Work Text:
“Brother.”
Al knocked on the door, which rattled weakly against the bone of his knuckles.
It was past eleven, and he knew Ed tended to let his research keep him up into the early morning hours. Now that they were sleeping in different rooms, Al felt obligated to remind him that the best thing for his brain was rest. He wasn’t trying to be motherly, or anything, but Ed wasn’t exactly the best at self-care.
Also, Al began to have suspicions when he watched that closed door. It started when Noah mentioned to him that he had the same routine every night: moodiness loomed over him, he became quiet, and he isolated himself in his room by eight. Al explained to her that it was probably him burying his nose in research, to which she responded by telling him he added to this routine with frequent trips to the store. This was before Al came across the Gate. Surely that pattern of behavior would change.
Al observed this routine in action. He didn’t know what he needed to buy every other day; a late-night snack, perhaps.
Al pressed his ear against the door. No sign of life.
The door’s handle and hinges announced his entrance into the room. The pungent fumes of ethanol hit him.
Al’s shadow cast over his brother, limp in his chair, a hardcover book splayed out over his face. Al looked at his desk. Papers with diagrams labeled in cursive and messy calculations were scattered beside a bottle. Beside that was a glass containing a remnant of liquid hugging the inside like a crescent, gleaming against the doorway light.
Al breathed out, giving Ed’s shoulder a gentle shake.
“Hm?” He muffled under the book.
Al removed the book and placed it neatly on his desk. “You all there, brother?”
Ed mumbled something in German. Al couldn’t understand it, but it was a line he recognized.
“It’s me, Ed,” he said. “Your brother, not the engineering crew.”
“Alles klar,” Ed slurred. “Lass mich in Ruhe.”
Al said, “Get up. Your headache won’t be as bad if you sleep on the bed.”
“Kannst du— gah, Al, will you quit buggin’?”
“We have to meet up with the professor and our sponsor tomorrow. I’m not having you half-functioning with a hangover, so, no, I won’t.”
Ed extended out his arm. Al grabbed the arm and swung it around his shoulder, straining against Ed’s weight as he guided him across the room. Once beside the bed, he let gravity put Ed down.
“I’m getting you water,” Al said.
He walked out of the bedroom with drooping eyes. His brother was an adult now, he had a right to drink. What bothered Al was why he drank alone.
It was a quarter past eight. Ed organized the papers on his desk. He knew they would get scattered by the night’s end, but he couldn’t have a clear headspace working if he didn’t have a clean space around him.
He thought about what the professor told him and fellow rocket scientists earlier today. He had to translate it for his brother, who was still learning. Though they spent hours collaborating around blueprints and re-checking their calculations, Ed’s brain could not shut off.
He opened a book by Hermann Oberth. It was fuzzy which page he left off on.
At these hours, it wasn’t necessarily work that put Ed in front of his desk. Yes, his brain could not shut off, but there were other, not-so-pleasant things on his mind, and the only way to deal with them was to work more. The double-edged sword pierced his abdomen and twisted, because work was difficult to focus on when he could not stop the spiral of thoughts that reminded him he and his brother were trapped in a world they didn’t belong.
And that is no figurative language.
Which no one would realize.
And if they did, they would give him a weary look and whisper to one another.
Which made him insane.
Ed’s brain could not shut off. Until he forced it to. From the corner of his eye, a bottle called to his attention.
In one pour, the rich embrace of ethanol got his olfactory nerves firing. Years ago, in a land that does not exist (he grimaces, thinking), the smell made him nauseous. His body has slowly adapted to associate the smell with a reward.
He brought the glass up to eye level, giving it a swirl. The liquor was a darker shade of amber than his eyes but shared a similar glint. He brought the liquor to his lips. His throat burned. His shoulders - screws and metal, bone and muscle - released the tension they had been holding all day.
His eyes suddenly felt heavy, and it wasn’t lethargy. He let the glass down on his desk a little harder than he wanted to. He gave one hard look at his research notes.
He noticed a mistake in his own handwriting. Of course. How could he not think of that?
At last, he could let his mind wander off into rockets and physics. When he spoke of launching machines to outer space, no one thought he was crazy. Well, people that appreciated progression and ingenuity didn’t.
Ed sucked down the last from his glass. He was beginning to get a head change.
Whiskey isn’t a crutch, he would tell himself. He was an adult. This was normal. He didn’t drink in the day, he got shit done, and he was entitled to a drink at night.
After ten, he would stop being a brilliant scientist and start feeling sorry for himself.
He thought about grass. The sun. A yellow house. Lemon peel pigments in the hair of a girl, sitting inside the house, leaning over metal scraps with a dog curled up by her feet. An old woman, biting her pipe in the shade of the porch. Visitors, adorned in blue military uniforms.
Ed loathed himself. He had Al, that should be enough. It was—this gray world had more hope with him in it. Ed would have been drowning in the highest proof liquor he could find if Al never crossed the Gate. But Al did, so he was fine.
"Mir geht’s gut,” he told himself, swaying to the side.
Ed emptied more into his glass. He noticed the bottle was getting light. He would have to get more tomorrow.