How Green Becomes Wood

Cooger sighed from relief when Xander said he didn't want to talk about the death of his mom. He felt sort of like a dick about it, but he really just was not the person to speak to about those sorts of things. He was the sort of person who normally resorted to making some dark joke about it, because it was really the only way he knew to cope with serious emotions, but he was self-aware enough to know not everybody found those sorts of jokes comforting, and in fact, a lot of people found them offensive, and he didn't want to upset the kid, especially because that meant he would upset his close good friends, and that was his worst nightmare.

So, instead, he drummed on his steering wheel and said, "Well. If you do it right, you go out and you learn from somebody. Ideally, you go to a trade school, or you get an apprenticeship, or you just start hanging out with someone who already knows themselves a thing or two. Or, if you're me, you fuck around and find out, and learn from trial and error," He laughed, and began pulling out of the parking lot, "Now, I did start out learning from others a bit. My grandpa knew a thing or two 'bout cars, learned a bit from him. For awhile, I worked at an appliance repair company, learned a bit there. But also I always liked just sorta, taking things apart, and slapping 'em back together. I'd try to fix things at my old apartments when they broke, and if I couldn't do it, when I had to hire someone, I'd ask them about a hundred questions as they fixed it. Never went to school for any of it, though. That's why I just bill myself as a Handyman, not, anything more specific than that. I'd give you my card, but you live with my people, so, figure you don't really need it. But if you ever wanted to come learn a thing or two, you're always welcome at the cabin. You just can't be allergic to cats. I foster cats, probably too many."
 
"Never liked cats, but they're alright, I guess," Xander shrugged. He doubted he'd ever actually take Cooger up on his offer, and he doubted actually meant his offer, like, really meant it. It was probably just a polite gesture, and he supposed he appreciated it, but right now, he was just tired and hurting and really wanted to go home and take a bath. Baths were a rare treat for him. Usually, he felt far too vulnerable, but if Cooger left, and Dark and Daizi were at work, he'd have the house to himself. It was the best time! He leaned back in the seat, listening to Cooger, but not really interested. It would be cool to learn to be self-sufficient like that, and a part of him was interested, but he'd mostly brought it up to change the subject.
 
"When I was your age, I thought men owning cats was kind of embarrassing, you know? Somehow I got it into my head that it was emasculating. Dunno why. Then I met this real mean dumpster cat, and I started feeding the bastard. And he just sorta came in. He smelled awful, scratched all my furniture, and if I left for the weekend he'd always throw up in my bed, but I do miss the guy. Anyway, I started volunteering at the animal shelter--that's how Dark and Daizi got their dog, we busted a puppymill, and most of the dogs were in pretty good shape, but Enkidu was rough and way small for his age, so..." He shrugged, "But me, I keep cats. I've got four of my own, then all my fosters."

He drove back to Dark's house, playing music loudly over his speakers, and eventually pulled into the driveway of that strange, creepy house at the end of the lane, "Alright kiddo, there you are. You're probably gonna want to take some pain meds. Do you want me to stay or...? Dark didn't really give me any instructions other than to take you home."
 
Xander snorted as he pushed the truck door open and climbed out. "I'm fourteen, not four. I'm good. Thanks for the ride and the ice cream, but you don't gotta stay. I'll just take the meds and play it cool until they get home to bust my chops." He closed the door and gave a wave before heading to the weird, dark house he more or less called home. He glanced up at the front and realized, no, not more or less, this was home. Bizzare and odd, but home, and even if Dark and Daizi did bust his chops, at least they listened first. They were annoying about the whole listening thing, but that was better than blindly rampaging around stating you were doing what was best without even getting to know the person. He turned, gave Cooger a salute, and headed inside for a hot bath and some pain meds.
 
Cooger waved goodbye, completely fine with leaving the kid home alone. From what he had been told, Xander had been briefly homeless, so it wasn't like the kid had never been unchaperoned before in his life. So he drove back to his cabin, parked his truck, and just flipped on the TV for a quiet night in with his many, many cats.
 
Over the next couple of days, Alec kept his head down at school and made certain to bring home any homework Xander would need. He was a little quieter than usual, but considering he was already a quiet fellow, it was hard to tell. He still made lunch for them both, leaving Xander's lunch on the table, and always made certain to ask Daizi if she had lunch or wanted one. Then he was off to a day at school. None of the other students ever laid hands on him or anything like that, but there were words and whispers, and walkways that seemed to materialize tripping hazards, and hallways that tended to get strangely blocked when he needed to get by. Tables that were always full. He was used to it. This always happened if Xander was gone for any reason. At least they didn't hurt him. He could tolerate their juvenile antics for that.

