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Certainty	By : Skyflower Category: Fullmetal Alchemist > Het - Male/Female Views: 9301 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Full Metal Alchemist, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Certainty
- 1
Notes: This fic takes place when Ed and Winry are eighteen. Al has been restored; Ed hasn't.

Disclaimer: I don't own FMA, although I wish I owned Ed and Winry so I could make them do this for real. If they were real, that is.

****

"It's finished!" Winry crowed as she gave the screwdriver a final twist and stepped back from the work table. Tool still in gloved hand, she twirled around and gestured to display the finished product to her audience.

Except her audience hadn't been paying any attention up until now.

Ed yawned, lifting his gaze from the book he was reading on the windowsill. "Looks good, Winry," he said. "Is that for the tractor accident kid that came last week with his mother?"

Winry sighed heavily. "First of all," she said, "Grandma finished that automail yesterday. Second of all, that's the whole reason she andare are out today. They're paying a house call because the boy's doctor said he shouldn't travel anywhere in his condition. Third�" Winry set down the screwdriver to in order to lift her new piece as she landed the last verbal punch, "that kid lost his left arm in the accident." She held up the automail so Ed could clearly see which side of the body it belonged on.

"A right arm� So that's for�"

Winry was beaming.

"Hey!" Ed slammed his book shut indignantly and jumped down from the windowsill. "You should've told me you were making me a new one! You didn't even measure me for it, and look what happened. You got the size all wrong! That arm's way too small to fit �"

"I don't need a tape measure to know what size you are," said Winry, walking over to where Ed was standing. "What kind of mechanic would I be if I couldn't tell when you've outgrown your current automail by a whole half centimeter?"

Ed looked down at his right arm, then to the new one that Winry hol holding next to it for comparison. His face darkened.

"Well, it looked a lot smaller from across the room," he muttered, turning away and scowling at an oil stain on the floor.

"Cheer up," Winry said as she returned the arm to its place on the worktable for the time being. "A half centimeter's a lot � for you, at least. And I'll start on your new leg this evening." She sighed happily and and gazed at the metal arm she'd worked on steadily for the last four days. "This is most definitely the best piece I've ever made!"

"You say that every time you finish something," accused Ed.

"Because it's true every time. I'm always improving, so each new thing I make is my best one." Winry plucked her work gloves off and tossed them on the bench beside the table. "That's why I'm a great mechanic."

"You've never been modest, have you."

"I'm every bit as modest as you are, Mr. I-Became-A-State-Alchemist-When-I-Was-Twelve," she retorted. "Besides, lots of other people have said I'm great. Grandma and Al and dozens of our customers have said it." Winry folded her arms as if to finish with "So there!" But her satisfied smile disappeared after a pithy moment of silence when she saw how Ed was doing his best to look bored with her speech.

"In fact," she finally continued, "I think just about the only person who hasn't said it is you." Her mischievous tone didn't go unnoticed by Ed, who took this statement as the challenge it was obviously meant to be.

"If you're waiting to hear it from me, you can forget it. Your ego doesn't need any more inflating," he said matter-of factly, reaching for his book once again. "Jeez, you're almost as bad as Colonel Mustang."

"Really? I bet I know a way to make you say it." The gleam in Winry's eyes and the way she clenched her jaw after those words matched the now almost dangerous edge in her voice that Ed had learned to recognize years ago. But instead of reaching for her favorite wrench on the toolbench as Ed had expected her to do next, Winry began walking towards him again, a brisk pace with heavy footsteps, arms swinging firmly back and forth.

Three strides was all it took, and Ed had no time to both register and respond to the puzzling action before Winry was standing in directly front of him. He did, however, register the sharp tug around his waist that came less than a second after she halted. Then, looking down, his eyes registered thd ofd of his belt grasped in Winry's left hand, held back to a position that would undo the clasp with one more pull in the right direction.

And as his mind and body registered all the things that could mean, he was jolted � not in a way that could exactly be called painful � by the possibilities of what his mechanic was planning to do to make him speak.

The next moment, he was grabbing his belt away from Winry while hearing himself shout, "What the hell was that for?!"

Whe loo looked up at her, she began laughing, high-pitched and flustered, shoulders shaking up and down. "That was priceless! You're so easy to scare, Ed! What did you think I was going to do, molest you?"

Unfortunately for Winry, she wasn't as good an actress as she was a mechanic. Turning away from Ed, she stifled her laughter by covering her mouth with both hands. This appeared more to be a poor attempt to hide her face, which had turned almost the same color as the pink bandanna on her head. Suddenly, Ed found himself regretting having pushed her away. But why? Because doing so had embarrassed her? Or�

"Winry�"

Because he had wanted her to continue?

