Chapter Text
Nicky frowned in concentration as he adjusted the elevation of his scope. In the early morning there was only a sliver of sun on the horizon, the remaining sky casting a shadow over the building Nicky was stationed in. The rest of the team were in the warehouse opposite preparing for the job Copley was throwing their way that evening. Nicky would be aiming through glass so he had just about every angle known to man to consider.
He felt content to be busy in his calculations, though the empty air next to him felt hollow without Joe spotting for him. He was bundled up in a thick winter coat and was lying on one of his more comfortable mats, having taken the gamble that everything was going to go to plan and he wasn't going to need to just up and leave it.
Andy's voice buzzed through the comm. "Ground floor clear. Nicky?"
"All set." He flicked his head torch on and off a few times to remind her which window he was in.
Then Joe wandered into his line of sight, squinting up at the building until Nicky flashed his torch again.
"Nicky," Joe said through the comm.
"Yes?"
"We have a question."
"We?"
"We have a question," Nile repeated, sliding up next to Joe and tucking her arm into his. "That you, Signor, are qualified to answer."
"Go on."
"If you have a lasagna and you put another lasagna on top of it, is that one lasagna or two?"
"Sorry?"
"So take two lasagnas. You put the first on top of the second like layering a cake. Does that make one big lasagna or is it still two lasagnas?"
Nicky thought hard.
"That is a married lasagne," he decided.
"A married lasagna?"
"Yes. A married lasagne."
"So it's… one lasagne," Joe said. "My point exactly."
"No, no, no. It's a married lasagne." Joe was silent. "See, we are two separate people, but we are also together, so we are one thing. It's both. It's married."
"It can't both be and not be two lasagnas." Nile complained.
"Why not? Things can be two things at once. Atoms can be in two places at once," Nicky said. "The lasagnes we see are just an approximation of what's going on at an atomic level. It's physics."
"No. It's lasagna."
"It's one lasagne," argued Joe.
"It's two separate lasagnas!" Nile gestured about with her free arm. "What if one lasagna was wildly different from the other? Then that's just a lasagna on top of a different lasagna."
"If you put a vegetable lasagne on top of a beef lasagne it would cease to be vegetarian. It would be one lasagne."
"But if you look in the middle the layering would be wrong. It'd be double pasta."
"What kind of lasagne are you eating where the top is only pasta?" Nicky asked with genuine concern.
"That's how we had it at school! Just a bunch of cheese sauce on top."
Joe looked at her with a great expression on his face. "Lasagne is just a vessel for sauce! It's a way of making sauce acceptable for polite society. See, if we all sat around eating just the sauce then the principles of modern industrial Europe would fall apart at the seams."
"Rationality would cease to have meaning," Booker agreed from somewhere else in the building, out of breath like he had been running up stairs. "Then all those academics wouldn't have any excuse to meet up and jerk eachother off."
"Is the basement clear, Book?" Andy interrupted.
"Yeah, boss. Crystal."
"Jesus Christ," she muttered.
Nile laughed at them. "Fuck industrial modernity! You can eat sauce if you want to. You're a free man."
"No," Joe said, "you're a Freema- Ow! Don't hit me."
Nicky grinned into the dark. "It's still married in my opinion but cheese would count as a layer. It would be cohesive."
"So it's one lasagne!"
"No," Nicky says. "It's-"
"It's two lasagnas!" Nile insisted. "It's two. It's so two."
"You've said the word lasagne so many times it no longer has a meaning," Booker sighed.
The comm crackled with static as Andy groaned in agreement.
"Andromache, please. The floor is yours," Joe offered.
"Please," she begged. "Be fucking quiet."
There was a pause of silence that Andy might have described as sacred if she believed in that sort of thing.
"But if you had to pick?" Joe asked
"It's- I don't know. Married?"
"But-" Nile began. A faint ringing interrupted her.
"Quynh's calling," Andy said. "Yeah, hi. We're all good. All set. I have a question- Uh huh. No, not about the mission… Okay, hear me out. If you have two lasagnes and you put one on top of the other does that make it one lasagne or is it still two lasagnes? …I know it's a stupid question, just answer it… Nicky says it's married… Okay. Yeah, 0600 hours, we'll see you then. We love you too."
There was a sequence of noises that sounded like Andy dropping her burner phone and aggressively crushing it beneath the heel of her combat boot. The suspense curled around the rest of the team like smoke.
Andy cleared her throat. "Quynh agrees with Nile."
"Ha! How you like them apples?"
Joe sighed. "I hate those apples."