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one.
They played a lot of poker. Against anybody around—people who knew them, who told them off for cheating or asked them with a laugh how they'd done it, and people who didn't, marks too sweet to even realize they were being hustled. Against each other, too, which was just keeping in practice. Nobody could spot a tell like Henry.
Johnny'd thought he was pretty good at it, too. Showed what he knew.
They played a lot of poker, and they played for a lot of different stakes. Some more often than others.
Johnny would've done it differently, if he'd known.
Heck, if he'd known, they wouldn't've wasted so much time. He'd have taken care of it himself as soon as he'd figured it out.
But as it was, turned out poker did the trick.
They'd had a good night. It had only taken a couple hands downstairs to land them a fair jackpot, with Henry as the seasoned player who knew what he was doing, and Johnny as his new friend who didn't know a straight from a flush, and had drunk a little too much besides. Henry'd lost the same as the rest of the table, when Johnny had won a hand on a streak of beginner's luck—and he'd gotten het up about it, too, and needed a couple other guys to talk him down and tell him to let it go, that Johnny would lose the next hand.
Which he had, just by a lot less than he'd won. Enough to make his luck look gone, that was all it took, and then he'd folded his way out of the next round to go get himself some more to drink, and it could hardly have been called a surprise that he hadn't come back, with a couple pretty girls hanging around the end of the bar at the same time he had been.
Easy money always put Johnny in a good mood. Henry too, though you had to look a little harder to see it. Easy money, and Johnny wasn't drunk but he was tipsy, just enough that his face felt warm with it, his feet never quite going where he meant to put them. So when they climbed the stairs up to the room they'd taken, Johnny had a friendly arm around Henry's shoulders, swaying into Henry with every other step, and he was filled with a sense of warm satisfaction. This was how every evening ought to be, and he didn't much like to think that soon it might be over.
Henry got the door open, because Johnny wasn't up to the task. Johnny hung on his arm until it was done, and they stumbled through together, pressed briefly close, because Johnny hadn't let go.
"Couple more hands?" Johnny said, before Henry could laugh and push him off and move away.
Henry looked at him with narrowed eyes, but there was warmth tugging the corners of his mouth into something that was considering becoming a smile, a knowing fondness in the look that made Johnny's ears hot. "Haven't lost enough yet?"
"Funny man," Johnny said, grinning, and shoved a hand up into Henry's hair, ruffled it and knocked Henry's hat off on the way, just for the fun of it.
He had a deck in his pocket—not the ones they'd been using downstairs, because the quickest way to get yourself kicked out of a game was to insist on using your own cards instead of the deck already on the table. Their room was small, but it wasn't just beds; they had a little desk of a thing, a couple wobbling chairs with legs that weren't all the same length. He chucked his own hat across the room onto his bed, and then pulled a chair out and sat down, and started shuffling.
Henry was still moving around. Getting a glass of water, Johnny understood, when he turned and came over to the table with one—except when he set it down, he set it on Johnny's side.
"Aw, come on," Johnny said, making a face at him. "I'm hardly drunk at all."
"Sure," Henry said, mild, and didn't take the glass back.
Johnny shook his head and kept shuffling. He really wasn't that drunk, but heck, maybe after another half-hour he'd be thirsty; and if Henry wanted to fetch him water in advance, who could be bothered complaining?
"Couple more hands," he repeated, because Henry hadn't actually agreed.
Henry stood there looking at him, and Johnny couldn't understand what it was that crossed his face while he did it, what that strange steady weight in his eyes was, except that it made Johnny's heart thump abruptly hard in his chest.
But then Henry pulled out the other chair, and sat. "Your poker face could use a little work," he said at last, real blandly.
"Whatever you have to tell yourself," Johnny agreed as if solicitous, grinning, and dealt.
He almost always lost, playing against Henry. Might have pricked his pride a little, except Henry was so goddamn good it was hard to mind—hard to do anything but watch him, trying to work out what he'd done and when, and be impressed. Johnny wasn't kidding himself, he was good at what he did; he could pull a pair of aces from his sleeve when he needed to with nobody the wiser. But he could admit, if only to himself and not to Henry, that experience counted, and Henry still had the balance on his side on that particular score.
