more_magic | wooden floors, walls and window sills, tables and chairs worn by all of the dust

Entry tags:

alex,
item post

wooden floors, walls and window sills, tables and chairs worn by all of the dust

The calls haven't been coming at a rate Darlington might call constant, but come they have over the last week or so, steady enough to be suspicious. Always the same two numbers, the same two voices--one bright and chipper, the other almost oily in its overconfidence--and the same message, the thing he cannot parse. They call about investment opportunities, about return potential and competitive markets, and the only thing keeping him from passing it all off as an unfortunate run of wrong numbers is the fact that they call him by name, every single time.

There's something in all of it that reminds him of his childhood, the Layabouts and their infrequent visits that grew more urgent the sicker his grandfather got, until they'd become a temporary constant there at the end. His mother's bizarre health foods displacing Bernadette's casseroles in the fridge, his father wandering from room to room downstairs talking about assessing Black Elm like it was a specimen in a lab, a body on a table just waiting for the autopsy. To them, he supposes, it had been. They'd wanted him to sell, demanded it and bullied him the same as they had his grandfather, and their anger when he'd rebuffed them was still as clear now as it had been at fifteen, that day in his room.

This house is worthless, Danny. Worse than worthless. Only the land is valuable.

The profits can be shared. You can come to New York, take advantage of all the opportunities that will open for you there.

Do you really think you'll be some Lord of Black Elm, Daniel? You don't rule this place. It rules you.

There's no way this can be that, but it's on his mind anyway as he lounges on the couch reading, looking over at his phone when it starts to buzz. Seeing one of those now-familiar numbers, his thumb hovers over the Reject icon on the screen before shifting, tapping Accept instead. "Tell me why you keep calling me."

The conversation that follows is short, and unbelievable, and ends with him scribbling down an address on the flyleaf of his book. "You're going to lose this number," he says, just before ending the call. "I will never be interested in any offer you think up." He's out the door a minute later, hailing a cab outside Dimera. He nearly bungles the address; memory taking over for a moment, guiding his tongue to the more familiar cadences of his old one in Westville.

It can't be possible, but he'll never forgive himself if he doesn't check.

Darlington recognizes it from the moment they pull up to the drive; the gravel, the gentle curve, the stone columns flanking either side and the lamps dotting the pathways just beyond. The trees are in full leaf, green rather than the mottled oranges and yellows he remembers, but each of them is as familiar to him as they've ever been before. He pays the driver, his hand already trembling when he pulls the door handle to get out of the car and a hope he doesn't want to acknowledge fizzing in his chest.

It only gets stronger as he walks up the drive, the stones crunching beneath his feet. When the house comes into view--stone and crumbling towers, the solid wood of the door and the dark slate of the steps, each window glinting in the late afternoon light--he stops right where he is and stares. This was his home, his anchor, and the lack of it over the last seven months had been a loss too painful for him to acknowledge. Not until now, with it restored to him at last.

He fumbles his phone out of his pocket, pulling up Alex's number, texting her the address and a photograph he takes with shaking hands. Tell me I'm not hallucinating again, Stern. Get here and tell me this is real.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

holy fucking shit i'm on my way.

She doesn't even take the time to put a bra on before she gets into the cab, eventually climbing out at the bottom of the gravel drive in jean shorts and a t-shirt, her low-top sneakers. He's still standing on the drive in front of the house and she comes to stand beside him, her mouth hanging open.

"Fuck. It's really here."

Darlington made a hesitant, wandering circuit of the grounds while he waited, from the pond with its ever-verdant scum of algae to the sinister clumps of foxglove near the sunroom windows; through the overgrown rose garden down towards the hedge maze and back again. The slope at the back of the grounds now looks down on the rolling fields of Darrow's countryside, not the line of houses along Edgewood with the spires of campus just beyond, but everything else is no different than it might have been in New Haven.

He doesn't understand it, wants to question and investigate, tease out the how and why of this unexpected restoration of his heart, and perhaps in time he will. For today, it's enough just to marvel at it.

