Chapter Text
Ed is stewing. It’s a bad idea for a variety of reasons—among them, that he doesn’t even really like stew; and that it won’t solve anything; and that at the mathematical rate he’s been going, he won’t have another vacation until he’s fifty, so he shouldn’t let anything ruin this one.
He tries for a couple minutes to pay attention to something else. He’s made it through the vast majority of this ungodly three-hour train ride from Marseille—where Al’s impressing the fancy French pants off of all of his university hosts—to Paris without much incident other than the occasional lapse into stewiness, but he can feel that the jet-lag and the sleep deprivation and the Al deprivation are all starting to get the better of him.
He manages to convince his idiot-asshole brain to be content with looking out the window for another five minutes, but then it starts to wander to other windows, and to the time they took Andy’s truck to Tahoe just for a day—which was as much time as Ed felt comfortable sparing from time in lab right about then—and when they got back from mucking around aimlessly in the snow, the windows were all fogged. Andy had pulled his glove off and reached up and used his fingertip to draw a little heart in the condensation, and Ed’s had dropped right through him and hit the ground, and after that he’d been more or less completely fucked.
Stupid. Anybody could draw anything they wanted—on a window, on a canvas, on another person’s skin. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t even have to be true.
The scenery moves by so swiftly in this ridiculously fast train that amusing himself by approximating their velocity based on the estimated size of a building on the horizon helps for a second, but when that gets boring, he tries to make himself focus on the people in this train car with him. Unfortunately, they’re the same people they’ve been since nine this morning, because there aren’t any stops.
The two kids on the opposite end of the car have, to their credit, been remarkably quiet this entire time. About ten minutes into the trip, they’d started whining, but then their mom had whipped out a monumental backpack crammed full of coloring books and little puzzles and so many snacks that Ed had half-considered going over and introducing himself, the better to beg for a little bag of fruit gummies in exchange for hanging out with her kids for a while. He likes kids. They usually like him back, because he doesn’t try to feed them any bullshit.
They’re less interesting when they’re quiet, though, and he doesn’t want to look like a weirdo who stares at other people’s children, so he checks on the soldier instead.
Ed had—embarrassingly, he will be the first to admit—done a double-take when one of the hottest fucking guys he’d ever laid eyes on strolled onto the train, dressed head-to-toe in orangey-brown fatigues and looking like the most attractive death warmed over that Ed could have dreamed of.
Worse yet, the gorgeous son of a bitch had had the audacity to select a set of seats two rows down from Ed’s, and then to collapse onto one of the ones that faced in Ed’s direction—at which point he almost immediately went to sleep with his head resting on the pile he’d made from his matching camouflage duffel bag and backpack. He looked marginally less dead once he was snoozing. He didn’t snore. He was damn fine.
Ed had been struck with a deep thrum of searing-hot guilt for a long second when he’d first started watching out of the corner of his eye. Then he’d remembered that he didn’t have a boyfriend anymore, so he could surreptitiously ogle any fucking guy he wanted, and he didn’t have to feel bad about it at all.
The guy isn’t snoozing anymore now, though: he draws Ed’s gaze back to him by stretching both arms over his head until his spine cracks—audibly, even over the intense ambient noise of the train. Then he stands up in the aisle and stretches again; then he knuckles at his eyes with one hand while he keeps the other braced on the back of one of the train seats; and then he stumbles off down the aisle towards the far end of the car, presumably in search of the bathroom or something. Ed wouldn’t wish train bathrooms on anyone. Especially not someone with such a nice ass.
He tries looking out the window again, but this part of the countryside looks identical to the part he stared out at before, and he just…
Needs to get a grip. He’s on a great trip—for the first time ever, when you really think about it—and even despite this whole Andy debacle, as far as a net of positives over negatives, he’s still having a great time. That’s the part he needs to pay attention to. Nobody likes a whiner. He’s already a workaholic and a weirdo and a nerd and an introvert and just generally sort of a freak; he can’t afford to add another big no-no to the list. Honestly, it’s a miracle he ever had a boyfriend in the first place, and pretty shocking that it took this long for Andy to realize his mistake.
He knows Al would probably hit him around the head for thinking that, but he can’t help it if it feels true. He’s never been any good with people the way that Al is; all he’s good at is science—experiments and data and papers. Hypothesizing, probing, extracting results. That shit’s easy. People are impossible.
