2020-11-27 - I Brought the Glenfiddich, Senpai

Friendships are undiscovered country. Friendships are hard. And friendships apparently require maintenance. When you dent them well and solid, they don't self-repair and give themselves a fresh coat of paint. The only one who can get in there with a screwdriver and a paint gun is, well, you. Words that a therapist might say -- and has said -- but words mean nothing until you're ready to hear them, and process the message, learn the lesson. Reasoning like that is what brings Ravn Abildgaard to the Steelhead Service Centre with a bottle of twelve-year Glenfiddich and a bad conscience. He's still not exactly certain what he could have done differently, but things are not all right, and he bloody well intends to make them. Or at least be able to say 'I tried, I bloody well tried' this time, instead of his usual 'too bad, I guess -- bye'.

He walks in, wearing his usual black -- no purple scarf today -- and a somewhat defiant air that he's probably not even aware of himself. The air of a man who feels like life has gotten away scot free for throwing things at him for a very long time -- and now he's finally decided to stand his ground and fight back a little. That week of Gray Harbor essentially being covered in a cannabis cloud eroded his defences, forced him to lower his guards and let the light in. The weed is gone and with it, the strange sense of being free of inhibitions -- but it's left seeds behind, and some of those are taking root.

One of those being that a friendship that creaks at the hinges might be better oiled than walked away from.

"Are you in, Rosencrantz?" he calls out as he steps inside, looking around. Some day, the mechanic is going to rise out of the pit like a dragon out of an ancient moat. Maybe not today, but sometime.

Music is playing, of course. Not from Itzhak himself, for a change. This music comes from the speakers set all around the garage. It's violin music, also of course, but not bluegrass or Cajun or classical. This music is melancholy and haunting, a collision of Middle East with Eastern Europe. Jewish violin music, speaking to its people's long griefs.

Itzhak is just dropping the hood on a Camry that looks like it's seen better days. Itzhak looks like he's seen better days. Well, he always looks like that, but sometimes it only enhances his fire, makes the wildness of his spirit glow. Today, cold, dark, and stormy, it only makes him look older than his years but no wiser. He looks up, squinting, crow's-feet crinkling at the corners of his eyes--and smiles, lopsided, tired. For a moment there, everything about the way he's holding his lanky body says that he's about to go over and hug the hell out of Ravn.

"Well look what the cat dragged in," he says, instead, visibly reining himself in. "Lemme wash up, be right with you."

Ravn nods and places the paper bag of whiskey bottle on some convenient surface. He doesn't look fantastic himself; too many days spent stoned out of his mind, only to be followed by lying awake at night thinking about choices made, words said, actions undertaken. At least he's managed to get a shave in -- chin scruff its usual very carefully achieved casual two days' length look restored. He is a vain man in his own way -- it takes effort to achieve the exact same brand of careless drifter appearance every day. Something which seems painfully obvious when he failed to do so for a bit, showing what he'd actually look like if he didn't make the effort.

"Thought I'd... swing by, see how you're doing. Didn't think it was a bagels kind of day, though." Because bringing a bottle of whiskey over in the afternoon of a work day is perfectly normal. Somewhere.

Itzhak comes out of the head, unzipping his coveralls to shuck out of them like a snake shedding its skin. He tosses them, limp and lifeless, on a workbench and rolls on over to the sitting area. Underneath he's wearing a t-shirt that reads All I Care About Is Violin and in smaller letters, and, like, three people. The usual beaten-in tight jeans worn to suede softness and steel-toe workboots, too. Himself, he's never close-shaved, or hardly ever, and he's always rocking scruff between stubble and proper whiskers. He must, like Ravn, maintain it that way.

"What's this?" Taking the whiskey, he looks it over, eyebrows going up, mouth flattening into an impressed line. "Nnnnnot too shabby. You bring glasses? We're gonna have to drink it out of paper cups if ya didn't. What's the occasion?"

If Ravn was worried Itzhak wouldn't be happy to see him, the opposite seems true.

"Paper cups seem appropriate, somehow. And I suppose the occasion is that I didn't feel like bagels." Ravn straightens up a little from his customary hands-in-pockets slouch. Maybe he is relieved that the other man seems pleased. "I don't know if it's too early in the day to drink. Everything feels like I ought to be drunk, though. Might just have the grandest pot hangover in the history of mankind."

