A/N: Short one to start, but once they get rolling, they're going places! It won't be smooth sailing of course, but Scott's finally dipped a toe out of the closet.
Cht 1 Sprouting wings
His father accused him of many things while he was alive – slacker, disappointment, problem child. But no one could ever accuse Scott Favor of being a bad person. Or a horrible friend. He tried to distance himself, tried to run back to the safety net of home and propriety, to everything his upbringing afforded him. It took the two most important men in his life dying to finally shine a stark light on the fact that instead of running back home, he was running away from the real home he had come to know.
Scott could talk slicker than shit, Mikey said. He talked Carmella out of her pants, and then he talked her halfway across the world. He could talk anybody into anything, and thus he seemed destined for a life in politics just like his father. So he accepted his inheritance with grace, the proper amount of decorum and a tinge of remorse over his wild days. And then he secured himself the perfect trophy wife material. Because he knew he needed her to craft his new life, to leave the old one behind and go respectable. To change, just when no one expected him to. Yet watching the revelry of Bob's funeral contrast against his father's staid service left Scott wanting. And he knew why. He lay there that night next to her, feeling the press of her warm, nude body against his, and he could no longer deny that which he could not change. The thing he had always run from, the real reason he would never be his father's golden boy and why he rebelled so hard. Home was not here. And finding Mikey might not be easy.
Mike woke up in warmth, covered with a blanket in the backseat of a car. He wondered briefly if he had fallen asleep on a date, until he glanced up bleary-eyed to see the back of Scott's head over the front head rest. No longer did he dream of his mother cradling his head in her lap. Now it was Scott holding him, comforting him in his sleep; so when he awoke now, it left him wondering faintly if his dream had merely shifted to Scott driving him off into the sunset somehow, to safety.
He sucked in a breath, shifted, raising up and almost guiltily meeting Scott's eyes in the rearview mirror.
"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty," Scott quipped, trying to inject some humor into the situation. They hadn't seen each other for weeks, had not left on a good note. And he was not exactly sure how Mike would receive him.
"Tha fuck are you doing here?" He answered groggily, looking around at the scenery flashing by. "Where are we?"
"Headed south Mikey, headed south!" Scott smiled winningly, only faltering a second when Mike refused to meet his gaze again.
"Where's your girlfriend?" he couldn't help but bite the word out. Could not help the sting of jealousy that choked him, like bile rising up.
"She's gone," Scott said evenly, "she headed back to Italy a day or so ago. Didn't work out, ya know?"
"Why not? She seemed perfect for you," he answered sullenly, though hope sprung to life in the smallest flicker, deep in his belly.
"No, man. No she wasn't."
"She sure seemed like it. She was pretty," he chewed the word, "smart. Normal." His voice got quieter, he scarcely dared to look up into those fathomless eyes again, but he was dying to know what Scott was thinking up there.
When Mike finally dared to look up again, Scott met his gaze evenly, "she wasn't for me. Didn't feel like home, you know? Didn't feel real."
"So…why'd you come to me? I mean… why'd you come looking for me?"
"I sprouted wings, Mikey," he said, casting his eyes back to the road, trying to see what lay ahead of them.