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“Well, I love her enough to marry her.”
“You’re kidding,” Sonny’s shocked stare scratches Rico raw, like skin and sandpaper against the grain.
“I’m serious,” Rico answers, pitched low so he doesn’t end up yelling, “…you don’t trust your feelings anymore, Sonny,”
“Ever since Caitlin died, everything tastes sour to you, man,” he continues, salt in the wound.
“No, man. Come on, that’s out of line – ”
So much for not yelling, “Look, you want to push the whole world out, and I want to live in it! I don’t need you to tell me how.”
—
Sonny finds Rico drinking his sorrows away after being turned down by Val, which is weird. He's holed up in one of the shittier bars downtown and looking rough in his old leather jacket and jeans, which is weirder.
Sonny almost didn't recognize him until he was right up next to him, watching Rico down another whiskey shot, and another. The whole scene is surreal, but he orders his own drink, and they sit in silence for awhile. The loud music slowly becomes richer, tangible and thick as more people bustle into the small space, adding to the noise, louder and fuzzier as the night and the alcohol goes on, filling the space between them.
He could ask if Rico wants to talk about it. It was a hell of a case, on top of a hell of a love affair. But that was more often true than not between the two of them. As much as they tried to deal with it in helpful, timely ways, these types of things would float up later – in violent bursts, small references, sudden breakdowns – that’s just the way they operated.
So he’ll let nature take its course, Sonny figures. They both lost the right to say I told you so years ago.
The line of empty shot glasses gave it away, but Sonny decides to ease in lightly, "Trying to prove something here?"
Rico takes a minute, resolutely not looking over at Sonny, who has forgone sitting forlornly on a creaking stool like his partner. Instead he leans with his back towards the bartender, surveying the crowd, elbows resting on the edge of the counter as he sips his Black Jack.
“I think a part of me just wanted to prove you wrong,” Rico mutters finally, hardly loud enough to be heard over the din, “to show you that life…that you,” he stutters, “that we can still be part of life, man.”
Sonny blinks, remembering their locker room conversation, and the strained not-argument at the meet up with Izzy, “You and me are two very different dudes, Rico.”
“Yeah,” Rico bitterly laughs, “…probably wanted to prove that more to myself.”
“What?”
“That I wasn’t the same as you.”
—
“I’msorry, man,” Rico slurs, after Sonny has convinced him to take his pity party to the St. Vitus and called them a cab.
Sonny tightens his grip at the small of Rico’s back, still a little thrown to see him in his old leather jacket and jeans. Looks like both of them lose a bit of spit and polish when they are on the outs. But Sonny had rarely seen Rico just outside of spiffy, even at the worst of times – while over the last couple years he himself hasn't been in much more than torn shirts and jeans, letting his hair run away with the weeds. Two very different dudes, indeed.
“Sorry for what?” Sonny asks.
“What I said,” Rico stumbles a little as they finally make it to the car, “about you…earlier…”
Vague. Rico continues, “How do you do it? Live with it?”
Sonny wants to snark a little. Barely, he wants to say, but Rico probably wouldn't appreciate it, “Not everything is sour, Rico.”
—
On the boat, later, Rico kisses him suddenly, off-kilter and off-center, and Sonny is shocked. He places his hands on Rico’s arms to push him away, but Rico reacts much faster than somebody as drunk as him should, and is off of him in a split second, “Shit —“ Rico says, another layer of decorum stripped off, he barely swears, not like Sonny — and he drops the bottle of beer he was holding, “Shit!” he says again, and immediately kneels to pick up the bottle. Sonny stares for a second, a little lost, but notices when Rico’s posture slouches a little more.
“Hey - hey, I’ll get it. You OK, man?”
‘“I’m gonna be sick,” Rico mumbles, the sudden movement and fear and shame making the world spin intensely around him, his head like a ball on a chain. Sonny gets him up and over to the side of the boat, and while Rico starts emptying his stomach over the side, Sonny takes the moment to hose down the deck quickly and hurry below deck to fill up a glass of water.
He feels like he’s in slow motion, grabbing an old Disney World glass and immediately chipping it against the faucet, but can’t find it in himself to react beyond intrusively wondering when he last refilled the water tank. He watches his hands move in front of him like a stuttering movie projection, seeing the kiss as if it happened to somebody else, overlaid on Mickey’s grin.
When he comes back to Rico, still over the side of the boat, he leans next to him and rubs a comforting hand on his back. Rico groans and spits, “God, I remember why I hate drinking.”
