Archive of Our Own ^beta

It starts, surprisingly enough, with Roy Mustang.

Ed had just gotten off of his train in Central City from Creta, about to head to the ticket booth to get another train straight to Rush Valley and finally get to see his fiancée again.

(he still can’t believe Winry and him are engaged)

But it being Central City, of course, means that the newly minted Brigadier General Roy Mustang could be nearby.

And he is, fresh off a train from Ishval himself.

Ed hates his life sometimes.

“Fullmetal,” he says with his smug voice and even smugger grin. “Already back from abroad? Did they kick you out? Do we need to prepare for war?”

“Harhar, Colonel Bastard, very funny.”

“I was promoted, did you forget already?”

“I’m retired, did you forget already?”

Somehow they had unanimously decided to walk towards a café nearby the train station and sat down, because as much as they were being assholes to each other they also hadn’t seen each other in about two years. Which was a weird state to be in after three years of constantly working together.

Part of Ed was also just happy for the banter, because traveling alone was weird as hell.

“So, Fullmetal—,”

“I’m retired, are they letting people with memory problems carry guns nowadays?”

Mustang rolls his eyes, simpering at their waitress as she places their orders on the table. “You retired with honors, which means you kept your title and privileges, in case you forgot. You even got to keep your watch and everything. Besides,” he smirks as he brings his cup to his lips. “The day I use your name is the day I retire and open a flower shop.”

“Ditto, on your rank,” Ed deadpans, taking a sip from his own cup. “So, how’s Ishval?”

“What has the world come to that we are making smalltalk?” Mustang teases before sobering up. “It’s going really well, most of the larger cities have been steadily reconstructed and infrastructure rebuilt. It’s really beautiful, maybe you could visit sometime.”

Ed hums. “I might, it’s a bit out of the way from Rush Valley though, so it would have to be a bigger trip, and then Winry would need to make sure her clients are taken care of…”

“Oh right, Hawkeye told me that congratulations are in order.”

He gives him a dead-eyed stare. “That happened a year ago, Bastard.”

“Well, sorry, I was a bit busy rebuilding a wholeass country—,”

“Oh, shove it,” Ed snorts, taking another sip from his coffee before making to take a bite from his lemon cake. “But thanks, anyways.”

They lapse into a surprisingly comfortable silence, focusing on their food and drinks, before Mustang speaks up again.

“What are you gonna do now? I mean… job-wise?”

Ed lets out a slow breath, leaning back in his chair and looking up at the sky in thought. “I can still do theoretical alchemy, which is kinda why I went West in the first place, but… I don’t know. I’ve never been good at just sitting around and doing research just cos, you know? It was always with a purpose in mind, or with the plan to use it, which—,” he shrugs.

“Which you can’t, anymore,” Mustang says, and from anyone else it would have felt like a jab, but Ed has known him long enough to know he didn’t mean it as snidely as it had come out. It still stings. The man looks thoughtful, arms crossed and staring intently at the table. There is a glint in his eyes that Ed knows too well, and it usually spells trouble. For him, specifically.

“Spit it out, what’re you thinking with that one brain cell of yours, Mustang?”

“Just… I know the title ‘Fullmetal’ was mostly a joke on behalf of, you know,” Ed rolls his eyes but nods, waving at him to continue. “But you were always exceptionally gifted in metal-based alchemy, I saw your revision reports, not to mention all the general reports on your everyday mayhem—,”

“Get to the point.”

“With your fiancée working in automail… have you ever thought about picking up metallurgy? You have the basic knowledge of alloys and all the other nitty-gritty details, it would help with her work, your research would have a practical application… and, let’s be real, metallurgy is just the layman’s metal-based alchemy. I bet you’d be great.”

Ed stares at him for a good, long moment. “Are you suggesting I… become an automail engineer? Me? I forget to do maintenance on my own prosthetic most days, not to mention find it boring as fuck, are you serious?”

Mustang rolls his eyes with a low tsk. “I’m suggesting you put your innovative mind towards improving an area of automail, specifically the metals and alloys they use.” He waves a careless hand around, for once gloveless. The faint scars left by Wrath’s blade glimmer in the early afternoon sun. “I’d never suggest to let you loose on a poor amputee who asks for a hand and gets a claw with gargoyles for fingers instead. But switching from one science to another, similar one isn’t the worst suggestion, is it?”

The thing is… it wasn’t. Ed likes working with metal and ores. It was the one thing he and Winry could geek out over together. It’s one of the reasons his weapon of choice had always been to transmute his own automail arm, it was so easy he barely had to think about it.

Would it be the worst thing in the world to look into it?

“Even if you end up not liking it,” Mustang’s voice interrupts his thoughts. “Winry might still appreciate the effort. Women like men that take interest in their hobbies and jobs.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Is that why you picked up sharpshooting?”

Mustang splutters. “Who, what, I mean—,”

“Hawkeye told Winry, who told me. For someone who can singe off someone’s eyebrows across a city block you are apparently a very poor shot, color me surprised.”

He glares. “As if you are any better.”

“Did you forget that I got nearly perfect marks on my gun license exam, back when I was fucking twelve? Marcoh just fucked up giving you your sight back, I bet. Get some glasses, my guy.”

“I will have you know that I have 20/20 vision.”

“So you just suck, good to know some things will always stay the same.” Ed shakes his head. “You’re so lucky the Promised Day was sunny, or you might have been useless.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, thank you, I’m engaged.”

Mustang ends up walking him all the way back to his platform and waits with him for his train to arrive, ostensibly for the riveting company, but Ed knows him well enough to see an attempt at dodging paperwork for what it is.

“So, are you moving to Rush Valley permanently now?” The question sounds stilted, like Mustang has no idea how to go this long making smalltalk with a former subordinate, and Ed can’t really blame him. It was a little awkward, this sudden equality. For all his blustering, Ed had been a kid, now he was nineteen and engaged and already a retired soldier.

He wonders if things will ever not be awkward between them, on some level.

“Nah,” he shrugs, idly hoping his train will come already. “Winry still has clients in Resembool, and Granny can’t take care of all of them all the time, so we decided to split the time fifty-fifty, not like I am the type of guy to stay in one place anyways.”

“The only way you’ll ever stay put is if you’re dead, and even that is questionable.”

“You know me too well,” Ed snorts, watching the train slowly roll into the station. “Hey, greet the others from me, will you?”

“Sure,” Mustang hums with his hands in the pockets of his coat. “And if you really can’t seem to find a job to hold your interest… give me a call, I’m sure I can find something.”

