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People got a sense of humor, right? They like picking perfect little dates for jobs. Requests for things to happen on birthdays, holidays, anniversaries. A little spit in the face of someone who thought maybe they were going to have a good day. Thing is, everyone knows in the business that killing someone in the middle of a divorce on their anniversary is going to look suspicious. That’s why a person’s got to do it right. Make it look like an accident or make it obvious that they’re a stranger killing someone and not a hitman for hire.
Tangerine doesn’t really care much for holidays. When he and Lemon decided to stop taking jobs on them it was more because of the traffic and the annoyance of it than anything else. That, and people rarely listened when they said that any other day than a special date was better for a killing. It wasn’t a rule that they couldn’t take the jobs, just whether or not the payment was worth it.
The one holiday that always won out?
Fucking Valentine’s Day.
Vengeful exes or unsatisfied spouses or black widows looking for a way out of their situation. It wasn’t just the money. They’re one off jobs. Not messing around with big mobs or annoying gangs. No meddling in drug rings. Just get in and get out. Simple as that. Those are the ones they always preferred. Not like fucking Bolivia, apparently.
And it’s not like Tangerine had anyone that he spent the holiday with. It’s not really like he spent the holidays with anyone but Lemon anyway. Not until now.
They don’t always share a bed. Tangerine’s a light sleeper. Even just his dreams can do it, when they push him too far into the realm of violence instead of giving him a little bit of reprieve like he had wanted. And then he’s awake. Stuck there wide eyed and annoyed for hours on end until he can finally sleep again. And it’s just easier sometimes when Kostya isn’t there.
Then he doesn’t have to worry if he woke Kostya up with his tossing and turning. Or if he was mumbling in his sleep again. And having to explain that. Again.
Sometimes it’s not, though. Of course. Sometimes it’s nice to wake up with the arms wrapped around his waist and know that he’s not alone. He always goes to sleep before Kostya does, and he’s gotten better at sneaking into Tangerine’s bed without waking him. And it's a bit of a nice visual, aint it? Waking up in the middle of the night, a little disoriented and with his fists clenched, knowing that Kostya tiptoed from the couch down the hall and into Tangerine’s bed, just to lay here. Just to hold him.
And then Tangerine can feel cold palms pressed against his stomach or resting on his chest or the feeling of a face buried into the crook of his neck. He can trace the tattoos that Kostya keeps hidden underneath his sweatshirts. Really properly look at the birds and the flowers creeping around on his skin. Like tiger stripes in the dark.
So sometimes it’s better.
And sometimes it’s all just a bit too much. Just holding him. Or being held. Sometimes it’s too much. And Tangerine feels like he’s going to break.
So Tangerine doesn’t really know what he wants.
But when he wakes up this morning to his alarm going off, he knows all he really would like is to stay in bed for a little bit longer. But Lemon is expecting him and he’s got a flight to catch. He’s got no choice but to get up and get ready. It’d almost be easier if it had been a bad night.
He twists in the bed, fumbling in the dark light. The sun won’t be coming up for another few hours, his windows blocked with thick curtains to keep the city lights at bay.
“Kostya,” he whispers.
He doesn’t stir. Guy could sleep through fucking anything. It’s annoying, but it makes slipping out of bed easy. He goes about getting ready, stopping by the edge of the bed to see if Kostya will wake up after every few steps. His teeth brushed, hair carefully put into place, phone pocketed, luggage double checked.
Nothing.
Well, he let him sleep long enough, didn’t he?
“Wake up,” he says, hitting him a little harder. “Konstantin. Wake the fuck up.”
He barely even stirs.
“Don’t know why your daddy was so hellbent on killing you. You sleep so much you’re practically dead already.”
“Shut up,” he mutters.
Oh, so that’s what gets him?
“I’m leaving. You gotta say goodbye to me or I’m going to think you’re just using me for sex.”
“I am using you for sex.”
“Can you pretend for a minute you aren’t?”
Kostya rolls over to face him, his sleepy eyes barely open. “It is five in morning.”
“Yeah, I know. And my flight is in an hour,” Tangerine says. He reaches out and brushes Kostya’s hair out of his face. “I’ll be gone for a few days.”
“You told me.”
He seems grumpier than usual. Tangerine sighs and leans forward, kissing him gently.
“Go back to sleep. I’ll see you then.”
Tangerine stands to leave, but Kostya grabs at his shirt, tugging him back over to the bed.
“One more,” he mumbles.
Of course.
Tangerine leans down and kisses him one more time. Not so quick this time. Kostya’s hand in his hair, holding him like it’s a threat.
“Miss me?”
“I make no promises,” Kostya replies. He pushes Tangerine away before pulling the blankets back around him.
Already snoring before Tangerine’s even standing upright.
“Miss him already?” Lemon asks.
Tangerine scoffs. “No.”
“You keep checking your phone.”
He pockets it, eyeing Lemon. “Don’t you have something better you could be doing? Like reading the briefing?”
“Don’t need to.”
“And why’s that?”
“Got you, don’t I?” Lemon replies. “He’ll be fine, you know.”
“Of course I know that. Why don’t you mind your fuckin’ business?”
“Just a bit hard when your eyes have turned into hearts. Didn’t even think that was possible. Kind of embarrassing, mate. Should get that checked out. It could throw our cover, even.”
“Fuck off,” Tangerine checks his watch. When is the plane going to start boarding and free him from this shit?
“Think it will last?”
Tangerine looks over at him. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Playing house with your little boyfriend. Do you think it’ll last?”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Girlfriend, then.”
“Lemon. That’s not even funny.”
“What do you call him?”
“Kostya.”
Lemon sucks a breath in between his teeth, nodding sagely. “Spells trouble if you ask me.”
What else is Tangerine supposed to call him? Even with the way Lemon said it— boyfriend— it sounded so unserious. Which Kostya is. Unserious. But serious. It can be both. It’s not like a real relationship. It is, but it isn’t.
It makes all the sense to Tangerine, and isn’t that the only person that it matters to?
The job is easy.
Most of these are. Just people trying to get back at loved ones in a poetic way. Owner of a restaurant wants her husband dead. Caught him cheating with one of the staff members. She felt bad for the girl at first. Thought she was conned into it somehow. And maybe she was. But when money was put on the table, it didn’t really feel very fair, did it? Nothing against the girl, she had assured them, but the husband’s got to die before their divorce is finalized.
Tangerine’s not really sure how much of the money really matters to her. It’s a factor in these things, of course. Money always is. But sometimes it’s just about killing someone. Even if they get caught, at least they won that bit, didn’t they? At least the bastard’s dead. Doesn’t matter what scars are made in the process. Tangerine can look at his own and say the exact same shit.
They plan to make it look like a robbery. The man’s supposed to be working that night. They can come in, kill him, maybe break some shit, take some money, a bit of equipment, and go. If anyone else is there, they just get caught in the crossfire. Metaphorically speaking. Tangerine’s in the business of killing but not in the business of killing random strangers if he doesn’t need to. They’ve got to have some decorum, don’t they?
The important bit is to make sure the cameras catch two people robbing the place. Make it as believable as possible so police don’t go looking for more information and find some money missing from the woman’s bank account.
Then she’ll just be considered lucky, just a bit.
“Are you coming or what?”
Tangerine crushes the last bit of his cigarette underneath his shoe as he puts his phone away. “Yeah, yeah.”
There are some memories that are like they’re stuck on fast-forward. Like there’s nothing a person can do to slow them down and remember all the little details. It’s not fragmented. Kostya remembers every bit of it. But he can’t stop it. He can’t pull it back. He can’t savor it.
Tangerine is like that.
Like he is too fast. Too quick. A blur that is here one minute and gone the next. Even when he isn’t physically gone, even when he is in the other room, even when they are laying in the dark next to each other and Kostya can feel his heart beating underneath his hand, it is like it’s going too quickly. Like he can’t hold onto it.
His mother was like that, too.
