"Everywhere that isn't chock full of power hungry people like us is like that." Lark says, and chuckled because yeah there's no megalomania in him, nope.
But that is the problem: there is nowhere Lark knows where he and Alec wouldn't be preyed upon. Sure, Alec could lay low, could hide what he is. But that's just another kind of prison.
...people in his world I wouldn't trust to keep their hands off me. Alec could be very useful in Lark's upcoming war. Of course he's considered that. But there has lately been the thinnest thread of doubt, as faint as a mote of dust seen from the corner of his eye. There and gone.
But when it's there, his mind is almost changed. He's almost, not quite but almost, tempted to tell Alec not to consider himself invited until after Lark has secured a few borders. He doesn't need Lark to protect him; and strangely, that's not what the impulse is about. (He can't identify yet what it is.)
Alec isn't especially power hungry; he is insatiable for options, to give himself as much leverage as he can to keep himself out from under the sway of other people, but he mostly just wants to be left alone. To that end, he is especially useful. He has always been useful, was designed to be, made himself even moreso, and he does not need protection.
He has not considered Eggsy's invitation; he has not considered Lark's, or Iris's, or Furiosa's. He won't, not until it would do him an ounce of good, not until any of them were even an option. They're not. They're just not.
So he huffs out of a breath and lets the first statement linger, until the second one lets him smirk with the side of his mouth Lark can't see.
"And now there's a tone." Alec is smirking. Lark is grinning up at what he's fairly sure is the Seven Sisters constellation (cluster? It's been years since Astronomy 101). "The innocent act doesn't fly with me."
He's looking at the stars but every other sense is trained on Alec, ready to pounce or run or chase or play.
Pleiades cluster, Alec would tell him. And he is indeed smirking, visible now as he intentionally lets the tone in question slow to a lazy, arch drawl.
"And now you're accusing me of being not innocent, but in fact a liar. Scandalous." He'd raised his hands at some point to pillow his head on, but now he stretches his arms back over his head, draws his spine up a bit off the ground just so with a slow, luxurious inhale.
"Go on then. What am I, if not pure of intention and virtuous of character?"
"Well, obviously you corrupted me. Everyone thought I was a warden before you showed up." He teases, and he probably wouldn't be eyeing that slow stretch quite so lasciviously if he knew how well Alec sees in the dark.
(It's there again, the doubt that could take hold and run off with him during a less stable moment; of course it's his fault. It would have to be. Alec pushes the thought aside like an overly affectionate puppy or an amateur defense.)
"So? With the way everyone talks about wardens around here, why would you want to be one? Much more fun on this side of the fence," he teases, and maybe Lark doesn't know that this cliff top is lit like daylight for Alec, and maybe Alec has no intention of pointing it out, but he shifts his hips a little to better stretch first one side of his torso, then the other, taking his time.
He knows exactly what he's doing, letting his breath out as slowly as he gathered it to him.
"People don't look at us and think inept, Lark. It just doesn't work that way."
"...Yeah, you're right," he waves a hand dismissively. "Thank you for hauling me away from their side. God knows who I'd be if I'd kept that up."
Lark, watching him in what is dimly blue twilight for his eyes, is plainly enjoying what he's seeing. But more than that, more frightening for Lark, is how much he feels. It's not just feeling for Alec; it's feeling in general, when he's become so used to having a say in what emotions trickled in.
It's been flash floods lately. That they've been pleasant is not the point.
His usual response is to just throw himself into something else, something far from whatever end of the ship Alec is on at the time. But this is his favorite place in the world and it has a soothing, grounding effect on him, even if it's just a room on the ship. (Or maybe it's just the heat.)
As slowly as Alec was breathing in and out, Lark's hand brushes against his side, reminding himself that Alec is the most real thing here. And yeah, maybe taking advantage of the way Alec's shirt has ridden up ever so slightly.
"Mm," Alec replies agreeably, an acknowledgement and a reply all in one; he sees Lark reach from the corner of his eye, thinks he would have even if he weren't hypersensitive towards any deliberate movement towards himself. He could stop him if he wanted to. He doesn't.
Despite the cloying heat, a shiver runs out from where Lark's fingertips drag through the cooling sweat still clinging to Alec's skin; one of his outstretched arms snakes down, touches his own fingertips to the bones of Lark's wrist, not an actual hold but unerring and staying all the same.
"Think so, do you?" he asks in the same tone, with the same look he's already been called out on once - playful, but subtle, like the tips of retracted claws.
"Oh I have no idea what you're thinking is on my mind right now," he says, and his tone is very much like Alec's look: playful but also mild. He flexes his wrist against Alec's fingertips, just to feel a little pressure.
And pressure there is: Alec slides his fingers more completely around Lark's wrist, tugs at his hand to pull it away from his side.