He stares at his former boss. “I’m not gonna reenlist, Bastard.”

“Not that,” the man has the audacity to roll his eyes. “But I have connections; there’s bound to be something somewhere you will enjoy doing.”

“Or I become a househusband and not owe you shit.”

“You owe me regardless, Fullmetal.”

“Pretty sure Grumman is still in charge and we don’t have elections yet,” Ed smirks over his shoulder, one foot on the train. “See ya around, Mustang.”

“Not too much, I don’t need gray hairs yet.”

“Would help with the babyface though!” He cackles at the indignant shout following him into the train, soon drowned out by the engine.

This would never get old.

“Ed!”

He can’t help his grin at hearing her voice, whirling around just in time to catch her in his arms. “Win! Hey, didn’t expect you to pick me up.”

“Are you stupid?” She pulls back and rolls her eyes. “Wait, don’t answer that. Of course I am gonna pick you up, dumbass.”

He smirks, raising an eyebrow. “Missed me that much, huh?”

“Less and less the more words come outta that mouth of yours.”

Well, he has a solution for that. “C’mere, you,” he snorts, raising a hand to her cheek and tilting her head up, leaning down for a brief kiss. Winry sighs into it, her hands resting on his chest. “Let’s go home, I’ve been on trains for the past twelve hours and really need a shower.”

It’s surprisingly easy to fall into a routine with Winry.

For a relationship that had been spent apart for half of its existence it still seemed to click into place effortlessly. They got up early — because life in Rush Valley starts at dawn, to get as much work in as possible before the inevitable midday heat — and had sleepy breakfast. Winry would go down to Garfiel’s for work while Ed would stay home to work on… something. He still wasn’t entirely sure what he should be doing, so most of the time he just did chores or went over a decade’s worth of research notes until even he got sick of the periodic table.

He had half a mind to write a book, but what about? Most of his research was too volatile or confidential for publication, and even if he thought his life was interesting, a majority of his exploits were under a gag order from Grumman. So what was left was not just pathetically little but also mindnumbingly boring.

(he still had his stuff from his travels, but he wanted to go over that when Al was set to visit, since that was their project)

So authorship was out of the question, it seemed.

But what to do, then?

Have you ever thought about picking up metallurgy?

He hadn’t thought about Mustang’s words since that conversation, but now, weeks later and bored out of his mind…

Would it be such a bad idea?

“Well,” he mutters to himself, looking at the spotless apartment and the research notes he’d gone over thrice already. “At least it’ll kill time, I guess.”

Winry comes home that night looking shellshocked. “Hey.”

Ed looks up from one of the books he’d gotten from the library, brushing his bangs out of his face with ink-stained fingers.

(he might have gotten a bit too enthusiastic about taking notes)

“Hey, Win, what’s wrong?”

She blinks, staring blankly at him. “Mr Garfiel… offered to sell his shop to me.”

“Wait, what?” He marks his page and shuts the book, getting up from his seat on the ground by the coffee table and walking over. “Seriously? That’s awesome!”

“Yeah,” she nods, still not quite there, before shaking her head. “But, Ed, it’s not like I can afford it—,”

“I mean,” he licks his lips. “I can chip something in. Three years of military service as a state alchemist paid really well, and I barely had expenses. I already feel bad just sitting around doing nothing.”

She frowns up at him. “I can’t accept that.”

“Win, we are engaged. I already pay half the bills from those savings—,”

“But—, what, you’d be fine co-owning an automail shop of all things?”

He shrugs. “Why not? It’s our only real source of income already, and I could, I don’t know, do all the admin stuff that you don’t wanna deal with. Would keep me from going stir crazy and leave you to be a gearhead in peace.”

For a moment it looks like she wants to protest the gearhead comment out of principle, but she pauses, mulling it over. “... and you’d really be okay with that? And helping me with the shop, even though you hate it?”

Ed rolls his eyes. “I don’t hate automail or your job, Win, don’t be stupid. If buying that shop off of him and doing your own thing would make you happy of course I’ll support you. What kinda househusband would I be if I didn’t?”

She smiles. “The big bad Fullmetal Alchemist, reduced to assisting his fiancée with administration work and cooking dinner, what would the people think?”

“That I’m living the good life, obviously,” he teases, actually meaning it. As bored as he is, this way at least he can spend some time with Winry throughout the day and feel useful. He’s started feeling down on himself for just lounging about lately, at least he’d be contributing to their household this way.

“Okay,” Winry says, biting her lip nervously. “Let’s… buy an automail shop, I guess.”

Ed, in all his naive glory, had underestimated the amount of paperwork required not just to change the ownership of a wholeass building and company, but also just how bad Garfiel had been at making his paperwork coherent.

(don’t get him started on the call from the finance department in Central calling to ask if someone had stolen his watch and registration code, because what the fuck does he need 500.000 cenz for, exactly?)

The inventory lists were three years out of date, the warehouse a bigger mess than Ed’s brain, he’s pretty sure there’s a dead animal somewhere between all the boxes with metal scraps and, to top it all off, the man had been incapable of keeping proper lists on costs and income and taxes owed.

Ed wants to tear his hair out.

“How did he not go bankrupt?”

Winry shrugs, used as she is to the chaos that was the shop-formerly-known-as-Garfiel’s.

“Did he even have price lists?”

“We kinda just eyeballed it,” she admits, rummaging through one of the boxes with what looks like leg plates. “What?”

“I’m so glad I’m unemployed,” Ed groans. “Because this is a full-time job, holy shit.”

Winry snorts. “Well, have fun being a neurotic mess, Ed, I’ll be over here making the replacement leg for Raoul.”

“Uhhuh, sure, you do that, love,” he says, focus already entirely on the mass of yellowed paper stacked against a wall of the warehouse. Rolling up his sleeves he sighs. “Why did I talk her into this?”

One thing about Edward Elric is that, once he has set his mind to something, he will do it until it’s done or he falls over from exhaustion. That’s how he always approached alchemy, and that’s how he approached automail rehab. Three years? Fuck that noise, one is already way too long.

So, naturally, that’s how he approaches bringing order to his and Winry’s new business venture.

He starts out with clearing a wall in the small room he has claimed as their new admin office. “First things first: what do I need?”

Updated inventory lists, price lists, order forms, itemized running costs, tax forms…

This is how Winry finds him, hours later, with the entire wall taped over with handwritten notes and papers, color-coded and alphabetized, because Ed is nothing if not an absolute perfectionist.

“So, uh, ready to head home, Ed?”

