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Branded	By : ibshafer Category: Fullmetal Alchemist > Het - Male/Female Views: 13845 -:- 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.

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Title: Learning Curve – part 3

Part: 3/7 (Branded – series)

Author: ibshafer

Rating: R

Character/Pairing: EdXWin… or is it WinXEd?…

Disclaimer: I don't own these people, they own themselves and are just nice enough to let me
spin them around the page now and then; after this particular spin, though, you can bet Ed
withdraws his generosity... (Sorry, Ed! I love ya! Honest! You’re just so much fun to torture...)

Summary: In which Edward and Winry get some alone time…and in which the course of true
love runs anything but smoothly…

Warnings: sexual situations, but nothing too explicit

Genre: Fullmetal Alchemist; AU, I guess…

Spoilers: none

Feedback: Yes, please…

[From the previous chapter:]

…words were refusing to form in Edward’s brain just then. In fact, his brain was considering
mutiny. After all, he’d been ignoring it for several hours now, so what use was it anyway?

Slipping a tank top over her head, Winry spun to face him. She no doubt saw the last remnants of
his brain leaking out of his ears, because all at once her expression softened and she sat down
next to him on the bed.

“I’m sorry, Ed,” she said quietly.

Leaning in, she covered his hand with her own, squeezing, then softly kissed his forehead.

All members of the Team instantly returned to their posts.

Winry smiled at him gently, shaking her head, and stared deep into his slightly unfocused eyes.

“Meet me in the kitchen in five minutes, Ed.”

Huh?

“W-what,” he asked, unable to see anything but her lips.

“Meet me in the kitchen in five minutes.” She repeated and then spared a glance downward.
“And as much as I love the view, you should probably put some clothes on, too.”

Ed blushed so hard his ears throbbed. Suddenly shy, he pulled the sheet into his lap.

“Why should I meet you in the kitchen,” he asked, his voice slightly hoarse and more than a little
confused.

“You’ll see.”

I’ll see…

The lips were smiling again. It was nice.

And then he couldn’t see them any more because they were pressing gently against his own.

She was gone with a giggle, but not before she’d retrieved his shorts from the floor and flung
them at his face.

~*~*~*~

He came downstairs to find her packing a picnic hamper with food, humming softly to herself.
When he saw her in the kitchen, all happiness and light, he slowed his decent down the stairs, the
pang of a now all-too-familiar feeling poking him annoyingly in the center of his chest.

I’m the Fullmetal Alchemist! I’m supposed to be this prodigy… How can I be bad at this?

He bit the inside of his cheek so hard, he drew blood.

‘Hero of the People,’ my ass…

Folding a cloth around what looked to be a good-sized chuck of brownie, Winry was intent on
her task and hadn’t noticed he was there yet.

Considering how the last hour had gone, her frustration, with him, with the whole morning,
really, Edward would have thought she’d be impatiently tapping a toe or at the least, swearing his
name under her breath, but she wasn’t doing that. She wasn’t upset at all.

In fact, she seemed downright happy.

How can she be so calm? I thought she was … unsatisfied?

Ow!

There went that feeling again!

The geek in charge sent the assistant geek off to search for the source, leaving Edward paused
awkwardly on the stairs. Not knowing how long it was going to take and not wanting to be
discovered standing awkwardly on the stairs just staring at her, he quietly started down again,
hoping he’d be able to make a nonchalant entrance, the kind of entrance the ape on the book
cover no doubt made; the kind Mustang probably perfected when he was still in diapers.

Unfortunately for Edward at that moment, he was neither a) an ape; b) Roy Mustang or c)
anywhere near as cool as he wanted to be…

Unfortunately for Edward, the house was clearly conspiring against him…

When he hit the bottom step, a warped board there gave him away with a thundering, grating
creak and Winry looked up at him in surprise.

“Hey,” she said, smiling.

Ed instantly felt his cheeks coloring and he damned his blood for the show-off that it was, always
rushing to his face so it could be seen.

“H-hey,” he mumbled, awkwardly.

The time upstairs alone, dragging his clothes on, had given Ed the breathing room he needed to
get his brain in order. (All posts manned, sir!) He was still confused, still embarrassed at his
failure to make her happy, but she seemed calm, so why shouldn’t he be?

“We’re going on a picnic? Shouldn’t we be…” He glanced back upstairs somewhat sheepishly.

He was rewarded with a lovely blush that started in her cheeks and soon spread downward to her
collarbone. (And, Ed now knew, well beyond…)

“Picnic?” Winry shook her head. “Not we. You.”

Before he could ask her why, she’d handed him the hamper, then, taking him by the hand, she
steered him towards the door.

With her head, she gestured to the big oak tree in the yard. “That looks like a good spot.” She put
her book into his free hand.

“Don’t come back until you get it.”

It hadn’t been a particularly brilliant couple of hours for Edward so it came as no surprise to him
that he was confused by this.

“Until I get what?”

She patted him on the bum and pushed him towards the steps.

“When you get it… you’ll get it.” With a giggle, she stepped back into the house.

“Hey!” he called after her.

“Yes, Edward?”

“What’s with the hamper?”

She grinned at him widely.

“Lunch, silly.”

~*~*~

If there was anything in this world that Edward Elric relished, it was study. Books were worlds to
him, knowledge a mystery waiting to be unraveled.