"Well, I know for one that it involves touching. I doubt very much you were looking for a laundry care tag, or a designer label. And you already know I don't have any tattoos."
Well that's a lie. "I knew that the last time I looked, sure."
He tugs his wrist away, disliking any form of control over him--at least here. Physically he's usually happy to accept it, to learn from it for exploitation later. Here, though, it makes him want to bite. "Who knows what's changed in a few days?"
Overhead a meteorite streaks by and Lark's attention turns to it for the two seconds it's there. "Seriously, though. I'm glad you came out here with me."
It isn't a lie; his barcode isn't a tattoo. It would be much, much easier to get rid of than it is if that were the case.
"Believe me, I'm not leaving this place with any freaking prison tattoos," Alec replies, snorting; he also lets Lark take his hand back without protest, dropping his own back down across his stomach.
He doesn't look at the fake meteorite. He's still looking at Lark, and now he's smirking.
"Yeah, well, you owed me one. Although I don't really have any other places to offer you, seeing as I doubt you want a tour of the compound."
"Neither will I," Lark scoffs. He has never wanted one anyway, even when he was a younger man.
He knows some have, and has no particular opinion on what people do with their skin. But of all the things to commemorate in his life, this is nowhere on the list. Not when it would really mean the Admiral was somewhere in the ink.
He glances at Alec; he wouldn't turn down such a tour but he won't ever ask for one, either. "I still want to show you Pasadena and New York. Just- not if you're actually seeing it in terms of debits and credits."
"And you're not?" he asks before he can stop himself, and then does successfully stop the grimace that comes after. His next exhale is a sigh.
"Not - I mean," he tries, fails, and tries again to reset. "You can't tell me it's not automatic for you. That it's not like hearing that we're both speaking in English, or remembering my name."
The fact is, Lark isn't. At least not the trip trough Seattle, not the trip here. And the fact is he should be and it's part of those sudden, unwanted rushes that he isn't.
He can lie. It wouldn't do any good, not after a pause like this. And every second just gives Alec more time to think of his own lies, but fine, more power to him for being quicker on the draw. Lark stares at him through the starlight a beat longer, defying himself.
"So how do you think you're paying me back, exactly?"
"I didn't mean it that way," he replies, indeed much quicker than Lark had. And an equal moment later: "I mean, I did, but not - shit," he swears under his breath, and shakes his head to cut himself off.
Alec isn't someone who lets himself be caught on the back foot, not anymore; he hadn't realized he was admitting anything. He hadn't realized he didn't know exactly what he was stepping into when he said it, mostly as a joke, but one with the kind of foundation of truth that allows for in jokes. So here he is. On the back foot.
"Never mind," he tries, mumbled more than the definitive slamming of a door he's capable of, already gathering his body back in from its previous easy stretch, already coming back more on his guard.
Lark would have joked, if Alec hadn't backed out of it so quickly. Well, he would have joked, and mentally he would have filed that away just the way he is now.
"Relax," he says after a moment, looking away again. "It's fine."
It isn't really, but it should be. What Alec said would have been true not so long ago and Lark wishes it still was. If you can't force yourself to feel or not feel something, you can always pretend until the rest of you cooperates.
"Yeah, sure," Alec says, but it's sarcastic, dismissing that particular lie. He'd settled for laying straighter on his back, arms down, but now he actually just goes ahead and sits up, now he actually stands and pulls his shirt straight, dusts his hands off.
" - no, I take it back," he starts again a moment later. "Mind. Did I miss something? Did I miss where we aren't people that look at the entire world according to who we owe and who owes us?"
This isn't an accusation, not the way he says it. It's honest bafflement.
"We owe each other certain things and I won't ever be the sort of person who says we don't." So Alec isn't wrong there.
"Some debts you go after. Others, there's no point. With as much as I'm doing here, maybe I don't want to go after everything you owe me. If I did, certain things would lose their value--like this. I don't bring debt collectors to my home." He kills them.
"That's all I meant," Alec says after a moment, after reminding himself of the way other people talk about home. He's still standing and now he glances out over what he can see of the landscape which is, from here, most of it. His expression is blank.
He should go, he thinks. He wants to, not because he'd rather be somewhere else but because it would be easier, it would be safer than staying. He could easily make it back to the bikers before Lark could physically stop him.
"I know. Now." Lark sits up, then stands. "Look, I don't know why this is different. And I don't know if I want to pick it apart to find out why."
He does know that he doesn't really want Alec to vanish like he has other times they've strayed too far into...something. And he does know that he has no idea how to convey that in a way that won't make Alec want to run more.
