Work Text:
Reaching the third landing, Riley sighed and paused in the cramped staircase to adjust the body in his arms. It had been raining outside, but it hadn't cooled down the city, even this late at night. He felt sticky, tired, and like he'd been walking forever. Gladius gave a small murmur as his eyes fluttered open and he attempted to fix Riley with an unfocused gaze.
"Hey, big guy," he smiled, blinking slowly up at the Qunari, his breath like the fumes off of an empty bottle of moonshine. "You know, this is really nice."
"What is?" Riley flashed the man a smile as he shifted his weight to make it easier to look him in the face. "The heat, the mold, or the horrible smell on this floor?"
"Being carried like this," Gladius mumbled, closing his eyes again. "I always do the carrying. That's nice too, I guess."
"Not like I had a choice," Riley started forward again, angling his head to continue up the staircase. His horns had knocked some of the plaster out of the wall on the first flight, so he was trying to be a little more careful as he continued the climb. "You were in no shape to walk after I healed you and you kept grabbing my ass when I threw you over my shoulder."
"It's a nice ass."
"Yeah, I know," Riley turned the corner and heard rather than saw Gladius' boots scrape across the wall. He hadn't been to this safe-house before, but he was going to have a few choice words about flights of stairs with Hector the next time they ran into each other.
"Why did you get so damn drunk, and who stabbed you? I thought you were just running an errand," Riley groused, passing the landing for the sixth floor. He didn't get any kind of coherent answer from the man in his arms, just more steps to climb and a little flurry of follow up questions chasing around in his thoughts. Why was this building so damn tall? Who could possibly live up here? Why did he drop in on a job that wasn't his? That was a bunch of shit he probably wasn't getting an answer to any time soon.
Gladius continued to mumble occasionally as Riley finished climbing the last couple of flights. All that he could piece together was that the booze had been free for reasons that didn't make sense, Gladius had punched some racist asshole for all the right reason, and that guy's friends had got stab happy.
"Why were you laying face-down in the middle of the street?" Riley asked although he was pretty sure he knew the answer to that one.
"Thrown out," Gladius grinned, and flailed an arm for a second, threatening their balance. "At least I got to go out through the door."
"Oh yeah?"
"Other guys went through the windows," Gladius leaned his head against Riley's chest and sighed in deep contentment. "Then you were there."
Riley remembered sharply that the only windows at the Broken Rake were on the second floor and winced. He hadn't seen anyone else outside the seedy card room, but there was zero chance that one or both of them wasn't getting their ass chewed by Tarquin when he found out. He still had no idea if Gladius had finished what he'd been sent to do.
That was tomorrow's problem.
At that thought, Riley crested the final step to the last floor and muscled his way through the only door in the hall. There had been other apartments up here once, but earlier in the year the roof had collapsed on one side, wrecking the other two. They'd been demolished and a few months from now the owner was set to tear out the whole floor. Until then, the half exposed hallway and apartment were vacant. Building super was a Shadow Dragon and was letting them use it as a safe-house until it got cleared out.
"We home?" Gladius asked sleepily, squinting into the unfamiliar room in mild confusion. Riley spotted a couch in the near dark, and started to set the man down. Gladius decided he didn't want to be let go about halfway down, and after an awkward minute Riley found himself sitting with the large man sprawled out across his lap, one arm, and the rest of the couch. After a moment, the other Shadow Dragon started to lightly snore with his hand firmly grasping Riley's and pinning it to his chest.
"Close enough," Riley looked down at Gladius with a brief smile, fishing around with his free hand to tuck a pillow back behind his neck as he leaned back and closed his eyes. He'd slept worse places, with far worse company.