FMA: The House That Ed Built
Title: The House That Ed Built
Rating: T/PG-13
Word Count: 4,678
Characters/Pairings: Ed/Winry
Summary: With their wedding approaching, Ed builds Winry a house.
A/N: This may come as a shock to nobody, but I don't actually know how to build a house. It's not really supposed to be about that. Post series, implied if not outright spoilers for where everyone ended up.
***
Winry appears around lunchtime, a picnic basket on her arm. Ed and his helpers - the next closest neighbors and their teenage sons - are hefting the last cabinet into place. Ed was holding the cabinet in place as Mr. Foster wields the drill; he grimaces as the wood grinds and shakes beneath his hands, but when he steps back and checks their work nothing appears to be misaligned or out of place.
He can hear the unfinished floor cracking and popping beneath Winry’s feet. “It’s really coming together,” she says admiringly, beaming at Ed when he turns to greet her. “I like the finish we picked,” she added, as though they hadn’t spent a week bickering about it.
“Once these are up we can get your counters put in and your sink set up,” Mr. Foster explains, wiping his forehead off with a handkerchief. While the late spring weather wasn’t exceptionally warm, it was still muggy outside and no fans had been installed yet. Ed could feel sweat trickling down his back.
He though he’d done enough research when he was planning their home, but as the neighbors pitched in to help Ed found that he wasn’t nearly prepared enough - and, in some cases, had over-prepared. So much more went into a home than he’d really considered, and putting everything together layer by layer was far more intimidating than he’d been expecting.
As capable as Ed was, he couldn’t - and wouldn’t - compete with the wisdom others had gained by building their homes, and he was grateful for the help. The whole town had offered aid, and it had warmed Ed’s heart to see how many in town were happy to see him settling down again.
“I brought lunch for everybody,” Winry said, dropping the basket on the floor and opening it. “The least I could do, with all the help everyone’s been giving us.”
There were fresh cookies packed away at the bottom, and Winry slapped Ed’s hand away gently as he reached for one of those first before handing him a wrapped sandwich. They settled in a loose circle, enjoying their break as they discussed what needed to be done and what they would work on next.
“I cleared some of my appointments tomorrow,” Winry said, looking at Ed. He’d been chewing slowly, more focused on the casual press of Winry’s knee against his thigh than the taste of his sandwich. “I’ll be able to come up and help. I think Gran can cover anything unexpected.”
“That’s good,” Mr. Foster said, fishing the milk jug out of the picnic basket. “We can use every able body to get you up and moved in as soon as possible.”
The goal was to have the house finished before their wedding in the fall. So far everything was going according to plan, but they still needed work to go as smoothly as possible in order for everything to be ready - not just for Ed and Winry to move in as a married couple, but to prepare for the influx of guests that would inevitably invade Risembool for their wedding.
Actually building their house made the upcoming wedding much more real. He can actually see it now, standing at the stove with a kettle, or Winry rolling out a pie crust on the counter. It’s really going to happen, it’s not just a warm picture to cocoon himself in or a promise to remind himself of.
He thinks Winry must see it the same way he does; halfway into her sandwich she looks over at him, her eyes bright and the faintest blush to her cheeks and said quietly, “You know what I just realized? This is the first time we’ve entertained company in our house.”
The neighbors laugh but Ed just nods in response to her embarrassed half-smile. He can see it too - family dinners, friends from Central, guests from abroad - and there’s something charming about the very first meal in their house being in the company of their closest neighbors on their unfinished kitchen floor.
He laughs and stretches out, leaning back on his elbows. “Next time let’s get a table.”
***
“What do you think?” Ed asked as Winry stepped barefoot onto the carpet, her toes twitching into the thick fibers.
“I like it,” Winry said slowly, nodding her approval as she stepped around the parameters of their soon-to-be completed living room. “It’ll clean easy.”
“It goes with the furniture,” Ed added, gesturing to the plastic covered couch and chairs piled up in the hallway.
“We should set that up,” Winry said quietly, her attention immediately stolen as she lifted one corner of the tarp curiously. “How did you want to arrange it?”
He’s known Winry for a lifetime, and Ed can tell immediately by the way she asks that she already has something in mind. “What do you think?” he asks, because how their furniture is arranged isn’t particularly important to him, and it’s obvious that she’s been thinking about this.
“I was sort of thinking,” She mimes with her hands, holding them far apart to indicate the couch. “If we put this against the far wall it’ll face the window, and the chairs can go against the other wall, so it faces towards the hallway where the workshop entrance will be.”
Ed stiffens. Winry doesn’t appear to notice at first, but Ed senses it straight away - there’s the heaviness in the air, the type that hangs around when an argument is imminent.
Indeed, Winry is still gesturing. “That way we can put a table here with magazines or books on it or something for patients.”
There it is. Ed is exhausted, he’s been at the house for two days straight and the last thing he wants at this moment is to fight with Winry. But he’s been letting her talk about the workshop too much, and she’s getting ideas that he really needs to nip in the bud - or figure out how they’re going to compromise.
“I uh - um.” He cleared his throat awkwardly, his throat suddenly dry. “I didn’t think we’d see patients in the house Winry.”
She blinked at him, her thoughts instantly derailed. “You don’t want me to work here?”
“No, no!” he waves his hands and rubs the crease between his eyebrows, trying to think of the right way to say what he was thinking. He’s building Winry a workspace in the basement, and that’s a foregone conclusion or else he’d never see her. “It’s just that… Gran’s house is already completely set up for an automail business. You can do surgeries there, and if you wanted to you have room for students there and everything.”
