They solved Stark's problem first. Winry was surprised how quickly he caught on, but then again, he had created that shock system he'd been trying to wire into the arm. Although he did tend to jump ahead of himself and not think things through and that brought trouble. She had to keep him from designing on paper to the moon and keeping his hands actually working with something concrete and not trying things that would blow up in his face like they had when he was working by himself for those first weeks after he'd moved in.
Tony was amazed with her. She was fun, bubbly, and had one heck of a throwing arm. He knew that from the bruises he got from a certain projectile wrench. Seriously, what was that thing made of? He did get the feeling that he was managing to impress her with his genius, but that didn't mean he escaped her daily wrench throws or the tremendous screamed tongue lashings. Oh no. On those two things, Winry did NOT hesitate.
Finally, after he was able to construct a working hand from parts he'd selected out of her stock, she decreed that her part of the bargain had been filled and it was his turn to pay up. Gladly. It meant he could give the lashings for once and throw her into complete awe of him.
But first, he had some business to take care of. The day after his test, Stark was on the telephone posting a long-distance call to Pepper. The suit he'd brought with him was too advanced to use in his lessons without giving the girl a heart attack, so Tony asked Pepper to send him a less advanced suit-"For demonstration only, I promise,"-and more cash-"I need to be able to buy the parts I need to try out this new idea." He shouldn't have said 'new idea'. If he'd thought Winry gave tongue lashings, he had seriously forgotten what pain Pepper could inflict, even over a telephone. Finally, he told her he would call back later with a friend and went to find Winry.
He was in luck. Winry had just pulled one of her famous apple pies out of the oven when he dropped in with a question. That pie was quite a mystery to him. When he'd asked where she'd learned to make it, her answer had just been, "I learned it from someone very special." When he'd asked why she practiced it so often-he had eaten it three days of the week while learning from the blonde-she'd actually blushed. "None of your business!" Aha! So the girl had someone she was into. Whoever he was, Stark felt sorry for him and hoped the recipient of the blush had one heck of a thick skull.
Once they'd each had a slice, Tony opened up the conversation. "You know the system I'm going to try to teach you?"
She immediately brightened the way she always did when they were talking about mechanics. "Yes?"
"Well, I need to get a simpler version of the design than the one I currently have so I can work with you to convert it, but the person with custody of it won't let me ship it out here." He was hoping her eagerness would overcome common sense.
It didn't.
Winry's eyebrows immediately went up as the sparkle diminished. "Why won't they let you?"
He looked down at the table. "She thinks I want to use it instead of just look at it. She only let me bring the other one for protection, after I wired it so I couldn't use it for anything else." And she'd looked over his shoulder the whole time to make sure that was the only thing he did. Winry started to laugh. He looked at her, a little angry.
She calmed down quickly under his gaze. "I'm sorry, but…you looked just like Ed when he's broken his arm again and doesn't want me to yell at him. It just looked funny."
He smiled. She'd actually had an innocent reason, a rare thing in his old line of work. "Anyway, I was hoping you might talk to the one holding the object and convince her to ship it out for research purposes."
Now the mechanical gleam was back in her eyes. He had her hooked. "Of course! Just tell me what I need to say to get that terrific piece of machinery out here!" He smiled to himself again. This was going to be fun.
Sorry I haven't updated! I was really busy with Years vs. Days, another FMA fic.
My thanks to Reviewer74 and Astivalis for sharing their opinions with me. This is actually really hard for me to write so I need all the encouragement and ideas I can get.