#lark x matilda
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“I would ki-kill that guy with my bare hands,” Benny comments casually. He has the beer bottle against his teeth, dark red sunglasses perched lower on his nose than usual so he can stare across the bar. Sunglasses inside usually make a man look stupid but Benny has that trashy white guy energy that sort of pulls it off. Lark would never try, always feels a little out place when they bar crawl like this to some hole in the wall in the first place.
He’s leaned against the pool table, also looking across at the man flirting with his girlfriend. Matilda, in contrast to Lark, fits in everywhere. She has that energy, so even though she’s in clothes too nice for the place, she doesn’t look awkward. She doesn’t blend either—Matilda stands out against the bland backdrop of some dive bar (that they only went to for the pool tables to begin with) and it explains why some moth has gotten stuck in her glow.
Lark wants to find it funny that it’s always so stereotypical, especially in bars like these. Tucked both hidden away and close to the local university. A good haunt for frat brothers—and it’s those types that approach her so frequently. They have names like Harry or Brad and they can come in a variety of looks but they all poli-sci major and wear khaki shorts and boat shoes. They gel their hair and smile with Crest White Strip teeth. He wants to find it funny, but sometimes it makes him so angry he sees little dots in his vision.
Matilda sits there, little thin black cocktail straw between her teeth as she gives Harry-Brad a demure smile. Lark marvels at how good she is at that and equally marvels at how stupid the men are that wander close and offer to buy her a drink. He can’t actually remember the last time Matilda paid for herself.
“No you wouldn’t,” Lark comments, watching Xavier scratch. He seethes childishly, holding the pool stick in his hands like he might snap it over his knee. The beer has flushed his pretty face red underneath the low yellow lighting of the bar. “You’d start a fight and then immediately run and find Xavier and expect him to finish it.”
“So?” Benny stands from the stool he’d claimed and then lines up his shot. “Not m-my fault Xavier has a PhD in fuck around and find out.”
The red head puffs himself up, flexing stereotypically, mouth set in a grimace. He’s wearing a stolen shirt straight from Benji’s closet, which is obvious by the tattering at the bottom and the edgy design on the chest. It’s also just a smidge too short, but he’s tied a plaid long sleeve (also Benji’s) around his hips.
“Professor Left and Right.”
“Doctor,” Benny corrects, and strikes the cue ball with precision perfect form. It bounces around the pool table, sinking one after the other. He straightens and looks at Lark with a nasty, smug smile. Lark only half pays attention, turning his head to watch over his shoulder as Matilda accepts the drink held out for her. Once shes taken a dainty sip, she then turns swiftly on the bar stool. Her darkly dyed hair fans out glossy behind her as she does, effectively cutting the man off in one snobby gesture.
Mouse is leaning between Naima’s parted knees as her girlfriend sits at the bar; and she laughs so loud that almost everyone turns to stare. Harry-Brad retreats back to his friends with a humiliated, stormy expression.
“God, I fucking love her,” Lark says absently. His head tilts as he watches Matilda continue to sip from the colorful little cocktail.
“Tell her that yet?”
“What the fuck?” Lark’s panicked eyes dart back to Xavier, who has taken to leaning over the pool table in an attempt to thwart Benny from winning his fourth game in a row. He feels a strange panic building up inside his chest at the mere suggestion, as if Matilda might hear over the noisy bar all the way to the corner where the tables are stashed.
“Dude.”
“Game,” Benny says easily as he sinks the eight ball. “Want t-to set it back up?”
“You’ve been dating Matilda longer than Benji and I have been together.” Xavier slides his way around the pool table, using his hand to swipe the rest of the balls he’d not been able to sink into pockets for fun. They crack together loudly.
“Together as in acknowle-le-ledging, or together like you guys fi-finally suck each other off?”
“Fuck you,” Xavier snaps, his teeth clicking together. “What about you, dickhead? I know you haven’t said anything to Maran.”
“I have an excuse,” Benny says as he sits down on his stool. He picks up the pint he’s been nursing (the third, or fourth) and takes a sip. “I’m em-emotionally unavailable.” Lark rolls his eyes and looks at Xavier, who is thankfully suppressing a grin. There’s always a good chance that Benny and Xavier will slip from good natured ribbing to full blown argument, to get the fuck out this bar before I call the cops.
And the bartender sort of looked like the type to brandish a baseball bat before the cop calling part.
“One time, I watched Maran leave and then walk back inside to say I love you.” It makes Benny’s pale cheeks tint a soft rose color. He looks a little funny blushing, because it doesn’t suit the persona he’s constantly pushing. With the tattoos and the backward baseball cap and the stupid sunglasses. Benny uses his middle finger to push them back up his sharp nose.
“That’s b-because he said it makes him nervous if he doesn’t say it before he goes somewhere. Needs to be li-like the last thing he says every time. Leave Maran the fuck alone, alright?” Benny gestures with his beer toward Lark. “This was about that fuckin’ loser.”
“I think it’s about both of you,” Xavier sighs. “You were both in relationships before me.”
“Oh, look at Xavier—high and mighty because he says I love you to Benji every time he gets breakfast.” Lark flaps his hands, mocking and mean. He makes his eyes big intentionally, pathetic and soft. “Benji, I love you so much—extra blueberries in those pancakes, please?”
Benny is kicking on the stool, howling with laughter while Xavier’s flat gaze pins Lark.
“You’re both hopeless. I hope Maran breaks up with you—and Matilda breaks up with you for the fourteenth time.”
“Dunno, fifteenth could be the charm,” Lark jokes dryly.
“Are you fucking assholes done with this table yet?”
All three men turn to look at the group in waiting. It would have been dramatic irony if Harry-Brad with the nice teeth who had been hitting on his girlfriend was among them; but it’s not a sitcom situation like that. It’s just another group of men, drunk and impatient, university age boys with too much alcohol in them already.
“We p-paid for anoth—ther game,” Benny says, lip curled in a sneer.
“We p-p-p-paid—” Before the man can actually finish the mocking insult, Xavier has already thrown the punch. It connects with savage precision, straight to a vulnerable, open jaw. The sound is not too unlike the pool balls smacking together. Lark watches the man crumple like a marionette with cut strings. Then he sighs and pulls his jacket off.
—
“Ow,” Lark complains weakly as Matilda pushes a paper towel wrapped ice cube to his eyebrow. A swelling knot is forming, dark purple and ominous looking. “Ow,” he continues in a sharper tone when Matilda presses just a bit harder.
“Oops,” she replies, with a pretty flutter of her eye lashes. She has glitter on her cheekbones. It’s sort of haphazard and unintentional looking, which makes it downright beautiful on her. Matilda is the first girl he’s ever dated that isn’t precise with her make up. Doesn’t spend hours in front of one of those cute desk mirrors or worry about it in pictures. He likes it, but he can’t really piece together why.
They’re in her bed, because Lark had decided to go home with Matilda instead of back to his shared apartment with Xavier and Benny. Mouse and Naima still linger in Matilda’s kitchen—the sound of their conversation only somewhat carries. The cadence is nice; they have wildly different tones that somehow fit together prettily. Lark hates to admit that he’s liked Mouse even more since she found someone who stopped her from going crazy at random intervals.
He’s moody, however, laid out on her girlish bedspread. One of her stuffed animals is wedged under his arm as he broods and she tends to the little knot on his busted eyebrow. The ice makes it numb, but she’s not exactly a nurse about it—and is maybe a little tipsy still.
“That last cocktail got to you, huh?” Lark asks with more bite than he means.
Matilda arches a perfect eyebrow. When he’d first told Xavier about her—because he told Xavier everything and told him before anyone else—Lark had talked far too long about Matilda’s face. The long, elegance of her nose. Her lips pursed and pouty and her cheekbones cutting. Xavier had gestured at his chest with raised eyebrows, suggestive cupped hands—this is a memory he’s never told Matilda because it’s Xavier’s worst behavior.
“Someone’s pissy because he lost a fight,” Matilda sighs condescendingly, tossing the ice cube into the little trash can by her bed.
“I didn’t lose,” Lark replies with narrowed, annoyed eyes. “We got kicked out.”
“Do you think you would have won if the bartender hadn’t threatened to kill you guys?” She looks skeptically amused, and also like she’s winning the pseudo-argument (that could turn into a real argument, very quick). He pauses for a moment, looking down at the squished stuffed animal wedged between his bicep and chest.
“Do you see how mean she is to me?” he whispers directly to the little alligator plush. One of it’s little beaded eyes is missing, giving it a comical permanent wink. “She thinks I can’t take a lacrosse player in a fight.”