“But I’ve always lived where I work…” Winry says faintly, not looking at him. He’s gratified to hear that her tone isn’t combative, but he still doesn’t like the frown on her face, even if he’s not surprised by it. “Even in Rush Valley, I stayed with Master Garfield. And Gran’s always lived in her workshop too.”
“I just think, in the long run,” Ed stumbles, and he has to tread carefully, lest he insult the way she was raised, surrounded by patients and surgery and sickness and screeching metal and heavy tools - perfect for Winry, for making her the women he wanted to marry, but not necessarily the way he wanted to live himself. “I think that you’ll be better off, keeping Rockbell Automatil in the Rockbell house.”
Winry looks up at him then, and he can see hurt in her eyes, but he’s reasonably sure now that she’s not mad at him. Winry likes to yell and throw things when she gets mad, and she just looks quiet, like he’s laid a heavy burden across her shoulders. He suspects it’s because he’s making her think about something that she doesn’t want to think about - a time when Gran won’t be there and she’ll have to make decisions about Rockbell Automail on her own.
She bites her lip and scratches her head. “I can still have the basement as workshop though right?”
“A corner.” Ed asserts.
“Half.” Winry immediately shoots back.
He really, really doesn’t want to fight with her. “We’ll see,” he murmured, dodging, and Winry gave him a soft smile and winds her arms around his shoulders.
“Half,” she whispers, kissing him softly on the chin.
***
They’ve only been working for about forty-five minutes and Ed’s knees are already complaining about the harsh treatment. Laying tile, while simple, is kind of an annoying, tedious little task. And they’re only working on the first bathroom in the house - there are two others waiting for their attention once this task is complete.
He stands up, wincing as his knees pop, and goes to retrieve a new box of tile. It’s just him and Winry working alone today - Gran was up earlier in the day to assure them both that they were proceeding correctly, that they weren’t about to tile themselves into a corner, but she was also covering Winry’s appointments at the shop and wasn’t able to stay.
It’s the first time that the two of them have worked alone in their house, and there’s something peaceful about it even if it means more work. He grunts as he moves a tile into place, glancing across the room where Winry is mixing the cementing paste to lay under it. There’s a look of concentration on her face, and it’s the same she wears when she is working on automail. Even though he's seen it a million times it still makes him smile. Winry always gives all of herself to her work, no matter what it is or who it’s for.
He reaches again, the ceramic heavy under his fingertips, and can't help the way his mind idly skims through ideas to make this easier somehow. The house is quiet around them, the only sound in the room their breathing and the sound of scraping paste on the floor, of tiles occasionally clinking together.
Ed is the one who finally breaks the silence, a thought weighing on his mind. "You know," he says, and he hears more than sees Winry sit up and look at him curiously. "You know, the past couple years, I've gotten pretty used to doing things with my hands."
Even if he wouldn't trade it for the world, it was a struggle, at first. Not only was his restored arm weak and awkward, but he'd spent years getting used to having automail in that place - suddenly he was receiving feedback, touch and pain and heat and cold, from a place that for years had been an enormous blank spot in his conscious.
And that was just the physical struggle. There had also been the mental struggle as well - that arm had been used to performing certain actions, his mind accustomed to breaking down the world in a certain way and building it back up the way he was envisioning. It isn't that he misses alchemy - he does a little - but that for so long it had been such a part of his identity that it had forced him to look at the world in an entirely new way.
Winry is quiet while she waits for Ed to finish his thought. One of the things he loves about her is the fact that she knows when to push him and when to sit back and wait for him to come to her. She asked him about the Gate, she asked him about the final battle, about his father and Mustang and Hawkeye, about Al and how he retrieved his body, but she never, ever asked him about alchemy or commented on how he used to perform it or its multitude of uses in their world.
“It used to be automatic, using alchemy,” Ed says quietly. “And sometimes it’s kind of hard because I’ll remember how it easy it was. Or I won’t think of using alchemy, and then it’ll hit me later, and it’ll be like I forced myself to forget a reflex.”
He scratches the back of his neck and looks down at the pattern emerging from the tile, not wanting to watch Winry’s face while he speaks. “And then sometimes it’s like this, where it’s not even like alchemy would have helped anyway, because laying tile isn’t the kind of thing that it could have shortened or even made less annoying.”
It’s an observation, an objective thought about his life now and the path it has taken from his and Al’s initial mistake years and years ago. Silence falls. Winry doesn’t respond but brings a bucket of water over to him, her hands brushing over his brow, across his shoulders.
Flashing a shy smile, he finishes softly, “This is better you know.”
He loves her for not asking how.
***
When he comes into the room, the rug is halfway rolled out; she’s gazing at the bookshelves neatly lining the walls.
“These look good,” Winry comments, not looking at Ed but hearing as the floor creaks beneath his feet. “But we’re going to have to get better lighting in here. We’ll go blind if we’re straining our eyes when it’s getting dark.”
"I'll figure it out," Ed asserts comfortably, already mapping out which corners he can put lamps into without casting too many shadows. "I don't tend towards all-nighters anymore anyway..."
Winry flashes him a small smile and reaches out to run her hand along one of the shelves, examining the texture of the wood. "Are you sure this is going to be enough space for all the books though?"
