How Green Becomes Wood

"We call bottles Jaja. It really matters to us, especially to him," She hesitated, thinking, but ultimately decided it wasn't her buisness to share why it mattered so much to him, "Luckily for you, because she was born early, we get extra weeks of her being so small and loving to be held like this. Unluckily for me, it means I get a longer period of sleep deprived than you had."

She turned to Jack, "I can go, we can put Ivy in her cradle. She's probably near to sleep now anyway. Do you know, Sally I think I told you, but Dark made the cradle for her? All on his own. And her crib upstairs, too."
 
"Of course it matters to you," Sally agreed warmly. She stood and gently slid Ivy into her bed. "You did mention it, and it is so beautiful! He really went all out, didn't he? Though, of course, he would." She offered Daizi a hand up. "I suppose everything in life in a trade. You trade extra snuggles for less sleep."

"You do good work," Jack told Dark. "I can see why you wouldn't want to make a profit of this kind of hobby. It is far too personal."

Xander, Alec, and Peter stood around the table playing a nonsense game with a pair of spoons while they waited for the others to join them, laughing at their own ridiculousness and trying not to get too carried away.
 
Dark nodded, standing where he could see Ivy in her little bed, "I thought, baby furniture takes over the house, but most baby furniture is also hideous, and I did not want my home to be an eyesore." He nearly smiled, while Daizi grinned, clearly amused at how her husband always deflected praise, and hurried over to take his hand. Walking to the dining room, Dark added, "If I were to make a profit, I would need to sell it at a price most people could not afford. I would hate to put things into the world that the person I was growing up would never have even been able to afford dreaming of owning. But I donate some things, either directly to charities or shelters or schools. If I did not, everything would be too cluttered here."

Daizi's face lit up even brighter at the sound of her boys laughing, and as she led Dark into the kitchen, she asked, "What are you three up to?"
 
"Nothing," Xander said as Peter accidentally sent the spoons clattering to the floor.

"Nothing at all," Alec giggled.

Peter dove for the spoons and reemerged with them in hand. "A quick rinse, and these will be right as rain!"

"I got it," Xander assured him, retrieving the spoons. "No need to let the guest wash the dishes."

"A second ago, you were threatening to make me do just that," Peter pointed out.

"Yeah, but that was a second ago," Xander countered.

"Well, I'm glad to see you three are having fun doing... whatever it is you are doing," Sally said, amused and mystified.
 
"Well whoever is going to clean it better hurry!" Daizi laughed, although she didn't actually care so much, "Ivy is just falling asleep now, so she'll probably sleep long enough for me to eat at the table."

Dark followed her into the kitchen, "I can wash the spoons, if it would be easier." He was infinitely more subtle, but he was also glad to hear Xander and Alec laughing again, and made a note to suggest they invite their friends over more often.
 
"I got it, I got it!" Xander assured them both as he took the spoons and washed them off in the sink before drying them. "There. The spoon debacle has ended."

"Until next time," Peter declared ominously.

"We'll see," Alec replied. He smiled and touched Daizi's arm. "Come! Let's eat before Ivy wakes up! Well, continue to eat. Xander already started."

Xander made a face at him as he rejoined them at the table. "You tattle tale. Picking off the edges that are already falling off does not count as actual eating."

"I'm with Xander on this one," Peter agreed. "It's like fries in the bag. Bag fries are free territory, and so are crumbly edge bits."
 
"Hey!" Daizi laughed, holding up her hands, "I don't know why you're telling me, I can't see it, I wouldn't have known. And had you let Dark wash the spoons, he wouldn't have either."

"That still leaves the problem of Peter's parents," Dark said in his calm, unaffected way.

"Yes, but they aren't responsible for our boys, and since technically Sally and Jack did bring the food to share with our family, so I think, technically..." She said the last word in a sing-song voice and tipped to the side to bump against Dark's shoulder, smiling up at him. He rolled his eyes, very slightly shifted his weight to just barely nudge her back, and then mumbled something teasing to her, which made Daizi giggle.
 
"Peter's parents are disappointed that they didn't raise a sneakier food thief," Jack said in mock seriousness.

Sally rolled her eyes. "No, Peter's parents are not. Now, come, eat while it's hot!"

The Hollis family and the twins gathered around the table, and Sally made sure Daizi got the first serving of whatever she wanted, declaring that until Ivy was old enough to receive special treatment like this, it was up to Daizi to accept on her behalf. Jack just chuckled and waited his turn before diving into the food in a manner similar to Xander. Apparently, they had similar ideas when it came to speed-eating food. Even Alec ate a decent amount, though at much more civilized pace.
 
Daizi made the point that, since she was the sole producer of all of Ivy's food, she, technically, was giving Ivy special treatment because if she didn't eat, neither did Ivy. Then she made a more emphatic point that Dark, as her co-producer of Ivy's very existence, he should make his plate second.

He still felt a bit weird eating in front of guests, though, so he took a relatively small amount, and then, when inevitably pressured, took a bit more. Stressful times always somewhat woke the mostly dormant odd behaviors he had around food, but he was coping. Daizi was used to it, and she had her own learned ways of managing it.

Miraculously, Daizi had actually managed to finish all but the last little bit of her dinner before Ivy began to scream for hers, so she politely excused herself from the table.

"Peter," Dark asked, obeying his wife's whispered 'entertain the guests,' command, "My boys have told me a little bit, but I do not know if they are giving biased accounts. How has the school been handling my absence?"
 
