Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"All right, Al. That's the last of them."

"Are you sure we can't keep just one?"

Edward glared at his baby brother.

"No, Al, we can't. We don't have time for a pet and they smell terrible."

"It's not their fault! I'm sure we could control the smell if we kept the cage clean- "

"-which is something we don't have time for! Besides, rats cause diseases. I'm sure they'll be much happier in a place like the sewers than a tiny cage anyway."

Al studied the squeaking, stinking mass of multicolored fur and bald tails roiling in his empty body.

"I suppose you're right," he said, surprising Ed. "The sewers are a good place for rats to live. It's not too cold or too hot, there's lots of food they like, and lots of room for them to play."

Ed wasn't sure that rats played in the way Al was thinking of, but he wasn't going to correct someone saying he was correct.

"Of course, I'm right. I'm the big brother, being right is my job."

Unfortunately, it wasn't all positive for him.

Alphonse had screamed so shrilly that Ed was sure his eardrums had ripped when he'd tried to start throwing the rats down a storm drain. Despite Edward's assurances that rats are competent swimmers (he didn't know if that was true or not, he just wanted to finish this and go take a nice, long shower), Al had been terrified that the tiny animals would go into shock and drown when they suddenly met the water-or worse, break their necks on a dry, stone floor.

So, Ed had transmuted the lid off a manhole and used his automail arm to pull his coat into a makeshift basket and climbed down the ladder of the maintenance tunnel one-handed. The rats crawled around the pouch made of his jacket, sniffing and peering around, but not risking climbing over the edge.

"Gentle, Brother, gentle! Don't crush them!"

"I'm not going to crush them, Al, stop worrying-AWW, GROSS!"

"What? What is it? Did one of them die! I told you to- "

"IT CRAPPED ON ME!

The ringing giggles of his brother's laughter was almost as humiliating as having his famous red coat stained with rat feces.

Almost.

XXX

The druggies who had been living in the vermin-infested shack (Ed thought it might have been a shop, maybe a corner store, before it had been abandoned) had been taken into custody without a fight. They had been too high to even understand that they were being raided. Ed and Al had stepped into the building and saw a dirty, barely clothed couple lying against the wall, apparently unconscious and resting in each other's arms. An older man had been sitting up against the adjacent wall, and while he had been awake, he clearly hadn't been lucid. The balding man had smiled at the boys, revealing several missing teeth, and pointed at an ingredient-stained table bearing what looked like laboratory equipment from a university classroom.

"Hel' yaseffs. I's goo' bennie."

Alphonse deigned to answer him while Edward simply raised an eyebrow in a silent question.

"No thank you, sir. We've come to take you to a doctor. He'll be able to help you get better."

The old man had seemed to find that quite agreeable and, with the armor's help, had hobbled out of the empty shop and into the patrol car. The police didn't bother to handcuff him. The young couple were carried out on stretchers and escorted to the hospital via emergency vehicle.

After collecting the paraphernalia and any evidence that might be needed in a court trial, the authorities headed back to their offices to finalize the paperwork for the arrest of the addicts and the demolition of the building. Upon learning that the tumbledown store was to be destroyed, Al had refused to leave the premises until the colony of rats he had seen feasting on the remains of the buffs' most recent meal had been relocated (it had looked suspiciously like a single giant cheese wheel; Ed thought to himself that anyone in the mood to eat an entire circle of Västerbotten had to be on some type of amphetamines).

"Al, they're just rodents."

"This building is their home!"

"It's full of drugs, Al! It's not safe for anything to live in there!"

"All the more reason to get them out of there! I'm not leaving them here to be smashed underneath a bunch of rubble!"

"Al, please, I'm tired and hungry- "

"I'm not going anywhere until they're safe!"

And Edward hadn't the energy to argue.

That was why Edward, his left arm and shoulder port sore from three trips up and down the ladder, his coat now being cleaned by a professional laundress with a stomach made of iron, was vigorously scratching fleabites while taking a two-hour-long shower. When he finally did come out of the bathroom, his fingers and toes wrinkly and his wet hair falling heavily behind his back, he let his brother know just how much he thought saving a bunch of dirty bug-ridden rodents was worth by curling up on the couch of their dorm room and pouting, wearing nothing but a towel around his body.

After about five minutes he went back into the bathroom and put on some clothes, having only a towel had gotten cold. Then he went right back to sulking.

After watching Edward grump for half an hour, Alphonse left and came back twenty minutes later with three shrimp-and-beef kabobs, a box of noodles, and a bottle of ice cream soda.

Edward had fully forgiven his brother by the time he went to sleep that night.

XXX

"You apprehended the suspects without resorting to violent force or destroying public or private property. The individuals in question have proved quite cooperative in divulging information about their dealer and even routine smuggling operations."

Mustang looked up from the reports he had received from Fullmetal and the police department. His eyes, normally sharp and scrutinizing, were soft and pleased.

"I'm impressed, Fullmetal. Good job. I'm proud of you."

Edward scoffed and flicked his head aside, but Roy saw the suppressed smile and little chest swell happily. The boy would never admit how much the colonel's praise meant to him, but he had never been good about controlling his body language. Hawkeye didn't bother to pretend she wasn't gladdened by Ed's uncharacteristically docile behavior during the assignment. She smiled gently and gave him a nod of approval that sent sparks of gratification sizzling down his spine.

"Wasn't a big deal. The dude was too doped to know what was going on, anyway."

"Even so, Fullmetal."

"I don't care." He did care and both Hawkeye and Mustang knew it, but neither commented. "Do you have anything else for Al and me? And I don't mean stupid coffee runs!"

Roy chuckled and fished a file from somewhere on his paper-laden desk.

"I doubt it'll lead to anything, but I kept tabs on it just in case. There's no rush, so no need to book the morning train- "

"Blah, blah, give it here." Ed snatched the file out of Roy's proffered hand. "Thank you. I gotta go, Al's waiting for me at the laundromat. See ya, Colonel!"

And he bolted out of the office with the energy only a young person can possess.

"He thanked you," Hawkeye noted after the door had shut and the mismatched footsteps had trailed away.

"Must be in a good mood," Roy said, then turned back to his deskwork. "Enjoy it while it lasts, it won't for much longer."

XXX

A week later, Mustang received word that the Elric brothers had returned to East City. After three days and the boys hadn't come in for a follow-up report, Roy decided to check if what he'd heard was true. He called the barracks and the receptionist confirmed that yes, the Elric brothers had checked in a little over two days ago. He requested that Edward be sent for, and after ten minutes of filling out forms with one hand and holding the phone receiver to his ear with the other, he heard the clacking sounds as the other line was handed off and Alphonse's tinny voice came through. It wasn't uncommon for Al to answer his brother's phone calls. Mustang didn't mind, Ed tended to respond heatedly to calls and rarely listened to his conversationalist.

"I'm sorry, Colonel. We were going to come in this morning, but I'm afraid Brother's unwell."

Roy rolled his eyes, although he knew Al couldn't see him.

"Alphonse, I know that boys Fullmetal's age can be… difficult… when they're feeling lazy, but you need to tell your brother to get off his butt and come finish his assignment."

There was an uncomfortable silence, and Roy had the inkling he might have unintentionally offended Al by insulting his brother. That was unfortunate, but it changed nothing.

"No, sir, I don't think you understand. I don't want Brother to go in today because I don't think he's feeling well. He was quiet on the train back and he only ate a bowl of rice for dinner. I really think he should rest-"

"Al? Who are you talking to? Is it the colonel? Gimme the phone!"