Except if you’re Al, obviously, since Al’s good at both. At least that extends to him, he supposes; that’s another blessing that he needs to sit his ass down and count. That one counts for five blessings, really. So maybe he should just spend the last half-hour or so of this train ride thinking exclusively about Al.
Tactical error: thinking about Al makes him glum again about the fact that Al was supposed to be here right now, and even though it probably won’t be long before he catches up, Ed’s facing at least three days without him after an entire semester of Al-less-ness. The whole point of coming here was to get to see him, and here he is, bereft of his brother for another stretch.
He busted his ass for this, too—to pay for the ticket; to cram this trip in between two big phases of his project so that he wouldn’t feel like a shitheel leaving lab for two weeks. Two weeks is practically forever in research-time. And for once, for once, it all timed out beautifully—he scrounged up just enough from the side-jobs and night work gigs and extra teaching and hoarding pennies every which way he could manage to pay for his flight and the train tickets and have enough left over for the hotel that they were going to pick out when they got in today. He’s pretty sure he even scraped up enough to take Al to a really nice dinner or two. He was looking forward to that.
Well, the upshot is that if he stays someplace way cheaper than he ever would if he had Al with him, he’ll have more money for buying Al ice cream when Al does get here, and that’s the important thing.
Fuck.
Ice cream.
That was his and stupid Andy’s first stupid date—the first stupid date of Ed’s stupid life. He got twelve toppings at Coldstone just to see if they’d let him, and then tried to backpedal when he realized that Andy was getting ready to pay; and then when he said “But I’m the moron who thinks gummi bears and coconut flakes and cinnamon and sprinkles together aren’t going to make me want to throw up, so I should pay for it literally as well as figuratively,” Andy started laughing so helplessly that he had to lean on the counter, and the girl who was working actually snorted aloud, and…
And Ed already misses him like hell, and it’s not—logical. It doesn’t matter if it’s fair; he’s learned his lesson about fair; but it doesn’t make sense.
What did he do wrong?
What changed?
It doesn’t make sense for relationships to have half-lives, and they just sort of disintegrate into nothing while you have your back turned. People aren’t radioactive (mostly). They don’t just—it couldn’t just—
It couldn’t have been entropy alone. He and Al have never drifted apart; he and Winry always pick up exactly where they left off and start shooting spitballs at each other across the room again or whatever, and…
But it can’t be that simple.
Because if it is—if things just fail, sometimes, without any sort of an explanation—then Ed is done with it. What the hell is the point?
To his credit—sort of—Andy tried to provide an explanation in the email that he sent the other day, which he had helpfully titled I think we should break up. right in the subject line. Less to his credit, when Al had immediately gone to stalk him on Facebook in a fiery retributive rage, there were already pictures of him getting kind of cozy with some other dude at a party. Al had only relented on promises to murder him in a variety of grisly and creative ways when they confirmed that the time stamp on the email preceded the time on the clock in the backgrounds of the party pictures. Ed still isn’t sure that Andy is going to get to keep his balls once Al gets back to the States, but they’ll all just have to cross that bridge when they come to it. Ed will be hiding the sharp objects just in case.
Damn. That does it. Ed’s will trembles one more time—one last Herculean effort to withhold the waves of tragic sentimentality—before he unlocks his phone and goes back to read the stupid fucking email again.
Unsurprisingly, its contents haven’t changed overmuch. Parts of it are damning, and parts are bewildering, and parts are just… sad. Parts of it just burrow deep into the middle of his ribcage and throb until he aches all over.
He doesn’t have very many friends. Al’s here, obviously, and they cram in as many late-night text chats as they can, but it’s not quite the same. Winry’s at MIT, and she’s the belle of the damn ball like she always is everywhere—she makes as much time for him as she can, but she’s got her own life now, and it’s a good one, and the last thing he wants to do is to distract her from it.
He doesn’t ask for much, and he doesn’t need a lot. But he’s starting to think—starting to wonder, after reading this shitty email so many times that he sees the ghosts and afterimages of other letters in between the lines—that maybe that’s part of the problem.
I know you love me, or at least you did for a long time, because that’s how you do things – that’s how you live. You don’t do anything halfway. I still really like that about you. But it’s hard too. Because you’ve never been as passionate about me or us or any person I’ve ever seen except maybe Al as you are about your research. And that’s really cool in a way. You’re a great scientist and you’re just going to get greater. But I don't think I’m going to wake up one morning and find out that you’re a greater boyfriend.