"Brilliantly, sir, if by brilliantly you were to translate it as a complete disaster," Peter replied with a grin. "Actually, it's not quite so bad. The substitute is a bit sub-par, but they seem to be surviving. Although, sir, I have been wanting to ask you, how has the camel business been going?"

Xander choked on his water but managed to recover without sounding like he was dying.

Alec held up a finger. "The smuggling of camels business or the bringing down of camel smuggling business?"

"Either one," Peter assured him.
 
"Camel smuggling?" Dark asked, drawing himself up and focusing his gaze on Peter. He did not acknowledge Xander choking on his water, but his eyes did briefly, very briefly, flick to Alec hearing the clarifying question. And he was exactly like himself, as he always had been: pointed, focused, and intentional. Undulled by six weeks of domesticity. Passing no blame onto Peter, clearly just the messenger, Dark inhaled and said, "Al'ama." Damn. Exhaling, he settled back into his seat, and more casually, "You think they could manage to be a bit more creative with their stereotyping. I do not know if it is better or worse than saying I am off with Aladdin." He pronounced the name properly, not like how it was said in the film. It was an intentional choice.

It wasn't to say he was exactly offended, he could see the humor in it, but it was also disappointing.
 
Peter hid a smile. "I take it then, sir, that you would not like to hear about the Aladdin-"

"No, no he would not," Xander snickered while Alec tried to shush Peter.

Sally raised a brow. "The Aladdin what?"

Jack glanced between them. "That fellow with the genie? What's he got to do with camels? And what do camels have to do with Mr. Dark here?"
 
"Disney had planned to set Aladdin," He still said it with the proper pronunciation. In the other room, hearing it, Daizi shook her head, knowing Ivy's childhood would be full of this rant, "in Baghdad. Technically, 1001 Nights, that we call Arabian Nights in English, had it set in China, but it is from 1001 Nights so they said 'put it in Iraq' which is, of course, why they claim it is barbaric, except they decide to change it to a fictional city because of the Gulf War. So they say, 'Add India! It is the same,' and they add the Taj Mahal. And they add the Sphinx, because all of the Middle East is Egypt."

He pushed his hair back, "But I do not imagine the students have thought about any of that and just think, 'oh that is the Middle Eastern Disney film.'"
 
The twins nodded rapidly, smiling innocently. "Yep, yep, that's all they think and nothing more," they agreed.

Peter glanced between them with a raised brow but didn't argue with them. "Great music, at least, and the world's best genie. Anyway, I wouldn't mind owning a camel, but one of those cold-tolerant ones. Dromedary, I think they're called?"
 
Dark looked at the twins and knew, of course, they were lying, but didn't particularly want to know the truth. Well, if he were honest, he was extremely curious, but he knew it were for the best he didn't know.

"Great music except for 'it's barbaric' part," Dark replied, then took a sip of his drink, "I have no idea the effort needed to care for camels, I grew up in the city."
 
Sally sipped her water with a smile. "I have only really spent my time in the city in multiple places. I wouldn't know what to do with myself in the country!"

"I've been in the country once. There were cows," Jack said with a sage nod of his head.

Peter chuckled. "There were cows?" He repeated in amusement.
"Cows and a good deal of blue sky," Jack said cheerfully. He laughed and shook his head. "No, I've spent a fair amount of time in the great outdoors, but I can't say I'd want to live there. Visiting is just fine."
 
"My friend Cooger grew up in New York, but his grandmother lived in the country so every summer he would visit her for most of it, and it was where his mom grew up," Dark mentioned, "They took me there once they had sufficiently forced me into the family. But they did not have livestock like cows, only chickens, and they never asked me to help, and I was not prepared to offer." In fact, he had mostly sat silently and listened to Cooger talk to him while staring into the distance, "Daizi and I would have preferred to live somewhere more rural. Not a farm, but forested, enclosed. But we wanted a good school district," he looked at the twins and smiled in his way, "Good thing, too."
 
Alec smiled back at Dark. "A very good thing! Not to mention, your commute would be terrible."

"Lemme guess," Xander smirked, "while Cooger was yammering away at you, you stared at random pebbles and junk, right?"

"That sounds like something you would do when you were younger," Sally teased Jack.

Jack shrugged. "What can I say? I didn't have many words when I was young."
 
"This house we designed would have been more imposing in the forest, though," Dark said, gesturing lightly at the romantic-gothic interior. Then he looked at Xander and shrugged, "There was little else to do. I was not fluent in English and there was a lot on my mind. He and his family were trying to adjust me to normative teenage life. I was not there yet." In fact, he was fairly certain he had never made it there, and still hadn't reached it. There was always that haunted gleam in his eyes, even during his happiest moment, "and self reflection is good for the soul. I had not quite figured that out yet, but now when I am brooding I am not dwelling, which I used to do." He very slightly smirked. It was better than anger, anyway, but that very much seemed like an unhelpful statement to add.

Dark looked up at Jack and Sally, "Daizi is better at keeping conversation light. I was never taught small talk."
 
"I was taught how, but I was never very good at it," Jack admitted.

"Small talk is where all the best deals are made," Sally said with an elegant wave of her hand. "The quiet hints, the little nods, and, of course, the handshakes."

"Woe be to anyone who goes back on a handshake," Jack said with a nod, unable to hide his grin.

Alec looked between them curiously and ended looked at Dark. "What is so important about a handshake?"
 
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