More Dysfunctional Than You

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Scene Title	More Dysfunctional Than You
Synopsis	Christian wins a bike race! Teo struggles with how to treat him now they're known buddy-buddy Fed and terrorist. Christian gets a box of radios from Deckard and wants a bunch of stuff that explodes for Christmas. Teo finally makes verbal diarrhea about his big gay crush. This lengthy conversation is necessarily fueled by caffeinated tea.
Date	December 12, 2008

Cliffside Apartments: Christian's Apartment

Chris had been home a few hours by now, but he was still more than just a little out of it. He'd gotten his Motard back into its home, and half stripped out of his riding gear but frankly changing out entirely was just too much fucking work. So he sat in near silence, listening to the kettle creak on its way to a whistle. It was always like this though, this sort've stupor was almost welcome. It cleaned the cobwebs out've his head.

Said Motard was of course, covered with a fine misting of dust and across some of its surfaces entirely mulched and charred rubber. Its side panels had scuffs and scrapes, one footpeg was slightly tweaked and both handguards looked like an angle grinder had attacked them, but as evidenced by the sizable trophy and plaque on the kitchen counter it hadnt all been for naught.

On the average day, Teo has as much stealth as a herd of cattle and not all the paranoia in the world is going to change his default gait. So it goes: his footfalls precede him, the thwack-a-thump of frost-encrusted winter shoes on the hallway floor, audible through Cliffside's thin walls. Several strides later, the noise of walking gives way to the noise of drubbing the door with his fist, albeit this time without quite the level of enthusiasm that had awakened the entire floor the other month.

Through the eyehole, Teo looks roughly normal: sleeping for a day had helped him recover most of his color, and the bruises on his neck have begun to fade even if his voice still sounds like he's speaking in a dialect of a cheesegrater: "Christian?"

Christian grunts,damnit. Slowly he rises, and makes his own noisy trip to the door. Theres no peeking through the door, or shotgun for that matter. He knows that voice, cheesegrater or not."Hey punk."And open goes the door, So Chris can offer a soft smile. "C'mon in stranger, I'm just bout ready for some tea."He was dressed only in his pants and Motocross boots, leaving two things immediately obvious. One, Christian is like twice as powerful as he looks without a shirt as with. Two, he's got enough scars and stitch tracks to make suitable street cred for like four peeps. "I werent expecting ya."

Given Christian is roughly the size of like four peeps, that may make sense on a mathematical level. Math isn't Teo's forte, however, and he carries the same morbid fascination with battle scars as the next kid who thinks beating stuff up is really cool — which has somewhat less to do with being stabbed by little girls and strangled at gunpoint by old men than one might otherwise think. He stares until it's impolite to do so, looks up and gives a salutationary flare of fingers from around his grip on a bag of Chinese. Not the kind that makes you puke, likely.

"You're all fucked up," he offers by way of acknowledgment, stepping in. Despite that dirt and boots characterizes his host's current state of dress, he removes his own shoes with one heel pressed to the other toe, then hooked toes. His head swivels to the kitchen counter and he grins. Shows teeth: almost all of them. "Congratulazioni."

He frowns just a hint at that "Chicks dig scars dude."Like the T-shirt says apparently. He turns as Teo slips in, tugging the kettle off the burner. "You want some tea too bud, I mean christ if you brought the food. I got tea and I got some Kumis and thats like it. "Out of beer, for shame.

The Trophy was fairly simplistic, with "#1 Stock class midweight" and a plaque that declared the exact same words, but listed the track and date and division and all that boring shit. "They were pissed as fuck, these punks were all hard and shit about how like badass they were. Nobody would talk to me after the first heat, and I won all three of them outright. Good track for the Husq, and tight tracks are really good for my bodytype."huge, huge was his bodytype apparently. "So whats up with you bro?"

By then, the food's on the kitchen counter and the younger man is studying the trophy out of his eyes turned sideways, giving Christian his back for a moment. Despite this, he can hear the frown; Chris is worse even than he as at hiding how he feels. Maybe even when he's lying. "Mi diaspace," Teodoro answers, waving a hand backward without looking; his words are muffled because he's using his teeth and his other hand to get the stapled bag of food open. "I'm not complaining or anything." Were he marginally less distracted, he probably would have picked a different configuration of words.