I always sort of felt like an afterthought, I guess. It weirds me out that we never fought about anything. People always say that if you don’t fight, it means you don’t care. I know you care, in your way. You always did and you always do. But I don’t know if your way is the right way. Not the right way for it to work anyway.
I want to share stuff with you but I always feel like you’ll just say “I have to work.” You’re always working. And I get that that’s important to you and you have things you feel like you have to prove but when can I just be me, and you can just be you? There’s never time. You don’t make time. And I couldn’t wait anymore to see if you were going to change your mind and try to find some. I know if I said “Let’s go out and go dancing and be stupid,” you'd say “I have to be in lab tomorrow,” and I know that if I said “Let's just stay at home and watch movies all weekend,” you'd say the same thing.
I think maybe you need people sometimes. I think you need Al. But you don’t need me. And I need that. I need someone to be thinking about me all the time. I guess that’s vain or something but it’s made it really hard. I know in my head that I matter to you, but in my heart it hasn’t felt like it for a long, long time.
I probably should have said something a long time ago. And I didn’t ever want to hurt you or anything. I still don’t. You meant a lot to me, and you still do, really, but it’s just not working, and it won’t work. It can’t work. And you being gone for a little while now has made me realize that there’s just so much more out there that I was ignoring because you were right here, and I kept trying to force it to happen. But it’s not going to. And there’s so much more, Ed. There’s so much stuff I still haven’t seen or tried or done or anything. And I want to. I want to go out and make bad choices and not be afraid that I’d come back and you’d just look at me because you know better than I do. You always know better. You’re too old for how old you are, and I feel tired, sometimes, just being in the same room with the weight of everything you want to accomplish and everything you already are.
It’s just time. And I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. But I think it’ll be good for you, too, in a way, you know? I think you need space and air and a chance to explore things. I think this has ended up a habit more than anything else, and it’s time that we broke it and moved on.
So I’m really sorry. I’m really sorry, and I wish you all the best. I really do. Take care of yourself and travel safe out there. I guess this is goodbye.
Fucker couldn’t even say it to his face. That’s the part that… well, it all hurts a lot, but that part’s a special little knife with a fine edge and a sharply-angled point. It’s not like Ed ever mistook this thing for the romance of the century or whatever, but he thought…
He thought it was worth more than that. He thought he was worth more than that.
Movement snags his attention, but it’s the lesser-known Marvel spinoff character the Super-Hot Soldier again, and he doesn’t want to stare, so he makes sure to look down at his phone again.
Except that the soldier doesn’t stop walking at the train seat where he left his stuff.
He comes right up to the bench opposite Ed, leaving only the plastic table in between them, and then holds out a packaged cookie, one of those little madeleine things that Al’s obsessed with, and a Lindt chocolate bar.
“Quelque chose de sucré pour un jour qui n’est pas si doux?” he asks.
Ed stares up at him.
He’s even better up close.
Ed is fairly sure that this guy is trying to buy him some sweets for the sheer hell of it, which must mean he’s stewing way more obviously than he thought, and also that this is the single most intense encounter of the gorgeous kind that he’s ever experienced.
There is, of course, one obvious and significant problem.
“Desolé,” he forces out. “Je ne parle pas français.”
Because of course Sorry was the first thing Al taught him how to say, immediately followed by the ever-applicable I don’t speak French. Al promised him that everybody in Paris will know enough English at least to point him in the right direction, but they’re not in Paris yet, and this guy got on in Marseille just like he did, and what if—
“Ah,” desert-more-like-dessert-fatigues says. “Canadian?”
Ed continues staring, which isn’t exactly the best response, but he keeps reaching for superior choices and coming up empty-handed. “American,” he says, hoping that won’t fuck his chances of… whatever there’s a chance of. Do the French still hate them all on principle? Probably Europe in general hates them more than ever for leading the charge into a worldwide political clusterfuck with such staggering panache. “Um—from California.” Right. Al told him to say that. He should’ve started with it.
