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.
"I know you won't be," he says. He'd missed having her presence last time, but it hadn't felt like she was really gone, either. This time, with so much changing, he can't pretend it isn't harder.
The unspoken question lingers but he's already answered it in his mind. It takes more time to find words. "We're taking time apart to figure...this...out. But I'll still be paying attention. I'll still be there."
She's scared, is what she doesn't want to admit to; what he doesn't want to admit to. Other people look at him and think progress but he knows he's been coming apart at the seams stitch by stitch and there's nothing good inside. Nothing good but Riley, who of all the things she's unsure of knows this was not a mistake.
Lark, in this terrifying new place, will shore up the pieces of himself while he can't. She'd all but told Lark that last time and she still means it but now she feels so much more precarious.
So much younger. "He doesn't know what to do. I don't know what else to do."
Lark has always known what to do. Sometimes what he knows is the wrong thing, but he can count on one hand the number of times he hasn't known which way to turn, and he'd still have fingers left over.
He isn't actually lost right now. He knows that he desperately wants to keep going, that he wants Alec--that he wants Knox. But he also knows that wanting something, even so badly it makes your teeth ache, is not how major decisions are made. And this nebulous thing feels major even if he can't say why yet.
He's not in a good place mentally, or emotionally, or physically. But he is built to keep a pack together, and as long as Alec is hurting, Lark will have moments of clarity. The pain isn't lessened, but the fog sometimes lifts. (What he doesn't know, because he never went through it and never stuck around when other wolves were, is that if Alec dies a permanent death at this point, it will tear open a part of him that is entirely wolf, that doesn't heal).
"You know I'll do anything I can." Including sitting here, letting Alec sleep on him, after they've decided this might be it. "He asked for time--I have to give him that."
Alec is also not usually at a loss for clarity, at least in situations where most other people would be lost. Drop him in the center of a battlefield and he'll find the quickest way out, possibly even win the battle on his way; he mapped his way out of the Land of the Dead and back in and back out again and again. He knew he would be able to survive where others didn't stand a chance. He was right. He's been right about that since Manticore.
But this is different. This isn't something he can outmaneuver or pick his way past with logic and solid tactics - and he knows that because he's been trying. He hasn't cried, not without being in overwhelming physical pain, since the day they took Teek away when he was seven years old. It unnerved Riley - and him - as much as it did Lark, but that didn't mean any of them could stop it.
"I do," she agrees, sincerely. "I wish I could give you more. I honestly do. I wish I could stay. But I need you to know that if you each take time, and you each decide to let go of this based on something as temporary and circumstantial as fear? It is a mistake."
(If Alec died, Lark would never heal; if what he has now with Lark fails, Alec will never open himself up to it again, and shortly after that he'll self destruct in a truly spectacular fashion.)
It's the way she phrases it that allows her words to slip past Lark's tension and exhaustion, his anger and his panic and his longing. All those layers that deflect so much of what others advise him to do, but Riley manages it because how often has Lark told his pack not to be ruled by fear? Not to be pawns to lust, or gluttony, or even boredom?
He can't outthink this. Neither can Alec. But he can watch himself to see what emotion is battling for control, and he can make decisions with it in mind.
It's not much, all told. But it's a start. And for a moment, his expression has a shade of resolution under the weariness.
"I don't want to make mistakes with him," Lark says quietly, despite the pang he feels at knowing Alec will know this anyway because Riley does. "Not thoughtless ones. I won't take this lightly."
She knows that; she does. And because she knows it, so too does a part of Alec, although it isn't a part of him that he's had the luxury of exercising with any regularity. It, like her, is not a part of himself that he's been able to allow out where others can see before the past year.
So if there's anxiety for Lark in knowing that Alec will know that he's committed to getting them right, the tradeoff is that some part of Alec knows that it would be the worst kind of mistake they could make to give up because they were afraid of what would happen.
She still has as much of herself pressed against Alec as she can get, but Riley hooks a paw up over the side of Lark's head, pulls him close enough to be able to twist her head and groom the side of his face, his hair, his neck, anything she can reach without disturbing Alec between them. Her claws are duller than any other big cat's would be, more like a dog's, strong and likely uncomfortable; her tongue is rough enough to peel flesh off bone with enough repetition and focus, but then, both of these have always been the only possible way either of them know how to love.
The advantage here is that Lark is not just a strong human, nor is he just a clever werewolf. He knows how dangerous Riley could be, and because he's Lark, he finds both a thrill and a certain kind of peace in leaning in close to her. Because if he loves Alec--cantankerous, unpredictable, angry pieces of him as well--then of course he loves Riley, who represents the purest and strongest parts of him.
His hand strokes her shoulder in turn. If he'd been in wolf form he'd have groomed her back, like he'd done not an hour ago for Alec in a desperate, instinct-driven bid to offer comfort. But he's not so shaken up now, and there is a difference between licking fur and merely dirty skin. So: petting will have to do.