Xander, for his part, stays home outside of occasionally wandering around their close neighborhood. He did his homework, cleaned the house, slept, and spent long moments trying to think of what he wanted to do with his life. And this was only in two days! He wasn't used to having literally nothing to do while in such a safe place. What did people do with themselves when they weren't working or in school? Hobbies were such an elusive thing. How did one get started with a hobby? How did you figure out that you even wanted to do a thing badly enough to spend money and spare time on the thing?

So, when Alec got home from school on the evening of day two of his suspension, Xander lay on the couch reading a book while one foot rested on the top of the couch and his head hung off. He looked at Alec upside down. "Are horses a hobby?"

Alec took off his shoes and coat and touched the salt before answering. "I think you know more than me since you're the one reading about them, but I think they sound more like a full-time commitment to me."

Xander groaned and let his head flop back. "I don't know what to do. I'm bored enough to read!"

Alec smiled at his brother and put his bag on one of the chairs. "Well, perhaps that's because you don't have enough life in your life!" He walked over, his green-lined grey coat flowing around him as he did so. He was wearing a dark grey vest with red piping over a bright blue and yellow shirt and a red tie. Compared to his top half, his nice, neat black slacks looked almost normal. If only they weren't half of a marching band suit complete with a thin red stripe down the side. It didn't match the school's marching band's uniform, so who knew where it came from.

Xander frowned at him, still upside down, and tossed the book onto the coffee table. "That sentence makes no sense."

Alec grinned and trotted over to the small entertainment system in the corner. He opened the CD player, picked out a disc he'd kept hidden tucked in the very back. "You'll see in a minute," he grinned. He popped in the disc, which was a burnt CD of all of his own personal favorite songs, and hit play.

Xander growned as James Bay's "Best Fake Smile" started to play. "Really?"

Alec hopped up onto the table and started singing along with the music, pretending to hold a mic as he did so.

No, you don't have to wear your best fake smile!
Don't have to stand there and burn inside!
Oh, oh, oh
If you don't like it!

Xander tried to ignore him, but the guitar riff was pretty catchy, and he finally got up and started pretending to play along as he stood on the couch. They finished off with a flair, both of them singing along to the song.

If you don't bleed it,
You don't need it anymore!
If you don't need it,
Get up and leave it on the floor!
No more believing,
Like it's a voice you can't ignore,
If you don't need it,
You don't need it, no!

They went through three more songs that way, Xander trying to pretend he wasn't into it with Alec bouncing from table to couch and spinning across the floor, singing his heart out. Xander mostly pretended to play an instrument, not really singing much, but Alec threw himself into the performance, body and soul. Not even grumpy Xander could resist, and the pair of them ended up in hysterical giggles.

Then Meghan Trainer's "Better when I'm Dancin'" came on. Xander refused to sing along to the "girly" song, but he did dance along while Alec sang along perfectly.

Don't think about it
Just move your body
Listen to the music
Sing, oh, ey, oh
Just move those left feet
Go ahead get crazy
Anyone can do it
Sing, oh, ey, oh

Show the world you've got that fire
Feel the rhythm getting louder
Show the world what you can do
Prove to them you've got the moves
I don't know about you

But I feel better when I'm dancing, yeah, yeah
Better when I'm dancing, yeah, yeah
Oh, we can do this together
I bet you feel better when you're dancing? Yeah, yeah

Alec danced as he sang, pretending he was Charlie Brown from the Peanuts movie and he was about to win the trophy at the winter dance, but hopefully he wouldn't slip and fall like Charlie Brown did.
 
Daizi walked up the long path to her front door, touching the salt as she passed through the threshold. It had been a very, very long day, to the extent that, at some point, she had to just convince her boss she would do better work if she could work from home the rest of the day. Her coworkers were all great, and she got along great with her boss, but one of her preliminary articles had just returned from being peer-reviewed, and had been absolutely ripped apart. Thankfully, they felt the research it's wasn't flawed, so she hadn't done months of work for something that would never be published, but still, it was brutal. And she was exhausted.

Daizi was going to call out to the twins that she was home as she took off her shoes, but then she heard something unexpected: singing. She left her cane on the front table with her sunglasses, and quietly walked towards the source of the noise. She did not know they were dancing, although by the ruckus she guessed they probably were, but luckily for them she was unable to see any of their moves.