Hearing the sound of a car door slamming just behind him, he looks back, something in his chest soothed by the sight of Alex coming up the drive. She's just as awed, as disbelieving, as he had been, and when she's close enough he reaches for her hand.

"I haven't gone inside yet," he says. "I...it's absurd, but it felt like I might break some kind of spell if I did."

"It's one of those Darrow things," she says, slipping her hand into his, threading their fingers together and squeezing lightly. "Like Hellie's bat." She stands, staring at the house for a moment. "Do you...want to go inside? Did it give you the keys?"

"Something a whole lot kinder than Hellie's bat," he says. There's regret in that, cutting through the shock and elation he's feeling at having Black Elm back. The two of them are a lot stronger now than they had been, and even if they weren't Darlington knows Alex wouldn't begrudge him this--she's the only one here who knows how much this place means to him--but he makes himself feel the guilt of it anyway.

He looks over at her when she squeezes his hand. "I've had the keys all along," he says. "They were in my coat on Halloween, so they...came with me." He smiles faintly, taking his keyring out of the pocket of his jeans. "I couldn't bring myself to take them off."

He finds the front door key, brass worn to dullness after so many years in one Arlington pocket or another, holding it almost gingerly in his fingers. "Let's go inside. I'll give you the tour. Again."

Alex squeezes his fingers again.

"I'd like that," she says. "You can show me around again. I pretty much only remember where your bedroom was."

"Almost the furthest point in the house," he says, smiling crookedly as he fits the key in the lock. It turns smoothly, and even though Black Elm has never contained the same clear kind of presence as Il Bastone, it still feels as though the place is welcoming him back. "The only thing more distant is the attic."

He pushes the door open, the hinges creaking, echoing through the interior. "I'll have to ward it again," he says, looking over at her as they step inside. "It might take time, but we have enough--"

Darlington stops abruptly, the sound of his voice echoing away just as the hinges had only a moment before. They should be entering the great room, vast and opulent, full of heavy wood furniture and the long leather couch by the fireplace; everything he'd grown up with, everything he remembers. Instead, there's nothing but a bare room, an expanse of polished wood floors and dark walls, the fireplace cold and the sun streaming in through the picture window along the back wall to illuminate the emptiness. "There's nothing here," he says. "Everything...the furniture, the books, the...there's nothing here."

She's looking at him, so she sees the way that his face falls when he steps through the door and sees that everything is gone. The room is imposing, huge without things in it. Alex thinks that the whole apartment that she grew up in could probably have fitted in just this room with space to spare.

"...Darrow shit," she says, squeezing his hand. "Babe, I'm sorry." Of course this place wouldn't just give Black Elm back to him; of course there'd have to be some kind of trick to it.

Alex's words are a kind of balm, even as he keeps looking around, searching for some trace of anything left behind. He can see into the kitchen from here, the blue and white Delft tiles along the wall and the wood of the cabinets, just the edge of the old refrigerator in the corner--but no warm copper shine from Bernadette's pots on the rack over the stove. It has to be the same all over: the ballroom, his grandfather's bedroom, the library and the lounge, even the medicine cabinets in the bathrooms stripped bare of pill bottles and boxes of band-aids.

"It's a husk," he says, his voice turned hoarse for a moment. He clears his throat. "Not the worst of Darrow's shit, not at all, but...I really thought I'd get it all back."

"Not a husk," says Alex, shaking her head and leaning up against his arm, pressing close to try and comfort him. They've been getting better and better recently and it feels like the best thing she can do for him right then. "A beginning. A fresh start. You can make it yours." She presses a kiss against his shoulder. "Or ours. Give me the tour. Let's see what we can make of it, okay?"

Alex leans into him, her lips pressing against his shoulder through the cotton of his shirt, the contact loosening something tightly-wound inside his chest. It still felt as though his heart was as empty, as bereft, as the newly-vacant rooms of Black Elm; untethered from everything familiar, aside from the walls and the floors, the ruined fountain he can just see jutting up from the center of the hedge maze and the tangled branches of the trees scattered through the grounds. But Alex was right, in her way. It could be his now, entirely.

It could be theirs.

