How Green Becomes Wood

"It's sort of like horse radish," She replied, tossing her hair over her shoulder. Dark might have said something to help either the twins or his wife, but he was lost in his thoughts again and said nothing.
 
Xander took a sniff and wrinkled his nose. "It is horse radish. Why did they color the horse radish green?"

Alec shrugged. "No idea, but I am quite happy not tasting it."
 
"It's not quite horse radish, just similar. You should try it," She urged them again, "since we're experimenting, and all. Just a tiny bit. And the ginger is quite nice too," saying this, she ate a piece of ginger, which she did truly enjoy.
 
Neither twin cared much for the wasabi, although the ginger was a nice palate cleanser between sushi rolls. Xander did, indeed, end up getting the all-you-can-eat and trying out a bunch of different types. Some he didn't like but finished anyway, but others he loved. Alec stuck with his two rolls and got a bowl of miso soup to finish, content with his much smaller meal. The warmth of the soup seemed to hug him from the inside out, comforting him in a way the cold fish rolls could not.
 
Near the end of the meal, Daizi asked Dark a question, but he didn't respond until she nudged them. Then he blinked, almost like he was waking up, and apologized, asking her to repeat herself.

As they went to the car, he almost broke his rule and asked Xander to drive home, but recognizing the teen had never driven for that long of a distance, and had never driven in city traffic, he decided the day he wasn't totally there wasn't the day to learn. So he drove home, and once they were safely inside, he locked the door behind them, and said, "I think I am going to go lie down."

"Do you want me to sit with you?"

"No, I think I would like to be alone."
 
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The twins watched Dark warily the entire time. They didn't draw attention to it, but Alec was truly anxious for his foster father, and Xander was worried in his silent, grumpy way. When they got home, they said nothing as Dark went to lay down.

"Why can't we ever have a good day without some kind of shit happening?" Xander grumbled quietly once he was sure Dark couldn't hear.

"Because we're cursed," Alec replied bluntly.
 
Daizi adjusted how she supported her daughter and bent to scratch Enkidu behind his ears, "We have had good days. Your birthday was good, and so was the first day we took Ivy out. And Dark's birthday, and Christmas... I think it's been a few months since we had something detrimental happen. Today was just... really, really bad." She rolled her shoulders back, touching the salt for the second time since coming home. "Are you both okay?"
 
Xander grunted. It was so much easier to focus on the negative than the positive in situations like this. He supposed Daizi was right, but this was still bad. He shrugged out of his jacket and went to hang it up safely.

"We're fine. Nothing bad happened to us," Alec assured her. "We had a good time outside of that, too."
 
"Sure, but it is still stressful, even if it isn't as stressful for us." Daizi told them, rubbing Ivy's back. "Thank you for taking care of him. It helped." She waited for a few moments and then walked to the living room, wanting to relax on the couch since her bedroom was occupied.
 
Xander went out to his shed, and Alec retreated to his room with a sketchpad. It hadn't been all bad. The art installation was genuinely interesting and fun, Ivy had laughed, and Daizi had gotten to eat her coveted food! They took some time to cool down, each to their own.

Eventually, Xander came back in, smelling faintly of leather and wood from his latest project. He went to find Daizi, looking first in the living room where he'd last seen her.
 
She was still there, lying back on the couch with Ivy nestled against her chest, listening to the quiet music she had turned on, and Enkidu was lying at the end of the couch with his head on her feet. Being lost in her thoughts, she didn't notice Xander had walked in.
 
Xander spotted Daizi and guessed she hadn't noticed him. He backed up a bit and reentered, trying to be a little louder and more noticeable as he made his way over to his favorite chair, clicking his tongue at Enkidu to make the dog notice him and move enough to alert Daizi. A shift or a tail wag should do it. He plunked down in his chair and spoke up quieter than he normally might. "So. I have a problem." Not words Xander was known for.
 
His plan to catch her attention worked, so when he sat down she wasn't startled. Instead, she sat up and turned more towards his voice. His tone, and even the way he began the conversation made her furrow her brows, and matching his energy, asked, "What's going on, habibi?"
 
"Do you remember that quiet kid who came to join us on our birthday? Milo?" Xander asked. "I got an issue with him." He paused, frowning, and picked at the arm of the chair. He wasn't used to asking for help or opinions, and certainly not on matters of friendship. How did one go about this kind of thing?
 
"Kind of twitchy, like a rabbit, but, yeah, he's nice enough," Xander agreed. "Thing is, he likes photography, like Peter's dad, but instead of taking pictures of, like, flowers and stuff, he takes candied pictures." He paused, reassessing his words. "Uh, you know, casual pictures of people doing regular stuff. Anyway, I told him Alec and I didn't like our pictures taken and maybe he should ask. He said okay and sorry, then when we went back to school, the pictures were all stuffed into our locker with the negatives and everything. I didn't mean he had to take it that far, you know? And I haven't talked to him since. Seen him a couple of times, but not talked to him." He didn't know how to end this informational spiel, so he just stopped talking awkwardly without bothering to tack on any kind of question.
 
Daizi nodded slowly, drumming on her daughter's back as she thought through what Xander had said, "Have you not spoken to him because of it, or because you haven't really had the time? And do you want to talk to him?"
 
Xander shrugged awkwardly. "I dunno. I guess it could be nice to talk to him. He's weird. But I'm not going to chase him down or ferret him out of one of his hiding places. I dunno if he's avoiding me on purpose or if it's just kind of, you know, not happening to make our paths cross, but I feel kind of... I dunno, guilty, I guess, about the pictures thing. I just wanted him to remember not everyone wants that."
 
"You aren't a bad guy for setting boundaries." Daizi told him definitively, "As long as you were polite about it, you did nothing wrong. Is it possible he also feels guilty, and that's why he gave you the pictures? To try to make it right?"
 
"Yeah, probably, but now I don't know what to do with them," Xander admitted. "They're still in my backpack, and I forgot about them for a while. He said it was just for him, memories and junk, so I didn't mean to take them all away from him. Just, you know, remind him it ain't mannerly even if it is legal to just take pictures."
 
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