How Green Becomes Wood

When Xander made his comment about how Dark will never set down the baby, Cooger again slowed down, and for the first time spoke in complete seriousness, although not in anger, "Dark's parents didn't love him. I'm sure he'd not be totally pleased at me telling you that, but I think he's doing you a disservice by not being more forthcoming about that. I understand why he can't tell you specifics, but someone's gotta be blunt about it: They didn't even like him. He's got no memories of his parents coming to hug him when he was sad or scared as a kid, nothing like that. So yeah," He shrugged, "he wants to hold that baby all the time, 'cause nobody can go back in time to give him that affection, but he sure as hell can make sure he don't repeat the same mistakes. If y'all were babies when you came into his care, he'd hold you all the time too, but you weren't, and good thing, too, imagine those two having to take care of three kids under two. Imagine Tarot pregnant as she is lugging you two babies upstairs at bedtime," He chuckled, willing to let his moment go, "You think you're trouble now? And yeah, we're still fairly near to it, we're just on a loop."
 
"Cool," Xander said uncomfortably, glad to move on and talk about anything else. "Glad we're not lost, though I'd be disappointed in you if we were."

Alec stared at Cooger soberly. "Why do you need to tell us?" he asked bluntly. "We already knew he had a terrible background, but why did you have to tell us more?"
 
"Because 'terrible background' can mean a thousand different things. Knowing more specific information like that helps you to understand where he's coming from a little bit more." Cooger replied, firm in his convictions, "'Cause if you tease him about how much he plans to hold that baby, without understanding why it's so important to him... I don't know, little man, that sorta thing gets inside a person's head."
 
Alec sighed and shook his head. "Why must we be such a depressing group of people?" he asked morosely as he started walking again. "You are the only one who does not seem to have some form of severe trauma, and if you do, please do not destroy my illusion, at least not today."

"We're a group of trauma because birds of a feather flock together and all that," Xander said dryly as he followed Alec.

"It'd be nice if we weren't all so terrible about talking about it and expressing our needs," Alec replied.

"I think if we were, none of us would be quite so traumatized," Xander pointed out.
 
"Of course he's not going to express his needs, he knows you don't mean anything by it. And I don't know if he's seen the connection between his intensity about making sure babies are held and not left to cry and his upbringing. I mean, shoot, when I took him home for that very first Thanksgiving break, when his English was still trash and he hadn't done any work dealing with his problems, we had an 18 month old there, and this kid was just crying, and nobody was doing anything because my aunt and uncle were doing that 'cry it out' self-soothe thing, and Dark got so squirrely he ended up just holding and playing with the kid the entire time. But I guess they understood each other 'cause they spoke English at about the same level. Nah, that's not fair, by then he spoke English better than the baby."

He put his hands back in his pockets and kept rocking, kicking a stone for a little while before it rolled off the path and disappeared, "He also, you know, has lost every kid Tarot has. So this one living is a big deal for him, too. When you think about it. But it's really just a good thing to understand that even though a person seems like they've got it all together, that don't mean they don't still have a lot happened underneath. Like a swan on the water, right? That's why empathy and compassion are such important skills to learn."
 
"Of course it is," Alec agreed, wondering why Cooger was going down this topical path. Of course it was a big deal that the baby was living, of course it would hurt more than he could possibly understand to lose children that way, and of course being empathetic was a big deal. Why did Cooger suddenly feel the need to give them this deep and meaningful lesson when normally it seemed like he avoided deep topics like that? Was it just the comment about Dark never putting the baby down? It was just a joke to Cooger underlining why they doubted they'd ever need to change the baby. Now it felt like they were in serious trouble, but he couldn't fully understand the depths of why. They had, or at least Xander had, teased Dark about holding the baby all the time, but that had been back when they'd both felt threatened. They'd both more or less gotten over that, and thus the teasing had stopped.

Xander had started to wander off. He didn't want to talk about this any longer, and he was beginning to think the one thing tying the improbable friends of Dark and Cooger and Daizi together was their love of lectures. At least Cooger kept them shorter, but Xander didn't know why he felt the need to take it so seriously. The way Dark had talked about it, him holding the baby 24/7 was going to be more fact than joke. Not that he really held it against Dark, at least not anymore. He had more or less resigned himself to the idea that Dark and Daizi would more or less forget about them for at least the first couple of months or longer while the baby was newborn, but eventually, he figured things would balance out. Eventually.
 
