immoral. [edward elric x reader AU]

Edward never stopped thinking about (Y/n) after that day. His wedding day. It had been two weeks, and he had seen no sign of the (h/c) haired girl before or after he returned from his honeymoon.

He felt dirty. Nauseous. Uneasy.

He tried his best to forget about (Y/n) and enjoy the remainder of his wedding day, of his trip to the west with the woman he married, but he couldn't get the friend of his spouse out of his head.

Winry noticed that the golden eyed man's head often seemed to be in a dimension outside of the one they were in after (Y/n) head gone home sick, or at least that's what (Y/n) had texted her saying had happened at the end of the reception. Winry had tried calling the (e/c) eyed woman to see if she was okay, but each call had gone to voicemail. Paninya advised that it was best to leave (Y/n) alone to rest, though she suspected something deeper lay beneath (Y/n)'s disappearance.

Winry had tried asking Edward if something was wrong each time he spaced out, but he denied any accusation of feeling out of the ordinary when she did. He masked his true emotions very well and did his very best to make it seem as though he was enjoying his time with his new wife, but the Rockbell could not be fooled easily. She knew something was off, and it hurt to feel herself drifting from both her friend and her spouse, to be left in the unknown.

The second Edward and Winry came home from their honeymoon, the Elric attempted to bury himself into work. He booked his next trip across the country to study philosophy in Xing before the school year, which was not scheduled to occur for another week.

He buried himself in research, keeping himself occupied by everything he had to put on hold due to the wedding. He stayed up all day and night at his desk, writing furiously, typing frantically, but none of it was ever enough to keep his focus.

(Y/n)'s words continued to replay in his mind without fail.

She was in love with him.

She had been this whole time.

His heart would lurch forward at the thought before he'd sit in his self-loathing. At first, he wanted to believe that this was a one-sided confession. He wanted to believe that (Y/n)'s words held no weight on his flourishing relationship with the blonde mechanic. He wanted to believe that (Y/n) loving him meant nothing, and that she could disappear off of the face of the earth without another word to him and he wouldn't care.

But he did care. He cared more than he thought he did.

He thought about (Y/n) every waking moment. So much so that it made his stomach turn and his head ache. He had migraines, cramps, insomnia. He couldn't even eat a full meal without losing his appetite just by looking at the plate. He was obsessed, doomed entirely, and Winry hadn't the slightest clue as to why.

Edward's mind wandered to his and (Y/n)'s past interactions often. He dissected each conversation, each fight, each shared glance, each laugh, each smile, each moment of physical contact; he analyzed everything in search of an unsaid confession.

He found that (Y/n)'s behavior not only made sense now that he knew she was in love with him, but that he, undeniably, had felt something toward her as well.

He first believed (Y/n) to be a nuisance. She didn't like him, so why would he have liked her in return? He hated the way she took up Winry's time and attention, the way her views always contrasted his, the way she blatantly admitted that she was not fond of him whatsoever. He hated the way he hated her from the very beginning, so fighting with her became comfortable, it became normalized. But as time progressed, he even began to hate hating her.