Hey guys! Hope you're all healthy and self-isolating to beat this pandemic. This is one of THREE more chapters about Ed and Winry's maybe-date-situation in Central, even though it was only supposed to be one originally. They keep getting longer and I am helpless to stop them.

Thank you so much to my lovely reviewers! You guys are the best! A note: given that we know Ed and Winry get together in the end, but we don't really know what their whole Deal is during the big "85%" scene before Ed goes west, I've decided to chart their progress toward that point using what we DO know about Edward Elric: namely, that while extremely smart, he is super frickin' dense. He's also spent years and years repressing and ignoring his emotions, for both trauma and stubbornness reasons, which is why it's not so easy for him to just figure out how he feels or what to do about it. So, uh, this is all to say that you're gonna want to smack him (and maybe me) by the end of this chapter. But hang in there!

The song for this one is "Cold Light" by Operators, and since this is my fic and I can do whatever I want, I'm gonna let it lead us off:

Put your heart in the hands of the city
Workin' hard when you're not around
And ooh, you sure look pretty
Oh, while your feet are movin' on the ground

Some people born and they never wake up,
Some people born and they got it all
But me, I just can't stop
I can't stop until I really fall

Go home, go home,
Baby, it'll be alright
Put your life into the cold light
Put your life into the cold light

So do you, do you wanna dance?
Do you wanna take the long way home?
And do you stop, entranced, my love?
You know, I could never be alone

After finally breaking free of their uninvited entourage, Edward led Winry out of the restaurant and through the back courtyard.

"Where are we going now?" Winry asked, following him through the patio area that had been closed up for the season. It was right around nine, and the sky wasn't dark yet but there was a definite chill in the air. They passed the hedges and then the dumpsters, and then Ed led her through a narrow alleyway between two brick buildings she couldn't identify from behind.

"It's a surprise!" Ed called over his shoulder. "This is just a shortcut."

At the end of the alley, they stepped out onto the main street. It was the civilian core of downtown Central City, where there were shops, restaurants, bars and nightclubs, independent hotels—all manner of things that had nothing to do with military command. It was a wide cobblestone street that banned cars, dotted instead with food carts and sidewalk cafes serving a leisurely crowd of pedestrians. It was Friday night, and the people of Central were out in force, spilling in and out of restaurants and pubs all the way up the street.

"Alright," Ed said, turning to Winry as they both stood at the edge of the street. "So up that way a couple blocks is the market square—" he pointed to the left with his thumb "—and we'll head there later. But over here a couple blocks—" he continued, pointing to the right, "—is where we're going now."

Winry looked at him curiously, then surveyed the street in front of them. There are a ton of restaurants here, and we just ate—and obviously we're not going to a bar, unless for some reason Ed thinks it's my lifelong dream to get kicked out for underage drinking, which would be…well, hopefully it's not that. So then what else…

Her eyes widened as they landed on the brightly-lit marquee sign jutting out over the street in the distance.

"Oh my God, are we going where I think we're going?!"

Ed paused. "Uh. Do you think we're going to the movies?"

Winry shrieked with enthusiasm, making no attempt to contain herself. "Ahh, I'm so excited! I've always wanted to go to an actual cinema! And they're getting better all the time, apparently, too—this place could have so much incredible tech that we've never even seen! And look at the size of it—they must have a really sophisticated setup to be able to show pictures to that many people every night. I wonder what kinds of projectors they're running? Aaah, I hope they'll let me take a look after the movie!"

Edward grinned, shaking his head a little. This was a better reaction than he'd hoped for. "Jeez, Winry, I didn't think it'd be that big a deal. It can't be that different from the movies we've seen at home, right?"

She turned sharply back towards him. "Can't be that different? Have you never been to one of these places before? You and Al have spent so much time in the city."

"Yeah, but we didn't exactly have a ton of time to mess around! I don't think I've actually seen a movie at all since before Al and I went to Dublith to train."

"Well, you've been missing out," Winry said, grabbing Ed by the arm. "Let's go! Even the movies Mr. Greenboro shows at home have come a really long way in five years, and whatever they've got in Central is bound to blow those out of the water."