Edward's voice, distant but recognizable.

"Brother! I told you to go back to sleep!"

"Gimme!"

More clacking, and then Edward's voice again, now clear and unusually hoarse-sounding.

"We'll be right there, Bastard, keep your boxers on!"

The receiver was slammed onto its cradle and all Roy could hear was a dial tone.

XXX

Mustang should have listened to Alphonse.

He knew that as soon as his major and the suit of armor stepped into his office.

The last time he had seen Fullmetal look that pathetic, it had been moments before the boy had vomited all over the freshly cleaned carpet of his office. Roy had half a mind to send the brothers right back to the dorms, but he was the one who'd insisted they'd come in the first place, and Edward looked as if he didn't lie down soon he would collapse.

He was tiny next to his brother, Al's giant arm holding him close and guiding him through across the threshold, immotile yet tender, like a mother eagle shielding her chick with her wing. The boy's eyes were closed, and he was leaning against his brother's broad side. Roy could see him shivering from his desk.

Mustang expected anger from Alphonse, a lecture on how he ought to listen to others when they said something was wrong, but any animosity Al might have felt toward the colonel was dissolved in his worry for Ed.

"We were about halfway here before he got this bad; I was scared he wouldn't make it back to the dorms if we turned around, so I just kept going-"

He had kept going once they'd reached Headquarters, through the building and to Mustang's office, and they had gathered a following. Roy could see Havoc, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, peering from behind Al's shoulder. He could also see a concerned-looking receptionist, a curious sergeant, an angry Hawkeye, Falman wearing an inquisitive expression-

An angry Hawkeye.

The embarrassment that had been filling Roy's stomach as he took in all the witnesses to his stupid stubbornness curdled into sick fear.

"Can I-"

"Put him on the couch, Alphonse," Roy said without breaking eye contact with Riza or hearing what Al had been going to ask.

"Thank you, sir." He guided his brother to the sofa that came with having a private office in East Headquarters, when they reached it Ed sat down heavily and buried his face in Al's side. Al held him tighter, but just as gently.

Havoc took a step into the office cautiously and studied the small figure that looked like Edward but couldn't be, because Edward was a force of nature that flattened everyone and everything in his way, not this child who was curled up in his kid brother's shadow.

"Hey, boss… is the chief okay?"

"No, Jean, he clearly is not," Riza answered for her colonel and stepped around Havoc and into the office and approached the couch.

Havoc glanced at the waste basket next to Mustang's desk and back to Ed.

"He's not… uh… gonna… y'know…. Is he?"

Hawkeye had dropped to one knee in front of the sofa, she turned her head and looked at Jean from over her shoulder.

"Do you want to stay and find out? I believe you have work to do, Second Lieutenant." Her eyes narrowed at the receptionist peeking into the room next Havoc. "As do the rest of you."

They both heard what she didn't say and made themselves scarce. Havoc took the liberty of closing the office door before making his departure.

"Thank you, Lieutenant," said Roy, genuinely glad for the privacy.

Hawkeye sent him a scowl that promised pain later.

Lots and lots of pain.

The glare vanished the instant she turned back to Elrics.

"Hey, Edward. How are you?" She spoke as if to a young child.

Edward blinked open his eyes. They were glossy and unfocused.

"S;upid bas'ard. Wha's he want?" It was a lame attempt at normalcy.

"Yes, he is, isn't he?"

Out of the corner of his eye Ed saw Roy's countenance flood with betrayal, then smooth out into chastisement. He'd deserved that.

Riza reached out a hand and Edward flinched from it like a startled rabbit but relaxed as her soft touch graced the space beneath his jaw and behind his ear. She was warm and smelled like peonies.

"Is he feverish? I can't tell, I'm sorry- "

"No reason to be sorry, Alphonse. He's a little warm, but I don't think it's anything to worry about."

"Usually he whines and complains when he's not feeling well. I haven't seen him like this since his surgery, and that was when he'd let me in the room."

"Have you tried taking him to the infirmary?" That was Roy, stepping around his desk so he could come closer, although he stopped a safe distance from his lieutenant. He wasn't sure if it was wise to approach her yet.

"Brother doesn't like doctors and he usually gets better on his own."

"Alphonse, I don't think this is anything serious, but I think he would feel better if you brought him in." Hawkeye hadn't removed her hand from Edward's jawline and the boy hadn't shown any signs of wanting her to. Neither had he shown any form of protestation when taking him to the infirmary was suggested. His lack of dissent rather than his lack of assertiveness was what made up Al's mind.

"Okay. Come on, Brother, let's go to-oh."

Ed did not follow Al as his brother stood up. In fact, he did the opposite: he clung to Alphonse's arm and tried to keep the suit of armor from leaving the couch, which nearly ended with him sprawling onto the floor. To prevent that, Edward had to let go of Alphonse's limb, and he settled for curling his body onto the sofa, pulling in his legs and burying his face in his knees. Roy had never seen the boy do anything so infantile, and Mustang was surprised to find that he was frightened by it. Alphonse turned back to the couch and leaned down to place a leather hand on Ed's side, as if his brother was a tired dog he was petting.

"On second thought, could you bring someone here?"

XXX

Edward was not sure what had happened. He had been feeling odd on the train ride back to East City but had written it off as the routine tiredness he often felt near the end of an assignment-although this trip hadn't been that strenuous.

It had been a town that had built a thriving economy off synthesizing precious gems using alchemy and then crafting them into pieces of jewelry which they sold for relatively low prices. State law prohibited the alchemical creation of gold, which the jewelers did not use a speck of in their work but had no official institutions against rocks such as emeralds or jades. While the information they'd learned hadn't been directly beneficial for their personal studies, Ed believed they may have picked up one or two potentially useful bits of geological knowledge, and he couldn't deny that watching the crafters turn boring, raw materials into beautiful, rare treasures was fascinating.

Perhaps he'd picked up a local strain of flu as well.

Sleeping certainly seemed to help, and though he hadn't felt noticeably hungry during the past couple of days, he hadn't felt nauseous. He had woken up that morning to the sound of Al's echoing voice talking on their dorm room's telephone. He'd been feeling better. His automail ports were a bit sore and there was a mild drum of pain right between his eyes and behind his nose, but he'd been feeling better.

So, he told the colonel he'd be there in a few minutes, pulled on his boots, and he and Alphonse had made their way to Eastern Headquarters.

They were about one-eighth of the way there when the aching in his ports spread into his muscles, deeply, like it was trying to reach his bones.

They were about one-fourth of the way there when the drum at the front of his face caught fire, and the flames consumed his forehead and burrowed into his brain and settled there, smoldering.

They were about halfway there when the fire destroyed the part of his brain in charge of regulating his balance, and the pain in his muscles turned them to stone.

Alphonse had gradually morphed from walking behind him, to walking beside him, to letting him lean against him, to supporting him completely. He'd relinquished control to Alphonse completely, his head hurt too much for him to care. At some point, the stone in his body turned to ice and Edward had started to shudder even though it did no good; the cold was inside of him and his body couldn't seem to make itself hot enough to melt it. By the time they reached the military building, Ed was being guided by his brother blindly. He could not open his eyes, the sight of the world going past and around him made him feel like throwing up.

Edward balked when Alphonse tried to coax him up the stairs.

"Come on, Brother. We're almost there."

Edward refused to lift his feet onto the first step. He felt like it was taking all of his willpower not to curl up on the floor and die.

"There's a couch in the colonel's office. You can lay down there. Come on, you can make it."

He could not make it.

