What are you doing New Year's Eve?

[takecourage]

They step off the tram and walk up to the lodge together and Alex...really hadn't been prepared for how beautiful it all is. She's glad she went with the fancier dress now, velvet, off the shoulder, cut below the knee and paired with spike black heels with straps that wrap around her ankles. She'd have felt underdresssed in anything else.

She blows out a breath and, for a moment, she almost shrinks behind Darlington, trusting him to protect her from the unknown.

"I...don't think I'm going to fit in here," she says.

Comments

[takecourage]

"You make it sound like it's something to be got through," she says, raising her dark eyebrows. "This isn't Manuscript, Darlington. You can relax."

[more_magic]

"I know it's not Manuscript," he says, a faint flush touching his cheeks at the reminder of that night. What he could recall of it, more accurately, the bits of reality and fantasy and desire all still too knotted together for him to pick apart cleanly. He'd wanted her then--and there, and here, his world dividing that night without his awareness--in a way he'd never desired anything, something so sudden and strong he barely had words for it even now. "Thank god for that."

He takes another swallow of champagne. "I wasn't thinking of it as something to be got through, either," he admits. "More like a..." He exhales, making a vague gesture with his free hand. "The closing of one book, maybe, and approaching the start of something new."

[takecourage]

"That sounds better, at least," says Alex, draining the rest of her champagne and teaching forward to refill her glass. "I have literally never been I'm a place this nice. Other than Il Bastogne. Remind me to take a bath or something before I leave."

[more_magic]

"It is lovely," he agrees. "Not in the same way, of course, but...beautiful for what it is."

Alex leans forward, over him a little as she reaches for the bottle, her dress making a soft sound against the sheets as she moves. Maybe it's because it had just been on his mind, but for a moment Darlington has a flash of his vision from before, of kneeling at her feet as that dark silk dress slid from her body. This isn't that, as they'd already established; tonight's a night as different as it could ever be from the havoc Manuscript played with him on Halloween. Still, he thinks of it anyway.

He blinks, trying to make the action seem as natural as he can, taking the bottle from her and topping up his own glass once she's finished and sitting back once more.

"And I doubt you'll forget, Stern," he says, a faint smile on his lips as he raises his glass to take a drink. "Even if it can't be as nice as that tub at Il Bastone."

[takecourage]

"I remember thinking," she says, her dark eyes sparkling with barely repressed laughter as she sips her champagne, "that I couldn't imagine you sinking into a bubble bath to relax."

And, just like that, she's picturing him, suds and all that bare skin, and she takes another swig of champagne.

[more_magic]

Darlington laughs at that, unguarded and entirely without pretense, even as his face warms a couple degrees in a way he doubts he can blame on the champagne. Why she'd be imagining it in the first place, he couldn't say. Likely, it had been something from early on, maybe during the tour he'd given her that first day; a thought tinted with that hard-edged scorn she'd had for him up until only a few months ago. "Not very broadminded of you," he murmurs after a moment. "I'm disappointed."

He turns to look at her, taking in the shine of her dark eyes and the curl of her fingers around the stem of her glass, the line of her throat as she tips her head back to take another drink. Some sudden impulse makes him turn, setting his glass back down on the side table before leaning to pick up his jacket from the foot of the bed. His phone is in the inner pocket, and he pulls it out, calling up the music app.

"I realize I owe you a dance, Stern," he says, getting off the bed and holding his other hand out to her. "If you'd still care to collect."

[takecourage]

"I think I just couldn't imagine you relaxing."

Literally nobody has ever asked her to dance and, for a moment, Alex isn't sure what to say. She knocks back the rest of her champagne, feeling her head give a dizzy little flicker and then she sets down the glasses and she takes his hand.

"I'd love to."

[more_magic]

He's seen surprise on her face before, and wonder, but each time it happens he's struck anew by the way something about her seems to open; some secret and vulnerable heart revealed beneath the armor she carries so close. If he thought she'd tolerate it, he might even have said it was beautiful.

