Participants:
| Scene Title | Italian Lessons |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | The morning after goes in the theme of the night before: eerily solemn conversations and affection in bite-sized tokens. |
| Date | February 9, 2010 |
Palermo, Sicily — The Laudani House
When Delilah wakes up, Teo isn't there.
Rain's still coming down out of the sky in buckets. It was 'wise' enough not to bother with curtains. Not a single ray of sunlight makes it unmolested through the churning vapor of the sky. The clock— knocked over once or twice during the festivities of the evening— has been returned to its upright position on the bedstand. Red digital letters show the time to her blockily. 11:38 AM. A few hours later than he was supposed to have gotten up to see his mother. Teo. Or they, both of them, depending on the agendas, obligations, and available sights of the day.
The creased and dented hollow of linens to her right are no longer warm, but the cause of her awakening reasserts itself in a way that she might find comforting: footfalls clattering, boots dropping emptied to the ground, cabinet doors, interrupting the stillness and the white noise with minor tokens of big-limbed boy-movement in home space.
It was one of those sounds that nudged her awake, getting a small, closed up frown before Dee rolls her neck over to squint blearily at the clock. She considers it with mild wrath at first, until realizing that they were either up Very Very Late or things were just that Exhausting. That thought makes her smirk, and she turns over to giggle into the crumpled place where Teo had slept, cheek rubbing against the chilled bedspread. She waits now, listening past the skipping of the rain and the contented buzz in her head.
Boots, cabinets, the distant rustle of downstairs. For now, she keeps waiting, though her hands are searching around under the comforter for a now missing satin blue nightgown.
Nightgown provides itself a little bit reluctantly. It's squeezed out underneath a pile of linens and tubby comforter, threatens to slither out of reach of her fingers and fall into a shiny heap on the floor when her fingers go for it, but in a few seconds it cedes itself. More noise downstairs, then a long pause; probably Teo using his ability, or something like that. See how she's doing. That's one of his tricks, probably. He's always been rather vague about his superpower, too.
He's been vague about not having it anymore.
"Lilah?" Teodoro's voice doesn't seem to be able to figure out whether it's trying to be quiet, lest she's sleeping, or loud enough to rouse her out of a stupor. A loud whisper, restrained call, emanates up the stairs from where he's standing at the bottom one. "Lilah? I bought your coffee."
It should be easy to put something like the nightgown on again, right? You'd think so. Delilah's first attempt accidentally puts the string of a strap up over her head, effectively in the armhole. So she backpedals to try that again. By the time Teo's voice wafts with him up the stairs, she is as dressed as she is going to get. Coffee? For measure, there is a sniff at the air in case the smell of it possibly came up too.
"I'm awake." Relatively. She sounds awake, but if he gets there before long, she is still sitting with her legs over the edge of the bed, and her hands are trying steadily to calm any bedhead that has come from …well, everything. "When did you wake up?"
"Too early, feels like. Not that you could tell. Weather is shit." Short sentences. Means Teo is— what, sleepy? Probably not, judging from his face as he zooms around the doorframe, manically glazed at the eye and twitchy at the fingers. Coffee already. Perhaps more than one cup. He looks at her for a moment, then the corner of his mouth hikes up and his eyes go thin above smile that takes only a second to settle evenly between the zones of his face. "Called the hospital.
"They suggested I come in later. My mom's asleep and my dad's just driving the nurses out of their minds." He measures a few socked footsteps across the floor and offers two hands, palms up. He has been thinking about New York City too much since he left the room. The people in it, the apologies and audiences he owes. He is glad and not particularly surprised that the sight of her thready scarlet bedhead is enough to net his uncomfortable vacation-time thoughts and clear the air of them.
Teo does it without thinking: steers her closer to stand on his feet.
This isn't something that she has seen much of- Teo, with caffeine in him. More than one serving, it looks like. She grins at him when he smiles first, smoothing her hair and taking his hands when he offers them. For now, she allows herself to be led around a little, steering and standing all the same. One of her hands absently smoothes a long wrinkle at the side of his shirt, and she thumbs it down while leaning her face closer, cheek momentarily putting pressure on his chest, and her nose sounding an inhale. The bed smelled like him too. It is his room.
"She'll probably be awake around suppertime, don't you think? You have a few days to visit her off and on, wouldn't want to deprive her of rest, now would you?"
Girls smell better, boys just aren't supposed to notice that sort of thing. Even the officially gay ones. He sniffs at her ear and is pleased to smell that she isn't so much like him now that he can't still smell her. Of course, however sweet the gesture, it still consists of him snorfling around like a badger through her hair.
