Plotbunny for this one thanks to Feriowind, who wanted to see Ed being domestic - which for me translates into Ed being "domestic".

Winry was quite sure that somewhere along the line somebody had lied to her, because this was most definitely not how things were supposed to turn out. Countless conversations with girlfriends late at night – for though Winry might not be the most conventional girl, late night talks in private about those things the guys Just Wouldn't Understand were never to be turned down – had led her to create a reasonably fair mental image of what exactly boys were like, and how they should be dealt with. Even profoundly unconventional guys like Edward Elric.

There was no doubt about Ed's being male; Winry could attest to that personally. Therefore she felt rather cheated and off balance (and she hated being off-balance) to see that Ed had done something that by all accounts no male should go out and do.

He had bought a sofa for their new house.

"Well?" said Ed, puffing out his chest a bit. "What do you think?"

For starters, she thought of throwing a wrench at his head, but decided to withhold judgement for just a few more seconds.

It was certainly... impressive, she would give him that. A large black-leather monstrosity that dominated their admittedly small living room, and were those clawed legs?

"Winry?" Now Ed sounded a bit worried, and looked at her searchingly.

"Remember when we talked about furnishing the living room?" she said, trying to keep her voice mild and her itching fingers from reaching for her wrench. "And remember when we had talked about light blue?"

"Uh," Ed said, blinking guileless golden eyes at her, evidently having absolutely no clue about said conversation. Mental note: just because Ed nodded and made agreeing noises didn't mean he had internalized anything.

"But this sofa is really badass!" he protested, rallying quickly. "You have to admit that! Don't you think it looks awesome?"

Winry forgot about the sofa for a second, and thought quietly to herself that an enthusiastic Ed was very sweet (and very much hers), and when she looked back at their living room she concluded that maybe the sofa wasn't quite as eye-bleedingly horrible as she had first thought.

"But the blue," she said mournfully, thinking of doilies, because they were all the rage now, and they just wouldn't match a black leather sofa with clawed feet. She might not want to touch a crochet hook with a ten-foot pole, but that didn't mean she had to forego doilies!

"Oh," Ed said, sounding a bit crestfallen, and looked back at the living room. He chewed his lip for a moment, then brightened. "We can paint the walls blue!"

Winry tried to imagine it. Blue walls, white ceiling, wood floor, black sofa. It would be... creative, but it could work. Maybe.

"Fine," she capitulated. "Blue walls. But!" she grabbed Ed's arm, when he would have run off to do a victory dance or something, "just the walls, Ed. Okay?"

"Sure!" he replied cheerfully. "I'll get it done tomorrow!"

She should be happy that Ed was so helpful and interested in the house, Winry told herself, laughing as Ed demonstrated that the sofa was quite bouncy, and giving in to her impulse to smack him with a wrench when he tried to draw her in on the fun.

And that should have been the end of that.

On Monday when Winry got home from her automail clinic (separate from the house, because in a city the size of Central you just had to keep your work away from home, otherwise you'd never have any peace at all), she saw that at some point between them both leaving for work and returning home, Ed had arranged for the living room walls to be painted blue. Thankfully, he had painted them quite a normal shade of pale blue, nothing too glaring, and now that she was less shocked every time she saw the monstro- er, sofa, she conceded that it was tolerable. Or would be, once she was quite used to it.

Taking a few more steps forward she paused in the center of the living room – their living room, and was once again overcome by the fact that after it all Ed had returned to her, ready – hopeful – able – to try and build a life together. It was all still new enough to her that a foolish smile crept onto her face, and she tilted her head back just a bit. Then she tilted it back a bit more, because on the ceiling were some things she didn't remember being there before. Alchemy must have been how Ed had gotten the walls painted so fast, which was nice, but did not excuse whatever he had done to the ceiling.

She was still contemplating the ceiling, wondering how exactly to phrase the complaint about it, when Ed came in, calling out a hello, his army boots loud on the still-squeaky wooden floor.

"Winry!" He paused, followed the line of her gaze. "Oh. What do you think of the walls?"

"They're very nice," she answered, her eyes still captivated by the designs on the ceiling. "I don't remember these stucco things being there."

At least this much was true about men: they couldn't recognize a warning tone when they heard it. Or at least Ed couldn't, because he proceeded to tell her about how he had seen them at the bastard Fuhrer's mansion, and thought that Winry would like them, and besides, ceiling decorations weren't just for snooty people like the bastard Fuhrer, they could have them too if they wanted!

"They're looking at me," Winry observed.

Ed laughed a bit nervously and looked up as well. "Are they?"

"The angry bear faces, or snake faces -"

"Crocodile," said Ed, sounding insulted. "Snakes' jaws are completely different."

"You idiot," Winry said, exasperated. "Couldn't you leave the reptiles out of it? What's wrong with something fluffy, if you had to have the ceiling looking at us all the time?"

