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Ed woke up with his head on his desk, paper stuck to his cheek with dry sweat, for perhaps the fifth time that week. Ever since being kidnapped by Diggory, Ed had found it almost impossible to sleep at night, tormented by insomnia only to suffer nightmares when he finally fell asleep. So, he was utterly exhausted. And despite the mould situation down in the basement, the dim lighting of the archive just made him drowsy, and Ed kept nodding off when he should’ve been working.
So, nothing unusual so far. Until he noticed something cold encasing both his wrists, which didn’t dangle by his sides as he expected them to. Instead, his arms had been awkwardly positioned behind his back, his upper arms digging into the back of his chair, and familiar rings of metal encircled his wrists. For some reason, Ed’s hands were cuffed behind his back.
In the past, Ed would have thought about this logically, assuming that someone must have cuffed him as a weird attempt at a joke. But since being tied up by a serial killer, anything too tight around his wrists just set Ed off (as he discovered when he tried to wear a shirt that was a little too tight and the cuffs pressed against his wrists in a way that made him freak out), panic building until he couldn’t think rationally anymore. His breaths came as shallow, frantic gasps, jerking his arms in a futile attempt to get the cuffs off his wrists. And, overwhelmed with terror, Ed didn’t feel like he was in the archive. It was like he was back in a serial killer’s lair, tied up and vulnerable.
Beneath his shirt, the still healing wound throbbed as though Diggory just cut him. Bloody hell, he needed to get his hands free. He needed to escape before Diggory could come back and cut open his vest and dig a knife into his skin. He remembered the strips of human skin hanging up around him, recalled the feeling of human leather rubbing against his cheek, smelled the foul tanning chemicals. In Ed’s terrified mind, Diggory didn’t die. He was still alive, and back to finish what he started. And Joe probably wouldn’t find him again in time. Ed was going to die. In agony and alone.
His heart hammered in his chest, barely able to draw breath. Desperate to escape, Ed leaned forward in his chair and lifted his bound hands, relieved to find he wasn’t handcuffed to the chair. So, when he staggered to his feet, he didn’t bring the chair with him. He was still restrained, but he could move. Ed’s head swam from breathing so fast, but he couldn’t help it, and he certainly couldn’t stop. He couldn’t explain to himself that he wasn’t in that room and Diggory was dead, and even though he’d been handcuffed for whatever reason, he was safe. It was like the rational side of his brain had totally shut down, leaving Ed running on desperate survival instinct and adrenaline.
All Ed knew was that he couldn’t get these handcuffs off alone, and that meant he needed to find someone. And that started with getting out of the archive and to a location where he might find people. Like the incident room. Although he feared that someone from Joe’s team might have done this to him. But hopefully he could find Joe. Or Miles—because Ed’s addled mind drifted to the moment when Miles untied him, gentler with Ed than he had ever seen. But it didn’t matter who, really. As long as they got the cuffs off for him. So, he hurried out of the archive and down the corridor, dizzy from breathing too fast and off-balance from having his hands awkwardly bound behind his back.
As he stumbled up the stairs, movements uncoordinated and his vision blurring with tears, Ed missed a step and lurched forward. But without his hands, there was no way to regain his balance or break the inevitable fall. Sure enough, he crashed to the ground, his stomach and chest taking the full impact of the fall, air knocked from his lungs. And a fraction of a second later, his face slammed into the ground, something crunching in his nose as pain exploded through his head. Ed let out a strangled, agonised yelp, the tears spilling over.
When he managed to sit up, he found a small, smeared puddle of blood where his face had been pressed against the floor. But that didn’t really register with Ed. All that mattered to him in that moment was getting these fucking handcuffs off.
Somehow, he got back to his feet, bracing his shoulder against the wall to keep his balance, moaning in pain as his nose throbbed in time to his racing heart.
He didn’t know what the time was, or if anyone was even still at work. But there was no way to get these handcuffs off alone. So, Ed continued onwards, desperately hoping that someone would free him.
