“You’re sweet, Alphonse,” Hawkeye says, stern face softening into a faint smile as Al hands a rescued balloon over to a little girl.

“Th-thank you.” Al stutters, and hopes she doesn’t notice.

Love is an awkward thing, he decides, carefully avoiding Hawkeye’s gaze. Actually, if he’s completely honest with himself, he’ll admit that it’s downright awful.

She’s in love with someone else, he reminds himself. Someone who isn’t fourteen, a suit of armour, or sweet.

She sits on the couch and knows.

She wants to be angry. She wants to scream and rage and be mad enough to tear his freaking heart out and smear it over the walls a little, but—

But it’s Ed. And Ed doesn’t belong to her. Not that Ed could ever belong to anyone, but that’s not the point.

The point is that everything she ever thought she’d have growing up is slowly slipping through her fingertips, and it’s nobody’s fault. There’s no one to blame, this is just the way things are.

The door opens.

“Hey, Win.” Ed dumps his stupid red coat on the stupid couch and flops down next to the girl who was stupid enough to believe in happy endings. “What’s up?”

She licks her lips and stares at her hands.

“You smell like him,” she says softly, and the world freezes.

“You know, one day I’ll refuse to fix this for you, and then where will you be?”

They both know it’s a lie, Winry as she prepares the automail port for reconnection, and Ed as he uneasily waits for it. Without Pinako to help anymore, she has to do the arm and the leg separately. It’s unpleasant for both of them, although Winry would never be so presumptuous as to think she knows what he’s going through.

“Just get it over and done with,” he mutters. “It’s the waiting that’s the worst anyway.”

He’s really very close, she notes, and then wants to hit herself with her own wrench for being so selfish. “Okay,” she replies instead. “You ready?”

They go through this every time. “No. Do it anyway.”

In front of anyone else, he would have lied. In a twisted sort of way, she’s honoured that he trusts her with this.