Fic: Prompt: "Teeth Chattering"
As Usual
by ishte
Prompt: Teeth Chattering
“You know I haven’t tried this in years Winry,” Edward felt the need to remind her as they stood shivering in line at Central Square. “Not since…”
“It’s like riding a bicycle, Ed,” Winry said airily, waving a hand dismissively. “You never forget how.”
Edward frowned at her. “You know I never really learned to ride a bike, Win,” he pointed out. “That drawing Al did was-well it was really good-but it was just fluff. Seriously! It never happened.”
Winry gave him a pretty pout, her hands on her hips. “You know what I mean, Ed!” She told him, shooing him forward in line.
Edward sighed and rolled his eyes. This was how it was going to be. As usual. He was willing to accept it. Happily even, but the hell if he wasn’t going to roll his eyes and pretend to argue. “Fine fine! Whatever… You better have a crane ready if I fall through,” he told her as he paid the man at the booth.
Winry snorted with an eloquence that Edward could hardly have matched. He turned to hand her one of the pairs of skates, and she laughed as he shoved them into her hands. “Ok come on, Ed!” she insisted. “You can’t fall through. It’s just a big frozen fountain. You and Al used to play bandy whenever it got cold enough for the lower pond to freeze. Hell I played too!”
“Yah, but-”
“No ‘but’ anything,” she interrupted. “Your automail is top of the line. Now that it’s all refitted again, you may as well give those new locomotor circuits a workout. There’s nothing else like them, you know? Hardly anyone has them in their automail yet. And those new relay sensors.” She put her hand on his arm and shook her head. “I invented them for you. Nobody else has anything like ‘em.”
“I’m your guinea pig,” Edward told her with a smirk. But he waved his metal fingers at her through the glove. He had to admit that the sensors were really something. They gave him back sensations well beyond the very rudimentary pressure, temperature and spatial sense he had gotten used to. His first set hardly had that. The second had a little more, and was still superior to anything anyone else had. The arm and legs he and Hohenheim had built in London, and some later legs in Munich had no inbound sensors at all. Not to mention constant breakdowns, until he eventually had almost a dozen legs in various states of repair and if he was lucky he might have one of them working properly again by the time another one broke.
“You’re a perfect guinea pig, Ed!” Winry beamed, interrupting his thoughts. “Who else can move like you?”
Edward started to point at his brother on the ice already with his girlfriend, but Winry overrode him.
“With automail, Ed!” she chided. “Sit down and put your skates on!”
Edward obeyed, strapping the rented skates on tightly over his boots, and then sitting back up, his hands on his knees watching her finish hers. He liked the way she crossed the laces over her ankles, pretty even in warm winter boots.
“Ready?” he asked her nervously once she straightened again.
Winry nodded and he got up awkwardly. “I don’t know Win…” he said, trying to get his feet to feel right under him. He stood, teeth chattering. Central’s winter was colder than usual this year, but they’d warm up quickly enough once they were moving around more. He let her take his arm, pretending it wasn’t because she was steadying him, and they made their way onto the ice.
There was music playing. For a moment, Edward was baffled by that, trying to find the orchestra until he realised that someone had gotten the brilliant idea of rigging a phonograph with a microphone and then positioning speakers in various places around the makeshift rink. The record starting to skip ruined the effect for a moment until the attendant carefully eased the diamond stylus over a groove past the scratch.
“Just promise yourself that you’ll laugh if you fall down, Ed,” Winry warned him. “I’m serious!” She said when he shot her a look, and then did a balance check. “You are way to critical of yourself. If you fall, you haven’t done anything anyone else has never done. You haven’t skated in years.”
“Let go of me if I start to fall, and I’ll think about it.” He’d never laugh if he took Winry down with him. Al? Sure. Al was a man. He might even take Al down on purpose. Not Winry. He pushed off and tried to remember how to do this. His right foot seemed to remember. His left? Well… Even walking was different, he’d had to learn how to make his new leg do what he wanted it to, and for his brain to adapt until it seemed normal. If he had gotten his flesh limbs back, Edward knew he would have had to relearn everything just as he had with his automail-just as he had an adjustment period every time one of his limbs was upgraded or replaced. His left did not remember how to skate. He couldn’t remember how to shift his weight onto his left foot, how to use his weight against the skate to move forward, rather than awkwardly pushing the skate out or worse, back. “Okay, Win?” he asked, wanting her to tell him she wouldn’t crash with him.