His head snaps up from where he’s hunched over trying to decipher Garfiel’s loopy handwriting on an order for either new screwdrivers or grease. “What? Oh, is it that late already?”

“Almost midnight,” she says, slightly dazed. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” he waves her off, setting his work aside and getting up, stretching his arms over his head. “I think two more days and I can call this done with and can move on to clearing that warehouse.”

“That’s good,” she says, wondering how something that looks like barely more controlled chaos than what they walked in on this morning could possibly be close to being ready, but what does she know? That’s why she agreed to let Ed handle this. His neuroticism had to be good for something, after all.

Ed finishes all the administrative work early on the third day, the office now cleared of dirt, random debris and, most importantly, of outdated and barely legible paper left behind by Garfiel. All the filing cabinets were neatly labeled, the desk a meticulously organized mess that no one but him could navigate, and everything for the day-to-day business in easy reach.

That left the worst task: cleaning the warehouse, taking inventory, and making it a meticulously organized mess both him and Winry could navigate.

He’d gone out and bought a pair of sturdy work pants for just this occasion, because everything else was either shiny leather or slacks, and he wasn’t gonna clean up possibly decaying animal remains in that. Armed with a random tanktop and a pair of gloves he’d stolen off of Winry as well as his trusty combat boots he is now standing in the door of the warehouse, and despairs.

“This is the ninth ring of hell.”

“Don’t be a baby, Ed. Now either let me through or get me a #2 cross head.”

He turns to her, blank-faced. “A what?”

“It’s a screwdriver,” she rolls her eyes. “How are you going to do inventory if you don’t know the first thing about what any of the tools and materials are called?”

Ed takes a breath as if to argue, but pauses and steps aside to let her into the large storage room. She… did have a point. He had no clue about any of this, he couldn’t really do inventory by writing down short big screw, when there were approximately n+5 variations of them strewn about in this mess.

“... I’ll be back in a bit, I gotta go to the library.”

“Sure,” Winry snorts as she passes him by with what he assumes is the screwdriver in question. “Have fun.”

‘In a bit’ turned out to be the entire day. Winry is in the middle of making dinner when he finally returns from the library, raising an eyebrow at him and his leaning tower of books. “Back already?”

“Harhar,” he grouches, setting the books down on the coffee table. “Why are there so many types of screws?”

“Each has a different function,” she shrugs, turning back to the pot of stew she was making. “I’m taking it you need those for inventory?”

“Huh? Nah, I memorized all the different types of screws, nuts, bolts, tools and whatever the fuck else you need for automail, these are for a side project.”

She stops stirring the stew and turns to him, eyebrows creased. “You… memorized… all of it? In a day?”

“What? Like it’s hard? I memorized more in less time when I was nine.”

“Ed… even I don’t know everything by heart.”

He smirks at her, entirely too smug. “Good thing I’m the one doing inventory, then.”

His smirk lasts exactly as long as it takes her to throw a bread roll in his face.

Ed finds three rotting animal carcasses in the warehouse and wants to scream.

Part of agreeing to handle all the paperwork of running a business was handling ordering all the shit they need, from bolts to steel plates to machine oil to new sticky notes.

(Ed really loves his sticky notes)

It’s also, incidentally, what pushes him over the edge.

“What the fuck do you mean you are doubling the price for knee caps? That’s highway robbery, Ferguson!”

“It’s a supply and demand issue—,”

“Oh, miss me with that, you son of a bitch, I know you have a two year supply in your warehouse, you are just a money-hungry asshole.”

“Well, if that’s what you think then you can find another supplier.”

The line disconnects with a click, and Ed wants to smash it with a hammer.

He hates this. If he still had alchemy he could make all their shit himself. Ore was so much easier and cheaper to procure than the parts, especially when all the local suppliers were so smug over their quasi-monopoly—

“Wait.” He had sort of given up on his maybe-project of learning metallurgy when it turned out running the shop was so much work, but now things were starting to wind down into a comfortable routine — outside of arguing with assholes. He had still kept up with reading about it, because he found the subject genuinely interesting.

Could they afford him doing an actual apprenticeship though? And then build and outfit a wholeass forge?

What if he had no talent for it?

Oh, fuck it.

Edward Elric had never let what-ifs stop him from doing shit anyways.

He finds his fiancée in her workshop, bent over a blueprint for a hand replacement. She looks up at the sound of his steps, and something in his expression must have given her pause. “Ed? You okay?”

“Ferguson is a dick and won’t sell to us anymore,” her face falls, but before she can say anything he continues, suddenly feeling nervous. “I’ve been thinking—,”

“Never a good sign,” she says dryly, but puts down her pencil and turns around in her chair.

He stares for a moment, feeling like he’s about to propose all over again. “I want to do an apprenticeship… with a metalworker.”

Winry opens and closes her mouth a few times, looking like a very adorable fish. “What?”

Ed shrugs, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly and probably getting oil stains there. The machine oil somehow ends up everywhere. “I just… I specialized in metals, as an alchemist, and I’ve been reading up on metallurgy… as a hobby, you know? And it would get rid of the reliance on suppliers like Ferguson — who wants to raise his prices by 100%, the prick, I swear next time I see him I’ll—,”

“Ed, focus,” she interrupts him, pinching the bridge of her nose. “So, because you used to do metal alchemy and Ferguson is an asshole you want to… apprentice, under a metalworker, and presumably build and outfit a forge in here? Am I getting this right?”

He shrugs, again. “Pretty much, yeah.”

Winry stares at him, face blank and unreadable, and Ed is keeping close watch of her hands to make sure he can dodge any and all wrenches flung his way. Then she sighs, put upon and world-weary. “Sure, you’ve done weirder shit, why not be a metalworking apprentice?”

Ed blinks. “Really?”

She shrugs, turning back to her blueprint. “Yeah, why not? I’ll give Dominic a call tomorrow to see if he knows anyone who’s looking for an apprentice.”

“I love you so much.”

Her lips twitch, fingers playing with her pencil as she sends him a sideways glance. “If we finish early, you can follow up your words with some action, Ed.”

Fuck, the bastard was right? He can never find out.

“Challenge accepted,” he croaks, and dashes back to the phone.

Dominic LeCoulte is still as scary to nineteen year old Ed as he was to fifteen year old Ed.

“So,” he says, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. “You want to become a metalworking apprentice.”

“Uh, yeah,” Ed scratches his cheek nervously. “Though I kinda figured you’d just… give me someone’s address.”

Dominic snorts. “I will make sure you’re not a waste of time first.” Ed gulps, and something vindictive flashes in Dominic’s eyes. “Now, why do you think you’d be a worthwhile apprentice, alchemist?”

