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Levi takes a deep breath prior to knocking the door. He’s practically scripted out the whole interaction in his head. Hand the flowers, say sorry for the bad day, leave. Don’t kiss, don’t touch, just leave.
“Here it goes,” he whispers to himself before rapping his knuckles against the wooden door. It slowly opens, in hindsight, it was probably a regular speed but everything was in a slow-motion induced by anxiety. Nico stood there with messy hair and tired eyes. It took everything within Levi to not just wrap his arms around his boyfriend and take care of him.
“I’m sorry about your day, I hope your interview went well,” Levi spoke while holding out the flowers. Nico looked at them confused and took them.
“Uh, thank you,” he breathed. The smaller nodded and turned away.
“Wait!” Nico shouted after him. Levi froze in his tracks. This wasn’t part of the script. Why the fuck is Nico going off the scenario he played out in his head?
“I don’t really want to talk right now,” Levi sighed, not turning to meet his boyfriend’s eyes.
“I’m really sorry,” Nico continued. Levi bit his lip and considered breaking all his rules. But his stubborn and petty attitude took over. He kept walking down the hallway.
-
“Failure isn’t my identity! I reinvented myself!” Levi slurred and pointed to himself. “I don’t wear glasses anymore! I’m not a failure! I wear contacts!”
“Should we like, cut him off?” Parker looked at him concerned. Taryn pushed the rest of the liquor away from the very drunk man across from her.
“I think we,” Levi spoke pointing at all of them, “should get pizza.”
“Yup we are cutting you off,” Parker stated before taking the vodka off the table and back into his liquor cabinet. Levi pouted and sat back down on his seat.
“When is your shift tomorrow?” Taryn asked, now walking over to sit next to Levi.
“Well, I have temple at 8:30 for Erev Pesach,” Levi slurred. The two other interns look at each other very concerned.
“It’s 2 am right now and you are so very drunk and you are going to be so hungover for temple,” Parker groaned.
“Erev is Hebrew for eve, and Pesach means Passover. Do you guys want me to tell you all about Passover?” Levi informed them.
“Please don’t. Let's just get you to bed.” Parker grabbed the drunk interns arm and hoisted him up. Levi stumbled over his feet over to the bedroom.
“You know, I’m not going to talk to Nico tomorrow. I don’t have work because I’m Jewish and the Jews made this holiday week in advance so I don’t have to see my boyfriend that I’m mad at,” Levi explained. Parker just nodded and sat him down on the bed.
“Actually Pesach is-”
“Alright that’s enough Judaism for tonight, okay? Just go to bed.”
-
They texted back and forth a few times, but Levi gave only a few word answers. He really isn’t prepared to work and see his really pretty boyfriend be good at his job and not think about the words that came from his lips. It really wasn’t that bad the first day. Levi was being self-assured and didn’t let heat of the moment words get to him.
But then they got to him.
Levi has failed. And failed a lot. The majority of his life has been him fucking up, but at least this time he hadn’t failed at the relationship. Levi spent the whole Sedar going over his mistakes and how Nico never made the same ones.
Levi stood up from the bench and walked out the intern locker rooms just to be met by Nico standing across the hall. Well, maybe he can just sneak back inside the locker room-
“Levi, hey,” Nico said walking towards him.
“Oh, hi,” he spoke back. Levi went back to walking until Nico stopped him by grabbing his arm.
“Look, I didn’t mean what I said. Failure never defined you. You define yourself, even when everyone tried to label you one thing you didn’t let it get to you. That’s why I love you. Because you learn from your mistakes and they make you better. I’m in love with you. I just let out all my frustrations on the first person I saw and I shouldn’t have. I’m so sorry,” Nico spilled.
“I love you too. I want to say I forgive you, but it hurt. And it's not okay to use me as a punching bag and think I’ll just take it,” Levi sighed.
“I know, it’ll never happen again. I promise. You could insult me if you want?” Nico smiled. The intern returned the smile and kissed his boyfriend.
“I just might. Also, I got super drunk after I gave you those flowers and was really hung over for Erev Pesach. My rabbi totally knew,” he laughed.
“You know, I’d love to go to one of these holidays with you,” the other spoke.
“I’ll take you to the next one. We have tons anyway.”