Al had to hoist him up, so that Ed was sitting on one arm with his free hand caressing Ed's back. He set him back on his feet at the top of the staircase to preserve his dignity. He knew the receptionist from the front desk was following them, she had been since they had passed through the lobby. Al knew she was worried and wanted to make sure they arrived at their destination without incident but allowed them a wide berth to protect their privacy. He deeply appreciated that and made a mental note to thank her later.

Havoc was not so keen on the brothers' desire for confidentiality.

"Hey, Alphonse - woah. Is the chief all good? He's not looking so hot," was the greeting he gave them as Al shouldered himself and his brother through the door to the main office

"Good morning, sir. Colonel Mustang wanted to see Brother, and Brother said he was feeling better today, but…" Al's voice trailed away as he watched Edward push away from him and attempt to make himself presentable. He knew they had reached the office upon hearing Jean speak and, despite his abnormal public appearance of debility on the way there, Ed was hell-bent that Mustang the Bastard would not see him any way besides autonomous and sophisticated. He straightened his posture and his coat and ran his flesh hand through his hair. Then he opened his eyes and his face turned the color of chalk.

He had been pressing his forehead against the cool metal of Al's armor; the pressure and cold had snuffed the throbbing in his skull to a bearable thrum. With his face away from his brother's steel skin and his eyes open, the sudden brightness to his eyes and upright position of his head freed and amplified Ed's migraine to a point that his vision was tinted with yellow and red. After a tormented ten seconds in which Edward mentally tried to control the pain enough to function, he realized that if he continued wrestling with his body he would end up either being sick in Mustang's office or pass out - or both - and he decided he would much rather see the colonel clean and conscious than wearing his own puke and/or vegged out.

He closed his eyes and collapsed against his brother like a ragdoll kitten.

Alphonse immediately convolved around him defensively so that all Havoc could see of him was below the knees.

"Oh, Brother… Let's go into the colonel's office so you can sit down."

XXX

"To be fair, he was the one who decided to come in."

"To be fair, sir, you were the one who refused to take Alphonse at his word."

Roy sat at his desk, feeling ironically out of place and awkward, while Riza stood guard by the closed door. Alphonse was hovering anxiously over his brother, who was either asleep or lacked the energy to do anything except lay under the blanket the receptionist had donated. The woman had proved worth more than her paycheck. After retrieving a small quilt from the infirmary, she had told Riza (who was clearly in charge despite the colonel's rank) that she had informed a nurse on shift that their assistance was needed, and that the technician had promised to send someone right away.

The man they sent was balding and disgruntled, and Roy would have wagered that he was near the end of his middle years and leaning towards seniority. Upon arriving he gave Mustang a look that suggested he did not think that the colonel's predicament was worth an out-of-office visit, to which Roy responded with a gesture towards the couch. The physician turned his attention towards the direction Mustang had gestured and his face softened. He immediately forgot about the colonel as his instincts as a grandfather and a doctor came to the fore.

Edward did not like doctors. Doctors gave him shots, and shots made him feel sleepy and dizzy and sick, and when he felt like that it meant they were getting ready to cut open his stumps and jack around with the severed neurons and stunted bones, and that hurt, no matter how strong of a drug they gave him.

But Edward was already hurting, and he already felt sleepy and dizzy and sick, and if Al said the man who was dressed in a professional white coat and smelled like antiseptic and latex was going to take the hurting and the sleepy-dizzy-sick feeling away, Ed was not going to argue or fight back.

So, disproving Alphonse's fears of his brother attacking the man and in doing so ironically strengthening his anxiety for Edward's wellbeing, Ed did not throw a punch or assault the doctor with swear words, or even slap his hand away when the man placed a soft hand on his forehead and listened to his breathing.

"He must be feeling really awful. Brother hates doctors. Oh, um, no offense to you, sir."

The doctor glanced at the suit of armor sitting on the sofa by his brother's feet, his gauntlet pressed firmly against Edward's curved back. He found the high-pitched, almost childish voice coming from the helmet perched atop an eight-foot suit bizarre, almost comical, but he did not question it. The sense of intuition he had developed during his life as a practitioner told him he probably didn't want to know.

"It doesn't look that bad. It's most likely just a particularly nasty virus or bacterial infection," he said as he shook the thermometer he'd been reading, knocking the mercury back into the glass bulb. He had measured the boy's temperature by slipping the tool under Ed's arm rather than having Ed hold it under his tongue. With the fierceness of his shivering, the man was worried Edward might accidentally bite down on the thermometer and break it. "His fever is pretty high, though. It's probably what's making him so off-color. I would recommend giving him an aspirin to keep him comfortable and from overheating. That should make him perk up."

The doctor pulled a small notepad from the lapel of his coat and scribbled on it, then tore the page free. He stood in confusion for a moment, unsure whom to give it to. Mustang surprised himself by stepping forward and accepting the tiny paper. He caught the word penicillin as his eyes glanced over the writing.

"Lieutenant, we're taking the Elrics back to their dorm."

"Yes, sir."

Though her tone of voice was compliant, her expression held a warning.

You better not be doing this to avoid your work.

Roy made a subtle gesture towards the couch, his own countenance aporetic.

Do you really think they can walk back in their condition?

Riza's face softened as she conceded his point.

The doctor rolled his eyes.

XXX

Edward had very nearly reached a state of fevered sleep when he was pulled to his feet and led, stumbling, out of the office. It was later in the day and so the hallways were busier, which meant there were more potential staring gazes. They were only potential because as soon as either Mustang or Hawkeye sensed an unwanted observer, the watcher was almost immediately pinned with pair of brown or black eyes that promised pain.

After being carried down the stairs (Roy and Riza had looked away for Ed's privacy, not that it would have mattered; he'd lost his sense of surroundings when they left the office) and out of the building, Riza fetched the car and brought it around while the colonel, Al, and Ed waited on bench off the sidewalk. Edward finally sank into the sleep he'd welcomed on the couch and by the time Hawkeye arrived, he was slumped against Alphonse and snoring softly. He did not wake up when his brother carried him to and from the vehicle or throughout the ride itself.

XXX

Roy heard nothing from the brothers for the entirety of the following workday. He'd called before leaving for home that evening; Al reported that Edward had spent the day either sleeping or lounging (he'd tried studying but claimed the tiny print of the books made him dizzy). He hadn't been happy about the medicine, but the aspirin certainly seemed to help, he was at least capable of verbal communication.

"And he ate an orange."

"Just an orange?"

"He said he wasn't very hungry. He did drink lots of soda, though. Is that okay?"

Roy didn't know.

"You should probably give him something healthier. Water or juice. Tea, maybe."

"Oh, good idea! I always put milk in Brother's tea and tell him it's cream, he can't taste the difference- "

"WHAT DID YOU SAY?!"

"Uh oh. I have to go, Colonel, Brother's awake."

XXX

When Alphonse called him the next morning, Mustang had expected an announcement of Fullmetal's recovery and a time in the day at which he would report in.

He received neither of those.

"Colonel, I don't think the medicine is working."

Roy sighed at the boy's childish impatience.

"He's only been taking it for a day, Alphonse, it's a pharmaceutical drug, not a magic cure."

"No, that's not what I mean. He's gotten worse."

"I'm sure it's not that bad - "

"He looks like he has the measles!"

That gave Roy pause. Measles weren't serious, but they were highly contagious. It was a common childhood illness, one that Roy had when he was young.

"It's nothing to worry about. Just keep him inside and away from healthy, sane, normal people. The world will thank you for it."

