Al sighed silently and tried not to look as bored as he felt, but it was a difficult thing to do when there was literally nothing left to do in the entirety of the little general store he worked at. It was well after midnight, and even here in the heart of Central it was long past the time when even the latest of the late-night customers preferred to shop. Really, it was dead times like this that made Alphonse truly hate working the closing shift.

It wouldn't have been so bad, except that the owner had declared that while on shift, all who worked in his store Must Look Busy. This, while at the same time forbidding books or even notepads to employees, claiming them to be a waste of time and possible sales.

Past Midnight.

In an empty building.

Right.

Alphonse personally thought that claim was more than a bit rich, since he knew that Mr. Uffman spent most of the day in his office at the back of the store napping or banging one of the three young ladies that also worked here, and was in fact doing that right now, if the noises he'd heard when he'd gone in search of the ever-missing dust rags were any indication.

Still, he couldn't really say anything since he was currently out of Royal Favor for having experimented with alchemy in the storeroom, which was a practice that the Mighty King Uffster sorely disapproved of. No matter that the crack in the foundation had been costing a fortune in patch jobs before Al had mended it, alchemy had still been practiced on the hallowed (ha!) grounds of the shop, and Uffiemania hadn't liked it. So now Al was forbidden to even sketch arrays since it supposedly encouraged "improper thoughts", and the end result was that the blonde was stuck with nothing official to do and far too many unofficial things he could be doing.

Not that he hadn't tried to Look Busy. From the moment that the last customer left, he'd kept himself as occupied as was possible. He'd cleaned the counter and register, dusted the shelves, put pack all the items that customers had left out of order, organized the stock, reorganized it so that everything was categorized by the pattern of the witches' monologue in Macbeth, re-reorganized it all back again before Uffabooboo could notice the difference, hummed every limerick he knew—dirty or otherwise—and of course, thought up new and interesting variations on Uffalump's name. All that had kept him busy for maybe an hour before boredom once again set in. The simple fact was that the store just wasn't that big, so any sort of activity involved with it didn't take very long. About the only thing that was keeping Al from resorting to balancing condom packets on his nose was that he still couldn't go near the things without blushing uncontrollably; a fact that highly amused the three female employees of the store.

And to top it all off, Al knew that on this night in particular, he wasn't even supposed to be here. Not only did he have homework from the class in botany he was taking at the local university, but his father was supposed to have arrived tonight on his monthly visit, though he made a small face at the thought of impending parental units. After he'd been born, his parents had divorced, and Alphonse had been raised by his father ever since. Alphonse truly did love Hoenheim and honestly respected him as a scientist and scholar, but he also fully admitted that the man had no equal in being clueless and absentminded. There were times when Al honestly wondered how he'd survived early childhood with a man who would regularly forget that he even had a son and that said son might need watching to keep from getting stuck in the drainpipe on his cheerful search for buried pirate treasure. Alphonse hadn't been all that surprised when, in the fervor of his current branch of research, Hoenheim had up and left two years ago, only returning once a month to check in with the university and make sure his son was still breathing. He'd also not been surprised to note that every month for that entire two years, his father always got distracted and arrived a day later than he said he would. There was no reason this month's visit would be any different, so he hadn't really seen a reason not to come in when Ufftahoo called him with the news that Aliza was ill and needed a stand-in.

He liked having the extra spending money for his alchemy books, and if the sounds he'd heard leaking from the office door sounded rather like a certain "ill" co-worker, that was hardly any of his business. He just wished that it wasn't so boring!

More out of wishful thinking than any real hope, Al glanced over at the clock on the wall, and his spirits rose a bit when he found that while he'd been caught in his musings, his time counting nemesis had decided to cut him some slack, the hands indicating that it was no more than five minutes until he could close up and finally go home. That is, just so long as there weren't any last minute—

*jingle*

—Customers. Damn.

Alphonse suppressed a groan even as he slapped a pleasant smile on his face and turned to the door, a greeting on his lips. A greeting that froze there as he stared shamelessly at what had just walked in.

Walking through the doorway was a man who, if Alphonse had been a woman, would have been described as "drooly leather pants sex god", and that only if feeling restrained. Since Al was a man and thus needed to fit such a sight into a more manly vocabulary, he decided to take a good long look—not an ogle, he did not ogle!—before choosing a term that might allow him to keep some male dignity.

…

Hot damn!

