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It is three-thirty in the morning, and you are just getting home. This isn't exactly how things were supposed to work out.
First the whole ruby incident, then the broad, then Inspector driving home without you... You're not even supposed to be back on your feet yet. Your doctor is going to flip his desk if he finds out. You're hoping to dodge that, but more so, right now, you're just looking to get home.
It's been a few weeks since the Felt almost took you out of the story for good; two of Quarters' slugs almost finished you off after what was already a fight you weren't winning. It was only because Slick dragged you to the hospital himself and "supervised" the operating process that you made it through, you suspect. Your memories of it are faint, but you're pretty sure he punched at least one nurse. You guess they were already in the hospital, so at least they didn't have to send an ambulance anywhere.
Except for Slick, it's been a boring few weeks. You're not the kind of man who likes to spend a lot of time to himself, and definitely not the type to be spending that alone time in bed resting. You spent about three days in bed after stumbling out to get groceries the day after you were released, mostly trying to catch up with the energy you lost having forced yourself to walk out for groceries.
So you were back on your feet at pretty much the first opportunity; calls were piling up. Crime in this city not only pays, but in its way, pays you. You couldn't rest knowing what would be happening out there, so you dragged yourself out of bed for this stolen ruby case.
And now you're dragging yourself back to it. It's not that you were exhausted, in pain, and far from home; it was more than you were all three of them at the same time, and out of painkillers to boot. You would have happily crept home seven or eight hours ago if the chance had come up, but you were just so relieved to be back in the swing of things that you might have pushed yourself a little too hard. Chasing the fleeing manservant down might have taken a bit out of you. A bit.
So it takes you awhile to get home. You spend a good hour trudging back, unable to find a taxi for the life of you. But finally you're home, eyes feeling burned into your head as you fumble for your keys and try not to let off any unintentional shots. You try to be nonchalant about it, but it's so late and you're weaving from exhaustion, you're actually pretty surprised you don't blow your doorknob off. You get in okay and manage not to terrify your neighbors for once.
You shuffle in, strip tiredly out of your coat, and toss it on the sofa. You haven't eaten in hours, but you're far past your second and even third wind, and you're on your last legs. All you want is bed, a whole day to sleep, and somebody to make you bacon and eggs when you get up, which you hope will be around seven pm. You throw back a pair of painkillers with a handful of water from the bathroom sink, and reflect that you have high hopes for the first, though not the rest of your goals.
When you get to your bedroom and flip the light on, though, things begin to look up. You'd expected to collapse into bed much as you left it, a tangle of sheets which seem to forget which one of them used to be on top. Instead, curled in a ball like a sleeping cat (if a mangy, scrawny one), is Spades Slick. You don't know how he got into your apartment, and right now you don't care. He's passed out in your bed, his hair a tangled mess on one pillow, his whole body wrapped around the other one. It takes you a moment to realize he's wearing white over his usual blacks- dark pants, bare feet, and one of your shirts. He looks rumpled and comfortable and something in your chest opens and warms just seeing him.
In the sudden light, he groans quietly and turns over. You flip the light off immediately and shuck your pants and shirt off. You slide into bed just as he blinks and looks around, disoriented. "Whurrrr you- oh," he mumbles. "Whurr've you been?"
You pull the pillow away from him and make use of it. "Making a living," you say, smiling in the dark.
He laughs roughly. "Like you ever do."
"At least mine was an honest day's work," you say, but your patience for banter has already run out. There's only one thing you want now: sleep. Or rather, two, because when you do, you want to do so wrapped around the skinny mobster in your bed. When he goes to reply, you tap impatiently at his mouth until he stops talking.
"What're you doing here?" you ask, once you've gotten him pulled into your arms and wrapped a leg over his.
"Takin' care of you," he says, voice thick with sleep. "But then you weren't even here. So I just. Waited."
You smile into his hair and nuzzle closer. "Good job," you tell him, and by the time you finish the sentence, you're already asleep.