Alex's silence in the wake of his question stretches on a beat longer than he expected, and he nearly moves to sit back on the bed, content to dismiss the ridiculous impulse that had made him get up in the first place. But then she's gulping back her champagne, the motion just on the edge of reckless, and her hand is in his, and Darlington's glad once more that he'd heeded whatever had spurred him to this moment. He cues up a song, something slow that requires little thought to move along with, turning up the volume on his phone as he sets it down on the side table. Their ill-gotten room is large enough that there's plenty of open space, a makeshift dance floor of sorts between the bed and the wide window along one wall.

One hand still in hers, his other goes to her back, the velvet of her dress soft beneath his palm. "You were right, by the way," he says, his mouth ticking up in a smile. "I did take lessons. Now we'll see how much I remember."

He pauses a moment, listening for the beat, then starts to move them in a careful, easy box step.

[takecourage]

When he'd asked her to dance, Alex hadn't been expecting the fucking waltz and, at the same time, she has no idea why she's surprised. Because of course they're dancing like this. Because it's him. Automatically, she goes up onto her tiptoes, letting him lead her in the dance, her fingers threading with his after a moment. She's intensely aware of the weight of his hand on her back.

"How old were you?" she asks. "When you took the lessons?"

[more_magic]

With Alex no longer in her heels, the difference in height between them is more pronounced, more noticeable--but not at all awkward, even so. Feeling her weight shift as she goes up on her tiptoes, he adjusts his hold slightly to compensate, to support her a little more as they keep moving. He only lets himself think for a minute about how well she fits in his arms.

"Thirteen," he says when she asks, breathing out a small, quiet laugh. "I thought it'd make sense to learn before I got to high school. For homecoming, or prom." He'd also simply wanted to learn, to practice and perfect another skill as he had so many others; to be the citizen of the world his grandfather had tried to make him. There was little else to do within the vast and empty halls of Black Elm, after all.

"Not that there was dancing quite like this when prom actually came to pass, of course."

[takecourage]

"Yeah, we were very different kinds of thirteen year olds," she says, letting out a huff of a laugh through her nose. She's distracted by the way his fingers splay against her back. "That's...almost unbearably cute, Darlington."

[more_magic]

Darlington grins, ducking his head a little, something warm blossoming in his chest at the near-compliment. "I doubt you'd have said that if you'd seen me at the time," he says. "But thank you, regardless."

The mention of it only serves to remind him how close he and Alex are in age. How they really had been thirteen at almost the same time, leading such different lives at opposite ends of the country--and how only a few years later, something fundamental would change for them both. He's not so naive as to think knowing her then might have saved her from what was to come. He could barely save himself. None of that stops him, just for a moment, from trying to picture the two of them as the children they'd been before their worlds had shifted.

Still keeping up those easy, smooth steps of the dance as the music plays on, Darlington raises their linked hands, coaxing Alex into a spin.

[takecourage]

Her skirt and the blunt ends of her hair flares as he spins her and Alex feels giddy in a way she can't remember ever feeling before. She's laughing when she comes back to him and, this time, she presses closer, her tits brushing against his chest as she curls her arm around his neck. It's a movement that feels entirely natural.

[more_magic]

The breath he lets out as she presses herself against him contains just the barest hint of a shiver, something so easily missed but that he's all too aware of even so. He looks down at her, bright and laughing, safe within this space he's made for her--for them both--and knows, without form or thought or question, that he wants to see her exactly like this again. As often as he can, and as often as she'll let him.

The song ends, fading into a brief silence before switching to another track, but Darlington doesn't pull away to stop it.

[takecourage]

"How close are we to midnight?" She asks, and realizes that that makes her sound like Cinderella or something - like this spell could somehow end, and everything could shatter into something more mundane.

She's so close to him now that it's the easiest thing in the world to rest her head against his shoulder as they dance.

[more_magic]

The structure of the way they'd been dancing doesn't have a place now, not when she's resting so close; her arm around him, her head on his shoulder. Their hands, still linked. It's so easy to transition into a gentle, contented sway, something simple and formless.

Rather than let go of her to look at his watch, Darlington turns his head, glancing towards the clock on the bedside table. "Only a couple minutes," he says, inwardly surprised at how quickly the last half-hour has gone by. He could have sworn they'd have more time than this.

