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Home	By : Crescentgray Category: Fullmetal Alchemist > Het - Male/Female Views: 2010 -:- 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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Disclaimer: I don’t own Full Metal
Alchemist.

A/N: This was written primarily for
Scarlett Raven, who posted a request for a Roy/Winry pairing. I hadn’t really thought of it before (or
really any FMA fanfics, I was just sort of browsing in here), but since I’m all
about alternative pairings, I figured why not?
And honestly, I kind of dig the idea of Winry and Roy together.

Angsty as
requested (though I don’t know how romantic it is), and hopefully I channeled
both characters appropriately so there won’t be any glaring OOCness. Also, I don’t actually know how long the train
ride between Central and Risembool is, but when I googled it I found a site that said it was a 48 hour trip,
one-way, so that’s what I’m using.

Set between the end of the series
and the movie (though some liberty is taken with the time frame and events –
for example, Roy has been demoted
to Corporal but is still in Central). Hopefully
not too clichéd. Told in 1^st
person, Winry POV.

Oh, and no happy endings. Fair warning.

Home

The kettle whistled at 1:55 p.m. on the first Sunday of September,
and I quickly took it off the heat and poured the boiling water over the
tea. Granny was cutting the crusts off
of those little cucumber sandwiches she liked to make before stacking them up,
cutting diagonally first one way, then the other. In place of the two sandwiches she’d made,
there were now eight little triangles of cucumber delight. Honestly, I don’t know how she did it. Cooking was a science but no matter how
closely I followed her recipes, I could never quite get my sandwiches to taste
like hers. Which, I suppose, was why I
was in charge of tea and she was in charge of food.

“There’s a smudge of grease on your
right cheek, dear,” she chuckled.

I frowned and grabbed a dish towel,
scrubbing fiercely at my cheek. Really,
it’s not like he hadn’t ever seen me in a worse state of disarray. I almost said as much but just as I opened my
mouth to speak, there was a sharp rapping from the front door. I glanced at the clock, and saw it was
exactly 2:00 p.m. He was right on time. As usual.

“Why don’t you get the door and
I’ll move the tea to the sitting room?” Granny suggested, giving me a gentle
shove in that direction. I walked
quickly to the front door and opened it, smiling politely at the man standing
on our porch.

“Good afternoon,” I said amicably
with a little smile.

“Hello, Winry,” he replied, taking
me in at a glance. Suddenly I realized I
was still holding the dish towel in my hands when I noticed the amusement
sparking in his one, coal black eye.

I grinned at him. “Won’t you come in, Brigadier General?”

He stepped in, brushing past me,
and I shut the door behind him before facing him again. He was wearing that tight, controlled smile
of his, the one that he almost always wore.
His mask.

“You can call me Roy, you know,” he
said easily. “And I’m a Corporal now.”

I shrugged, still grinning broadly
up at him. “Old habits die hard, sir.”

“So they say, so they say,” he
replied. His eye roamed over me quickly,
and I wondered suddenly how disheveled I looked. Granny was always on me about my appearance,
and usually I made more of an effort than I had today, but I’d been working on
this new gearshift mechanism that I really thought could add a lot of
flexibility to certain joints and had completely lost track of time. If I could just get it right, I should be
able to get a lot more dexterity out of automail fingers. I’d been working on it until Granny called me
at 1:45, reminding me of both the
date and the time. I hadn’t really had
any time to pull myself together.

“You have something here,” he said
quietly, gesturing vaguely at his cheek.

I laughed, and while his smile was
still just a mask, there was genuine warmth in his one eye as he watched me.

“Yeah,” I answered. “Just a bit of grease that I was trying to
get off,” I continued, waving the dishtowel for emphasis and, hopefully,
explanation. “See, I’m having a hell of
a time with this one gearshift that I’m working on. It’s really delicate work, a tiny little piece,
and the main problem that I’m having is I can’t get the lubrication just
right. See, if I use a standard grade
oil it just gunks up the whole thing, but the lighter oils break down too
quickly and then the whole mechanism just grinds to a halt. Since it’s so small, the teeth of the gears
have to be really perfectly lined up and without the proper lubrication, they
wind up stripping themselves. I’ve been
thinking about trying something nontraditional, maybe mineral oil? I don’t know, but there has to be something
that’ll work. Still, trying to figure
this thing out is so frustrating! Even Granny
doesn’t have any good suggestions, and you know how rare that is. But she agrees with me that if I can get the
thing working properly, it would be a big step forward for automail. I mean, it would allow the wearer to almost
perfectly mimic the fine motor skills of real flesh fingers! Can you imagine the implications, how much
that would mean to people who have their hand or arm replaced? As it is, some people can’t even master
holding a pencil because their fingers are so clumsy, so this would open up a
whole realm of possibilities for them, allow their lives to return even closer
to normal!”

I paused, feeling slightly out of
breath and excited, the blood rushing through my veins. Suddenly I realized that Mustang’s smile had
changed – the controlled one was gone, replaced by the slightly less common
bemused smile. It was less common, but I
was pretty familiar with it by now. I
also noticed that at some point during my little soliloquy, he’d taken the
towel out of my hand, grasped my chin with his permanently gloved fingers, and
started cleaning my face for me. I felt
like such a little kid that I almost wanted to blush.

“Sorry,” I said in a small voice.

He chuckled softly, a warm
sound. I liked his laughter when it was
like this, soft and genuine, not the usual cold laugh that was just another
part of his mask. Sometimes I wondered
what it would be like to see a real smile from him.

“I know how you get, Winry,” he
replied as he tucked the towel back into my hand, apparently finished. “Besides, it’s refreshing to see the
exuberance of youth.”

