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It’s late when Ziggy hears a knock at his door.
He tenses immediately—there’s only so many people who know where he’s staying, and none of them have reason to seek him out this late. It’s pouring rain, too—who would be coming to see him now? His heart pumps a bit faster. There’s no way it’s her, but just in case, he picks his revolver up off the nightstand before he goes to open the door. The weight is a small comfort, allowing him some security as he turns the lock with his free hand.
The tension dissipates immediately, though, when he cracks the door open and sees Flop, his hair wet and plastered to his forehead and smiling dumbly despite the rain. He’s drunk, clearly.
“Heyy, Zoggy—uh, Ziggy,” Flop stumbles over his own words. “Can, can I come in?”
“Jesus, Flop,” Ziggy mumbles, opening the door for him and hastily setting the revolver aside. In his inebriated state, Flop doesn’t seem to notice the weapon (or if he does, he doesn’t say anything). “Why the hell are you here?”
Flop doesn’t answer, only lurches forward into the small one-room apartment Ziggy rents for the time being. Ziggy quickly moves to catch him before he falls, and ends up with one arm around Flop’s shoulders and another across his front. “Be careful,” he mutters. “Be stupid if the floor did you in.”
“S’alright,” Flop slurs, placing his hand over Ziggy’s, whose heart flutters involuntarily at the touch. “I got you to catch me, don’t I?”
It’s been a problem as of late. That feeling, the one that’s wormed its way into Ziggy’s chest and refuses to leave, that makes itself known whenever Flop is around. Which is often, given that he’d made the stupid and short-sighted mistake of inviting him to be a part of the investigation. It’s messy, and would never work for any number of reasons, but Ziggy grasps his hand anyway. “Why’re you here? It’s pouring.”
“Came to see you,” Flop shrugs, leaning into Ziggy. He tenses at Flop’s weight pressed against him, but Flop continues on, unaware. “S’been a year.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.” Ziggy begins walking Flop to his bed, just to set him down. He smells like whisky, even through the rain.
“A year. Whole year since she left me,” Flop mutters, eyes fixed on the opposite wall. Ziggy hopes to god Flop can’t hear his heart beating against his chest.
“Oh.” He’s not sure what to say, really, to that. Sorry doesn’t mean much; he’s sure Flop’s heard it enough by now, as most people do when something terrible and unfair happens in life. Ziggy’s heard enough sorrys. He’s sick of them by now, so he no longer tells people anything that might warrant one. “I, uh—”
“For Reed,” Flop sniffles, and Ziggy worries for a moment he might start bawling. “For an idiot. She married him. She married him and not me.”
Ziggy decides to just let him talk for now, until he’s tired himself out. He doesn’t know much about Sherry beyond the fact that she and Flop were engaged—this is the first he’s said more than two words about his failed engagement, though, so Ziggy resolves to actually listen.
“And wasn’t he already married, anyway?” Flop mutters, putting his head in his hands. Shit. He’s still talking. Ziggy hesitates, then reaches out to place a hand on his shoulder. Flop looks up at him when does, wearing a sad sort of expression that makes Ziggy want to wrap his arms around him and tell him that he doesn’t need her when he has him. “I’m sorry. I just…” Flop looks at the floor again. “We didn’t even like each other all that much, but I was hers, you know?”
He does know. Ziggy’s no stranger to failed relationships, after all. “Yeah,” he replies, voice soft. “Yeah, I know.”
“And it’s not even that I miss her that much—I mean, I do—it’s more that I miss being with someone who’ll have me.” Flop lays down on Ziggy’s bed on his side, looking the deputy in the eye. “She tolerated me. That was enough.”
The feeling in Ziggy’s chest hangs there, heavy. He wants so badly to tell Flop otherwise—that he deserves more, that he shouldn’t be tolerated but loved, but that’s too close. Too close to something more familiar and more intimate than what they really are, which is just colleagues by circumstance. Nothing more, no matter how much Ziggy might entertain the idea.
“It sounds like it may have been for the best,” he decides to say, and that sounds comfortably distant, understanding but not too familiar. Tears begin to brim in Flop’s eyes again, and Ziggy worries he’s really fucked himself over, now, until he opens his mouth to speak.
“You’re right,” Flop manages, voice breaking. “You’re right. It wouldn’t have worked. She’s… I don’t think she was ever right for me.”
It hurts, it really does, seeing Flop this broken up, because Ziggy knows there’s nothing he can do that’ll ease this sort of sting. “You’ll be okay.”
“I know. I know, eventually. It just… it hurts now.” Flop sniffles, wiping his face with his shirtsleeve. He sighs with the kind of exhaustion that only comes with crying. He looks Hey, I… I hate to ask, Ziggy, but can I—”
“Don’t even ask.” Ziggy stands. “Obviously ou can stay. I ain’t sending you back out into the rain.”
Flop manages a smile. “Thanks, Ziggy.”
Ziggy lends him a dry shirt, and manages to ignore the way that it hangs off of Flop’s comparatively smaller frame. It’s, God forbid, cute. Flop’s not small (not that small, as Ziggy has come to learn Flop insists), but he looks like he is, curled up in Ziggy’s bed with his shirt around him and Ziggy feels really, really stupid for allowing himself to think he wouldn’t mind seeing this every day for the rest of his life. For God’s sake, they’re colleagues working an investigation together, and when this is all over and done and Fae is locked up or entombed in some flood-proofed masoleum Ziggy is picking up again and leaving, just like he did the first time.
“Ziggy,” Flop says, and Ziggy realizes he’s been staring. Shit.
“Yeah?” Ziggy gives him a tired smile. The rain has lessened by now, still pattering outside but in a way that feels almost comfortable rather than battering.
“Thank you again,” Flop says quietly.
“‘Course.” The word almost gets stuck in his throat. He wants… he wants a lot of things, Ziggy decides, and he can’t have any of them. He doesn’t really deserve them.
“You’re not sleeping.”
“I’ve got work to do,” he replies, settling at the little table in his space and lighting a candle. He’s already read over Fae’s letters and poetry hundreds of times, but he knows he won’t be able to sleep.
“Okay.” Flop almost sounds disappointed; Ziggy mentally chastises himself for imagining it. Flop falls silent, and for a while, the only sound is his even breathing and the scratch of Ziggy’s pen on worn paper as he makes notes on Fae’s work, even though he knows them inside and out, just to pretend he’s doing something other than thinking about the other man in the room. For a while, Ziggy believes he’s fallen asleep, until Flop speaks again, somehow quieter than before.
“Ziggy,” Flop whispers, turned towards the wall, face hidden. “Can you hear me?”
“I can,” he replies, unwilling to speak louder for fear of ending whatever moment they have right now, the two of them whispering to each other.
“You’re a very good friend,” Flop says quietly, so quiet Ziggy isn’t sure if he’s heard right at first. “You’re better to me than she ever was.”
Ziggy presses his lips together, stares at the back of Flop’s head, and smiles as best he can, even though he can’t see him. His grip tightens around the pen in his hand and his eyes water up with tears but he smiles anyway.
“Thank you, Flop,” Ziggy replies, and it doesn’t sound forced at all.