"I just... can't believe you would do something like this, Al. It's so senseless. It's irresponsible. It's..."
"Brother, I-"
"It's disgusting!"
Al drew back, the hurt apparent on his face.
"Do you think I'm disgusting, Brother?"
"That's not what I meant," Edward said, words tinged with remorse. He hadn't meant to say it like that, but there was no other way he could think of to convey his pandemonious thoughts. This was wrong! It was all wrong! This was Al he was talking to. Al! It was a self-defining word in his mental dictionary. Al had always just been Al, and always would be. Now in only a few years of absense it almost felt like that Al had slipped away into something different. Edward couldn't make sense of it; the thought of falling in love with another man struck him as, to put the simplest of terms on it, weird. With him, of all people! If there was this part of Al that was hidden, what else was there for him not to know?
"Brother, I don't think you're being fair. What if it were someone else?"
"That's not the point, here."
"What if it were Winry?"
"Winry never tried to kill us, Al!"
"... You know I don't remember anything from then."
"That's why it's all the more dangerous! I don't want you getting hurt."
"But he's changed, Brother! People change!"
"He's hardly even human!"
"You don't even know him!"
"I know enough! I'm telling you this for your own good."
"Do you really feel that way, Brother? Or are you afraid that I might really love him?"
There it was. The truth; plain, and undisguised and straight from the mouth of his brother who had always posessed wisdom beyond his years. Most people would have taken offense and become emotional; yelled, retorted, gone overboard. Not Al. And yet, even if he was supposed to have lost all those years of growing; there was some smidgen of maturity he had retained; no- gained. This wasn't the insecure ten-year old he had lost in the gate in a fateful night of tears and blood, nor was it the selfless armored boy who had given himself up in order to save his brother. They were all the pieces same Al; but this one had grown just a step further. He had grown up, and Edward had missed it. Worse still, he had gotten to be there to see it happen; Ed had never been so jealous.
"Do you really love him?"
"Yes. I really do."
Those were the words of a person, who in spite of his age, knew what he meant when he said them. It was still Al.
"I don't want to lose you, Al."
Alphonse drew himself against his brother in an unashamed embrace.
"You haven't, Brother."