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

[takecourage]

"I want you to fuck me," she says, rolling her hips to press back into his hands. "I want to come on your cock. Think you can do they for me?"

[more_magic]

"God, yes," he groans, letting out another shaky laugh at how desperately needy it sounds. He leans forward, kissing her again, something hot and just on the edge of filthy.

"Bedroom, or right here?"

[takecourage]

"Right here," she says, smudging the words against his mouth with more kisses. "Right now. I've never needed something this much in my life."

[more_magic]

Her voice all but shakes with desire, her lips full and soft as they press against his, and Danny knows he'd give her everything she could ask for. With Alex in his lap it's hardly any work at all to move, turning until he can lay her back against the couch, her hair spilling in a dark fan around her head. He'd seen her just like this that first night, but when he's rendered dizzy by it now, it's all due to his own desire.

He shrugs out of his shirt the rest of the way, moving back from her only long enough to remove his shoes and socks and pull his jeans down and off. His cock is aching hard, pressing against the cotton of his boxers, but he makes himself stop if only for a moment. "Condoms, Stern?"

[takecourage]

Alex spreads her legs, nothing go cover her but the tiny scrap of her G-string.

"I'm on the pill," she says. She'd gone for the prescription right after new year; it had felt like wishful thinking at the time. "Just fuck me. Please."

[more_magic]

His eyes go immediately to the juncture of her thighs, the way her cunt's only barely hidden by the fabric of her G-string. It's obscene, and for a single, shameful moment he's so glad he doesn't have to step away from her and search out any kind of protection.

His mouth gone dry, all he can do is nod, hooking his fingers in the waist of his underwear and pushing them down. A moment later, he does the same to Alex's, stripping that scrap of fabric and string off of her. Slotting himself between her thighs, he takes hold of his cock and presses into her as slowly as he can bear.

[takecourage]

He slides into her, nothing between then at all and it's everything she's been waiting for. Everything that she's wanted. She arches her back, pressing her tits against his chest.

"Fuck me like you mean it," she says.

[more_magic]

She clings to him, arches beneath him with her eyes dark and wild, and it's a breathtaking enough sight that Danny all but forgets anything else that might have mattered other than this. "Yes," he groans once he's as deep as he can get, once her legs are bracketing his hips in the way he'd tried not to fantasize about ever since--Halloween, maybe. New Year's. A month ago. The timespan, he realizes, isn't important at all.

He moves, hips rocking in firm, rolling thrusts hard enough to bounce her tits. The feeling of it, of nothing between his cock and the slick heat of her cunt, is enough to pull another low groan out of him. "Alex," he says, breathing her name like the precious thing it is before he kisses her again.

[takecourage]

He fucks her just as hard as she's been fantasizing about for weeks, and it's utterly perfectly. She lifts one hand over her head, grasping the couch cushions, the other pushed into his hair to tug him down to kiss her harder, deeper, more. Her breath sobs out of her against his lips.

[more_magic]

There's demand and need and something almost desperate in every one of their gasping breaths, in every tight pull of Alex's fingers in his hair or the snap of Danny's hips. It feels like something inevitable, like the consummation of that realization he'd had right before they fell asleep on New Year's; they couldn't go back to what they'd been before. He never wants to.

He meets and matches the heat of Alex's kiss with a hunger of his own, nipping at the full center of her lower lip before he licks into her mouth again. Her nipples brush against his chest as he fucks her, the sensation sending another dizzying shiver through him.

[takecourage]

It isn't going to take her long to get there this first time and she knows it. She rocks her hips against him, fucking herself on the length of his cock.

"Fuck, Danny."

[more_magic]

He can feel the way she trembles, the fluttering build as she gets closer and closer to the brink. It's different and the same as when he'd been on his knees for her, his mouth pressed to her cunt, and no less beautiful.

"Come on, Alex," he groans, nearly pleading. He shifts a little, fingers sliding over her clit. "Come for me."

[takecourage]

She could listen to him say things like that forever but right then she's just all sensation and it doesn't take long before it's brimming over the edge and she's coming with both arms around his neck.

[more_magic]

Alex comes, arms curled around his neck and her fingers buried in the dark strands of his hair, and everything about it--the sight, the sound, the feeling--is more wonderful than any bit of magic he's ever experienced. He does his best to fuck her through it, to hold off, but before long the roll of his hips goes erratic, his face pressing into the crook of her neck as he comes with a moan.

[takecourage]

She cradles the back of his head as he comes, as she feels him come, rocking her hips to fuck him through it. When he's spent she just clings to him, her thighs trembling where they're still wrapped around him.

[more_magic]

Breathing hard, Danny stays just like that for a long moment, holding and being held, unsure which of them is trembling more with the force of their aftershocks. Eventually, he lifts his head again, staying within the cradle of her hands but moving enough to press another kiss to her mouth.

"I only have myself to blame for not doing any of this sooner," he murmurs.

[takecourage]

"We can both blame you," she says, laughing and tugging his hair lightly. "Get my blanket. I'm not moving for a while."

[more_magic]

"I'll allow it," he says, a flush on his cheeks and his mouth curving in a lazy grin. He pulls out of her with a soft groan, moving only enough to reach over the arm of the sofa and grab for a fold of the blanket, pulling it up and out of the bag. As he drags it up it unfolds a little, but he shakes it out the rest of the way, draping it over the both of them before settling back down, letting Alex rest her head on his shoulder.

[takecourage]

She settles in against him, her head against his shoulder and her leg thrown across his thighs.

"Was that good?"

[more_magic]

There's a hint of some quiet vulnerability that he thinks he can hear in the question, something that twists at his heart just slightly. He wraps an arm around her, dropping a kiss against the straight center part of her hair.

"Of course it was," he says. "Better than any of the times I fantasized about it, if I'm to be honest. What about for you?"

[takecourage]

"I don't think I've ever come like that," she says, rubbing her cheek against her chest. "Not with...a guy inside me anyway."

[more_magic]

He nods, letting out a soft, quiet breath as she nuzzles at him. "It felt...intense. More so than it has before, with anyone else. But appropriately so." He glances down at her, taking in the slope of her nose and the curve of her cheek as she rests there against him. "You're singular like that, Alex."

[takecourage]

She's not sure that anyone's ever called her anything like that and she's quiet for a long moment afterwards, her finger idly tracing the dip of his naval.

"Guess you really are my boyfriend now..."

[more_magic]

Whether alone or with others, he's always done well in the quiet, in moments of security and something like peace. This one has a weight to it, a meaning that carries different things for both of them--and a few that are exactly the same. Darlington's happy to let it play out, shifting a little as her finger runs over the slightly sensitive skin of his belly in that gentle loop around his navel.

"And you're my girlfriend." He'd called it juvenile back in the club, those terms smacking of the schoolyard; of something more immature and fleeting than either of them really felt, young though they still were in years. But maybe that's exactly what the both of them need, after all they'd been through. He drops another kiss to the shining dark of her hair, thinking not of Undine or Mab, but only Alex. "Wouldn't want it any other way."

[takecourage]

"I know how many girls you've slept with," she says, keeping up that light touch, revelling in the warmth of his skin, the soft drape of the blanket over her bare skin. "But how many girlfriends have you had?"