Every wall is lined with bookshelves; while it isn't the biggest room in the house, Ed isn't exactly looking to establish a library for all of Risembool. All he wants is a space to work in. Though he has savings from the military, most of the income he currently generates comes from consulting work and academic papers. Alchemy might be a closed door within his mind, but he can still help others seeking to learn. Interest in alchemy has exploded since The Chosen Day, and as one of the few who's been to The Gate and survived to tell the tale, Ed's point of view is often in demand for articles, particularly as a tale of warning.
Next he’s going to look for a desk to purchase, but the bookshelves are a good start. He still has materials from when he was younger, his own, his father’s, and Izumi’s, but he's also amassed quite a collection during his travels once Al had been restored - especially foreign books.
"Oh yeah," Ed responds, his tone blithe. "Al steals a couple every time he comes home, but I still have boxes and boxes in storage back. I'm going to arrange transport for them next week. It might be a tight squeeze, but I think I'll have enough room."
Winry turns to look at him, a confused look on her face. "I thought this was going to be our library."
"Well the whole house is ours," Ed responds, and maybe there’s a little bit more of an edge to his tone than he originally intended, but he isn't quite sure what Winry is splitting hairs about. "But I figured this is where I'd get the most work done."
Winry's eyes narrow, just a little. Not enough to put an ugly look on her face, but enough to let Ed know that he’s in trouble. "I have books too Ed. A lot, actually."
Ed snorts. "So? You have your workshop."
"You don't think I'll want to bring any home?" Winry demands in a slow, patronizing tone. A flush begins to creep into her cheeks, her eyebrows knitting together.
He fights the urge to roll his eyes. “What, to read in bed? Your books are already in bookshelves in your workshop in Granny’s house. Mine are sitting in storage in Central.”
Winry is quiet for a long moment, an unhappy look on her face. She’s mad, he can tell, but he also can’t help how defensive he feels at the moment. The entire house is hers to do whatever she wants with; all he wants is his stuff out of storage.
“Ed,” Winry finally says quietly. “You do remember that you have an automail leg, right?”
“Huh?” He rocks onto it by reflex. “Of course.”
“Well you don’t seem to want much automail in the house,” she snaps.
He remembers their discussion in the living room. “You’re getting half the basement,” he replies, exasperated.
Winry just looks at him. Her expression is sad, not just angry, and Ed feels his frustration ebb a little. Despite being used to living together, this is a new situation for them, building something from scratch.
“You’re getting half the basement,” he repeats grudgingly. “I could order a few more bookcases for down there and make it like… sixty percent.”
“Ninety,” Winry responds instantly, her eyes shining.
“Seventy five,” he replies, although he has a feeling he knows where this is going to go -
“Eighty five percent,” she says decisively, and Ed remembers another discussion about percentages on a train station platform years ago.
“That seems fair,” Ed concedes.
***
“So all that’s going in here is going to be the bed frame from your bed at Gran’s?” Winry asks slowly, her eyes roving over the notes in her hand. There’s a pencil behind her ear, and she’s chewing on her thumbnail absentmindedly.
The majority of the house is up at this point, and can even be lived in, once their furniture arrives. They’re making steps towards moving in, and they’re in the process of separating what’s theirs, what’s Granny’s, and what Granny’s giving to them out of the goodness of her heart.
The walls of this particular room are still white, and the hardwood floors gleam under their feet with no accenting carpet; in the winter it will seem sterile and chilly, but at the moment, in the mid-summer sun, it looks fresh and new.
“Yeah,” Ed confirms, looking over her shoulder to see what else is on her checklist. “I wouldn’t even move in the dresser drawers. I have no idea what Al will be sending back from Xing.”
In the most technical of terms it was a guest bedroom, but even when Ed put the design for the house into blueprints it was labeled Al’s room. They’d have guests, sure. They’d have family and friends come to visit them, people who know them and love them and want to see them, but there was no real doubt in either of their minds. Alphonse will probably be staying in the bedroom more than anybody. It’s really his room, even if they know he’ll object to it being referred to as such.
“You really think he’s going to send back furniture?” Winry asks, skeptical. “I mean, I know we told him he could do whatever he wanted with the room…”
“I have no idea what he’s going to send back,” Ed mumbles, scratching the back of his head. “Sometimes he forgets and writes in Xinganese and I’m not sure I’m translating it correctly.”
“Well,” Winry glances around, still chewing on her nail. Ed resists the urge to tear her hand from her mouth. “Can’t we move some spare stuff in here for him and let him decide if he wants it or not?”
Ed shakes his head quickly, the end of his ponytail swishing against his shoulder. “Winry, I don’t even know that he’s going to keep the bedframe. He keeps talking about this thing they do in Xing where they arrange rooms a certain way and I really don’t want him to come home and be insulted because I’m stifling his energy or something.”
Winry blinks, and looks at him for a long moment, her eyes sizing him up. She bites her lip before she asks in a cautious tone, “You really miss him, don’t you Ed?”
The suggestion of it takes him by surprise; once he works through it he suddenly feels tired, weary down to his bones. His knees fold from under him and he sits down in the middle of the floor, stretching his legs out into the patch of sunlight streaming across the wood.
He wonders how to answer her question. Part of him knows it isn’t just a simple yes or no answer. “I got used to having him around all the time, you know?” Ed finally says. He barely recognizes his own voice; it sounds low and gravelly. “And then I got used to not having him around all the time. But he wasn’t around because he was going his place and I was going my place.”