Maybe we could, he thinks, a sudden thought he doesn't know if he should examine too closely--and followed, almost immediately, by a question he doesn't know if he should ask. He can't make it flip, can't make it part of their nonchalant rapport, their push and pull of affection and scorn. He can only ask it, simply and honestly, and hope he's making the right decision.

"Traditionally, you're meant to kiss someone for luck at midnight," he says, before he can pull himself back from saying anything at all. "Would you want me to?"

[takecourage]

Her head against his shoulder, she's not looking at him when he says it and, with the way her stomach dips, she's glad she doesn't. She doesn't think she's imagining the sincerity in his voice.

"For luck?" She asks, and she's smiling when she says it. "Sure. I figure we could both do with more of that, right?"

[more_magic]

"We could," he agrees. "Here, or in New Haven. As much luck as we can get." Because of course that's what he'd meant. It was for tradition, for luck, for the sake of capturing the kind of magic everyone believes in; nothing that will crack the world open or change the fate of nations, just a single, small hope at the commencement of something new.

Two people reciting the same spell, he remembers himself saying once, though he thinks he'd meant something different then.

His hand smooths down her back before lifting away, more reluctantly than he might have expected. Following the sweep of the second hand on his watch, he recites the countdown once they reach the last seconds of the year. "...three, two, one." He smiles, as soft as his voice had been only a moment ago. "Happy New Year, Alex."

He moves only enough to tilt her head up a little, the brush of his fingers soft beneath her chin, then leans in and presses his lips gently to hers.

[takecourage]

It is not the first time that Alex has been kissed. Her first kiss had been Len, a few weeks before that time they fucked on the floor of that Baskin Robbins, the soles of her feet still sticky with bubblegum ice-cream. She hadn't been a virgin for a long time before that, even, not in the way that mattered. But when Darlington wishes her happy new year and then tilts her chin up so gently, Alex's eyes flutter closed and it's easy to pretend that she's some different girl, pristine and perfect and never before kissed.

And it's perfect. So perfect that she doesn't want the moment to end. Without realising, she pushes the kiss a little bit deeper.

She wants so desperately to be the girl he wants her to be.

[more_magic]

There had been other kisses, other girls, laughing and soft and sweet, but Darlington's not thinking of any of them now. Only Alex, the fullness of her mouth and the press of her body and the way her lips part just enough, a silent permission to deepen the kiss, to fall into this moment for a little longer. It's so easy to accept.

He shifts the hand at her chin, running his thumb along the line of her jaw as he keeps kissing her. One of them--both of them--makes a soft sound against the other's mouth, something wordless and without real form.

[takecourage]

Thus is more, she realises, than a good luck kiss. She tangles her arms around his neck, tugging him closer, licking into his mouth. She shuts her brain down and lets the beast inside just have what it wants, for as long as what it wants lasts.

[more_magic]

If he thought he was imagining any of this, he knows he'd stop. As they'd said not long ago, this isn't Manuscript; there's no blinding fog, no magical coercion to the way Alex's arms loop around his neck or the way his hand drops to her waist, pulling her hips in against his. It's just them, sunk into whatever this could be.

A start, maybe. A beginning, just like the new year.

They trade deeper, more openmouthed kisses, Darlington's breath coming just a little faster. His other hand slides up along her spine, along her dress to where the dip of the neckline reveals the smooth skin of her back. She's warm beneath the touch of his fingers, and feeling it, he can't help the quiet groan that's pulled from the center of his chest.

[takecourage]

He pulls her in closer, so that their bodies are pressed close together and then he groans like that, soft into her mouth, and she's taken by surprise by how hot that is, her cunt throbbing in answer. She pushes her fingers into his hair, holding on.

[more_magic]

The shiver that runs down his spine as Alex's fingers twist into his hair is almost electric, the kind of sensation he doesn't know he's ever felt before. He's aware of a low, settling tension in the pit of his stomach, one that is familiar, and knows he's getting hard. A blush touches the line of his cheekbones, but he doesn't stop kissing her, doesn't pull back from holding her close.

The hand at her back finds the small metal tab of her dress's zipper, one fingertip doing nothing but touching it for the time being.

[takecourage]

She can feel him starting to get hard against her and it doesn't even occur to get to pull away from him. Her hand stays in his hair, the other skimming down his side and around to squeeze his ass through his pants, pulling him in closer still.