---
Miles honestly thought that he and Chandler were the only ones left at the station at such a late hour. But this turned out to not be the case, which they discovered midway through Miles trying to force Chandler to go home and not sleep here tonight again, when approaching heavy footsteps made them both freeze. Especially Miles, who still hadn’t forgotten the mysterious footsteps that haunted him a while ago when he went to the basement.
“What the hell…?” Miles mumbled to himself, standing up and approaching the door.
At almost the same moment, Buchan hurtled up the stairs and into the incident room, his voice desperate and shaky as he rambled, “Please get them off! Please…”
Tears streamed down his flushed, clammy cheeks, and blood painted a series of messy trails down his lips and onto his chin. He trembled from head to toe, body tense like a rabbit in the bloody headlights. And his stance was bizarre, his arms pulled behind his back in an unnatural way. It took Miles’ confused brain far too long to recognise the stance as a man with his hands cuffed behind him. But who the hell had cuffed Buchan? And why?
“Ed?” Chandler said, racing towards him.
But Buchan stumbled backwards, losing his balance. He lurched to the side, banging his thigh into the edge of Kent’s desk. A yelp escaped him, the sound morphing into a loud sob. Buchan’s eyes screwed shut as he panted for breath, fully hyperventilating in front of them. Buchan’s behaviour reminds Miles a little of himself after being stabbed by the Ripper, when seemingly random things gave him horrific panic attacks. But he never looked like this. So… broken.
“Don’t crowd him,” Miles said. “It’ll make him worse.”
Chandler looked at him as if to say, ‘how do you know?’. But Miles had talked Chandler through enough of his probably-OCD breakdowns to know how to calm down a man in acute distress. And he wasn’t a stranger to comforting Buchan at his weakest—after all, Miles was the one tasked with untying Buchan when they rescued him from Diggory’s clutches, still startled by how Buchan fully crumpled against him, clinging to Miles and thanking him between gut-wrenching sobs. Of the two of them, Miles was clearly the most qualified to deal with this. Although that didn’t mean it came naturally to him. He could comfort his boys. But grown men? Far more difficult.
“Okay, Buchan, I’m gonna get those cuffs off for you,” Miles said, rushing over to his desk and locating the key for his own set of cuffs (grateful that everyone was issued cuffs with identical locks). He approached Buchan slowly, holding out both hands, the key clenched between clammy fingers. “Just lemme come behind you, and they’ll be off before you can say Ripperologist,” he said, attempting to add some levity to the situation. It fell flat. He glanced at Chandler and mouthed, “Talk to him.”
Chandler nodded. “Just look at me, Ed, and let Miles uncuff you.”
“Joe…?” Buchan gasped, thankfully not running away when Miles walked behind him and reached for his bound wrists. Even with the shit lighting, from this angle Miles noticed how red the skin on Buchan’s wrists had become; Miles suspected that he tried to escape his bonds and chafed his wrists raw.
“Yes, it’s me,” Chandler said. “Just breathe, Ed. We’re here to help.”
“Joe, I don’t…” Another sob, confused and vulnerable. “What’s… happening to me?”
“You’re having a panic attack. Just focus on your breathing, okay?”
To be honest, Miles wondered if this might be more than a panic attack. When forced to try therapy after the stabbing, the shrink said some stuff about flashbacks to Miles. Thankfully, Miles never had one, but to his understanding, they involve the brain confusing the past with the present. Like a person remembering the feeling of someone’s hands touching them, or the smell of booze, or stuff like that.
Buchan flinched when Miles touched his wrists, but he didn’t run away. To Miles’ frustration, his fingers trembled a little, but he managed to fit the key into the first lock and turn it. The cuffs clicked, the metal around Buchan’s left wrist springing open. A couple of seconds later, the other cuff clicked open, freeing Buchan completely.
The moment he escaped the handcuffs, Buchan held his hands in front of his chest, rubbing his wrists. Instantly, some of the tension left his body, but that didn’t stop him crying and struggling to breathe and generally looking like a hair’s breadth away from a complete nervous breakdown. He also scurried away from Miles again, adjusting his position in the room so he didn’t have his back to anyone. And now Miles thought about it, he realised Buchan had either kept everyone in his vision or backed himself into a corner whenever he visited the incident room since his kidnapping. It was clear that Buchan did not feel comfortable with people potentially creeping up on him at the best of times. And this was certainly not one of those times.
