--Winry has her own type of affection, I suppose....
Challenge 11: Protection
Rush Valley. The automail center of Amestris. The city that occupied much of Winry Rockbell's daydream time. The city that Edward Elric avoided at all costs.
So, when the two of them had an opportunity to visit said city, the battle was long and hard, each side insisting that he or she would never do as the other said.
Two days later, they were in Rush Valley.
"Can we go home now?" the boy whined, trudging behind Winry and poking her in the back every now and then.
"No. Shut up," the girl replied. She glanced at the map she had bought on the train and made a little squealing sound. "We're only a few blocks from the house of Matilda Grooksin, the first female automail mechanic ever!"
Ed scrunched his face up and unenthusiastically twirled a finger in the air, wishing Al was there to calm her down. "Whoop-dee-flippin'-doo."
Winry ignored him, which probably would have made the alchemist thankful had he not been busy grumbling to himself about the entire situation.
"Hey, blondie! Yeah, you in the red!"
Both Ed and Winry looked up. Ed pointed to himself in confusion, and the owner of the voice, a teenaged girl with thick, curly red hair, grinned cheekily at him. "Yeah, you. Looks like you could use some new automail, huh?"
The alchemist stared. He wasn't showing an inch of metal, not even between his gloves and coat-sleeves. "How did you—"
A slightly older-looking girl next to her rolled her eyes. "We're experts, hun. Now, how much do you have on you?"
"Automail?" he asked, confused.
"No, stupid. Money."
Ed opened his mouth to reply, but Winry got to it first. "Actually," she said, a note of disdain in her voice, "he has perfectly good automail already."
"Oh, really?" the redhead smirked back. "Because from the way he's dragging it, it looks like the mechanic just attached a lump of steel to his shoulder."
The blonde girl flushed angrily, and then turned sharply to Ed and barked, "UNDRESS."
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me! Shirt off!"
"I am not taking my shirt off in the middle of the street!"
"You know, there are many painful ways to attach automail…" Edward fought back the urge to take a step back at the dangerous glint in her eyes. "Some people have even passed out for days at a time from it."
"Alright, alright, I'm doing it… Yeesh."
He shrugged off his coat and handed it to Winry, who was looking smugly at the other girls. Working hard to keep from rolling his eyes, Edward unbuttoned his jacket and pulled his shirt over his head, and gave both to the girl.
"See?" Winry said, gesturing to his right arm proudly.
"Hm," they murmured in response. Ed raised an eyebrow, suspecting that they weren't actually looking at the automail.
Maybe Winry noticed their distinct lack of worshipfulness for her mechanical expertise too, because she shoved his clothes back and ordered him to get dressed in a bathroom nearby. So off he went, muttering incoherently to himself all the while.
The moment he was out of earshot, the two Rush Valley mechanics turned to each other and grinned. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"If you're thinking anywhere along the lines of 'good gods he's hot', then yeah."
"It looks like he's part of the military too—Did you see his pocket-watch?"
"Did you see his abs?"
"Did you see his wallet?"
"Sorry, girls, but he's taken," Winry interjected, a half-annoyed, half-disgusted expression on her face.
"Oh, is he?" the redhead said with a smirk. "Not by you, right?"
"Of course not," she replied peevishly. "But I know for sure that his boyfriend won't appreciate it much if he heard you talking like that."
The girls stared at Winry, then at each other, and then back at Winry. "His… his…. Ohhhhhhhh…"
"What are you guys talking about?" Ed asked, coming up behind the Rizembul mechanic. The two other girls glanced at each other and started giggling, while Winry smiled and grabbed Edward's automail wrist, leading him down the street.
"What did you tell them?" he asked suspiciously.
"Oh…nothing," she laughed, putting the boy even further on edge. "Come on, we're going to be late to the Rush Valley convention tour."