FicWad

Ed had never been so happy to see the casual, smoking form of Jean Havoc in his entire life.

"Yo, boss." Havoc drawled, flicking the remaining stub of his vice to the side with one practiced motion. "Mustang is looking for ya."

"I'm sure he is." Ed muttered. "Where is it?"

"I don't suppose you would want some lunch first? One of the women here makes a mean..."

"Havoc." Ed snapped, impatient and not at all willing to play along.

"Dirty laundry over food...are you sure you're alright?" Havoc ignored the venomous look Ed leveled at him and pushed off from the building he had been leaning on. "It's over here. Had one hell of a time keeping the kids away from it. They were fine with ignoring it until someone came along and found it interesting." Havoc motioned with one hand and ducked into an open door.

Ed followed, pausing just inside the door to take stock of his surroundings. It was instantly and overwhelmingly apparent that Havoc had been living in the single room building since he had called Mustang with the news almost a week ago. A table of rather dubious structural integrity bore witness to a terrifying sort of chain smoking, littered with butts of varying lengths and more than a few battered packs. There was a chair with what Ed assumed was Havoc's jacket draped over it...but that is where the furniture ended. Ed grimaced as he looked at the moist looking dirt floor and didn't even want to consider where Havoc had been sleeping.

Havoc removed his jacket with a flourish, revealing a pitiful bit of red and gold cloth. Ed hated clichés, and hated to think of himself as the deplorable romantic type...but he was hard pressed to ignore the fact his heart most definitely staggered through the next few beats, that his throat seemed constricted. His world wavered, and narrowed down until it contained nothing beyond that bit of Ling's second-favorite shirt. Ed ran a hand slowly across what had been a truly magnificently flamboyant bit of clothing, hissing as he noticed blood had added a rust colored, splotchy pattern of its own.

"Ling would be pissed." Ed whispered, envisioning the fit the man would have upon seeing silk ruined by weather and soiled in such a horrific way.

Havoc wished he hadn't just finished his last smoke. There was something intensely painful about seeing the usually irascible alchemist so dazed, so pitifully uncertain. Ed's legs seemed to give up fighting against the anxiety spawned tremors traveling through them, and he collapsed into the chair with an abrupt keening cut short as Ed bit angrily at his lower lip.

If it were Mustang, Havoc would crack some appallingly inappropriate joke, make some wildly impossible statement to help ease the tension of a private man exposed and uncomfortable about it. With Ed...well...Havoc was at a bit of a loss. His usual tactics usually resulted in violent bursts of irritability, not something he was sure would help the situation. Ed was too damn good at twisting the anger back at himself once he got going. Blunt or humor...it was almost a toss up between the two extremes.

So Havoc went for blunt. "Well, what do we do next, boss?"
Ed blinked at him. "What?"

Ok. Maybe blunt wasn't the best idea. Ed seemed a mite dazed. Not that Havoc blamed him, really; it was just that sort of situation. Havoc leaned close, risked placing a hand on Ed's shoulder and smiling down at the younger man. "Well, we need to find these bastards so we can beat the shit out of them."

"Yeah..." Ed gnawed at his lower lip for a moment, sorting through what few options they had. "Did anyone see anything, hear anything?"

"Not that they are willing to admit to. Which leads me to believe they are either involved somehow, or we are up against some real scary bastards."

"Or...they could be completely involved."

Havoc thought back on the last few days, on the silent disproval that met his every move when he ventured out of the hovel grudgingly lent to him for the duration. "Somehow I don't think that's it, unfortunately. I get the feeling they are just waiting for my cash to run out so they can either kick me out or kill me. Or both, really."

"I could try talking to them...though Al really is better with people than I am."

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Mustang mentioned Al was heading out after you."

"WHAT?!"

Havoc enjoyed the stunned look on Ed's face; saw the relief under the reflexive anger in Ed's eyes. Both Elrics. The damn hostile natives wouldn't know what hit them, and maybe they could figure out where the hell Ed's royal pain in the ass of a lover had gotten off to.