As it is, his voice is light with reassurance over the crackle of plastic and healing damage. "Do you get money or anything?" He twists his head over to drop the baggy of cutlery, and he reaches over to pull out cartons of food. "Tea's good.

"I've been catching up with sleep, mostly." Mostly. "There's other stuff you'll hear about soon. That Fed thing I mentioned before got solved without anybody dying. Has your friend emerged?" It's not hard to tell; he still isn't sure how to carry himself. What to say, how to do this thing, friendship and business coexisting in too little space, uncertain how to avoid sounding like he's prying or checking his peripheral whenever Christian gets closer.

Christian finds it relatively easy, but then thats to be expected. "No, he's a strange dude. Like, he's morally very secure." He pauses to pour Teo a rather large mug of tea before pouring himself one aswell, some sort of generic green tea with a little honey. "Me and my partner, are yaknow we're Army. Team oriented, and he's very individually oriented so theres alot that contributes to our working relationship being a slight trainwreck. Like this faking dead thing, I was gonna do something entirely different."he shrugs, slipping around to the other side of the kitchen counter and snagging himself a seat.

"You see, I wanted to just get him out've the hospital. Then I'd find a body in the morgue, a john doe and have our paperwork specialist make him invisible. Then pop him in the leg, put him in Felix's bed and head across the street. From there, I'd use a 20mm rifle firing a high explosive shell. It doesnt penetrate well really, we have these aluminum cased ones for urban use. Anyway, I'd pop the body through the window and make it look like a hit. Shit would have been so messy that the body would have stood up to a legit autopsy." He shrugs, peering over the spread as he snags food. "But instead he wants to do it another way, and right now he's the boss so." He shrugs again, glancing back up to Teo. "It's pretty FUBAR, but at least we're ready to start arrests."

"Sounds like you've done what you can," Teo offers by way of comfort. He sets the heels of his hands on the kitchen counter and boosts himself up to sit there, for once foregoing his preferred seating. That is, on the floor. Possibly because Christian's tracked dirt all over it. He dislikes doing laundry if he doesn't have to: money doesn't grow on trees, even if you have Hana Gitelman backing you with wire transfers. "Don't you feel… kind of… fuckin'… weird talking to me about arresting terrorists?" he asks. "Unless you're talking about arresting somebody else.

"Grazie." He accepts the mug of tea with two hands when it comes, glancing sidelong to see what Christian picks out of the pile. A noodle thing. Pork, shrimp, peppers. He forgets the name of the dish or he'd mention it; thinks it was named after a province of China. "Or, I mean. Don't you feel weird talking about arresting anyone to me? I think you're supposed to fucking arrest me, one tiny bureaucratic exception aside. I'm a terrorist." Have been. Was. Categorically. He puts his nose in his mug of tea.

"We're all off the reservation Teo, this is the way these things are done. I'm entirely comfortable differentiating whats right from whats legal, arent you?"he grabs chopsticks, and digs in without further drama. "In my head, and in my heart there is a difference between somone who fights for freedom and a terrorist. I know it's like, a wierd thing but remember you ain't the first guy acccused of being a terrorist I've sat down to dinner with. Just the first I'd like to call my friend."He smiles softly, good god wasnt he just a sweetheart?"If I wasnt a soldier, I'd like to think I'd be fighting under your flag."

If you haven't heard him screaming enraged epithets at incompetent marines, then yeah, you'd probably think Christian's only that: a sweetheart. It's better that he's more than that, probably. Between business and friendship, Teo doesn't have a lot of room in his life for people who are merely nice. He roots through a carton of fried rice with his own chopsticks.

The first mouthful doesn't go down right, because he'd forgotten his throat is still slightly botched up and was careless; he ends up coughing into the inside of his arm, still bundled up as he is in his jacket, perpetually averse to the cold. He thinks Christian would probably be better at than he is. Fighting. Running. Figuring out how to make less people die. Momentarily unable to distinguish the line that the older man seems to have such little difficulty locating, he keeps his eyes low, head down, does not answer.