“Shut up, Elias.” She snatches the stuffed animal from him and tosses it to the other side of the bed. It lands belly up, upside down staring at him with that one little eye, smiling like it has a secret. His attention is swiftly brought back to Matilda as she slowly slides her way on top of him. Her knees squeeze on either side of his hips and Lark’s hands instantly find their way to her thighs.
She’d—blessedly—stripped for the night. Matilda wears one of those cute bralettes that he barely understands (“They don’t work like a real bra, so why wear them?” “El, shut up.”) and a stolen pair of his briefs. He loves the way they look on her, because her height makes them ride up shorter than they’re meant to be, cut into the meat of her thigh. The little peek of flesh drives him insane, even though he’s seen her, completely naked, hundreds of times.
“You don’t have to flirt with guys to get drinks.” Sometimes, he’s not sure why he starts with her, in the same way he has no idea why she starts with him. Lark had never been the type to argue with partners before; actually, he’d been a bit of a pushover with the last girl he’d dated before Matilda. But something about her pulls that tiny hot, mean part of him to the surface—and further, he has no idea why he likes that so much.
Sometimes, when he thinks about anything before Matilda, it had all sort of felt muted. Arguing, sex, whatever. It was like pastel colors went neon chrome when she was around.
“I wasn’t flirting with anyone—he bought the drink.”
“I can buy you drinks.”
“And go: thirteen dollars for a Moscow Mule? Oh my God, Matilda.” She makes her voice deep and gruff to imitate him, which makes the insult softer. He rolls his eyes, hands sliding from thighs, around to cup her ass and jerk her closer. She falls forward with her palms braced on the bed. Her hair, pin straight and glossy, falls over her shoulders and touches him, tickles his skin. Lark does a supremely good job of not looking down at that lacy, useless, purple bralette.
“I don’t wanna argue.”
“I’m not arguing. You’re starting an argument because you’re projecting—”
“I wanna fuck, like—really bad, Matilda.”
His blunt honesty disarms her immediately and makes her pale cheeks go a lovely, unique shade of pink. His hands flatten and travel up her sides and he loves watching that little shiver of anticipation run through her. Matilda’s eyes narrow, her chin tipping down. More strands of her hair slide from behind her ears and dangle beside her cheeks.
Lark gets it then; that stupid conversation that he can barely remember in the bar, because he was sort of drunk and the fight had come just directly after. He gets Xavier’s point—he’d like to say it. He’d love to put a hand around Matilda’s throat and jerk her close and say it right to her. Except, before he can get a chance (he’s lying to himself, he’s too cowardly really, in that moment, and will be for some time), Matilda straightens and all but yanks that flimsy purple fabric off.
—
When he can’t fall asleep right away—which has nothing to do with the fact that Matilda sprawls her long limbs just about everywhere with no courtesy to her bed partner—Lark wanders into the kitchen. It’s dark, but he has her place memorized. Not because he’s there so frequently. No reason.
“Holy fuck,” he hisses, jumping when he nearly collides with Naima.
“The best kind of fuck, I guess,” she replies easily. Lark is stunned into a moment of silence before he bursts into a shocked laugh. She smiles, a pretty upturn of her lips, head equally tilted. He recognizes the big hoodie she has on, because it was stolen out of Xavier’s closet who had stolen it from Benji anyway. Lark had last seen Mouse wearing it, absolutely dwarfed in the damn thing.
There is a lingering moment of silence between the two of them that Lark finds shockingly comfortable.
“Did you know Mouse talks in her sleep?” Naima randomly offers up as she crosses the kitchen to the fridge. Lark slowly steps around her to lean against the counter. He points at the organic juice he’d bought and purposefully left at Matilda’s. “This stuff is poison, by the way. No different from the kind that actually has flavor.”
Lark uncaps and takes a swig from it.
“It’s not about flavor, it’s about calories. What is Mouse sleep talking about?”
He suspects she’s passed out on the long, artful couch that Matilda has in her living room. Suddenly makes sense to lark why Naima is awake—that thing couldn’t fit two people on it if it was bribed with more stuffing and new upholstery.
“Voltaire.”
“You’re fucking joking, right?”
Naima laughs as she snags leftovers out of the fridge. They’re grease stained in a little cardboard box. She tosses it onto the counter and goes about finding silverware. For some reason, seeing her at ease in the kitchen—knowing where things go, where utensils are located, where the glasses in the cupboard are—is nice for Lark. It makes him warm. Thinking of Naima, Mouse, Nomi, anyone, in this big artsy apartment with Matilda…makes him happy.
“I dunno. Little beast is reading him lately. She’s got a paperback full of sticky notes covered in coke stains. Mumbling about him in her sleep. Love her for it.”
And it’s not I love you, nor is it necessarily in the spirit of the phrase, or even remotely what Xavier was talking about. But it makes Lark pause with the half gallon juice to his lips. Naima doesn’t notice—or she doesn’t feel the need to notice—and continues poking through the grease stained leftovers with a fork. Lark puts the juice away.
“Want some of this?” The box is in her hand, held out. He can’t even remember where they’d stopped for food along the way home, mostly because he’d turned it down anyway. Lark stares at it, smells the cooked chicken at the very least. He feels for a moment, insanely vulnerable in his t-shirt and briefs. There’s an awkward pressure in his chest. But when he looks at Naima, she’s diverted her attention to the living room. Not that she can see the couch from where she’s standing.
And maybe it wasn’t about looking at Mouse, but not looking at Lark for a moment. He’d feel patronized by anyone else. Or embarrassed. But it’s so dark out that Matilda’s big windows look entirely black. It’s the liminal watery time before anyone wakes up, hungover after a night out. He looks at the ground before shrugging.
“Why not?” He laughs and jerks open a drawer to find a fork.
—
When Lark climbs back into bed, Matilda snips at him. He accidentally lands on her hair a bit, which causes her to squawk and turn on her side to slap his bicep. He mumbles a soft apology and her ire dies immediately; she turns further, arms folded and fists tucked up underneath her chin. Matilda burrows with a wiggling motion until Lark catches the hint and wraps arms around her shoulders. He brings her in closer, where her soft breath tickles his collarbone.
She falls back to sleep so quickly, he doubts she was even really awake to begin with. And Lark is tired too; the alcohol has gone and died in his system, so he’d not even been able to sleep before the hangover hit. His eyebrow burns, the knot bigger than it was hours ago. There’s the creeping suspicious dread that this will get back to his coach and he’ll be talked to about professional conduct.
But there’s also Matilda, her soft sleep sounds. Her knee wedging between his thighs to rest there. The smell of her hair and the fancy products she uses. Lark rests his cheek to the top of her head, drowsy and exhausted, but insanely wired at the same time.
“Hm,” he tests his voice in the quiet of her bedroom. There is mostly just the sound of the aircon and the ever present ambiance of the city outside the window. No noise comes from the rest of the apartment. He feels solidly alone and not alone; the sort of comfortable loneliness of being the only one awake. Lark presses his lips into Matilda’s hair. She doesn’t shift. So, he lets himself practice. Says, I love you, at least three or four times in the empty quiet of her bedroom.
That way when he eventually says it out loud, he’ll do it perfectly.
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Warmup doodle consisted of Lark and Matilda and I decided they should be happy forever actually!
SCREAMS MY HEAD OFF SYD!!!!!!!!!!! THEIR ENERGIES ARE PERFECT!!!!! IM LOSING MY MIND!!!
Oh my God I’m literally going to print this and put it in my fucking WALLET IM CARRYING THEM AROUND WITH ME
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all three
Benny can tell it’s bad when Lark isn’t saying anything.
The truck rocks back and forth as it speeds down an abandoned back road, jostling them together—Lark, crouched behind Benny, arms underneath his, holding him upright. His mouth is close to Ben’s ear, heavy breathing tickling his skin. It’s not unpleasant. Sort of distracts him from the agony in his leg. There is no descriptor for that sort of pain; his teeth chatter and his whole body twitches and his hands feel numb and distant. It is so blinding that he keeps snapping in and out of consciousness. Awake and then dark, awake and then dark. Sweat pours down Benny’s face, gets into his sensitive eyes, drips off his nose and chin.
The smell of blood is nauseatingly strong. The copper of it is inside his mouth, on his tongue. When his tunnel vision focuses, it’s on all the wet spread of it across his pant leg. He can see white. He can see bone.
“This fu-fucking blows,” he manages in a desperate sort of a whisper.
“You’re alright—it’s gonna be alright, Ben—you’re alright—”
Which is what they say when you are most certainly not going to be alright.
—
He survives surgery. He does not survive his girlfriend.
