Memory Drabbles

[ukan]

RUTHLESS

Con is as tall as Lark, but built of more muscle, and he's a little younger. He smiles easily, and he's young enough to let in light to every room he enters with the sheer strength of his optimism. The rest of the pack is made up of lawyers closer to Lark's age, or soldiers just back from the war; Con is untouched by the tedium and compromise of the legal system, or the utter hell of fighting for richer, lazier men.

Given a few years though, and a little experience that Lark could generate for him, Con would be one hell of a leader. Despite his innocence, the pack loves him already. So here, now, in Lark's pack, Con is a threat. There are plans that he trips over because he doesn't listen when Lark pushes him away. There are secrets he could expose, and thereby endanger Lark and the rest of the pack.

What Lark does is draw him closer. He teaches him the principles of war, which govern everything as surely as any law of physics. And when Con understands them, when he picks them up just as quickly and naturally as Lark suspected he would, Lark begins to break these principles in small but glaring ways.

What he needs is for Con to believe the pack would be safer under his hand rather than Lark's. It only takes a month. That's how fast a young man can go from mere recruit to thinking he can take whatever he wants if he can justify it with selflessness.

Lark was challenged
that night there was no moon.
The pack had seen and felt it
coming and building.
Lark was a man when it started,
wolf when it ended.
Con tried to cut him with a knife
coming in through the front door
but with perfect liquid grace,
Lark slipped past the weapon's edge
grabbed Con's hand and bent it back.
The blade flew through the Ruscha.
Teeth gleamed bare and sharp...
Con was a man when it started,
he wasn't much by the time it was done.

...

Lark has to have his pack tight.

Poor fucking Con, he was strong and he was proud,
Lark liked him fine but the pack is stronger now,
they're solid.
"Thank you, Con," he thinks to himself
as he puts on cuff links, straightens his tie.

Comments

RECRUITING

[ukan]

Jason is a troubled kid, in the sense that he was a very good kid until partying after school became partying during school, which turned into dropping out and then being kicked out by his parents. He's only seventeen, which is so much younger than Lark would like. But times are tough. And if this doesn't work out, no one is going to miss a street kid.

Lark finds him on a street corner, huddled up and shaking despite the heat, his lips badly chapped but somehow he's still able to smile. Lark invites him into a cafe and watches the way Jason's fingers drum on the table, even after he's ducked away into the bathroom and come back sniffling but without the shakes.

It's easy to get Jason to talk. It's harder to get him to stay on any topic. It's how Lark learns about his family problems, about leaving school. It's how Lark learns that Jason would love to start a pet store--no, no, fuck that man, he'll start an indoor skydiving place. He heard of one once. And hey, does Lark know what would be great? A Slurpee. Man, yeah, a Slurpee, can they get one?

Lark patiently keeps him close all day. He feeds him, and he buys him new clothes. He doesn't miss the way Jason gets nervous every time Lark hands over money, and he knows why. But he doesn't acknowledge it.

"Jason," he finally says, when they're alone in his car--in Tati's car--not far from the new den. "Have you ever wanted to do things other people only dream of?"

And that bright, happy expression crumples. "Oh. Yeah. Okay." His hands start to unfasten the lovely new belt Lark bought, to unzip his jeans.

"No-" Lark says immediately, his voice gentle and worried. It doesn't give away any of his irritation. This is so much easier with veterans. "Not that."

When some of that trust resurfaces in Jason's expression, Lark gets an idea. He takes him to the house, where Maria has just come home from work at the bar. She takes one look at Jason, raises her eyebrows in surprise, and then makes herself scarce.

Lark shows Jason the Atari, and Jason is excited by how retro it is. Lark has two games. He only ever uses one: Pong. If you want to see how like a dog a man is, show him a ball and let him watch it bounce. It doesn't matter if it's bouncing around a room, a court, or a screen.

It takes two rounds before Jason is mellow, engrossed. Lark leans closer to him, and resumes that low, hypnotic drawl that works so well on the veterans. Maybe there's hope for this poor, ridiculous hummingbird of a boy after all. "Have you ever felt like you were just a little bit...different?"

Leaving

[ukan]

There's a reason that new recruits, even those taken in their late twenties or early thirties, are called 'pups'. Take any person who is sick with something--cancer, addiction, grief, depression--and change them into a wolf, and it's like you've turned them into a thing that runs on jet fuel.

