The Desert Ague (Chapter 2/?, EdWin, Jerso, teen)
Title: The Desert Ague (2/?)
Author: crazybeagle
Rating: T for innuendo/language
Prompt: I would like some hurt/comfort with Ed in Creta or some other country in the east. Het please, but nothing explicit.....I'm looking for hurt/comfort with some sexy twists. Don't take yourself too seriously, if you can put in a few bits of comedy, I'd love it, but it's OK if you want to go with the more angst laden h/c.
Word count (chapter 2): 2600
Summary: When Ed attempts to make the trek to Xing to attend Ling's coronation as emperor, things go disastrously wrong. Turns out it really is a bad idea to cross the desert with automail. Good thing Winry tagged along, both to keep him alive and to call him ten kinds of idiot for having set out in the first place.
Ed had seen the desert before-hell, he'd traveled what amounted to its entire distance during the trip to Xerxes and back. But there was still something arresting, and distinctly unnerving, about seeing the gently-rolling landscape of Amestris drop off so abruptly into so much nothing. There was too much sky here, he decided-it left a person too open, too exposed. Home of his ancestors or no, he didn't care for it.
Not to mention, it was too damn hot.
But not when they'd first stood right at the edge of it, watching it swallow up the land before their eyes, it wasn't. It was early March then, and in northeastern Amestris, it was still chilly.
When Winry, confused and shivering a bit, had mentioned as much to Jerso, Li Feng had rolled his eyes, and Jerso had chuckled. "That ain't gonna matter any by this afternoon, sweetheart, you'll see," he said, with a glance at the sky. He patted the flank of his horse-a massive, good-natured palomino, a draught breed that was probably the only sized breed in existence large enough to hold his weight. Must have been an exclusively Xingese breed, Ed thought, because he'd never seen horses that large in Amestris. "Well," Jerso said, after he'd swung himself into his saddle with a grunt, "mount up, everybody."
Li and Winry did so easily-Li looked to be a natural horseman, though the way he held himself on his own gray gelding, stiff and just-so in that damned expensive carved leather saddle, only further convinced Ed of what he already suspected. This guy was most likely going to be a broody, pretentious pain in their asses the entire way to Xing and then some. Unless he couldn't be bothered talk to them at all, which seemed to be the case so far, and that was fine by Ed. Winry was good with horses-some neighbors in Risembool owned a few, and she'd taken care of them on and off for years, as well as ridden them for fun every now and then, and she was decent on both counts. Her horse was a small mare with an oddly speckled brown and white coat that Jerso was calling an appaloosa, and it whickered softly when she swung herself into the saddle and patted its withers.
Ed and horses, however, did not get along so well.
"You just gonna stand there, Elric, or are ya comin' to Xing with us?" Jerso looked between Ed and his horse, an ill-tempered bay stallion, with which Ed was currently having a rather heated staring contest. Everything about this particular horse annoyed him, from the threatening way it swished its tail whenever he walked too close, to the awful smell that would hang around it whenever it munched on onion grass, to the way it seemed to try its damndest to get extra spit and snot and horse-breath on his face and hands whenever he tried to put on the bit and bridle, while it'd drool and snort and chomp and shake its long head. Oh, and to cap it all off, its-his -name was Majesty, apparently, though the reason for that was beyond him.
"Ed?" Jerso's voice was an amused rumble from atop his saddle. "We leavin' anytime soon?"
"Yeah, I'm coming, I'm coming," Ed muttered, and after a few tries, during which he could hear Winry biting down on a giggle or two, he finally managed to hoist himself unceremoniously into the saddle. That's another thing he hated about good ol' Majestyhere: by anyone's standards, Majesty was a big horse. Not as big as Jerso's draught horse, but big nonetheless. And that was immensely irritating, because all the pride he'd felt once he'd finally reached a height at which nobody could really call him "short" anymore-he was of fairly middling height still, but at least he now had several inches on Winry, and he wasn't too far behind Al-was promptly deflated at the sight of this stupid horse's back so far up in the air. It took a few ridiculous contortions, and some hopping, for him to even get a foot in the damn stirrup.
Winry was openly laughing at him now. "You alright over there?"
"Shaddup," Ed muttered, getting a tight grip on the reigns while Majesty pawed and stamped at the ground, impatient. He heard what sounded like a quiet scoff coming from Li's direction, but he didn't look over.
Bastard.