"Ours," he says, his echo of it sounding like a decision they both needed to hear. "We'll keep your place at the Bramford, but...Black Elm could be ours." Darlington smiles at her, soft and faint, then turns his attention back to the huge, empty room. "So, this is the great room, Stern," he says, gesturing at it with his free hand. "Usually formal, largely for entertaining. When the Layabouts came to visit, this is where the night would end, most of the time."

He breathes out, shaking off the brief lapse into a memory he doesn't want to recall. "It's also the room that served as the staging area for every single freshman admissions file last summer, when I still assumed I had a choice in my Dante."

"Good thing you didn't have a choice, or we wouldn't even be here," she says. "I remember in here. There was a leather couch, right?" She points, indicating the vague position. "It always seemed really fucking weird to me that it was like...an entrance hall with furniture? But I guess I'm just not high class enough."

"Right by the fireplace," Darlington says, smiling when she gestures vaguely in that direction. "And the stereo was on the bookshelf that used to be...there, along the wall." His grin turns softer, more thoughtful. "Which I know you remember, from that day we got caught in the rain."

He laughs at her next observation. "I could point out that this isn't the entrance hall, because you enter into the foyer when you come in the front door," he says. "But you're also not wrong, Alex. It's...all about making a statement."

"Totally the first time I realised I was in trouble where you were concerned," she says, leaning against him before she glances back over her shoulder at the vestibule. "Okay. Show me something else."

Darlington smiles, thinking back on that day, lying by the fire with her as they both dried out from their sudden, surprising drenching. He'd rested his head in his arms, the wood floor solid under his back; Alex sat closer than he'd expected, leaning against the side of the couch. He wonders now how much might have changed for them both, and how much earlier, had he been bold enough to rest his head in her lap instead.

He laughs softly when she prompts him. "As you command." He points with his free hand towards the kitchen, as they start to walk, the tiles bright in the sun coming in through the window. "Kitchen's over there, with the butler's pantry and the walk-in freezer just beyond." Already anticipating the comment she's likely to make, he looks over at her with something both resigned and amused in his expression. "We only ever had Bernadette," he says. "The butler was well before my time."

She huffs a laugh through her nose.

"I remember the kitchen," she says. "Couldn't get anything to work so that I could make tea, but I was definitely in there."

"The stove went in sometime in the fifties, same as the fridge," he says, taking her through the hall and past the formal dining room. It's empty, just like everywhere else they've been, but there's still a part of him that expects to see the long, dark table and hard-backed, uncomfortable chairs, the heavy drapes at the windows, all the things he remembers from so many awkward evenings with his parents and grandfather. "I think even when it was new, it was temperamental." Darlington laughs, soft and rueful. "Sometimes I wonder if it was the stove's fault my first attempt at the Orozcerio failed so...spectacularly."

As they go into the sunroom that stretches the length of the house, full of golden light from the late afternoon sun, he looks over at her. "When were you trying to make tea here, anyway?"

"After you were gone," she says, quietly, still holding his hand. "We...Dawes and I...borrowed the Mercedes and I took it back. There was a light on - in the kitchen and in your bedroom. I thought you were here, but you weren't. I ended up sleeping in your bed. It was fucking freezing. I slept in three of your sweaters and that hat I replaced at Christmas."

She has an urge to kiss him, then, so she leans up and presses a kiss against his jaw.

"Right," he says quietly, the corner of his mouth going up in another faint smile when her lips brush his jaw. The reminder of his absence sends a chill through him, one backed with a now-familiar kind of regret; that he hadn't known any of this, that he'd been so careless, that though he'd saved Alex from whatever lurked in the Rosenfeld basement, it hadn't kept her from other, sharper kinds of misfortunes in the days afterwards. "That makes sense."

He squeezes her hand, lets the pressure of it steady him. "It was probably Dawes who left the light on," he says. "It's not in Oculus's purview to...play housekeeper, such as it is, for Lethe delegates, and especially not in places the society doesn't even own. But you know Pammie." He leans down, kissing her again. "I wish it hadn't been a false hope for you that night."

"I know Pammie," she says, rolling her eyes fondly at him. He knows what she thinks about his relationship with Dawes. "Come on. Next stop, tour guy."

