hey, it is a job, it pays a lot; is it disservicing someone?

[more_magic]

That he waits until the end of the week isn't delaying or reluctance--or, frankly, a resistance to the absurdity of taking romantic advice from a high schooler--merely a desire, after having done so much wrong, to finally get one thing right. He knows he's behaved abominably, said things that he never thought himself capable of, and even after Caleb's assurances, Darlington's not sure forgiveness is a thing that Alex will be able to find where he's concerned.

He holds onto the hope of it, along with his memories of that first week he'd spent in Darrow; their easy intimacy, growing close in a way that they'd only begun to manage back in New Haven, and the surprising and utterly wanted course their night had taken up at Kagura. Thinks, too, of the certainty in Caleb's voice as he'd said You make her feel the butterflies. He wants, more than anything, not to be wrong about this.

He'd agreed to work this month's Final Friday evening program at the museum, and by the time he's finished helping the other front-of-house staff clean up and pack everything away, it's already past ten. If Alex is working tonight, it's more than likely that she's gone already, but after a brief stop at his own apartment, Darlington's on his way to the Bramford. He knocks on her door, using his key when there's no answer, finding the apartment empty and dark.

There's a moment where he thinks about waiting, about being there once more when she gets home just like he had been the night he'd come to work on the wards. It is, he knows, some kind of a coward's choice; the easy way out of a situation that he should have been strong enough to face up to well before now. Breathing out a long sigh, he leaves the bag he'd brought by the side of her couch and heads back into the cold, hailing a cab and giving the driver an address that gains him a winking look in the rearview mirror that he tries to ignore.

Only a week ago, he'd sworn he'd never go back, that there was no place for him here even if Alex was hellbent on making it hers. Even now, he'd rather be anywhere else. But there's no other place Darlington knows he should be tonight if he's going to make some attempt at fixing even a fraction of what he alone had broken.

They pull up outside the club on Paper, and after paying the driver and going through the ritual of cover and ID with the bouncer at the door, Darlington goes inside. The music is just as loud and grinding as before, the crowds around the stage just as vulgar, the drinks from the bar just as watered down; once again, it fills him with displeasure and unease and has him glancing towards the exit. He stays instead, choosing a table that's neither fully lit by the stage nor completely hidden in the shadows and setting down his drink.

This may only break things further between them, bring about an assumption or an argument that will sever the thin threads that still remain of their tie to one another. Darlington can only hope, with the kind of surrendering faith that he's reserved for few other things in his life--and once before for Alex, on a Halloween that turned into nothing he could have anticipated--that it'll be something altogether different.

Comments

[more_magic]

It's the guy who's stripped this time, made vulnerable at Alex's hands, and Darlington's not too proud to admit that his mouth goes slightly dry, if only for a moment. He takes another drink, the glass rattling a little against the table as he sets it back down.

This routine's nothing like the other, he can concede that, but some part of him still looks for that evidence he'd convinced himself he was seeking the last time. A sign of obligation, maybe, of expectations needing to be met or managed; something that suggests the choices here are as much an illusion as anything Manuscript might have conjured back home.

[takecourage]

There are some variations; sometimes she spanks them, sometimes she unbuttons shirts so that she can slap the pad of the crop against exposed nipples. She makes him hold the crop between his teeth while she slips out of her skirt and corset, leaving her in the boots and skimpy panties and a barely there bra.

[more_magic]

The guy onstage holds the crop between his straight, white teeth, a megawatt smile turned into an oddly blissful grimace while his hips shift a little against the chair. Alex all but ignores him, peeling down her tight skirt and undoing each fastening on her corset, each move seemingly a calculus between teasing and control.

Darlington swallows hard, before he entirely knows he's doing so.

[takecourage]

This routine always ends the same way - the guy on his knees, her fingers in his hair to hold his head while she grinds her panty clad cunt against his face. Her track finishes and she lets him clamber down, laughing and straightening his clothes, and Alex gathers up her clothes and her tips.

She's about to step off the stage when she sees him.

For a moment all that she can do is square.

[more_magic]

Alex puts the guy through his paces, such as it is, leaves him at her mercy in one position or another. Maybe it's just because Darlington's so focused on that, still looking keenly for things he can use to bolster his side of the debate that's been raging between them--the one he's here to end, or at least to change to something more civil--but the thought that he might be noticed doesn't even cross his mind until it's happening. Alex freezes, staring at him, and he meets her oil-dark eyes with his. His stomach flips, and if asked, he's not sure he'd be able to explain the reason why.

