Work Text:
‘I feel like death,’ made itself present through the sheer fatigue radiating off of the elder brother; it required no conversation or audible complaint.
“It’s not my fault that you stayed up so late, brother. I tried to warn you multiple times but you threw a pillow at me!” Al chastised with barely hidden annoyance, laced with an air that very much hinted ‘I told you so.’ No matter how prominent a lead or important the research, Edward was slowly destroying his health. Alphonse was going to begin to hold his brother down against whatever bed was in reach and forcing him to sleep during the nights that he insisted on such behavior if this wasn’t something that showed signs of shifting. He was not going to watch his brother self destruct. Especially not for something that could wait.
The elder of the two shifted his weight between legs in a gesture of restlessness.
“Get off my case, Al. I threw a pillow at you because you kept badgering me! Who says I’m too tired, anyway?” Furrowing his eyebrows with a following yawn that further condemned his placement in the not-terribly-foreign land of sleep deprivation, a heavy sigh came from the armor that towered over him.
“Maybe I kept insisting that you sleep since I knew you were going to feel so terribly today. I mean, look! Someone could see the bags under your eyes from a mile away! You look terrible, Ed.”
“That’s just my face. Nice to see that you’re not below insulting your older brother’s looks.”
“Ed,” Alphonse began, with waning but nevertheless saintly patience, breathy in heavily laced vexation. If he had a flesh body, he was certain to have a migraine. His older brother was behaving like a child.
“You slipped down a stair and almost fell asleep right there!”
“I was in an extremely deep thought process. People slip up, okay?”
“Of course,” Al replied hastily, making no effort to sound like he believed the shoddy excuse.The two exchanged a tension filled stretch of silence, both making an effort to look away from each other; Edward had his arms crossed against his chest and his expression was almost indisputably one of pouting.
“Please stop pushing yourself so hard,” The younger gingerly began, looking back down to examine his brother’s posture. “I know that this is important- it’s extremely important to me, too. But, I’m not in big enough of a hurry to risk your health. Take a breather, okay? I could handle some of it, too. You know I can.” Musing with hope to break the otherwise impenetrable ‘Ed Barrier’, the tone that had been sharpening instead softened. Less lecturing, he hoped to make a form of positive impression.
“I’m not risking my health, Al. I’ll be fine. You’re acting like I’m going to fall over dead from a terminal illness just because I pulled a late night. It’s just not realistic,” Ed veiled his mouth with a gloved palm, audible yawn causing moisture to form at the corners of his golden eyes.
“You’re pushing it by doing it way too frequently. This stuff will affect you long term. I really will start to hold you down so you’ll sleep when you need to, brother.” The threat provoked Ed to turn his attention to Alphonse fully, a look of brewing irritation visible, albeit dulled with his fatigue.
“You’d better not.” Ed spoke in monotone.
“I will, though.” It had been a joke prior but now Alphonse was dangerously close to considering it.
“Prove it.” Repercussions hadn’t been considered until the next shared silence, a gloved hand rubbing insistently at his left eye, blissfully unaware of the stifling quiet. The retort hadn’t been a true invite to test the word of his younger brother, though it seemed to be what happened to slip from his mouth despite the circumstance. The dawning of what he had challenged took a few moments to settle in, left arm ceasing in its motions as Ed grew nervous. He wet his lips, gulping.
He was across the room the very moment that Alphonse made a motion, making a graceful display of bumping his side into the edge of the mahogany side table and letting out a colorful array of expletives that would have most people covering their mouths in sheer, scandalized terror.
“Come here, Ed.”
“No!” Edward was panicked to a comical degree; it resembled the behavior he adopted while in the face of needles that would be more accurately described as ‘behaving like a toddler.’
“Why is it always petty arguments and fighting with you!? Can’t you just sit down and relax for once!?” The two found themselves dancing around the room ridiculously before they’d planted themselves on opposite sides of the table that Edward had rammed his hip into just a few hectic moments earlier.
“Maybe I’d relax if my brother wasn’t threatening me with force! I told you, I’m fine!”
“Ed, you’re unbelievable! It’s always the hard way when it comes to you! You can’t stop picking fights and you’re always so foolhardy!”
“You’re not unbelievable and foolhardy to be chasing me around the table!?” The golden blonde retorted with blatant defiance to the figure that attempted to reach over the table for him. Al had almost succeeded in grasping Edward, too, snagging his coat just barely.
“You were literally complaining earlier about feeling lethargic! If you don’t want me to worry, maybe you shouldn’t be complaining! In the end, you really did do this to yourself. Ah, geez!” The armored soul threw his hands up in exasperation, stepping away from the table. “Fine, brother! Do whatever you want, but never say I didn’t try to set you straight!” Accompanied by irritated, metallic footsteps, Alphonse barged out of the room. What a thing to fight over. The boy was in the middle of throwing a look at the door frame before his eyes widened at the sound of the front door opening and soon afterward closing. Despite Alphonse’s frustration, he took care to not slam it. The force was there, though.
“Oh, come on, Al! Are you really going to just,” He was gone before he could finish. “...Leave?” Ending the sentence uselessly, Edward pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. “Where are you even going to go, Al? You’re such an idiot sometimes…”
When he placed one foot in front of the other with intent to move forward, Edward instead found himself reaching for the table to regain balance.
Maybe he had been pushing himself beyond reasonable boundaries.
He couldn’t just let his brother roam angrily by himself in the streets of a place that, quite honestly, he hadn’t properly acquainted himself with yet. There was an insurmountable list of trouble that Al could get himself into.
Ed never did grasp how hypocritical of a thought that was.