Participants:
Scene Title | Unimaginatively Self-Destructive |
---|---|
Synopsis | Francois prevents Teo from being the above when both men restlessly wait out an Abby-less evening. |
Date | December 15, 2998 |
Apartment in Ryazan
Something's in the air tonight. Pressing against the windows and the unlocked closure of the bedroom door, unraveling smokily in the thin light from the reading lamp that came with the room. Not a song lyric, however deceptive the iambic pentameter might lead one to believe, and certainly not the sonorous romance of Shakespeare.
The inchoate promise of malignant tumors, perhaps. Teodoro is smoking instead of sleeping.
Ash clumps thinly in the ripples and valleys of the sweater over his belly, pick out the weave of garment and linens with points and flecks of white like scurf or dander— something more organic, possibly more boy-hygiene disgusting than the sterile waste of stuff it is. His legs are tossed and ratcheted up at odd angles on the narrow bed, their long lines exaggerated to the point of severity by the seams of his jeans like a mantis left belly-up after a toddler's scooter bisected it in one easy rollering squish; the pocket of his hoodie is bumpy and boxed out from something filled up inside of it. There's bottle of beer set up (between two bottles that used to have beer) on a bedstand that has each of its four legs at different lengths and tipping and knocking like a swaybacked old mare whenever he reaches over to grab himself a swing.
He doesn't have a reason not to stink up his living space, ironically, for the precise same reason he has reasonable emotional appetite for stinking up his living space. Abby isn't here. Gone from the place, from his available vicinity, to lay (nervously) in bed with. Not merely gone, but kidnapped, instead of cuddled up in his arms and the delicate palpitation of her pulse perched on his thumb like a resting moth's wings open, and close, and open again. He wonders how many times a man's got to fail at protecting his own before they do, indeed, resort to the melodrama that Dr. Sheridan had prescribed to mortal distress— retreating into a life as recluse, driftwood carving, joining a monastery.
The right corner of Teodoro's mouth seizes upward. Ha, ha.
No one is going to sleep well tonight. Too busy poisoning themselves - it's not an unfamiliar ritual. Smoke, alcohol, roiling self-doubt. He hesitates, first, when he crosses by Teo's door maybe not for the first time tonight, before finally setting his hand down on the handle and twisting. Francois rarely does things halfway, and so there's no prim knocking, which he would have afforded this intrusion if Abby were here.
She isn't. So. There's the abrupt ease of hinges after the metallic slide of the door undoing, Francois not letting the door swing open too wide - just enough to ease his frame through and nudge it shut again. "I had— "
The assault of acrid smoke somehow didn't cross his senses upon hovering outside, but now it's enough to sting eyes. A mild exaggeration, but the air is sure dry and Francois expels a soft snort as if it to clear the scent out from his nose the way dogs do, a twist of a rueful smile on his mouth. Dimmed. "You are hoping she will appear if only to tell you to put that out?" is a guess, but he doesn't take another step just yet. Less Teo's matter of fact invitation some couple of weeks ago, more of an offer, as much as he comes bearing nothing but a concerned look drifting around the room.
The room happens to find Francois' concern redundant, supercilious, and irritating, having survived and won the battlescars from inhabitants far worse than this one, but Teodoro doesn't mind being a creature of incomparable grace. He squints at the doctor and, for a moment, might be taken for a man addled by the point of inebriation that his optical organs have physically slid out of focus or his visual cortex can't process any light that isn't sort of streakily brownish green. He isn't that drunk, though. Look: three beers.
Partly, his squint is unwelcoming. It isn't Francois, really, it's Teo— and mostly, just the timing: he had to have let himself go juuuust when Francois came through that door. Really, two hours ago, he was doing something moderately intelligent. Reading. Consulting the available satellite photograph of 'the compound,' which was depressing to consider, given the monastery's grubby bird's-eye-view and its maudlin brackish licorice rimming of shadow at three o' clock in the afternoon gave precious little away and was profoundly less impressive to look at than, say, Pinehearst Tower.
There's a disgruntled swipe of a broad hand across his sweater, unsettling flakey residue and he manages to heave his back off contorted corpulence of the pillow he'd jammed down between scapulas and bedframe, sit upright. "Maybe," he answers. "It isn't unfeasible. I haven't smoked much lately. She might detect the change in situation while good habits go rewarded unnoticed. Do you smoke?" It's vaguely hopeful, affords him a spark of resigned good humor when his optimism registers in his self-awareness. Cigarettes are like garlic in that way. You know which way.
