My Dad Is So Controlling

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sonny_icon.gif teo_icon.gif

Scene Title My Dad Is So Controlling
Synopsis Having apparently found his recalictrant inner-teenager at the age of thirty, Sonny goes to his room after supper, and finds his secret snugglebunny available to commiserate with him. It isn't as juvenile as it sounds.
Date March 28, 2009

Wherever They Were Staying

Tribeca, I think it was. Safehouse. Yarp.


Even with the tension hanging in the air, it's awhile before Sonny's able to break free of his parents. He's had a few to drink, so rather than drive to the safehouse, he switches his face over to Connor's and calls a cab. Dr. Kinney's not supposed to have a suit this nice, but the cabbie won't know that.

It's about 2 AM that there's the sound of the key in the lock. He enters quietly, returns his face to his own and sheds both jacket and suit jacket. He kicks off his shoes as he walks through and pushes open the door to their temporary bedroom. There, pants are tugged down, then dress shirt. He grabs a pair of flannel pants and a t-shirt. Doesn't matter who it belongs to. They're pretty much the same size.

It's with a grateful exhale that he crawls into bed, smelling of expensive whiskey and even more expensive cologne.

Courtesy of Kinney-Bianco's super-secret bank balance, the mattress is a sturdy make and model that doesn't bounce or squeak at the addition of a second body. The first body — the one that had already been there, shifts slightly, limbs skewing the striated linens and bunching new contours into the comforter. Teo had gone to bed early. Insofar as that he hasn't except napped in the past few days, between dumping corpses he was too cowardly to try and really destroy and running relay between islands.

A single lucent blue eye splits open, waves fringey lashes once, twice, before sliding shut again. "'Lo." A long-fingered hand pries the elastic of the other man's waistband, a handhold chosen more for sleep-addled convenience than salacious inspiration.

There's another smell as Sonny gets closer. He smells ever so faintly of cigarette smoke. He only smokes when he's nervous or stressed, which means he had one hours ago before walking in to dinner. But the scent lingers faintly, caught in his hair and on his skin.

"Nnfh. Sorry, didn't mean to wake you up. G'back to sleep." A hand reaches out and brushes over his forehead, followed by a press of lips that lingers a moment. He wriggles down under the soft comforter and exhales in a whuff. Half-mast eyes seek out the contours of Teo's face in the darkness. He's close enough to feel the other man's breath. In spite of the tumultuous evening, it relaxes him almost immediately. Funny how a terrorist is a calming influence on him.

It isn't funny. It's very serious. Even Mayor Bianco would think so, and for a man as dedicated to fatherhood as he is, he often seems to have difficulty taking certain aspects and elements of his son's life seriously. In the half-lit filtered in through the Venetian blinds, Teo's face appears halved by shadow, staid lines and quiescent color palette.

Still to all appearances dead to the world, except for the fact that the dead don't speak. "Smoking, Doc B?" Or pucker at nothing in lazy answer to to token affection dropped on his brow. For once, Teo's the one who exhales spearmint fresh symphonies into the stale nicotine miasma. Not that he's one to care, still. "Thought you knew better."

"You'd be surprised at how many doctors smoke," says Sonny as he flops over onto his back and stretches his toes out to the far end of the bed. "S'why I'm glad I'm not a surgeon anymore. I smoke when I need my nerves calmed." Like going to meet with his parents when he's been avoiding them.

Sonny closes his eyes and tries to still his breathing. Despite his efforts, there's a tense sound to his inhale and exhale. One hand snakes underneath the covers as he seeks out Teo's nearest hand. When he finds it, his fingers lace for a gentle squeeze, then the digits are pulled up to his mouth so he can kiss the back of the Italian's hand.

The long, gunsure hand that Sonny had appropriated for his use squirms slightly, curls, contracts around surgeon's hands, captioned by a desultory murmur that may or may not have been Italian. It takes more concentration than it's normally wont to, analyzing the noise of Salvatore's breathing, and in the end, Teo doesn't bother.

It's as much inspired by self-interest, anyway, when he pushes one elbow out like an oar, wedges it into the choppy sheet-cotton waves of the bed, rows himself close. He throws a knee over Sonny's hip and rolls his torso flush against the long line of his side, puts his big ruddy nose into the cartlidgenous corkscrew of his lover's ear. "Talk," he says.

