mayfield_logs | Confessions

Confessions

Who: Al and Satou
When: October 6th
Where: Satou's house
What: Boy meets girl...
Warnings: Awkward turtles everywhere

Al had been doing a lot of thinking after talking to Winry. So many people were leaving Mayfield now... Ed, Greed, General Armstrong, Colonel Mustang. What if Satou were next? Or him again?

Maybe it was a hopeless endeavour, and maybe she wouldn't feel the same way. After all, he was just a boy without a body now, what could he offer her? His hugs would be cold, he couldn't eat with her or feel her tears if she cried. But...

...he was here all the same.

Grateful that his nerves couldn't show on his face, he lifted his hand and knocked almost timidly on her door.

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"I've got it~!"

It was a silly thing to shout to a household full of drones. Satou came tearing down the stairs, seeing as she had very little else to do besides lock herself in her room and study.

So it was a pleasant and welcome surprise to see Al at the door. She did not even stop to wonder why he was there, too caught up in how happy she was to see someone who was not a drone or a book.

"Al! You're visiting me?" The witch grinned, opening the door wider. Not sure if he wanted to come inside or not, but at least offering the option. "How do you do? Can I help you?"

Even as she answered the door, he almost chickened out. He could easily have said he was here to invite her to carry on their training. Or perhaps even to invite her over for a friendly dinner now that she was alone in the house with drones.

But one thought of the droned smile of his brother hardened his resolve. He didn't want to leave it too late. Yes, it was scary, but he needed to keep moving forwards.

"Um, can I come in? I need to talk to you."

Either of those options would have been very welcome. Satou was lonely, bored, and Al was probably the only person who could 'eat' with her and not die as a result of her strange food choices.

Coming in was fine too. Satou nodded and stepped back, opening the door as wide as possible to allow him in.

"Mm, sure. Um, is my room okay? The drones are in the living room, so..." She didn't think he was going to say anything bad. Nothing that would shock the drones or be dangerous for them to hear. But they always made the dumbest comments on the smartest things. "U-unless um, if that's weird then um... s-sorry, what did you want to talk about?"

"Y-Your room?!"

The repetition came out as a squeak. This would be awkward enough, without it having to be said in Satou's room. But it would be worse in front of the drones, and so he steeled himself and nodded.

"Sure, that's fine. It's something I need to talk to you in private, anyway."

"Private?" In the context of living with a bunch of drones, Satou supposed that did make sense. Maybe he had a plan for how to get out of Mayfield and needed her help. "Mm, this way then."

Her room was fairly messy. Though she didn't have a mess made up of clothes on the floor, but a mess of carefully organized books. They all seemed to centered around one point where she had a notebook to keep her research in.

"Nihehe... s-sorry, I was working on a spell idea... um, come in, come in! The bed isn't a mess, at least." She wasn't sure if Al cared to sit at all, but figured it was worth offering. "Um, what can I help you with?"

The room was just as he expected it to be. Satou was such a diligent learner, so dedicated to her spells, that he wasn't surprised to see that was the focal point of her private living space.

"O-Oh, right..."

Al stalled, suddenly very aware that this was the point of no return. He was scared, sort of confused, but he knew he had to do this. He wouldn't turn back... he and Ed had promised one another that they would always move forwards, never back. Now he had chosen a course of action, he had to see it through.

"I really like you."

The words came out in a murmur, quickly followed by a tumble of others. They all came tripping out as though he was worried if he didn't say them right away, he wouldn't manage to at all.

"I mean I... like you, like... um, really like you. More than friends. And I don't know if you like me... too."

He paused, before very lamely adding:

"So I thought I should check. You know, if you do."

Satou had been clearing off the bed so that he could sit down. She had never had a room to play hostess in, so everything she did was marked by how she was nervous about failing. She had just been rearranging the pillows and only-God-knows-how-many stuffed animals when he spoke.

"Au?" She set the toy in her hands down. Her gaze timidly focused on Alphonse as her mind and heart tried to come to terms with what he'd said. The beady eyes of the stuffed animals seemed to stare holes into her back, judging every second she left silent while wondering what to say.

"Alphonse, um..."

She started quietly. Her instinct was to believe this was a mistake. Liking someone like her as a friend was already a miracle. For him to like her in the way she was interpreting seemed too far out to be possible. If he thought that he felt that way then she must have done something very right, but very wrong. It made her happy to hear that. And that made her worry that she had selfishly forced Al to think he felt this way.

"... Y-you may be thinking too highly of me, I um... O-oh dear, I-I'm sorry, I-I..."

Satou covered her face, which was definitely cherry red by now.

"I-I don't know what I should say um..."

The silence was excruciating.

It felt like the seconds dragged on for hours before she said anything, and Al knew that if he had a heart then it would be pounding out of his chest round about now.

The way she started, so hesitant and unsure, make his stomach curdle in an unpleasant knot. He was halfway to reassuring her that it was okay if she didn't like him too, when he actually registered what she'd said. Even now, even after everything, she was insulting herself to the point where she couldn't understand people liked her.

It made him so angry. Not at her, at the people in her life who had made her believe such untrue things about herself.

"It's okay if you don't like me too, but I do like you and it's not because I think too highly of you. I think just highly enough about you, okay?"