The thing is, Alec knows that, as much as he can know that just now; there is a solid disconnect, one that Alec can't be sure who placed there in him or if it was just always there and always will be, between knowing something to be true and believing that it is true. In giving it the kind of weight that he sees other people relying on and has never understood, because he's never been in a position to do anything other than observe.
He doesn't honestly think Lark wants him to go anywhere, and he doesn't honestly want to go. He still thinks he should. He still thinks staying is a terrible idea, that it will backfire on them both, that it will hurt. He presses his teeth together, not really grinding, but a tensing of the muscles in his jaw, release, tense, his arms folded. He barely hears the question. He can't not pick this apart.
But he can do that alone. "What happens if I say yes?"
He only realizes now that he had fully expected Alec to say 'no', for that to be the end of the night for them: Lark offering and left a little confused, hat in hand, while Alec...well he doesn't know what Alec does. Gathers himself, fortifies himself.
"We go to my place, I make us dinner." He says. He was always providing food back home, but he never cooked for any of them. He does it here because he prefers that measure of control over his food; he does it for Alec because Alec seems to like it sometimes.
And the unspoken part is that over dinner, Lark talks. Always. It's a key part of eating for him, often the only time he has to catch up with pack. Often it's the only time he's truly relaxed enough to talk about himself.
Refocuses. While Alec refocuses on who he is, what he wants, why he's here and how he gets out again. He can only do that alone, and he knows that.
But he's not alone here, unless he wants to be; for now, he doesn't. He's quiet a moment more, considering how much weight that puts in one column over the other because he meant it. He views the world in how uneven the scales are.
Then he cracks a smile. "I was half afraid it would mean I'd be building a fire and you'd be turning back up naked with a rabbit in your mouth," he admits, only partially serious. (He wouldn't mind that as much as he'd pretend to, either.)
Lark grins. "You make it sound like that's not something I'm going to do." Just not here in the Enclosure. He doesn't trust the idea of eating something that isn't real.
"Think you can get me down from here without a trip to the infirmary after?" He isn't opposed to being injured, actually, as long as he isn't bedridden.
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But that is the problem: there is nowhere Lark knows where he and Alec wouldn't be preyed upon. Sure, Alec could lay low, could hide what he is. But that's just another kind of prison.
...people in his world I wouldn't trust to keep their hands off me. Alec could be very useful in Lark's upcoming war. Of course he's considered that. But there has lately been the thinnest thread of doubt, as faint as a mote of dust seen from the corner of his eye. There and gone.
But when it's there, his mind is almost changed. He's almost, not quite but almost, tempted to tell Alec not to consider himself invited until after Lark has secured a few borders. He doesn't need Lark to protect him; and strangely, that's not what the impulse is about. (He can't identify yet what it is.)
"I saw that look." By the way.
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He has not considered Eggsy's invitation; he has not considered Lark's, or Iris's, or Furiosa's. He won't, not until it would do him an ounce of good, not until any of them were even an option. They're not. They're just not.
So he huffs out of a breath and lets the first statement linger, until the second one lets him smirk with the side of his mouth Lark can't see.
"Was there a look?"
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He's looking at the stars but every other sense is trained on Alec, ready to pounce or run or chase or play.
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"And now you're accusing me of being not innocent, but in fact a liar. Scandalous." He'd raised his hands at some point to pillow his head on, but now he stretches his arms back over his head, draws his spine up a bit off the ground just so with a slow, luxurious inhale.
"Go on then. What am I, if not pure of intention and virtuous of character?"
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"So? With the way everyone talks about wardens around here, why would you want to be one? Much more fun on this side of the fence," he teases, and maybe Lark doesn't know that this cliff top is lit like daylight for Alec, and maybe Alec has no intention of pointing it out, but he shifts his hips a little to better stretch first one side of his torso, then the other, taking his time.
He knows exactly what he's doing, letting his breath out as slowly as he gathered it to him.
"People don't look at us and think inept, Lark. It just doesn't work that way."
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Lark, watching him in what is dimly blue twilight for his eyes, is plainly enjoying what he's seeing. But more than that, more frightening for Lark, is how much he feels. It's not just feeling for Alec; it's feeling in general, when he's become so used to having a say in what emotions trickled in.
It's been flash floods lately. That they've been pleasant is not the point.
His usual response is to just throw himself into something else, something far from whatever end of the ship Alec is on at the time. But this is his favorite place in the world and it has a soothing, grounding effect on him, even if it's just a room on the ship. (Or maybe it's just the heat.)
As slowly as Alec was breathing in and out, Lark's hand brushes against his side, reminding himself that Alec is the most real thing here. And yeah, maybe taking advantage of the way Alec's shirt has ridden up ever so slightly.
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Despite the cloying heat, a shiver runs out from where Lark's fingertips drag through the cooling sweat still clinging to Alec's skin; one of his outstretched arms snakes down, touches his own fingertips to the bones of Lark's wrist, not an actual hold but unerring and staying all the same.