He glances at the paper bag. "And that's kind of my go-to brand for when I feel like looking at the mirror and not recognising that scrawny fucker looking back at me."

"Fine. By. Me." Itzhak pronounces each word with relish.

He digs his phone out of a too-snug hip pocket, swipes for a minute. The OPEN sign in LEDs switches off, and so do the work lights, leaving only the sitting area with artificial light. The gray stormy light (if 'light' it can be called) falls through the skylights, rippled by rain. Melancholy Jewish violin music turns off and something exceptionally chill starts up. Lo-fi beats to get day drunk by.

"Feels like I'm gettin' ready to make out with you," he remarks, making these changes to the environment via some app on phone, "but don't worry, I won't tarnish ya honor."

"I'm not man enough for you anyway." Ravn smirks; the banter between the two doesn't bother him in the slightest -- hell, he's often the one to initiate it. He looks around at the changes with an impressed expression all the same and nods. "Nice setup though. Fancier than you'd expect from a garage. Or I would at least -- I think I mentioned, this place is a lot fancier than I tend to think of when someone says garage. I hear that word and I still expect someone's dad to come out in a wifebeater, yelling at the damn kids to turn down those guitars. English is a funny language."

Then he flops down bonelessly on one of the chairs in the corner. "Pretty sure I don't have much honour left to tarnish anyhow. How's life on your home front? No surprise night visitors since last in mine."

"I rebuilt it to look fancy. Was just a flat fuckin' box before. Still ain't actually fancy, just looks pretty." Itzhak snorts at Ravn not being man enough for him, not to mention the wifebeater thing. He plucks a couple paper cups from the sideboard (a dresser in a past life), tosses his phone on the coffee table and slings himself into the cozy armchair across from the other man. All the furniture is peak cozy, a funny contrast with the rest of the garage.

The question gets a grunt in response. "De la Vega's out of town. Taking care of some stuff. Miss him."

Blissfully unaware that de la Vega is likely pacing the floor of a very locked cabin in the woods somewhere, plotting how to kill Alexander Clayton and make his escape from cocaine detox hell, Ravn nods with the mild sympathy of a man who assumes that the other man's partner is just gone on some weekend business trip to Portland or similar. "Everything feels a little off right now. I feel like I ought to be apologising to everyone for last week. Bet I'm not the only person in Gray Harbor who does, either. Feels like a house of cards that keeps coming down. Maybe I can build a better one."

Itzhak rubs his forehead above one eyebrow in the manner of a man who has a headache he doesn't anticipate going away. Another native speaker of American English would translate 'out of town, dealing with some stuff' as bad. Whether Ravn does or not, Itzhak doesn't tell him any further details. "Pour some a that good shit for me, would you already? Ain't you Vic's bartender apprentice, act like it already." Teasing, of course, though Itzhak sounds cranky and tired. Slumping down in the armchair, he regards Ravn like he's rather got a hangover himself. "That house of cards again, huh?"

Ravn plucks a couple of paper cups and unscrews the bottle. "Myeah. I am. Thinking about that too. Feels like there's a lot to think about after this week. I'm not the only person who's been forgetting to use their inside voice a lot."

He rubs his temple a moment with gloved fingers, then offers the other man one of the paper cups; the shot is rather generous. "You look like your week has been even shittier than mine, Rosencrantz. Anything you want to talk about? Or pointedly not talk about, just tell me if I get too close to the landmines."

Itzhak takes the cup. "To pointedly not talking about shit. L'chaim." He taps his cup to Ravn's, has a sip. Then his eyebrows go up, and he sighs, smiling for real, before he swallows. "Oh, man. Oh man that's amazing. I don't usually get to drink on this level, being a count has its perks, huh?" Yeah he hasn't forgotten that part, but at least he's teasing Ravn about it instead of yelling at the top of his considerable lungs. "So what is it we're thinking about?" He sets to sipping.

"I'll bring the cheapest fruit wine I can find next time," Ravn threatens with a small accompanying grimace. "Or a bottle of turpentine."