I laughed a little at that, rolling
my eyes before looking back at him, tilting my head to the side. His smile had changed again, this time into
the closest thing he had to a real smile, a soft little upsweep at just the
corners of his mouth. This was the one I
hardly ever saw.

“You’re hardly an old man,
Brigadier General,” I said teasingly.

It was the wrong thing to say, and
I mentally kicked myself as his eye grew distant and that fragile little smile
smoothed back into a neutral mask.

“Older than you think,” he
answered, and I heaved a mental sigh at the coolness in his tone.

Sometimes I wondered why he
bothered coming out here, actually.
After… after Ed had disappeared, Mustang had shown up with an eleven
year old Al, unsure of what to do with the younger Elric brother. We took him in, of course, and Mustang had
started visiting once a month to check on the boy. Al lost interest in the monthly meetings
fairly quickly, and then he’d left to re-apprentice with Izumi. Mustang’s visits had continued however, much
to my surprise. Every first Sunday of
every month, come rain or snow or shine, Roy
Mustang showed up on my porch at exactly two
o’clock for tea. It had to
be grueling on him, and I knew he must have worked out something in his
schedule so that he could come out here.
Four days of travel once a month for a few hours of tea hardly seemed
worth it to me, but Mustang was the type of man who was driven by obligation. I wouldn’t say we’d grown exactly close as
the time had passed, but in a way we had.
Sadly enough, he was probably one of my best friends, which spoke more
for the pitiful state of my social life rather than of any closeness between
us.

Still, I had come to look forward
to these visits from him. They brought a
regularity to my life that helped me feel stable, especially once I’d accepted
that Ed was truly gone. Some days he and
I would talk of nothing, little bits of useless gossip from Central. Other days we would have deep, serious
discussions about the state of the military or the changes going on in our
government. Sometimes, rarely, we would
simply sit together in companionable silence, enjoying our tea and little
sandwiches with no need for talking.

His voice shook me out of my
musings.

“Which reminds me,” Mustang said,
pulling a small, brightly wrapped box out of his coat pocket. I watched him uncertainly.

“Sixteen days,” he continued
gently. I frowned slightly at him,
missing the reference.

“Winry, only you would forget your
own birthday.”

It dawned on me that he was
right. Something similar had happened
last year when he’d visited in September, though I hadn’t so thoroughly
forgotten it that time. Ok, so I was really excited about this new gearshift
design.

I grinned at him, and then started
laughing. He just looked so funny standing
there in his nice black suit with that half-bemused, half-exasperated
expression on his face, holding a little package with a ridiculously large bow
on it in his hands.

I threaded my arm through his and
guided him along the familiar path to the sitting room. Granny sometimes joined us for tea, but today
she had apparently decided not to, leaving only a tray stacked with tiny little
sandwiches and the tea itself as evidence that she’d been in the room at
all. He settled in his usual chair as I
poured the tea, adding a splash of cream to his, no sugar, two sugars and cream
for me. He took a little plate and
helped himself to a few of the sandwiches while I sat down in my spot, the
loveseat just across from him. I took a
sip of tea and snagged a sandwich, nibbling on it delicately, ignoring the
grime under my nails. I had washed my hands
of course, but I hadn’t really scrubbed and my nails were a mess. Oh well. I was a gearhead.

“How is Al?” Mustang asked. That was always his first question, followed
by “How is Pinako?” if Granny hadn’t joined us.

“He’s good, almost thirteen now,” I
replied. “He came to visit just last
week, actually. He’s growing fast – he’s
so much taller than Ed was at that age.”
There. I’d managed to say his
name without tripping over myself. The
dull ache was there of course, but the bright pain had faded some time ago.

“And how is Pinako?”

I smiled to myself. Really, Mustang could be so predictable
sometimes.

“She’s fine,” I answered. “She made the sandwiches.”

He nodded and picked up one of
those sandwiches, making a noise of appreciation as he ate it in two
bites. They really were very good. I’d have to start practicing making them if I
ever wanted to reach Granny’s level of expertise.

We sat in silence for a few
minutes, enjoying the tea and the sandwiches before he broke it by saying,
“You’ll be eighteen, right?”

I glanced over to him, pushing
aside thoughts of tiny gears. I smiled
and nodded.

“It’ll be a big day for you.”

I shrugged slightly. “If you say so, sir,” I replied. That exasperated look was back on his face,
and I had to suppress my urge to laugh again.

“Aren’t you excited?” Mustang
asked. “You’ll no longer be a child;
you’ll be a young woman.”

I hesitated, wondering if I’d
actually heard a slight emphasis on the word young or if I’d just imagined
it. Deciding that it didn’t matter –
trying to puzzle through Roy Mustang’s motivations was a lot like banging your
head repeatedly against a brick wall – I simply shrugged again. I didn’t say what I thought of course; I
genuinely liked Mustang now, and one simply did not stir up the painful past
when friends were visiting. I didn’t say
that I hadn’t been a child for a very long time, what with my dead parents, the
Elrics’ attempt at human transmutation and then their quest for the Philosopher’s
Stone, the disappearance of my first love from this world and having to deal
with the fact that Al was now a boy again.
No, I actually didn’t remember the last time I had been a child.

Mustang sighed softly, apparently
nonplussed at my cavalier attitude.
“Anyway,” he said, “happy birthday.”

He took the little package off of
his knee and passed it over to me. I
glanced at him with a questioning look on my face, and at his encouraging nod,
I gleefully ripped into the colorful paper.
I opened the package and stared at the contents, my jaw slack and my
eyes wide.

It was a full set of the newest 89
series of screwdrivers by Minex, five of them in total, guaranteed never to
rust or break. They were hot off the
assembly line, and were by far the smallest set of screwdrivers on the market,
designed specifically for exceedingly delicate automail repair. I ran a fingernail over the smallest one, so
slender that it almost looked like a splinter.
I had wanted a set of these so badly, but they were very, very expensive
and there was no way I had the cash to blow on them.

