FMA: Gender Roles
What could have been pinpointed as “the beginning” - if Ed had actually been calm enough to stop and think rationally about it - occurred one icy December morning when Ed woke up in the tiny apartment he shared with his brother, not to a warm body next to him as he had expected but to the rather jarring sensation of his freezing cold automail leg brushing against his flesh one. With a yelp - he would never get used to that - Edward sat up, rubbing his eyes and looking for Winry only to confirm that, as he had suspected, he was the only one in the bedroom. A familiar screeching noise was ringing through the apartment.
With a groan he reached for his slippers and poked his head out into the hallway, where Winry was kneeling on the hardwood floor in front of the radiator, the spare tool kit she kept at his apartment already open and scattered across the floor.
She looked up at him, exasperated. “Does it always make this noise?” she demanded, pointing at the uncooperative radiator.
“’Course,” Ed answered, only half-awake. “I told the landlord before we moved in that I wouldn’t sign any lease unless he could guarantee that the radiator went ‘caaaaashhhiiiiibaaaarrrgh’ at all hours of the night.”
She stopped working and glared at him, unamused by his sarcasm, and then turned back to her project. “Go make breakfast,” she ordered absently.
For a moment he just leaned against the doorway and glowered at her, and then shrugged and went into the kitchen, grumbling under his breath and slamming the cupboard doors and pans despite the fact that he knew Winry had returned to her little mechanical world and was most decidedly not paying attention to him.
Ed wished desperately Al were home from school so that he could make the three of them breakfast - as nice as it was having his girlfriend stay over anytime she wanted, if it wasn’t pie then Winry was generally useless in the kitchen, and Al’s cooking skills easily outmatched both of theirs. (Ed had secretly considered sending her off to Izumi for housewife training before deciding that he loved his teacher far too much to do that to her: not to mention making her train meant that he was seriously considering making her his wife and that was just a whole new set of conflicting emotions and thoughts that Ed was entirely unwilling to consider.)
He looked up again when she appeared in the kitchen, holding a misshapen hunk of metal. “You’ve been alchemizing unnecessary things again, haven’t you?” she accused, throwing it on the table and picking up the cup he’d laid on the counter. Taking a sip, she blinked at him over the rim of the cup and asked, “What is this?”
“Hot chocolate, dummy.” Ed threw her a confused look over his shoulder, not noticing that he was getting bits of eggshell in the scrambled eggs. “Don’t look at me like you’ve never had it before.”
She shrugged. “I was expecting coffee.”
“Al prefers hot chocolate.” Not to mention his coffee was simply awful - no matter how many times he made it exactly as Al instructed him to it always came out far too bitter and Ed just couldn’t bring himself to set himself up for more teasing on Winry’s part.
“You know,” Winry said, casually running a finger around the lip of her cup and licking it, “you don’t need to use alchemy for stuff like that.”
“How do you know I did that?” he asked, completely engrossed in the frying pan in front of him. “Al could have done it.”
“Al would have fixed it,” she said decisively. When he wheeled away from the stove, she gave him her brightest grin and ran for it.
The eggs burned that morning. Later when Ed thought back to that morning, that was what he remembered: not that he had, without thought, set himself up for his permanent emasculation around the house; no, he remembered that the eggs had burned, and that her kiss had tasted like hot chocolate.
From that day on, however, when something around the house broke - even if it was easily fixed - he set it aside for her. Ed quickly lost count of the number of times that he had stopped Al from clapping his hands, just to roll his eyes and grumble, “Put it aside. Winry will fix it later.” (Ed did not, however, lose count of the number of times that Al rolled his eyes right back at him and accused him of being of being a slave to Winry’s whims; he’d gotten up over three hundred before, disgusted and defensive, he’d given up.)
Winry delighted in every challenge Ed presented her with, and eventually the pair fell into an easy routine: Winry would stop over for breakfast before her automail clients started storming the shop, tools in pocket and a slightly maniacal grin on face; Ed (or Al, if he were home and Ed wheedled enough) would be at the stove, spatula in hand, cup of hot chocolate sitting on the counter - Winry had been a quick convert once she had finally tried Ed’s coffee, as he had feared for so long.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” Ed posed to her one day, sipping his own cup as he leaned against the doorframe and eyed her hunched form as she tinkered inside his oven.
There was a long pause, interrupted only with a loud clank, and then Winry’s voice filtered out. “…What?”
“Screwing around with this stuff. You still have to go to work and you’re going to be working with the automail all day…” And probably well into the night, Ed mentally added. “…doesn’t this get… I don’t know, boring or annoying or something?”
