Work Text:
"Does it look bad?"
Tangerine almost started. It was the longest coherent sentence Lemon had spoken since he'd found him barely clinging to consciousness in the toilet of the Shinkansen – the rest had all been disjointed ramblings about coin lockers and schoolboys, and his codename mumbled over and over into his ear with increasing urgency as they snuck past Minegishi's men thanks to his impression of a mortified young salaryman escorting a drunk colleague home.
"We've seen worse," he said. Which, although technically true, didn't do any justice to the mess of bruised skin and ruptured blood vessels colouring his abdomen a sickly purple hue in the shadows of the back alley. "You can have a good look for yourself after we get out of here."
Lemon nodded. His brows were drawn together, forming a crease that just kept deepening with each shallow breath.
As it often happened when he spared him more than a passing glance, Tangerine had the uncanny feeling of standing before a funhouse mirror that, rather than making him taller, and larger, and twisting his figure with all sorts of cartoonish proportions, turned his reflection into a life-sized, three-dimensional game of spot the differences. Some more obvious than others, like the three buttons missing from Lemon's shirt where he'd all but torn it open in the haste to assess the damage, leaving it to hang loosely from his shoulders despite his best efforts to tuck it back into his slacks, or the specks of red on his collar from one of the kidnappers' parting gift, the same red Tangerine would have later found smeared across his suit as well. All the jostling and shaking had caused the gash to break open again, a fresh stream of blood trickling down the side of his face, dripping steadily from his jaw.
In a rare fit of solidarity – for his partner or for that distorted version of himself he saw in him he couldn't say – he produced a spare tissue from his pocket and made to wipe it off, only for his wrist to be caught in a surprisingly solid grip, a hair's breadth from his cheek. By the look in Lemon's eyes, he knew he had miscalculated. Tangerine braced for him to snap like the wounded animal he was, waited for the snarl, the insult that never came, biting his tongue to prevent any ill-advised words from escaping. They hung there, behind his gritted teeth. It's alright. Listen to me, it's alright, you're alright. Not just corny platitudes, but lies, too. Deceitful and patronizing. Lemon would have had all the rights to spit them into his face.
So he stood motionless, allowing him to gauge his intentions, process the unthreatening nature of the tissue in his hand and weigh it over the adrenaline coursing through his veins and beginning to override the drug in his system, screaming at him to fight back. His scowl softened somewhat, eventually, as did his hold, although his nails dug hard into his skin when he dabbed over the torn flesh, perhaps with less caution than warranted, leaving four tiny welts in a neat little row in their wake and unleashing a chain reaction that had them hissing in unison.
Rather than slipping it back into his pocket and further soiling his attire, Tangerine tossed the bloodstained tissue aside. All too late did he realise his mistake, one that had nothing to do with his non-existent environmental consciousness and everything to do with the object it ended up bouncing off of. Before he knew it, his gaze had followed its trajectory and fallen on the discarded vest lying on the ground with the single bullet still embedded inside. Warm bile surged in his throat.
"Told you I wasn't gonna go down easy," Lemon rasped, having sensed his discomfort, or perhaps just seen his mouth twitch, followed his eyeline, and drawn the only logical conclusion.
The weak, almost fragile quality of his voice, a far cry from the smug drawl that usually accompanied such boisterous remarks, rattled Tangerine's nerves more than the thought of the punishments their esteemed client might have in store for the unlucky bastards who'd managed to deprive him of an heir and sizeable chunk of his fortune both in one fell swoop. Not for the first time since boarding the damned train, he regretted never having summoned the patience to go further than the first chapter of the one medicine textbook he'd tackled in the early days of his career before moving on to more exciting reads. Even though he doubted it included a section titled How To Tell If Your Partner Is Bleeding Out On The Inside (And How To Break It To Him).
"You really shouldn't be talking, right now," he told him.
It was meant to be a harmless observation – a general piece of advice, even – but he must have used the wrong tone, because Lemon didn't hesitate to bite back. "And you should have stopped to poke at my ribs somewhere else. This place reeks."