He should have expected this, really. Dominic knew him as just the Fullmetal Alchemist, the unappreciative loudmouth kid who took his mechanic for granted and had been useless when push came to shove. As far as the public was concerned he’d incurred a horrible alchemical rebound while helping with the coup that left him unable to perform transmutations and retired with full honors. That left him a hero, but also someone very publicly and suddenly unable to do the one job he was known for. In a world where amputees and crippled veterans were commonplace he was suddenly viewed with a pity that he hasn’t known since his mother died.

Ed is also pretty certain that Dominic thinks this sudden interest of his is just a passionless fancy to replace the one thing that had defined him as long as he has known. And in a way that was true, though it was far from passionless. He doesn’t do anything with less than full conviction.

But it would be a lie to say part of him wasn’t trying to find a purpose beyond alchemy.

He licks his lips and takes a deep breath. “I know what this must look like to you, and I admit that at first I only really looked into it for fun. But… for years Winry supported me in all the reckless shit I got up to and I want to finally repay her kindness. I don’t want to be a burden to her and this is something I can do to help her.”

“So what, you’re doing it for her? What about yourself, kid? What do you want?”

That’s the question, isn’t it?

“Alchemist, be thou for the people,” he says, wondering if he’s shooting himself in the flesh foot with his words. “Maybe I can’t perform alchemy anymore, but I’m an alchemist at heart. And I want to help people. I’d be giving Winry the material she then uses to give people limbs to stand on their own.”

Dominic raises an eyebrow. “And that would be enough for you?”

Ed shrugs, grinning despite himself. “More than enough.”

Dominic hums, then gets up from his seat and rummages through a large crate in the corner of the room, metallic clinking echoing until he finds what he’s been looking for. He slaps the thing in question — a banged-up automail arm — down on the table beside Ed, then a stack of scrap paper, some screwdrivers, wrenches and a pen.

“Alright then,” he says, waving at the assortment. “You have three hours to find out what’s wrong with this arm and propose how to fix it, as well as a way to prevent the same thing happening to another arm. Have fun.”

“Uh,” Ed says, Dominic already marching to the door. “What?”

“You want to make automail parts, don’t you? Then you gotta know how the one affects the all.”

And with that Ed is left alone to his mounting panic attack.

Five minutes later Ed has sufficiently freaked out and now stands in front of the table, wondering what the fuck he got himself into.

“Okay, you can do this. You carried one of these around for four years. Sure, you were lazy about maintenance, but you know how to do it in theory . And you memorized all the bits and bobs and odds and ends for inventory. He’s not asking you to fix it, just figure out what’s wrong with it. Easy peasy.” He stares at the arm, looking worse than that time a chimera had chewed on his own. “I’m doomed.”

When Dominic returns three hours later it’s to the sight of Ed squeezing some more notes into barely-free space on the back of the last page of the paper he had left him with. In front of him the arm’s guts are exposed and strewn about, and somehow he got oil stains on the back of his shirt.

Dominic, for all the respect he lacks for the kid, has a very sudden, disturbing bout of prophecy at the sight, like an aching in his bones at a coming storm.

He rips the sheets out of his grip and reads over what he’s written, and despairs.

And, despite thinking the kid is a hopeless brat, he sighs and resigns himself to the inevitable.

“You get here at 5AM sharp Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, and if I hear a single complaint out of you I will throw you into the canyon.”

Ed blinks at him, his words slowly sinking in. “Wait, what?”

“Hey,” Winry pushes up her goggles to smile at him, some last scattered sparks flying from her project. “How did it go?”

Ed shakes his head in a vain attempt to clear his mind. “He… took me on as an apprentice?”

Winry blinks once, very slowly, then fully turns towards him. “Wait… Dominic is gonna teach you metalworking?”

“Apparently?”

“How? He didn’t take me on, but he’s willing to put up with you?”

He throws his arms up. “I don’t know! Maybe he had a stroke?”

Winry lets out an offended huff. “I can’t believe this.”

“Hey, neither can I.”

With a tired sigh she puts her goggles back on and returns to her project. “Well, congratulations?”

“Win, I have to be at his place at 5AM thrice a week. That is not reason to congratulate me.”

“Oh, so justice does exist, after all.”

“... I’m not making you dinner tonight.”

Ed would be surprised at how quickly he adjusts to his new routine, but at this point he has gotten used to the ease with which his and Winry’s lives merge together. In spite of spending more time apart than together, building a shared life feels natural and like the simplest thing in the world.

On the days he has to get to Dominic’s he rolls out of bed at half past two, prepares breakfast, lunch and dinner for Winry and leaves it in the fridge while he stuffs his face as quickly as he can. Then he makes for the arduous track up the mountain in the pitch dark with only a torchlight to guide him and arrives just five minutes before five.

Those three days a week are hell on earth, and he hopes Dominic and Izumi never meet and become friends, because he knows it would be his death.

But, more than torture, they are fun. He hadn’t even realized how much he had missed doing things with his hands and working with metals, stuck as he'd been behind a desk and phone.

His enthusiasm seems to convince Dominic the rest of the way that he’s not a complete lost cause, and he begrudgingly agrees to help him outfit his own workspace once he has deemed him good enough.

Ed would be ecstatic if he wasn’t dead on his feet and sleep deprived.

His ‘off days’, if he can even call them that, are spent picking up his slack with the shop and household chores, and it takes him almost falling asleep with his face in the dishwater for Winry to put her foot down and declare she’ll do the household chores instead until he’s done with his apprenticeship.

“But you’ve got so much to do with the shop,” he argues, the one sentence interrupted by a dozen or so yawns.

“And you are going through a physically demanding internship, I can do the fucking dishes, Ed.”

“But—,”

“No buts, go to fucking bed.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Three months before Al and May are set to arrive from Xing and five before Ed and Winry’s wedding is to take place they close up shop in Rush Valley.

“Man,” Paninya says, kicking her legs back and forth as she lounges on one of the worktables, watching Ed change a client’s oil with a strange glint in her eyes. “It’s gonna be weird not to have you around.”

Ed rolls his eyes, cleaning up any stray oil spills. “You’re a bridesmaid, don’t pretend we’re leaving on a journey ‘round the world.”

“It’s still almost half a year,” she whines, handing him a screwdriver. He frowns at it and exchanges it for a different one before he goes to put the client’s cover plate back on his forearm.

“Yeah, Ed,” his client chimes in, the traitor. “How am I supposed to live without your wonderful bedside manner?”