For the first month, Lark was walled in by his grief. When Violet had him, it was the first physical contact he'd had outside of sparring with the rest of the pack. And by the second or third day he realized it was more than that; he realized that time without her stretched on for years, that she may be the most dangerous one in the pack but that he worries endlessly about her when she's out of sight, anyway. He realized that he could hear her coming home and he and the other wolves would wait to greet her, even late at night.

And he realized with quiet horror that he didn't miss Brad. Not so much. Not with Violet's curves and Violet's fangs and Violet's shrewd mind filling up his vision.

He threw himself into work more aggressively than ever. One case, two, three in a row that he won. Violet took the money and he let her. He even smiled. He even let her draw him into the bedroom for his reward.

I would die for her. Any one of the dogs around him must have thought the same thing at one point or another. But Lark, as he lay quietly on the floor and couldn't help hearing her reward the big former wrestler who just joined the pack, Lark became increasingly certain that the only person he wanted to die for is already gone. And he doesn't want that sort of harried, frantic devotion to anyone, ever again.

So he formed a plan. And twice, that devotion to her stopped him from literally detonating the bank many of his new clients frequent. It's a place that's painted up in legal shadows, but the money is real and it's stacked to the rafters.

Lark is known for causing trouble in the pack. Tati is always there to bail him out, and Tati always does it with a fond laugh or, occasionally, an angry bite that leaves a lasting scar. And then a laugh.

The pack is a little bit nervous about this heist, but Lark's plans have become less chaotic and more believable. The rewards, too, are becoming more tangible and more beautiful. A poor, neutral pack like Tati's needs whatever cash they can get and this would set them up for fifty years at least.

What they don't know is that Violet is inside. They think she's waiting in the big SUV Lark secured for getaway (but in truth Lark paid some punk kid to steal the car the second Violet got out; it will force the pack to run away as wolves and dogs, and no one in the FBI will be looking for dogs.)

Violet is following his request, which he laid at her feet last night: go inside, get the manager, demand to see Jeremy Fan's safety deposit box. Here's the key. What she doesn't know: Lark already cleaned out the box, and Jeremy was told by a rival that he'd be approached by the thief's girlfriend to arrange a ransom. No weapons.

When he sees her and she seems to play dumb, he shoots her. One bullet would have done it but she gets four.

They all feel the moment she's gone. If being in her good graces was like basking in spring sunshine after a bleak winter, this is an earthquake that swallows them whole. Lark watches his comrades stumble and he wonders if his own heart has stopped because he can't feel it, can't feel anything, and it's only because he has his finger already on the detonator that he manages to set off the explosives by the vault.

He stuffs money into a bag, sheds his clothes, and makes a run for it with all that cash held between his jaws. Tati has control of the most northern parts of Los Angeles, so Lark runs south, as hard as he can. He never looks back.

Kiss Me Now and You'll Catch Your Death

[ukan]

"Don't mind if I do." Alec sits next to him there in the pub, how it was before the vandalism, and Lark can smell the deeper layers of Alec's genetics. The astringent top layer is gone, replaced with the salt and musk in every drop of sweat; and under that the familiar warmth of something that Lark has inside his own marrow. It's all cut with that maddening, bait-and-hook tang of feline, a smell that Lark has begun to think of every time he sees Alec grin.

It should all combine to make him tense and adversarial. Alec is equal parts prey and predator for Lark, and instead, Lark finds himself laughing with him, finds himself paying attention to when he and Alec are on patrol again. And lately--well, sometimes Lark isn't even scheduled, and he shows up to find Alec anyway.

They banter back and forth tonight, grinning like they've forgotten how to do anything else, both of them trying unsuccessfully to hide their manic glee at each other. Until Alec slings his leg over Lark and straddles him, and this is the moment where Lark realizes he likes this. This is the moment he realizes he craves this, craves more of Alec's weight on him, and that he wants this the way he had just begun to want Lisbeth. Which means it's a fine opportunity to drive up some discipline in himself.

Lark's hands trail along Alec's jeans; he can feel solid muscle, he can feel how Alec runs warmer-than-human. He thinks of this as Russian Roulette and he thinks it's a favorite game now, the only game he wants to keep playing.

So he has to know just how ruthless Alec is, when the only thing at stake is pleasure. "How does the price change if I tell you this could also do something bad for me?"

