(no subject)

[takecourage]

She really doesn't know why they bother having two apartments at all, not when they're both much happier when they're in the same one. They cook together, they eat together, they sprawl on one sofa watching movies. They took the time to ward both places, with Bramford being as deeply haunted as it as. Riddled with grays. Alex feels them wash over her the minute she steps into the hallway but, in either of the apartments, she trusts him to keep her safe.

"What are you even doing?" she asks.

Comments

[more_magic]

"Just a minute," he says, not an answer to her question--or, not the one she might want--but a start. He studies the chalked sigils along the doorframe, frowning and contemplative, then reaches out, adding a line here, a glyph there. Making things a little stronger, more secure.

Satisfied, he nods once, then turns away. "I heard someone talking about a spot draft in the laundry room the other day," he explains, going into the kitchen to grab a bottle of wine and two glasses before he joins her in the living room. "I thought I'd just...update some things."

He looks at her, concern on his face for a brief and unguarded moment, before he sets the glasses down on the coffee table.

[takecourage]

The look on his face is distracting, for a moment, and she can't help but look at it and then, once it's over, she can't help but think about what a look like that might mean. She holds her hands out for the wine.

"Are we tucked in safe?"

[more_magic]

"Safe as can be." The wards here will never, he thinks, be as defined as those on Il Bastone or the Hutch, unbolstered as they are by centuries of reinforcement by one member of Lethe after another, but they're enough for here. Enough for Alex to breathe a little easier in the places they call home.

He uncorks the wine with a practiced hand, pouring out some for both of them. When she holds out her hands, Darlington huffs out a laugh and passes one of the glasses to her. "They haven't been any more present for you, have they? More than usual, I mean."

[takecourage]

"You mean have any of them touched me?" He still hasn't stopped asking her the wrong questions, no matter how much time they spend together. She slips her wine and shakes her head. "Not since that one right after you got here."

[more_magic]

He asks the wrong questions because to ask the right ones, this one, still makes his heart stutter a bit in his chest. He holds back the old denial--that's impossible, you're mistaken--knowing it's false now, if only where she's concerned.

"I didn't exactly mean that, but...it's good to know," he says instead, then takes a sip of his own wine. "That they haven't."

[takecourage]

Alex shifts, her head against the back of the sofa so that she can study his face for a moment, her wine glass cradled between her hands. She's started wearing a lot of thin silver rings. She's got more money in Darrow than she's had in her life before.

"So what did you mean?" She asks. "Exactly."

[more_magic]

"I'm still trying to understand the patterns here," he says, admits really, a small and self-deprecating smile crossing his face as he glances over at her. In this world or any other, he'll never stop wanting to be the one with all the answers. "The larger rhythms of it, I suppose. The same baseline things that drove the Greys back home do so here, it seems, but I don't know if there's more beyond that."

He pauses, looking at her again, the way she's seemed to settle here in a way that he hadn't seen in those first few months--the only months, until now--he'd known her. "I keep hearing things get weird, whatever that means, around the new year. For instance."

[takecourage]

"Of course you are," she says, a small, almost fond smile pulling at the corner of her mouth when she says it. "Yeah, I've heard that too. Will it be weird by our standards, do you think?"

[more_magic]

"Our standards are pretty high," he says, laughing as he takes another drink. He notices that smile and doesn't think he's imagining the faint affection in it, finding himself oddly pleased by the thought. "Might be a point in our favor."

[takecourage]

It sometimes happens: she's looking at him, and then she gets the urge to ruffle his brown hair back from his forehead. She takes a sip of her wine and looks away instead.

"I'd say that there's not much we can't take on together, but..." She barely represses a shudder, thinking of his face in that last moment before he'd disappeared.

[more_magic]

It's odd, knowing the fate that's supposed to await him; a vanishing in the dark, there and gone in the space of a blink. He'd called it his appointment at St. Elmo's only once, some brash and flip joke in the face of it, and Alex had looked so stricken he'd immediately apologized. When she shudders now, he only just holds back from reaching out to touch her arm, some reminder of his continued and solid presence.

"We've taken on enough," he says instead. Reminding them both, in a way. "Whatever happens, it'll be...we'll deal with it."

[takecourage]

It's so easy to believe him when he sounds that certain, that solid. Alex finds that she trusts him in a way she hasn't trusted anyone, certainly not a man, in her entire life. Whatever else might happen, she knows that he would never knowingly let her down.

"Bring it on, Darrow," she says, raising her wine glass in a lazy toast.

[more_magic]

"Two shepherds of Lethe, far from their usual pasture," he quips, knocking the rim of his glass against hers. "Us against a pocket universe." He shakes his head, then takes a slightly larger swallow of wine. He'd abandoned the urge to write up reports on it all rather quickly--who would they be for, in this place?--but every so often he can't help thinking about the look on Sandow's face if he ever got a whiff of any of this.