Tangerine huffed through his nose, suppressing the urge to point out that his smell wasn't exactly pleasant, either, after his unwitting nap in a public bathroom. He knew it would only earn him a reminder that it wasn't a very nice thing to say about someone who's been watching your back for the past five years – or about anyone, really. Never mind that he was pretty sure he had run out of nice things to say at some point between Little Minegishi's death and the MM sticker incident in Sendai.
"Beggars can't be choosers. You'd better get used to it. I suspect we'll have a great deal of begging to do if we want to earn ourselves a relatively quick and painless demise," he took in the way Lemon sat slouched on the rusted fire escape, how his hand trembled as he pushed a sweat-damp lock from his face, and reasoned that for one of them, at least, it could hardly get more painful. Small mercy. "Besides, I don't remember you suggesting any alternatives."
"Well, that's because I was a little..."
"Delirious?"
"Busy," Lemon completed as if he hadn't heard him at all. His next breath was marked by a wince Tangerine pretended not to notice. "I was a little busy trying not to throw up on you. Easier said than done, believe me. But I knew if I ruined your jacket I'd never hear the end of it, so..."
The jarring familiarity of the last sentence, which he was sure he'd been addressed verbatim before, what seemed like lifetime ago, after the other man had nearly spilled his (rigorously soft) drink on him, brought a sombre smile to Tangerine's lips.
"Of course you were," was all he could muster without his voice edging towards dangerously shaky territory. He cleared his throat afterwards, just in case.
"Why, thanks Lemon! You're so thoughtful!" his partner said, treating him to his best impression of him by pitching up his natural inflection a fraction and adding an odd lilt Tangerine's sure as hell didn't have. "There, fixed it for you."
If he was well enough to get sarcastic, he was also well enough to walk, Tangerine decided. "We should get moving. Can you stand?"
By way of a response, Lemon stretched out his hand, palm up, for Tangerine to clasp tight into his own and use as leverage to pull him upright.
"I feel like this is a good time to confess that I don't know where we're going," he said as they emerged from the alley.
He had motioned for Lemon to wait while he peered around each corner to ensure the streets were still void of armed goons as they had been when he'd urged him inside, and had been relieved, if marginally so, to see that the sun starting to set meant less people strolling about, less witnesses on the sidewalks casting wary looks their way yet never daring to stop and offer their assistance.
Lemon remained silent for a while, maybe considering their options, maybe concentrating on the daunting task of putting one foot in front of the other. Then, with unshakeable conviction: "You'll figure something out."
"You could try that too, sometimes. Problem solving. I hear it's good for your brain."
"Wouldn't want to step on your toes. Thinking's your job," he replied matter-of-factly.
"And what would yours be? Wait, no. Let me guess... professional suitcase misplacer? I suppose there could be a market for it," Tangerine said, and simultaneously realised he might have been a touch too caustic. He wasn't even sure if the fact that his wits were mostly occupied ensuring neither he nor Lemon ended up diving face-first on the curb was an acceptable excuse.
Alright, scratch that – he had been too caustic. But it was the only way he knew how to keep reality from crashing down on him all at once, sending his composure together with his will to keep clinging tooth and nail to whatever meagre hopes they still had of survival down the gutter. If they dug at each other, and scoffed, and bickered throughout, he might just forget about Japan's most feared kingpin breathing down his neck and trick himself into believing that everything would turn out fine, like it always did, to hell with Russian novelists and their judgement of those who choose to deceive themselves.
Pressed up against his side, Lemon snorted. "Don't be ridiculous, that's not a real job. And for the record—"
A violent coughing fit culminating in a wheezing sound reminiscent of a strangled cat cut his reply short. And thwarted his following attempt, as well. He didn't bother with a third, letting Tangerine have the last word.
He couldn't remember having ever been less pleased about winning an argument.
It soon became apparent that Lemon's legs had no intention of collaborating. That, and that the arm Tangerine had looped around his waist to help him keep his balance might be doing him more harm than good. The too-vivid image of a possibly broken rib piercing something vital next time he prevented him from falling by tugging him closer, along with the pained little noises that came with it, persuaded Tangerine to ignore his partner's insistence that he could keep going, he could, just give him a minute, and steer him towards the first hotel that appeared around the corner – an old, run-down building whose façade had definitely seen better days. Not the accommodation Tangerine would have picked had he been any less desperate. But alas.
