Chapter Text
“Ugh, I’m starving,” Ed complains as they get off the train.
They’re returning from one of their first expeditions since Ed joined the army and Ed has done nothing but sleep and eat since they were finished with it. The lead itself was a bust and Ed had seriously contemplated hanging the villagers that kept questioning if he could really be a State Alchemist. He knows his instatement as the Fullmetal Alchemist made national news, is it really so hard for these people to not act surprised?
The thought makes him growl a little, but he pushes it down. Overall, the mission was a success. A local gang has been unmasked and a rumor of a cursed forest is undone.
He knows he’s being cranky, but he can’t help it. He has a crick in the neck and he’s both vaguely nauseous and congested, while not really being sick. And he can’t stop thinking about food.
“Again, brother?” Al asks, sounding both shocked and amused at the same time. “You ate an hour ago!”
“It was a small snack,” Ed protests, even though he knows it wasn’t, guilt churning in his gut. He knows he eats a lot. He always has, but the past year he’s gotten weird with food.
Granny and Winry assured him it was normal. He’d been recovering from blood loss over and over again with all the surgery and had to re-eat food after he threw it up from the pain. Not to mention that he’s getting to that age where he starts to grow, which requires food. Ed just hates it, that’s all.
He hates how much his body wants him to eat. It’s too much. Constantly, his body is asking him to eat, making him feel so hungry and every time it gets caught in his throat, because he can still eat. He can still eat, while Alphonse can’t. And Ed’s the one who did that to him.
Ed is the one, who suggested bringing mom back to begin with, yet he gets to keep his body. It’s just unfair that he gets to continue to live and breathe in flesh and blood while Al can’t. Al should hate him, blame him. Heck, Ed does!
Right now, he can’t help but hear an accusation in Al’s voice that probably wasn’t there. Still, he can’t help but want to punish himself for it. To stop eating like he tries to stay awake to keep Al company until his body betrays him and sleep drags him under. Some days, he even thinks he’ll manage, the guilt making him feel nauseous… but it’s never nauseous enough to make him stop thinking about food like he wants to.
Sometimes Ed feels possessed. He feels like he’s starving all the time, desperate for more food, more nourishment, more everything. He can’t count how many times he tried to stick to three bare minimum meals and failed. It’s infuriating.
“Nevermind, you’re right.” He clears his throat. He’s not failing again today. He had a full lunch just an hour again. It was bare bones, but more than enough. He can make it through. “We should hand that bastard Colonel his report he wanted so badly.”
“Don’t call Colonel Mustang a bastard, brother!” Al scolds gently, thankfully easily distracted from Ed’s slip up.
He knows that won’t last forever, Alphonse is too perceptive sometimes and they’re both growing up fast. Too fast some would say, but it’s by necessity. They have to fix their mistake, they cannot sit around and wait to be raised, they’ll have to do it themselves. Entering the military has granted him adulthood in the eyes of the law, as well as guardianship of Al. And he’s going to take it and run with it; he has two legs, he can do that now.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets like he doesn’t care. They both know he does. Mustang has given them a chance that he really shouldn’t have and they’re forever in his debt and Ed knows it. He wants to show the man he didn’t make a mistake, even if he sometimes really want to kick his smug face in.
His stomach rumbles as he walks off and he hastens his steps to cover it. He had lunch an hour ago, it’s fine. His stomach isn’t trying to eat itself. He’s being selfish. He’ll cope.
Ed doesn’t cope.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, Ed eats too much for a reason. Neither of them know it at the start, but Ed has bound Al’s body to his own through the Gate. He’s supporting an entire second body next to his own, which is very much not great for a child. In a sense, it’s like a pregnancy, but dialed up high. It’s not a small fetus, but a whole other child that Ed is trying to support. And no one is aware of that fact.
He comes into the office like a little whirlwind and is rude from the start. He doesn’t mean to be, truly, he doesn’t. He’s an adult now and he wants to act the part. It’s just hard when the smoke from Havoc’s cigarette makes him more nauseous, the fiddling Fury is doing with his radio bores into his skull and Mustang keeps fucking gloating.