"Okay, okay!" Ed raced to keep up with her as she all but dragged him by the arm down the street toward the glittering lights of the cinema marquee. "Jeez, you don't have to pull so hard. This was my idea, remember?"

"Sorry," she replied, loosening but not releasing her grip on his right bicep as they kept moving.

Half a step behind her, Ed could see the edge of Winry's wide smile, and he could feel the warmth of her hand gripping his arm through his shirtsleeve. He still wasn't used to it. They weren't moving that fast—but he felt his heart speed up.

In Resembool, on the last Saturday of every month unless something got in the way, a man named Mr. Greenboro arrived by train with his film projector in a big leather suitcase, and he set up shop for an evening in the Jacksons' barn. Maisie Jackson herself would hang two white bedsheets across the far wall, and he would set up his projector up in the hayloft. Then two or three dozen people from town would file in, paying two hundred cenz at the door each, and take their seats on bales of straw arranged in long rows. Maisie and her daughters would sell lemonade or apple cider depending on the season (and rye, if you knew which daughter to ask) and some kind of snack, and then Mr. Greenboro would show the first few movies.

There was something new every month, but always within a given format—there was usually a five-minute reel of slapstick comedy, acrobatics or stage tricks of some sort, then often ten minutes of some kind of documentary. Sometimes it was footage of grizzly bears fighting at Mount Briggs; other times it was shots of Cretan tribespeople with their elaborate clothing, or of coal miners or factory workers or fishermen living their day-to-day lives. Then, usually, there was a message from the Führer-President, which anyone with a projector license was strongly encouraged to play.

After that came an intermission, where the kids typically ran amok in the barn and the adults took a chance to mingle. This was, historically, the part when a young Winry would climb up to the hayloft and start haranguing Mr. Greenboro to let her look at the projector, until he either acquiesced or kicked her out.

Then came the main event—a twenty- or even thirty-minute movie. Ed and Al's longstanding favourite had been The Fly-Man (because it had an alchemist in it) but Winry had been a bigger fan of Doctor Llewellyn's Machine, which had a robot. They had also seen the one about the bank robbers, the sequel to the one about the bank robbers, the one about the farmer who grew giant vegetables, the one about the princess who joins the circus, and the one about the moon.

In theory, the films all came with piano scores, and they were meant to be shown with specific live music—but in Resembool, they were shown alongside the dulcet tones of Old Man Jackson's accordion. He had a habit of editorializing quite a bit when he transposed the sheet music, and tended to shout out commentary on the movies while he played.

All this was to say that going to the movies in Resembool was a very specific experience, but it bore very little resemblance to going to the movies in Central.

It was dawning slowly on Edward—as he and Winry stepped under the dazzling lights from the marquee toward the box office, where a girl in a neat navy-blue uniform took his money through a gap in a little glass windowpane and handed him two elegantly-printed paper tickets—that he didn't actually know much about the world they were walking into at all. He had thought of going to the movies as kids' stuff, since he'd been a kid the last time he'd had a chance to go. But as they walked into the crowded lobby, an elegant room with high ceilings, marble floors and gold-painted moldings, the wood-paneled walls covered in framed movie posters and big mirrors, he realized they might actually be the youngest people here. There were a few groups who looked like they could be older teens or young twentysomethings, but most of the people lined up for the concessions stand or waiting to enter the theatre looked like, well, actual grown-ups.

Ed had been working for the military long enough that he wasn't fazed anymore by being the youngest person in every room, and he wasn't easily wowed by modern big-city things like this anymore either. Maybe he'd just been back home for too long; he didn't expect to feel so out of place, but suddenly he was craving Maisie Jackson's apple cider.

"Oh, wow," Winry said, taking in the sight of the lobby. She hadn't let go of his arm. "You think they've got enough haybales for all these people?"

Ed laughed. "That's exactly what I was thinking."

