🍾🥂Snippets 4/6 - Flavio

The impromptu celebration wasn’t the wisest idea, considering the meeting you’re having with Fortin the next day— in several hours, but it only really dawns on you when Flavio’s eyes go vitric and unfocused.

You’ve lost count of the number of bottles that passed through your hands somewhere between the bar and Flavio’s condo, but even though he has sipped from less than half of them, the alcohol seems to have finally taken its toll.

Though initially, you arrived in a group, the other agents are nowhere to be seen. Max dipped nearly the second the car’s doors were open, excuses and rushed apologies pouring out of him like water from a leaky bucket. Kovalenkova, too, vanished without a trace once her first cup had run dry, dragging already wasted Wilson to hit the clubs.

She seems to have taken the growing... whatever this is between you and Flavio better than you expected, if the lack of chaperoning is anything to go by. To be fair, you and Flavio haven’t been jumping at each other’s throats in weeks! At least, not in the usual sense.

Alas, before you noticed, it was just you, Flavio, and a bottle of whiskey - scratch that, half a bottle - in his littered with pizza boxes and empty bottles loft.

The celebration - abrupt and unplanned as it were - is not so purposeless, considering that in the last, what, four months all you did was work, some of you even overtime. Some of you without pay (no, not at all, you’re not bitter about that, no ma’am). And hey, if Alois can drink himself stupid all day long without you nagging at him even once (um, twice? Never in a row?), you can indulge, too.

You’ve more than earned it, being not only one step closer to solving the case, but also to getting the SPD off your ass permanently. Well, most of the SPD. If anything, you’re hoping to keep a single agent around for a little while longer, terrible humor, questionable fashion sense, and his mismatched ceramics he has you use instead of proper liquor glassware.

Speaking of. Flavio’s holding onto the turgid cup of whiskey with sincere focus, as though he’s worried he might spill it on the— oh, yes, the carpet. Whatever. It actually might look better with a stain on it. Certainly, it can’t get any worse.

The two of you have been opting for drinking straight from the bottle until you relented and accepted one of his mugs (black with cat ears stuck to the rim, perfect for you to poke your eyes out. If you didn’t know any better, you’d accuse him of carrying an assassination plot against your person. He only laughed when you said that, but a laugh is not a no).

His way of drinking is as atrocious as his choice of containers, Alan would probably roll his eyes all the way into his skull if he saw this. Instead of keeping the proportions, Flavio overfills his cup, foregoing ice or garnish, making you eager to witness him pour the whole thing all over himself at any moment during his flailing. It hasn't happened yet, but you’re still hoping for a good show. You do have the front seats, after all.

Though you started the night seated on different ends of the couch, (with Flavio’s legs taking more than his half) the squishy, slippery monstrosity pushed you to the center inch by inch until Flavio’s thighs, in his stupid skin-tight jeans, became glued to yours. You can feel yourself sweating just from the proximity.

When you push yourself away, only to inevitably slide right back, Flavio looks up from his cup and laughs.

“What’s so funny?” You can’t quite kill off the biting tone, it’s a force of habit, but Flavio doesn’t mind. On the contrary, the way he squints at you is more entertained than anything. When you frown, it only seems to entertain him further. “What?”

His attempt at an explanation, however, is incomprehensible to your ears, though apparently amusing enough to have him break into a fit of giggles, causing him, and the contents of his mug, to sway sharply, almost spilling - the liquid out of the cup, Esposito over the armrest.

You catch him at the right moment, grabbing a fistful of his maroon turtleneck - this ugly, ugly thing is pretty soft to the touch, huh - and pulling back.

He lands a little too close, half-way in your lap, snickering to himself at your dry, “Hey, watch it!” and each and every curse that follows until he settles down, somehow without losing a single drop of his drink. Talk about dumb luck.

“What the hell were the two of you chugging in the backseat? I thought Wilson said it was an energy drink?”

“With vodka.”

“Fucking hell, man.”

You almost wish they’d shared, if only so you could just knock yourself out faster, not having to deal with a wasted and overfriendly Flavio. Oh, is that why Kovalenkova left? A revenge, is that it? Great. You didn’t think she knew the true effect he had on you, but it seems you were mistaken.

It used to mess with your head, back then, how friendly he got, how nice. The contrast between your usual quasi-arguments was so sharp you felt like you needed to treat him worse just to keep the line drawn. You don’t mind it wiped clean now, and yet a solid part of you still hates the fact that he doesn’t seem troubled at all, not by your closeness, not by your words. Nothing you do gets a rise out of him, and though you never thought yourself the type, you began to try harder to get a satisfactory reaction. You don’t know how to handle him other than with teeth bared.

“Did nobody teach you not to mix clear booze with darker ones? If you throw up on me, I’m moving the fuck out, contract or no.”

“Wow? Excuse you? I can hold my liquor,” Flavio mumbles, greatly affronted, raising his cup sharply to demonstrate, and still somehow keeping the liquid motionless.

“Oh, I’m so very sorry, your stomach can, just not your brain, is that it? Ah-ah—” you interrupt his slurred attempt at refuting you, “—and open your mouth wider when you talk, I can’t understand half of the things you mutter to yourself.”

“I said,” Esposito repeats, this time overtly slow yet with the same drowsy quality that betrays his growing inebriation, “it’s unfair, that you got to save me twice. In one day at that, wow. Am I the agent here, or you?”