“Brigadier General,” I murmured,
gazing up at him in awe. He was relaxed
back in his chair, looking quite pleased with himself. “You shouldn’t have. These things cost a fortu…”

Mustang cut me off with a wave of
his gloved hand. “It’s my pleasure,
Winry,” he replied. “Besides, how often
do we get to celebrate your eighteenth birthday?”

I grinned and closed the package
carefully before hugging it to my chest.
“They’re wonderful, sir.
Perfect!”

The ghost smile came back, and I
was inordinately pleased to see it.
Really, he couldn’t have gotten me a better gift, and I just wished I
had a better way to thank him for it.

“You should come to Central to
visit sometime.”

I cocked my head at him, still
grinning like an idiot. “Sure!” I
replied.

“How about at the beginning of
October? I’ll take you out to dinner and
we’ll celebrate your birthday properly,” he continued. “Gracia and I were speaking just the other
day, and she mentioned that she and Elysia both missed you. I know she’d be happy for you to stay with
her.”

I wondered if I could do it. Since Ed had gone, I’d sort of made myself a
hermit, staying close to home and throwing myself into my work. The only people I saw with any regularity
were Granny, Al, and Mustang. But I was
feeling good. I probably was overdue to break out of my self
imposed isolation.

“Alright,” I answered. I noticed that some tension left his body at
my acceptance, and I wondered briefly if he’d been worried that I would
refuse. Jeez, Winry, I thought to myself, you really do need to get out
more.

We spent a few minutes in happy
silence before Mustang asked, almost too casually, “Are you seeing anyone,
Winry?”

I looked at him in surprise. “Sorry?” I said.

“I asked if you were seeing anyone
right now.”

“Uh… no,” I replied, feeling a bit
off balance by his question. Of course I
wasn’t seeing anyone! A sudden, somewhat
insane thought occurred to me, and I voiced it before I could stop myself. “Are you asking me out, sir?”

Mustang had the grace to look
slightly embarrassed. “Me?” he replied,
still casual. “No, not at all. I’m an old man, remember?” I rolled my eyes at this but he continued,
completely ignoring my reaction. “No, I
ask because there is a young man under me, one of our newest state alchemists,
and I thought perhaps I’d introduce you to him when you came to visit. His family is also in the automail business
and to hear him talk, you’d think he would have preferred becoming a mechanic
over an alchemist.”

I sat for a few moments, thinking
it over. Would I be betraying Ed? I could hardly think of him sometimes without
tearing up, I missed him so badly. And
while I thought I would be fine going to visit Mustang and Mrs. Hughes in
Central, that was a pretty far cry from going on a date with a complete
stranger.

“I don’t know, Brigadier General,”
I said softly, staring down at my hands with their grimy fingernails. “I’m not sure if…”

“Winry,” Mustang cut me off. I glanced up at him and found him leaning
towards me, a serious expression on his face.
“It’s been almost two years. I
just want you to find some happiness, instead of rotting away in this place,”
he continued gently. “Don’t you think Ed
would have wanted you to be happy too?”

Irritation sparked through me, though
I stamped down on the urge to lash out at him.
He wasn’t playing fair, bringing Ed up like that and using him against
me, but then again, I already knew that Roy Mustang didn’t always play fair. Sometimes I wondered if he ever did.

I sighed quietly. I knew this alchemist well enough – he would
push and prod and goad me until he got his way.
I might as well just accept it now with as much grace as I could
muster. Besides, I knew that nothing
romantic was going to come of it, but it would be good to make a new friend,
especially a fellow gearhead.

Resigned, I nodded slightly, and
Mustang sat back in his chair, looking altogether too smug. I really liked the Flame Alchemist, but I
could easily see how he always rubbed Ed the wrong way. There was something slightly infuriating
about a man who was not only usually right, but also knew that he was. And Ed’s
ego hadn’t been much smaller than Mustang’s was.

“October, then,” he said, the
controlled smile back in place. I sighed
softly and nodded again. “Good,” he
continued. “I’ll make the arrangements,
and send word when Gracia is ready for you.”

And that was that.

***

I was staring into the fire,
mesmerized as the flames danced behind the grate, sitting alone in Gracia’s
guest bedroom. Within six hours of
arriving in Central, she’d convinced me to give up calling her Mrs. Hughes
(“I’m not even ten years older than you, Winry!” she’d exclaimed) in favor of
her first name. This was my fifth day
here, and I’d been really enjoying myself… until last night. I’d spent a lot of the day with Gracia today and that had helped after the fiasco of the
night before, but after dinner tonight I just wanted to retreat and be alone
for a little while. She’d watched me
worriedly but acquiesced.

My date with Loland Dunhill the
previous evening hadn’t gone very well.
Oh, it had started out fine; it was the ending that had been bad. But, whatever, I’d escaped relatively
unscathed and today had calmed me down a lot.

I started from my seat at the loud
banging coming from the front door downstairs.
Uh oh.

Within a minute I heard him,
shouting for an explanation, and I heard the murmur of Gracia’s voice, trying
to calm him down. Dammit. Of all the people I wanted to see right now,
Mustang was pretty low on the list. It
wasn’t that I was mad at him for his poor choice regarding Dunhill, I just
didn’t know if I had enough strength to face him right now. Still, from the way he was yelling
downstairs, it didn’t look like I was going to have much choice. Deciding that I better prepare myself for the
confrontation, I stood and shook the tingles from my left foot, which had just
been on the verge of falling asleep.

I heard the heavy, rapid thud of
his boots on the stairs – it sounded like he was taking them two at a time. With a deep breath, I tried to relax as I
faced the door. I didn’t have to wait
long. A few moments later my door was
flung open and Mustang was filling the empty space, Gracia just behind him,
looking at him with a concerned expression, her daughter clinging to her skirt.