"Not at all," he replies, leaning closer still, breathing in deep just under the corner of Lark's jaw, right against his throat, his teeth an unseen breath away from scraping on skin. His speech is clear for all of that. "The fact you're considering it at all tells me that either the chance is negligible, or the consequence not bad enough that you couldn't deal with it in exchange for the benefit."

"...there's always a way to make this more one-sided in your favor." But God, Alec smells good, and Lark can feel his breath. His fingers grip, coax Alec to take that little bit of friction that's just there. If this isn't going to get him the secret, Lark may as well stop. But he doesn't. He could; if he believed that Alec would really, willingly drive things in the direction that Lark most fears, Lark would be gone by now.

But that makes him want Alec all the more. It makes him want him more than he thought he could want anyone. Even with their sudden, unpredictable diversions (knocking chairs aside, pushing each other away, grabbing and holding and grappling).

"You jealous I didn't come find you to pierce my lip for me?" Alec asks. Lark is not; but he knows already that he could very easily become jealous, because envy is as much a part of wolf relationships as death. Besides: right now they're a mere step away from having to decide if they're going to put a stop to this, or if they're going to make a new use for the pool table.

And Lark wants that. But he can't.

He tries again to explain to Alec why, and instead he makes a joke about the prom that dances stupidly close to his actual concern that Alec won't be around tomorrow night. His mind tries to rationalize, instead, to find a safe way to test how far he can go with this strange creature. He decides he will actually gladly put Alec on his back and get him off with his mouth (he's too distracted now to think what that means and that he doesn't want anything one-sided, not ever, not with Alec).

They don't get that far. Alec seems to want more; and Lark cannot tell him the truth. Not about this. He can't tell him about Violet, and about the morning after being with her: the euphoria and the sense that all his thoughts had been cast in stone except the ones for her.

"When do you patrol this week?" Lark asks, his voice quiet and raw, but he hopes foolishly that Alec will just answer him. That it will count as an invitation for Lark to come find him again.

But instead, Alec sneers at him.

And so Lark caves. And he tries to explain: that there's no real happiness with the alpha females in charge. At least not for Lark. He is the only wolf he has ever heard of, in all his research and all of his acquaintances, who was unhappy under a girl's leadership.

He would rather be dead than go through it again. And he tries weakly to joke about it as he asks very seriously for that from Alec: If I end up under your control, bleed me for intel and kill me.

It's the intel that's the joke: a gentle ribbing at how ruthless they've both been joking about being. He has to joke; he can't stand to actually ask someone to kill him, even to set him free.

But what he gets is emptiness in return, and something that has lingered with him ever since: "Maybe I won't bother to fuck you first. Maybe I'll just lift a gun and choose for us both."

Rohan

[ukan]

You're sitting close together, and you can hear his heart beat and the way his lungs fill with breath, but you still have no idea what he's thinking. After that last fight you aren't sure you even care. (But actually you do care, you are sure; you were the second you saw the frisbee.)

"I tried to tell you before, you didn't want to know." It's the first time Alec has reached out, though, and if he wants to know now, you'll tell him. "Someone who isn't an inmate and therefore got to keep all his supernatural mind control tricks, no matter how he abuses them."

You watch Alec, but everything between the two of you feels as slick and uncertain as the metal you're both resting on above the city. You can guess what he'll say, but you're wrong when he finally does say, "Did something else happen?"

So you tell him, as brazenly as you dare, to see what he'll do with it. You tell him about the demotion idea, even though that's only a secondary plot at best. It's the one that will get you into the most trouble. Except that you know your warden, which is exactly what you tell him. You know Chris. You were there from day one for Chris; he's the only pack you have left and Chris would never, ever take away the one thing that you can't function without.

But you don't tell Alec what that thing is. You'd rather he think that your trust in Chris is based entirely on sentiment and blind faith. You'd rather he have no idea that you do know what you are willing to sacrifice, and that you already know the one thing that would break you. You certainly don't want anyone else, not even Alec, to start looking at all the ways you protect and safeguard and camouflage that thing.

So: you boast about your friendship. You paint yourself as naive and nostalgic, even though Alec responds to it with scorn and anger and you've discovered you hate seeing him scornful of you. You like to make him laugh, and you like it when your minds race on the same track. You care what he thinks of you and that's why you had decided, after Halloween, that you were done with him. (But clearly you aren't. And you're glad you aren't even though it frustrates and even frightens you.)