Even if it had bothered Johnny, losing to Henry, he had a feeling it wouldn't have tonight. He felt too good to do anything but laugh, every time Henry just so happened to come up with a hand that beat Johnny's. Once, and then twice, and Johnny had said a "couple", he knew he had, but he started shuffling again and Henry didn't stop him. He cut the deck whichever way he liked, gave himself three of a kind—Henry inevitably had four. If he got himself a straight, Henry pulled a flush. After that, he quit trying, landed nothing much except a jack he couldn't do anything with, and Henry calmly revealed a pair of twos.
Johnny had given in and taken a sip of the water, by then, and he almost spat it on Henry trying not to laugh.
"You got some real nerve," he said when he could, aiming for accusing and missing by a mile—it was too good, that was the problem. It was a pleasure, sitting here across from Henry when he was relaxed, at ease, pleased with himself in that cat-who-got-the-cream way he had when there wasn't a mark in the room to keep him covering it up.
It was that, maybe, that made Johnny reckless. He'd thought about it too much anyway. He'd started wanting Henry a while ago, and he wanted Henry a little bit all the time, in a way he was starting to get used to; it was only every now and then that the wanting got sharp on him, cutting suddenly through to the bone in a way he was never quite ready for.
It happened right then, looking at Henry across from him over that little table in the lamplight. Johnny swallowed hard, throat tight, and then heard himself say, "Raise the stakes?"
Henry's eyebrow went up. He looked at Johnny, and then, pointedly, at the table, where a pot very conspicuously wasn't, because they hadn't been betting anything, only playing the game, saying "call" or "raise" without putting anything down. "Sure can't lower 'em," he said.
"Well, no," Johnny allowed. "And the money from downstairs is half yours anyhow. Something else."
Henry eyed him. He'd gone cool and expressionless, the way he did when he thought Johnny was about to screw up—the way he did when he was already planning around how to clean up Johnny's mess. "Planning to tell me what you got in mind?" he said evenly.
Johnny had been, until he'd said that. "You'll just have to win and find out," he said instead, trying to match Henry's tone and almost succeeding.
Henry did win. Johnny would've thrown it if he'd had to, by then, but he didn't. The hand went pretty fast, or maybe that was just Johnny's head whirling, and then it was over and Henry was looking at him again, in that chilly gimlet way that said he expected nothing and would be unsurprised to get it.
Johnny lifted his chin and smiled, steady, slanting and deliberate, and lifted his hands to the collar of his shirt; and Henry went still all over.
The buttons felt smaller than usual, slippery like they were trying to get out from under Johnny's fingers. He didn't let them. He undid them all, cool as you please, quick as he could, and shrugged the shirt off onto the back of his chair.
"Johnny," Henry said, low and sharp.
Johnny looked up.
He'd meant to push, that was all. He'd meant to make the thought cross Henry's mind, the same way it wouldn't stop crossing his, and then maybe if Henry found it didn't put him off—if he let a few more hands pass, let Johnny lose his belt and his undershirt and his socks, and decided he liked the view all right, then Johnny would have a shot at getting somewhere.
But Henry was—Johnny sucked in a breath, startled, and the sound felt loud, the air still and hot, the room smaller than it had been. Henry looked the way Henry always looked, and yet every line of his face had changed, fierce and hard and intent, and his eyes were so blue Johnny felt burned by the weight of them on him.
Jesus.
"Jesus," Johnny blurted.
And just that fast it was gone, smoothed away again. Henry was looking away, leaning back in his chair, which tipped obligingly to follow his weight, and he'd put a hand on the table like he meant to push himself up. "All right," he said, very evenly. "Made your point."
Johnny didn't feel as though he had. He didn't understand a goddamn thing, and he was starting to think Henry didn't either.
He didn't want to hear the rest, and he didn't want Henry to get up and walk away from him.
He dealt, fast, the fastest he'd ever dealt in his life.
Henry fell silent as the cards flicked out across the table.
He looked at Johnny again, and his face said nothing. But when Johnny was done dealing, Henry sat there for a second and then set a hand over the cards, drew them toward him, and Johnny had him then. Henry never folded, unless it was for a con.
They didn't speak, didn't kid with each other like usual. The room was silent, except for the crisp sound of the cards moving against each other.
Johnny lost. Johnny lost his belt, and there were no words he knew for the look on Henry's face as he stood and undid the buckle and pulled it free. His belt, and then his undershirt, just the way he'd meant to do it, and he wanted to die a little because Henry was hardly even looking.
