ukan | IC CONTACT

Alec is not now, nor will he ever be, a wolf; transgenics speak among them a different language of loyalty and respect, of love. It's a delicate balance, and no one outside of it can understand it of course, but he would rail against the idea of needing protected. He would not protect any of his own kind out here, at least not that he'd admit outright. On your own two feet or not at all.

In practice, there ways around this, and extenuating circumstances; but overall this is the stance Alec and every X5 that made it to his age took. This is what he would throw in Lark's face if he crashed and burned and went over out here in the sand and the heat, which ultimately, he doesn't.

It's the bike that's in danger of overheating first, that makes Alec finally slow down and pull over in the shade of a wall of rock several stories high; he's panting, a line of dirt streaked in the sweat around his eyes, his hair wind-tousled and dark. He immediately strips his jacket off and fans the sweat-darkened t-shirt underneath as he sits up and twists to find Lark, grinning.

"We didn't die."

"I can't believe it either," he teases, panting and ecstatic. He grabs two bottles from the small bag he'd carried in, and hands one to Alec. In this heat they've already started to go lukewarm.

This is the dirtiest he's seen Alec, minus the times he's seen him bloodied. Lark likes things clean and neat but he isn't going to pretend there's no allure in Alec sweaty and sandy and grinning at him.

"Aren't you glad we're on bikes and not on foot?"

If there were some way to change that, a source of water nearby that they didn't bring with them, Alec would be for sure; as it stands, he doesn't seem to notice or mind as Mich ad his constant disapproval would suggest he should. He's not comfortable, this isn't his preference, but it's not the worst off he's ever been, either.

He takes the water, drains half of it, then sips the rest more slowly while shaking his head. "You make it sound as if being out here on foot was an option and I promise you: it wasn't."

Still. "You're getting much better."

He's certain a transgenic would do just as well in the desert as one of the heavier-furred lycanthropes, but part of being out here is enjoying being out here. If Alec can't love it like Lark does (and who can? Even other wolves don't) then he at least wants him to not hate it.

"Yeah?" He grins, looks around them. "There's incentive to do well out here." Which is, if you know him, a 'thank you'.

"But this all reminds me, I want to find a way to get a bath in my cabin. I'll have someone haul water to it from the showers if I have to."

Hating something has never really stopped Alec from doing something if it becomes necessary; however, this is not necessary. If he hated it, he wouldn't be out here.

He raises an eyebrow at the segue though. "Is that your way of rubbing my face in where we're not right now? Because I will leave your ass out here," is his reply, only half serious.

"Seriously? A bath? Why?"

He laughs by way of answer and sips his water. "I want a bath because if I get into a fight and don't necessarily want to face the wardens with blood all over me, I can soak. Even if I have to siphon water from my kitchen sink through a garden hose. I want one because it's only a matter of time before some inmate panics and destroys the showers again, and sponge- or tongue-bathing only goes so far. I want one because there are things we can do in the bath that I've only been able to do once or twice in my life."

Another sip. "And if I ever decide to start a black market organ harvest, I'll need a lot of ice and a good tub." Okay, yes, this one might just be playfully testing to see how far Alec's read in the book Lark gave him.

The joke is on Lark: Alec already understood that reference before he even knew the lycanthrope he's currently wrinkling his nose at.

"You civvies are so spoiled," he teases, even though he would absolutely spend a lot of time in a bathtub if he had access to one. And: "And I guarantee you anything we did in a bathtub would be a first. You should've told me before the Christmas lists went out. I could've snuck one in under the radar for you."

"I would have if I'd thought of it then." He'd been preoccupied with T'Pol, with his dozen other ideas. "But maybe it's better this way. Chris can ask for one for me. And if he won't, I'll just get creative; it'll give me a chance to see what I can get away with that won't involve risking Zero or whatever they do as punishment this month."

Alec is, by this point, eyeing the rock wall at their backs, neck craned as his eyes climb up the side of it.

"You can just build one, you know," he offers idly. Then: "Have you ever landed in Zero?"

"I could, sure. I went to law school because I love getting splinters and nails driven through my hands," Lark retorts, and then follows Alec's line of sight.

Prissy lawyer facade is gone, and in its place the werewolf who would absolutely scale a sandstone cliff. "No. But I know it won't kill us."

Alec snorts.

"You lost the right to complain about your delicate hands when you told me you like burning the skin off your paws," he offers back blithely, smirking when he catches sight of Lark's expression from the corner of his eye. He's still casually sipping on the last of his water, drawing it out.

"It would be more effective if they'd actually treat it like solitary," he muses, thoughtful. "Take away the communicators, don't allow visitors. That's the main problem: no one here has the stomach to actually enforce punishment. It's cruel."

"I know." Lark says and sounds resigned until he starts laughing. "And they can't figure out why people keep dying. They call it a phase and put their heads in the sand and hope we learn from their example."

It makes Alec smile, too.

"Yeah, well, the hard cases would just shrug it off anyway and the smart ones would turn it back on them." He is absolutely including both of them in both categories here.

"How well do you climb?"