As they headed into the theatre to find seats, Edward caught a glimpse of his reflection in one of the big decorative mirrors lining the walls. He almost didn't recognize himself. Somehow he'd been expecting to see a much younger, scrawnier kid looking back at him, sticking out like a sore thumb and looking pissed about it. But instead there was a guy in a nice vest with a girl on his arm, and he didn't look out of place at all.

They managed to get seats—real, velvet-upholstered seats—almost dead centre, since they'd skipped waiting in line for snacks.

"Jeez, just look at these," Ed said, poking at the material on the arm of his chair. "What is this, the frickin' opera?"

"What's the feature called again?" Winry asked, checking her ticket stub. "The Beasts of Devil's Alley?"

"Yeah. You haven't seen it already, have you?"

"No, I haven't even heard of it. It must be brand-new."

"Uh-huh, that's what Fuery told me. He's pretty big into this stuff." Ed shifted casually in his seat. "Supposedly it's some kind of crime movie? It's about gangsters, or mobsters, or something."

"Alright!"

Just then the lights dimmed, and the stragglers out in the lobby hurried to their seats. Then there was an odd clattering sound Ed couldn't place, and he looked up toward the front of the room to see a tiny little middle-aged woman in a dress covered in more sequins and beads than he'd ever seen in his life crossing the floor. With a final rattling noise, she settled at the upright piano in the front corner of the room. Then the red velvet curtains were drawn slowly open, revealing the huge silver screen—easily four times as big as the "screen" in Resembool—and the pianist began to play as it lit up.

Ed stole a quick glance at Winry next to him as the title cards for the first cartoon were rolling. She was smiling widely, her eyes bright, staring intently at the screen and looking genuinely thrilled. So far so good.

The cartoon was about—of all possible things—a three-legged dog. It was some kind of hound with big floppy ears that looked nothing at all like Den, and its life seemed to centre entirely on stealing sausage links from butcher shops, but it was still enough to make Winry tap excitedly on Ed's hand next to her on the armrest and point. They both laughed.

Ed kept watching, but found himself distracted within minutes as his eyes adjusted to the low light. The cinema audience was almost wall-to-wall couples. Practically everybody seemed to be sitting in pairs.

Whoa, hey, he reminded himself, just because a pretty sizeable amount of guys and girls are sitting in pairs doesn't mean they're all on dates. You're just making an assumption.

As if on cue, the guy sitting in the very next row yawned and stretched very conspicuously, bringing his arm down around the shoulders of the girl next to him. Ed cringed automatically.

Well, that's just about the lamest thing I've ever seen, he thought. Not only did that guy pull the cheesiest move possible, but he basically just announced to the whole theatre that he was too much of a wimp to just actually go ahead and put his arm around a girl like he meant it. What a dumbass.

Then he watched as, to his disgust and confusion, the girl in question leaned her head on the guy's shoulder.

Ew, what? How did that actually work? How can she reward that kind of behaviour?!

Ed shifted in his seat and tried to focus on the screen again. When he went to lean on the opposite armrest, his forearm bumped against Winry's, and his little finger brushed the side of her hand. He pulled back, startled at the sudden contact.

"Oh, sorry,"he whispered.

Winry shot him a mild, quizzical look that said sorry for what? Then she looked back up at the screen, apparently unbothered.

Ed felt his face get hot as he forced his attention back onto the movie in front of him, although he couldn't pinpoint exactly why.

Heh. Told ya. But don't worry-more coming soon! That detail about the guy bringing a projector to Resembool is actually canon-it's mentioned in the FMA Guidebook (the only one they released in English), and of course the bit about the Fly-Man is mentioned in the manga (and is also a real movie, minus the alchemy bit). The rest I made up. I've been researching a lot of real film history for these chapters and it's all so cool-and it's got me brainstorming really heavily about what the movie industry in Amestris would be like, given that they have a lot of decent tech but extremely fraught borders. I'm not sure how much of that will actually make its way into the story, but I'm honestly having the time of my life. I also think it makes a lot of sense for Winry to be big into movies, because hey, it's mechanical engineering that creates the illusion of life! That's her jam! We'll get into that more in the next chapter, though.

Thanks so much for reading! Let me know what you think, stay safe out there and I'll be back with more soon.