He licks his lips uncertainly, but he reaches a decision fast. "If you stay around after I do."
Lark hasn't taken anything at all for pain since he quit drinking. He doesn't like who he is when he's too relaxed, when there are too many chemicals in his system, and most wolves become lethal when they take anything.
But the pain is just as likely to make him wild, and at least if the pain killers do affect him badly, Alec will be there. He does trust Alec with that.
He can't see Lark's expression behind him, of course, but he can hear his voice when he answers. Alec isn't sure what he was expecting as an answer but it wasn't exactly that.
Still, he'd already been intending to hang around after everything gets sorted. It's easy to nod.
"Then go ahead. I'll get the bikes sorted, grab a shower, stop by the infirmary, and then I'll be up." Give them both time to sort themselves out, but not enough time for anything to happen unless the Admiral intervenes.
It takes some doing to make a quick batch of brownies with just one arm, and not his dominant arm either. But Lark manages. They're just out of the oven and cooling by the time Alec will get there.
Lark is...struggling not to show any pain. It's actually easier to hide it when Alec is there: Alec acts as a focal point, a specific face to keep this weakness hidden from.
Alec would understand if he knew; he's accustomed, even, to filling that specific role, or at least he once was. A barrier for weakness going both ways.
As it stands he shows up freshly showered and in clean clothes, his hand neatly wrapped in gauze and a small bottle of pills in his pocket. He could've gotten more but the request at all, after his behavior recovering from the incident with Bull, was suspicious enough on its own. So he slips in the door and offers them without comment, already smirking as he ibhakes the chocolate scented air as if nothing at all had happened.
Lark takes them, and his mouth is dry so he palms two pills and goes to get a glass of water. On the way he glides a hand over Alec's back, a silent but very fervent bit of gratitude and invitation to stay.
"Is it working?" He throws a smile over his shoulder. If not for how pale he is, it would be hard to guess at the way the pain in his shoulder has radiated all the way up his neck and into a truly spectacular headache.
He metabolizes things very, very quickly though; it's what allows him to eat an entire person and not look or feel as if he's had anything but a decadent lunch. Two minutes and change after he swallows the pills he feels them begin to work.
Alec does, too; Lark will find the medication is adjusted to that, still relatively mild, but longer lasting for transgenic treatment. He makes a point of investigating the brownies both for their sake and to watch Lark down the pills and water from the corner of his eye.
He barely needs the invitation: he's already shucking his jacket off, leaving it draped over a chair where he can still get to it easily if he needs to, and pushing the sleeves of his fitted sweater up his arms a bit. All the same he's calmer now, more focused, feeling more himself; he reads the touch loud and clear, and lets it answer something that sits unacknowledged, dead silent and faint, in the center of his chest.
"Absolutely. I have a confession, though," he admits a moment later, scooping a corner out of the brownie pan with his finger and popping it into his mouth. "I have no idea how to make burritos." Apparently he's still planning on making good on both of their threats and promises.
"Don't worry. I grew up in Los Angeles, you can't walk out the door without finding a good burrito. Come here; I'll walk you through it." Lark would have to take off the sling in order to wrap the ingredients, so it's better that Alec is intent on cooking.
"The best tortillas are handmade. But," he doesn't have those. He has refrigerated flour discs for them instead, and he sets them on the counter. "I can't taste the difference anymore anyway. Okay, we need...rice, beans, and the steak there. How are you with cooking rice? And hot sauce."
The thing is, Alec could figure it out if he had to, probably; he could break down the ingredients anyway, and make a guess at it. He knows to heat everything past 165 to kill bacteria, and he knows to eat it while it's hot. Other than that?
He watches what Lark is pulling out, listens, because if his weak point is context his strong point is learning curve, is never needing told something academic twice. He scoops the steak out and shakes his head with a small, crooked smirk.
"I guess super weapons weren't earmarked for kitchen duty. They had other ideas for their expensive R&D."
"I'm not complaining. A kitchen boy wouldn't have had nearly as much fun on that cliff." Lark finds a small pot for the rice, a pan to cook the steak, and a butter knife. It's all he has to cut anything with besides his teeth and the act of putting food in his mouth then giving it to someone else is not okay. Even with someone he likes.
"Ideally the meat is in bite size pieces. The rice I like to season with..." he rummages and finds a few sandwich baggies of spices "borrowed" from the kitchen.
"You have a strange idea of fun," Alec says, in the kind of musing tone that means his own idea of fun isn't necessarily different, but together they are definitely not the norm.
He reaches to take the baggies once they're produced, sniffing at them. His nose isn't as sharp as Lark's, he knows, but it's plenty sensitive. The rest he watches from the middle of the movement.
