(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]

"None of the pizza places here really compare, do they?" he says. "They're good, but they're not Yorkside."

For a moment Darlington wishes they were there, rather than here; splitting a pizza, maybe, or devouring bowls of Yorkside's signature avgolemono soup on a cold winter night. Talking and laughing, long after the meal was over and the dishes cleared away. Just being together, like they are now. The thought of it makes him smile as he lifts his wineglass to his lips and takes a drink.

"Good thing they'll be around forever, no matter what else changes."

[takecourage]

"That's Lethe, right?" she says, sipping her own wine. "We did that." Maybe the only person that she's ever been this comfortable on her own with is Hellie, and look how that turned out. But maybe they were always going to be a disaster, the two of them - burning too bright from both ends?

[more_magic]

"We did," he says, only slightly wry. "One of the benefits of all that power."

That, and a restaurant owner more savvy than all the Houses of the Veil had anticipated. Maybe it was strange to be proud of that man, holding his own against a long-ago Lethe delegate trying their best to explain and compel away the presence of a living dead girl in a pizza oven, but Darlington was a local and devoted son of New Haven long before he was ever a shepherd of Lethe.

He looks over at Alex again, seeing the quieter expression on her face. He'd never call it softness--not where she can hear him, at least--but there's something easier in it all the same. "Enjoying yourself, Stern?"

[takecourage]

"You know what? I am," she says, stamping on the little flicker of defensiveness she feels before she's ever really thought about it. Darlington doesn't mean it as a criticism, and she knows it. She scoops up a bit more of her food, popping it into her mouth. "Good food, classic cinema. So-so company. What's not to like?"

[more_magic]

"So-so?" he laughs. "My standing's improved, it seems." The wine's already made him a little warmer and loose, more expansive; it's easy to lean into her slightly, just for a moment before he shifts to reach for another piece of naan.

"I'm glad you're having a good night. Honestly."

[takecourage]

"What about you?" she asks, distracted, for a moment, by the way his shirt rides up to reveal a sliver of skin at the small of his back as he leans. "Are you having a good time?"

[more_magic]

He doesn't entirely expect the pair of questions, the way she asks them, and the slight surprise of it makes him go quiet and thoughtful. "Yeah," he says, the word honest in its simplicity. "I am. Second-best food in town, decent wine, better than usual company." He smiles at the faint echo of Alex's own list. "I like that we've started doing this here. Nights like this."

[takecourage]

"Yeah," she says, shocked by just how much she feels it. "Me too. Maybe it would have been like this back home, too. If we'd got the chance. It kind of was...a few times. Remember that time when we got soaked?"

[more_magic]

He'd been about to say the same thing, express some gratitude for what feels like being granted a second chance at this. He'd held back instead, on some level fearing that making even the faintest reference to why this kind of thing hadn't been possible might bring on that stark and stricken look he's seen from her before.

The one he hates, every single time.

Alex brings it up instead, chasing it with a reminder of happier times, and somehow that's easier to take. "I like to think it would've been," he says, the wine--he thinks it's the wine--loosening his tongue a bit, keeping him in this moment of more genuine honesty. He calls up that memory of the rainstorm, the way they'd sat in the drive at Black Elm, debating whether to wait it out in the car before Alex declared she was just going to run for it. It was Darlington who had the keys to the house, so what else could he do but follow her?

"I do remember that," he says, swirling the wine in his glass a bit as he talks, the motion idle and thoughtless. "Lying by the fire, music on the stereo. Finding a bucket, when I realized the roof had sprung another leak."

[takecourage]

She's flustered, for a moment, by the memory of his bare feet. It still feels absurd (especially here, where she's used to him padding around the apartment without shoes and socks) but it had felt almost as intimate as seeing him naked, at the time.

"All those fucking leaks," she says, eating the last bite of her food and then setting down the plate, settling more comfortable into the curve of the sofa with her wine glass.

[more_magic]

"It's a constant process," he says, though there's more fondness than exasperation in the complaint. Black Elm was his, for good or ill, and most days he wouldn't have it any other way.

Alex moves and settles, something odd and unreadable on her face for a moment that he's almost moved to ask about, until it passes away again. His own plate set down, he stretches his arm back along the cushions of the sofa once more. With the way she's sitting, his fingertips are close enough to brush against a few strands of her hair.

