Title: Awkward Repose
Author: jordannamorgan
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Characters: Winry, Edward, Alphonse.
Setting: Shortly after the Elric brothers' human transmutation.
Rating: G.
Length: 224 words.
Summary: Once again Edward was not in his bed.



A week after the surgery to implant Edward’s automail ports, Winry peeked into the bedroom at dawn, to see that he wasn’t in his bed—yet again.

Resisting a shake of her head, she pushed the door open and looked farther into the room. The heap of steel armor that Alphonse now inhabited was sitting in his corner as usual; and as Winry expected, Ed was sprawled across his not-so-little brother’s lap. His head was pillowed on Al’s rigid vambrace, his remaining arm and leg dangling over like the limbs of a rag doll, his spine curled in what the mechanic could not imagine was a comfortable posture.

When she approached them, Al’s helmet tilted upward to look at her. He said nothing, but his spiked shoulders gave a tiny shrug.

“How can he sleep in that kind of position?” Winry marveled in quiet exasperation.

At the sound of her voice, Ed stirred and turned his head. Golden eyes blinked open, half-lidded and hazy with an ache he was too drowsy to conceal; but not from the pain of cramped muscles, or even an entirely physical pain at all.

“Doesn’t feel hard,” he mumbled faintly, shifting toward his left side to leave her staring at his back. “…It only feels like Al.”

With eyes brimming, Winry slipped from the room and left them alone.

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2022 Jordanna Morgan