AN: asjdhaskjdhaskjfsajdfhkdsjfa i wrote most of this high, all of you are warned now. Um? Also zero communication is key to being a young adult. So i have this garbage, and you are warned that it probably is sad and sappy and will have a very rewarding ending! All this fic is examples of good and bad communication, OOC edward elric, enlightened!mei chang, sad!winry, and tons of mushy feelings that make you either really sad or smile until it hurts.
Summary: "All I know about love is: that it makes the world seem smaller. It makes war worse. It makes you want to salvage all the time that you have. It makes me weaker. I guess, what I am trying to say is-" Mei laughs, eyes still kind and full of sincerity, "it's so hard to understand but it has to be enough." A story about love, and how much you have to work for it. EdWin. R&R.
Warnings: dubious-consent, ptsd references, bad communication, having sex w/o communicating,
xxx
"It's science, really." Ed had pushed her against the wall sliding his mouth into her skin, burning her alive. "It is the only thing humans can do to survive." Winry's voice caught in her throat and his hands braced against her hip, thumbs pressing into her inner thighs. She felt it all there, burning and numb and tingling, her mind ached to be blank.
"Ed-" Another push pressed their chests against each other, flush and naked, the skin raised and all nerves on end. He managed to touch her face, cheeks, chin, mouth, shoulders, waist, hips and thighs all in the moment. She was completely smothered by him. "Ed."
He cups her breasts with both of his hands, both hands contrasting in material. The intense warmth of his flesh hand, and the smoothed out metal of his automail. His body is angled around hers, and it makes her dizzy with confusion. She is left helpless while she tries to comprehend where his body begins and ends around hers. When she finally begs him to free her breasts from his advances, all the sounds she can make are vibrating moans that she can feel in her stomach.
In an attempt to grasp some other kind of reaction from him, Winry gasped, gripping his shoulders and grasping his head to look up at her. She wanted reassurance that this wasn't half way. That she would find that fire she always saw, that the warmth of his drive couldn't possibly burn her. She wanted sanity and logic and something to root her the moment into the ground. She wanted the Edward Elric that she fell in love with to finally fall back.
But his eyes reflected a darkened molten gold. The same color she has seen in his eyes when he told her he first wanted to leave to Central to become an Alchemist. The same color that burned with determination when he told her that he may no be able to save them. The same color she remembers seeing when he told her not to cry.
He wanted to completely take her. He wanted to burn her alive. The stare was hard to continue after such a hunger was so obviously mirrored in her own.
He didn't kiss her that day. Even when he held her like glass, and tore open her clothing like tissue paper. No reassurance. Nothing to quiet the echoing of her breaking heart.
xxx
Winry sits in the famous Xingese open bath, while Mei Chang fiddles with her hair ties before stepping in to join her. Winry takes notice to the younger girls naked body, while a tiny towel wraps around her chest. Winry guesses she has worn it for her own comfort. Mei had asked her about Amestrian spas and what were the attique for dressing. What a strange thing to worry about.
"How are you feeling?" Mei notes and she enters the water shoulder deep, losing her towel in the process. Mei eyes are genuine, kind even. While the girl is only a couple years younger than her, Winry can see the age of war reflected in Xingese princess's eyes. With uncharacteristically tanned skin and dark hair, Mei always looked out of place in the Amestrian Capital of Central. Even when Mei came to Resembol to come and meet her, Winry felt that her tanned olive skin and wavy long hair was so exotically gorgeous. Mei was a beauty from a different time, and Winry could not help feeling a little green with envy.
"It's amazing! It is like a bath at home but so much bigger. The steam seems to be really be helping me detox all the junk in my system after traveling such a far distance." Winry smiles, completely relaxed, and happy that she is able to indulge is such a small luxury.
"We also have a coed bath for adults, The Imperial Majesty allowed it to be closed off just for us. Which was expected for his favorite Amestrian visitors." Mei laughs, stretching her lithe body, relaxing her usual tightly formed shoulders.
As the warmth of the bath embraced Winry, she was reminded of the heat of last night. Silence slipped over her, unable to think of anything but the happenings of last night. She remembers crying into her pillow after hearing him excuse himself. She remembers the shame that fell on his face, with nothing other to say but "I'm so sorry," over and over again. Grief clutches her chest.
"You seem somewhere far away." Mei soft voice cuts into her thoughts. "Something troubling you?"