“Stupid,” Nomi seethes, bent over him. Tears drip off her chin. Her shaking, pale hands are clasped into the scratchy white cotton blanket so hard that tendons stand out in her wrists. She’d painted her nails recently—a pretty teal color. She’d sent him a photo and everything. Now there’s big chunks missing, like she’d picked at them nervously while Nick had rearranged his shin into something resembling human shape.
“It should have been your neck.” She catches herself on a sob, falling closer to him on the hospital bed. Her dark blue hair is wild and messy—she has no make up on. Looks more disheveled than he’d ever seen her. Benny lifts a hand and cups her cheek, which is rosy in color and soft, just like the petal.
“Next time,” he manages in a husky whisper, and he’s happy to at least hear one laugh before the painkillers yank him right back under.
***
He dreams, shockingly, of Benji.
It should be Maran. Or Lark. Or Matilda—Nomi. Even Xavier, who sometimes flits between that softened house husband version of himself and the terrifying Shadow who had stalked through warzones with a sledgehammer. Who had smiled with blood between his teeth. It could have been anyone; random mercenary, the Doctor who had sewn his leg back together.
But instead, it’s Benji.
“Couldn’t ‘ave dodged that shotgun blast?” Benji’s asking, Benny’s leg hefted across his lap. He has a medics bag open, a sewing needle and hospital grade thread pinched between gloved fingers.
They’re inside his childhood bedroom. A corner room in a shit apartment, size of a closet. Mattress on the floor, too poor for a dresser so he folded his clothes and put them on the floor. Little line up of dinosaur toys on the windowsill. Benny’s breathing so fast and hard it’s making him dizzy. The lights aren’t on, but he can see Benji in the dark perfectly.
He slides the needle through Benny’s blood-wet skin. It doesn’t feel like anything except pressure and a tug.
“Cold,” Benny whispers. “That’s cold, Corporal.” It makes Benji snort, black eyes flickering up from his work. He’s watercolor thin in the dream, hazy at the edges. Not altogether there, because Benny had been afraid to really look at him back when they’d all visited. Benny had felt ashamed and curious and awkward and more than anything, he’d felt seething jealousy.
The door to his bedroom creaks open, the sound painful inside his skull. Light from the hallway spills in around the silhouette of his father, who is just a tall, dark Shadow with two white dots for eyes. Benny’s chest starts moving faster, his hand reaching for Benji. He can see the belt in his hand, unfurl, like a snake.
“Benji, go faster,” Benny whispers, his voice thick and wet. “Please. Please.” The heavy sound of his fathers foot steps are similar to mortars going off in the background.
“If Xavier had, back then? Where do you think Maran would be?”
I don’t want to think about that, I don’t want to imagine that, what do you want, for me to say sorry? Look at you, you got the happy ending, it’s fine, it’s fucking fine, stop judging me, I was just scared, I am always just scared, and it hurts! It hurts!
“Oi, this fuck,” Benji laughs. “Loser never could pick on someone his own size?” He tilts his head over his shoulder, chin petulantly tucked. He raises a hand, pantomimes a gun, thumb cocked back. The Shadow of his father raises that belt and Benji clicks his tongue.
They’re in the hospital suddenly, Benji in his SAS uniform, legs kicked up and resting on the bed. His hands folded over his stomach now. Benji smiles—Benny, shamefully, remembers just that detail about him the most because Benji had been really fucking pretty when he’d smiled at Xavier.
“Thank you,” is what Benny thinks he manges to say, but consciousness sort of blows through him just like the shotgun blast to the leg.
***
“I have to leave soon,” Nomi says, sitting on the edge of the bed. She’s fluffed and arranged his pillows over seven times now, but he lets her because it seems more nervous habit than anything else. Something to do with her hands. Benny blinks tired eyes, his hand settling softly onto her tapered waist. He squeezes, just to feel his own strength. She playfully swats the hand, but she’s smiling, so he knows he’s fine.
“Why?”
“Flight leaves in five hours and I haven’t got shite packed, swear. Always leave it for last minute—but you know me. Can’t help it.”
Benny follows, but he’s still dizzy, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He gives her another gentle squeeze and Nomi slides forward a bit. All things considered, Ben’s upper body was fine—bruises and cuts and nothing more. It was just that stupid right fucking leg that’s suspended in air by a sling. He hates looking at it, but there isn’t much to look at if Nomi isn’t in the room.
Matilda had drawn something obscene on the cast just to get him to smile.
“Where are you going?”
“Liverpool.”
“Jealous,” Benny laughs, eyes shutting. It’s not the first time since landing in the base hospital that he’s imagining Maran. Actually, every single night he slips to sleep he tries imagining Maran. Since that first dream of Benji, he’s either not dreamed at all, or things have been blurry, nothing to remember. He wants one dream of Maran, of his smile, or his hands, or the way he dresses, the smell of him.
“Right, well, don’t need to be. Bringing him here.”
“You’re fucking what?”
Ben sits up straighter then, bracing a hand on the bed to give himself leverage. Hospital equipment beeps in the background. The room is dull gray but private—this isn’t a main base of operations. It’s sort of like a giant storage shed, like a safe house that people bunker down in. He’s only ever been to this one a few times.
Nomi’s light brown eyes blink, her hands pushing against Benny’s shoulders to force him back down flat. He’s shocked that she manages—couldn’t fight her way out of a wet paper bag, but he’s so fucking weak that he crumbles at her touch.
“Nomi, y-you can’t bring Maran here.” Panic makes his voice reedy and high pitched.
“He’s worried about you.”
“You c-can’t bring him here.” He gestures with a desperate hand to the door. Outside, he knows there are men with guns. Women strapped with knives. Little specialists and snipers and—and military things. Violent things. Benny’s chest tightens, constricts on his lungs like a vice. He closes his eyes to the feeling, pressing a hand to his forehead. “He’ll—this isn’t—you know why he—”
“Give Maran credit,” Nomi snaps, her dark, prefect brows knotted together. She’s frowning at him, so pretty still. Rolls her eyes and flaps a hand toward the door he’s indicating. “And this isn’t even like, one of the active bases. Listen, he’s worried.”
“You sh-shouldn’t have told him anything.”
Nomi stands then, her cheeks darkening to a crimson color. Her eyes narrow, all the pretty light brown disappearing. He’d not even noticed she was in jeans. A t-shirt. She wouldn’t look like herself, if she wasn’t so herself all the time. Benny blinks up at her, feeling a cold dread inside his stomach.
“You’re wretched for that, Ben. Proper fuckin’ wretched—and should be ashamed. You think he doesn’t have a right to know? Or see you? What is he then? Just a lad you screw once in a while for fun?”
“No—”
“Because if you’re thinkin’ of him like that, then stop thinkin’ of him at all.”
“Jesus, Nomi, I’m not—”
She’s crying again, little ones that weep down her cheeks prettily. Benny feels the weight of his shame and guilt like a car’s rolled over on him. Compressed to the littlest thing. He holds out a hand—and for a moment, he’s horrified she might not take it. Horrified, but also, that he’d deserve her walking out the door. She isn’t wrong—it was a disgusting thing to say.
But she does take it. Her hand is small and soft as it slides across his palm. She steps a bit closer. The clicking sound of her heeled boots is so comforting.
“Promise not t-to repeat this,” he says quietly. “’Cause y-you’re right, I’m a f-fucking bastard. But, I want t-to say it to him. Not that he hears it f-from you. I know you two fucking t-text all the time.”
“He’s funny,” she mutters defensively. “He sends me cute animal pictures.”
“I love Maran,” Benny continues. He watches her blink rapidly, tears like little gems dropping off her round, soft jaw. He feels one land on his hand. It’s not too dissimilar from the expression she’d made when he’d confessed the very same thing to her; in a hotel they were sharing, directly after the Shadows had combusted. He’d said it, and she’d stared at him, with those giant, pretty eyes.
“I w-want to see him, but I love him—and I don’t w-want him—I just don’t want him to—I want him to b-be okay. And—this is all pretty fuckin’ weird.”
There was dating a mercenary and then there was seeing into that mercenary’s life. A year ago, when they’d first come together, getting Maran to leave his apartment for a food truck down the street had been difficult. There was so much substantial progress; he would fucking kill himself if he was the reason it all got ruined. Him and his broken leg and this mercenary hospital-safe house-not base.
Benny swallows hard and lays his head back against that seven time fluffed pillow. He closes his eyes and feels an odd prickling behind the lids. His cheeks are hot and feverish, even though the rest of him feels so, so cold.
Nomi’s cool hand touches his forehead.
“It’ll be alright, Ben.”
He believes her more than he’d believed Lark.
