A/N: All right, so the first three chapters are mostly schmoop and exposition, but I promise the plot's on it's way. Just please bear with it for one more chapter. And to all those who have read this so far, thanks! It's my very first fanfic *blush*, so I hope you're enjoying it! I'll try to keep the updates coming just as fast as I can type/edit them.

Same disclaimer applies, I don't own FMA or any of the characters therein. Would be nice *sigh* but still not mine anymore than they were in the last chapter.

Chapter 3

Caution: Wet Floor

By Monday they were all back in the lab, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to return to the battle. The day after their little group dinner, Roy had kept his promise and showed up to see Ed's little presentation. Roy had even brought his crazy best friend Maes and Maes's little girl Elysia to enjoy the exhibition. Maes had wondered what could have prompted Roy to even find the event, but after he'd caught Roy mooning over the pretty blonde scientist, he hadn't needed to ask any further. Roy always had been a sucker for a nice . . . ahem face.

After the first five hours in the lab, a lot of the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed had left the team, and they had to take turns walking around to restore circulation in sleeping legs. When it came time for Roy's turn, he decided to explore the building, hoping to find wherever Ed's lab might be hiding. Down the hall and around the corner he was spotted by Winry in the biomechanical engineering lab, and he stopped to chat with her briefly.

"You know," she said slyly, after pleasantries. "If you're looking for Ed, he's on the second floor. It's the last door on the right. Just remember to turn off your cell phone before you go in. The professor in charge of the projects up there is totally anal about it and will implant it somewhere unpleasant."

Roy shared a conspiratorial smile with her as he turned off his cell phone before sliding it back into his pocket and heading for the elevator. On the second floor he discovered that there were only four labs, and they were each enormous compared to the labs downstairs. Three of the four were bustling with students and professors, like little sciency ant farms crawling with little nerdy ants in lab coats. The last lab on the right was the only exception. Somebody had put up blinds over the glass walls, and they were all closed. The desk and stainless steel tables were cluttered with notes, instruments, machinery, tools, beakers, and racks of vials. Where Roy's lab had one white board, this lab had three huge whiteboards, all filled with equations and diagrams in four different colors of ink. One machine in particular took up almost an entire wall on its own. It had a sort of pieced together look to it, like somebody had gone grave-robbing in the junkyard to create Frankenstein's Transformer. The lab door was open, but it didn't appear that anybody was in the lab, not even Ed. At least, Roy thought that until he looked down.

"Hi," said Ed offhandedly.

"Um, Ed, what are you doing?" asked Roy, looked down at him. Seeing Ed laid out like that was forming a funny knot of warmth in the pit of Roy's stomach.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" asked Ed, puzzled by the question.

"Lying on the floor."

"Well, there you go," replied Ed.

"But, why are you lying on the floor?" asked Roy, amused but getting a little worried.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time?" answered (asked?) Ed. "There's condensation." He pointed toward the huge machine, at the base of which water had dripped on the floor. "I hadn't changed the towels yet." He pointed again at the machine but aimed more at the floor. Towels were bunched up around the base of the machine, but they were so super-saturated that they weren't doing their jobs anymore. "Not all awake . . . I got here fucking early, you know . . . and I didn't see, 'cause I was reading . . . and you know, they say 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall', but that's not true. I can prove it. It's 'the heavier you are, the harder you fall'."

"Shit, did you hit your head? How long have you been on the floor?" asked Roy with a surge of panic.

"I've been hit harder. Been down here a little while though," replied Ed with a sigh. "Time to get up I guess. Al would laugh at me if he could see me now. Winry definitely would." Roy hovered close, torn between wanting to help the kid stand and telling him to stay down until they could check for a concussion. In the end, he settled for helping Ed up. He almost dropped him though when he felt metal instead of a soft fleshy right arm. Until that moment, Roy hadn't even noticed that Ed had automail. He wanted badly to ask about it – innate curiosity was a curse like that – but he knew better. "Thanks," said Ed, wobbling a little as he straightened. "Maybe I ought to go talk to the dorks in the medical lab. I don't think I feel so good."

"Probably a good idea," agreed Roy dryly.

Roy helped Ed stagger along, and was relieved that they only had to go across the hall. "Professor! Oh no! Did you slip in the water again?" called one of the female students and suddenly every student in the lab stopped what they were doing to scramble toward the woozy genius. "One of these days you're going to really crack your head open."

