A/N: First of all, huge thanks to all who gave such nice feedback on the first chapter! It’s what keeps me doing this 🙂 I hope you guys will like this one, it was quite fun to write (I’m sorry if there are any inaccuracies in the figure skating part because I’m still quite a rookie when it comes to my figure skating knowledge). Special thanks to @vvavavoom who shared me this vid that inspired me to write this chapter! @aquietkerfuffle here you go!

Chapter one here <-

Next chapter: [x]

Words: 1868

Genre: romance (what I like to call fluff), little bit of humor, hurt/comfort later on

No warnings

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The lunch between
the hockey players and the figure players was a pleasant one. Ed and Winry
caught up with each other and shared what had happened to them after their families had left
Resembool. However, Ed didn’t bring up the accident that had let to him losing
his arm, and he was still wearing his gloves at the lunch. Ed’s teammates did
notice this, because usually when it was just them in his company, Ed didn’t bother
to hide his automail. They also noticed that Ed mostly talked about Al, and how
he was likely to be drafted first overall in Amestris’ biggest hockey league
the next summer. He was clearly very proud of his brother, while he belittled
his own achievements quite a bit.

Perhaps the
biggest event during the lunch occurred when Winry tried to shake Ed’s hand as
she promised to meet the guys the next morning when she had free time (but only
if they wouldn’t tell her coach, because if he ever found out, he would kill
Winry for putting herself into a potentially risky situation. What if an
accident happened and her Olympic journey ended?) Ed pulled his right hand away
quickly, and offered his left hand instead, and after some confused staring
Winry finally took it. She didn’t understand why he did that, but she did pay attention
to the weird sound Ed’s right arm made and narrowed her eyes. It seemed he wasn’t
telling her something… and she was determined to figure out what it was.

“Sorry, I think
I hurt my wrist a bit at the practice, I want to let it rest now…” Ed tried to
explain, and although he didn’t sound very convincing, Winry didn’t push it further.

The next
day Edward found himself at the ice rink far earlier than usual. He had slept
quite restlessly, but instead of his usual nightmares, a blonde-haired figure had
appeared in his dreams. He was a bit on the edge the entire way to the practice,
and not even Roy bothered to tease him too much.

Ed was
already on the ice when Winry finally showed up with skates in her arms and a
tired smile on her face. Even though as an athlete she did have a pretty strict
schedule, she had never been a morning person, because instead of going to
sleep early she rather read “Automail weekly” or played with her tools. So many
times her coach Mr. Garfiel (who happened to know a good deal about mechanics
too) had had to order her to go to bed when she had passed out on the sofa in
an awkward position with her mechanics books and magazines around her.

The
previous evening, she had run into the bobsleigh team and with starry eyes
asked them to tell more about their sleighs. One of the guys had offered to
share his information over a late dinner, and Winry had agreed to join him.
However, it turned out the man was more interested in getting the pretty and
popular figure skater into his hotel room, so Winry quickly turned him down
(for some reason, Winry saw a golden-haired boy in her mind when she did that)
and withdrew into her own room. She spent the rest of the evening on the
internet, searching how bobsleighs were made.

Back at the
ice rink, Winry had to cover her mouth to hide her yawn as she approached Ed
who asked her teasingly: “Not a morning person?”

“I got fixated
on something last night and didn’t notice the time… You guys happen to have coffee
in the locker room?”

“Yeah, we
do, but it’s probably better if you don’t go there right now. Shirtless Mustang.
No one wants to see that.”

“Oh,” Winry
blushed and laughed shyly.

“But I
could get you some coffee if you want to,” Ed suggested, and Winry accepted his
offer gratefully.

“Thanks!
Smells so good.” She took the cup from Ed when he returned and gave him a smile
that left Ed extremely flustered, and he simply nodded at her.

As Winry
was sipping her coffee, a voice behind the pair said: “What do we have here?
Elric, since when do you bring people coffee?”

“Hey, just
because you are my captain, doesn’t mean you can boss me around like some…” Ed
gave Roy Mustang a dark look, but he didn’t want to go for his best insults now
that this girl was right in front of him.

“Short of insults? How lame, Fullmetal.”

Winry could
practically see steam come out of Ed’s ears as he glared at Mustang furiously.
Where did that nickname come from, she wondered, but didn’t have a chance to ask,
because Ed was already yelling:

“Don’t.
call. me. that! Also, if someone’s short of something, that’s…”

“Relax,
Elric, he’s just trying to embarrass you in front of Ms. Rockbell,” Hughes
tried to calm him down, and to his surprise Ed did take a deep breath and turn
his attention back to Winry.

“So… how
about we just start?”

