I do not, have never and will never own Ellery and the Inspector. I do, have always and will always wish I did.

Ellery woke up feeling awful. His head was aching dully and he was nauseous. He had definitely had a few to many drinks last night. When he tried to get up he put the majority of his body weight on hid left wrist. That, he shouldn't have done. The wrist hurt like hell for a moment before it gave away and he hit the bed again with a dull thump. Perplexed, Ellery wrinkled his brow and looked at the wrist. It had a bluish shade and was now throbbing. How had that happened?

Then he remembered and suddenly wished he could stay in bed all day. The fight. He had had a fight last night. Trying not to put any more weight he slowly got out of bed, he had a novel to write and no matter how muck he wished he could he couldn't stay in bed all day. First of all he'd make some coffee and then he'd start writing. If the wrist didn't get any better he'd have to go to a hospital but he hoped to avoid that. Hopefully his father would already have gone to work by now and he wouldn't even have to worry about him. It could actually turn out to be a liveable day…

"Good morning, son" a voice. Ellery visibly stiffened and then slowly turned his head to the voice's owner. His hopes had been crushed very effectively with those words.

"Dad", he said and tried to smile, "shouldn't you be at work?"

"It's Saturday", the old man said and gave his son a curious look. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah", Ellery said a little nervously, "is there any coffee?"

Inspector Queen narrowed his eyes at his son.

"Why do you act like you've done something wrong?" he asked and gave his son a piercing look.

"What do you mean?" Ellery said with shrill voice.

"Come here and sit down, son" the Inspector ordered. Ellery looked around himself, as if to find a way to escape, and then reluctantly sat down.

"Now tell me", his father ordered.

"Tell you what?" Ellery asked without meeting his fathers eyes.

"What you've done."

Ellery cursed mentally. Was he really that transparent? Maybe it was just the curse of having a cop as a father.

"Nothing" he said, trying to sound innocent.

"Ellery…"

The younger man winced. How he hated that tone. He looked up to the ceiling and put a thin hand to his face, playing with the still from sleep ruffled hair. How could he answer that? If he told his father he was in loads of trouble and if he didn't tell, well, he was still in loads of trouble.

"I'll count to three", Inspector Queen stated and caused Ellery to squirm even more.

"One…"

Ellery hesitantly bit his lip and scratched his head. His dad was seriously counting. Counting. Like Ellery was a five year old who was sulking and wouldn't do what he was told.

"Two…"

The old man was serious! He was really counting. Ellery licked his lips and took a deep breath. He had to face it, he wouldn't get away.

"All right, all right. I'll tell you", he said.

"Good boy", the Inspector said and gave his son a smile. Ellery just grimaced, that was far from what his father would think when he'd heard what he had to say.

"I was in a fight last night", Ellery nervously and quickly mumbled and then swiftly looked away, trying to hide himself by itching his head.

"You were what?!" the Inspector roared.

Ellery cringed and made a suffering grimace. Did his father have to use that tone? He was twenty-six for God's sake! Which unfortunately hadn't changed the fact that he was scared of his dad's anger…

"Fighting…" he whispered, still not looking at his dad.

"Fighting?" Inspector Queen said, a little calmer. "You were fighting…"

"Yes…" Ellery whispered and curled up, making himself as small as possible.

"You injured?" the Inspector asked sharply, allowing paternal worry to over-ride his anger for a moment.

"Not really…"

"What d'you mean, not really?"

"Well… I'm kind of bruised and I think I might have sprained a wrist…"

"You think?" Inspector Queen yelled. Ellery flinched and gave the old man a shame-faced look. He was actually sorry; his body ached in places all over and the fight had been so pointless. Of course, it hadn't seemed like a bad idea then, probably due to the many cocktails he'd had.

"I really am sorry", he said sincerely.

"I bet", the Inspector said gruffly, "At least tell me there was a good reason and you didn't just feel like doing some fist fighting?"

"Eh…" Ellery hesitantly looked away, "there kind of was…"

"There kind of was?"

"Well, it seemed like a good reason then!"

"You weren't, by any chance, drunk?" Inspector Queen, equal portions of sarcasm and anger in the voice. Ellery ignored the question and continued to study the ceiling. He was so dead.

"Ellery!"

"Possibly… maybe… a little?" he nervously looked up at his father and grimaced.

"Why the fight?" the Inspector relentlessly carried on with the interrogation.

"He was asking for it!" Ellery exclaimed.

"Really?" the small, and right now very scary, Inspector drawled.

"It's true, dad! He was mouthing off to everybody and was just… completely abnoxious."

"Sp you decided to beat him up a little?"

Ellery squirmed under the stern gaze that came along with the question.

"No!" he said, a little whiny, "it wasn't like that, dad! I just told him to go to hell and he got mad and pushed me, so I pushed back and he took a swing at me and before I knew it I had punched him in the face!"

"And..?"

"Well, we started to fight… Until we were pulled apart by a couple of people."

Ellery refused to look at his father and he was staring hard at the floor. He knew that he'd done the wrong thing but he didn't want to admit it. Inspector Queen was staring hard at his son, trying to judge how he felt.

"Look at me", he said sternly. Ellery continued looking at the floor, not daring to look up for what he might see.

"Ellery, look at me."

The voice contained a clear order and very reluctantly Ellery raised his eyes to meet his fathers stern gaze.

"I'm very disappointed in your behaviour" the old man said and Ellery felt his cheeks burn. He hated that word; disappointed. He didn't want to disappoint his father, he wanted to make him proud.

"You realise what's going to happen?"

"Yeah…" Ellery mumbled. He thought so at least. Damn.

I wasn't going to post this yet, it was only supposed to be a one-shot. But with my very convenient writer's block I can't seem to finish the next part so I decided to post this. The next part might take a while. So don't wait up! ;)

Now please review and make me a happy girl.