Video Games Pt. 2
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Winry thought she was going to vibrate out of her skin in anticipation of seeing Ed. Once school let out, she started to fret over how she would spend the three hours she still had ahead of her before he got home from work.
She took the long way back to the apartment, cutting down twenty minutes, and fidgeted in the car for another fifteen before finally getting out and going to her own place. She contemplated putting on make-up, changing her outfit, taking a shower, and even thought about cancelling the thing all together, ordering a pizza for herself and hiding away in her room.
Eventually, she decided on taking a long, hot shower and freshening her face with a dash of confidence-boosting cosmetics. The giant sweater and yoga pants, however, were going to stay.
She took a look at herself in the mirror and beamed. It wasn't an official date, but this might have been the first time she prepped for a night with a guy without any help from Lan Fan or Garfiel. Despite the anxiousness that was bursting through her to see him, she felt confident. It was different. It was nice.
All that was left was texting Ed and confirming their plans.
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(4:33): School has not claimed me tonight! If you'd like to hang, I'm free!
(4:48): Perfect timing, I was about to get dinner. See you in a few
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Five o'clock finally struck, and that's when her nervousness really kicked in. Oh God, she thought, as she stared at her phone screen. He was going to be home any minute.
Winry paced the length of her living room, eventually going to her patio door and peaking out to see if Ed was walking up the apartment's entryway. She squealed and ran from it with unusual speed when she saw a glimpse of what she thought might be his head, and sat anxiously on the couch, waiting for him to call or text her and invite her upstairs. What she wasn't expecting was the knock on her door, or Ed blasting in before she could open her mouth.
"Yo!" he greeted, bearing a lopsided smile and a paper bag that smelled like heaven. "Would you mind bringing up some bowls? I haven't run my dishwasher yet."
Winry rolled her eyes as she smiled. "Why can't you be a normal person and just wash your dishes in the sink? It takes like, two minutes tops."
Ed hitched the bag higher up in his arms and adjusted the strap of his messenger bag. "Dishwashers were invented for a reason, Win. I'm not letting such advances go to waste."
"Whatever," she laughed, and got up to go to her kitchen. "I'll be up in a minute."
"Got it!" he shouted, and bounced out of the doorway, leaving Winry to squeal excitedly in the solitude of her apartment.
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Winry took a giant bite of fried rice and let out a happy moan. "If food were a person, I'd make sweet, passionate love to them.."
"I can tell," Ed commented, sideways glancing at her while taking a long swig of beer.
Winry kicked his thigh in response, and laughed when his drink bubbled and spilt down his front.
"Jack ass," he exclaimed, and stood to unbutton his beer-soaked shirt.
Winry eyes grew wide as she ogled the muscles of his back, but the view was quickly obstructed when Ed threw the shirt over her face. She could hear him laughing after she let out a shriek and swatted it off, and threw the shirt back at him as he started to back out of the living room; he caught it before it made contact with his head.
"I'll be back," he shouted to her. "I wanted to change into sweatpants, anyway."
"In that case, you're welcome!" she shouted back, and chuckled as she took another bite of rice.
The last time she had been in Ed's apartment was the incident with Jean and Becky; anytime they'd had dinner or played video games, it was at her place, and Al had been with them. It was comfortable enough, although she did still stick with her first thought of too much black and red, but something felt different about his place in comparison to hers. She couldn't tell if those facts were what made her feel so nervous about that night, or if it was the fact that she had every intention of making it known that she was attracted to him.
When the moment was right, of course.
Ed entered the room moments later in a pair of darkly colored sweats and an old band tee. He flopped back into his spot on the couch and grabbed one of the boxes from the paper bag.
"So," he began, filling a bowl with lo mein. "What are you going to school for that causes you to pull at least two all nighters a week?"
"A masters degree," she replied. "At least, that's what I'm hoping for. I want to become a prosthetist."
Ed's surprise was immediate; his eyebrows rose high as he nodded slowly. "Really? That's a tough gig."
Winry shrugged her shoulders and grabbed her own bottle of beer, taking a small drink. "Go big or go home, right? My mom was a prosthetist. I grew up around spare parts and blue prints. I even started designing my own prosthetics when I was little. Of course they were nothing that could actually be used. Eventually she let me start helping her with small jobs, and I just kind of fell in love with it."
Ed smirked. "Sounds like Rockbell women are all a bunch of gearheads."
"Damn straight," she smiled. "What about you? I know nothing about your job, other than your boss is an ass and you see crime scenes. Do you work for the police?"
"Sort of," he replied. "I'm a forensic technician."
Winry's eyes nearly popped out of her head. "What?! No way!"
Ed slurped a clump of noodles and raised his hands in the air. "Yeah! What's so hard to believe?!"
"The whole thing!" she exclaimed. "I can't see you being the sound-minded person to analyze a crime scene. You get pissed when you watch commercials about animals in need."
Ed pointed an accusatory finger at her. "No one can watch those SPCA commercials and keep it together. If you do, you don't have a heart; and I haven't done much fieldwork yet. I've mostly been in the lab."
Winry twirled her fork idly as she listened. "Ah. Do want to work on crime scenes?"
