Eden was aptly named at birth: she is fresh and warm and sunny and secretive, and Winry wants nothing more than to unlock her gates and explore uncharted territory like a snake on a garden path. She knows her body better than anyone, the tight throb of her muscles when she clenches in pain, the tilt of her pink lips like cherry blossoms, her slender fingers made for playing keys but which instead scrape circles on stone and grow callouses.

Winry clutches a lily tight in her hand (white, like the flowers that marked Ms. Elric's grave so many years ago), dissecting it bit by bit with her thumb and little finger. The anatomy of flowers astounds her, arouses her, fascinates her: two sexes, one body, a miracle of biology. Stamen, pistil, ovary, stigma. It comes apart in her hand, moisture crawling down her wrist, seeds peppering her bed.

Eden smells like lilies, in her unbiased opinion. Like lilies and sunshine after a hot spring rain, and the horrid tang (like iron, like blood) of alchemy. When she puts Eden on the operating table, or on a chair, when she puts metal to metal and lets her scalpel kiss Eden's flesh, the intermingling of overpowering scents makes her nervous and lightheaded: if she could have Eden swear she would never clap pretty hands again, never stain the air with tainted oxygen, she would be content.

The petals lose their form, less like silk now and resembling the fibrous tissue of human muscle.

Winry raises her head, hearing the cutting cry of pained screams, and tells the dog to stay put. She leaves the ruined lily on the bed where it might die or dry out in relative comfort. Perhaps she will press it into a book later.

Eden is sweating ice, lips dripping blood, cries half-muffled in her throat. She squeezes the fabric of the blanket that is draped over her, though only in one hand. The arm crafted from metal alloys resides on a table, broken and fragmented, two rooms away. All that is left of Eden's right arm is a port stuffed with wires and bits; surgery will be needed, but not tonight, not now.

Winry fetches a glass of water, rouses her, holds it to her lips; droplets of blood fade like smoke in the solution. Eden is quiet, unassuming, tears utterly absent from her eyes. Even the sweat seems to have cooled, as if Eden can halt her body's biological responses simply by willing it (and only if she is conscious to do so).

It is a kind of quiet fertilization, a soft spring morning in the darkness of summer night. Winry's fingers, somehow even more roughened by hardened blisters, whisper through the flaxen sheen of Eden's hair. For such a difficult life, existing as a woman in the shackles of the state, Eden is remarkably soft. Her skin, her hair, her lips, even the tingle of dark eyelashes against Winry's palm are like fine, hand-crafted parts on a doll.

Eden blinks, her breath short and broken. She turns her head, brushes the faintest of kisses against Winry's wrist, a tear curving down the girl's arm not long later. Winry feels it drip down and disperse, her skin energized by the air itself as if hundreds of tiny feathers caress her. She leans down gently (so gently, because Eden is most certainly not easily destructible and Winry wants her to feel as if she is blown from thin glass) and kisses her lips.

It's hardly a kiss, really, but silk-to-silk and lily-white scents and closed eyes make it worth it. Winry thinks of all they could have together—a night of kissing and tugging and slipping in heat—and the image that appears in her mind is that of flower petals opening upon a head of dusty seeds.

"Why did you do that?" Eden asks, her voice shaky and tired but not containing any traces of the disgust Winry had been listening for. Instead it contains the telltale hitch and hunger of a scientist's curiosity, the ticking of cogs accustomed to finding solution through experiment and conquest.

But Winry has no hypothesis to offer. "I don't know." She goes down again, submerging herself in Eden's close heat, brushing a kiss against her pliant lips, fingertips sowing paths in golden hair. The night is strong but she feels as if the sun could be beaming directly over her head, so flush is her skin and so hot the blood in her cheeks.

Eden responds, tentatively, as if uncertain of what permissions she has on these brave new grounds. Her eyes close and her heart races and all at once she raises her hips, just so, just slightly, and Winry has no choice but to lay beside her, twine her close half-over and half-under and kissing and pressing and shifting nearer, nearer, nearer.

Winry opens her eyes to find that they've been immediately stolen by Eden's hot, golden haze. The girl's lips are parted (like a blossoming rose) and her hair has come undone and she's searching for Winry with her only hand, reaching and grasping and sweeping over the waist that has been bared in the shuffle.

Winry kisses her pulse and Eden whimpers and arches her back and tilts her head to expose more hot, hot skin. Winry doesn't question why or how they're doing this, doesn't bother with the details; they're just two girls, two friends, comfortable enough in each other to touch and linger.

Yes.

Eden kisses her ear and she feels heat pool somewhere deep inside, rendered immobile by the intimacy. There's a tongue against her lips and she parts them, breathy moan muffled and snuffed out. Lip between her teeth. Tongue way deep. She slips her hands beneath the black fabric of Eden's shirt, not stopping until she can shift them and finger the clasp of her bra.

