Ficlet: In the Best Possible Taste
Title: In the Best Possible Taste
Characters: Ed/Winry
Rating: PG for nerds enthusing over gross medical pictures
Word count: 470
Prompt: evil_little_dog, Winry/Ed - A (happy) future with you
"And Mr Garfiel said we could have this couch he's replacing, it's only two years old and it's really nice."
"Not pink, right? Or, like, gold?"
"No, it's blue velvet, it's nice, don't spill stuff on it." Winry flipped carefully through the pile of old prints stacked outside the bookseller. She was trying not to notice Ed tearing through his own pile - hopefully not literally tearing. "Hey, this one's pretty neat!" She held up a medical illustration of an automail leg from what looked to be somewhere in the mid-nineteenth century: chunky and solid with no ankle joint, its parts labelled in copperplate.
"Wow." Ed leaned in. "1860," he said, pointing at the bookseller's pencilled label. "This must have been what they looked like when Granny was just starting out. Crazy."
"Can we put it on the wall in the living room?" asked Winry, bouncing on her heels a bit.
Ed threw an arm around her waist and grinned. "Sure! We could have, like a theme. Look at this!" He brandished a crumbling old illustration of a human skull, part of it removed to show an inaccurately labelled map of the brain.
Winry peered for a second. "Uh, wow."
"What?"
"That's not a cross-section. This is a record of an operation, the surgeon actually cut a hole that size in the patient's skull to remove - something, lemme look some more."
"That's even better!" Now it was Ed's turn to bounce. His cheek brushed scratchily against Winry's as he leaned in, fighting her to get his look at the gory details.
"Okay, so - looks like it was some patient with a head injury, and the surgeon experimented with slicing out - oh, huh. Well, I'm not an expert or anything, but I expect that killed him."
"Deadly, crappy nineteenth-century brain surgery," said Ed, clearly entranced. "That really sucks! We should put it on the wall next to the old-school leg. We can put them both over the girly couch!"
Winry resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. "Don't you think some of our guests might be kind of freaked out if they have to look at some dead guy's hacked-up brain every time they come round?"
"Who?" Ed seemed genuinely confused. "All your friends are automail nerds, they talk about amputations while they're eating pizza. They will recognise this picture for the awesomeness that it is."
"Yeah, but. What if, theoretically, we had a friend who was a normal person and thought it was odd that we have pictures of brain surgery on our wall?"
"Normal person," said Ed thoughtfully, clearly chewing over the concept. Truth be told, it was a little foreign to Winry too. "Huh. I guess that could happen. Okay, can we hang it in the bedroom?"
Characters: Ed/Winry
Rating: PG for nerds enthusing over gross medical pictures
Word count: 470
Prompt: evil_little_dog, Winry/Ed - A (happy) future with you
"And Mr Garfiel said we could have this couch he's replacing, it's only two years old and it's really nice."
"Not pink, right? Or, like, gold?"
"No, it's blue velvet, it's nice, don't spill stuff on it." Winry flipped carefully through the pile of old prints stacked outside the bookseller. She was trying not to notice Ed tearing through his own pile - hopefully not literally tearing. "Hey, this one's pretty neat!" She held up a medical illustration of an automail leg from what looked to be somewhere in the mid-nineteenth century: chunky and solid with no ankle joint, its parts labelled in copperplate.
"Wow." Ed leaned in. "1860," he said, pointing at the bookseller's pencilled label. "This must have been what they looked like when Granny was just starting out. Crazy."
"Can we put it on the wall in the living room?" asked Winry, bouncing on her heels a bit.
Ed threw an arm around her waist and grinned. "Sure! We could have, like a theme. Look at this!" He brandished a crumbling old illustration of a human skull, part of it removed to show an inaccurately labelled map of the brain.
Winry peered for a second. "Uh, wow."
"What?"
"That's not a cross-section. This is a record of an operation, the surgeon actually cut a hole that size in the patient's skull to remove - something, lemme look some more."
"That's even better!" Now it was Ed's turn to bounce. His cheek brushed scratchily against Winry's as he leaned in, fighting her to get his look at the gory details.
"Okay, so - looks like it was some patient with a head injury, and the surgeon experimented with slicing out - oh, huh. Well, I'm not an expert or anything, but I expect that killed him."
"Deadly, crappy nineteenth-century brain surgery," said Ed, clearly entranced. "That really sucks! We should put it on the wall next to the old-school leg. We can put them both over the girly couch!"
Winry resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. "Don't you think some of our guests might be kind of freaked out if they have to look at some dead guy's hacked-up brain every time they come round?"
"Who?" Ed seemed genuinely confused. "All your friends are automail nerds, they talk about amputations while they're eating pizza. They will recognise this picture for the awesomeness that it is."
"Yeah, but. What if, theoretically, we had a friend who was a normal person and thought it was odd that we have pictures of brain surgery on our wall?"
"Normal person," said Ed thoughtfully, clearly chewing over the concept. Truth be told, it was a little foreign to Winry too. "Huh. I guess that could happen. Okay, can we hang it in the bedroom?"