" 'm working on the cooling problem, but . . . 's complicated, you know?"

"Look at me, Professor Elric," said the girl, pulling out a penlight and shining it in each of Ed's eyes. "Pupils are equal. You're slurring a bit, though. Are you nauseous? Did you lose consciousness at all? Are you in any pain?"

He looked at her a beat, then finally untangled the barrage of questions, answering, "Yes, no, yes. 'm fine. Mild concussion at worst. Nothing worth worrying about."

"Sir, maybe you should go home for today," suggested one of the other students. "You're not in any state to handle anything delicate."

"Yeah, yeah, maybe," said Ed with a heavy sigh. "Come on Mustang, back to the lab we go. I gotta shut all my shit down."

They left to a chorus of good-byes and sympathy and headed back across the hall to Ed's lab. Once inside, Ed sat behind his desk and typed something into his open laptop before closing it and dropping it into a laptop bag that was hanging from the back of his chair. "Could you flip the big switch on the side of Big Bertha over there? But you have to push the three green buttons first, top then middle then bottom." Roy looked over at the giant machine he assumed was "Big Bertha" until he found a huge switch like the kind one would expect to use for electric chairs and next to it were three unmarked glowing green buttons. As he pushed each button its light changed to red, and when the last one was red he pulled the creepy executioner's switch. A hum Roy hadn't even noticed before suddenly stopped. "All right, now turn off the centrifuge, but don't open it. I'll have to run those fucking cultures from scratch in the morning I guess."

One piece at a time, Ed walked Roy through turning off the equipment in his ridiculously oversized lab then finally Ed got up, shouldered his laptop bag, and shooed him out the door, pulling out a little bungie keychain with a keycard and four keys on it. He locked his lab and typed in a number on the keypad next to the door, arming the alarm. Only the labs with the most sensitive material had alarms on them. Roy was a little impressed that Ed's lab was one of those places.

When they got to the first floor, Ed pulled an ancient cell phone out of his pocket and turned it on, stopping to lean against the wall a minute while he dialed. Apparently, walking and dialing at that same time wasn't a possibility at that moment. "Come on, you can sit in my lab and make your call," Roy told him, guiding him down the hall and into the lab, waving off the curious stares of his team. He guided Ed into the nearest empty chair then released him to make his phone call.

"Edward hit his head pretty hard," Roy explained simply, leaving out the part that it was because of his own clumsiness. He figured Ed would appreciate the omission – and when Ed turned his blushing but grateful face to Roy, he knew he'd chosen right.

"Shit, Al's in class," muttered Ed, closing his phone. "I think . . . fuck, what time is it? Bus runs by East Campus Drive in the morning at 4:00, 5:30, 8:15, and 10:45 then 12:15, 2:00, 3:30, and 5:00 for evening. I think it does . . . that could be West 7th. Fuck, it's all mixed up. I haven't had enough coffee for this shit."

"Do you want me to give you a ride home?" asked Roy carefully.

"Oh fuck no," said Ed, shaking his head vehemently then regretting it just as vehemently. "Unless you want your dashboard repainted, I'd say it's a bad idea."

"We'll roll down the window and bring a bucket," said Roy, firm but gentle. Ed groaned but gave in and got to his feet again. "You guys hold down the fort. I'll be back in a bit. Want me to bring back take-out?"

"Hell yeah!" called Breda, followed by general agreement from the rest.

"Agree on a place then text me what you want," he tells them. He dumped out their "Take-out Collection" jar – a giant plastic jar-shaped tub that had once held hockey-puck-like pretzels but now held their collective food fund – and pocketed the money so he wouldn't have to pay entirely out of his own pocket. He also grabbed one of the small trash cans and dumped its contents into one of the other trash cans (he'd been serious about the bucket).

"Fuck my life," moaned Ed under his breath, his cheeks scarlet and even his ears turning pink.

As soon as they got in the car, Ed paled and his entire body became so tense he was all but trembling. They placed the "bucket" on the floorboard between his feet and rolled the window all the way down, just to be on the safe side. "Do we have to go far?" asked Roy, worry creasing his brow. Ed shook his head, his mouth clenched as tightly shut as his eyes. "Good lord, you really hate cars."

"Yeah, ya think?" asked Ed caustically, his voice strained.

