Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Ocean's 11
A/N: Got this idea after reading damncritic's 'Some kind of an organisation'. Just sort of got me thinking about Toulour. So thanks to damncritic for that.
A/N2: This should have been a short piece of absolute nonsense. However, it ended up being a long piece of absolute nonsense. Go figure.
A/N3: Would also appear to be set in 'More Things Change' verse.
A/N4: InSilva has read it, gradually and thanks to her for having Linus level misunderstanding about goldfish which led to lines of funny. At least I think they're funny. And wouldn't have thought of them otherwise.
A/N5: This is not an A/N.
The message had arrived at Reuben's by mysterious means just as they'd all been in the process of arriving.
With a decidedly amused expression, Reuben played it for each new arrival in turn and again once the final pair – Danny and Rusty, looking slightly less immaculate than usual – had arrived and they were all gathered in the living room.
The message was French, furious and filthy. As such it reminded Basher of an ex-girlfriend, and he said so repeatedly while the recording of Toulour explained that thanks to the ill-thought-out indignity that had recently been heaped on his head by Ocean's 11, considerable compensation was owed, and Livingston explained that he'd be taking Toulour more seriously if it was a hologram, instead of a tape which led, naturally enough, to him debating with Virgil as to whether Toulour was more like Emperor Palpatine or Princess Leia. Turk said they were both freaks.
Linus, who had been the first to arrive, and so had heard it fourteen times – Turk and Virgil having wanted to be absolutely certain that Toulour wasn't going to elaborate on exactly what the indignities had been – could barely contain himself until the tape ran out.
"Does he think we're completely crazy?" he burst out. "I mean, no-one's been anywhere near him, right? Why would we risk annoying him, after everything? That would be really, really stupid. And unprofessional. And - "
Saul interrupted, looking stern and weary. " - Daniel? Robert? Do you have anything you'd like to say before you manage to sneak out that door?"
Mere feet away from the door they'd been steadily inching towards since Toulour started yelling, Danny and Rusty exchanged a long look. "No?" Rusty suggested hopefully, with a charming smile.
Saul managed to look impossibly more disapproving.
Danny and Rusty exchanged another long look and took a step back into the room. Danny sighed. "All right. There might just be a slight - "
" - very, very slight - " Rusty emphasised.
" - chance that this is our fault," Danny admitted.
Suddenly part of an admission of guilt, Rusty immediately offered clarification. "Well, I wouldn't say fault, exactly."
"No," Danny agreed, brightening slightly. "I mean clearly - "
" - it's not like - "
" - we didn't - "
" - though I suppose, maybe - "
" - it's difficult to be certain," Danny finished, smiling.
Saul nodded as if this made perfect sense and was nothing more than he'd been expecting. "What are you talking about?"
"We don't know," Danny said calmly.
"But we saw Toulour last week," Rusty added.
"We think, anyway." Danny nodded thoughtfully.
"And by 'saw' you mean 'humiliated', yeah?" Frank checked.
Another long exchange of looks. "There was a bar?" Danny suggested. "And a bottle?"
"Actually, I think there was - "
" - maybe a few more than - "
" - a lot - "
" - possibly even many - "
" - ninety nine, and none of them on walls - "
" - so there you go then," Danny said triumphantly. "Not our fault."
There was a feeling of waiting for the inevitable. Reuben pursed his lips.
"He can't hold his drink, that's not on us," Rusty explained with a dazzling smile.
"And where was this bar?" Saul asked with great patience.
"And what did you do to Toulour?" Linus asked with considerably less.
Rusty frowned. "What did we do to Toulour?" he pondered to no one in particular.
"Fiji," Danny pronounced, in a tone of great wisdom and certainty.
Rusty blinked. "We've never been that dirty-minded before."
"No, the bar," Danny explained, turning to face Rusty. "The bar was in Fiji."
"No it wasn't," Rusty answered immediately.
Danny sighed. "That's what you said at the time. I still say there's no reason for it not to have been Fiji."
"Yes, but we met Toulour before we got to the place that could have been Fiji," Rusty said patiently. "There were planes."
