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]

Alex nods, trying not to let the way that hearing that feels show on her face. He's right, and she knows he's right -- it was her that shit on that particular doorstep, after all.

"I think you're right," she says, covering his hand with hers. "And, believe me, it is fucking killing me to say that."

[more_magic]

There's a tightness in her face as she nods, something regretful that he regrets in turn even as her agreement is itself a relief. "I know," he says, his hand stilling when she covers it with hers, her palm warm against the back of his hand. "I wish it were different. More than I can say."

He looks down, noticing Kirby curled up at the base of the couch where he'd moved when they did, looking at the link of their hands, the beginning of Alex's tattoos at her wrist, up and up until his focus returns to her face. "Tell me what you need?"

[takecourage]

"We'll get there," she says, because that's something that she has to believe, right then. "I need..." She takes a moment to think about what she actually needs. "I need you close. I need to know that...you're okay? That you've...forgiven me or whatever? So whatever that looks like, I need you close tonight."

[more_magic]

"We'll get there," he says, and tonight that feels like more of a possibility than it had even a week ago. He listens closely as she keeps talking, taking it all on and hearing the way she makes herself almost vulnerable, something he knows doesn't come easily to her.

"I can do that," he says. "Be close, stay close, here or once we go to bed. Both." He lays his other hand on top of hers, smiling at the faint ridiculousness of the layering; his hand beneath hers beneath his. "I'm okay, and I forgive you." He kisses her again, soft and brief despite the wish to linger. "And I love you, Alex."

[takecourage]

"I love you too," she says and means it, utterly, completely. She looks down at their hands, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "We could make out a little more?"

[more_magic]

They've both been saying it to one another, kept saying it and knowing it was true. Hearing it from her now is still more of a relief than he thinks he could have anticipated. They'll be okay. They are okay, and they're only getting more so.

"Making out, I can do," he says with a soft laugh. "Only fitting, considering this is the first time you've ever invited someone up, after your very first date." His next kiss does linger, a little deeper and warmer than the ones before.

[takecourage]

She smiles, curling her arms around his neck and pulling him in for another kiss.

"Bet it's not the first time you've been asked up, though, is it?"

[more_magic]

"No," he says, kissing her again, letting himself be drawn in by the curl of her arms around his neck. "It's not."

They move closer to each other, there on the couch, his hand returning to her back, her chest pressed a little to his. It's more, and it's perfect, and Darlington pointedly doesn't think about how easily Alex could slip into his lap, just like this. How either of them could draw the other down onto the cushions.

"And don't have a heart attack, Stern," he says, grinning when their next kiss breaks, "but it's not even the first time I've said yes after a first date."

[takecourage]

"Oh, shit, really?" Says Alex, pressing one hand to her chest in mock distress. She reaches up, brushing dark hair back from his forehead. "I bet you were always a perfect gentleman though, right?"

[more_magic]

"Really," he says, mock-serious, leaning contentedly into the brush of her fingers in his hair. He hadn't realized the level at which he'd missed even that. "And I was always perfectly respectful, to no one's surprise. Never minded her taking the lead."

There's heat that kindles in him when he says it, something low and smoldering, the memory of all the ways they'd discovered how deep that statement ran for him.

[takecourage]

"Yeah, there were some things you were always going to figure out about yourself, right?" she says, teasing lightly. "Just needed the right girl to show you the way."

[more_magic]

He sighs, something more fond than aggrieved, and kisses her again. "It seems I did," he says. His fingers run lightly down her side, over the thin stuff of her t-shirt and down to the curve of her hip. "The right, unexpected, surprisingly commanding girl."

[takecourage]

That touch is enough to make her shiver, and she shifts her hips a little bit, moving a little bit closer.

"I never thought I'd enjoy it so much, honestly," she says, her dark eyes flicking to her face. "Is talking about this okay?"

[more_magic]

"It's okay," he says, momentarily distracted by the shift of her body beneath his hand, that roll of her hips. "Talking is fine. Talking about how we both didn't expect to enjoy all of that so much is, admittedly, even better." Neither of them, he thinks, want more than that on that particular front tonight, but this is just enough.