Alphonse Elric had never claimed to be straight, but he knew that this man would have tempted even the staunchest of womanizers. Bright blonde hair tied back in a braid that rested between broad shoulders shone softly in the light, the golden hue matching the perfect almond-shaped eyes that glittered with both intelligence and intensity. They were set into a sharply featured face that was beautiful yet still totally masculine, with high cheekbones and a clean jaw line. Something about the angle of that jaw stuck Al as oddly familiar, but he knew that he'd never seen this man before and thus dismissed the feeling in favor of more eye candy. Though somewhat undersized—brutal honesty would have dictated use of the word 'short'—the man was lean and fit, filling out those leather pants perfectly with his strong legs and shapely ass.

Oh, that ass! That, Alphonse decided, was the sort of ass people got down on their knees and worshipped. He was certainly ready to bow down to the Church of Ass in the hopes of reaching Nirvana, and even just from watching it move in those pants as the man walked he felt like his soul was rising to grasp enlightenment…

Wait, that wasn't his soul rising. Good thing he was behind the counter.

The customer's chest and arms were a bit harder to make out, obscured by a thick black shirt on top of a black undershirt, much to Al's disappointment. Still, he wasn't going to complain since the man could have been wearing the bright red coat as well instead of carrying the garment in a bundled mass of fabric under one arm. That would have obscured the ass as well as the chest, which would have constituted as a crime against humanity.

To top it all off, the man had a certain magnetism around him. Despite the fact that he was so small, there was something about him that just demanded that he be looked at. There was a shocking amount of presence to him, even though Al was fairly sure this man couldn't be all that much older than himself, and he was only just turning seventeen. That draw was so strong, in fact, that Alphonse had to actively wrench himself out of the desirous trance before he really did get down on his knees to worship.

He shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and attempted to return to something resembling sanity. Knock it off, Al, he told himself firmly, Yeah, he's gorgeous, but he's also likely straight as a post, and the only reason you're panting after him like this is that you haven't gotten laid since that army colonel dumped you last year. Well, that and he's hot.

Really hot.

Realizing that he was once again slipping, Al gathered all the willpower and self-control possible and shoved all dirty thoughts out of his mind. The store wasn't closed yet, so he was still on the clock and had to act like a good little retail peon. Wishful thinking and daydreams could wait until he was at home in bed. He opened his eyes again, calmer now, and realized that the man hadn't even noticed he was there, just stalking around the aisles and muttering to himself irritably. Not unusual, since Al knew that he had an unfortunate knack for fading into the background, but it couldn't hurt to at least say hello.

And the faster he got the customer what he wanted, the sooner he could go home and have his wet dreams in peace.

"Good evening!" he chirped in his best I'm-Still-Cheerful-And-Happy-To-Serve-At-1am-Really-It's-Not-An-Act-I-Swear voice.

Al learned very quickly that it did, in fact, hurt to say hello.

Startled out of whatever internal rant he'd been having by the clerk's voice, the customer gave a yelp and spun, gold eyes wide and his limbs flailing. One of those outstretched arms caught a display stand holding bottles of maple syrup that the store had put on sale in the hopes of finally unloading, and the whole thing went down with a sickening crash of broken wood and shattering glass.

Alphonse cringed, his Company Smile vanishing at the demolition. "Great," he groaned, "just what I needed. I hope you're going to pay for all that." Already he could see the brown puddles of goo spreading from the ruined display, seeping into the floorboards. Oh, that was going to suck to clean up. So much for going home soon.

The customer stared at him, irritation and temper bringing a slight flush to the pale face. "Why should I do that? It's your fault for coming at me out of nowhere!"

The urge to worship vanished as Al's own irritation grew. The man was attractive, but it looked like he was the sort of customer who argued with anything that didn't go his way and got difficult if caught doing something wrong. "It's on the sign over there," Al replied, trying to sound polite as he pointed to the square piece of painted wood detailing the three rules of King Uff. "Number one: You break it, you buy it."

The man turned his gaze to the sign, and gave a snort, dismissing them just as quickly. "If that's the case, then there's no problem if they aren't broken, right?" he asked, a cocky smile coming to thin but still alluring lips.

Ooooh…pretty…gah! Focus, Al! "Yeah, but it's pretty obvious that the bottles are smashed, and it'd take a miracle to change that." he replied, pointing down at the quickly spreading mess that was filling the room with the near overpowering scent of maple.