He takes a sip of his own and savours the taste a moment; say what you want, tween Glenfiddich is good. Then he shakes his head. "Just thinking about what I actually want. Hyacinth Addington and Vyv Vydal nudged some thoughts my way -- something about doing what you want to do and making sure you're good at it, but is bartending what I want to do? Or rather, cleaning the place and yes, taking bartending lessons which I do enjoy. But they do have a point -- is this what I want to do and make sure that I'm good at? I hadn't thought about it that way before, because I never thought I'd be doing it for a longer period of time. Just a few weeks, you know? It's still awkward as hell there to be honest."

"Can't be worse than Manischewitz." Itzhak tips his paper cup in an ironic toast to that one, too. "Mmm. I mean, they got a point. You really wanna go all in on barbacking and scrubbing the john? There ain't nothin' wrong with it, it's honest work, but ," he wobbles the cup, "you should think about that. Whether you wanna do something you actually like, right? You're smart as hell, you play a gorgeous violin, you got cheekbones I'm pretty sure are illegal in thirty states, you don't gotta tie no millstone around ya neck if you don't want."

'Awkward' makes him grimace sympathetically. "You mean about Benz?"

"I do like simple, manual work. It keeps my hands busy and my mind can wander. Just, not sure this is what I want to do for years." Ravn nods and absolutely, definitely pretends he didn't hear anything about violins or cheekbones; his self-image is a skinny amateur, and by god, he'll fight people for the right to keep it that way. "It'd help, of course, if I did know what I want to be doing."

He leans back in the armchair and sips the contents of the paper cup. "And yes. I suppose I do mean about her. She's not doing anything. Neither's Marshall. But I still walk around the place with this feeling that I've somehow fucked up big time. That I managed to somehow hurt her, by being my usual oblivious self. Pretty sure she'd deny it if anyone was to ask her about it, but that's what it feels like, yes."

"This day-to-day mechanic stuff sucks," Itzhak says, leaning forward a little, confiding. "I fuckin' love cars, I love engines, but being a generic neighborhood mechanic? Sucks. Much rather be doin' custom work, building racing engines, fun stuff. So be careful what you get good at." He pours himself some more Glenfiddich. "Ahh, tateleh, sorry to hear it," he murmurs. "You talk to her about it?"

"Once. It didn't go very well. Lady Sunshine is -- well, sunshine. All smiles and bubbles if it bloody well kills her. Hurting below. But I can't force someone to want to talk things out, and I can't force myself to fall in love with someone either, no matter how bruised their ego might be. I like her. She's certainly attractive enough. But I'm not in love with her, and if I was, I'd be so deep in denial I'd probably be in Africa." Ravn closes his eyes a moment. "Why is it that people project their self-worth like that? Somebody just not feeling that way about somebody else says nothing about that somebody else. All it says is that the first somebody doesn't feel that way."

Itzhak murmurs, "That she is," against the rolled rim of the paper cup, and drinks. "One time I tried to tell her it was okay if she wasn't like, screaming happy all the time. She didn't take it too good. She's had a tough time, with Marshall gone and all." Gone away to the war, he might almost have said. MIA. "Yeah," he agrees, with a suspicious amount of sympathy in his voice. "It's like people project their self-worth on the weirdest stuff. Like barbacking for tips or something."

"Oh, ouch." Ravn at least has the decency to wince. "Not you too. Vydal and Hyacinth already sat me down for a very serious discussion about whether this is what I want to be doing with my life. The answer is no, it is not. But the problem is that I don't know what I want to be doing with my life. I never thought I'd stick around for more than a week or two, Itz. Barbacking is fine for making some travelling cash, having a handful of interesting conversations, and then moving on. Which is all it was ever meant to be."

Itzhak smirks over at Ravn and pats the arm of his chair, in a sort of substitute for contact. "Ahhh hell, I don't care what you do. I just wanna keep you around, and what you're doing seems like a fast track to burning out on it. That's all. Christ, I sound like my mother," he mutters, dryly amused.

The Dane laughs softly before refilling his cup. "You also sound like me. I've had that conversation with myself a few times after I came out of that bloody weed haze. It all set a lot of thoughts into motion -- I said things to people I wouldn't normally have said. I said things to myself that I wouldn't normally have said, either. I get how this looks on the surface, Itzhak, but it's not about Bennie and Marshall. It's about me -- if I'm sticking around, which I seem to be, then how do I see myself in Gray Harbor ten years from now? What am I doing, where do I live, that sort of thing. Nice existential crisis with a healthy dose of weed hangover."