Christian has some poor social skills, but that doesnt mean he's utterly hopeless. He knows when a change of subject needs to happen, and so he's quick to oblige. "I got a number from a dude, he runs a dirtbike graveyard for the motard scene. He had a pretty real good smattering of blown motors I was tempted with, I almost snagged this real nice low mile 525 longblock. I think he wanted like fourty bucks for it, anyway you wanna run over there and find a bike?"

Bikes. Teo looks up, blinking in a fashion that may or may not be construed as kind of dumb, pushing his head out of wherever it had gone to emerge somewhere in the region of conversationally useful. "Yeah," he says after a moment. "There's also this other girl I know who wants to help me build— or— rebuild a bike. I told her I had another friend I was committed to tooling around doing that stuff with, then she said she wouldn't mind meeting you. She liked the job you did on Xerxes. Ragazza's pretty fucking good-looking, too.

"Her eyes are, uhh." His own gaze narrows slightly as he rifles his English vocabulary in search of the words that could circumscribe Elvis' features. "Sultry in that deadpan kind of way. Lips like pillows. Seriously, she can't scowl without pouting, and she's always scowling. But kind of young for you, maybe," he says, with an inkling of the same good-natured teasing that had gone on when they discussed boffing robots and the role of projectile vomit in the dating circuit.

Christian shrugs. "So she's a mechanic, or is she just technically sophisticated? If she's just a clever girl, maybe. I've dated mechanics before though, and they don't do well for me. I tend to drown in my own hobbies, anyway trust me it never ends well. I wanna take some time, sort've gel a little before diving in again."he pauses to work at some Chinese. "So, why don't you go after her then? You seem smitten."

Denial comes with a shrug of one shoulder, rue slanting the corner of Teo's mouth. "Nah. She wanted to kill me a few weeks ago. And I think she thinks I'm seeing Abby. You remember Abby." Abby who's kidnapped, although he deigns not to mention that because, really, they all have enough on their plates before they start shuttling hand grenades back and forth between their forks. Or whatever. Possibly he pushed that metaphor too far. There are arrests to be made, sociopathic Company agents to negotiate with; he doesn't want Christian to worry. Neither the sweetheart half nor the one who shoots homeless people to keep his pet FBI agent alive.

That isn't an explanation — of why he isn't after her, though. It's evident he thinks Elvis is beautiful; she is. "You? Signor? Drown in your hobbies? No fucking way." He's laughing at the older man, a little. Mostly through his eyes, the lower half of his head otherwise occupied by the process of eating.

"She sounds mean, but then some of the lifer types are like that. "he shrugs. "Abby is way too soft for you anyway, shes too sincere."He shrugs, leaning back to peer at a plain cardboard box on the table. "You send me anything?" He hikes a brow, reaching a free hand over to turn the large box on its side. A simple hand written address, in what could be familar handwriting.

Teo turns up the corner of his mouth. "I think she's 'a lifer,'" he agrees dryly. "Not mean. Hard, maybe. As the English use the slang. What's so insincere about me?" He sounds mildly offended at that, though less because Christian actually managed to bruise his ego than because he's surprised at that observation; possibly disconcerted. He tries to be a good boy, most days. Terrorists don't commit the way he has because they think they're wrong. The edge of his hunger's been dulled by now, so he puts his carton of rice down and shunts his butt off the concrete, lands with a thump of socked feet to look at the box. "No.

"Was gonna ask you what you wanted for Christmas, though." His eyebrows hike, quizzical; the handwriting does look familiar — albeit only faintly, capitals, jagged, legible, with a certain art to them as if from some skinny, self-loathing, older schmuck who refuses to admit there's lovely or worth looking at in anything he does or creates. "Need to open in private? I can fuck off." He gestures vaguely at his tea mug.

Christian shakes his head "We're all inherently dishonest creatures Teo, you cant be honest to anyone all the time."he produces a switchblade with a click and neatly slices open the tape. "Well unless it's a bomb, I wouldnt worry Teo." And indeed it isn't, it's radios. "Neat," is his immediate reaction.