Daizi leaned against the archway, smiling to herself and listening. She knew she should probably say something, or, walk away, and reenact her return home, but louder, to save them any embarrassment, but it was the first time Alec and Xander seemed to just be acting like normal, happy kids, and she didn't want them to feel the need to stop.
 
Neither twin noticed Daizi at first as they continued playing around. Then Cody Simpson's "La Da Dee" came on. Xander snorted in laughter and waved his hands, refusing to have any part of the perky love song. Alec grinned and pretended to be plucking a banjo as he sang along, his voice surprisingly similar to the Australian singer's, though without the accent.

There's no way to say this song's about someone else
Every time you're not in my arms, I start to lose myself
Someone please pass me my shades
Don't let 'em see me down
You have taken over my days so, tonight I'm goin' out

Yet I'm feeling like there is no better place than right by your side
I had a little taste and I'll only spoil the party anyway
'Cause all the girls are looking fi-

He spun around as he sang and spotted Daizi standing there watching. The word "fine" caught in his lips, and he stuttered to a stop, his face growing red as the song continued in the background, its bright and happy tune at odds with the sudden silence from both the twins as they stared at Daizi. Xander finally went over and turned the CD player off.

"S-sorry, Daizi," Alec almost whispered, inching back.

"We were just fooling around," Xander said, moving to stand next to his brother, who was still on the coffee table. "We'll get to our homework now."
 
"No, it's okay," She laughed, "I'm glad you're having fun. It's only, like, four, so if you want to do something else for a bit, I won't stop you. You're in school eight hours a day, or, would be. If all you do is work your brain'll melt out of your ears. Although, if you left footprints on the coffee table you might want to clean them. It can support my weight, so you're probably fine, but you know how Dark likes things clean." She shrugged her shoulders with her arms loosely crossed... And then took a few moments to think. She obviously couldn't see exactly where they were standing, so she was really only able to estimate where they were in the room, but judging from the way their footfalls changed she had some idea of where they were standing. So maybe that was why they seemed nervous about her presence, they were standing on her furniture.

But she found herself rather suddenly thinking about how the twins often seemed a bit... standoffish with her, and she couldn't blame them, she wasn't exactly the type of person you met every day, and they had known Dark for a few months prior to when they moved, so it made sense if they were more comfortable around him than her but, "I'm not going to eat you both, you know that right? I'm not that kind of witch, and even if I was, you're both too old," She chuckled, and then said, "and I'm really much more relaxed than my husband, I'm not going to get annoyed if you're just having fun."
 
Alec quickly scrambled down from the table and crouched to rub the footprints off the table's dark surface. "I am sorry, I guess we got carried away," he admitted, scrubbing hard to make certain not a single smudge remained.

Xander shrugged, forgetting she couldn't see it. "Maybe not eat us, but we're not too old to get turned into bats or toads." He was teasing, but his dry tone didn't immediately indicate that he was.

"I should have asked before using your CD player. I apologize for being presumptuous," Alec said. "Xander didn't have anything to do with it."

"She said she was fine with it, I don't think she's mad," Xander told him. Then he squinted at Daizi. "Right?"
 
"Maybe not, but there's so much paperwork for those sorts of transformstions. It's not at all like it used to be," She sighed, and then was unable to prevent from laughing. Daizi was not built for acting, she could never manage to maintain a false-serious attitude for long enough.

She listened to Alec's intense apology for using the CD play with mild concern, not because he had used it, but because it seemed to her like he was anticipating swift punishment, "It's fine that you used it, Alec, and it'd be fine if Xander was 'involved.' It's just an appliance, it's like using the microwave. You're allowed to watch TV, too, you can make profiles on our streaming services if you want, I don't care."
 
"I could never be so presumptuous," Alec said.

Xander raised his brows at him. "No, you can just be presumptuous enough to keep calling her pretty practically the first day you met her."

Alec blushed. "I said I was sorry, and it was beautiful, not pretty."

"Whatever." Xander elbowed him gently. "I bet you can't be presumptuous enough to ask her to dance."

Alec turned even brighter red and stammered incoherently for a moment.
 
"I mean you live here, it's not like we're going to keep you in a room to stay silent and do nothing but do your homework until we allow you to emerge for sustenance." She wasn't laughing now, because she wasn't joking. She did sincerely want them, and in particular Alec, to believe them when she and Dark said to 'make yourselves at home.'

Then, Daizi listened to them bicker about that particular conversation, and might've left, if it were not for Xander's last comment. And it was well within her shenanigans budget, "I'd dance with you, Alec," she said, not with the intention to embarrass or shame him, "but I'd probably have to lead, because you're shorter than I am."
 
