Summary: It’s time for little Emma’s birthday, but Edward is probably more excited than she is. (parental!Ed, EdWin)

Part 1 here, but you don’t have to read it to understand this one.

A/N: I hoped I’d manage to write this earlier, but now I’m glad I didn’t because I heard it’s the wonderful @kilmartin85′s birthday. May this be my birthday present to you! You deserve it so much because you are honestly one of the forces that keeps me want to contribute to the EdWin fandom. 

Characters: Ed, Winry, Al, Edwin babies Emma and Alan

Words: 1350+ 

Genre: fluff (breaKING I know)

No warnings

---

“… Happy
birthday, dear Emma, happy birthday to youu!”

Emma Elric
woke up with a start. It was only 7 am, but her father had just sung her the
traditional birthday song, very loudly. Edward had been so excited about his
daughter’s birthday (much more than Emma herself) that he had insisted he bake
the birthday cake even though Alphonse was expecting a new research report from
him as soon as possible. The workaholic he was, Ed rarely left such things undone,
but after becoming a father he always prioritized his children.

During his
years as (what he liked to call) househusband, Ed had become quite a good cook.
In his opinion cooking wasn’t that different from alchemy; you take a certain
amount of ingredients, mix them, and their form changes. Winry was often so
occupied with her work that cooking had become Ed’s job, and usually the kids
didn’t mind. But it was the weekend now and Emma didn’t appreciate the
breakfast and Ed’s off-key singing so early in the morning.

“Dad, it’s
fu… um, way too early get up! I wanna sleep more!”

Ed decided
to ignore the curse word his 5-year-old had almost said and just smiled.

“No
sleeping on your birthday! We are gonna celebrate the entire day!”

“Ugh,” Emma
grunted and pulled her covers back on. She was “saved” by her mother who
mumbled something about the baby in her stomach kicking hard and Ed would miss
it if he didn’t come back to their bedroom. He rushed to Winry, but not before
making Emma promise she’d get up soon enough.

Two hours
later, Emma finally decided she was hungry and joined her family in the
kitchen. Her big brother Alan stuck his tongue out at her, then ruffled her
hair a bit to wish her a happy birthday. Her dad looked at her mother and
particularly her belly as if he had never seen anything as amazing, and her
mother seemed happy to see Emma up. She gave Ed a fake-annoyed look and got up
to hug her daughter.

“My baby
girl is getting so big!”

“Mum! I’m
not a baby, I’m five!”

“You’re
still our baby, though.”

Emma shook
her head and tried to pull away from the hug. Her parents were impossible. She
was glad she had already asked uncle Al if she could go to ride on one of his
horses later that day, so she’d get one moment alone.

However, Emma
was wrong about getting to be alone. When uncle Al was setting her on the
saddle, the overprotective father of hers ran from somewhere (she didn’t even
want to know where he had been watching her) and yelled something incoherent
about her being too small to ride a big horse. But before Ed got closer, he
fell on horse manure and cursed under his breath. Emma just giggled and ordered
the horse to move and left her father lay on the dirty ground.

Emma loved
playing with the animals at Al’s; besides horses, he had more cats than Emma could count,
and two golden retrievers to make sure the cats didn’t get too lazy. Emma had always
wanted her family to adopt one of them, but Ed said that one puppy, adopted
from Riza Hawkeye, was definitely more than enough for the already busy family.

When Ed
came to pick his daughter up after going home to clean himself, she was
brushing the fur of one of Al’s kittens and ignoring the hisses and scratches
the shy cat tried to give her.

“Emma, the
poor cat doesn’t like being brushed. Why don’t you let it go?” Ed asked as
nicely as he could. He never raised her voice to his daughter.

“But Mommy
always says I should brush my hair, so it won’t get tangled, and cats need to
do the same thing!” Emma answered with her 5-year-old’s logic.

“Cats take
care of their own hair, sweetie,” Ed said, and the kitten finally managed to
wriggle out of Emma’s arms.

“Tell you
what,” Al interrupted, “I’ll let you borrow one of them once they are old
enough and we’ll see how well you take care of it. If it works out… maybe I’ll
let you keep it.”

“Alphonse!
I’ve already said I don’t want any cats in the house!” Ed shot an annoyed glare
at his brother who didn’t care.

“But she
clearly loves animals and what’s a better way to teach her some responsibility
than letting her take care of her own pet? I think it’s an awesome idea.”

“Hmmmp,” Ed
sneered but didn’t object anymore. If his daughter and Al had decided to act against
him, there wasn’t much he could do against those forces of nature.

---

Back at
home, Ed asked if Emma wanted to help him decorate her birthday cake. She did,
but before that her hair needed to be braided, so that her already quite long
hair wouldn’t fall into the cream. Ed had been practicing complicated braids on
Emma (and Winry)’s hair a lot in the past, so he did the neat fishtail braid in
record time. Emma decided that her dad needed to have his hair prettied out
too, and she put all kinds of flower and butterfly pins in it.

Winry came
out of her workshop in that moment and laughed at the sight.

“You know
what? I think I’m gonna take a picture of this situation and send it to
Brigadier General Mustang. I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

“Don’t.
You. Dare,” Ed growled to his wife threateningly, but suddenly his face lit up
and he said in a completely different tone:

“Or maybe
you should, so he’d see what a wonderful daughter I have.”

“My husband
is a weirdo,” Winry sighed, “Although I guess I’ve known that from the moment I
met you.”

“You wouldn’t want to have it any other way!” Ed yelled at her back as she turned to go back to her
workshop.

Soon he and
Emma withdrew into the kitchen to decorate the cake. While Ed whipped the
cream, Emma chose the decorations on the cake, but her father was disappointed to
see that she picked strawberries instead of the skull shaped candies he had
found at the market. Winry hadn’t allowed Ed to buy black food coloring,
claiming that she didn’t want her daughter’s birthday cake to look like it was
someone’s funeral. The “boring” cake tasted good, though, so Ed let the topic
be.

While the
family was in the middle of eating the cake, a postman knocked on the door
leaving a letter to Ed. He opened it, and his expression changed into a sour
one as he read the message.

“What’s
wrong, Ed?” Winry asked worriedly. That face didn’t know good.

“Mustang
wants me to go to Central… Says he wants to talk about some job…”

“Haven’t
you told him ages ago that you are done with the military?”

“I have,
but he couldn’t care less.”

“You know,
I think he only wants to see you. He doesn’t say it out loud, but you’re almost
like son to him.”

Ed rolled
his eyes at Winry’s words, but then said:

“You know
what? Maybe I should go. BUT I will take you guys with me and remind him that I
have something he doesn’t.”

“Don’t be so
rude. It’s not his fault the military rules forbid…” Winry scolded her husband,
referring to Mustang’s relationship with Ms. Hawkeye.

“Yeah,
yeah, I know. But, I will still take you guys with me!”

“But what
about my work?”

“If you ask
me, you should take a break from it because you are raising a miracle inside you. I can personally
contact your customers that you are not available for a while.”

“Why would
you do that?” Winry asked, surprised.

“Because you
guys are my family and I will not let the same thing that happened to my
childhood family happen to us. We are in this together.”

He took his
wife and his children into a hug and the look he gave to Winry let her know
he meant everything he said.