How Green Becomes Wood

"Honestly if you become that strong, I will not complain a bit. I weigh over 200lbs, I am fully aware that if there is an emergency and I am incapacitated, I am staying in that emergency situation. I could carry two of you three at once, or I suppose three of the four if one of the three is Tarot, but if I go down, I do not value my chances." He said this without judgement, because he was aware he was not easy to move, especially if he was unconscious and couldn't help to support his own weight at all. Especially now that Daizi was pregnant, because before he figured between her and someone else maybe there was some chance, but currently, and he meant no offense to Alec, but he knew there was no way he and Xander could move him. And to be fair, he would not want them to try. If there was a fire or something and he had passed out from the smoke, he would want them to leave him behind and not try to pull him out too, putting their own lives at risk.

Daizi lightly shuddered hearing him say this, though, "Darling, I really hate it when you talk like that."

"I apologize," He replied, "I did not mean to upset you."

She ambled towards him and wrapped herself in his arm, "Maybe, we should go to the Cafe and not talk about something that'll never happen, if there's an emergency you'll be completely fine and strong and carry all of us out on your back and we'll all be just fine."
 
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Xander snorted softly. "We're used to dealing with problems bigger than us. If we needed to, we'd figure it out."

"Rolling is a possible option," Alec mused. "Perhaps onto a sheet we could pull together?"

"Office chair," Xander said. "Wouldn't be easy, but it has wheels."

"Oh! Wheels! Do we have a wheelbarrow?" Alec asked.

Xander nodded. "We do. It'd be hard getting him into it. Maybe a ramp of boards and roll him on up?"

"I don't know if we could roll him up. That might upset the wheelbarrow," Alec pointed out.

"Ah, good point. Maybe if we braced it really good, we could kind of fold him up into it."

"Excellent idea! We should get a wagon. One of those garden ones with the removable sides."

"Not a bad idea. And there's also a tarp covered in baby shampoo. It'd take more time to set up, but if we weren't in a hurry but still had to move him..."

Alec giggled. "I like that one best. Baby oil or shampoo and water!"
 
Behind her sunglasses, Daizi squeezed her eyes shut and dug her nails into Dark's arm. The whole conversation brought back a specific memory, and not one she particularly enjoyed remembering. Naturally, Dark noticed, because he always did, so he very softly whispered to her, and after she replied, he held her tight and kissed the top of her head.

"I am very glad you both can think up plans so quickly," He said, and felt strangely touched they were both immediately willing to try to find solutions, "but perhaps we should save the discussion of how to handle such things for later. Although it is important to remember we have stairs." He said this sentence quickly, because he was interested in engaging in the discussion, but he understood how Daizi found it upsetting. She was quietly fixating on that one memory, but imagining if it had happened now, and it ended differently, what would happen if she was left with herself and three kids? And how then if she lost the baby, it'd be so much bigger, and what if without Dark there Child Services came and took the twins away, then she would be all alone. All of these thoughts and anxieties were entirely internal, she was just quiet. The thought of something happening to her husband was, understandably, one of her biggest fears, and the worst part was knowing in a dangerous situation, managing her own self would be difficult enough.
 
"That's what helmets are for!" Xander said a little too cheerfully.

"We made a slip-and-slide in our yard once with tarps, shampoo, and water," Alec mused. "Only, it wasn't baby shampoo. It was our mother's good stuff."

Xander groaned. "Oh, man, that stuff foamed! The whole yard looked rabid. It stung like hell if it got in your eyes, too."

"And then our mom showed up. She'd gotten off a little early that day," Alec remembered. He shuddered. "I thought for certain we should start digging our own graves."

"And then she started laughing. She laughed so hard she had to sit down right there on the sidewalk," Xander said, a tiny smile tugging at his lips. "That was the hardest I ever saw her laugh."
 
They so rarely heard the twins talk about their mother, Daizi smiled and raised her head. Neither she nor Dark interrupted them, but when they seemed finished, she said, "I'm glad you have such a positive memory to think back on. It sounds like a really fun day." She really wanted to ask them questions, she was desperate to learn about their lives before she met them, but she never really knew which questions were appropriate. She never wanted to ask something too personal too soon.

After hesitating, though, she did ask, "What was her name?"
 
Xander shoved his hands into his pockets, his smile disappearing.

