For Caleb

[takecourage]

Now that Darlington is in town (not in a pocket universe where she can't get to him, essentially lost to her), Alex finds herself more invested in making her apartment feel like home. She's never had this kind of disposable income and, after buying herself t-shirts and sweaters and underwear and jeans, a really good pair of boots and a good jacket, she turns her attention to nesting. Ground Zero had been a shithole, but this was her place, and she was going to do it right.

She hadn't wanted to subject Darlington to shopping, so she'd sent Caleb a text and arranged to meet him so that they could go browse together. Alex is dressed in a sweater that's too big for her (she hadn't been able to resist it in the store; it had been so soft), her leather jacket, the voluminous scarf that Darlington bought her for Christmas, soft navy wool studded with tiny silver stars.

Comments

[takecourage]

"You fucking heard him," she snaps, her face impassive until he scuttles off. She fights her desire to run away; she doesn't have enough people to be careless with them here.

"I don't want to talk about this here," she says.

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

"Okay," he says immediately, because she's honest with him about it. "I'm sorry, I. I didn't mean to upset you."

[takecourage]

"It's not your fault," she says. "Come on. Let's go and get a coffee. We can...clear the air and then we can buy scatter cushions and shit."

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

He nods, and they walk in silence back through the store, to the in-store Ahab's by the exit. He orders a hot cocoa with whipped cream, and offers to pay for Alex, to thank her for buying him fries and two shakes the first time they'd met.

When they're sitting with their drinks, Caleb thinks back to that moment before the associate had approached them, and what they'd been talking about. Christmas.

"Did that guy get you any good presents?" he asks. "That Darling guy?"

[takecourage]

Alex is actually in the process of unwinding her scarf as he asks her and she smiles.

"Yeah, actually," she says. "He got me this. I've literally never owned anything this soft in my life."

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

Caleb smiles, sipping his hot chocolate and lifting a hand to wipe the whipped cream from his upper lip. "It looks warm, too," he notes. "Did you get him anything?"

[takecourage]

"Yeah," she says. "A beanie to replace once of his that I lost back home. Much nicer than the one that I lost. It looks...unreasonably good on him."

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

That has him grinning. "I'll bet it does," he says, tone light and teasing. "Does he... know? That you feel this way?"

[takecourage]

"Feel what way?" Asks Alex, both eyebrows firmly raised. "I'm just really relieved to see him."

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

"Well, that's true, you are," he confirms, "but that's not all you feel." He lifts his eyebrows right back, a little pointedly.

[takecourage]

"You clearly think you're being really clever here," says Alex, half smirking, sipping her coffee. "But I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you're picking up feelings from the waitress or something."

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

Caleb leans on the table, watching her, feeling her feelings. There's no way she can't know, right? But it sort of feels like she doesn't — like she doesn't even realize what she's feeling is there, or that she doesn't know what it actually is.

"...Huh," he says, leaning back. "Okay, well... not my place, I guess."

[takecourage]

"Oh, no!" Says Alex, shaking her head and putting down her coffee cup. "You can't do that."

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

"Do what?" Caleb asks. "No, I don't know, like. You should work through your own feelings. I don't want to, like. Make you feel weird." He pauses, considers, then says, "Weirder."

[takecourage]

"Okay, you really do need to explain yourself now," she says, staring at him, though she's still smiling. "Because I am...really fucking curious, for a start. And being in touch with my own feelings has never been my strong point."

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

"No kidding," Caleb remarks. He tilts his head, feeling for that spiky, poking feeling that tells him, no, she really doesn't want to hear it. He doesn't feel it. He takes a breath, another sip of his hot chocolate, and says, "I mean, you're super into him. Every time you talk about him, you get this feeling like you've just missed a step going down stairs."

[takecourage]

Alex just stares at him for a moment, a faint flush going across her cheekbones.

"I mean, I'm an asshole but I'm not blind." She digs her phone out of her jacket pocket and flicks through her phone to find a picture of Darlington folded into an armchair in her lounge reading. She holds it out to him as proof.

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

Which, okay, Caleb's not blind, either. The Darlington guy wasn't ugly, but maybe wasn't entirely Caleb's type. He wouldn't know for sure until he'd met the guy, though.

"Yeah, but it's not just, like, a 'he's cute' sort of feeling. It's deeper than that." He doesn't want to say the L word. When he'd realized how he really felt for Adam, it had been one of the most incredible feelings in the world. He doesn't want to toss that word at Alex and have her fight against it.

[takecourage]

"Are you sure it's not, like...just that I'm really relieved to see him?" She picks up her coffee, taking a sip, not looking at Caleb for the next part. "I thought he was dead."

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

"There's relief, too," he assures. "But it's a different color from what you're feeling. A different shape." And then, because he can feel the curiosity from her before she even asks, he explains. "So, relief is this really pretty pastel pink color. When you talk about him, that's definitely there, but it's underneath the other stuff. There's also these fluttery, butterfly feelings inside your ribs — well, my ribs. That's how it feels when someone likes someone else."

[takecourage]

"Huh."

She lets that sink in for a second. "So is...liking someone and wanting to fuck them too different colours?"

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

He blushes hard, and he rubs his face with a groaned out laugh. What the hell.

"Um, yeah. Being, um, being, y'know. That's different."

[takecourage]

That does make Alex laughs, a warm and genuine sound.

"Horny," she says. "How?"

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

Her amusement feels good, better than the wariness of earlier, but that doesn't make it any easier to talk about this.

"Well, it's, it's not a color, exactly. It's a sensation. It's like this hot vapor, like. It's not so hot it hurts, but it's too hot to be exactly comfortable? And it s-sorta pools, right in my lower belly." And because he's thinking about it, he's having a reaction to it, and he's really glad there's a table over his lap.

[takecourage]

"So it feels how it feels to the person who's feeling it too," says Alex, one eyebrow raised. "That's...interesting. And you get off that me when I talk about D...when I talk about him?"