They are nothing alike, the two of them. Kostya would sooner cut his own heart out than admit that Tangerine shares more likeness with his father than his mother, so he won’t. But his mother? Tangerine? They are both the kind of people that burn too bright and too fast. Just looking at them and someone would know that there is not enough time in the world to spend with them.
On the contrary, Kostya feels like he is stuck on pause. He has done nothing since he came here to stay with Tangerine. He hadn’t even intended to stay. One night turned into a week turned into a month turned into a kiss turned into sex turned into never leaving, never wanting to go anywhere.
He is quite useless. Kostya knows that.
He’ll figure it out. How to be better. It was always his intention to fix that. To be worth keeping around.
Kostya leans over the edge of the tub, staring down at the bathroom tiles. The rug left askew, the toothbrush missing from the cup. The door left open like Tangerine will reappear around the corner, tell Kostya that he decided to stay. Like he could know. Like he could feel it--that right now, Kostya would like to not be alone.
He has never done it before. Tangerine is not a man of romantic gestures, though Kostya wouldn’t think of it as a romantic gesture at all. Not when it’s something he wants this deeply. For Tangerine to be in the tub behind him, the water growing cold around the both of them, his hands combing through his hair.
He’s not lonely.
Just grieving. Just guilty.
They’re good at their jobs, but there’s things they can’t plan for.
Like some dickhead that thinks he can be a hero and save the few other people in the restaurant. Tangerine wasn’t going to touch them. Was just scaring them, yeah? Keeping them corralled into one space. Yelling a bit. Waiting on fuckin’ Lemon to finish grabbing whatever he wants to grab.
All in all, it works a little bit better this way. Having the guy they’re meant to kill try and tackle Tangerine to the ground. He just wasn’t planning on getting hit in the face that hard. More power behind the fist than he was expecting. His nose pops and blood streams down his face as he pushes the guy off. He was just supposed to shoot him. It’d be cleaner that way, but he’s a bit annoyed.
So maybe he punched him back a few too many times. Maybe he grabbed him by his hair and slammed his face into the granite floor. This fancy little joint completely decimated by the smattering of blood and bone on the ground.
“Bit much,” Lemon says, almost like he’s disappointed.
Tangerine pulls his mask up, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. It only makes it hurt worse, only makes the bleeding keep spilling down his lips.
“You got everything?”
“Got enough. We go?”
Tangerine nods. “We go.”
Kostya does not like sleeping alone.
He gets used to a body next to his. Had spent quite a bit of his life crawling from one bed to the next. Finding strangers for comfort. There is always someone willing to let him sleep beside them.
Tangerine is not here, so he lays in the bed. Pulls the comforter around him. Not tired but not willing to keep his eyes open any longer. It still smells like his cologne. Tangerine uses too much of it. Has practically doused the apartment in it.
It is almost like he’s here.
But it’s not the comfort Kostya would like.
He is thinking of nursery rhymes and old recipes and stories about his grandparents. He’s thinking of the way Japanese sounds on his lips, of being taught all the things he wants to remember that get lost in all of the things he can’t forget. He thinks of his mother’s hands. Counting numbers on her fingers, of rolling out dough, of flipping through pages. He thinks about plaiting his little sister’s hair. He thinks about Russian winters and cherry blossoms and ice and bone and blood and burnt flesh.
He thinks about the phone in his hand.
He thinks about her promise.
He thinks about Tangerine.
Miss me?
“You sound like shit,” Kostya says.
Tangerine leans back against the truck, watching the cars pass by on the highway in the distance. Waiting on Lemon again in the gas station. Sun’s starting to rise, but Tangerine’s not quite willing to let it be the next day yet. Not when he hasn’t had a chance to sleep. Doesn’t count if he doesn’t sleep.
His hand still fucking hurts.
He keeps thinking he sees blood in the face of the watch.
“I’m fine.”
“Are you?”
“’Course I am. You don’t have faith in me?”
“I have faith that you will get into trouble.”
“Could say the same thing about you.” Tangerine kicks a chunk of ice off the back wheel. “I’ve got another job tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“I’ll be back on Friday.”
Kostya hisses and swears. There’s a clatter on the other end of the line.
“Look, you don’t need to throw a fit about it. It’s only two days.”
“I burnt myself. I couldn’t care less about when you come back. Next week or next year. Do whatever you want.”
He’s annoyed. He’s like a child when he gets upset. Won’t ever outright say anything. Just pouts.
“You burnt yourself?” Tangerine asks. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Making kartoshka. Or trying. I apparently cannot bake for shit.” There’s another clatter. This time it sounds more intentional. “It was nice thought.”
“You’re not ruining my kitchen, are you?”
“Your kitchen is fine. I’m cleaning up after myself. Trust.”
“Yeah, alright,” Tangerine sighs. “What is kartoshka?”
“It’s a dessert. My mother used to make it. It was passed through family. You can use biscuits but it isn’t right, it needs to be made with cake,” he says. “I cannot bake cake. Not like she did.”
“The craving just hit you or something?”
Kostya makes a small noise. A cross between a laugh, maybe, and a whimper. “There are things you do when you don’t feel so good, yes? This is one. She would—she didn’t have to. Not after she married my father, you know. He had money. Kartoshka cake is thought of for the poor. But that’s what she grew up with. That’s what she taught me. But she made it when she was missing her mother. She would tell me stories about her.”
“Do you miss your mum?”
“Of course I do.”
“Do you want to tell me any stories about her while you fuck up my kitchen?”
“You have to go,” Kostya says.
“Who knows how long I’ve got to wait on Lemon for? I have time to kill. Tell me about her.”
Kostya is quiet for a long moment before he sighs. “Not tonight, vozlyublennyy.”
“You gonna tell me what that means?”
“Idiot,” he replies. “Friday?”
“Friday. Around six in the afternoon.”
“Good. I will see you then.”
“Kostya—” he says quickly. “Be—Be careful, alright? With the stove. Don’t burn yourself again.”
Tangerine doesn’t need to know Russian to know that Kostya, when he speaks in it, is telling him to shut up. Not to worry, of course. Tangerine wasn’t worried. He just doesn’t want him hurt. There’s a difference.
“Just don’t miss your flight.”
He hangs up the phone and it takes quite a bit of effort not to throw it. Kostya doesn’t know why he is so angry about it. About the phone call. About hearing Tangerine’s voice sound all strange and muffled. At hearing the sounds of speeding cars and howling wind and knowing that it is so much colder where Tangerine is at right now.
He doesn’t have a good coat. He thinks he is too good for a real, proper coat. He is too concerned with packing his hair gel and his stupid cologne to think about properly warm socks and gloves and a scarf.
Tangerine is going to get sick, and who’s going to have to deal with him then? Not Lemon. Lemon doesn’t live here. He visits often enough that there is no point in them having separate places, but whenever Tangerine has even sneezed, Lemon has excused himself and stayed away for three days before he felt like it was safe to come back.
So Kostya will be the one to get sick, because he will be the one dealing with Tangerine acting like a baby with his stuffy nose and his sore throat. And he’ll have to fend off his stupid hands and his snotty kisses because Tangerine doesn’t know how to keep to himself. And then he’ll get sick and Tangerine will have the gall to complain about Kostya’s pouting again.
And the cake is shit.
That, too.
Kostya grabs the pan and tosses it into the sink, kicking the stove while he’s at it.
It’s just not fair.
He can’t cook and he can’t bake. And Lemon isn’t here. And Tangerine is gone. And his sister is dead. His mother is dead. His father is dead.
And Kostya is alone.
They get a hotel halfway down the coast towards their next job. They’ve got plenty of time to get there, but Tangerine’s sitting at the edge of the bed, trying to do the math for when Kostya will be awake when they stop next.
He’s always up late. Watching something or reading one of Tangerine’s books. He goes on walks, too. Wanders around the city, even late at night. Still acting like he’s the son of The White Death halfway across the world. Like he’s untouchable. He’s lucky to even be alive.