"Um, was it an accident or something?" asked Roy, marveling at his own complete lack of tact. Usually he was a lot better at talking to people than this, but Ed never failed to throw him off his game. "I ask because I noticed the automail when I was helping you up."

"Y-yeah, t-there was an accident," said Ed, forcing himself to lean back in the seat, his left hand clamped around the seatbelt like a lifeline. He used his right hand to indicate turns with vague, shaky gestures. "I was nine and Al was eight. Fuckhead drunk driver t-boned us. His stupid fucking truck c-crushed our car like an empty fucking can. My side of the car got the worst of it. But there's no way mom and Al were coming out of that all right either. Mom was killed pretty much instantly. Al wound up with head trauma and was in a coma for two years. I lost my right arm and left leg."

"Wow, I'm so sorry. I really can't imagine going through all that. It must have been hell," said Roy, hoping Ed would hear his earnestness. His heart truly did go out to him. "I lost my parents when I was young too, but I was so little I don't even remember them. I went to live with my Aunt Chris and that's the only home I've never known, so I guess it was never really a big deal for me. Is Izumi a relative or something? She doesn't look like either of you, so I wouldn't think so, but stranger things have happened."

Ed gave a shaky laugh, momentarily distracted from his misery. "Yeah, I think Izumi would freak the fuck out if somebody tried to accuse her of being kin to us. Izumi was sort of our tutor when we were kids. Mom noticed pretty quick that we were too advanced for normal classes, so she decided to homeschool us. Izumi volunteered to handle that duty, since she was a friend of our absentee fuck-up of a father. After the accident, with dad still MIA and mom gone, we went to live with Izumi and her husband. They're tough, but they've been good to us. We wouldn't be half as good at what we do if not for them." Ed pointed out an apartment building that was all but dilapidated, indicating they'd reached their destination, then added, "If Izumi hadn't taken us in the Rockbells would have. Winry lives with her granny, Pinako. The Rockbells have been in the automail business since the technology was introduced, so they've got a rep as the best in the business. That's who hooked me up with my arm and leg."

Ed got out of the car, and Roy followed suit, not yet trusting the younger man to be entirely able to walk on his own – and secretly hoping to see where the tetchy prodigy lived (which definitely did not make him a stalker . . . okay, maybe a little). Really, he was just curious about what kind of magpie's nest a super-genius would call home. Was he still living with Izumi and her husband while he finished school? Or did he have a place of his own? He imagined the place would be at least as cluttered as Ed's lab, but hopefully not as grimy as the stairwell they ascended to the apartment building's third floor. Eventually, Ed opened up one of the apartment doors and stepped inside, pausing to hold the door open. "Coming in Mustang? I'll make you a cup of coffee to take back with you."

"You don't have to go to the trouble," said Roy, though he stepped into the apartment anyway. "You're injured. It wouldn't be fair to force you to make me coffee."

Edward laughed, throwing his head back as if to more fully release the rich sound into the air. "It's not any trouble," he said, closing the door behind Roy. "Come look and I'll show you. Remember that coffee machine I told you about the other night?" Ed pointed to the left of the door where the worn carpet gave way to ancient linoleum, signaling the entrance of a tiny capsule of a kitchen.

Just past the start of the tile was a small table, on which sat what was either the world's scariest coffee machine or some sort of small-scale industrial machinery. Given the carafe and hooded spigot, he'd go with coffee machine as the likelier answer. It was just barely smaller than a microwave and made entirely of stainless steel, welded neatly at the joints. "This is my baby," said Ed, proud as any papa. He lifted a section of the top, which turned out to be a hinged lid, and gestured for Roy to look into the machine. "See, the coffee beans go in there," he pointed inside then closed the lid. "And you just turn the dial on the front to tell it many cups to make, hit the button, and walk away. If it needs to be roasted first, there's a dial on the side to tell it how dark to roast it, and a flick of a switch dispenses it into the chamber for grinding which then dumps into the filter basket for brewing. If it doesn't have enough coffee, it'll cut itself off partway through the brewing cycle. There are sensors and timers to tell it how much coffee is enough or not enough for how much you want to make. There're also sensors to tell it which attachments are hooked in so it knows whether it's doing coffee, cappuccino, or espresso. When it does cappuccino, there's a pipe that can be attached to make foam. I added that bit for Al. I don't do cappuccino personally, but Al loves it."

"It's noisy, but damn if it isn't a work of art," said Roy, just barely holding back the urge to hug the thing. "You're amazing." Ed's whole face turned bright red. "I mean, seriously, if you patented this, you'd make millions from desperate college students alone."

