Title: Handicraft (For Those Who Have Hands)
Fandom: All-New Ghost Rider (Fullmetal Alchemist AU)
Rating: T
Length: 1300
Content notes: Cursing, Disability, Depression
Author notes: For the challenge "yarn" and the Birthday Bingo prompt "metal." Completed two lines.
Summary: Gabe discovers an old craft project abandoned under the seat of the Charger. This is mortifying because he's supposed to be this alchemy prodigy, and how's he supposed to fix himself and his big brother Robbie if he can't even finish a scarf? It's also mortifying because the Charger...is Robbie.

Behind a car wash, parked at the coin-op vacuum station, a supercharged black-and-chrome muscle car glinted in the sharp bright Colorado sun. Both its doors hung open. The cabin was empty. A teenager in a collapsible wheelchair leaned in through the driver's side door, pulled a balled-up hamburger wrapper out from under the driver's seat, and dropped it on a growing pile of litter on the pavement.

A red-tailed hawk screeched from a cottonwood tree across the street from the car wash. The boy looked up at the sound, green eyes flashing against light brown skin, and grinned widely when he spotted the bird. “You can't see those in LA,” he remarked. “Still want to run home and be a movie star?”

The car's radio flicked on, a rising and falling sigh of static. Then a voice, a male voice, the same Calexican accent: “We'd be millionaires. I'd get to meet Michelle Rodriguez.”

“You're so shallow,” the boy grunted, leaning into the cabin again, and almost overbalancing out of the chair. Both his legs ended six inches above the knee. He caught himself, shoved himself back with his free hand, and retrieved a snarled bundle of red yarn and white knitting needles from under the seat. “Shit, Robbie.”

“Why don't you take a break and finish this tomorrow,” the car suggested. “I mean. It'd be really great if you finish, but—”

“I forgot I bought this,” the boy exclaimed, staring down at the knitting in his hands. “I was gonna—I almost figured it out—” He teased a flap of scarf out from the knotted yarn. “I just got bored and left it. Under the seat. With all the fuckin' fast food wrappers, and—I can't believe I let it get this bad, Robbie, I'm so sorry.”

“Hey, it's okay,” the car said, twitching its turn signal to the left. “It's not—it doesn't—it's like if you put stuff in my pockets. It's a little annoying, but it doesn't hurt. You haven't even had a chance to do this 'till now—Gabe, it's not an emergency, relax.”

“If I don't do it now, it won't happen,” Gabe replied grimly, and swept his arm under the seat again. Came up with gas station receipts, half-empty water bottles, and a rubber band from one of the mysterious stacks of small bills that had been stashed in the car's trunk. He swept the whole pile off what remained of his lap and onto the concrete.

The car twitched its turn signal again. “Did you just toss your knitting stuff?”

“Yeah,” Gabe grunted, backing and turning his chair so he could peer into the rear footwell. The driver's seat folded up and slid forward on its rails to give him access.

“Put it back! You were all excited when you got that!”

“And I got bored after six inches!” Gabe exclaimed. “I'm not a kid anymore. You don't have to heap praise on my smallest accomplishments.”

“Hey, that's six inches more than I'll ever knit,” the car said. “I mean. 'Cause I never knitted—and I—Gabe, Gabe, it's okay.”

Gabe was gripping the upholstered back of the driver's seat with white knuckles, his other hand covering his mouth. He released the seat stiffly and rubbed the leather where his fingernails had dug into it.

“It's okay, Gabe,” the car insisted. It dipped on its shocks, tilting toward the boy as though it could scoop him up with the door.

“It's not okay,” the boy snarled. “It's not, Robbie, don't lie to me, I'm the only one you've got to fix you and I can't even finish a stupid scarf.”

The car straightened and its blinker shut off. On the static of the radio, faint and distorted, a man sang, fifteen in a forty, I don't have to worry, I'm'a take it slow... At last the car said, “Gabe, I'm just glad I got a second chance.”

“Don't talk like you're dead!” the boy snarled.

“I'm not,” the car said quickly. “I don't feel dead. I'm good. I'm happy. Hey, of all the engines you could've stuck me in, this is a great pick. I could've been a generator. If it ever came to it, just leave me in Jay Leno's driveway, I'll never have to worry about anything ever again—synthetic oil, wash and wax once a month, tire shine—”

“That's not funny.”

“It's a little funny.”

Gabe straightened up and scowled into the side window so the car could see him.

“If you're right, and my body's out in the aether somewhere—there's no-one I'd trust more than you to find it. But, Gabe, you—you're still—look what it took from you. I don't want you to get hurt even worse, because of me.”

“It's my fault,” Gabe said grimly. “It's my responsibility.”

“No.”

“Robbie.”

The car was silent for a long time. Gabe finished sweeping papers out of the footwell, set the chair brakes, and lowered himself to the ground. He started stuffing the piled detritus into a plastic grocery bag.

“Don't throw out your knitting stuff,” the car said.

“Don't give up on life,” Gabe snapped.

“I'm not giving up.”

“Really? 'Cause that's how you always sound. 'Don't worry about me, Gabe, I always wanted to live in a garage under a tarp.' Fuck you, you're not fooling anyone.”

The car's starter motor buzzed and clicked a few seconds. Then, soft, “Don't throw out your knitting stuff.”

“Fine.”

Gabe fished a stick of sidewalk chalk out of his pocket, shuffled around on his thighs and drew a circle large enough to accommodate the bag of trash. He planted his hands and activated it: will and mathematics and some mysterious price that allowed him to conquer entropy, or so it always seemed. Excited molecules radiated light and vibration, a blinding blue-white glow that shot up from the lines of chalk, between Gabe's outstretched fingers and through his closed eyelids. When the light and wind died down, a plastic-bound spiral notebook sat on the concrete in the place of the trash, beside a pat of butter derived from the grease and cheese remaining on the wrappers. “Robbie,” he said, tossing the new notebook into the front seat and hauling himself back up into the chair, “I'm not leaving you like this. This is not acceptable. There's plenty of people without legs. There are no people who are cars. Do you want me to get the vacuum?”

Silence from the car.

“I can do it,” Gabe growled.

“Yes, please,” said the car quietly.

Gabe fed a few quarters into the vacuum machine and laboriously wheeled his way back with the hose trapped under one arm. He stuck the hose in the angle where the car's open door met the front pillar, and hauled himself inside after it. He sucked up crumbs and bits of grit from the upholstery as the seats slid back and forth, out of his way. The car's windows rolled down and static crackled on the radio.

“Is this weird?” he asked the car. “This seems weird.”

“You're like those little birds walking around in the alligator's mouth. It's not weird.”

“Thanks for that image. And it's crocodiles.”

“Whatever you say, little bro.” Another crackle of static, then, “It was itchy.”

Gabe paused, the running vacuum hose in his hands. “You've got more sensation. You're still bonding to the car.”

“It's just practice.” The car's windows rolled back up an inch, the hand-cranks rotating. “Do you wish I was like how I was when it first happened? I don't. I like being able to talk, and work my own transmission, and open my own doors—”

“Where else itches?” Gabe asked.

Another long silence, and then, very soft, “Could you do my vents? The defrost vents, and the dashboard—”

“Of course, Robbie. I got you.”