Except then, the next hand—Henry lost.
Pure luck, the kind poker never was for them. Johnny had hardly even looked at his own hand, didn't know what was in it, but then he did look and he had three of a kind, to Henry's pair of kings.
Henry stood up.
"Henry," Johnny said, very low, and then didn't know what to say next.
Henry was rough, quick, with his buttons, so that Johnny almost expected to hear one rattle away across the floor. He stripped his shirt off with hard sharp tugs like he didn't care if it tore; and when he was done he stood there for a second, met Johnny's eyes for less, and then turned away.
"All right," he said. "That's enough."
"Henry," Johnny said again, and got up, rounded the little table and reached out to catch Henry's arm.
Henry turned on him, yanked himself out of Johnny's reach. His jaw was tight and his throat was working. "That's enough, I said," he repeated, very level, cool enough you might think he meant it if you weren't looking at his eyes.
But Johnny was. Johnny was looking, and Johnny saw, and didn't back off. "It was my idea," he tried, as if Henry might have forgotten; but he didn't know what Henry was trying to pull, why he should be so dead set on backing out when he had to understand that Johnny wanted in, and saying so, even if it was side-on, was the next best thing to actually asking.
"Sure it was," Henry agreed, and didn't ease an inch. "And I'm telling you it was a stupid idea, and that's enough."
Johnny took a step closer, searching Henry's face, trying to figure it out. "Henry—"
"Go on back downstairs," Henry bit out. "One of those girls at the bar'll take you, I'm sure. You don't smell that bad."
"I don't want any of the girls at the bar, Henry," Johnny said.
"Well, find another bar, then," Henry said. "You do what you like. But not me, understand?"
"If there were boys at the bar, I wouldn't want them either," Johnny said. "I don't want anybody but you."
And he was still looking close, so he saw it: the flicker of a shiver, crossing Henry all over. The way the muscles at Henry's jaw worked, the way Henry's eyes shuddered shut before he made them open up again.
It got him right in the guts, a sucker punch, and he was still busy trying to breathe through it when Henry wet his lips and said, real slow and quiet like he wanted to make sure he wasn't going to have to say it twice, "Don't get in my bed, Johnny. Not if you're going to get out of it again."
Johnny blinked.
Henry looked dead serious; worse than dead serious. "Pick somebody else," he said, still just as steady. "But don't do this to me. I'll beg if you want me to. Just don't—"
"Henry," Johnny said, and caught him by the shoulders, and kissed him.
He couldn't help it. He got it now, all right—that Henry thought Johnny had done this to him for a little fun, because they'd made some easy money and Johnny was tipsy, because it had been a good night and Johnny wanted to keep it going.
Because he didn't know how long Johnny had been waiting, that Johnny had raised the stakes a lot higher than a shirt just hoping Henry might give him a chance to talk him around.
But that was all right. At least one of them had the real picture; and Johnny knew what to do now.
Henry was tense under his hands, unmoving. Johnny didn't mind. Because he got what Henry had been saying, what he'd meant by it, and that meant it wouldn't last.
He held on, and he kissed Henry—skimmed a hand up the side of Henry's throat to his jaw, rubbed his thumb back and forth across the rough prickling stubble over Henry's cheek. He kissed the corner of Henry's mouth, caught his breath against Henry's cheek for a second, and this time when he went back to it for real, Henry shivered all over and then came to life against him: caught him by the waist and held him there, and kissed him back.
two.
The morning Henry's fever broke, he looked about ten times better.
Johnny couldn't say for sure when it might have happened. He'd been sitting up nights, since Henry's coughing kept him awake anyhow, and Henry could be soothed with some water, a wet cloth across his hot forehead, but only for about half an hour at a go.
But enough nights in a row like that, and even the coughing couldn't keep Johnny from dozing for a stretch now and then, leaned up against the wall by Henry's head. They'd holed up in the corner of a basement, which was to say Johnny had found one to break into when he'd realized exactly how sick Henry was, that he wasn't going to have the time and couldn't count on the luck to run a con for the price of a room for a week. It was dim, and it was quiet, and the boiler at the other end ran now and then and warmed up the stuffy air, which could be counted on to put Johnny out like a light.
