we kept our hearts from view, this time we're problem solving

[more_magic]

To say they get back to normal wouldn't be true. There's enough that's changed, that's needed to change, that whatever they'd been before isn't a place they can return to now. Darlington moves his things out of the Bramford and back to their apartment in Dimera, paying the exorbitant repair costs the landlord quoted him for the bedroom door just so he won't have to look at the splintered frame and all it represents. He and Alex talk, sometimes more deeply than he thinks they ever had before, other times about absolutely nothing at all. He still takes Kirby for a run in the morning, and he's still over there for dinner almost every night.

Day by day, over the next few weeks, it starts to feel like something's building out of the ashes.

When they'd first begun, Alex had said it could be like dating, starting fresh in a way they hadn't really taken the chance to do before. So far, it's felt like that; slow, and careful, and a little cautious as they feel out the edges of these new boundaries. Almost normal, when so little in their life--here or at home--had been that way for years.

Darlington brings up the idea, dinner out instead of in, one day when they're just sitting on the couch with Kirby. An actual date, maybe, to mark another step forward in the thing growing between them. He picks one of their favorites, a place downtown that's upscale and intimate, making the reservation for an evening Alex has off of work. That night, he showers and dresses, calling a cab and asking the driver to wait outside the Bramford while he goes to the second floor and knocks on Alex's door.

He still has a key, just as she has one to Dimera, but tonight he wants to do everything right.

Comments

[takecourage]

She opens the door, a little flutter of nerves as she does so. She'd been out and bought herself a new dress for the occasion. It's the kind of things that she knows that he likes - a black sheath that leaves her shoulders and her collabones bare, silver chains layered around her pale throat.

When she sees him standing there, she smiles, a faint flush spreading across her cheekbones.

"This is so weird," she says, stepping out of the apartment and locking the door behind her.

[more_magic]

"Deeply," he says, offering her his arm. She'd looked beautiful from the moment she opened the door, but then she smiles, her cheeks grown just a little more pink, and she's gorgeous. She always was, to him. "Don't ask me how long I debated whether coming with flowers was going to be laying it on too thick."

As they wait for the elevator, he turns to look at her again. "That's new, isn't it? You look great."

[takecourage]

"Might have been laying it on a bit thick," she says, taking the arm when its offered. "But that doesn't mean I wouldn't have liked it." She looks down at the dress and nods. "Yeah. I...saw it and I thought you'd like it. Is that stupid?"

[more_magic]

"I'll remember that for next time." Even though they're both agreed, both committed to fixing the things that had gone wrong, the fact he still gets to say things like next time still strikes Darlington as a little miraculous. The self-conscious look that crosses her face surprises him for a moment, a twist of regret in his chest that she seems so doubtful at all. "No," he reassures her as the doors to the elevator slide closed. "It's not stupid at all. I like it a lot."

Once outside, he opens the door to the cab for her, closing it once she's seated and going around to get in on the other side. He gives the cabbie the address to the restaurant, then settles back, his hand finding Alex's.

[takecourage]

She curls her fingers through his, squeezing his fingers and threading them together, holding his hand properly.

"You know," she says, looking out of the window. "This is my first first date, ever."

[more_magic]

"Yeah?" he says, knowing enough of her history to be aware it's not playacting. Knowing enough of her history that he's able to regret that it isn't. He watches the streetlights flicker across her skin, his hand warm in hers. "I'm glad I'm the one marking that milestone with you, then."

[takecourage]

"I like it when it's milestones with you," she says, meaning it utterly. He'd been the first man who went down on her, the first one who made her come every time she was with him. He's the only man who's ever consistently made her feel like she's worth something. "I like that suit, too."

[more_magic]

"So do I," he says, and means it too. The ones he's reached thanks to her--some of them, anyway--are different, a few he hadn't even been aware he might achieve, but it was doing them with her that made them matter. The phenomenal and the mundane alike; all of them were better having done them with her.

"And, thanks." The suit he's wearing is one he'd already owned, but tonight has so much meaning behind it that in a way, it makes everything feel a little more fresh. Unlike almost everything from Manuscript, it's a shift in perception he doesn't mind at all.