“You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?”
“What? No.”
“You’ve been out of it this entire trip,” Lemon says. “What’s your problem? You need to pay attention. We’ve got jobs to finish up and you’re in fucking La La Land over there daydreaming.”
“I’m not daydreaming.”
“But you are thinking about him. You’re a wreck.”
“What the fuck do you want from me?”
“I want to know why this is so different from the last twenty jobs we’ve taken. You left him before. You’ve left other people, too. Why are you distracted this time?”
Tangerine scoffs. “I’m not distracted.”
“That idiot almost broke your fucking nose, Tangerine. He could’ve done a lot worse.”
Sure he could’ve. Maybe Tangerine could’ve even been killed. Anything could have happened. But that’s always been true. They make mistakes. They’re good at their job, but they’re human.
“Do you love him or something?”
“Shut the fuck up, Lemon.”
The second job is cleaner than the first.
They mostly do killings, but around Valentine’s Day, they take just about any job they feel like doing. Especially the easy ones. Then they can sit back and wait out the rest of the winter while the world thaws.
So when a widow asks them to sneak into his in-laws place and steal a ring from a jewelry box that belonged to his grandmother, they agree. No reason not to. They have a fake to replace it with, but he wanted the real thing for himself. It was his. Not his fault his wife died.
Or maybe it was. They didn’t ask questions. Not part of the job.
The in-laws are at a fancy restaurant out of town. The security system is easy to bypass. The ring is just sitting on the dresser, next to a nice set of pearl earrings.
“You know,” Lemon says, retrieving the fake one from his pocket. “You could give that to your boy. Since you’re in love and everything. Might as well marry him. Then we can tell Ol’ Jack that his ring was just missing. What’s he going to say?”
“He’s going to say ‘you’re not getting paid if I don’t get my fucking ring back’,” Tangerine replies. “Why are you convinced I’m in love? What’s your problem? Don’t you have trains to think about? Or was the last Thomas episode actually some Rule 34 shit you watched and now you’re all obsessed with sex and marriage?”
“Didn’t say nothin’ about sex. You’re disgusting.”
“You’re the one looking at porn of trains getting, pun intended, railed .”
“Am not,” Lemon drops the ring and moves away from him. “Just, I know that look.”
“What look?”
“When you’re in trouble and you don’t know what to do about it.”
“I should’ve taken this job without you,” Tangerine says. “Nothin’ that’s happened here have I needed you for. You’re just being annoying.”
“Come on—”
“Lemon,” he says carefully. “I know you don’t give a shit about this. Stop pretending you do.”
“I don’t give a shit about him. But you are my brother. Just want you to be happy, that’s all. That a crime?”
“Might be the most criminal thing you’ve done.”
“So,” Lemon says. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Love him.”
Love him?
Kostya is almost as annoying as Lemon is right now. He’s frustrating to be around. He’s always sleeping, it seems. Or he’s clinging onto Tangerine. Like he’s spent so long not having that kind of affection he has to make up for all of it in the few months they’ve been together. If they’re even together.
They hadn’t really talked about it. Their first kiss felt like an accident. Sleeping together felt like they were trying to kill time. And then it didn’t. But when Tangerine leaves, Kostya still grabs him by the sleeve and kisses him and pretends like he didn’t and waves him off. He doesn’t say goodbye. Neither of them really do, not in the way that people should.
But Tangerine’s place isn’t as quiet as it was before. And when Kostya laughs, so does he. And when he smiles, so does Tangerine. He gets called insults in Russian and it feels like he’s always supposed to have been called moy lyubimyy or dusha moya. Like Tangerine was waiting for it. For this other shoe to drop. For someone to be sitting on his couch when he comes home and to tell him about the book they read, about the walk they took around the block, about the annoying neighbors and the stupid news and at night, to tell him about the dream they had when they woke up before dawn and couldn’t fall back asleep. Someone to watch the snowfall with and be told stories about being a child, jumping from Russia to Japan to Italy to France and back again.
Someone who didn’t have a home in the same way that Tangerine doesn’t have a home.
So does he love him?
Does he love any of that?
Of course he does.
But does he love him?
“I’m not the kind of person that falls in love, Lemon. You know that. The job doesn’t allow for it.”
“Alright. Fine. But is he?”
Oh.
That’s what all this is about. Lemon said it before and Tangerine wasn’t paying attention. He’s not trying to get to the bottom of their relationship because he gives a shit about the two of them being together. He just wants to know how dangerous it is. If they’ll break up, if it’ll be over and Tangerine will be fucked up again.
Or if he’ll die. If Kostya will die.
What would that do to him?
“It’s not going to happen again,” he says quietly. “Alright? I’ve got it.”
“Then you need to be on the same page.”
Kostya sits at the window in the bedroom, looking down at the streets below. It’s been snowing the last two days, and it's supposed to snow more. He watches the snowplows clear the street, depositing neat piles on the side of the road at the bend. All crowded around a few bare trees. He was sort of hoping the storm would mesmerize him enough to make him fall asleep and it hasn’t.
It’s a sort of sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, this late. This early. Whichever category 4:39 falls into. He hasn’t been sleeping.
Tomorrow would have been his mother’s birthday. She would have been turning fifty-seven.
It has always been better for him to grieve alone. There has never been a good outcome from someone seeing him upset. People always try to press the tears out of him and then when they spill, they look away as if he has cut himself open.
He keeps remembering the cake he made for her last birthday. It was lopsided and all wrong. It fell apart when he tried to stack the layers on top of each other. So uneven that by the time it made its way to the table in front of her, it collapsed completely. She helped him scrape the icing off, helped him turn the pieces that were left into kartoshka. They ate them and watched fireworks that his father had set up for her. He had wanted to cry then, and only then. With the bright colors illuminating the sky, crackling and exploding above them in rainbows. He didn’t really know why.
His breath is fogging up the window, so he leans back, goes to wipe away to look back out at the few people starting to spill out onto the streets. Starting work days or getting back from wherever they had been.
But instead, he draws.
He’s not so good at it. Better with a pen and paper.
It makes him feel a little bit better.
His nose hurts worse today. Not broken, but a little swollen. The bruising makes it look worse than it is. Makes him keep touching it every time he catches himself in the mirror, like he can take it away if he’s careful enough with it.
Beside him, his phone buzzes. He’s expecting a text from Lemon. They’re headed to Idaho in two separate cars. Best to sometimes travel alone. Harder for the pair to be tracked that way, though, like Tangerine has said, they’re good at their jobs. Got enough money to pay off police anywhere they go, plenty of passports to get through security without getting caught, and safehouses in every country when they need to lie low.
But when he picks up his phone, it’s not Lemon. It’s Kostya. A picture sent to him of a shoddy drawing of a stick figure on their bedroom window, overlooking the dark wintry streets.
He picks the phone up, dialing him back.
“The fuck are you doing awake?”
“You didn’t like my picture?”
“No. What is that even supposed to be? Looks like a sasquatch.”
“It’s you,” Kostya says. “I was lonely. I needed company.”
“That does not look like me.”
“Agree to disagree.”
Tangerine sighs. “What are you doing awake? Isn’t it like six in the morning there?”
“Closer to five.”
“Still.”
There’s a rustle of movement, the phone propped up closer to Kostya’s face. “I am in bed now.”
“You’re ignoring my question, darling.”
“I can’t sleep. I thought it was obvious.”
“Yeah, well…” he trails off. He doesn’t even know why he called him. This didn’t have to be a phone call. Just—
Nice. To hear his voice.
“Something happen?” Tangerine says quietly.
“Not yet. Or a long time ago, maybe.”
“The fuck does that mean?”
Kostya laughs. It’s a bit lost. “Tomorrow is my mother’s birthday. And I am alone.”
“Did you try making your cake again?”
“No. I broke a bowl. It was a very upsetting experience.”
