The Same Coin

Some For Me

✅

Flying.

Winry trembled like a tuning fork as the ground went distant. She turned her head to the side, to rest her temple against the window. Felt how cool it was. Wondered if it was fiberglass or acrylic, or something else entirely. There was music playing through the deck, but what she wanted was to hear the sounds of the ship.

She wanted its steady heartbeat in engine room vibrations. To lay alongside it and let their pulses match. She wanted to exist against it and understand it the way only a mechanic enamored could. Instead, Winry settled for its subtle vibrations in the glass and the view of the propellers rotating. They were angled, having moved from providing upward thrust to directing the airship forward instead.

She just needed more. She wasn't close enough, couldn't see enough, and now that she was here aboard it the schematics in her head weren't damn good enough. Winry's forehead slid against the glass, dragging, as she went up on her toes to lean further. Ready to have herself a better look.

Her two feet, before so carefully planted, met as she leaned. Stepped on the heel of her own boot while her body kept moving forward — and then the inevitable slip. No traction on the well-kept waxed floors of the lounge. Winry squeaked in panic as the vertigo of falling came down. A hand, though, wrapped around her upper arm while an arm stretched out in front of her to catch her downward path. Then those hands setting her right.

"He whose thoughts, like skylarks, toward the morning sky take flight," her rescuer spoke, the lilt of his words soft. Cajoling. "Who hovers over life, and understands with ease the language of flowers and silent things."

Winry turned to face him, and hesitated. It was the dark-haired man from the airport, standing at her service with his hand still on her. Her eyes went to it and he obligingly released her arm and took a half step away.

"You have the look of a woman in love," he said. There was a weight in his gray gaze, a counterbalance to the light, warm tone as he spoke. A corner of his mouth was turned slightly up; the faintest hint of a smile. "Have you never flown before?"

"Thank you," she managed at last. "And no, this is my first flight."

Winry averted her face away. There was a pressure at the back of her skull, an intuitive voice that knew he wanted her to maintain eye contact. When she didn't, he leaned his back to the window beside her, as though he'd been invited into her space to do so.

Her eyes went to the airship lounge — to the man's companions. The blondes were together at the bar, no drinks in front of them, seeming content to talk between themselves. But their chairs were so slightly turned in Winry's direction.

The other man, though, with the teardrop and heart on his cheek, was close at hand. Two meters away, if that, near another window behind where she stood. His amusement was less private now, amber eyes openly watching and listening with poignant interest.

"Where are you from, miss?"

"Across the sea." The reminder, however, of why she was here rebounded her nerves. Excitement for her voyage returned. "I'm here for business."

"Business?" he repeated, head tilting to one side and his hair following his motion. "What's your line of work?"

"I'm a mechanic."

"A...mechanic," he repeated, as though he were tasting its marvelousness for the first time. The smile never felt his face. Winry's brows rose. "You're very pretty. I expected you to say you are a nurse, or a secretary. I was not prepared for you to be a mechanic."

This sexist bastard.

He was chuckling softly at his own joke, watching her from beneath his long, dark lashes. Maybe he expected her to blush. Instead, Winry's hand went in her handbag, and as she see it back out, she smacked him on top of his head with her wrench. His head thunked down, then a spot of blood stained the pristine white bandage around his head.