—
Benny turns out to not…really be that wrong, however.
Maran throws up before even getting on the train. Nomi pretends not to know he’s thrown up, because she wants to afford him that dignity, but it’s also obvious—and his hands are shaking when he hands over his ticket to the surly red capped man on the train. She thinks, not for the first time, that maybe Benny was right. That pushing something like this was actually horrific of her, that she was in the wrong. That she was being awful.
But when the train starts moving, he settles a bit. Leans with his forehead against the glass, shoulders rising and falling sort of heavily, but evenly. Nomi sips her tea from the little paper cup. Extra creamy the way she likes it.
“Maran,” she says, getting his attention. It goes to her so quickly that it kind of makes her dizzy. Like he was just waiting for her to want him; and she feels guilty about that too. Don’t you know, I want you too? I want you to want my attention. I want you, have I not made that obvious? God, I want you. She licks tea from her lips and sets the cup aside.
She goes to sit beside him, which sort of shoves them together some. It’s not unpleasant—for her anyway. He has a boyish scent to him, like the soap he uses is the same from his school years. She wants to draw her hand over his short hair. Christ, she wants to kiss him or something, really. But he’s blinking at her.
“Can you tell me about something?” she requests, pulling his hand into her lap. It’s clenched until she wiggles her fingers between them. All at once, he softens entirely. Like he was a clenched muscle that’s only just relaxing. Nomi holds his hand up to her lips, eyebrows raised, smiling.
“Oh,” he says, laughing. “Nomi, I’d—I would tell you anything.”
“Can you talk to me about Benji, then?”
“Benji?” Maran laughs around the name; he has such a familiarity in saying it. Like it was a reoccurring word his whole life. Benji, Benji, Benji. Nomi grins, presses a swift kiss to the tops of his knuckles. Her dark maroon lipstick smudges a bit there, leaves a cute little tattoo of her. His cheeks flood with color, the same color, she thinks. It makes her—God, it makes her love him for a moment.
“He’s like—well. Benji’s where it all started, yeah? Xavier met him and then everything changed.” She shifts a bit, gets comfortable. Tucks a leg underneath her. Pretends not to notice that Maran’s eyes fall right to her thighs and then back up with innocence. She continues holding his hand.
“I’ve never met ‘im. Been sort of afraid to.”
“You?” he says it and then seems to immediately regret it.
“I get scared!” Nomi laughs. The sound seems to ease him even more, which makes her ego feel full and buoyant. “He scares me. Not like him. But—it all began with Benji. If you trace it all back, the whole thing, roots go to Benji. Xavier and him. So—could you talk to me about him?”
There’s a long pause where Maran looks at her. He’s taller, so she has to tilt her head up to look at him. She thinks about kissing him again. The feel of his lips on hers. So different from Benny’s. So similar, in that it has this right sort of feeling. He wets his lips with his tongue and then looks down, smiling.
“Benji,” he starts.
And doesn’t stop for the whole train ride.
—
“I don’t care how fucking cute he is,” Matilda says, standing outside Ben’s room. They both look through the windowed door. They watch, together, as Maran folds down on top of Benny. His shoulders shake. Nomi feels like they should turn around and give them privacy, but Matilda is planted firmly, eyes narrowed. “You are better than me.”
“You do not think that,” Nomi replies with a sarcastic snort.
“If Lark had a boyfriend, I would string him up.”
“Lark doesn’t,” Nomi says, fully turning her back on the scene. She leans against the door. Shuffles until she’s covering the window—Matilda stares at her with flat eyes. “You know it’s not the same.”
“So what is it?” Matilda asks. Her posture relaxes, arms unfolding. She puts her hands on her hips, face taking on a more concerned expression. It doesn’t really suit her—but that’s why Nomi loves her so much for it. Because it doesn’t suit her, but that she feels it for Nomi anyway. Concern. Worry. Care.
“Complicated, I guess,” Nomi says, looking down at her hands. She’d completely peeled all her nail polish away. “But,” she lifts them then and laces all her fingers together. “I think we’re figuring it out, yeah?”
“No,” Matilda replies. But then hooks her arm around Nomi’s and begins leading her elsewhere. “But if it works for you.”
If it works for all three, Nomi thinks. All three.
—
“I can’t believe yo-you were on a train,” Ben says, grinning. Maran’s eyes are slightly puffy, his cheeks and nose red from crying. He’d burst into it almost immediately at seeing Benny in the hospital bed; which had done things to Benny’s heart he didn’t want to think about. Now he sits, almost in the exact same place Nomi had been the day prior. Both of his hands hold one of Benny’s. They’re sort of too big to get away with that, but he’s warm and comforting and making it work.
“Only thought I was going to die maybe once,” Maran admits in a soft, humored tone. He sniffs here and there, remnants of tears still clinging to his gorgeous eye lashes. Benny’s free hand sneaks over and squeezes his thigh.
“Thanks,” he finally says. There’s a catch in his voice. He clears his throat. Benny’s eyes bounce around the room, stray to and from Maran and then he finally closes his eyes. “Maran, thank you for coming—”
“Can we kiss?”
He laughs out, the painkillers making his head foggy and dull. Benny’s hand squeezes Maran’s thigh again, eyes painfully peeling open. His head sags to the side on the pillow. For a second, he’s accidentally bewildered at the sight of the other man—here, in the room with him. Outside his apartment. In his silly SEGA shirt, his eyes rimmed and red. Hair freshly bleached. Benny’s heart speeds up, the monitor on the side traitorously beeping and making Maran glance at it.
“Am I doing that?” he asks, in a shockingly smug voice. Benny lifts his hand from Maran’s thigh and hooks a finger into the collar of his shirt.
“C’mere, you fuckin’ brat,” he whispers and pulls them together to kiss.
—
All three of them are on the outskirts of the base, looking at the thick line of trees. It’s middle of nowhere vibes, but pretty instead of spooky. Reminds Ben, for a moment, of Xavier and Benji’s dumb little house in the woods. He drags on his cigarette, tilts his head back to blow smoke up into the air.
“Bleh,” Nomi huffs, swatting it away with a gloved hand. It’s not even that cold out, but she acts anemic and pathetic. Sniffs here and there. Nomi and nature don’t get along too well.
Maran, in opposite, treks from the edge of the woods, holding up a leaf the size of his head.
“I’m keeping this,” he says confidently.
“No one can stop you,” Benny replies. He shifts a bit on the wheelchair. Maran comes to stand in front of him, twirling the leaf by the stem and smiling. He has that smile on—the one that Benny usually only sees in confidence. In his bedroom, late at night when he’s talking about something he’s fond of. When they’re together, watching a show, when they’ve just got done fucking and Maran is looking blissed out of his mind and—well, Benny sort of hopes, it’s love. That he’s got love in that smile.
“Doctor says I h-have to uh,” Benny leans down to stub the cigarette on the ground and then awkwardly tuck it into the top of one combat boot. The cast on his other leg makes wearing two impossible. “Maybe—might need help getting around and all that. For a bit.”
“He’s trying to ask if he can stay with you for a while,” Nomi says. Benny glares over his shoulder at her, and she responds by sticking out her tongue. When he swings his head back to look at Maran, he’s bludgeoned by the look on his face. It drops quickly, like he might be embarrassed by it; but for a moment, Maran had a look of pure excitement. He schools his expression to something neutral. Which, for Maran, is actually still a bit of a smile.
“Yeah, basically,” Benny says unceremoniously, tossing his hands up into the air.
“I think he’s just trying to get you in a maid dress,” Nomi sighs. “Don’t let him boss you around too much, babe.”
“You can.” Maran steps forward, that silly leaf still in his hand. “If—I mean, if you’re serious. You can—my place. For however long.”
The wind sort of whips around them just then. It makes Nomi’s hair fan around her. She couches, as if hiding behind the wheelchair to get away from it. Hands curled over the edge, looking at Benny with big, glossy eyes. Maran steps forward too, tucks an arm around his face to save it from the biting cold. Benny doesn’t do anything. He just sits there, in wonder. Awe. Looks down at his casted leg—there’s still that filthy weird drawing Matilda had put there.
“Yeah, I’d like to.”
“Say no to the maid dress,” Nomi quips.
“And you can visit,” Maran says, his smile bashful. “Right?”
Nomi, stunned into silence, only manages to nod. Benny slings an arm around her shoulder, yanking her in close to kiss the top of her head and make her howl with annoyance. She wiggles free, dances toward Maran, tucks herself behind him. Holds onto his biceps and glares around his shoulder.
“He’ll be awful and annoying the whole time, Mar.”