There are four Radios, Two chinese and two Russian army field radios. These are a few generations old each, the last radios made with an analog focus. "Man, you have no idea how hard these are to get ahold of for a guy like me. Felix's jackass really came through."

It's difficult to say what part of this conversation is more uncomfortable. Too hard: Teo stops trying to rank one discomfort against the other and cranes his head over to look at the radios. Bright eyes flit to and fro over the boxy shapes, dials and wee buttons that he's only begun to understand in any capacity worth mentioning, and he enjoys being able to recognize them for their age.

"Why do you need so many old radios?" he asks, dropping into a crouch to poke his head over the box, having apparently conveniently forgotten to protect his neck or whatever the paranoid protocol is for this situation. It's either a function of trust, or adaptation, or he doesn't tend to value his physical person all that much. Hard to tell which, between the finger-marks on his neck and the fact that he brought Chinese.

Christian hmms… "Well, you see I'm not alone." He turns back to Chinese, munching happily away. "whenever I use a radio, like to talk to Median? Well one of my own peeps could be listening in, and you know that could get me shot."he smiles, noding to a radio set atop his laptop over on the radio desk. "So I use an enemy analog radio, do some stuff to it and then I can be reasonably secure. Sure the NSA can crack it, They'll crack anything but if I stay sharp it takes months for them to catch up."

Gently, he runs his hand over the smooth steel shell over each radio. "These, make it impossible to work the signal in real time. Nobody else makes a good digital packet radio, and the NSA and ISA keep both on hand. Means I can crack any radio transmitting in a minute or two, if it's digital. Digital is clearer, lighter and goes further but for a guy who may have to break away from his own organization?"he smiles fondly. "A little more, and I'll be able to go solo if I have to. I can be prepared."

Long, callused fingers flit over the flat faces of analogue displays without touching, the restrained curiosity of a young man chastised first by the uncomfortable awareness of his own size and second by the regretful recollections of the times he had forgotten. Teo's hand curls back after a moment, slow from thought. He tilts his head back and peers up at Christian from under a creased brow. "You do work with the FCC and the FBI. HomeSec has been hunting PARIAH for a long time, and you have work to do — between them and the other stupid fucking tits wrecking the world out there. Why would you break away? They have enough worthless assholes running that ship. If you jump, that's — I think we're worse off." He pulls his arm back, sits his elbow across his knees.

Christian selects a russian radio, shaped like two bricks with a keyboard on the top and dials and readouts on the end. Then, abruptly he brings the radio down on the countertop."Relax Teo, these are field Radios. Your allowed to touch it, it'll take a bullet to break one."Before he simply offers over the radio, which predictably shows absolutely no signs of his abuse. "Homeland security is a monster, and the greatest enemy I have ever known. I can beat them, if I deny them their duty. Open warfare with homeland will only further legitimize its use, to destroy them we must show that existing law enforcement agencies are more than capable of doing their job and doing it morally. Not everyone believes as I do, all it would take is one hint of suspicion. Then they'll come for me, and I'll have to run. I'm no use to anyone if I'm dead."

Some part of Teo can't even believe this has come up. Then again, the other part of his brain understands that some people choose this — the lifestyle he was alternately blackmailed and stumbled into, once upon a hardware shop. He takes the radio from Christian and examines it with his fingertips more than his eyes even though he's looking at the thing without seeing, something absent in his manner if not exactly hesitant. "Let me know when you want to leave.

"I'll talk to people who can help you." Or order them around, maybe, but that isn't really his style. Probably get him killed someday, if not unceremoniously demoted. Either case scenario seems perpetually likely, when he's the only one backing a young prisoner who tried to eviscerate him. Doing this job takes more intelligence and courage than he has, Teo's pretty sure. A morbid thought; he concludes it with a fragment of a grin. "What do you want for Christmas? You already have all this shit." Finally, he rocks back on his heels and straightens. Wiggles Russian radio near his head.

