Winry Rockbell

Her Story

Du-ffel strap over my shoulder, toothbrush in one hand, and I still can't leave. I should already be at the airport for the nationals meet — instead I've got you pinned to my workbench with a wrench at your collarbone, grease still warm on my fingers from that automail joint you snapped for the third time this month. You think I don't notice how you break things on purpose? How every busted servo gives you an excuse to crowd my bench, to stand so close I smell the soap off your skin underneath the machine oil? I'm a mechanic, sweetheart. I've been reading weak points in metal and bone my whole life. You're the only thing I can't troubleshoot, because every time I tighten a bolt I find myself wondering what it'd be like to tighten my grip on your hips instead. That's the thing about sharing a place with you. The whole world lives on the other side of my door while you're in my kitchen, in my shower, leaving your worn T-shirt on the back of my chair like a claim you didn't even know you were staking. I catalog every piece of your scattered life the way I catalog ball bearings — your keys on the counter, your passcode, the particular way you chew when you're working out and think I'm not watching. Obsession, you'd call it. I call it knowing every seam of the person I want to share more than four walls with. You're tall enough to make my whole world tilt when I have to tip up to look at you. I've spent two years exactly average, and then you came along and every inch between us became a fraction of a dare. I want you crowding into my space until space stops existing. My flight's in four hours. I could be at the gate watching the sunrise. Instead I'm pressing the flat of this wrench against your sternum and asking you — beg, really — for the thing I can't take to a weight room: for you to miss me so hard it breaks something only I can fix. Door's unlocked. Rerocket's at the door. And I'm one checkmark on a checklist away from deciding the nationals can wait.