Cooger let the conversation rest, not pushing it anymore. He couldn't help being a bit protective of Dark, because even though he was technically a bit younger, at least if Dark's January birthday were treated as fact, he still remembered the weird, quiet, Iraqi kid showing up confused in his dorm room, and how it sort of became his job to help him adjust, and as a result, Cooger felt like Dark's older brother. He was still keeping an eye out for him, even though now most people saw him as less of an adult because Dark was the one with a wife and a steady job. A wife and kids, plural, now. So he kept an eye out.

The twins clearly didn't mean anything by their jokes and comments, but he worried about if when they said those things, Dark would start feeling like there was something wrong about wanting to be devoted to his kid when she finally popped out. In Cooger's opinion, Dark had spent more than enough time confronting all the ways he was screwed up.

As they walked in newfound silence, Hank came up the path, having apparently decided to rejoin them, "There's the Dumpster Cat!" Cooger said, cheerfully, "I swear, the reason why we won't see any monsters, Alec, is 'cause Hank single-handedly keeps 'em away. Or, single-pawedly, I guess."
 
Alec brightened when Hank returned, feeling that whatever the dark cloud was that had passed over them during the intense conversation was gone. "I believe it," he stated, and he meant it. After all, Hank had just saved him from analyzing everything Cooger had said and their last conversation and twisting it around in his head until he felt sick inside. Hank was here, and Hank made things better. If he could make this better, physical monsters would be no problem for him!

"How's it going, Hank?" Xander asked. He reached down and offered a hand in greeting to the cat. "Have a good sunbeam sprawl?"

"I wish I could sprawl in a sunbeam like a cat," Alec said.
 
Hank meowed with a deep, almost raspy sound, and stretched against Xander's hand, and rubbed against his legs.

"Nothin's stopping you from stretching out in a sunbeam," Cooger replied. They were coming back in sight of the cabin again, "Except maybe our complexion, but if you wear enough sunscreen you'll be fine, I'm sure. People go sunbathing all the time, or at least they used to."
 
"Huh," Xander said in surprise. He hadn't expected the cat to actually accept his offer of friendship. He gave the cat a careful scratch and then headed for the cabin. "We should get started on the twice-baked potatoes. This was a really cool walk, though, thanks. I wouldn't mind having a getaway like this."

"Me neither," Aelc agreed, walking alongside Cooger. "I mean, we've only ever lived in the city, and I can't imagine living out here full-time, but it is so nice to have a nature break." He grinned and displayed the leaves poking out of his rock-filled pockets. "Not to mention highly inspirational!"
 
"Nobody could pay me to move back to the city," Cooger said, heading inside and pulling the bag of potatoes from his pantry. They were clearly homegrown, and he set them down on the cabinet, "the worst thing about Dark and Tarot is that they moved to the suburbs. I love their house, and I love their garden, but I hate their neighbors and all the other houses. It feels way too cramped. House like theirs should be on a cliff somewhere secluded, the kinda place where lighting strikes illuminate it and only it."

He looked down at Alec's pockets, and shaking his head said, "Don't walk into the lake, kid, or you'll drown. I think there was some poet who went out that way or something."
 
"Yeah, I agree," Xander nodded. "None of the neighbors are even that nice." He paused. "Well, there's Sloan, but I doubt she's going to stick around once she gets old enough, and her mum has it out for Daizi. But I guess she did take them a casserole after one of the... you know, losses. Everyone else is either rude or just keeps to themselves." He couldn't help but wonder what kind of rumors must be circulating after the ambulance showed up to the Dark and Daizi house a week or so ago.

Alec looked down at his pocket worriedly. "I'll keep that in mind. I used to want to be a writer, but I don't think so anymore. Not because of this, I just sort of lost interest." He looked up at Cooger. "Do you read or music?"
 
"It's good to know they ain't heartless. I think the biggest problem with adults is they try to hard to make sure everyone knows they're adults, you know what I mean? They can't slip a little and let everyone else know the biggest truth of being an adult. Do you know what that truth is? It's that none of us ever really know what we're doing. Not a single adult. But if we let other adults see we don't know what we're doing, then they'll feel at ease to show others the same thing, and then what happens is all adults are open about how lost and confused we are, and then the whole damn world falls apart."

Again, he laughed at himself as he pulled more ingredients out, and to Alec said, "I listen to audiobooks sometimes, and like I said I'm trying to teach myself harmonica, but it's not going well. I've never really been a studious type. Dark's the brains, I'm the muscle, you know?"
 
