IT'S MAH BURFDAAAAAAAY!

I am now 26 and have been kicked off my parents' insurance plan. Also, my joints have already started popping to get a head start at dying.

I had a dream last night that Edward was like, "You think it's funny to write all these whump stories about me?! Let's see how you like it!"

And then he turned me into a proton pump.

Instead of getting mad, I was stoked, so he turned me into an alpha-beta-gamma vesicle transporter. I was just like, this makes sense because these are proteins and diseases are just proteins fighting each other. Then he told me that I was going to die a virgin and I told him that virginity is a social construct made up to scare girls into adhering to ethnic breeding programs and that doctors can't actually tell if a woman is a virgin or not by looking.

Then my cat woke me up for skritches and kisses.


When Edward had been told that he'd be allowed to go home, he'd been thinking the dorms or Risembool.

He had not been thinking of Mustang's apartment.

His protest upon finding out had been exactly three-point-seven seconds long before he decided he was still too tired and hungry to care, called Roy a "smothery stupid bastard-ass" and then proceeded to take a nap.

"Are you sure you don't want me to take him?" Hawkeye had asked Roy for the fifth time. "Black Hayate wouldn't mind a warm body to sleep on and an extra hand to scratch him behind the ears."

"I appreciate it, Lieutenant, but I'm already on forced medical leave, same as Fullmetal. It doesn't make sense for you to use up your paid time off to babysit him when I'm already being paid to stay at home."

For the fifth time, Hawkeye sighed and relented, not able or willing to counter argue the logic of the colonel's statement.

"Well, if you're sure…"

"If he ever gets to be too much, I'll call you. I promise."

Secretly, Roy had been sure that he would have had to call her by now. Instead, he was nursing a cup of raf and chewing an omelette Zharkov had delivered personally, with Doctor Sharp's supervision. The doctor had done a perfunctory check-up that was little more than asking if Edward's fever had returned and if he was still eating okay. With a negative report on the first and a positive report on the second, Scott had taken his leave with Zharkov in tow, but not before listening to Zharkov try to say something in clumsy Amestrian, give it up and speak in his native language, and then have the Drachman translated into Amestrian by Scott.

"He says he knows that nothing could ever make up for what he's done, but he's promised to bring you breakfast and dinner until you are both free to return to active duty."

Roy had tried to refuse, more out of politeness than out of any lack of desire, but Zharkov had insisted and the smell of the coffee he had brought stopped him from protesting further.

"Is this right?"

Edward swallowed the porridge in his mouth. He still wasn't allowed to eat solid foods or drink milk (to his absolute delight), but the light cream mixed into the softened apples and cinnamon was dilute enough to not cause any problems… or so they told themselves.

"Close," he said, tapping the molecular structure Rhea had drawn on the paper between them. Ed was sitting on the couch on one side of the coffee table while Rhea was sitting in the armchair on the other side. "Remember that you want eight electrons around every atom. Take a couple from the outer shell and turn it into a covalent bond. Then both atoms can have both of them and have eight."

Rhea looked confused for a moment, then brightened when she remembered. "It's the sharing of electrons that turns atoms into molecules."

"There ya go!"

Roy didn't stop himself from smiling.

"Have you ever thought becoming a teacher, Fullmetal? You seem to be good at it."

Edward glared at him and grabbed the spoon in the oatmeal bowl, shoving it into his mouth.

"Sh't 'p, b's'rd."

"Don't talk with your mouth full, Brother."

"Alchemy was a lot easier when it was just carbon, oxygen, and aluminum," Rhea mumbled, erasing the structure she'd drawn and remaking it according to Ed's specifications.

"I can't believe you got this far working only with metals," Alphonse said from where he was washing dishes in the kitchen half of the main room. Roy was also not stopping himself from enjoying the advantage of a house guest who constantly needed something to occupy himself. So far, Al had cleaned the bathroom, done the laundry, and taken out the trash. Mustang had told him not to bother if he didn't want to, but Alphonse had insisted that he wanted to.

"Reading books is nice and all, but what's the point of reading if you can't use what you learn?"

"You read books about cleaning?"

Al's helmet flashed in the light from the windows as he shifted, almost as if the armor was blinking.

"Brother… leaks a lot when he's not feeling well… and he doesn't feel well a lot. It's one of the drawbacks of automail."