"I'll shred it once it's cooked," he offers, and moves to take over the meat. That, he can do. "If you can't taste the difference anymore, why bother with seasoning?"
"Well, I can't tell the difference between fresh butter versus two month old margarine in a tortilla. And if I have to eat someone's belt to make it easier to hide their body, I'm lucky that I don't care how it tastes. Everything is just...dulled for me. But spices are like a punch in the mouth." At least those are: a few different kinds of pepper, some strong herbs.
"I can still taste sweets all right, though." It's a confession only because he had never eaten sweets at home, or here for that matter, until Alec and his Twinkies and Skittles and chocolates. If anything, sugar has a stronger impression because of how muted everything else is. His theory is that it's because lycanthropes don't really run into sugar much when they're hunting; it's only recently that it's been put into everything.
He licks his lips, keenly aware of the raw meat in a sudden, heightened way that he normally has well under control. Which is the thing he'd suspected would happen with a sip of alcohol or a couple of pain relievers which are, thankfully, working just fine. It just means he has to watch his thoughts more closely.
"Well, then you've got the important parts covered," he replies, incredibly sincerely. It's not as though he got a chance to eat a lot of sweets or junk food either back home, but he's making up for lost time now - and honestly thankful for his metabolism, with all the extra empty calories. But he does genuinely love his vices now.
And he sees that abbreviated motion, though he doesn't look up from what he's doing with the spices, with the meat and the pan. Just notes it, and wonders if he'll ask later how much of Lark's condition that he stay was for security and how much was comfort; he doesn't mind either way, is not afraid of Lark. Not physically.
"Find yourself needing to eat a lot of belts, do you?"
"A few," Lark says, with no shame whatsoever. "The last one back home worked in trafficking. Human trafficking, mostly. Which isn't why I killed him, but that detail gets me some traction in most circles when they find out I don't just chase tennis balls. How do you like your meat?"
"I hope you didn't get too much indigestion," Alec replies casually, because he can't be bothered to feel bad about anyone that would deal in human trafficking either - and also because he isn't particularly bothered by this tendency in Lark. There is, even, a part of him that can respect the neat efficiency of it.
The question, though, gets a pause for consideration.
"Okay, to be perfectly honest, I'm aware that there are differences, I just don't know what they are. Cooked is about as far as I get. Medium-rare is the answer on the persona list."
"Well rare is the most tender, it has the most juice to it. For obvious reasons, I like it best. Medium rare follows up on that; good job, persona list. Medium is a little pink in the very center. It's tougher. Well done is like gnawing on a piece of leather." Yeah, he is definitely fixating on the meat in a decidedly wolfish way, and he realizes it, so he gets a ginger ale for himself and offers one to Alec.
Alec takes it, raising an eyebrow at the descriptions.
Sometimes, he thinks people really just complicate life for themselves for the hell of it.
"We're going to go with whatever happens this time. I'm honestly not sure I care," he offers back, frowning down at his efforts with the steak and the pan. "It's sticking."
Alec wrinkles his nose, reaching to dig some butter out of the fridge, dropping a large chunk of it in with the meat.
So, now it's popping, of course. He makes a disgusted noise in his throat and reaches to turn the heat down.
"Maybe some mac and cheese next time," he offers, lifting the lid to check the rice, replacing it quickly when he sees the boiling water stop for a moment.
"That was a mistake-" Lark decides, brushing a tiny fleck of hot butter off his hand. "Tell you what, I'll cook the meat next time. Unless it's hot dogs. Anyway, this is the hard part. The rest you'll have down before I've even finished explaining it."
He can't help but laugh, if only at himself. He once cooked a four-course meal for the two of them with little trouble; he works in the kitchen with Steve. But put Alec in the kitchen with him and he forgets to watch the heat, to mind the meat, to stir things. It's ridiculous.
"Yeah, two or three minutes since they're already cooked." He leans against the counter, leans his head against the cupboard, and feels a bit fuzzy but mostly just good.
He's still a little sore (the drugs are good enough that he knows he'll be able to sleep, not so "good" that he'll be drooling on himself). He fell off a cliff and they've managed to burn the burritos, but in this new habit of living moment to moment, today stands out as particularly good.
Which is what he's thinking when he realizes he's more or less staring at Alec, and he shakes his head and straightens. "When the ingredients are all done, you'll lay them out in the middle of the tortilla..."
Alec sees Lark go down, so to speak, when he settles against the cabinet; he's also uncomfortably aware of the fact that he's being stared at. Normally this isn't so much of a problem, but even a little fuzzy Lark's gaze is heavy in a way most peoples' just aren't, and Alec knows he's screwing up the burritos. He'd never admit it, but there's actually a thin thread of distress starting to weave its way through the foundation of his frustration; the latter is natural. The former is conditioning and experience.
