Fanfic: Telephone (Fullmetal Alchemist)

[nebroadwe]

Title: Drabbles: Telephone
Fandom: FMA (manga version)
Character(s): Winry
Pairing: very early, one-sided(?) Winry/Ed
Rating: G
Word Count: 300
Warnings: Implicit spoilers for chapters 56 and 64.
A/N: Three drabbles about Winry that bunnied earlier today as I was thinking about my in-progress fic "Errands of the Eye" (aka "Winry and Paninya go to the movies"), which is by-golly going to get finished someday! Consider this a kind of preview. These drabbles are only my second sidling approach to romance; concrit welcomed with the ringing of bells and the freedom of the city. Crossposted from nebroadwe to Höllenbeck (i.e. hagaren_manga, fm_alchemist, fullservicefma, fma_het, fma_writers, fma_fiction, winrylovers and ed_winry).
Dedication: For tobu_ishi, master of the romantic drabble.

---

Dial Tone

Automail is a noisy business. Every competent engineer learns to sift sounds of order (or incipient disorder) from cacophony. Winry knows she's competent, but lately her ears trick her: she hears the telephone bell in the overtones of drills and saws, screaming as they bite into steel, in their motors' burring whine and even in the forge's hiss and clang. One morning she woke trying to answer her alarm clock, which was just embarrassing. Garfiel worries her about tinnitus when not teasing her about absence's effects.

Sometimes she wishes they hadn't called. Mostly, she wonders whether to call him back.

≈
Voice Message

Sensation is automail's Philosopher's Stone. Engineering makes the lame leap like a stag; why shouldn't it give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf? So Winry sketches the human ear: the tympana, the ossicles, the petrous labyrinth. Do sounds, she wonders, ever get lost in there, never reaching the vestibulocochlear nerve? Is that why she still hears his words (Are you all right?) as clear and puzzling as they were that day -- and as warming?

She snorts and crumples the sketch, ignoring her own blush. I hear what you said, Edward Elric. Why can't I hear what you meant?

≈
Disconnected

Winry stares at the disassembled knee on her workbench, but sees the wall by the telephone and the calendar with its picture of snow-streaked mountains brooding over an autumn forest. That's that. They're off again. Next time they call, it'll be because Ed's leg's too short or his elbow's seized up or ...

She won't think about "or". Ed's disregard for her masterworks is enough to make a dedicated engineer weep, but at least the repair bills pay her apprenticeship fees. And he'll always need his mechanic, her mind whispers.

The next time the telephone rings, she lets Garfiel answer it.

[Disclaimers: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix). Copyright for this property is held by Arakawa Hiromu and Square Enix. All rights reserved.]

Comments

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Blast. I could've sworn that was yours. Maybe it belongs to cornerofmadness. Set in the mangaverse, just after all the recent revelations about the homunculi, and has Ed and Winry being invited to tea with the Führer for some occasion or other ... all kinds of I-know-you-know-I-know and people tiptoeing delicately around the invitation-as-command and guest-as-hostage situation. I hope whoever-it-was hasn't actually published the end and I just missed it ...

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

OH! That one. For COM's b-day. *makes face at self* Yes. I need to get back to that, too. And I've got ideas. If only I didn't have to work and make money to survive, I could do so much more writing. *laugh*

Never fear, you haven't missed the next installment of that story.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

OH! That one. For COM's b-day.

I'd like to say that I was sure it was yours because of the style, but what I was actually remembering was reading it in the layout of your page (that distinct blueish background color).

If only I didn't have to work and make money to survive, I could do so much more writing.

Hear, hear! Scar snuck up behind me this morning with a quotation from Robert Bolt's Man for All Seasons and images of mirrors and landslips, and suddenly I'm taking notes for YA character sketch ... but I'm finishing "Errands of the Eye" first. I mean it! I will not be moo-oo-ooved ... I will not be moo-oo-ooved ...

Never fear, you haven't missed the next installment of that story.

Yay!

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

I'd like to say that I was sure it was yours because of the style, but what I was actually remembering was reading it in the layout of your page (that distinct blueish background color).

Hey, however you remember the story...*grin* And if COM had written it, we're pretty much interchangeable. *shrug* We've been writing together off and on since the 80's, in one form or another.