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He lets Alec speak, listening to the words as much as to the undertow in them. "You're right," he says, believing it. The reasons behind Alec's choice always made Lark curious, but now that he has them he can't imagine arguing against them.

He looks away then, absently touching the ring on his finger. It isn't the real one but it's a habit at this point. "I'm glad you had her to teach you that."

Alec can keep his anger going indefinitely; he can fan his temper to a searing breaking point, he can hold it just so for as long as he feels he needs it to keep going, as long as he needs its protection.

None of that is this; this is Lark, who does not rise to challenge him or dismiss him, whom he does not need to protect himself from anymore. So instead his anger is just that - just anger because it's always there, just frustration at this entire unsavory situation - and he swallows it down with effort, to keep himself here, keep himself thinking, keep himself listening. He nods.

Then he sighs, and reaches up to rub the corners of his eyes, to pinch the bridge of his nose. "That doesn't make it any easier. Not knowing," he admits, clarifies. "But because I don't know, I have to go with what she taught us. Right?"

"I think," Lark says slowly, considering his words, the delicate situation. "That risking breaking a choice she made is worse than anything else you could do. Worse than not knowing. ...But that doesn't mean not knowing isn't its own sort of hell."

There are things he knows he can never help Alec recover from, and that those things sometimes trip them up even now. But again: knowing that doesn't mean that watching Alec struggle isn't hell.

It's not a good answer, but it's the same answer Alec has already come to; it's the only one he can see as satisfying, as well as any one answer can, every need the choice presents. But that's the thing about choosing to do nothing: it's a choice that must be made, over and over, and that dies the moment a different one is made.

He squeezes at the corner of his eyes one more time, and forces himself to sit down on the edge of the bed. He doesn't apologize - years into their relationship, even when he can admit he's in the wrong for something, he so rarely apologizes - but he does give that much ground anyway.

"That's how I feel, too. That's what I know - but I still wish it were different." This time he does not offer the qualifier of sometimes.

"I do, too." It's why he's brought it up in the past, and why he did now even though he knows it doesn't help anything. "After seeing how Biggs and the others adjusted to Citadel, I can't help wondering. Wishing something else could have happened."

He isn't attached to the idea of family, and his idea of what that is doesn't match other people's anyway. Neither does Alec's. But those people mattered to Alec, and so they come to his mind now and again. All the potential there, not just to see how they'd flourish with freedom, and all the reasons it will never be met.

They mattered to Alec. They mattered. And the day he looked Shila in the eye for the last time before he put her down once and for all was one of the hardest he's had to face without actually dying, and it sticks with him still in a memory known for its clarity and longevity.

He's looking at the back of his hands when he asks, soberly, "Please don't ask me again about Shila and deals. It's hard enough already."

He doesn't apologize. He rarely ever does about the deep questions, the ones that cut. Instead he can offer a promise: "I won't."

He listens to the quiet. "I don't regret anything that brought me to where I am now. I think that's the same for you. I hope it is."

"It is," he can say with confidence.

"This isn't regret. It's just..." Useless.

"It's just what's left."

"Grief," Lark guesses, because he can smell and hear a lot of emotions but he's never had much to grieve himself. No one who qualified as family, or who he would spend time on the Barge trying to bring back.

"When we're done here, I'll be done with wondering what if." It's just so hard to be in a place like this and not think about it. Especially for Lark, who is insatiable when it comes to opportunity. "It's the thing I miss most about being home. I know the roads we've taken there, I know where they can take us."

"It's one of the things I love about you." Alec has no shortage of creativity in a very particular way, but Lark is miles outside of his league in ambition and vision. Alec isn't even in the game by comparison.

"I just need you to trust me about the roads that begin and end with Manticore." He twists, glancing over his shoulder. "And I know you do. It's just a place better left dead."

Lark nods once, solemn. "All right." But the topic is around them now and he thinks for a moment. "Tell me something we'll do when we aren't working."

It's not even really a diversion; Lark struggles heavily with turning off 'work', especially here where the distractions are brief.

It's around them now, so switching gears from thinking about Shila and Manticore and his lost unit to the two of them - the furthest thing removed from his former life - takes him a moment and not an easy one. He glances back over his shoulder and tries to think of what Alec Tennant would say, how he'd flirt, what scandalous thing would come out of his mouth.

Instead, he forces himself to lay back - he'll feel it again soon, but for now this is what he has - and lets his head rest against Lark's hip.

"Are we working now?" he asks.

"No." He's not sure what to call it. They fall together like this often, just stretched out on the bed touching or not, talking until somehow hours have passed. Lark doesn't have this with anyone else, and can't think of anyone else he could ask--he will never talk about these moments outside of this room.

"No, it's just us right now."

"Then this, obviously," he jokes even though it's dry, because it's a step back from the ledge he'd been standing beside, a step back towards Lark even if it's not a good joke.

"We should use this opportunity to redecorate. Try out a few new wallpapers, a few coats of paint, see what happens when all we have to do is wish it back the way it was or walk away from it at the end."

"Are we still agreed that nothing with a name like 'Elk Tongue' is a good look?" Lark asks, eyeing the walls. One would think he'd love the name and a color that calls to mind a puddle of drying blood, but no.

"We were never agreed on that in the first place, if I recall correctly." Yes they were.

"You also tried to veto Unicorn Cupcake Swirl."

Edited 2021-05-27 14:11 (UTC)

He wags a finger as if to point out the wall he spared from such a nightmare. "I did veto it, and then you agreed when I pointed out that purple glitter swirls would make me vomit up bits of rawhide all over your shoes."

Alec rolls over on his stomach, resting his chin on Lark's hip instead, eyebrows raised.

"I still don't believe you. That's not the effect it has when they're in body paint."

He pretends to take this seriously. Pretends there isn't a smirk pulling at his lips. "Well, if you want to get naked paint yourself and stand in front of the wall, that might be a compromise. You'd have to quit your dayjob, though."

Alec shrugs, poker faced except to someone who knows very, very well what his real poker face looks like.

"You'd have to quit your day job too, in order to make all that work worth it. I can't just be standing around naked and fabulous without an audience."

He eyes Alec like he can't quite picture him naked at all anymore. It's clearly been years. "We should do a trial run. I don't want to tell Pagan I'm quitting so I can watch you stand naked in front of a wall all day if it isn't worth it."

This only makes Alec, currently bare to the waist, tense and draw in his breath just so to make his muscles that more subtly defined under Lark's gaze. He's fully aware of what he looks like, even if some days he has small panic attacks about how different it is to what he used to be.

"He'll understand. I'm sure he'd even agree that it's worth it. And that it's a fantastic color for anything - including walls."

Lark's fingers trail after, lightly brushing each line of muscle. At least until he stifles a laugh because, "He would agree. Not even just to gang up on me. Obviously we can't tell him."

Alec breathes out under the ghosting touch along his skin, relaxing just the slightest bit.

He smirks.

"You're the one who wanted to. In fact you're the one that wanted us to talk. It's your own fault we're BFFs now. I pretty much have to tell him."

"Yeah what do you think of him?" An honest question, while he keeps teasing Alec's skin. It's rare that they have the same affections for people, and he isn't sure if Alec is doing it just for his sake. He hasn't seen them together yet; he can only hope it's more than just appeasing him.

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