"Nah, I'm not interested in money," said Ed with a small shake of his head. "Besides, it's mostly built out of spare parts from other coffee machines. Some of the parts and the casing I had to machine myself over at Granny Pinako's, but even the sensors, circuit boards, and heating elements were scavenged and repurposed. I don't have any schematics for it or anything. I just sort of . . . put it together." Roy tried not to gawk, really he did, but he just couldn't help it. His eyes were round and his mouth hanging open, and no amount of wishing could make him look anything but thunderstruck. Who just puts together complex machines in their spare time? He thought wildly. "I guess if I took it apart, I might be able to retrace my steps. But she's perfect as it is, so I don't want to tempt fate by screwing around with her too much."

"I will pay you to let us put this in the lab during finals," said Roy, finally rediscovering his composure. "We can hide it from the engineering kids for you. Then you'd have easy access to it too, since it'd be right downstairs."

"Well, we'll revisit these negotiations when we get closer to finals," said Ed with a sly little smile that put fresh cracks in Roy's composure. Ed went to the cupboard and pulled down a travel mug and its lid, sitting them on the kitchen counter. "What do you like in your coffee?"

"Just milk and sugar," answered Roy with a shrug, and Ed shuddered dramatically. "What's wrong with milk and sugar?"

"There's just something fundamentally wrong with milk, period," said Ed, making a face. "I hate that shit." Roy almost said, No wonder you're so short, but liked living a little too much to let it slip. And worst of all, Ed was watching him as if he expected exactly that comment and was deciding what dangerous kitchen ammunition would most effectively maim him. When no comment was forthcoming, Ed relaxed, temporarily mollified by Roy's silence. "It'll be a few minutes, plus the machine's really loud when you're standing right next to it. Go ahead and have a seat on the couch or look around or whatever."

The machine was just as loud as he said, so Roy retreated to the living room, opting to look around since he had tacit permission to snoop a bit. Ed just set down his laptop bag then disappeared into a short hallway opposite the kitchen capsule. The living room was probably smaller than Roy's bedroom, and every available wall had cheap bookcases shoved against it, every shelf overloaded with books and notepads and binders. The couch was ancient and lumpy and actually had little patches sewn neatly onto the arms and a few places along the front, the original upholstery an ugly burnt orange color that hadn't been popular since the 70's. A matching armchair sat cattycorner to the couch and was in a similar state of loving repair. They had a TV that was probably almost as old as Edward, and it was sitting on a wooden crate they'd painted dark red. The apartment was disappointingly tidy, but there were indications of mess just waiting to ensue. It was like chaos and order were silently duking it out, vying for dominance of the space.

Roy had just moved to the short hallway to examine the pictures hanging on the wall when Ed emerged from one of the three doors at the end of the hall – the doors presumably belonging to two bedrooms and a bathroom. "So, do you live here alone?" asked Roy.

"No, it's just me an Al. I figure eventually him and Winry will move in together, but for now it's still me and him," answered Ed with a shrug. He indicated one of the pictures hanging on the wall. "See, that's me, Al, Izumi, Sig, Granny, and Winry." The Granny in question was even shorter than Ed, wearing a severe look on her face which had cracked into a smile. Sig turned out to be a huge mountain of a man with an intimidating demeanor, complete with dark beard and thick black hair, but with kind eyes despite all that. "It was Al's 21st birthday. That's why we're all holding beers." He pointed to another picture that showed a very young Ed and Al, grinning on either side of a pretty young woman with a sweet smile and eyes just like Al's. "That our mom. Al really looks just like her. He even has her same exact smile." Ed lightly brushed his fingers over the picture with a sad little smile. "At least one of us came out all right."

Roy noticed that a whole section of the wall was dedicated to framed newspaper and magazine articles all about the two prodigies' accomplishments. "Al puts those up. I kept telling him to either throw them away or shove them in a box, but he's stubborn about it, so I just let him do what he wants if it makes him happy," Ed explained to him, color rising in his cheeks. How could somebody so amazing be so humble? Was that even legal? Roy looked more closely at the pictures attached to the articles, noticing that none of the newspaper or magazine photographers had managed to capture a straight shot of Ed. It was always a candid shot of him working, usually with his head mostly turned away from the camera or wearing safety goggles so that his face was more or less obscured. Was he just shy? "I'm not in this for the acclaim, any more than I'm in it for the money. What's important is the discoveries and what they can do to help people. You know?"

