Participants:
| Scene Title | Recrimination And Reconciliation |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | The kids play. The grown-ups have a tough time despite the diplomatic efforts of striped stegosauruses and like. |
| Date | May 12, 2019 |
The Dancing Boar Tavern
IT IS SO LOVELY.
Every so often the Tavern is home to three distinct little, high-pitched voices that seem to vibrate off of everything they start squealing near. After rustling them into a booth, Delilah has Walt, Joe, and little Natalie over in the corner seats with coloring books. Natalie is more interested in coloring than her brother and their friend, who are more invested in scribbling fiercely over each other's pages rather than actually coloring anything.
Delilah is nearby at one of the free tables, talking an apparent new hire through things; in the end the teenage girl is sent into the back to have someone else take care of things. Making her way over to the booth with the kids, Delilah squeezes into the seat beside Natalie. "Oh, you're getting good at that. The boys don't seem to like staying in the lines today, hm?" Nope. Everyone is lucky these are not markers, or else both little boys would look like dry-erase boards in a kindergarten.
Hello Kitty never goes out of style. Abigail in her scrubs prooves that. It makes the kids smile on the pediatric ward with all the different kinds that she has. The blonde healer starts to make her way in through the doors, a pause to locate the sound of the giggling and of Delilah sitting with her daughter before she's on her way there. "Boys will be boys" She calls out at the antics of her son with Delilah and Teo's. "How are you doing Delly?"
Joe sees his mom before anyone else, being the one facing the door, and so he wears a grin instead of paying attention to Walter defacing his now purple giraffe. Walt catches his look about the same time as his mother, and just a few seconds before Abby speaks up to his mom.
Deliah picks Natalie up onto her own lap, giving the girl a better view of the table and subconsciously making room for Abby if she wants to sit. "I'm doing …alright." She does, however, sigh a little as she says this. "How was work?"
"It was good. Discharged two children today, finish up what their chemo and radiation didn't catch and they were sent home. Other than that, it was.. good" Abby leans over after she sits to plant a kiss on her daughters forehead and then reach over to ruffle both boy's hair. "They haven't been too bad a terror?"
Joe can't be outdone and there's two green crayons now tuck up his blonde headed nose. "Booogers!" Which leaves Abigail rolling her eyes. "Are we wanting dinner here?" Asked of the two kids that genetically belong to her. The answer of course is a resounding yes. Eating out is a treat that Abigail doesn't give them often, though with the permanent addition of Deckard to their family, it just might be. It has been lately. "I'll call Flint and tell him where to meet us kay?" She glances over to Delilah with a smile.
A man-sized shadow blocks in the doorway behind Abigail, subtracting the width of Teo's shoulders and the austere curve of his skull from the sunlight outside. The days are getting the further back winter recedes. Two things that make being in New York City tolerable. There are other ones: in ridiculous Japanese cartoon scrubs and flitting about under verdant ginger plumage, brandishing crayons. Teodoro is wearing black, still, and armed also. There are raw, sharp-edged shadows around his eyes as if he's been thinking about something too grim or hasn't gotten enough sleep, but they fade out, soften when he sees the children and the women.
"Buongiorno." He lifts his hand to wave, once, and lopes in.
"Alright. You know where the phone is, hon." Delilah laughs, leaning over to snatch crayons out of mouths and noses. "We taught you a long time ago not to stick things there-"
Walter practically wrenches himself away when Dee reaches over at him, but not without losing his 'teeth' to her hand. About two seconds later, he is underneath of the booth table, crawling out from behind the little screen of legs and careening across the floor with a piece of the coloring book in his hand. Wait, where did he get that? "I colored you a stegosaurus!"
Abigails blue eyes look up at Teo when he appears, a ducking of her head to him in greeting, but there's no more than that. "Teo" and then she's back to Natalie, moving the young girl over to her own lap and grabbing a crayon to help her daughter color in the blue of the waves of the sailboat coloring page.
The long black columns of Teo's legs walk themselves across the room to the table under which his offspring has concealed himself. He stoops slightly to bring a sliver of his face into view, a single pale eye turned down to study the rent portion of Crayolaed paper scrunched in Walter's small hand. "Dude," he says, with the proper affectation of a stoner. "That is totally sweet." He opens a hand, palm-up, inviting the child out even as he tugs his own head up above the level of the furniture to locate Abigail. "Ciao, signorina."
Walter hoists himself away from the boothcave with his hand finding Teo's, the other limb handing over the colorful, yet relatively realistic dinosaur coloring job. "I hope you're not on drugs. Drugs are bad." Perhaps ironic he says this, perhaps not. There is no telling if Walter knows the extent of his mom's other secrets. "See, look, I gave him stripes on his butt." The boy stands up beside Teo and points down at the page while he shows it off.
As Natalie is handed off, Delilah scoots to the outside end of the booth bench when Abby takes her place. Okay, if you don't want to call Flint-. "I swear he spent …three whole days on that. He wouldn't leave it alone." For a less-than-six year old, it seems like a project.