As the morning went on, Ed quickly found out what Jerso had meant about the season not mattering out here. They rode across what at first looked like light-colored, hard-packed dirt and clay, the horses kicking up a fine dust all around them. It was a sort of worn-down path marked with huge, tumbled- granite boulders that doubled as mile markers, which Jerso explained was an old caravan trail that they could follow almost the entire way to Xerxes. Xerxes itself, of course, would mark their halfway point to Xing.
By the time they'd stopped for lunch, Ed was sweating, the skin around his port uncomfortably hot. His legs ached from sitting on that giant of a horse for the past several hours, and he kind of hobbled awkwardly over to the boulder marker they'd stopped by-half-sitting, half-falling onto his ass while Jerso and Li were tethering the horses, and leaning back.
And then Winry was standing over him, one hand on her hip, another holding one of the cloth bags that held their supplies. She dumped it in his lap. It was heavy. He grunted. "Lazy," she said, shaking her head. "You've been sitting all morning. You could help with lunch."
"What's there to help with?" he muttered, rubbing absently at his leg. "We pull stuff out of bags, and we eat it. It's too hot to build a fire or anything."
She let out a little huff of irritation, but didn't argue that point. She knelt in front of him and took the bag, though, and while she was rummaging through it, Ed could see that her cheeks and the tip of her nose and ears were already pink with sunburn. Like the rest of them, there was a thin coating of dust on her skin and in the folds of her light cotton shirt and pants where the horses had kicked it up. Ed now understood why Li had wrapped a wide scarf around his mouth and nose before they set out-he hoped his lunch didn't taste too much like the grit coating his teeth and tongue.
Before his fatigue combined with the soothing, rustling sounds of Winry's sifting through the bag could lull him into any kind of stupor, she was flinging neatly-wrapped parcels of flat bread and beef jerky hard at his chest.
"Lunch is served," she said with a smirk as Ed belatedly swatted the air in front of him and grumbled.
"You shouldn't be sitting right on the ground," she said, scooting herself back so that she was seated next to him, her own parcels in her lap. "There needs to at least be a layer of leather or plastic or something under you," she added, snagging a bit of his linen pant leg in two fingers. "To keep sand out of the port."
"What sand?" Ed asked, picking up a handful of the fine loose dust that surrounded them and letting it slide back through his fingers.
"Must you always argue with everything that comes out of my mouth?" she shot back. "You could at least get it up off the ground." And then, without warning, she was leaning over him and grabbing at his thigh with both hands, tugging upwards.
A hiss of pain escaped him before he could stop it, and he hoped she couldn't feel how hot the metal was through the fabric.
She let go, brow furrowing. "Ed?"
He propped his leg the rest of the way up, knee bent, trying not to make a face as he did so. "I'm good," he said, dismissively, grabbing for the parcel of beef jerky. "Just haven't ridden a horse in awhile, is all." That was actually the majority of the issue here, anyways. The damn horse was too big-it was like having a freaking mountain with a mind of its own between his legs- and his thigh muscles would be sore by now automail or no.
"Hm." She didn't sound convinced.
He tore off a chunk of the jerky with his teeth. "And I made it just fine to Xerxes and back, remember?" he said.
She rolled her eyes. "Don't talk with your mouth full." She paused. "And how exactly were you feeling once you got to Xerxes?" she asked him, her eyes daring him to lie to her.
"Fine," he snapped, reaching for the bread.
She raised an eyebrow. "Fine?"
"Yeah," he said, though it must've lacked conviction, because she looked skeptical. That, and worried. He thought back, searched his memory to confirm the truth of it. What stood out most clearly of course, from that trip, had been the discovery that Lieutenant Ross was still alive, the run-in with the Ishvalans, and of course the discovery of the mural of the Philosopher's Stone among the ruins of the city. Sure, he'd been hot as hell on the way, complaining and cursing the fact that there hadn't been time for him to change out of his black clothing, and wondering whether or not it really was possible for somebody's blood to boil... But all it had taken to rectify all that was a quick cannonball into the ancient city's well, and he'd been perfectly fine again.
