Draped in Wires
by. Poisoned Scarlet
Theme 019: Trouble Maker
Ed tried to catch his breath, flattened against the east wall of the the Rockbell Household and trying desperately hard to keep his breathing at a minimum least she hear and stalk him. He could hear Winry's shrieks from the inside and the back door get thrown open in a rage.
She's faster than she was before! He found himself thinking. I gotta' be smart about this!
He sprinted to the front, leaping over the porch steps and throwing the front door open. He ran into the living room, intent on finding a place to hide for around four hours, when Winry appeared from the kitchen – wrench in hand and wearing a furious expression.
DAMN! She predicted my movements!
Unbeknownst to him, he always did the same thing when he was in trouble...
"ED! YOU'RE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE!"
"SHIT—!"
Edward bolted back the way he came from, Winry's footsteps close behind. He felt a gust of air brush his head and he increased his pace, knowing he had just barely managed to dodge a wrench blow. He jerked to the right, allowing her to stumble forward, and booked it back into the house, up the stairs and slammed his door open; locking it securely behind him and backing up to his bed, where he fell back into it and crawled under the sheets.
He was in trouble he couldn't even begin to comprehend! He had, one, eaten the entire pan of apple pie she had made for everyone and he had, two, managed to break a cup in the process due to Den's snout startling him when the dog sniffed the hem of his pants. Winry had caught him breaking the cup, too, which made her scream, "Not again! Ugh, you're about as elegant as a bull in a glass shop!" and became enraged when she noticed the licked-clean pie pan where a once-scrumptious pie had been left to cool on the windowsill.
Needless to say, Edward responded to her furious look with the exact wrong thing to say:
"...I thought it could've used more cinnamon..."
That was what found him under his covers, cowering like a beaten dog, and groaning – the manly word for whimpering – when he heard her bang on the door furiously.
In all technicality, once the fear and dread subsided, he always found himself thinking how beautiful she looked when she was livid. It was all wrong, and kind of sick now that he thought about it, but it was only when she was furious that expressed such a passionate emotion on her face.
That, and when she spoke of automail – but he ignored that fact in those few crucial seconds.
"ED! OPEN UP NOW!"
"MAKE ME!"
"EDWARD ELRIC YOU OPEN THE DOOR THIS INSTANT!"
He chose not to reply, opting instead to throwing a pillow over his ears to block out her incensed growling. He had forgotten, in his musing, that she was an ace mechanic and the fact only struck when he heard the door knob wiggle as she picked the lock open.
Shit.
His heart plummeting, stomach twisting with dread, Edward watched in horror as the door knob stopped twitching and it all went silence for a moment. With baited breath, he waited for her to show her beautifully enraged face, and he gulped when the door silently swung open to reveal a deranged grinning Winry.
At least in his eyes.
In any other persons eyes, she was smirking like she had won a shopping spree to a hardware store.
"You," she hissed, menacingly, "are in so much trouble!" She stalked forward, raising her hand to deliver the finishing blow, when he shot up; his hand grabbing her wrist to prevent the knock out. Her eyes flashed in annoyance and she jerked back, intent on making him see stars, when his other hand shot up to grab her left.
His anxious gold eyes flickered to hers.
Think fast, think fast, think fast! He thought, queasily. What would make her rage dissipate? What could make her forget about her anger? Praising automail, saying my legs acting up? What, damn it, WHAT?
She narrowed her own, making sure to inject as much ire into her stare as possible.
I...I can... Against his will, as she began her threatening again, his eyes flickered to her lips. Would it even WORK? It would probably make her more angry, he deduced, but, he decided logically, it would definitely stun her enough for him to escape the household and head over to the river for a few hours!
It was perfect!
But did he have enough guts to do it right?
I've faced dangerous alchemists, seven annoying but homicidal Homunculi, one stuck-up Colonel, and an old bearded guy who wanted eternal life, Ed fired himself up, steeling his eyes. I can DO this! It's just Winry...with a wrench... crap...
"Let me go! I'm gonna' give you hell, Edward, that pie was everyone and you ate it! Ugh! You're such a pig!" she continued her tirade, trying to wrench her wrist from his grasp, and oblivious to the battling ideas that ran amok in his head. "It was a whole pan, too! How could you eat a whole pan of pie in half an hour?
Do it, he convinced himself. She'll be pissed as fuck but it'll be enough to save myself a hospital fee for a few hours!
She saw him nod, saw his eyes go hard and, before she knew it, his mouth crashed on hers and her once furious eyes widened in frozen shock.
The fury melted into bafflement.
Her death-grip on her wrench was reduced to jello and the tool fell to the ground with a loud clatter. His hands, which gripped her wrists, moved to grasp her hands instead, pulling them down as he screwed his eyes shut and continued to move his mouth against her unresponsive one.
Wh-what is this? She thought, thoroughly dumbfounded. She had always imagined their first kiss to be something heady and full of passion. But here he was, mouth against hers like she had dreamed about, and she was more pissed than anything in the world.
And now he was moving away, too!
Alarmed, she crushed her mouth against his again – making her own kiss unintentionally bruising.
"Wait, no—mfft—Win—!" Ed struggled away, not at all expecting this. He expected her to just stay stunned for a moment so he could properly maneuver around her and flee. But now she was forcing him still and his fighting will was slowly shearing away with every smack of their lips.