If asked, he’ll blame Colonel Bastard entirely for it, but he knows he’s cranky. But feeling cranky of all things makes him feel like a child and he needs to be an adult now. Adults swear. Adults don’t give a fuck about authority, because they have authority themselves. And right now, Mustang can stick it so far up his ass-
“Fullmetal, what the hell has gotten into you?” Mustang snaps.
“Nothing’s gotten into me,” Ed scowls. “You’re being unreasonable. I fixed all those houses, didn’t I? I don’t know why the fuck you’re complaining. Nobody’s mad, I was epic and you get to gloat like the thunder stealing slick asshole you are.”
“I can write you up for insubordination,” Mustang threatens. It’s not the light jab it has been before, this time Mustang sounds steely. Serious.
“F-”
Before Ed can tell Mustang to fuck off, Al is interrupting him: “Brother! Stop antagonizing the Colonel, please.”
Instantly, Ed clicks his jaw shut. He wants so badly to do right by Al, but he can’t help but fuck it up over and over again. Guilt crashes down on him again and he hunches in on himself. “Fine. Whatever,” he mutters, scuffing the floor with his shoe, unable to admit he’s sorry, but not able to let it go by without remorse either.
Mustang’s eyes narrow for a moment, assessing. His voice is less cold, though still filled with an air of something Ed can’t place when he asks: “Did something happen?”
“Noth-” Ed starts indignantly, before a waft of Havoc’s cigarette forces him to swallow. Calmer, though still mulishly, he tries again: “Nothing happened.”
In return, Mustang simply raises a brow and Al – the traitor – jumps in: “He said he was hungry when we got here.”
“I ate an hour ago!” Ed protests, because Al had just made that argument, he can’t just switch sides now! That’s unfair.
“Clearly not enough, Chief,” Havoc comments, trying to sound jovial and only falling short a little bit in the face of Ed’s foul mood.
Ed feels a little bad about that, but the cigarette smoke is there again and the feeling of failing Alphonse all over again, claws on him. So he scowls at Havoc and deadpans: “I ate three pork buns and a full plate of spaghetti.”
This has all of them blinking. In the end, Breda whistles: “Damn, kid, that’s a lot of food.”
“Yeah, so I’m not hungry,” Ed says definitively, hoping this will end the whole argument and he can get back on track with giving his report, so he can get the fuck out of here. Whether it’d be on his way to a new lead or a bed, Ed doesn’t care. He’s hungry, he’s tired and he feels Bad all over.
Sadly, his stomach decides that it has had enough of Ed’s lies and chooses to protest Ed’s insistence of not needing food by wailing like it’s on the island Teacher left them on again.
It’s quiet for a moment, then Havoc asks: “Are you sure you ate all that an hour ago, Chief?”
“Shut up,” Ed mutters, feeling how his cheeks redden. He didn’t ask for this. He didn’t ask to fail over and over again at not letting Alphonse suffer alone, but it seems impossible for him to keep to eating bare bones the way he wants to.
“Falman, go to the cafeteria and get Edward a full tray,” Hawkeye orders, getting a quick salute and ‘yes, sir’ from the man, before he leaves. Then she turns to Ed and calmly says: “I expect you to eat what he brings you.”
Ed swallows, then also says: “Yes, sir,” a respect he only reserves for her.
Fortunately, Mustang doesn’t seem to care much about his insubordination, despite his earlier threats to write him up. He appears to mostly glad Hawkeye stepped in to force food on Ed – probably so the bastard won’t have to lower himself to something as undignified as caring – and is watching the scene of those stupid steepled hands of his.
“What do ya want?” Ed snarls at him, properly humbled but far out enough from the mortification to pick up on his pissed off hungry behavior once more.
Mustang stares at him for a long moment, before he leans back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, instantly changing into the more lax persona he usually presents. “Are you capable of telling me what happened without all the insults, or do we have to wait until your little snack gets here, Fullmetal?”
“I’M NOT LITTLE!” Ed screams, before taking a deep breath. He’s also exhausted still and he wants to get away from the noise and the smell and lay down for a bit. His head rushes randomly – something he thought he’d gotten over after all the surgery but has returned – and he has to blink away the dizziness.