Winry's voice dies in her throat. What should she say? How can she lie? Winry blinks again unsure what to say.
"War isn't easy." Mei begins, her face opening up into a genuine smile. It's something Winry has never seen before. Mei has always been so stoic and calm around her. She seemed to be raised to never offer emotions for free, and never worrying about trivial things such boys and feelings. Mei looks as if she was built on tragedy, and she never settled on merely surviving. "It can be easier if you could talk to someone about your hardships."
Winry sighed. "I don't really understand it myself." How should she begin? Her pathetic love life and how it made her sad? "I have never seen the Elrics as merely my brothers. They were everything. He- I guess, Edward, was someone who inspired me resilient and steadfast and- uh, strong."
"You love him." It wasn't a question.
"It's more complicated than that." Winry grumbled.
"And you fear he won't receive your feelings well? Maybe because you have grown up as family?" Mei's voice stays light, but a flush has blossomed her cheeks.
"I know he sees me as a woman." Winry suddenly realizes that sharing her sex life may actually not be the proper thing to do. "As in, I am not a sister to him. And it's not about love. its-"
How can she explain who Edward is to Mei? Where even to begin? How can Winry even fathom to explain that he is so extraordinarily kind? That only she knows that no one on this earth can do the things he's done for the people he loves? That he is so ultimately selfless, and hides under such a vulgar strong front. How can she iterate that Edward isn't just a prodigy of alchemy, he lives and breathes and believes in it? That it's so much a part of him that things like love, like her love, cannot matter. That she knows better. That her little girl feelings don't matter.
Edward is beyond her. It drives her mad, and that isn't the worst part. She is so far behind him, and she knows he will never stop to even look back.
That's what hurts. It doesn't hurt when she knows he isn't capable of loving her or that he is the person who will always be moving forward. It doesn't hurt when he acts like she doesn't know him like she does. Not even when she knows he can't love her like she knows she needs.
She is empty and rotting and she is hurt because this exactly how it feels to be left behind. She understands how important it is to keep moving forward, but she is hurt because it's as if he is pointing at her biggest flaw. As if he is her biggest flaw. It hurts her to know he doesn't need to look back.
"I love him," Winry begins, "But that is not enough."
xxx
"All I know about love is: that it makes the world seem smaller. It makes war worse. It makes you want to salvage all the time that you have. It makes me weaker. I guess, what I am trying to say is-" Mei laughs, eyes still kind and full of sincerity, "it's so hard to understand but it has to be enough."
Winry isn't convinced that it can be that simple. It wasn't as if she felt it Mei was being impersonal, or as if the advice had been given offhandedly. The advice has shaken her, how can such a thing be enough? When would she stop feeling this way?
Winry had felt better though, even as she revealed such a bare skeleton of the real story to Mei. It was refreshing, a detox of feelings. She wandered back into her room maybe to sleep some more.
Before she could react, she saw Edward sitting cross legged at the foot of her door. He looked up to meet her eyes. "Winry, I wanted to t-"
He was so fast, already up in her face. Taller than her, towering over her. He reached to touch her shoulder but he looked like something on her face changed his mind. She wanted to stop him, to make him run, to for once rid him of her thoughts. There is a pause before Winry has the courage to say:
"I cannot do this right now."
There are so many different emotions that reflect in his eyes that it almost made him completely unreadable. But, as quickly as they flashed, he nodded and a look of determination opened up on his face. "That's okay," and then when a smile fell on his face it made her want to take everything back. "That's totally fine, Winry. But that doesn't mean I am not going to come back to you tomorrow and ask for you to talk to me.
Before he steps forward, he gauges her reaction, and his entire face transforms into something she only remembers seeing in his face as a child. It's something so hard to describe, something between adoration and respect, and patience. The look dries her throat and makes her believe in something she only has fantasized about. "I have never been very good at understanding my feelings for you. All the things I did yesterday were totally backwards. And honestly, I can't even give myself the credit for coming all the way over here to talk to you. Al said something-" He grins a bright smile that stops her heart from beating, "-that made me realize that the person who has always been so patient with my emotions has been you. I-" He stops, and coughs, color spreading up his neck dancing around his jaw is such a flattering way.
Again he seems to be thinking really hard about something, and she notices that his hands are twitching, almost trembling. "If you cannot talk right now, we can talk tomorrow or the next day or… the next. I just want to be able to work on it with you."