Benny loves watching Maran’s face when she uses the nickname. He loves—oh fuck, does he fucking love them.
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Seamstress Girlfriends Part III
Hattie Morahan as Enid Fairleigh & Matilda Ziegler as Pearl Pratt
(Lark Rise to Candleford Series 3 Episode 8)
#sapphic#wlw#vintage sapphic#victorian#victoriana#19th century#19th century fashion#1890s fashion#lark rise to candleford#matilda ziegler#hattie morahan#enid x pearl#pearl x enid#seamstress#sewing#seamstress girlfriends
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They’d upgraded from the supply closet.
Not that his room on base is all that luxurious. It’s tiny, the bed’s a fucking twin and the paint on the walls is chipping a little. He’d forgotten to clean before she got there, so his clothes are still strewn about haphazardly, waiting for a Staff Sergeant to come by and scream at him for it. The stereo he’d managed to smuggle on base with Benson one night (bless the fucking guy, he’d do anything for a free pack of cigarettes) was the only noteworthy part of the room. In his opinion anyway.
The CD’s were stacked lovingly on top of it, in a very specific order. And he slides a case off to hold it up to her.
“Hybrid Theory,” he says, throwing her a smile over his shoulder. “My freshmen year repeat.” Then he shuffles the CD’s a little more, picking up a case. “Or, Weezer. By Weezer.” He turns then with the CD’s in his hands. Lark had been focused looking at the music, but looking at her on the bed completely spools whatever thoughts he’d had into shredded ribbons floating away from him. He holds up one more CD case. “Smash by Offspring, too.”
“You were a very angsty teenager, huh?” She’s laying there in one of his Shadow shirts. The thick cotton kind that he’s supposed to wear on off days; regulation black and stiff. It fits on her differently than him, and she’s comfortably tugged it up a little too to show off that little tattoo underneath the swell of her breasts. His eyes linger there before falling lower. She’d not put any pants back on, just her underwear.
They’d had sex an hour ago and she was still there. In his room. Still listening to him take her through every album that he could reference as points in his life. I listened to this band when my boyfriend broke up with me. I listened to them when I got kicked out. This was a CD I was allowed to have in jail. And she’d listened to him, humming with delight if she knew the band. Commenting on those she was interested in; picking out a playlist because the stereo could switch between three CD’s.
She’s still there. And it makes his heart flip a little in his chest. Lark puts the CD’s down on the stereo. It causes some of them to slip a little, nearly fall off, but he’s crossing to the bed now.
“I’m still kind of angsty,” he admits, with a playfully dark grin.
“Kind of?” She teases back and it makes Lark wrap a hand around her ankle. She gives him one warning arch of an eyebrow and then he yanks. She makes a squeak of a sound that’s high pitched and pretty. He pulls her down more—she feels like nothing its so easy to pull her toward him. He watches that shirt hike up higher and higher, sits just perfectly to obscure more of her skin. Matilda’s arms wind back above her, spine lifting a bit from the bed as she adjusts for comfort. Or to make him insane.
She’s good at doing that. Does that a lot. Teases him until he has to pin down her hands, or hold her arm behind her back and kiss her shoulder and get a little rough with a thrust. She’d not expected him; he relished in that, because sure, it wasn’t obvious he could be like this in bed. Lark knew he looked soft—knew most people found him cute and endearing and sweet. And Lark had liked flipping Matilda over on the bed and pulling her hips back and kissing her spine.
At the end of the day, though, he’s still bludgeoned by her.
Lark moves until he’s kneeling at the end of the bed and hooks a leg of hers over his shoulder. He kisses beside her knee, glancing toward her and grinning against her skin. Matilda’s hand floats up, soothes back his black hair. She bites her lip in that way, that fucking way. His mouth moves a hungry, but slow pursuit over her thigh. The warmth of her body makes his feel painful.
He thinks she’s going to break his heart; that it’s inevitable. Because, he likes her. Not a small amount, not an easy feeling to ignore or tuck away. She’s not a distraction for him the way he might be for her. Lark likes listening to her talk, likes asking her questions about her art, likes getting to see her smile, likes stealing things for her that even money can’t buy on base. He likes losing sleep to make sure no one on base ever fucking bothers her.
He doesn’t know how much of him she might like. If it’s just the way his arms are stronger than they look and can hold her body close in an embrace, devouring her with a kiss that makes them both pant. Or if she actually likes listening to him talk about music, isn’t just indulging him--if there are things she gets caught up on, when looking at him the way he does looking at her.
Larks teeth finally touch the fabric of her panties, tug them a little bit as he looks up at her. Matilda’s beautiful pale face has gone slightly pink in expectation, in anticipation of where his mouth will go next and—
A hand bangs at the door. It makes Lark jump—it makes Matilda jump too, her heel accidentally colliding against his shoulder and sending him backward. He scrambles up from the floor, his heart racing into his throat.
“Fuck,” he whispers, turning to her and yanking the blanket to cover her, tuck it around her as she looks at him with giant eyes.
“Tanaka!” He pauses entirely when he hears the voice. Lark’s hands are fisted into the blanket, looking down at Matilda. It’s a shame those pink cheeks are going to waste. “W-Why is your door locked, man?” His body sags forward, hands catching and bracing themselves on the mattress as he shuts his eyes.
“Why are you trying to get into my room, Benson?”
“Wh-Why? Jacking off? Oh fuck, you are, aren’t you? You try that trick I told you? Sitting on your left hand ‘til its numb?” Matilda’s nose scrunches in disgust (still manages to look pretty doing that too) and Lark slowly puts his forehead down on her shoulder.
“Benny, what the fuck do you want, dude?”
“Corporal says we gotta do smoke tests with Unit Six. Sink’s out until his st-stupid wrist isn’t broken.”
There is an irony to Xavier inadvertently getting in the way of his time with Matilda. I’m not letting him sneak off to find that fucking medic next time we’re in field, Lark thinks sourly as he pulls back from Matilda. He kneels on the bed a minute. She looks up at him, with a smirk of an expression. His hand cups her cheek, thumb brushing over her lower lip.
“Are-are you still jack—”
“Ben, I will be out in a fucking second, relax!” He waits a beat to see if Benson will say anything else awful before leaning back down. Lark’s still holding her cheek when he mumbles to her. “You can stay here, if you want.” Her eyes narrow a little, almost suspiciously—and he likes that about her. Wants to tell her he does, but is afraid it’ll come out wrong but, it’s that she is suspicious about him at all that he thinks shes fucking brilliant. Sometimes she tangles him up so easily, he forgets where he is, what this place is.
Matilda never seems to forget, and he appreciates her. Keeps him sort of grounded too.
“You want me to just lay here, bored, while you go ‘smoke test’.” She makes quotations in the air with her slim pretty fingers. He grins crooked and reaches under the bed until his hands find the iPad he’d gotten jailbroken by Nomi.
“Smoke tests are when you—actually, listen,” he plops it onto the bed. “You don’t need to know what smoke tests are, they’re not as fun as they sound. Just—if you wanted to stay here, while I’m gone.” Lark pulls back, slides from the bed. He stands there for a moment before he reaches for the shirt she’d almost torn off him when they’d gotten into the room. “You could. I’d like if you did.”
Matilda puts a finger on the iPad and slowly slides it her way. Her pretty eyes are lidded, aloof. But she smiles, underneath that all. It’s a real smile too. Lark darts in to plant a kiss on her knee before he tugs his jacket off the desk chair. When he opens the door (and shuts it behind him very quickly) Benny is standing in the hallway.
“Works li-like a charm right? Ol’ numb left hand?”
—
It goes on for longer than it’s supposed to. Smoke tests are easy; it’s just an assimilation of another teams patterns. Stiles team is supposed to mimic Unit One, supposed to fall into line with theirs and mesh. But Shadows rarely ever mesh well. As good of a Sergeant as Stiles is, as fantastic as she is, actually; heads butt non stop. Benny gets into a fight with Anderson and Xavier has to pull them apart by their scruffs like mange ridden dogs. Lark can’t get a response on comms from Fontaine because Fontaine’s a piece of shit.
And Xavier’s anxious; that energy rolls off him, permeates the entire training. Switches himself from boot to boot, gets testy quicker than usual, gets mean faster too. Yells more than he should, aggravates Stiles into telling him to quiet down. It’s a miserable event that leaves every operator stormy as they walk away.
It’s because he wont be in the field. Lark walks the long hallway to the private side of the base. Wont be able to find that medic. Wont be able to keep him safe. He pauses in front of his door. For some reason, Lark imagines Matilda on the field. He thinks of concrete splattering up from sniper rifles and he thinks of gunpowder residue that sticks to the skin and doesn’t come off for days. The smell of blood. It makes his stomach turn over and he puts the key to his room in. Wonders if its better to find her there or not and knows which one is right and which one his heart wants.