Roy was too squeamish to ask for details.

"Metals are easy," Ed's voice broke Roy out of his reverie. "That's why they're metals. They're malleable and conductive. Especially aluminum. It doesn't have to follow the law of eight."

"That's because aluminum was made by the devil," Alphonse said completely nonchalantly and Edward, who what just eaten another spoonful of porridge, choked on his laughter and Roy had to pound him in the back.

"You remember that?!" he said as soon as he got his breath back.

"How couldn't I? You circled it and drew little demons all over it."

"It's a good reminder. 'It isn't steel, a maker, but metal, beware aluminum made by the devil.'"

"The guy who wrote that was being serious."

"Yeah, but it helped me remember. I kept forgetting aluminum because it's used like any other metal, but it doesn't follow the rule of eight."

"It has… too many electrons, right?" Rhea asked, her brow wrinkled in concentration.

Ed shook his head.

"Too few. That's what makes metals so much easier. You don't have to stop and wonder if it follows the rule of eight. You only have to worry about that with the non-metals… or metals made by the devil."

Mustang suddenly felt both awkward and special. He might have just witnessed something private and he wasn't sure if he was supposed to or not. He decided it wasn't worth the risk and looked away.

"It's something we found in one of our dad's alchemy books when we were little. Brother always liked to circle things he found in books. I just wrote them down in my own journal. Brother had to start doing that once we started going to libraries because librarians don't like it when you draw in the library's books." For a moment, Mustang though Al was talking to him until he heard Rhea giggle.

Ed huffed.

"How was I supposed to know?! We'd never been to a library before."

"I remember that," Roy found himself saying. "I had to pay for the damages. I took the money out of your research fund."

Edward turned to make a snarky remark. Instead he made an odd hiccuping sound and clamped his mouth closed as the blood drained from his face. Rhea immediately stood up and Roy leaned forward on the couch, ready to jump to action at a moment's notice. Ed did a full-body shudder and swallowed hard, taking and releasing a deep breath through his nose.

It was Alphonse who took the initiative, all but shoving the glass bottle of chalky tablets into his brother's face.

"I told you you should have taken them before you ate."

Ed wrinkled his nose at the medicine, looking as if he was considering refusing them. Roy was considering making his taking the medicine an order, remembered that Edward (and himself) was on medical leave. He wouldn't have needed to anyway because a fresh spike of pain from the angry burn being bathed in breakfast and digestive juices inside him made his decision for him. The tablets stuck to his teeth and turned all the moisture in his mouth into mud and he wasn't sure his stomach would accept the water Rhea brought him to wash them down with, but he took the tablets and drank the water and then slouched over on the couch, his head on the armrest, as he waited for calcium to do its work.

Rhea sat next to him, abandoning the armchair and the paper and pencil on the coffee table, and started petting his side like he was a particularly large hound dog. Ed opened an eye and seemed to think about telling her to back off, then decided that after everything he didn't really have any dignity left to save, closed his eyes and resigned himself to the next half an hour. Roy resigned himself to having no one to pick on for entertainment and stood up with a groan (he was not enjoying being older than twenty-five) and made his way to the kitchen table to fetch the morning paper.

There was a letter on top of it.

"Awfully early for mail," he muttered to himself.

"Yeah. It was just sitting there on top of the paper. I think it was delivered urgently because it has the fancy military stamp on it."

Roy turned over the envelope. Sure enough, there was Amestris's official seal stamped in wax over the flap of the paper. Roy felt his brows rise at the sight of it. A letter this formal would usually be delivered by a lower officer to ensure its safe arrival - then again, it wouldn't be the first time that a private, terrified of Roy's reputation and the urban legends surrounding him, had simply chucked the papers on his desk (or in this case, his stoop), saluted hastily, and ran off before they could be acknowledged or dismissed. It made for poor discipline, but Roy could never bring himself to report the behavior.

After all, he was just as terrified of the Flame Alchemist as they were.

Glancing absently at Rhea, who was still fawning over Fullmetal as if he was a dying veteran injured in battle, Roy made sure she had as little opportunity as possible to see the contents of the envelope as he broke the seal and lifted the flap. The paper inside was crisp and rough, a testament to its quality and importance. Roy unfolded it and read the first line.

And reread it.