He opens his mouth to say something when Lark snaps out of it, when Alec pulls the pan back off the hot burner and turns off all the dials he can find. He smirks anyway, pulls down two plates, and presents the entire mess still on the stove with a flourish of his empty, bandaged hand.
"Ta da. Piece of cake. Go sit your ass down and I'll make us plates - I know how this part goes."
Lark eyes that mess with undeniable hunger, moans a little and isn't even being entirely theatrical. He works hard to keep the depths of his hungers secret, but simply isn't up to the task of burying them tonight. There's no point; Alec isn't afraid of them anyway.
He slips past Alec, still watching the food, but drops a kiss--split-second, perhaps less--on Alec's shoulder. The strangest thing he learned about himself those long weeks as Bonnie's pet dog was that he is capable of such easy warmth. There's a world of difference between the way he enjoys letting someone scratch behind his ear, and the way he is here in this kitchen, but the surprise is the same. Lark is forty-one years old and only in the past year has he discovered that he understands simple affection, scrubbed free of most of his usual motives.
In turn, the strangest thing about being here by far for Alec is when he is the recipient of that easy warmth; oh, he is capable of a certain level of it himself, when he's actively working someone else and trying to win their favor. Left to his own devices, without the ulterior motive of binding someone's affection closer to him, he neither reaches out nor expects to be reached out to - and then Lark does something like that.
He tips his head when it happens, so he can see where he felt the kiss from the corner of his eye, and he hesitates, although not for long. Just a moment and then he's moving again, assembling plates for them both, rolling up burritos passably well after a try or two. This, after all, is only geometry.
He drops both plates into place on the table as well as himself into the chair opposite Lark, forks tucked under the wrapped tortillas, although he expects neither of them will use them. No, Lark's hungers do not scare Alec, just as his do not scare Lark. There are much more subtle savageries to be wary of between them.
The X5 smirks. "Eat up - then I'm going to fix that sling up proper."
Lark digs in, holding the burrito with one hand and consciously, forcibly restraining himself to eat one easy bite at a time rather than devouring it in the two seconds it would take him otherwise.
"You pass," is his assessment of the first-try burritos, with a stealthy wink. The drugs aren't strong but they're strange enough to dig into his chemistry and shake loose a relaxed, giddy happiness.
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Lark hasn't taken anything at all for pain since he quit drinking. He doesn't like who he is when he's too relaxed, when there are too many chemicals in his system, and most wolves become lethal when they take anything.
But the pain is just as likely to make him wild, and at least if the pain killers do affect him badly, Alec will be there. He does trust Alec with that.
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Still, he'd already been intending to hang around after everything gets sorted. It's easy to nod.
"Then go ahead. I'll get the bikes sorted, grab a shower, stop by the infirmary, and then I'll be up." Give them both time to sort themselves out, but not enough time for anything to happen unless the Admiral intervenes.
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Lark is...struggling not to show any pain. It's actually easier to hide it when Alec is there: Alec acts as a focal point, a specific face to keep this weakness hidden from.
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As it stands he shows up freshly showered and in clean clothes, his hand neatly wrapped in gauze and a small bottle of pills in his pocket. He could've gotten more but the request at all, after his behavior recovering from the incident with Bull, was suspicious enough on its own. So he slips in the door and offers them without comment, already smirking as he ibhakes the chocolate scented air as if nothing at all had happened.
"Someone's trying to suck up," he teases.
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"Is it working?" He throws a smile over his shoulder. If not for how pale he is, it would be hard to guess at the way the pain in his shoulder has radiated all the way up his neck and into a truly spectacular headache.
He metabolizes things very, very quickly though; it's what allows him to eat an entire person and not look or feel as if he's had anything but a decadent lunch. Two minutes and change after he swallows the pills he feels them begin to work.
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He barely needs the invitation: he's already shucking his jacket off, leaving it draped over a chair where he can still get to it easily if he needs to, and pushing the sleeves of his fitted sweater up his arms a bit. All the same he's calmer now, more focused, feeling more himself; he reads the touch loud and clear, and lets it answer something that sits unacknowledged, dead silent and faint, in the center of his chest.
"Absolutely. I have a confession, though," he admits a moment later, scooping a corner out of the brownie pan with his finger and popping it into his mouth. "I have no idea how to make burritos." Apparently he's still planning on making good on both of their threats and promises.
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"The best tortillas are handmade. But," he doesn't have those. He has refrigerated flour discs for them instead, and he sets them on the counter. "I can't taste the difference anymore anyway. Okay, we need...rice, beans, and the steak there. How are you with cooking rice? And hot sauce."
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He watches what Lark is pulling out, listens, because if his weak point is context his strong point is learning curve, is never needing told something academic twice. He scoops the steak out and shakes his head with a small, crooked smirk.
"I guess super weapons weren't earmarked for kitchen duty. They had other ideas for their expensive R&D."
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"Ideally the meat is in bite size pieces. The rice I like to season with..." he rummages and finds a few sandwich baggies of spices "borrowed" from the kitchen.
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He reaches to take the baggies once they're produced, sniffing at them. His nose isn't as sharp as Lark's, he knows, but it's plenty sensitive. The rest he watches from the middle of the movement.
"I'll shred it once it's cooked," he offers, and moves to take over the meat. That, he can do. "If you can't taste the difference anymore, why bother with seasoning?"
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"I can still taste sweets all right, though." It's a confession only because he had never eaten sweets at home, or here for that matter, until Alec and his Twinkies and Skittles and chocolates. If anything, sugar has a stronger impression because of how muted everything else is. His theory is that it's because lycanthropes don't really run into sugar much when they're hunting; it's only recently that it's been put into everything.
He licks his lips, keenly aware of the raw meat in a sudden, heightened way that he normally has well under control. Which is the thing he'd suspected would happen with a sip of alcohol or a couple of pain relievers which are, thankfully, working just fine. It just means he has to watch his thoughts more closely.
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And he sees that abbreviated motion, though he doesn't look up from what he's doing with the spices, with the meat and the pan. Just notes it, and wonders if he'll ask later how much of Lark's condition that he stay was for security and how much was comfort; he doesn't mind either way, is not afraid of Lark. Not physically.
"Find yourself needing to eat a lot of belts, do you?"
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The question, though, gets a pause for consideration.
"Okay, to be perfectly honest, I'm aware that there are differences, I just don't know what they are. Cooked is about as far as I get. Medium-rare is the answer on the persona list."
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Sometimes, he thinks people really just complicate life for themselves for the hell of it.
"We're going to go with whatever happens this time. I'm honestly not sure I care," he offers back, frowning down at his efforts with the steak and the pan. "It's sticking."
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It shouldn't stick, and he pushes and scrapes with a spoon to try to get the meat sizzling rather than burning.
"Maybe it needs butter."
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So, now it's popping, of course. He makes a disgusted noise in his throat and reaches to turn the heat down.
"Maybe some mac and cheese next time," he offers, lifting the lid to check the rice, replacing it quickly when he sees the boiling water stop for a moment.
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He can't help but laugh, if only at himself. He once cooked a four-course meal for the two of them with little trouble; he works in the kitchen with Steve. But put Alec in the kitchen with him and he forgets to watch the heat, to mind the meat, to stir things. It's ridiculous.
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He could make something edible in a kitchen that sucks the electricity from the rest of the house to work, but now he's just annoyed.
"The beans you just heat, right?" he hazards warily.
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He's still a little sore (the drugs are good enough that he knows he'll be able to sleep, not so "good" that he'll be drooling on himself). He fell off a cliff and they've managed to burn the burritos, but in this new habit of living moment to moment, today stands out as particularly good.
Which is what he's thinking when he realizes he's more or less staring at Alec, and he shakes his head and straightens. "When the ingredients are all done, you'll lay them out in the middle of the tortilla..."
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He opens his mouth to say something when Lark snaps out of it, when Alec pulls the pan back off the hot burner and turns off all the dials he can find. He smirks anyway, pulls down two plates, and presents the entire mess still on the stove with a flourish of his empty, bandaged hand.
"Ta da. Piece of cake. Go sit your ass down and I'll make us plates - I know how this part goes."
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He slips past Alec, still watching the food, but drops a kiss--split-second, perhaps less--on Alec's shoulder. The strangest thing he learned about himself those long weeks as Bonnie's pet dog was that he is capable of such easy warmth. There's a world of difference between the way he enjoys letting someone scratch behind his ear, and the way he is here in this kitchen, but the surprise is the same. Lark is forty-one years old and only in the past year has he discovered that he understands simple affection, scrubbed free of most of his usual motives.
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He tips his head when it happens, so he can see where he felt the kiss from the corner of his eye, and he hesitates, although not for long. Just a moment and then he's moving again, assembling plates for them both, rolling up burritos passably well after a try or two. This, after all, is only geometry.
He drops both plates into place on the table as well as himself into the chair opposite Lark, forks tucked under the wrapped tortillas, although he expects neither of them will use them. No, Lark's hungers do not scare Alec, just as his do not scare Lark. There are much more subtle savageries to be wary of between them.
The X5 smirks. "Eat up - then I'm going to fix that sling up proper."
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"You pass," is his assessment of the first-try burritos, with a stealthy wink. The drugs aren't strong but they're strange enough to dig into his chemistry and shake loose a relaxed, giddy happiness.