Eden makes a high, needy noise, hips shifting up in a gentle roll. Winry groans into her mouth, unhooking the bra and answering Eden's restless movements with a few of her own. For a moment that's all they can do: kiss and grind, only occasionally tugging at the other's clothes, lost entirely to the void of this simple process neither should enjoy (according to what they both know of science and reproduction).

This is sin for the sake of it.

Winry has Eden's shirt pulled above her head and discarded, and immediately goes for her neck, kissing and biting and sucking. Eden squirms at the gentle caress of her hair against her chest, desperate sounds escaping her one after the other. Winry looks at her just once, just briefly, to see her pretty eyes glowing, and then closes her mouth over one of her breasts, tongue flicking at the nub.

Eden shoves her hand over her mouth and very nearly screams, her body shaking hard. She mumbles incoherent nonsense into her palm, eyes squeezed tightly shut, before biting her lip and tangling her hand in Winry's mussed hair instead. Winry kisses a trail down the center of her chest, light and airy, before her fingers just barely tap the fastenings of her pants.

"W-what are you doing…?"

Eden sounds more intrigued than frightened, though the hesitance makes Winry pause.

"I won't if you don't want me to," she says carefully, meaning it despite the desperate tremble in her fingers. She's nearly gone numb with desire, unable to control even the most basic of movements.

But Eden shakes her head. "No, I—I want you to, I just…" She looks uncertain. "Not if you don't want to…I mean, I know I'm not…exactly the most…"

Winry doesn't let her finish her sentence, snaps open the button and drags down the zipper. She inches the girl's pants off her hips, panties following until they're both bunched around her knees. Winry moves between her legs, breathless at the scent of arousal, and then calmly asks her to watch. Watch me worship you, let me help you bloom. I'm your gardener, Eden.

It's slow. Steady. She's just exploring the path, no danger here, nothing but taste and texture and scent and the sound of Eden's soft breathing. She lays her hands on Eden's thighs, not shying away from the cool metal that brushes her arm, squeezing reassuringly. Her tongue slips down and up, spelling out the alphabet, a stylus against wet canvas.

Eden crosses her arm over her chest, eyes clenched tight. She grits her teeth, body shaking hard. "Ahhnn…I've never—I mean…" She pants softly for a few minutes, slipping away into the warm embrace of pleasure. "Why would you ever do this…for someone like me…?"

Winry looks up, peering between Eden's shaking legs, and sees that there are tears in her honeyed, half-open eyes. She's never thought about it before, but it must be true that Eden hates herself, that she thinks she doesn't deserve love or affection. She cursed herself and Allison to torn limbs and and an empty shell. She believes she is a monster.

"Do you think that you're ugly, Ed?"

Eden just trembles and looks away. "How can I not?"

Winry nods her head, determined to finish this now if for no other reason than to prove Eden wrong. She presses a soft kiss to the silky inside of the blond's thigh, runs her fingers down her leg and along the ruts of her automail, not perturbed in the slightest. "I think you're beautiful." She wraps her mouth around her own finger, getting it wet, staring at Eden head-on. "Every part of you." She slips it carefully, gently, inside her.

Eden hardly makes a sound as Winry starts to move it in slow, slick thrusts. Winry does this a little while longer before adding another, just two, just enough to press against her walls. Then she dips her head again, tongue dancing along her most private areas, wet around her clitoris.

Like metal and honey.

Eden is dripping wet, moaning and biting her lip to muffle the sound. She shakes as she tries not to let her hips shift, not wanting to hurt her, not wanting anything but to melt. It's an incredible moment, where her heart seems to beat to an unknowable rhythm as it pounds against her ribs, where her body clenches in an almost-death that she wishes she could linger in forever.

"Winry…"

Winry looks into her eyes, lips and tongue still between her legs, and knows she's close. The girl is tightening, throbbing around her fingers. Eden receives the message (loves me, loves me not) and lets go, her body arching like the stem of a spring flower, her mouth open in a silent moan as she breathes in cold, crisp air. Her heart beat goes to her ears and she goes deaf to everything but its pulse, warm pleasure tingling down her body to the tips of even her automail toes.

As she comes, Winry thrusts with her fingers, not stopping until she collapses from exhaustion and excitement. Golden eyes powerful and hungry on her own. Eden sits up, hair sticky with sweat, panting raggedly. She pulls Winry in for a hot, sweet kiss, moaning as she tangles her hand in her hair—

It begins to rain. Tap, tap, tap on the roof.

Winry lays on her bed. Watches the lightning as it streaks the dark spring sky, feels the thunder in her thighs. She leans over the bed, reaches beneath it to grab a leather-bound journal her father once owned but never wrote in. Between its crisp, white, unblemished pages, she presses the remains of a dead lily.