A/N: This is me. This is me attempting to catch back up. So have a chapter that would, admittedly, have been better placed about two months ago when there was actually winter, instead of a slow, half-assed early spring.
74. First snow
Winry gazed out the window as she made a pot of strong coffee (as she said to her curious customers, "You try dealing with an ex-state alchemist who doesn't want to get up"). It had snowed at last after a warm autumn, and she loved watching the morning sunlight glint off the untouched snow. No footprints, tire tracks, hoof-prints, piles, snow angels, muddy slush… it looked every bit the part of the frosted gingerbread land. The sparkling snow added a touch of the mystic as well. She might be a scientist (and she'd smack Ed every time he said mechanics and biology were lesser sciences than chemistry and physics), but she was still a bit of a Romantic in the classical, artistic sense.
She heard a thump upstairs, followed by a thundering on the steps, which broke her out of her thoughts. Ed burst into the kitchen, still clad in only his boxers, wearing an expression of utter shock. His eyebrows had disappeared into his mane of hair, and he was pointing at the window.
"Snow!" he croaked out at last.
Winry stifled a giggle. "Yes, Edward, snow," she replied with the air of someone humoring a small child.
Ed shook his head violently. "I always know when it's going to snow! How the hell did it sneak up on me?" he asked, cocking his head to the side as he puzzled.
She couldn't hold back the laugh anymore and started chortling at Edward's utter confusion. "I told you when I attached the new ports; the new alloy reacts to atmospheric and pressure changes similarly to the way your body does, so you won't get achy before storms anymore," she explained, and snorted into her coffee mug.
"Oh, yeah, right," Ed mumbled, and he plopped down at the table where his mug was waiting.
"I take it my theory worked," Winry added, her face a mask of forced calm. "Al said you used to toss and turn all night before a blizzard, but you fell right to sleep when I came to bed."
Ed suddenly shut right up and turned a dark shade of magenta. Winry glanced at him with a clear inquiry in her eyes. "I, um," Ed stuttered, "I sleep better now that Al's normal, and, uh,…"
"And what, Edward?"
"Well, and when you're with me," he muttered, looking deliberately into his coffee and shuffling his feet on the ground.
Winry glanced at her empty ring finger and had the good sense to blush. She and Ed had never been traditional, but they were still products of their time. She also knew several things: Ed wouldn't want her to be hurt by the neighbors' behavior, he enjoyed what that did together far too much to think about giving it up, and considering his own parents' common-law arrangement and how he felt about it, he would eventually marry her just to spite everyone who compared him to his father.
Some shouting and cheering broke the moment, and Winry looked over her shoulder to see some kids starting a snowball fight. One day, they'd be watching their own blond children playing in the first snow of the season. It was only a matter of time.