Winry's laughter had died down as Ed spoke her name, and her voice was quiet now. "I'm sorry. I went too far." She slowly turned to face him again, but her eyes were lowered and focused somewhere beyond him.
Ed hated himself now. Why had he been so impulsive when he had never really wanted Winry to let go? And why hadn't he wanted her to let go? He knew the answers to those questions. He just didn't want to admit them to himself, and he knew why he didn't want to. It was the only thing that kept him from pulling her against him and kissing her, now that he was sure of how she felt towards him.

Still, he couldn't leave her feeling bad about what she'd done.

"No, you didn't. You didn't go too far," he said, still waiting for to lto look him in the face.

It took Winry a moment as she swallowed, drew in a deep, shaky breath, and lifted her eyes. When she finally spoke, it was with new self-assurance.

"Yes I did. I should have started with this." And suddenly she was no longer giving Ed the option of refraining from kissing her.

As soon as it happened, all of Ed's worries were involuntarily abandoned to the back corners of his mind and replaced with the desires that had previously slept there, waiting to be awakened by the person they were centered around. This was what the selfish part of him wanted, had wanted for so long, and finding out that Winry wanted it too made it impossible for him to deny those thoughts of his anymore.

Ed pulled away from her, trying not to keep too close but not wanting to distance himself too far. That wasn't a problem. Winryrms rms held them at a perfect interval, and her eyes told him that she had felt him kissing her back and wasn't about to be shy anymore.

"This is how you plan to make me compliment your mechanic skills, huh?" he asked, suddenly feeling the need to break the silence.

"No," came the muffled answer from lips that had found their way to the space between Ed's neck and collarbone, at the same time that one hand began its painfully slow path down the length of his upper body. "I was just teasing you then. Your compliment wouldn't mean anything if I had to bribe you like this for it."

Winry may have been teasing him the first time, but it was nothing compared to what she was doing now. As her fingers once again reached his belt, Ed had to swallow back a moan before speaking again. "So you used that as an excuse. You were really going to�"

"I've wanted to for a long time. I couldn't wait anymore now that we finally had the house to ourselves, but I needed to find out for sure if you thought of me that way." The red that had been there before and disappeared suddenly returned to Winry's face. "And I knew for a long time that once I found out, I� I wasn't going to be satisfied with just kissing."

"You mean you�"

For the first time since they had kissed, Winry smiled. "I still have the box from Grandma in my dresser."

So that was what she meant; there was no mistaking it now. Ed remembered all too well the time last year, shortly after he and Al had moved back in with the Rockbells, when Auntie Pinako had sat the three teenagers around the table after dinner and handed them each a wallet-sized cardboard box. They had all listened, not daring to look at each other, as Pinako explained that she knew about the urges common to people their age and said if she was going to have sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds of opposite sexes living together under her roof, she'd rather be safe than become a grerandrandmother. Mortifying as it had been, even then Ed hadn't completely dismissed the idea that the contents of those boxes might be put to use one day. It appeared now that Winry hadn't, either.

Ed nodded and pressed his hips to Winry's, wordlessly letting her know that he also wanted � needed � to do more than kiss. His vision blurred as Winry took his hand and led him down the hallway to her bedroom.

She might change her mind if you bring hat'hat's worrying you. That's why you're keeping silent. You selfish bastard. Speak.

He was vaguely aware of her opening the top drawer of her dresser as he struggled to convince himself to talk to her, then of the two of them moving toward the bed, being lowered into it�

"Winry �"

It was no use. The name came out as a plea, which its owner responded to by hastily pushing up Ed's tank top. He could have stopped her. He should have stopped her. He didn't want to stop her. And she didn't stop, not until his clothes were off and her clothes were off and her hand was around him and � no, he couldn't have stopped her.

Then there was the sound of cardboard tearing and the words "hold still." Winry had said those words to him often before; each time she made the connection of automail to nerve. Except her hands never trembled at those times like they did now, so that Ed couldn't tell if she was talking to him or to herself. Still, those words coming from her had always had a certain comfort, despite being followed by indescribable pain. To Ed, it was her way of saying everything was going to be all right. So he let go of everything except the image of his childhood friend sitting naked beside him as he lay back on the smooth sheets and watched her.

"You know," Winry said with a relieved smile after what must have been only a minute or two, "they say most men kick and scream over having one of these put on them. Thanks for being so good about it."

"Just like automail attachment," Ed murmured, relaxed enough to speak again, but not without a slight shakiness in his voice. "Only this didn't hurt, so you don't need to treat me like a baby."

"Oh? You think that's how I'm treating you?"

It was true that what Winry was doing with her hands now was not something most people would think to do to any baby. A satisfied "hmm" was the only answer she got as Ed lifted his hand to stroke her side lightly with his fingertips. He continued to do so until she had lowered herself next to him on the bed, her eyes on the same level as his, looking straight into them. "I'll take that as a no," said Winry.