“If you feel like hearing my voice you can always call, I’ll give you bedside manner,” Ed says, raising an eyebrow at him. “There’s a reason I only take care of idiots like you.”

“That’s mean.”

“Exactly,” he deadpans, fastening the last bolt and kicking at his shin. “That’s the usual fee, dumbass.”

He hands the money over with a good-natured eyeroll, smirking, then pauses. “You know, I never understood why it’s cheaper to get an oil change from you.”

Ed looks at him, wondering if he’s as stupid as Ed insists he is. “Cos I’m not a real mechanic?”

Paninya snorts, waving him off. “Just give him the money and let it go, mate.”

“Right,” he says, looking befuddled, and as he leaves and Ed closes the door for good he feels like he just missed a whole different conversation between those two.

“So,” he says, looking at Paninya. “Did you actually have questions about the wedding or did you just wanna annoy me?”

“You know the answer to that.”

Pinako isn’t exactly sure what she expected. When Winry had called her to tell her about buying her own shop in Rush Valley — buying one with Ed, no less — and all the subsequent calls catching her up on their daily lives… well, suffice to say Pinako had been mildly confused.

Don’t get her wrong, if she knows one thing it’s that for all his bluster and denial Ed worships the ground her granddaughter walks on and would do anything she asked without a second thought.

Still, she didn’t expect him to use a small fortune to help Winry buy her own shop nor be as involved in running it as he had apparently been. And start apprenticing under that old idiot Dominic, even if as a metalworker? Preposterous. Ed was an alchemist, even if he had lost his ability to perform it. He would never stop burying his nose in books and arrays long enough to learn a whole new trade. Never.

That’s what she had always thought, anyways.

But then the two had come home with a whole truck bed’s worth of bits and bobs, only half of which were actually Winry’s, and Ed had set up a workspace for himself beside Winry’s and, well.

Pinako had taken a surreptitious look out the window to check if her neighbor’s pigs had sprouted wings.

“I vote for a tungsten-magnesium alloy,” Ed grunts, slamming a hand down on the table between them.

“Magnesium is too flammable,” Winry argues back, slamming her own hand down for emphasis.

“That’s what the tungsten’s for!”

“Tungsten is too heavy!”

“That’s what the magnesium is for!” He throws up his hands. “I’m the fucking metal expert here!”

Winry huffs, crossing her arms. “You haven’t finished the apprenticeship yet.”

“Win,” he pinches his nose. “My fucking alchemy specialty is metals and minerals, the apprenticeship is just so I can use my knowledge practically.”

Pinako puffs out a plume of smoke, more entertained than she would expect. “How about aluminum?”

Ed rounds on her. “The automail is for a guy who works in wet-salting, the arm would corrode the second he walks into work. Are you trying to give me an aneurysm?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck you too, granny.”

“Fine,” Winry growls. “If the client complains it will be your fault.”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

Granny Pinako approaches him while Winry is consulting with a new client, expression inscrutable. “Hey, pipsqueak.”

He sighs, turning to her. He hates getting interrupted when he’s working on a new alloy. “Yes?”

She seems surprised that he doesn’t rise to her bait, but he’s learned to hold his temper, thank you very much. “It looks like Winry will be doing port surgery soon.”

“Okay,” he says. “And?”

“I’ve gotten a bit too old to help with that.”

“Okay,” he repeats, feeling his patience slip. “And?”

“Well,” she puffs a plume of smoke in his face as if to goad him into throwing her across the room. He’s tempted. “You already help her a lot, I figure I can show you how not to be completely useless in an operating room.”

That brings Ed up short. “What?”

“Are you deaf?” Another puff of smoke. “I said I will teach you how to assist Winry in surgery.”

Not for the first time Ed wonders what about him attracts the most batshit insane teachers.

Al has just helped May off of the train when he hears two excited shouts behind him. He turns and can’t help his smile as he sees Ed and Winry rush towards him, practically bowling him and May over as they jump into their arms.

“Welcome home!” Winry exclaims, squeezing him tight enough to steal his breath.

“Took you long enough,” Ed chastises good-naturedly, ruffling first his and then May’s hair, grinning vindictively at her glare. “Almost thought you’d miss the wedding.”

“It’s two months away,” Al argues, rolling his eyes and picking up his and May’s suitcases.

Ed rips the luggage out of his grip. “We still have a lot to prepare, and gotta start working on our project. Ling couldn’t make it?”

May sniffs before linking her arm with Winry’s. “My brother sends his congratulations and a gift in his absence, and hopes the Crown Princess’ presence will suffice.”

“Just barely,” Ed says mock-seriously. “Maybe I’ll skip his and Lan Fan’s wedding, too, see how he likes it.”

“Ling’s an emperor, Brother.”

“So? We ate my shoe together and escaped a pocket dimension, the least he can do is show his ugly mug at my wedding and be a groomsman, ungrateful bastard.”

“Ed’s just salty he had to ask Mustang to be a groomsman instead.”

“Understandable, carry on,” May allows.

“Who’s the third?” Al looks at Ed quizzically. He knows he and May will be paired up, and assumes Mustang and Hawkeye, but Paninya?

“Fuery,” Ed shrugs. “Figured he was a safer bet than pairing Paninya up with Havoc.”

Al winces. “Fair enough.” He doesn’t want to imagine what Paninya would do to someone like Havoc if given the chance. The man’s legs were messed up enough already without having to dance with someone who can shoot with her kneecap.

“Elicia is really looking forward to being flower girl,” Winry changes the subject away from possibly hazardous wedding party members, and the rest of the way home is spent with idle chatter and catching up.

Al doesn’t realize it at first, and in hindsight he will wonder how he missed it for as long as he did.

“Oh, shit, I knew I forgot something,” Ed mutters as he sees the veritable chaos of scrap paper and blueprints scattered on the dining room table, quickly moving to clean it up before Al can stop him. “One sec, I’ll make space for us to work.”

He winces. “Brother, you know Winry hates it when you touch her things.”

Ed stops in the middle of scooping up a bunch of papers, frowning at him. One of the blueprints flutters to the floor, and Al bends down to pick it up with a sigh. “What? Al, this is my stuff, not Winry’s. You know she’s too organized to leave her things like this,” he shuffles some of the paper in his arms to take the blueprint Al is holding. “I lost track of time earlier and forgot to clean up my work shit, is all.”

Al blinks, taking a closer look at the blueprints and scribbled calculations and measurements covering the table, finding them all written in his brother’s barely legible scrawl rather than Winry’s neat, blocky print. “Huh?”

“Yeah, I told you I started an apprenticeship, didn’t I?”

