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From the backseat, cars never seemed terribly complicated. You turned the wheel and the rumbling machine seemed to effortlessly glide from one lane to the other, and, as if by magic, it knew to coast to a gentle stop in the perfect position every single time to drop its safe and sound passengers off at their destination. Forever used to the reliable pull of Resembool's loyal draft horses, Edward never even really thought about how much control the driver had over the vehicle. It felt as though the car were an obedient steed that simply navigated itself through the disorganized cobblestone streets of East City without need for much care from the person behind the wheel. It never felt as though driving took much of the Colonel's attention at all.
Now sitting behind the wheel himself, Edward felt as though the car were a growling, shuddering, unpredictable beast.
"Just try not to take any of the paint off the old girl," Roy threatened through a light chuckle. Everyone in Eastern Command knew that no matter how many dates the infamous playboy Colonel went on, his precious personal vehicle was his true girlfriend, if not his true love. "Or I'm gonna be taking the skin off your ass and I don't care who knows about it."
"So I just... pull this right?" Ed winced in his seat, grimacing down at the dashboard with the same confusion he'd given the Colonel's chessboard the one and only time the man had convinced him to try playing against him. It hadn't felt like much of a game– or at least not like any of the games he was familiar with and knew he liked. It was like a weird puzzle, with too many rules and too many pieces that were hard to tell apart from one another. The dashboard glared back at him with the same intimidating stare the chessboard had given him. He felt unimaginably stupid under the spotlight of its glowering gauges. "Or, uh, push?"
"Depends on what you're trying to do."
Of course the Colonel was going to make this difficult. He made everything difficult. Why would a driving lesson be any different?
"Uh, drive?" Edward replied lamely, frowning at the officer in the passenger seat who was content to passionlessly watch him writhe behind the wheel. "C'mon, Colonel, give me a hint..."
Never one to offer his conversational opponents the mercies of dignity, the Colonel seemed to glow at the sound of the teen's begging. Like a throned ruler before a starving peasant, he seemed to keen into the glow of his own power trip with a simple, vicious smirk.
"We're just taking it out of park. Press the brake down– keep it down, and press the clutch, then you can put it in first," He explained simply, as though it should be obvious as a four-point constructional matrix. Ed wished there were a kind of alchemy that could teleport him across town with just a simple array– then he wouldn't even need the stupid car. "What do you say out here in the East? Easy peasy? Easy peasy."
"First?" Ed frowned, feeling pathetically out of his depth. Alchemy was easy peasy– He's only been in the driver's seat for two minutes, but driving already felt impossible.
"First." Roy confirmed heartlessly.
"...Which means?"
"First gear. Come on, FullMetal, shouldn't you know all about engines?" The man's crooked grin always felt like the punchline of a mean joke at Ed's expense. He could never tell if that was what the Colonel was actually going for, but that was always, always, always what it felt like. "You've got two of 'em, don't you?"
Growing up around his granny's automail workshop, heavy machinery and their many dangers weren't new to him the way they might've been with other children in the East Area. Having two of her handcrafted prosthetics himself, he thought he was used to all the ins and outs of engines.
"Yeah, but they don't need all this!" Ed huffed with both arms outstretched, gesturing desperately at the cockpit of knobs, buttons, levers, and pedals that he didn't understand. How was he even supposed to know what "the clutch" looked like? It could've been any of these widgets and gizmos! "I don't need to put my leg in fifth or whatever."
"I'd be pretty impressed if you could," he rolled his eyes sarcastically, though it lacked the usual furious exhaustion that Ed expected from one of the Colonel's eyerolls. Usually, an eyeroll meant Ed was getting a lecture instead of a lunchbreak. "Why can't the old lady teach you how to drive anyway? I'd expect automail engineers to know a thing or two about gear shifts."
"You were in Resembool– did you see any cars?"
"Guess not," the Colonel shrugged. "So what? You country kids are taking your dates out on donkeys?"
The grin grew wider and more vicious. The Colonel seemed to take a teasing interest in "the simple life" that the East Area offered– always intrigued by what new jabs he could come up with to cut his youngest subordinate down another peg. Roy Mustang was one of those Central-sector natives that seemed to think very little of those who were raised closer to the border. Ed was from the type of far-East border village that thought men like him were fussy, spineless aristocrats who had never worked a day in their lives.
From the way the Colonel spoke about his childhood, Ed doubted the Resembool perception of Roy was any more truthful than Roy's description of Resembool's citizens as toothless, illiterate hicks. Truly, the two officers could not have come from more different worlds.
"Where do you think we're taking our 'dates' to?" Ed scoffed, trying to echo the Colonel's pompous eyeroll but it didn't feel nearly as intimidating when he tried it.
"Out to pasture? That's how the sheep do it, right?" The Colonel's laugh was a nasty school bell, clanging up from his bouncing chest to put a stop to Ed's fun. A wicked crescent smirk sliced across his soft features, his brows knitting upward in faux-ecstasy. Ed felt his whole body flush a shameful red as he realized what kinds of sounds the Colonel was imitating in the seat beside him. "Baa, baa~!"