“D’accord,” Tall, Dark, and Definitely Not Diabetic says, which Ed has heard a lot in passing lately, but which did not feature on his list of critically useful phrases. “That is… interesting. I had thought because you began with an apologize—” Aw, fuck, that’s cute. Goddamn it all to hell. “—and you are so quiet…”
“Jeez,” Ed says, instead of That’s the first time anyone’s ever told me that I’m quiet in my life, so thanks or something. “Um—sorry.” He attempts to gesture in a way that indicates the seats across from him rather than just making him look like someone who waves his hands around a lot. “Do you want to sit down?”
“Thank you,” the soldier says. He settles directly opposite Ed and then lays the items he brought out on the table like he’s trying to resell them. Or like he’s about to cover them with cups and start a shell game. Or like he initially grabbed them all at random and doesn’t really remember what he bought. Ed supposes that all of those things may very well be true. “Although I am afraid our train food is… very… bad,” he says, “you looked so—ah, how to say… unhappy that I am hoping perhaps they may at least be… not making anything worse.”
Ed has to fight a very compelling urge to pinch himself. Is he asleep? Maybe this is a dream. He’s read that sometimes you retain foreign languages even if you don’t understand them, so it’s perfectly possible his unconscious brain is regurgitating bits and pieces of real French.
“Are you offering to try to cheer me up with food?” he asks.
The soldier grins at him, and that…
That ain’t fair.
“Jesus,” Ed says helplessly. Apparently he needs to install a replacement for the filter between his mouth and his brain, because this one’s busted enough to let out: “Where have you been all my life?”
Instead of getting up and walking away in a huff, though, the soldier laughs, sets his elbow on the table, sets his chin on his hand, raises his eyebrows, and smirks.
“I have been here,” he says. “Rather than in America. Which I think was a mistake.”
At least Ed’s heart waited until now to start pounding. He really is flirting with an excruciatingly hot stranger on a train in a foreign country three days after an email breakup. Life is fucking weird.
He looks down at the food on the tabletop so that he won’t just gaze into said excruciatingly hot stranger’s fascinating dark eyes and start to drool. “Are you gonna have one of these? I mean—you looked like you were having a pretty rough day.”
“This day is better than every one of the days before it,” the soldier says, and the softness to his voice makes Ed’s eyes dart up again in spite of all the better judgment. As it happens, he looks up just in time to see the soldier’s face brighten exaggeratedly. “And now this day has you, also; and there is chocolate. How could one possibly complain?”
Ed swallows and forces a smile back. He’s bad at flirting. He knows he’s bad at flirting. If you start bailing the leaky canoe before it’s even taken on much water, is there a remote chance that you might not sink to the bottom of the lake? “Do you live in Paris?”
The soldier nods, and then he grimaces. “But I… have not seen my flat in… a while.” He gestures down to the uniform, and for the first time Ed is able to look at something other than his perfect fucking face or his perfect fucking shoulders for long enough to notice the little embroidered patch on his chest that reads MUSTANG. “It will be… a… how do you say—adventure?”
Ed’s chest has gone all sympathetic-tight, which is a pain for all kinds of reasons. “That’s a good way to look at it, I guess.”
Mustang nods pensively for a second before he warms up again. “How long do you visit?”
“I have another week,” Ed says. “My brother was supposed to come up with me—he’s studying at Aix-Marseille right now—but somebody in his research group had a family emergency, and he’s the nicest person ever, so he volunteered to stay and do the thing that they were supposed to do.” The sympathetic-tightness has morphed into the more familiar kind that he fights with all the time—the loneliness, and the wistfulness, and then the immediate swell of guilt. “But I’d already paid for this ticket, so he’s just gonna come up and meet me in a couple days. I figure I’ll stay at a hostel or something. He’s already seen a lot of the touristy stuff because he’s been traveling a little while he’s here, so maybe I’ll try to knock some of that out while I wait, so that he and I can do stuff that’s more fun for him.”
Mustang smiles at him, sort of ruefully, and then reaches down to push the cookies and the chocolate bar towards Ed’s side of the table. “That is… an unfortunate event. To be alone when you thought you would not. But you will love Paris. She will welcome you. Un petit peu de chocolat?”
Ed makes a point of considering the items, and then a bigger point of eyeballing Mustang. “What kind of Frenchman gives good food away for free? Is there something wrong with them?”
He can’t even quantify the relief when Mustang sits back, looking comically aghast, and presses his open palm to his chest.
“Comme il est impoli,” he says. “I believe you now, that you are American.”