"Think so, do you?" he asks in the same tone, with the same look he's already been called out on once - playful, but subtle, like the tips of retracted claws.
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"Well, I know for one that it involves touching. I doubt very much you were looking for a laundry care tag, or a designer label. And you already know I don't have any tattoos."
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He tugs his wrist away, disliking any form of control over him--at least here. Physically he's usually happy to accept it, to learn from it for exploitation later. Here, though, it makes him want to bite. "Who knows what's changed in a few days?"
Overhead a meteorite streaks by and Lark's attention turns to it for the two seconds it's there. "Seriously, though. I'm glad you came out here with me."
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"Believe me, I'm not leaving this place with any freaking prison tattoos," Alec replies, snorting; he also lets Lark take his hand back without protest, dropping his own back down across his stomach.
He doesn't look at the fake meteorite. He's still looking at Lark, and now he's smirking.
"Yeah, well, you owed me one. Although I don't really have any other places to offer you, seeing as I doubt you want a tour of the compound."
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He knows some have, and has no particular opinion on what people do with their skin. But of all the things to commemorate in his life, this is nowhere on the list. Not when it would really mean the Admiral was somewhere in the ink.
He glances at Alec; he wouldn't turn down such a tour but he won't ever ask for one, either. "I still want to show you Pasadena and New York. Just- not if you're actually seeing it in terms of debits and credits."
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"Not - I mean," he tries, fails, and tries again to reset. "You can't tell me it's not automatic for you. That it's not like hearing that we're both speaking in English, or remembering my name."
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He can lie. It wouldn't do any good, not after a pause like this. And every second just gives Alec more time to think of his own lies, but fine, more power to him for being quicker on the draw. Lark stares at him through the starlight a beat longer, defying himself.
"So how do you think you're paying me back, exactly?"
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Alec isn't someone who lets himself be caught on the back foot, not anymore; he hadn't realized he was admitting anything. He hadn't realized he didn't know exactly what he was stepping into when he said it, mostly as a joke, but one with the kind of foundation of truth that allows for in jokes. So here he is. On the back foot.
"Never mind," he tries, mumbled more than the definitive slamming of a door he's capable of, already gathering his body back in from its previous easy stretch, already coming back more on his guard.
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"Relax," he says after a moment, looking away again. "It's fine."
It isn't really, but it should be. What Alec said would have been true not so long ago and Lark wishes it still was. If you can't force yourself to feel or not feel something, you can always pretend until the rest of you cooperates.
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" - no, I take it back," he starts again a moment later. "Mind. Did I miss something? Did I miss where we aren't people that look at the entire world according to who we owe and who owes us?"
This isn't an accusation, not the way he says it. It's honest bafflement.
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"Some debts you go after. Others, there's no point. With as much as I'm doing here, maybe I don't want to go after everything you owe me. If I did, certain things would lose their value--like this. I don't bring debt collectors to my home." He kills them.
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He should go, he thinks. He wants to, not because he'd rather be somewhere else but because it would be easier, it would be safer than staying. He could easily make it back to the bikers before Lark could physically stop him.
He doesn't move. "I wasn't serious."
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He does know that he doesn't really want Alec to vanish like he has other times they've strayed too far into...something. And he does know that he has no idea how to convey that in a way that won't make Alec want to run more.
"Hungry?"
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He doesn't honestly think Lark wants him to go anywhere, and he doesn't honestly want to go. He still thinks he should. He still thinks staying is a terrible idea, that it will backfire on them both, that it will hurt. He presses his teeth together, not really grinding, but a tensing of the muscles in his jaw, release, tense, his arms folded. He barely hears the question. He can't not pick this apart.
But he can do that alone. "What happens if I say yes?"
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"We go to my place, I make us dinner." He says. He was always providing food back home, but he never cooked for any of them. He does it here because he prefers that measure of control over his food; he does it for Alec because Alec seems to like it sometimes.
And the unspoken part is that over dinner, Lark talks. Always. It's a key part of eating for him, often the only time he has to catch up with pack. Often it's the only time he's truly relaxed enough to talk about himself.
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But he's not alone here, unless he wants to be; for now, he doesn't. He's quiet a moment more, considering how much weight that puts in one column over the other because he meant it. He views the world in how uneven the scales are.
Then he cracks a smile. "I was half afraid it would mean I'd be building a fire and you'd be turning back up naked with a rabbit in your mouth," he admits, only partially serious. (He wouldn't mind that as much as he'd pretend to, either.)
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"Think you can get me down from here without a trip to the infirmary after?" He isn't opposed to being injured, actually, as long as he isn't bedridden.
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