“You ruined my kitchen,” Tangerine tsks. “I knew I should’ve hired someone to watch over you. You’re a menace. You can’t be trusted.”
“Tangerine.”
“Not a time for jokes? Because I wasn’t even joking. I was being dead serious. I could’ve—”
“Tangerine,” he repeats. “Kak vy pozhivayete?”
“I’m fine.”
“You do not sound fine. You still sound horrible. What happened?”
“Just a bit of congestion is all that is. You know you’re changing the subject, yeah? Just when you were starting to get all vulnerable with me.”
“You were making jokes. All figli-migli. No return, moy durak.”
“I feel like you’re making the situation worse,” Tangerine replies. He leaves the sink, dropping down onto the edge of the bed, kicking off his shoes as he speaks. “You want me to be vulnerable with you? Over the phone? Is that how romance works these days?”
“Romance!” Kostya laughs. “You do not know romance. You are sex fiend.”
“I am a completely normal complex human being that just happens—” he sighs, waves it off like Kostya is here to see him dispel the words away from him. “What use do you have for romance anyway?”
“You brought it up. Is that your vulnerability? Your romance?”
Do you love him?
Tangerine bites his bottom lip. Feels all the enjoyment he was getting out of this leave him. Not that there was much to begin with. Not when Kostya dropped his my dead mom has a birthday tomorrow on him. Tangerine didn’t even clarify which tomorrow it was. His or Kostya’s? Kostya is in Wales. Sitting in Tangerine’s tiny flat. Laying in his bed.
He wishes he was there. He could ignore Kostya’s question. He could kiss him. He could reach up underneath his shirt and press all the parts on his body that makes Kostya’s mind go blank and forces out a laugh and asks for more.
But he’s not. Tangerine is here . A fucking thousand miles away.
“Tangerine?”
“It’s fucked,” he says quietly. “That you don’t get it from me. You know that?”
“Are you drunk, malen'kiy fruktov?”
“Well now look who’s making fucking jokes. I’m being serious here. You got me being serious and now you’re doing what I did to you.”
“Ah, revenge. I’m sorry, Tangerine. I will be serious. What’s wrong?”
He doesn’t want to say it now. It sounds fucking stupid. He’s felt stupid thinking about it all day. And it’s all Lemon’s fault. Easier to blame him than to admit it’s something he was thinking about the second he agreed to taking a job on Valentine’s Day, away from the only person he’s ever actually wanted to spend the day with. Like the fucking holiday ever mattered to him.
“Just you’re alone. And I’m working. Not fair to you that I’m gone. It’s fucked. I know I said that already, but it is. No fuckin’ romance and no fuckin’ gifts and I can’t give you everything you want.”
“And what do I want?”
“I don’t know. Someone that will say I love you and maybe get married. Maybe adopt a couple of kids. Or have science babies.”
“Science babies,” Kostya says numbly.
“Nice house in a nice place. Take the kids to school. Date nights, yeah? Anniversaries that mean shit.”
“I never asked for that.”
“You didn’t have to,” Tangerine says. “That’s not the point. The point is I never asked if you wanted it. And I wish you did.”
“You wish I what?”
“Made me say all that.”
“But you did say it,” Kostya says. “You are confusing me, vozlyublennyy.”
“I know, I’m a fuckin’ idiot,” he mumbles back. “And I should be there. You should be making me tell you I love you instead of being five thousand miles away.”
“Do you think I need to make you say it?”
“No. I just think you should.”
“Tangerine. You are tired? Sick? Maybe we talk in morning.”
“I won’t want to talk about it in the morning.”
Kostya sighs. “I can’t make you say something you don’t mean.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. He’d feel a lot better right now if he was drunk. He’s not usually like this. He’s had plenty of relationships. None that lasted, none that knew what his job was. Mostly just short lived flings wherever he was staying at. None that involved someone living in his flat and kissing him in the morning and quietly telling him to be safe. None that read any book that he put in their hands, none that laughed at some of his stupidest jokes, none that could just—
Be Kostya.
None that really understood.
“You are a mess,” Kostya says quietly.
“Do you have a word for that in Russian? Wanna throw another fuckin’ nickname at me that I don’t understand?”
“Hm,” he mumbles. “I thought we were being serious?”
“You have one, you just don’t want to say it.”
“No. I need to save them. Give them to you slowly.”
“You make it sound like a kink.”
Kostya laughs again.
And fucking Christ—
It’s a really nice sound, isn’t it?
“One more day,” Tangerine whispers. “That’s all.”
“No more vulnerability?” Kostya asks.
“Not tonight, vozlyublennyy.” Tangerine says. He knows he butchers the word, but it still earns him another laugh from Kostya.
“You do not know what you’re saying,” he whispers. “Just come home, will you?”
Home.
“Soon.”
He falls asleep with his phone tucked underneath his ear. He doesn’t think Tangerine said much of anything after all that. He just listened to him brush his teeth, change his clothes, watch a few stupid shows. Kostya didn’t really care. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend he wasn’t alone. And if he kept them open, he knew he wasn’t.
Kostya still doesn’t sleep for long. When he wakes, his phone is dead. He leaves it plugged in on the nightstand as he gets ready, keys tucked in his pocket, leaving his phone behind.
It’s close to people’s lunch breaks. They leave their jobs, scattering around in the streets. Ducking into cafes and pubs for food. Kostya keeps walking, knows this path by heart.
Tangerine took him here often in the first few weeks they came here. At first it was just because he didn’t like leaving Kostya out of his sight. Always thought he was a flight risk, but he wasn’t. There was nowhere for him to go. There still isn’t. Just home. And he prefers it that way.
His father is dead, sure. But it will never be safe to return to the places he grew up. Someone took the White Death’s place. Someone always does. It was Minigeshi before his father, it will be someone after. And whoever comes after, he can’t be certain that they won’t hold some type of grudge against him.
Plenty of people that worked for his father are willing to take the role and the majority of them hated Kostya. Not that there wasn’t a reason for it—there always is.
He ducks into the shop, giving a short nod to the man behind the register. He slips through the stacks of books, looking over every last shelf. There are many holes in Tangerine’s collection, but there is only one book that he knows he wants to read next.
He taps his hands on the side of the steering wheel. Stuck in traffic for the last hour. Barely moving. His phone is sitting on the dashboard, telling him all the ways he could kill time. Call Lemon, even. Talk about something. Anything. Better than the static-ridden radio show that’s just two people talking about the best or worst Valentines presents someone could receive.
He picks up the phone, almost calls one of them. Decides against it. Doesn’t feel like talking. Doesn’t feel like unpacking the question again.
Instead, he opens up Google Translate. That word is wracking around in his brain. Kostya’s voice mumbling quietly--
You do not know what you’re saying.
Voz uu blinny
It autocorrects him only a little bit, the other side of the screen reading out: PANCAKE CART.
Fucking pancake cart? He doesn’t even know what that means. What the fuck is a pancake cart?
Kostya wraps the book up as neatly as he is able to. He tries to remember what his sister did when they were younger, wrapping presents for their parents' birthday, for holidays. She was always the best at it. Perfectly creased corners, using only one or two pieces of tape, a neat length of ribbon in a perfect little bow.
It’s not as precise as hers. He can’t cut as straight as she manages to do it. He doesn’t fold the ends as evenly as she could. But it’s one thing that she taught him that he won’t forget how to do, even if he can’t do it perfectly. Kostya picks it up, sets it on Tangerine’s nightstand. Fixes the bow the way she would have.
“I miss you,” he whispers quietly. Like this little gift could be any number of people in the world instead of a book wrapped up neatly in shimmer red paper.
Their last job is the most annoying one of the bunch. It’s not something they would typically do—staging a kidnapping. The heiress, a blonde girl with a thick southern accent, is only nineteen. She’s got access to more money than anyone could dream of, but she’s still pissed off about it.
