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The light coming in around the edges of the curtains was way too bright to be natural, and Ed screwed his eyes up tight against it. He was not quite sure how much he had had to drink last night, but from the fact it tasted like something had died inside his mouth and his head was pounding, coupled with the fact he was in a place he did not remember going to sleep in, made him think that it was perhaps just a bit too much.
Dad had warned him, several times, that the spirits out in Xerxes were a hell of a lot stronger than the stuff available in Amestris, but Ed had apparently not got the memo. Well, he had got the memo but the point remained that they just tasted really good.
Well, they tasted really good at the time. They definitely did not taste really good now. Whose idea had it been to come on holiday to Xerxes anyway? He was going to blame Dad. It was easy to blame Dad for most things. Especially since they only ever came out to Xerxes to visit Dad’s extended family in the first place.
“Wakey wakey, brother, rise and shine!”
Ed groaned and forced his eyes back open, being rather alarmed to find Al looking at him upside down. It was only after a few seconds, once conscious thought had returned, that he realised that Al was in fact the right way up and Ed was the one who was upside down, having fallen out of bed at some point. Falling out of bed whilst in his sleep and not waking up at all was a new hangover feat not achieved before, but it probably went some way towards explaining the pounding head.
From somewhere on the other side of the bed, there was a groan like a dying cat, and as Ed righted himself and sat down heavily on the floor, he looked across to see Ling rising from the blankets like a zombie.
“We’re awake,” Ling grumbled. “Why are you waking us up at this ungodly hour?”
Al raised an eyebrow. “It’s two in the afternoon. Mom wanted to know if the newlyweds wanted any lunch.”
“What?”
“We’ve just had lunch,” Al said. “Mom wants to know if you wanted any.”
“Not the lunch part, the newlyweds part!” Ed was now suddenly and extremely sober, staring at Ling in horror. Certainly they had been going out for a while and were at the stage where Ed had invited his boyfriend to come on holiday with him, but getting married? That was definitely not on the cards. “What happened last night?”
“We did try to warn you,” Al said. “But nooooo, you two were determined to keep on drinking Rattlesnake Poison and then go on a magical mystery tour of the town.”
“Why did no one stop us drinking poison?” Ling asked. “How are we still alive after drinking poison? Are we dead?”
“Mom and Dad tried to stop you. Several times. But you said something along the lines of ‘I’m nineteen, I’m old enough to drink over here and I can hold my liquor’ and stormed off.”
Unfortunately, the memories were starting to come back. Ed groaned.
“I think I remember now,” he muttered. “Why did I think it was a good idea to drink a whisky called Rattlesnake Poison in the first place?”
“That one I can’t answer.” Al leaned in the doorway, still smirking. “Do you remember going to the temple?”
“Kind of?”
“Do you remember playing poker with the altar attendant at one in the morning?”
“Kind of?”
“Do you remember acting out a traditional wedding ceremony with Ling, and the altar attendant officiating?”
“It’s fuzzy but sort of? I remember Ling in a veil.”
“Are you aware that altar attendants are able to perform marriage ceremonies so you did technically get married in the temple last night?”
Ed groaned and flopped back onto the floor. “That’s it. I’m not leaving this floor ever again.”
“Al!” Dad’s voice came along the corridor. “Stop teasing your brother about his newly matrimonial state.”
Al, the cold and unfeeling brother that he was, just burst out laughing, but he did dutifully move out of the doorframe, and Ed guessed that he ought to be grateful for that.
“You know,” Ling said from the bed, the words muffled in his pillow, “when you said ‘why don’t you come on holiday to Xerxes with us, you can meet my extended family’ and I said ‘are you sure’ and you said ‘what could possibly go wrong’, I honestly did not expect us accidentally getting married to be one of the many, many things that could have gone wrong.”
Ed would admit that it would not have been on his top ten list of things that could have gone wrong, but considering some of the scrapes that he and Ling had got into over the course of their relationship, he wouldn’t put anything past them and he knew that no one else would put anything past them either. Mom probably wasn’t even surprised that they’d managed to do this.
“I’m too young to be married!” Ling wailed. “I still have my whole life ahead of me! I’m still fun and fancy free! Now we’re going to be two old men grumbling about our slippers and telling kids to get off our lawn before you know it.”
“We don’t have a lawn,” Ed said. “We don’t have a house. We don’t even live together officially.”
“Oh God, we’ll have to get a mortgage!” Ling slithered off the bed, suddenly awake and alert, and he grabbed the front of Ed’s t-shirt, staring at him with a frantic look in his bleary and bloodshot eyes. “Ed! I’m too young to join a homeowners association! What if they don’t let us fly pride flags out of our windows! What if they make us put topiary squirrels in the garden? Actually topiary squirrels don’t sound too bad.”
Ed detached Ling from the front of his shirt whilst he was still musing on topiary. “I think you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself. We’ll worry about mortgages and homophobic neighbours when we’re not hungover.”
“Does this mean that we’re technically on our honeymoon now?” Ling asked.
Ed just sighed, finally finding the wherewithal to drag himself off the floor and go and brush his teeth. There was a part of him that wondered if the rest of the family were just messing with him, and he was fairly sure that whatever had happened in the temple last night wasn’t legally binding. Unless they had actually signed some documents somewhere along the line. Hmm. He’d have to look into that.
Feeling slightly more human, he returned to the bedroom to find Ling browsing scatter cushions and other soft furnishings for their non-existent home, and as he rummaged around in his suitcase for fresh clothes, he did have to wonder what it would like to actually be married to Ling and making a life together. They were only nineteen, naturally neither of them were thinking that far in advance, but aside from the general horror of matrimony to people as young as they were, Ed found that he wasn’t completely averse to the idea. As far off as it was and as stupid as the image was, he could see Ling being someone he could grow old and shoo noisy kids off the lawn with.
He wouldn’t tell him just yet, though.