When he gently opens the door, just wide enough for him to slip in, he’s shocked to find the lights off. Lark stumbles a little bit in the dark, getting the door locked behind him.
“Hm?”
Her voice makes his heart skip over a beat, the rhythm coming undone and picking up speed and tempo.
“Just me,” Lark says softly into the dark of his room. He can barely make out the figure of her in his bed. She’s sitting up slightly and then hearing his voice, settles back down. He stands there for a long moment, entirely unsure of what to do until he finally sits at the desk and begins unlacing his boots. He’s slow about it, like he’s trying to put his thoughts together and can’t. His mouth feels so dry for some reason. The drills had been long and hard but Xavier had been a fucking dog about refilling canteens.
When he finally gets his boots off, his shirt comes next. Then his tactical pants. Lark slowly kneels on the bed. It’s a twin, but she’s slim—they’re both slim. And she’s turned onto her side, tucked closer to the wall.
“You said I could—”
“Yeah,” he replies quickly. Then he clears his throat. His hand finds her thigh, drags up her waist. “Yeah, no—I mean, yes. I wanted you to stay.” Her laugh is such a gentle sound in the darkness. He slowly lays down beside her and as he does, she turns to face him. One of her long legs hitches up over his hip and pulls his body toward her. Lark’s sore, will probably be sore for a few days, from all that running, climbing, jumping, arguing, feeding off Xavier’s horrible anxiety about his medic. Lark’s anxiety about his—her.
“I was having a cool dream,” she mumbles, sleep still in her voice. Sleep more. Safe here.
“Was I in it?” He laughs, bringing an arm around her ribs, smoothing a hand down her lower back. He feels her shiver. Bundle closer.
“We were at the beach,” she starts, sighing content in her half sleep. We. Lark listens to the rest of it, listens to her voice dwindle to nothing but breathing as she falls asleep again. He should sleep too; he has to be up early, has to report in for hanger duty because they don’t actually have enough flight staff and Benny had volun-told him to work alongside him. He should sleep because he’s tired, and he needs it, but he’s been good at putting off sleep for her. Makes her mad that he does; makes her snap a little at him and he likes it because it means shes feeling something for him. Even if it’s annoyance.
—
The next time they’re in the field, Xavier looks at Lark with raised brows. For a red head, he has these oddly defined, dark brows, expressive with them. His hair isn’t that sort of ginger orange glow, but this real deep, almost amber color that seems unnatural in genetics. Reminds Lark of the dyed hair Matilda had before she’d been made to subdue her personality the way they all did for the Shadows.
“Give me like—” Xavier hunches closer, big green eyes docile in a way he never looks. His comms are switched off, he’s tugging at his tactical mic to give it the slip. “Like not even half an hour.”
You could stay, he’d told her. And she had—and it had become sort of regular. Not all the time, but Lark didn’t go to sleep alone all that often anymore. He looks at Xavier, that nervous sort of pinch to his face that means he’s worried as much as he is excited—because it havdn’t been his Extraction Unit running these last couple weeks, had it?
“Tell him he fucking owes me,” Lark says in a flat voice and Xavier doesn’t even wait for the full sentence to get out before he’s skidding around the corner of a building. Lark stands there, looking out the vantage point they’re posted at.
He tries to find a song to sing, in his head, shuffles through the old routine of finding a melody first to hum; but his brain is full of a conversation instead, one he’d had with her before leaving. Something mundane, but he settles on thinking of her voice instead. Hums not a tune, just a hum as he remembers the tuck of her hair behind her ear almost slipping out, a strand that would fall gracefully and touch her collarbone if it did.
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She sits in the same spot everyday. A bench tucked close to the pond, a big tree right by it, shading her each and every time. Lark notices, because he takes the same running trail every morning; a path along the park that he finds mysteriously devoid of other runners when he’s early enough. He used to change it up, new scenery once in a while, until she started being there everyday. So he runs this trail now.
Everyday.
Lark slows by the same bend he’s always slowing by, even though he shouldn’t. This is the part of his run he needs to maintain, work on his stamina, shave off a minute from his time. This is the body of the run, as they call it, where the most calories are burned, where the most muscles are being fucking tortured. That’s the point of training—which he also isn’t supposed to be doing, necessarily. Outside the regimen his coach has given him, he’s only supposed to do light runs.
Lark has never been a light runner.
Still, he slows to a walk and then to a pause, where he steps off the trail a bit. There’s no one behind him, but the careful consideration is ingrained habit. He puts fingertips to his sweat slick neck, looks at his watch, pretends to count his pulse; she shifts on the bench a little bit, sloped shoulders, sketchbook on her lap. Lark has a watch that tracks his heart rate the entire time he’s running—a gift, actually, from the very coach that would be suplexing him into the fucking pavement if he knew Lark was overworking himself. Though, technically, as he stands there, chest heaving, panting out even, controlled breaths—he’s really not overworking anything. He’s completely stopped his run.
But his heart rate does go a tick up when the woman on the bench imperceptibly moves her head. Lark watches dyed red hair spill over her shoulder with that slight tilt, her pale skin beautiful in the slowly brightening morning glow that peeks out patterns between the tree leaves above her. Beads of sweat roll down his chest under the loose fitted tank, run between the defined lines of his abdomen. He adjusts the band of his shorts just a bit.
And for the first time since he’d noticed she’s there every morning, they make eye contact. His hands drop, fingers flexing, acid built up in his limbs to make them feel numb and hard. His chest is already starting to slow its painful heave, his shoulders relaxing and dropping.
Lark dares to lift a hand and wave.
—
The back seat is spacious enough, but his head still smacks into the car door anyway as he falls into it. Lark barely has time to assess bad it hurts before Matilda is on top of him.
“Ow.”
One of her slender hands brushes up underneath his head and touches exactly where the pain was splintering up across the back of his skull. He blinks up at her, dazed, and instead of wincing with the pain as her fingers find the exact spot his head hit plastic, he’s smiling. It’s just as dopey as his eyes are, spread across his face almost ear to ear.
“Oh my God,” she laughs, her knees up and hitching around his hips.
The wiggle room isn’t the best in the back of the mustang, and he finds his spine is half on the seats and half off, but he isn’t paying attention to that. He’s looking at the way her thighs are spread across him, acid washed denim stretched. His hands go there immediately, cup and jerk her forward a bit more. Her hand slaps against the window, her weight sinking heavier across his hips and making him flood hot and dizzying.
“You need to clean your car, by the way.”
“Huh?”
“Have a thing for McDonalds?”
Lark glances to the floor, then recoils at the sight of the fast food wrapper graveyard. He shoves himself a bit, so he’s not as close to it, glancing up at Matilda. She stares down at him with arched, expectant brows and sharp eyes. Her features are long and pretty, with a pointed chin and high cheek bones. It’s her nose, really, that made him pause. It was elegant and defined her face as so unique. Lark watches more of her silky hair slip from the tuck behind her ears. He wants to take a strand, feel it between his fingers.
He wants to use his fingers for a lot right now.
“It’s—” Lark pauses, cringing a bit. His hands still take an opportunity to spread and slide just so onto her ass. He tries to smile in a way he hopes is charming. “It’s my room mates car.” Her eyebrows dig forward, furrow and wrinkle, her eyes flattening. Lark smiles wider, fingers drumming.
Matilda’s hand flattens on his chest and drags down. Lark’s body bumps up on reflex. He sucks in air without meaning to, smile dropping to something a little bludgeoned as she slips it below his tank top. Then, just as slow, she slides it up to reveal his abdomen. His muscles flex at the feel of her skin, a slow roll of his stomach. The thick, black centipede across his side dances a bit.
“I’m still judging you, but—”
That small allowance makes him dart up, braced on one hand while his other slips behind her neck and pulls them into a messy open mouthed kiss.
***
The July rain is torrential. Absolutely slaps against Lark’s window, loud with the occasional crack of lightning, aftermath of thunder that rumbles the whole apartment building. Doesn’t really drown out the sound of Matilda’s panting, her gorgeous and loud moans, the slap of his thighs against hers. Her hand is yanking the silver chain around his neck, her other scrambling over his desk. Lark’s concentrating too much to pay attention to the scattering of items, his messy room just messier for it.
He keeps her lower half up, off the desk, hands gripped around her slender waist. He’s mesmerized by the press of his thumbs, so close together, indenting her soft skin. Every snap of his hips forward into her body makes her louder, makes the pleasurable twist of her face harsher. Matilda’s long legs stay hooked around his middle, tightening harder when he’s rougher with it.