“’Cuz you see,” she says, popping her bubble gum. “I was supposed to get a real nice inheritance when I turned eighteen. But my daddy only let me have half of it. I overheard him talkin’ to my mama about my tendencies to overspend but I don’t think that’s very fair, do you?”
Tangerine and Lemon exchange a glance.
Best to just nod along. Get this all over with.
“Here,” she says, setting a box down in front of them. “Some locks of my hair to send them so they know it’s real. But I’m gonna get goin’ because my boyfriend is waitin’ for me at the station and—”
“You’re not even going to stay?”
“They’ll wire the money. I don’t need to be here.”
Tangerine sighs. “It would probably be better if you don’t go running off. If they get the police involved—”
“Oh, honey, half of their wealth comes from sellin’ oxycontin. If they call the police, they invite them into their home, what happens to what I want? What I need?” She shakes her head. “They won’t. All you need is a bit of proof and to cross y'all's fingers and everything will be A-okay.”
“And if it’s not?” Lemon asks. “What do we do then?”
“Well, I already paid you. Do your jobs! Kill one of them if you have to. Preferably my daddy since he’s the one keepin’ everything from me. Mama runs the business without him anyway.”
“Feel like if we’re going to be killing a family member for money it would be the one we supposedly have locked in the basement.”
“Golly, I don’t think you’d do that to me. Do you?”
“Just go,” Tangerine says. “Please. Because I’m tempted to do it anyway.”
“Impatient to get home?” Lemon asks.
“Ooh, what’s at home?”
“Nothing,” Tangerine replies. “Just sick of this week. So yes, Lemon, I’d love to get home.”
“Oh, you would love it, wouldn’t you?”
“Yall are weird,” she laughs. “Okey-dokey, I’m gone. Thanks for everything, sweethearts.”
When the door closes behind her, Tangerine looks back over to Lemon. “Don’t.”
“I was just going to say I’m glad she’s gone. Parents have already agreed to the money transfer, we just have to wait to confirm it.”
Tangerine doesn’t even want to entertain the idea of them not following through anymore. He’s just thinking about that stupid flight.
“Lemon, can I ask you something?”
“Is it about Kostya? Because to be quite honest with you, Tangerine, I am getting kind of sick of it. It was fun teasing you about it but I really don’t want to know anymore about… you know. That.”
“Just…” he sighs. “Do you know what a pancake cart is?”
“I have no fucking idea what you just said to me.”
“Well, what good are you then?”
The problem with knowing when Tangerine will return is that he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Kostya sprawls across the couch, waiting for the hours to slip by. Trying to think of something he could do to pass the time, but his thoughts are distracted. He tries to clean, but ends up pacing in circles. He tries to read, but only manages to go over the same page a hundred times and not a single word sinking in.He tries to watch something, but all he does is stare at the screen, watching commercials try to sell him something he doesn’t need or want.
And then his phone rings.
“Tangerine?” he says, and he loves the name. Never even bothered to learn what his name was. He thinks Tangerine told him once, but nothing has quite captured the way the fruit sounds on his tongue. Like he is biting into him. It might be the only delicate thing about the man, that name.
“I’m at the airport,” Tangerine says. “Just waiting for our plane to board. And I wouldn’t have called you but these last few days and last night, it’s… I feel like I’ve been going mad. Kostya, can I ask you something serious?”
“I thought we did our vulnerability already.”
“Is there a quota?” he clears his throat, sniffs like he can cover the noise up after the fact. “I just wanna know what a fucking pancake cart is. Can you tell me what that is?”
“Pancake cart?”
“Yeah that, uh…” he trails off. “Vozlyublennyy. That’s what you said before.”
He’s fucked up the word again. Massacred it beyond repair. But it still makes Kostya laugh.
“I told you not to say it.”
“Because I didn’t know what it meant, which was weird, because I thought you said it meant ‘idiot’ or something but apparently it doesn’t. Apparently it means pancake cart.”
“Ah,” he says. “And who told you that?”
“Google Translate.”
“You are trusting Google Translate, moy lyubimyy?”
“Just tell me what it means. If it’s not that, just—”
“It’s for me. You don’t need to know.”
“You’re shit-talking me to my face, I feel like I deserve to know.”
“Deserve and need… these are two different things, Tangerine,” he smiles. “Hijack your plane and force them to fly you to me. I tell you then.”
“I’m not doing that. Nobody’s paying me to do that.”
“Money is only thing that matters to you? What about romance, vozlyublennyy? What happened to romance?”
“It don’t fuckin’ exist in bumfuck Idaho,” It sounds like he kicks something on the other side. A swear follows it, a short apology. “Go to sleep, alright, love? It’s like a twelve hour flight. I won’t be seeing you for a long time anyway.”
“Love,” he mumbles quietly. “See, you know what vozlyublennyy means.”
“What’d you say? Sorry, Lemon’s talking to me. He told me to tell you he said hi.”
“Hi, Lemon,” he offers back. “Have safe flight, okay?”
“If anyone hijacks the plane, it won’t be me.”
“I don’t think you can say that in an airport, moy durak. ”
“You know, I do know what moy means,” Tangerine says quietly.
“Yes, just not ‘pancake cart’,” Kostya snorts. “If I’m asleep, wake me when you get here.”
“Of course.”
The hours slip by. He sleeps on and off. Checking his phone with barely open eyes. Everytime he gets a text from Tangerine saying the flight has been delayed again, he pulls the covers back around himself. Pretends he didn’t see it. Maybe that will make Tangerine appear beside him faster.
But it doesn’t.
Kostya wakes for the day. He has his breakfast alone. He walks around the city, trying to find a way to make himself more useful. He keeps his phone in his pocket at all times. Checking the time constantly.
And then Tangerine texts him: flight canceled.
When Tangerine answers the phone, all he hears is Kostya yelling. It takes him a minute to even realize that he’s not talking in English, rambling instead in Russian, his annoyance catapulting across the language barrier.
He’s quiet as Kostya keeps talking, slipping out of the motel room with his coat over his arm.
“I know.”
“You know,” he scoffs. “Why didn’t you do what I told you?”
“Hijack the plane?”
“Yes.”
Tangerine rolls his eyes. “Look, I can’t control the weather. There’s a fucking snow storm and it’s not safe to fly. Do you think I chose this? I spent six hours hanging around an airport and they kept saying oh any minute now and now I’m staying in the shittiest motel I’ve ever seen in my life listening to Lemon snore and you yell at me. It wasn’t my choice.”
“I miss you.”
The words catch him off guard. He lets out a laugh. “You what?”
“Nothing—”
“Did you say you miss me?”
“No. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Oh, you miss me. I think maybe that’ll clear up the weather. Power of love and all that.”
“I said I miss you, I didn’t say I love you.”
Tangerine bites his lip. “Right. Well, you know—”
“It is just sex I miss. That is all.”
“That’s all, huh?”
Kostya lets out a strange noise. Kind of like he’s been wounded. “Isn’t that all I’m allowed to miss?”
“Why would it be?” Tangerine asks. “Because I made a joke about it before I left?”
“Because I have to make you say more. Apparently.”
Now when did this conversation turn so fuckin’ serious?
Tangerine moves away from the door, slipping down towards the back where the pool, filled with snow, is left deserted.
Neither of them are exactly the type to have a serious conversation. Not about their stupid feelings and not about whether or not they’re allowed to love each other or miss each other. There was nothing either of them even said that pushed their relationship to this point. It just kind of happened. Kostya came to bed with him to sleep, not for sex. He would kiss Tangerine’s cheek and pull him away from his work just so they could watch a movie.
But Tangerine was stupid. He said too much. He opened the floodgates. Now he has to deal with it.
It’s easier over the phone, anyway. He doesn’t have to look at Kostya’s face. Doesn’t have to untangle the way to hold his own body, his expressions.
“Are you still there?”
“I’m still here,” Tangerine says quietly. “I miss you too, you know.”
“It’s only been few days.”
“You—” he heaves out an annoyed breath. “You said it first.”