And then sat down in the now empty armchair and read it a third time.

"I was just joking," he heard himself think aloud.

"Everything you do is a joke," Edward mumbled from where he'd smushed his face into the furniture.

Roy was too busy reading the rest of the document to comment.

"Um… Fullmetal… do you still have that formal uniform that you were issued when you first joined up?"

Edward opened an eye to look at him questioningly.

"Wha… yeah, you said I had to have it for formal stuff. Why?"

"Because you've received your assignment for after you're off leave. You're going to a party."

Edward closed his eye and stuck out his tongue. Normally, he would be asking about what food would be available at the party. Right now the thought of food made the oatmeal and apples think about making an encore.

"I ain't dancin'. 'Specially with no girls."

"It's not a ball, Fullmetal. It's an award ceremony."

Ed blew a raspberry.

"What hotshot general shot some random dude in the brain this time?"

"You did, Fullmetal."

"Hah! Always knew they'd celebrate - wait, what?!"

Edward sat up so quickly his face turned from a ghostly white to a dangerous yellow before fading back to white. Alphonse forgot to mind his steps as he stomped over to the couch.

"What?! Brother shot someone?!"

Ed rolled his eyes and punched Al's breastplate with the hand of his repaired and reattached automail arm.

"No, ya dummy! I would remember something like that!"

He then shot Roy a conspiratorial glance that said, I didn't, did I?

Roy laughed.

"No, you didn't shoot anyone. You're being awarded a Medal of Courage for," he looked back at the letter, "'willingly putting life and limb on the line for the citizens of Amestris and the greater good.' And I am being 'honored for exemplary leadership and'…"

"And what?" Alphonse prompted, leaning over the couch so heavily that Edward was having to bend his head to avoid being poked in the eye by the apex of his breastplate.

"'…and the successful rescue of an incapacitated brother-in-arms.'"

There was an awkward silence.

"Well, you did, didn't you? That thing it said," Al said, not pulling away in the slightest.

Edward's face had gone from an ill gray to a self-conscious pink and he suddenly found great interest in the screws of his right hand. Rhea was equally uncomfortable, her eyes round and downcast with shame.

Roy sighed and tossed the letter onto the coffee table where it stuck to the glass.

"Fullmetal, I… I never meant to… I would much rather -"

"Someone read the report on how I puked all over you and decided to have a party about it."

The response was so abrupt and so true and so Fullmetal that Roy forgot what he was trying to say. Edward, cheeks still pink and still fiddling with his hand, shrugged fatalistically. "But if they want a reenactment, they're all out of luck."

Alphonse recoiled as if Ed had tried to bite him - though if he had, the only damage he would have done would have been to his teeth.

"Brother! Gross!"

And then Rhea was laughing so hard she was crying and Mustang had buried his face in his hands to hide his smile.

XXX

Roy pretended not to notice when Edward fell asleep against him.

Alphonse pretended not to notice when Roy wrapped an arm around Edward and pulled him closer.

"Brother-in-arms," Roy mouthed to himself, hating the words and hating that they had been applied to Edward. Roy had been awarded the honor several times before for keeping all his men alive during the war and was given several medals at the end of it for the same accomplishments. He had hated it then, too.

Roy had saved no one. He had been the reason why so many had not survived.

He had not "saved" Edward. He had watched Ed suffer and had shielded Ed's body with his own to limited success. Doctor Sharp, his son, and Kingston had saved him.

Brother-in-arms.

This implied that he and Fullmetal had been on even standing. This was something only the blind or those lacking depth-perception could see because they couldn't see the mound of corpses lifting Mustang away from goodness while Edward remained among humanity, oblivious and pure.

Brothes-in-arms.

That was the problem. Fullmetal was not his brother. Fullmetal was his subordinate, his charge, the perfect example that he turned every good thing he had into something terrible.

"Brother" was not the right word for that.

It was stupid but Roy couldn't stand knowing that phrase was there, linking him to Edward in such a twisted, contorted description of the truth.

He couldn't bring himself to write past the first letter. Hypocrite that he was, he couldn't spell out the truth, either.

So he settled with a less disquieting, more accurate lie.

XXX

The best cake Edward had ever had was now effectively nullified by what had to be the most awkward encounter he'd ever had.

