Author's notes at the end this time.
95. Implicit rules
"Wait… that's part of a hand, you've got that… spare wrench… spanner… soldering iron… pepper spray-"
"Pepper spray? Now you've gone too far!" Ed protested.
"Hey, a girl can't just rely on a wrench for self defense," Winry snapped back as she threw another set of drawers open.
"What harm can someone do when you've taken their limbs off?"
Winry ignored him.
"What's she looking for, brother?" asked Al from the doorway.
"Screw driver," Ed muttered. Al looked at his brother, sitting against the wall, and Winry running around like a beheaded chicken.
"Shouldn't we-"
"No."
"But-"
"Trust me."
So the Elrics sat against the wall as Winry tore her workshop apart. After a while, they heard footsteps in the hallway, and Garfiel stuck his head in.
"Winry, dear, what are you doing?"
"Screwdriver," said the Elrics.
"Oh let me help you, then," he replied.
"No-" Ed called out and tried to pull the man back, but he had just moved a tool from one of Winry's piles. She whipped around and smacked his hand away with the tool that happened to be in her hand, which happened to be the pepper spray.
"Right. I'll leave it to you," he squeaked and ran out of the workshop. Winry went back to searching as though nothing had happened. Al looked to Ed as though asking how he'd known, and Ed merely shrugged.
"You hang around here long enough, you learn all the implicit rules she has- for example, don't ever touch her tools," he explained.
Al raised an eyebrow. "Brother isn't usually so perceptive," he countered, "especially when it comes to Winry."
Ed crossed his arms and huffed. "She also got me in the face with the spanner last time," he grumbled. Al's jaw dropped and he began inspecting his brother for injury, but Ed shoved him away. "Relax, I'm fine," he groaned. "She made it up to me, don't worry about it."
"How?"
"Uh… we…" Ed stumbled, not wanting to talk about his a Winry's private hours with his little brother. "We played chess," he said.
"Chess?"
"Lost and lots of chess," said Winry, spanner in hand. She winked at Ed and put an extra sway in her step as she left the room. Ed groaned and rested his cold, metal hand against his face. Al shook his head as Ed ran out after her, saying something about a queen torturing his knight.
A/N: FYI, "Inevitable Conclusions" updated and wrapped up today. That's where I put the not-quite-T rated drabbles. It's been fun, and if that kind of story is up your alley, check it out ;)
Now, as far as this one goes, I should have renamed it "inside jokes." The opening lines are once again adapted from one of my much older stories. I just could resist reusing "Pepper spray? Now you've gone too far."
"Playing chess" comes from freshman English class. We were reading Romeo and Juliet, and of course someone had to ask what exactly happened between Acts III and IV. As our teacher tried to define "consummate" to 14 year old kids (in a way that wouldn't get him yelled at by stuffy important people), someone else supplied "They were playing chess," and it just caught on for every other piece we read for the next two years.