They would never know if the receptionist who came rushing from behind the counter upon seeing them stumble through the sliding doors intended to complain about their manners, the obvious bloodstains on their clothes, or the fact that they hardly resembled his usual clientèle; the instant he caught a glimpse of Tangerine's gun, empty but still tucked safely in its holster, his mouth snapped shut with so much force the sound of teeth clacking echoed through the hall. His entire frame shook as he handed over the key card to room 207. Obviously located on the second floor, no elevators. Obviously at the far end of a carpeted corridor that drained the last of Lemon's energies, leaving him with just about enough strength to take three steps beyond the threshold before collapsing on the bed.
Tangerine was right behind, already running on autopilot, arranging his following moves in order of priority. Lock the door, drag a chair over from the dining table and lodge the backrest under the handle, draw the blinds, get better acquainted with the room well on its way to becoming his personal hell by turning it upside down in search for anything and everything that could come in handy if, when, Minegishi's men would start gathering outside threatening to knock down the door. His final loot amounted to some used toiletries, a drawer full of dull cutlery, four metal coat hangers that could have been re-shaped into semi-decent improvised weapons in a world that didn't have semiautomatic firearms, and a powerful sense of impending doom bearing down on him.
Attempting to dispel it, he patted his jacket for the pack of cigarettes he'd swiped from a stall by the platform – missing. So was his lighter and the paperback he'd packed for the ride, twenty-four hours and a domino of catastrophes before, when he still believed he was about to embark into the most boring assignment of his career. Denied one last smoke and with no wise words to soothe his spirit, he shuffled up to the bed, grimacing when he felt his soles stick to the linoleum floor.
Under different circumstances, the sight of his partner sprawled sideways on an aggressively pink comforter, hair sticking every which way and long legs dangling over the edge, would have made for quite the amusing picture. He could have used a good laugh. What a pity, then, that his eyes kept straying, drawn by the bruises peeking from his unbuttoned shirt, the quiver at the corner of his mouth as he breathed in too deep and was swiftly punished for it.
Lemon cracked one eye open when the mattress dipped under his weight. "Do you still have him?"
Tangerine stared at him in confusion. Aggravated by his lack of prompt response, Lemon made what seemed like an inhuman effort to sit up and, just like that, he found himself on the receiving end of a very pointed look. The kind that tended to foreshadow an I'm-not-angry-I'm-disappointed speech, but that in the absence of paternal figures concerned about his teenage mischief enough to give him one, Tangerine had come to associate with the other man preparing to chastise him for being too slow on the uptake of his more cryptic cues.
"Arthur," he said. "I gave him to you, remember?"
A vague description resurfaced in Tangerine's mind. Shy and hard-working. Zero accidents. Right. "The one who got screwed over by Thomas?"
"Uh huh."
He reached into his back pocket, pulling out a crumpled slip of paper that, once smoothened out, revealed Lemon's drawing of a smiling locomotive. Well, perhaps it had been a smile. With how creased it was, now, it was much closer to a frown. That must have been the face he'd made when that little bastard Thomas had broken his record, too, Tangerine thought right before chiding himself for getting hung up on the character dynamics of a children's cartoon.
But not before musing out loud, "So much for a spotless record."
"I did say he got into one accident," Lemon pointed out. "Only one, though, and it's behind us. I bet things will start looking up soon."
Tangerine tried to return the drawing to him, but he pushed his hand away.
"You can keep him. I just wanted to make sure."
"You'll probably need him more than me," Tangerine replied, even as he slid it back into his pocket. He had no will to fight him on such trivial matters.
"It doesn't matter. As long as we stick together, it'll end up rubbing off on me too," the shadow of a grin, a proper grin, not constrained by an edge of suffering, hung over Lemon's features as he spoke.
"I guess it will."
