To be honest I wrote this ages ago.
But I was really only writing it in order to get to a certain scene.
And then I hit writer's block.
And so it sat around for over a month gathering dust and refusing to budge.
Whatever. Consider this Chapter 1 of what may at some point in the next decade become, say, a 2-parter.

---

It had been a mistake to let Edward buy the tickets.

Actually, she should have guessed based on how... eager he had been. But then he was enthusiastic about loads of other things for reasons she never really understood, so she'd figured that this was more of the same, that maybe in addition to dreaming of farming chickens and participating in a lice-hop race Edward had a lifelong dream of buying ship tickets. At least she couldn't definitively put it past him.

Full of surprises, that boy. But this particular surprise has been...

“You only bought us one cabin!?” She exclaimed, in horror.

“What? It's a double-size cabin.”

“Yes, but there's only one of it.”

“Well, it was cheaper than buying two singles,” he said, innocently.

“Don't even- don't give me that sickening puppy look, money is not our biggest concern right now, and I know full well you did this on purpose. I am exchanging this ticket right now.”

“No, don't-” he began, but followed her anyway as she stalked up to the dock to talk to the ship's captain.

“I'm sorry,” the captain said, “but we don't do exchanges or refunds.”

“But-” Mel began.

“Ship policy.”

“Could we at least buy another-”

“Nope. Ship policy.” The captain crossed his arms firmly and stared off into the distance, refusing to speak any further.

She whirled away, furious, in time to see Edward try- and fail- to stifle a grin.

---

And so when they left for the Arishta Isles they left in a single double-size cabin, and Mel was no longer speaking with Edward, at least for the next five minutes, maybe.

“Meeeel,” he whined.

Mel ignored him.

“Oh cool, these hammocks rock. Ooh, look, I can rock it back and forth like this- hey, this is kinda fun, I bet I can make it go even higher if I just-”

THUMP.

He picked himself up and glared at the hammock.

“Bad hammock,” he said, and turned appealingly towards Mel. “Mel, the hammock is being mean to me.”

Mel ignored him.

“C'mon, Mel. You know you want to talk to me. You know, deep down inside, you just want to smack me upside the head and get over it.”

Mel ignored him.

“Otherwise I'll have to tell you a story about the Veldtian Merchant and the Talking Dog. That story takes hours. I'll just talk and talk and talk.”

Mel winced. And ignored him.

“Fine. Alright. The Veldtian Merchant. Be that way.”

He sat precariously cross-legged inside his hammock. Mel rolled over so she couldn't see him anymore.

“The Veldtian Merchant was a woman, with eight husbands. They were all named Quentin, by the way. She had a thing for Quentins. In the beginning she had three Quentins, one with blond hair, one with red hair, one with black hair, so she called them black, white, and red Quentin, variously. But then she got two more Quentins, and one of them brought a whole set of hair dyes. So there went that.”

Mel felt her lips twitch upwards. She quickly willed them back down again.

“Anyway, after the Veldtian got the eighth Quentin in an incident involving a shipwreck and a herd of angry sheep- and, now that I mention it, a ruby teaspoon and a bottle of fairy ale- she decided that she could focus her attention to building a huge shipping empire across the world. The only problem was that she had lost her ship in the aforementioned eighth Quentin incident. And it so happened that the shipbuilders in Veldt had gone on something that they have in Veldt, called a “strike”, which is when the workers refuse to work unless they get paid anymore. In Thais we don't have those, we just have general grumbling which tends to break out into fistfights and which my father says relieves the tension just as nicely, but In Veldt they're much more polite and even eat their bread with little forks. And they have all sorts of strikes... Baker strikes, Janitor strikes, I heard the politicians once went on strike and people tried to pay them to stay that way.”

He paused.

“Seriously? You're not even going to laugh at that? Hellooo, Mel, I just made fun of nobles. Sort of. Mel? Did you go to sleep? Should I start talking to my toes now?”

Mel ignored him.

“Oh well. I guess I won't tell you, then,” Edward said, sounding rather offended.

Mel ignored him.

There was silence.

There was more silence.

There was silence with compound interest.

Mel fidgeted, irritably.

“Alright, fine!” She said, rolling to her other side so she could see him. “What were you going to say?”

He grinned at her. “You're talking to me.”