But over the years, Edward had also come to another understanding, this one relating to the
nature of study, knowledge and unraveling mysteries: that sense of wonder and pleasure only
applied to topics, and books, he himself chose to study, and not to any imposed on him by
someone else, no matter how interesting the topic may have been. (Unless, of course, the subject
was alchemy, and then all bets were off…)

In school, before he and Al had stopped going, (just after Izumi had taken them on as
apprentices), his grades had been fairly good, but nothing to alert the media about. He did well
not because he studied hard, but because he just naturally absorbed information with ease. If a
subject interested him, he owned it. If it did not, he wouldn’t even rent it…

It didn’t help that he also had a rebellious streak a mile wide. When someone, no matter who,
was pushing something on him, if he wasn’t pushing back, he wasn’t Edward Elric.

And so, muttering under his breath, much more interested in the contents of the food hamper,
than the book itself, Edward made his way out to the oak tree to read Winry’s Sex Manual, as it
would heretofore always been known.

~*~*~

Nibbling at a chicken sandwich, Winry stood at the kitchen window and watched Ed settle
himself under the old oak tree. (Well, ‘settle himself’ was too tame a way to describe it; ‘threw
himself on the ground’ would be more accurate…)

She tried to reassure herself that she’d done the right thing. Not for the first time, she wondered if
she’d even been wrong to kiss him yesterday and cross that line, at all. Just because you want a
thing, just because you can have that thing, that thing being the heart, and the delicious body, of
one Edward Elric, doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing...

Winry worried that she’d ruined the lifelong friendship they’d had.

Then again, they’d been through so much together; as friends, as the only family each of them
had, surely they could survive this?

What was a little semi-successful, not-altogether-terrible sex between friends?

Right?

~*~*~

Back to the tree, Ed stared at Winry’s book, now propped up against the picnic basket, and he
could swear the damn thing was staring back at him…

The maiden was looking at him with lust-glazed eyes as the ape pawed his big, meaty hands
through that flimsy-looking bodice of hers.

‘Thirty minutes from now I’ll be screaming this big guy’s name and … finishing all over the
place… Bet you wish you were that good…’

Shut up, you’re just a freaking book. What do you know?

It was the ape’s eyes that did the most damage to Ed’s psyche, though. The blond behemoth just
oozed confidence, sexual confidence, something Ed had never questioned, or shit!, even thought
about before now.

‘Looks like size really does matter, pipsqueak! Bwahahaha….’

In his head, the ape threw his head back and laughed a big belly laugh at Ed’s expense.

Ed toed the book, knocking it flat onto its back cover.

There! Let ‘em stare at the tree for a little while…

Not even abject humiliation at the ‘hands’ of a romance novel, though, was enough to distract Ed
from a very familiar, very beloved, and what was very suddenly, a much more pressing need.

Catching a whiff of a most appealing olfactory combination emanating from the hamper – a
heady combination of fresh baked bread and deep chocolate brownies – Edward’s stomach,
usually the most assertive member of the Team, suddenly found its voice, sort of a low, yawning,
barbarian growwwl, and let it be known, to all other staff members, members who had clearly,
clearly been indulging some pretty less-than-savory whims of late, that It Was His Turn Now.

‘Wow,’ Edward thought to himself. ‘I’ve worked up quite an appetite today, more so than usual.
What have I been…’ The words trailed off in his head and he suddenly felt all the blood in his
body rush to his face. ‘Oh, yeah…’

A flash of Winry’s smooth neck, and the sweet taste of the skin just at the hollow of her throat,
wrought havoc with both Edward’s appetite and his circulatory system.

His senses assailed by the rich scent of chocolate, his memories utterly overrun by soft moans
and soft kisses, Edward shivered and burned, simultaneously.

Hmmmm, food.

Eyeing the hamper, in his mind, already feeling that soft country bread layered with lettuce and
what was no doubt chicken, filling his mouth, Edward let his stomach do a hopeful, happy dance
in his abdomen.

…..er, sex.

Tapping the book at his feet with a bare metal toe, while at the same time, in his mind, seeing
both the soon-to-be fornicating couple on the book’s cover and the soft curves cascading

down Winry’s smooth back – from shoulder to inwardly arched spine, past… (Edward’s mind
went blank as one of the Team, it didn’t matter who, accidentally leaned on the oxygen feed line
and the world started to spin)… to tender calves that were so easily tickled by his fingertips….

Food.

Sex.

The old oak at his back, a cotton blanket keeping the damp from his shorts, Edward waited
impatiently as a battle for control was waged in his head.

His libido and his recent memory had put together what they thought was a pretty convincing
slide show, but his stomach was threatening to scream so loudly, the distraction would render all
other pursuits a failure…

Food…

Sex…

On the one hand, a fat volume wherein two perfect physical specimens contemplated, talked
about, then had copious amounts of sex.

On the other, a cooler filled with sandwiches and what was beginning to smell like a whole pan
of brownies…

Food?

Sex?

Hmmm…

Food was food was food…

No arguing with that.

And reading about people having sex, no matter how many words were used, was not the same as
actually having sex yourself, so…

Food it was!

With a gleeful little gurgle, Edward (and his triumphant stomach) lunged for the cooler.

~*~*~
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