Reaching up he grasps Winry’s wrist, her skin smooth against his fingertips, and tugs at her until she’s on the floor next to him, her legs crossed at the ankle. “And it was okay that we were in different places, because we were just on different paths on the same journey and we were going to meet up again.”
Their fingers interlace. She’s being quiet again, letting him talk, and he feels his heart pulse. He isn’t worried about misspeaking, or being offensive; she understands him better than anybody.
“It doesn’t feel like that anymore,” Ed explains. His eyes rove the floor, memorizing the pattern of the wood grain. “We’re doing this, we’re going to build this house and - and have a wedding, and it doesn’t feel like me and Al are headed for the same goal anymore. It’s not the same journey, we’re heading to different places. And that’s okay, but, yeah. Yeah, I miss him.”
Winry picks his hand up and presses his knuckles to her lips. For a moment she’s silent, and her breath washes warmly over the back of his hand. Finally she offers quietly, “I miss him too."
***
Winry finds it first.
“Ed,” she calls from the bedroom. “What is this?”
He turns into the doorway and stops short. Winry’s eyes are bright, and he can see why. The bed is huge. He knew it was coming, and he’s still surprised at how big it is. It seems almost out of place in the bedroom, large and luxurious, not quite as practical as they’re used to.
“That,” he says quietly, leaning against the doorframe, “is a wedding present.”
Her face is still shocked. She glances back and forth between his face and the bed, as if waiting for him to grin and declare that it’s just a joke, that they’re taking it away now. “From who?” she finally asks, her voice just above a whisper.
“My teacher and her husband.” Izumi insisted, despite his objections. And it had to be delivered before the wedding. He never considered Izumi Curtis to be the superstitious type, but: “She says it’s bad luck for a couple to start a marriage with a bed that’s been slept in.”
Winry looks at him and cocks an eyebrow. “So they bought us an entirely new bed?”
Ed shrugs and drags his foot along the floor. “They wanted us to get our marriage off on the right foot.”
It’s generous, to be sure. More than generous, all things considered, but he’s touched by the gesture. In his short life he’s seen many examples of a marriage, and with his own wedding coming up he’s been on the receiving end of more than enough advice about how to make their union last, but the picture he’s always held close to his heart has been his teacher and her husband at work in their butcher shop. There is something both completely mesmerizing and utterly natural about their partnership, and they make him feel a sense of security that he was never able to feel with his own parents. Sig and Izumi Curtis have each other, and all is right with the world.
Winry circles, running her hands along the crisp white linens. “It’s really beautiful. I almost feel bad accepting it.”
“They wouldn’t take it back even if you tried,” Ed snorts, shoving his hands into his pockets and imagining Izumi’s face. The thought is distracting enough that at first he doesn’t notice that Winry has crawled onto the bed.
She gets his attention by flinging her shirt in his face.
He blinks, looking down at the garment in his hands, and then looking up at her, eyes wide. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” she asks, reaching behind her back to unhook her bra. “This our marriage bed, Ed. Our bed. Don’t you want to try it out?”
“Um…” Her bra follows the same path as her shirt, and momentarily Ed loses the ability to put together a sentence. “Yeah. Yeah, I would.”
“Well what are you waiting for?” she demands, flopping onto her back to shimmy out of her pants and kick them aside impatiently.
He’s still holding her shirt. Reluctantly, he tears his eyes away and looks back down at the floor. “I don’t think we can yet.”
Winry sits up, staring at him incredulously. “Why ever not?”
Ed huffs impatiently. “If we do it… she’s going to know.”
“Huh?”
His face is beet red; he can feel the heat radiating off of him, but that does nothing to sway his opinion. “This is our marriage bed,” he repeats back to her. “And if we do anything in this bed before our marriage, Izumi is going to know. I don’t know how she’ll know, but she will.”
“You’re afraid your teacher will be mad because we had sex in our bed?” It’s more a statement than a question, but Ed cann’t bring himself to back down.
“On her wedding present,” Ed clarifies. “Meant for our marriage.”
She responds by throwing her panties at him. He looks at her clothes littering the floor.
“Worth the risk,” he declares, stripping off his shirt.
***
“Ed?” he hears Winry call from upstairs, kneeling in the hallway sorting through boxes. “Ed, this looks like stuff from your trip to Creata. What do you want to do with it?”
“Just put the box away,” he shouts back. “I need to sort through it and figure out what I want to keep.”
He hears her grunt as she picks the box up and listens as her footsteps carry down the hall, creaking above his head. He knows exactly where she’s putting it.
Next to their bedroom there is a room.
It isn’t much, for a room. It’s square and has a closet and a big window that lets in a lot of sunlight. They haven’t hung blinds yet; they haven’t even painted it.
It’s just a room.
They haven’t done much with it yet; by silent agreement it’s sort of morphed into a storage room, a place for them to shove boxes and furniture that they haven’t worked out what they’re doing with yet. It saves them from tripping around the house, or from having to make the trip into the basement.
Other than that, they don’t really go in there. Usually, they keep the door shut, even as they’re opening windows and doors in an attempt to air out the house.
They have plans for that room.
They haven’t talked about it, but he and Winry both know what they’re going to do with it sooner or later. He doesn’t know exactly what Winry is picturing, but Ed can see a soft, plush carpet, gauzy curtains floating in the spring breeze, and a dark wooded crib in the corner.
That’s all it is for now though. Just a picture in Ed’s mind. Plans, to be decided upon later.
Until then, it’s just a room, next to their bedroom. Good for storage.
