How Green Becomes Wood

Milo shoved his hands in his pockets, knowing Xander didn't understand, but he couldn't blame him. "I'm not trying to be unhappy. I just want to be ready. Because..." He frowned, trying to think why it mattered to be ready, but he didn't know why. He just knew he had to be.

Dark had come home only minutes before they came back inside and was sitting on the couch with Ivy in his lap, talking very seriously to her in Arabic while holding both of her hands and supporting her in a seated position with his knees. When the door opened, he looked up, "Hello Xander, hello Milo."

"Hello, Mr. Dark," Milo mumbled.
 
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Because if he wasn't ready, something bad would happen. Maybe Milo had some ideas of the bad things that could happen. Maybe it was just this vague feeling that something bad would happen. Maybe he was certain a very specific bad thing would happen. Because he needed to be with the one person who he had tied his life to. She had shredded his life along with her own, but she was his lifeline, and he could not see the way to grab onto anything or anyone else. He needed to be with his mother and to babysit her. To make certain she stayed alive because he couldn't lose her like he'd lost his father no matter how bad of a mother she was. She could be far worse than she actually was, but he'd still need to be with her. In a way, he was addicted to his mother just as she was addicted to drugs. Well, if his mother was able to truly break her habit, perhaps he would too. The problem was, neither could do it on their own, but both needed to want that help. How did you help someoen who didn't want to be helped? Who wanted their life to change, but not to actually change it? Xander knew Milo was not deliberately trying to be unhappy. Maybe he was self-sabotaging on a subconscious level, or maybe it was as simple as he was too fixated on something else to try. Maybe he was afraid. There were a lot of maybes in his assumptions, and Xander knew it. He could be completely wrong, but he felt like he was in the right ballpark. All he knew was that he did understand on some level, but understanding did not always mean you knew how to help.

"Hey, Ba." Xander nodded to Milo. "He's desperately curious to see your woodworking, but I said that was up to you." He slid off his glasses and went to put them away, deliberately not looking at Milo and pretending to be completely innocent.
 
Because if he allowed himself to really plant roots, and allowed them to grow deep, then it'd be that much harder to rip them out. This time was supposed to be different, his mom had promised it'd be different. They'd move to New Mexico, and that would be it, the very last stop on the road, there'd be no moving around anymore, and he'd be able to set down his roots then.

But now his mom was down in New Mexico. And he was still here in Pennsylvania, and there was the promise that she would come and get him when she was ready and his grandparents agreed that she was ready. And nothing had changed. He was still sitting around knowing that at any moment he would get the call that he was moving, so he still had to guard himself like he had been doing all these years. Like Xander said, it could be months. Until this recent blow, Milo at least had a deadline, he had the knowledge of when. Now he didn't even have that. Everyone was telling him it was a good thing, but it was the same as what he had before, and although he understood the delicate differences between the two situations, practically, for his daily life, they were identical. And how was he supposed to relax and let himself really build a life here when at any moment his mom could be ready to start their actually settled life? And for some reason, it felt like everybody in his life expected him to almost hope his mom didn't get it together and come back for him, like everybody else had decided she had run out of chances.

It was all too complicated and too upsetting for him to fully grasp, so he stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared at his shoes to look Mr. Dark in the eye, "I--well, I'm interested, but it's okay, you don't have to show me."

"No, it is no problem," Dark replied with a slight shake of his head since he was holding Ivy's hands and therefore could not give the wave he typically did in those moments, "I enjoy showing my work. I can take you both out there after dinner."

"Okay, sir, thank you, sir."
 
"I'm going to see if Mama needs help in the kitchen," Xander said to Milo. "You can come with if you want or stay here. Whatever least floods your boat."

"That's not how that saying goes," Alec called from the other room.

"It is now!" Xander called back before heading into the kitchen.
 
"I'll go with you," Milo said, definitely not feeling comfortable being left unattended in his friend's home. He needed an anchor, and that was Xander, and so he hurried after him to the kitchen. "I think whatever least floods makes more sense for me, actually. I'm anxious all the time so everything a little bit is a flood."

"Dinner is nearly ready," Daizi said, hearing them step in, "but you're welcome to set the table, if you need something to do."
 
"It's nice to be right sometimes," Xander said with a smirk. To his mother, he said, "Thanks. It's smelling good." He indicated for Milo to follow him as he collected the appropriate plates and dishware. He handed some to Milo, kept some for himself, and started setting the table. "Hey, we talked around it a lot, but I forgot to ask. How is your mum? She got settled into her new place okay?"
 