There was another long pause on Winry’s end, and then she pulled herself out of the oven to raise a sooty eyebrow at him. “Ed, how long have you known me?” she asked curiously.
Ed frowned. “Since you were born. My whole life.”
“Uh huh.” She nodded. “Have I ever not enjoyed figuring out how something mechanical works?”
He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Alright, alright. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t… taking advantage of you or something.”
A wicked glint entered her eye. “Edward. How long have we been dating?”
Ed blinked. “…a couple years now?”
“And when have I ever objected to you taking advantage of me?”
Ed choked on his hot chocolate. Winry grinned at him and disappeared back into the oven, tossing spare coils at him good-naturedly.
When Ed remembered that day - which he didn’t often, except for on those occasions when he accidentally stepped on one of those metal coils lying somewhere around the house - he remembered how forward she’d been and how embarrassed he’d been, and how amused she had been at his discomfort. That, and how absolutely awful the hot chocolate had felt, going up his nose.
Eventually Ed and Al’s lives changed again and the pair moved out of their tiny apartment - now running far more efficiently than it had when they had moved in, thanks to Winry - and went separate ways. Al moved into a place closer to the hospital, to be nearer to his job - and his nurse girlfriend, though Ed had tactfully avoided mentioning so. Ed moved in with Winry, as their lives had ceased being two things that were shared and had turned into one space occupied by both.
There were, naturally, perks to such a move: waking up every day with Winry was certainly up there, along with the fact that automail maintenance was much easier now that they lived directly above her shop. (Aside from the obvious differences, however, it wasn’t that much different from living with Al; Winry’s automail babbling simply replaced Al’s medical jargon, and Winry and Al shared disturbingly similar giggles when Ed was feeling uncomfortable.)
The place, naturally, was already a mechanical marvel when he moved in, and all it really fell to him to do was alert Winry when something broke and she failed to notice. (Once, just once, he had tried to fix the radio when something had shorted out in the back, and she had walked in and actually batted his hands away, like he was some kind of child. He’d half expected her to send him to bed without dessert or something.)
Life went on as it always had: Winry spent most of her mornings - and the majority of her nights, to Ed’s dismay - tinkering with something and Ed quickly became acquainted with the settings on her stove and her favorite brand of hot chocolate.
The morning it hit him he was standing at the stove - making scrambled eggs again, though Ed would never appreciate the irony - when she wandered in, still in her nightgown, cradling someone’s automail leg like a child with the end of her screwdriver sticking out of her mouth.
Ed frowned at her. “How many times have I told you to keep those things out of your mouth?”
“Muh?” she grunted at him, only half-awake and already totally engrossed in her project.
“Here.” He shoved a cup at her. She eyed it before shifting the leg so she could take it in one hand. “That should taste a bit better than an oily screwdriver.”
She frowned at him and pulled the screwdriver from her mouth only to pluck it in her cup, using it to stir. “I like the taste of gear oil,” she murmured, “and if I recall correctly so do you.”
He ignored her wild accusation. “The light fixture in the hallway is on the fritz. I changed the light bulb and it’s still not working.”
“I’ll look at it after breakfast.” Her voice was still wispy with inattentiveness, and she wandered back out of the room, probably for the steps that led downstairs to the shop. Ed sighed and realized he was going to have to remind her again to get dressed before her first appointment.
Honestly, as much as he loved her, she could be so frustrating sometimes. As useful as her single-mindedness could be, sometimes it felt like Ed was constantly chasing after her just to make sure that if her own head fell off she wouldn’t simply walk on past it. He was honestly reminded of the way Hawkeye had had to goad Mustang into work, or the way Gracia would patiently clean up after Maes and Elysia when their tea parties got out of hand, or the way -
- the way his mother used to distract his father from his research with simple things that needed to be fixed around the house. Ed stood for a moment, jaw agape, as it suddenly hit him - he could see it so clearly, his father, sipping on stale coffee, wandering into the kitchen for lunch, when Trisha would present him with a fresh cup and point out that the door was squeaking or that the refrigerator was making a funny noise.
The eggs burning brought him out of his reverie, but that didn’t alter the magnitude of his epiphany.
He was… he was Winry’s wife.
A half hour later found Winry in bed, bare except the covers pooled around her hips, staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Wow…” She rolled onto her side to look at Ed, who was sprawled comfortably with his hands behind his head. “What was that about?”