"They – they match the sofa!" Ed spluttered, and Winry closed her mouth and conceded failure. They did go with the damned sofa.

Inhale, exhale, now speak calmly. "Dear Edward," she said sweetly. "How about if, from now on, we make purchases for the house together?" It was not actually a suggestion.

He looked frightened. Good.

Things went smoother when she met him after work the next day, her still covered in grease, him still in uniform, to buy tableware.

Unsurprisingly, Ed wanted black. Winry wanted flowers. The saleslady brought out something black with flowers, and then they proceeded to bicker about how big flowers could be and still be acceptable (while other people in the store persisted in making comments about how cute they were). They settled on black with medium sized flowers, and plain silverware after Ed scoured the store in search for something decorated with skulls and couldn't find any. He sulked all the way home.

At least something went right, Winry thought to herself, pleased with the new purchase. All she had to do was keep an eye on Ed, and it seemed there would be no more sofa incidents.

She woke up the next morning with the niggling feeling that she had forgotten something. It perplexed her all through breakfast, and her kiss goodbye to him was a bit more absentminded than usual. Not that Ed seemed to notice anything was wrong, the blockhead.

The answer came to her while she was working on the suspension for a new foot for one of her patients. She always thought best when tinkering with bolts and gears, and now she put down the needlenose pliers in surprise.

"Oh," she said aloud, her heart sinking when she realized what her terrible oversight last night had been.

"Mrs. Elric?" Max, her red-haired assistant, excellent with surgery, a little bit clumsy with gears, refused to call her Winry no matter how much she insisted. He would grow out of this stuffiness, she hoped.

"Hold the fort," she told him urgently, putting down the parts she was working on and practically flying out of the workshop. Curtains. How could she have been so stupid as to mention that their bedroom needed curtains in his hearing?

Dialing his office number, she shifted from foot to foot, hoping against hope that he would pick up. No luck. It was time for desperate measures.

Resolutely she dialed the Fuhrer's personal number. He absolutely hated when Winry called him looking for Ed, and kept trying to change his number in a futile attempt to keep from being badgered all the time. Winry never told him that Riza always slipped her the new number surreptitiously, 'just in case'. Privately, she thought that Riza just enjoyed watching Roy fume helplessly over the phone.

Disappointingly enough, the phone was picked up by the Fuhrer's secretary, who already recognized Winry's voice well enough not to bother with asking for identification. They exchanged pleasantries and chatted about the latest fashions in doilies (God! She wanted doilies. Why did everyone else have them? Maybe it would be worth learning to crochet or knit or however they were made. She could make little doilies with a wrench design. She smiled at the thought.), and finally Winry managed to maneuver the conversation around to the part where she was asking about Ed.

"Look, Katie, I need to talk to him," she wheedled, a note of urgency in her tone.

"I'm terribly sorry, Winry," Katie answered anxiously, but still managing to maintain the professionalism that befit the Fuhrer's personal secretary, "Fullmetal is in an urgent meeting with the Fuhrer and several other generals. I'm afraid he's not available right now."

Winry sighed. "He crashed the meeting again, didn't he?"

A smile was practically audible in the other woman's tone. "I can safely say that he was not on the original list of participants."

Thinking quickly, Winry said, "Could you do me a favor? Tell him to call me the second he gets out."

"No problem," Katie assured her.

Winry waited all day, fidgeting nervously and hoping the phone would ring. Needless to say, it never did.

She closed up shop early because of lack of focus and rushed home, hoping against hope that Ed hadn't gotten home before her – but such fortune was not to be had. He had also decided to make dinner, which was really nice, though fried eggs and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers got a bit old after a while.

"You'll never believe what I found today!" he enthused as he chopped away. Ed was good at chopping, though Winry would bean him if he ever transmuted his fingers sharp to do it, like he used to.

"Oh?" Winry managed, her heart sinking.

"You should see our room!" Ed said, pausing to look at her, a wide grin on his face. Wordlessly, Winry went to check, all the while reminding herself that no matter how boneheaded he might be, Ed meant well. Usually.

Their room looked worse than she had feared, because where in hell had Ed managed to find somebody who sold black skull-printed curtain fabric? The rod with two cow skulls at either end was obviously transmuted by him, and the little curtain ties shaped like vertebrae were... a touch, though 'nice' would be far too strong for it.

She walked stiffly back into the kitchen, a smile like a rictus on her face. "No," she said sweetly.

Ed looked at her, obviously having absolutely no clue what she was talking about.

"Ed, my darling," and now he knew to be worried, "if you ever want to have sex on our bed ever again – get the damn skulls out of our room!"

Ed – and this was a secret nobody else knew, and would probably never believe – pouted, and looked aside. "I like the curtains."

"I hope you like me better."

"O-of course I like you better," he stammered, gave her face one last searching look, and sighed.

Winry smiled. Victory.