They stop outside the restaurant, and Darlington gets his wallet from his pocket, paying the driver before he gets out of the cab and goes to open Alex's door.

[takecourage]

Alex gets out of the car, swinging her bag onto her shoulder. She steps in and straightens his tie, touching his face with fond, light fingers before she steps away.

"Oh, yes," she says, grinning broadly when she realises where they actually are. "I love this place."

[more_magic]

They've been relearning each other in so many ways, but contact is one of the easier ones. Still slow, and careful not to push too much too soon, but even the lightest touches are grounding for them both. Darlington smiles when she fusses with his tie, leaning his head a little into the light brush of her fingers against his jaw.

"What a coincidence," he says, laughing a little as he takes her hand again. "So do I."

They enter the restaurant, following the hostess to a small table hidden a little in the back, close and intimate. He hadn't made any special requests when he'd called in the reservation, but for this kind of first date, it strikes Darlington as just about perfect.

[takecourage]

They're tucked away at the back of the restaurant, a small table, and Alex automatically shifts closer when they sit down, leaning into his space a little. She's never, in her whole life, wanted someone the way she wants him. She's never wanted to fix anything the way she wants to fix things with him.

"I bought cash with me," she says, picking up a menu. "We can split it."

[more_magic]

She moves close to him almost the moment they're seated, her body leaning in towards his in the same way she always had when they were out like this before. It looks easy, but Darlington knows enough to understand the trust there, how she'd never have done it with anyone--not even him, except on rare occasion--before Darrow. He doesn't want to fail that trust again.

Alex offers to split, and he has to keep himself from his old impulse to reject that, to play the gentleman and insist the night's all on him. That's an argument that belongs to the old Daniel, the one he should have left behind more easily; here, he's learned how important it is for her to have this.

"Sounds good," he says, smiling over at her. The candlelight from the small votive on the table glints off the chains around her neck and paints her skin in flickering light, and once more he's struck by how beautiful she is. He opens up his menu with one hand, his other resting against the tablecloth for her to take if she wishes.

[takecourage]

Alex starts to flip through the menu and, after a moment, she reaches out and slides her hand over his, threading their fingers together. "We're doing three courses, right?" she asks, glancing at him. "And cocktails?"

[more_magic]

"Right," he says, smiling a little when he feels her hand slide over his. He scans the menu a moment longer, then looks back up. "I remember we liked the cheese plate before, so that could be a start. Maybe in addition to one of the others?"

The server comes by then to grab their drinks order, and Darlington nods at Alex to go first, ordering a Manhattan for himself once she's finished.

[takecourage]

"Yeah, that was good," says Alex, who, honestly, had never had more than American cheese (or the vegan shit that Mira liked) in her life before she'd met Daniel Arlington. Alex orders herself a peach Bellini and a soda, feeling really low class but not quite enough to not do it. Once the waiter's stepped away, she shifts her hand so that she can take his properly.

[more_magic]

Her order is everything he might have guessed, something perfectly Alex. There would have been a time--just last September, maybe, back home and at the start of everything--he'd have rolled his eyes and marked it down as just another signifier; too California, too heathenish, too everything he'd worked so hard not to be. It's none of those things, he knows now, as aware of that as he is the fact she'd have called him a snob at best if she'd ever found out.

And he'd have deserved it.

She moves and takes his hand again, more solidly, and he runs his thumb gently against her skin. "I feel like we should be making first date small talk or something," he says, one side of his mouth going up in a smile. "But I'll be damned if I know exactly how to start."

[takecourage]

"Don't look at me," says Alex, leaning back in her chair a little and smirking at him, still holding her hand. "I've got no fucking idea how this is supposed to work. Don't tell me that you didn't take small talk lessons or something as a teenager."

[more_magic]

"As a teenager?" he says, raising one eyebrow in response to her smirk. "Give me some credit, Stern. I was winsome and charming from at least the age of ten."