"There weren't planes," Danny corrected, frowning suddenly as if remembering.
"Right," Rusty agreed.
There were very few places in the world more boring than the wrong side of the security checks at Heathrow Airport. Except, possibly, the wrong side of the security check at Heathrow Airport three hour after all flights had been grounded for mysterious reasons relating to the wrong kind of leaves on the runway. The voice from on high had told them, in crackling tones, that their patience was appreciated – Danny had glanced sideways and laughed – and that normal service would resume shortly. They were expecting Godot to arrive first. Possibly accompanied by Elvis.
They'd started out in a sushi bar, before moving on to a coffee bar, then, briefly a salad bar, a wine bar, for a while and several drinks, before Rusty got thrown out for clashing with the décor, and had finally ended up leaning against the metal bars above the food court.
"The top of that head looks familiar," Danny commented after a moment.
Rusty paused in the act of drizzling caramel sauce on his potato chips. "That's Toulour."
"Yeah," Danny agreed. "Where do you think he's going?"
"Nowhere," Rusty pointed out definitely, glaring at the departure boards which remained uniformly pessimistic and absently dropping jalapeno peppers on top of the caramel.
"Think he'd like some company?" Danny wondered.
"How bored are you?" Rusty demanded, adding one packet of brown sugar, one of white, and a sachet of ketchup to the mix
Danny glanced at him. "Bored enough to be seriously trying to figure out if I've managed to get you pregnant."
Rusty considered. "I'm sure you're too old for that," he decided at last, and took a handful of...stuff. "Want some?" he added generously.
"We saw Toulour," Danny puzzled out slowly. "And we wanted to talk to him..."
"Why?" asked Linus keenly.
Rusty looked at him. "You ever been stuck in an airport, kid? There's not much to do. And I have a very low boredom threshhold."
"It was that or Strip Twister," Danny agreed.
"And that's how you got kicked out of the Ritz," Livingston nodded understandingly. Everyone looked at him. He shrugged. "What? It was. Besides, Rusty cheats."
"How do you cheat at Twister?" Virgil wondered.
Rusty shrugged. "It's easier when you're naked."
"Moving on," Danny said hastily, "We just talked to him. It was all perfectly civil. Nothing that he could possibly take exception to."
Toulour actually groaned when he saw them coming and made several pointed remarks in French that they pretended not to understand. "What did I do to deserve this?" he demanded. They weren't sure whether he meant them or the airport but either way, they were going to take the question seriously.
"It's the hair," Rusty said seriously.
Danny nodded. "Definitely the hair."
"It invites - "
" - well, it's only to be - "
" - not that there isn't - "
" - a place for it - "
" - just not necessarily on your - "
" - exactly," Danny declared. "That's exactly it."
Toulour took a deep breath. "I have now been in this country five hours longer than was my intention. I find myself tired, annoyed and very, very bored. So, I have to ask, what do you want?"
"A drink!" Rusty said suddenly, as though the thought had just crossed his mind for the very first time.
Danny looked surprised and then thoughtful. "Would you care to join us, Francois?"
Toulour looked at them as if they were the craziest thing he had ever seen. They didn't react. They were used to it. "You seriously expect me to drink with you?"
Danny shrugged. "You got something you'd rather do?"
Toulour took a deep breath. "There is not enough room in the universe to write a list of all the things I'd rather do."
Rusty nodded. "Maybe you should write smaller?" he suggested.
The crackling voice from above interrupted before the conversation got needlessly philosophical. "We would like to thank you for your patience and apologise for any inconvenience. We assure you, staff are working to rectify the problem and normal service will resume in time."
Time. There was a lot of it about.
Toulour sighed. "Fine. But I will not pay."
Rusty looked surprised. "Will anyone?"
"We took him for a few drinks," Rusty pondered, squinting into the foggy middle distance of memory.
"In God's name, why?" Reuben demanded.
Rusty stared at Danny. Danny stared at Rusty.
"Michael Swan," Danny said at last.
Rusty nodded. "Definitely Michael Swan."
