A/N: So, about a month ago, SJ Smith published a story called Frustrations. Go ahead, go read it. It's only about 300 words, it won't take long.

Alright. Anyway, my initial reaction to that fic was, and I quote, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Because I was so sad for Al. It took me most of a month to write this (admittedly, I was doing other things, like writing Blue Beetle fic for Yuletide, and writing tons of other fics for FMA exchanges, and getting horribly ill for like two weeks), but here it is. I feel better now.

At first, he tried to tell himself that it was just the way he'd respond to any beautiful woman. Winry was pretty, and he was a young man, and it was natural that he feel warm when she touched him. It was normal that the scent of her hair made him quiver.

It didn't mean anything.

He tried to tell himself that it was just a crush. He'd had a crush on Winry as long as he could remember, after all. He and Brother had argued about it as children, but that was just play. He'd grown out of it, surely.

Ed and Winry must have thought he was asleep. He almost had been, when he heard them making love on the couch. They were obviously trying to be quiet- but not quiet enough.

Al should have felt embarrassed. He should have rolled his eyes at them, put a pillow over his head, and gone to sleep- or at least thumped a wall so they knew to cut it out.

He didn't. He couldn't stop listening. He could hear Winry's breath hitch. She moaned, she cried out. Al found himself breathless, imagining her. And suddenly, lying there hard and ashamed in the dark, he understood what he'd refused to admit to himself for so long.

He was in love with Winry.

Winry, who was going to marry his brother in a month.

Al felt like he might throw up.

Winry made pancakes the next morning. Al was up earlier than Ed; he was almost always up earlier than his brother. He wandered into the kitchen after he finished in the bathroom.

Winry turned as he walked in. "Come slice the bacon!" she ordered him, smiling. She was wearing Ed's shirt, and nothing else. It fell to mid thigh. As she turned, it slipped off one shoulder, exposing creamy, bare skin.

"Sure, Winry," Al choked out, and went to the ice box. He put the bacon on a cutting board, pulled a knife from the block, began cutting thin slices from the hunk of meat.

Next to him, Winry swept around the kitchen like she was dancing. Brother made her happy, Al thought. What she and Brother had done last night made her happy.

"Al!" Winry said suddenly, upset.

Al looked down. He'd cut himself, he realized distantly. His blood spattered on the wood of the counter.

Al had to drive three towns over to find a bar where no one knew him on sight.

Ed would wonder where he'd gone, but Al didn't care right now. He needed to think; he needed to not think. He definitely needed to not be in a house where his brother was sleeping next to Winry. Sleeping next to her, holding her, kissing her- Al forced himself to stop that train of thought before he crashed his new car. He finally stopped in Burlow. He'd never been there before, which recommended it. He did know that Burlow Steel Works was where most of the plating and parts for Rockbell Automail came from, for what that was worth. Pushing the thought of Winry and her automail away, Al went into the bar.

There were two bartenders- probably the owner and his adult son, by the look of them- and a smattering of patrons; probably regulars by the way that the bartenders glanced over at him with surprise when he walked in the door.

"What c'n'I get you?" the older man asked, and then he poured the whisky that Al ordered. Al's hand throbbed, but the alcohol helped.

Al had spent the last few years lying to himself, he realized now. He had thought that he was going traveling because he wanted to see the world. He knew now that he'd been running away. He even knew what he had been running away from: Resembool, and that house, and the woman who loved his brother and not him. It was no wonder, Al thought, sardonically, that he'd always been so drawn to blondes in his many short, doomed love affairs. No wonder too that he'd always gone away from those encounters feeling empty and alone.

It was sort of a shame that Ed and Winry hadn't got around to having sex back before Al had decided that he needed to visit Xing and the lands beyond, he thought, viciously. If they had, maybe he'd've realized the lie sooner. Now, they were going to be married, and they were happy, and Al wanted nothing more than to run again. If leaving wouldn't mean explaining himself to Ed- either before he left, or after Ed hunted him down- Al would have been gone already.

When he asked for another drink, he told the bartender to leave the bottle. He was hoping that Winry's blue eyes would get lost somewhere in the amber depths of the whisky, but somehow, no matter how much he drank, they were still there.

He woke up in a strange bed, alone, with his boots off. He searched his aching memory, and vaguely recalled being hauled upstairs by the men who ran the pub. Ashamed, he left money on the bed- enough, he hoped- and snuck back out to his car.

He might have avoided the pub owners back in Burlow, but he couldn't avoid Ed. It was nearly noon by the time he pulled back up to the house in Resembool. Ed was sitting on the porch, one hand clasped in the other.

As Al pulled into the drive, Ed jumped up. "Al!" he cried. "Where the hell have you been?" Ed cocked his head, taking in Al's vaguely disheveled appearance. "Are you okay?"

"I just... wanted to go somewhere," Al said, lamely. "I'm fine, Brother."

"Jeez, Al, the next time you 'want to go somewhere', leave a note or something!" Ed said, scowling. "C'mon. Winry's working on Mr. Talman's arm, but she made me promise to let her know when we found you. You can explain your need to suddenly disappear to her and her wrench."

Al rolled his eyes. "I aman adult, Brother," he argued, as Ed dragged him into the house. "You don't have to treat me like a kid. I am allowed to occasionally go out on my own if I want."

Ed looked almost hurt as he glanced back at Al. "We're not trying to treat you like a kid," he said. "We were worried, jackass."

