though it's been said many times, many ways

[more_magic]

It’s strange to think of where he was a year ago, exactly. Waking up in Alex’s bed, hung over from the shame of the night before and the lingering effects of whatever Manuscript had given him, preparing for his first full day in a city outside of the world he knew and realizing in the process that he’d lost nearly two months in the space of a breath. There were more shocks to come, more alterations in what he thought to be true, but very little had managed to surpass the disorientation of that initial beginning to his tenure in Darrow.

Back then, Darlington had wondered what they might have done at home, if Alex would’ve been on a plane to California at the start of break--or if he might have managed to convince her to stay, to spend Christmas at Black Elm with him. What they got instead was better, that makeshift celebration with hastily-bought gifts and the smell of a half-remembered recipe wafting from Alex’s kitchen; the start of something new, even if neither of them had known the depths of that newness at the time. And now, a year on, through hard work and some kind of miracle, he gets what he’d wondered about after all.

Christmas Day will be just for them, presents and breakfast and relaxing by the fire, but tonight is a chance to celebrate. They decorate the main floor of Black Elm, filling the rooms they’ve already managed to furnish with light and warmth, the tree they’d bought earlier in the month standing by one of the large picture windows in the great room. Alex cooks all of Estrea Stern’s recipes she can think of, adds a few of Bernadette’s that Darlington remembers from his childhood. There’s music low on the stereo, a fire lit in the vast fireplace, the new table and chairs they’d bought for the formal dining room arranged just so beneath the chandelier at the center of the room. Even Kirby gets into the spirit in a new, festive collar, bright red against his black fur.

Above all, they’ve invited the people that matter, the few who have come to mean something--to one or both of them--in the year that’s just passed. It’s the first real party Black Elm has seen in many years, not since Darlington’s grandfather was alive. It feels, once again, like starting something new.

[[tag in, tag around, enjoy the party!]]

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[more_magic]

"Alex likes to cook," he says, noting Kavinsky's bizarre dig but refusing to acknowledge it. He can be civil. He's being civil, and the other man can deal with it as he likes. "So do I, honestly, but this is Alex's show. The most I was entrusted with tonight was making a salad and picking the wine."

Sipping his wine, he looks towards where Alex is standing by the tree, bright and laughing and happy. What irritation he hadn't been able to school out of his features at Kavinsky's approach fades away, just for a moment.

[mitsubishievo]

Watching Darlington soften, seeing the humanity, is pretty nice at least. Most of their interactions have been pointedly about Darlington being as far from showing humanity around Kavinsky as possible. So Kavinsky sipped his drink and ate his cookies, and said nothing on the matter, like calling attention to it would snap him out of it.

"Well, everything's turned out good. Like, the whole place, everything."

[more_magic]

"Thanks," he says, and though his smile is small, it's there--and genuine. They both know Kavinsky has no more obligation to be cordial than Darlington does, even superficially, but it means something that he's intending to try. "There's still a ways to go with the house, but we've made something of it so far."

He pauses, considering the truth of that, how easy it had been--and how natural--to say we. "I still can't believe some days it showed up here at all," he admits.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky was pretty sure that was the first time he'd seen Daniel Arlington smile without it being a smirk, or something sardonic. And Kavinsky had never had a problem finding assholes attractive, but he could see the appeal in the gentler look too.

He rolled his eyes at himself, but hid it in sipping his drink.

"I had my car show up," he said. "That was a whole--anyway, not as impressive as getting a whole fucking house. If you need shit, lemme know. I can send it over with Newt sometime."

[more_magic]

"We're far enough outside the city that some days I wished we'd had a car first," he says, meaning both his old Mercedes at home--still there, he assumes--and the car they have here thanks to the generosity of Alex's regular. He's made his peace with the latter, mostly, and he's not too proud to admit that no longer needing to hike down to the closest bus stop was a considerable factor in helping that along.

The offer is something he doesn't expect, his eyebrows ticking up just slightly in surprise when it's made. "I'll let you know," he says, and means it.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky nodded a little bit, because the offer had been genuine and felt right. Not just because making a genuine effort on both their parts would probably sooth some of that eye-rolling from Alex, but also because he knew how hard it could be to put together a house--and he'd had the assistance of his dreams to put everything together.

He sipped his drink and picked up a second cookie.

"And, ya know, if you need a hook up for a second set of wheels?" Kavinsky shrugged, and it was with a genuine look at his eyes. No tricks, no gambles. He knew that Alex had a car now, because she'd been smart with her money, but having two when you lived out in the country was always useful.