When you were at home, hiding from Baron and trying to recover your losses, you had been gathered up by dog catchers. It had been your plan, obviously; you'd needed somewhere safe from other wolves. So they had looped a leash around your neck and put you in a pitch black cage in a truck. You hadn't had room to stand, much less turn around, and so you had sat there and breathed slow and hoped the driver didn't run any red lights or plow into any cars.

Lately, inexplicably, you close your eyes and you feel that cage pressing on your shoulders. You're not claustrophobic, but being here is like that: no room to move when you absolutely have to move, your muscles are burning and your skin is itching and you can't move. And maybe you'll never get out.

So you know that this thing with Rohan is really just a desperate need to bite something, if only to relieve the tension for an hour or two. You can tell Alec, and anyone else who asks, that it's because you crave justice. Fuck justice. This is about blood for blood's sake, because that's a part of you that you will always have to pin down and control. But you can't really explain that you are an animal when you spend so much time pretending to be a man.

You breathe in slow, just like you had in the dark, and you smell Alec beside you. And for the first time in a month or more, you feel some of his logic trickling in through the bared-teeth rage that simmers below your surface.

"...Yeah. Maybe you're right." You say, and what you mean is that while Alec is here, while Alec could be in danger from someone with Rohan's powers, you won't do anything to provoke a fight.

No, you're not done with Alec, after all. Maybe you never will be, even after he's gone. Maybe you don't mind the thought as much as you did an hour ago.

Pup; cw mention of alcoholism, violence

[ukan]

She is a big part of your life now, the hot days spent working under her careful eye, the humid nights spent in her bed. But she is not the only part.

The pack is seven strong right now, including you. For them, for Tati, this is as good as it's ever been. They have enough hands working on cars and pulling in money (most of it your money, from your high profile job as a litigator) that they relax.

You don't.

On the weekends you take the boys who aren't occupied with Tati or Violet, and you all go into the city and rob pimps. One of the dogs gets shot one night, before the rest of you can help him. He recovers but before he comes thieving with you again, you have to convince him up front and subliminally that it's a moral venture. It doesn't take long; you get along well and the man once wanted to be a cop. He has a white knight complex--which unfortunately is how he ends up dying for you six months later.

But before that, you wake up before dawn every single day and you go to work, where your secretary avoids eye contact. Where even your boss goes silent and tucks his chin when you're around now--protecting his throat without realizing it. You work your ass off. You pulled in 60 hours a week when Brad was alive. Now, with the pack, with this new strength, you pull 80. Then you go home and you run with monsters, and if you're lucky, after you've all eaten your fill, you crawl into bed with your queen. If you're unlucky you lie on the floor with the others and listen to her enjoying someone else.

At work, someone makes a weak joke about burning the candle at both ends because they all think you've switched from Jim Beam to cocaine. He makes a rude sniffing sound and laughs. You give him a single look, and he never says another word in your presence again.

Not that you give him the opportunity. Two months later, you go to his house on four legs and you rip his throat out and keep biting and biting at him as he bleeds out on his expensive white carpet.

You take everything of value in his home, not because you need it, but because fuck him. You don't want any of this shit. You don't want anything anymore but blood and sex and the smell of other people's fear. If you had your freedom, your own pack, maybe it would be different, but you don't.

Tati is the thing that brings you down to earth again, over and over, whether you want him to or not. His eyes are that kind, his teeth are that sharp.

You come in after you've left the body. You give the cash and the expensive watches and the gold and silver to Tati, and even though you've showered since the murder, you reek of blood. You know you do. So does the loot.

You watch him as he looks in the bag and sighs and sets it down. "Where is it? Where's the body?"

"I took care of it."

It's one of the only times you will ever see Tati angry, and despite yourself, it is frightening. "Where is it?"

Too bad for him you can hear the concern in his voice. Too bad for Tati, you know he cares about you. He's waiting out your grief, and he'll be as patient as it takes.

You take him back to that house in the suburbs and you show him what you've done. On the ride down you even tell him why (I felt like it). And you expect Tati to do...something. To be angry again. To punish you. But instead he shows you the ways a lycanthrope can hide all the damning evidence in a crime scene. He's trying to help you, and you can see that.

You just don't care. You can't. Because what you actually got from that bloodied apartment is the name of a bank. Right now it's just a potentially useful scrap, and the first thing you're keeping to yourself since the change.

But someday, it's where you will steal back your mind and your freedom.