"I-I didn't say that!" Satou blurted. Looking at his armor's face was getting increasingly difficult, but she forced her head to stay held up even when it was embarrassing. It still took her a few seconds to gather her thoughts and figure out what to say.

"I didn't say that... th-that I don't like you that way. Alphonse has always been kinder to me than anyone else that I know... I-I um..." She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "I-I just... I just don't want to risk disappointing you. If I say what's on my mind then you might be stuck with me, even though there are plenty of more wonderful girls who would be much better for you. Who are smarter and better at martial arts and not as strange as I am..."

Al almost regretted telling her anything. To see the amount of discomfort this was obviously causing her made his insides twist, and a coldness seem to settle in the hollow cavity of his chest.

"N-No. I want you to tell me what's on your mind. Truly and honestly."

He didn't want to be worrying she had tried to spare his feelings. Whatever the outcome, however she felt about him, he wanted to hear the truth.

She'd been dancing around the topic. Satou took one more deep breath, sorted her thoughts, and took a shaky step towards him.

"M-me too. I like you too... A-a lot. I like you a lot!"

Immediately, Satou covered her face to hide how embarrassed she was.

"Truly! Honestly!"

"You do?!"

It came out as a sort of squeak of surprise. In all his imaginings of how this might go, he hadn't really pictured that she could truly like him back.

"But I'm--"

He hesitated, sitting himself down on the bed to be more at her eye level. The lights of his eyes dimmed a bit and a metallic sounding sigh came from somewhere inside his helmet.

"I can't offer you what you deserve, not in this body."

He can't hug her and feel it, he can't take her for meals to share, he can't even smile at her.

She followed him, standing across from him and looking directly into the dimmed lights. A second later she smiled more confidently and shook her head slowly.

"You can talk to me, right? And we can research together and spar together, and we can spend time together."

Satou giggled. "I like you already. What kind of body you have has nothing to do with it."

It was moments like this where Al wished that Satou could see herself through his eyes. It took an amazing amount of strength and affection to see past the armoured body and to the boy underneath, especially when discussing something more than friendship. But she had done it without batting an eyelid.

If he could be blushing, he would be tomato red right about now. Tilting his head up to look at her and reach out to tentatively take her hand in his much larger one.

"R-Right."

She met his hand halfway and gripped it as tight as she could in hers. All of this was threatening to send her nerves over a metaphorical cliff, but she tried to keep herself at least looking confident.

"I-I've never done this sort of thing before though, um..." Satou admitted shyly, trying not to let her gaze drop away from his, "I-I should be more worried about giving you what you deserve, probably..."

Edited 2012-10-12 22:27 (UTC)

"You have to stop thinking like that."

Which was, admittedly, a little hypocritical after his own worries just a second ago. But his weren't born from a place of self-hatred, more knowing the reality of what he was.

"I like you because you're you, Satou, you don't have to try and give me anything else. I'm just... glad you like me too."

"Ah... mm... Me too." She nods, reminding herself again that she doesn't have to keep thinking that way. Admittedly, it is strange to imagine that someone could actually like the person she was. A good strange. "Th-then, um... From now on, um. You should call me when you get lonely o-or um. Actually, you could have done that before, but now you can extra call...?"

Al can't help it, he chuckles at that. It was just so adorable, and so very Satou to offer.

"Mm! I'll remember... extra call! You can extra call me too."

He felt like he could walk on air, he had actually told a girl how he felt and it went well!

"Mm! And um..." She glanced at her research materials, remembering what she had been up to prior to this. It wasn't a big deal in comparison to Alphonse, but it was worth bringing up slightly, "I'm working on some research, so I might be up late for a while... Do you um, I mean, if you ever need company at night, um... I can try to stay up late so you don't get lonely!"

"Thanks, Satou."

His voice was a bit softer, she couldn't know how much that might mean to him. Nights were the hardest, when he was alone and everything was silent.

"What research are you working on?"

She gave the research materials another look.

"When we were practicing together I realized that I'm not very good at defense." Satou explained, "So I've been trying to write some spells to help defend people better, in case of an emergency. Right now I sorta just focus on the offense."

Which was effective when alone, but dangerous with so many people possibly at risk.

Ah...

He's so proud of her, that she's finally thinking of using her magic for defence instead of blowing everything up. He nods enthusiastically, bending down to look at her notes.

"How is going so far?"

"Hm! Well~"

She went about gathering a few of her books, opening the one on the top of her stack and flipping through the pages.

"Defending is really a strange concept, isn't it? With offensive spells, I'm typically destroying things that exist. With defending, I'm preventing the destruction of what is there... However, I cannot seem to protect things with creating something to protect it, like a shield of sorts."

She closed the book again, apparently having no use for it in the context of her rambling.

"Defending is plus one, attacking is minus one. I guess what I'd like to be able to do is multiple by one..." Her smile became more shy as she recognized her rant, "Sorry, witches think pretty weird things, huh?"

"You can use the same principles for attack as defence."

Oh Lord, they're such geeks. All awkward talk of relationships and feelings has fallen by the wayside now, as Al fires up with enthusiasm.

"If you can take out the threat without destroying it or injuring them too much, that's pretty good."

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