"You're not supposed to get that reference," Teo informs the child. "You're too young." He bends his arm, trapping Walter's hand down at his side even as he snares the little trunk of the child's torso in the crook of his elbow and hoists him aloft. His other arm hooks down underneath the child's knees, making him a makeshift bench to perch on. "And innocent, in theory. There's something completely fucked up about American pop culture. I dunno. How've things been?" He turns, son wreathed in arms, until his son pointed at Delilah and Abby like some sort of unimaginable weapon, and studies them down its barrel.
"Language," Abigail murmurs, grabbing her daughter's sippy cup so she can drink from it. "Delilah, can you tell them Spaghetti and meatballs all around for us?" Since the other woman can easily flag down one of her waistaff.
Say what you want about Walt being a terror, but he is awfully good about being dollbaby'd around in Teo's arms, content to appear oblivious. "Yeah, Teo, Language. You owe Abby a whole quarter for that word." The boy snickers to himself, but then frowns. "I still owe you a dollar for the jar, Abby."
Delilah looks to Abigail for a moment, before standing up from the booth. Are you pointing our son at us? She blinks up at Teo for her second moment, then at Walt. "Right. Do you want anything, Teo?" Walter does, if pops doesn't. "Mom I want a milkshake-"
There's a slight shake of Teo's head. Slight, mostly because a larger one would smoosh his face into the back of Walt's head, which would be uncomfortable. He can already smell the organic warmth and soapmilk of the child's ginger crop from here. "Milkshake," he agrees, his arms tightening slightly, a squeeze that would have been slightly out of character for him before the month's revelations, and is moreso now. He turns to set the boy back down in his chair. "Mi dispiace." For the language.
"I think i can overlook the jar today," Abigail answers Walter with nary a smile, opting to focus on helping her daughter color and keep an eye on joe who's now making an orange rhino on his paper.
"What? Really?" Walter is totally surprised. As he is squeezed like a stuffed friend and put down, the only response that Teo gets for that is Walt making sure he takes the picture by grabbing Teo's palm and putting it on his hand. There. "«You look tired.»" Comes in that childish Italian, for Teo from Walt.
Delilah isn't oblivious to either gesture, smiling knowingly(and quite fondly, still) at Teo before stepping away across the tavern to put in the dinner orders. Don't explode while she's away.
Now Teo is the proud owner of a stegosaurus with a stripy butt. It's not an especially perplexing change of circumstances. He used to want one of these; he used to be a boy, too. "Hmmm," he says, in the attitude of a discerning proprietor, looking down into the crinkled sheet, a crook of his mouth to acknowledge Delilah's departure. "«Bad mattress. You need to have harder ones or it will mess up your back as you get older. So will girls.»" He adds the latter thing somewhat blankly, glancing up at Abigail hovering over her own towheaded brood.
"I'm leaving soon." This, in English. For Abigail, mostly, though she is represented by a humorless shoulder turned toward him and he isn't trying hard enough to make eye-contact to actually get it. "Tomorrow. I'm going back to Israel. It's very fashionably dangerous out there. We should probably make up before I'm gone."
"There's nothing to make up for. I don't like what they're doing. I think it's wrong, you think it's right. A difference of opinion is allowed" The blonde answers keeping her tone light, calm, airy. Don't let the children know that anything is wrong by the tone of her voice. "You can dislike what I was prepared to do but.." But nothing. Blue eyes look over at him then back down to her daughter. "Stay safe out there. Tell Hana to stop in soon so I can take care of her, if there's still a here"
Walter simply stares up at his father at this new advice, squinting a little in mild distaste. "«But girls have girl germs.»." And then, just as Teo expresses his going back overseas and Abigail asnwers him in kind, the ginger boy sits up straighter in his seat. "It might be fashionable, but you have such bad taste." Ziiing. "You better come back."
The Sicilian's mouth goes lopsided and he tips his head forward, stares down the front of himself, trousers, footwear, jacket all in the same bleak shade of monochrome. "Really fu— bad taste," he acknowledges. Lifts his head the next moment, squinting slightly at the back room. Secondhand sight phases briefly over his first-person perceptions. He sees the blender going, milk thickened out by ice cream, Delilah's pale hand clamped over the lid as the blades skreeEE. "I do dislike what you were prepared to do.
"A difference of opinion doesn't really cover this. Which isn't to say I know what would…" he fades off momentarily, his features tensing slightly around an inchoate grimace of discomfort, or maybe just a frown. He folds the stegosaurus up neatly between thumbs and forefingers, pulls his jacket ajar to shuffle it into his inner pocket. "That would be better," he agrees with Walter, unequivocally. "Maybe next month. Things might be back to normal by then."