"No!" Now Al sounded angry as well as anxious. "You're not listening! Brother had the measles when he was three! You can't get it twice. This is something else!"

Roy heard a second voice. It sounded mumbled through the phone, but he could tell that whatever it said was slurred and unfocused, almost like the speaker was drunk.

"Brother, I don't know what that means!"

"What did he say?"

"He keeps telling me that his stomach is leaving, but he won't tell me what the heck he's talking about. I… I don't think he knows. First, I thought he might be feeling sick, so I grabbed a trash can, but he just kept saying it over and over again, so then I tried giving him food in case he was hungry, but he wouldn't eat."

Mustang glanced at Hawkeye. She'd been standing by his desk, listening to the conversation, as she always did when he was on the phone (the colonel tended to use paparazzi calls as an excuse to procrastinate on his deskwork). She met his eyes, brows raised, but said nothing.

"Do you want me to send someone to check on him?"

"Oh, would you, Colonel? Thank you! I was hoping you would!"

After promising someone would be there in ten minutes (by someone they both knew he meant himself and the lieutenant), Roy replaced the receiver on its cradle and buried his face in his hands with an exasperated sigh.

"He learned that from you."

Roy looked up at Riza bemusedly. She was smiling the way one does when they are appreciating their own personal joke.

"Learned what?"

"Emotional extortion."

Chapter Text

This was not the measles.

Measles made one break out in pox-like spots and made one's eyes watery, and then one's parent (or in Roy's case, his aunt) fetched one's favorite stuffed bear and let one eat cup cookies in bed while listening to radio shows all day long.

It did not make one lie sprawled on their covers looking like they were telepathically questioning the ceiling for the secrets of the universe while wearing polka-dot pajamas.

If it wasn't for the fact he could see the boy's automail, Roy might very well have thought Edward was wearing a shirt with dotted sleeves. The blemishes themselves were scattered all along his left arm and circled around his neck, but Ed's flesh hand and face were unmarred. Alphonse had pulled a chair beside the bed so that he could better monitor Edward's condition. He held his brother's wrist gently, pulling his arm away from his body so that the colonel and second lieutenant could inspect it.

"It's on his leg, too."

Mustang, his previous conviction that this was a simple case of a nonage pox illness and a mother hen complex, was seriously rethinking his agreement to expose himself to whatever force of nature was behind this anomaly. He kept himself a good five feet away from the bed and its occupant. Riza, ever fearless, had pushed past her superior and was studying the breakout on Edward's skin as if it were tiny print in a book she was reading.

"When did this happen?"

"Sometime last night. I got him to eat some toast before I went to read for the night. When the sun came up, he looked like this. I tried to get him to talk to me, but he just stared at me like he didn't know what I was saying. Then he told me his stomach was leaving and that's all he'll say when I get him to talk."

"Did you try giving him his medicine?"

"He wouldn't take it. He wouldn't even take the strawberries I got him. Brother loves strawberries."

"When was the last time you checked his temperature?"

A moment of silence, then creaking as the metal helmet lowered in shame.

"I… I was worried I might accidentally break it. My fingers are big, and the thermometer isn't, and I know mercury can cause chemical burns…"

Riza didn't say anything, simply gave the steel child a pat on his gargantuan shoulder he couldn't feel.

"It's in the cabinet behind the mirror in the bathroom," Al answered a question that wasn't asked. Roy retrieved, both to do something useful and to temporarily escape the awkward atmosphere that they were all trying so desperately to ignore.

Edward would not keep the glass bulb in his mouth.

He let it sit for a moment, a confused expression on his face as he reflexively worked his jaw and tried to taste whatever had been shoved under his tongue. He must have decided he didn't like how it tasted because he spat it out.

Alphonse picked up the tool from where it landed on the mattress with his forefinger and thumb and carefully returned it to Hawkeye.

"No, Brother. Leave it."

Riza slipped the thermometer back under his tongue, placing a hand on the top of his head to keep him still. His hair was warm and wet from fever and sweat.

Ed let his jaw hang loose and dropped his head to the side. The instrument rolled out of place.

"Brother, no!"

Ed blinked up at Al's empty eyes. His own were glossy and blank.

"M' stomach s' leavin'." The words came out hoarse and sloppy.

Al groaned in frustration.

"Brother, what does that mean?!"

"You need to be firmer," Roy piped up, his tone edged with annoyance. Mustang was not an impatient man, but the fact that it was taking five minutes to perform a task that should have taken one. After so many years in the office environment, where the slightest delays could mean working overtime when he should be sipping a whiskey at the bar, he had come to respond to unnecessary waiting with negativity and testiness. "You know how Fullmetal is, you have to assert your dominance before he'll take you seriously. Even if it's stupid. Like this."

Al nervously glanced between his infirm brother and Mustang's patronizing stance.

"I don't want to hurt him – "

"Bull," Roy swore as he all but shouldered Riza aside and snatched up the thermometer. "The only thing that can hurt Fullmetal is his own idiocy."

He grabbed Ed's chin – the boy's skin was hot and clammy - and jabbed the glass bulb into his mouth.

Ed instinctively flinched and instantly started to struggle.

Al let out a cry of distress.

Riza made as if to grasp Roy's shoulders and pull him away.

"Colonel, please!"

"Sir! Be gentle, you could choke him!"

Edward was incoherent and exhausted but bearing automail was famous for building bodily strength. Mustang could feel it as the boy tried to turn his head against the colonel's grip and even raised his arms (the metal one seemed to lag and did not reach the man) to vainly push him away. The action caused Ed's upper body to begin lifting off the bed, and as he his chest began to rise, he made a deep-throated growling sound and flopped back onto his back. He laid there, obediently still.

Roy grinned smugly at Al and Riza, both of whom looked as if they had been seriously considering attacking him – which, in fact, they had.

"See? Firm." Once he'd finished praising himself, Mustang noticed their expressions and his own fell.

"What?"

He looked back at Fullmetal. He looked just as out of it as before. Then Roy saw the fisted automail hand on the left side of the boy's body. It clutched the blanket in a way that it was clear that Ed was trying to hold his side beneath the covers.

And then he was being pushed away by a merciless metal arm and was knocked clean off his feet.

"What did you do?!"

Roy regained his footing. It did not miss him that Riza did not help him.

"I was helping you. Like you asked me to. And you just assaulted an officer of the Amestrian military – "

"Couldn't you tell that you were hurting him?!"

Alphonse frantically pulled the sheet off of his brother, who reacted by spitting the thermometer and rolling onto his right side – opposite from one he was now gripping without obstruction – and grumbled unintelligibly in annoyance. Al began wrestling with him, trying to get him to let go of his torso long enough for Al to lift his shirt and assess the damage; with his hand holding it in place, Alphonse could only remove his shirt to just above his belly button.

"The spots are all over his stomach, too!"

Hawkeye took a step closer to look for herself, noticed the thermometer lying forgotten against Edward's neck, and plucked it free. Alphonse, trying not to be too distracted by his brother's speckled abdomen, managed to pry Ed's artificial fist off himself and lifted his shirt past his navel.

At the same moment, Riza, who had been holding the thermometer to the light so as to see the tiny numbers marked upon it, managed to make out its reading.

They both said words neither Roy nor Edward had ever heard them say before.

Hawkeye tossed the glass tube onto the bed and ran out of the room. Roy picked it up and saw enough red to know the mercury was well past the 100 printing.

He looked up and repeated his lieutenant's curse.

Ed stared balefully at his brother and his colonel, who in turn were staring at the obvious swelling that lay just beneath his ribs.

"M' stomach s' leavin'."