Point was, he woke up sometime too early to really call morning, yawned in his throat and felt around, took the cloth off Henry's forehead and wet it again and put it back without even opening his eyes. Maybe Henry already hadn't needed it anymore by then; or maybe he had.
Either way, when he came around for real, the first pale winter sunlight was creeping in, through the gaps between the boards he'd put over the window, the one he'd busted to get in here and then hoisted Henry through. And he blinked and rubbed his face and looked down at Henry, and Henry was looking back at him.
Looking back at him—really looking, not only lying there with his eyes open and Johnny in front of him. Johnny's breath caught, and he swallowed hard and touched Henry's face, which wasn't half so red as it had been; and it didn't feel hot either. Clammy with leftover sweat, but that was all.
"The hell are you doing?" Henry croaked.
Johnny didn't know whether to laugh or scream at him or pop him one. He split the difference in the end, shaking his head and huffing through his nose while his eyes got useless and hot, keeping his hand right where it was on Henry's face.
"Making sure you stuck around," he said at last, hoarse. "You still owe me a drink after that Wharton job, remember? I let you off the hook just because you went and died of pneumonia, everybody's going to start doing it, and where's that leave me?"
It was a sad jape, but Henry didn't call him on it. He lay there, breathing slow, and touched his lips with his tongue, which meant Johnny was already reaching to pick up the canteen for him by the time he tensed and curled up on himself and coughed.
Johnny was braced for it. He was used to the sound by now, the long scraping jags of it, deep in that barking way that said it was coming from the lungs instead of the back of the throat. If anything, it wasn't as bad today as it had been.
But Henry had been under with the fever, delirious, almost the whole week. And the look on his face said he didn't much appreciate having his faculties returned to him at the moment.
Johnny waited it out, got an arm around Henry to hold him up a little while he was racked with it, and when he was done and he'd spat something neither of them wanted to look at over in the corner, Johnny held the canteen for him, too.
It was good to watch him sip at it. Stupid thing to think, but it was true. He'd been so far under a couple days ago that Johnny had been—had been holding his face, dribbling the water into his slack mouth as careful as he could, and no idea how much Henry was actually swallowing.
When he was done, Johnny set the canteen down again and helped him settle. There wasn't much for a mattress, just some ratty blankets stacked on each other, but it was better than the floor.
"Lot of work for one drink," Henry said.
"Hey, nobody stiffs me, pal," Johnny managed.
Henry huffed out a breath that probably meant to be a laugh, and looked at Johnny for a minute; and then his eyes drifted halfway shut, and then all the way, and then he was asleep again.
Which was fine, Johnny figured. The rest would keep till he was stronger. Till he didn't need Johnny tending to him—till they each could stay or go if they saw fit to.
Johnny couldn't let it go. Not hardly. But he could wait a little while, if he had to.
After a day, Henry could sit up without turning the color of bad milk. After two, he could stand, and even walk around a little, and the color had come back into his face for real.
After three, he was breathing easier, and he could talk without having to stop and cough a while every time, and his voice was evening out again, too, not cracking and rasping half so much as it had been.
Which meant he was probably in good enough shape to be ambushed.
Johnny didn't talk around it. This wasn't a grift, and Henry wasn't a mark, and if Johnny treated him like he was he'd see through it in a second anyhow.
Henry usually woke up thirsty. On the fourth day, Johnny was awake already, and he handed Henry the canteen like usual, and then, while Henry was drinking, he said, "You're a damn fool."
Henry looked at him over the flat of the canteen, drank a little more and then lowered it and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Didn't seem like there was anything to be done about it," he said, very evenly. "I didn't expect you'd take matters into your own hands," and oh, Johnny thought, he was talking about the pneumonia, about not telling Johnny he was sick.
Which was fair enough, because that had been stupid, too.
"So you figured you'd keep on sleeping out in the cold," Johnny said, "and giving me your blanket too half the time, and not coughing where I could hear you. Smart guy."
He'd gotten loud, too sharp. But he didn't know what to call the feeling in him, thinking about it. All the long time Henry had been under with the fever, he'd been thinking about it, and he still didn't know.
He'd been furious, at first. Furious, and he'd wanted to pop Henry one, and he couldn't stand to picture how it might have gone if he hadn't worked it out. Whether Henry'd have slipped for real, or told him; or if he hadn't, whether Johnny'd have woken up there on the corner with him lying there, touched him and tried to wake him and then realized—
But that wasn't the point, Johnny reminded himself, and took a deep breath.
