Mood: Tired
Online.
((This was stolen from alchemistx on livejournal. Its a good storyline. So, the credit for the writing is to alchemistx, lord of lingxed fluff..))
Fury and Farman looked up as he made a beeline for Havoc’s desk, his current workplace while the officer was in the hospital, but once Ed collapsed into the hard, wooden chair, they returned their attention to their work. Hawkeye was busy picking papers out of a file cabinet, Heymans Breda, however, grinned, got up from his desk, and began to make his way over to Ed.
Edward inwardly groaned. Breda only smiled like that and came over to him when the officer had a new joke to tell, and Ed wasn’t a very big fan of the man’s jokes. The alchemist picked up a stray piece of paper and held it under his nose, suddenly very interested in what it had to say.
“Hey, Ed,” Heymans greeted. Ed glanced up at the officer, a mistake he realized too late, and quickly went back to reading the document. “I got a new joke, you want to hear it?”
“No,” Ed sighed, amazed at how he didn’t sound as agitated as he felt. A suggestion Al had made flashed in his mind for a millisecond, the one about trying to control his anger once in a while, and he actually considered it… But it only lasted a millisecond before Breda to continue with his joke.
“Okay, there’s a girl and her neighbor. Her neighbor has a pet dog he loves to death, but he has to leave town for a while. So he leaves the dog in her care, and when she walks into the house her first day of dog sitting… The dog’s dead! She doesn’t know how the dog died, just that it’s dead. And she decides to take it to the vet to find out what happened. But she would need to take a train to the nearest vet clinic, and she doesn’t want to carry a dead dog on the train. So this chick puts it in a suitcase! She’s lugging this suitcase on the train and this guy asks, ‘Hey, miss, do you need help carrying that?’ She answers ‘Yes,’ and at her stop the guy carries the suitcase off for her. Then the guy says, ‘Man, this thing is heavy! What do you have in here?’ And she lies, says it’s some electrical equipment. The next thing she knows the guys running away, with her suitcase!” Breda burst into a fit of laughter as he reached the punch line, and Ed felt his stomach sink, suddenly remembering why he hadn’t liked Breda’s jokes to begin with.
“That wasn’t a very funny joke,” someone pointed out from behind him. The weight of a hand was placed on his shoulder and Ed turned around to thank the person for telling Breda what a horrible joke teller he was. He stopped when he saw who the stranger was.
Ling looked down at him and smiled. “Hi!”
Ed eyed him up and down, The Prince was wearing a set of what Ed could only guess was casual Xingian clothes, and he was holding a… Juice box. “What are you doing here? I thought Mustang set you up with a whole bunch of meetings—and where did you get that?” He pointed at the unopened juice box.
Ling wiggled his eyebrows at the blond. “Those meetings were boring, so I left. I thought you might have been in the break room being lazy as usual, so I checked there first, and once I saw you weren’t in there I came here. But not before I took a drink, I was quite thirsty after all of those meetings.”
Ed growled at him, “You can’t just take a drink from the break room, that’s for people who work here! You couldn’t just drink from a water fountain?”
“Water doesn’t have the tangy fruity taste,” the Prince pointed out.
Ed’s eye twitched. “Give me that,” he snapped, snatching up the juice box and slamming it on the table.
Ling yelped, and stared down at his now empty hands. “My juice box!”
Breda snickered, having shrugged off Ling’s previous comment about his joke-telling skills. “Edward’s right, Your Highness, those drinks are for hard working officers like me.” He picked up the juice box, unattached the straw and stabbed it into the thin little hole before taking a couple of desperate gulps.
Ling watched all this in apparent horror. “My juice box,” he sniffed.
Ed sighed and crossed his arms. “You’ll get over it,” he assured. Hawkeye tsked at the whole scene and continued to work. Fury and Farman snickered and continued to watch.
Roy eventually stuck out his head (all the noise they had made gave him an excellent excuse to stop working for the moment, and also to yell at Ed). But that second reason never happened, as his gaze fell on Ling. He plastered a placid smile onto his face. “Your Highness, I thought I scheduled a meeting for you and General Hakuro this morning, is it already over?” he asked.
Ling smiled back, “No, I merely dodged out of that meeting. After a couple of hours, I saw it to be unimportant, and the General to be rather conceited. I’m sure he has yet to notice I’m gone and is still talking to himself about alliances and whatnot.” Ling laughed a little and Roy’s smile grew at what the foreigner thought of the General.
“Yes, he does come off like that,” the Colonel agreed, causing Riza to look up from the file cabinet and give him a meaningful stare. He quickly added, "But I must insist you return to that meeting. Should I escort you?” And gruff sigh came from the side of the room Riza was on.
Ling only smiled, “No, I believe young Edward would be happy to do that. Wouldn’t you, Edward?”
Ed’s eyes snapped up from the new piece of paper he was holding, “What? No! Ling, look at all this work I have! You walked here by yourself. I think you can do it again in reverse.”
“Honestly, Fullmetal, you were groaning in my office not too long ago about how you wanted to get out of work, and here’s your—Breda, are you all right?” Roy’s lecture was cut short as his eyes snapped over to Breda, whose hands were on his throat as if he couldn’t breathe, and whose face was turning blue.
The soldier didn’t answer as he fell to the floor, a crumpled mess. The other occupants of the room were by his side in an instant. Roy went to his knees by his comrade’s side. “Breda! Breda, what’s wrong?” Roy questioned, though Breda could only manage to get out small choking signs.
“Sir?” Fury squeaked.
Roy’s eyes snapped up to him and Farman, standing a precautionary distance away. “You two, go get a doctor!” he ordered, before returning his gaze to Breda, who had begun to shake.
The door slammed closed as the two ran out, and Edward felt awkward simply standing behind his desk with Ling, while Roy and Riza were trying to figure out what was wrong with Breda. He looked at Ling, to see how the Prince was taking all of this, and saw the usually grinning face set hard in a very blank look. Eyebrows narrowed, and lips turned down in a frown, Ling appeared to be in a deep thought.
“Ling?” Edward asked as he found his voice.
The look didn’t leave the Prince’s face, but he replied to Ed’s concern, “I’ve seen this before, in my country… he’s been poisoned.” Ling stated.
The room gaped at him, as he looked around for something… anything…
And then his eyes feel on the juice box he had in hand not to long ago. His stomach twisted at that thought, but he pointed an accusing finger at the liquid none the less, “That drink is poisoned.”
----
It was dark before Ed left the hospital they had managed to get Breda into. From there, the rest of the day had been exhausting. Roy Mustang had been furious with the fact that someone had poisoned an officer in his command, and the fact that he now had two soldiers out of commission.
Luckily, Ling had told the hospital what drug that it had supposedly been, and, even luckier, they had had the antidote in stock. Another fortunate thing was that Breda hadn’t drunk the entire juice box. A few big swigs, but that was all. If he had ended up drinking the entire thing, he would have died before they could have even gotten him to the hospital doors, or so Ling had said.
Ed had been surprised by Ling’s knowledge of what was going on, and the immense help the Prince had been in the situation. Though it also unnerved him quite a bit.
Ling had mentioned that he had seen many fall to that particular poison, and knowing Ling, he had probably had some used on him once or twice, and then today…
Ling had almost died today.
If he hadn’t come into the office, he probably would have drunk it and died all alone, or if Ed hadn’t swiped it from him…
((Random Manga Pages, now. WARNING FOR SPOILERS.))
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