He doesn't know how to ask her to come over, or if he should go to her, meet her at the side of the stage. Both of them stay where they are, the tension growing, until Darlington raises one shoulder in a shrug. I'm here, it says. I'm not going anywhere.

[takecourage]

She disappears off stage, ignoring the fine shake on her hands as she counts her tips and changes, pulling on short shorts and pouring herself back into her corset before she steps out onto the floor. A few regulars try to catch her eye, but her attention is solely focused on him.

"What are you doing here?" She asks, sitting down at his table.

[more_magic]

Alex is the one to break whatever's passing between them, turning away and disappearing offstage, and when she does Darlington lets out a breath that's shakier than he could have anticipated. He doesn't know if that's the end, if he's made another wrong choice, but he stays at his table, taking another swallow of a drink that he wishes was stronger and more fortifying than it is.

A door at the side of the stage opens a few minutes later, Alex stepping out, and Darlington watches as she rebuffs table after table, weaving her way towards him. Over the last few minutes--and days, and weeks, the entire month--he's thought up and discarded all manner of things he might say, explanations he might give, but when she pulls out the chair opposite and sits down, he can't recall any of them for a moment.

"Because you are, Alex," he says at last, looking over at her, his eyes meeting hers once more. "I went to the--to your apartment and you weren't there, so I came here."

[takecourage]

She draws in a deep, shivering breath, feeling the bind of her corset across her tits as she stares at him. Her stomach churns and she thinks of Caleb and butterflies.

"So now what?" She asks, and she reaches out and picks up his glass, taking a sip of his drink.

[more_magic]

"It's more water than liquor," he mutters as she reaches for his glass, an inane warning. "Someone should really have a talk with the bartender."

He's deflecting, and he knows it, trying to buy himself as much time as possible. Her eyes are so dark, staring back at him; unbidden, a shiver runs down his back. "I don't know," he admits. "I came to apologize, to tell you...a lot of things. I was wrong. I shouldn't have...it's neither my right nor my purview to tell you what choices to make, even if I don't want you to ever feel the need to make them." He takes a breath, and lets go of the vital part of himself that he'd been holding back for far too long and for reasons he doesn't even believe in any longer.

"I'm sorry, Alex. What I did, what I said, it was...I was unforgivable. Have been, in one way or another, since we woke up at Kagura."

[takecourage]

It's all she's been wanting to hear, everything she'd started to doubt would ever be forthcoming. She takes another sip of her drink and stands up, her fingers brushing against his hand on the table.

"Now you've seen me work," she says, walking around the table. "Do you still think it makes me a whore?"

[more_magic]

He deserves it, and more, but the question still hits him like a blow. Something wounded flashes in his eyes, soothed only by the glide of her fingers against the back of his hand as she gets up and crosses to his side of the table. He looks up, looks her in the eye.

"I never did, Alex. And to have implied otherwise is the thing I regret most of all."

[takecourage]

"But you said it," she says, her hips picking up the rhythm of the music that's playing. "Or close enough, anyway. And then you threw me out of your apartment like I wasn't good enough for you."

[more_magic]

"I said it," he says, because he can't deny that he had. Not in so many words, maybe, but close enough for the implication to be clear; close enough that Darlington knew, all along, the kind of thing he'd been implying. "Out of anger. And out of jealousy." Once again, saying it, admitting to it, feels like giving something up he should have let go a long while ago.

He watches as she starts to move to the music, the roll of her hips making his face flush in a way he hopes is obscured by the dim gloom in this area of the club. He looks back up, the reflected stage lights picking out the lines of her face, his next breath containing a little more of a shiver than the one that had preceded it. "I wasn't trying to throw you out," he says. "Just letting you know you could--no. That's not...I wanted you to leave, and wanted you to stay, and I didn't know how to say either."

[takecourage]

She listens to all of that, her fingers ghosting up over the fabric of the corset to brush over the curve of her tits and the back down, barely brushing between her legs. She hadn't intended to start dancing for him, not really, but the look on her face is too good for her to stop.

"Still jealous?" She asks, leaning in so that her body presses against his, her mouth close to his ear.

[more_magic]

His eyes start tracking the movement of her hands before he even knows he's doing it--and when he realizes, it takes more effort than he might have anticipated to look away. When she presses against him, the husky woodwind of her voice low in his ear, it's enough to have him swallowing hard before he's able to speak again.

"Of who, Stern?" Another deflection, of a kind; he recognizes that. "Not that frat boy you hauled up on stage tonight."