Henry was watching him, unreadable, and hadn't said a word.
"No, I'll be holding that one over you for a while, my friend," Johnny said more calmly. "But I didn't mean that in particular, as it happens."
Henry frowned, just a little.
"You're a damn fool," Johnny said again. "And you let me know it, thanks to that fever."
Henry's face changed, and his whole body went still. He was sitting, casual, elbow on his knee, and he didn't move an inch, kept the easy curve of his spine and the loose draping angle of his wrist exactly as they were. But it was a cover, now: like this was a grift after all, but it was Johnny who was the mark.
Wouldn't do him any good, though, seeing as Johnny already had his number.
"Can't say I remember that," Henry said, very steady. "Can't say as I remember much of anything. Couldn't have made a lick of sense—"
"Sure," Johnny agreed. "You were out of your head. You just lay there most of the time, turning over and then back, talking to yourself. Couldn't even hear most of it."
He stopped. He didn't want to, hadn't planned to. He'd wanted to get it all out at once, real calm and clear, so Henry couldn't misunderstand him or lie to him, couldn't tuck it away again where he'd been keeping it all this time, where Johnny hadn't known a thing about it.
But it was hard to think of. It had been—it had been the worst of it, that one long day and night where Johnny hadn't been sure, for the first time since he'd understood just how sick Henry was, whether Henry was going to live. The fever had gotten so high Johnny'd almost flinched just touching Henry, half expecting every wet rag he laid over Henry's cheeks and arms and chest to go up in a cloud of steam. Henry had been flushed, burning, delirious; no idea where he was or who was with him, crying out names Johnny didn't know, trying to stand except he hadn't had the strength to, weak as a kitten when Johnny reached to hold him down.
But then it had happened. Then he'd called for Johnny, too, and he couldn't take that back. Not that, not any of it.
"It got bad," he made himself say aloud, as if his eyes weren't stinging, as if Henry couldn't probably tell. "Real bad."
He bit his lip and looked, and Henry had softened up a little, sharp blue eyes not quite so gimlet as they had been.
"Johnny," Henry said, almost gently.
"You called for me," Johnny said. "I was sitting right there, holding you down, trying to get some water in you, and you were crying for me like I broke your heart."
Henry's jaw went tight. He didn't say a word.
"I talked to you. Told you it was me, told you I was there. You didn't believe me at first. Or maybe you just weren't hearing me," Johnny acknowledged. "But I held your hand and I talked to you some more, and then you got the picture. Grabbed on pretty good, once you had it straight in your head who I was." He swallowed, and didn't let himself look away from Henry. "Grabbed on, said my name again. Laid one on me, too."
It didn't sound right, saying it. But it wouldn't, he knew, no matter what words he picked. There weren't any that could hold the way it had happened, the way it had felt—the way Henry had practically crawled into his arms, hanging on out of sheer stubbornness, as weak as he'd been and shaking all over. The way he'd touched Johnny's face, pressed his own to Johnny's cheek. His mouth on Johnny's, shocking and sweet as anything; except it had been so hot on Johnny's, too, hot and dry, lips cracked to pieces, that it had been impossible to forget there was something awfully wrong.
Johnny hadn't done anything about it then. He couldn't have. He'd let it happen, shushed Henry and gotten him to lie back again, gotten some more water in him.
But it had been stuck in him since, that moment. Lodged between his ribs like a bullet, every breath he took.
Henry looked cool as anything. "Is that so," he said.
"Yeah," Johnny bit out.
"Well, you said it yourself," Henry observed, mild. "I was out of my head—"
"You knew it was me," Johnny said sharply, and Henry went silent.
Johnny waited. Henry didn't move. He swallowed once; and then he lifted his chin and met Johnny's eyes and said, "If you're going to take a shot at me, then do it. If you want an apology, you can have one. Take it or leave it."
For crying out loud. "Oh, I'll do you one better," Johnny said, huffing out a breath and shaking his head, and then he reached across the space between them and took Henry by the collar, leaned in himself and pulled at the same time, and kissed Henry for all he was worth.
He couldn't have done it then. If he was angry about anything, it was that—Henry had picked a hell of a time to finally let on, lying there half-dead and cooking himself, Johnny knowing he wouldn't remember half of it. Every time they'd ever split a room or gotten a drink together, Henry hadn't breathed a word; no, he'd saved it till right when Johnny couldn't do a damn thing about it, couldn't even tell him he wasn't alone and know he'd hear it.
