The room smells of chalk dust and damp earth and dread. The few lanterns that they kindled for light make the support beams of the house yawning shadows, which shake and roar with the night’s wind. A crow or a raven caws outside.

His stomach is full and rolling from all of the food he just ate at the Rockbell’s house— hot meat and vegetable pie, turnips, his own milk and the milk that Ed refused to drink—less than he normally eats, but enough that anxiety makes him sick with the idea of more. He barely remembers tasting it. Alphonse is nervous and his hand is shaking a little and he has to lift the chalk away from the floor to keep from destroying his clean lines.

He can’t think of anything more terrible than this going wrong.

“Do you think we managed to fool them, brother?” he asks, turning to Edward who is across the room and marking detailed sigils around the edges of the Transmutation Circle.

“Hm?” Ed asks. “Oh, probably. Think of how surprised they’ll be tomorrow morning when we show up for breakfast with mom.”

Ed smiles across the room and somewhere in him Al knows that it’s just bravado, and that Ed is also shaking with terror. But somehow the idea that Ed is just as scared but is going through with it anyway gives him confidence. Al checks the diagram that they pieced together from books and hours of work, checks his line, and places the chalk to the floor.

The stone is rough with bumps that are the antithesis of a clean circle, but Al forces the chalk against the grain of the stone and completes the last ring. He ties the circle with a symbolic knot, and then he looks over at Ed. “I’m done,” he says.

“Good,” Ed says. “Then come over here and check my work.”

He pushes himself up off of the flagstone floor which has begun to hurt against his hands. There is chalk dust on his fingers, making them soft and white as daisy petals. He brushes it off on his pants. The rough cotton catches calluses on his fingers. He skirts the edge of the circle to check Ed’s work like their teacher told them an alchemist should always do.

He wonders what Izumi would say if she saw them now, breaking the fundamental rules of alchemy.

She’ll be proud if this works, Al thinks.

Ed’s work all checks out, and so does Al’s. They’re ready for the final component, the metal basin that they filled with a carefully calculated mishmash of chemicals just hours ago. The midnight mountain winds still for a moment as he helps Ed to pick it up and drag it over to the middle of the circle. The edges of the basin cut into his hands, and he can only lift it a few inches off of the floor. By the time they get it in place his arms and back are aching and sweat is cooling at the back of his neck, sending a chill up his spine.

The knife point stings but less than he thought it would, and then they have their soul data. There’s no time to bandage the wound—they have to work fast, while the blood is fresh. Alphonse sticks his finger in his mouth and it tastes like he’s just put a 20-cens coin in his mouth.

Iron, water, inorganic salts, he thinks, naming the chemicals that he is tasting, that he knows intimately from hours secreted over forbidden books. Their teacher taught them to learn and recognize the chemicals in anything that they might come across, and by now it is habit.

It is not this teaching that comes to his mind, though, as much as it is another. There aren’t any miracles. You can’t get something from nothing.

But surely the basin of mixed chemicals that they prepared, the soul-data that they provided, the transmutation circle that they labored over, the months and months of work aren’t nothing. If this is a miracle, it is one justly deserved.

He places his hands flat on the floor at the edge of the transmutation circle. The rough edges of the flagstone cut into his skin, just as the cold seeps up through his hands and into aching wrists and shoulders. A bird caws outside. Another gust of wind shakes the house. Al’s stomach rolls over like a lazy sleeper and groans with the effort. Sweat sticks his hair to the back of his neck. His cut finger itches fiercely and stings when he presses it tight against the flagstones.

He looks up and meet’s Ed’s eyes.

Everything is pain, and then white nothingness.

"What are you doing?"

Harvey looks up, 'caught red-handed' flashing in his eyes. "You know what I'm doing," he says after a beat. There's little point in denying the obvious.

Mike stalks up to his boss and relieves him of the paperwork on the desk. "We're in Hawaii," Mike sighs, shoving the documents into a drawer. "We're meant to be on holiday, remember? No work. Those are the rules."

"Louis will be all over Jessica," Harvey mutters moodily, hand running through his freshly washed hair. For once it's slick-free and soft, and Mike's fingers tangle with Harvey's in the brown.

"And I'm all over you," Mike says, slowly climbing into Harvey's lap and grinning seductively. "Which one will you choose?"