"Yeah, she's okay, I think." Milo replied, setting down the plates, "She already has job interviews lined up for, like, being a waitress and other jobs like that, and even one at Sephora. And she sent me a picture, she has a cactus in front of her house. She says she thinks flowers on it are going to bloom, soon. It's not quite been a week, yet, but she said she's working really hard."
 
Xander paused and glanced at Milo. "Cactus? Really? Cool. If it blooms, you gotta show me a picture, yeah? Alec'd love that." He kept going, showing Milo how they set up the silverware. Only Daizi needed it a certain way, but it had become standard for them all to have it that way. "How big is the place?"
 
"Not super big, but it is two bedrooms, because I was supposed to be there too. I don't know what she's going to do with the second bedroom, it's not furnished right now. It's one of those adobe looking houses, and it's pink, and has it's own fenced yard, but the yard is stone, with a fountain. The fountain doesn't work, though."
 
"I guess you get to plan out what you're going to put in that room, then, and let her know for when you get there," Xander said reasonably. "I don't know how to fix a fountain, but it sounds like fun to figure out, though I don't know if I could take a pink house."

"Pink used to be the color for boys, you know," Alec said, wandering in, "and blue was for girls."
 
"I like it. I think it's unique, you know? Like this house. I like when houses are special looking. Because then you're able to say, 'I live in the pink house.' or 'I live in the haunted house.' And then when people come to visit, they know they're at the right one, and they don't have to worry if maybe they were accidentally sent the wrong number, because someone can type a four instead of a three really easily, but if they say, 'it's the pink one,' and you're at the only pink house on the block, you know you're at the right place." Milo explained, not at all bothered at the thought of living somewhere potentially girly, "And Mom says it blends into the sunset."
 
"I don't think of pink as a girl's color. I just don't like it," Xander shrugged, "but, yeah, it's nice to be able to find the thing instead of driving past a million houses that look exactly the same."

"It looks like there are a lot of houses that look like that around there," Alec said, investigating pictures on his phone. "I like them, though. They are still very different. They look like they'd be cool during the summer."
 
"We used to live in this boarding house that looked really old and cool on the outside, but they had made the inside really boring and modernist, and we weren't even allowed to hang up posters. Not that we had posters to hang up, decorations like that are hard to take down in a hurry," Milo commented, adjusting a crooked fork, "that's something I'm excited for when I move to the pink house, I'll be able to put out things I like that just exist to be there. I'm gonna get a snow globe."
 
"A snow globe?" Xander asked. "Why a snow globe?"

"I like snow globes," Alec agreed. "You don't need a reason to want a snow globe."

Xander shrugged. "Fair. How about posters? What are you going to hang up?"
 
"I don't know. They just seem like a good piece of clutter. You can put a snow globe on your desk, and they have a little thing inside. People can put pictures inside snow globes." It didn't occur to him how snow globes are breakable, and therefore difficult to keep from breaking if you moved around all the time, often in a hurry. "I don't know. Maybe like... art prints, you know? Or I'll make big prints of some of my own photographs and hang those, but also that feels weird and self-indulgent, I don't know if I'd like to look at my own work every day."
 
"Maybe if you had a favorite picture you liked. Or rotated them out," Xander suggested as Alec went to see if Daizi needed help. "It could work. If I had my own room, or at least space in the one I have, I'd get one of those beanbag chairs. They look uncomfortable, but I've always wanted one."
 
"Oh, I'd like, um, a hammock, you know? Or one of those egg chairs that suspend from the ceiling." Milo said, smiling a little as he considered what possibilities were really there once he wouldn't have to constantly think about how easy it would be to pack down everything, "and I'd get a rug, too." And it'd be the same colour as one of my walls."
 
Xander had to think a minute before he could conjure the mental image of the "egg chairs" Milo referred to. Then he nodded in agreement. Those sounded comfortable, too, or a hammock, though he wasn't sure how to fit a hammock in a bedroom. "Are your walls going to be different colors?"
 
"Three of them would be white," Milo said, for the first time scratching his arm purely because it itched, "and the third one I might paint spring green. Or light blue, or. Something. Not yellow. It's just a rental, but mom says that as long as we paint the colours back to what they were before we moved in when she's able to buy a house, it's fine to paint them any colour."
 
"Green's nice," Xander agreed. "Any colour, huh? Before you leave, remind me to show you our room." He nodded toward Alec. "We were told the same thing when it was decided we'd be staying here."
 
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