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It was nine o’clock at night in Resembol, and raining outside. The Rockbell living room was dark and cool; mud was caked onto the floor and the tattered crocheted rug; coats and shoes and umbrellas had been sprayed like filthy wet bouquets onto the chairs in the corner, next to the bookcase whose books had all been read four or five times over; Ed and Winry were sinking into the couch, half-asleep, staring out the window blearily, their feet resting on the coffee table in front.

His clothes were still damp and wrinkly from fixing the dam with the other menfolk of Resembol earlier that night. She was tired from working twenty hours straight in the shop and getting a good warm dinner ready for the boys when they returned from dam repair. Alphonse was upstairs in the shower – they could hear it in the living room, the rolling sound of thousands of water droplets hitting the shores of the tub. Granny Pinako was still in the shop, the buzz saw going even at this late hour, but she knew no one was asleep.

“So what did you really come back for?” Winry asked, energy enough only to mumble.

Ed groaned. He was waiting for Al to get out of the shower, but he was falling asleep on the couch with Winry in her dark living room. She was soft and womanly and inviting on the couch, and the rain outside was rhythmic and familiar. It was the greatest feeling.

Winry raised her arm and looked at her outstretched hand silhouetted in the light from the window. It was a flexible, expressive thing to study.

“You gonna do this forever?” she wondered. They were twenty five, she and Ed – Al was twenty – and the brothers had flirted back and forth between Resembol and the rest of Amestris for years.

“I don’t think so,” Ed murmured. He put his hand up behind hers to see his own silhouette. “My hand is bigger than yours.”

His hand was thick and burly, scarred and calloused – but then, so was hers. She was just a girl.

“Good. Something is.” It was one of those clever comments that had no backing to it; she was so tired. Ed made a laughter sort of sound. He reached his fingers through hers.

“I was thinking you could come live with me,” he said. “Me and Al, that is.”

Practice loneliness for a few years, or half your life, and see what an offer like that does to you. Her heart jumped.

She shifted to look him the eye. “What did you say?”

“I like you,” he said. He smiled, and closed his eyes. He looked like he could go to sleep right there, and leave her hanging. “And your cooking’s great. We just have to get a bigger place in Central.”

It was way too late in the day and she was far too exhausted to be deciphering momentous life decisions like this right now.

“Are you joking?”

This time he did laugh. “No. I could be though, if you wanted me to.”

“That’s generous.”

“Yeah, well. It’s been a few years in the making.”

Winry leaned back on the couch, quite awake, and stared out the rainy window again. “Really? ‘Cause I didn’t even see this coming. How many years?”

“A few.”

She grinned. How was she supposed to sleep now? Her heart was going crazy. Stupid Ed. She really needed to get some sleep tonight.

He took her hand in his – the flesh one – and squeezed. “Besides,” he said, eyes still closed, “I like you.”

They’d been flirting back and forth between Resembol and the rest of Amestris for a few years, Winry and Ed. She was beautiful and strong and loved him, and he’d finally realized it. He was all she ever wanted, even back when she thought he was as far from that as any boy off the street. They were each other’s one and only.

She rolled over to put her arms around him and rest her head on his chest. He laid his arm on her back.

“I like you, too,” she said. Somehow she thought this moment would be wilder, and more spectacular, but she wasn’t complaining. She’d learned to take what she could, with Ed. “I think I’d like to live with you.”

Ed leaned into her, to lay his chin on her head and burrow into the cocoon of their two warm bodies.

“I’m glad we had this talk,” he mumbled, comfortable enough to sleep and tired enough to drift into it and peaceful enough, for once, to enjoy it.

“I think you’re supposed the kiss the girl at this point,” Winry noted.

Ed put a hand under her chin and pulled her face to his, and kissed her gently.

“Okay,” Winry whispered to his mouth, “now I think I love you.”

“Yeah,” he answered, “I know. Me, too.”

She smiled to the heartbeat in his chest.

The pitter patter of the rain would be their song, the shadows of her living room and his past would be their colors, and the sometimes-brightness of their childhood would be their foundation when they moved in together, alchemist and mechanic, or soldier and surgeon, or boy and girl. Their not-quite lives together joined, wire to nerve. Girl to boy.

In any case, they loved each other. Finally, after a lifetime when there’d been more important things, it was enough.

-TerraCotta Bones

^^