#let's pretend this is in the same poly relationship setting as my edling fic <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[waitineedaname]

Lan Fan had known about Winry’s exuberant love of automail. She had not quite been prepared for that attention to be laser-focused on her with a delighted squeal. “Look at the plating!” Winry exclaimed, eyes practically sparkling as she admired Lan Fan’s arm. “The way they slide together so that the armor doesn’t limit your mobility! Oh, wow.” 

Lan Fan went slightly pink, unused to this kind of attention. “The engineer tried to keep my profession in mind when they designed it. It’s modeled after Xingese platemail.”

“Amazing.” Winry turned her adoring attention to the elbow joint. “Ed says you have a knife attachment too.”

Lan Fan nodded. “Be careful, I don’t want to cut you with it.” Winry withdrew her hands, and with a swift motion, Lan Fan flicked the blade out of the elbow joint. Winry practically shrieked with joy.

“I can’t believe it’s retractable! And so smoothly!” Winry carefully ran her hands around the base of the blade where it was deployed from. 

“I have to oil it regularly,” Lan Fan told her, extending her arm so Winry could examine the underside of it. 

“That makes sense. That’s a given with any automail, especially ones that experience the kind of strenuous use you’d be putting yours under. Ed never oils his enough,” she added with a sigh, though her exasperation didn’t last long. “Do you just have the one blade or can you swap it out?”

“Would that be possible? Multiple attachments?” Lan Fan asked, eyes wide. Winry clutched her arm, a determined sparkle in her eyes.

“Lan Fan. You have to let me make you new knives. Give me a week, and I’ll have all sorts of new blades for you.”

Well, Lan Fan wasn’t going to turn down an offer to make her more dangerous. “Okay,” she said, nodding. Winry clapped her hands happily, clearly resisting the urge to squeal again.

“How’s your port?” she asked, back to examining her arm. Lan Fan knew the scarring at her shoulder was unpleasant to look at, but Winry was a professional and saw scarred automail ports for a living. “Does it get sore?”

Lan Fan winced. “I did not give it enough time to heal when I first got it,” she admitted. “The nerves were definitely damaged. But physical therapy and alkahestry has helped.”

“Alkahestry, huh?” Winry tapped on her chin, contemplative for a moment. “I wonder if I can get Mei’s help with improving physical therapy… Hm…” Winry shook herself out of her thoughts with a smile. “Sorry. Got distracted there. How does it compare to your other arm? Are you used to it?”

“I’m not ambidextrous anymore,” Lan Fan said with some regret. “But the automail is much stronger than my right arm. And my dexterity is almost the same. I can throw kunai with my left arm just as well as my right.”

Winry’s eyes lit up again and she took Lan Fan's automail hand in both of her own. “You have to show me right now.”

Which is how they ended up in the Rockbells’ back yard, Lan Fan’s set of daggers in hand. “Pick a spot for me to hit,” she told Winry, pointing at the large tree she’d chosen for target practice.

Winry examined it for a moment, then pointed at a knot near where one of the branches split off. Fast as lightning, Lan Fan embedded a blade in the center of the knot, quickly followed by the rest of her kunai in a radial pattern. Winry applauded like she was watching a sporting match.

“Do you want to try?” Lan Fan offered once she’d plucked the daggers out of the bark.

“Me?” Winry pointed at herself, as if there was anyone else Lan Fan might be talking to. “I’ve never done this sort of thing before.”

“It’s never too late to try.”

She showed Winry how to hold the kunai, and how to position her body in relation to the tree. She ended up guiding Winry’s arm similarly to how Winry had been handling her automail only a few minutes prior. The first blade Winry threw ended up bouncing off the tree without embedding itself in the bark, but it at least hit the tree, which was a victory in itself. Lan Fan guided her through when to release the blade and how much force to put behind the throw, but just seconds before Winry threw it, they were interrupted.

“Hey Win, Ben wants- SHIT!” Ed yelped just barely ducking out of the kunai’s trajectory. He and Ling had taken the children raspberry picking at the neighbor’s that afternoon, and he had chosen that moment of all moments to walk around the side of the house. Ling appeared beside him, raspberry stains around his mouth and a toddler on his shoulders absolutely making his hair sticky. He looked at Ed on the ground with the other toddler in mild bemusement, then looked over at Winry and Lan Fan, realization lighting up his face.

“Ooh! Are you doing knife throwing?” He grinned, excited. “You should do that thing where you throw it at me and I catch it with my teeth!”

“Not with my kid on your shoulders, you won’t!” Ed complained, pulling himself upright to pluck Liane off Ling’s shoulders.

“I’m not doing that, my lord,” Lan Fan said flatly. Ling pouted.

“Why not? We used to do it all the time as kids!”

“I don’t want to return home and have to explain why the emperor has a new scar on his face.”

“I’ll be fine,” Ling insisted, but the moment was broken anyway, the children rushing over to their mother to distract her by showing her their baskets of freshly picked berries. Lan Fan collected the daggers Winry had thrown, taking one of them from a disgruntled Ed who had nearly become a dartboard himself.

“Your wife is cool,” she informed him as she took the knife back. Ed raised an eyebrow.

“I’m aware. Did she drool over your automail and offer to design more knives?” he asked. Her blush was apparently enough of an answer to make him laugh. “Figured. She’s been itching to do that since I first told her about your elbow sword thing. I dunno what your automail mechanic is like in Xing, but Winry isn’t gonna want to let you go once she gets her hands on your automail.”

“Well,” Lan Fan said diplomatically, “We will just have to visit more often, then.”

Ed grinned. “None of us will complain about that. C’mon, let’s eat some of those raspberries before Ling and the kids eat them all, then you can give us all a knife throwing demonstration.”

The children were even more thrilled by her knife throwing than their parents, though it was Winry’s cheers that Lan Fan heard the loudest. Yes, they’d definitely have to make it a point to come back to Resembool more often.