"Nah, 'course it's not about them," Itzhak says, a little surprised that Ravn would say it looks like that. Then he rethinks. "Okay, I can see how you would say that, but nah, it's about doing your stuff. So what stuff is it you wanna do, that's the question. Hell, you don't even gotta decide right now. You got all the time in the world to think about it."

"Yeah. Thing is, I've been thinking about it for thirty years and that hasn't gotten me anywhere." Ravn smirks at himself. "I want to work somewhere that isn't a bar. People go to a bar to hook up. Which is fine, and no one actually hits on me at the Twofer, but I am sick and tired of the rumour mill hooking me up with you, Bennie, Vic, and anything else that's walked in or out of that place at some point. So, not a bar or night club or other place like that. I do want to work somewhere I meet people though -- otherwise I might as well just do more online tutoring than I already do, back at my own place. I like meeting people. I'm considering just setting up an office away from home at the Espresso Yourself, much like de Santos has."

Itzhak snorts a laugh, blushing. He hides behind the cup for a moment, pretending like he's really invested in considering the excellent liquor. He clears his throat. "You ain't made it in this town until someone's positive you fucked either me or de la Vega," he says, just wry as all get out, and tips the cup up to finish it. "Mmm. Fuck that's good." He's starting to relax, losing some of the ferocious tension he's carrying around with him. "Sure, why the hell not? You could try it out, see if it works for ya. If not you can do something else."

"By that logic I made it here when you came out to the Vagabond the first time to play and ruined that photographer's camera," Ravn says with a lopsided smile. "I think all small towns are like that. Must be annoying as hell for you and de la Vega both, though."

He can't help another small laugh. "I feel like I'm making life changing decisions this week. Like I'm at a crossroads, figuratively speaking. I either get up now and keep moving -- which I won't -- or I grow the fuck up and start dealing with consequences. Which is honestly quite terrifying."

Itzhak rubs over his mouth, a curiously unhappy expression surfacing on his face, like an alligator silently rising from murky depths. "Yeah, well, in his case they got a better than average chance of being right," he says, but that's not what made him unhappy. He shakes it off, pours himself some more fine whiskey. Quietly, he says, "Glad you're not gonna leave town. I'd miss ya."

Ravn looks at the other man. Then, somewhat uncharacteristically, he leans over a bit and touches his forearm -- a careful touch but one that does not surprise his neuropathy given that he initiates it, and one that's through two layers of fabric. "I'm not going anywhere. I can tell something is going on with you, Itz. I'm not going to ask. Minefields, personal things. You need to talk about it, you tell me. You need to just swear about life in general, go right ahead. Life's a manipulative, selfish bitch who screws you over and laughs at you afterwards. I don't have a hell of a lot of experience with the whole friends thing but I'm pretty certain that just being there when the other guy needs to vent is part of the deal. And I'm here."

Blinking tipsily, Itzhak looks back at Ravn, then down at his hand on his arm. A tremulous and genuinely touched smile breaks out on him, and he pats his arm next to Ravn's fingers but not touching him. "Yeah, well, turns out you ain't stupid. I never been good at hiding shit." He runs his tongue along his teeth, sighs, and shrugs. "My ex girlfriend's back in town. Safe to say it's eatin' at me."

Ravn winces and draws back -- but in the natural fashion of someone reaching for their paper cup, rather than someone who just burned their fingers; his gloves and Itzhak's shirt sleeve combined with the fact that he initiated the touch rather than be surprised by it seems to make all the difference. "From the way you say that, I'm going to venture a guess and say that you did not part peaceably and in a good, let's be friends forever kind of way. Are you expecting her to show up and cause trouble?"

"Some would consider that a good quality in a man, Itzhak -- not hiding things." He studies the other man's face intently. An ex-girlfriend seems a little -- off the mark for such a bad mood. There may be something else, but in that case it's obvious that this is a mine field better avoided -- and the Dane decides to do so. "I don't have a lot of experience with ex-girlfriends," he says instead. "But they're exes for a reason. It's eating at you because you still have feelings for her, or it's eating at you because you think she still has feelings for you. Am I right?"

