance of spectacularly loud crashes. Winry gave a tired sigh. "Alright, you might have a point. I guess I'll talk to you later."

"Okay, bye. Love ya."

Ed froze as soon as the words left his lips, staring at the phone with wide eyes. He hesitated for a minute before slamming the receiver back in its cradle without a chance for Winry to say anything in response. He stood there with his fingers clenched around the phone for a minute, just staring at his hand and wondering what the hell he had just done.

It had just slipped out so naturally in their usual goodbye that he hadn't had a chance to stop himself from saying it before it was hanging in the air. And now it was out there and he couldn't make it go away. Ed wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear.

Maybe she hadn't noticed, he told himself as he headed back to Al's room. Things had been chaos at the workshop, or at least it had sounded like chaos. And she had been distracted, so maybe she hadn't really been listening to him and the silly stuff he was saying.

Ed winced internally. Okay, maybe that was a bad way of phrasing it. Maybe she just had her attention slip for that one thing he'd said.

When he got back to the room, Al was hunched over a piece of paper, with a pile of other colorful papers spread across his lap. Mei had sent the paper in a package to Al as soon as she had gotten home, along with instructions on how to fold the papers into all kinds of shapes. Her letter said that it was an ancient art from her country and that it would give Al something to do while he rested. She had even done the first one for Al, a tiny paper panda that lived on his nightstand to keep him company.

Ed could still remember when he and Al had once made paper into very similar shapes back when they were kids, but they had done it with alchemy instead of the meticulous folds in Al's instructions. When he'd had alchemy, Ed could remember being pretty good at turning paper into a crane. Without it... Well, his creations usually turned out so lopsided that he considered himself lucky if anyone even recognized it was a crane. But Al had taken effortlessly to the art, of course, and would spend his days folding one paper creature after another. Ed had several of them sitting on the dresser at his hotel.

"Brother?" Al said, looking up from his current project to frown at Ed. "You look pale. What's wrong? Did Winry say that your arm getting cold is serious? Oh gosh, is your arm okay?"

"What?" Ed snapped out of his thoughts with a frown and shake of his head. "No, no, Al, my arm is fine. She said I just need to work on circulation and crap, don't worry. I'm fine."

"Then what's wrong?" Al said, his frown deepening. "Did you two argue or something? You look... terrified."

"I-I..." Ed stammered, his eyes connecting with Al's. "I think I just told Winry I love her."

"Oh?" Al's eyebrows shot up, and Ed swore he could see a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "You think you did? That's something I think a person would usually be a little more sure about."

"I..." Ed coughed, feeling his cheeks starting to warm up. Dammit, he was going to end up beet red, wasn't he? "I didn't really mean to, it just... kinda... slipped out."

Al snorted and shook his head, lowering his project. "What exactly did you say, Brother?"

"Uh..." Ed closed his eyes and swallowed the lump in his throat. "Okay, bye. Love ya."

There was a long moment of silence in the room before Ed finally cracked his eyes open again. Al was giving him a weird frown, somewhere between confused and amused. Ed's mind flitted back to the hole he had been considering living in earlier. Maybe he could put in a nice rug and pillows or something, since he was clearly never going to come out of it, ever.

"Okay," Al said with a sigh and a shake of his head. "Walk me through exactly why you're upset."

This time, it was Ed's turn to give Al a confused look. "What're you even talking about, Al? I told her I love her."

"Yeah, and I love her too, Brother. And she loves us."

"Yeah, but..."

"I tell her I love her every time I say goodbye to her," Al said with a shrug. "And she says it back. Winry loves us, and she knows we love her too. It's not a big deal. So why is it a big deal for you?"

Ed opened his mouth, but found that he couldn't seem to make any words come out. He hadn't really thought about why the words scared him when he'd said them, only that he'd felt an immediate pang of fear as soon as he'd said it. Ed ran a hand through his bangs and sat in his usual seat beside Al's bed, letting out a deep sigh before resting his forearms on his knees.

For some reason, he had a sudden craving for coffee.

"Okay, three reasons I can think of off the top of my head," Al said, and Ed resisted the urge to tell him no. If he couldn't talk about this with Al, then he was scared he wouldn't ever be able to talk about it. "Reason one could be that you said it and realized after the fact that it could be taken romantically instead of platonically, and you're scared Winry took it in a romantic way and you're going to have to let her down."

Ed snorted, pretty sure that Al was giving him too much credit in that scenario.

"Reason two is that you said it and didn't think about the meaning, but you're scared because you realized it could be meant in a romantic way."

Ed looked away from Al's eyes and rubbed at his lips with his thumb, staring at his lap instead. "What's the third reason?"