Darlington kisses her again, not missing the fact she's moved even closer. "Do you want to..." He trails off, thinking about what he wants within the boundaries they've both set. "Talking about it in the bedroom is...counterproductive," he says, his grin rueful and teasing and directed mostly at himself. "But if you want to stay here, and lie down or get in my lap, that's not going too far."

Being that clear with his boundaries strikes him as awkward and blushing, almost virginal, but he knows all of this is only going to work if he does. They're stronger than they were, but they're not yet back to who they'd been.

[takecourage]

It's a habit that they have -- talking about things until they're hot under the collar -- and it's something that Alex could go for tonight, even if there's a limit to what it can culminate in.

"We could go into the bedroom," she says. "Then lying down or ending up in your lap is...workable, right?"

[more_magic]

"Certainly more comfortable." He studies her, thinking, knowing that to agree is another push forward for the evening. Even if it's only talking. "Okay. Bedroom it is."

[takecourage]

Alex stands up first.

"Come on, Kirbs. Bed," she says, walking across the room to pat the top of his crate. After a moment's hesitation and a massive yawn, Kirby pads across the room and into his crate. Alex drops a treat in front of him and closes the door for the night. She walks back over to the sofa and offers Danny both of her hands. "Shall I get us some beers?"

[more_magic]

"Oh good, you got him to stay in there again," Darlington says, watching Kirby turn and settle on the plush bed lining the floor of his crate. "Can't think where he learned your side of the bed was an acceptable alternative." He offers her a smile, small but steady, his feigned ignorance the closest he thinks either of them want to get to referencing the long, broken week and a half when he'd found the bed so lonely, so empty, that he let Kirby curl up there with him just for the sake of another living presence.

He takes her hands when they're offered, letting her pull him up. "Please," he says, staying close and hand-in-hand once he's standing. "Do we have any more of that six-pack I brought the other night? The sour we tried at Darrowfest?"

[takecourage]

"A couple, yeah," says Alex, squeezing his hand before he lets it go. "You go and get comfortable and I'll grab them, okay?" She takes a deep breath as she walks away from him, centering herself a little bit.

[more_magic]

He nods, watching as she turns towards the kitchen, marveling at the fact they're here again at all.

Going into the bedroom, he turns the bedside lights back on, arranging the pillows so they're propped up against the headboard and moving his jacket from where he'd left it at the foot of the bed. Hiram's Crucible is still there in the corner, golden and glowing, and even though he's spent months in this room the sight always manages to take him a bit by surprise. Like a fragment of Lethe, of their past, come to greet them.

When Alex shows up in the doorway, he's sitting up in bed, against the pillows.

[takecourage]

Just the sight of him there makes something flutter in Alex's chest, and she stands there for a moment, just watching him. "You look really fucking comfortable," she says, padding over to the bed and climbing in, holding out one of the beer bottles to him as she settles at his side.

[more_magic]

"I am really comfortable," he says, taking in the sight of her in the doorway, as she starts to move, her t-shirt slipping to reveal a bit more of her shoulder, her shorts a little low on her hips. It feels so right, to be here with her, just like this. "I spent most of my life sleeping on a mattress that I swear was there when my great-great-great grandfather first built Black Elm. This is the damn height of luxury, as far as I'm concerned."

He wishes he had the memory of waking up there with her, the day after Halloween.

As she settles, he takes a sip of his beer, putting an arm around her shoulders once she's nestled against his side.

[takecourage]

She settles in against his side, curling up a little and taking a sip of her beer as she closes her eyes.

"Yeah, same. You should have seen the state of the fucking mattress at Ground Zero." She closes her eyes for a moment. "Anyway. What were we talking about before?"

[more_magic]

A chill runs down his spine at the mention of it, this close to everything they've already said and all the things he's already learned about Van Nuys and Hellie and that mattress, but he lets it pass. She's here with him, not there, and that's what matters.

He smiles against the lip of his bottle, the question rekindling a bit of that slow heat from before. "If I remember correctly," he says, "we were discussing my surprisingly long-held preference of letting the women I'm with take the lead. As it were."

[takecourage]

"Oh, yeah," says Alex, playing innocent, like she'd actually forgotten. "Did you... Was that always kind of a thing then?"