"So if you think about it - "
" - and if you had any sense you wouldn't - "
" - it's all his fault."
"Why?" Linus asked, feeling like a broken record.
Another exchange of looks and Rusty smiled and Danny scowled and began talking. "Michael Swan is a man - "
" - though we may be using a fairly loose definition of the word - " Rusty interrupted helpfully.
" - hush. A man who had a very nice collection of - "
" - small - "
" - gold-ish - "
" - expensive - "
" went 'plunk' when you dropped them - "
" - when you dropped them - "
" - and a well-stocked drinks cabinet - "
" - and a room - "
" - a suite - "
" - a dungeon - "
" - completely - "
" - not just the sheets, wall to wall - "
" - and the carpets - "
" - things hanging from the walls - "
" - chairs with moving - "
" - parts, and little furry - "
" - and rubber," Danny finished with a shudder.
"Lots of rubber," Rusty expanded.
Linus was looking somewhat shell-shocked. Saul and Reuben exchanged glances and Reuben shook his head. A long time ago, when there'd been nothing much to do, Saul, Reuben and Bobby had started taking bets on how long Danny and Rusty could talk back and forth, without coming to the end of a sentence or, indeed, the point. The record was twelve and a half minutes so far. By mutual consent, anytime something traumatic was involved didn't count. So far Saul was two hundred dollars up.
"So we needed a drink," Danny explained brightly. "To deal with the sexual perversion."
"We didn't want to talk about sexual perversion, we wanted to talk about Toulour," Saul said with a sigh.
They blinked. "We thought you said you didn't want to talk about sexual perversion?" they said in unison.
The table was covered in glasses and there were a couple of bottles lurking innocently round the edges. They'd finished commiserating with Toulour over his discovery that the famous Castafiore Emerald was a fake, and had absolutely avoided mentioning that twelve years ago, when they'd been in the neighbourhood, it had started out one hundred percent genuine. And they'd told him all about Michael Swan's second basement.
Toulour was hovering somewhere between appalled and intrigued. It was the intrigue that was seriously frightening to see. "So the suit was lined with latex?" he asked again.
Rusty nodded. "Latex inside - "
" - fur and feathers outside," Danny confirmed.
"Elmer Fudd would have shot it on sight," Rusty added thoughtfully.
Danny grinned. "Lots of people would have shot it on sight."
Toulour blinked. "And the house was in Mayfair?" he checked.
"Uh huh," Danny nodded. "Guy throws parties every Friday."
"Thank you," Toulour said absently. "I believe it is my turn to not buy the drinks." He stood up and headed to the bar, somewhat unsteadily.
The crackling voice from above once again thanked them for their patience. It was beginning to sound downright malevolent.
Rusty turned to Danny. "Did you ever think that we could be here for the rest of our lives?"
Danny paled. "Get two bottles," he called over and Toulour turned round and, surprisingly, made the 'OK' sign back.
"And some peanuts," Rusty yelled, and the gesture turned into something else altogether. "Huh," he commented.
"Rude," Danny agreed.
"Goldfish!" Linus exclaimed suddenly.
Turk regarded him uneasily. "Really?"
"What Danny and Rusty were saying about Michael Swan." More people started looking uneasy. "Before that bit," he clarified hastily. "The collection. Expensive things that go 'plunk'. Goldfish."
Danny blinked. "You think we stole his collection of goldfish?"
Yen expounded to the world at large on the resale value of goldfish.
"Besides," Rusty added despondently. "Goldfish don't go 'plunk' when you drop them. They make a kind of gasping noise, writhe about a lot and then go very, very still, and thank you so much, Linus, for evoking our childhood trauma."
Linus snorted. "Can't have been a very traumatising childhood if that's the worst you can think of."
For a moment Saul looked like he wanted to say something. But in the end he shook his head and stared out the window for a moment.
"It had its moments," Danny said brightly.
It was probably later, although they were past the point of taking bets on it. The table was covered in glasses. The floor was covered in glasses. Toulour was covered in wine, courtesy of a brilliant plan to con the man at the next table out of his shoes, which Toulour had taken an unaccountable fancy to somewhere along the line. It had half worked. The left half, as it happened.
