Chapter Three
Refreshed from her weekend of recuperation, Winry strolled into Mr. Garfiel's Monday morning to find him sitting at the back counter, intently reading the newspaper.
"Good morning!" She chirped brightly as she set here bag behind the counter and adjusting the coveralls she wore, the top half unzipped and the arms tied around her waist like usual, leaving her midriff bare as she only wore a tube top, wispy blonde hair held back in a bandana.
"Winry." He greeted in an unusually distracted way.
Jered came in the door next, clothes rumpled, and hair mused a bit. "Mr. Garfiel, Winry, good morning."
"Good morning Jered." Winry responded brightly, but Mr. Garfiel just grunted from behind the paper.
Jered peered curiously at the newspaper currently concealing his flamboyant bosses' features. "Something in the paper today?"
Mr. Garfiel finally set the paper down, still open on the countertop to address the two teenagers. He let out a dramatic sigh, "Looks like a second young woman has gone missing."
"Second? I didn't even know there was a first." Winry commented.
"Yes, apparently her family thought she might have just left without saying anything, but it's been about two weeks with no word. Apparently both missing women were young and attractive." Garfiel cast a concerned look at Winry; as did Jered, but Winry hadn't noticed. "You should be careful out there, just in case."
Winry flashed an unworried smile at her boss. "I usually am! Plus, I always have my wrench with me." She said, proudly slipping it out of her back pocket. "I'm pretty handy with this thing." She added with a mischievous wink, just ask Ed, she added mentally.
"Still…" Mr. Garfiel trailed off, giving her a small frown.
"I can walk you home after work." Jered offered.
"That's not necessary. I mean, you don't live around me, do you?"
"In that general direction…" Jered answered with a cheeky smile. "At least take me up on the offer when you work late. There's some bad neighborhoods near here, especially at night."
Winry tried to be offended, but Jered was just so earnest. "I guess." She sighed dramatically. "That means you're now honor-bound to come to the bar with me and Pan on Friday nights!" She winked at Jered.
He chuckled. "I think I can live with that." With that, they got to work for the day, chatting and laughing as they worked on automail side by side.
The pattern of working late and then being escorted home by Jered became a regular pattern for them that week. Winry usually got so absorbed in her work, she never noticed when the shop closed down; she was usually tinkering on something in the back.
Thursday passed quickly, and it was already getting late, long past the automail shop's hours of operation, but Winry was completely absorbed in a wiring project for a new forearm for Mrs. Johansson. When she finally put down her tweezers and wire cutters, she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and her stomach grumbled. Winry pulled off her gloves and wandered over to the cabinet that tended to hold snacks for such occasions. She opened the cabinet to reveal some stale crackers and a very brown banana. Winry frowned as she threw the banana away and ventured a bite of the stale crackers.
"Pft! Yuck!" She proclaimed, scraping the cracker mash from her tongue into the trash.
"I can't believe you tried those…" Came a wry voice behind her.
Winry turned, hands on hips. "I'm starving. It was worth a shot." She snapped at Jered as he grinned at her.
"Maybe if you actually went home when we closed, you would eat a real dinner for once."
"I still have leftovers in my fridge!" She argued.
"How old?" He countered.
"Only three days. It's still good." She pouted. "You want some?" She asked, flashing him a toothy grin, already knowing he'd insist on walking her home, especially after the second disappearance in the newspaper earlier that week.
"Are you referring to the meatloaf or the spaghetti?"
"Well… the meatloaf is almost gone, but there's still plenty of spaghetti."
Jered let out an exaggerated sigh. "I guess…"
Winry punched him in the arm, and he rubbed it, grinning at her. "You don't have to eat my cooking you know."
Jered waved her off. "You ready to go?" He asked while he shouldered his bag.
Winry looked around her work bench, a nagging feeling that she was forgetting something important, but she couldn't figure out what, as she packed her own bag. She liked to take home bits and pieces to fiddle with at home before finally collapsing into bed.
Jered waited outside while Winry locked the doors, and they began the trek back to her apartment. They took the long circuitous route that Jered tended to favor in the later hours of the day. Winry had asked why he preferred this longer way and he simply stated that the more direct path led through unsavory neighborhoods, whatever that meant. They chatted easily on the long walk home, walking up the stairs and finally entering the first apartment on the left on the second floor. Winry dumped her bag on the table in the living room, Jered following suite with his own before they headed to the kitchen for a late-night dinner of leftovers.