Ed shrugged. "I'm fine either way."
She took another bite of rice, and chewed slowly before sitting her bowl down. "Well, I must say, I'm really surprised. I figured you had some kind of boring office job."
"Psh," Ed scoffed, and sat his empty bowl on the ground, "every job is a boring desk job at some point," and laid back further into the couch. "To be honest, I think it's crazy that you have such an interest in amputees."
Winry's brow furrowed, worried that the conversation was going to take an unsettling turn. "Why?"
Ed scratched his chin and dropped his head slightly, before meeting her gaze again. "'Cause I'm one."
Winry's heart dropped. That was not the response she thought she was going to get.
"Really?" she responded as coolly as she could.
Ed nodded once, and lifted the bottoms of his left pant leg to show a gleaming prosthetic.
"Oh my gosh!" Winry let out. "I know that model! It's state of the art!"
Ed shrugged as he tried to surpress a smile. "I guess."
"You guess?!" Winry gasped. "You have full articulation in the ankle! Oh my god! How did I not notice this?"
"You're having a better reaction to me having a fake leg, than you did actually meeting me," Ed laughed.
Winry shot him a playful, but dirty glare. "Maybe it's because it wasn't your prosthetic leg that was banging on my door at five in the morning."
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The night continued to be an explorative experience between the two. Ed was completely dumbfounded over the fact that she was so enthralled by his leg. Every person he had ever been with was shocked by it in some way, though it was never positive. Most people swallowed back their pity and tried to ignore it, some became overly sympathetic to the point that Ed couldn't continue seeing them, and others admitted their inability to handle his amputation. It was fucked up, it was unfair, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Yet, there was Winry; a girl who was not only understanding, but she was studying to be the person that created prosthetics. She wanted to give someone like him the chance to walk on two legs again. It was too coincidental, almost too perfect to believe.
After dinner, they spent a half hour arguing over what video game to plug in, played fifteen rounds of rock, paper, scissors in an attempt to decide, then eventually put in Street Fighter II: Winry's choice.
"Way to pick fucking Blanka again," Ed grumbled.
"Oh, suck my big toe," Winry snapped.
Their fighting progressed into smacking each other on the arm and shoving one another in hopes of screwing up their performance. It brought them to a tie on their matches, and Ed was hell bent on winning this video game night. Winry was in the middle of smashing in a combo attack, when he smacked the control clean out of her hands.
"You son of a bitch!" she wailed, and smashed into him, knocking him back into the couch, and began to whack him in the chest.
"Your fault!" Ed exclaimed. "Hold the control tighter next time, woman!"
Ed's grabbed both of her wrists in an attempt to block her flailing arms, and pulled them down to her sides to immobilize her. The sudden jerk caused Winry to lose balance, and she fell flat onto Ed's chest. She squealed loudly as she fell; her chin landed in the crook of his neck.
"Ow!" she whined, and lifted herself up slowly. "You're an asshole!"
Ed's mouth dropped. "I'm the asshole? You attacked me!"
"You knocked my controller out of my hands!" she retorted.
"You're just mad 'cause I'm winning," Ed replied, smirking like a complete jackass.
"Oh shut up!" she exclaimed, and began to squirm in his grasp. "Let me go, or I'll head butt you!"
Winry jerked in the exact moment that Ed removed his hands from her arms, and their faces fell against one another. Perhaps it was the adrenaline building from the moment, or perhaps the both of them were just falling into a rhythm that was ruled by instincts over logic. Whatever the reason might have been, as Winry's nose smacked into Ed's, he moved in and kissed her.
It didn't last long. Winry pulled away in minor shock; her face flushed deep red and her pupils shrunken by the complete surprise of the act. Ed grew nervous, wondering if he made a wrong move, but then he noticed the way her eyes flickered, as though she were waiting for him to signal that kissing her was not an accident. He stared at her for a moment longer, then let his gaze drift to her lips. He could feel her suck in a breath, and when her wide eyes began to close, he closed the space between them once more.
His nerves blasted into a cool, tingled mess of overstimulation. The taste of beer and spices had never been more enticing to him than when they were paired with this girl's lips. Winry brought her hands to his jaw as the kiss deepened, letting her fingers trace down from his face to his neck as she lightly sucked on his bottom lip, and thoughts turned sporadic as the chasteness of their kissing spiraled into something more primal. Was he going to let this escalate any further; more importantly, did he want it to? What the fuck was he doing? He barely knew Winry! Was he really going to try and fuck his new neighbor, just because she was okay with his leg and had the mouth of a goddess?
Winry let out a soft, whisper of a moan, and Ed knew he had to stop. She was too much for him; he wouldn't be able to control himself if she continued.
Popping one eye open and moving his hand to the floor, he patted the ground softly until he found his controller. Slowly, he lifted it up so that both hands wrapped around it, and began to attack his helpless opponent.
Winry's head shot up and turned to the screen. "You son of a bitch."
With a surprising amount of speed, she immediately went after his controller, causing them both to laugh and scream as they rolled about the couch, fighting and kissing and, quite frankly, doing an awful job at playing their video game.
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