I love how in FMA, you have all these longstanding friendships/partnerships with romantic undertones as most of the love stories.
And then there’s Al and Mei. Al meets Mei, and she instantly gets these incredibly unrealistic expectations of how manly and gentlemanly and perfect Al is. And, normally, a show would have her learn he’s not all that. But instead FMA has Al proceed to prove every single one of her expectations right and the fantasy is never broken for a second.
I recently hit 1000 followers on this blog, so I thought I could do a “giveaway” in my way: by writing a fic about the topic of your choice.
Rules:
You must be following me.
Reblog/like/reply to this post sometime between March 7th-11th (several reblogs accepted).
I’ll randomly pick one of the participants and contact them for the details on the fic on March 12th.
Note: I’ll write only for the FMA fandom, and only canon (or almost canon) pairings (EdWin, AlMei, Royai, etc) OR friendships/platonic/familial ships accepted! If I’m not comfortable with the topic of your choice, I will ask you to give me another topic (but as long as your wish meets the above mentioned criteria, that shouldn’t be the case. I’m most comfortable writing EdWin, but the fic /doesn’t/ have to be about them).
The fic will be 1000-3000 words long, depending on the topic.
Happened in the previous chapter: Winry teaches Ed and his teammates some basics of figure skating, but while doing that, she discovers something’s not quite right with Ed’s right arm.
A/N: thanks again for the feedback I got for the latest chapter, it’s what keeps me writing ♥ This chapter is dedicated to all of you who have supported me in writing this!
Genre: romance, bits of humor, some hurt/comfort later on
Ed quickly pulled
his right hand from Winry’s and tried to think of a way to avoid answering her
question. However, from Winry’s stubborn stare he knew that wouldn’t be easy.
“N-nothing?”
he attempted lamely, but Winry didn’t believe that for one moment.
She decided
there was no point in tip toeing around the topic, so she asked directly: “Do you…
do you have a prosthetic arm?”
What
surprised Ed was that instead of sounding slightly scared, like many of those
who knew about his automail had sounded when they found out about it, Winry
sounded curious. And maybe slightly worried, but that wasn’t so surprising.
Ed lowered
his voice so only Winry could hear his answer: “Fine, I do, but please keep
your voice down.”
“Huh? I
thought your teammates know about it?”
“Yes, but
in a place like this you never know who might be listening… Hell would break
loose if people found out about this.”
“What do
you mean?”
“Well, can
you imagine what people would do if they heard someone was playing with a metal
arm on the national team? They would immediately roast me out of here.”
“Oh…”
Winry hadn’t
considered someone could possibly have an issue with an automail, so she was
embarrassed she hadn’t immediately realized it. Thankfully, Ed saved her from
further embarrassment by continuing:
“Yeah. My arm could cause someone some serious damage if I wasn’t careful, and
not just that, it’s also a risk to myself. If I hit my shoulder in a wrong way
and it got inflamed… that would be really bad.”
“But you’re
still willing to take the risk?”
“Hockey is
one of the few things that makes me happy, I’m not gonna give up on it just
because of this… issue.” Ed looked at Winry darkly. “I feel I owe it to my
brother who’s been rooting for me this entire time.”
“You’re
doing this for Alphonse?” Winry asked in surprise.
“Mm. He’s the only family I really have left, and he’s reason why I didn’t quit when things got difficult. He is expecting me to keep doing my
best every day.”
“Wow. You
know, you keep impressing me. I’m sorry, but my first impression of you was
that you are probably someone who’s playing for the money or something of that
nature. But sounds like I was wrong,” she added softly.
Ed was
visibly flustered. He wanted to say he really wasn’t as noble as he had just
made himself sound, but he didn’t have time because Winry asked:
“You know…
this is gonna sound weird, but… can I see it? The arm?”
“Uh… I
guess. But not here, let’s go to our locker room. It’s OK, no one’s there right
now.”
Ed quickly informed
his teammates that he’d take a short break and pulled Winry with him.
Back in the
locker room, Ed took his hockey jersey off and rolled up the sleeve of his
undershirt. A thick layer of bandage covered the arm made of metal, and he
removed it too. He didn’t know how he had expected Winry to react to seeing his
automail, but it hadn’t been like this: she started clapping her hands and made
a high-pitched sound that couldn’t be anything but a squeal of excitement. Her
eyes were shining brighter than he had ever seen so far.
“Um, so,
here it is,” Ed said awkwardly as he lifted his arm, so Winry could see better.
“It is so
pretty! One day I’m gonna build one of these!” she exclaimed happily as she
examined the automail.
“Really?”
Ed had a hard time imagining someone so graceful as Winry wearing overalls, oil
and grease on her face and hands, but on the other hand, she hadn’t liked those stereotypical “girly” things as a child either.