Christian is quick to smile now. "I don't need anything Teo, I just have a few rifles to go and everything is done. I've got enough to get away, well I have for awhile actually. I'm just getting close to getting enough to get away, and keep working."Slowly he rises, suddenly drawing cold. He sets his tea down, and files back down the hall some to grab a hoody. "What do you want for chris-shit. "He lifts a finger. "Your souvenir from the armory, chrissakes I almost forgot!"

"All right," Teo answers with all the magnanimity that's available to him. A reasonable amount. The radio stops wiggling, and he squints down at it while he fiddles. "Then let me know when you want to fight. I'll talk to people who can use you. Unless you really want to do it alone." He can defer to this preference, apparently, even if it strikes him as dangerous or even suicidal on some level; they all have their way of doing things, and it's enough for him that they have a common enemy.

Or five. More than enough war to go around, always. "Anywwhat." Looking up, he's stopped by the finger that Christian holds up. Confusion turns to consternation the instant the older man speaks. "Oh, God. You didn't. You did? It's really okay. We have our own stuff. But thanks? Answer my question," he adds, aiming a hapless punch at Powell's enormous shoulder. Focus. Away from the 'splode.

Christian produces a small wooden box, a grenade box which he hands over. "This was listed as water damaged, two and a half years ago." He smiles, popping the little clasp to open up the lid. Flashbangs. "Do you boys and girls, know how to use these?" Its an honest question, it was easy to confuse them with you know like a grenade or if you didnt have a clue you might run in after them and flash yourself.

"I appreciate the offer by the way, but I'm far more useful when I'm right here. You have a senior enlistedman, and a veteran and you guys want to keep an arms lenght like I'm going to come after you still. Like I wouldnt kill as quckly as you would for the right reasons, like I'm not offering you more firepower than you guys have."

It's a box. Teo can take hold of a box without looking completely awkward, even if it does happen to contain grenades. "Yes," he answers, on behalf of the ones who do. He looks around as if in search of somewhere to store the box, but he didn't bring a bag, so he's left to turn back to the counter and sit it beside the still-open carton he hadn't finished with.

"I didn't mean just that, amico. I seriously doubt we're going to be bumping into each other in the foxholes some time soon, but there are things we have that you might be able to use. Median's a pretty good hacker, you might have noticed.

"Just think on it, eh?" It's as much as he's going to ask at this juncture. Besides, you know. Again. "And quit fucking dodging my question, asshole. Seriously. What kind of presents you like? Books? Some shit to put on a shelf or hang on a wall? Don't be a girl about it. Give me guidelines." Either he's converging on an understanding of how to juggle completely disparate civilian and business topics in one conversation, or he's decided to pretend this feels normal at all.

God, presents. "You guys alread-, Ok. Actually there is something, I want your help in finding some rifles for christmas. I'd also like someplace safe where I can stash some of the gear I've already collected, my funding is in cash so its really no thing at all for me to pay for them but Felix's little black market merchant isn't very good for guns." He ponders, pausing a moment. "But I wont accept anything, if I cant get something for you in return." It was a clear, distinct line for Chris indeed. His life, was his work.

That isn't exactly the Christmas spirit, as Teo understands it. The Sicilian is left squinting, his scratchy voicebox left momentarily to disuse as he lets his incredulity speak from his expression. They've been over this before, obviously. It's either his hobbies or his job. "That shouldn't be a problem. I'll see what we need and work out what you've got.

"For Christmas, I want a boat." Prompt with all the audacity that only a twenty-six-year-old can manage, he makes this announcement. Smiles brightly, no teeth, and hops up backward on the counter again. His shoes bang the cabinets once. "A little one, preferably. Not bigger than this." Straightening his hands, he holds tbem a foot apart to alot the length. "The smaller the better. Plastic is good. Whatever you think of. Got it?" Despite the rasp he speaks with, he does his best to look the part of a spoiled prince. Lifts his eyes and his chin, cheerfully— playfully expectant, mock-imperious.