The brief drinking competition – sparked after Toulour had haughtily explained that no true Frenchman could possibly be out drunk by an uncivilised American - had come to an abrupt end after Toulour had, in an excessively panicky voice, claimed to be able to see two of them.
Now they were discussing names.
"I mean," Danny went on, "All foxes are nocturnal. So why a night fox? What makes that different from any other fox?"
Rusty gave him a look. "Since when do you know nature?" he asked in a low voice, while Toulour blinked and tried to reason his way through his raison d'etre.
"Remember that time in Dodge?" Danny whispered back.
A moment's consideration. "Not very well," Rusty admitted.
"Well, while you were laid up and snoring, on fourteen different types of drugs, I had to amuse myself with a hospital TV that only showed the Discovery channel," Danny explained.
Rusty gave him a look. "Weren't you supposed to be holding my hand and mopping my fevered brow?"
"Oh, I was doing that too," Danny assured him.
"While you were discovering foxes," Rusty nodded.
"It sounds more dramatic," Toulour said eventually. "If you are going to make a name for yourself, you need to think about what that name will be." He narrowed his eyes at them. "You, obviously, did not."
Rusty smiled sweetly and poured them all another drink.
Danny looked thoughtful. "We had a couple of drinks, I think," he announced with uncertain confidence.
Basher nodded with all the certainty of experience. "And by a couple you mean...?"
"A lot," Rusty agreed. "A whole lot. There was nothing else to do."
"You didn't want to play Strip Twister?" Linus asked sarcastically.
Memory stirred. "I think we might have played Strip Poker," Rusty said thoughtfully. "And then you set fire to something."
Danny looked startled. "I set fire to something? That's not normally the way it goes."
"Think it was Toulour..." Rusty mused.
Toulour was staring down unhappily at the smouldering pile of silk that had once been his tie.
"Least you were drinking wine," Rusty pointed out brightly. "If you'd been on anything with more alcohol, could have been a whole lot worse."
"Thank you, Pollyanna," Danny muttered sulkily. Rusty had taken his cigarette lighter back. Apparently Danny was not to be trusted with it. He'd also taken Danny's spare Twinkie. He wasn't to be trusted with that either.
"I need a new tie," Toulour announced with slurred and wavering gravitas.
Danny sighed. "Surely you can do without," he suggested. "I can't even remember the last time I wore a tie."
Rusty blinked. "Yesterday night," he pointed out. "Michael Swan's party."
"I meant as me, not for a job," Danny explained. "Besides, I didn't get to wear it for long."
"No," Rusty agreed. "Especially as it was a choice between your tie and your virtue."
"Dick Turpin never asked that," Danny mused.
"She didn't look much like Dick Turpin," Rusty answered.
Danny considered. "She was wearing a mask."
"I need a new tie," Toulour repeated, not having followed anything said. That might or might not have been due to the alcohol.
"Okay," Rusty sighed. "Come on. We're in an airport. The one thing they can do is ties."
They watched as Toulour got to his feet and staggered towards the door.
"The other thing they can apparently do is drunks," Danny commented.
At a leisurely pace, they followed Toulour round to Tie Rack. They only had to redirect him once or twice, the first time away from an ATM he said he knew a trick for and the second time away from an amusement arcade.
"I like him better like this," Rusty commented in an undertone. "You think we could just keep him drunk?"
"This!" Toulour declared presently, holding up something blue and yellow and swirly. "Is this me?"
Rusty squinted at it. "No," he said at last. "That's a tie."
"I will take it," Toulour decided and promptly knotted it elegantly round his neck.
The sales assistant suddenly took an interest. "Oy! You are planning on paying for that, aren't you?"
Toulour made a lofty noise of disavowal. Rusty sighed, took a step behind the counter, pressed a couple of buttons and took a handful of notes out the till and passed them to Danny who, in the process of examining a cardboard cut out wall display, had just blocked the security camera.