"Uh--" Itzhak laughs, a sound rich in regret. Better to laugh than to cry, his people say. He rakes his fingers through his curly black mane. This does nothing except make it wilder. "She dumped me. Because..." one hand describes a circle, Itzhak trying to gather up words that make sense. "Because I wanted to protect her. I know that don't sound bad, but to her it was bad. She's got damage." He taps one temple. "Up here. You know? Trouble communicating. Too many pills, too many years on the street. Too much exposure to Them. I wouldn't take her to bed until she told me real explicit that she wanted me to. I couldn't trust myself that I knew what she was saying a lot of the time. I kinda suck at communicating myself, yannow? So I decided I hadda be careful.

"She said I treated her like a child, and what can I say? She was right." Itzhak stares into the dim reflection cast by the little pool of liquor in his cup. "I promised we'd be friends, but I was fuckin' lying to her. I knew that wasn't gonna happen. Do I still have feelings for her? I dunno. Not feelings like I wanna get back together, I know that, but feelings? I feel a lotta things. They're like a big-ass tangled ball of wire. What she feels, I ain't exactly qualified to guess.

"But I loved her." Quiet. Itzhak drains the whiskey far faster than it deserves.

Ravn drains his cup as well while listening. He shoots the other man a sympathetic look and says, "I knew a guy once who'd say that if you don't hate her after, you never really loved her in the first place. I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but there's some truth to it. When break-ups are nice and clean and easy, neither side were ever all that invested to begin with. People lash out because they hurt. Sounds like you made a good choice there -- both in being the adult in that relationship, and in maybe not settling down as the adult in an uneven relationship like that for the rest of your life."

He hitches a shoulder lightly and pours both men another shot. "Look at me giving opinions on relationships. Oddly enough, that used to happen to me a lot back home. The guy who's never involved in a messy break-up or crying about his girlfriend must know something the rest don't, right? If I know anything, it's that people project their needs and wants on to each other a lot, and then feel as if they've been hurt or slighted when the other person doesn't live up to those needs and wants. I see it all the time -- somebody wants to be saved, or for that matter, wants to save somebody, and the other person either doesn't want to take on all that responsibility, or have someone tell them how to live. Or even worse, both sides are looking to get saved by the other so they just tear each other down instead."

"She wanted me to move in with her. I said no. Because, basically, that. Didn't wanna be the adult. It was after that she dumped me. And a while after that? De la Vega asked me to move in with him and I said yes." Itzhak holds out his cup for the refreshing of the booze. "And I'm happy with the grouchy fucker. We're both fucked up and neither of us wanna fix it. We just wanna...be. With each other."

He gives Ravn a cockeyed look. "You don't sound like a guy who knows somethin' I don't, you sound like a guy who don't do relationships, and who might be pretty smart for that. 'Course you can give advice, you get to observe and never get down in the muck yaself. You're like the David Attenborough of relationships." Pause. "That sounded like I'm insulting you. I ain't, I just sound way more like an asshole when I'm drunk." Sighing again, "That's how Bex broke up with me. Nice and clean and easy. Isolde, little messier. Bex? She was just like, off to the next stage of my life, which you ain't included in, Rosencrantz. How did this get to be me whining about my exes? I am drunk."

So he drinks some more.

"Sometimes you need to whine, though. I paid someone to listen to me whining about my fiancee for almost two years." Ravn hitches that shoulder again, very slowly, as if to say, I could probably have spent that money better. "David Attenborough of relationships. I like it. And here we see the common American warbler trying to attract a mate by building a white picket fence around his nest..."

He shakes his head. "I burned my hands well and solid on that whole thing too, Itz. Fell hard for the first girl to pay me any attention. You know that single guy who'll worship at the feet of any woman giving him a second glance? That was me. Took me long enough to realise that it wasn't about me at all. She had her life planned out and part of that plan involved some suitably presentable bloke who'd be grateful enough for the attention to just play his part and look nice on the mantelpiece. See? I can whine too."

Need more whiskey.

Itzhak listens to this, with that musician's sense of listening: a keen ear highly attuned to nuance, breath, and prosody. Ravn's accent makes him more musical than most, too. He whistles low. "Wow, I never woulda thought you were like that. Never I wouldn't in a million years, shows what I know, right? ...this the girl that died?" Yeah, being drunk does not give Itzhak any improvement in social skills.