Christian tightens his smile just a touch"See and here I was gonna see to getting my hands on a drug seizure boat, like a oh seventy two foot sailboat that just got bagged with six dead bodies and twelve kilos of coke?"there was no seventy two foot sailboat, but Teo didnt know he was actually thinking about a ford econonline he had used a couple days prior to test ammunition on. "but yes I can do a small plastic boat, no handgun thats worth having instead of the Canadian brass blaster?"

"I don't want guns for Christmas," Teo replies, his tone dry enough to include seventy-foot sailboats. "My mother would beat me with a fucking rolling pin. That's not the boy she raised." He recaptures his mug of tea and downs the rest of it, despite that it's cooled — unwilling to let it cool further, probably. Better than beer in its own fashion. The last thing he needs, he thinks, is to go back to sleep. "Christmas is for sentimental bullshit.

"The way I was taught, anyway. The corporations and the wars can piss off and wait long enough for me to get my fucking boats, and find people what they want." He picks his his feet this time, perching his heels on the edge of the counter — despite that the cabinets right up against the breadth of his shoulders probably threatens to topple him forward and smash his head open on the tiled floor. "I guess I could also use someone to tell about a thing I can't tell anybody else about. Instead of guns." He picks up the corner of his mouth and looks at the radio rig across the room.

Christian nods softly. "If you want a friend Teo, I'm already there. Do you want an advisor, a confidant?"He wasnt sure, exactly how to take that. "Or for me to help you put together a motorcycle ontop of all of that stuff?"He steps past, setting a simple little stapled packet on the table. "Or you could take this stupid test, and I can get you a radio for your licensed self. I'll need it back by tomarrow of course."

Generally, Teo makes bad decisions. Sometimes they make less sense than others. Choosing the FCC guy out of all of the people he knows to talk about this thing is probably dumb. Like talking about swimming with an eagle. He holds out his hands and makes graspy motions with his fingers: give him the packet and he will get it done by tomorrow. Acquiescence. It remains non-verbal because he's busy trying to figure out how to say the rest. When it comes, it's without ceremony or particular finesse, without qualification or explanation because he can't get his head around either of those things. Confidence, advice. Both, either. Anything, nothing.

"I want to fuck my best friend." Rue. He always sounds so rueful.

Christian licks his teeth, hoisting his brow at that. "Do they know?"Now granted, if Chris thought Teo was gay this would be the most awkward moment of Christian's life. "are they in a relationship?"Now Chris was scared, he wasnt very good at relationships period. Still, Teo was his best friend and a friend in need. "is this a sound place to make an effort, in reguards to the economy?"

"Yes. No. An effort for what?" Teo's turned his face downward, pale-eyed gaze lowered past his knees to the floor. Curled up on the counter, he looks somewhere between tired and shy, tea mug nested in his hands. He feels neither, really. He's more awake than he's felt in ages — well, compelled by something other than terror, nerves, or caffeine, anyway. And he's never shy. As ever, there is a disparity between Christian's interpretation and Teo's unhappy head, but the Sicilian doesn't know where it is. Isn't sure what it is, or why he said anything. Guns, bikes, and radio are safe harbor and even PARIAH's upcoming arrests relatively so.

Christian clears his throat as he puts the tea back on. "Everything is an economy. Friendship is an economy of respect, and trust. It doesnt work, if you run up a debt you see?"he ponders his next words carefully. "Is the risk of failure, enough to put this friendship into debt? If you tell them, is their response going to be like explosive and terrible or will it just change things? Either way, you should always be honest. Tell them, or make it easy for them to figure out."

Rue gives way to outright sheepishness; Teo lifts a hand to the back of his neck and scrapes awkwardly, grimacing slightly at himself without taking his attention off that conspicuous portion of floor. "He already knows." Yep. He. The floor looks extraordinary from this angle, the way the ceiling light hits it, projecting tiny shadows between lines of lineoleum panelling. "It's not like that. I've never wanted to be with somebody in the sense of — staying with them, and I haven't really wanted to be with anybody particular for just a night in a long time.

"When I was younger, I practically had 'welcome, stranger' shaved into my pubes. Benvenuto, estraneo. I got bored of people pretty fucking quick. I'm pretty sure they got bored of me, too. I know how I am.