"Excuse me," Danny smiled at the sales assistant. "I believe that this should cover everything?"
"Thank you," the sales assistant said mollified.
Toulour, who had been watching the whole thing, giggled slightly.
Danny glanced at Rusty. "You're right," he said. "We should definitely keep him this way."
"Really," Danny said thoughtfully. "I can't think of anything he'd be upset about. We had a few drinks, and then I guess we went our separate … " He glanced sideways at Rusty suddenly. "Oh."
Rusty tilted his head to one side. "Oh," he agreed.
Saul sighed. "Can we take it that you did something stupid and irresponsible?"
"And amusing?" Reuben added.
They were back in the bar, sitting behind a new and exciting collection of empty glasses and bottles. Toulour had adopted a bad American accent for reasons of subterfuge. Well. One part bad American accent, one part Joe Pesci.
"You're good fellas, you know that?" he told them insistently, swinging a glass round wildly and neatly soaking a nearby air stewardess in advocat which had been brought back to the table by Danny, allegedly on the basis that it would bring out the lights in Rusty's eyes.
Danny blinked. "Goodfellas?" he checked.
"In spite of everything, I mean," Toulour pressed on in drunk determination. "...I mean...what did I mean?"
"You mean it's your round," Rusty told him seriously.
"Nooooo," Toulour shook his head owlishly. "I never mean that. Oh, yes. See, you're good at what you do, and even if I hate you, I can respect that. I'm not like Benedict." He leaned forwards conspiratorialy. "You should hear the things he says about you."
"We have," Danny told him gravely.
"Often," Rusty added.
"Well, good," Toulour nodded. "Good. You know, you look at him and all that...all that everything and you just have to wonder, don't you?"
"Do you?" Rusty asked, carefully arranging barsnacks in order of saltiness.
Toulour looked round carefully and leaned in even closer. "Is he compensating for something?" he hissed.
They didn't look at each other. But the grin was very much in evidence.
"You should ask your wife," Toulour added, seemingly completely innocently and he then lost interest in the topic in favour of finding out where his drink had gone.
The grin vanished abruptly.
Toulour went on obliviously. "But what I mean is, you're master thieves, I know that."
"Thank you," Rusty said carefully. "I can honestly say we've never thought of ourselves exactly in those terms before."
"Well, you are," Toulour insisted. "I should know. I'm a master."
Rusty's lips twitched. "Really."
"Really, really," Toulour nodded seriously and giggled. "But why are there so many of you? Even when there's not eleven of you, there's two of you. You...what's that phrase I'm thinking of? You live in each other's underwear. That's it."
"That's not it," Danny said firmly. "I never go near his underwear. He wears a thong."
That had the effect of temporarily distracting Toulour. Especially when Rusty didn't deny it. Except to Danny with loud silence.
"You know, Terry Benedict still hasn't figured out whether or not you're having sex," Toulour mused. "He keeps asking people. He asked me and I told him, I don't care." He looked over at them. "Are you having sex?"
"We're having whiskey," Danny said holding up a glass.
Toulour nodded and joined in the toast, apparently happily. "Why are there two of you?"
"It's better with two," Rusty explained, poker-face firmly in place. "Easier. More fun. Much more fun."
Toulour nodded again. "I like it on my own."
"We could have guessed that," Rusty smiled and Danny dropped his mouth into his own hand and bit his knuckle savagely.
"It's more rewarding when it's your own work," Toulour went on.
"Everything you pull, you mean?" Rusty checked innocently.
"Exactly," Toulour agreed. "Everything I pull is mine and when I see the results...it's so satisfying."
Danny groaned and kicked Rusty hard under the table. "Just because he doesn't get that you're baiting him doesn't make it okay," he whispered loudly.
"Oh, Francois doesn't mind, do you Francois?" Rusty said with a broad smile.
Toulour blinked drunkenly at him. "No."
"I mean, he said himself, he's a master," Rusty added and Toulour nodded happily.
"I am a master," he declared loudly to the bar at large, raising his arms in the air in celebration.
"And not just a master thief, right?" Rusty went on and Danny plotted murder.
