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]

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?"

[more_magic]

"Including you?" he murmurs, moving his arm slightly from where it's curved around her, his hand resting gently along her side. "Three serious ones, and...two that were more casual. Never got to the point of calling it one thing or another."

He pauses, smiling faintly. "Cared about all of them. Of course."

[takecourage]

"Not much in the way of casual fucking then?" she says, feeling a little shiver of shame at the thought of all the things that she's done with guys basically because Len told her that she ought to. His turn of phrase strikes her as strange. "Not loved?"

[more_magic]

"Loved them, too," he says, decently abashed by the correction, mild as it is. "I meant more that..even the casual relationships, the ones without definition or that didn't last longer than a handful of dates, it wasn't...I wasn't indifferent to them." His foolish, romantic heart, he thinks, wouldn't have let him be.

"Possibly that made more sense in my head than it did said aloud."

[takecourage]

"No, it made sense," she says. "I was...I only ever had one boyfriend. Before you."

[more_magic]

He nods, and just for a moment, the easy embrace he has her in gets a little tighter, more reassuring. He didn't know much about Leonard Beacon, aside from the horrors of his death, but if asked Darlington might have admitted he found it all no great loss to the world. Or to Alex.

"We don't have to discuss him," he says quietly.

[takecourage]

She feels his arms tightening around her, and she's grateful. She presses a kiss to his shoulder.

"You're right," she says. "We don't. I'd rather talk about you, anyway." She strokes her hand over his bare hip. "How old were you? Your first time..."

[more_magic]

The kiss, just a light press of her lips against his shoulder, makes him smile; so too, the question that follows it. "Back to the interrogation, then," he says, just on the edge of teasing. "My first time having sex, or doing anything at all?" He coughs, hiding an embarrassed laugh within the sound. "Eighteen, to the first. Sixteen, if we're just talking messing around."

[takecourage]

"What are we classing as messing around?" she asks, thinking about how this must be how normal people do it, people who don't end up losing their virginity on the floor of a Baskin Robbins at fourteen.

[more_magic]

"A makeout session that turns into learning how to finger the girl you snuck upstairs with during a house party," he says. "In my specific case." He glances down at her, marveling at how easy it is to keep up this line of conversation in a way he hadn't done--or, sometimes, hadn't chosen to do--with anyone else.

"She had to tell me what to do, how to touch her. I hadn't the slightest idea."

[takecourage]

"Well how else were you supposed to know?" she says, grinning at that. "And I'm glad that you figured it out. First blowjob?"

[more_magic]

"Seventeen." He cants his head a little to the side, one shoulder lifting in a shrug. "Same girl, actually. We were on an orchestra trip to New York City, and someone snuck a bottle of vodka into the hotel, and...one thing led to another."

[takecourage]

"I bet it did." She's quiet for a minute, while she's trying to think of her next question. "Ever done anal?"

[more_magic]

She's quiet for so long that it only adds to the surprise of what she says next. "That's a hell of a pivot, Alex," he says with a short and almost disbelieving laugh. "No, as it happens."

[takecourage]

"Got to keep you on your toes," she says, and then she makes a thoughtful sound at what he says next. "Duly noted." She grins up at him and then presses a kiss against his skin. "Anything you've never done that you want to try?"

[more_magic]

He makes a soft sound as she kisses him again, something contented and affectionate. Lying here, warm and close and draped in the blanket he'd bought, it's so easy to imagine more nights exactly like this one; more chances to make up for whatever happens between them at home in the next few months. Danny smiles, running his hand gently down her arm, then back up again.

"Aside from what I admitted to earlier? Putting myself in your capable hands?" He pauses, thinking, then shakes his head. "I think just that fantasy's going to cover a lot of unknown ground anyway."

[takecourage]

"I was a little bit surprised," she admits, shifting so that she can glance up at him. She's never felt as safe and as comfortable, as held, as she does right now. It feels like they could talk about anything. "That you're into that. I...Yeah. Wasn't expecting it."

[more_magic]

"Nor was I," he says, looking down as he feels her head tilt up, meeting her eyes with a smile. He pauses, thinking, then tilts his head a little to the side. "Well, not entirely. I'm...Manuscript's illusion had to have something to grab onto, else it would've taken a different shape than it did. Even the strongest glamours have to be rooted in something real."

Darlington's faintly aware he's blushing, but right now, with Alex, he's nowhere near self-conscious about it. "Wouldn't have seen myself as your acolyte if some part of me hadn't wanted it already."

[takecourage]

She feels her cheeks colour at that, reaching up to trace her fingers along the strong line of his jaw as he looks down at her.

"I've never...other than the club, I've never had a chance to do that with a guy," she says. "The clubs just pretend, so...Yeah. Doing it for real would be new."