“Sounds
good,” Winry agreed, and after putting her skates on on the bench (she had only
access to the locker room at the figure skating arena, so she couldn’t use the
ones in this one) she stepped on the ice. She looked like a whole different
person compared to the one who had just drunk coffee as she started gliding around
effortlessly.

“How do you
do that? I have skated just as long as you have, but…”

“I’m sure
it’s just the way we practice. You guys focus on the speed, your stamina, the
stickhandling, taking and giving hits, and so on, while we focus on doing our
moves as cleanly as possible. Balance is of course really important, and we for
example get a lot of tips on how to not get dizzy when spinning.”

She speeded
a couple of meters and spun for a long while. Ed frowned and asked then:

“Do you
think I could learn to do that?”

“Like I do?
It requires years of work. I don’t doubt your skills, but spinning probably won’t
help you score more, so that’s not something you should spend a lot of time on.
But, I can teach you some basics that might help you to improve your balance in
a different way than the practice you guys do.”

“Sounds
good to me.”

It turned
out Winry was right to start from the basics. Ed had to try the arabesque
spiral many, many times before he managed to make it look somewhat decent (and
he huffed in annoyance when Winry told him it was one of the first moves a
figure skater learns). He turned red when Winry decided to show how the
position should look like and put her hands on his waist to adjust him. It
helped though, because after that his movements looked notably better and he started
to gain confidence.

“You know
what?” Winry joked when Ed decided to take a breather, “you almost looked
pretty out there.”

That made
Ed’s entire team burst out laughing, and the young man looked like he could
kill someone.

“Hey, I
meant it in a good way,” Winry tried to cool him down, “you have already
improved a lot. How do you think I would look like if I switched to hockey gear
and tried the things you are good at?”

Ed almost
slipped “better than me for sure,” but he managed to keep his mouth shut this
time.

After that
it was time to switch to jumps, and Winry suggested Ed would change to figure
skates because the blades in the hockey skates made jumping difficult, but Ed
didn’t listen. After falling twice while trying a basic waltz jump, he finally
gave in and took the skates Winry had brought with her (she had snuck an extra
pair that no one used from the locker room when she had decided to help the boy).
He stumbled a bit at first, but eventually figured out how the skates worked
and managed to do a jump that could be counted as the waltz jump. To Ed’s annoyance,
Roy had mastered it first, and he was now flexing his muscles to Riza Hawkeye who
for some reason had decided to show up at the men’s practice, but Riza seemed
rather uninterested.

“Captain
Bastard, stop that and focus on the practice,” Ed snapped, but Winry noted that
perhaps Ed could take a break too if he managed to do an axel (“not fair,
Mustang has practiced figure skating with his aunt his entire childhood!”) with
hockey skates on. Of course Ed didn’t manage to do that, but he did the waltz
jump (as cleanly as a hockey player can) soon after that, and Winry promised
him a breather.

“So, when is
it time for the twists?” Ed asked as he and Winry were sitting on the bench
taking a sip from their water bottles.

“If you
want to try spinning, perhaps the
best way to start would be to use the correct term.” Winry nudged Ed’s shoulder
with hers teasingly.

“Oh, two
can play this game. How about you try to explain icing to me.”

“I have no
idea why I would need to, but fine: it’s the sugary thing you put on cupcakes
and stuff.”

When Ed
rolled his eyes, she added: “Oh come on, do you really think I don’t know
anything about hockey? An icing occurs when you shoot the puck across
the centre red line and the opposing team’s goal line, and no one
touches the puck before it crosses the goal line.”

Ed just
stared at the girl in surprise, and she explained:

“I used to
play hockey until I was like 12 and decided to start focusing on figure
skating.”

“You did?”

“Yeah.
Sometimes I kinda missed hockey when I was younger. But then I saw in some news that you had scored another
hat trick or something and it drove me forward in my own goal to become a good figure
skater.”

“Did you
really pay attention to my doings even though we hadn’t seen each other for
years?” Ed asked in amazement.

“I know
this is silly because we were like 5 when we were separated, but… I always
considered you my friend, even though we were so young back then. I often
wished I could have contacted you or traveled to Resembool but I never could
for various reasons.”

“Oh. That’s…
nice of you.”

The couple
didn’t notice how close they were, how their noses almost bumped, until someone
whistled behind them and exclaimed:

“Yoo
lovebirds! Don’t you think the break is over? Mustang here is going crazy.”

“Ugh… I
guess he’s right,” Ed sighed and extended his arm to pull Winry up from the
bench. That was a mistake, though: he was only wearing his thin glove,
not the hockey one, on his right hand, and Winry could feel the hardness of it
through the glove. She shot a very confused look towards Ed, and from his face
she could see that he had just realized what had just happened.

“Ed, what’s
wrong with your hand?”