"...Can we at least put them in the guest room?"

In the end she managed to convince him to get rid of the curtains entirely, but the guest room now sported cheerful yellow curtains, on a sinister, skull-frosted rod. Maybe it would keep guests from wearing out their welcome.

On Thursday morning Ed told her over breakfast that he would probably be home late, because "that squinty-eyed stuffed-shirt from Xing" (translation: Emperor Ling) was arriving with a whole cavalcade and Ed was expected to hang around to greet him. Not that he wanted to, of course. He spent quite a while voicing his pique in various permutations until Winry had quite gotten the point that he wasn't pleased with the arrangement at all.

Winry went off to the clinic unworried, because what could go wrong? There hadn't been any more uncomfortable home-decoration incidents since the curtains. It seemed Ed had gotten the point.

For dinner, she thought, she would make something he liked. He'd probably be pretty wound up after an evening of having to hobnob with dignitaries, and if she got him into a good mood... well, Ed usually had a lot of energy when wound up, and an energetic Ed could be a lot of fun.

A while back Ed had bought her a small radio for the corner of her workroom, and now Winry kept it on with the volume lowered, listening to the broadcast about the arrival of the Xingians with much pomp and circumstance. She even got to hear Ed make a small address, and smirked to herself at the tone of his voice. To anybody that knew him, it was quite obvious that he found the whole thing annoying and couldn't wait to get away.

Max didn't say anything but she released him early anyway. There was some sort of gala going on downtown, and he spent the entire day speculating about the Xingians and sighing whenever the festivities were mentioned on the radio. Personally, Winry wasn't especially interested; she'd probably be dragged by Ed to some function or another sooner or later, and there would be time enough to watch fireworks some other day, when Ed had gotten over his initial annoyance.

When she got home she decided to go and schmooze with Laura, the next door neighbor for a while, until Ed returned. As they often did when the men weren't around, they both dragged chairs over to the low fence that separated their houses, Winry brought some cookies and Laura brought tea, and the general feeling was pleasant. They packed up when the mosquitos started humming around them, and Winry made sure the screen doors were all tightly shut, before glancing at the clock. It was past eight. Ed should be home soon.

Except Ed didn't return alone. Winry greeted him, then caught a glimpse of the black look on his face, and the large scroll-like thing he was carrying.

"That stupid know-it-all Xingian snot!" Ed railed, tossing the scroll onto the sofa. "I can't believe the nerve of him!"

"What is this?" Winry went over to the sofa and picked up the scroll, untying the ribbon that held it closed. It proved to be made of some sort of heavy paper, and when she unrolled it, she realized it was a strange painting of some sort. Simple ink lines wove a mountainous landscape across the yellowish paper, and the effect was... certainly interesting.

"A present," Ed said. "Ling, that moron... said it was called 'fung shooie' or something like that. The absolute nerve of him!" He stomped around the living room and waved his arms. "It's supposed to bring good energy to the house, or something. He said maybe it would calm us down! I don't need calming down, I'm a perfectly calm person! Insinuating that somehow you and I would, oh, murder each other in our sleep if we didn't have some Xingian scribble up on the wall...."

Winry sniffed in disdain. She had the feeling Ling went out of his way because he was still sore over being rejected and losing out to Ed where she was concerned. But that "up on the wall business"... that didn't sound good at all.

"I am so not excitable. I mean, fine, I could see where he's coming from with you, because you can get downright scary with that wrench of yours-"

Winry chucked a wrench at his head.

"-AUGH what was that for?!"

"That's for bringing home another piece of useless crap for the house!" Winry shouted back.

"It's not my fault, I didn't ask for it!" Ed yelped defensively, rubbing at the red spot on his temple. "I wanted to burn it right there, I told the bastard Fuhrer that you wouldn't want it, but he said that it would cause an international incident if we didn't put it up!"

Winry looked at Ed, then down at the painting (which wasn't truly ugly, just strange, but mostly representing a whole lot of things that had the potential to annoy both of them), and ran her fingertips over it thoughtfully.

"You know," she said slowly, meeting his eyes again, "I think it would match the bathroom extraordinarily well."

A matching smirk appeared almost instantaneously on Ed's face. "I love you," he said gleefully, "we should get married!"

Winry rolled her eyes, because the joke had gotten just a little bit old (though it would also never get old) the first six or seven times Ed had proposed to her – he had been so excited at her agreement that he wanted to milk the experience for all it was worth, which was very sweet, though the multiple public proposals got a bit embarrassing after a while.

Together they hung the painting in the bathroom and paused to admire it, until Winry gave in and answered Ed's previous statement – why ruin his fun?

"Yes," she said, "we really should get married."

And maybe there was something to the whole 'fung shooie' business, because there was quite a lot of very nice energy between them for a while after that.

Not enough to quell Winry's dismay when she saw that the mailbox had mysteriously morphed into a gargoyle overnight, though.