His legs wobbled, but Miles knew better than to grab Buchan without asking. Luckily, Buchan seemed to realise he might fall, and he managed to grab Mansell’s desk and perch on the corner of it. Arms wrapped around his abdomen as though trying to hug himself, ragged breaths continuing to catch in his throat.
“Right, keep up with that slow breathing, ‘kay?” Miles said, not even realising until after the words came out of his mouth that he’d reverted to the softer tone he used back in that fucking paper mill—his best attempt at comforting a hysterical adult man.
Buchan looked at him, his agonised expression softening ever so slightly. He stared into Miles’ eyes just like he did when they rescued him, nodding before doing his best to drag in a deep, slow breath. And then Buchan looked down at his wrists and then back to Miles, and before he realised what was happening, Buchan staggered over and flung his arms around Miles.
“Whoa!” Miles gasped out, embarrassed by the stupid little noise of surprise but unable to take it back.
Buchan rested his chin on Miles’ shoulder, hunching himself a little to make it work with their height difference, head leaning against Miles’ as he continued to both cry and try to slow his breathing down. Remembering how Buchan clung to him in the paper mill the moment Miles untied his wrists, it was obvious why he chose to hug Miles in this moment. And whilst Miles wasn’t used to being hugged by blokes, just like back then, he pushed the awkwardness down and tolerated the hug.
After several minutes of coaching Buchan through the breathing exercises everyone learned in therapy (even if using therapy techniques brought back memories of poor Morgan and her horrific death, but he couldn’t help that right now), with Miles awkwardly patting Buchan’s back and trying not to notice the glances Chandler threw at him, Buchan finally pulled away from Miles, his breathing more under control.
“I… I’m sorry…” Buchan said to Miles, unable to look at him and his flushed face glowing even redder. “I… I just…”
“Sorry for what? I’m pretty sure nothing just happened,” Miles said with a little smile.
When Buchan realised what Miles was doing, he let out a weak laugh. And he smiled, a silent ‘thank you’ for not embarrassing him further. As Chandler handed him a few tissues to wipe his eyes (and mop up some of the blood all over his face), Buchan mumbled his thanks, trying to wipe the blood off his lips and chin but mostly smearing it all over his face. Ever the clean freak, Chandler grimaced at the sight, but didn’t mention it.
“Ed, do you know who cuffed you?” Chandler asked. Miles also wanted to know, but he personally would have left the question until later. But it’d been said now, so he kept his mouth shut.
Buchan looked at Chandler with watery eyes, sniffling as he tried and failed to catch his breath, squeezing the bloody tissues in a trembling hand. “Um…” His voice wobbled, a little higher pitched than usual. “N-No, I don’t. I’m sorry. I just… I woke up like that.”
Chandler and Miles shared a glance. They knew how much Buchan had fallen asleep at his desk lately. It implied he wasn’t sleeping well. But he wouldn’t listen to anyone who suggested he take some time off work, so he kept coming in sleep deprived. Although Miles wasn’t one to talk, given how he came back to work as soon as his stab wound was mostly healed, even though he was also dealing with some mental shit.
“That’s okay,” Chandler said, his tone suggesting, ‘there is no need to apologise’.
And as he thought about someone ambushing a sleeping Buchan to restrain his wrists in a manor eerily like what he went through only days earlier, Miles grit his teeth until his jaw ached.
---
Once Buchan had mostly calmed down, they decided to take him downstairs to get checked over by Dr Llewellyn, who thankfully worked just as terribly long hours as Chandler. Buchan couldn’t look at anyone, uncharacteristically quiet as Llewellyn sat him on a chair and inspected his chafed wrists and swollen, bruising nose—which had finally stopped bleeding. And she was the first person in the room to point out that the reading glasses worn on a string around Buchan’s neck were broken, having presumably been crushed when he fell flat on his face.