"No..." Toulour agreed hesitantly.
"You're a master of all forms of social interaction, right?"
"Yes!" Toulour answered, preening himself.
"So you see, Danny, obviously Toulour is the master baiter at this table," Rusty explained.
Danny carefully banged his head off the wall behind him.
"I am the master baiter!" Toulour yelled exultantly, and he drank the last of his drink down, stood up triumphantly and fell slowly in the direction of the floor.
Danny and Rusty watched him expressionlessly.
"Huh," Rusty commented, after some time had passed and it was obvious that Toulour wasn't going to get up anytime soon.
"Yeah," Danny agreed. "Awkward."
"Guess Toulour passed out," Danny said slowly.
"And so you left him alone to sleep it off and made sure you were as far away as possible, right?" Frank checked with definite irony.
"Yes," Rusty said positively. "Of course we did."
There was a long pause.
"We might have had a few more drinks first," Danny admitted.
"Possibly a lot more drinks," Rusty added.
Reuben grinned. "What's the next thing you remember?" he asked.
There was a moment when they stared at each other, frowning, a moment of collective-memory searching.
"We watched Toulour pass out - " Rusty began,
" - and then we finished the drinks - " Danny nodded.
" - and then there was a plane - "
" - not the right plane - "
" - but it went somewhere - "
" - and the people were very nice - "
" - except when they were trying to kill us - "
" - and then we came here, sobered up and posted bail - "
" - not necessarily not in that order."
Another pause. "So why is Toulour so mad?" Danny wondered out loud.
It seemed unanswerable.
"You got him drunk and set him on fire!" Linus said, wildly and wild-eyed.
It wasn't.
Toulour was happily unconscious on the floor. Occasionally he'd move slightly and make little snuffling noises. Danny and Rusty watched him absently and drank to friendship, alcohol, the promise of aeroplanes, not being caught in Michael Swan's dungeon, cocktail cherries, false goatees on evil twins, and each and every button on Rusty's shirt.
Eventually, the crackly voice from on high suggested that they could probably start thinking about going and finding a plane. It might even be able to get off the ground.
"We can't just leave him here," Rusty said, staring at Toulour, face displaying unaccustomed, drunk and bewildered compassion.
"We can just leave him here," Danny suggested. "Really quite easily."
"Suppose something happens to him?" Rusty asked, looking worried.
"Like what?"
"I don't know..." Rusty frowned in concentration. "We should leave him someplace else. Someplace safe."
Danny thought about it for a minute. Actually, it did make sense. They were trying to be nice to Toulour, after all. "Someplace he can sleep it off without anyone disturbing him and then go catch his plane," he nodded.
"Yeah," Rusty agreed. "I'll go get a trolley."
While Rusty was away, Danny made a couple of attempts to wake Toulour. Would be easier that way, after all. Saying his name didn't work. Shaking him merely led to him grabbing Danny's hand, smiling, and murmuring something along the lines of "Not now, Mimi." Pouring a jug of Sex on the Beach on his face only made him sigh and lick his lips. At that point, Danny gave up.
Rusty came into the bar a few moments later, dragging a luggage trolley. The bartender gave him an odd look, Rusty gave the bartender some money and everyone was happy.
"He's all sticky," Rusty commented staring down at Toulour.
Danny nodded. "And I'm Mimi," he explained.
"Ah," Rusty looked understanding and helped Danny drag Toulour up onto the trolley. They rolled him out of the bar and only hit him off the wall a number of times.
"Where we going?" Danny wondered.
Rusty shrugged and took the trolley on a sharp turn on two wheels towards a random door. "Mind opening this?"
Danny looked up at the sign on the door. 'Private. Absolutely No Entrance. Risk of Death.' "Sure."
They found themselves in a huge room full of non-moving conveyor belts and scattered luggage.
"No sign of Bruce Willis," Danny commented.
"Should be safe then," Rusty agreed. "Leave him here?"
"Why not?"
Carefully, they tipped Toulour off the trolley, and leaned him against the conveyor belt.