***
Rating: T/PG-13
Word Count: 4,678
Characters/Pairings: Ed/Winry
Summary: With their wedding approaching, Ed builds Winry a house.
A/N: This may come as a shock to nobody, but I don't actually know how to build a house. It's not really supposed to be about that. Post series, implied if not outright spoilers for where everyone ended up.
***
Winry appears around lunchtime, a picnic basket on her arm. Ed and his helpers - the next closest neighbors and their teenage sons - are hefting the last cabinet into place. Ed was holding the cabinet in place as Mr. Foster wields the drill; he grimaces as the wood grinds and shakes beneath his hands, but when he steps back and checks their work nothing appears to be misaligned or out of place.
He can hear the unfinished floor cracking and popping beneath Winry’s feet. “It’s really coming together,” she says admiringly, beaming at Ed when he turns to greet her. “I like the finish we picked,” she added, as though they hadn’t spent a week bickering about it.
“Once these are up we can get your counters put in and your sink set up,” Mr. Foster explains, wiping his forehead off with a handkerchief. While the late spring weather wasn’t exceptionally warm, it was still muggy outside and no fans had been installed yet. Ed could feel sweat trickling down his back.
He though he’d done enough research when he was planning their home, but as the neighbors pitched in to help Ed found that he wasn’t nearly prepared enough - and, in some cases, had over-prepared. So much more went into a home than he’d really considered, and putting everything together layer by layer was far more intimidating than he’d been expecting.
As capable as Ed was, he couldn’t - and wouldn’t - compete with the wisdom others had gained by building their homes, and he was grateful for the help. The whole town had offered aid, and it had warmed Ed’s heart to see how many in town were happy to see him settling down again.
“I brought lunch for everybody,” Winry said, dropping the basket on the floor and opening it. “The least I could do, with all the help everyone’s been giving us.”
There were fresh cookies packed away at the bottom, and Winry slapped Ed’s hand away gently as he reached for one of those first before handing him a wrapped sandwich. They settled in a loose circle, enjoying their break as they discussed what needed to be done and what they would work on next.
“I cleared some of my appointments tomorrow,” Winry said, looking at Ed. He’d been chewing slowly, more focused on the casual press of Winry’s knee against his thigh than the taste of his sandwich. “I’ll be able to come up and help. I think Gran can cover anything unexpected.”
“That’s good,” Mr. Foster said, fishing the milk jug out of the picnic basket. “We can use every able body to get you up and moved in as soon as possible.”
The goal was to have the house finished before their wedding in the fall. So far everything was going according to plan, but they still needed work to go as smoothly as possible in order for everything to be ready - not just for Ed and Winry to move in as a married couple, but to prepare for the influx of guests that would inevitably invade Risembool for their wedding.
Actually building their house made the upcoming wedding much more real. He can actually see it now, standing at the stove with a kettle, or Winry rolling out a pie crust on the counter. It’s really going to happen, it’s not just a warm picture to cocoon himself in or a promise to remind himself of.
He thinks Winry must see it the same way he does; halfway into her sandwich she looks over at him, her eyes bright and the faintest blush to her cheeks and said quietly, “You know what I just realized? This is the first time we’ve entertained company in our house.”
The neighbors laugh but Ed just nods in response to her embarrassed half-smile. He can see it too - family dinners, friends from Central, guests from abroad - and there’s something charming about the very first meal in their house being in the company of their closest neighbors on their unfinished kitchen floor.
He laughs and stretches out, leaning back on his elbows. “Next time let’s get a table.”
***
“What do you think?” Ed asked as Winry stepped barefoot onto the carpet, her toes twitching into the thick fibers.
“I like it,” Winry said slowly, nodding her approval as she stepped around the parameters of their soon-to-be completed living room. “It’ll clean easy.”
“It goes with the furniture,” Ed added, gesturing to the plastic covered couch and chairs piled up in the hallway.
“We should set that up,” Winry said quietly, her attention immediately stolen as she lifted one corner of the tarp curiously. “How did you want to arrange it?”
He’s known Winry for a lifetime, and Ed can tell immediately by the way she asks that she already has something in mind. “What do you think?” he asks, because how their furniture is arranged isn’t particularly important to him, and it’s obvious that she’s been thinking about this.
“I was sort of thinking,” She mimes with her hands, holding them far apart to indicate the couch. “If we put this against the far wall it’ll face the window, and the chairs can go against the other wall, so it faces towards the hallway where the workshop entrance will be.”
Ed stiffens. Winry doesn’t appear to notice at first, but Ed senses it straight away - there’s the heaviness in the air, the type that hangs around when an argument is imminent.
Indeed, Winry is still gesturing. “That way we can put a table here with magazines or books on it or something for patients.”
There it is. Ed is exhausted, he’s been at the house for two days straight and the last thing he wants at this moment is to fight with Winry. But he’s been letting her talk about the workshop too much, and she’s getting ideas that he really needs to nip in the bud - or figure out how they’re going to compromise.
“I uh - um.” He cleared his throat awkwardly, his throat suddenly dry. “I didn’t think we’d see patients in the house Winry.”
She blinked at him, her thoughts instantly derailed. “You don’t want me to work here?”
“No, no!” he waves his hands and rubs the crease between his eyebrows, trying to think of the right way to say what he was thinking. He’s building Winry a workspace in the basement, and that’s a foregone conclusion or else he’d never see her. “It’s just that… Gran’s house is already completely set up for an automail business. You can do surgeries there, and if you wanted to you have room for students there and everything.”