Mustang’s eye raked over me from
the top of my head to my bare feet, before his gaze lifted back up to my
face. His eye narrowed. Damn.
I’d been hoping that I wouldn’t see him so soon – Dunhill had left a
mark on my face where he had smacked me.
Well, at least I had left one back, that prick.

“Roy,”
Gracia said soothingly, “you’re scaring Elysia.”

“You should both go for a walk,” he
replied coldly.

Gracia glanced at me over his
shoulder, and I nodded slightly at her.
I could handle Mustang, and she would only get in the way if she stayed. She frowned but nodded back.

“Come along, darling,” she said,
picking her daughter up. Elysia was
staring at the alchemist with wide eyes, and I felt bad for her. “Mommy wants some ice cream. Does that sound good?”

The little girl nodded silently,
her gaze never leaving the back of Mustang’s head, and with one final glance at
me, Gracia left. The alchemist took a
step inside my room, and slammed the door shut behind him. I jumped a little at the loud noise.

“So,” he began in his dangerous,
casual voice. Damn, he must really be
pissed. “Dunhill called in sick
today. I had a load of paperwork so I
worked late, but I decided to stop by the infirmary to check up on him when I
was done. He’d already checked out, but
imagine my surprise when I overheard the nurses joking about his feisty date
from the night before, who had apparently punched him square in the nose.”

I shrugged slightly, watching him
warily.

“Now I can see that you weren’t the
only one throwing punches. What did he do?” Mustang hissed, taking a step
closer to me. I took an involuntary step
backwards. Sure, I’d seen him angry, I’d
even seen him passionate that one time when he was so upset with Ed for not
coming to him for help, but I’d never seen this… this wrath, this fury in him
before.

Mustang was still advancing on me,
so I kept cautiously retreating. I was
quickly running out of places to go, though, and in a matter of moments I found
myself with my back to the wall and the alchemist looming over me. He grabbed my arms – what was up with men and
the arm grabbing? – in almost the exact same spot Dunhill had the previous
night. I winced slightly at the pain,
and realized that the other soldier must have left bruises there as well. Dammit.
I suddenly wished I had kicked him in the groin a lot harder.

“What. Did.
He. Do?” Mustang nearly yelled,
his face inches from mine, punctuating each word with a small little shake. His face was a twisted mask of rage and, if I
hadn’t known for sure that it was Dunhill that he was furious with, not me, I
would have been frightened of him. As it
was, I was a little scared, but I also knew this man. He would sooner chew off his own arm than
hurt me.

I needed to calm him down, though, and
fast. He was probably imagining all
sorts of terrible things that Dunhill had done, probably far worse than what
had actually happened.

“It’s ok, Brigadier General,” I
said hastily. He leaned his face in
closer, staring into my eyes with the only eye he had left, our noses almost
touching. “I gave him a kiss on the
cheek goodnight, he wanted more and wouldn’t back off when I told him no, he
hit me and tried to kiss me again so I kneed his groin and broke his
nose.” It was pretty barebones, but
Mustang didn’t need to know the rest; how terrified I’d felt in those moments,
how Dunhill’s eyes had been alight with a frightening anger at my rejection, how
I’d fled to the guest bedroom of the Hughes’ house and trembled for an hour
before I was calm enough to do anything else.

Mustang’s eye narrowed and I
realized somewhat helplessly that he was even angrier than before. “I’ll kill him,” he whispered, so quiet that
I almost didn’t hear him, for all that there was almost no space between us. “I’ll fucking kill him.”

“No!” I cried, but he was already
pulling away, releasing my arms and taking a step backwards away from me. The mask was back on his face, settled into
place perfectly, but there was a murderous glint in his eye. He meant it.
Mustang really was going to go kill Dunhill.

“No, sir!” I cried again, taking a
step forward and grabbing the front of his military coat. “Please, Brigadier General, it was
nothing! I already punished him enough,
and it’s not like he really hurt me!” The
icy mask didn’t crack, and that glint didn’t go away as he stared down at
me. I wasn’t getting through to
him. He was starting to pull away from
me again.

“Please, Roy,”
I said quietly, hating how broken I sounded.
But I felt broken inside and it showed in my voice. He paused, his eye focusing on me again. Mustang had enough blood on his hands –
murdering Dunhill, even if he was to somehow get away with it, would fracture
his already splintered soul even further.
“I couldn’t bear it,” I continued, whispering now. “Please, Roy,
please don’t do this.”

My words hung suspended between us
in the still air and I stared up at him, begging him with my eyes. And then I felt his arms go around me as his
lips crashed down onto mine.

I gasped in surprise and his tongue
darted past my lips, stroking lazily against the side of my tongue. I moaned softly as an unexpected white heat
arced through my entire body. What… what
was this?

Mustang groaned too and pulled me
tighter against him and suddenly I wanted more, I needed to get closer to
him. I had never felt this before, not
with those fumbling kisses from Ed, not even when I fantasized about Ed and me
making love for the first time. This, I
realized hazily, was true passion.

One little part of me was aware
that he had pushed me back against the wall again, following me, covering me
with his lean, hard body. I pressed
closer to him, my hands ripping at the buttons of his coat while his gloved
hands ran up and down my sides, almost tickling me but instead making me feel
feverish and hot while he plundered my mouth.
I sucked at his tongue, darting mine playfully against his and was
rewarded as he groaned louder and pressed up against me even harder.

I felt several buttons give way
beneath my desperate hands, distantly aware of the noise they made as they
skittered across the floor, but I didn’t care.
Finally his coat was open to me and I shoved it off of his
shoulders. He didn’t even have time to
shrug out of it before I attacked the crisp white shirt underneath. I heard cloth rip.