Darlington thinks for a moment, but what comes out when he speaks again isn't the kind of easy, light inquiry he'd have used with anyone else. Even though they're starting over, trying again, he and Alex had progressed beyond all that a while ago. "What were you like at that age? Not in relation to the Greys or anything else, not like that, I just..." He looks at her face, at the dark spill of her hair and the swirl of her tattoos along her shoulders. "I want to know who you are."

It's always been true, but he means it more deeply now than he ever had before.

[takecourage]

"I bet you fucking were."

She grazes her thumb along his as she thinks about his answer for a moment. "I was....chubby. And nerdy. And really shy." She raises an eyebrow. "Wouldn't think it to look at me now, right?"

[more_magic]

"It's not what someone might expect at first glance," he says, trying to envision it the same as he'd always done the few times it had come up before; this different version of Alex, short and pudgy, smart and shy and unable to block out the things no one else could see. All of it, the skin she'd shed like a snake out of a necessity he'd only begun to understand the depths of before everything had gone wrong. "But that doesn't mean I can't see it, a little."

Their waiter comes by with their drinks, and Darlington thanks him, taking his hand away from Alex's to pick up his glass. "Very little about me at that age is that surprising," he says, smiling a little against the rim of his glass before he takes a sip. "Scrawny, obedient, easily fascinated by just about anything. When I wasn't at school, I was in my room or the library reading anything I could get my hands on, or in the study at Black Elm with my tutors."

He sets his drink down, his fingers stroking over the back of her hand. "Guess we were both nerdy in our own ways."

[takecourage]

Alex raises her glass in a toast to that, taking a sip of her drink, enjoying the tart, sweet combination of prosecco and peach puree.

"I know a lot about what you were like as a teenager. Or, at least, what you were like around girls when you were a teenager," he says. "And it sounds adorable."

[more_magic]

"I still doubt you'd have said that if you saw me at the time," he says. "But I'll take the compliment."

He could leave it there, keep it something easy and self-deprecating, exactly the kind of thing they both have done for as long as they've been in each other's lives. It wouldn't be out of place even now, on this first date that's something more than that, but Darlington finds himself wanting to delve a little deeper than just the superficial. He wants to try here, just a little bit more.

"It's not like I...pretended to be something I wasn't," he says. "Not consciously, or maybe intentionally's a better way to put it. But especially after my grandfather died, it was all a way of ensuring people didn't look too closely at anything else."

[takecourage]

"Because you were on your own, right?" says Alex, taking another sip of her drink and putting the glass down, leaning in a little, her chin caught in her free hand. "So you had to stay under the radar. It was different for me. I just...stopped going anywhere anyone would notice me. I didn't got to school or anything like that. I still don't have my GED."

[more_magic]

"Right," he says. "Easier to be Danny Arlington, who'll be the one to pick you up at your house and drive you to the library or anywhere else you want to go, or who'll stay for dinner and always offer to help with the dishes, then have anybody come to Black Elm and ask how long it'd be until my parents got home." He scoffs, faintly, glancing for a moment at some point in the distance. "I said they worked in the city, which was true and continues to be so, and if anyone assumed they took the Metro-North to and fro every day just like anyone else, I didn't say a word about it."

Neither of his parents would ever do something as pedestrian as ride commuter rail, Darlington knew, which had only made the necessary fiction a little more satisfying.

The waiter stops at their table again, and Darlington orders the cheese plate for their starter along with a small crudité board of summer vegetables. He skims the menu one last time as Alex orders her main, then gets the hanger steak for himself and hands over the menu with an easy smile of thanks.

"So you left," he says once the waiter's gone again. All of it had been in her Lethe file, of course, information on dry, dispassionate sheets of paper that he'd once thought told him all he needed to know. But hearing it from her, now, casts it all in a different light. "School, and Mira, and everything else. Which I understand, I think. Not wanting to pretend everything's still just the same as it ever was."

[takecourage]

"You make it sound a lot more sensible that it was," says Alex, sipping her drink for a moment. "I fell in with a bad crowd. Mosh was nice to me, because she thought I was spooky and shit, and then Len started paying me attention and, more importantly, supplying, and..." She shrugs. "Down the rabbit hole."