Not that coming in two hous prior would have given Francois new information or purpose - this at least is a vague change of pace, if one that Teo resents. "Only to look like I am doing something." Moves in closer, despite the lack of particular welcome - dressed all in blue in jeans and a loose sweater, his feet bare ands hands clasped behind his back as he strides closer. "Or to make others feel comfortable. Would it help?" It's only fair, really - Teo had found Francois drinking on the stoop in the wee hours, and even for such an occasion, he'd managed to be underdressed.
Being held at gunpoint wasn't particularly dignified either. The mattress dips down when the Frenchman invites himself to sit, glancing judgmentally— in the true sense of judgment, weighing the possibilities for the verdict— towards the bottles of beer, and back to Teo. "Everyone tried to quit, in the sixties."
There's one that's still got beer in it. Maybe that would help. Teo glances at it in the same syncopated moment that the Frenchman does, his expression vague with speculation. Would it help? W— his head swivels back to give the older man a playfully accusatory glance. "Are you making fun of me, signor?" He puts the cigarette out in a lazily haphazard snatch of movement at the ashtray between bottles, boring its flame-wilted end into another silky hole in the crumbling remains of its brethren. "I guess I deserve that.
"I'm" being melodramatic, excessive, rather unimaginatively self-destructive, "young," Teo observes, a little lamely, reviewing his knowledge of the 60's with a brief and incisive scowl. Boo. Whatever! Not as young as the night is.
He crabs closer, scooting up with a dig of bare heels into linens. The mattress sinks further at its vertex point below Francois and the Sicilian sidles out of the peripheral of his vision, reinterpreted as a tactile presence instead. Chin set down on the oblique muscle of Francois' shoulder, fond as a mutt if not precisely with the dumb animal— humility that such a canine gesture would ordinarily be characterized by. His hands are startlingly warm on the Frenchman's wrists. He pulls Francois' long hands up, backward, through dingy tobacco air and places them around the top of his own head.
Bristly fibrous hair in porcupiney spikes, smoothed by the salt and oil cupped and dispensed by the pores of Teo's scalp. Strands poke palms, bend and bow under the weight of recurved fingers. Some of them are blonder than the others. He hasn't gotten enough sun, lately, here in Ryazan, to be as blonde as he is, for instance, when at sea. Francois' ear bends against the nudge of his forehead, pink cartlidge nearly as warm as his brow. Teo's hands fall gorilla-fisted to the coverlet and he leans in, sniffing at shampoo and a mumble of malformed inquiry.
His short fingernails scrape through cropped hair, enough to wake up skin rather than mark, palm carding over scalp until hands fall away again. There's a chuckle, in response to the mumbled question he can't quite pick out even at this proximity; possibly due to ESL, possibly because it's mumbled into his hair, or maybe because there aren't really words anyway. Francois leans forward, enough to leave Teo nuzzling air that still lingers, very briefly, with the clean smells the Frenchman brings with him into the smokey room. The tilt forward is not finished with a rock up onto his feet, remaining perched as he instead reaches over his shoulders, enough to grab soft fistfuls of his own sweater, and drag it up and over his head.
The thin grey T-shirt beneath goes with, both items left to tumble to the carpet. Back as pale as the rest of him, maybe more so, scarless save for one splotch of marking somewhere close to his spine, generic black ink and red together, the size of a child's palm. A bird, standing, a clawing foot raised aloft and breast puffed out, the mess of tail feathers beneath it curving like flame tongues, more impressive than folded wings. Ordinary in its material - a rooster, with both dichotomies of colour faded from time if not sun. It shifts along with skin when Francois twists his neck to glance at Teo over a shoulder, the two black dash marks at the slope between throat to shoulder shifting in a similar undulation.
"I am not making fun." The denial is gentle, turning enough to reach a hand, fingers catching beneath the Sicilian's round chin. "What is it you believe you deserve?"
Heh heh heh. Teo is like two breaths away from answering, Cock, since— you know— it's right here in two incarnations at least. The Sicilian has his finger on one of them, calluses testing the feel of inked scar tissue barbed and limned around the shape of avian nested between columns of muscle and bone and he — he would be getting other parts on the other one, but he's been caught by the face and is being confronted by Difficult or at least Obtusely Existential Questions. He leaks a sigh. Wiggles his jaw.
