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

[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.

[more_magic]

She squeezes his ass and he laughs, the sound muffled against her mouth and edged with another, needier groan. "Alex," he breathes, nudging her head gently to the side and kissing along her jaw, towards the graceful line of her neck and the bared slope of her shoulders.

He's careful here, though it takes effort. He remembers the moths, the magic, the caution he'd given her once it was all over: be careful in the throes. Darlington never expected to have cause to take his own advice.

[takecourage]

This is so much more than it started off as, and Alex isn't about to start fighting it now. She keeps her hand tangled in his hair, her head falling back as he kisses down her throat, the blunt ends of her hair shivering against her bare skin.

"Darlington," she breathes. "Fuck, Daniel."

[more_magic]

His given name sounds beautiful, coming from her mouth, but it's an unusual enough occurrence to make him pause, though he stays pressed close. "This is..." he starts, looking at her with his lips parted and his hair mussed from her fingers, his hand running idly along the curve of her hip. "You're still...?"

He doesn't know what he's saying, what he ought to say, what he wants to. The bed is behind them, only steps away, and he can feel its presence there like some kind of weight.

[takecourage]

Her breath catches, tits heaving inside the press of snug velvet and a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. She squeezes his ass again, her other hand shifting to cradle his cheek.

"Use your words, Darlington."

[more_magic]

Darlington leans into the hand against his face, and lets out another soft laugh as Alex squeezes his ass once again. "A fair request," he murmurs, his eyes closing briefly as he sets his thoughts to rights. He opens them again a moment later, asking the first and most important thing that comes to mind and doing his best to divorce it from the heavy, insistent pulse of his own desires.

"Do you want me to stop?"

[takecourage]

Alex wants to give that the thought that it deserves, she really does, but her body is taking over and she shakes her head, almost involuntarily, pressing close again.

"Don't stop."

She'll deal with the consequences of whatever this is tomorrow. For now, she just wants to let herself have something good.

[more_magic]

He'd have done what she wanted, no matter the answer, but as Alex shakes her head and presses her body to his again, it feels like a gift he hadn't known he was seeking until it came. His breath shudders out of him, his blue eyes finding her dark ones, seeing heat and surprise and need in their depths. For a moment, he wonders if the same might be said for his.

"I won't," he says, then kisses her again, firm and hungry, giving himself over to the moment once more.

[takecourage]

She gives herself permission not to think and just lets herself react to the way he kisses her, the waves of want that she can feel almost rolling off him. Her hands are back on his hair, holding him close, keeping him to the kiss.

[more_magic]

Even if he could pull away now, Darlington knows he wouldn't. Alex's fingers twist in his dark hair, keeping him in place, keeping him sunk into only what's happening between them now, and it's perfect. Both his hands now slide along the dark fabric of her dress, along the line of her back, pulling her as close to him as he can get.

As carefully as he can manage, if with considerably less grace than when he'd led her as they danced, Darlington starts to guide them back towards the bed, large and plush and inviting, full of a promise he hadn't expected when they'd first entered the room. When the back of his legs hit the edge of the mattress, he sits, tugging Alex down with him.

[takecourage]

She can feel the heat of his hands through her dress and, in a flash, she's remembering the heat of his breath against her through the lace of her panties on Halloween, his hands on her under her shirt as he'd pushed her back on her couch in Darrow. She's remembering every single time he's touched her, as well as every single time she's wanted him to touch her, and then he hasn't. He sits down on the bed and Alex goes with him, ending up in his lap, a leg on either side of his thighs, her toes barely touching the floor as they kiss, one arm curled around his neck.

[more_magic]

Alex straddles him, almost bird-light as she perches in his lap, and once again he thinks of Halloween, of only a week ago, of the dizzying whirl of his own desires. His hands map some of the lines of her body, pressed as close as they are, long fingers tracing hips and ribs and shoulders, straying along her back and tangling a little in the ends of her hair. He's still hard, knows she'll be able to feel it with the way she's sitting, but there's no shame in the thought of it.

He nips gently at her full lower lip before he moves away from the wonder of her mouth, restarting his trail of other, careful kisses from before along her neck--and then further, down her chest to the edge of the dress's neckline and the soft swell of her tits. They're long past prelude, and Darlington welcomes it all wholeheartedly.

[takecourage]

She can definitely feel how hard he is and she rocks her hips down against him, lets him know just how much she welcomes that, wants it. His mouth works it's way lower and Alex moans as his lips brush against the press of her tits under fabric.

[more_magic]

Darlington groans as she rocks down against him, just the friction enough to make his head spin--to say nothing of the way Alex moans as he kisses his way along the slope of her tits. His fingers find the metal tab of her zipper again; this time, he only hesitates a moment before he starts to pull it down, slowly enough that she has the space to stop him.

He would, he knows he would--but god, he doesn't want to.

[takecourage]

It takes her a moment to realise that he's starting to unzip her dress and, once she realises, she doesn't try to stop him. She tousles her fingers into his hair again, rocking her hips slowly.

[more_magic]

He undoes the zipper as far as it'll go with her sitting in his lap, his hand slipping beneath the fabric of the dress, splaying against the bare skin of her back. Given the line of the dress, he might have expected to find nothing beneath, but somehow it still takes him by surprise.

He groans again, mouth pressed to her chest, his nails scratching lightly down her spine as her fingers tug at his hair.

[takecourage]

"You can take it off," says Alex, already shrugging her shoulders, shivering at the feeling of his nails scratching lightly over her skin. He'd seen her in her bra before. This is different, obviously, but she realises that she's never cared less about that in her life. She wants to be seen by him.

[more_magic]

Darlington nods, struck wordless again in the face of that permission and the vulnerability it holds. Gently, he peels the top of the dress down, Alex helping it along with those rolls of her shoulders and the graceful way she pulls her arms from the sleeves.

The fabric pools around her waist, a dark eddy of velvet flowing across both of their laps, and the sight of it--and of her--is more beautiful than even Manuscript's hallucination had made it seem.