Buchan sighed weakly when he looked at them. But he mumbled, “I… I’ve got spares.” Understandably, his broken specs seemed to be the least of his worries right now.
When she gently squeezed Buchan’s nose, testing to see if his bones were broken, Buchan winced, and Miles supressed the urge to grimace in solidarity. It has been a while since Miles got a bloody nose, but the experience was fucking painful. And unlike Miles, he suspected that a bookworm like Buchan wasn’t so accustomed to pain.
“Luckily, your nose isn’t broken,” Llewellyn said, speaking to Buchan in a tone that Miles had never heard before. Miles wondered if it was how she spoke to her children at home when they got upset.
As Llewellyn gave Buchan a run-down on how to best tend to his wounds, Chandler put a hand on Miles’ upper arm and led him aside.
“One of ours did this to him, Miles,” Chandler whispered, leaning his head close to Miles’ ear so the others couldn’t overhear him. “Nobody else ever visits the archive.”
Miles hated that Chandler was right. But at the same time, it didn’t come as too much of a shock. After all, these were the same people who laughed at him after Kent made a joke at Buchan’s expense mere days after his kidnapping; Miles knew that Buchan wasn’t exactly popular at work—an attitude that Miles himself used to contribute to before inexplicably warming to Buchan a little. Still, he didn’t expect anyone to do this to him.
“What are you gonna do?” he asked.
“Well, first of all, I want to take Ed back to his house and let him rest. We’ll deal with this tomorrow, when everyone comes back to work. Whether Ed comes in or not doesn’t matter. I just want to talk to them all, and find out who did this to him. And whoever did it is getting suspended.”
An infuriatingly emotional part of Miles would rather this person get fired immediately. But he didn’t want to admit how angry he felt on Buchan’s behalf, so he kept the thought to himself. Instead, he nodded. “Good plan. How’s Buchan getting home, though? We ain’t letting him take the bus home like this.”
“No, of course not. We could get someone to drive him home, but I suspect he’d rather you do it.”
“Why me?” Miles flinched, confused and a little defensive. “He’s your friend.”
Chandler flashed him a wry smile. “Come now, Miles. Don’t forget how he acted back there. He wanted you to help him, not me.”
“That’s only cos untied him back in the paper mill.”
“Exactly. I think he associates you with rescue. So, I think he’d be more comfortable alone in a car with you right now.”
Miles sighed. “Oh, fine…” he muttered, but he didn’t really mind that much.
And Chandler clearly knew this, because he gave Miles another of those annoyingly knowing smiles.
“Oh shut up,” Miles said as though he spoke, and Chandler chuckled under his breath.
---
“I’m gonna give you a lift back home,” Miles said once Dr Llewellyn had stopped looking over Ed’s injuries and was satisfied that he didn’t need to go to hospital (unless his condition deteriorated, of course). He wondered if this was what Joe and Miles spoke about when they went to the other side of the room to talk amongst themselves.
Unable to make eye contact with a man who saw him at his worst twice, Ed stared at the floor. “You… you don’t have to do that. The buses are probably still running, so—”
“It wasn’t a suggestion. It’s happening. C’mon, let’s get going.”
“W-Well, if you’re sure,” Ed said, a little overwhelmed by Ray Miles bossing him around.
Miles nodded, and began to walk towards the car park—but at a much slower pace than he usually walked, a silent acknowledgment that Ed was really not in the mood to rush around right now. Even keeping up with Miles’ dawdling pace made Ed’s head pound with every step, his nose horribly hot and throbbing.
Even after calming down, his heart continued to race, the adrenaline refusing to leave him. Ed hated how this constant, low-level fear was apparently his new default state. He was sick of being scared all the time. But he didn’t know how to make it stop.
(But an embarrassed part of him that he refused to acknowledge suspected that Miles’ presence helped him somewhat.)
Ed groaned when he slid into the passenger seat of Miles’ car, his body aching from the fall he took on the stairs. He felt like he’d been beaten up, but all his injuries were caused by tripping over his own feet. Although that wasn’t really fair… because Ed would never have fallen if someone handed handcuffed him in his sleep. The thought of someone doing that to him made him feel sick. Well, sicker than he already did.