She realizes that he doesn't move to touch her. Why does she want him to touch her so bad?
"I-" She realizes he has spoken too much and she isn't ready to hear what he has to-
"Ed, just come tomorrow."
He blinks.
She smiles.
xxx
That night she dreams where she wakes up to kisses on her face. Arms are twirled around her like vines making her feel rooted into the bed. She is so comfortable and without opening her eyes, and can hear Edward humming an unfamiliar tune that makes her want to fall back into a comfortable dreamless sleep.
A kiss lands on her lids, and it makes her giggle. She can feel the sunlight in the room all over her body, it makes her squint to see him make that familiar look from when he was standing outside her bedroom in that hallway.
The only thing that she remembers being left with from that dream is feeling so hungry that it forces her awake. Her body is still buzzing from the high, his affection left her with the buzz that made her dizzy enough to stay in bed for a couple moments longer.
xxx
And as he promised, as the sun was setting, he came by her bedroom asking for her. When she doesn't make a movement to open the unlocked door, he opens it. He does not step in, but peers to check where she is.
Unbeknownst to Edward, Winry had stayed in her room all day to make sure she didn't miss him as he promised to stop by. Even her trips to the kitchen and bathroom were outrageously rushed and pushed off. Those actions made her even more antsy at his arrival.
So when he finally knocked, it made her feel the rush of nervousness that she didn't expect to feel all at once. It made her tremble and miss him so much more than she already had. It made her want to jump him on sight.
So when he finds her, crumpled on the floor in a mess of blankets, he smiles. Raising an eyebrow, and steps into her room. "What are you even doing on the floor, Winry?"
Honestly? "Waiting," For you.
"Waiting, Huh?" He removes his boots at the door, and steps around her blankets to sit in a similar manner as he did in the hallway, across from her.
She notices that his hands are turned upwards, as if inviting hers to join his. But he makes no effort to reach for her, his body language open and ready for her permission or to decide.
"I-" She wants to tell him everything, she wants to spill her fears and worries and explain why she needed to push him away. Why everything on her face, in that hallway, was because she was so afraid and not prepared and not ready to handle what it meant to be his in a way she has never imagined. She wants her mouth to work, she wants her mind to shut up, and she wants finally be able to tell him how she has always felt.
She finally takes a deep breath, arms wrapped around herself in an attempt to grasp on her messy feelings, "Um, there is so much I want to tell you. And- uh, I have no idea where to start."
That bright smile is back on his face, and it makes Winry twitch. "We do have a lot to talk about. That night-"
Before he can finish, she cuts in, "It was amazing, Edward. I have never been with a person like that, it made it so-"
"Ugh, Winry? Can you let me finish?"
"I mean, I did start first."
"Are we really arguing about this?"
"You are the one who said we needed to talk about it." At that, she laughs and it feels lighter than air. This is what she wanted that day. This feeling, spreading in her chest making it both harder and easier to breathe. She grabs his open hands and pulls him towards the mess of blankets and urges him to sit closer to her under the blankets. As he scoots in her direction, she is reminded how deadly his smile is. She twines her arms with one of his and leans against him. "You have already said so much, Ed."
"You don't understand, Win. I never want to stop talking to you." Can he read her mind? "I'm sorry about the other day. I was nothing short- eh" a cough, "of an ass."
"You were." She hummed, she leaned in even closer as she felt him relax at her touch. "But I should have told you how I was feeling." She turns to look up at him, eye watering, as a rush of unexpected emotions make her stomach flutter. Goosebumps raised all along her skin, along with the heaviest feeling of love that she doesn't think she could ever describe. "I love you."
She can feel his intake in breath as the words leave her mouth. She feels she needs to explain further, that there is no way he understands the way she feels, and she needs to further make him understand-
He brings his face to hers. Cheek to cheek, and the action stunts her. All she can feel is the warmth of his face against hers, and the loud overbearing sound of their clashing stuttering heartbeats. What's happening? What is he-
"Winry." His voice rumbles in her ears, and when she feels his gentle hands- the same ones that touched her that day like glass- cradled around her face. Brushing her cheeks with his calloused thumbs the tears come faster and harder and how had she never felt something like this? "How have you never been able to tell how much I adore you?" She can hear his smile, and it forces her to weep harder, clutching his shoulders, she squeezes her fists tightly shut. "I adore you."
"You ass."