“But I’ve always lived where I work…” Winry says faintly, not looking at him. He’s gratified to hear that her tone isn’t combative, but he still doesn’t like the frown on her face, even if he’s not surprised by it. “Even in Rush Valley, I stayed with Master Garfield. And Gran’s always lived in her workshop too.”
“I just think, in the long run,” Ed stumbles, and he has to tread carefully, lest he insult the way she was raised, surrounded by patients and surgery and sickness and screeching metal and heavy tools - perfect for Winry, for making her the women he wanted to marry, but not necessarily the way he wanted to live himself. “I think that you’ll be better off, keeping Rockbell Automatil in the Rockbell house.”
Winry looks up at him then, and he can see hurt in her eyes, but he’s reasonably sure now that she’s not mad at him. Winry likes to yell and throw things when she gets mad, and she just looks quiet, like he’s laid a heavy burden across her shoulders. He suspects it’s because he’s making her think about something that she doesn’t want to think about - a time when Gran won’t be there and she’ll have to make decisions about Rockbell Automail on her own.
She bites her lip and scratches her head. “I can still have the basement as workshop though right?”
“A corner.” Ed asserts.
“Half.” Winry immediately shoots back.
He really, really doesn’t want to fight with her. “We’ll see,” he murmured, dodging, and Winry gave him a soft smile and winds her arms around his shoulders.
“Half,” she whispers, kissing him softly on the chin.
***
They’ve only been working for about forty-five minutes and Ed’s knees are already complaining about the harsh treatment. Laying tile, while simple, is kind of an annoying, tedious little task. And they’re only working on the first bathroom in the house - there are two others waiting for their attention once this task is complete.
He stands up, wincing as his knees pop, and goes to retrieve a new box of tile. It’s just him and Winry working alone today - Gran was up earlier in the day to assure them both that they were proceeding correctly, that they weren’t about to tile themselves into a corner, but she was also covering Winry’s appointments at the shop and wasn’t able to stay.
It’s the first time that the two of them have worked alone in their house, and there’s something peaceful about it even if it means more work. He grunts as he moves a tile into place, glancing across the room where Winry is mixing the cementing paste to lay under it. There’s a look of concentration on her face, and it’s the same she wears when she is working on automail. Even though he's seen it a million times it still makes him smile. Winry always gives all of herself to her work, no matter what it is or who it’s for.
He reaches again, the ceramic heavy under his fingertips, and can't help the way his mind idly skims through ideas to make this easier somehow. The house is quiet around them, the only sound in the room their breathing and the sound of scraping paste on the floor, of tiles occasionally clinking together.
Ed is the one who finally breaks the silence, a thought weighing on his mind. "You know," he says, and he hears more than sees Winry sit up and look at him curiously. "You know, the past couple years, I've gotten pretty used to doing things with my hands."
Even if he wouldn't trade it for the world, it was a struggle, at first. Not only was his restored arm weak and awkward, but he'd spent years getting used to having automail in that place - suddenly he was receiving feedback, touch and pain and heat and cold, from a place that for years had been an enormous blank spot in his conscious.
And that was just the physical struggle. There had also been the mental struggle as well - that arm had been used to performing certain actions, his mind accustomed to breaking down the world in a certain way and building it back up the way he was envisioning. It isn't that he misses alchemy - he does a little - but that for so long it had been such a part of his identity that it had forced him to look at the world in an entirely new way.
Winry is quiet while she waits for Ed to finish his thought. One of the things he loves about her is the fact that she knows when to push him and when to sit back and wait for him to come to her. She asked him about the Gate, she asked him about the final battle, about his father and Mustang and Hawkeye, about Al and how he retrieved his body, but she never, ever asked him about alchemy or commented on how he used to perform it or its multitude of uses in their world.
“It used to be automatic, using alchemy,” Ed says quietly. “And sometimes it’s kind of hard because I’ll remember how it easy it was. Or I won’t think of using alchemy, and then it’ll hit me later, and it’ll be like I forced myself to forget a reflex.”
He scratches the back of his neck and looks down at the pattern emerging from the tile, not wanting to watch Winry’s face while he speaks. “And then sometimes it’s like this, where it’s not even like alchemy would have helped anyway, because laying tile isn’t the kind of thing that it could have shortened or even made less annoying.”
It’s an observation, an objective thought about his life now and the path it has taken from his and Al’s initial mistake years and years ago. Silence falls. Winry doesn’t respond but brings a bucket of water over to him, her hands brushing over his brow, across his shoulders.
Flashing a shy smile, he finishes softly, “This is better you know.”
He loves her for not asking how.
***
When he comes into the room, the rug is halfway rolled out; she’s gazing at the bookshelves neatly lining the walls.
“These look good,” Winry comments, not looking at Ed but hearing as the floor creaks beneath his feet. “But we’re going to have to get better lighting in here. We’ll go blind if we’re straining our eyes when it’s getting dark.”
"I'll figure it out," Ed asserts comfortably, already mapping out which corners he can put lamps into without casting too many shadows. "I don't tend towards all-nighters anymore anyway..."
Winry flashes him a small smile and reaches out to run her hand along one of the shelves, examining the texture of the wood. "Are you sure this is going to be enough space for all the books though?"