XXX

Poor Edward was having a very bizarre day.

In fact, he wasn't sure he had woken up at all.

He remembered he'd been feeling particularly odd the previous evening, so he had rolled over and gone to sleep as soon as he'd finished the bowl of chicken rice soup Al had made for him. It had been good, but not as savory as Granny's. It was probably missing some garden spice he'd never heard of.

His next conscious observation, assuming he was conscious, was a drubbing pain in his brain and a heavy, pinching throb above his left hip. He could feel the contusion causing it against his flesh arm. When his brother appeared with two slices of toast and a bowl of fresh strawberries (he knew what the food was because Alphonse had waved both the toast and a strawberry under his face; Al had been hoping the smell of the breakfast would awaken Ed's appetite), he became uncomfortably aware of the bloated, strained feeling of his stomach, which responded to Al's encouragement for its owner to eat with a sensation that warned that if he did try to ingest anything, it would crawl out through its master's mouth and depart on a leave of absence.

Edward told Alphonse as much.

Or, at least, he thought he did.

He'd said something.

Whatever it was, it must have gotten the message across. The food was taken away, but the gnawing, almost clawing perception did not leave, nor did the impression that his stomach was too big for its given space inside of him. The longer he endured the experience, the more convinced he became that his gut had lost interest in its current vacancy and was trying to force its way into the open world by bursting through his skin.

Edward told Alphonse as much.

Unfortunately, the message must not have gotten across, because instead of doing something about it, Al tried to persuade Ed to swallow a couple of bitter pills. He'd put the medicine on Edward's chest and attempted to guide his left hand into placing the capsules in his mouth, but Ed would not cooperate, and eventually the offending tablets were removed.

He was left alone for a while.

He dozed.

Then Colonel Mustang and Lieutenant Hawkeye appeared, and they tried to feed him a glass stick.

He spat it out.

Mustang must not have liked that because he'd grabbed Edward's face and shoved the stick under his tongue and would not let go. Ed had tried to push him away but moving made his stomach angry and it bit and slashed beneath his skin and he had to use his metal hand to make sure it didn't escape from inside him. After a while the colonel's hand left his chin and Ed spat out the thermometer again.

Then Alphonse lifted his shirt up and made his tummy cold. He didn't like that, so Al put it back down. After that, they wrapped his blanked around him, the way he would roll up his brother in a bed sheet and play caterpillar when they were little, and then someone hoisted him up into her arms and took him away.

She was warm and smelled like peonies.

He fell asleep.

When he woke up, he was lying on something soft and he was being handled by people with gentle hands. One of them put a thermometer under his arm – a much more sensible place for it than his mouth, he thought – and someone else brushed the inside of his arm with something velvety and cold. A moment later, he felt the sharp sting of a needle – that was bad, needles were bad – and he raised his head and shouted in protest. The needle was not taken away. A palm landed on his forehead and benignly shepherded his head back against the pillow. He continued to protest. The palm did not leave, and he was surprised to realize he did not want it to. After a few minutes of yelling, although what exactly he was saying he did not know, the medication in the fluid drip took effect and Ed's world became fuzzy and cordial, and he forgot what he was protesting about.

Someone pulled his shirt up for the second time that day. Whoever it was started pressing on his abdomen, feeling around his torso as if they were looking for something. He raised his head again and managed to tell them that his stomach was trying to run away and if they could please catch it and put it back if it found its way out. Then he collapsed into loving calignosity.

XXX

It was never good sign when everyone in the emergency room stopped what they were doing, and you became the center of attention.

Alphonse showed them the receipt from the pharmacy for the prescription the infirmary nurse had given him – resourceful as always, as was his wont, Roy thought to himself – and they were currently peppering the suit of armor with questions.

Mustang and Hawkeye found themselves on the sidelines. Roy glanced at Riza. She had carried Edward from his dorm room, into her car (Alphonse had cradled his dormant brother during the journey, she had reaccepted him upon arrival at their destination), and into the hospital. Now she held his empty blanket, staring at it as if she was confused about where he'd disappeared to.

"Can I see him?"

"Not yet. The doctors are working on him, but we'll let you know as soon as –"

"OLLY! OLLY! OLLY!"

The nurse's directions were completely ignored.

Alphonse found him first. Roy skidded to a halt beside him, his gloves on, though he did not remember equipping them, fingers poised to snap. He heard Hawkeye turn the safety off her gun.

The poor technicians gave cries of shock and fear. A young baby-faced medical student, his hand on his inmate's forehead to keep the boy from hurting himself, looked up from whispering words of comfort Edward could not understand and saw a spiky metal monster accompanied by two soldiers, their postures aggressive and their eyes focused on the child on the cot. Without a second thought, the student turned to face the intruders and spread his arms out, blocking his charge with his own body. The supervising doctor took a step towards the military personnel, his hand outstretched as if he was about to offer terms of peace.

"OLLY, OLLY, OXEN FREE!"

Whatever anyone was going to say was forgotten. Everyone stared at the boy on the cot. Edward had fallen eerily silent after emitting his nonsensical battle cry, and to everyone around him, he appeared to have fainted. That was, until he spoke up, albeit garbled and drowsily.

"Game's over, time 'a come out."

Alphonse and the intern stared at Edward a moment longer, looked up at the same time, and then stared at each other. Then they both burst into laughter.

The adults glanced at them and at each other, completely flabbergasted.

XXX

"But what do oxen have to do with anything?"

"I don't know. It's just what you say when you're it and you can't find the other players."

"So, you would just stand there in the middle of a field and shout 'Olly, Olly, oxen free!' at the top of your lungs?"

"Not a field. A barnyard or the woods. There aren't any good hiding places in a field."

"Brother's actually good at it. One time, when I was the one seeking, I looked around for him for a whole hour before Winry got tired of waiting to be found and came out to help me. She found him rolled up in the grass covered in mud. He'd read about animals camouflaging themselves to hide from predators and he wanted to try it out for himself."

"That's… adorable."

"Mom thought so, too."

Edward decided he'd let this conversation go on long enough. He opened his eyes and gave the nurse adjusting the fluid drip the meanest, ugliest face he could manage in his current condition.

The doctor-in-training saw his patient was awake, smiled at him, and ruffled his unkempt hair. Ed thought about biting him, but he knew he couldn't reach the student's arm with his teeth. "Good afternoon, Mr. Olly."

"Who the hell are you calling adorable?!"

"Brother! You're awake!"

Alphonse appeared above him, his huge, steel shoulders bunched up the way Ed knew they did when his brother was excited. Al relaxed slightly as a thought occurred to him.

"I mean… you're really awake, aren't you?"

Edward lifted his left arm and glared at the tube-and-needle system feeding water and medicine into his blood.

"How long do I have to leave this in?"

"Yep. You're awake."

Ed didn't hear him. He was too busy staring at the mosaic of spots covering his skin.

"What in the shit happened to me?!"

"Definitely awake."

"Your brother found you delirious and unresponsive this morning, Fullmetal."

Edward sat up.

Or, at least, he tried to.

He made it to his elbows when a stab of pain bit into his side. He hissed in annoyance, both at the feeling and the placating gesture the intern made.

"You shouldn't – "

"Shut up."

The boy did, his teeth clicking together audibly.

"What are you doing here, Bastard?"

Roy smiled pleasantly at the insult. Ed must be feeling much better.

"Alphonse asked me to help him deliver you to the nearest medical facility. Unfortunately, there's no cure for bantam."

Edward's expression shifted from angry to disconcerted to nervous.