“No. I'm not. I want to go to sleep and not see your dumb face.”

She rolled back to face the wall.

“Mel?” He whispered.

“What?”

“I'm sorry.”

There was a pause.

She sighed. “Yeah, fine, I... Whatever.”

“And I love you. A lot.”

She threw one of her pillows at him, and curled up into the remainder, bright red.

eeeeeee! sooo cute =D I just love the ending! Eddie is just like a little kid in this!

Mel tends to bring out Ed's little kid. *sigh* He gets all enthusiastic and excited around her.

“Mel, the hammock is being mean to me.”

I just had to laugh at that.

Excellent. I wasn't sure if the hammocks were for one person at first, and thought they were next to each other. That would be fun

Gaaaaah, good job!! Now I can't get those two off my mind! Hehehe

Awwww....Ed is sooo sweet! <3 This is great Blurble =D

Ah, Ed is just so cute. They make such a good couple ^^

If they were sharing a two-person hammock... yeah.

ugh wish i could write the next bit it's less immature and yet more sweet. *sigh*

wow the story was so cute especially the ending...
Go MELxED!!

Awww... cute stuff Though I doubt Edward would be so quick with his "I love you" just yet. Those two are all about showing and never about saying. Never heard them say it ONCE in three games *le sigh* And Edward is 20 by now. Can't call him a boy unless you're as old as Gray

Y'know, I'm not sure if it's the brand new FF8 fangirl in me, but I can totally see Mel as Squall and Edward as Rinoa (in terms of emotions, not physical capabilities obviously). Maybe I'm just overthinking things XD

I think it will take Mel a while before she can think of Ed as "that man" rather than "that boy". I'm sure one of my next fics can have him having a cool moment and her thinking OMGHE'SSOMANLY (lol) but in general he's more like a total goofball around her.

As for them never saying I love you... I dunno, somehow I always see Ed as being kinda demonstrative. I guess because in my game he proposed to her like ALLLLL the time (=D). And also because he just... feels like the more open type.

And while those two had super-huge communication problems in TLO, in my interpretation this mostly came from Mel. More importantly, the ending of TLO did not really contradict my interpretation of Ed as the more open honest one.

Mel: I'm /not/ a mage1
Ed: Stop lying to yourself just cause you're scared
Mel: ...Dammit I hate when you're right all the bloody time
Ed: =DDDD (BECAUSE WE'RE TOTALLY IN LOVE =DDD)
Ed: So. I decided I actually want to be a king now. And you need to be trained in magic. Thus we are going together to the opposite side of the globe because obviously we're sticking together. (BECAUSE WE'RE TOTALLY IN LOVE =DDD)
Mel: ...
Ed: Now let's go hang out somewhere (BECAUSE WE'RE TOTALLY IN LOVE =DDD)

okay, pretty clearly some of my personal preferences play into that interpretation, but... yeah.


Alright, in canon they don't ever say those exact, precise three words but somehow rather than seeing that as something significant that once they said it you can be sure it made it's way into the script, I just see it as the kind of thing they mention off-screen... Plus I guess whatever all my fics follow each other in my head so once I had Ed being all confession-y in At an Impasse it just proceeded from there (maybe things will change when I finish little joys and move on to it's pseudo-sequel set in game, when they will be much more prickly at each other, but a. that's going to take a while and b. seriously, even then there's fluff. more obliquely references fluff, sure, but I've had the image of them staying up talking together and Mel falling asleep and Ed totally pulling The Move on for something like two years.

“Oh cool, these hammocks rock. Ooh, look, I can rock it back and forth like this- hey, this is kinda fun, I bet I can make it go even higher if I just-”

THUMP.

He picked himself up and glared at the hammock.

“Bad hammock,” he said, and turned appealingly towards Mel. “Mel, the hammock is being mean to me.”

Mel ignored him.

“C'mon, Mel. You know you want to talk to me. You know, deep down inside, you just want to smack me upside the head and get over it.”

Mel ignored him.

“Otherwise I'll have to tell you a story about the Veldtian Merchant and the Talking Dog. That story takes hours. I'll just talk and talk and talk.”

Mel winced. And ignored him.


Had to laugh at that...

I ship Stella x Edward and crackship Belf x Edward, but this is well-written and funny.