Then she was beneath him, for for some desperate reason he couldn't place, Ed tried to remember what he had been thinking about before the two of them entered this room. But there wasn't time to remember. There wasn't time to do anything except wonder what the hell he should do. Fo. For years he had known in theory what was supposed to happen when two people were like this, but how was it supposed to happen?

He felt Winry's hands coming to rest firmly on either side of him. She was pushing him lower� guiding him? Ed looked up, saw her head tilted back with her eyes lidded and brows furrowed. The vision of her like this, pleading, gave his hips an impulsive thrust--

He froze. The bolt of heat surgintointo his lower body told him he had done exa wha what he was supposed to do, so why was Winry suddenly gasping, her brows twisting to change her expression into one of pain, and why were there tears surfacing in the corners of her eyes?

Her mouth opened slightly, and Ed waited an agonizing moment for her to scream or cry, but there was nothing. She appeared to be silently forming a word. One syllable. From the shape of her lips, it looked almost like� his name? Wait, she was saying it again.

"Yes."

She didn't sound hurt. Ed looked closer and saw that through her tears and underneath her look of pain, Winry was smiling. Was this how it was supposed to be? Softly, and as gently as he could, he questioned her.

"What did you say?"

More tears welled up, but with them her smile came through even more brightly. The last time she had looked like this was when she finished her automail piece earlier that day.

"Yes," she said again, followed by the word it had been mistaken for atst. st. "Ed."

He loved what it did to him to hear his name spoken that way, loved it because it let him know he was doing the same to her. It became a cycle he never wanted to break.

So Winry broke it instead.

He had never heard her sound so pleased before. It was too much to take knowing that it was his doing, his intuition telling him that only he could get this response from her. Him and nobody else, not even �

Al.

Ed's jaw clenched and his eyes shut forcefully as he felt himself following Winry's lead. Why did he have to be reminded now, just as his physical sensations and emotions were reaching the height of his awareness and screaming about how right this was?

Winry shifted upward on the sheets while the heat slowly diminished, and when they were finally separate, Ed collapsed sideways into the space Winry had made for him on her right.

"Good thing you didn't land on your automail arm," Winry chuckled softly. "That would bee been an anticlimactic ending."

Not as anticlimactic as Ed bringing up what was on his mind, he thought. atedated to do it then, with Winry looking so happy. It would be selfish to say anything; he could end up hurting her feelings, making her think he didn't love her enough. But then, hadn't he already been selfish toward Al? Wasn't that what he was worried about to begin with?

Winry reached over and began tracing the hinges on the metal arm. "You're thinking about someone else right now, aren't you?" She said it with such a knowing tone that Ed mentally swore at himself for being so easy to read. Hearing it out loud made him feel even more ashamed.

"I'm sorry, Winry."

"Idiot," she scolded, voice still gentle. "You're afraid you're going to start loving me more than you love your brother."

"No! That's not it! It's just�" Then as suddenly as Winry had said it, Ed realized she was exactly right. He'd been afraid having this relationship with Winry would hurt Al, but had never thought about why it would hurt him. Ed knew from the way his brother always talked about her that Al thought of Winry as a sister. It wouldn't hurt him to simply know that Ed and Winry were in love. It would only hurt him if Ed were to replace him with Winry.

"Ed," Winry sighed, "you would never let that happen. Can't you trust yourself?"

He couldn't stand seeing her look disappointed like this. "It's something I've never done in so long," he explained. "Al has always been more important to me than anyone else. What if I find out I've forgotten how to love more than one person equally?" It's not just that I might love you more than Al. What if instead, I can't love you enough because of him?

"You idiot!" Winry said again, not so gently this time. "You think love works like your alchemy, where you have to give up loving one person in order to love another? Equivalent trade, is that it?"

She was gripping his automail so forcefully that Ed half expected it to shatter. She was angry, but she wasn't letting go, because she trusted him. Ed knew he couldn't make her let go, for both of their sakes. And to do that, he needed to do as she said, and trust himself.

"You," he finally said, "have the most unscientific and flawed understanding of equivalent trade I've ever heard."

"Is that all you can say?"

No. He had to say right now what he wanted to believe, even if he didn't fully believe it yet.

"But maybe you're right about the rest of it. I mean, about love."

"Of course I am!"

Ed hoped that one day he could be as certain of that as Winry herself was. But right now, he also needed to tell her what he was certain of.

"Winry, I�"

Her eyes widened as she loosened her grip on Ed's arm, sliding down it to put her hand in his, and wait.

"I think you're a great mechanic."

Ed knew those weren't the words Winry had expected to hear, but her surprised laughter was exactly what he had expected to get in return for them. "Of course I am!" she said for the second time. "That's probably the closest you're going to get to saying 'I love you,' huh?"

Once again, she was right. Because as someone they had both known once said, men do best with actions ind ofd of words.

And so, taking the arm that Winry had created for him, Ed pulled her in close and showed her what he knew with a certainty that could never be found in words.
- 1
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Certainty