There was so much force behind Winry's kiss that Ed's head knocked sharply against the wooden wall, but there was no opportunity for him to register the pain. Shock froze his limbs and snapped his eyes wide open against her onslaught, but he didn't move either to respond or pull back. Before he could fully process the implications of what was happening, he felt Winry's tongue swipe insistently across his lips, and his surprise suddenly found voice.

"Wha—"

His exclamation cut off as Winry pressed herself firmly against him, rising on her tiptoes and invading his open mouth with her tongue. Ed's logical thinking quickly slipped to the very back of his brain, replaced at the forefront with vivid awareness of Winry's thinly-clad self molded to his bare chest. He tried to get words out again—although he really didn't know what they were going to end up being—but rather than forming coherent syllables he groaned deeply into her mouth. Winry responded with a soft noise of approval, and tugged on his lower lip with her teeth. Ed's eyes nearly rolled back in his head. Now far from pushing her away, he pulled her still closer, one arm wrapping around her waist and the other hopelessly tangled in her long, soft hair.

After several intense seconds, Winry's hands loosened their hold on his neck and she dropped from her tiptoes, ending what Ed thought might have been the most ecstatic few moments of his entire life. His eyelids fluttered open, and he looked down to see her face, which wore an expression that looked almost as surprised as he still felt. She had her mouth covered with one hand, and when she brought her gaze up to meet his, her eyes grew even rounder and she let out a distressed squeak. She stepped back, causing Ed's arms to fall from around her, and pressed both hands over her mouth as her panic threatened to spill over.

"Oh no."

Those two words brought Ed down from the high he was still contentedly riding and forced him back into reality—which, coincidentally, now felt a lot more chilly than it had before Winry kissed him.

Winry seemed to have only one train of thought: "oh no, oh no, oh no," spilled from her mouth until Ed's state of mind moved from indescribable euphoria into moderate annoyance.

"What was so 'oh no' about that?" he queried sharply.

"Oh Ed, I didn't mean to—I guess I'm just so tired and stressed that I just—oh damn—I'm such an idiot—ohhh, nooo…" and she trailed off as her hurried excuses were obviously having a negative effect on the irritated former alchemist.

"You didn't mean to?" The stupidity of her reasoning obviously registered, and Winry's face cycled through several shades of pink to a rest at deep maroon. "That was one hell of an accident, then." Ed's face tightened, brows furrowed over his golden eyes.

Winry moved her hands up from her mouth to cover her entire face, and her shoulders collapsed inwards. She looked small and defeated, like a breath of night wind might carry her off. Ed didn't move towards her, mostly because her words had caused his heart to plummet somewhere near the dead center of the earth. He felt like his soul had left him after their kiss, and might still be wandering the room in search of his heated body.

Winry hunched over holding herself, and stood motionless for several seconds. Then, Ed noticed with alarm, she began shivering, then gradually began shaking with more and more violence. Oh shit, is she crying?The knot that clutched his gut twisted again, and he almost stepped towards her to try and do some damage control before he heard a hysterical giggle escape her throat. Winry was laughing.

It wasn't a mirthful, musical laugh like her usual one, but instead a high-pitched, nervous titter that seemed like it was wrung from her body. Her laughter caught Ed off guard, and he almost thought it would be preferable to have her crying instead.

"Win-Winry?"

She was trying to get control of herself enough to speak, and finally she was able to choke out a sentence between spasms of hysteria.

"If—if I could have—just made it—until tomorrow!"

She was still bent slightly forward, grasping her middle as if trying to hold herself together, but slowly straightened up and wiped her eyes, which were leaking from the force of her giggles. She regained her composure rather quickly. Ed was still very much in the dark about her vague explanatory statement.

"Made what? And what about tomorrow?"

She fixed her gaze on him, serious on all fronts, and Ed saw her trying to formulate something he would understand. He hoped he would be able to process it, given the current dodgy state of his intellect.

"I almost did it. I almost watched you leave again without doing something idiotic. And I would have succeeded, if you hadn't messed it up just now by coming down here." She smiled at him—a beautiful smile, but it looked a little bit like the wavering reflection of someone's smiling face in a bowl of water. "So if you wanted to know why I've been such a head case recently, I guess that's why. It's all been a big distraction for myself."

"Really? I thought you were just having a bad time of the month!" Ed wanted to swallow the words right back down as his own teacup sailed towards him. He caught the little porcelain cup as it flew past his left ear. Winry hadn't really heaved it with that much force; it was more the principle of the thing. And there were no wrenches nearby, Ed noted with fervent approval.