“Yes but I am not contract killer.”
“So you get to experience different emotions than me, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Tangerine sniffles. “You’re stupid.”
“So are you, vozlyublennyy.”
“You’re allowed to want more,” he says. “You know that, right? You’re allowed to want and miss whatever you want or miss.”
“You complicated things.”
“I complicated things? Is this because I left you on Valentine’s Day?”
“It is because what you said. Who cares about stupid day? I don’t miss you because day. I miss you because you are gone. This is truth.”
His accent always gets thicker, his English a bit messier when he’s upset. It’s more than that. Tangerine can hear the tightness in his voice. The strain of holding back any and all sound that he doesn’t want to permit. He can hear the struggle of him trying not to breathe too deeply. Like shallow breaths do a better job at keeping all of the emotion at bay.
And still he fails, because everything he does to cover it up only proves to Tangerine exactly what he is feeling.
“I can’t quit my job, Kostya. I like what I do. I’m good at it.”
“Who said that? Who said quit? You are gone. I miss you. Those are different things. It is difficult.”
“Then tell me what to do.”
“There is no thing you do.”
“Then we’re talking in fuckin’ circles, aren’t we?”
Kostya sighs. A ragged exhale that makes his voice shake when he speaks. “I can not be allowed to be upset? I have to only feel one thing? Tell me one thing I feel, moy durak. Tell me. And I will feel it.”
Tangerine fucked up.
He doesn’t know exactly what he did, and that’s the problem. He doesn’t know how they were led here. Or maybe everything he has ever done when in the presence of Kostya has led up to this. Making their relationship like something that the both of them stumbled across. He said goodbye when he left, but it wasn’t right, was it? Kostya was upset even then.
“Tangerine. Please.”
“I didn’t mean I want nothing,” he mumbles. “When I said that before, I didn’t mean that I wanted nothing with you. I just meant I can’t be that. And I know you didn’t ask for it. I just wanted to tell you. So you had an out if you did.”
“An out.”
“It’s a mess if we’re together and you decide in two months or two years or twenty years that you should’ve had some normal fuckin’ life instead of stuck with me making shitty mistakes and ruining your life and—”
“Vozlyublennyy. Moy lyubimyy, why are you convinced I want that? You keep saying it like it’s something I want and I’m lying to you.”
“Well you never said you didn’t.”
He mutters something in Russian, but the meaning is clear.
You are fucking stupid.
“My father is White Death. My mother raised me to believe that love could fix all things. My sister proved it could not. My father made sure of it. My family is dead. I have no home. I do not wish to recreate that.”
“I don’t understand what you just said.”
“I am not person to want family the way you think family needs to be wanted. Do you need me to tell you directly? That you are it? That you are all I want?”
“Yes.”
“Tangerine,” Kostya says carefully, his voice lowered. “ Moy durak, moy lyubimyy, malen'kiy fruktov. You are all I want.”
“You missed one.”
“Did I?” he says. “Hm. Pancake cart?”
“Yeah,” Tangerine replies. “Can you say it again?”
“Which part?”
“You know which part.”
Kostya offers a small laugh. “You are all I want, vozlyublennyy. Is that enough for you?”
“Mhm,” he mumbles through closed lips.
“Are we done?” he asks. “With mess? Can I just miss you now without being interrogated?”
“Yeah. We can be all piggly wiggly now if you want.”
“Figli-migli.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
“Ya tebya…” Kosyta mutters, stops like he thinks better of it. “Idiot.”
“Did you ever manage to get your cake to turn out?” Tangerine asks suddenly. “When you were making your kartoshka?”
“No. I told you, I broke bowl. I gave up. I cried for a bit.”
“Did you really?”
“Russians do experience emotion.”
“Contract killers don’t.”
“No, they just have…” he pauses. “What was word you used?”
“Vulnerability.”
“Yes. Vulnerability.” Kostya sighs. “And yours was romance, yes?”
“No. Just love.”
Because romance wouldn’t include Lemon, who is his biggest vulnerability. If anything happened to him, Tangerine wouldn’t last a second. And Kostya, as short of a period of time that he has known him, has quickly risen the ranks of people that he would probably fall apart without.
“Can I say again?” Kostya whispers.
“Say what?”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too, love.”
“You make me very stupid.”
“Don’t blame me for that shit,” Tangerine says. “You’re plenty of stupid without me.”
“So imagine me with you.”
“I do all the time.”
“Moy durak?”
“Yeah?”
“I am going to smother you when you get home.”
“Can’t wait.”
Tangerine finally lands at four in the morning. Jet-lagged and exhausted, his eyes barely open as he follows Lemon to the garage to pick up their cars. They go their separate directions, both too tired to say much more than a goodbye. He drives slowly, turning the forty-minute drive to his place into an hour.
He’s like a zombie, making his way up the stairs, his key jamming in the lock three different times before he manages to turn it properly. His luggage left right at the entrance, his keys tossed haphazardly onto the kitchen counter.
There are glass shards in the trash can. A pair of shoes left in a puddle next to the doorway. Tangerine moves towards the bedroom but stops in the doorway. The bed is made. Empty. He turns back.
“Kostya?” he ventures into the dark.
He doesn’t bother turning on the light. He knows where Kostya will be. Curled into his pile of blankets on the couch, a fort made out of pillows and throws. He makes his way over with the light of his phone, confirming the form on the couch to be his Kostya. Tangerine kneels down next to it, prying the blanket away from his face.
“Kostya,” he says again. “Wake up.”
He is returned with an annoyed grunt, before his voice finally catches up to him.
“Tangerine?”
“Yeah. I’m back. What are you doing out here, darling?”
“Waiting.”
“Come on,” Tangerine says, pulling the blankets away from him. He leans forward, nuzzling his face closer to his. “Come to bed.”
“Carry me.”
“Absolutely the fuck not. You’ve got two feet. Come on.”
He pulls Kostya off from the couch, tugging him along as they stumble towards the bedroom. He doesn’t let go of his hand, despite the angle hurting his shoulder. Despite Kostya moving closer, wrapping his free arm around Tangerine’s waist. Already latching onto him, already unwilling to let him go again.
Tangerine flips on a light, pulling his jacket off. Kostya slips his hand free, moving to stand in front of him. His fingers making quick work of his tie, but his gaze settled on Tangerine’s face.
“Does other one look worse?”
“Huh?” Tangerine asks.
Kostya pulls him down by the tie, leaving a gentle kiss on his nose. The tender skin still hurts, but he had almost forgotten about it.
“He’s dead.”
“Good,” he whispers. “Next time don’t let him hit you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Kostya unbuttons his vest, his shirt. Tugging him out of his clothes. Dropping them to the ground as he pulls Tangerine back closer to the bed.
“How tired are you?”
“Just a bit.”
“I would be very upset if you fell asleep on me.”
“Maybe I’ll do it just to piss you off then.” Tangerine replies. He pushes him down onto the bed, leaning over him as he gets a good grip on Kostya’s sweatpants. “Since you know, you make me do all the work.”
Kostya smiles. And what is Tangerine supposed to do with that? How is he supposed to just be around someone who can smile like that and make him smile in return? He tugs the pants down, slipping them off of Kostya in an awkward movement before pressing his knees apart, slotting in between them.
He rests his forehead against his, nudging him gently with his nose. So close to kissing him but for some reason holding back. Like he’s waiting on something. Like he needs to say or do something first. Like it has to be special.
And it never has before. But a lot of things are different this time.
“Does it hurt?” Kostya asks.
“A little.”
“Will it hurt if I kiss you?”
“Probably. You can do it anyway.”
Kostya sighs. He reaches up, his thumb tracing along Tangerine’s bottom lip.
“Ya tebya lyublyu.”
Tangerine laughs. He doesn’t know why he laughs, but he does. He shouldn’t have.
“It means—”
“I know what it means,” Tangerine says. “Can you teach me? I don’t want to fuck it up when I say it.”