[takecourage]

"So not jealous that that's the first thing you came up with," she says, her lips brushing against the shell of his ear before she shifts, sliding into his lap, straddling him, her hands on her shoulders. "What are we even doing here, Darlingotn? What do you even...what do you want out of this?"

[more_magic]

She can read him better than anyone else he's known in his life, and they both know it. He just barely suppresses the urge to roll his eyes--though the impulse is cleared away rather neatly only a moment later anyway, as she slides into his lap. "Alex, for God's sake," he mutters, sighing out another faintly shaky breath.

The weight of her hands on his shoulders is barely anything at all, but he's aware of every inch of contact. He tilts his head up, reminded of all the other times he'd seen her from an angle much like this: at Kagura, in the haze of the Manuscript party, on the floor of her apartment the day before Christmas. His lips part slightly, and for a moment he's lost again for words.

"I want--" he starts, then stops again. "I want your forgiveness, more than anything else. To start with. And only if I've earned it. After that, I want to know what to be to you here. There's no cause for me to be your Virgil, and being either just your friend or nothing at all isn't something I think I could tolerate."

It feels like revealing far too much, exposing the hopeful, secret heart he'd learned to keep quiet after so many years in the lonely halls of Black Elm. His stomach twists, his mouth gone dry. "So tell me what to be here, Alex, and I'll do it."

[takecourage]

He says that and her head spins with the power of it - tell me what to be here. Her lips graze against his skin and she arches her back, the curve of her tits brushing against him. Hips still moving with the rhythm of the music, she pushes her fingers into his hair, pulling his head down so that his lips just brush against the bare skin of her cleavage.

"I don't think I want to be just your friend either, Danny."

[more_magic]

She twists her fingers into his hair, mussing it; he resists the pull for a moment, his stubbornness warring with her particular brand of force. When his lips ghost across the skin of her chest, he lets out another of those quiet, shuddering breaths. His hand, still resting on the table beside him, twitches just finely.

"Then we're on a similar page at last, it seems."

[takecourage]

She feels the way that his breath shivers out against her skin and something low in her body clenches in response. She keeps up the swaying motion of her body in his lap; it feels like she's making a point here, more than anything.

"Tell me exactly what you want, Danny," she says, quietly, her hands skimming back up her corset to start unhooking the top. "Tell me what you want to be to me." She needs to hear him say it.

[more_magic]

His eyes had slipped closed as she pulled him about; he stays like that even as her hands leave his hair, his head slightly bowed. "At the risk of sounding juvenile," he murmurs, low enough that only she can hear, "I want to be your boyfriend."

A faint smile playing on his lips, Darlington opens his eyes at last, looking up at her. As she starts to undo the fastenings on her corset, a flush returns to his cheeks. "Alex, you don't have to..." He trails off, swallowing hard. "Not here."

[takecourage]

She wonders what colour it would be to Caleb, the burst of utter elation that spills through her when he says it, the exact thing she's imagined him saying before. Of course he worries about sounding juvenile, but Alex can't honestly imagine hearing anything more perfect. You don't have to and not here don't mean the same thing, especially when coupled with the look on his face right then.

"Meet me outside," she says, slipping out of his lap. She can't kiss him here, not without getting shit from her boss, but god, she wants to. "I need to cash out."

[more_magic]

His head spins a little as Alex pulls away, sliding out of his lap and standing before him with her tattoos spilling black along her arms and her hair draped in a dark curtain over one shoulder. She's beautiful.

The question of standing up isn't quite as awkward as it might have been if she'd gone a little further--he can concede that--but he hesitates a moment anyway before nodding. "I'll hail a cab."

[takecourage]

It takes her a few minutes: to convince her boss that she needs to leave early with a migraine; to tip out the bar-staff; to change (she leaves the corset and the shorts on, pulling on jeans and a hoodie over the top). But then she's slipping out onto the curb, making a beeline for him. After a moment's hesitation, she slips her hand into his.

"Your place or mine?"

[more_magic]

She turns and goes, and he gets up a moment later and heads towards the exit. If there's haste here as there had been the week before, the motivation behind it is far different. He waits there in the cold, a dark-haired boy in a dark coat, and when she emerges he offers her a faint smile--and then his hand, when she reaches for it. Their fingers lace together, and something warm sinks into the center of his chest.

"Yours," he says, raising his free hand as a cab turns the corner. It pulls to a stop, and Darlington opens the door, letting Alex slide in ahead of him. "When I stopped by earlier, I may have left a kind of peace offering for you." He smiles sheepishly, then leans forward to give the address for the Bramford to the driver.