“Winry,”
he moaned against my mouth, and I nearly sobbed with relief when I felt his hands
join mine on his shirt. An instant later
the shirt and coat both fell with a whispered thud to the ground, and then he
was there, so much skin begging to be stroked by my aching fingertips. I ran my hand over his chest, feeling
powerful and beautiful when he hissed as my fingers grazed over his
nipples. I had been so sure that I would
be so unsure, uncertain, but there
was no doubt in me. I wanted this, more than I’d ever wanted
anything in the world before, and I wanted Mustang, not anyone else, not Ed, not
Al, Mustang.

I felt his gloved hands returning
to my sides, hesitant, and I growled with frustration. I grabbed his hands in mine, pulling at the
gloves, letting them drop carelessly to the floor and then finally his bare
hands were on my skin. He stroked his
fingertips across my exposed, flat stomach and I felt the muscles underneath go
shivery while my knees went weak. His
touch was still hesitant though, and I was suddenly irritated with him. Hadn’t I made it clear enough that I wanted
this?

I lifted my right leg and hooked it
around his waist, drawing his groin tight to mine, and I whimpered when I felt
the hard maleness of him pressed so tightly against me. I ground my hips down, letting his erection
slide over me through our clothes, and now he was the one who whimpered.

“Roy,”
I murmured, begging, “touch me.”

With a groan he buried his face in
the side of my neck, suckling on the tender flesh there and I gasped as the
ache in my core throbbed with an almost painful need. I felt his hands pull down my tube top and
then my breasts were free, firm and upswept, the nipples already peaked and
hard. His hands claimed them, cupping
their fullness while his thumbs brushed across the sensitive tips and I arced
into him with a cry of need. He was the
Flame Alchemist, and I was burning alive in his inferno.

My hands couldn’t stay still,
roaming over his broad shoulders, down his muscled arms or across his sparsely
furred chest, around his sides and up his back, plunging into his soft, shaggy
black hair. My fingertips brushed over
scar after scar, the evidence of his long life of military service, and a
sudden, unexpected protectiveness welled up in me. Despite his past, Roy Mustang was a good man, and I hated that he’d been
hurt so often. I wanted to take away
that hurt, let him bury it inside of me so that he could forget it, if only for
a little while. I wanted him to bury himself
inside of me so that I could forget
my hurts too, my loneliness and sorrow now that Ed was gone and Al was a little
boy again. I needed to be closer to Mustang.

I dropped my hands to my pants and
undid them quickly, hooking my thumbs in the waistband of my panties and
shimmying out of the whole thing in one swift motion. I felt his body stiffen as he groaned
helplessly against my throat, and I quickly reached for his pants before he
could stop me, undoing them and shoving both his pants and his underwear down
around his thighs. He must have felt me
tense up just before I jumped on him because he caught me easily as I wrapped
both of my legs around his waist. I
moaned as his hard, burning cock grazed through the dripping folds of my sex,
parting the lips before settling at the entrance to my body. This is
it, I thought distantly. Of all the
ways that I had ever imagined this happening, the current situation had never,
ever been one of them.

“Always you, Winry,” I heard him
mutter against the skin of my throat as he kept his face hidden from me. I stilled, not sure if I was ready for this
confession from him.

He ground his hips forward, sliding
his cock through the folds of my sex, coating himself in my wetness, and I
nearly screamed when the head brushed against the sensitive bundle of nerves
near the top. He made a small little
circle with his hips and I whimpered at the resulting motion against my
clit. Gods, he was going to kill me if
he kept doing that.

I felt his cock slide back down and
pause at my entrance again, and I braced myself. This was it.
What I wanted more than anything else in the whole world, what I’d
wanted without even being aware of it until he first kissed me. I didn’t love him, at least I didn’t think I
did, but suddenly I wondered if maybe I could
love him if I let myself. And I realized
yeah, yeah I could. I could.

“Always you,” Roy
continued, sounding as if the words were being ripped from him against his
will. He kept his face buried in my
neck, and I was glad of it. There was too
much intensity, too much longing in his voice and I didn’t know if I could bear
to see the look that must currently be on his face. “From the first moment I saw you, Winry, and
how old were you then? Ten? Eleven?
I saw you and I knew that was it, that you would be the only one that I
would ever…”

He trailed off, resting his
forehead on my shoulder.

“Make me stop, Winry,” he
pleaded. “Do you know what it’s
like? To be an adult man and see a
girl-child and know… know… I was disgusted
with myself. At least I wasn’t attracted
to you when you were still a child, how perverse would that have been, but the knowing was bad enough, knowing that
this child would grow into the woman that… knowing that I could never have you,
because of Ed and Al and… and your parents…”

Men, I decided in that moment,
always made everything entirely too complicated.

“Shut up, Roy,”
I muttered, taking matters into my own hands and thrusting myself downwards,
impaling myself fully on his cock, biting back a cry of pain as I forced him to
tear through my virginity.

He froze in obvious shock, but that
was actually probably good. It hurt way
more than I had expected it to, and I was glad for the time to get used to his
size inside of me. The initial pain had
been bright and focused, but it was quickly fading to a dull, throbbing
ache. Owie, I thought to myself.

As the moments passed, however, the
ache subsided and I became acutely aware of him filling me. I could almost feel the ridges and contours
of his cock, forcing my body to mold around him like a glove. Instinctively, I clenched my muscles and his
head shot up, his coal black eye boring into mine.

“Why?” he whispered. “You were a… how could you let me…”

“Shut up, Roy!” I repeated,
emphasizing my point with a small thrust forward with my hips. Oh gods.
That was… oh gods.

