icameheretowinry:

teamalphonse:

icameheretowinry:

Fma headcanon that during the nights when Al is still stuck in his armor and sick of reading or sitting alone with his thoughts, he teaches himself a bunch of random skills to pass the time.

Like one morning Ed wakes up to the sound of Al playing the cello.

I absolutely love this and I hope you don’t mind that I kind of took this and ran with it

For a while, he sticks to research, because they can cover more ground if he keeps researching while Ed sleeps. But it gets old. And draining, since it means a lot of days he’s basically researching 24/7 without giving his mind a break.

So he switches to fiction because he’s never really read fiction before – he and Ed basically grew up on a steady diet of alchemy text books, after all. He probably learned to read with academic texts. Fiction is kind of new to him. Al finds he likes adventure stories with young protagonists or mysteries that keep his mind occupied with clues and misleads. He struggles to enjoy fantasy books about magic, though, since he’s just as much a scientist as his brother.

But fiction gets old too, so Al starts checking out books on whatever random subjects he can think of – he reads up on Amestrian history and later learns it was pretty much all wrong. He reads three books on botany. He picks up a book on Amestrian birds and confuses the hell out of Ed when he casually identifies three different birds as they’re walking along the road. (“That’s a North Amestrian Swallow.” “….ok?” “You can tell them apart from other swallows because of the red coloring on their breast.” “I – ok? Is the bird going to help us somehow?” “No, I was just letting you know.” Ed worries for the rest of the day that Al is going to start trying to adopt birds now too.)

He reads almost every book Central library has on first aid and basic medicine because he worries one day he won’t be able to get Ed to a hospital fast enough.

Alphonse Elric becomes a walking encyclopedia of random facts and knowledge.

But as much as he loves reading, reading gets old too.

So he starts picking up random skills and hobbies. He learns about music and starts teaching himself the cello. He tries knitting and gets frustrated when his big, clunky hands get in the way. (It goes on The List. “Finish the scarf for Winry with my own two hands.”) He takes up wood working and carving, and the first thing he makes is a cat, of course, only it doesn’t end up looking much like one – but he’s still proud of it, because he did it without alchemy.

After four years, and roughly 7-12 hours alone each night, Alphonse knows just a little bit about everything and has dabbled in a hundred different hobbies. Chances are if you ask Al if he’s ever tried something or read up on something, he’ll say yes.

THANK YOU FOR THIS IT GOT SO MUCH BETTER.