Sonny shifts to allow for the change in position. Goosebumps prickle up along his skin. His free hand trickes down, tugs up on Teo's shirt and splays his fingers against his lower back. He exhales a scotchy breath and rubs a smoothly shaven cheek against his lover's.

"M'dad. Trying to get me back into doing social scene stuff again. Tried telling him no. We had a fight. Fight that didn't get anywhere." He closes his eyes. At this proximity, it's easy to tell when his facial muscles contract into a frown. "Never win arguments with him."

"I don'— mind, if you wanna go back to it." The answer comes belatedly, the air behind it faintly hitched around the flattening of his nose and mouth on the edge of Sonny's face. The kiss doesn't miss, not exactly.

By now, he's used to spontaneously tumbling around in the dark against the good Doctor's body that he can figure out where Salvatore's mouth is whenever he needs to do something particular with it. However, Teo hadn't been jerking his lover around when he granted permission to speak. Like most things about him, Teo's magnanimity is sincere.

His eyelashes tick open again. His own face is faintly stubbly; he has no remaining relatives to stand ceremony for, after all. "You di'nt say you lost," he notes, after a moment. Perhaps faintly impressed. He's never met Harry Bianco, of course, but he's seen him on the television. Not wishy-washy junk entertainment television: the kind of television people take seriously.

Sonny's palm flattens against Teo's shoulder and rubs down his bicep. He entwines one of his legs and curls his toes under. "Nn. Don't want to. Sick of it. Wanna do that kinda stuff on my terms, not cause dad says jump. I'm nearly thirty, for god's sake."

He turns his face and presses a kiss on whatever bit of Teo's within easy reach. "Dad can't separate what's good for me and what's good for his career. To him, they're they same thing. But they're not. All seems so trivial now that I know what's really going on."

Peculiarly enough, having a domineering father to rebel against is one of those seemingly pedestrian things that Teodoro really can't relate to. His father had been a nebbish beanpole of a man, and his mother, though strong-spirited and powerfully inspiring, hadn't built a lot of fences. Teo's silence is an effort sort of silence, breaks with a soft sigh through his nose.

It's all unimaginable to him, or purely intellectual. "He'll get over it, right?" he theorizes tentatively. "After you… fuckin'… pick your terms?" Teo's shoulder pulls nearer under the planing of Sonny's hand and the oblique muscle of his thigh does too, winching his lover nearer still by the interlace of legs. He is still not the most expert cuddler, lacking any sort of innate trait of nurturing, but he's good at worrying and he is, now.

Sonny's defiance isn't exactly ordinary. He's rebelling at twenty-nine against the mayor of one of the biggest cities in the world. A tall order. How do you win a debate against a man who is a master of political spin? The answer is, you don't. All he can ever hope for is to air his feelings and that his father will in turn take that into account.

He enfolds his arms around Teo and snugs as neatly and as tightly as is comfortable. The warm rhythm of the other man's breath and the tight press of his body are great comforts. He slides an arm under Teo's, fingers brushing for a moment at the sensitive spot just below his armpit. Then his hand flattens and begins a slow rub against Teo's back.

"Mmm. Hard to tell with Harry. He doesn't like it when he doesn't know what's up with me. And I've been an enigma to him lately. Rebelling ten years too late."

Comfort goes both ways, though Teodoro isn't much in the mood to talk about what happened with his last couple evenings, and that's a whole other bad habit — or heartache — to lapse into.

Ordinary is in short supply lately. The fundamentals remain the same, however. Quarrelling with politically-empowered patriarchs or abetting cold-blooded murder, really, it all comes down to the same weird mix of loyalties and principles. Holding your ground is a victory in and of itself. "Rebelling just 'n time," Teo contradicts. The scrape of fingers underneath his arm elicits a ride of goosebumps, a telltale trace of heat discernible in the eyes opposite Sonny's despite that they're too close to actually focus on. His voice is felt in equal part as heard, reverberating through skin and skin. "Watched the fuckin' news lately?"

As usual, Teo misses the more mundane human drama involved here, glibely forgetting that that whole 'we're gay too' thing is a thing.

Sonny is always aware when he brings up any drama from his own life, that it's likely small in compared to what his lover is dealing with. But if he never aired his own problems and downplayed them for the epic struggles, well, they'd have a fairly one-sided relationship. Besides, sometimes it helps to be reminded of those mundane human dramas.