After a moment of hesitation, Alec said, "Tara Aven. Tara Aven Cunningham. She would have been thirty-two in two months." He smiled up at Daizi. "Not that you should ever reveal a lady's age, of course, but I don't think she'd mind you knowing."

"You kidding? She wouldn't have given them the time of day," Xander grumbled.

Alec ducked his head. "Maybe, but she wouldn't have been rude."
 
"My birthday is also in July," Daizi said, "except I'm turning 37, so just a bit older. I don't mind revealing it, I'm not ashamed of how old I am. But it's okay if she wouldn't have really felt comfortable talking to me, a lot of people don't really know how to talk to a blind person, so I'm never surprised when people get weird around me. It doesn't feel grand but it's unfamiliar, and people either try to hard not to offend--people constantly try to avoid using the word 'see' or 'look' around me. It's not offensive to tell me, 'I'll see you later,' I catch myself saying that--or they talk really loudly or like I'm a child, or they just avoid interacting." It kind of sucked, but she had grown accustomed to it, and anyway she didn't want the twins to feel poorly that their mother may not have adored her and Dark.

"People are also generally frightened of me," Dark added, "and I had to stop going to dive bars because there are too many men in those places who tried to pick fights with me to prove how manly they are or something. So avoiding me is preferable to a random drunk guy attempting to shove me."

"I kind of miss your bar fighting era though," Daizi sighed.
 
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Alec and Xander stared at Dark, the ever-proper suit-wearing teacher and cried simultaneously, "You go to dive bars!?"

"There is no way!" Xander stated.

Alec shook his head. "Utterly impossible."

"Dive bars are for scoundrels like us, not gentlemen," Xander concluded.
 
Dark blinked at them and then very slowly rolled up his sleeve and said, "...Yes, of course I used to go to dive bars. First of all, I was poor, but also I am good at playing pool and if you are an adult they are rather enjoyable, until some 5'7 guy comes and punches you for no reason. But, the good people in those places are better than the people you find anywhere else, they will have your back."
 
"For more punching?" Alec asked, bewildered.

"Nah, I think he means they'll keep him from getting clobbered," Xander said. He looked Dark up and down and shook his head. "Nope. Can't see it. Poor or not, you're way too classy for anything like a dive bar."

Alec nodded in complete agreement. "Too classy!"
 
"I think you both need to understand I have gone through many years of personal development, I was not born as I am now." He replied, a mild sparkle in his eyes as he recalled the wild years of his youth.

"After Dark kidnapped me from my wedding," Daizi added, having never lost the crush she had on the version of Dark who was still scrappy, "we tried to say we weren't in a relationship, because it made my life as a runaway bride seem less complicated, so I was living in this two bedroom apartment with him and Cooger, supposedly sleeping on the couch but sneaking into his room every night and back to the couch every morning. And going to a dive bar somewhere meant we could sneak off to someplace nobody knew us and so we didn't need to hide." She didn't mention how their game ended when Cooger caught them in bed together.

"Okay, again, I did not kidnap you, you came willingly."
 
"You guys led a really weird life," Xander stated.

"It's like a romance novel," Alec sighed wistfully.

Xander stopped and eyed his brother. "Since when do you read romance novels?"

Alec gave him a beatific smile. "I don't have to tell you everything. Anyway, I think it is a lovely story. Imagine it as a romantic comedy! It would tug on heartstrings all around the world. Tears and laughter!"

"And gagging," Xander said, rolling his eyes. "I think I'd rather avoid all that altogether. I'm going to stay a bachelor forever."

Alec considered the proposition as he looked at a patch of tall, bobbing flowers. "Alright, that seems fair to me," he agreed. "We can both be bachelors. Can we have a house of our own with a hidden library?"

Xander shrugged. "Sure. I'll figure out how to make a secret door for you and do all the cooking."

"I'll clean and make sure we stay clothed!" Alec agreed.
 
"Well, would you believe us if our story was just meeting in a coffee shop or at work?" Daizi asked and then turned her face up towards Dark at the same time as he lightly squeezed her elbow. Since she couldn't see him, he had learned over their years ways to give equivalent signals to what would, for a sighted couple, be handled through a look. Alec almost immediately deciding to be a forever bachelor because Xander did concerned them. They had nothing wrong with forever-bachelors, Cooger was one, and they'd never say you'll change your mind (although they did wonder if Xander ever would, without judgement, but they sometimes talked if he was aromantic and/or asexual, if he hadn't reached the point in his life where he began to have those feelings, or if it was his past trauma souring him to the idea, and it could have been a combination of the three), but it was the way Alec just agreed to go along with it to stay with his brother that stood out to them.