Ed has to bite his lip. “Well—maybe you’d better eat one first, so I know they’re not poisoned. Not by you, or anything. By the people who run the train.”
“He insults my honor,” Mustang says, shaking his head mournfully; “he insults the honor of my train—”
“You said yourself the food was bad,” Ed says. “I’m just agreeing with you.”
“It is not as bad as missing one’s brother, I think,” Mustang says. He reaches across, snatches up the madeleine, and tussles with the plastic packaging. “These one should instead eat with a cup of tea in any case, so I will test for poison, if it pleases you.”
Ed knows just enough French to realize that that’s probably a sort of backwards transliteration of S’il vous plaît, but it still sends a shiver rocketing right up his spine.
“So noble,” he manages to say. “I guess you can have some of your honor back.”
“You are very generous,” Mustang says, finally getting a handhold on the plastic to peel a corner off and free his tiny yellow sorta-like-a-cake-thing. “I do not know how your brother can stand to be apart from you.”
“Me neither,” Ed says, but his throat sort of sticks as he tries to choke down all the other words diving swiftly from the back of his head to the pit of his stomach—
You only ever make time for Al, and science. It’s not a normal kind of selfish but that’s still what it is, when you get right down to it. I’ve never been important enough to you for you to try to understand what I want, to try to find time to put into things I like. Dinner together sometimes isn’t enough. It’s not a relationship. It’s just people who eat together. I could have that with anybody. If that’s all you’re looking for, you’ll find somebody else.
Mustang’s fingers still against the plastic, and a glance up confirms the worst—he’s watching Ed’s expression closely, and must have seen a substantial portion of what just went through Ed’s head.
“There is something else,” Mustang says, very softly, and Ed’s heart beats far too fast and far too hard. How does he know? Who the fuck is this guy, and what right does he have going around on trains and reading people’s minds? “I do not… it is not my right to… how do you say—is it—break in?”
“Pry,” Ed gets out.
“Ah,” Mustang says. “I—do not wish to pry.” He lays one really, really well-proportioned hand down on top of both the cookie and the chocolate bar and pushes them, gently, even closer to Ed’s edge of the table. “Please.”
“All right, all right,” Ed says, and he draws the cookie over towards himself. Do they call them ‘biscuits’ here, too? He thinks he saw that on a sign in a pastry shop in Marseille someplace, but he can’t remember. It’s chocolate chip, which is the superlative flavor; and he thinks something sort of soft and chewy sounds like better consolation if he has to make a choice. “It’s—I mean, it’s not, like… I guess it’s sort of a secret because Al’s the only person who knows right now, but it isn’t on purpose.”
He picks up the cookie, but he’s not sure he can feel it. It’s like his hands belong to someone else, or they’ve detached themselves from his nervous system altogether in the hopes of escaping the rest of the train wreck that his life amounts to lately.
At least it is a soft cookie. He had a moment where he was worried it was going to be one of those thinner, crispy-style ones. They’re just never as good.
His robot fingertips find the edge of the package and pull to split it between two of the little triangular tabs. “My—the… person I was… dating… kinda… dumped me. In an email. And then, like, pretty much immediately went out with some other guy.”
He sneaks a glance at Mustang.
And then startles backwards a little, because they’re still functionally strangers, and they don’t even know each other’s names, but by the combination of deep concern and unrestrained disgust in Mustang’s expression, Ed thinks that if Andy were here right now, this guy would probably put a fist right through the bridge of his nose.
“That is not right,” Mustang says, very low and very levelly. “That is not… decent.”
“I don’t think he meant it to be shitty,” Ed says. He now has an open cookie packet and a sliver of plastic exactly the right size for slipping away from you and ending up as litter, and not a whole lot else. “I guess—I mean, it sounded like maybe he’d been… feeling… neglected or something. For a really long time. But I just—he could’ve—said something. He at least could’ve given me a chance to… I don’t know. Try to fix it. At least explain myself. It’s not… waiting until I was out of the country and just unloading his side of the story all at once without even letting me have a say in it is…”
Oh. Well, so much for ambiguity and unspecific references to the gender of the individual involved. Hopefully the fact that this Mustang guy has low-key been coming onto Ed this whole time means it’s not an issue. It’s difficult to be sure, though, given that it might not be the kind of coming-on with any real intent behind it. Ed’s under the impression that the French are just sort of like that.