“Ya—”
“Ya…”
“Tebya,” Kostya whispers quietly, he shifts closer, closer closer closer.
“Tebya—”
“Lyublyu.”
“Lyublyu.”
“You practiced it before,” he says. “Didn’t you?”
Tangerine nods. “Not fair that you speak English for me, right? And I don’t know shit for Russian.”
“You are much more romantic than you give yourself credit for.”
He laughs. And his laugh makes Kostya pull him closer. Fingers threaded in his hair. Kissing him hard, like he is going to crush him. And it does hurt. His nose lights up like it’s on fire, but he doesn’t care. He hasn’t kissed him in over three days and it has felt so much longer than that.
Kostya breaks away. Tangerine moves, kissing his jaw, moving down towards his neck. Biting gently at his skin. His hands fighting with the stupid shirt he’s wearing, struggling to get it off of him when he doesn’t want to pull away.
“T-Tangerine—” he whimpers. “Say it again.”
“What?”
“Say it.”
He presses a kiss against his throat. Whispers it like a secret there against his skin.
“Ya tebya lyublyu.”
“In English?”
Tangerine smiles. Kisses him again. “I love you.”
There is something that happens often when they have sex. Less so when Kostya is mad at him for some reason or another, or when Tangerine is pissed off.
Kostya’s hands dig into him. Nails scraping his skin. Mumbling in Russian, always Russian. Never stopping unless Tangerine is kissing him to shut up or if he presses his fingers into his mouth. He can still feel them on his fingertips. Words trying their hardest to escape him.
He asked Kostya what they meant once. And now it’s all that sits in his head when he’s with him. No matter how tired. His mind repeats Kostya’s voice in his head as they slip past his tongue.
More more more more.
Sometimes—
Please, please, please.
And one, he was told, was nothing. Just gibberish. Tangerine’s name tangled together with the wrong syllables. Morphed into something that’s not even a real word. Just all he can manage.
He thinks he likes that one the best.
Kostya wakes close to noon. Tangerine sprawled across his chest, cheek pressed against his skin. He brushes his hand through his hair. Catching all the curls, feeling the soft locks between his fingertips.
He has been traveling. Been using cheap hotel shampoo, been in dire lack of his usual styling supplies. He must have forgotten them.
Kostya could stay awake. He could get out of bed, could shower. He could kiss Tangerine awake and they could go about making up for their brief lost time. Instead, he watches Tangerine sleep. He traces patterns on his spine and his forearm. Wandering around the black ink of his tattoos, making invisible ones of his name again and again.
It is silly.
But Kostya has learned how to say Tangerine in every language he can think of. It’s a bit like a mantra, when things get truly terrible. When his bad days are bad enough that he feels like he will break in half for good.
Kīnū. Tanjerịn. Quýt. Gyul. Santara. Ṭēnjērīna.
He falls back asleep, tracing the kanji for the twentieth time over on Tangerine’s shoulder. Gentle lines and tender swoops.
He’s gone.
Kostya wakes up startled, suddenly aware of how cold and empty the bed is. The daylight streams in through the curtains, blinding him as it reflects off the bright white snow. He stumbles out of the bed, haphazardly picking up clothes on the floor until he has enough to cover himself. Tangerine’s shirt and his own pants, one of each of their socks. The cold temperature alerting him that either the furnace has gone out or Tangerine has settled their flat into a comfortable, seemingly sub-zero temperature.
“Tangerine?” he says as he steps out into the hallway. “Moy lyubimyy?”
“You’re awake,” he says, setting a few things out on the counter. “Thought I was going to have to call someone. Sleeping all day. It’s not healthy, love.”
“You could have woken me.”
“I was out,” he says, shedding his jacket. The snow still wet on his sleeves, barely starting to melt. As if he needed proof. “I thought I’d get back before you were up. So maybe you should stop harassing me.”
“I—?” Kostya sighs. “Where did you go?”
“Store.”
“For why?”
He pulls a box out of his bag, shaking it in his direction. “I was thinking about what you said a few days ago. About your mum. How she would make kartoshka with you. I can’t bake a cake from scratch and I’m not really willing to anyway, so I went to get cake mix. And then we can make it together. If that’s alright with you. Did I get the right kind? I looked up a recipe but I wasn’t sure if maybe you used to make it with a different flavor. I just thought I’d be safe and get vanilla. Are you alright, love? I fucked it up, didn’t I?”
Kostya stares at the box. At the picture of the perfectly yellow vanilla cake on the cover. It is so stupid. It is just cake. It’s not even his mother’s. It doesn’t even look like hers.
He doesn’t want to cry and even less, he doesn’t want Tangerine to see him cry. So he steps over to him in the kitchen, takes the box from his hand, sets it on the counter. And then he wraps his arms around his waist, buries his face against his shoulder.
“I don’t know if that’s a yes or a no.”
“Shut up.”
“Alright.”
He feels Tangerine’s hand curl around the base of his skull. Thread through his tangled curls, a kiss pressed against his temple.
Kostya squeezes him as tight as he can manage. He wants to make it impossible to separate the two of them. He wants to make it so that the ache will finally be fulfilled. And it won’t be. Right now, Tangerine is a person that he simply cannot get enough of. There isn’t enough of him for that.
There is also, quite frankly, too much of him.
Kostya does tell him stories about his mother.
They bake the cake together, though there is little work to properly be split between two people. Kostya sits on the counter, peeling an orange, handing him segments as he splits apart tales from his youth. He often slips into Russian, repeating his stories quietly to himself, like he is keeping fragments of them still secret.
He tells Tangerine the first time he had kartoshka, he was just a little boy. When his father had not quite taken over Minegishi’s spot yet. When his mother was careful at scrimping and saving, she would bake cakes for people that lived on their street, for her coworkers. She would use the scraps to make kartoshka, would keep it a special secret between the two of them until his sister was born, when she was invited into the ritual.
And then his father became The White Death, and kartoshka was no longer a thing they ate to make use of scraps. They could buy fancy cakes from the shops, they could order ones that were tens of thousands of yen, beautifully decorated, tasting better than anything his mother could ever dream to create herself.
But she still made it.
Just for him.
“She said it was like love. Making it was like telling her mother she missed her, when she didn’t have the ability to anymore,” Kostya says. “Eating it reminded her of being little girl. Those memories were not always good, but memories of eating kartoshka with her mother were.”
“Is that how it feels? Being with her again?”
“Little bit,” Kostya lifts a hand and wipes his cheek, although he isn’t crying. It is more like a warning gesture, telling himself not to. “It was my fault she died. I was stupid and reckless. Kartoshka does not make up for something so childish.”
Is it not equally Tangerine’s fault?
It’s why his father wasn’t there.
He wonders if Kostya ever thinks about that. If he ever blames Tangerine. If he ever thanks him, either.
They wouldn’t have met if it wasn’t for the series of unfortunate events that struck the two of them.
“Do you know what that is like?” Kostya asks quietly. “To be reason someone you love is dead?”
Tangerine moves over to his side, ignores the buzzing in his pocket as his phone rings in a text. He removes it, setting it aside without even looking at it.
There are many things Tangerine has done. There are many people he has killed with his own two hands. There are many people who’s deaths he has caused. And he doesn’t feel guilty for all of them.
But there are certainly some that still wake him at night.
“I do,” he says. “Yeah.”
“Does it ever go away? The guilt?”
Tangerine shakes his head. “Just becomes an easier roommate to live with.”
Kostya sniffles. “It is bad day, I think.”
“Yeah, it happens. But I’m here, yeah? You’re not alone with it.”
Tangerine reaches up, catches Kostya’s hand before he can properly wipe away the real tears this time. He does it for him. Leans up and kisses his cheek.
“You want to cry for a bit?”
Kostya laughs a little and nods.
“Do you want me to leave?”
He shakes his head and grabs Tangerine’s shirt, pulls him closer. “What if you are gone next time?”
“Call me.”