He's never been this close to her. The nearest he came was an accidental brush on the Barge, when touching the daemons was not just taboo. And now here they are; Naki has found a place to rest on Alec's hip, as easily settled there as on Lark's shoulder. But he thinks again of that first touch, and of the way Alec had reacted, and he thinks of the little pieces he has of Alec's life. Of the things he's done to keep his soul together, and healthy, and not like the damaged souls Lark saw here and there.
"Do you wonder how we got this way?" he asks her, quietly bewildered by it all.
"Which way, Lark?" she asks, pausing briefly in her licking to do so, though even now she's still purring deep and low by way of soothing both herself and Alec.
Her fur is illogically cool to the touch, but other than that there's no surprises there: her coat is thick and glossy and vibrant, her frame light and her muscles lean and hard beneath her unmarred pelt. Whatever damage Alec carries with him - and to be sure, there is a lot - it hasn't touched her at all.
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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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The unspoken question lingers but he's already answered it in his mind. It takes more time to find words. "We're taking time apart to figure...this...out. But I'll still be paying attention. I'll still be there."
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Lark, in this terrifying new place, will shore up the pieces of himself while he can't. She'd all but told Lark that last time and she still means it but now she feels so much more precarious.
So much younger. "He doesn't know what to do. I don't know what else to do."
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He isn't actually lost right now. He knows that he desperately wants to keep going, that he wants Alec--that he wants Knox. But he also knows that wanting something, even so badly it makes your teeth ache, is not how major decisions are made. And this nebulous thing feels major even if he can't say why yet.
He's not in a good place mentally, or emotionally, or physically. But he is built to keep a pack together, and as long as Alec is hurting, Lark will have moments of clarity. The pain isn't lessened, but the fog sometimes lifts. (What he doesn't know, because he never went through it and never stuck around when other wolves were, is that if Alec dies a permanent death at this point, it will tear open a part of him that is entirely wolf, that doesn't heal).
"You know I'll do anything I can." Including sitting here, letting Alec sleep on him, after they've decided this might be it. "He asked for time--I have to give him that."
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But this is different. This isn't something he can outmaneuver or pick his way past with logic and solid tactics - and he knows that because he's been trying. He hasn't cried, not without being in overwhelming physical pain, since the day they took Teek away when he was seven years old. It unnerved Riley - and him - as much as it did Lark, but that didn't mean any of them could stop it.
"I do," she agrees, sincerely. "I wish I could give you more. I honestly do. I wish I could stay. But I need you to know that if you each take time, and you each decide to let go of this based on something as temporary and circumstantial as fear? It is a mistake."
(If Alec died, Lark would never heal; if what he has now with Lark fails, Alec will never open himself up to it again, and shortly after that he'll self destruct in a truly spectacular fashion.)
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He can't outthink this. Neither can Alec. But he can watch himself to see what emotion is battling for control, and he can make decisions with it in mind.
It's not much, all told. But it's a start. And for a moment, his expression has a shade of resolution under the weariness.
"I don't want to make mistakes with him," Lark says quietly, despite the pang he feels at knowing Alec will know this anyway because Riley does. "Not thoughtless ones. I won't take this lightly."
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So if there's anxiety for Lark in knowing that Alec will know that he's committed to getting them right, the tradeoff is that some part of Alec knows that it would be the worst kind of mistake they could make to give up because they were afraid of what would happen.
She still has as much of herself pressed against Alec as she can get, but Riley hooks a paw up over the side of Lark's head, pulls him close enough to be able to twist her head and groom the side of his face, his hair, his neck, anything she can reach without disturbing Alec between them. Her claws are duller than any other big cat's would be, more like a dog's, strong and likely uncomfortable; her tongue is rough enough to peel flesh off bone with enough repetition and focus, but then, both of these have always been the only possible way either of them know how to love.
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His hand strokes her shoulder in turn. If he'd been in wolf form he'd have groomed her back, like he'd done not an hour ago for Alec in a desperate, instinct-driven bid to offer comfort. But he's not so shaken up now, and there is a difference between licking fur and merely dirty skin. So: petting will have to do.
He's never been this close to her. The nearest he came was an accidental brush on the Barge, when touching the daemons was not just taboo. And now here they are; Naki has found a place to rest on Alec's hip, as easily settled there as on Lark's shoulder. But he thinks again of that first touch, and of the way Alec had reacted, and he thinks of the little pieces he has of Alec's life. Of the things he's done to keep his soul together, and healthy, and not like the damaged souls Lark saw here and there.
"Do you wonder how we got this way?" he asks her, quietly bewildered by it all.
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Her fur is illogically cool to the touch, but other than that there's no surprises there: her coat is thick and glossy and vibrant, her frame light and her muscles lean and hard beneath her unmarred pelt. Whatever damage Alec carries with him - and to be sure, there is a lot - it hasn't touched her at all.
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