“Sure,” Al agrees, moving to help Ed clean up only to get his hands slapped away.

“Don’t mess with my stuff, you’ll make it so I can’t find anything,” Ed chastises him in a very Winry manner, gathering the papers haphazardly. “And this is for my apprenticeship and work.”

“I… didn’t expect you to take it so seriously.” Maybe that had been silly of him, but considering he had only ever seen Ed take alchemy seriously, who can blame him?

Ed throws him a look. “Of course I take it seriously, Al, what the fuck?” He glances at a sheet in his hands. “Oh, this one is Win’s, how’d that get in there?”

Al looks between the pile of blueprints for automail parts in his brother’s arms and the one that is also a blueprint for automail, but in Winry’s writing. “Uh—,”

“Oh, right,” Ed mutters, putting it aside. “I needed the measurements for reference, gotta give it back later,” Ed pauses, blinking at him. “You okay, Al?”

Al shakes his head to clear his thoughts. “Yeah, I think I might just have a mild heatstroke, is all.”

Ed blinks some more. “Well… maybe get some water while I finish cleaning up?”

“Yeah, I’ll… go do that.”

As he walks into the kitchen, wondering if he had eaten something off, he decides to ask the only sane person in the household. Just to make sure. Poking his granny for attention he jabs a thumb in the direction of the dining room, hoping his confused expression is enough to get his question across. It is.

“No,” Pinako says dryly, taking a drag from her pipe. “You’re not having a stroke.”

“Oh,” Al says faintly. “I see.”

She breathes out smoke. “Yep.”

Al and May are trying to explain the mechanics behind long distance alchemy to Ed when Winry’s newest patient arrives, hobbling in on a pair of crutches.

“Oh,” Ed says, taking a glance at his pocket watch. “It’s that late already?”

“I’ll go get Winry,” May offers while Ed gets up to help the patient to the operating room and hands him a change of clothes, Al wandering after them out of curiosity. He watches as Ed pulls up the partition for the guy to change behind before he moves over to one of the lockers in the corner.

“Brother?”

Ed hums, pulling an apron on over his clothes and starting to roll up his sleeves.

“What are you doing?”

“Prepping for the surgery?” He asks it like it’s a stupid question, throwing him a distracted glance as he starts vigorously scrubbing at his hands. “Winry needs someone to help her, Al.”

“Do you even know what to do?”

Ed snorts, putting on gloves before walking over to a cupboard and starting to arrange an array of various tools and other things Al can’t start to identify. “Do you think granny would let me in here without drilling shit into my head? Be real, Al.”

Al feels vaguely uneasy at the thought of his brother helping in a medical procedure. “Maybe May should help her instead?”

“Has May ever even seen a surgery?” His brother throws him another glance. “At least I know the names of everything and how to place a fucking access so she can focus on the actual procedure.” He looks up as the patient hobbles out from behind the partition, looking vaguely green in the face, though whether it’s from nerves about the surgery or the prospect of having Ed assist with it Al can’t tell. His brother snaps his fingers at the patient. “Go lie down and be quiet.”

“Ed, bedside manner,” Winry sighs as she comes into the room, not seeming the least bit perturbed by Ed of all people fussing about.

“Bedside manners are overrated,” Ed says dryly, already busy trying to find a vein in the guy’s arm. Al suppresses a wince. “Now Al, May, get your asses out of here.”

Al can’t believe that his brother is kicking May and him out of the operating room, considering they are actually trained in medical alchemy, but Al knows when it’s a futile endeavor to argue with Ed.

Doesn’t mean he isn’t hovering by the door the whole time waiting for shit to hit the fan.

(shit never hits the fan, and Al has no idea how to cope with that fact)

The third and final strike is when Al witnesses the ultimate, irrefutable proof that his brother has somehow turned into, what he would call, a gearhead.

And somehow neither Ed nor Winry seem to have caught on to that fact yet.

“If you wouldn’t mind the blue tint,” Ed starts, seamlessly picking up from Winry’s explanation on what type of automail would best suit the client. “A cobalt-steel alloy would be extremely low maintenance, we can use medium-carbon steel to cut down on cost since the cobalt would add to the durability.”

Winry hums, nodding along before turning to the client. “That could work, it might just be slightly heavier.”

“We could add aluminum?”

“Uh,” the client looks extremely overwhelmed. “I don’t mind if the weight is on the heavier side?”

“You say that now,” Ed says. “But wait until you have to run after a train cos you overslept and your leg weighs a hundred pounds.”

“I don’t think that’s something I will have to worry about,” the client says faintly, and Ed shrugs.

“Suit yourself.”

“So a cobalt-steel alloy,” Winry mutters, taking some notes. “And you’re sure you don’t want me to add a machine gun to the knee joint?”

The client exchanges a panicked look with Al, who shrugs.

Really, Winry wanting to install a machine gun in a post office clerk’s knee is the least weird thing about the whole situation, if you ask him.

The morning of the wedding Paninya sidles up to Al as he finishes off his tie, one eyebrow raised.

“So, Ed.”

“Oh thank fuck, you’re weirded out too?” He stares at her like she is the sole sane person in the world. “He’s helped her with port surgery, what the fuck is going on?”

“Beats me,” she shrugs, grinning. “But I think it’s kinda cute.”

“Cute is not a word I would use to describe my brother turning into an automail mechanic, but go off, I guess.”

Paninya snorts, patting his arm. “Hey, it is sweet that he’s so dedicated to helping her do what she loves, and if he’s happy doing that, then who are we to talk him out of it?” She tilts her head. “Or are you jealous?”

He blinks at her. “Jealous?”

“Well,” she hedges, tapping her chin. “Alchemy was always your thing, and automail was Winry’s, but now Ed is really busy with automail himself. Are you annoyed that he’s not as into alchemy as he used to be?”

“Of course not,” Al frowns. “We still spend lots of time talking about alchemy, and he’s still just as into it as he’s ever been,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I guess it’s just strange that he’s so into it all of a sudden, he always dismissed it, and now he’s having heated debates with Winry about melting points and conductivity.”

Paninya laughs. “Fair enough.”

“Also,” he adds. “It’s getting annoying to see them not realize it.”

“Don’t start, I’m convinced they’re the only ones who haven’t caught on yet.”

“Two peas in a pod.”

“Word.”

“I do.”

“Hey, Win?” He waits for her to look up from the dishes before he broaches the subject he’d been thinking about for weeks now. “Don’t you agree that throwing fried wires in the trash is kinda a waste?”