"You look exceptionally better, Mister Elric. I hope you have been adhering to the treatment I prescribed."

Edward, wearing his dusty and wrinkled uniform with his face covered and full of cake, swallowed the sweetness in his mouth and stared at the man stupidly. Aleron Kingston stared back. Taking this as an invitation to keep talking, Kingston did so.

"Your specimen is a welcome addition to my collection. Its unique shape allows me to explain the true potential of my extractor. I have had many physicians and professors request to be present for live demonstrations."

Edward kept staring.

"My wife and son came with me tonight. They are very excited to meet you."

"You're married?!"

The words were out of him before he could stop them.

"Yes," Aleron answered flatly.

"Fullmetal, wipe your face. You look like a baby on his first birthday, not a celebrated soldier."

Grateful for the excuse to escape the situation, Ed grabbed a handful of napkins and rubbed them over his mouth, chin, and cheeks. His face was still sticky with sugar when he ran up to meet Mustang and Hawkeye where they stood in the middle of the floor with flutes of what looked like champaign in their hands. Edward pointedly looked away from the ribbons and medallions pinned to Mustang's new jacket. Rhea and Leonie had made it for him free of charge and Ed knew Roy hated ruining the beautiful blue fabric with the awards he'd been given for his exploits during the Ishvallan war, but it would have appeared questionable if he'd attended without them and even worse if he hadn't attended at all - especially considering this event was partially in his honor.

"Why is he here?" Ed grumbled, casting a surreptitious scowl towards the buffet table where Kingston was helping himself to some cake. His expression and the way he was chewing made him look like he'd never had cake before. For all Edward knew, he hadn't.

"He kind of saved your life, Fullmetal. He deserves to be here as much as you do. Besides, I wasn't in charge of the guest list. Did you know he's married?"

"Yeah, he just told me. Don't believe him, though. I don't see no wife."

"That's because Adeline and Allie are with Alphonse."

There were so many A names in that single sentence that it made Edward dizzy and he had to shake his head to clear it. Reading his body language, Roy smiled wryly and took a sip of champaign.

"Their family seems to have a unique relationship with the first letter of the alphabet."

"Some families do that, sir," Riza said from beside him. She frowned at Edward. Ed shifted his feet, meeting her gaze but finding the idea of his dress shoes more and more interesting by the moment.

Then Hawkeye pulled a kerchief out of her pocket and started rigorously wiping at his face.

"Pwah!" Ed tried to move away from her but she stayed him with her kerchief-burdened hand.

"Hold still. You have icing on your nose."

She wiped the kerchief on her flute to wet it with condensation and went back to scrubbing at Edward's mouth and nose. Ed growled his protest but stopped himself from pushing her arm away.

"Oh, there you are, Brother. This is Doctor Kingston's son. He's named after his dad so everyone calls him Allie."

Edward turned around, horrified that anyone should see him getting his face scrubbed like a child, to see a child staring up at him with round bright eyes. He looked frighteningly like his father. He only came up to Al's knee, making the armor seem gargantuan in comparison.

"Hello. Papa says you're the one who ate the button."

Yes, this boy was definitely related to Kingston.

"Allie! I'm so sorry, sir, my son is still learning about social manners." The woman appeared so suddenly that Alphonse had to lift his arm to avoid having the woman brain herself on his elbow.

"Hello, Misses Kingston. This is my big brother, Edward."

Adeline did not seem fazed by the clarification, something that could only be the result of her seeing stranger things or Al explaining the situation, as best as he could without revealing too much.

The first thing Edward noticed about her was her chestnut hair.

It was tied in a bun behind her head, the loose strands curling into springs around her ears. It was so simple and so familiar that Edward forgot how how to breathe for a few seconds.

Perhaps it was the sugar filling his blood and rushing to his brain, some of the first semi-solid food he'd had since the button had been taken out. Perhaps it was the fact that he'd spent the entire day sleeping and his circadian rhythm was messed up. Whatever the reason, the words that came out of his mouth were ones that would make him cringe in the middle of the night when he was trying to sleep for years to come.

"You look like Mom."

Adeline was understandably taken aback. Alphonse was understandably mortified.

"Brother! What - I'm so sorry, Misses Kingston -"

Adeline smiled and waved the apology away.

"It's all right, Alphonse. I've been told your mother was a beautiful woman so I'll take it as a compliment."

