Title: The Idea of Procreation
Author: S J Smith
Rating: Gen
Summary: Izumi never gave much thought to boys.
Disclaimer: Arakawa absolutely owns all.
Notes: For Dreamer1789.
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The idea of procreation - it wasn't one that had particularly caught her fancy. Izumi had watched the girls around her grow from being little crybabies who played with dolls to bigger, simpering crybabies who played with boys, and not in fun ways, either, like kick-the-can or rounders, but with these long, stupid looks, and a lot of giggling. Her mother despaired of her finding a husband, there were so many out there, she'd cry, and wave a hand at any number of boys, none of whom Izumi found at all interesting. She'd beaten Mark up for teasing a little girl, and knew all too well what William got up to when he thought no one was looking, and Jarod was just a odious prig who thought his wife should wait on him hand and foot. The others in town were cut from the same cloth, and Izumi smacked those who came sniffing around her on the nose and sent them yelping on their way.
Besides, if she became a wife, she couldn't continue her quest to become an alchemist. There was something so amazing about alchemy, and even her mother's heavy sighs and quibbles about how it wasn't 'ladylike' weren't enough to dissuade Izumi from her studies. When she told her mother she was heading north to beg for an apprenticeship from a master alchemist, she thought her mother would turn grey overnight. As it was, she had to sneak out of the house, and hop the train rather than catching it in the station. Her mother's tenacity wouldn't just allow Izumi to leave.
And then she spent a month tracking the alchemist down - and a month in the mountains - and discovered she'd trained for the wrong man - she'd found the brother, not the actual alchemist - and Izumi felt horrible, and angry, and that she might be wasting her time, just like her mother always said.
The bearskin was heavy, but she wasn't giving it up. She'd gone through too much to get it, and she carried it out of the tavern and almost right into a man, a huge man, the skin slithering out of her hands and falling to the muddy street between them.
Izumi almost didn't mind. This was a man, not one of those pandering playboys from her hometown, one with callouses on his hands and a broad pair of shoulders, and he smelled deliciously like sun and sweat and other things that made her insides twist. Izumi could barely stammer out a 'hello' or a 'beg pardon', nothing she really wanted to say at least, just this squeaky noise that sounded more appropriate coming from one of those simpering girls back home.
"Let me help you," he said, and his voice made her toes curl.
All right, so maybe there was something to this idea about procreating...
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