Every wall is lined with bookshelves; while it isn't the biggest room in the house, Ed isn't exactly looking to establish a library for all of Risembool. All he wants is a space to work in. Though he has savings from the military, most of the income he currently generates comes from consulting work and academic papers. Alchemy might be a closed door within his mind, but he can still help others seeking to learn. Interest in alchemy has exploded since The Chosen Day, and as one of the few who's been to The Gate and survived to tell the tale, Ed's point of view is often in demand for articles, particularly as a tale of warning.
Next he’s going to look for a desk to purchase, but the bookshelves are a good start. He still has materials from when he was younger, his own, his father’s, and Izumi’s, but he's also amassed quite a collection during his travels once Al had been restored - especially foreign books.
"Oh yeah," Ed responds, his tone blithe. "Al steals a couple every time he comes home, but I still have boxes and boxes in storage back. I'm going to arrange transport for them next week. It might be a tight squeeze, but I think I'll have enough room."
Winry turns to look at him, a confused look on her face. "I thought this was going to be our library."
"Well the whole house is ours," Ed responds, and maybe there’s a little bit more of an edge to his tone than he originally intended, but he isn't quite sure what Winry is splitting hairs about. "But I figured this is where I'd get the most work done."
Winry's eyes narrow, just a little. Not enough to put an ugly look on her face, but enough to let Ed know that he’s in trouble. "I have books too Ed. A lot, actually."
Ed snorts. "So? You have your workshop."
"You don't think I'll want to bring any home?" Winry demands in a slow, patronizing tone. A flush begins to creep into her cheeks, her eyebrows knitting together.
He fights the urge to roll his eyes. “What, to read in bed? Your books are already in bookshelves in your workshop in Granny’s house. Mine are sitting in storage in Central.”
Winry is quiet for a long moment, an unhappy look on her face. She’s mad, he can tell, but he also can’t help how defensive he feels at the moment. The entire house is hers to do whatever she wants with; all he wants is his stuff out of storage.
“Ed,” Winry finally says quietly. “You do remember that you have an automail leg, right?”
“Huh?” He rocks onto it by reflex. “Of course.”
“Well you don’t seem to want much automail in the house,” she snaps.
He remembers their discussion in the living room. “You’re getting half the basement,” he replies, exasperated.
Winry just looks at him. Her expression is sad, not just angry, and Ed feels his frustration ebb a little. Despite being used to living together, this is a new situation for them, building something from scratch.
“You’re getting half the basement,” he repeats grudgingly. “I could order a few more bookcases for down there and make it like… sixty percent.”
“Ninety,” Winry responds instantly, her eyes shining.
“Seventy five,” he replies, although he has a feeling he knows where this is going to go -
“Eighty five percent,” she says decisively, and Ed remembers another discussion about percentages on a train station platform years ago.
“That seems fair,” Ed concedes.
***
“So all that’s going in here is going to be the bed frame from your bed at Gran’s?” Winry asks slowly, her eyes roving over the notes in her hand. There’s a pencil behind her ear, and she’s chewing on her thumbnail absentmindedly.
The majority of the house is up at this point, and can even be lived in, once their furniture arrives. They’re making steps towards moving in, and they’re in the process of separating what’s theirs, what’s Granny’s, and what Granny’s giving to them out of the goodness of her heart.
The walls of this particular room are still white, and the hardwood floors gleam under their feet with no accenting carpet; in the winter it will seem sterile and chilly, but at the moment, in the mid-summer sun, it looks fresh and new.
“Yeah,” Ed confirms, looking over her shoulder to see what else is on her checklist. “I wouldn’t even move in the dresser drawers. I have no idea what Al will be sending back from Xing.”
In the most technical of terms it was a guest bedroom, but even when Ed put the design for the house into blueprints it was labeled Al’s room. They’d have guests, sure. They’d have family and friends come to visit them, people who know them and love them and want to see them, but there was no real doubt in either of their minds. Alphonse will probably be staying in the bedroom more than anybody. It’s really his room, even if they know he’ll object to it being referred to as such.
“You really think he’s going to send back furniture?” Winry asks, skeptical. “I mean, I know we told him he could do whatever he wanted with the room…”
“I have no idea what he’s going to send back,” Ed mumbles, scratching the back of his head. “Sometimes he forgets and writes in Xinganese and I’m not sure I’m translating it correctly.”
“Well,” Winry glances around, still chewing on her nail. Ed resists the urge to tear her hand from her mouth. “Can’t we move some spare stuff in here for him and let him decide if he wants it or not?”
Ed shakes his head quickly, the end of his ponytail swishing against his shoulder. “Winry, I don’t even know that he’s going to keep the bedframe. He keeps talking about this thing they do in Xing where they arrange rooms a certain way and I really don’t want him to come home and be insulted because I’m stifling his energy or something.”
Winry blinks, and looks at him for a long moment, her eyes sizing him up. She bites her lip before she asks in a cautious tone, “You really miss him, don’t you Ed?”
The suggestion of it takes him by surprise; once he works through it he suddenly feels tired, weary down to his bones. His knees fold from under him and he sits down in the middle of the floor, stretching his legs out into the patch of sunlight streaming across the wood.
He wonders how to answer her question. Part of him knows it isn’t just a simple yes or no answer. “I got used to having him around all the time, you know?” Ed finally says. He barely recognizes his own voice; it sounds low and gravelly. “And then I got used to not having him around all the time. But he wasn’t around because he was going his place and I was going my place.”