Thankfully he took the hint,
settling his weight on me, bracing me up against the wall while his hands
drifted down to take hold of my hips. I
leaned into the wall, letting myself be supported between it and the unyielding
hardness of Roy’s body, my hands
clutching the alchemist’s broad shoulders.
He was staring at my face, drinking in the sight of me, his expression
so serious and almost hard in a way, and I was suddenly reminded of something
my Granny had said long ago, when I’d been no older than fifteen, maybe sixteen.

Ed and Al had been visiting, and Ed
had spent a lot of the day bitching (as usual) about Mustang, Al vainly defending
the Brigadier General to his brother. Granny
had taken her pipe out of her mouth and said, quite quietly, “I think love is
hard on that one.”

Ed had sputtered, glaring at Granny
before saying, “Huh?”

“I think love is hard on that one,”
she had repeated. “For some people, love
isn’t a joy, it’s a burden. Loving
someone, anyone, even as a friend, hurts them.
Of course, it hurts them more to not love at all, but that doesn’t make
love any easier on them.”

“Whatever,” Ed had scoffed while
rolling his eyes. “The man is still an
ass!”

“Brother!” Al had said sharply, but
I had tuned them out, pondering Granny’s words.

Then I was snapped back to the
present as Roy pulled his hips
back, slowly sliding out of me. I tried
to follow him, hating the emptiness as he left, desperate to have him back inside,
but his hands on my hips kept me in place.
And still he watched me with his coal black eye.

Then he slammed forward again,
burying himself to the hilt, and his name was ripped out of my throat
involuntarily at the sensation. I felt
him, I felt him, not just his body
but him, his spirit, the soul of Roy Mustang brushing up against my own soul,
and I wondered vaguely if maybe I’d been wrong before. Maybe I already did love him, and I just hadn’t known it. I felt closer to him than I’d ever felt to
anyone in my whole life, but I was greedy, I wanted to be closer still, I
needed to melt into him until there was nothing between us anymore, until we
became one.

He was studying me,
his genuine ghost of a smile lifting just the corners of his mouth at the look
of surprise I knew was on my face. “Do
that again,” I urged him.

And then he did, not pausing now
between strokes, pulling out and plunging into me at an ever increasing
pace. I distantly heard a soft mewling
noise, and it took me a few moments to realize it was me. I sounded like a woman, not a girl. I rode him, a helpless leaf in the tempest of
our passion, swept up as he branded me as his, clinging to him with my legs
around his waist and my hands on his shoulders.
He was making these soft little grunting noises in perfect counterpoint
to my mewling, and I was struck by how perfect this was, this was perfect, this
was the first perfect moment in my life since Ed had disappeared.

The tension was starting to build
in me, and I was hurtling, hurtling towards a cliff that I only knew from my
own furtive, late night explorations, and Roy
was there, pushing me towards it. I
needed more though, I needed to get closer, and my hands left his shoulders and
instinctively went to my breasts. I
cupped them, moaning in pleasure as I stroked my pebble-hard nipples, but what
drove me further was the look on his face at this action. He looked a little stunned at my wantonness, but
there was something else, more than lust, more that desire, a dark, primal need that was so powerful, so
overwhelming that there was no simple word to describe it.

Then the tension arced through me
and I shattered, coming apart before him while I sobbed out his name and as I
broke into a thousand little pieces I felt the raw, jagged, festering wound
inside of me close and scab over abruptly.
A hundred images of him flashed through me; the monthly teas at my
house, the little kindnesses he showed me, the ghost-smile, his whispered
confession tonight, the expression on his face while I came in his arms. Oh gods, I did love him, I loved this man, this alchemist. I loved him, Corporal or Colonel or Brigadier
General. I loved Roy Mustang.

With a groan he leaned forward,
burying his face in the side of my neck again and I heard him murmur, “Winry,”
against my sweat-slicked flesh as he filled me with his seed, my name a plea, a
benediction on his lips. Nothing else,
just that, but I still heard it clearly in the way he said it – Roy Mustang loved
me too.

My arms tightened possessively
around him and I held him as close as I could, feeling my soul entwine and
tangle with his and I knew I was lost, lost, hopelessly lost. What was between us wasn’t alchemy, it wasn’t
science and thought and formula – it was magic, and I felt humbled and blessed
and grateful that with the world, our lives as confusing and screwed up as they
were, he and I had found each other.

“Roy,”
I whispered, and I felt his arms wrap around me, holding me steady and keeping
me close while his cock softened inside of me.
I love you, I added
silently. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. I didn’t love Ed any less for loving Mustang,
but suddenly I could see a future without my childhood love, I could picture a
life where I wasn’t alone and broken.

Roy
stepped back from the wall and shuffled to the bed, the movement made awkward
by his pants still around his knees. I
giggled softly and he paused, pulling back to give me a half-hearted quelling
look. I laughed at this and rubbed the
tip of my nose against his before giving him a quick kiss on the lips. He grunted as I pulled back, but there was no
mistaking the pleased look on his face.
For the first time since I’d known him he looked almost happy, and the
recently scabbed over wound inside of me shrank just a little bit at his
expression.

He leaned over, settling me gently
onto the bed, his cock finally sliding free with a soft little popping
noise. He quickly divested himself of
his boots and his remaining clothing, and I took my first good look at him.

He was tall, with broad shoulders
tapering down to a waist that was slimmer than I expected. He wasn’t exactly slender, but he wasn’t
stocky either and while he was certainly well-muscled, he was no
Armstrong. He looked surprisingly lithe,
actually, his skin neither pale nor tan.
There was a light dusting of black hair curling on his broad chest, as
well as a bit around his navel that continued in an increasingly thick line
down to his groin. There the curls were
coarse and matted with our combined juices, and I saw little streaks of red
along the length of his softened cock, the evidence of my innocence. I was curiously unembarrassed to be studying
him so openly. He was a lot smaller now
that he wasn’t excited, and I wondered abruptly how big his hard cock had grown
– it had felt like a club inside of me, hardly this innocuous thing I was
presented with now. I vowed that next
time, next time I would study him when he was aroused. I wanted to know every inch of him, in every
way that I could.