"What's bantam? It sounds… foreign. Wait, is this – "he stared, wide-eyed, at the blemishes on his arm. "Do I have some kind of immigrant bug?! Do they have the cure in Amestris? Oh, God…"

Mustang started laughing. Riza, ever present where her colonel was, cast him a reproachful look from her seat beside him. "Sir, that was unkind."

"It's true, though," Roy defended himself once he'd gotten his diaphragm under control. "There's nothing the doctors can do for stunted growth – hey!"

Roy jumped from his chair and stumbled backwards, bonking the chair's leg with his foot and sending the furniture screeching half a foot across the floor.

"What the hell are you doing, Fullmetal?!"

Edward sucked in his cheeks, gathered as much spit on his tongue as he could, and spat at Mustang a second time. He smiled angelically.

"Sharing my bantam. After all, if it wasn't for you, I probably wouldn't have it."

"How is any of this my fault?!"

"If you hadn't sent me on that stupid mission, I wouldn't have caught it!"

"What mission?!"

"I don't know yet. One of them!"

"You have no proof!"

"It doesn't matter. What's for sure is that you'll be getting it from me!"

"Brother, please stop. That's disgusting. Besides, you haven't had anything to drink in over twelve hours. You shouldn't waste your fluids on the colonel."

"Yeah, you shouldn't waste it on me – wait, what's that supposed to mean?!"

He didn't receive an answer.

Al's words had given Ed pause and he glanced at the needle in the crook of his elbow.

"How long was I out?"

"You've been in the hospital for about five hours." Alphonse's voice had turned quiet, like a forest after a summer storm. "I brought you breakfast this morning and I found you all spotty and out of it. You wouldn't eat or take your medicine, so I got scared and called the colonel and Lieutenant Hawkeye and they said you needed to go to the emergency room… the doctors say they're doing blood tests to find out what it is."

Edward reached a dappled arm towards his brother, who bent his knees so as to bring his helmet closer. Ed placed his hand on his brother's head and patted him affectionately. Mustang suddenly had the feeling he was witnessing something private and felt embarrassment for himself, but he didn't want to interrupt the moment by leaving.

"I'm sorry, Al. But I feel fine now. I'm sure it's nothing."

Alphonse was not placated.

"If it's nothing, then why is there a lump in your stomach?"

"There's a what?!"

Al helped Edward pull his hospital shirt up enough for him to see the ovular knot on the left side of his navel.

"Splenomegaly."

Everyone in the room turned their gaze to the medical student. They had forgotten he'd been there in his silence.

"Splenamowhatiddy?" Ed thought the word sounded like someone choking on their pudding.

"Splenomegaly. Inflammation of the spleen." He was rewarded with blank stares.

"That 'lump in you stomach', as you put it, is your spleen. It's supposed to be there. It's just… unusually big right now."

Ed poked it and winced at the sharp sting of warning it gave him.

"Don't do that. We don't want it to rupture."

"Rupture?! Like, blow up?!"

The armored boy was all but looming over the intern in terror. The student saw his patient's face had become a sickly shade of white and the soldiers' eyes were wide and alarmed.

"Well, no, not blow up. Just… spring a leak. Like a water balloon."

"Is that bad? Could it kill him?!"

"Well, yes… but the chances of that happening are slim to none!"

No one was listening to him anymore.

The cot was sagging under Alphonse's weight, he'd sat down on the bed and was clutching his brother close to him. Edward was still staring at the mass in his stomach that was apparently a vital organ on the verge of exploding. Mustang was asking himself if he should take the next few days off of work to stay close to his major, and Riza was contemplating shooting the doctor's apprentice in the foot.

This is what the doctor found when he opened the door.

"Tomas," he sighed, putting a hand to his head, "we've talked about this."

"I-I'm sorry, sir, they asked questions and I knew the answer – "

"You do not know the answer, you know textbook definitions and statistics. If you did know the answer, then you would be the doctor!"

"I'm sorry, sir." The intern looked sincerely repentant.

"It's not me you should be apologizing to. Now, why don't you go take care of Mr. Elric's paperwork in the office for me."

Tomas instantly brightened. He nodded emphatically and dashed from the room, only pausing to close the door behind him.

There was an awkward silence.

"He really is a good boy. Smart, too. Just… socially inept. Now," the man raised the clipboard in his hand and studied the pages on it, as if he was going over notes for a public speech, "Mr. Elric?"

"Ed. Unless you're trying to sell me something?"

The doctor smiled.

"Ed, then. Have you been in contact with rats recently?"

"Rats?" Mustang glanced at his subordinate, who glanced up at Alphonse, who seemed to be pondering the man's question deeply. "Why would Fullmetal – "

"Oh!" Al went ramrod straight, sending the hospital bed shaking. "A couple of weeks ago Brother and I did that drug bust the colonel wanted us to check out, and the police said that they were going to knock down the building. There was a family of rats living there, so Brother helped me move them, so they wouldn't get hurt."

"Oh, yeah. A mommy rat, a daddy rat, and twenty-nine baby rats."

"There were thirty-two rats, Brother, not thirty-one."

"Dammit."

The doctor examined his patient with a raised brow.

"Yes… well, I'm afraid one of those friends of yours left you a little present."

The hospital bed rocked, this time because Edward had shoved his brother.

"I told you rats spread diseases!"

"Not the rat. The fleas on the rat."

It took half a minute for the others to grasp the doctor's meaning. When it did, Roy burst into emphatic giggles. Edward's expression collapsed into horror and he made a yelping cry of disgust.

"I have fleas?!" He ran his hands through his hair and then brought them to his face, checking for insects on his fingers. "I showered as soon as I got back to the room!"

"Then no, you don't have fleas. Fleas can only live on something that has lots of hair, like a dog or a carpet. But between the time the fleas managed to jump from the rat to you and the time when you washed them off in the shower, they had plenty of opportunity to bite you."

"So that's why you were scratching so much that evening! You told me your pajamas were bothering you."

"Well, how was I supposed to know your little vermin pals gave me bugs?!"

Mustang was still laughing.

"Sir, please."

Roy turned to Riza, his face red and tears in his eyes.

"I guess you could say he's finally become a true dog of the military!"

Hawkeye grabbed her superior's arm, stood up, and excused the both of them. She dragged the still hysteric Mustang out of the room.

"So… what is wrong with Brother?"

The doctor glanced at the test results on his clipboard.

"We did some research into pox fevers. The microscope showed us an intracellular pathogen and the gram-stain came back pink. Now we know that Mr. Elric – Ed – has indeed had contact with rats, and thus rat fleas, within the past three weeks, and it all seems to check out."

He looked up, the expression on his face akin to a referee at a children's swim meet.

"Congratulations. I do believe you are the first case of endemic typhus to be reported in East City in the past fifty years."

The Elric brothers were not impressed.

To the contrary, they appeared horrified.

The doctor studied them, bemused by their dismay.

"Is something about that concerning?"

"Will Brother have to go into quarantine?"

The doctor balked at the sudden question.

"What? No, no. In fact, once the swelling in his spleen goes down, he can go home. With the proper antibiotics this time."

"But won't it spread?" Ed stared at his spots as if he expected them to jump off of him and scurry away. "I thought typhus was contagious. And… you know…"

"It can wipe out entire towns!" Al finished for him. "Everyone gets sick, even the doctors, so they can't do anything about it, and everyone just lies there, and no one can do anything, and the whole town dies!" Alphonse brought his brother closer to him as he spoke, a breach of personal space Ed didn't allow anyone else, and even then, he rarely went further than a one-armed hug. In that moment though, the intimacy was a comfort, which was something Edward would never admit. He didn't need to. The only stranger in the room could see the way the boy curled against the armor's belly like a lonely kitten.

