could've had a nice life, I can't even fake a smile

[more_magic]

Everything Darlington had ever read suggested that January was meant to be a time of new beginnings. Of starting afresh, of stepping through a doorway--the month named, after all, for Janus--and becoming somehow better than one had been in the year just past. There were rites, and rituals, and spells to recite; if he'd been a Roman, he might have given a tribute of figs and honey, or salt and coin, depending on how much one trusted Ovid's account. Regardless, things at the start of a new year were meant to be different.

In looking over the ruin of his January, Darlington wishes he'd been more specific about the kind of new beginning he'd been seeking.

He could ask how, or why, or when things went so spectacularly wrong, but in his heart he knows the answer. Knows, too, the only person there is to blame for it. He'd made a litany of wrong choices, flung himself down a path that he'd built stone by stone out of his own rigidity and judgement and anger. Whether awake or asleep, he's been plagued by flashes of his own regrettable memories: the smear of glitter on Alex's cheek, that full moon night; the tight set of his own jaw as he hid in the squalid shadows of the club and watched her gyrate on stage only a few days ago; the sound of that mug shattering against the wall beside his head; the sneer of his voice as he said one unforgivable thing after another. If he could begin again, walk through the doorway of the new year once more and be wiped clean, he would. He'd give anything to do it. But he can't.

With his one Monday class cancelled, he's agreed to take on an additional shift at work today, coupling his usual morning shift at the museum with another in the afternoon. It felt good to work, to sink into the repetition of selling tickets and directing guests, pointing the way to the restrooms or the temporary exhibit hall and taking down yet another complaint that the touchscreens in the Human Bodies gallery were malfunctioning. It doesn't quite keep him from dwelling--nothing, really, ever could--but it's enough to let him forget for small stretches of time.

The gap between the end of one shift and the start of the next means he's managed to swing a full hour and a half for lunch. After using his staff discount to buy a sandwich and a bottled juice from the cafe in the museum courtyard, he looks around for a place to sit. There's some tour group from one of the high schools here, a chattering tangle of adolescents picking at their own sack lunches and sprawling across the benches, and as he makes his way to a vacant table at the other end of the seating area, Darlington affords them a slightly wide berth.

Comments

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

Caleb is quiet for a moment, eyes going a bit distant as he works through the different feelings. There's a lot. Darlington cares about Alex, a lot. He really does believe she deserves better than the club. He really is worried about her. He really does regret their fight.

Caleb shakes his head. He owes Dr. Bright, like, so many apologies.

"Listen, you're being fucking stupid," he says. "Her job is a job. D'you think the people behind the counter at any fucking retail store actually give a shit about your day, or if you checked your eggs for cracks? They're fucking faking it. Alex is doing a job that she likes, that she's good at, and she's doing it with a gay dude who is also good at it."

He doesn't know this from experience. He's not old enough to go to the club, and he'd already decided he didn't want to feel the clientele there. They'd probably feel really gross. But he's listened to Alex talk about work, and she really doesn't hate it.

"It's not like it used to be," he adds.

[more_magic]

"This doesn't seem at all comparable to a job at a supermarket, Caleb," he says, even as he knows he'll sound like the insufferable prig he's been all too often in recent days. Darlington sighs, waving a hand in a vague gesture of concession, if only for the sake of the fragile détente that's settled between them. "But I take your point. Or points, since I'll also admit to having been fucking stupid." He smiles faintly.

Darlington straightens up again, looking without real aim or purpose at the far wall of the courtyard and lost in his own quiet thoughts for a moment. None at this point are unfamiliar to him; the same litany of guilt and recrimination, reminders of the regrettable things he's done and said. He's still not sure how much of it he'll be able to repair, but he's willing to try.

"There were a lot of people who failed her back home," he says, looking back at Caleb. "Including me. I shouldn't have done so again here."

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

"Good," Caleb says, feeling his shoulders fully unwind. "But don't tell me. Tell Alex. Bring her a blanket that's as soft as the scarf you gave her, and tell her you're sorry, and that you support her, and, and fucking kiss her."

He huffs, because as far as his ability is concerned, that's all that needs to be done. Alex is angry, but she still loves him. If he apologizes, she'll listen.

He thinks. He's pretty sure, anyway. Darlington hurt her, but it wouldn't have hurt so much if she didn't care so much.

