IC inbox / contact

[bleak_midwinter]

.

Comments

[ukan]

His hand reaches up, resting over Tommy's, because despite this normally being a dominating gesture to a wolf, Lark knows what the intent behind it is here.

He doesn't usually consider himself part wolf, part man--he's a lycanthrope. He is whole in every alien way. But there is a part of him that feels carved out and left to dry, that knows how far his relationships stretch and how alone he is at the far end of them.

And then there is a part of him that is just happy, glad to have Tommy, and Nux, Chris, and Furiosa. Alec. They aren't a pack, they can't fix what he needs fixed. But he's glad anyway.

"You're a better friend than I thought you'd be," he says, which is true, even if he's teasing gently.

[bleak_midwinter]

"You're less of an arse than I thought you'd be," he replies, glib but fond. He ruffles his hair slightly, pulling playfully on the short hairs in his neck. He thinks of Freddie, and how that friendship had ended up, and he has to shake his head to get the thought out of it. No sense lingering on that, right now- he'd gotten Freddie free, he knows he had. Just a matter of seeing him, now.

"Does Alec know? About the woman?" Because he might be sympathetic.

[ukan]

Lark is able to invoke the precise mood of a dog having his ears rubbed, sometimes. Like now. He leans toward Tommy ever so slightly, giving more of himself in that gesture than he's given anyone other than Bonnie in years.

"No. I'll tell him, it's just...we have a lot of- tension between us. A lot of unspoken understandings that it would be a bad idea to share too much. You know?"

[bleak_midwinter]

"If you share your bed with someone, regardless of how much it means to either of you, you are giving them a degree of power over you." But yes: he knows. He smiles in fond amusement at Lark's expression.

[ukan]

"I was going to try to argue with you," Lark admits, "Because I know you're right. When I was teaching Furiosa how to swim, months ago, we had this session where I kept trying to relax and let her be in control."

Needless to say, he never got there. He always kept the lead, even with her, even in a controlled situation that he had personally devised.

[bleak_midwinter]

"Not everything," he says, fingers slipping from Lark's hair finally. "You can decide not to give anything. But you will, whether you want it or not. Accept that or cut it off, now. Stop the game."

[ukan]

Lark sits up a little and resents that his first thought is simply that he likes Alec--he likes him enough to ignore that the risks outweigh the gains. He likes him enough that, if it came down to some sort of fight to the death and Lark won, he'd feel a little bad even if he wouldn't hesitate.

"Don't say 'I told you so' in six months," is his only request of Tommy.

[bleak_midwinter]

"I'll preserve your dignity," he says, soft smile playing around his mouth, eyes twinkling a little.

To be honest, he thinks it'll be a mistake. These are not men who will make each other better, but it's not Tommy's life, and he's not their warden or their babysitter. They'll see what happens.

[ukan]

"I know." That Tommy will, at least in public. And that Tommy has doubts. Lark does, too.

"The worst that happens is no worse than what can and does happen in most situations like this." Meaning, "If we're both stuck here a hundred years, he can't get hold of me as deeply as...she did."

[bleak_midwinter]

"Then you'll be alright." His voice is soft, and Lark knows him well enough to understand what he's thinking of- Grace, and how he can't imagine anyone ever moving into his life as quickly and as deeply as she had.

[ukan]

He nods, and rests his head in his hands until he can feel himself grow calm.

"How did we end up like this?" Ruined for other people. Ruined at all by someone else, when he's certain they both knew better all along.

[bleak_midwinter]

Tommy himself leans against the counter, legs crossed at the ankle, and goes about lighting a cigarette- two, if Lark indicates he'd like one as well.

"We thought we couldn't be loved, and then we were." It's the only explanation he has, really.

[ukan]

He nods. Sometimes, he likes to stoke the old addiction, so he can push it down again. It's one way to pass the time around here, even if it's something he would never have let himself do at home.

"Then does it matter if we deserve that love?"

[bleak_midwinter]

He hands him the lit cigarette, lights one for himself.

"For us, individually, yes." He shakes the match to extinguish it, then leans his elbow on the table.

"Because that is how we became like this."

[ukan]

"It made you a better man, you said." Or he'd hinted at it, anyway, in saying that Grace was why he was a warden and not an inmate.

He takes a short but thoughtful drag off of his. "How?"

[bleak_midwinter]

He knows this is true, but has always found it difficult to put into words. So he smokes for a quiet minute, thinking, and then replies.

"She taught me to consider others, to ask for help, to not be blind when pursuing a goal. And she-" he clenches his jaw, now, and mutters the next part before smoking: "She made me feel as if there were a future in which I could somehow be happy and satisfied."

[ukan]

Lark nods, almost to himself, and watches smoke twirl up from the end of his cigarette.

"That's the worst part, for me. I can reach the goals I have for myself. They'll be enough for most of me. But after her- nothing fills that. Nothing will ever fill that. I've never doubted where I'm going, but I wonder now what the hell I'm going to do when I get there if she isn't with me."

[bleak_midwinter]

He lets out a soft sigh, passes his hand over the communicator in his pocket- where he has the recordings of Grace, which he watches most nights.

"If I can't-" He licks his lips, starts over. "If I reach the decision not to contact her, after this, it'll be my own damn fault for feeling like that."

[ukan]

Lark hums, a little morose over how well he can relate to that. He doesn't see Lisbeth being there at the end. He's not even sure she'd pick his side if she was there. She isn't a wolf, after all, and while her moral code is very much of her own devising, he has a hunch that what he has in store for California would disturb her.

"What would cause you to write her off?"

[bleak_midwinter]

He shakes his head- that's the wrong word. "I can't do that. She'll never be someone I've written off."

He knows this for a fact, a certainty deep inside of him: no one will ever compare to her. No one could ever measure up. He'd have to keep himself forcibly away if he made that decision.

[ukan]

"I believe in fighting just to fight. I believe I can learn things about myself through self-denial. But you- you seem like the opposite." But Lark is desperate enough to cope with his loss that he'll follow any example just to see.

[bleak_midwinter]

"I always fight for a reason," he agrees, even if the people around him don't exactly know that reason. "And I'm not sure what the 'ell I'd learn from denying myself most things."

[ukan]

"Really?" He's truly surprised by that, from Tommy if not from anyone else. "You don't think you've learned by denying yourself a vice?"

[bleak_midwinter]

He levels a look at Lark-- one vice in particular there both very familiar with, of course. But he drinks and he smokes, and if Grace were here he wouldn't be denying himself sex, either. Now, the latter is more a case of having no interest.

"What I learn from not doing certain things is that I function better without them- and so I won't. But that isn't self-denial."

[ukan]

He nods, because Tommy has a point. "No, you're right, that's not. But it's hard to explain the power in it if there's no point of reference. You could experiment with it."