That smile changed to an outright grin, one that both attracted Al and gave him an odd sense of foreboding. "I don't need miracles," the customer replied, clapping gloved hands together, and then pressing them to the floor. Blue light filled the store, making Alphonse yelp in surprise.

"Hey! Rule two on the board is no alchemy!" he cried, more out of startlement than any real affront. Wasn't there supposed to be an array? He was pretty damn sure that alchemists needed an array!

After a moment, the light faded away, leaving the blonde man smirking in obvious smug satisfaction, and the display back upright, the bottles on it now intact. Or…at least sort of intact. Al stared, his jaw hanging open in growing dismay. It seemed that the alchemist had a rather odd sense of aesthetics, and the bottles that before had been shaped like a charming matronly woman were now rather closer to depictions of Santa Muerte, scythe included.

"Er," he said.

"Cool, huh?" the man replied with a grin. "So now we're good, right?"

Alphonse was about to tell this obviously crazy—but still sexy—man just what he felt about his idea of 'cool', but never got the chance. There was an angry roar from the back office, and Al turned just in time to see Mr. Uffman charge out of the room, so overtaken by rage from alchemy being practiced on his property that he hadn't even remembered to pull his pants up. That was far more than Alphonse had ever needed to see of his boss, and he instantly clamped his eyes shut with a whimper, trying to purge the horrible image from his mind.

After that, it was mostly sound, his ears filled with the angry voices of the shop owner and the customer screaming at the top of their lungs, followed by crashes as they knocked over the contents of several shelves. By the time Al dared to peek out through his fingers, they'd both taken refuge behind two toppled sets of shelves, and were screaming bloody murder at each other while launching bottles of Mrs. Butterdeath across the wreckage.

Alphonse, being a sensible and intelligent young man, decided that the best course of action at this point was to hide under his counter, and that was what he did, wondering if he'd still have a job after tonight. Somehow, he just knew this was all going to end up being his fault. Something was going to happen that would dump all this right in his lap.

*jingle*

Another customer? Now?

"Excuse me," said a voice that Al found distressingly familiar, "But I seem to have lost my son…"

"Oh no…not now," Al whined, recognizing the soft and slightly clueless tone that only his father could use and still sound intelligent. He moved to stand, to call Hoenheim to the dubious safety of the sales counter while the madmen continued to battle each other with their syrup valkyries, but someone else beat him to it.

"Shut up and get out of the way, old man!" the blonde customer snapped, "I'm going to kick this bastard's ass!"

"See here! This is my shop and I refuse to have some little brat fouling it with his ungodly sciences!"

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING SO TINY THAT HE COULDN'T EVEN DANCE ON THE PINHEAD WITHOUT ANGELS STEPPING ON HIM?" Syrup Muerte once again took her avenging flight, and Al decided it would be easier to just stay hidden.

"Now Edward, you can't just fly off the handle every time someone comments about your height…"

"WATCH ME!"

"Sir! Is this little terror your son? I insist you remove him from my shop before I call the police!"

"DON'T! CALL! ME! LITTLE!"

There was a clap, another flash of blue light, and a crash far louder than any of the ones Al had heard before. He even felt the floor shake under him, and he prayed that the ceiling didn't decide to come down as well. He stayed hidden under the counter until several minutes after the noise and light went away, and then only dared to come up when he heard Aliza finally run out of the back office and through the front door, shrieking her head off.

Al rather wanted to do the same, to be honest. Mr. Uffman was unconscious on the floor amidst piles of ruined foodstuffs, pinned down by a large stone hand that seemed to have somehow sprouted from the wall. With broken pieces of glass skulls and puddles of maple syrup everywhere, the entire scene had taken on sort of a surreal atmosphere. What was next, he wondered; walking suits of armor? Homicidal zombies? Cyborg soldiers, perhaps?

Hoenheim, who had somehow managed to stand at the door and yet not receive even a single scratch or stain to his person despite the miniature war that he'd walked into, suddenly spotted Al and smiled, waving. "Ah, there you are, Alphonse! I was worried when I didn't find you at home."

The blonde, Edward, turned to look back at Al now, far less than the picture of sexy perfection than he had been. He was disheveled and flushed, hair falling out of his braid and into his face, his clothes and skin rather liberally coated in syrup. Al tried very hard not to laugh, but the urge died almost instantly upon his father's next words.

"Come over here. I'd like you to meet your older brother, Edward Elric."

What?