And years later, when he remembered that morning, that was what he remembered - not that burning feeling of not-quite shame and not-exactly indignation, but how Winry had shrieked when he’d grabbed her from behind and how she’d spilled hot chocolate all over herself and how they’d had quite a pleasant time cleaning her up. That, and how he’d ended up feeling quite satisfied, both with himself and his role in their relationship.
(Which was good, incidentally, because not a damn thing changed.)
With a groan he reached for his slippers and poked his head out into the hallway, where Winry was kneeling on the hardwood floor in front of the radiator, the spare tool kit she kept at his apartment already open and scattered across the floor.
She looked up at him, exasperated. “Does it always make this noise?” she demanded, pointing at the uncooperative radiator.
“’Course,” Ed answered, only half-awake. “I told the landlord before we moved in that I wouldn’t sign any lease unless he could guarantee that the radiator went ‘caaaaashhhiiiiibaaaarrrgh’ at all hours of the night.”
She stopped working and glared at him, unamused by his sarcasm, and then turned back to her project. “Go make breakfast,” she ordered absently.
For a moment he just leaned against the doorway and glowered at her, and then shrugged and went into the kitchen, grumbling under his breath and slamming the cupboard doors and pans despite the fact that he knew Winry had returned to her little mechanical world and was most decidedly not paying attention to him.
Ed wished desperately Al were home from school so that he could make the three of them breakfast - as nice as it was having his girlfriend stay over anytime she wanted, if it wasn’t pie then Winry was generally useless in the kitchen, and Al’s cooking skills easily outmatched both of theirs. (Ed had secretly considered sending her off to Izumi for housewife training before deciding that he loved his teacher far too much to do that to her: not to mention making her train meant that he was seriously considering making her his wife and that was just a whole new set of conflicting emotions and thoughts that Ed was entirely unwilling to consider.)
He looked up again when she appeared in the kitchen, holding a misshapen hunk of metal. “You’ve been alchemizing unnecessary things again, haven’t you?” she accused, throwing it on the table and picking up the cup he’d laid on the counter. Taking a sip, she blinked at him over the rim of the cup and asked, “What is this?”
“Hot chocolate, dummy.” Ed threw her a confused look over his shoulder, not noticing that he was getting bits of eggshell in the scrambled eggs. “Don’t look at me like you’ve never had it before.”
She shrugged. “I was expecting coffee.”
“Al prefers hot chocolate.” Not to mention his coffee was simply awful - no matter how many times he made it exactly as Al instructed him to it always came out far too bitter and Ed just couldn’t bring himself to set himself up for more teasing on Winry’s part.
“You know,” Winry said, casually running a finger around the lip of her cup and licking it, “you don’t need to use alchemy for stuff like that.”
“How do you know I did that?” he asked, completely engrossed in the frying pan in front of him. “Al could have done it.”
“Al would have fixed it,” she said decisively. When he wheeled away from the stove, she gave him her brightest grin and ran for it.
The eggs burned that morning. Later when Ed thought back to that morning, that was what he remembered: not that he had, without thought, set himself up for his permanent emasculation around the house; no, he remembered that the eggs had burned, and that her kiss had tasted like hot chocolate.
From that day on, however, when something around the house broke - even if it was easily fixed - he set it aside for her. Ed quickly lost count of the number of times that he had stopped Al from clapping his hands, just to roll his eyes and grumble, “Put it aside. Winry will fix it later.” (Ed did not, however, lose count of the number of times that Al rolled his eyes right back at him and accused him of being of being a slave to Winry’s whims; he’d gotten up over three hundred before, disgusted and defensive, he’d given up.)
Winry delighted in every challenge Ed presented her with, and eventually the pair fell into an easy routine: Winry would stop over for breakfast before her automail clients started storming the shop, tools in pocket and a slightly maniacal grin on face; Ed (or Al, if he were home and Ed wheedled enough) would be at the stove, spatula in hand, cup of hot chocolate sitting on the counter - Winry had been a quick convert once she had finally tried Ed’s coffee, as he had feared for so long.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” Ed posed to her one day, sipping his own cup as he leaned against the doorframe and eyed her hunched form as she tinkered inside his oven.
There was a long pause, interrupted only with a loud clank, and then Winry’s voice filtered out. “…What?”
“Screwing around with this stuff. You still have to go to work and you’re going to be working with the automail all day…” And probably well into the night, Ed mentally added. “…doesn’t this get… I don’t know, boring or annoying or something?”
There was another long pause on Winry’s end, and then she pulled herself out of the oven to raise a sooty eyebrow at him. “Ed, how long have you known me?” she asked curiously.
Ed frowned. “Since you were born. My whole life.”