Jered slid his empty plate away from him and slumped happily in his chair. "The best I ever eat is here." He said contentedly as he stretched his arms over his head.
Winry smiled at him as she stood and gathered the dishes, taking them to the sink to rinse and wash them, setting them in the drying rack before returning to the table with some coffee that had finished brewing while they ate their dinner. As Winry sat with her coffee and Jered took a deep drink she asked, "So, are you still up for a drink with me and Pan tomorrow?"
Jered smiled at her over his mug. "Wouldn't miss it. I think that's the most entertaining part of my week."
"Are you actually going to join us in drinking this time?" She asked, raising a brow.
"Someone has to be responsible. With how much you and Paninya drink, one of us should be able to find the way home." He chuckled as she swatted at him across the table. "Besides, drinks are expensive and I'm trying to save up my money."
Winry just shrugged and finished her coffee. Jered also drained his mug, then stood up to stretch. He walked into the living room and grabbed his bag from the coffee table and slung it over his shoulder. "See you at work tomorrow morning?"
Winry nodded, giving him a hug that he returned. "Yup! And then drinks!" Winry chirped as Jered just shook his head with a small smile.
He left and Winry locked the door behind him, turning to grab her bag from the living room and making her way into the extra bedroom across the hall from her own and next to the bathroom. The spare room served as Winry's home workshop. There was a heavy work bench/desk along the back wall with a chair and spare lamp and the bed was pushed against the side wall, leaving more room for her crates of automail bits and pieces. Whenever Edward and Alphonse visited, Edward would sleep in the bed in the spare room, grumbling about her automail-freak piles of junk all over the floor which he would inevitably stub his fleshy toes on, cursing loudly.
Winry upended her bag on the work bench, gears, wires, bolts, and nuts spilled out across the surface. She shifted through the pieces until she found the particular gears she needed and returned to work on the foot for the barman's young son. Winry had spent over 20 minutes working on wiring the individual nerves, ready to hook them to the electronic mainframe when she reached for her wire strippers, to find them missing.
"Damn it." She cursed. The feeling that she had been forgetting something earlier had been correct. She'd left her wire strippers at her workstation back at Mr. Garfiel's shop. Winry drummed her fingers on the desktop, considering. She couldn't make any more progress on the foot without them, but it was quite late and rather dark out now. Mr. Garfiel's isn't that far away. There's been two kidnappings though… But I do always carry my wrench… She looked at the clock, it wasn't late enough for her to go to bed, and she didn't have any other projects in the apartment currently and she was still itching to work on something. She groaned, rubbing her head beneath the bandana. She stood, stretched, and grabbed her favorite wrench, tucking it into the back of her coveralls and retied the sleeves around her waist. She grabbed her keys and left her apartment, locking the door behind her before she could reconsider her decision.
She jogged down the stairs and out onto the street, keeping up her pace as she once again made a snap decision and decided to take the shortcut Jered was always so worried about. She'd taken this shortcut plenty of times, granted it had never been this late at night. After a few blocks she slowed; up ahead was the flickering of firelight which confused Winry until she got closer and saw the fire was contained in great trash barrels, dark figures in layers of shabby clothes huddled around them. Winry's pace slowed as she debated the merit of this shortcut.
Winry steeled her nerves, raised her head, and set her jaw stubbornly as she walked confidently forward in a manner that stated she was on business and not to be messed with. At least, she hoped that was the vibe she was giving. As she passed a few homeless stragglers on the outskirts of the firelight, their heads turned to follow her and a few cat calls and whistles began to follow her, garnering far more attention than she wanted. She surreptitiously slid the wrench from her back pocket and held it firmly at her side as her pace quickened.
As she began to move into the firelight, the attention began to escalate. Homeless, raggedy men began to gather closer, some bold enough to reach out to her. She jumped to avoid their grasp, swinging her wrench before her is a clear warning. The straggly men backed out of easy reach of her wrench but watched her with hungry eyes as she passed through the thick of them. She could feel their ravenous eyes latched onto her breasts beneath her tube top and regretted not pulling on the sleeves and zipping up the rest of her coveralls. Something pinched her butt and she spun, striking at the fingerless-gloved hand that pulled back with a hiss as her wrench connected. She quickened her pace, determined not to run yet. Prey ran.