Reaching up he grasps Winry’s wrist, her skin smooth against his fingertips, and tugs at her until she’s on the floor next to him, her legs crossed at the ankle. “And it was okay that we were in different places, because we were just on different paths on the same journey and we were going to meet up again.”
Their fingers interlace. She’s being quiet again, letting him talk, and he feels his heart pulse. He isn’t worried about misspeaking, or being offensive; she understands him better than anybody.
“It doesn’t feel like that anymore,” Ed explains. His eyes rove the floor, memorizing the pattern of the wood grain. “We’re doing this, we’re going to build this house and - and have a wedding, and it doesn’t feel like me and Al are headed for the same goal anymore. It’s not the same journey, we’re heading to different places. And that’s okay, but, yeah. Yeah, I miss him.”
Winry picks his hand up and presses his knuckles to her lips. For a moment she’s silent, and her breath washes warmly over the back of his hand. Finally she offers quietly, “I miss him too."
***
Winry finds it first.
“Ed,” she calls from the bedroom. “What is this?”
He turns into the doorway and stops short. Winry’s eyes are bright, and he can see why. The bed is huge. He knew it was coming, and he’s still surprised at how big it is. It seems almost out of place in the bedroom, large and luxurious, not quite as practical as they’re used to.
“That,” he says quietly, leaning against the doorframe, “is a wedding present.”
Her face is still shocked. She glances back and forth between his face and the bed, as if waiting for him to grin and declare that it’s just a joke, that they’re taking it away now. “From who?” she finally asks, her voice just above a whisper.
“My teacher and her husband.” Izumi insisted, despite his objections. And it had to be delivered before the wedding. He never considered Izumi Curtis to be the superstitious type, but: “She says it’s bad luck for a couple to start a marriage with a bed that’s been slept in.”
Winry looks at him and cocks an eyebrow. “So they bought us an entirely new bed?”
Ed shrugs and drags his foot along the floor. “They wanted us to get our marriage off on the right foot.”
It’s generous, to be sure. More than generous, all things considered, but he’s touched by the gesture. In his short life he’s seen many examples of a marriage, and with his own wedding coming up he’s been on the receiving end of more than enough advice about how to make their union last, but the picture he’s always held close to his heart has been his teacher and her husband at work in their butcher shop. There is something both completely mesmerizing and utterly natural about their partnership, and they make him feel a sense of security that he was never able to feel with his own parents. Sig and Izumi Curtis have each other, and all is right with the world.
Winry circles, running her hands along the crisp white linens. “It’s really beautiful. I almost feel bad accepting it.”
“They wouldn’t take it back even if you tried,” Ed snorts, shoving his hands into his pockets and imagining Izumi’s face. The thought is distracting enough that at first he doesn’t notice that Winry has crawled onto the bed.
She gets his attention by flinging her shirt in his face.
He blinks, looking down at the garment in his hands, and then looking up at her, eyes wide. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” she asks, reaching behind her back to unhook her bra. “This our marriage bed, Ed. Our bed. Don’t you want to try it out?”
“Um…” Her bra follows the same path as her shirt, and momentarily Ed loses the ability to put together a sentence. “Yeah. Yeah, I would.”
“Well what are you waiting for?” she demands, flopping onto her back to shimmy out of her pants and kick them aside impatiently.
He’s still holding her shirt. Reluctantly, he tears his eyes away and looks back down at the floor. “I don’t think we can yet.”
Winry sits up, staring at him incredulously. “Why ever not?”
Ed huffs impatiently. “If we do it… she’s going to know.”
“Huh?”
His face is beet red; he can feel the heat radiating off of him, but that does nothing to sway his opinion. “This is our marriage bed,” he repeats back to her. “And if we do anything in this bed before our marriage, Izumi is going to know. I don’t know how she’ll know, but she will.”
“You’re afraid your teacher will be mad because we had sex in our bed?” It’s more a statement than a question, but Ed cann’t bring himself to back down.
“On her wedding present,” Ed clarifies. “Meant for our marriage.”
She responds by throwing her panties at him. He looks at her clothes littering the floor.
“Worth the risk,” he declares, stripping off his shirt.
***
“Ed?” he hears Winry call from upstairs, kneeling in the hallway sorting through boxes. “Ed, this looks like stuff from your trip to Creata. What do you want to do with it?”
“Just put the box away,” he shouts back. “I need to sort through it and figure out what I want to keep.”
He hears her grunt as she picks the box up and listens as her footsteps carry down the hall, creaking above his head. He knows exactly where she’s putting it.
Next to their bedroom there is a room.
It isn’t much, for a room. It’s square and has a closet and a big window that lets in a lot of sunlight. They haven’t hung blinds yet; they haven’t even painted it.
It’s just a room.
They haven’t done much with it yet; by silent agreement it’s sort of morphed into a storage room, a place for them to shove boxes and furniture that they haven’t worked out what they’re doing with yet. It saves them from tripping around the house, or from having to make the trip into the basement.
Other than that, they don’t really go in there. Usually, they keep the door shut, even as they’re opening windows and doors in an attempt to air out the house.
They have plans for that room.
They haven’t talked about it, but he and Winry both know what they’re going to do with it sooner or later. He doesn’t know exactly what Winry is picturing, but Ed can see a soft, plush carpet, gauzy curtains floating in the spring breeze, and a dark wooded crib in the corner.
That’s all it is for now though. Just a picture in Ed’s mind. Plans, to be decided upon later.
Until then, it’s just a room, next to their bedroom. Good for storage.
***