Ravn flops bonelessly in his chair. "Yeah. It's not that surprising, is it? The lonely guy who doesn't know how to people -- and suddenly there's a gorgeous, confident woman marching into his life. Of course I fell head over heels for her. I was just grateful to have somebody in my life. Classic story, really. She wasn't a bad person. Just, what she really wanted was a dog. And I had so little faith in myself as a human being that I was happy to be turned into one."

Grimacing, Itzhak shakes his head in disgust. "Glad she's dead."

Then, promptly, he gets a dawning expression of horror, like maybe he should not have told Ravn that he's glad his girlfriend died. "Uh. I didn't mean it. ...I mean, yeah, I meant it, but not like that?"

The expressions that flit across Ravn's face at that are numerous. At first, yes, the horror -- did he just say that out loud? Then, the embarrassment of actually, he's right. And finally, the laughter -- well, that was awkward.

The Dane decides to take the statement as it was meant, in the end, and nods. "I was working myself up to breaking up with her. We argued a lot. It was never going to work out. I'm not glad that she is dead but I am glad that it's a past chapter of my life. She's certainly a very big part of why I hesitate to involve myself with something like that again. I have this idea that if I am to fall in love a second time in my life, I need to know the other person first. To be her friend. Because getting laid is all well and good, but it's not being in love and wanting to build the rest of your life together. Nor is it having somebody build their life and graciously assigning you a role in it."

"I'm already way too drunk," Itzhak mutters, blushing tomato frikkin' red and scrubbing his face over with one big hand. "This shit's strong." Sure, blame it on the high quality liquor and act like that's not exactly what you think, Rosencrantz. "No, okay but seriously I didn't mean it. --I meant it," he has to admit, shoulders going up, "just maybe I shouldn'ta said it like that. I don't like nobody treatin' you like a dog. You're not a dog, unless it's a badass junkyard kinda dog. You're not a Siamese. That's a cat, but you know what I mean. A girl oughta love you because you're amazing and not because you probably live in a castle or whatevah."

He's trying.

"I live in a trailer park," Ravn points out, grinning. He's definitely not sober enough to even consider trying to explain the somewhat complicated situation around his home affairs -- that technically yes except no because things and let's just not, not right now. "I'll meet somebody, some day. Or I won't. Not basing my happiness and my self worth on it -- if that whole mess taught me anything it's that you don't need somebody at any price. People who are happy in their relationships are far outweighed by people who aren't. I'd rather be on my own than add to that statistic, you know?"

Itzhak sits upright very suddenly (he'd been slowly oozing down in the armchair) and waves at Ravn frantically. He looks very excited. But no words are coming out. Instead he signs at him, one-handed, quick flickering flashes of American Sign Language. Then the words come back. "OKAY no okay I just got it! THAT'S why you live in the trailer park! So nobody comes along like hey that guy's got some cash and he can do the thing on the stationary, I bet I can mold him to my will!"

Ravn opens his mouth. Then shuts it. And opens it again. And then shuts it again -- all in all managing a quite convincing impersonation of that meme of the guy from Firefly. The New Yorker is right but he's also wrong, and whiskey is starting to make things really complicated and really simple at the same time here.

Eventually he gets around to, "Well, that's part of it. Some people do get silly about things. Americans get very silly about old world titles, things like that. I'm not special. And I don't want people to think I'm special or different because some guy who lived eight hundred years ago impressed some other guy."

"Shut the fuck up," Itzhak says, pointing at Ravn with a leveled finger as steady as a gyroscope. The rest of him, not so much, but his hands, perfectly steady. "You are special. You're hella special. Not because of that. Because of you. I don't know what it is, why so many people don't get it about you. Is it because you're pretty? Because you just do the stuff you gotta do? Is it the accent? I don't fuckin' know! But nobody gets that about you, and I'm pissed off about it. You're like Javier. Nobody gets him either, they think all the wrong things about him, and they just figure, hey he's hotter than asphalt in July and thicker'n New York cheesecake, why don't I carve off a slice of that? But they're WRONG. Not about him being hot and thick. That's right. But they're wrong thinking he's just some rough trade piece of ass. And they're wrong about you bein' a fucking Pomeranian."