She blinks at him in surprise. “I mean, yeah? But there isn’t really a way to fix something that small and delicate, is there?” She shrugs, scrubbing at a stain on one of the plates.

“What if I told you there was?”

Winry looks at him doubtfully, giving up on the stain and drying off her hands. “Okay Ed, hit me with your latest harebrained idea.”

“It’s not harebrained, thank you very much,” he argues, miffed, then takes out what he’s prepared to slam it on the counter. “There.”

Winry stares at the piece of paper covered in an array and the fried nerve cable in the middle. “Okay? Ed, you can’t do alchemy anymore.”

“No,” he agrees. “But you can.”

“What?” She asks, deadpan, face blank.

“Listen,” he starts, waving at the array and cable excitedly. “I develop the arrays and explain them to you, and teach you how to perform the transmutation. I do the theory and you do the practical part, and, boom, we save thousands of cenz on spare parts. Profit!”

“What.”

“It’s genius.”

“It’s crazy.”

“Okay, but it’s also genius.”

His wife blinks at him for a long, long while, then raises a finger, exasperated. “If this doesn’t work—,”

“I do the dishes for the next year, yeah, yeah, so, you game?”

Winry sighs, defeated. “Alright, how does this work, then?”

“Knew you’d see my wisdom.”

“Make that two years.”

When the transmutation is a success no one is more surprised than Winry, but she can’t find it in herself to argue with Ed because, well, he had been right.

Not that she’ll ever admit it.

Al sits him down the day before he and May are set to leave for Xing.

“Alright,” he says, looking him in the eyes like he’s about to pitch him the idea of Ed and Winry moving into Ling’s palace. “We need to talk.”

Ed blinks. “Is May pregnant or something?”

Al blushes. “What? No! Why would you even—, whatever, no, this is about you.”

“What about me?”

His little brother takes a deep, calming breath, pressing his palms together and pinning him with one of his looks. “Has it occurred to you that you are, perhaps, an automail mechanic?”

Ed can’t help it, he bursts out laughing, the idea too ridiculous. “What,” he gasps, tears running down his cheeks. “Are you talking about?”

“Brother,” Al says, voice stern. “You are doing the exact same work as Winry, minus the actual automail building, how do you not see that?”

“I do not.”

“You do the admin work,” he starts, counting off his fingers. “You help her with consultations, you make all the parts she uses, you help her with port surgeries, you help her brainstorm her designs. Brother, Ed, all you’re missing is designing and building your own automail.” Ed makes to protest, but Al stops him with a raised hand. “No, before you go straight back to denial, I want you to actually think about what I’ve said.”

Ed huffs, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes but indulging Al, if just to prove him wrong.

He thinks.

And thinks.

And—

“Oh,” he breathes, blinking at his little brother. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Al agrees dryly, deadpan. “Oh.”

“Hey, uh, do you have a minute?”

Winry looks up from the workbench, hand stilling where she was adding something to her latest schematic. Something about his tone must have given her pause because she frowns, turning in her seat to look more fully at him, all her attention on him. “Of course, Ed, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he assures her quickly, cringing at how it sounds. “Just—, ugh, promise not to make fun of me?”

It’s a testament to how nervous he must look, because Winry just nods instead of making a joke, so he quickly thrusts the blueprint into her hands, feeling ridiculous. She stares at it for a long while, and he almost turns tail and runs when she finally speaks. “Ed, what the hell?”

He flinches. “Is it that bad?”

“What? No!” She looks at him like he’s an idiot, which he might actually be. “I just—, where is this coming from?”

Ed scratches his cheek awkwardly. “Al… might have… suggested that I have been doing the exact same work as you, aside from, well,” he waves at the blueprint in her hands, vaguely panicked. “And I realized that he might — might — have been right. So,” he winces. “Just tell me how much it sucks and I’ll let it go.”

Winry blinks her impossibly blue eyes at him for a moment longer before she looks back at the sketch, taking her time to actually look at it properly, then hums. “This… is actually pretty good for a first try, Ed.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah,” she confirms, looking back up at him. “It’s different from how I’d do it, but from what I can tell it would work perfectly fine… if you can actually make it,” she smiles. “I like the retractable elbow blade.”

Ed blinks at her, his heart in his throat. “Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

And if his blueprint gets a bit wrinkled from how urgently he kisses her, and how insistently they move to a clear surface for other things, then, well, he can always draw it up again later.

Ed has just finished cleaning up after his last client when the phone rings. Throwing the dirty rag into the laundry basket by the door he picks up, crossing his arms and leaning against the desk with his hip. “Rockbell-Elric Automail, Edward speaking, how may I help you?”

“Fullmetal? I’m surprised your wife lets you answer the phone.”

He rolls his eyes. “Bastard, what do you want? Finally blew your arm off?”

“No,” Mustang responds, sounding vaguely offended. “But I am calling about automail, yes.”

Ed straightens. “What happened?”

“Falman had an unfortunately close encounter with an old landmine up north and lost his left leg below the knee,” Mustang says dryly, but contrite. “He has recovered from surgery and is currently in Central City. We were hoping—,”

“He’s already recovered from surgery? Why the fuck am I only hearing about this now?” He rubs an agitated hand over his face before dragging their planner over to him, eyes flitting over this week’s appointments and the train schedule pinned up over the phone. “Doesn’t matter, hang on,” he can move the maintenance calls to next week, he supposes, and maybe get his new client to come in tomorrow instead—, “Day after tomorrow, train arrives at 10:15.”

Mustang is quiet for a moment. “Are you sure?”

Ed rolls his eyes again and scoffs. “Yes, Bastard, I’m sure. Is Falman gonna go back to Briggs after or is he getting transferred?”

“Why is that important?”

“Because I doubt he wants fucking frostbite, Matchstick.”

“... he is going back to Briggs, yes,” Mustang sounds vaguely surprised there is more to consider than just the price of an automail.

“Okay, so cold-resistant, their uniform’s pretty heavy, so as light as possible—,” he mutters, taking notes to the sound of Mustang’s silence. “Did he or Ice Queen mention any specifics?”

“I think I’ll hand him the phone instead,” Mustang says, perturbed, and there is some shuffling before Falman’s voice drifts through the receiver. “Edward?”

“How the fuck did you think stepping on a landmine was a good idea?”

“Not like I planned to,” Falman grouses. “So what did you need to talk to me about that the General couldn’t answer?”

“I know your leg’s gotta be light and cold-resistant, but is there anything else?”

Falman thinks for a moment. “Is there a way to make it easier on the joints to be walking and standing a lot?”