“Well, excuse me.” It’s not like you expected gratitude, you didn’t do it— That’s the thing. You don’t know why you rushed to cover Flavio in the first place. With Max here, he’d have been fine either way. Yes, your effort was all for nothing, but he doesn’t have to rub it in. “Next time I’ll let you get shot since you like it so—”

“No, I meant... Wow, I’m glad you were there.”

You almost snark back, sensing sarcasm, but his expression stops you. His grin is just a tad too thin to count as his usual artificial one, not wide enough to be saturnine either. He’s slipping into honesty so subtly that if you didn’t see him fall apart before, you won’t have known any better now.

Recognizing that he has been caught, he breathes out a laugh. His words, though, bring no clarity. “I thought I couldn’t sink lower. Gratitude, hm?”

“What?”

“Well, my boss...” he cuts himself off, as if by habit. “My old boss, I mean.” He doesn’t add a snarky remark, doesn’t look at you meaningfully, and yet you still have to avert your eyes. Even if the guy’s health is rapidly improving, it’s still an obvious sore spot you’d rather not scratch at. “It used to piss me off, you know, his ‘things to be grateful for,’ positive affirmations bullshit. I never liked that, but back then, when everything was so fucking shitty, I thought, self-help right, I might try anything, it’s not like it can get worse. And then, I thought, how fucking pathetic, you know, is that the best thing I can be grateful for? Not being wet? I— Forget it.”

With the messy way he speaks when he’s sober, the off-tangent soliloquy doesn’t deter you, though you do lose the thread of the conversation. Still, it’s probably the longest he spoke to you, or anyone that you’ve seen, without pulling out that smile of his, so you can’t do anything else than prompt him to continue.

“You can talk about it,” you say, waiting for him to be busy chugging his drink down, so that he can’t interrupt you. It’s not a good place to be, not really. When he bares his neck, and you don’t know whether you want to hold or smother. There’s something in you that forces you to do the former. Always the former. “I already think you suck, there’s nothing you can do to make me think worse of you. You can talk about it. You don’t need to— You know, smile all the time. Isn’t it exhausting?”

He blinks at you like he either doesn’t understand the question or like it never dawned on him to even consider it. Both options are too miserable for you to conceive, especially since you can do more than just wonder how many - if any - other people have said that to him in the months you spent working together. The answer being none.

Even the off-duty agents, everyone here has their own mess to clean up. If anyone bothers to look behind Flavio’s mask, as cliché as it is, he doesn’t let them see him as anything other than content. It works too well, the ‘I’m fine,’ the laughing so hard, so often, that nobody even thinks to enquire. And those who do... Eh.

Kovalenkova would have killed you for even thinking about hurting him, but she’s not exactly someone to whom he could come to cry his heart out... not if he wants her to see him as a shoulder to lean on when she needs one. It’s the same way with everyone else, from what you’ve noticed. If he’s ever anything other than borderline positive, it’s an accident.

“I was just— ironic, isn’t it? I just,” he drifts off again, but you let him get to the point at his own pace. “You still do that face when I’m close, like a cat stroked sideways. And I thought, a year ago, three, I had no idea you’d be the thing I’m most grateful for.”

His tone is mild, but for some reason, you can’t meet his gaze. You watch his hands instead, twirling the now-empty glass, propping it on his thigh. “Don’t give me that. It’s not like I took a bullet for you or anything.”

“That too but, nah, in general. I still find it—” he pauses, both the words and movements, “—gratitude, whatever. My life was shit, and it was infuriating trying to find things to be grateful for. And I decided to just, be fine regardless, you know. Regardless of the things. But because of you, I thought about it again.”

“So I’m like the absence of rain to you? Something not super shitty to be grateful for?”

“You—” He sucks air through his gritted teeth, it’s the closest genuine reaction of reproach you’ve ever gotten from him, and you weren’t even trying. “Maybe it’s because you spend too much time with that lawyer of yours, but not everything I say has a double meaning.” Yes, aside from his happy-go-lucky facade, he’s nothing but blunt. “You make me want to feel grateful, you know. Even for the small things. Especially for the small things.”

“Oh.” Well, now that you got more of that gratitude you wished for, you’re out of things to say. He really does go all-in, doesn’t he. Contradictory, too, he’s both one of the most genuine people you’ve met, and someone you have the hardest time taking at his word. “You’re welcome, I guess,” you mumble, and that’s probably not what he wanted to hear. Then again, seeing as he didn’t mean to reveal that at all, perhaps he didn’t count on anything.

To fill the awkward silence that commences, you do what you know best - you hand him your glass in a gesture of truce. He accepts it readily, downing it without making an offhanded joke about it being poisoned. From the minute twitch of his lips, though, you know he thought about just that. The smile widens when you squint at him.

“Hey,” he says, before you can open your mouth. His expression falls again, and he hesitates a bit, placing your glass on his own, balancing them. He only continues when you make a noise, fully prepared to continue that impromptu heart-to-heart, maybe even share some of your own thoughts... But it’s just like him to ruin the mood. “You don’t reaaaallly think I suck, do you?”

“No.”

“Because I was going to tell you that my head game is—”

“Fucking hell,” is all you can muster before the rest of your complaints are drowned underneath the roar of his laughter.