Ravn blinks slowly. And then again, because seriously, Pomeranian? Or maybe it's the idea that he and the gruff police captain might be alike in some fashions -- a piece of introspection that seems rather odd at first until the not entirely sober Dane realises what the other man means: Not that he and Captain de la Vega are secret twins, but that both project a facade to the world. And that, at least, is an assessment that he cannot deny.

He shakes his head, laughing and refilling his glass again. "Everyone's fucking special. In that way that makes them them. But I guess you're right -- I don't want to be a Pomeranian. So I'm not. I mean, at least I get the luxury of choice. It's what I'm coming to love about this town, you realise? That it let me in and let me be the me I want to be. And I've got friends here who'll kick my ass and tell me in a strong New York accent that I'm being an idiot when I'm being an idiot."

At least, hopefully that's not what Itzhak means, that Ravn and de la Vega are alike. He must mean that people come to the wrong conclusions about both of them. Right? Right. Hopefully.

"Look," he says, holding out his own cup for a refill, like he needs one, "in New York, I'm nothin' but an ex-con can't hold a job. Workin' under the table, picking up construction day jobs, trying to land some kinda real music gig, but," he fans his fingers at Ravn. STAY on his right hand. "Ain't no New York Philharmonic gonna hire a guy looks like me, even if I had the chops. Been in bands, some of 'em did okay, but mostly, aside from wrenchin' for de Santos? I was a huge fuckin' loser. I was looking at another twenty, thirty years comin' along of the same, you know what I'm saying? Here, I mean, shit," laughing, he flips that same hand over in a flourish. "I got a real boyfriend, I got my own business, I got amazing people in my life. This is where I gotta be. This is where I wanna be, much as I miss my family. I was completely worthless to 'em there, but here, I can do a little good in the world."

Ravn nods enthusiastically and waves his glass at the other man with hands that are decidedly less steady. "That's it. Gray Harbor has so much going on that no one has time for all that. Whatever baggage you had from somewhere else? Tuck it on a shelf, because you just got upped to the big leagues, and the trouble here is real. All I ever did with my life was stupid attempts to get attention, and then going into academics because I realised I like books better than people most of the time. And then -- running away from everything. The way the world works, Itzhak, it's ridiculous and frequently, unfair as hell. So a place like this, where what you do defines who you are? It's no fucking wonder we come here from all over the world, when you think about it. This is home."

He settles back slightly. "I mean, not everything here is perfect. I'm sick and tired of a few things. But on the whole? Gray Harbor is paradise to a guy like me."

"That's what de la Vega says about an active combat zone. Whatever else you were don't matter." Itzhak's lit up with pleasure in the conversation, looking significantly less tired and significantly more drunk. But mentioning his boyfriend again has his face souring. He rubs his mouth, like he'd done earlier. "Ehhh. Don't mind me," he mutters. "I ain't sleeping much and I miss him a lot. This helps, actually, even though I'm moping and I know I'm moping. He's gonna be home soon enough."

The unspoken I hope hangs off that sentence like a droplet from a blade of grass.

The unspoken I hope dangles visibly enough from the end of that last sentence that it manages to catch Ravn's attention even through the fog of several glasses of excellent European whiskey. He looks at the other man for a moment, trying to do the math. There's something he's missed here, and whatever that something is, it's making his friend very unhappy. But that something is also something that his friend very much and very obviously does not wish to discuss. Even if Rosencrantz can't keep the unhappiness from slipping into his voice, his privacy is something that Ravn has every intention of not violating.

Instead, he slowly says, "You're allowed to mope, you know. It's no use pretending to be all happiness and sunshine and bubbles, if you feel like death warmed over on the inside. This whiskey's too damn strong for me to be able to use my words properly but -- you know it's all right? To not be happy. Sometimes I just want to sit somewhere and not be alone, and know that even if I don't really want to talk to anyone about it, I'm not alone."

If the line about 'sunshine and bubbles' was meant to make Itzhak laugh, it works; he snorts, taken off guard, and shakes his head. "Not me, meyn boychik, no sunshine or bubbles here. I never been able to pretend. Kinda envy anybody who can. Just...want him to be okay." He toys with the paper cup, rubbing a thumb along the rolled lip. "Thanks," he adds, not looking up. "You say you don't know how to be friends, but from where I sit, ya doin' just fine."

