CARDS!

Would you like one? Then please, put your real name and address (including country!) in the screened comments below, and I will do my best to send you a card (free of charge!) by the time Christmas in July rolls around!

 

Droog turns, checks the road, while Slick makes sure that there's no one looking suspicious. That's why they always work in pairs, if not all four of them together. You can't watch your own back, and in a city like this, you need ever bit of help you can get. They cross, not quite in lockstep. Droog's legs are too long (at least to Slick, they are), and he always leaves him just half a step behind. But that's fine. Really. Thunder rumbles across permanently leaden skies, and Slick mutters a curse. The last thing they need is rain, especially since they still haven't got somewhere nice and dry to sleep.

The sooner they find out what this red thing is, the better. Now across the road, Slick could see that it wasn't a body or fabric. It was too shiny, for want of a better word.
"Keep an eye out." He kneels to inspect it, and Droog turns around, hands in his pockets. Ready. Waiting. Slick draws his knife - he's not stupid enough to touch something that bright of a colour with bare hands - and moves away the few sheets of yesterday's broadsheet. He stops. Stares. There is no way this should be possible, and yet, he's staring the proof of a miracle, something ridiculous and impossible right in the face. The knife goes away again, and he wraps it back up in the tattered newspaper. 

He'd heard something about kids being abandoned in bins before, but this took the fucking cake. A three tier cake with diamonds and pearls and a bombshell of a stripper inside. Some little voice inside him questions why the everliving fuck he's doing this and it's probably what's left of his common sense, but he shoves it back down ruthlessly. Sure he's a gangster, but he's not mean enough to leave this to die. As much as it pains him, he tucks it under his arm and stands. Droog lowers eyes to the package (too large, too heavy) and flicks them back up quickly (Slick, what the hell are you doing), but he of all of them knows better than to ask questions like the ones that are undoubtedly on the tip of his tongue in public.

"Gotta find somewhere dry for the night. Doesn't matter where." Slick had never been wordy, Droog handled that. Always had, hopefully always would.
"Any preferences?" Smug bastard. He knows what Slick wants - a warm bed, without lice and a leaking ceiling, preferably with some little thing in it to keep him interested. But with this thing, that ain't gonna happen. Not for a long, long while.
"Somewhere that doesn't stink like piss'd be nice." If he hadn't been looking (glaring), he wouldn't have seen the smallest of amused smiles pass over Droog's face. Of course the bastard knew where they'd find a shelter, he'd probably had one on the card for ages. Miserable sod.
"I know a place." Slick growled, and started stalking down the street. "Wrong way." Fuming, he stopped mid-stride, turned and marched back up to his partner.
"Then why don't you lead the way, so we can grab Boxcars and Deuce, and get there. Before it rains." The only thing worse than an angry Spades Slick was a wet and angry Spades Slick, and so Diamonds Droog about-faced neatly and started strolling up the street casually, Slick huffing along at his side. There'd be time to find out what the object was later. Much more time.