Roy
sat on the bed next to me, drinking me in with his gaze before he began pulling
what was left of my clothing off of me, which was really only my tube top. His eyes narrowed as he took in the bruises
on my arms, but he didn’t say anything and I smiled softly up at him.

He began running his hands over me
gently, soothingly, scattering little kisses here and there on my languid
flesh, and I realized that he wanted to study me as much as I wanted to study
him. I didn’t know how he could still be
so energetic, though – I’d ridden him, but I felt like I’d been run over by a
refrigeration truck, I was so exhausted.
I could tell that he wasn’t trying to arouse me again, he was just
learning the map of my body. I lay
there, lazily stroking his arm or kissing any part of him that got too close to
my face.

Finally, it seemed he was satisfied
with his exploration for now, though I could tell by his expression that he
wanted to study me more. Roy
pushed against me, urging me to roll over onto one side and when I complied, he
laid the long, hard length of his body against my back, curling around me while
he held me close to his chest. I’d never
felt this way before, so comforted, protected, desired and loved. He twined his fingers in mine, and for the
first time, I became aware of the scars on his hands. I brought his right hand up to my face,
studying it in the semi-darkness, the light from the fire enough for me to see
the many old raised burn scars on it.

He shifted a bit, and I could
instantly tell that he was uncomfortable with me looking at his marred
hand. Of course. He always kept them covered with his gloves,
and I wondered how many other people had ever cared to look closely at them. It made sense, though – he was the Flame
Alchemist, and his hands bore the pain inherent with that title.

Slowly, I placed soft kisses on the
old burn scars, my lips seeking out and trying to soothe the old hurts. After a few moments I felt him relax against
me, and he rested his chin on my shoulder.

“Good night, Roy,”
I murmured as I snuggled back into him.
He kissed my shoulder gently and nuzzled the back of my neck, and I soon
lost myself to the oblivion of sleep.

***

I awoke the next morning with a
band of sunlight across my face, and I briefly wondered why I was so sore
before remembrance came in a rush.
Laughing softly, I stretched luxuriously, noting that I was the only one
in my bed. Well, by the sunlight I could
tell it was already well into morning, and Roy
had a schedule to keep, after all. He
was still a dog of the military, for all that he refused to practice alchemy
anymore.

I peeled my thighs apart with a
slight frown – it was a little icky, but also… I don’t know. Kind of sexy in a way, too. And then excitement bubbled up in me. I loved him.
He loved me. I didn’t know what
was going to happen, if we were going to date or get married or what, but I
couldn’t wait to find out.

I hopped out of bed and quickly got
myself cleaned up, grateful for the washbasin and pitcher of water that Gracia
had thoughtfully put in my room sometime yesterday. I dressed and pulled on my boots. I didn’t know what I was going to do today,
just that I was going to do something. Maybe go shopping for supplies to cook Roy
a gourmet dinner tonight.

I nearly skipped down the stairs in
my haste, and I ducked into the sunlit kitchen with a cheery, “Good morning!”
to Gracia, who was sitting at the table with a cup of tea, and Elysia, who was
playing with a doll under the table.

“Good morning,” she replied, but
something in her voice made me pause. I
turned towards her, taking in her expression.
It was so… sad. Suddenly I felt
like my stomach dropped out of me, and I exhaled sharply. This wasn’t good, this wasn’t good at all.

“Honey,” she said softly to her
daughter. When the little girl glanced
up to her mother, Gracia continued, “Mommy needs to have an adult talk with
Winry. Why don’t you go play in your
room?”

“Ok, Mommy!” Elysia replied
enthusiastically. She gathered her doll
and breezily left. I felt helpless as I
watched her go – as long as the little girl was in the room, I was protected
from whatever news her mother had to tell me.
I already suspected of course, I was far from stupid, but I couldn’t,
wouldn’t believe it.

Tense silence filled the kitchen
and I felt my stomach give a queasy little clench. Gracia looked away from me, glancing out the
window at the cold, clear October day.
“So now you know,” she said softly, almost to herself.

I felt a cold, brittle wind tear
through me, sucking away all my warmth, freezing the happy future I’d been
envisioning until it shattered in a million shards of ice. I was cold, oh, so cold, so cold that I
couldn’t even shiver.

“He once told Maes about you, you
know,” she continued in that same soft, calm voice. How could she be so calm while she was
ripping my soul apart? “It was that
first time you came to Central, to visit Ed and Al, do you remember? They’d been drinking and Roy
was very, very drunk, so drunk that he had to spend the night here, and he told
Maes how afraid he’d been when he found out you’d
been taken by that… that murderer, Barry.
After that, everything came spilling out of him, he told my husband
everything. Maes
was only slightly less drunk, and he accidentally told me after we’d put Roy to
bed. Honestly, Maes
didn’t know what to think – I think he was shocked that Roy
was so obsessed with you. After that, he
started pushing Roy even harder to
find himself a woman to settle down with and start a family, which annoyed him
to no end, of course.”

I took a step forward and put my
hands on the back of the chair across from her, but I couldn’t muster the
strength to pull it out and actually sit down.

“What did you think of it?” I
asked, my voice barely a whisper.

She shrugged delicately, keeping her
gaze fixed out the window. “I thought it
was a bit strange, but I also know Roy. He wouldn’t have allowed himself to have
anything even remotely resembling an inappropriate thought towards you. And he’d convinced himself that there was no
way that… that you’d ever feel the same way about him.”