"Unless you're planning to bail on me," he went on. "In that case, heh, a stroke of bad luck would be the least of my problems. Also, I can't promise he'd protect you from my inevitable revenge. I'd keep that in mind if I were you."
Tangerine's first instinct was to take refuge in outrage. It would have been easy. It would have been warranted. For all his faults and shortcomings, Lemon had never been a bad judge of character. Over the course of their collaboration, he'd proven to be nearly as adept at discerning people's true nature, allies, foes and targets alike, by what for most would have been a treacherous first impression as he was handling a switchblade. That he wouldn't deem him above letting his partner take the full brunt of a failure that had been his, as well, calling his professionalism into question, should have infuriated him. It didn't. Rather, it filled him with a strange kind of sadness, made of hunched shoulders and a bitter taste on his tongue instead of bared teeth and recriminations.
If only to prove him wrong, he compelled himself to hold his gaze while he imagined a universe in which he could bring himself to stand up, press his forehead against Lemon's one last time, then his lips in rightful order, muttering some pathetic excuse about procuring them something to eat, walking to the door, turning the lock, pulling it open then closed behind him and starting to run as soon as he stepped outside, fully conscious that Lemon's accusatory look would follow him to the streets below and to the ends of the Earth afterwards. Then he tried to imagine one in which he was able to execute each action without faltering once.
An exercise in futility.
"You," he stammered. "You're in pain. You're not thinking straight. Can't we talk about this some other time?"
The imaginary glare he'd pictured to accompany the realization that he was being left behind materialized on the very real Lemon beside him in place of his smile, erased without a trace. Its intensity had Tangerine fighting not to look away while Lemon considered him through narrowed eyes. He dissimulated the urge by rubbing his face, idly wishing he could as easily scrape away the wariness from his bones. Whatever conclusion his partner drew from his gesture told him he needed to elaborate, as he wet his lips like he was about to speak, but hesitated instead, choked back a curse and placed his palm on his stomach where the twinge that had cut his breath off had come from.
"It was a joke," he wheezed eventually. "The bit— the bit about you bailing on me."
It had been a while since Tangerine had last felt so stupid. A joke. Of fucking course it was.
When it occurred to him that he really should be saying something to clear the impasse, it was far too late to summon any semblance of eloquence. Even more so since he couldn't for the life of him think of anything other than how comical it was that he who took pride on the extension of his vocabulary and pestered his partner to broaden his to little avail would be parched for words when it mattered most, and how dramatic irony was much, much more appealing when it befell somebody else, preferably on a written page.
"I know," he lied, and attempted to make up for it by placing a hand on Lemon's knee, where he hoped it didn't hurt, squeezing it ever so lightly.
Part encouragement, a clumsy soothing gesture from a man who was more used to be intimidating than reassuring, part apology, because he was the one who doubted, and he'd been the one to insist they accept the job in the first place, dismissing his partner's objections about their client and his lack of trust, and he should have listened.
Lemon said nothing in return, just leaned against him. His cheek resting against his temple, bloody wound and all. It felt feverish against his skin, filled his nostrils with the smell of blood and sweat and something too sweet in his breath when he exhaled.
Tangerine chose to believe he understood.
Tangerine's phone buzzed to life, catapulting him awake.
Right hand flying to the weapon at his side, useless as it was, he blinked away the dark spots dancing before his eyes until he could make out his surroundings. The door was still locked, the windows bolted, no shattered glass or agitated yelling outside hinting towards an imminent break-in.
He didn't remember falling asleep. In fact, he clearly recalled telling Lemon to stay awake with him and being none too disappointed to see him promptly disregard his advice, lay down on his good side and begin snoring softly over the drone of the air conditioning he hadn't found a way to turn off, while he resigned to keeping watch alone. He'd paced for a bit, visited the bathroom to scrub his hands clean of dried blood and gunpowder, raided the mini fridge once he'd all of a sudden realised that his mouth had never been drier, and paced some more, casting the occasional preoccupied glance at the streets below through a slit between the curtains. As his movements had turned sluggish and his thoughts hazy, he'd resolved that it couldn't hurt to rest a minute, maybe two. Lemon was still breathing, though faintly, and so he'd toed his shoes off, hung his jacket over a chair, laid down beside him, and next thing he knew the repeated sound of an incoming call was banging against the walls of his skull.
