(no subject)

[takecourage]

Christmas has always been a weird thing for Alex. She'd been raised at least nominally Jewish (though her grandmother had always cared more about that than Mira, with all of her crystals and her buddhas and her new-age shit), but they'd still had a Christmas tree at home. She'd still gotten gifts. This year is different, though, because this year she's spending it in Darrow, a million miles away from both Van Nuys and New Haven.

And she was spending it with Darlington.

She spends most of the day in her kitchen at Bramford, cooking. She makes a variety of things, traditional and un, stuff that Mira used to make, that her grandmother used to make, things she likes. She'd sent Darlington out the day before to buy wine, since she didn't know the first fucking thing about wine. And there's gifts, and, for the first time in years, Alex feels like she's home.

It's not something she dwells on too long, but it's there.

Comments

[more_magic]

"I can manage chopping," he says, setting the bag down on the floor for a moment while he unbuttons his coat and hangs it on a hook by the door. "Put that solid Arlington work ethic to good use." Picking up the bag again, he stops in the living room to leave it on Alex's coffee table before heading into the kitchen, pushing the sleeves of his sweater up as he goes.

"I have," he answers, leaning easily against the wall in the corner of the kitchen, staying out of her way until he's instructed otherwise. "I doubt I'll hear anything about transferring until Barton reopens, but I've at least emailed. Picked up a few other things at the mall today, too, though somehow the crowds were even worse than they were the day before."

[takecourage]

"Assholes leaving their shopping to the last minute," she says, smirking and pushing a board of mushrooms and peppers in his direction. "Nice and thin."

[more_magic]

"At least I had the excuse that I was dropped here with nothing but the clothes on my back," he says when she smirks at him. "Not sure what everyone else's problem was."

He finds a knife in the small block by the sink before going back to the cutting board Alex had slid his way. "As you command," he says, glancing over at where she's standing by the stove, a wooden spoon in one hand, the other on her hip. He smiles, then turns to the array of mushrooms and peppers and sets to work.

[takecourage]

"Some of us didn't have that," she says, wincing a little when she reminds him that she came here with the crucible. She stands, leaning her hip against the counter and watching him cut up the vegetables.

"This is so fucking weird."

[more_magic]

"Point taken," he says, seeing that fleeting wince cross her face and remembering what she'd told him about her arrival. He doesn't understand it, doesn't know how that could ever be necessary, but there was a wall that went up behind her eyes when he'd tried pressing for details and he'd known better than to cross it. "It could have been worse."

He keeps chopping, finishing up the mushrooms and finding a small bowl for them in the cabinet near his head. "It is weird," he agrees, looking at her again, a small smile on his lips. "And we know from weird."

[takecourage]

"Yeah, I could have come here without it." When she's half asleep, she still dreams about the horrible clash between the Belladonna and the pain of broken ribs.

She glances at him.

"It's better now you're here."

[more_magic]

He doesn't look over at her again when she says it, just keeps his eyes on the red and orange of the peppers he's cutting into thin slices. Even so, a soft, almost surprised smile crosses his face. "You couldn't be rid of your Virgil forever, Stern. Not even in a pocket universe."

Once the peppers are all chopped, he grabs another bowl from the cabinet and scrapes them in, the knife making a faint, rough sound against the plastic of the cutting board. "Here you go," he says, picking up both bowls and setting them down on the counter by the stove. "Anything more?"

[takecourage]

For a moment, she can't even breathe. It feels like he's punched her in the solar plexus, even though he'd said it so casually, with no idea of how much she'd suffered when he was gone. Because he was gone. She tugs the cuff of her jumper over her hand, trying to surreptitiously wipe away the sting of tears.

"I should be so lucky," she says, finally.

[more_magic]

Darlington has an eye for the uncanny, an awareness developed from a lifetime of seeking and hoping and wishing for a world more magical than the one he'd grown up inhabiting. It means he notices things others might not--and fails to see so much else. Alex scrubs at her eyes, and he all but assumes it's just from cooking; onions, maybe, or a smoking pan of whatever she has going on the stove.

