How Green Becomes Wood

Xander was not as confident, but he had hope. He headed upstairs and checked on Alec. Alec was still curled up and quiet. Xander sat on the edge of his bed and started in on his homework.
 
Dark sighed as Daizi took Ivy into her lap. They had a few hours before Ivy went to sleep for the night, but it was time to start winding her down. In a way, it was all very amusing. This was true, normal, almost mundane high school drama, and it was still so, so serious.
 
Xander finished his homework and took the books and papers down to his room so he could put them in their proper place and not lose them. Then he went back upstairs to sit on Alec's bed and got a little extra study in on English and History, his two arguably weakest subjects. Eventually bored with that, he texted Milo and Sloan a little, making idle talk, and sent the pictures of Ivy and Enkidu to them. (After asking Dark to send them to him and getting his permission to share.) He read between texts. It was boring, but at the same time, Xander felt as if he was somehow making up to Alec all the times he had left him. All the times he'd been angry and abandoned him to figure it out himself. He knew he might be overreacting a little, and so was Alec, but what teenager didn't overreact at least a little from time to time? This was his way of making up all the bad times, overreaction or not. Eventually, he fell asleep.

Alec, for his part, lay quiet and still as the night wore on. He did doze off a little, but he was mostly awake, listening to Xander breathe and feeling Kiki move around from time to time.
 
After Ivy was put in bed, Dark and Daizi enjoyed time to themselves, just as a couple, their other obligations set aside momentarily. As wonderful as it was to be parents and to have roles in their lives they were passionate about, getting to sneak some time just to themselves in the evening was always one of their favourite times of day.

But as the night grew long, Daizi started nodding off on Dark's shoulder, feeling warm and cozy besides him.

"You should go to bed," He murmured, pulling slightly away from her.

"I'm okay," She replied sleepily, nuzzling her cheek against his shoulder, enjoying the scent of him and the way his body vibrated as he spoke.

"My love," Dark kissed her hair, "If you fall asleep down here, you will be sore in the morning."

"If I fall asleep down here, you'll carry me to bed."

"I will be up in a moment, I have to lock the doors," He promised, and with only a medium amount of grumbling, Daizi pushed herself up and went tiredly upstairs.
 
Alec snapped awake abruptly. He couldn't remember falling asleep, but he must have at some point. He lay still for a moment, reorienting himself. Xander was sound asleep in a position that would likely mean a tingling arm when he woke up. Kiki was down at his feet. He moved with great care, sitting up and shifting to the side so he could gently nudge Xander into a more comfortable position. Kiki woke and watched him sleepily. Alec sat there for a minute, staring at nothing.

The darkness felt full and textured, filled with things he could not yet understand. Things that he may never understand. Things he understood a little better now that he'd had some time to simply sit and allow themselves to be felt. He hated feeling things. Hated it more than anything else, even now. Feelings, negative feelings, feelings that were anything other than happiness in some form, they were frightening. Painful. They were things he didn't like facing for long, and he knew this about himself. He'd spent a lot of his downtime thinking about nothing, trying to feel nothing, but then he'd let it in. All of the feelings and thoughts that many other people could handle so easily and so rationally. He let them come to him and sat with them like a troubled child. Now he understood them. Now that he understood them, they were not as frightening. They were not as big and terrifying as they had seemed before. It was like realizing the monster in the darkness was nothing more than an angry dog. Still something that needed to be dealt with, but not as paralyzing when you were expecting something much worse.