"It did not feel like a comedy when we were living it," Dark said, choosing not to immediately address their concern, "I remember sitting in my terrible apartment with the mold growing above the shower I was too tall for, and holding the letters from her while we were broken up and feeling like nothing would ever be okay again."

"And the way we fought when we were back together and I wanted to stay secret, it was miserable." Daizi agreed, also choosing to address the problem later.

Still, even though they were avoiding the main problem, he wanted to reemphasize that relationships were neither exclusively sweet nor were they exclusively miserable, "What did the Priest say in Fleabag? Love is awful, it makes you doubt yourself, judge yourself, it is all any of us want and it's hell when you get there? So it is no wonder why we do not want to do it alone? And love is not something weak people do."
 
Neither Alec nor Xander could imagine Dark and Daizi broken up at any point in life. At least, not broken up and then put back together again. Even Xander with his belief that all marriages and relationships ended could truthfully picture either of them with anyone but each other.

"That sounds quite scary and hard," Alec said. "I'm glad you got back together again. Partly because that was the road that led you to fostering us." He gave them both a happy smile. "That is something I'll always be thankful for."
 
"Looking back, it feels like we maintained our emotional relationship during those years, because we never stopped talking to teach other, which meant it'd never work out with anyone else we dated," Daizi said, and after a moment grinned broadly, because she had so many memories of him in her mind, and even the painful ones from when they weren't together seemed sweet, now that she knew how their story ended. They were walking arm-in-arm and his baby was growing inside her; she never had to worry or wonder about their love, "and I am very thankful we get to foster you too, I love being able to provide you both with a safe place to land."

Dark glanced down at his hand, "I should get the red string tattoo. I think I can fit it in above the spider, it is really just a red line," he desperately missed getting tattoos, "If I had more space left over, I would let you both pick something for me."
 
"Why a red line?" Xander frowned. "What is that supposed to signify?"

"Are you sure you aren't addicted to getting tattoos?" Alec asked, sounding almost worried for Dark.
 
"You will not like it--" Dark chuckled, "it is meant to represent the 'red line of fate' which connects two people, it can get knotted and tangled but it will never break and can never be cut. So it would be for my relationship with Tarot. Although it would be better if we both had one, but I would not force it."

Daizi hummed and kissed Dark's shoulder, "I couldn't see it, but a little thing like that I'd get with you, if it matters to you."

He smiled softly, "No, I could not even ask, finger tattoos hurt more. But I appreciate your willingness, it means a lot to me," after breathing in deeply, he turned to Alec, "No, I am not addicted. I just enjoy them. I got my first only because I thought it would be cool, but then I began to use them to cover scars and stretch marks, and liked how I had reclaimed what had been done to me, so I got more. And I guess I just found more reasons to keep doing so. It feels like how I supposed to look."
 
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Alec didn't look completely convinced. Finding reasons to do something painful and permanent sounded addicted to him, but he wasn't going to argue. Instead, he said, "Well, you're going to need a second body soon as far as I've seen. Why don't we read more of these plaques to Daiz so she knows the names of the flowers we're smelling?"

Xander wandered off, bored of the conversation. It held no interest to him. He was bored of the place but trying not to be annoying about it. He'd seen all the flowers. What more was there to see? More flowers? The same ones again? And the powerful scent made him feel like sneezing.
 
"Running out of space was a sad day," Dark agreed, "and you are welcome to read them to her." He looked over towards Xander, and wondered what to do. It wasn't hard to see he wasn't loving the garden, but everytime they offered leaving, they were told no. He would consider not asking and just suggesting they all go home, but Alec and Daizi still enjoyed it, and he didn't want to disappoint them either.

"I touch the signs if they're close by, if I liked the shape of the petals or the scent, but otherwise I don't mind so much," She shrugged, "I'm kind of hungry, we can go to the café if you'd like."
 
"I am rather hungry, too," Alec admitted. "Xander? Are you hungry?"

"I could eat," Xander said, coming back to rejoin the group. "We're going to that cafe, right?"

Alec nodded. "Daizi said it was really good." He looked up at her. "I think we're ready to go, but only if you're ready. Are you ready?"
 
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