Which perhaps made it all the more insulting when the man started to laugh.

Alphonse was not often angry, but whenever he was, those who witnessed it never forgot it.

"You think this is funny?!" The doctor's cachinnation stopped so abruptly his vocal cords could have vanished. "My brother could be dying, and your laughing?!"

The man's face had faded to the match the color of his coat.

"Now, hold on, let me explain – "

"You'd better." The voice rang with a dangerous vibration, and though Alphonse had no eyes, the empty spaces where they should have been burned with a fire that promised pain if he what he heard wasn't satisfactory. As gentle as the leather gauntlets were when touching the boy, the man knew that he would find no kindness if they reached for him.

"We believe your brother has murine typhus. What you're thinking of is a disease called typhoid fever. While the initial symptoms of both are similar, they are caused by completely different bacteria, and murine typhus tends to be much milder than typhoid. They are also spread differently. The typhoid fever bacteria must be ingested, while typhus enters the body by using the rat flea as a vector."

Both the doctor and Alphonse had relaxed during the explanation, the doctor more so than Al.

"I… apologize for reaction inappropriately. It's just… I have the feeling you got the idea that your brother has typhoid fever from a radio drama that played last week."

Al shifted bashfully. "Maybe."

The doctor smiled but made sure to stop at that.

"So… what's going to happen to Brother now?"

"We'll replace his penicillin with doxycycline and, once his splenomegaly has resolved itself, he can go home."

"But if I was already taking medicine, why do I need more?" Ed scowled at the needle in his arm. "And when I can I lose this?"

"It's not that you need more medicine. It's that the one you were taking doesn't work with endemic typhus." The doctor checked the dosage on the fluid bag. "Now that you're coherent, we can probably take you off the IV once this dose is done. But I'd like to keep you on some oral fever-reducers, just to be safe."

"But what's the difference between the medicine I'm taking now and this new one?"

"It's not so much the medicine than the bacteria. Do you remember how I said the test results came back pink?"

"Yeah. What the hell does that mean?"

"When we want to know what kind of antibiotic will work best on a strain of bacteria, one of the tests we run is called a Gram stain. We use two special kinds of dye – a purple one called crystal violet and a red one called safranin."

"So?"

"Crystal violet is designed to color a bacterium's cellular membrane so that we can see the it under the microscope." The doctor took a moment to peruse Alphonse's metal body with his eyes. "But some bacteria have a special outer barrier – a suit of armor, if you will – that keeps the crystal violet from coloring the cellular membrane. That's where the safranin comes in. It stains these cells' 'armor' so that we can tell the difference between the bacteria with a protective shield and the ones that don't. The ones without a second membrane are colored purple. We call that a Gram-positive specimen. The ones with an outer shield are colored a reddish-pink. Those are called Gram-negative."

As the man had been giving his explanation, the dosage in the fluid bag tied to IV stand dripped its last drops. The doctor placed his clipboard on the one of the now empty seats and reached into his coat pocket for a wad of gauze and a tiny bottle of rubbing alcohol. He continued speaking as he uncorked the vial and started wetting a square of gauze.

"Antibiotics works similarly, except instead of coloring the cellular membrane, it dissolves it, killing the cell. Penicillin is like crystal violet. It only works on Gram-positive cells. The bacteria that is making you sick is Gram-negative. The penicillin won't do you much good. That's why I'm switching you to doxycycline. Doxycycline is capable of destroying the cell's membrane and its 'armor'."

"And that," he pressed the alcohol-saturated gauze to Edward's elbow, where the needle entered his skin, and pulled the instrument out swiftly, "is your biology lesson for the day."

Ed winced at the sting of the needle's exit. The gauze was left on his arm to stem what little bleeding there was. The injection wound itched fiercely. It took a great deal of self-control not to scratch.

"It should also help the swelling in your spleen to ease off."

Edward, now that his feeling arm was no longer restrained by an intravenous line, felt the shape that was pushing out of the skin of his left side.

"Do these Gram-negative bacteria make people's insides expand?"

The doctor chuckled deep in his throat.

"Not necessarily. These specific Gram-negative bacteria are also intracellular. That means it lives inside the cells of its host. It does this so that it can hide from the body's immune system."

"Oh! Like a secret agent?!"

Edward rolled his eyes at Alphonse's childishness.

The doctor laughed.

He seemed to laugh a lot.

"Yes! Yes, you could definitely see it that way. The body's immune system knows that there's something there that shouldn't be, but since the pathogen is a secret agent, it can't find it. White blood cells are too big to go searching around inside of other cells. So, the immune system starts working really hard to find the pathogen and to repair what damage that's already been done. The spleen is one of the central organs of the immune system." He noticed the boy's hand holding his side. "If I may?"

Edward obliged him by pulling up his shirt. The man was gentle as he palpated the abscess, but Ed couldn't help shivering at the feeling of being touched.

"When there's work to be done in the body, blood flow to the area increases, and sometimes there's so much blood that the tissue expands. This is what we call inflammation. Your spleen is inflamed with blood because it's trying to fight off a particularly troublesome unwanted guest."

The doctor finished his exam and Ed gratefully dropped his shirt back down. He'd been exposing his tummy so much today it was starting to get cold.

"It's not too bad. In fact, I'd say it's visible more because you're a rather skinny young man than excess swelling. Now that it doesn't have to act as the sole line of defense, I'll bet it'll be back to normal size by this evening or tomorrow morning."

"How long until I stop looking like a jaguar?" Edward proffered his speckled arm for emphasis.

"Maybe three or four days. After that, I suspect you'll be feeling good as new."

"Sir… um, I have a question?"

The doctor gave Alphonse his full attention.

"You said it's called murine typhus."

"Murine, or endemic, typhus. Yes."

"Not just typhus. Does that mean there's more than one kind? How do you know which one it is?"

The man frowned thoughtfully. It was a difficult query, but an important one nonetheless.

"Well… to be honest, we weren't sure for a while. The bacteria that causes murine typhus has a lot of cousins that cause some awful illnesses. We actually were worried it was epidemic typhus for a while."

"Does epidemic typhus kill?"

"It can."

The plate of Alphonse's armor was chilly and smelled of iron, but Ed didn't pull away has his brother coddled him like a teddy bear.

"But epidemic typhus is spread through head lice, and we didn't find any evidence of lice when we checked his hair."

"Wait, you looked through my hair while I was asleep?!"

The doctor didn't honor Edward's outrage with an answer.

"He hasn't had head lice recently, has he?"

"No, not in years." Alphonse's grip had lessened considerably but he hadn't let go by any means.

"Then I think we can safely rule out the epidemic variant."

The doctor retrieved his clipboard from the chair he'd placed it on and analyzed the papers on it.

"I'm going to guess this is a pointless question, but do you think you could eat something?"

Edward's face at the mention of food confirmed his suspicions.

"Do you feel sick, Brother?" Al looked around the room for a trash bin.

"No. I feel… full."

Alphonse's helmet snapped back to his brother with an ear-grating squeal of metal on metal.

"Full?! Like, the opposite of hungry?"

"Yeah. I guess so."

"But you haven't eaten in hours! How could you possibly not be hungry?!"

"His spleen is probably pressing against his stomach and setting off the satiation nerves. But even if it wasn't, I doubt he would have an appetite anyway."

Edward wasn't at all hungry, but his mouth was so dry he could taste how mucid it was.

