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

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

more_magic

"Christ, Stern," he mutters, turning his head away even as he grins. "Yes. Starting with that morning, when I was in the shower."

They both know that morning was also the beginning of the strain that formed between them, the thing he'd been too cowardly to address until tonight, but the twist of embarrassment that forms in his chest is slight and fades away almost as soon as it starts. "Mostly a replay of the night before, but a few stray thoughts about what we might have gotten up to, if one of us had had the foresight to bring a condom."

From:

takecourage

Alex bites her lip, curling her arms around his neck, her tits bouncing slightly as she rocks her hips down against his.

"Tell me how you pictured fucking me?"

From:

more_magic

Alex squirms in his lap, her tits bouncing, and he groans again. "Laying you on your back in that ridiculous bed," he says. "Learning what it felt like to have your legs wrapped around my waist as we...in the throes. As it were." Darlington raises one eyebrow.

"If we'd been prepared enough for more than one round, also discovering what it looked like if you rode me."

From:

takecourage

Alex wants both things really badly, but she's also working them both up so deliciously and she doesn't want that to end either. She's never done anything like this before. She shifts, slipping her hand between them so that she can squeeze his cock through his jeans.

"How big are you, Danny?" She asks, with a flicker of a wicked grin.

From:

more_magic

Her hand slides between them, fingers curving around the bulge in his jeans, and he can't keep himself from pushing into the touch. "And if I told you I'd never measured myself?" he says, each word articulated with slightly more effort than usual. "Based on your reaction the last time, I don't think I disappointed."

From:

takecourage

"I think you'd be the only guy I've ever met who hasn't," she says, huffing out a laugh. "Do you want to touch me?"

From:

more_magic

"Not quite the unique status I might have anticipated," he says, head tilting up a bit to look at her. He lets out another shivering breath. "Yes, Alex. More than anything."

From:

takecourage

She kisses him then and it's permission and encouragement and everything in between.

"Please, Danny," she says.

From:

more_magic

He matches the desire and need in her kiss with more than enough of his own, his hands going first to her sides, just holding her as his fingers run along the line of her ribs. "Tell me if I do anything wrong," he murmurs against her mouth. "Or if I'm doing everything right."

Slowly, Darlington slides his hands inwards, cupping her tits, the pad of his thumbs smudging against the peaks of her nipples. As his thumbs move in a slow, lazy back-and-forth, he kisses down her jaw, his breath sighing out of him.

From:

takecourage

"You just want to hear me talk dirty," she says, shifting in his lap, rocking forward against him and arching her back to press her tits into his hands as he plays with her nipples like that.

From:

more_magic

"Call it an added benefit," he says, continuing the downward path of his kisses against the side of her neck and along the curve of one shoulder, lips brushing the inked stars now spangling her skin. She arches into his hands and Darlington takes that as an invitation, as permission, the slow rub of his thumbs changing with a slight shift of his hand to a sliding kind of pinch. "I get to learn what you like, and hear the way you say it all at once."

From:

takecourage

"You think I'm vulgar," she points out, teeth digging into her lips as he starts to pinch at her nipples like that. "That's good."

From:

more_magic

"I'd deny that, but you'd call me on it in your own inimitable fashion," he says, smirking. She bites her lip, squirming a little as he pinches her, and he keeps up the touch. "What else have you liked, that I've done already? Tonight or on New Year's."

He pauses, looking up at her. "Or Halloween, if it merits inclusion."

From:

takecourage

"New Year was the first time anyone ever went down on me," she admits, still rocking her hips, pressing into his touch. "No-one else ever bothered."

From:

more_magic

Beyond the crime scene photos and autopsy reports in her file, there'd been precious little about the small-time drug dealer that had styled himself as Alex's boyfriend in life. Hearing Alex make that small and all-too-casual confession, though, lowers Darlington's already low opinion of Leonard Beacon a few additional degrees.

"Glad to have been the first," he murmurs, easily setting aside that brief darker turn of his thoughts. None of it mattered now; not here, not tonight. "And if we're on the topic of New Year's, that was the first time anyone gave me a blowjob quite like that."

From:

takecourage

"You've been hanging around with the wrong sort of girls, Danny," she says, with a broad grin, still rocking idly in his lap. She smooths her hands down his chest, unbuttoning the first couple of buttons on his shirt, tracing her thumb against bare skin.

From:

more_magic

"So it seems." She keeps moving against him, teasing and squirming, and he can't help a soft smile at the gentle stroke of her thumb against his skin. His own hands leave her tits, running along the slim planes of her back.

From:

takecourage

She arches under the touch, her fingers still working on his buttons.

"What else haven't you done that you want to try?" She asks.

From:

more_magic

For all that he wants to keep kissing her, to map every curve and swell of her with his hands and his mouth--and all the more so now, with the magic of the address moths broken at last--Darlington can't deny that there's something equally heady in what they're doing now. Alex presses into his touch, continues opening up his shirt, and all of it is more perfect than he could have expected.

"Happy to take suggestions, Stern," he says, running the nails of one hand lightly down the column of her spine as he speaks. "If there's anything in particular you want to try. But for myself..." He bites his lip, the flush on his cheeks darkening a shade. "Manuscript had its own agenda, and that part I don't wish to repeat, but there was something oddly alluring about putting myself in your sway."

From:

takecourage

Alex raises her eyebrow, a bright delighted grin spreading across her face as she finishes opening his shirt, rubbing both hands down over firm muscles.

"You think you'd like taking orders from me, Danny?"

From:

more_magic

"Our friend the frat boy certainly did tonight," he says, the almost-fondling rub of her hands against his chest sending a shiver down his spine. "And maybe, possibly, I was jealous of that."

His stomach flips a little in admitting to that, letting go of another small bit of his control. Somehow, he doesn't entirely mind it.

From:

takecourage

"Huh," says Alex, but she's still grinning when she says it. "Sometimes that routine gets more extreme. You caught the tamer version."

From:

more_magic

"Dare I ask what you mean by that?"

The question is light enough, said with the kind of heated, teasing edge they've both been employing almost since the moment Alex slid into his lap here on the couch. Even so, something about more extreme makes him think for a moment of that first routine he'd seen of hers the week before; of Kavinsky throwing her about, the final dismissive insult of the way he'd spat on her as she writhed on the floor of the stage. Something unsteady and uncertain flickers across his face for a moment, then is gone again.

From:

takecourage

"Restraints," she says, scraping the edge of her nail lightly across his nipple. "A blindfold. A little bit harder with the crop." She shrugs. "Making them get friendly with my heels."

From:

more_magic

Darlington groans, as much at the things she says as the short, sharp scrape of her nail against his nipple. He swallows hard. "Sounds like quite the performance."

After a pause, riding out a sudden and strong wave of arousal at the question that comes almost immediately to mind, he speaks again. "How much of that would you want to do with me?"