He tried to kiss all that at Henry at once, and it probably didn't work but it still felt good. Henry's mouth was warm—just warm, not blazing with fever anymore—and it went soft under Johnny's, welcoming, even when the rest of Henry was taut as wire, stiff as a board.
Johnny let him go after a minute, but didn't back off any. He stayed right where he was, and he said against Henry's jaw, "I know. All right? Don't kid yourself. I know. If you wanted a little fun, you'd have asked, and no hard feelings. I know."
And Henry shook a little, and didn't move, didn't say a word—but Johnny had meant it; he didn't have to.
three.
Henry didn't realize Johnny had gotten shot, at first.
To be fair to him, Johnny didn't realize it either, not right away.
The shootout wasn't their fault. Didn't have anything to do with them at all, which meant they didn't know it was happening until it already was. And then it was a blur, people shouting and screaming, everybody trying to take cover at once.
Henry made it to his feet first, tipped their table over on its side and then caught Johnny by the shoulder to pull him around it, down behind it. Johnny felt an impact, hard, sharp, jarring him right through his whole body. But right then he figured he'd hit the edge of the table. He kept going, dropped down beside Henry and tried to catch his breath, reached for his thigh hoping he could rub the hurt out of it a little, and it was only once he'd closed his hand on it, bitten back the noise he wanted to make and moved his fingers against his trousers, that he realized his palm, the spaces between his fingers, were full and sticky.
Henry was looking over the edge of the table, watching whoever it was who'd started all this taking potshots at each other. He hadn't seen Johnny's particular trouble yet. Johnny looked down at it himself and then wished he hadn't. That was more blood than he liked to see any day, and especially on himself. The first dull hurt of it was getting sharper now, deeper, hot and awful all through his thigh, and he shivered, and the edges of his sight went strange for a second.
It was fine, he told himself. He still had the leg. That was the important part. It was pretty high up and his jacket was long. He could just about cover it. Had to be better if nobody knew a man had been shot in the thigh at this shindig—if nobody knew to look for a man who'd been shot in the thigh, wanting to ask him some questions.
He breathed in, and out, and in again. And then Henry grabbed his arm, hauled on it good, and said, "Come on, quick, this way."
Johnny hadn't realized till then that the sound of the guns had stopped for a minute. Henry towed him around the end of a counter just as the shooting started up again, hustled him along it, and he still had a hand on Johnny, closed tight, so it was no wonder he didn't bother looking back.
Johnny kept up pretty well all the way out the back of the building and into the alley. But that was about the limit.
Best he could figure was that Henry felt him slow—Henry squeezed his arm, steadying, and left him there leaning against the alley wall, saying, "Hold on, hold on, wait here a minute, will you?" Then he hustled off down the end of the alley. Checking the street, Johnny understood, and then slid down the wall without meaning to, just because it would have been so much harder not to.
Henry took a minute, that was all. Maybe two. But by the time he came back, Johnny knew for sure he wasn't going to be able to cover anymore. It was eating him up; he couldn't think, he couldn't breathe.
"Hey, catch your forty winks another time, pal," Henry said, somewhere that seemed to Johnny to be much further away than was reasonable. And then Henry had him by the arm again, but this time Johnny couldn't stand up.
"I can't," Johnny said. "Henry—Henry, I can't." He found a spare smile, or at least a half of one, and pinned it on as neat as he could manage. "Sorry. You better go on."
"You can't?" Henry said, because he hadn't seen yet. "Just what's that supposed to mean? Johnny—"
He went quiet, then. Johnny figured out how to look up at him, though it wasn't as easy as usual; he was staring down at Johnny's leg, where the deep red blot of it had crept down far enough that Johnny's jacket wasn't over it anymore, and his mouth was pale, pressed into a tight thin line.
"I don't think we're going to need to cut it off," Johnny said. "But it's going to be about as much use as if we had, getting out of here. You go on, all right?"
"No," Henry said, real low.
Which was stupid, because he had to know as well as Johnny did that he needed to. He'd be in for a world of trouble if the police picked him up—if word made it back to Lonnegan somehow that he was still breathing. Wasn't any help for it, for Johnny, but he still had a shot, and he had to take it.