"Can I have an ice cream soda?"

The doctor laughed heartily.

"Yes. Yes, you can."

Chapter Text

Tomas had said the chances of splenic rupture were low, but every hour or so an attendant would stop by his room. They would check his belly for discoloration and take his blood pressure each time.

"It's a little high, but that's to be expected with his fever," commented one of the nurses as she uncuffed the sphygmomanometer from around Edward's arm. "It's better than dropping."

"What would it mean if it dropped?" Alphonse piped up from the foot of the cot, where he was reading the book on pox diseases the staff had lent him.

"It would be an indication of internal bleeding. But don't worry, if you're going to start hemorrhaging, this is the best place to do it. Caught early, it's nothing a transfusion and a few stitches can't fix."

Ed's blood pressure did not drop throughout the night. He took the antibiotic and fever-reducer the doctor had prescribed with his dinner, which had been little more than a small bowl of yogurt; his hunger had yet to return. They woke him during the night for a second dose.

When morning came, Alphonse was glad he'd memorized the location of the trash bin.

He didn't need to know his brother's mannerisms to interpret the meaning behind Ed scrambling awake, his face a gray-green color and his mouth drawn tight.

"Nausea is normal with typhus," the doctor said as he gave a sweaty and panting Edward an encouraging pat on the back. "But we should probably wait on breakfast and pills."

At the word "breakfast", any pallor Ed had gotten back into his face receded and he stuck his face into the bin that Alphonse was holding for him. The doctor looked away as the boy made a noise that sounded like a cat trying to swallow a frog whole, more for his patient's privacy than out of disgust. "Definitely wait on those."

XXX

It wasn't until the middle of that afternoon that the doctor was satisfied Ed's spleen had shrunk to a secure size. Edward had been insulted when they had brought in the wheelchair to escort him to the lobby.

"I can walk on my own just fine!"

He flopped off of the hospital cot and made a show of walking to the threshold.

He took about six independent steps before he decided that the wheelchair didn't look too bad after all. Ed plopped himself down in the seat and glared at the nurse's benign smile.

"But I won't. 'Cause I don't want to."

"Well, that explains a lot," Alphonse muttered to himself.

Ed turned his scowl on his brother.

"What did you say?!"

"Nothing, nothing. Just thinking about girls."

He couldn't not giggle at Edward's horror-stricken face.

Ed was further disgruntled when Colonel Mustang met them at the hospital doors.

"Go away, bastard, I don't need you."

Roy grinned as if he'd been hoping the boy would say that.

"Okay, then. You can walk back to the dorms. Come along, Lieutenant, we're leaving."

"Yes, sir."

Edward forced himself out of the wheelchair and started walking, his back straight and his head held high.

He made it to four steps this time.

"Well, go on, laugh at me," he mumbled into his hand. He'd gotten himself comfortable sitting in the back seat of the car with his elbow against the window and his chin on his palm.

No one said anything.

"I told you to laugh!"

"There's nothing to laugh at, Fullmetal. Certainly not you. Why, finding humor in a creature as pathetic as you would be just cruel – oof!"

Ed had kicked the back of Roy's seat with his metal foot.

Then he laughed.

And Roy turned around his seat, black eyes bright with murder.

"Laugh all you want. We'll see who's the joke soon enough."

XXX

Ed strode into the office, his brother behind him, the very picture of youthful health. He still had one or two spots on his stomach, but he had woken that morning without a fever and had eaten a full breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, and orange juice; and after he'd requested seconds, Alphonse decided he had recovered enough to appear in public.

Roy looked up as his office door was kicked in by an automail leg.

"Ah, Olly. I see you're feeling better."

"You bet your ass I – wait, what did you call me?"

Mustang didn't answer because his chance to do so was interrupted by Havoc scampering into the room and slapping Edward on the shoulder.

"Tag! You're it!"

He charged out the door.

Ed and Al stared after him.

"What in the fresh hell – "

"Oh? You're not going to give chase?" Mustang tilted his head to the side in mock curiosity. "You should call him back. He has work to do, and he's not going to get it done waiting for you to find him."

"What are you talking about?"

"I don't know, colonel, this seems awfully mean," Alphonse spoke up.

Ed turned to him.

"Do you know what's going on?"

Al's shoulders pinched together, something he always did when he was being questioned on a topic he didn't want to talk about.

"Oh… well, you see, Brother… when you were in the hospital – when the colonel and Miss Hawkeye first brought you in, I mean – you kind of… shouted."

Edward's eyes instantly rounded terror.

"I did?! What did I say?! Did I say anything about – "

"No, no. No one knows anything. It's just that… I guess you were trying to get the doctors to leave you alone. Or maybe you thought they were playing a game?"

"What did I say?! Please, Al, tell me."

"Olly, Olly, oxen free!"

Mustang may have looked ridiculous suddenly standing up at his desk and hollering a children's watchword, but it was worth it to see Fullmetal's face melt into pure mortification. Roy collapsed into painful-sounding cackling.

"I didn't."

"You did, Brother."

"I didn't!"

"Yes, you did."

"Wait… so when I woke up and that kid was messing with my drip and he called me 'Mr. Olly'…"

"I'm sorry, Brother."

"No! God, no!" He buried his face in his hands.

"It's all right, Brother. The hospital staff thought it was cute."

Mustang's pealing was bordering screaming.

"That's even worse! I'm not cute!"

"Not you. What you said."

"That doesn't change anything!"

"Sir, while I appreciate that you're enjoying yourself, may I remind you that those forms are due in two days? And Havoc – "

Riza strolled into the office, her strides purposeful and calculated as always, and stopped in surprise at the sight of two red-faced boys – one from breathlessness, the other from humiliation. "Edward? Are you all right?"

"He's fine, Lieutenant, he's just – "

"He's it! You'd better start running!" Roy dissolved into exhausted giggling.

Hawkeye raised a brow.

"That's what Havoc told me. I passed him running down the hall." After another fifteen seconds of thinking, the memory struck her. "Sir, if you and Havoc are mocking the major about his previous condition – "

"It's fine, Lieutenant." The blush had receded from Edward's face, though the skin of his neck was still a bright cherry red.

All eyes turned to him.

Even Roy silenced so as to give him his full attention.

"Edward – "

"It's fine, Lieutenant. Because you're wrong. You're all wrong."

Ed lifted his gaze, his eyes filled with new direction.

Then, before anyone could react, he launched himself forward and thumped his metal fist into the colonel's chest, earning him a shocked oomf!

"Because Mustang's it!"

And he dashed out the open door.

"EVERYONE RUN! THE BASTARD'S IT! HE'S COMING!"

There was the scraping of chairs against the floor and confused murmuring. Those who were in on the "Olly Alchemist" joke made quick work of racing out of the outer office in search of a hiding place.

Alphonse glanced at Roy's dumbfounded expression. The man was wondering how his ultimate prank had backfired so horribly.

"Sorry, Colonel. But you know how it goes." He lumbered into a clomping jog, calling, "Catch me if you can!" in his tolling voice.

The department was completely abandoned, save for Roy and Riza. After a moment of stunned quiet, this fact occurred to the colonel. A sly grin snaked its way over his mouth, and when his lieutenant met his eye, the foxy attitude radiating from him intensified. She studied his suggestive posture, which she met with cool indifference.

"Don't even think about it."

And she turned on her heel and stalked off, out of sight.

Mustang sat in seclusion for about five minutes, giving his subordinates a healthy head start, then shrugged. He wriggled out of his uniform coat and sprinted out of the office.

"Ready or not, here I come!"