Chapter Text
“Brother.”
There was no sound more familiar, more comforting, or more relieving than Alphonse’s voice in Edward’s ear. In the corner of his eye the elder brother captured the young man’s profile back lit by a single flickering streetlight. Boasting the strong, rectangular jaw he’d matured into, the winter hat Al wore smeared his golden brown bangs over his forehead. Softness reminiscent of their mother’s eyes was ever present in his, crowned by silver iris’ warmed to near gold by the light reflected in them. The youthful, unburdened smile he never lost contrasted the maturity settling in his features.
“It’s snowing!” Al announced like a stage host introducing the season’s arrival.
Thin snowflakes floated down around the brothers like confetti, fringes glittering in the light. Relief flooded into Ed’s veins and his heart flushed the feeling through his body like a narcotic. He took it all in, revelling in the high.
There was nothing wrong.
Pulling himself out of the unexpected euphoria, Ed sheltered his emotions inside the firmly clenched fist of his right flesh hand and punched Al in the shoulder with it, “Who the hell gave you permission to grow so much taller than your big brother?”
“This again!?” without missing a beat, Al swiftly punched his brother back, “when are you going to have a growth spurt and catch up?”
Bouncing back, Ed delivered his next jab as a verbal sneer, “At least I don’t sound like a squeaky toy.”
Al responded with a wicked grin, “My voice won’t stop me from kicking your backside from here into next Tuesday.”
“Let’s see you try,” Ed egged him on with the pop of his brow.
“Snowball fight?” Al squared his stance in anticipation.
The grin that tore Ed’s mouth open was ripe with fighting spirit, “You’ll lose.”
“Only in your dreams!” Al’s high pitched voice cracked.
Ed doubled over in laughter from his brother’s voice snapping like a broken violin string. Al’s fiercely rosy cheeks poured even more joy into his amusement. Struggling to gather himself amidst the verbal jabs Al continued to throw, Ed couldn’t help but lament over how it was such a shame this tiny voice remained attached to a man of his brother’s size.
“HEY!”
Both Ed and Al turned their attention to the call.
Winry trotted along a path winding through the dim park. A handful of streetlights flickered to life as she approached, acting like a guide through the fading twilight.
“You’re late!” Ed stated the obvious.
“Sorry, I had a lot to get done in the shop at the end of the day,” she said, arriving at Ed’s side bundled in her scarf, hat, and winter coat, “client showed up last minute. I wish people wouldn’t turn up fifteen minutes before closing.”
“Make sure you put out a memo letting everyone know their problems and emergencies need to happen between 10AM and 5:30PM or they’re shit out of luck.” The eyeroll Winry gave curled Ed’s grin.
“You’re an asshole,” Winry condemned him, then leaned in to kiss him.
Ed lurched back.
Winry retreated in surprise.
Wait, what was he doing!?
Ed froze, standing awkwardly with a wedge of air driven between them. Why did he just reject a kiss from Winry like that!? His eyes thrown wide in horror of himself, Ed scrambled to find an explanation for what he’d just done.
Confusion was ripe in Winry’s voice, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Ed didn’t know. The ghost of his hesitations left him. Honing his focus on the woman in front of him, Ed was at a loss for what to tell her, “Sorry, I don’t know what happened there.”
Grinding her lower lip between her teeth, Winry gave him the benefit of the doubt, “Don’t start getting bashful on me again just because Al is here.”
“Won’t happen.”
Ed leaned forward and kissed Winry. At the point when it should have ended Ed leaned in a little further, a little more emphatically, and kissed Winry a little longer, reminding himself he was long past those timid sorts of first kisses.
“Edward Elric!”
An unmistakable voice calling out his name exactly like she had since he was a child took hold of Ed. “Mom!”
“This is a public park, control yourself,” Trisha scolded her eldest son as the streetlights guided her arrival.
Trisha Elric's two adult sons ran like children down a cobblestone path, swirling the lackadaisical flurries that floated in the air. She was greeted with a hug and kiss on the cheek from each one.
“You’re late,” Ed stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets like a patient child while his mother’s thinning fingers adjusted his scarf, “we were starting to get worried.”
“Was I the only one who wasn’t worried I’d make it?” Trisha teased, “you boys need to put a little more faith in your mother. I’m a country girl after all, a little snow wouldn’t have stopped me.”
Ed rolled his eyes and doled out her rhetoric, “Yeah, we know you walked uphill both ways in knee-high snow to go anywhere growing up in the country, doesn’t mean Al and I aren’t going to worry about you in the city.”
Trisha somehow managed to soften further. The smile she gave added a few more wrinkles to her face and she patted her son on his cheek. “Thank you.” Swinging the hand out, presenting an open road, the mother motioned towards the next path their family would take. “We need to head to the house, your father picked up some things for us to make for supper.”
Two more streetlights gained power in the lingering twilight on either side of Trisha’s gesture, flickering as the current feeding them surged. Along the route that lay ahead of them, the evening lights of the cobblestone path came alive one after another to stave off the encroaching darkness for the journey. Ed’s brows slid down to sit atop his eyes as the path they would walk started to shine. With each new light the scope of the park gained brilliance and took shape, its winding paths and intersections shimmering in the white winter dusting. Every second that ticked by thickened the blanket of settling snow, purifying the visual and masking the imperfections of the route's finer details.
Something in the park felt like it had become lost. Ed narrowed an eye, trying to pick out what it might have been.
Al’s warm hand landed on his shoulder, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Ed didn’t know. His concerns were shed like snow brushed from his shoulders.
“Come on, Edward,” Trisha brightly told her eldest son something he longed to hear, “let’s go home.”
In the last glimmer before darkness completely fell, showered in streetlight and glistening snow, Ed stepped forward at his mother’s behest and walked through the front door of their city home.