Work Text:
Alphonse looks around the little coffee shop they’d just settled into, logging faces and body language with a habit long engrained from his years trapped in a suit of armor. It used to bother him when he was so often overlooked once people got done marvelling at the size of the suit, but it gave him plenty of opportunity to watch people. Considering his brother’s tendency towards missing anything that wasn’t trying to take his face off, however, he’s...well, thankful might be the wrong word. But he doesn’t quite regret it, either.
His brother is, true to form, sprawled out on a couch in the corner of the shop they’d commandeered. Alphonse is sitting in an armchair perpendicular to Edward’s couch and giving his standard fondly exasperated glare at the top of the head owned by the best and most frighteningly selfless brother in the world. Winry is on the settee across the little coffee table from Edward’s couch, Riza settled comfortably next to her. Alphonse is quite certain they’re both uninterested in any sort of romantic attachments, but he hopes for good things to them both either way.
He looks up as their orders are delivered, four steaming cups of coffee held by a man in an apron who gives their little gathering a scathing look. He’s silent as he unloads the cups on the table, and just as Alphonse thinks they may get out of this one without a fight, the man speaks.
“Four blondes in a coffeehouse. Could you be any more basic?” he mutters sourly. Alphonse has time to sigh, wondering if it’ll be Edward’s fist or Winry’s wrench first, when a new voice speaks up from behind the poor fool.
“There is nothing ‘basic’ about a single one of them,” says Amestris’s current Fuhrer. The waiter spins around quick enough that Alphonse half expects him to fall over, eyes wide and visibly paling, though the Fuhrer clearly isn’t done yet. “Those four blondes are, in no particular order, my second-in-command and oldest friend, my genius boyfriend and savior of Amestris, the extremely well-published genius brother of said boyfriend, and the rising forerunner of international automail relations with Xing who also happens to be the aforementioned boyfriend’s own mechanic.” Roy Mustang nearly grins at the panic in the waiter’s eyes, but settles for a smirk that just barely misses smug. “If it’s not too terribly basic, could we bother you for two more cups?”
After much bowing and apologizing, the waiter scurries off, and Edward gives Roy a heated look that makes Winry visibly uncomfortable. Alphonse sighs, far beyond being affected by Ed anymore. Thankfully, they’re put out of the worst of their misery as Edward sits up just enough that Roy can settle on the couch beside Ed.
The last person standing dances around the table happily, settling on the ottoman nestled against the side of Alphonse’s armchair. “How was the conference?” he asks Mei, who takes the time to beam up at him while their calves brush.
“It’s probably a good thing you kept Edward here,” Mei says happily. “Lan Fan freaked half the room out when she dropped from the ceiling with the built-in blade exposed and I think four people cried. Had Edward offered a practical demonstration of the durability of properly manufactured automail, we might have needed emergency services.”
Edward grins with a flash of teeth, but doesn’t deny it. Roy and Riza laugh along with Alphonse, though Winry just sighs and shakes her head. “You’d be a menace to everything that every person around you is trying to build if you weren’t Ling’s favorite person,” Winry says with a huff, picking up her coffee and taking a sip.
“Not my fault Ling’s an idiot,” Ed answers flippantly, though his reach for his own cup is hindered by Fuhrer Mustang wrapping his arms around the younger man and nuzzling into his shoulder, likely to mutter things that would give the rest of them cavities.
Alphonse glances over, trading a long-suffering look with Riza. Their respective problem adorations quit being stupid and finally put Amestris out of it’s collective misery after Alphonse had shown up on Riza’s doorstep and all but begged her help in setting up a date between Ed and Roy because he could not stand the pining any longer.
She had studied him for two frightening heartbeats, sighed softly, and invited him in with the passing comment that a semi-secret date would probably result in fewer complicated inquiries than shooting either of them would. Alphonse’s response that knives are quieter had pulled a genuine laugh from her, and she’d offered to buy him dinner while they plotted. They’d been friends since that night, and Alphonse visits regularly to talk about the things that haunt him because she understands in a way that no one else will. Riza’s the only other person Alphonse knows who has done things she’s not proud of while following the person she thinks the world of, and watched them shoulder even worse. She knows his guilt and his worries about Edward intimately, because she carries the same for Roy.
Mei’s hand slips into Alphonse’s, and he grins at her. There’s a bit of an age gap, though it’s no more severe than the one between Edward and Roy, and everyone is of age so there’s no reason to lose sleep over it. Mei, having figured out over the course of the months leading up to the Promised Day just how dependent the Elric brothers are, wasted no time in getting the newly minted Emperor’s permission to move to Amestris and live here full-time.
Mei has been busy setting herself up as Xing’s official Ambassador in Amestris, both for textile trade and tradesman trade. Lan Fan’s arm sparked a great deal in Xing, and there’s suddenly a massive demand for automail there. Winry and Garfiel are training a group to go over there and set up a secondary shop, and have been getting regular shipments of ores from Xing in turn, which has made Rockbell Automail a major player all over again. And when Edward sent a letter to Ling asking him why he wasn’t letting alkahestry be taught to rising Amestrian medical students so that alchemy could be taught to rising Xingese scientists, Ling had personally shown up in Central with nearly a dozen alkahestry specialists in tow and set Central Command to nearly exploding in panic.
Edward had thought the whole thing hilarious. Roy, as Alphonse understands it, had been far less amused by the sudden appearance of a major foreign dignitary. Alphonse just smiles at the memory while Mei and Winry and Riza discuss the next big trip to Xing to see how the plans are coming along. His brother is currently reading over another of the Fuhrer’s files (which is probably on the sketchy side of legal but often extremely helpful to multiple parties) while said Fuhrer runs his fingers through Ed’s ponytail.
Alphonse doesn’t care how it looks, or what some teenage waiter considers ‘basic’ in regards to any of them. This is far closer to peace than Alphonse thought they could achieve, and he is content.