What...what was I gonna' do again? He thought, dazed, but regained enough of the lost IQ points from her eager response to grab her by the waist, responding with a fervor that made her dizzy and forget why she had come into the room in the first place. She twisted her hands out of his and lost her footing, causing him to fall sideways on his bed.
She pushed him on his back without breaking contact and straddled him, vaguely aware that he had finally stopped struggling against her.
The flurry of sensations and emotions stunned both of them for a moment. Her fury was reduced to wonder and his own dread transformed into desire. One had been waiting forever for the moment and the other was just looking for a manner of escape but now that he had her captive, hands gripping the curve of her waist, he was a little lost as to where he would take this.
His first plan had been to, well, run away although he couldn't recall why as now he wanted nothing more than to stay with her.
He hadn't really thought about what he would do after he had hit this stage since he was quite sure ripping her clothes off and getting rid of the maddening frustrations happened after he did something else, which he was still clueless to.
He had been too focused on the last stage to plot out the in-between one...
He allowed her a few seconds to catch her breath, which were coming quick and shallow, before he caught her lips again. She groaned, not having gotten enough breath, and moved her mouth away from his when she couldn't take it any longer. She discovered, in those few seconds of labored breathing, that air was such a pest in these types of situations.
He tasted sweet, a mixture of tenderized apples and cinnamon wrapped into one enticing package...
Suddenly, the reason for her being caught in the situation came back.
"Don't you think...that just because of this...you're not in trouble anymore!" She inhaled deeply, her forehead resting against his own as a small smile curved her lips.
Oh, right, I was supposed to run away! Now I remember! His eyes flickered from a rusted gold to a light yellow, as she caught her breath above him.
"Are you still going to hit me with that wrench?" he ventured, their breathing going back to normal.
"If you keep reminding me why I chased you around the house then you'll get something worse than my wrench in my skull!" she snapped, some of her previous anger filling into her eyes.
"Geez, sorry for thinking that after that you wouldn't want to murder me!" he huffed, mouth tugging into a scowl.
She watched him for a moment before lifting her hand and forcing the corner of his lip up.
He narrowed his eyes.
"You look better when you're smiling," was all she said, her own smile causing his flushed cheeks to grow darker as she hopped off him and picked up the tool from the floor. He propped himself up on his elbows, rather bewildered at the turn of events.
"That's...it?"
Her brows shot up, cheeks growing steadily pinker. "Um..."
His face grew scarlet. "NO! I didn't mean about-about that! I meant if you were going to hit me or...knock me out or something!" he hastily corrected himself, unable to meet her amused gaze. "You're not pissed anymore...right?"
She kept her disappointment at bay, reminding herself that this was Ed and he would not voluntarily be smooth until he was sure she wasn't just messing with him. Or if he could be smooth at all!
Her grandmother was right: it seemed that she would be the guide in their progressing relationship.
At least he told me how he feels, she told herself. That has to be worth something! "I've got better things to do than hit you with my wrench right now!" she loftily said, regaining her composure with a cross of her arms.
"Then why chase me around the house if you weren't gonna' do anything to me?" he asked, scathingly.
She grinned. "It's fun to watch you run around like a headless chicken!"
He scowled. "You—!"
"Hey," she lifted the corner of her own lips. "Smile or else I really will hit you over the head!" She rolled her eyes when he only grimaced and headed toward the ajar door of his bedroom. "And open up the window! It stinks in here!"
"At least my room doesn't smell like a motor!"
A vein popped on her temple. She spun on her heel and, without giving him a chance to realize what had just happened, thew her wrench and nailed him right on the forehead, throwing him back on the bed as her tool bounced on the bed.
She exhaled sharply. "Idiot!"
"I THOUGHT YOU SAID YOU WEREN'T GOING TO HIT ME! ARGHH!" Ed clutched his head, rolling on his side and curling inward. That hurt.
"When you stop saying stupid stuff then I'll stop hitting you!" she snapped back, stalking to grab her wrench and wasting no time in slamming the door behind her. She saw Al and Mei stand in the hall awkwardly, unsure of what had just happened.
"The pie will be delayed today," she smiled apologetically, tone significantly less volatile. "I'll have to bake another one because your idiot brother ate it all!"
Al frowned, concerned. "Is he okay in there...?" His brothers pained groaning was really beginning to worry him.
"He'll be fine once he sleeps it off!" she waved dismissively. "Mei, would you like to help me? You can come too, Al!"
Mei smiled, taking her word for it and waving off her own concerns. "Of course!"
"But...brother is..." Al frowned and, after a moment of quick deliberation, followed the two women downstairs; hoping his brother was alright as they began to prepare the doe.
A/N: I am aware this is delayed by a few days but I have a valid excuse! I wanted to watch Maid-sama! so I clicked on a random website and somehow, accidentally, downloaded an anti-virus...virus lol. It screwed with my system and even popped up my browser every five minutes with porn. It prevented me from going into my Control Panel, Security Center – everything. I swear, I ran my anti-virus five times until, finally, it more or less caught the virus.
Then it turned out the virus wasn't gone so I had to preform a bunch of other stuff, around two more three hour scans, to finally fix my computer! The virus messed with my browser settings but now that that's all cleared up I can continue to update regularly!
Review!
Scarlett.