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 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?"

[more_magic]

"I suppose it was," he says, looking over at her. "Not that I thought of it as submission, not that I was aware of it in those terms. If anything, I considered it being...considerate. Wanting to make sure whoever I was with didn't feel pushed or obligated to go any further than they chose to go."

He smirks. "You're going to tell me this is just more proof I'm adorable again, aren't you?"

[takecourage]

"Pretty much," she says, grinning. "And it's more than that, anyway. There's a difference between being a considerate fuck and wanting to be treated like shit by a hot girl, Danny."

[more_magic]

"Oh no, Alex," he says, the crass way she puts it only causing it to sound more alluring, somehow. "The treating like shit is all you. The only one who's gone that far, and the only one I'd allow to."

[takecourage]

"That's because you always dated nice girls before you met me," she teases, smirking against the rim of her bottle. "All those Ashleys just didn't know what was good for you."

[more_magic]

"I'm really starting to wonder if you've had some kind of vendetta against an Ashley somewhere in your past," he says, dryly teasing. When she puts her bottle back down, he leans over to kiss her, once more slow and lingering, driven by the way they've picked up the earlier thread of their conversation.

"But you're right," he says. "None of them did."

[takecourage]

Alex smiles into the kiss, shifting a little so that she can rest back against the pillows, one hand coming up to touch his face. She studies his face for a long moment.

"What's your favourite?" she says, finally. "Of anything we've done?"

[more_magic]

"My favorite?" he says, eyes closing when she touches his face and his smile slipping into something more slow and relaxed. "I still have a lot of fond memories of Valentine's Day, you making that fantasy of mine happen. How we started to figure out all the things I was into. The marks you left behind."

He shifts his hips slightly, that low heat getting stronger, just like it used to when they talked like this. "Since we've figured it out...remember that night you demanded I cook you dinner in the nude?" Darlington brushes his fingers against her thigh, watching her face. "And then you wound me up talking about everything you were going to do with me after?"

[takecourage]

"Of course I remember that," she says, biting her lip when his fingers brush against her bare thigh. "I don't know how you managed to make something so ridiculous look so fucking sexy."

[more_magic]

He smirks, even as a shiver rolls down his back when he sees her bite her lip like that.

"I'd say it was practice, same as always, but that was the first time I'd ever done something like that." His fingers repeat their path along her thigh, this time upwards instead of down. "Maybe we call it natural talent."

[takecourage]

"It just suits you," she says, grinning at that, shifting her hips carefully at the maddening brush of her fingers. She doesn't want to push him, faster than he wants to go or away. It just feels good. "Doing what you're told."

[more_magic]

Alex moves, slow and careful enough that it can't really be called a squirm, but with a definite intent. He can't ignore it--nor, he realizes, does he entirely want to. As long as they both keep their boundaries in mind, maybe they can have this for tonight.

"Oh, yes?" he says, as though what she says is news to him. He takes a drink of his beer, spiraling out the tension that's already started to settle. "Is that your favorite, out of everything we've done? Seeing me do as I'm told?"

He almost says serve you instead, holding it back only at the last possible instant.

[takecourage]

"You don't get applause for the bare minimum that I expect, babe," says Alex, grinning up at him, admiring the way muscles shift when he drinks and swallows. "I like...my favourite is when you get really deep down into it so you'd do anything. When I'm the one with all the power."

[more_magic]

Darlington knows exactly what she means, another shiver running through him at the memory of how it feels when he gets to that place. Like Merity, like Halloween, but the influence he's under is not magic, just entirely something of their own making.

"It took a little while to get comfortable with that," he says, watching the way she looks up at him, the full curves of her lips and the dark tendrils of hair starting to come down from the knot at the top of her head. "Giving up all that control, even when I trust you so deeply. But now..." He has to pause and take a breath, aware again of the heady, electric tension in the room. "Now, I always look forward to it. Surrendering like that."

[takecourage]

She feels the shiver go through him, pressed close as he is. When he pauses, her cunt throbs.

"Letting me do whatever I want to you," she says. "Craving it."

[more_magic]

"Exactly."

There's something dark and deep in the inkwell of her eyes, a desire that Darlington thinks might be reflected in his own. They have to be careful; they can't fall too fast again, as they had the last time. He swallows hard, turning away only long enough to set his beer down on the bedside table. When he kisses her, it's slow, and deep, and wanting.

[takecourage]

He kisses her harder, deeper with more intent than before and Alex reminds herself that there's plenty that they can do that's not having sex. She pushes her fingers into his dark hair.