"Just answer, already," Lemon groaned, saving him the mortifying ordeal of rehashing the performance he'd given on the Shinkansen by frantically pressing his fingers beneath his jaw whilst trying and failing to swallow an insistent lump in his throat in the interminable seconds it would have taken him to find his pulse.
"It'll be one of Minegishi's men demanding we come out and surrender so he can serve us to his boss on a silver platter," Tangerine said gloomily. "I'd rather not make it easier on him, if I can help it."
"Then tell him we made off to Okinawa with the ransom money and that they're more than welcome to come and get us, if they want to," though pain and exhaustion conspired against him to make it impossible to raise his voice above a whisper, his tone was that of when he thought he'd just made the funniest possible joke. With that, he brought an arm over his eyes to shield them from the first rays of sunlight filtering through the blinds.
Tangerine's chuckle came out more akin to a defeated sigh. If only.
The phone stopped ringing after the fifth chime. Only then did he fish it out of his pocket. The timer on the upper half of the screen marked 7:45 AM. Just above it, the red icon of not one, but several missed calls next to a familiar ID.
"I might need to take this one, after all."
"Send Minegishi my regards," he heard Lemon call out as he stood up and moved into the interconnected living groom.
He tapped the screen twice, then brought the phone to his ear.
"Tangerine," Momo's voice greeted him from the other end of the line. "What happened?"
He glanced at his partner from over his shoulder. He'd already fallen back to sleep. Or passed out again. It was just semantics, at this point.
"Lemon got shot," he exhaled into the receiver. After that, everything else poured out of its own accord, like he'd been holding back in wait for a sympathetic ear, or the closest approximation thereof. "He got into a scuffle with some kid and he fucking shot him. He says he was drugged, I'm not sure about the dynamics, I wasn't there when it happened, I... I wasn't there, but – look, it doesn't matter anymore. We lost the money and the hostage. We're cooped up in a hotel room in Morioka, don't know for how long we’ll be. Lemon is lucid, for now, but he can't really walk. I'm not even sure he understands the gravity of the situation. Maybe it's just as well. The more out of it he is when they come and get us the better."
"Wow," she said after a long stetch of silence that had Tangerine wondering if they'd been cut off. "That sounds like quite the story. I'm looking forward to hearing all the details in person. Oh, by the way, the collector's edition you ordered came in yesterday, so feel free to drop by whenever. But that's not what I meant," she went on with the characteristic lack of emotion of someone who knows getting attached to your customers, no matter how loyal, is terrible business practice in her field. "I mean what happened on the platform. I heard Minegishi's..."
The rest of the sentence came through garbled, unintelligible words intermixed with phone static.
"He's what?"
"Sorry about that, I still have to get this damn landline fixed. What was I saying? Ah, yes. Minegishi's dead. That's what I've gathered from the guys who visited last night while I was closing up shop, at least. Lots of complaints about not being paid, something something the client thinking he could withdraw from the contract by getting himself killed. Seems like even his lieutenants dropped off the radar. Some claim the Hornet is back in business, which frankly I find a bit hard to believe."
She proceeded to detail her theory about how people in the industry were not unlike rabid music fans obsessed with their idols, ready to fall for any rumour claiming their favourite artist is planning a surprise comeback after years of retirement even when all clues seem to be pointing in the opposite direction, but Tangerine had stopped listening, could hardly grasp what she was saying over the sound of his own long, incredulous breath of relief.
"Tangerine, honey, are you still there?"
"Yes. Yes, I... could you do me a favour?"
He could practically hear the laughter in her voice when she replied, "Favours don't pay rent, honey. You know that better than I do."
"A special price, then," he tried. "For a good friend?"
"I'll see what I can do."