She murmurs that retort, and all he does is smile. "If there's nothing else you need in here," he says again, "I can uncork one of the bottles of wine and let it breathe before dinner?"

[takecourage]

"Yeah, you do that," she says, shifting pans on the stove, starting to pull things together. Letting herself get lost in the task in hand again. "Though I will never understanding why wine needs to fucking breathe."

[more_magic]

"It develops the flavor," he says, matter of fact, with a faint shake of his head at her tone once her back is turned. "It's best if you decant it, but in the absence of such, just opening the bottle should suffice." Once said, Darlington realizes how insufferable he sounds, prattling on about it; how ridiculous it had been to want, just for a moment, for Alex to have been the kind of person who'd care.

He looks through a few of the kitchen drawers until he spots a corkscrew buried at the back of one of them. Alex's kitchen is narrow enough that passing behind her is a bit of a squeeze as she stands there at the stove, and as he goes, he lays a hand briefly at her back--a warning, a notice, a hope to avoid some kind of collision.

Finding the bottles of wine he'd bought the day before, he looks them both over before making a selection and opening it up, setting the bottle and a pair of glasses out on the coffee table next to the gift bag he'd brought.

[takecourage]

She is, as ever, pretty endeared by his rich boy nonsense, drawn to the paradox that is this man in front of her compared with the virtual monk's cell that he'd called a room back at Black Elm. When he touches her back, she leans slightly into the touch; it's unconscious, and she barely realises that she's doing it. Once he's out of the room, she pulls dinner together, serving up and, after a few minutes, coming out into the lounge, juggling two plates and cutlery. She sets his plate down in front of him.

"It's a bit of a mix," she apologises. "It's mostly stuff I remember my grandmother making for Hannukah. Latkes. Keftes...those ones are spinach, and...these are leek. The chicken's got turmeric and cumin." She flushes faintly. "I hope it's okay. It's...all I really know how to cook."

[more_magic]

When he hears the rattle of plates and the sound of the silverware drawer opening and closing, Darlington pours them both a glass of wine, looking up just as Alex comes into the room. "Here, let me," he starts, setting the wine bottle down and starting to get up from the couch just as she places his plate in front of him. "Or you've got it on your own, Stern," he says, laughing softly at the brief, hectic jumble they'd both slipped into.

She'd given him a brief sketch of the menu the day before, when he'd been sent out for wine and those few remaining ingredients, but seeing it all laid out--not to mention smelling it, that rich mix of spices and the faint scent of oil--is a different matter entirely. "It looks delicious," he says, taking note of the faint pink of her cheeks--whether a flush from the heat of the stove, or embarrassment, he doesn't know. "Better than I might do, hosting someone last minute."

[takecourage]

"I don't believe it," says Alex, folding herself into the end of the sofa before she reaches for her wine, taking a sip before she picks up her plate. She doesn't know anything about wine, and even she knows enough to know that it's good. She nudges him with one sock clad foot. "I call bullshit. I bet you cook as well as you do literally everything else I've ever seen you do."

[more_magic]

"I acquit myself decently," he concedes, letting out an almost-surprised huff of breath as she pokes him with her foot. "One of the things I had to learn a little about, once it was just me at Black Elm." He'd started out subsisting on chicken rolls and frozen convenience store burritos--what fifteen-year-old boy wouldn't, when left to his own devices?--but in addition to being terrible those things cost money he hadn't entirely been able to spare, once the reality of his situation truly set in. Bernadette had left behind some cookbooks, though, and he'd applied himself first to learning a few of the simpler-looking ones, then some of the more complex when he managed not to cook up anything too vile.

That, of course, would come a few years later, with a very different sort of experiment and a tarry sludge at the base of a ruined stockpot.

"I'll have to make you dinner one night soon," he continues. "Then you can compare."