“And if you are off killing someone?”
“I can multitask.”
He digs his fingers into Tangerine’s skin. Hellbent, it seems, to leave as many bruises on Tangerine today as he can.
But it’s okay.
It’s better bruises than the ones he has received before.
“I…” Kostya trails off. “I got you something. Gift.”
“You got me a gift?”
He nods. “It’s on your nightstand.”
Tangerine separates from him, moving into the bedroom. He finds it where Kostya directed him. A soft green ribbon wrapped neatly around orange shimmering paper. He pulls at the ribbon, undoing the paper. Being a bit more careful than he usually would. Underneath, he finds a book. He recognizes it instantly. He’s been telling Kostya about it for almost a year. Had been keeping careful track of the release for the last six months.
“This isn’t out yet,” he says, turning back to the doorway.
Kostya nods. “Not until next week.”
“How’d you get it? You didn’t steal it, did you? You know how against theft I am.”
“I didn’t.”
“So how did you get your hands on it?”
“I am my father’s son,” he shrugs. “I broke the employee’s hand and told him if he didn’t give me an early copy I would kill his mother and sister. And his dog. Which may be step too far.”
Tangerine sets the book down behind him. “You threatened a dog?”
“No,” he says. “All that was lie. I actually just slept with him.”
“I prefer the first story.”
He quite likes making Kostya laugh.
It was so difficult for so long. To manage anything other than a sarcastic chuckle or a scoff. Prying smiles out of him like it was a chore for the both of them. He gets a little better every day.
Even on bad days, he can still laugh. Tipping his head back, hand over his mouth to cover up the sound. Choking on bits of kartoshka cake as he yells something in Russian.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re saying.”
“You are trying to kill me,” he says, reaching for his glass of water. “You are cruel. And you should learn more Russian. Always making me translate myself. Where is fairness in that?”
“You don’t know French.”
“I do!” he yells, though they both know it’s just the bare minimum. Just enough for him to have survived the handful of summers they vacationed there when he was a child. “And it is different. French is not your first language.”
“Russian is barely yours.”
“You want me to talk in another language you do not know?” Kostya asks. “I could choose Italian, then. Or maybe Spanish? Dutch?”
“You don’t speak all of those.”
“Neither do you, so I could very easily fake them.”
Tangerine turns away from him, ready to leave the kitchen entirely. He feels Kostya grab his shirt, pull him back. Arms wrapped around his waist, cold hands moving up underneath his shirt. He kisses the side of Tangerine’s neck.
“Ahoya na,” he whispers. “Happy?”
Tangerine leans back against him, his hands holding Kostya’s in place. “Yeah. Could be happier.”
“How so?” he asks. “Tell me, moy lyubimyy.”
He opens his mouth, but he doesn’t get a word out. He can hear someone knocking on the door. The two of them separate, both annoyed.
“Five seconds,” Tangerine says. “I’ll be back.”
Kostya nods, picking up another kartoshka and biting into it.
Tangerine moves to the flat door, pulling it open only as far as the chain allows. “The fuck you want?”
“My shit,” Lemon says.
He wasn’t expecting him. Tangerine glances back to the kitchen. Must’ve been why he was texting. He just kept ignoring him. What did it matter? If it was important, Lemon could’ve called.
“What do you mean ‘your shit’?”
“We took each other’s luggage last night and I need mine.”
“Don’t you have clothes at your place? You got to come and bug me when I’ve just gotten rid of you? I’d almost gone twenty-four hours without a fucking Thomas the Train reference. Now I’ve got to reset the clock.”
“My sole existence is not nearly enough to qualify as a Thomas the Train reference.”
Tangerine reaches through the slim space of the door, pulling Lemon’s coat aside. There’s a patch on his jacket. Blue train. Stupid.
“What’s so important in your luggage that you need?”
“You think you’re the only one with someone waiting at home all upset about missing Valentine’s Day?”
“Oh, you’ve got a lover? Really? What’s their name?”
“None of your business. Can you just let me grab it? It’ll take two seconds. You’re being an asshole.”
“He is very good at that,” Kostya says. “Hello, Lemon.”
“Percy,” he says, pretending to tip his non-existent hat. “What are you eating?”
“Kartoshka cake.”
“Any good?”
Kostya nods. “Let him in, Tangerine. We have too much. We can give him some. He can take a few to his vozlyublennyy.”
“Yeah, I can take some to my bunny.”
Tangerine closes the door, sliding the chain back before letting Lemon in. He is realizing, watching Lemon follow Kostya back to the kitchen, that he doesn’t like the two of them being around each other. It’s a bit overwhelming. He hasn’t had to deal with this in a long time. Two people he cares about in such close quarters. Lemon acted like he didn’t even care for him two days ago, now they’re already laughing at something Tangerine’s missed.
“So this is arstotzka?”
“Kartoshka, ” Kostya corrects. He shakes his head. “Arstotzka, what is that? It is nothing. You two never try to get words right. I have impeccable English and you trip over any Russian I give you.”
“I didn’t last night,” Tangerine mutters.
Kostya ignores him. “Did he tell you about the pancake cart?”
“He did. What does it mean?”
“It means he is stupid.”
Lemon laughs, “Didn’t know we needed Russian to figure that out. But you know this gives you free reign to insult him all the time. He wouldn’t even know.”
“I do plenty,” Kostya says. He almost seems offended that Lemon wouldn’t assume he doesn’t already.
“But you’d never insult me, right?”
“Who the fuck cares if he insults you?” Tangerine asks. “Shouldn’t you be getting your shit and leaving, Lemon?”
“I would never,” Kostya continues. “Insult malen'kiy fruktov? I would rather die.”
“That’s enough,” Tangerine says, tugging Lemon away from the kitchen. “You don’t get to call him that. You call me that. That’s fucked up, darling. I would never do that to you.”
“Vinovat,” he says. “Of course. I am sorry. I’m apologizing. You’re right.”
“You’re going,” Tangerine says, pulling Lemon towards his bedroom. “I don’t like you two together. I can already see you two conniving assholes figuring out a plan to get rid of me.”
“And what would I gain from him if he’s not around annoying you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how your fuckin’ brain works. I just know I don’t like it.”
Lemon crosses his room, picking up the dark blue bag from the corner. “So things are going good between you?”
“I’m not having this conversation, Lemon.”
“Fine,” he says. He goes to leave, but stops before he walks past Tangerine. “It’s good. Seeing you like this.”
Tangerine nods. “And yours?”
“Too soon to tell you about.”
“But you will?”
He shrugs. “Maybe. Depends on if they like the arstotzka.”
Tangerine shakes his head. “See you next week?”
Lemon nods, leaving back the way he came. Tangerine hears him exchange goodbyes with Kostya.
And the apartment is just for the two of them again. A little messy, but not empty. Even a little quiet.
Before he can leave back for the kitchen, Kostya is slipping into the room beside him, arms snaking around his waist again. Constantly clinging onto him. It’s nice to feel so wanted. To be touched because he wants to hold onto him.
“I put the rest of the kartoshka away.”
“Okay,” Tangerine kisses the bridge of his nose. “You want to come to bed?”
“It is still early, malen'kiy fruktov.”
“I wasn’t planning on sleeping. Unless it’s still a bad day?”
Kostya smiles and leans up, kissing him gently. “It’s better now.”
Tangerine kisses him back. Maybe a bit too forcefully, a bit too much. He can feel Kostya smiling against his lips. Can smell the sugar still on his skin. He’s aware of what they are right now. Foolish and in love. Acting like children.
What is that Kostya had said before?
Figli-migli?
He doesn’t even know what it means. Doesn’t care. Doesn’t even care that when Kostya kisses him, his face still hurts. Every part of him is yearning for him. Skin to skin doesn’t feel close enough. Palms pressed on his chest, fingers tracing over ink, kisses left on old scars.
Ya tebya lyublyu.
I love you. I love you.
Somehow that doesn’t sound like enough either.