He started to give Miles his address, but Miles just said, “I already know.”
It took Ed’s aching head a little too long to remember that Miles had been to his house twice before. Once to go through all of his stuff when he was arrested (he hated remembering his time in that cell, partly because he knew how much Miles hated him back then and that hurt), and again when everyone ended up hiding at Ed’s house during that business with the Krays. “O-Oh… of course,” he mumbled.
As they drove away, Ed tried to think about what happened to him. But he really didn’t remember much between finding the cuffs on his wrists and being looked over by Dr Llewellyn. It was like a huge chunk of his memory had been wiped. He supposed it made sense, because his brain was too busy freaking out to waste time recording memories.
(Although he wished his brain had done the same back with Diggory. Because then he wouldn’t remember that horrifying experience every time his shirt cuffs were a bit too tight.)
And that gap in his memory worried him. Because Ed remembered acting hysterically when Joe and Miles burst in to save him, sobbing like a child and hugging Miles. So, he took a deep breath and said, “I… I can’t really remember what I did back there. I’m sorry if I was embarrassing.”
“It wasn’t anythin’ I hadn’t seen before,” Miles said. “In this line of work, I’m always seeing people freak out. ‘Sides, you had an extra reason to lose it that makes this whole thing so fucking cruel.”
“What do you mean?” Ed asked.
“It ain’t rocket science. You got restrained by your wrists. And someone handcuffed you. It would’ve been like if someone ran up and stabbed me with a bloody stage knife right after I’d been stabbed. By that I mean: a fucking cruel thing to do.”
“I… I didn’t think about it like that,” Ed mumbled.
When they arrived outside Ed’s house, he hesitated with his hand on the inside of the car door. Part of him wanted to invite Miles inside, because he would appreciate the company of a man who always seemed to know how to calm him down. But that would be weird. So, he kept that ridiculous idea to himself, and instead said, “Thank you for the lift.”
“Don’t mention it,” Miles muttered. “Now get going. I need to get home.”
“O-Of course,” Ed said. “Thank you again.”
And he opened the door and got out as quickly as he could when everything ached and his head wouldn’t stop pounding.
At his front door, Ed paused just long enough to glance over his shoulder and realise that Miles was waiting for him to go inside before driving away, and then unlocked the door and went inside, prepared to explain to Mother why he looked such a mess. And not looking forward to another sleepless night.
---
Understandably, Ed didn’t come into work the next day. He texted Joe to apologise for this, but Joe told him not to. After all, he hadn’t done anything wrong. And anyone would need some time to recover after such a traumatising and painful experience. Besides, Joe thought that his task might be easier without Ed around to potentially get upset again. Because this wasn’t going to be fun.
Once everyone arrived at the incident room and settled down for a long day of work, Joe stalked out of his office with his hands behind his back. Riley looked up at him, doing a little double take at the expression on Joe’s face.
“Is everything okay, sir?” she asked.
“Not especially, no,” Joe said, trying to keep his anger at bay. But being in this room, he couldn’t stop thinking about last night, about Ed’s bloody face and terrified sobs. Someone in this room did that to him, and he needed to find out who. “I have to talk to you all about something serious. I’d like your full attention,” he added, aware he sounded like a schoolteacher but not sure how else to get his point across.
To their credit, everyone put down their phones or looked away from their paperwork and computers.
“Has something happened?” Kent said.
Joe nodded. “Yes. Something serious. Last night, when I thought Miles and I were the only ones still here, we discovered that someone had done something to Ed. They handcuffed a man who only recently was tied up by a murderer, and he panicked. And injured himself when he tripped but couldn’t catch himself because his hands were tied.”
He didn’t mention how much Ed cried, how terrified he seemed as he begged to be freed and hyperventilated and only trusted Miles, the man who freed him back then, to untie him. They didn’t need to know the details. The gist of how much Ed got hurt was enough to put Joe’s point across.
Kent glanced at him and then shot a look across the incident room. And before Joe could ask who he was looking at, Kent blurted out, “It was Mansell!”