She could feel the adrenaline begin to rush through her veins, blurring the muttering and cat calls into incoherent buzzing as her beating heart pounded in her ears. She was shaky, but ready to stand her ground.
"Winry!"
Something snatched at her wrist, and she swung, her wrench connecting with the offending man's side with a dull thwack and she caught a flash of something familiar. Her momentum to keep going slowed as the familiarity nagged at her for a moment, and the man she had just beaten gasped something.
"Winry!"
She paused long enough to glance at the man again and was so stunned she nearly dropped her wrench in surprise. This homeless man, with his creased and dirty clothes, his rumpled hair and piercing green eyes… it was Jered. Before she could process more than recognizing him, another hand was pawing at her rear. She swung the wrench ruthlessly at the grabby man, but he leapt back out of reach again.
Jered took a deep breath and straightened from his crouched position, pulling Winry behind him protectively between him and the wall. "Enough!" He growled out in a low, dangerous voice. The men that had kept out of wrench swinging distance eyed Jered carefully as they weighed their options.
Most found the easy sport too challenging now and ambled back to their fires or bed rolls. A few continued to stare Jered down, silently challenging him. Winry watched as Jered's hands curled into fists and he took a menacing, heavy step forward. Two of the remaining men left while the final stared at him a moment longer before he spit in the street and turned on his heel.
Jered's eyes continued to scan the alley full of men and he reached behind him until he snagged his worn-out bag that he carried everywhere and once again had hold of Winry's thin wrist. He began walking, taking impossibly long strides that Winry struggled to keep up with unless she trotted behind him at a slow jog. The silent young man continued to pull her down the end of the alley and back onto the main streets, eyes always scanning but never looking at her. The blonde mechanic wanted to ask him questions, wanted to tell him to slow down, ask him where he was going, but she was afraid to be the one to break the silence.
The curb across the street and some blocks down tripped up Winry and she would have fallen, but Jered's grip on her wrist pulled her up and to him as he stopped abruptly. Catching her seemed to break the silent tension as Jered stopped their frantic rush forward and stopped to examine her under a street lantern. He studied her face, the way her lower lip was swollen from biting it, the dried salt on her cheeks that were evidence of a few tears, the unnerving paleness of her face and the slight tremble of her body. Winry watched in the flickering fire light as his gaze turned from harsh and angry scrutiny to soft, gentle worry.
A calloused thumb brushed gently across her cheeks, catching another tear as it fell. Winry hadn't realized she'd been crying, and she reached up to brush away the tears when the adrenaline finally left her body and the terror of what had almost happened finally washed over her and she began to sob, her whole body shaking and legs not wanting to support her weight. Jered wrapped her in his arms and pulled her against his broad chest, rubbing her back soothingly as he tried to whisper reassuring things in her ear as she let herself come undone. As her legs gave out, he easily gathered her closer and swept her into his lap as he sat on the curb, back against the streetlight, letting her cry as he comforted her.
It didn't take long for Winry to regain her senses and wipe away her tears in embarrassment as she struggled out of his embrace and off his lap, trying to maintain as much dignity as possible as she settled beside him on the curb, but she did lean against him.
She cleared her throat, still thick from crying and tested her voice. "So… you're homeless?"
Jered had his hands in his lap and was fiddling, not meeting her gaze. "… yeah."
"How long?"
"… a while."
There were long pauses before each of his answers. She could tell he wasn't comfortable talking about it, so she changed the subject. She stood and made of show of dusting herself off before she turned to Jered, discreetly watching from his spot on the curb.
"Come on." She said cheerfully.
He gave her a bewildered look. "Where are we going?"
"Home." She said simply as he found his feet. He stilled and watched her warily. "You're not about to sleep on the street when I have a perfectly good guest room going to waste."
"But that's your home workshop." Jered argued. He had seen it on several occasions when he had walked her home after work.
"So? I'll just move that stuff to the living room. Lots of space out there that I also don't use." She said with a cheery smile.
"But-"
"Jered." She cut him off. "There's no point in arguing, you're not going to win. Grab your bag and let's go home."
Jered let a tentative smile reach his lips. "Let's go home." He agreed.
Sarahplainntall here! Hope you enjoyed this latest chapter! I always appreciate reviews, so a big thank you to those who reviewed the last chapter. Elvenstar146-hope it continues to entertain you; purpleviolets- thanks! Hope you continue to enjoy!