Gives up the escape art, at least for the moment. Pale eyes crank over to level on Francois' face, and the exploratory index finger on the man's spine is traded in for two palms flush on the flat of the Frenchman's back, greedy, or stalling, maybe both, planing downward to the twin dimples behind the narrow of Francois' hips. "I guess it would be presumptious to say 'you,'" he says, in the seconds before he realizes that the brain-mouth filter was bent out of its frame and choked down the drainage some time ago. His scalp tingles pleasantly where he had solicited caress. "But if I say 'not much,' you'll be offended.
"Maybe you'll be offended," Teo amends, offering the older man a different squint. This time, there's no fleeting illusion of ill-fitting beer goggles, this time, but the onerous process of thinking. It is probably not the wisest example to bring up, under the circumstances, but the analogy carries resonance to irresistable to ignore: "I don't deserve Abigail, but I want her back anyway." Resonance. Former-healers. Cut from the same cloth, you could say, maybe— maybe; he isn't sure.
There's a small wry smile as Teo's fingers seek out the familiar spot at his back. Happens in bed, on bed, gravitating towards colour and scarring. The only others are the white scratches where Carlisle Dreyfus had put a knife in him the count of three times, low on his stomach. Anyway, he gets the joke,and allows amusement to permeat his own speculate pause for a moment, before his own expression sobers. He neither smoked out nor drowned his own anxiety, but he doesn't bear the official title as Abby's hero, either, but who's counting?
"They deserve her less," Francois suggests; releases Teo's jaw now that he has an answer. He moves closer into the circle of an embrace already established with Teo's palms at his back, his own hands seeking out the base of the Sicilian's throat as if in a fraction away of closing and choking. Doesn't, of course, a warm collar of gentle fingers and smooth palms for as long as it takes Francois to wrinkle the fabric of Teo's hoodie at the shoulders, and he shifts his legs underneath him to kneel properly on bed covers. A smile comes back up. "But non, you do not deserve me."
Not as much of a mood-killer as you might think, though it is met with a due sink of consternation in the line of his brow. Not because he doesn't think it's true than because it is. Teo's mouth is going to mosey over to the two black notches on Francois' shoulder now, picking their way down the slope of fair neck to the musical lilt of clavicle and— "But you are slumming it tonight, right?" He glances up and askance. The apple of his throat bobs in the curl of the other man's hand like a Halloween confection in water, reverberating every syllable through on the tenor register of his voice.
They might also agree on the details regarding Abigail's captors, the irrelevance of titles and public recognition, and scars for keepsakes, but this question— and answer— holds the mainstay of Teodoro's attention. Blunt-nailed fingers nettle elsewhere. The round bones of Francois' spine, hipbone, then the slide down to the ridged scars that Carlisle had left the man to remember him by. There's none, under Teodoro's hoodie, where Eileen had left her handiwork. Courtesy of a radical old biddy named Hadley. He wouldn't know how to articulate his sympathy even if there was.
There's the brush of Francois' thumb along Teo's brow, as if to smooth away the line of consternation a somewhat barbed piece of coyness had brought along. There's only a sound of agreement in the back of the Frenchman's throat, before he glances down between their bodies enough to look where Teo's fingers are exploring. It doesn't get an unpleasant reaction - skin shivering, bridled tension making stomach muscles go still, and the visible cues that go along with Francois being disarmed for a moment. A hand drops down, curls around Teo's knuckles, not quite snatching them away so much as giving them something else to touch.
A kiss, then, with patient enthusiasm and warmth, rising up a little off his relaxed sit, thighs levering Francois forward. Hands discard what they were doing in favour of sliding up under the hoodie, skimming warm skin and leaving a couple of red tracks of nails, temporary and bleaching out in the same white as scars, to nothing a couple of seconds later.
The garlic rule is apparently suspended. Making out with an ashtray is less unpleasant to a former smoker than it would have been to someone who'd never, or maybe there are just more important things. After all, experience will have indicated clearly to Teodoro that apocalypses trump things like lung cancer, the luxury— if not of luxury— then of peace of mind, or career viability within the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sometimes, there isn't enough time to worry about the future. At others, the impact of a one night stand is negligible enough that the equation solves itself before constituting a problem.
So hey: experience does matter, and Francois has experience in more departments than, apparently, preying on a hapless blond's insecurities. Francois is a good kisser, and the distracting enticement actually creates a short-lived physical obstruction when Teo's too busy eating at the inside of his mouth to afford the four-handed fumble enough space to get his hoodie off. Short-lived. Eventually, he remembers enough to suck the air back down his lungs and pull his head back into his collar, retracting like an eel through densely creased cotton, the green shirt underneath that.