“Nope,” she said lightly, and stuck her nose in the air. She was pretending that there was nothing awkward at all in the way he moved.
“Win!” Edward growled, the distraction causing him to push his foot back weighlessly, which threw his weight too far forward on the right, and sent him sprawling onto all fours, “Scheisse!”
Winry came tumbling after, landing half across him. He went flat beneath her, she laughing brilliantly the whole while.
“Aw! My back!” Edward protested, red-faced. “Why do people always have to land on my back!”
Winry laughed harder and pulled herself off of him. “Come on Ed. She regained her feet and offered her hands. “Try it again. Remember when we were learning to walk again? Think about how you do it with your right leg. Your right leg remembers. I can tell when I watch. Just work to make your left do the same thing. You know how your new leg works well enough to do that. The only difference is with skating you’re kind of doing it in the opposite direction.”
Edward scowled. He should never have agreed to this. But Winry was having a good time. The little amethysts he had bought her sparkled in the ovals of their silver cages where they hung from her ears. She looked stunning, even bundled for the cold winter weather of Central. “‘Kay,” he got his right skate under him, and let her help him up. “Just gotta remember to shift my weight and not push with my foot.”
“Right,” Winry agreed taking his arm again, and helping him along for a while.
It took some baby steps, a few more false starts and a couple more falls, before Edward had the motion figured out. But then, Winry turned out to be right. As usual. He was doing it with almost as much skill as he had during their childhood. He got Winry to keep him from plowing into anyone while he relearned backwards as well. For a moment he thought he might have trouble with it, but once he watch what his foot was doing and adapted it to what he knew it was supposed to be doing, he had it. Oh certainly he didn’t have perfect grace, but he could skate passably well. It wasn’t as if hockey players did figure skating. Or bandy players, Edward reminded himself. They just needed to be able to go forwards, go backwards, do quick turns, make quick stops and starts, and sometimes jump.
Some old waltz was playing on the phonograph, as the skated along, Winry holding Edward’s arm, and Edward’s hand resting on hers. Of course his brother had to skim by with Molly in his arms, turning in a quick gliding step. A little surge of jealousy washed through him.
“You want to try that?” Winry asked, correctly reading his expression. As usual.
Edward shook his head, frowning. Winry knew he could dance. They went to the Central Palais often enough. “I don’t know how, Winry. I’ll have to have Al teach me the step.
“Ed,” Winry grinned. “I know how. Bill Barney taught a bunch of us girls.” She fairly beamed with pride. “Well and some of the boys too, obviously.”
The flash of jealousy that stabbed through Edward was unfounded. He knew it. Old Bill Barney was harmless, and it wasn’t like any of the boys were going to try anything with one of the girls under that watchful eye.
“I’ll teach you,” Winry told him brightly stopping him and pulling him into position.
It was very obvious that Edward would have no choice. She knew what he really wanted whatever he said. As usual. He grinned. “You know we’re going to wipe out, Winry.”
“So,” Winry shrugged. “Here, you hold this hand, and and this one goes here, just like normal,” she said airily. I’ll push you in the direction you’re supposed to be leading until you get it, okay?”
“Right.”
They ended up in another heap on the ice, Winry laughing and Edward scowling. “Just as I thought,” he grumbled from under her.
“Oh Ed…” Winry laughed, rolling off him.
“Are you all right?” he asked this time.
“I’m fine,” Winry told him. “I played bandy with the boys, you know.”
Edward snorted softly, this time getting himself up, and helping her before he dusted himself off. “All right,” he studied his brother this time as the pair passed. “I think I get it now. Every third step I turn us, and we don’t tangle our skates up.” He pulled her into dance position again, remembering, as he knew she was, those hours in Pinako’s living room while she tapped out the beat with her stick. For Edward, learning to dance was part of the retraining of his limbs. That he got to dance with Winry was a perk he hadn’t fully appreciated until he had gotten a little older and better understood what he wanted.
His lips touched hers, before he fully realized what he was doing. She kissed him back, their lips cool, tips of noses frigid.
“We’ll get frozen together if we keep that up,” he told her seriously knowing it wasn’t true, but thinking it funny anyway. He began the dance again, this time with a little more confidence. It was what Winry wanted. Winry got what she wanted. As usual, he thought once more, not minding at all.