"Jackass. Who says something like that to the girl who just kissed you?"

"Your words, not mine—'jackass' has me about pegged."

Winry took the teacup back from him and walked over to put it in the sink, then came back to pick up her discarded quilt and wrap herself in it again.

"So, besides laying claim to your rightful title, is there anything else you want to know? Now that I'm apparently self-disclosing with abandon?"

Ed stared down at his feet. There were lots of things he was curious about, most importantly why she had assaulted him—not that he complained—but he opted to begin with the least dangerous. Although "dangerous," in this context, was relative.

"What makes this time any different? Me—us, I mean, leaving? I mean, you know we have to come back at some point." Winry's mouth twitched. "You do know that, right Winry?"

She nodded. "It is good to hear it, though." She sighed heavily. "I can't really tell you what's different…or at least, it's hard to explain what's different. I know I said you and Al should go. I meant it, and I still mean it. But to me it just feels a little less imperative this time. Al has his body. You have your arm. And everything—almost everything—is exactly, exactly perfect. And I am silly and young enough to want that forever."

Ed kept staring at his toenails. All five of them.

"What would make it easier?"

He read surprise into Winry's silence. He wasn't exactly known for being the most sensitive and empathetic soul, so he knew this question was unexpected. He already had a half-formed idea of what he could do to make his departure less of a reoccurring injury, and was prepared to act on it immediately.

"Well…it certainly wouldn't kill you to write more often. I think Al will stay in touch, but I'll probably have to go through General Mustang to find out if you're dead or alive—" she cringed at the unfortunate cliché, "—I mean, if you're still within communication range." She tapped her chin with the finger of the one hand that wasn't holding up the quilt, still in thought. Then, her reverie broke and she stared as Ed stepped forward, trapping her hand against her face with one of his own.

"Last question. Why did you think kissing me would help either of us resolve anything?"

Winry's eyes focused somewhere on the floorboards as a fevered pink crept back into her cheeks.

"Well, Edward, I figured I'd borrow a leaf from your book and just let my first stupid impulse take control." Even though she was blushing furiously, her eyes flashed up to his with a bewitchingly mischievous glint. Ed paused, taken aback, then snorted in laughter.

"In that case, it was a very well-thought-out ploy, and you picked the right person to emulate." He leaned toward her lips, holding one hand steady against her face to keep her from moving away from him.

He intended it to be a soft, sweet kiss, one that would reassure her that even though he could be oafish and stupid, she was the only person who would define "home" for him. He intended it that way. But when Winry's mouth opened for him, and when her hand slipped out from under his to creep up his neck and into his hair, his intentions fell to the wayside with alarming speed.

Ed's hands wandered down Winry's back and across her ribs—the quilt was gone again, and it had probably picked up most of the dust on the floor by now—pulling her fully against his body as her hands tightened in his loose hair and tugged his head down to deepen the kiss. He felt the warmth of her skin through the airy cotton nightgown, and he stroked his thumbs across her ribs with feather-light touches; in response she hummed approval against his tongue. Somewhere in a negligible recess of his mind, Ed came to the conclusion that he had at some point turned them around, and it was now Winry who was against the wall. And—oh Truth—she had somehow hitched one leg around his hip, and her hands were floating so softly down the planes of his chest, making his skin jump, down farther towards his abdomen—oh, she needed to stop that soon. But he couldn't keep himself from tasting her lips—chamomile and honey—and from feeling her gasp when he drew one finger up her sensitive spine. Winry's business-oriented hands were dangerously close to disrobing Ed completely when he tore himself away from her mouth, hearing his heart rate thunder in his ears and Winry's small whine of protest.

"I think that's probably enough," he managed, hoping his voice wasn't too choked and ridiculous.

Winry frowned, but nodded as she replaced one of the nightdress's straps on her shoulder from where it had slipped a little down her arm.

Did I do that? That was close…Ed got a little distracted thinking of the trajectory the night could have taken. Someday. We've still got waiting to do.

He felt her lean forward against him, tucking her head under his chin where it now fit rather perfectly. He rested his arms around her, letting his silence speak for him. Maybe now he could convince her that someday things would be, in her words, "exactly, exactly perfect." And even though they both knew he had to get on a train at an ungodly hour the next morning, sharing each other's warmth in the cold night was more of a gift than a full day of uninterrupted sleep.