Teo's tattoos are somewhat less individually artistic, though together, they come together to caricature a youth spent treating intelligence like a combustion engine for his career in football hooliganism. Crashing boats, crosses, flippant epithets and Protestant quotations worn like epaulettes across his biceps, the chess Knight stamped across his heart, Citta di Palermo's tribal eagle stooped for a dive on his back. The only injury he wears is the hole in his right shoulder, courtesy of DHS, scab loosed off to leave a small starburst of new scar tissue standing out in shiny pink relief against his winter pallor. Not quite as pale as Francois, though that's hardly the starkest physical contrast provided between them.
One arm hooks Francois' waist. He didn't mind when his other hand was taken. Shifts his grip to buckle Francois' arm again but this time into a lazy flex and sucks a kiss off the corresponding swell of Francois' left bicep, playing at the supplicant a little more than he strictly needs to, maybe because the coyness worked, maybe just because it's fun. You do what you're good at, and Teo's been thinking about this for a couple weeks.
No comments made on Teo's set of ink, just as there are none on his. Surgeon's fingers skim over, pick out the ones he likes, and a blunt sliver of nail scrapes thoughtfully over the chess piece in silent approval, the pinch of scar only quickly studied by the time Francois is getting distracted again. He didn't come here to be an art critic - mostly he came here because he knows how self-imposed loneliness can chafe. That might not have been the case for Teo, but Francois doesn't have the same insecurities as the Sicilian to think he shouldn't have tried. That arm curls up, hand stroking through mingled blonde hair, tingling tracks of fingertips.
Historically, playing the supplicant works. It might not be why Francois is even in Russia, but it sure made quick a work of it, and Teo probably wouldn't have a Frenchman now pawing the fastenings of jeans if he'd gotten from A to be B via Ghost's methods. Brick to the head, trunk of car. A little flattery goes a long way.
One hand takes Teo's, mingles fingers together and drags down; a metal clasp to a belt is gripped, loose in Teo's palm, and the slide of the leather through denim loops is slithery.
And like a slithering slithery thing, it falls away. Drizzles into the wadded pile of Francois' clothes on the floor like the topping of some kind of dessert syrup situation, though you'd— certainly hesitate to eat off the floors in here. Francois is probably the cleanest thing in the room, which Teodoro is ill-advisedly trying to get to rub off on him by doing his own share of pawing. Partially, it's to counterbalance the limitations of force imposed by the bruising fading from Francois' face. Still Teo's fault. A lot of it.
France's pants are stripped away with the same deft motions with which Lucrezia taught him to peeling petals off honeysuckle, which is a metaphor that probably shouldn't be carried too far and shall not. Disrobement occurs rapidly. He rocks forward and hitches Francois off to the side in time to spill an armload of Frenchman onto the mattress rather than the floor, and there is enough bounce to the bedsprings to keep the impact painless for Francois' back, and to send up a staticky scatter of ashes like a spangling of frost that unforseeably don't melt, but go as quickly out of mind.
Teo crawls up. Isn't as heavy, without real snow underneath, and the burden of child's-play warfare and fat down jackets anywhere involved. Sets his weight on an elbow next to the older man's head, his own face haloed by finger-furrowed hair, back-lit, grinning like a fool, and he starts there before the march South.
As averaged migratory journeys go, this one's a little brief, though a welcome reprieve from the siege of Ryazan's winter. There's no interruption of alarm clock, nor responsibility banging on the door from the stern fist of a teammate from next door.
If Francois hadn't been rooming with Teodoro for the past month or so and played peripheral witness to a lot of sprawling, he'd probably be led to believe that the Sicilian is a compact sleeper. The presence of somebody else on the bed inspires a reasonable likeness of generosity in Teo's sleeping habits, insofar as that he is all grasp and smothering body-heat, stewing dreams while suffocating facedown and somehow comfortable that way. His presence is a heavy head on Francois' chest and lips ajar to match the subtle gap between Francois' ribs without corresponding visibly with any bruises that may or may not have been recently instituted, a tattooed arm folded across Francois' belly and legs discreetly koalaed underneath a disproportionately mountainous stack of blankets foraged off the floor some hours earlier.
No snoring tonight.