"That you totally meant it romantically and you're scared because you've convinced yourself that it will make Winry hate you."

Ed swallowed a lump in his throat and turned back to look at Al with wide eyes. He hadn't been thinking that exactly, or at least he hadn't gone through enough conscious thought to get to that conclusion, but he could feel the words punch him in the gut as soon as Al said it. How did Al manage to do that, anyway? It was like his little brother knew the inside of his head better than he did. Which hardly seemed fair, for the record.

"Ah..." Ed's voice came out as a croak. "Yeah, those are pretty good guesses."

"Yeah?" Al said, and Ed almost wanted to tell him to stop doing those invisible smirks. How was it that Al could manage to have a perfect, sweet face and perfectly polite words, and somehow it still sounded like he was as smug as could be? "So which one's the right one?"

"Do I have to say?" Ed muttered.

"No. But you probably want to figure it out before Winry calls you back."

Thankfully, blessedly, Al actually let Ed change the subject after that. Ed was sure it was the sort of conversation that Al would have refused to let him avoid, so he found himself surprised when Al just agreed to show him the steps to the origami tiger he was working on. It just made Ed all the more determined to actually deal with it himself and prove he was actually mature enough to stop running away from difficult feelings. Like that would somehow prove that it was right for Al to just let him be sometimes.

So when visiting hours were over and Ed was on his way back to the hotel, he instead found himself weaving through side streets and taking a long way home. He told himself it was a silly habit when he wound up at the cemetery. After all, it wasn't like he could go talk to his mom or even the Rockbells. But then he realized that there was actually someone who was probably due for a visit anyway.

"Hey, Hughes," Ed murmured as he crouched down, fingers brushing against hard dirt that was still slightly frozen. "I know, I know, I'm overdue for a visit, I'm sorry."

Sometimes Ed felt almost embarrassed for how he talked to the dead. Here he went around saying he didn't believe in things science couldn't back up, and yet he talked to gravestones as if they were just people who were stuck living in the cemetery or something. He blamed the fact that he'd had to try and navigate through grief while he was still a kid with magical thinking. But after this many years, he wasn't sure if he even knew how to change that part of himself.

Besides, it was comforting to talk to these people as if they'd never left, beliefs be damned.

"I actually... I could kind of use your advice," Ed said with a sigh. "But... It hardly seems fair to ask you to give me something I need when I didn't bring you anything. Sorry, I would have gotten flowers or something if I'd realized..."

Even when he couldn't actually use alchemy, even when he learned that it wasn't an all-encompassing law, somehow Equivalent Exchange still haunted Ed's thoughts. He wondered if he was just going to be stuck in that cycle, weighing cost against gain and looking for fairness like a child measuring his brother's cookie to make sure neither of them got more cookie than the other. He patted down his pockets, mostly out of habit than really expecting to find anything, but his fingers brushed against the rough paper of an origami crane.

Ed pulled the crane out of his pocket and carefully balanced it on the ground in front of the headstone, the red paper stark against the frozen yellow grass. It had only recently gotten warm enough to go outside without a coat, and the grass was still struggling to catch up. Ed smiled a little at it, wondering if Gracia would see it and have questions, or if she would remember the crane Al had given her when she'd come to visit him.

"Okay," he said with a nod, putting his hands on his thighs. Somehow a simple paper crane was enough to make him feel better, even if he felt silly for it. "Okay, so I was wondering... How did you know Gracia was, you know... the one?"

The world was quiet as Ed sat, trying desperately to think of what Hughes would say. He usually didn't ask such direct questions when he went to a cemetery, but then again, he usually didn't have something weighing that heavily on his mind, either. At least, not in the particular way this particular problem happened to weigh on him.

Ed closed his eyes, and for a minute, he could almost pretend he was back in his memories with Hughes. He remembered the overflowing joy that was in Hughes' eyes as he pulled out his wallet of pictures. He remembered how Hughes would point and explain more excitedly than if he were a kindergartner at show-and-tell with a pet dinosaur. He remembered the way he would beg Hughes to stop and roll his eyes even though he didn't entirely hate it. Because seeing a dad who actually cared about his kid like that gave Ed hope. Because he liked thinking that maybe his mom had felt that much joy and pride over him too.

As he remembered, the memory warped in his mind until Ed was suddenly picturing himself instead of Hughes, bragging to Mustang about Winry, and he found himself smiling at the thought. He didn't hate it.

When he opened his eyes again, it was the same quiet cemetery with a crane on the ground in front of him. But somehow it felt like everything had changed. Ed took in a slow breath, still smiling as he rubbed the back of his neck.

"Thanks, Hughes."

