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“You can’t have pie for breakfast. Or brunch.”
“Says who?”
“Okay,” Winry amends, pulling out the seat adjacent to Ed’s, “you can’t have pie for breakfast without sharing with me, because I know that one is the last slice in the fridge.” Ed swallows guiltily, and Winry takes the opportunity to wrest the fork from his hand and reclaim a bite of the warm cinnamon apples on his plate. It ought to count as a breakfast––it’s a carbohydrate and a fruit. Chemically speaking, there’s not too much of a difference between eating a biscuit and an apple vs. eating a slice of apple pie, except the latter is infinitely better tasting.
On Saturdays, the shop opens at noon, which means that Ed and Winry have a couple extra hours of sleep and enjoyment of the gentle morning sun. Well, Ed does, at least, because Winry hates when he puts his cold automail foot on her calf when they wake up. But it also means (aside from the swat of a pillow hitting Ed in the side as revenge) that the time passes a little slower, more leisurely. Calmly. Like a brook over worn pebbles.
He pours two cups of coffee and puts cream and sugar in just one, for himself. Winry had grown accustomed to drinking black coffee to keep her awake during the long nights of automail repairs, but Ed, after being introduced to lattes in Creta, could never go back. “So,” he asks, absently stirring the foam in his cup, “who’s coming today? Anyone interesting?”
“Just some regulars,” Winry responds. “Mari’s son is actually adjusting really well to the new leg. You must’ve said something to him that really worked.”
“I better have given good advice, seeing as I have a real automail leg.”
“Oh, yeah? And who gave you that advice when they first installed it?” Winry’s eyes are brighter, rounder when she teases him. Her face creases in familiar, well-worn wrinkles, but they make her look younger when she laughs, not older.
Lately, he finds himself studying his wife’s face more and more often. Maybe it’s because they started to slowly convert the house into an amalgamation of surgical unit, health clinic, and physical therapy office, but in any case, he finds that he has a tendency to watch Winry––her face, the pull of her lips when she smiles, the way her fingers tighten miniscule screws and adjust wiring inside her automail. Even when they were kids, he had to admit that he was fascinated by what she did, always clamoring to see what she was doing until she had to forcibly remove him from her room.
They were, after all, on the opposite sides of the spectrum of ‘believing’: he, on one end, believing in alchemy, and she, on the other, in science and technology. But there is a certain magic in her automail working, even if she doesn’t realize.
He likes watching her late at night, mostly, when he’s propped up against a pillow and pretending to read while he waits for her to come to bed. It is like magic, how she can bring boxes of unshaped metal into life, and especially without alchemy. He likes watching the way she twists and untwists the wiring inside, the way she carefully moves each joint to test for mobility. And from all his watching, he’s learned a bit, too––he knows the way she hesitates when her calluses scrape against the metal, the way she sighs when she’s close to being done but not quite, the satisfied sound she makes when she finishes a piece.
There’s a clink as Winry sets the dish down. “Hey, airhead. What’re you thinking about?”
“Nothing, nothing,” he says. “Just about all the customers you’re gonna make me talk to today. You know I hate customer service.”
“It buys me time,” Winry replies. “Everyone wants to see us before the last person’s done.”
“We really need a professional secretary.” He’s already thinking about the miles of paperwork he’s going to need to file––thanks to Colonel Shithead (Brigadier General Shithead, actually), who seems to love making bureaucracy more and more complicated each year. Winry just laughs.
“I have you,” she says. “What else could I need?”
Fortunately, the day goes by in a blur. It’s good, because standout days are usually the ones that are most taxing on Ed’s health, mental or otherwise. The flow of customers is steady, but not overwhelming. Sometimes people come in to talk about their regular aches and pains, especially the arthritic patients, and some just stick their head in through the open window to ask Winry questions about her baking. Either way, Ed is just relieved nobody has business with him, or with Den, whom Ed keeps around to pet absently. It keeps him sane. Den is just there for the attention and the warmth of the couch.
On Sundays, they open again at noon, and Winry usually doesn’t work on any of her projects late at night like she usually does, so Ed no longer has to pretend like he’s reading while really waiting for her to go to sleep with him. He’s quite bad at pretending, really, but Winry hasn’t seemed to notice that he’s been stuck on page 3 for almost four months now.
He is just tall enough now to rest his chin in the curve between her neck and shoulder, inhaling the scent of her hair. His arms find their way to her waist, resting in the soft dips and hollows of muscle, hands resting lightly above her navel. Finally.
“Hey,” he murmurs, the words half lost in Winry’s long hair. “What do you think about kids?”
“What about them?”
“We should have some.”
“Like...like goats?”
Ed sits up and stares at Winry, who does the same.
“Oh,” she says weakly, “not like goats.”
“Not like goats,” he agrees. He sinks back down into the pillows, gently taking Winry with him and turning to resume the same position. He reminds himself that Winry’s genius lies in mechanical engineering, not English.
Winry had once said that men who stayed in one place were no fun. The truth is, though, he’s had his fun. Because sometimes, fun is unpredictable, and when you’ve been an alchemist for as long as he has, unpredictable is not something you miss. You start missing the comfort of a fixed point in your life. You miss stability, you miss the countryside, and most of all, you miss spending your time loving and being loved by the one person you know to be the keeper of your heart. And he has missed it, and tells her so almost every time he calls home, but has never missed it more than when he stood on the porch, waiting for her to open the door.
“Kids,” Winry mumbles.
“Yeah.”
“How many?”
He picks a number between one and ten. “Ten.”
“Only if you feed them all.”
“I’ll reconsider,” he says hastily.
He traces the slightly raised scar that crawls along her hip, horizontally. Made by a screwdriver, if he recalls correctly, which she had forgotten she was holding when she swung her arm back. All the scars she has are related to automail, somehow. Mostly his, but some from her journeys to countries beyond Amestris to bring new hands or legs to someone else. She is a topographical map of all the love she has ever shown in her life, and he is a grateful traveler, privileged to be wandering and discovering these landmarks.
He has traveled long and far. Perhaps now, she will join him.