Smoke scent has edged out of the way to make room for what can be discreetly described as human effort and enthusiasm. Francois feels pinned down and not in a bad way, breathing contented beneath the press of weight on his torso and the too-warm drape of an arm across his midsection. The press of winter against the window and walls makes this comfortable. A lamp is still switched on, throwing up light enough to make the glass glare black out towards the view of warehouses and round-roof churches — or would, if curtains weren't securely drawn, and observation Francois makes when he tips his chin up enough to glance that way. Settling again, chin brushing the the dishevelled tips of spikey hair courtesy of Teo.
His hand rests at the nape of the young man's neck, fingertips nestled in hair, thumb occasionally journeying along the slope of neck. Around now, he'd be sending comforting healing warmth through his bedfellow, regardless as to whether it's needed. No dice. "I don't see how someone so warm can be constantly complaining of the cold," he notes.
'Constantly complaining' seems like a slight exaggeration, okay. There's a quirk of brow and mock-defensive expression, probably more felt than seen. "I might be more at home in the cold if I wasn't," Teo says, after a false start cured with a brief clearing of his throat. He squirms his head, stretching his cheek slightly under pressure as he swivels a brief look up, chin surmounting the edges of fleece and comforter. He looks reasonably awake, all things considered, like Francois hadn't jostled him up in the middle of a good dream with that black-hearted bit mockery.
No, he was awake and fully receptive for that— cardiac— darkness. Stiff upper-lip, though; his mouth crooks a smile, presently. Teo does not appear to plan on moving anytime soon— or, you know, offering to, despite that the acknowledgment of his metabolic temperature being off the wall. It's still dark out, snow coming down in twisted white trails, flecking fluorescent whenever some automobile's headlights knife through. Plenty of cold to hide from, remaining time to kill. Fingers in his hair are nice.
"I don't see how you can be so comfortable in your skin, with the gift that made you immortal chopped out like a peach pit and the era you lived in chopped off like—" words fail Teo, for a moment. For a moment, he forgets even to add in a curse word to render his observation in a more casual light. He hikes both eyebrows. "Something else." He can complain about more things than just the cold.
That gets some silence. Fair play in that if Francois can dish it, he should be able to take it, too, and the ceiling lit warm by the lamp is studied. Hand in hair doesn't move, and the periodic thumb strokes don't cease. There's been enough lazy silence between them that a stretch of a pause doesn't seem totally out of place. Eventually, he speaks. "Perhaps I am just comfortable with being uncomfortable." A second hand rests companiably down on Teo's wrist beneath lumpy bedsheets — colder, inferior circulation, if not quite unpleasant. "Sometimes I am not sure.
"A lot of movies have sequels now. Remakes. The phones are ridiculously small. There are days where it feels like no time has passed at all, until I see Carlisle Dreyfus, or Abigail grown. Sometimes I feel as though I will simply vanish and I will leave nothing behind. Not a new idea — it has already happened."
Sleepiness has made his voice hoarser than the mild dryness it usually has, tone pleasant and sedate. Fingers curl, set fingernails against skin as lightly as a bird coming to land on flesh. "I am glad you see me as comfort-able. You all comfort me."
The play on words at the end elicits a slight wrinkle of ponder-ing that ultimately does little more than to add texture to the substance of Teodoro's thought and expression. He doesn't ask for clarification. You-all. Nigh all of those who have peopled the world since he's arrived in 2009? The operatives of Team Charlie? All present and former occupants of this bed?
Presently, Teodoro picks up his head. Shoulders himself closer and slides in under the point-contacts of Francois' fingertips, as if vaguely fretful that the curl of the Frenchman's digits had threatened recoil. He reassures himself otherwise simply by crowding Francois' space, sliding the scratchy roof of his skull under the older man's wrist, nosing past the musky, thin-veined inside of his elbow, until the natural bend of human anatomy has Francois' arms conceding to drape over his neck and his chin's parked in the air over the Frenchman's chest, balanced creakily on one forearm.
"Not to self-aggrandize, or shit like that," Teo pronounces with owlish solemnity, "but you'd leave me. Technically." He has kind of a cowlick going on, more pronounced with he tilts his head. Five thousand cowlicks comprise his haircut. He smiles widely. "I'd still be here: probably. I remember things from another time, too. The phones were even smaller, and the wars were between countries, again, instead of human subspecies. So I come from another time, but it's not one I can go back to, and I don't think I have enough lifespan to pay back what I owe this one.
"How do you like that?" He hurdles his other arm over Francois' hip, redistributes his weight over both elbows. Teo's shoulder was protesting. He isn't missing the point, not exactly. It's just better, sometimes, to know: "You'd be missed."