[more_magic]

He does laugh then, an almost involuntary reaction but one with no real malice in it. "Is that what you do, then?" he says. "Go around in full-throated defense of your friends, dispensing romantic advice and profanity in equal measure?"

The solution Caleb proposes is somehow utterly simple and completely insurmountable, all at once. It's the kind of thing that might have worked for the short-term, superfluous things his other relationships had been--ones with girls who were nothing at all like Alex Stern--but there's a part of him that can't keep the doubt that it'll function this time at bay. The words he'd said had been too harsh for even the softest blanket to soothe them--and a kiss had been exactly what had started this entire mess in the first place.

It's a challenge, but Darlington has rarely, if ever, backed down from one before.

"I'll try."

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

"It'll work," Caleb says, feeling Darlington's doubt like slowly cracking ice. "She likes soft things. And she likes you. You make her feel the butterflies."

He feels stupid for saying it, and also like he's just betrayed something of Alex's, but he needs to chase that doubt away. He needs to make sure Darlington does this, fixes this.

"I know, because every time she thinks about you, I feel them, too." He wants to darkly, playfully, add that he doesn't know why, but he can feel that they're not there yet.

[more_magic]

"She does," he says, carefully trying not to make it sound as much like the question it still is at the back of his mind. "And I...despite any evidence she may now have to the contrary, I like her too. Have for a while, to be entirely honest."

You make her feel butterflies is worlds away from You're being a giant dick, and for a moment Darlington is simply baffled, given how recently Caleb had looked ready to beat him into a fine paste. But there's an easing in the tense line of his shoulders now, a letting go of the anger that had fueled his march towards Darlington's table, and maybe the two of them have turned some kind of corner here too. Oddly, he finds himself hoping they have.

Caleb's comment about also feeling those metaphorical butterflies piques his curiosity, and the glance Darlington offers him in response is a little sharper and more studying. "Why do I get the sense you don't mean that figuratively?"

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

He sort of rolls his eyes at that. "I mean it literally," he says. "The same way I know you're not actually an asshole, you were just hurt and jealous, and you really do regret hurting her. The same way I know you like her, too, and the same way I know you're scared this isn't going to fix things between you."

It doesn't feel scary telling Darlington about his empathy, because he knows, thanks to Alex, that Darlington has some ability, too. Magic, probably, and therefore completely different, but he's a safe space to share his secret.

"I'm not, like, a mind reader or anything. I'm an empath. I can feel people's feelings. Yours, Alex's, my classmates'. Everyone's."

[more_magic]

There's satisfaction in knowing he was right, that his guess had struck true, but as always when faced with some new aspect of the uncanny Darlington mostly feels that same sense of wonder he first experienced at eleven on Lighthouse Point. The sweeping sense that the world's cracked open just a little bit more, another of its mysteries revealed. Caleb rolls his eyes at him, but all Darlington does is smile.

"Never met an empath before," he says, pitching his voice a little lower than it had been previously. If it's a secret, something entrusted to him even despite the fact Caleb had been so upset with him only minutes ago, Darlington's not going to be the one to reveal it. "Never knew I would, to be honest."

[greatamazingfeelingsboy]

"Yeah, well," Caleb says lamely, then offers the weakest, most sarcastic jazz-hands the world has ever seen. "Surprise." His phone chimes and he pulls it out of his pocket. It's Clint.

Dude, where r u?? Dammers is sending staff into the bathroom to make sure ur not dead!

"Fuck," he says when he reads it, and shoots back a few texts (one of which scolds Clint for telling Dammers he was in the bathroom). "I gotta go." He pushes the chair back, then tucks it in once he's stood. He hesitates, looking at Darlington. "Just... be good to Alex, okay?"

[more_magic]

"I deserved that," he says dryly, smirking at Caleb's half-hearted gesture. He could ask more questions--wants to, as unable to turn off his drive to be the one with all the answers as it seems Caleb is his ability to intuit everyone else's feelings--but then the kid's phone trills out an alert and the moment, such as it is, is lost.

Darlington waits, letting him tap out that flurry of messages, and when he stands again, he gives him a brief nod. "I will," he says, as genuinely as he can manage. "You're a good friend to her, Caleb. I'm glad. And...hang on."

He turns, getting his satchel from where he'd draped it along the back of his chair. Opening it, he pulls out a museum brochure, glossy and bright, a stock photo splashed across the front. "If your teacher asks, you had questions about the summer teen docent program," he says, handing it over. "Happy to help."