“Uh huh.” She nodded. “Have I ever not enjoyed figuring out how something mechanical works?”
He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Alright, alright. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t… taking advantage of you or something.”
A wicked glint entered her eye. “Edward. How long have we been dating?”
Ed blinked. “…a couple years now?”
“And when have I ever objected to you taking advantage of me?”
Ed choked on his hot chocolate. Winry grinned at him and disappeared back into the oven, tossing spare coils at him good-naturedly.
When Ed remembered that day - which he didn’t often, except for on those occasions when he accidentally stepped on one of those metal coils lying somewhere around the house - he remembered how forward she’d been and how embarrassed he’d been, and how amused she had been at his discomfort. That, and how absolutely awful the hot chocolate had felt, going up his nose.
Eventually Ed and Al’s lives changed again and the pair moved out of their tiny apartment - now running far more efficiently than it had when they had moved in, thanks to Winry - and went separate ways. Al moved into a place closer to the hospital, to be nearer to his job - and his nurse girlfriend, though Ed had tactfully avoided mentioning so. Ed moved in with Winry, as their lives had ceased being two things that were shared and had turned into one space occupied by both.
There were, naturally, perks to such a move: waking up every day with Winry was certainly up there, along with the fact that automail maintenance was much easier now that they lived directly above her shop. (Aside from the obvious differences, however, it wasn’t that much different from living with Al; Winry’s automail babbling simply replaced Al’s medical jargon, and Winry and Al shared disturbingly similar giggles when Ed was feeling uncomfortable.)
The place, naturally, was already a mechanical marvel when he moved in, and all it really fell to him to do was alert Winry when something broke and she failed to notice. (Once, just once, he had tried to fix the radio when something had shorted out in the back, and she had walked in and actually batted his hands away, like he was some kind of child. He’d half expected her to send him to bed without dessert or something.)
Life went on as it always had: Winry spent most of her mornings - and the majority of her nights, to Ed’s dismay - tinkering with something and Ed quickly became acquainted with the settings on her stove and her favorite brand of hot chocolate.
The morning it hit him he was standing at the stove - making scrambled eggs again, though Ed would never appreciate the irony - when she wandered in, still in her nightgown, cradling someone’s automail leg like a child with the end of her screwdriver sticking out of her mouth.
Ed frowned at her. “How many times have I told you to keep those things out of your mouth?”
“Muh?” she grunted at him, only half-awake and already totally engrossed in her project.
“Here.” He shoved a cup at her. She eyed it before shifting the leg so she could take it in one hand. “That should taste a bit better than an oily screwdriver.”
She frowned at him and pulled the screwdriver from her mouth only to pluck it in her cup, using it to stir. “I like the taste of gear oil,” she murmured, “and if I recall correctly so do you.”
He ignored her wild accusation. “The light fixture in the hallway is on the fritz. I changed the light bulb and it’s still not working.”
“I’ll look at it after breakfast.” Her voice was still wispy with inattentiveness, and she wandered back out of the room, probably for the steps that led downstairs to the shop. Ed sighed and realized he was going to have to remind her again to get dressed before her first appointment.
Honestly, as much as he loved her, she could be so frustrating sometimes. As useful as her single-mindedness could be, sometimes it felt like Ed was constantly chasing after her just to make sure that if her own head fell off she wouldn’t simply walk on past it. He was honestly reminded of the way Hawkeye had had to goad Mustang into work, or the way Gracia would patiently clean up after Maes and Elysia when their tea parties got out of hand, or the way -
- the way his mother used to distract his father from his research with simple things that needed to be fixed around the house. Ed stood for a moment, jaw agape, as it suddenly hit him - he could see it so clearly, his father, sipping on stale coffee, wandering into the kitchen for lunch, when Trisha would present him with a fresh cup and point out that the door was squeaking or that the refrigerator was making a funny noise.
The eggs burning brought him out of his reverie, but that didn’t alter the magnitude of his epiphany.
He was… he was Winry’s wife.
A half hour later found Winry in bed, bare except the covers pooled around her hips, staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Wow…” She rolled onto her side to look at Ed, who was sprawled comfortably with his hands behind his head. “What was that about?”
And years later, when he remembered that morning, that was what he remembered - not that burning feeling of not-quite shame and not-exactly indignation, but how Winry had shrieked when he’d grabbed her from behind and how she’d spilled hot chocolate all over herself and how they’d had quite a pleasant time cleaning her up. That, and how he’d ended up feeling quite satisfied, both with himself and his role in their relationship.
(Which was good, incidentally, because not a damn thing changed.)