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!]]

Comments

[shadows_have_offended]

As basically the only other person in a large house and intimate party that Neil even remotely knows, Neil finds himself gravitating toward Nova while he's still feeling a little bruised from getting into a terse conversation with Caleb. He'll get back over there, but for the moment, he wants to talk to Nova and just feel--well, not angry, for one thing.

"Hey," he says by way of greeting. "You like eggnog?"

[maloscuridad]

"Hey." Neil sidles up to him and Nova thinks he can spot a little tension in his face, a certain tightness of the jaw. "Yeah, it's not bad." It's also not usually his preferred beverage but if someone's offering, who is he to complain?

[shadows_have_offended]

Neil foists a glass of the stuff at Nova so that he has an excuse to linger, lifting his own glass to take a sip. He actually hates eggnog, which is maybe stupid because, for fucks sake, he's been known to eat some weird things, but it was this or wine, and he's trying to stay sober for Caleb's sake.

Even if he is still circling on that frustration that he can't quite explain.

"There's no alcohol in it," he says as an afterthought. "Sorry to disappoint."

[maloscuridad]

"Not my usual vice anyway," Nova says. It's probably odd coming from a bartender or maybe it just means he knows better than most. Drinking never did his family any favors. Nova drinks, sure, but it's not his preferred route to oblivion.

"You want to talk about what's got you like this?" If Neil thinks he's hiding it, Nova is sorry to disappoint.

[shadows_have_offended]

The only thing Neil's hiding from, right now, is going back toward the confrontation that he doesn't want to have and that he can't really explain, and he knows that the whatever it is on his face reads clearly. He drinks his own eggnog quietly for a moment.

"Well, Sal," he says, affecting a perfectly black-and-white movie voice, because he's funny damnit, and he really hopes that Nova at least laughs at him too, "I'm not having an argument with my boyfriend over whether or not I know that cigarettes can kill me at a party where I know...you and him."

[maloscuridad]

Nova only kind of gets the reference, but it makes him smirk anyway. Mostly, it reminds him of McKay.

"There's a lot of things that'll kill you. Some faster, some slower," Nova says. He thinks of the Mortiz matriarch, Mama Juanita, who lived over a century on a diet of stubbornness and cigarillos. He'd never known her but Alex's parents still spoke of the Alta Bruja of the family with a certain amount of reverence.

"But that's easy for me to say when I'm not the one sticking my tongue in your mouth."

[shadows_have_offended]

Neil manages, narrowly, to not snort eggnog out of his nose. He doesn't manage to not blush. "Jesus," he said, rolling his eyes skyward like the son of God was himself going to manifest and intervene on his behalf to stop attractive young men from saying things like that to him.

[maloscuridad]

"Just sayin'," Nova says, as if he wasn't just making crude insinuations. Without knowing the full scope, he supposes it's something a boyfriend gets a say in, but it doesn't seem like that's really all of it.

"But I think you already know what they do." It's just a matter of whether or not he cares.

[shadows_have_offended]

"Well, yeah, I'm not stupid."

He says it more pathetically than he means to, still blushing a little bit. It's easier to just feel bruised and sorry for himself now that he's not in the middle of the disagreement, but he doesn't want that either. So he sips his eggnog and frowns deeply instead.

"It was a stupid thing to get upset about." Then, even more pathetically, "I think that was out first argument."

[maloscuridad]

"Took you two that long?" Nova grins, thinking of the last person he might have loved. He and Alex had known each other about three seconds before they argued and then kept that tone all the way through Los Lagos. "It's probably healthy or something, disagreeing."

Nova shrugs. It's not like he knows anything about healthy dynamics.

[shadows_have_offended]

"It's hard to have an argument with someone that can read all your emotions while they're happening and tell you to stop having them," Neil says, but at least this time he's smiling a little bit about it. It was also a slightly disingenuous assessment, because Caleb never told him to stop having his feelings, but he had told him to stop pretending he wasn't having them.

Same difference.

[maloscuridad]

"Empaths," Nova says. He knew a few, back in Brooklyn. Plus Rosie's whole gift of the veil making her extra perceptive before they realized how much more than that she was. It's hard not to catch the way Neil is still smiling, even if they're arguing.

"So why are you smoking? Is that a feelings thing?"

[shadows_have_offended]

"Isn't everything?"

They were all messy creatures, or something like that. What was it Mr. Keating had told them? The human race was filled with passion, and poetry was part of that. But Neil just shakes his head a little bit about that.

"You and Caleb are about the only people I know and I guess I'm just a little..." He flaps a hand about it. "So I thought I'd have a cigarette like a fucking hooligan and see if that helped."

[maloscuridad]

"I get it," Nova says. Then he huffs a laugh. "At least you never called the host a colonizer asshole to his face." He's not actually sorry about saying it. It was something that Darlington had needed to hear and he hadn't deserved insulation from it.

"So, did it help?"

[shadows_have_offended]

Neil thinks about it for a second. He doesn't mention once referring to a friend of his a colored girl to someone else, and how he'd gotten the lecture that that wasn't the term that was used anymore. In the end, he says, "Pretty sure that'd be a little hypocritical of me, I think my colonizers are more recent than his."

He thinks it's funny, at least. In keeping with Nova's point. Hopefully it lands.

But he shrugs a little bit in the end. "I had the cigarette. I'm avoiding drinking. I'm talking to you. I'll let him cool off a little and then go back and apologize for being a dick. So, yeah, I guess."

[maloscuridad]

Nova snorts. Fair enough. Neil's never said anything to Nova's face that warrants him lashing out. Maybe because he has the sense and humility not to demand the whole world have access to the magic that Nova's ancestors were forced to cultivate in secret.

"Hey, not drinking is probably a good thing," Nova says. "You a mean drunk?"