"You think he'll be okay?" Danny wondered.
Rusty grimaced. "He's an international criminal and we're leaving him unconscious in an airport. Wouldn't count on it."
Danny sighed. "We don't want him to get caught because of this," he mused.
"Right," Rusty agreed. "We should take his passport. That way no one will know who he is."
"Okay," Danny nodded after a moment, and he knelt beside Toulour and removed a handful of documents. "You know this is going to make it difficult for him to get anywhere."
"Nah, I'm sure he'll manage," Rusty said assuredly.
They stood back and watched Toulour sleep for a while longer. After a moment, he slumped forwards and started snoring.
"Oh, that's an annoying noise," Danny complained.
"Easy fix," Rusty said confidently and pushed Toulour back upright. The snoring stopped for nearly five seconds, before Toulour fell over again and the snorting and whining got a little bit louder. Rusty frowned and looked as if he was taking the failure as a personal affront. "Huh," he commented and Danny stood back and watched as Rusty rummaged through the nearest suitcase and triumphantly pulled out a pink, lacy negligee. "This should work," he muttered.
Danny blinked. "Depends what you're trying to do."
Rusty pulled Toulour upright again and carefully tied him to the conveyor belt.
"Should hold him enough to stop him snoring," Danny approved with a smile.
Rusty was frowning again. "Suppose someone steals his wallet while he's out?"
Danny sighed. "Rus'..."
"It happens," Rusty pointed out.
"Don't you think we've done enough?" Danny tried.
Rusty still didn't look happy.
"Okay." Danny sighed harder. "I'll be back in a few minutes."
When he came back, Rusty was crouched in front of Toulour, a black permanent marker in his hand and an expression of concentration on his face. "Almost done," he commented.
"What you doing?" Danny asked curiously.
"Well, we've taken his passport," Rusty explained. "And I got to worrying about him waking up hungover and forgetting who he is."
Danny frowned. "That - "
" - it could happen," Rusty insisted. "So I figured I'd label him."
"With his name?" Danny checked.
"No!" Rusty answered indignantly. That would have been a really bad idea. And he'd figured that Interpol might be a little interested if he wrote Night Fox.
Danny looked over Rusty's shoulder. Rusty had written 'Foxy' across Toulour's forehead.
"Smart thinking," Danny agreed and he stared at the pen in Rusty's hand. "Can I have a shot?"
"Sure." Rusty handed the pen over generously and Danny set to work drawing a false moustache on Toulour's face. Mostly for security reasons.
"There's a few wallets in my coat. You want to give them to Toulour?" Danny asked absently, adding a few twirls and a couple of whiskers. "That way, no one trying to steal his wallet will know which one to take."
Rusty considered that a moment. "Nice," he smiled.
"Yeah." Danny grinned back at him. "There's a reason I'm the one with all the best ideas."
A few minutes later, they stood back and admired their handywork. Toulour sat, unconscious and drooling on himself, bound in lingerie, the word 'foxy' written across his face, decorated with fake facial hair, minus his passport and plus several other people's wallets.
"Well," Danny said definitely, brushing off his hands. "That's our good deed for the day."
"For the year," Rusty decided and Danny looked at him. "What? We can't all be charitable."
Danny grinned. "Another drink?"
"Toulour's overreacting," Danny decided. "Probably just embarrassed about getting drunk with us."
"Right," Rusty agreed. "Still - "
" - we are - "
" - oh, definitely - "
" - sorry," they said in unison, and they meant it.
Everyone glanced towards the tape full of bluster and vague threats.
"How difficult is it to think for a moment before you do whatever the hell you want?" Linus demanded.
Danny looked vaguely embarrassed. Rusty shrugged.
Livingston sighed. "The problem is, they do think for a moment. And then they do whatever the hell they want anyway."
"And people don't change," Saul said sternly.
"So what we doing about Toulour?" Frank asked suddenly, bringing everything back neatly to the long ago point.
Danny and Rusty looked at each other for a long moment. Then Rusty grinned and Danny leaned forwards. "Funny you should mention that..."
And that is that.