And a car was a slightly more specific thing to work with than something for the house, when it came down to it. Kavinsky wasn't sure if Alex had told Darlington about what he could do, but besides that, the offer made it a gesture to him, and not to the both of them.

[more_magic]

There are plenty of snide things Darlington could say about Kavinsky's hook up for things much smaller and more dangerous than a car, no matter what promises he's made to Alex about not wading into those waters tonight--or ever. Plenty of them come to mind now, sharply acid at the back of his thoughts even if he knows he won't give them voice. But there is, inexplicably, still a sincerity in Kavinsky's expression, something that might not suggest a legal avenue but one that's well-meant all the same. For once, Darlington decides to trust that instead of his usual assumptions.

"I'll keep that in mind," he says. "We're doing okay with just the one, but god knows that can change when you least expect it."

[mitsubishievo]

Legal is an entirely relative term when it comes to Kavinsky, because he invents everything, which means that he gets around the issues of acquisition and legality in that sense. But that hardly needs to be a topic of conversation.

"Especially around here. Never know when...something will fall out of the sky or something. It's helpful to have someone that can make that shit show up in your diver way at a moments notice."

[more_magic]

"Haven't experienced anything falling from the sky," he says, though with everything he's learned about Darrow--and a good helping of the things he'd seen back home--he's not about to discount it as a possibility. "Not yet, anyway."

The at a moment's notice has him raising an eyebrow. "I'm starting to think we're talking on different levels here."

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky blinked a little, cookie half in his mouth. He bit down, munched thoughtfully, then shrugged as he swallowed. "Yeah, apparently. Figured Alex woulda mentioned that one, too, you two being all..."

He flapped a hand. Alex had explained what it was they did back at Yale, magic and ghosts and what the fuck ever, but if Kavinsky was real about it, it wasn't his flavor of magic, and he didn't really get it. It just wasn't how his shit worked. In any case, he shrugged again.

"Anyway, it's not weird deals and black market bullshit, okay? I can just get you guys pretty much anything you want." Except for a way out of Darrow. He still had the scars on his hands from that one and only attempt, over six years ago.

[more_magic]

"She might have tried," he admits. "But it's maybe an understatement to say I haven't had much interest in hearing anything about you." He doesn't say it to provoke a fight, merely as a statement of fact. The idea of Kavinsky having magic of his own rankles, more so that it seems so mundane for him, so unextraordinary or precious, but Darlington tries to let that go.

What he knew, what he'd learned, he'd gained through effort. That meant something.

"How does it work, then?"

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky took no offense at it. He laughed a little bit and nodded. No, that made sense. And the way that Darlington looked at him now, like Kavinsky was--well, blase about the whole thing, and maybe he was, that also made sense. Darrow had made him blase about the whole thing. Or at least more candid than he had any right to be back in Virginia.

"I dream it," he said. He rolled up his sleeves a little, and there was a smattering of scars on the skin, mostly covered by the beautiful, intricate, colorful flowers that Jack and Newt had drawn for him, that he had gotten to cover older marks of dreams gone wrong, but the scars were still visible as close as they were standing. He turned his hands over, showing his burnt palms where he had dreamt of the Darrow leyline, and put his hands on it, and woke with the burn and a slight lichtenberg figure radiating from them.

He took off his wedding ring, and there was a glint of gold melted into the skin, where the demon that had briefly lived in Cabeswater had unmade the original wedding band. It wasn't the only thing the demon had unmade, but it was the only thing that had left such a visceral, permanent mark.

"Anything you can think of, just about. Well, Darrow doesn't like me to bring back people. Not whole ones, anyway. But if you can describe what a thing does, I can make it happen." He put the ring back on. "I cured cancer in a guy once. Well, me and--and a guy from home, who's not here now. He was better with the fantastical stuff than me. I was always more technical."

[more_magic]

It's not a magic he's familiar with, not quite the glamours and illusions of Manuscript but kin to them, something either steps beyond or steps behind what he's seen them do--the good and the bad. His lingering distrust makes him doubt momentarily the truth of what Kavinsky's saying, but he listens, and the more he hears and sees the more he finds himself believing it. It was always the most impossible kinds of magic that were the most fascinating.

"Something between generation and manifestation," he says, half to himself. "That's amazing."

[mitsubishievo]

"It's a living," Kavinsky said with a shrug. It was not, in fact, very much of a living, which is why he owned a record label that had been inherited to him, and why he stripped. But it was a part of him like breathing and there was no not doing it. In the brief moments where he didn't, his body began to come apart.

But he didn't need to go into those details with Darlington.