"Better at making friends than keeping them. I like this feeling: wanting something. Something good and normal. It's kind of like if you haven't gotten off in awhile and there's all this jittery energy you can use if you don't let it fuck up your head too much. I don't want to get bored. It doesn't really mean anything. I think I'm sorry I brought it up," he concludes with the grace of an epileptic whale on a beach. He shuts his eyes, squeezes them, reopens them and puts his empty mug down.

Christian refills the respective mugs of tea, offering a little smile in turn. "Sadly, Teo, while I don't think it's stupid or anything. I do believe you picked like the most emotionally dysfunctional fucker on the planet, if you want to talk I'm glad to listen but I'm afraid I'm not good for much good advice. If thats ok with you, then keep going dude. You aint said nothing strange or stupid yet, I'd tell you if I heard something that sounds off."

Wonderful: Teo isn't about to get dragged down the street and beaten to death by a bigoted mob. For whatever reason, that doesn't inspire him to look up except very briefly and only at a high enough trajectory to note that his teacup is refilled. He doesn't reach for it immediately. Fidgets with his toes instead, poking them with his fingers while his chin stays tucked between his knees. "If you weren't dysfunctional, I think you'd have even less to say," he answers awkwardly. "Or you'd tell me I sound weird or stupid. I don't know. Fuck.

"I don't know what else there is to say. I don't think I'd want to screw him if I didn't now he would. I'm a shallow bastard. He's… Pissed off. Seems mellow. Hypocrite. I said some shit to him before. Like — 'You're why people hate fags.' I took it back. We're okay now," his rasp blanks into a silence. This is making his head hurt, actualizing an ache that had lurked in the background of the past week, ever since he hit the floor with his head out of frustration, post-stabbing. There's no conclusion to this thought: he could hold forever.

There's an extra blink, ok Teo is gay but someone else is his best friend. "Well, that's pretty fucking harsh for a best friend. "which, is really all Christian is capable of articulating. "Tell 'em and or don't. Either you don't and your a bad friend, or you do and you got a shot at it being whatever its gonna be. The Brit dudes always say, fortune favors the bold yaknow."

It's probably good that Chris refrained from saying that out loud, because Teo feels no particular compulsion to reevaluate his whole sexual identity just because he wants to fuck one guy. He can agree that was harsh, though: pulls a face and scratches his ear. He knows. "Tell him what?" he crackles, shoulders falling out of their tensed square. "He already knows. He's leaving me alone. That's good with me. I'm not you, Chris. With that CIA woman in Mexico, or projectile vomit lady. I don't date anymore, and I've never kept a flame alive for more than a month before I lost interest. I'd rather want this than have it, then not want it anymore. Seriously." Bending his mouth around a frown, he glances up at Christian's face for the first time in awhile, then reaches over to snag his tea.

"Oddio. I'm fine," except now Teo's embarrassed, red, almost laughing. "I've had shrinks before. They're useful, but their part is done. I'm dealing with it. I am. Just— not… I'm not going to do anything stupid.

"Well, not any stupider than I have," he amends wryly. "I just wanted to tell someone. I guess. Don't tell your partner or I'll fucking shoot myself. I'm fine! Really. It's a peripheral issue compared to most of the shit that's going on around here. A pleasant distraction, if anything. Ummm. Thanks. Grazie. For listening. Now we should talk about something else." There's an uncomfortable contortion that goes through his sock-clad feet up on the kitchen counter as he trawls through his own head trying to come up with a thing. "Hey, gimme exam." He remembers. Points at the paper packet.

Christian hehs… "She doesn't even know you exist, only you one other dude have escaped my reports. You don't exist, officially. She just knows I have an off the book informant, which is the full breadth I'm gonna tell her on my own accord. "he nods, just about as far as he wanted to take that indeed. "So anyway, here." as he produces a pencil from an old coffee cup set to one side. "You haven five minutes to get seventy percent or better, there are fourty questions. I will clarify the question, but I will not just tell you the answer because I'm awesome."He glances to the side, fixing his gaze on a small wall clock before giving a simple: "And go."