"Think dad actually uses me as a barometer sometimes. If I start getting pissed about things not getting addressed, he tends to take a closer look. But he's a smart man and a damn good leader." A beat, a whuff of breath. "I think he'd accept us if he knew." Not that he's in any hurry to introduce his terrorist boy to the Mayor, but. That's not safe for anyone concerned. "Maybe one day."

It isn't small. It— well. Small's relative, obviously, and Teodoro doesn't begrudge hearing about it. There is some measure of wist involved. Death and grieving are not novel human dramas anyway, only more impressive for their permanence, and crushingly depressing for their lack of complexity. Love, familial and otherwise, is unequivocally worth hearing about.

If not necessarily easy to hear about. There is a sudden spike of skin tension at the mention of acceptance, of 'us,' that gives only slightly with 'one day.' Round, rough knuckles brush Sonny's cheek before the flats of Teo's fingers find his throat, contouring the apple and then the notch of clavicles. He doesn't say anything for a little bit. Not trying to make Sonny nervous, naturally; that would be unkind.

"What's your mom like?"

Sonny is learning to read Teo's various tensions and reactions. Which, granted, is easier when they're so close. "Relax, Tay. I wouldn't ask you to do that. There's too much at stake. Just…so you know what kind of man he is. That's all." He smiles a small smile. "I like having you here like this. Burrowed away. Secret. Just for me." He chuckles faintly. He's not usually one to speak about anything in poetic terms.

He closes his eyes and cranes his neck to accomodate Teo's touch. "Mmm? Oh, she's a fucking genius. Literally, I think. Just started teaching again. I…well, you've seen my father on TV, right? Well, she handles him like a champ." Nuff said. "She's Greek and Italian."

"Pretty fuckin' good place to be," Teo replies, his voice light and gladly transparent as the air over Everest. He may mean 'here,' or in Sonny's possession, or both. The whole thing is very good for his ego, and his ego doesn't mind, as long as it leaves enough room in the bed for Salvatore's to fit comfortably alongside. "Something about our country and strong women," Teo says. "'S the stuff of stereotypes and legends.

"I'm surprised you don't have more siblings. My mother wanted more, but she miscarried once between me and my brother, so my dad convinced her they weren't going to try anymore after." The knuckle of his forefinger bends into a squared curl underneath the point of Sonny's chin.

"Leadership's always a pair. She could probably run this city by herself. But she's kinda…well, she needs to keep learning things. Mama's never happy just doing one thing well." A restless spirit. If Sonny inherited any of that, it's been trained out of him.

He's happy for Teo's reaction and the lightness in his voice. His lips press against the other man's forehead and his fingers thread through growing hair. He plays with the short lengths and rubs the scalp beneath his fingers. A ruffle, almost.

"Well, shortly after I started going to school, mom got a big research grant. And dad's career started taking off. I think I was seven or eight when I asked why I didn't have any brothers or sisters. They always told me they thought they would have another kid. But…" he shrugs. "Success meant they never had time. Or, so they tell me. Might be more to it than that."

Irregardless of his 'original' personality template— whatever the fuck that is, a little restlessness apparently isn't impossible to train into a guy. Makes Teo smile, and that's felt, too, with the nonexistent physical margin between them, his brow smoothing under Sonny's mouth and a waggle of brows testing the feel of fingers dragging the roof of his skull.

"Your parents are cooler than mine," Teo concludes, by way of reassurance. There's a scrape of flannel and freshly finger-carded hair on sheet cotton, a full-body squirm, and he frees up both his hands to close, triangled, around Sonny's neck, holding the other man in place and providing a tactile locus of reference to plant a correctly configured kiss, this time.

Sonny laughs. It's a genuine, full sound of amusement that vibrates from deep in his chest. "Don't think anyone's ever called Harry Bianco 'cool.'" But then Bianco the Younger has other things to think about. Like Teo's tongue, and returning that kiss.

He constricts the other man with a pull of his arms around opposing torso. It's as if he resents even a hair's breadth of space between them. His knee bends and the arch of his bared foot rubs along the base of Teo's calf.

The unwholesome events that elicited Teo's unremarkable clinginess are best left that way: not remarked on. He's better now. Salvatore as well, which is better yet. Baby terrorist bites down gently on something soft and shaped like a wedge of citrus fruit — by default, his lover's lower lip.

"Phoenix 's going on Tuesday. J'ss so you know," he notes. Quick though not furtive, a footnote, before he shoves the conversation against the walls of Sonny's mouth and snuffs it out.


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