"Give me time, I'll manage to screw it up," Ravn murmurs, mostly in an attempt to defuse the darkness a little.

He reaches for the bottle, topping up where possible; are the two men going to end up staying in their respective chairs for a while because the floor moves too fast? Who cares? He's got no evening plans. "I can -- pretend. I mean. It's not difficult. Not if you don't care what happens to people afterwards. Then you just play them, like a video game. But do it long enough and it becomes painfully obvious to everyone that you're just wearing a mask. I can't... talk to people who do, for long. You realise that's one of the reasons de la Vega makes me squirm sometimes -- that he wears a mask, and I can't tell what's behind it. I get why he does, but I can't read him and it makes me feel like a prey animal."

Itzhak smiles, faint, crooked. "He has that effect on people. And yeah. He wears a mask." He falls silent, long fingers balancing the cup on his knee. Just when it seems he's not going to talk again, he does. "People think he's carved of stone. That he can take anything and shake it off and not give a fuck. It pisses me off why more people can't see that's just his mask. That's what I mean about you and him. Looks to me like a lotta people don't bother seeing that you wear a mask, too. You got a dozen of 'em, and he's just got the one, but, hell, I dunno. It's obvious to me. That you're both way more'n meets the eye."

"It's a way to keep people at a distance," Ravn admits. "To keep them from getting close enough to see the true you. And to keep them from using what they see against you. I thought that was obvious right away the first time or two I met de la Vega -- that he doesn't want people to get too close. I don't know him very well at all, and even I can come up with a number of reasons that he might not want to invite everyone in. He's a foreigner in a country that's riddled with systematic racism regardless how much it calls itself the land of the free. He's a high ranking police officer, which means he's pissed a lot of people off just by doing his job. Hell, that alone makes me wary because to me, police does not default to 'friend' -- and I'm not exactly a hardened criminal. Add life -- I mean, none of us get through it unscathed. And not everyone wants to be an open book, making the world their therapist. I respect that. I know I'm pretty close lipped. Not going to begrudge someone else the right to be too."

"That's without even going into that he's a queer guy with multiple boyfriends," Itzhak says, his smile a little more genuine this time. "Yeah. He's got his reasons. You got yours. You know what's funny? Roen doesn't wear a mask. Like, a little, like anybody's gotta, but he's just so himself all the fucking time. It's amazing. He says it's what a couple decades of therapy buys ya. Him and me pissed each other off the first time we met, 'cause I could hear the Song clear as anything in him, and I told him so, and he didn't react so good." Now that smile is fond, reminiscing about that time he and August Roen almost came to blows.

Ravn thinks for a moment, and then nods. "You're right. He doesn't. You know someone else who doesn't either? De Santos. Both of those look right through you, but for some reason, neither of them make me want to get up and run away when they do. And now that I know what to look for -- both of those two have a level of power that is almost blinding. Combined with the fact that both of them are essentially just good."

He adds, with a slightly self-deprecating smile, "It's not a few decades of therapy alone at least. If it was, I'd be a role model of well adjusted, contributing citizen. Heaven knows I've spent enough time trying to explain myself, but I'm pretty sure that I only learned half the lessons I was meant to learn. I've learned more about myself from you in a couple of months. The way you deal with your own fears, and the way you force me to face mine. That's something I've been meaning to mention sometime -- so thank you, Glenfiddich, for propping me up to say stupid things and hopefully not remembering tomorrow that I said them."

Itzhak murmurs, "It's 'cause neither of 'em would ever hurt you, and you can tell. Everybody can tell. They're good." He tips the cup up to take in more of that lovely Glenfiddich, and then those eyebrows go surprised. Swallowing, Itzhak blinks, like he's not sure if he's so drunk he completely misheard. "Wai-wai-wait, what? Run that by me again? You learned from me?" He pats the air with his fingers as if to settle this radical new statement into place so he can get a good look at it.

"Why is that a radical and strange notion?" Ravn looks genuinely confused (and slightly unfocused). "In a way, you're what I aspire to. I know you're not perfect, and that your life isn't perfect. But you're someone who looks their fear in the eye, flips it off, and gets on with things. I'm someone who just takes one look at things when they get difficult, and then runs away. I'm learning. From you. I'm still here. Think we'd even have had an argument about what I told you and didn't tell you about myself, three months ago?"