About an hour after he hung up, the back-alley doctor who'd introduced herself as Momo's third cousin twice removed, or second cousin thrice removed, he couldn't be bothered to keep track of that, honestly, determined Lemon had only suffered a cracked rib (diagnosis: "extremely painful, but not life-threatening") and a nasty concussion ("concussion-induced coma is a myth, let him rest if he can"). She stitched his cheek up, traded a bagful of painkillers for what little cash Tangerine still had on him, and made herself scarce as hastily as she had arrived – but not before pulling him aside to instruct him on the proper dosage for each medication, going over them multiple times until he was able to recite them by heart. If he thought it unnecessary, at first, he was forced to reconsider as he saw Lemon's gaze turn ravenous whenever the pills entered his field of vision, no matter how loudly he'd proclaimed that he could go without.
A week later, Tangerine picked up his suit from his trusted dry cleaners and was positively surprised to find that they had managed to scrub off the blood without damaging the stitchwork. It was the only detour he took on his way home to a rather disgruntled Lemon, who he found exactly where he had left him: spread out on the couch, channel-hopping between a 70s action movie and the 24h news channel broadcasting a special on rising crime rates in central Japan, bored out of his mind and not afraid to hassle him about it. Tangerine marked it down as a significant improvement from how, a few days prior, he'd spent the entire bus ride back to the capital gazing outside the window in complete silence, white as a sheet. The effort of covering the last half a mile separating the station from their safe house on foot had left him so nauseous he'd had to sit on the floor with his head between his legs for a while, lest he made a mess of the carpet. He'd sworn up and down the shitty gas station food was to blame, a claim which might have been more credible had Tangerine never witnessed him shovel down far less appetizing meals and carry on unaffected. They argued over dinner, then some more over the ifs and whens of taking on new assignments, coming to a mutually satisfying compromise about the former but never reaching a definitive consensus on the latter. And then, resolving the least he could do to make his recovery more bearable was to offer a diversion, Tangerine curled up against Lemon on the couch, careful to slot his knees and elbows and other sharp edges where they couldn't cause him further discomfort, and ghosted his fingertips over a patch of bare skin just above the hem of his sweatpants, teasing the possibility of inching lower still but not delivering, not until Lemon leaned fully into him, lips brushing his neck as he muttered something that sounded a lot like a finally.
Three weeks more and the bruises on Lemon's midriff had faded to faint, discoloured imprints. Which didn't stop him from using them as an all-purpose excuse to weasel his way out of any tedious task Tangerine dared suggest he was now strong enough to carry out, affecting a sudden stab of pain so excruciating he couldn't possibly be expected to walk, let alone go about town running errands, have some compassion! Reminding him that he hadn't seemed to have any trouble kicking a man's teeth in earlier the same day was, naturally, useless.
By the end of the month, the only tangible reminder of the Shinkansen was a crooked L-shaped scar that cut through Lemon's cheek, giving his resting expression an air as sour as his namesake. Much to Tangerine's astonishment, he took it in stride, suggesting he got a matching one, too, for his initial and offering to carve it himself as some strange bonding ritual of sorts. Tangerine was unable to tell whether he was messing with him or not. He shut him down either way.
It wasn't until autumn turned into an exceptionally cold winter that the Twins wound up making preparations for their first night back on the job at a busy supermarket in Urushigahara.
"I see what you mean, but working in our field is not an excuse to walk all over our colleagues," Tangerine was saying as they took their place in line next to a little girl who kept shooting him and his partner curious looks from behind her father's back. It was hard to tell if she was scared, intrigued, or just longing for the Thomas and Friends themed lunchbox Lemon had picked from the gadget aisle. "There's an etiquette, first come first served. It's been like that since—"
Lemon nudged him halfway through his tirade. "Look who's here."
Tilting his head, Tangerine glanced over to where his partner had gestured and, indeed, a few customers ahead of them was a very familiar pair of black thick-rimmed glasses perched on a very familiar face. The guy seemed to be talking to someone he couldn't quite see from his position, obscured as they were from a young couple's cart overflowing with dog food. But he did see the small mayhem caused by his arrival in front of the register. His attempt to pay for his groceries was met with a sudden malfunction sending several dozen coins skittering across the floor and the cashier attending to him in a fit of panic.