[takecourage]

He touches her hair and Alex has to ride out the dizzying urge to lean into his touch. She nudges him with her toe.

"It did suit you, being there."

[more_magic]

"Rattling around in my ancestral manse, fighting the ravages of time, you mean?" He has to say it, make that joke, because it pushes aside the inexplicable thought he had when she nudged him with her foot; to move his hand, curving it around that slim ankle. Not for power or control, just to hold her. Just to be in contact that little bit more.

He doesn't understand it at all--and understands it perfectly at the same time.

"I'm flattered, Alex."

[takecourage]

She loves it - when he says her name like that, not Stern, but Alex. The name she christened herself with.

"You're welcome, Danny," she says, draining the last of her wine, pouting just a little bit.

[more_magic]

He's hardly ever Danny to anyone, not since the death of his grandfather, but to hear it from Alex sounds quite nearly perfect. All he can do is grin, and so he does; something slow and pleased, comfortable in the same way the whole evening has been so far. Alex finishes her glass, the corners of her mouth turning down, and the sight moves him to speech before he's even thought about what to say.

"There's more, if you want."

[takecourage]

He smiles like that and Alex almost forgets how to breathe for a minute. She holds out her glass to him and, this time, their fingers definitely brush.

"Let's do it."

[more_magic]

The contact shouldn't be electric, but it is; a little jolt as quick as the glide of her fingers against his. Darlington finds himself absurdly short of breath as he takes her glass and sets it on the table before picking up the now-empty bottle. "Won't be a minute."

Dropping the empty one into the recycling bin next to the kitchen trash, he hunts around in the pantry until he finds the second bottle. It shouldn't have been that difficult to locate, but the delay is something he almost needs. A pause so he doesn't do anything foolish, maybe. After uncorking it, he heads back to the living room--to Alex, his mind supplies, unhelpful in its wine-drunk specificity--and pours a healthy portion into both of their glasses before sliding Alex's over to her, his fingers curled around the thin stem for a beat longer than truly necessary.

He doesn't notice, entirely.

[takecourage]

He fingers graze against his again and, this time, Alex has to ignore a jolt between her thighs so intense it almost makes her shiver. She takes a swallow of her wine and the sets her glass room, stripping her sweater off over her head.

"It's hot in here."

[more_magic]

He's only just sat down when she murmurs that complaint, and Darlington nearly gets up once again to adjust the thermostat--because it is warm, suddenly, the heat somehow kicked into high gear all at once. Before he can, she's peeling off that sweater, the thin tank top she's wearing underneath clinging to the knit for a moment, exposing the flat skin of her belly before it falls back into place.

He notices. Of course he notices, sitting there with his wine still in hand and trying not to stare. He doesn't even have the time to look away.

"Better, Alex?"

[takecourage]

And, yeah, she catches that look. Men have looked at her before like that but she finds that she doesn't mind at all when it's Darlington. When it's Danny.

"You could take a picture," she says, picking up her glass. "It'd totally last longer."

[more_magic]

"Sorry," he says, and he can feel himself start to blush. Finally, he manages to look away, down at the surface of the wine in his glass like it'll tell him something he doesn't already know.

[takecourage]

She pauses for a moment, weighing it up, mulling it over and then she reaches out and gently touches his jaw with her fingertips.

"I didn't say it wasn't okay."

[more_magic]

To say he'd been expecting this at all would be as much of a lie as saying he hadn't considered it, even a little. His jaw tenses, then relaxes, beneath the soft touch of her fingers. He takes one breath, then another, then lifts his eyes back up to meet hers. For a moment, they look almost as fathomless and dark as they had on Halloween.

"Is that because it is?"

[takecourage]

God, that look on his face. For a moment, all she can do is stare at him. Maybe it's the wine, but she finds herself nodding.

"It's okay," she says, softly. "I...like it. When you look at me like that."

[more_magic]

The nod of her head is slow and careful, but the sight of it fills him with a relief so bright it practically shines out of him. "I'd stop, if you asked," he says, because it's important to him to make that clear. After everything he knows about her, because of everything, he wants to make that clear. "But if you don't want me to stop, I won't."

There's something fumbling and ineloquent about that, shades of the kind of teenage awkwardness he'd tried hard to leave behind. But beneath it, there's nothing but truth.