[takecourage]

There are, so figures, parallels with how they grew up; how on their own they'd been, only Alex had made a choice and Darlington hadn't had any choice at all. She curls into the cushions, eating her food, lost for a moment in how nostalgic the taste of everything makes her feel.

"We can do gifts after we eat, if you like..."

[more_magic]

She goes quiet for a time, and Darlington does too, savoring the meal in front of him and topping off Alex's glass and then his own when they get low. There's something close and cozy about it; he thinks suddenly of that damp afternoon they'd spent at Black Elm, drying out in front of the fire and listening to music on the stereo. This isn't quite that, but it's close enough to make him smile.

"Sounds like a plan," he says when Alex speaks again, nodding towards the gift bag he'd set on the table. "I'd like that a lot."

[takecourage]

Alex doesn't have a tree, but she'd set Darlington's gift on the tv unit, where she'd lit a few candles. The metallic ribbon that it's wrapped with catches the light. "You can stay tonight. If you want. You're going to have drunk too much to drive at this rate."

[more_magic]

"Haven't bought a car here yet anyway," Darlington points out, though for a moment he wonders if the magic of this place might leave the old wine-colored Mercedes idling at the curb like some kind of holiday miracle. It's a silly thought, and fleeting; reminiscent only of the day he'd gotten his license and sat out on Lighthouse Point waiting and waiting for the sight of something marvelous. "But if you'll have me, I'll stay."

He smiles. "I won't even try to convince you to let me sleep on the couch."

[takecourage]

For a moment there, Alex had forgotten, because there he was, so at ease, it seemed impossible that they weren't in New Haven. But they're not, are there? Nothing's changed and, somehow, everything has.

"What's the point in having a king sized bed if I make you sleep on the couch?" she says. Most of the time, they're managing to stay separate but, a few times, she's woken up with Darlington's sleeping form cuddled close. She's really not above taking what she can get.

[more_magic]

Darlington rolls his eyes, smiling against the rim of his wineglass before he takes a drink. "No point at all, I suppose," he says. "You win, Stern."

They finish their dinner and drink the last of their wine; before Alex can get up, he stands, picking up their empty plates and taking them to the kitchen, leaving them in the sink. As he comes back to the couch, he loops his fingers through the ribbon handles of the gift bag on the coffee table, moving it over to where Alex is sitting. "Do you want to go first, or shall I?"

[takecourage]

"You go first," she says, hauling herself up off the sofa and bringing him the parcel that she'd wrapped. "Full disclosure - it's to replace one of yours that I stole from Black Elm and then...kind of lost."

[more_magic]

"Well, now I'm concerned," he says, his tone wry in a way that masks the sudden and unexpected flare of something warm in the center of his chest at the thought of Alex having anything of his to lose from Black Elm at all. He takes the present from Alex when she holds it out, resting it in his lap until she's sat back down.

After tearing off the paper, he opens the slim box and unfolds the tissue paper inside, smiling a little disbelievingly at the soft brown wool of the beanie inside. "Thank you," he says, genuine and sincere. "It's lovely."

[takecourage]

"It's maybe a bit nicer than the one I lost," she says, teasing him. "I don't know why you had a hat like that in the first place. It was awful."

[more_magic]

The description, brief as it is, helps Darlington place the hat she's talking about--and had, apparently, lost at some point in his absence from New Haven. "I know the one you mean," he says, the fingers of one hand still idly rubbing at the soft wool, far finer than the pilled fabric of the one back home. "I found it in a trunk in the attic years ago." He laughs. "It was so scratchy I wore it for a day and shoved it in the back of the closet. Where, I assume, you found it."

He only thinks for a moment about Alex digging through his closet at all.

After draping the beanie on the arm of the sofa, Darlington reaches for the gift bag, handing it to Alex. "Full disclosure," he says, echoing her words from before with a smile, "I saw this when I was out getting the wine yesterday and couldn't entirely resist."