“It does not matter whether or not he meant for it to be shitty,” Mustang says, and the touch of iron in his voice makes Ed glance up again. “In the end, it was. And you do not have to forgive him.”
Ed can feel his heartbeat distinctly in his throat for a long couple of seconds. It’s sort of uncanny. He doesn’t like it.
The unsettlement is part of what makes him blurt out the stupidest possible thing to say at a moment like this:
“Do you want to help me get revenge?”
Mustang blinks twice, looking bewildered. And also looking like a million bucks. Or a million Euros. Whatever’s worth more given the exchange rate today.
And then Mustang grins—part giddy, part wolfish, part delighted, and devastating all the way through.
“Absolument,” he says. “Most certainly. Yes.”
Ed can’t believe he just said that.
He can’t believe he even thought that.
He sure as hell can’t believe it worked.
“Great,” he says. “Um—do you have a couple hours this afternoon or tonight or something? I was thinking—I mean, maybe we can just take a bunch of stupid selfies in front of major landmarks or something, and I’ll, um—I’ll say you’re my… new boyfriend.”
Holy fucking shit, that just emerged from his mouth as recognizable words, and now they are free, and they’ll never be erasable.
Instead of recoiling in horror and then standing up and making a beeline for the exit door, Mustang sits back against the train seat, folds his arms across his chest, and smirks.
“Perfect,” he says.
Ed’s heart skitters in the best way.
“Okay,” he says, which is a half-step above the Holy shit, wow, uh, really? that almost came out instead. “Um—do you—have any plans today? I’m pretty much wide open except for finding a place to stay at some point.”
Mustang gestures with extremely elegant vagueness towards his matchy-camo bags a few rows back. “I need to stop by my flat, but it is… the location is very convenient. We could take the Métro—” The way he rolls that R makes it feel like he’s licking Ed’s vertebrae, and which is simultaneously colossally uncomfortable and utterly fucking great. “—and it would only be a few moments. Then we would be able to walk to many of the sights, if you wished.”
“Awesome,” Ed says. “This is—hell. I guess maybe I was overdue for some good luck or something.”
“I think perhaps for both of us,” Mustang says. He pauses, and then he extends his right hand across the table. Ed puts down the stupid cookie packaging he’s been fussing with uselessly this whole time in order to shake. Roy’s grip is firm and warm, and he doesn’t overdo it with trying to squeeze the life out of Ed’s hand or anything, but Ed can feel the strength in his fingers. “Roy Mustang.”
Ed tries to swallow hard enough to still the frenetic banging of his heart. “Ed Elric. Nice to meet you. Officially, anyway.”
Mustang—Roy Mustang—smiles at him again, which does not at all alleviate the heart-banging problem. Suffice to say that Ed wouldn’t mind having some other banging problems where this guy is concerned. “Enchanté, as we say.”
Ed bites the inside of his lip, but it’s too late to stop a little bit of hot blood from rushing to his cheeks. “You guys say a lot of weird stuff.”
“French is the most beautiful language on Earth,” Roy says, smile tilting until it splits into a grin. “One must only learn first how to maneuver one’s tongue around it.”
Ed has always heard that the European Union is a lot safer than the States, but one major failing in their precautions has become glaringly evident: they need to put warning labels on hot French men. Big, huge, neon fucking orange signs. Flirt at Your Own Risk or something.
But they don’t.
And as a result of this tragic negligence, Ed is going to die.
“I’m a pragmatist,” Ed gets out, by way of some small-scale miracle. “French has got way, way too many letters that you don’t pronounce. It’s linguistically inefficient.”
Roy’s grin has taken on a distinct note of a wince now. “Perhaps I should revise the plan to tour some of the art museums.”
“Is it historical art?” Ed asks. “That stuff’s interesting. But if it’s just sorta splatter-of-paint stuff, I’ll probably be an asshole about it.”
“At least you are honest,” Roy says. “Well—many have a bit of both. We shall see.”
They both turn to glance out the window as the train slows, and the city thickens around them. Ed’s heart is still beating double-time—here he is, swanning into an unfamiliar place in the company of an unfamiliar person. But it’s better to have the company, isn’t it? It’s better to have a guide through an urban wilderness where he can’t speak the language, and he hasn’t even plotted a destination on the map.
They’ll see about that, too, he supposes. And they’ll find out very soon.