When he got back to the hotel, it was late, and Ed didn't want to risk waking Winry up just to call her. After all, it wasn't even like he had anything to tell her. Hey, Win, just a quick call to say that I don't hate that I accidentally said love you last time we talked, and I don't really mind whatever way you end up taking it. Yeah. Awkward as hell. So he instead opted to crash into bed with a sigh, promising himself that he would work up enough courage to call her tomorrow.

What he didn't plan on was having nightmares as soon as he slipped into sleep.

Something about the thought of his arm not getting proper circulation must have stuck with him, even though he had been much more preoccupied with how he had ended the phone call, because in the dream, he couldn't seem to get his arm to have proper circulation no matter what he did. And to his horror, his arm started shrinking and shriveling up like it was a grape in the sun. Somehow no one else seemed to be as worried about it as he was, and eventually, it got to the point where Winry was angrily demanding that he explain his feelings for her while he was terrified at the fact that his arm was no bigger than a twig. Then his arm just fell off, like he was some sort of lizard in distress.

He woke up in a sweat, desperately clutching at his sheets and wishing he wasn't alone.

When he'd first lost his arm, he's had all kinds of crazy dreams, from things like having some really weird automail installed without him knowing, to his arm taking over his brain, to even just simple dreams like not losing his arm and no one believing him when he said it wasn't supposed to be there. Winry had coached him through every one of those nightmares, explaining that it was just his brain trying to process trauma. Were weird dreams like that expected for getting his arm back? Was that... traumatic?

Ed desperately wanted to call Winry and ask her. Even if she was guessing, he had a feeling that her guess would be better than his, anyway. Just hearing her voice would help him calm down, even if she didn't have any idea what was happening with him. But it was past midnight and she would definitely be in bed. Ed didn't want to bother her just because he'd had a bad dream. Oh no, poor baby, did you need mommy to make you some warm milk, too?

But Ed still couldn't shake the feeling of needing something to calm down, of wishing he could just hear her voice. After a couple minutes of tossing and turning and trying to fall back asleep, an idea hit him. Winry would be sound asleep in bed, and the workshop would be completely empty. She wouldn't be bothered if he called the workshop, and he could listen to the recording she'd done for the answering machine.

Okay, it wasn't anywhere close to actually getting to talk to her, and he admittedly felt slightly pathetic for even wanting to do it. But midnight had never been the time of night to make intelligent decisions, anyway.

He was tapping his fingers against the phone through the second ring and hoping it would get to the machine soon when a voice interrupted the third ring.

"Hello?"

"Winry!" Ed nearly dropped the phone in his surprise. "What're you doing in the workshop this late?"

"Believe it or not, you're not the only person who can make me pull an all-nighter," Winry said with a snort. "Why're you calling this late?"

Shit. Ed mentally kicked himself for actually saying something when she picked up. He was stuck explaining himself as long as Winry knew he'd called. If he'd just hung up, she could have thought it was a wrong number or something.

"Just... Ah..." Ed felt the blood rushing to his cheeks and felt immediately grateful Winry couldn't see him. He still wouldn't be able to get away with lying, not when she knew every one of his ticks. But he also couldn't bear the thought of admitting that he had just wanted to hear her voice, so he settled on a modified version of the truth. "Checking in... About arm stuff."

"You're calling in the middle of the night. To 'check in' about 'arm stuff,'" Winry repeated, and Ed could hear the playful skepticism that was on her face, even if he couldn't see it. "Well, what happened?"

"Nothing, nothing, I just... I just had a nightmare, that's all."

"Oh." Winry immediately sounded more serious. "What was it about?"

"Ah, nothing, it's not a big deal."

"Your nightmare was about nothing and not a big deal, but you still felt like you needed to call the workshop in the middle of—" Winry cut herself off with a sigh. "Ed, you know perfectly well the shop is closed at this time of night anyway. What's the point of calling about something that doesn't matter at a time when no one's around?"

"I..." Ed's mouth went dry. Somewhere along the way, he had managed to get painted into a corner. "I just... I just wanted... to hear your voice."

"Oh." Winry's voice was a soft sigh, and for a minute, Ed wondered if he should have even told her the truth in the first place. "I... I actually tried to call earlier, but you never answered."

"Sorry." Ed winced. "I... ah... Had to run some errands."

Winry was talking as if she wasn't going to acknowledge the fact that he'd ended their last phone call by saying he loved her, and it left Ed reeling. Had she just not noticed that he'd said that? The shop had been pretty busy then, after all. Or was she not bringing it up because he'd made her uncomfortable? Dammit, he'd made her uncomfortable, hadn't he?

