He was exhausted. The latest crime spree had been going strong since well before Thanksgiving and it was nearly Christmas. ‘No rest for the weary,’ he thought. Tonight was his first night off in over a week and he planned to spend it by going home and crashing.
He opened the door to his apartment and blinked. His living room was much cleaner than he remembered leaving it but that was not what had caught his attention. No, instead it was the pair of impossibly long legs leading to the impossibly tiny shorts that had halted his thought process. He blinked a few more times and the woman, for it must be a woman, straightened up, surprised.
“Oh! I didn’t expect you to be home yet! I was just trying to help you out since I know you’ve not gotten any peace for a while. I was planning to be gone by the time you got back. I cleaned up a bit and was going to hang some decorations and leave you dinner. You’re doing so much for the city, I thought I could maybe help you out some,” she stuttered, embarrassed.
He finally broke out of his stupor long enough to recognize his neighbor from across the hall. He had given her a key so she could feed his cat. Apparently she was taking advantage of that fact, but she was trying to be nice, so he let it go. He was just too tired to argue.
She pulled her shorts down self-consciously. She really had meant to be gone by the time he returned. She came up with the idea while she was cleaning her apartment. What she was wearing, while appropriate for cleaning in her own house, was not something she would ever wear out in public. The quick dash across the hall didn’t count as going out, but now that she had company, she was completely mortified. ‘He probably thinks I’m trying to proposition him,’ she thought to herself.
“Well, now that you’re home, I’m going to head out. You dinner is on the stove but it’ll need to be warmed up before you eat it.” She edged toward the door, a difficult task since he had yet to leave the foyer.
“Why don’t you stay for dinner?” he asked reflexively.
“Ah…thanks for the invite, but I’ve already eaten. You enjoy. I’ll talk to you later!” she said as she escaped into the safety of the hall. ‘Hopefully much, much later after you’ve forgotten these horrible shorts.’
He stared at the door, bemused. He tried to match his mental image of his shy, quiet neighbor and his very vivid image of her legs in those shorts and found his brain was just too tired to process it.
Writing prompts: crime, peace, decoration