A part of him had feared that in breaking up with Emma, he was admitting some kind of defeat. In "losing" Emma, he was setting himself up for a lifetime of loneliness. He hated the idea that his parents and several friends seemed so fond of, that you had to try out several people before you found "the one," that you "needed" to do that in order to have an idea of what kind of person you wanted. It felt so... consumer. Like partners were different brands of shampoo or something. He knew that was not what they meant, but it was how he'd felt when hearing it. He'd been so determined not to be the kind of person who dated a bunch of people while seeking "the one," but maybe he'd been the unrealistic one. Maybe trying to find the right person was not about figuring out what you did and did not want: it was figuring out who fit best with you, and you with them. It was like finding the right piece in a large puzzle. Some people got it right on the first try. Others, they needed to test a few pieces first. Sometimes, you thought you had the right piece, but it was not the right one. There was no harm in getting it wrong. Only in rushing things, or giving up. Just because Emma wasn't the right one did not mean he wouldn't find someone else to be the right one. As long as he kept his hope up but in check, things would be okay.

A lot of life was like that, he thought. Finding the right job, the right home, the right friends, the right school, the right aesthetic, the right style... It took time and was ever evolving. He'd feared that in making a mistake - not that it really was a mistake, he was realizing - with Emma, he'd lost his chance to get the rest of his life "right." Finding one piece rarely made an entire puzzle fall into place in one go. You might find a clump of pieces that all went together neatly, or maybe only one or two, and sometimes only one for a long time. And that was okay, because part of the joy of life was the act of building the puzzle, not in rushing headlong into the end. It was okay. Sometimes, you had to take a break for a while. Sometimes, you had to shift your focus. Sometimes, you had to take a moment to sort the pieces. There were a lot of analogies a puzzle could lend to life.

Emma, he thought, was not a mistake. She'd been wrong for him, but she hadn't been a bad person. In need of some growth, of course, but who didn't? Maybe someday, she'd find someone who would support her all the way to the White House, or wherever she wanted to go. It was not Alec. He was not the right one. But in being with her, he'd learned a lot about life. She had taught him a lot without ever realizing it, and for that, he was grateful.

He took a deep breath, and, steeled by his positive thoughts and realizations, shifted down and sat at the edge of his bed, feet hovering above the floor. It was nothing more than the floor. Another thing he had feared had not come to pass. There was no swirling vortex waiting to suck him down, the feeling so strong that it had felt like a physical presence some days. There was no desire to cease existence. No desire to let it suck him under. It was not there anymore. He was sad, sad that there was no future with Emma in it, but that was it. Just sad. He set his feet firmly on the floor and stood up. Picking up a blanket, he pulled it around his shoulder and walked downstairs, moving quietly to not wake anyone. He wasn't certain what time it was, but he knew it was late. He made his way down and stepped out onto the back porch. He moved a little farther out onto the porch, took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly as he stared up at the stars.
 
Dark was still sitting outside on the porch, but for once not due to his insomnia. He and Daizi had simply been up too late, and he had yet to get around to locking the doors like he had said he would. She was probably fuming, if she had managed to stay awake long enough to notice he was taking more time than he had promised he would.

When Alec came outside, Dark noted Alec hadn't noticed him, and he sat still, knowing if he spoke he'd surely frighten him. It was impressive how someone as large as he was faded so seamlessly into the shadows.

But, since he also recognized it would be strange to pretend like he wasn't there at all, he decided to approach the situation like he did when Daizi didn't realize he was in the room, and very calmly and quietly said, "You are up late."
 
Alec started a little, but quickly realized who it was. He looked at Dark for a moment and then walked over to sit next to him, leaning back to look up at the stars. "I've had a lot of sleep." He took a deep breath, as deep as he could manage, and let it out slowly. "You know... Life is... not so bad," he mused.
 
"No, just sitting with myself and thinking about a lot of things," Alec told him. He smiled and pulled his knees up to hug them. "Life is an awful lot like a confusing puzzle. Don't you think? It's solvable a little bit at a time, but sometimes a piece that you think goes here actually goes there."
 
"That's okay." Alec looked at Dark and gave him an impish grin. "You can be a nihlistic puzzle where the cat got on the table and knocked the pieces around, and maybe the dog ate one."
 
"I do not like to imagine an end," Dark answered, "Or one ultimate, final goal. But I once heard life described as a tapestry, but one we only see from the back, with all the threads and knots visible not unable to see the full image."
 
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