"Not as well as you. But I can manage that." It's going to be a whole lot easier to hang onto than the Space Needle, that's for sure.

"Want to go up first?"

Alec loves heights, but more than that now that Lark has him out here - now that he's already sweaty and dirty, now that he's already committed - he's going to get the most out of it. He tosses the empty bottle onto the ground beside his bike, fetches out a new one for when they reach the top, and raises both eyebrows across at Lark.

"Just this once, I'll take that lead." Like Lark leading them out onto the treacherous ground, Alec knows he can pick a way up the rock face that won't end with one of them with a shattered spine below.

Lark grabs a bottle for himself and nods for Alec to go, no snappy remark about it. This time. He hasn't climbed anything in a long time, and he's focused on following Alec's hand and footholds.

Alec doesn't seem to notice; he's dropping the water bottle into one of the pockets of his cargo pants, and then crouching to rub sand over the palms of his hands, to soak up the sweat and give him grip again. Then he reaches as high up as he can and hauls himself, bodily and easily, up onto the first ledge.

This is what he enjoys, if he is going to enjoy anything, if he can choose to do so: his body will do what he asks of it, and do it well, and there are very few things or people that can even keep up with him let alone stop him when he puts his mind to it. He enjoys the burn of muscles working to do what they're made to do, the pressure of air in his lungs pushing against what he demands of them, the way his pulse and his adrenaline kicks up a notch. This isn't a hard climb, and he's done something similar - window ledges and architectural spurs up the sides of buildings - probably much more recently than Lark, but he still has to pay attention. He still has to adjust his course, zigging and zagging across the sandstone and only glancing back, once, when they're about halfway up to see how Lark is doing.

Alec is grinning, his fist wedged into a fissure, anchoring him so he can let go with the other hand and lean back a bit against the wide-spread footholds to look first up ahead of them, and then back at Lark.

"Okay?"

Lark is not as fast as Alec. He's made for other things, for living in the desert and hunting in the city, but not for climbing. But he's doing well, he's doing much better than a human as rusty as he is would be doing.

And he's enjoying it. He grins up at Alec. "Yeah I'm fine. I'm enjoying the view." Because he can't not throw in a sassy flirt when they're out here because Lark likes it out here, and Alec is above him doing one of the things Alec does best.

He flashes another grin, the kind that is quick and thin and shows the expression he hands out the rest of the time for the pleasant lie that it is, the only thing that really can; there's a pulse of something hot and heady and bittersweet on the back of his tongue, the feeling he gets every now and again when he looks at Lark, really looks at him, and knows for a fact that they see each other.

It's the kind of thought that could easily turn into love if he let it; he doesn't, but he could. He sees how he very easily could, and if Lark were close enough he'd probably risk shoving at him even this high up. The fall wouldn't kill either of them at this point unless they landed very badly, but that's part of it, too. That's part of love.

A few feet later they're high enough that the shadow from the opposing rock wall is left behind them and they're out into direct sunlight, the sandstone beneath Alec's hands hot with it, scalding if he lingers too long. Anticipating it, he takes them up a slightly steeper but ultimately shorter path, leaning far out to catch hold of the final edge, arms shaking as he pulls himself up over the lip and rolls onto the top.

Despite his obsession with observing all the things he wants and then systematically holding them back, Lark has not let himself look too closely at what he feels around Alec. He doesn't give it a name, and it's too complicated to be sorted into 'positive' and 'negative'. It's too complicated to even pick apart pieces that could be labeled positive or negative. It's both. It's both and it's more, all the time, swirling constantly together.

Lark growls a little as he hauls himself up that last bit, and he sprawls on his back to catch his breath when he's there. The sky overhead is dizzying in how vast and how close it seems.

"This is a good perch," he decides, with a lazy grin.

Alec is doing the same beside him, their legs touching where they both rolled to a stop; the rock under his shoulders and spine feels good against his muscles and he has his eyes closed against the light and the sky. He won't last long up here but for now, he can't stop grinning as he catches his breath, lets the uneasy feeling that lives in his gut sink beneath the easy, simple pleasure of satisfaction.

"Up is easy," he replies, voice bright. "Down is harder without the abrupt stop at the end."

He doesn't hate it out here.

Lark chuckles, kicks his heel against the stone gently. "I want to avoid the quick way down, take the scenic route, anyway. The one that doesn't end in the infirmary."

He squints up at the utterly cloudless sky. "We should have come up here at night."

"Oh sure, now he wants something that won't bake our brains out," he tells the sky plaintively, but he's still too glutted on exertion to make a real go of bitching about it.

Instead: "Want to see a neat trick?"

Lark turns his head, still squinting, to see what kind of trick can be done from a hundred feet up on a rock.

"Yeah, let's see it."

Alec squints an eye open so he can look right back at him, smug and self satisfied as you please.

Very clearly, loud but not shouting: "Hey Enclosure: let's have a night scene instead."

It takes a moment, but then the sun goes out like someone found the light switch, and the blinding cloud less stretch of sky is replaced by indigo black and a shockwave of clear, bright stars. The heat lingers yet, but Alec stretches with a loud such if relief.

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