He sniffs his nose, hating how it’s always runny these days, makes him feel like a toddler. Truth, he feels fucking pathetic right now. He’s miserable all over and he made an ass out of himself in front of everyone, especially Al. He’s responsible for his baby brother and he hasn’t been acting like it. He can’t go insane just because he’s hungry and tired.
“I’ll wait for the food,” he decides, dropping on the couch in Mustang’s office.
“Very well,” Mustang says, gesturing to the couch as if to say ‘go ahead’. Ed doesn’t know what he’s playing at, acting like he doesn’t care after getting all prissy earlier, but he’s in too much discomfort right now to question it, so he ignores it.
“Are you alright, brother?” Al asks worriedly once Ed has slumped onto the couch, tentatively involving himself again after he had told on Ed earlier.
More guilt floods through Ed, because he’s Al’s big brother and he should be worrying about Al, not making Al worry about him. He’s horrible. The worst. Feeling more and more miserable and awful by the second, Ed manages to lie: “I’m fine, Al.”
“You don’t look fine,” Al says and Ed can hear that he’s frowning despite the metallic face. “We could have eaten.”
But they couldn’t have eaten. Al can’t eat. They would have gone for Ed’s sake and Ed hadn’t wanted to pull attention toward it, because it’s already bad enough that he can eat while Al can’t, so he shouldn’t indulge, but now he’s gone and only turned it into a bigger thing than it is. Fuck. He truly is the worst.
“I’m sorry, Al,” Ed says dumbly, because there isn’t much else to say. Any other words he tries to find get stuck in his throat and he feels like crying. Stupid fucking stomach. Stupid fucking Ed.
“It’s alright,” Al assures him and Ed wants to argue that it’s really not, but they’re fortunately interrupted by Falman, who returns with a tray that in different circumstances would be comically piled with food.
Ed’s traitorous stomach lets out another growl at the sight and, somewhat defeated, he accepts that he wants the food. Needs it. He’s very aware of everyone looking at him when the takes the first bite, since he made an absolute ass out of himself just now. Fucking hell, he feels like a little kid, it’s annoying.
However, most thoughts leave his brain after that first bite, because holy shit he needed that food. It might be military chow, which is naturally awful, but it’s delicious to Ed right now and he tears into the food with abandon.
The more he eats, the stupider he starts to feel. He already knew he acted like a right asshole, but with food in his stomach rationality returns and he can see how irritable he’d been acting. The embarrassment settles on his cheeks, feeling thankfully less dire than the shame that had threatened to swallow him earlier – seems like all his emotions are more easily kept in check now too – but still pretty big.
He swallows another bite and finally looks up. Most of Mustang’s team is staring at him with wide and shocked eyes. Havoc checks: “Are you sure you ate an hour ago, Chief? Didn’t mistake the time or anything?”
“I mean, he’s hitting that growth spurt age, you need more food at then,” Breda counters, though he sounds somewhat disbelieving when he does. Like he knows it’s true, but what Ed is doing still seems like too much.
“Yeah, I’m still growing, Havoc,” Ed says, this time not sharp and angry, but with a big grin. Then he sheepishly rubs the back of his head and adds: “Sorry. It won’t happen again.”
And he means to keep that promise, he swears it to himself as he returns back to eating. He knows he can’t afford not to keep it. He can’t let this gnawing hunger impact Al the way it had today. As much as he hates that Al can’t eat, this also won’t work. Ed loses the fight against his stomach, but in this moment of post-food clarity, he can see eating is the better option than whatever this had just been.
“See that it doesn’t,” Mustang says, because he’s still a slimy bastard, who lives to make Ed’s life more difficult.
“I said I will, didn’t I?” Ed grumbles without any heat. “Still wanna hear about what happened?”
“Once you can talk without your mouth full? Sure,” Mustang replies mildly, but there’s amusement in his eyebrow as he does. Ed will never admit it to him, but he’s relieved when his stupidity doesn’t land him in permanent hot water with the Colonel and Mustang lets it go easily after making his point.
“Whatever,” Ed rolls his eyes instead, finishing his plate before giving his rapport. With the food in his stomach, he feels like a normal person again. The nausea still lingers and he’s sure he’ll get another stupid fucking head rush when he stands, but he feels ready to tackle the next lead Mustang has for them when he leaves. They have their bodies to get back.