"What do you want to do for dinner?"

[takecourage]

"I wouldn't want to take it on with anyone else, Daniel," she says, and, as ever, using his given name out loud feels like spilling some kind of secret. "We could go out." She looks down at herself, at the sweats that are even more comfortable than her Lethe set, a sweater that she's pretty sure is one of Darlington's. "But I don't really want to put a bra on."

[more_magic]

She does it rarely enough that he still notices when Darlington becomes Daniel--and often enough that he's started to look forward to it, when she does. Today, it brings a smile to his face, something sudden and bright.

"We could," he says, but they're already so comfortable that it's hard to think about making the effort. When Alex glances down at herself, he does too, if just for a moment. And only a moment, once she keeps talking. Had he noticed? Of course he had, on a level he tried--mostly--not to acknowledge; still, he looks away again with a faint cough. "Always direct, Alex," he murmurs. "And given how loath I am to make you do something you don't want to, I think that means takeout."

[takecourage]

"Take out sounds good to me," says Alex, stretching delightedly. And if she noticed the way that his eyes linger on her, she doesn't draw attention to it. She does kind of like it when he smiles like that, though.

"What shall we get?"

[more_magic]

"Are we looking for something to compliment the wine, or do we care?" he asks, letting a mocking shade of snobbery thread its way into the question; all that Yale, all that privilege. He lets it drop, breathing out another laugh. "We don't care, do we, Stern?"

Darlington pushes his way up from the couch, padding back into the kitchen and opening the drawer they use to store all the various menus from places around the city. "Haven't gotten anything from that Indian place downtown in a while," he suggests, shuffling through the brightly-colored stack of papers in search of options. "Or there's always your favorite place, near the boardwalk."

When he'd learned it was her favorite, he can't recall; just that he hasn't forgotten that it is.

[takecourage]

"We definitely do not care," she says and, if she watches him go then she doesn't examine the impulse too closely. "That place is great," she says, draining her wine glass and reaching for the bottle. "But they don't deliver, remember? And I'm not walking down there."

[more_magic]

"You're right," he says, finding the menu for the Indian place and setting it aside. "Can't believe I forgot." He's picked things up from there before, other nights when he happens to be in that part of town anyway--and sometimes, when he isn't--and for a moment he thinks about slipping on his shoes and heading out the door. But they're settled in already, the wine already working its way through his system, and the thought of leaving even for a short time seems a foolish one.

"Indian tonight, then." Menu in hand, he goes back into the living room, rejoining Alex on the couch. Taking the bottle from her once she's finished pouring her new glass, he tops up his own.

[takecourage]

She plucks the menu out of his hand, scanning over it even though she knows that they pretty much get the same thing every time they order from this place. Unconsciously, she leans her shoulder against his.

[more_magic]

Darlington sips his wine as she studies the menu, not expecting her to suggest anything different than their usual but happy to give her the opportunity. That gentle, unexpected pressure against his shoulder gets him to look over, taking in the sweep of her dark hair, the curve of her cheek as she leans there. The corner of his mouth lifts, nearly involuntary, and he looks away again.

"Same thing as always, Stern, or something new?"

[takecourage]

She pretends to think about it for a moment and then shakes her head.

"Same as usual," she says. "There's cash in my wallet. Just grab my share."

[more_magic]

Between the monthly Darrow allowance and the part-time job he's taken up, he's not hurting for funds. As usual, he thinks about putting up some kind of gentle but insistent argument, offering to cover it all this time around. It's only polite, only something he finds he wants to do for her. But he knows what she's like sometimes, too; knows better than to argue when she insists instead.

"I'll call it in," he says, leaning forward to grab his phone off the table before getting up again. The motion breaks that contact of how they've settled against each other, something he's almost surprised to notice as much as he does. He dials the number, rattling off their standard order and giving the address as he finds Alex's wallet in her bag. "Right, thanks," he says to the person on the other end of the line, before hanging up and coming back to settle on the couch once more.

[takecourage]

He sits down again and Alex finds that she feels isolated, sitting on her own seat of the couch as she is. Eventually, she shuffles closer, on the pretence of reaching for the TV remote.

[more_magic]

As she leans to grab the remote, the sweater she's wearing--one of his, it's almost always one of his, something he's noticed but not thought about until now--rides up slightly, exposing a strip of skin just above the waistband of her sweats. He notices that, too, and if he thinks about it it's over and gone by the time she's sitting up again.

They're a little closer now, more in each other's space, and Darlington shifts to accommodate her, stretching one arm along the back of the sofa, his long fingers splayed against the top of the cushion. "Going to see what's on?" he asks as the television clicks to life.