"Ugh!! C'mon, Colonel– that's so gross!" Ed barked back quickly, disgusted by the Colonel's perverse baying. It was a crass, schoolboy-level joke– not something Ed felt a stuck-up city boy like the Colonel should be indulging in. "You said you'd help me, not just sit around making jokes!"
"I told you to put it in first."
"I don't know what that means!"
"Alright, alright, don't blow a gasket," Roy laughed gently, holding his hands up in a unspoken request for ceasefire. "Let me explain."
As the Colonel began rambling through the explanation about gears, shifts, clutches, sticks, and whatever else went into making the car go forward without running into anything, Ed's mind began to drift over the lines and veer off into uncharted territory. He knew he should be listening to his commander's brisk lecture on the inner workings of the vehicle that Ed was expected to be learning how to operate, but something had happened that made focusing on the task at hand impossible. Something Ed hadn't expected. Something that maybe even the Colonel hadn't stopped to consider the implications of.
When the Colonel leaned in to explain what position meant what gear, he'd done so by placing his hand over Ed's. His wide, smooth palm fully encompassed Ed's small left hand. It was rare that he wasn’t wearing his gloves these days– even rarer that someone would take the opportunity to touch his skin while it was uncovered. He had almost forgotten what even the smallest displays of skinship could feel like. There was a subtle warmth to his touch, there was a firmness to his grip, there were the minute, almost mechanical movement of muscles beneath the skin as he guided Ed's limp arm from first, to second, to God-knows-what gear. He felt his face flush with a subtle heat, a pinkish hue rising to meet his freckled cheeks as he lingered on the touch, on the Colonel's strange quips, his jokes about countryside dates, his jokes about the baying of sheep in the pasture, the way the man smiled, the way his eyes crinkled mischievously as he twisted the proverbial knife into Ed's chest again, and again, and again, with every little joke, with every little quip, with that stupid, stupid little bleating sheep act–
"So, you got all that?"
Ed stared back at the Colonel blankly, silently, dumbly.
"G... got what?"
Had he always been this stupid, or was this a side effect of puberty?
"...You're kidding, right?" Roy's grin fell off his face, his brows furrowed in disbelief. The slow dawning realization that Ed was not, in fact, kidding was obvious in every facial expression that followed until they landed at the rock bottom of pure disappointment. "...You're killing me, kid..."
"Maybe I should just... watch you do it first?"
"How are you supposed to learn by–" The Colonel's burst of annoyance was silenced as he turned his full attention to the teenager in the driver's seat. One look, and the Colonel stopped the lecture dead in its tracks. "...What's that look for, FullMetal?"
The pinkish hue was getting redder by the second.
"Wh-what look!?" Ed barked quickly, finally gaining the wherewithal to yank his hand away from the stick and free himself from the Colonel's overwhelming grasp. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late. Colonel Mustang could read anyone like an open book, and Ed was never one to play his cards terribly close to his chest to begin with. Whether Ed wanted him to or not, he could tell by the twinkle in his crinkled eyes that the man was developing a theory that would emotionally devastate Edward for years to come. The sort of dead-set embarrassment that you always remembered just moments before settling in for a good night's rest, the kind that made you wince and writhe beneath your sheets and wish you were never born.
A slender finger extended, playfully poking the flushed tip of Ed's freckled nose. The Colonel's grin grew viciously pleased, like a proud housecat with a mouse's tail between its teeth. "That look. What are you so red for? You can't really be that nervous, can you?"
Against its owners wishes, the Colonel’s teasing caused the interior of the car to fill with the soft, reliable sound of Edward's engine humming into the next gear. His one steel hand still on the steering wheel rumbled to life, matching the hurried beating of Ed's heart.
The Colonel leaned in. The sound grew louder.
"Oh... Is that your engine?"
"I-it's because you're being weird!" Ed defended quickly, pretending as though that excuse was even remotely believable.
"Well, my apologies, FullMetal," Roy whistled casually, his cruel smirk never once dropping from his face as he eased back into the passenger seat with one elbow propped against the window sill and his plush cheek dropped onto the perch of his fist. He hummed contentedly as if this moment wasn't going to shoot up the list of Most Traumatic Teenage Memories for Ed. “I didn't know this was the sort of thing that, ah... got your motor going."
"Nothing gets my motor going!!"
"Really? Hm. Maybe you should talk to a doctor..." The Colonel put on a face of faux-concern. "That can't be healthy for a boy your age."
Ed covered his face with his hands, groaning the way a dog whines and feeling the heat of his cheeks against his one flesh palm even through the white material of his glove. "...Can we just drive?"
"You wanna drive?" the Colonel's brows raised like the tail of a cat who just heard the sound of food clattering against the base of its bowl. Immediately, Ed knew to brace for impact because whatever the Colonel was planning to say next to was going to sting. "Then you should put it in first."
Another groan rose up from deep within Ed's pubescent chest, bubbling up like the head of one of grandma's favorite beers. His forehead knocked lamely against the top of the steering wheel, his mismatched hands in tight fists at ten and two, his teeth bared to no one with his face hidden behind the curtain of his golden bangs. He could feel the smug glow of the Colonel's ego boosting in the passenger seat beside him as he muttered: "I should've asked the Lieutenant instead..."