One of his arms goes bent almost double around her torso, squeezing her up in his jacket-sleeved bicep while the other scoops a handful of skirt, and perhaps the taut posterior above it, even if the grab is neatly concealed in his effort to start to lift her even higher, off his feet, and up to koala his torso. She isn't one of those waifish little things— and had his mother's approval for it, but he carries her without difficulty all the same.
"I was relieved," he admits, to her left ear, though not because there was anything particularly suspicious about her right. "I don't know what I should tell her. You know, between security protocols, ratings, and giving her some fucking peace of mind. It's Kozlow who came after her."
Being playful, Delilah has no problem with playing koala, nor with the 'concealed' grab at her backside. Or the badgersnuffling taking place in her hair. Her arms wrap around him to hug tightly, a laugh bubbling in her throat. It turns down after a second, as Dee leans her head back with a questioning look.
"Wasn't he the guy bothering Abby? And I'm not sure what you should tell her. Maybe a half truth? That you did something for the government." And now, someone from that something is going around trying to exact some sort of revenge. Failed revenge, in this case. "I think she'd like to hear he's being hunted, even if that's not accurate. She does deserve some peace." Amadora did nothing, and paid for that nothing anyway.
Huup. Teo's hands lattice neatly underneath her rump and he forms a seat for her with his hands as well as tipping the axis of his balance backward a couple degrees of inches to bring them even. Of course, part of this involves yanking her up closer. Their noses just meet in a collision of bendy cartlidge, but it is slight and nothing painful. "Yeah." His smile stays, though it's would be half were it not for the scarred leer slitted through his cheek. "One of the Russian Vanguard operatives.
"He's the one that fucked up my cheek." Turning, he buoys her along easy out of the door. The stairs open up behind her, and their shadow combined stoops into the tall walls, colors pastel on the bannister.
Lilah leaves a small peck on his cheek in passing, simply clinging on while she is toted around. She really is no spring chicken, but somehow it works out. "Someone will get him, I'm sure." He's alone, and people are after him. This Russian guy can't hope to last very long. Delilah has little experience in the field, but it feels obvious. "So what do you think you'll do, until you can visit your mother later? Should I come again, or do you need alone time? Because I can give you some space if I have to." She'd prefer not, just in case, but it is his choice.
One step, then another. Delilah finds herself descending Earthward in steady inching increments, secure in her lover's arms. Bump. Thud. Fortunate that Teodoro is a ninja, or his socked feet might find the hard wooden floors slightly slippery. There is a small flock of stained glass birds on the window at the top of the stairs, fanning their pinions in frozen flight, backlit by a diluted sunshine.
They glow Delilah a dull good-bye the moment before they sink below the wall and the kitchen opens up. Lit. Her coffee's pressed and hot in its glassy column. Nothing else has been touched since she saw it last. Couch cushions in the same configuration, books untouched in the curly wrought metal of their stands.
An entire house holding its breath for its mistress again, if not for her sons and the family complete. "You don't have to come. I probably owe her a little alone-time. I have some friends who'd like to meet you, take you for a little bit of pubbing or something while it's rainy. Their English isn't great, but maybe you'll think their fat pizza man accents are cute. Reputable guys. They used to be little bastards like me, but they've cleaned up now."
The house really does fit Amadora, in all her quaintness; the poking around from the night before told her that much. Delilah wiggles slightly, unsure about her getting down, or if Teo simply wants to have her there for a minute yet. Regardless, she gives him a squeeze.
"I think accents are cute- any good girl should. Are some of them still little bastards?" Dee grins at that. "If you think your friends can entertain, it doesn't take much for me. Surrounded by strapping lads with thick accents and bad English. Mmm."
"The first Italian word you need to know is vaffanculo," Teo instructs, a little primly, setting the girl down on the counter's turquoise tiles. They aren't cold despite the unkindness of the weather. He punctuates his point with a momentary press of his forehead to the girl's, the long line of his Finnish beezer flattening briefly against her cheek with the strength of his sentiment. "You say it whenever you really like a boy who seems to like the look of you as well.
"Then Porto un altro bambino dell'uomo is the next part when you get to it. Very important. But only for people you otherwise don't think you'd get to meet again, a'ight?" He's making fun, but she has succeeded however facetiously in moving his sense of humor to this a predatory sort of fierceness. He steps over to the coffee press and locates a mug. Coffee seesaws in the bottom of the cup, and then he pushes the sugar cup over. Its metal cap is ruched in the petals of Sicily's flower. Carnations.
Vaffanculo means: Fuck off.
Porto un altro bambino dell'uomo means: I am bearing another man's child.