Sonny laughs at that and Rico chuckles a little too, but with an edge of self-recrimination. Sonny doesn’t like the sound of it, “I’ve never seen you put it away like that.” Not even when Calderone Jr. murdered his child and Angelina in one go.
The same rueful chuckle, “You should’ve seen me before –" Rafael died, “before Miami.”
Sonny doesn’t think about it often, so secure in Rico’s own self-assured image: all silk ties, buttoned up shirts and double breasted suits, virgin daiquiris and crisp salads, diamond stud in his ear, white shoes, dark socks. It comes as a kind of splintering pain in his chest, the awareness that Rico has some deep waters, a whole life that Sonny hasn’t bothered to ask about and he knows Rico won’t share with him.
Rico looks at him then, “I left that all, when I came down here.”
Sonny doesn’t know what to say, so he simply nods. Rico is still staring at him though - just long enough that Sonny starts getting a little uncomfortable – before he straightens up. He looks a little sheepish, and Sonny knows immediately it’s because of the kiss “I…I should go home.”
Impossible. “No way in Hell, Partner,” Sonny says, “You’re downing this,” and he pushes the glass of water into Rico’s fumbling fingers, “brushing your teeth,” with the toothbrush he’s kept over here for years now, “and crashing here.”
A split second of indecisiveness is broken easily by Sonny placing a firm, guiding hand on Rico’s back. He’s too drunk to argue so he goes below deck easily once in motion, chugging the water.
By the time Sonny gets down there, Rico is passed out on the small couch, face down in his own drool.
—
When they wake up, Sonny makes some coffee, eggs and toast for Rico, who is much less disgruntled and hungover than he has any right to be.
In fact, his partner is practically beaming in comparison to the night before.
Perhaps all those sober days and clean living really did add up in some sort of cosmic no-hangover karma pool, muses Sonny. Or he's just perpetually feeling strung out and can’t tell if he’s miserable, hungover or not. He pulls out a carton of orange juice (that’s healthy, right?) from the small refrigerator and pours them both a glass, anyway.
“I…” Rico stares at the cracked glass Sonny’s pouring into, the cold flow of orange filling the illustrated sunrise behind the Mouse’s ears, then glances up, trying to parse some things together, “I did something dumb last night, huh?”
“Want a list?” Sonny smirks.
“No, like, really dumb,” Rico mutters, though Sonny sees that he appreciates the humor.
“Well, you drank yourself into a stupor, then fed the fishes a little regurgitated meal –" he swears Rico turns a little green. He’s never seen him with a hangover (even if it was a little one), he realizes, not in all the seven years he’s know him. He can’t help but want to prod a little.
He’s a little anxious about how Rico would take this, so he busies himself pouring his own glass.
“…And all after you kissed me.”
Rico surprises him by bursting out laughing, and not that dark-edged chuckle he’d been sporting last night, “Oh man…”
Sonny goes with it, he can’t fault a guy as piss drunk as Rico on something like that, especially not Rico, but there is something that sticks in his gut. A feeling he thinks might be disappointment. At what, he’s not sure.
“I’m told I’m usually a good kisser, so…” Sonny continues as Rico’s laughter picks up again, already reading the joke, “…my pride is a little wounded, pal.”
He’s glad, hearing Rico laugh like that again.
“You – you didn’t punch me out, though?” Rico ends with a giggle, making a show of searching his face for any sore spots.
“You have a habit of kissing men when you’re drunk?”
Rico smiles instead of answers, and Sonny feels like it’s a little bit of a Mona Lisa smile, hiding a whole world of experiences which Sonny will never know. Again the feeling splinters in his chest, that he’s a little jealous of the world where that mysterious Rico exists. He shakes himself out of it, placing the two glasses on the small formica table between them, tilting gently with the waves.
“Nah…” Rico starts, his wary stare belying the teasing tone, “I’m just a kissing, cuddling type of guy.”
It falls a little flat, but Sonny won’t push it. He could ask, but what’s the point? The conversation drifts and dies into a companionable silence, accented with the sound of waves and cutlery against cheap china. Sonny sips his orange juice, pulls a face at the tart-sour tang on his tongue – perhaps he should’ve checked the expiration date.
It wasn’t a good kiss, and it definitely wasn’t the right time or place. But when was it ever for them? He smirks to himself. At least the memory of it was whiskey-sweet and true and theirs.
That was enough for him.