Al shut up and let himself be dragged.

He tried to convince himself that he'd gotten it out of his system. He had had feelings for Winry, yes, but he had faced them, and come to terms with them. He had accepted that those emotions were hopeless and inappropriate, and moved on with his life.

It was better. He joked with Ed and Winry, argued with them. He finally got around to making dinner, too. It was rich with clarified butter and the spices that he'd brought from the East, wrapped tight in a box that he'd guarded like it was gold. When he'd been traveling, he'd imagined how Ed and Winry would react to the food: Winry's face, flushing at the intensity of flavor; Ed, declaring that the food was badass and shoveling it in.

The reality was everything he'd imagined. Ed and Winry loved the meal- beef cooked tender in a spicy sauce, rice and vegetables drenched with gravy and yogurt (which Al tinted with turmeric and neglected to mention was made of milk). They both told him that they'd never tasted anything like it, and Ed even said that it put beef stew to shame. Al laughed and said that he'd have to cook it again for them sometime, and that maybe the new railroad that Mustang kept talking about would bring the spice trade to Amestris.

Al insisted on doing the dishes, too, since he'd made such a mess of the kitchen. He found dishes calming; the warm soapy water and the repetitiveness were comforting to him. He washed, he stacked, he dried. When he was done, he wrung out the dish cloth and hung it up. Then he pushed open the door to the living room.

He froze, there on the threshold. From where he was standing, he had a clear view of Ed and Winry on the couch. Winry was curled up in the corner of the couch, and Ed was leaning against her, a bowl of ice cream balanced on his stomach. They were reading. Winry had her arm curled casually, comfortably around Ed's shoulders, her fingers idly carding through his bangs.

It was their eyes that undid him. Winry looked happy, as though she hadn't a care in the world. Her eyes were lit with that characteristically Winry-ish passion as she flipped through her magazine. Ed, though- Ed looked peaceful. His eyes radiated a calm joy that Al couldn't remember ever having seen there before. Al shut the door; backed away. He leaned back against the kitchen wall, heaving. He felt as though something was squeezing his chest so tightly that he could barely breathe.

He should be happy for them, he told himself. He should be pleased that the two people that he loved most in the world had found that kind of joy with each other. It shouldn't feel like an icepick in his heart, like he was losing them both. Like he was losing Winry.

It was idiotic. He'd already lost her years ago. She'd always loved Ed, he told himself. She'd never seen him that way.

Cheeks flushed red and lungs burning, Al ran.

The younger of the bartenders looked up when he entered. "Hey," he said. "I wondered if you'd be back."

Al sat down at the bar. His hands were shaking, and he tucked them into his lap. "Yeah?" he said, non-committally.

The bartender nodded. "You overpaid on the room," he said. "Da took the extra and started you a tab. You got a name, by the way? Da just wrote you down as 'that tall fella with the funny eyes'."

Al blinked. "Al," he told the other man.

"Dan," the bartender offered. "You drinking the same thing you were the other night?"

Al nodded, not quite trusting himself to speak.

"Coming right up," Dan said.

This time, when Al told the bartender to leave the bottle, he didn't. Dan leaned against the counter, the whisky bottle firmly in his hand. "It's a woman, isn't it?" he asked.

Al flinched, glaring at his glass. "I don't want to talk about it," he said.

Dan laughed. "No," he said, "If you didn't want to talk about it, you'd buy your own bottle of whisky and go drink yourself into a stupor in private. A man comes in once to drink himself into oblivion, it's a lapse in judgment. He does it twice in as many weeks, he's looking for someone to talk to. So- talk. Definitely a woman."

Al clenched his fists, trying to stop his hands shaking. "Yeah," he admitted bitterly. "A woman."

"Thought so," Dan said, putting the bottle away. He leaned back, looking at Al. "Man your age, it's usually a woman. So, what's the problem? Her family doesn't like you?"

"She loves someone else," Al said, staring into his glass.

"That's a problem," Dan observed.

Al huffed out a laugh, sharp and bitter. "She loves my brother," he said.

"Thats- a bigger problem." Dan leaned back. "Does the brother love her back? Man as good-looking as you, you might be able to talk her into changing her mind."

Al shook his head. "I couldn't-" he started. "My brother-" He set down his glass, running his hands through his hair. "We lost our parents when we were really young," he explained. "And my brother took care of me. And then, there was an accident, and I was... um... sick. For years. And Brother, he gave up everything to save me." Al was definitely drunk. Not drunk enough to pass out, sensibly, but just drunk enough to babble to a stranger. "He joined the military because he thought they would help him take care of me," he told the bartender. "He was always getting hurt. Bad enough to go to the hospital, sometimes. It was horrible; he was such an idiot. But he did it, in the end. He fixed me." Al dropped his head into his hands. "He's always loved her. And he's happy now. And she's happy. And they both deserve it, they deserve everything, but I just- I just want her to look at me like she looks at him." His fingers clenched in his hair. "I'm a horrible person."

Al felt rough fingers brush against his hand. "Hey," Dan said. "Having feelings doesn't make you a horrible person. It's what you do about it that decides what kind of person you are." Al looked up at him, feeling as though he might cry. Dan sighed. "Okay, big fella, you're spending the night again. Let's get you upstairs before I have to call Da to help me carry you."

"Okay," Al said, and staggered along next to the bartender.