Alec hesitated, relaxing a little as he accepted that he was not in trouble. He still had a hard time accepting that this was their home and they could use things as readily as Daizi and Dark could, but even with those uncertainties, he still felt safer than he ever had before. He smiled shyly and stepped forward, bowing even if Daizi couldn't see it.

"My lady, would you honor me with a dance?" he asked.

"What would you like to dance to?" Xander asked, wandering over to the CD player.
 
"I would love to dance with you," She reached out and found Alec, only temporarily reaching too high, but once she found his shoulder she was able to run her hand down the length of his arm to find his hand.

"Probably something slow," Daizi replied, stepping more into the room, "it's a somewhat cluttered space, and I can't see which means I don't know how well I can rely on my partner here," she teased, "And nothing from My Chemical Romance Danger Days, Dark and I had our first dance at our wedding to an acoustic, instrumental version of Summertime, so anything from that album is way too personal. And probably nothing from Black Parade either, we went to that concert together."


"Are comfortable putting your hand on my waist?" She asked in a soft tone, again trying to not embarrass him, but also needing to ask, because under no circumstance would she just place his hand there without checking in first, "If not, you can put your hand on my shoulder like I have mine on yours."
 
"Okay," Alec agreed, cautiously putting his hand on her waist. "I've never actually danced with someone like this, but I will do my best not to trip you."

Xander scanned through the stack of discs until he found one that looked promising and put it on. The soft, gentle yet haunting tones of My Medea by Vienna Teng drifted through the speakers. The singer's melodic yet powerful vocals wound through the room, enticing the listener to move with the sound of her voice.

Alec listened for a moment before stepping out and swaying slowly in time to the song. He tried to let Daizi lead, though he wasn't sure what it felt like to let someone lead in dancing. Still, he was game and did his best, enjoying the gentle movements. It wasn't long until he was humming along to the song.
 
"Oh it's not hard, I can do it with my eyes closed." Daizi joked, and when she heard the first notes of the song she said, "Good choice, Xander, Warm Strangers is a beautiful album... and maybe apropos. But skip the next song, if you would, I don't want to hear it today."

She did her best to lead Alec through it, and it was fun. By no means was it the greatest dance of her life, but it also was far from being the worst. Daizi smiled when the teen began to hum to the music. When they'd stumble and the one time Alec accidentally stepped on her foot, she just laughed, it didn't bother her.

When the song ended, she stepped back slightly, and said, "That was fun. You seem to really enjoy music, you should listen to more of hers if you liked it, she makes so many that make me cry."
 
Xander turned off the music when the song ended but made a note of the album. He liked the sound of the lady's voice, but wasn't sure he was into the style. He usually preferred something a little heavier, but he shouldn't judge based on one song. He'd listen to more later.

Alec stepped back when the dance ended. "Thank you for the dance. Yes, I do like music, but Xander says I have soft taste. I don't like songs that make me cry, usually. Well, maybe occasionally, but not usually. I like happy songs. Pop music, I guess, or indie stuff."

"You like Nightwish sometimes," Xander pointed out.

"That's nearly the only band we agree on," Alec admitted.
 
"I'm not too much of a pop fan myself, I like really strong vocalists with impassioned instrumentals. And I love sad music, it makes me feel tethered to something. I don't listen to it exclusively, like I said, god, weeks ago now, I listen to all sorts of music, but there's something about the drama of it," She stretched, and then chuckled to herself, "Although with four of us with different tastes, I don't know how we'd decide who gets to put on music if we ever take a trip somewhere. Well, Dark and I like a lot of the same stuff, so maybe I'll have to listen to Nightwish, and if I like them, Dark probably will too, and it'll be the only thing we'll listen to. I hope they have a lot of albums."

She sat down on the couch, feeling awkward just sort of standing in the center of the room, "But if you like, we can get you your own CD player if you like, or something. I feel bad that we haven't added much to your bedroom, I want you both to feel settled."
 
"I... would like a player, if we may," Alec admitted quietly. "I would really enjoy listening to more. And... if it's not too much of an imposition, maybe I could visit your music room? I promise not to touch anything or hurt anything."

"You just want to have an easier time playing karaoke," Xander grinned, sitting on the edge of the table.

Alec frowned and gave his shoulder a little push. "I enjoy music, you heathen, and there is no shame in that, even if it is not as thrashy and fuzzy as your lovely progressive rock music."

"It has a lot more soul than the three same themes recycled over and over again," Xander said sarcastically, nudging Alec's hip with his shoulder as Alec was still standing.
 
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