“Keep going—like that—I’m so—”
On that cue, Lark lifts her entirely, pulls her closer to his chest. She makes a loud cry of a sound, arms snatching up around his shoulders as he turns them. They fall into the bed, his body a hard drive forward against hers—her breasts press warmly into his chest as he continues fucking, one of her hands jerking at his bleached hair. The smell of her skin on her neck drives him fucking insane, his teeth securing a place there and listening to the whimper it causes. She pants out his name (Elias, Elias, Elias) over and over again in a way that makes his thoughts fuzzy.
One of Matilda’s hands scrapes down his back, makes him hiss and arch up, hips slapping forward to fully flush against her and that’s when her whole body shakes against his. Lark watches her with blurry yet intensely focused eyes. Watches the way her eyes shut, her mouth drops open, her chest lifts from the mattress. One of her hands grips into his waist, the other curved around his shoulder. Her whole body trembles with it and the sound she makes—he’d print it on vinyl. Listen to it on repeat.
“Oh fuck,” she pants out, both her hands slipping to hold his waist. “Fuck.” She blinks wet eyes at him, his chest swelling with that satisfied ‘I did that’ sensation. Nothing ever made him feel cockier than making Matilda cum like that, full body with it, teary eyed and breathing hard. Lark lips a bead of sweat from his upper lip, his hand smoothing over her collarbone, down her sternum.
His other hand jerks at the strap to loosen it, his breathing slightly labored. Matilda’s inner thighs were pink from the abuse of his own, and he can’t help but look at them as he pulls the toy off himself and tosses it to the side. He wants his mouth there, kissing the sensitive skin, tasting her, dragging lips and tongue over her for the second time that night.
Matilda’s fingers dance over the lines across Lark’s hips where the band of the strap had dug in just a bit too hard. It tears his eyes away from her lower half and up to her face. Her cheeks are just as pink, just as tantalizing and easy to stare at. Lark smiles at her satisfyingly, lips curved up deviously, blond hair stringy in his face from the sweat.
“So, the green ones nice.”
She pinches his thigh. It makes him yelp and then fall forward, hands braced on either side of her ribs. Her hand slides down his sweaty chest, fingernails dragging all along his skin and making him shiver, making him moan and hang his head. Her hand finds him, fingertips toying softly.
“Your turn?”
“Matilda,” he pants, shoulders shivering.
“You should get a bed frame, by the way. I’m not dating a guy with a mattress on the floor.” His head lifts from where he’d been staring at her fingers touching him and he blinks rapidly.
“Are we dating?”
“Get a bed frame, Elias.”
—
Out in the kitchen, Xavier and Ben sit at the table, staring at him. Lark stands in front of the fridge, water bottle in hand, glaring back at them. Except for their snickering between each other, there is only the continued sound of the storm outside. He chugs the water, throat bobbing, shoulders heaving and then throws it empty toward the trash can. It misses by a wide margin and plunks onto the floor.
Xavier’s grin goes sneaky and Benny’s gets bigger and bigger, sleazier and sleazier.
“I told you two I’d have company,” Lark says thinly. He’d put on shorts to come out into the kitchen, but is otherwise bare. There’s scratch marks along his chest that Xavier’s eyes keep flickering knowingly to.
“Company,” Benny says with his fingers in quotes. He swings his pale blue eyes to Xavier who repeats the gesture, mouthing the word. “Company th-that’s like—oh, Lark, yeah, Lark, oh fuck, Lark!”
“Lark, you’re so hot. Oh my God, I love your messy room and your big CD collection.”
His face goes scarlet with heat, but he realizes they hadn’t actually heard anything—or hadn’t heard well enough. Because Matilda only ever used his name in bed, the name he liked to hear from her when she was moaning, writhing underneath him. She’d asked and he’d been so shocked he’d almost just told her Lark is fine. Nickname since childhood, he’d picked up from the street kid’s he broke into abandon houses with. Little songbird. But he liked being Elias to her.
“Wh-when are we meeting her?” Benny asks, slopping up a mouthful of cereal. Xavier sits there idly, fingers flicking at a rubik’s cube, slowly starting to solve it without looking down. He’s counting underneath his breath, but staring at Lark with big expectant grass colored eyes.
“Never.”
“Meeting who?”
Lark doesn’t have to look over to tell that Matilda has not put on all her clothes. Its evident by the way the rubik’s cube goes clattering across the floor and Xavier’s head tilts back. His eyes sweep up to the ceiling, cheeks flaming the same color as his hair. In direct contract, Benny leans forward, forearms to the table, snide mouth curling into an absolutely slimy grin. He lazily runs his spoon around the bowl of cereal.
When he does glance over her shoulder, he’s happy to see that she’d at least pulled on one of his shirts. Even taller, the oversized fit skims her thighs and it’s black, so it won’t be see through enough to see. He feels an immediate strike of possessive heat in his stomach at her bare legs however, long and slender and pretty as they are. Especially the bruise across the back of her thigh that is very hand shaped. She ducks around Lark to open the fridge and glance inside it.
“Matilda,” Lark sighs heavily. “This is Xavier and Benny.”
“I’m single,” Benny replies, winking at Lark, who curls his lip.
“That’s so shocking, you look like such a catch,” Matilda quips, swinging around to face all three men and cross her arms over her chest. Lark notices that it hitches the shirt up a just a little. He remembers his mouth against her cream colored thighs, working teeth across her. Lark goes hot across the face again, in the hopes that there are no angles that are going to reveal his mouth print to his fucking room mates.
“Oh, wait, I know you!” Xavier’s eyes have dropped somewhat, but he keeps his head comically tilted back. He waves a bit, grinning with all his pretty white teeth. “I changed your oil before.”
“That better not be a fucking euphemism, Xavier,” Lark mumbles.
“I think you mean metaphor,” he replies, throwing Ben an incredulous look. Benny nods, patting Xavier’s shoulder affectionately.
“Wow.” Matilda draws the o out in the word, laughing. She slides her palm across Lark’s waist, trailing fingers as she walks back toward his room. “Maybe a new apartment with the mattress.”
***
The door to his room slams open hard enough to knock pictures off the fridge, magnets clipping off—Matilda charges out, swiping at her neon blue jacket she’d tossed over the table. Along with it, a bag of chips whips to the ground, opening and sending Ruffles scattering everywhere. Lark follows, scrambling across the tile of the kitchen in his socked feet, crunching on an orange chip here and there.
“Will you wait?” he snaps, his voice thin and high.
“You’re funny,” Matilda replies in a tight, unhumored tone. Her hand slaps at the keys hanging on the hook by the wall, ripping them off and catching them in the air. Instead of leaving she whirls around to face him, and they nearly collide. Lark stumbles back, furious hands balled into fists. He doesn’t usually wear his anger so bodily. He doesn’t usually get this angry, actually. And when he does, it’s mostly ice, a cold shoulder, a furious silence.
“Those are my keys,” he clips out, teeth snapping on the words. Matilda glances down to them. Easy mistake, because they have the same key chain. A little Polaroid picture of them from a photobooth at some festival they’d both been dragged to. They had ditched halfway through to be alone, sit in the bed of Xavier’s truck in the parking lot and listen to a carefully curated playlist they’d been building for months.
“Ass,” she snaps and throws them. They hit his chest unceremoniously and drop to the floor. Matilda continues stomping toward the coffee table where Xavier’s foot rests. He stares up at either of them with big, bewildered red rimmed eyes. “Pass me those.” She points with a slim, dignified finger and Xavier listens immediately, looping his own into her keys and tossing them. She snatches them from the air, swivels on her heel and makes a beeline toward the front door.
“Matilda, stay,” Lark argues, hands raised.
“Ask one of your other girlfriends to stay the night,” she quips sweetly, pulling the door open. Her hair whips behind her as she leaves. The smell of her will linger all day, he knows. It always does.
Lark shoves his head out to watch her walk, with that particular sway that makes him stare every time. There’s a hot coal lodged inside his chest, a sensation that feels similar to when he’s run for too long and the lactic acid starts to hurt, hurt in his calves and his lungs feel like winter. Lark grinds teeth together, wills himself to stop, but instead, ends up yelling.
“I don’t have any other girlfriends! Just you and your ten other personalities!”