"Then it's a difference of what Teodoro? Because we're not Phoenix. There's a group of us who are not aligned directly into the group of people who are willing to throw everything away so that they can go back. Because god forbid, Peter be married to someone else and she doesn't like what the world had become" You know what, dinner will be at home. "Joe, put your crayons away. Leelee, get your sweater. We're going to to the grocery store. Tell uncle Teo goodbye"
"Soccer starts in July." Just so you know, Teo. Walt looks at Joe when Abby aims to gather them to leave, a disappointed look on his face. Going? What happened? Even Walter cannot fill in the blanks in this case, as much as he might like to. "Can Joe come overnight this weekend? Mum told me I had to ask you myself." At least Delilah is missing the throwdown, or else she might make the mistake of having them both sit down and trying to make them …well, make up.
Teo holds himself still, staring across at the healer with his eyes hooded. "It's a difference of investment, I believe. Listen— don't go, please. I think I'm going to take off in just a moment. I just wanted to see Li and Walter before I flew out. The kids need each other more than I need them." Walter will be lonely, he thinks. The cafe is very large, and patrons younger than ten years old are far and few between. "I'm not Phoenix either." He steps around the corner of the table, drops a rough-fingered ruffle onto the roof of his son's head. "Everything's going to be fine. I've spoken to Tamara." He says that to Abby.
Stoops to whisper at Walter, afterward, "«Do me a favor while I'm gone, partner? Make your aunt Abby believe I love her?»"
There's a brush of thumb across the kid's cheek, a pinch of fierce affection at the line of his jaw, before Teo straightens. Lopes back around the counter, navigating through the traffic of waitstaff. "Lilah," he calls out. "I'm leaving. Can I get the milkshake to go?"
"Sure, it'll be fine because Tamara says it's all better, and everyone else is wrong. Because they can't just accept they've been given a second fucking chance at everything and want to screw us all over because they don't like it. And no, I have to go, Flint will be home soon. Stick around and get to know your son a bit more." Natalie has her sweater and Joseph has gathered his stuff. "Joe can come over this weekend, tell your mother i'll call her Walter." And with that, the blonde in hello kitty nurses couture is trying to shuffle her children towards the door, money left behind for the dinner that won't be eaten.
Walt peers up at Teo, his eyes having adopted a lighter color under the lights above his head. The boy nudges his cheek into the man's thumb as it brushes on his face, an affirmative little smile creasing both freckled cheeks upward.
Delilah, having been waiting just behind the kitchen doors for at least a few seconds, comes out just in time to watch Abby leave with the kids; there's no use arguing now, because their backs are already departing out the front. She'll figure what that was all about later, but for the moment, the redhead knits her eyebrows at Teo and puts her hands on her hips. What did you do now? "So, then. How about you? Are you staying or going, babbo?" Please stay. And not because there is spaghetti already being made, really.
"I do have to go." It's probably true, because Teo looks sorry that it is. "Secret ninja business. Before I head off to do other secret ninja shit— you know what it's like." No. Yes. Maybe; she's lived with him long enough to be acquainted, at least, with his preference for secrecy and ninja colors. He's leaning back against the edge of a cabinet, his shoulder eased up against the wood. He's thinking about Abigail which, as ever, amounts to worrying about Abigail. He thinks she will forgive him because she always has. That isn't the issue.
He can't talk about the issue because he's a ninja, apparently. "But I wouldn't mind taking some pasta off your hands if you have a foil carton or something." A ninja who smiles, adds in Italian, "tesoro," and takes a moment to extoll the virtues of her saucing techniques as he flicks at her hair with a hard-callused forefinger. The affection on his face is fierce instead of predatory, and he hangs a long arm over his shoulder. Makes his eyes big in his head.
"Please?"
Delilah nearly chases down that finger with her cheek while it is near her face. "Alright. I can feed you. But you're not allowed to enjoy it without thinking about not eating it with us. Just so you feel proper guilt." Her eyebrows lift and she peers at the Sicilian with a similar look to a warning from a teacher. There is a little voice that pipes up beside Teo, and suddenly there is also ginger fuzzy hair under whatever hand the man happens to have at his side.
"Mamma e Teo, Seduta in un albero~" Walter taunts, though unsure at the start. Should he call Teo dad? Hmmmm. It's not quite the same tune in Italian, but there's no mistaking his seeking out of smiles. At least he does it so they laugh. Delilah does, at least.
Teo does too, if only one syllable, quiet, almost under his breath. His eyes go momentarily crescent-shaped with amusement; the sort that old men wear when they're back from wars and listening to songs they used to sing with men who're all dead now. Not to be depressing. He's been to wars and some of his friends are dead. Red is still his color, and he finds himself momentarily incapable of regretting any of it, which might be a little arrogant, but only if you come at it from the perspective of a giant asshole. "Sorry about Abigail. She's pessimistic like I was the other week.
"Things got better." The half-hoop of his arm tightens briefly, and then he unslings it from around the woman's shoulders, frees her unto the world to find the spaghetti in it. "Next time," he's saying to Walter, with manic conv