“What the fuck, Kent?!” Mansell said to him. “You’re such an arselicker.”
“Are you serious, Finley?” Riley cried, speaking over Mansell’s insult, exasperated and disappointed. “Again?!”
“What do you mean, again?” Joe said as Mansell’s eyes went even wider and he waved his hand in front of his neck in a plea for Riley to stop talking.
“Riley, please—”
“I’m not covering for you,” she said. “I’m still so pissed off about it.” Turning to Joe, she explained, “Not long before Ed got kidnapped, this idiot thought it’d be fun to toy with him. So, he went into my computer without permission and used my email to ask Ed on a date. And when the truth came out, it humiliated both of us in front of the others.” Directing her gaze to Mansell again, Riley snapped, “Why do you keep messing with Ed? It’s cruel.”
“It… It was just a prank,” he said.
“A prank, huh?” Miles snapped, stalking towards them all. “Would you’ve come at me with a knife after I got stabbed by the Ripper?”
“O-Of course not, Sarge,” Mansell spluttered, shrinking under Miles’ imposing stare.
“Well, why not? If deliberately screwing with a man’s head for laughs is what we’re doing now.”
Mansell bowed his head, unable to look at Joe or Miles. “I’m sorry, sir. It… it was just meant to be a bit of fun.”
“For who?” Joe said, folding his arms. “Because it certainly wasn’t fun for me to clean Ed’s blood off the floor. Or for Dr Llewellyn to check if he’d broken his nose. Or Miles to go on a big detour to drive him home. And certainly not for Ed to go through all of that. I just… I can’t understand what possessed you to do this, Mansell.”
“I… I dunno, really. I… I just… thought it’d be funny.”
Joe gritted his jaw and took a deep breath to stop himself snapping. When he next spoke, he managed to maintain the illusion of calmness.
“Get your things and go,” he said, “You’re suspended. If I get my way, you’ll be demoted for this.”
Finally, Mansell met his eyes. “Please, sir, you—”
“I’ve given you enough chances. Now get out of my sight.”
Everyone stood around in painfully awkward silence as Mansell gathered his belongings and hurried out of the room. Only once Mansell had gone, Miles frowned in deep thought and then stepped closer to Kent.
“Hey, Kent, while we’re on the subject… how did you know it was Mansell? Cos it didn’t sound like an educated guess. You knew he’d done it. How’d you know that?”
Kent flinched. “Um…” He glanced past Miles and made eye contact with Joe, as though silently begging for Joe to pull rank on Miles and change the subject.
But now Miles had mentioned it, he wanted to know the answer too. “Go ahead, Kent.”
Swallowing hard, Kent stammered, “Because… he told me he was going to do it…”
Miles sighed, throwing out his hands in exasperation. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us? This is exactly the sort of shit you’re supposed to come to your sergeant for.”
Kent’s shoulders slumped. “Sorry, Skip…”
“I’m disappointed in you, Kent. I thought you were better than this,” Joe said, not missing how his words seemed to cut deeper than anything Miles had said. “If anything like this happens again, you come to myself or Miles and we’ll deal with it. And if you don’t, there will be serious consequences. Understand?”
“Y-Yes, sir,” Kent mumbled, looking almost as crestfallen as when Joe mistook him for a mole. Except that was an honest mistake that Joe tried to make up for. This, however… if Kent had just acted, Ed wouldn’t have got hurt.
“Good,” Joe said, casting his gaze around the room. “Alright, well… time to get back to work, everyone…”
Joe sighed, some of his anxiety fading now he’d done that unpleasant task. And although it didn’t erase the pain and trauma of the previous night, he was glad to have got some justice for poor Ed.
---
Ed stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Somehow, he’d slept in until ten o’clock, but you couldn’t tell from how awful he looked. His swollen nose had bruised horribly, dark purple blotches stretching across his face under his eyes, and it must have bled a little in the night, because his nostrils were crusted with blood. Ed grimaced, but the expression made him scrunch up his nose and pain shot through his face.