"Henry," Johnny said.
"No," Henry said, and leaned down.
Johnny got what he was about maybe two seconds before Henry's shoulder was in his gut. "You're an idiot," he said, to the back of Henry's jacket, but there wasn't much of anything he could do about it except make it harder for Henry, and making it harder for Henry would mean getting dropped.
Henry had an inch on him, if that. Johnny wasn't any kind of feather duster. It was a damn fool thing to do, picking him up this way, as if Henry could get any kind of distance like this without being seen.
Henry had to know all that, too. But he didn't particularly seem to care.
Johnny hung on, grim, as best he could. The world rolled around him like a craps die on the run. And then Henry was up, with Johnny slung over his shoulder bleeding like a stuck pig.
Johnny didn't know where the hell he thought he was going, with a man who'd been shot in the thigh on his shoulder, or how the hell he planned to get there without someone or other phoning the police about it. But he didn't get the chance to ask before everything turned very quiet and very dark, and after that it was too late.
When he came around, he was in a room he didn't know.
In a room, and in a bed. The sheets were clean, and his trousers were gone, his leg all wrapped up, and his shirt was gone too.
He blinked, and reached up, and rubbed his face. And then he turned his head, and there was Henry.
Henry's hands were bloody. He was washing them in a pail, sitting there quiet and serious, rubbing the thickest darkest bits out of the creases in his knuckles. He looked grave and worn out and a little sick, and Johnny hated it.
"Henry," he said.
Henry looked up, and came to his feet. There was a rag there, too, and he wiped his hands off on it and came toward Johnny. "You were right," he said, light. "Didn't have to cut it off."
"Well, go on," Johnny said, "get out the ticker tape."
Henry stopped a stride away, short. Johnny's tone had done it, the sharp way he'd said it, and he felt a vicious satisfaction for it.
"You'll be fine," Henry said, but Johnny didn't want to hear it. That wasn't what he was sore about.
"Sure I will," he snapped. "What the hell is the matter with you?"
"Not much," Henry said, cool now, level, "on account of how I didn't get myself shot."
"I told you to go on. You had an out. I told you to take it—"
"I didn't need it," Henry said.
"So you could get us both caught?" Johnny demanded.
"We didn't get caught."
"Not for lack of you trying," Johnny jabbed. "Why didn't you go on?"
"I didn't need to," Henry said again.
"You didn't need to do any of that. Where are we—how far'd you carry me? What the hell were you thinking?"
"Friend's place," Henry said. "I knew she'd help if she could," which was an answer to only one and a half of those questions, and he had to know it.
Johnny gritted his teeth. He shouldn't have let himself get so steamed, but he couldn't help it. He'd have been all right—he'd been small-time for so long, he wouldn't have made half the splash Henry would've, getting taken in. He didn't care to be ignored, and he didn't care to think of Henry going down the river because of him, either.
"You should've gone," he bit out.
And Henry looked at him then, real calm and steady, and said, "I couldn't."
Johnny didn't understand it, for a second. Why he'd said it like that, that and nothing else. Not dressing it up, not handing Johnny some old saw about partners or cons or how Johnny didn't know how things worked. Not giving Johnny any reasons, not saying why he'd thought he could do it or why he thought he'd get away with it. That it hadn't been the kind of risk it seemed to be, that he'd had the whole thing planned out in advance.
Johnny didn't understand it at all.
And then he looked a little longer, right into Henry's eyes, and he got it, all right.
He lay there, and didn't say a word. Henry looked away again, and turned around; dunked the rag he'd used on his hands and rinsed that out, too, real slow and measured about it, no hurry. He picked up the pail after, took it out of the room and closed the door behind him. And Johnny stayed where he was, heart pounding at his ribs like it would rather jump on out and follow Henry if it could, and let the thought roll around in his head until he felt like maybe he could get a hold of it.
After a minute, Henry came back in. He had Johnny's shirt in one hand, a fresh pair of trousers in the other—which was fair enough, considering the state Johnny's own had probably been in by the time Henry'd lugged him here.
Johnny waited, patient, till he was inside arm's reach. Then he got Henry by the arm, and Henry went still.
"You're an idiot," Johnny said, and pulled him down, and kissed him.
It took Henry a second to catch up, but he got there in the end; and until he did, Johnny didn't mind having to carry him a little.