"I could actually use the company, if you don't mind," Winry murmured. "It's hard to stay up through these all-nighters, and you are pretty good at being obnoxious enough to make sure no one can get any sleep."

Ed raised an eyebrow at the phone. "I... I can't tell if that's a compliment or an insult."

"Yes."

"Wait, you think I'm obnoxious?"

"Ed, if you don't know you're obnoxious by now, then I don't know what to tell you."

He chuckled and rubbed at the back of his neck with his free hand. "Yeah, okay, fair enough."

What followed was the kind of conversation that can only happen when it's sandwiched in the invisible hours of deep night. Something about talking during those hours felt safer, like it was easier to not have walls for once, easier to actually open up. And Ed found himself feeling normal for the first time in who knows how many years. He was just a normal guy talking to his best friend in the world and laughing as she told him funny stories from working in the shop.

For the first time in years, Ed felt himself breathe. It was actually all over. Al was sleeping in a bed at the hospital, and Winry was laughing and working on automail and alive, and Ed could actually feel the cord of the phone as he fiddled with it with his right hand. Everything was actually, finally okay.

They talked like that for hours, talking about everything and nothing all at once. It was all lighthearted, and yet it somehow felt like a deeper conversation than he and Winry usually had. Maybe because for once, the lightheartedness wasn't being hidden behind endless playful bickering that was always a hair away from becoming a real argument.

And then came the sort of question that's best asked at three in the morning, when people either get too bold or too tired to care.

"Hey, Ed, what did you mean when you said 'I love you,' the other day, anyway?"

"Uh," Ed took in a breath and switched the phone to his other ear so he could lean against the headboard. "What do you mean, what did I mean? I meant exactly what I said. I... I love you." He couldn't seem to stop himself from tripping over the words a little as he said them, like his brain was realizing how heavy the sentence actually was even as he tried to pass it off as lighthearted.

"Edward Elric, you'd better tell me exactly what you mean, or I'll—!" Winry huffed. "Well, I don't know exactly what I'll do, but I promise you won't like it!"

"I don't know, whatever way means I won't lose you!"

"What? Ed, that's not romantic at all! I don't want to just feel like I manipulated you into—"

"What? No, no, not like that!" Ed sighed deeply, dragging his free hand over his face. "I just meant that... I mean... I... I dunno, I might. Maybe. Be interested in some sort of romantic relationship with you or something. Just... Not if you're not interested. I... Don't want to put any kind of pressure on you or anything if you're not interested. And I'd rather just not have that kind of relationship than risk losing you as a friend."

"You dumbass." Winry sighed. "You're never going to lose me. I love you too."

Ed felt his breath catch in the back of his throat. "Like...?"

"Yes, Ed, like romantically."

"Oh." The word was barely a breath between Ed's teeth. "Wow."

A long silence settled over the two of them, and he found himself wondering what they would be doing if they were actually talking in person. Was this the point where they were expected to try kissing or something? No, that surely had to be later in the relationship. But then again, wasn't the "I love you" part of a relationship supposed to come long after kissing? Where were they even supposed to be in comparison to normal relationships?

"We're doing this all backwards, aren't we?" Ed said with a small laugh. "I think we're supposed to start with dating and kissing, not just jumping straight to I love yous and how we want to get married."

"Wait." There was a loud clunk in the background, and Ed had a feeling it was Winry putting down whatever automail she was working on. "You want to marry me?"

"Uh." Ed felt like the blood in his veins had frozen. "Well, why would I want to date someone if I didn't think that someday I would want to..."

"No, most people don't think they want to marry someone before they even start dating!" Winry let out a loud sigh, and Ed fought the urge to hang up and go find a hole to live in for the rest of his life. Again. "That wasn't actually a proposal, was it? Because if that was a proposal, I swear, Ed, I'm going to come out on the next train just to strangle you myself."

"No, no, that wasn't a proposal! I promise, when I actually propose it'll be way better than that!"

"When you propose," Winry repeated, and then let out another heavy sigh. "And who even knows why, but I'm probably going to end up saying yes, aren't I?"

Ed couldn't stop the giant grin from cracking across his face. "Yeah, unfortunately, you're stuck with me for a long time."

Do you ever sit down with inspiration for a oneshot at three in the morning and instead end up with a 25k beast of an anniversary present for your spouse? Just me?

And yes, I know, I know. I took a sudden and unexpected break with Other Side, and I'm very sorry for it. A lot happened in real life and combined with trying to work through a sudden burst of inspiration for a secret project, but I promise, a new chapter is coming soon. I'm just on a time crunch with this fanfic in order to get it all out in time for our anniversary.

Proposal count: 1