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

[more_magic]

"Now the truth comes out," he says with a laugh. "Just another way of getting me to serve you." He looks at her lying there, disheveled and grinning, and it feels so normal as to be its own kind of extraordinary. Going to the bathroom, he turns on the shower and lets it start to warm up, then dampens a washcloth in the sink before returning to the bedroom.

"Any additional requests, Stern?"

[takecourage]

"Get naked for me?" she asks, raising her eyebrow. "Please? And then you can go and shower in peace."

[more_magic]

"Happily," he says easily--more easily than he might have thought, just last night. Already shirtless, it's no work at all to push his sweatpants down, revealing himself to her entirely. Picking up the washcloth again, he sits at the edge of the bed, gently starting to wipe away the streaks of come along her thighs.

[takecourage]

He strips off and Alex leans her chin on the back of her hand, enjoying the view as he starts to wipe her skin clean.

"We're going to be okay, aren't we?"

[more_magic]

He's focused on the sweep of the cloth against her skin, the quiet ritual of doing this for her--because she'd asked, because he wants to, because it feels like another something normal--but when Alex asks that question, Darlington looks up, meeting her eyes with his. He smiles.

"Yes," he says, simply and honestly. "We're going to be okay."