“You’ll
see! Oh, but… can I ask you… what exactly happened? Why do you have an automail
arm?”
“It’s not
something I like talking about… I was 11… and an accident happened. Afterwards
I got a blood poisoning and it got so bad the entire arm had to be removed…”
“That…
sounds… I’m sorry. I can’t even imagine how awful that must have been. But what
made you decide to get an automail arm? I’ve heard the operations are extremely
painful and difficult to do?”
“To be
honest… It wasn’t really me who made that decision. Or it was, but Mustang helped
quite a lot.”
“Your
teammate?”
“Yeah, him.
His organization had hired him to scout a few promising young players while he was
scratched due to a lower body injury… And he came to Resembool. He had heard
about me, but he didn’t know about my accident until we met. When he saw what
had happened, he immediately told me about a surgeon who had helped one of his
old playing mates in a similar situation.”
He stared
at something Winry couldn’t see with an unreadable expression and continued:
“I didn’t
make my decision right away, but Al encouraged me, so only like a month later I
had my surgery, and after that I’ve been the most well-kept secret of the
hockey world. There have been a couple of cases where someone has suspected
something, but we’ve managed to make them shut up, and here I am.”
“What makes
you believe I won’t tell anyone anything? Like you said, it is dangerous to
play with that arm,” Winry asked curiously, even though she had no intentions
to report him.
“I can’t
say I know you very well, although I hope that’s gonna change…” He gave Winry a
look that was supposed to be flirty. “… But I still got a feeling that you are
someone I can trust. I wouldn’t have told you about this otherwise.”
“You are
right, I’m not gonna report you to anyone…” Winry said and smirked slyly, “but
on one condition.”
“Oh. What
is it?”
“That you
are gonna let me ask you questions about your automail – just your automail,
you don’t need to tell me what happened to you if you don’t want to – and give
it a proper check-up.”
“Huh? That’s
an… extraordinary wish.”
Winry
shifted uncomfortably on the bench, thinking that she was making Ed think she
was a weirdo, but Ed didn’t seem too shocked when she finally dared to glance
at him. Even so, she wanted to explain:
“This is
going to sound like a very weird coincidence… But I want to become an automail
mechanic when I retire from figure skating. You know, a girl’s gotta have
dreams off the ice too… but yeah, how about it?”
“Well, if
that’s all you ask… It’s a deal! Do you have anything to do tomorrow after
lunch?”
Ed tried to
not look too eager about this excuse to see Winry again, but couldn’t help but
smile a bit when he asked his question.
“No, we
always take our naps after the lunch, but if I’m honest, I’m not much of a daydreamer
anyway, so that time sounds good to me!”
“Great! I’ll
see you then. Oh, and by the way… you are not the only one with… unconventional
off-ice interests…”
Ed had no
idea what made him confess that, but it was too late to back out now.
“Hmm? What
do you like then?”
“Biochemistry.”
“Edward
Elric, the famous hockey player and the developer of a groundbreaking
biochemistry theory… I like that,” Winry said, and rested her hand on his
shoulder for a moment.
“Are you
making fun of me?” Ed acted hurt, but Winry could see he wasn’t being too serious.
“Noo! Why
would I? Chemistry nerd.”
“Automail
freak.”
They both
laughed at the names they had just given each other but realized then that they
had spent too long in the locker room and decided to return to the ice. Mustang
made an inappropriate comment about where he thought the two had been, but
other than that, no one else made a scene about their lateness.
Winry continued
teaching the guys the basics of spinning, and even complimented Ed a bit (Maes
smiled knowingly on the background as she did that), and the duo finished the
day by promising each other that after the season they’d have a skill
competition at the Resembool rink.
The next
day after the lunch Winry found herself in front of Ed’s hotel room. She
knocked on the door once, but nothing happened. The figure skater didn’t think
much of it; maybe Ed was in the bathroom or had fallen asleep on his bed. But
when she knocked again after a minute and still heard nothing, she started
getting restless. She was behind the right door, right? And they had definitely
been talking about 12 o’clock?
“Ed! It’s
me, Winry!” she yelled. Ed’s door stayed closed, but Roy Mustang had apparently
heard her voice, and he peeked out of his hotel room.
“Uh, this
is Ed’s room, right?” Winry asked him.
“Yeah.”
“Did you
see if he came here after the lunch?”
“I was with
Ms. Hawkeye so I’m not sure, but I believe he did because he always reads his
chemistry books in his room on his free time…”
“Oh. OK. Thanks!” Winry said, and Roy turned to go back to his room. But before
he had time to close his door, Winry heard a bloodcurdling scream from Ed’s
room.
FMA appreciation life 