"Yeah," said Roy, a slow smile curling his lips as he thought about Ed's words and decided he liked the feel of them. Roy wasn't conducting his experiments to get money or fame either, though he'd gladly accept both if they were offered. He was in it for the science, for the sake of discovering more about the world and how it could be changed for the better. "You know, that's actually why I changed from being a political science major to being a physics major. I got into politics because I wanted to make the world a better place, and I thought that was best way to do it. But the government is too corrupt to save so easily. I decided that instead of changing the way we govern the world, I'd change the way we view it and start from there."

"Hmm, sounds like a good plan to me," said Ed, looking up at him with the warmest, softest smile Roy had seen on the prodigy. It made him seem to glow with the warm amber light of a fire on a cold winter night, and Roy could have basked in that glow forever without a single regret.

Unfortunately, that's when the door burst open, letting in a huffing, panting Al into the apartment, panic written all over his face. "Brother! Are you all right? I saw where you called, and then Winry texted me right after and told me that you had to be helped out the door. I was so worried!" Al rushed over and took his brother's face in both hands, forcing the shorter-yet-older brother to meet his eyes.

"I'm all right, Al," said Ed fondly. "I hit my head and got a bit dizzy. I even let the med students have a look. Mustang gave me a ride home so I wouldn't have to wait for the bus."

"Do we need to clean out his car?" asked Al frankly with a grimace. Ed let out an impatient sigh and scowled.

"No, the car is fine," he grumbled then he pushed past both of them and went to the coffee machine which had finally grown quiet.

"Thanks so much for helping out again," said Al, offering him a kind smile that was indeed an exact replica of the woman in the picture. "You seem to be a handy guy to have around. You even talked him into going out to dinner with you, which I know probably wasn't easy. He's such a mole."

"It was more of a lab geek convention than an actual date," dismissed Roy, giving the young man a friendly smile in return. "Though, you know Edward, we can fix that if you'd like to. I wouldn't mind a chance to take you out properly. I'm a fan of good food, so I know a lot of good places to eat. Care to join me?"

"Smooth," whispered Al with a soft snicker. Hopefully, Ed hadn't heard his brother from the kitchen. Roy just gave Al a dry half-smirk and rolled his eyes before heading into the kitchen to join Ed.

"Since the lab is closed Saturday, we could go Friday night," suggested Roy. Ed didn't look up from the coffee he was pouring. His face was tomato red and his slightly upturned little nose wrinkled in a way that made Roy's heart twitch. Had Roy read him wrong? Was he not interested? Anything was possible with Ed. He was proving to be a bit unpredictable.

"Um, I'm in the lab all night Friday," he mumbled, barely audible. "But maybe Saturday. I work at the diner Saturday morning, but maybe Saturday night?"

"Perfect. How about 6:00?" asked Roy and Ed nodded, his ears coloring to match his face. It was so adorable Roy wanted to hug him to pieces. "Excellent. I'll pick you up here at 6:00 then."

"Here, fix your coffee so you can get back to work," muttered Ed, carrying the other two cups out of the kitchen. "I don't want you slacking off on my account."

Roy laughed and did as he was told. Ed had even set out the milk for him, though even touching the carton had put a look of revulsion on the younger man's face. Roy put the lid on then took a first sip and sighed with contentment. "Now that's bliss."

"Yeah, Ed's picky about coffee," Al told him, already sipping from his own cup as he dropped into the ugly orange chair. "I guess it's from years of drinking nasty lab coffee."

"I'm pretty sure no actual coffee was hurt in the making of that tar," growled Ed, and Al and Roy both laughed.

"Well, here's my number," said Roy, pulling out the cards Maes made for him when Roy had been tutoring that past summer. Roy handed Ed the card, Edward looking at it carefully as if searching for some hidden truth in the simple black-and-white card. "Call me in the morning if you still don't feel up to catching the bus. I don't mind coming to get you. It's on my way, and yes, I'll keep the bucket handy. See you tomorrow."

"Thanks again," called Al as Roy finally stepped out the door. He waited until he got all the way back to the lab parking lot before finally indulging in a loud fit of cheering. Holy shit! I've got a date with an angel! He thought with a flush of pride and wonder. The world couldn't be more fantastic right then if it tried.