My hands tightened on the back of
the chair, my knuckles white from the strain.
I wanted to say something, anything, but I couldn’t. Any question that I could ask, any encouragement
from me for her to continue would end with the awful truth that lay unspoken
between us.

Finally she turned her gaze towards
me, and I almost flinched at the sympathy in her eyes. “Men, even incredibly smart, clever men like
Roy Mustang, are very foolish creatures,” Gracia said softly. “Sometimes I think the smarter they are, the
more foolish they are. They think they
have the answers, so they go around and make all the decisions without even
bothering to talk to us women first.”

My shoulders slumped, my head
dropped at her words. The only thing
that was holding me upright was my deathgrip on the chair. “Why?” I finally asked quietly.

I felt more than saw her shrug
again. I was certain that if she
shrugged one more time I was going to lose it, I’d go stark raving mad and start
tearing the kitchen apart. “He thought
you’d be safer this way,” she answered.
“He still has enemies, powerful enemies you know. Any move against him directly would be
suspicious, but if something, an accident for example, were to happen to you,
it wouldn’t be remarkable. You’re
unknown, just a country girl from Risembool visiting Central. He didn’t want to risk anyone finding out
about you.”

Gracia paused for a moment, then
added, “And you know how Roy
is. He really does think he knows everything.
He thinks he took advantage of you while you were vulnerable last night,
and it was tearing him apart by the time he left here. And he’s also so sure that you could never
love anyone except for Edward, the stubborn man.”

I barked out a short, bitter laugh. Why wasn’t I crying? I’d cried for days, weeks when Ed left this
world. But now my eyes were as dry as
the deserts around Lior.

“When did he leave?” I asked.

“In the middle of the night last
night,” Gracia replied. “I woke up when
I heard him leave your room, and I caught him just as he was leaving. He looked so lost, filled with guilt and self
disgust. I tried to stop him Winry, I
really did, I tried to tell him to give you a chance, that
you might surprise him, but he’d already convinced himself otherwise.”

“Where did he go?” The words were becoming harder and harder to
say, the ice working upwards from my heart, now wrapping around my vocal
chords. Soon there’d be nothing left, just
a perfectly shaped ice sculpture of Winry Rockbell,
the girl who couldn’t hang on to a man no matter how much she loved him or he
loved her.

“He was headed down to HQ to put in
an immediate request for a transfer – he mentioned something about a military
outpost far, far to the north. I’m sure
he’s already out of Central by now.” How appropriate, I thought to
myself. He’d left me to go to a place
that was as frozen as my soul now was.

Why
didn’t you wake me? I raged at her silently. But I knew the answer to that one too – she
was as loyal to Roy Mustang as everyone was.
Well, everyone except for Ed, of course.
Still, I felt betrayed. She knew,
she knew how stupid he was being, yet
she had taken his side even in the face of that knowledge. What was it about him that inspired that
reaction in people? Even when she knew
he was wrong, she’d picked him over me.

The silence stretched between us
for several minutes, but still I kept my head bowed, staring down at my now
thoroughly bloodless knuckles. I had one
final question, yet another question that I already knew the answer to, but
some perverse part of me wanted to voice it out loud, hear the answer from her
lips so that the ice could finish consuming me.
I would ask it, already knowing the answer, and then I would leave this
house and this city and never, ever, ever come back.

Finally my throat unlocked and the
question slipped out of me, bitter and angry and filled with all the tears that
refused to form in my barren, dry eyes.

“Did he even leave me a note?”

Gracia hesitated, and that was
answer enough. No, of course he
hadn’t. He was always right, and I was
just a silly little girl who had accidentally fallen in love with him without
even realizing it sometime during tea one Sunday afternoon. If I’d been less foolish, perhaps I would
have told him last night, ripped open my chest and bared my heart to him until
he understood that I loved him, that I’d chosen him just as much as he’d chosen
me, that just because I’d loved Ed didn’t mean that I couldn’t ever love anyone
else. But I wasn’t wise, I was a
fool. And Roy Mustang was an even bigger
one.

I straightened abruptly and started
walking out of the kitchen, a tiny part of me relieved that I had decided to go
shopping just after breakfast. I was
fully dressed, I had my boots on, my wallet was in my
pocket. Sure, there was all my stuff
upstairs in the guest bedroom, but it was nothing important really, just some clothes
and toiletries and my shattered, dead heart.
I didn’t have to go back up there, I could just leave it. Gracia could send
it to me in Risembool if she wanted. Or she could burn it all. I didn’t care.

“Winry?”
she asked, sounding worried. I didn’t
care. Right foot, left
foot, one in front of the other, no hesitation in me now as I walked across the
living room to the front door.

“Winry,
where are you going?” Gracia asked, sounding somewhat
helpless in the face of my silence. I
didn’t care. I heard her follow me out
of the kitchen, her slippered feet whispering across
the wooden floor. Good. She’d be less likely to follow me since she
wasn’t wearing proper shoes, though it was unlikely that she’d leave her
daughter alone in the house anyway.

I flung open the front door and
stepped into the chill October morning, but it was practically summery compared
to the ice inside of me. I walked down
the front steps, not even bothering to shut the door behind me. I heard her stop in the doorway but I was
going forward, and there was no way I was going to look back.

“Winry!”
she cried from her doorway, now sounding slightly panicked. I didn’t care.
She should have woken me before he left, she should follow me out into
the cold morning even though I knew she wouldn’t, she shouldn’t have let her
loyalty to a fool destroy me so thoroughly.

I knew exactly where I was going as
I marched down the street, away from her betrayal, away from his cowardice,
away from my lost innocence. The wallet
was a comforting weight in my hip pocket as I made my way steadily to the train
station. I knew I had more than enough
to buy a one-way ticket to Risembool.

Home. I was going home.
- 1
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