Harvey observes his protegee - his lover - with amused, dark eyes. "There's no contest there," he answers, and pulls Mike down into a rough kiss.

This fic got too long for a comment, so it ended up on AO3 with a link here. Which is probably just as well so can warn for some bloody descriptions and character death.

The Message

I just wanted to say this is the funniest thing ever but my brain wanted to write it.

The sounds of a buzzing caught their attention. "Dude, what the hell?" Dean hollered, looking around the abandoned warehouse for the source.

"Seriously, who has one of those things?" Sam voiced, also looking. His head tilted up, he spotted a figure holding a bright, yellow vuvuzela decorated with stickers. He saw the person holding it and went "That explains everything."

"What?" Dean asked, moving his eyes to where Sam was pointing. "Damn it. Gabriel!"

The archangel appeared right next to them when he heard his name. "You called?"

"You had to pick one of the most annoying things ever, didn't you?" Dean fumed.

"Oh, come on, like I was going to use that horn Dad gave me. It always sounds out of tune."

"Horn? The Horn of Truth, the one that's supposed to signal the end of days for everyone. You replaced it with a vuvuzela?" Sam sputtered.

"Yeah."

Dean and Sam looked at each other. "You know what? Demons and Humans don't compare to a bored archangel that's been living on this planet for too long," Dean said.

"You guys are acting just like my brothers when they found out about it."

And then he started playing again.

After Da gives Van the message from Thor, Van takes a burning-hot shower. He stands with the water hitting his back, keeping the temperature scalding for - a long time. Long enough to contemplate his earliest memories all the way to his fall.

His fall. When he let go. When Thor's eyes followed him down, and he heard his brother's cry.

His brother. Thor is still his brother. Thor still claims him. He called you Van, Da said, one hand on Van's shoulder. He'd like to talk to you.

Van has saved Thor's life five times since Loki's fall. Thor has sat and talked with Da like an adult, with no anger or self-entitlement anywhere near.

Thor called him brother and wants to talk.

Van turns off the water.

.

Thor lives with the Avengers in Stark's building. And while Van could get in and out no problem, he'd rather not have their conversation derailed by well-meaning 'heroes.' So he leaves a note on Mjölnir and waits in a park a mile from Stark's building.

.
"Brother!" Thor booms, hurrying towards him, wearing a wrinkled shirt and half-buttoned pants, hair still dripping. Thor pauses as Van rises to his feet, and then he lunges forward, scoops Van up, and gives him the best hug he's ever received from Thor.

"Brother!" Thor says again, quietly, hands clutching Van’s shirt.

.

They sit on a bench and watch passers-by, and Thor listens as Van tells him their life as he knew it.

Thor saw everything differently. Thor lived a different life, the beloved, the bright.

“You’re happy,” Thor says, smiling at him. “Brother, I’m glad.”

Brother, he says. Not Loki. Not Van. Brother.

“I am,” Van replies. “Tell me – are you enjoying your life as a Midgardian superhero?”

Thor grins and begins telling Van more than he ever wanted to know about the travails of humanity’s struggle.

They stay at the park until the sun sets. Until Van rises, and Thor catches his sleeve. Until Thor looks up at him, for once the taller, and Thor asks, “Van – brother – will I see you again? I have enjoyed these past few hours.”

Van smiles at him, and leans down to kiss his forehead, and murmurs, “Brother, of course I’ll see you again.” Another kiss and he vanishes from right between Thor’s fingers.

He lingers, invisible and insubstantial, to watch Thor’s reaction. Thor stares, and then he laughs, and then he calls out, “I know you’re there, my brother. Give your father my thanks!”

Van feels so much relief he can’t help but sigh.

.

“How’d it go?” Da asks as Van slumps down on the couch.

“Marvelously,” Van answers. “I can’t believe it… he’s so grown-up now. We actually talked.”

Talked for hours, about everything and nothing, and if only this Thor had been the one about to be crowned…

Van looks over at Da, sprawled out over the loveseat, one of his own journals in his hand.

The Thor from the park only happened because Loki let go and became Van. Da smiles at him and turns a page.

Next time, Van decides, he’ll pop up for a brotherly talk during one of Thor’s battles. Just because he can.

Little brothers are meant to cause trouble, right?