"I hate to give it to him, but he's pretty talented," Lemon said. "It has to be a talent, right? Wouldn't know how else to describe it."
"More talented than we thought if he made it out of the train alive," mused Tangerine. "Without a friend to help him, either."
"Perhaps he made one along the way," the other man observed, squinting behind the shades he claimed were a staple accessory for anyone wishing not to attract attention during a stakeout, as though trying to place their acquaintance's mysterious companion.
Tangerine's eyes remained fixed on Ladybug. He must have set his jaw without realising, or maybe flexed his fingers in a tell-tale way that had never, could never escape Lemon's notice, not even when his attention was focussed elsewhere.
"You're still pissed at him."
It wasn't a question.
During the worst of his recovery, Tangerine had missed many things about working side by side with him. His penchant for underlying the obvious for maximum irritating effect wasn't among them.
"You would be too, if he tried to strangle you minutes after begging for a ceasefire."
"Probably, yeah," Lemon admitted. "But that's not all, is it? You're pissed about the suitcase."
"He was hired to do a job, same as we did."
"Sure, but one half of the Hornet is dead, allegedly, the other is MIA, so is the little Diesel, and from the face you make every time the subject is brought up I can only assume you're uncomfortable blaming my," the following words were accompanied by air quotes. "Careless disposition after what happened. You need a target for your frustration, and he was the perfect scapegoat right from the start."
Tangerine had long stopped being surprised by his partner's ability to read him like the well-worn comics heaped on his nightstand. Otherwise, he would have been blinking back at him, mouth agape after hearing him put into words the innermost machinations of his mind.
"Tell me you're not dying to rough him up a little," he retorted instead.
"Mh. I don't feel like listening to Dostoevskji's opinion about lying for the millionth time, so I won't," Lemon said candidly. "Lie, I mean."
"It's Tolstoj."
"Huh?"
"The quote you're thinking of – anything is better than lies and deceit. It's Tolstoj. Anna Karenina."
"Whatever. Shall we wait for him outside?"
While he contemplated his proposition, Tangerine relished for a moment in the mental image of Ladybug's face turning an increasingly alarming shade of purple the more his fingers constricted around his neck. Would it make him feel any better? If in the days following the incident that had dealt a severe blow to their career, not to mention to Tangerine's own sanity, his answer would have been a decisive yes, he was somewhat annoyed to discover it had mellowed into a fairly inconclusive maybe.
He shook his head. "We have work to do. Maybe next time."
They changed line, in the end, so that in a matter of seconds rather than hours they were already in the process of paying for their purchase. The short-haired woman in the cashier's uniform didn't bat an eye at the metal wire, disposable gloves and ziplock ties dissimulated among assorted snacks and shampoo bottles.
"Thank you for shopping with us! Do you need a bag for your—" she never got to to finish her rehearsed speech.
"Hold on," Lemon cut in, unceremoniously slipping his hand in Tangerine's pocket. "Is the giveaway still open?"
Without waiting for a response, he placed the ticked he'd retrieved on the counter. Arthur's creased frown didn't look nearly as grim as it had last time Tangerine had been confronted by it. If anything, it seemed kind of defiant.
"Congratulations, sir!" the cashier exclaimed after examining the contents of the plastic ball the ticket was exchanged for. "First prize, no less! It must be your lucky day," she pulled a sealed envelope from somewhere under the register. "Here's your coupon. It can be redeemed at the travel agency next door for two plane tickets for any destination within the country and an all-inclusive stay at a resort of your choosing. All the instructions are inside."
"What?"
"Two?"
Tangerine and Lemon chimed in at the same time.
"The ad said only one ticket, right? That was a mistake," she went on explaining. "We meant to fix it, but by the time we realized we had already printed all the fliers and posters, so we decided to spare ourselves the trouble and just inform the winner when they turned up. It makes for a nice surprise, doesn't it?"
A little dazed under the confetti rain that exploded around them to celebrate their victory, Tangerine turned towards his partner, who flashed him the toothy smile of someone who had, quite literally, just won the lottery.