“Cushioned and reinforced ankle joint, gotcha,” Ed notes that down. “Got a color preference?”

“Please don’t make it red,” Falman asks dryly. “Can you do dark gray and matte? To reduce accidental glare?”

“Sure thing.”

“Thanks. Oh, and Edward?” He hums. “That surgery hurt like a bitch.”

That drags a startled laugh from Ed. “It does, doesn’t it? Pray you never need the port replaced. Somehow hurts worse.”

“Noted.”

They exchange pleasantries and bid each other farewell, and it’s not until Ed is halfway through calling his various clients to reschedule that it occurs to him that he never clarified that it would be him making Falman’s automail, or that none of his old colleagues even know about his new profession yet in the first place.

Ed grins at the prospect.

“Oh, that’ll be fun.”

To Hawkeye’s credit she merely raises an inquisitive eyebrow when it’s Ed who steps off the train two days later, toolkit and suitcase full of parts and blueprints and a single change of clothes in his hands. “Hello, Edward, it has been a while.”

“Since the wedding,” he confirms, huffing as he puts his luggage in the backseat of her car. “How’s everyone?”

“Fine,” she says as she starts the engine. “No one else knows, I take it?”

“Winry told you?”

“She did.”

“Boo,” he pouts, but can’t help his grin. “Can’t wait to see their faces.”

Judging by Hawkeye’s twitching lips it is a sentiment they share.

Ed can’t decide whose reaction is the best when he steps into Falman’s hospital room, Breda’s gaping mouth, Havoc falling over with his chair, Fuery choking on his coffee, Falman’s wide eyes or Mustang looking .2 seconds away from vomiting.

He decides they are all equally hilarious.

He raises a hand, grinning as they take in his luggage and overall. “Yo!”

“What the hell?”

Ed smirks at his former CO. “What, matchstick? It was your idea.”

Mustang looks actually offended. “It was not.”

“You told me to take interest in Winry’s work, can’t help I’m awesome at it,” he shrugs, putting his things down on the floor by the door. “Now—,”

“Fullmetal,” Mustang cuts him off like he’s still 12 and his subordinate. “Where’s your wife?”

“Home, running the shop,” he raises an eyebrow at the older man. “Now, unless you want me to add a rudeness upcharge to the bill shut up or leave, but either way you’ll let me do my job, understood?” He walks over to Falman, clipboard and pen in hand. “Can I take a look at the port?”

Falman eyes him for a moment, but he had always been one of the smarter members of the team. Hesitantly he moves the thin hospital blanket off of him to show Ed what remains of his left leg.

He hums, bending down to take a closer look. “I see they already used the newest type, guess that’s to be expected from the military. And you’ve recovered well?”

“Uh, yeah,” Falman looks taken aback at Ed’s neutral, almost gentle tone of voice, something he’s worked hard to master so as not to scare away anyone willing to let him work on them.

“Awesome,” Ed says, taking and jotting down measurements. He does some quick mental math. “I should be done in two days.”

“Uhm,” Breda says, sounding lost.

“Where am I staying?” Ed talks right over him, looking at Hawkeye.

“Since you are contracted by the military, you will be staying at the barracks,” she responds easily, opening the door for him. “I’ll drive you.”

“Alright, see ya guys.”

As Hawkeye closes the door behind them he just makes out Havoc’s incredulous what the fuck? and grins to himself.

Worth it.

It takes Ed only one and a half days by virtue of pulling an allnighter. He surprises himself with how eager he is to finish Falman’s new leg as timely as possible, and he thinks he might almost understand how impossible it was to drag Winry away from working on his limbs back in the day. There is something electric in the thought of helping a friend rather than a mere client get back on his feet, and a not insignificant part of him wants to see their faces when they see that he’s actually good at this job, too.

And, he admits, this leg might be the best automail he has made to date, too, so maybe, just maybe, he is a bit proud of himself as well.

Ed barely covers his yawn with his free hand, the other holding onto the toolbox as he walks into Falman’s room, once again to the audience of the entire team. He glares. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“And miss this?” Mustang crosses his arms, raising an eyebrow. “Never.”

“You are a child, has anyone ever told you that?” The question is rhetorical as Ed walks over to Falman’s side, waiting for him to move the blanket. “How anyone thinks giving you authority is a good idea is beyond me.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“I’m not bothering you at work, am I?” Rolling his eyes Ed takes out the leg and aligns it with the port, taking last minute stock of how it measures up next to the real leg and nodding to himself. “Now, this is gonna hurt. On three. One, two—,” on three he connects the nerves with a twist of the wrench, Falman’s entire body going stiff as a board beneath his hands. He straightens. “How’s it feel?”

“Weird,” Falman wheezes, hands tight around his thigh.

“Weird is normal,” Ed shrugs. “Try moving the toes, the sensation will be uncomfortable at first, because you can feel the limb moving without feeling touch, but you get used to it,” he hums. “Good, now the ankle, roll it around a bit.”

Havoc whistles. “Man, it actually works.”

Ed’s gaze snaps up at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shrugs, unapologetic. “Just surprised you, like, made a functioning leg, Chief.”

“Asshole,” he huffs, looking back at Falman. “Is there any pain?”

“I don’t think so?”

“May I?” Ed hovers his hands over Falman’s leg, seeking confirmation before he touches it and moves the entire limb, not just the automail, and watches his expression for any discomfort. He hums to himself, satisfied. “If anything changes definitely mention it during the rehab or give me another call.”

“Alright,” Falman hesitates. “You’re surprisingly good at this.”

Ed blinks. “At what?”

“Bedside manner.”

“Well, fuck you too,” Ed says without heat, rolling his eyes and going through his toolbox for his clipboard, doing a last once over before he takes the invoice and holds it out to Mustang. “Your copy, you have three weeks.”

Mustang takes it, but keeps looking at him. “I’m not paying.”

“Then forward it to Armstrong, I don’t care who pays as long as I get the fucking money,” he turns around with a careless wave of his hand, packing up his tools. Behind him Mustang makes a surprised sound and he sighs. “What?”

“It’s less than I expected.”

“What, did you expect me to add thirty military surcharges?” Ed scoffs, pushing the toolbox up on his shoulder.

“Yes?”

“I would have, if it was you who’d gotten himself blown up, Mustang, but I actually like Falman, so,” he shrugs. “Hawkeye, can you make it to the station in ten? I wanna catch the train to make it home for dinner.”

“I can make it in five,” she says, and opens the door for them.

“Great,” he waves at the rest of the team. “See ya around!”

And for once the thought of being reminded of what he’s lost doesn’t sting.