"I'm never going to live that down," he says, sighing fondly when she rolls her eyes at him. "More to the point, you're not going to let me, are you?"

He takes her through the rest of the first floor, pointing out the parlor and his grandfather's old office just off the sunroom, the den next to the main living room, once filled with the large-screen TV and gaming systems his parents had bought for him over various birthdays and Christmases; trendy gifts to fulfill their own obligations, things they assumed he might use as cachet to find yourself some friends, Danny or couldn't possibly conceive that he might not want in the first place. He misses all of those much less than everything else.

"Most of the second floor, I closed off as much as I was able," he says as they climb the stairs, the wooden treads creaking in a still-familiar tone beneath their feet. "It's where I ran out of money, and most of the bedrooms up here hadn't even been occupied in years. My grandfather's room was the last of them, and even that..." He shrugs. "Once the hospice folks cleared out their machines and the bed and all the rest, there wasn't anything to do but shut the door behind them."

"Not your finest hour, boo."

She leans in against him when he starts to talk about his grandfather's death, slipping her hand out of his and wrapping them around his waist to pull him in close, leaning her cheek on his chest.

"We could choose any of them for us, I guess. Which one has the best light?"

For us.

She says it so casually, her arms wrapped around his waist and her cheek against the soft fabric of his shirt, and that in and of itself seems like something extraordinary. He could have lost all of this; almost had. Not even the restoration of Black Elm, he thinks, could have soothed that heavy a loss--and how quickly, how completely, he's come to know that here in a way he doubts he'd had the time to back home, based on all he knows.

Alex's question only takes a moment or two of thought to answer. "This way."

Darlington leads her down the long, dark hall, stopping at a door near the end, on the eastern side of the house. It looks like all the others, heavy wood darkened with age, but the room behind is large and light and airy, dominated by a bank of windows at the far wall, which curves to match the remainder of the tower just one floor above. "It's not the main suite," he says. "That's at the other end of the house. But this is..."

He trails off, looking at her, looking at the room. "We could make it ours."

"We could fit a really fucking big bed in here," she says, her fingers still linked with his, drawing him further into the room. "And enough closets for both of us." She looks up at him. "I know this is your house, in your bones, but...I've never had anywhere I could think of as mine before I got here. Never bought paint or whatever."

"We could," he agrees as she pulls him further into the room, picturing it all easily. "There was a four-poster in here before, and...a vanity just there, by the windows." He huffs a laugh through his nose, leaning his head a bit to one side. "That is, until I sold it after a pipe burst up on the third floor. It was Mackmurdo, so I knew I'd get more than enough to cover the repairs and pay the water bill."

He looks around the room, already sketching out possibilities in his head. They couldn't find exactly the same styles and eras, exactly the right furniture makers; even the Darrow contemporaries would cost more than either he or Alex could afford, unless they found supremely undervalued pieces and took advantage. He's not sure if he could do it, remembering his own experiences early on, in those lean years back home. The thought of being on the other side now turns his stomach more than a little.

Alex keeps talking, hesitant and careful, and it's enough to cease his thoughts and nascent plans almost entirely. She's right, everything she says is right; Black Elm was his home, his heart, the thing he'd fought hardest to keep. At times, it felt like the only anchor he had when everything else was on the verge of swallowing him up. The thought of changing anything sits heavy and unpleasant within him. But he'd always had it, this place that had been unquestioningly his from his very first memory--and despite his discomfort, he knows it's past time to share that with someone else who'd never had the chance to be so fortunate.

"There's a lot to restore here," he says. "A lot of rooms, a lot of repairs. Hell, even the landscaping needs maintenance. But we can...when you want to make this our home, together, we should make it ours." He looks around the room again, a small smile on his lips. "I want you to feel at home here too."

"Like I said downstairs -- it might be good for you to have to start over. A clean slate. For you, as well as us." She wraps her arms around him again, one hand finding its way under the hem of his shirt to press against warm skin. "I'd...You don't have to make everything as close to how it used to be as you can. Not if you don't want to. You can make it anything you want it to be."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject