"I need time," he replies after a moment, tipping his face against Riley, using her fur to wipe away the evidence even though he barely felt the tears start, and he hasn't felt them stop, and he doesn't know what that means either.
"I know how that sounds, but..." And he is sorry for it a lot but that doesn't change the necessity. "I shouldn't want any of this. I should want to get as far from you as I can, I should want to stop this right now or half a hundred times before, and I can. I can, I've done it before, I can drop everything and walk away and I can act like I'm fine until it's not a lie anymore, and then never think of any of this again. I should want to do that now. I do."
He desperately wants to shut this all down again and block it off somewhere he never has to look at it. "But I can't do that without leaving all of it. And I don't want to do that, but I have to figure out what to do."
First, Lark's stomach drops because it still hurts to know, and he can feel it in a sudden tension of his muscles no matter how he fights it. He sits back and that's when he feels relief that Alec has asked. At least it's familiar.
But it's followed by another surge of panic when Alec explains. He wants to argue, to convince, to shake this off, but he doesn't. For one thing it wouldn't help. For another, "Yeah. No, me, too."
He's never needed time before. But this all feels like standing with his toes curled over the edge of a cliff, and all he has to do is decide if he wants to fall. He isn't sure any more than Alec is.
Alec can't answer that. He's not good with reassurances, he still balks inherently at thinking of the future, of promising anything about what he's going to do next. It isn't that he's concerned about breaking his word because he's not, or at least not with most people. It's not even that he doesn't want to lie to Lark. He just knows how quickly false hope can kill, and he is a little afraid of that.
Riley breathes out, and answers for him: "Have you ever known us to give up at all?"
" This is different." That's what scares him enough to ask for reassurance
even though he doesn't believe in it. Even though he knows Alec won't give
it. That's the sort of small, irrational desperation he feels now and he
doesn't know how long that's been there.
"You need time and I can give that. But...I want to stay until it's time
for take off. Okay?"
"It's not different," Alec grates back, firm, and he means it as much as he meant what he said earlier about not getting a choice. It's not different. He doesn't give up. If he and Lark are done, it will be because they decided it; if he forgets him, it will be because he chose to move on after all of this. A promise not to give up is not a promise that everything will work out as they both want it to in this moment - it is not a promise that what they want won't change as soon as the dust settles - but it is that much.
As for the rest, he doesn't answer verbally, but the moment that Lark presents the possibility of him leaving - in the form of having to ask at all, but the thought is still there - Alec responds by reaching out to hold onto Lark instead, his cold-numb fingers curling somewhat clumsily into Lark's shirt or closing around his arm.
"Stay," he does finally say, Riley's tongue licking nervously over her muzzle again and again.
Lark holds on tighter, careful to avoid pressing on the wounds he knows Alec has but utterly unwilling to let anyone see them and think there's an opening for outside conversation.
"You smell good," he murmurs, which is a bit nonsense, Alec smells of sweat and blood and salt right now. But there's still that astringent tang to him, and that smell is the one that reminds him of nights spent sleeping safely, and long games, and the way Alec gleams when he's doing something he loves.
Which means this is also the smell that could gut him clean, over and over and over, if this ends and they're both still on the Barge.
The thing is, Alec never minds pain - not the kind that burns through his flesh and ignites his bones, anyway, not the kind he can now soothe with medical knowledge without having to avail anyone else of its severity or existence. He doesn't like it and he complains about it freely now, but in the grand scheme of things, he doesn't actually care. Lark presses closer and this time Alec doesn't complain at all.
He does laugh a little, letting the ball of warm bodies and daemons absorb the sound of it. It's not for anyone else anyway.
"I smell like I need at least three showers," he replies, because maybe Lark has the sharper nose, but Alec's is plenty sharp enough for that. "You just haven't noticed because the same can be said for you."
The harpy stench is the worst of it; he can smell their blood and all the places where their feathers touched him, can smell the dirt under their talons sunk into the jagged tears in his jacket. If only he could have kept it on.
"Bastard," Lark snorts, but like always there's a note of playfulness in it, sometimes even of delight. "You might need one. I could change shapes, give myself a once over like Riley does, and you'd never know I hadn't scrubbed myself with your shampoo."
He gives Riley a conspiratorial smile and a nod, one tongue-bather to another potential tongue-bather.
Riley, still caught between the role of absorbing Alec's anxiety and pain and exhaustion and anchoring him against it, flips the tip of her heavy tail into Lark's face.
"Upstart," she mutters with the elegant disdain of a cat perched confidently out of reach of the dog below it, for a wolf that would compare himself to a cat; there's the same fond tone in her voice, though, thin and resonant.
"If my shampoo smells like your spit, there's something very, very wrong with one of us," Alec supplements, lackluster.
"I'd love to learn from the master," he retorts, even knowing that at any minute she could vanish along with Naki.
Lark is still in quiet, protective shock over having seen Alec cry. The flatness of his tone only serves to make him that much more desperate to fight, kill, or just to ease some of it, to help dust away the misery for a moment.
"I could name a few things, but I don't think hygiene is one." He turns his head just a bit and licks Alec's cheek, down low by his jaw. "For comparison."
"You'd think so, but she's a cheetah. Every fifth lick she stops to bite," Alec replies for Riley, who has started shifting ever so slightly so she can surrender some of Alec to Lark, so she can bolster more of the side Lark isn't on, because maybe his words are joking but there's nothing under them. Not yet.
Lark licks at his face; Alec just tilts his head away a little, not evading so much as lifting his chin to make room, letting his eyes fall closed. A shiver runs through him, faint enough that if they weren't sitting against one another it would be easy to miss, but it exists. Alec runs hot as a rule, and now he's still shivering, still chasing off the aftereffects of the land of the dead.
"That's just a cheetah thing?" He'd have a joke but, like Alec, he's been drawn and quartered and he's lucky he's talking at all.
He's surprised when Alec doesn't push him or protest. He's really surprised by what is a nonverbal invitation, and he licks him again, along his neck, next to his pulse. He's slower about it than he'd ever be for cleaning. This way, he can get a sense for Alec's state: shock, or panic. This way he'll be able to think of something to do.
But for right now he can share his heat. "So I'll get to spend my life as a wereharpy."
Alec is very plainly not up for sex of any kind, and wouldn't be even if he were physically whole, probably; but he has been learning, piece by piece and bit by bit, from Lark mainly but also from Nina, that he enjoys being close. At least as long as he can generally convince himself to stay still he likes being close, and if Lark benefits from their sleeping arrangement, there's something about someone sleeping soundly beside him that Alec can neither explain nor put into words. Something... gratifying. No one trusts Alec. No one should, but every now and again, Lark does anyway.
So he tips his head out of the way and he closes his eyes and whatever else Lark is doing, for now Alec lets him do it; his pulse - normally extremely strong, extremely consistent - is still sorting itself out, figuring out it's actually driven by a living, beating heart, and it stumbles along its rhythm as best it can.
"I'm serious," he tries again after a moment. "Don't swallow any of this crap. Who knows - " Anything, really.
Lark is of the same mind right now. He craves contact, but not the sort that ends in clothes being ripped off or pushed down. Right now, he's flying blind it feels like, and so he's allowing instincts to fire that he's spent years trying to douse.
The strongest of those instincts demands he make sure Alec is going to end up stable again, even if he's not now. He lingers a little, tasting sweat and dirt and Alec, tasting flickers of the chemistry that makes him feel and react. He can smell them anyway, but this is a more accurate read. And he tastes something ashy and unbearably bitter, too, and knows it's from the harpies.
"I know." He turns his head and spits twice to get the taste out. And then, still feeling carved out and desperate for this, he turns back and pulls Alec a little closer. He doesn't say anything when he takes his own jacket off and puts it around Alec to try to still the shivering.
Here, finally, is the small sound of protest, or whatever the noise he makes at the end of a sharp inhale means, because moving is not what Alec wants to do right now, not in any sense of the word. He would if he had to, of course, he'll always do what he has to, but Lark pulls at him and then he's moving, shrugging his jacket off, and Alec goes and Alec sits for it but he opens his eyes again.
He knows he's in some kind of shock. He knows he kept his body going with as much rationed water as they had and what food they had, too, but he knows the rest as well. That's what allows him to settle into this new position even though he knows they're both thinking about him crying. They're both thinking about how weak and vulnerable he is right now, and that's not something he can let stand.
Except that he has to; there's nothing left to draw on, not right now, not with just Lark and their souls. "Infirmary's going to be busy for a few days. Judging by the way people are looking out over that cliff, some tears headed our way too."
"It'll be okay." The tears will be. Lark can handle those. "People will handle most of it the way they always do. The rest is just a cleaner, harder process."
He watches their shipmates a moment, and he thinks of Max, the girl from Alec's world, the one that ran, the one that knew so little of what she'd left behind. He wonders what she'd make of this tangle of bodies here, were it even possible to tell Alec is here between Lark and Riley wrapped around him.
He's not aware of the low rumble just between his throat and chest until Naki clicks at him.
Alec isn't thinking about their shipmates at all, not more than it takes to acknowledge they exist. If he thinks about individuals, he has to put names and faces to them, has to remind himself they're people. He doesn't want to so instead he just settles where he is and curls his hand back over Lark's arm.
"What is it?" he asks when he hears the growl, t he clicking. Notably, neither he nor Riley looks up for a threat, trusting Lark to handle it or rouse him if it vetoes necessary.
"Just thinking about the Barge. T'Pol wanting my hand or my head, Max kicking sand at you." He tucks his chin over Alec's head. It's the only gesture that feels properly protective without being demeaning. "Nothing to worry about. My mind is just catching back up to where we're going next."
Alec lets the names pass him by without trying to catch them; T'Pol, Max. Both people he should be concerned about, people that would definitely be interested in knowing that he's in especially mismatched pieces right now, but he just doesn't have the energy for it.
"Your mind is catching back up, and you're telling me not to worry?" he murmurs instead, leaning into the new position ever so slightly.
"Your next warden you'll ignore as thoroughly as you have every other warden you've ever been assigned," Alec sighs, both dismissive and even... faintly, bitterly fond. Some of the things he loves most about Lark he doesn't understand on a molecular level.
He smiles because Alec's right. But the question makes something in his chest seize up a little. The disturbing part is that it's not a bad feeling--just powerful, just unexpected. He's hated so much it nearly made him sick, but he's never felt something like this to the point it hurt.
"Yeah. You should. I'll stay here." If they have to part ways on the Barge to think things through, at least there's this.
He doesn't say thank you, doesn't say okay, doesn't say anything: Riley shifts a little to be more settled, and sets up a purr that would be deafening through direct contact. Alec turns his head a little more into the lee of where Lark and Riley's bodies are stacked together in blatant, necessary, unprecedented defense, because folded into the center of them for once in his life Alec actually feels safe.
He sniffs, quietly, and presses a chaste, dry kiss to the base of Lark's neck where his face ends up, and then he goes still. Maybe he's asleep. Maybe he's just pretending. Maybe he doesn't know how without his body just shutting off on him, but he stays still, he breathes shallow and even, and his pulse is slowly beginning to steady out.
It's Riley that says, low, questioning, able to do so without upsetting the rumble in her chest: "Lark."
Lark has fallen asleep next to Alec countless times. Sometimes, Alec pretends to sleep to make it easier, and Lark is used to that. He's never been the other end of the dynamic, staying awake for Alec instead. It flips various switches in his mind, makes him very aware of what's around them and how the mood in the area is.
He's afraid of waking Alec, so when Riley speaks his attention snaps to her and he hesitates before answering. "Yeah?"
Riley isn't concerned. She knows, before either Lark or Alec knows, that he won't be able to sleep much, not out here; not like this. He's exhausted and he thinks he wants to sleep but she knows he won't let himself.
He's taking something for himself, certainly, but it won't be rest.
"I'm not going to be here much longer," she says at last, and hates how helpless it sounds. She doesn't even know what she's asking, her gaze on him without raising her head or turning it. She just knows that it didn't feel like abandoning him, before.
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"I know how that sounds, but..." And he is sorry for it a lot but that doesn't change the necessity. "I shouldn't want any of this. I should want to get as far from you as I can, I should want to stop this right now or half a hundred times before, and I can. I can, I've done it before, I can drop everything and walk away and I can act like I'm fine until it's not a lie anymore, and then never think of any of this again. I should want to do that now. I do."
He desperately wants to shut this all down again and block it off somewhere he never has to look at it. "But I can't do that without leaving all of it. And I don't want to do that, but I have to figure out what to do."
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But it's followed by another surge of panic when Alec explains. He wants to argue, to convince, to shake this off, but he doesn't. For one thing it wouldn't help. For another, "Yeah. No, me, too."
He's never needed time before. But this all feels like standing with his toes curled over the edge of a cliff, and all he has to do is decide if he wants to fall. He isn't sure any more than Alec is.
"Just- don't give up on me easily."
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Riley breathes out, and answers for him: "Have you ever known us to give up at all?"
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" This is different." That's what scares him enough to ask for reassurance even though he doesn't believe in it. Even though he knows Alec won't give it. That's the sort of small, irrational desperation he feels now and he doesn't know how long that's been there.
"You need time and I can give that. But...I want to stay until it's time for take off. Okay?"
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As for the rest, he doesn't answer verbally, but the moment that Lark presents the possibility of him leaving - in the form of having to ask at all, but the thought is still there - Alec responds by reaching out to hold onto Lark instead, his cold-numb fingers curling somewhat clumsily into Lark's shirt or closing around his arm.
"Stay," he does finally say, Riley's tongue licking nervously over her muzzle again and again.
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"You smell good," he murmurs, which is a bit nonsense, Alec smells of sweat and blood and salt right now. But there's still that astringent tang to him, and that smell is the one that reminds him of nights spent sleeping safely, and long games, and the way Alec gleams when he's doing something he loves.
Which means this is also the smell that could gut him clean, over and over and over, if this ends and they're both still on the Barge.
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He does laugh a little, letting the ball of warm bodies and daemons absorb the sound of it. It's not for anyone else anyway.
"I smell like I need at least three showers," he replies, because maybe Lark has the sharper nose, but Alec's is plenty sharp enough for that. "You just haven't noticed because the same can be said for you."
The harpy stench is the worst of it; he can smell their blood and all the places where their feathers touched him, can smell the dirt under their talons sunk into the jagged tears in his jacket. If only he could have kept it on.
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He gives Riley a conspiratorial smile and a nod, one tongue-bather to another potential tongue-bather.
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"Upstart," she mutters with the elegant disdain of a cat perched confidently out of reach of the dog below it, for a wolf that would compare himself to a cat; there's the same fond tone in her voice, though, thin and resonant.
"If my shampoo smells like your spit, there's something very, very wrong with one of us," Alec supplements, lackluster.
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Lark is still in quiet, protective shock over having seen Alec cry. The flatness of his tone only serves to make him that much more desperate to fight, kill, or just to ease some of it, to help dust away the misery for a moment.
"I could name a few things, but I don't think hygiene is one." He turns his head just a bit and licks Alec's cheek, down low by his jaw. "For comparison."
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Lark licks at his face; Alec just tilts his head away a little, not evading so much as lifting his chin to make room, letting his eyes fall closed. A shiver runs through him, faint enough that if they weren't sitting against one another it would be easy to miss, but it exists. Alec runs hot as a rule, and now he's still shivering, still chasing off the aftereffects of the land of the dead.
"Careful. You'll get harpy cooties or whatever."
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He's surprised when Alec doesn't push him or protest. He's really surprised by what is a nonverbal invitation, and he licks him again, along his neck, next to his pulse. He's slower about it than he'd ever be for cleaning. This way, he can get a sense for Alec's state: shock, or panic. This way he'll be able to think of something to do.
But for right now he can share his heat. "So I'll get to spend my life as a wereharpy."
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So he tips his head out of the way and he closes his eyes and whatever else Lark is doing, for now Alec lets him do it; his pulse - normally extremely strong, extremely consistent - is still sorting itself out, figuring out it's actually driven by a living, beating heart, and it stumbles along its rhythm as best it can.
"I'm serious," he tries again after a moment. "Don't swallow any of this crap. Who knows - " Anything, really.
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The strongest of those instincts demands he make sure Alec is going to end up stable again, even if he's not now. He lingers a little, tasting sweat and dirt and Alec, tasting flickers of the chemistry that makes him feel and react. He can smell them anyway, but this is a more accurate read. And he tastes something ashy and unbearably bitter, too, and knows it's from the harpies.
"I know." He turns his head and spits twice to get the taste out. And then, still feeling carved out and desperate for this, he turns back and pulls Alec a little closer. He doesn't say anything when he takes his own jacket off and puts it around Alec to try to still the shivering.
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He knows he's in some kind of shock. He knows he kept his body going with as much rationed water as they had and what food they had, too, but he knows the rest as well. That's what allows him to settle into this new position even though he knows they're both thinking about him crying. They're both thinking about how weak and vulnerable he is right now, and that's not something he can let stand.
Except that he has to; there's nothing left to draw on, not right now, not with just Lark and their souls. "Infirmary's going to be busy for a few days. Judging by the way people are looking out over that cliff, some tears headed our way too."
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He watches their shipmates a moment, and he thinks of Max, the girl from Alec's world, the one that ran, the one that knew so little of what she'd left behind. He wonders what she'd make of this tangle of bodies here, were it even possible to tell Alec is here between Lark and Riley wrapped around him.
He's not aware of the low rumble just between his throat and chest until Naki clicks at him.
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"What is it?" he asks when he hears the growl, t he clicking. Notably, neither he nor Riley looks up for a threat, trusting Lark to handle it or rouse him if it vetoes necessary.
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"Your mind is catching back up, and you're telling me not to worry?" he murmurs instead, leaning into the new position ever so slightly.
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"Well, you shouldn't worry. My next warden, on the other hand..."
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"Can I... is it okay if I just sleep? A little?"
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"Yeah. You should. I'll stay here." If they have to part ways on the Barge to think things through, at least there's this.
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He sniffs, quietly, and presses a chaste, dry kiss to the base of Lark's neck where his face ends up, and then he goes still. Maybe he's asleep. Maybe he's just pretending. Maybe he doesn't know how without his body just shutting off on him, but he stays still, he breathes shallow and even, and his pulse is slowly beginning to steady out.
It's Riley that says, low, questioning, able to do so without upsetting the rumble in her chest: "Lark."
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He's afraid of waking Alec, so when Riley speaks his attention snaps to her and he hesitates before answering. "Yeah?"
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He's taking something for himself, certainly, but it won't be rest.
"I'm not going to be here much longer," she says at last, and hates how helpless it sounds. She doesn't even know what she's asking, her gaze on him without raising her head or turning it. She just knows that it didn't feel like abandoning him, before.
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