But despite looking and feeling utterly terrible, Ed thought about spending the whole day stuck at home with an overly-fussing mother who made him feel guilty for coming home injured and scaring her. Just like after the kidnapping when he went against the doctor’s suggestion to rest for a while, Ed wondered about going back to work. As much as he worried about a repeat of last night if he fell asleep in the archive again, he still wanted to return to the police station. Although… that might have been mostly because he wanted to see Joe and Miles again and properly thank them for all their help.
So, against all advice and his own common sense, Ed got changed (unable to wear the comfy jumper he had on yesterday thanks to the multiple bloodstains dripped all over it) and left the house, trying to ignore the looks he got from strangers he passed in the street.
Once he reached the incident room, Riley jumped out of her chair and rushed over to check on him. Ed just smiled and tried to pretend he wasn’t in that much pain, fiddling with the string that held his spare glasses around his neck. Kent kept his head bowed as though unable to look at him, and Mansell was nowhere to be seen. Both of these facts probably meant something important, but Ed couldn’t bring himself to care.
To be honest, his biggest focus was on seeing Joe and Miles. Both of whom came hurrying out of Joe’s office at the commotion from Ed’s arrival, both clearly shocked to see him.
“What the hell made you think comin’ in today would be a bright idea?” Miles said, but his tone wasn’t as gruff as usual. He seemed almost… fond of Ed.
Joe sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Bloody hell, Ed, you really should’ve stayed at home. You need to rest.”
“Oh, no need to worry about me, Joe. I slept like a baby! And now I’m raring to go,” Ed said, forcing a smile. Nobody bought his ridiculous lie. Before they could start bugging him to go home, Ed lowered his voice and added, “Could I, uh… speak to you two in private? If that’s alright?”
Sharing a glance with Miles, Joe then looked at Ed in a way he couldn’t understand, and said, “Of course you can. You don’t even need to ask.”
Ed followed them into Joe’s office, and took the seat that Miles offered him by way of saying, “Go on, sit before you fall. You look like shit.” He flashed a rare smile. “No offense an’ all.”
“None taken,” Ed muttered, trying to get comfortable when his whole body ached. “So, um… I just wanted to thank you both. For helping me when I was at my most vulnerable. Again. And I’m so very sorry for how I acted.”
Midway through adjusting a pen that Miles had just accidentally knocked out of its perfect place, Joe said, “You don’t need to apologise, Ed.”
“But I—”
“It’s not needed,” Joe said, smiling sadly. “It wasn’t your fault. None of it.”
“Exactly. The only one at fault is Mansell,” Miles said, tone malicious as he spoke the man’s name.
“Was he…?” Ed trailed off, the unfinished question hanging in the air. And he hated how he wasn’t surprised by this detail. The memory of Mansell’s last prank still stung if he dwelled on it.
Joe sighed. “He was, yes. Don’t worry. We’ve dealt with the… situation.”
“How so?”
“I suspended him. I’m planning to see him demoted, to be fully honest.”
Ed gulped. Despite the rush of relief that the man who did this to him was now nowhere near him, something else twinged in Ed’s stomach. “I, I appreciate it, honestly, Joe. But… I don’t want you to be short-staffed because of me.”
“It ain’t because of you, for cryin’ out loud,” Miles said. “It’s his own fault. And we’ll get someone new in no time. Dunno why, but people seem to be chomping at the bit to join us,” he added with a cheeky little smirk directed at Joe.
Rolling his eyes at Miles’ comment, Joe said, “It’s no problem at all, Ed. Anyone who hurts you is not welcome on my team. He made his bed, and now he’ll have to lie in it. But enough about that,” Joe continued, his expression softening. “I won’t send you home, but you need to look after yourself if you’re going to stay here today, okay? No pushing yourself while you’re recovering.”
Ed chuckled. “You sound like my mother.”
“Oh, if you wanna be fussed over, he can be much worse,” Miles said, once again smirking at Joe.
“Don’t act like you weren’t worried too, Miles,” Joe said.
And as Miles denied ever having worried about him (and Ed felt all warm inside at the thought of Ray Miles worrying about him), Ed managed his first genuine smile since he woke up restrained.