Now isn't the time to wax philosophical-slash-knowledgable about the changing of human minds and hearts. The sentiment is accepted, if peripherally; currently, Francois is busy looking for the lie, his expression as serious and searching as his arm is relaxed and comfortable around Teo's shoulders. Bats eyes, before his gaze shifts to somewhere around the other man's shoulder, a small smile tweaking the corners of his mouth and what seems to be honest apology writing on his features. "That sounds like a story to tell, and yet, I've asked no questions that would have allowed you to tell it."
Green peers back to blue in gentle inquiry, although he still doesn't ask. "I am not sure how I like it. I am used to being different and unique, n'est-ce pas?" Small smile widens, chin then lifting in a brief gesture towards. "How small?" Heh heh heh.
"It's a boring story," Teo informs the older man, without anything particularly, visibly disingenuous about this assessment, despite the fact that that's more than a little weirrrd. The story of his conception turns him off a little like the idea of one's parents having sex does others. Only a little like that: mostly, it reminds with uncomfortable clarity of his own artificiality. "Not like yours at all.
"I like yours better, anyway," he offers, gone kind of effulgent in the dim room by the magnitude of his generosity. Such sincerity is easy to give away. Cheap, pretty, bibelot for the shelf, flower for the glass. A little flattery goes a long way, but isn't like to hold much water. (That's what sex is for.) Linens are pulled aside with a magician's gratuitous swat, unveiling Francois' torso to the lukewarm stagnation of the bedroom air like uncurtaining a canvas. "Ce petit." He drops a forefinger and thumb down, down the course of skin, down piano-key ribs, keloids the rough shape of a knife's cross-section, the plateau of lower-belly cradled between hipbone vertices annnnd—
Up again. "You just put them right on your ear." He demonstrates, hooking a callused index around Francois' right ear, flexing the rosy shell of cartilage. "Increasingly hands-free. If not necessarily— you know, intuitive. Kids get lazier and lazier. And skinnier, from all the fuckin' soy substitutes. Cars still don't fly. Marriage is still both a state and religious institution, and and corporate America is creepy. But people get by." He retracts his forefinger like a swan resuming posture. Somewhere in the distance behind his head, he has one bare foot up, pink protrusion from the blankets, counterbalancing his miming efforts. "Just like then. You're— going to be okay, right?"
Boring story in the way that nine months in Germany is a boring story, or more like the boat from Europe to America? Which was genuinely really, really boring. This queston is asked only with a raised eyebrow, but as much a Francois' immortality has been sliced out of him, if willingly, there is still plenty of time left to fit it into words. Especially with fingers walking now down the length of his torso, toes curling way down there for as long as it takes that hand to travel back North. Francois smiles; twitches his head away by the time Teo is already retracting that hand, and rests his head back on the pillow with a lazy hood to his eyes.
"It doesn't sound so different. Just more - just like now." Long hands smooth along Teo's arms, shoulders, rest there for want of anywhere less awkward to position them. "Moi? I came here for you, tonight."
It's close enough to Christmas that Teo's expression is blatant in its reference. You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need— and if the healthy exhaustion laying lengthy in the sloppy muscle strings of their interpolated limbs is any indication, that was good. Far more effective than drinking or smoking, and better for the environment, probably, at least comparing the total mass of biodegradable latex and other waste languishing in the trash can. That worked out. "Grazie.
"You'll let me know what I owe you? Currency of preference?" Teo's grin bares a few more teeth when he asks. He walks his elbows a little bit closer, up the bed, bringing himself in range to make use of a pillow other than Francois' chest. Maybe the one bundled in cotton. Maybe Francois' shoulder or the ear that he had relinquished a few seconds earlier. Sort of kind of depends on whether Francois plans to find himself a bed of his own. The paraplegic weight of Sicilian legs on top of his own casts one vote per appendage.
"Avec plaisir." The Frenchman rolls over, content to tangle legs and slide an arm around around Sicily's waist. Settles, for a second, before lifting again to reeeach over enough to switch off the lamp and bathe the room in quasi-darkness. Teo will feel more than see him settle back down, hand seeking hip bone to rest there, lax. "You can bring us back Abigail," Francois suggests, a conspiring murmur, raspy-throated. In the dark, Francois' hand finds its way to Teo's jaw, thumb journeying to the corner of the younger man's mouth before pressing against it - either a gentle bid for a lack of answer, or something affectionate and familiar. Falls away a moment later, around when Francois is shutting his eyes.