Was.

So someone had told her they were orphans.

"Papa wrote about you in his statement to the university. He says your social significance will convince medical professors to use his extractors in their teachings, but the stupid surgeons won't let him. They like cutting people open too much even though they die."

Adeline grabbed her son's shoulders and guided him away.

"That's enough, Allie. I don't think Mister Elric wants to hear about such things on his special day."

Aleron looked up at his mother with unashamed eyes, the same bright blue as hers.

"But that's what you said, Mama."

Laughing still hurt, Edward realized, when a bark escaped him.

XXX

It wasn't long after that that Mustang found him and asked him if he was ready.

Edward was not ready.

Mustang told him that it had been a rhetorical question and whether or not he was ready didn't actually matter.

It was awkward, the way everyone was staring at him and Roy. There was a bubble in the party-goers with an impromptu wooden dais at the center, upon which Ed and Roy were made to stand.

Along with, Roy was surprised to find, Doctor Sharp from the hospital.

"I asked 'em if I could take this one, seein' as how I was there an' all," he responded to their joint expressions of surprise.

"But you're not military," Edward heard himself say. Roy poked in the ribs to shut him up.

"No more sugar for you," Mustang said under his breath so only Ed could hear him.

Sharp gave him a considering look.

"How do you know? You've only seen me in one place. An' everyone's seein' you in this place, so maybe we should get this over with."

Edward didn't really remember what Sharp called him - something about "riskin' life an' limb," a description that made Edward want to laugh because his ability to risk his limbs was limited and because he had actually employed the use of his internal organs rather than his external ones.

He didn't laugh because he was frozen by the stares of everyone in the grand hall and because he knew laughing would hurt.

He did remember how the needle of the pin poked him when the old man stuck the medal to his chest, damaging the uniform he had been required to wear. He remembered how Sharp saluted him, which somehow felt even weirder than having the man be there in the first place. He remembered how he had saluted back out of habit and how the audience had either clapped or saluted in return. The noise reverberated off the high walls and vaulted ceilings of the hall, and Ed had to resist the urge to cover his ears.

They gave Roy a ribbon and did the same for him. Roy looked just as nervous as Edward felt, a discovery that both surprised and soothed him.

Either that or the sugar crash was about to hit.

XXX

The medal was pressed gold inlaid with silver, with the letters SS risen in the center and circled by the letters of his title and name.

It was the most expensive name tag he'd ever seen.

"Rhea designed it herself and Zharkov helped her make it. She volunteered as a way to start off her indenturement," Roy said from behind him. Once the ceremony had ended, everyone had gone back to eating, drinking, and talking and Edward had taken the chance to study the excuse for their eating, drinking, and talking. He had noticed the faint remnants of transmutation marks that had been buffed over.

"What does SS stand for?" Edward asked, rubbing his thumb over the letters.

Roy smirked. His cheeks were red from the champaign.

"She asked me for a reference for the design. I sent her the letter they sent us about all this. I might have taken some… artistic liberties."

Edward rolled his eyes at the cryptic answer.

"Yeah, sure, but what does it mean?"

"Suicidal smuggler."

Roy expected Edward to snap, the sugar stupor breaking into gnashing teeth and screamed swears, or at the very least, another rolling of the eyes and a mumbled "Colonel Bastard."

He was not expecting Fullmetal to blink blankly, then narrow his eyes and show his teeth in a sly grin of victory that would make a fox with a stolen chicken proud.

"Hah! Maybe I'll transfer to the Investigations Department so I can make it my career."

Roy found himself matching Edward's grin.

"You will not. Remember the new rule: no eating things that aren't food."

Edward shrugged and flipped the medal so it bounced against his chest.

"Meh. I said I wouldn't give a demonstration anyway."

He decided not to tell Mustang about the other S on the other side of the gold, the beginning of the new phrase that Roy had written on the letter before crossing it out and replacing it with what would be the double S on Ed's jacket.

It was probably for the best.

This way, he could always call himself Roy's "son-in-arms'' if he ever needed to gain the colonel's upper hand.


ConstantReader doesn't think I can write a story about rabies.

My sixth grade teacher also thought I couldn't write a report about chocolate milk.

We'll see.

I mean, maybe they're right and it won't work, but ya never know.