"Adults are weird," Xander grumbled. He wasn't completely certain he knew what twice-baked potatoes were outside of the obvious, so he took a moment to look up a recipe online just to get a feel for what was expected. Once he'd scanned a couple of recipes, he gave a nod. These were simple enough. It shouldn't be too hard. "Alec, can you preheat the oven? These babies need to cook for like an hour. Then come help me scrub. How many potatoes should we cook, Cooger? One each or more?" He pulled out a couple of potatoes and ran some water in a bowl so he wouldn't have to keep the water running the entire time.

Alec switched the oven on and then moved over to stand next to Xander and help him scrub up potatoes. "What happens after the potatoes are cooked?"

"Then we gut the potatoes and mix the meat with, like, cheese and bacon and stuff, and then we refill the skins and cook them for another fifteen minutes or so," Xander explained.

"It sounds horrible when you say it like that," Alec said, making a face, but he vigorously scrubbed the potato skin clean.
 
"I'll probably have two. You can make as many as you want for yourselves. Potatoes grow like nobody's buisness, and it's better for you to be full, right?" Since he didn't need to start his part of the meal yet, he went over to help in scrubbing the potatoes, occasionally looking over at one of his cats and telling it in increasingly bizarre ways to get out of the kitchen while they cooked.

Eventually he turned to one particularly stubborn cat with a scowl, and said, "I swear, that's one thing dogs have over cats: cats ain't got no respect. I don't know who will adopt ya, Sammy, but they're in for it, aren't they?"
 
With three pairs of hands, the potato scrubbing went quickly, and in no time at all, Xander had four potatoes prepped and ready to go into the oven. He considered making himself two, but with corn and steak, he didn't think he'd be able to eat it all. Alec, he knew wouldn't be able to eat two. He carefully put the potatoes in the oven, telling Alec to stand back. Then he got started on the bacon. It would be done long before the potatoes, but it didn't matter if it got cold since it'd be going right back into the oven.

Alec looked at Cooger a little worriedly. "If the cats don't show respect, then nobody will adopt them?" he asked. He looked around at the cats. "But I thought that was supposed to be a part of their charm."
 
"Don't worry, Sammy'll be adopted. People'll love him regardless. I just like to shame them a bit. Make 'em think they're in a precarious situation, but I've never met a cat nobody wanted. Sometimes it just takes a little longer to find their forever home, but everyone makes it to theirs, because I work with a no-kill shelter."

He leaned up against the counter, "Most of the kittens go to the Cat Café, though. That's a place where people pay for tea and coffee and just get to snuggle up with the cats, it's easier to get really well socialized kittens that way. I only get the kittens who have problems. My girl Sarah needed to be bottle fed when I brought her in."
 
"A cat cafe sounds really, really nice, especially if you can't own a cat but want one," Alec said wistfully. He didn't want a cat, but the idea was pleasant. "Like if someone in your family is really allergic, or maybe you live somewhere where there's a no pets policy." He turned and looked out, admiring the view. These were some lucky cats!

Xander grumbled at the bacon as it cooked. He hated cooking bacon. It always spat at him! He wasn't entirely sure it was worth the pain by itself, but it would be delicious in the potatoes. "Cooger, what do you have for draining bacon? Paper towels? Regular towels? Grease can?"
 
"Oh, yeah, hold on," He brought over a coffee can full of bacon grease and set it on the counter, "I swear, one day, I'm going to make the biggest candle out of this. How funny would that be? Package it up all nice so it seems like a regular candle, but it's just bacon? And the café is really nice, it's good for when you want to get out of the house, but you're stressed out and just need a nice quiet place. I don't really have an issue with getting overstimulated, but for people who do, it's amazing."
 
Xander glanced at the can and took out the bacon before pouring out the grease. "I think I read a story online once about who did that for real. Didn't turn out so well. Our mum used to use it to grease the pans and stuff. That was pretty cool, except for the time when she decided to make a cake for the first time ever. She actually had a decent job, she got the cake mix and a pan from a dollar store. It was pretty good. Except she didn't know you use butter when you grease the pan. She used," he nodded toward the can, "grease. Weirdest tasting cake ever on the outside, but the middle was okay."

Alec wrinkled his nose at the smell of bacon and wandered outside. He stopped on the porch and stood in the sun for a minute, giving Hank a nod. Then, noticing something down by the lake, he headed that way. He wasn't much use in the kitchen, anyway, and it was kind of crowded with three people, so he figured no one would really notice. The water sparkled and gleamed brightly as if it was trying out for a part in a movie. Gentle waves rippled along the top, and he was fairly certain he saw a couple of fish moving around. He fished in his pockets until he found the flat stone he'd picked up earlier. He'd always wanted to try this! He gave the stone a throw. It skipped! Only once, but it skipped. Eagerly, he started looking for more flat stones.
 
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