It feels like a gross exaggeration to say that his days feel long. There is no enchained procession on endless nights spent building a monument of stone and shadow he was a slave to from birth, even after death. The days aren't so long as they are empty. Even as he bides himself to the steps he walked for years before the last—six miles starting just before dawn, church on Sunday, practice arrangement memorized for half his life, peruse fall course selection considerations, meticulously review and write notes over the rituals of the last year—nothing suits.
He can play the part—cling to the normal and refuse to surrender to the trappings and the suits of woe—but the darkness bides a burn beneath it all. More patient and more ravenous for each new minute held a-bay. Which is where he finds himself again tonight: a play-act in necessity, even in empty-silence of Il Bastone, perhaps all the greater the need for it. To prove he is not a man only when there are others around; that he still belongs within these walls, no prodigal son returned only to rip the flood boards asunder when not kept under lock and key.
As though alone, he must be even more sure, even more silent, even more studious and grateful: penitent to the grace of being pulled back, being accepted (acceptable), for each door the opened, or book that appeared, each time the floor or a wall hummed softly when his skin settled against it. As though that was grace, but a far deeper, darker, desperate clarion call to deserve even the barest brush of one fleeting second having it again.
Darlington wasn't expecting Alex to more than toe a foot or two in the door and give her report, as though they both weren't well aware that, too, was a shadow charade on too many manifold degrees; which made the event that followed unexpected, to say the least—
Left him briefly holding the less than half a finger now of his Lagavulin in one hand and a book in the other, both aloft, as Galaxy Stern suddenly pressed herself like an overly larger pet into his side and against his leg; left him in the middle of a forgotten breath holding very still, eyes not quite deciding whether to settle back on his floating book, the fireplace, or the head of dark hair suddenly right at his peripheral.
One of his brows quirked as he tested lowering his arm with the book back to the arm of the couch. "Good evening, Stern." There was a stiff amusement there; three words to politely chastise the lack of her greeting, the very Alex-ness of her just treading over lines of propriety like they never existed in the first place. (As though Alex hadn't done exactly that. Looked at all the laws of man and beast and god and hell and walk through them the same, if she was bent to it.)
Re: affectionate physical contact. sometime post-hell bent.
He can play the part—cling to the normal and refuse to surrender to the trappings and the suits of woe—but the darkness bides a burn beneath it all. More patient and more ravenous for each new minute held a-bay. Which is where he finds himself again tonight: a play-act in necessity, even in empty-silence of Il Bastone, perhaps all the greater the need for it. To prove he is not a man only when there are others around; that he still belongs within these walls, no prodigal son returned only to rip the flood boards asunder when not kept under lock and key.
As though alone, he must be even more sure, even more silent, even more studious and grateful: penitent to the grace of being pulled back, being accepted (acceptable), for each door the opened, or book that appeared, each time the floor or a wall hummed softly when his skin settled against it. As though that was grace, but a far deeper, darker, desperate clarion call to deserve even the barest brush of one fleeting second having it again.
Darlington wasn't expecting Alex to more than toe a foot or two in the door and give her report, as though they both weren't well aware that, too, was a shadow charade on too many manifold degrees; which made the event that followed unexpected, to say the least—
Left him briefly holding the less than half a finger now of his Lagavulin in one hand and a book in the other, both aloft, as Galaxy Stern suddenly pressed herself like an overly larger pet into his side and against his leg; left him in the middle of a forgotten breath holding very still, eyes not quite deciding whether to settle back on his floating book, the fireplace, or the head of dark hair suddenly right at his peripheral.
One of his brows quirked as he tested lowering his arm with the book back to the arm of the couch. "Good evening, Stern." There was a stiff amusement there; three words to politely chastise the lack of her greeting, the very Alex-ness of her just treading over lines of propriety like they never existed in the first place. (As though Alex hadn't done exactly that. Looked at all the laws of man and beast and god and hell and walk through them the same, if she was bent to it.)
"I trust everything went well?"