Or so he'd thought. Because another memory was surfacing, hazy, and more in snatches than in one continuous sequence-a memory of camping beside the ruins that night, right before they'd headed back to Amestris. At first, the smell of the cooking fire and the excitement of the day had left Ed absolutely ravenous, but when somebody had pushed a supper bowl into his hands-a stew with vegetables and some rice from the East-his stomach turned, inexplicably, and he'd declined it. He remembered staring into the fire while everybody else ate, sipping from a canteen, feeling odd and hot and uncomfortable, and then practically falling into his sleeping bag after having excused himself early, wondering why his automail felt so heavy. He woke once, thirsty, and after stumbling to the well to drink too much water and then vomiting it all up into the sand, he went back to sleep, thoroughly miserable. But because he'd been alright, if a bit groggy, the next morning, he'd barely remembered that night at all until now.
He figured he didn't even need to bother to explain the specifics-she was wearing an I-told-you-so expression, eyebrows disappearing beneath her bangs.
She reached over, set a hand on the side of his neck. Her lips were pursed.
"What are you doing?"
"Checking your temperature," she said, and softly tapped his thigh with the finger of her other hand. "Remember what I said about major arteries and automail?"
Now it was Ed who was rolling his eyes. "Winry, it's only been four hours. I'm fine."
She didn't take her hand away. There was an odd, faraway look in her eyes for a moment; her gaze went out over the rock-strewn horizon and she let out a shaky breath.
"Winry?"
Her hand slid up the back of his neck, fingers catching in his hair. She turned back to him, that odd expression replaced by a sparkle of mischief in blue eyes. "That's not all I was doing."
And then her lips were on his.
Ed made a noise of surprise-a bit of an mmpf!-and then he caught on, gave into it, and kissed her back. She tasted good, like the aloe balm she'd bought at an outpost yesterday to keep her lips from cracking in the sun, and tea, and more than a hint of desert dust, too, but he couldn't bring himself to mind. Hell, he had to taste like beef jerky right now, but she obviously didn't care.
A loud snorting noise come off from somewhere to their left, and they both started, nearly bumping noses as they did so. Winry whipped her head around so fast that her ponytail smacked Ed in the face.
"I take it I'm interruptin' somethin'," Jerso drawled, arms crossed, eyes crinkled and lips pinched, looking as though he was finding it very hard to maintain any sort of composure.
"What do you need?" Winry said briskly. Ed was glad she was doing the talking here, because if it had been him, he'd either be yelling, or muttering something idiotic and unintelligible, or some combination of the both. All things considered, he was impressed that Winry wasn't doing the same.
"Was just gonna offer to fill the canteens," Jerso said, holding his hands up in a placating gesture, but now grinning broadly. "There's an old well that trade caravans use not too far from here, and I dunno if I wanna leave it to His Excellency back there." He jerked a thumb back towards the makeshift camp where the horses were tethered, and swiped at his broad, sweaty face with a sleeve. "He can take care 'a the horses if he wants, and he ain't half bad, actually, but seein' as he hardly spoke a word to me for weeks the whole way here, I'm afraid he might try ta slip us all arsenic one 'a these days if I stick him on canteen duty." He shuddered. "Hate these political types."
Well, Ed thought, Jerso would know what he was talking about in that regard, having been a guest of the Xingese court for the past year. From what little Ed had been able to discern about it so far, it seemed that Xingese politics were a strict game of facades and decorum, which left plenty of room for backstabbing. It made him nervous for Al. About Li Feng himself, Ed could determine very little-around thirty, short-haired, clean-shaven, and with a very serious, austere demeanor, Li seemed everything that the Emperor-to-be was not. But that aside, he kept quiet and kept to himself, bringing up the rear during the ride and tending the horses in between. Ed sensed a cold resentment in him. He wasn't to be trusted, to say the least.
Winry had fetched the canteens from the packs and thrust them hastily into Jerso's hands. She was looking determinedly away from him, from both of them, high spots of color on her cheeks that had nothing to do with the sun, lips fuller and redder than usual. "Thank you, Jerso," she said, pointedly.
"Alright, alright, I can see when I'm not wanted," he said, shrugging huge shoulders and grinning again. He turned and waved. "Bye now."
Winry's shoulders slumped, and she sank back down beside Ed, head dropping down between her knees. Ed heard a little agitated growl from the back of her throat.
"Well…cat's outta the bag," he offered, lamely.
She sat back up, ramrod straight, and shot him an incredulous glare. "Honestly, Ed. We live together. There never was a bag to begin with. What were they supposed to think?"
"That…you're my mechanic?"
She blinked. "You're an idiot."
He scowled. "Gee, thanks."
And then her hand was wrapped around his neck again, but her lips lighted on his forehead. "A complete idiot," she murmured against his brow, and kissed him.
To be continued~