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Winry Rockbell confuses Ed.
Ed doesn’t like to brag (yes, he does), but he’s pretty damn smart. Complex alchemical equations? Piece of cake. Outsmarting Truth and getting his brother’s body back without losing another limb while saving the country? Home by dinner, no sweat.
Figuring out the girl who’s currently hunched over his leg, tinkering with the wiring with her back to him and muttering to herself? Ed would have better luck trying human transmutation again.
“How did you even do this?” Winry asks crossly, and it takes Ed a second to realize she actually wants an answer.
“I was trying to fix the roof,” Ed wrinkles his nose. “It’s not my fault that I slipped-”
“It rained last night, you dumbass!” Winry flourishes a hand at the corner of the room, where a half-filled bucket sits, water from the ceiling hitting the surface with a soft plink every minute or so. Damn, he didn’t even manage to fix the leak. “Why would you go up on the roof after it rained? Did you injure anything else?”
Ed surreptitiously tugs down the hem of his t-shirt to hide the spectacular purple bruising that’s beginning to blossom on his side. “No.”
Winry turns around to narrow her bright blue eyes at him, and Ed sticks his tongue out. He quickly retreats it when Winry raises a wrench threateningly. Den growls softly and sticks his head on Ed’s lap.
“Only Den loves me,” he sighs dramatically, scratching his head, and Den whines in agreement.
Winry doesn’t respond; her head’s bowed over the exposed wiring of his calf again, and her smallest screwdriver has made an appearance, so she’s functionally deaf at this point. Ed's pretty sure he could start yelling fire! and she still wouldn't hear him.
Ed leans back in the procedural chair and scoots over so that Den can jump up. He curls up against Ed’s side, puts his head on his stomach, and promptly falls asleep, giving a little huff. The rain starts back up again, and for a while, the soft pattering of the drops hitting the roof is the only sound in the room, save for the whirring of Winry’s tools.
Ed doesn’t mean to start staring at her again, he really doesn’t, but there’s not much else to do.
He just can’t figure her out.
She’s always worn her hair long, hasn’t cut it since they were eight, and Pinako, utterly sick of spending an hour each morning chasing them down to brush the snarls out of their hair, forced them both into a chair in the kitchen and cut their hair into matching blonde bobs. Now, it hangs down in a long pony-tail, catching the yellow light of the lamp, and Ed hides a snort when he realizes the black streaks near the end are from grease, not hair dye. She never wears nail polish- too much of a nuisance, what with all the patients she sees- but she buys fancy hand lotion by the gallon and always smells of ridiculous things like lemon verbena and rose. Every time she had visited them in Central, she’d worn miniskirts and nice blouses and completed the ensemble with clunky combat boots that’d seen at least three years of wear, if the mud permanently crusted into the bottom are anything to go buy. She turns for a second to grab something off her shelf, and her ears flash silver, all four pairs of earrings glinting in the low light.
Once, just once, Al had said, “Winry, you know you don’t have to wear every pair of earrings Ed and I get you at once!”
Winry had fixed him with such a murderous stare that Al, though he had at least two feet and multiple pounds of metal on her at that point, had gulped, stepped back, and wisely added, “But it looks so nice! You should keep them all on!”
Ed wonders vaguely how much it had hurt to put the earrings in. Probably less than getting two automail limbs installed. And despite Al’s misgivings, Ed has always liked Winry’s earrings- how they look when her hair’s thrown into a bun at the top of her head, early in the morning when she’s only half-awake, how they catch the sun when they walk to the lake in the afternoons. They’re pretty. So, before he can stop himself, not really thinking, Ed says,
“Winry.”
“Hm.”
“What would you say if I asked you to pierce my ears?”
It’s quiet for a second. There’s a thump, like she’s dropped something. Winry opens a drawer, shuts it again, and within a minute, she’s advancing on him with a needle between her fingers and an utterly predatory look on her face, as if she’s gone hunting, and she’s just spotted her prey.
“I would say, 'stay still'.” She grins, eyes flashing, the black grease on her face war-paint.
Ed gulps.
The gold hoops she sticks into the holes are small enough that Ed can barely tell that they’re there, but he keeps touching them, anyways.
Al raises an eyebrow when he appears in the kitchen for dinner, leg successfully reattached and ears aching.
“You trying to twin with Winry again?” He asks.
Ed gives him a once-over, decides two years of physical therapy and fifty pounds of lean muscle is enough recovery, and smacks the back of his little brother’s head.
“Shut up,” he says verbosely, and Al’s grin widens, undeterred.
“It looks good, brother,” he says.
Winry comes in after him, having washed the grease off her hands and face. She turns her back to him to open the fridge, and Ed sees she didn’t catch the oil in her hair. He bites his lip to stop the smile that springs to his face uninvited.
“Are you making fun of Ed’s earrings?” Winry asks Al. She takes the cap off the orange juice and chugs half the bottle, not breaking eye contact with Al the entire time.
Al is unfazed. “Maybe.” He says, crossing his arms.
“Well, I think they look good,” Winry declares. Then her eyes go wide and she quickly turns back into the fridge, her cheeks flushing a bright pink.
Al turns slowly back to Ed, a knowing look on his face and an insufferable glint in his eyes.
Ed picks up the knife he was using to cut his meat and points it at his brother. “Shut up.” He says, before Al can even open his mouth.
“But-”
“I’m going to return you to the Void if you say one more word. ”
“I just think-”
“Shut. Up.”
Al just laughs.