He slams the door shut, chest heaving furiously. For the first time, he almost understands why Xavier punches or kicks things when he’s angry—Lark doesn’t even get angry. He’s patient to a fault. He’s a pushover sometimes, even. But Matilda is so—she gets him so—
“Are you guys fighting?” Xavier asks, smiling from the couch. He sings the word, fighting and draws it out. His pink tongue touches the edge of a joint he’s rolling. “Cause Maran and Benji are coming over and—”
“Shut up, Xavier,” Lark snarls, turning toward his room. He hears cackling as he slams his own door shut with just as much force.
—
Lark ends up in Matilda’s room only a few hours later. They argue more, all the way from the entry of her apartment to the living room, into the kitchen. He follows as she wanders, brings the fighting to every square inch. They lose the plot of the argument quickly, too, without really anything to argue about. Lark isn’t even sure what had started the fit before, back at his place. Just that it had gone from angry to very angry quickly.
Now that they’d reached her room, it goes very very angry to falling into her bed. Yanking his shirt up as she jerks open his belt. He kicks himself up higher as she crawls over him and her nails drag down his skin, over his chest. He pants with excitement, veins open and flowing warm blood everywhere, all over him to every inch. His hands grip into her with an absolute reckless abandon he’d never had before. Lark rolls them, stronger than her, pins her to the bed.
It’s messy—and rough, because he knows she likes it like that. Wants it like that. Matilda’s body melts against his and her spitting fury turns to a delicate submission that Lark takes and devours. Pulls her hard against him, kisses hungrily along her collarbone, the beautiful pale column of her neck. His teeth nip her skin, make her whimper as her hands drag paths across his well defined back. Her mascara runs, her eye shadow smudging.
Lark pins her to her stomach, his hot breathing against the back of her neck as her fingers curl into her sheets.
I love you, he thinks as he kisses along her spine. As she arches and his knee shoves her legs further apart. You fucking drive me insane, I cannot imagine not having you, mine, all the time. His teeth skate over the curve of her hip, his hands flattening her hips to the bed. She makes a sound in half surprise, half pleasure. Matilda, I love you.
He isn’t satisfied with one, so he flips her over, his hand between her thighs bringing her toward another as she yanks at his hair. He looks at the way her body bends, chest pressed up. He lathes a tongue between her breasts, over her sternum, listens for the sounds of her getting closer and closer. Cups her jaw as she’s about to cum, makes her look at him, positions his mouth above hers.
The way her tongue extends already, as he’s spitting into her mouth nearly makes him angry. That anger just makes his hand faster, the way she likes it—so she cums again licking the bit of spit that hit her upper lip.
—
“Do you remember what I said that made you angry?”
“Probably something stupid.”
“Yeah, probably.”
He runs a hand through her hair, her arms tucked around him, head to his chest. That playlist got switched on again, while he was showering. It plays louder than it probably should for the hour, but he doesn’t care—neither does she. His fingers brush through the strands, pushing some behind her ear. She sighs out contently.
“I think you started it,” he offers. She smacks his thigh and makes him yelp and then laugh. Loud.
***
She hasn’t turned and seen him yet, so he enjoys simply watching her.
The art gallery lighting compliments her—or it only does, because it’s her. The guests look strange, odd against all the neon. Little washed out ghosts that meander the gallery, speaking softly under the ambient music, ooohing and ahhhhhing. The colors dance across the ground and the ceiling and the walls, just as much art as the actual installations. He finds it easier to look at than the people.
Matilda stands with a champagne glass in her hand, but hasn’t actually lifted it to her lips yet. It’s as full as it had been when someone handed it to her. Her other hand is tucked under her elbow, as if supporting herself. Lark can see a line of tension along her slim shoulders, a little tuck to her chin. She’s in heels, which makes her so beautifully tall he feels winded.. And she wears all that long, shiny hair into an artfully styled bun that has stray strands falling every which way, in perfect mess.
To Lark, she stands out just as much as the neon lights. More so. He wonders why no one else is standing and staring at her.
When Matilda turns and sees him, the line melts. She sets the champagne flute down. He waves.
—
“You’re in so much trouble, huh?” Her pretty fingers pet his hair back from his forehead, tuck stray blond locks behind his ear. Her nail polish is a bit chipped—he had no idea why that makes his heart swell, insanely painful between his ribs. Lark has to tilt his head back to look up at her, and this angle makes him dizzy with the desire to kiss her, to feel her soft lips against his own. Neon purple halos behind her head from a snake design he knew she spent so long creating. His hand begs to sit on her waist, to touch her anywhere. But instead he keeps hold of the crutches underneath his arms.
“Nah. I’m coach’s favorite,” he promises, which is a lie and she knows it. Well, he is one of his coach’s favorites. That’s why him skipping this athletics comp is going to make Coach Fuller insane.
Lark can’t compete, with his ankle twisted. The brace is awkward underneath his dress slacks; because he’d actually dressed up for this event. Put on a tie and everything and had made Xavier tie it for him, because it was real and not a clip on. Lark looks up at her, the sparkle of neon across her eyes surreal. She tucks the hair further behind his ear, touches his neck and smooths her hand over his shoulder.
He’s supposed to go anyway. For moral support, or because scouts could still be among the crowd and talk to the coach about him. Because Lark is on track even despite his injury.
And truthfully, he’d be there. He’d been at all of them, injury or not. Competing or not. It made him itchy to not know how his team mates were doing, or to see his competition. Usually, anyway. But—standing there, watching her eyes spark as she departs to cross to an art collector, long legged and powerfully confident with her shoulders tight. He can’t find it in himself to regret skipping.
Lark knows she can’t spend that whole night with him. Lark knows she probably wont even be looking at him for most of it; that she has to mingle, discuss, sell an art piece here and there. But, he doesn’t mind tucking himself next to a navy blue art piece to watch. He doesn’t mind not running.
“I Hope It Rains Today,” someone reads from the plaque next to the dark blue piece he hides next to. Lark blinks a few times, his cheeks going dark pink and warm as he tries not to snicker.
***
“It’s my Grandpa’s birthday today,” Lark explains as he sets the cake down on the kitchen table. Matilda sits with one of her legs up, knee underneath her chin. Her eyebrow raises, because she…knows a thing or two about the Tanaka’s. More than anything, she knows Lark doesn’t particularly talk to them. Not willingly anyway. His phone only explodes with phone calls, one after the other, when one needs something.
“No, he was cool,” Lark laughs, flipping the top of the cake open. It’s red velvet, which had also been his favorite. He produces a fork for her that she hesitantly reaches for.
The apartment is empty; which is so fucking rare that Lark almost feels like they should be spending the time doing something else. Dance in the living room, jump on the couch, fuck on the floor or something crazy. Instead, he takes a bite from the cake, chewing and smiling at her.
Lark doesn’t mention Matilda not eating around others. He doesn’t mention her cutting portions when people are with them or watching—the same way Matilda doesn’t mention Lark logging his calories into an app, or making sure his macros are perfect. They don’t, because they aren’t sure how. Or because it would be a fight that doesn’t end with sex. They meet in the middle, with her ordering just an appetizer when they’re out or him skipping if it’s ‘junk food’.
“When my Grandpa came to America, he didn’t know his birthday.” Lark scoops up another bite with the fork. “His parents hadn’t recorded it. He knew he was born in the winter, and he knew his age, but not the day.”
“Really?” Matilda prods the fork into a big piece of the icing. She picks the chunk and puts it into her mouth, her lips curling at the edges.
“It’s not that unusual, honestly,” he explains, smiling back. He wants badly to dart forward, kiss that little bit of icing across her lower lip. “But, Immigration Services gave him a birthday.”
“Sounds American,” Matilda snorts as she takes another bite.
“Right? Anyway, he didn’t follow it.”
“So,” she licks icing from her lip, just like he’d wanted to. “It’s not his birthday?”
“Well,” Lark intones in a ridiculously dramatic voice. “That was what was really funny about Ojiisan.” He takes another theatrical bite from the cake. It’s dwindling, as they eat, bites missing in sloppy, unorganized chunks. Lark never eats cake—or he waits. He saves all that craving for this. And usually, he does this privately. A smaller cake. A treat, in his room, candle lit, portrait of his grandfather on his desk to eat across from. “He would just pick a random day in November and say it was his birthday.”
“No shit?”
“Like, every year it changed.”
Matilda laughs, her knee falling. She leans forward, with an arm over the table as she picks more at the cake. He watches her, the slow slide of her hair from behind her ear. She’s started dying chunks of blue, for her best friend. Lark loves the way the dye makes her hair feel, thick and soft. He stabs a piece of the cake.
He would have liked her. He would have thought she was funny and intelligent. He would have asked about her artwork, or told her she was too good for Lark while winking at him. He would have sat and ate cake with them.
Lark takes that next bite slower.
“You should tell me more about him,” Matilda says. He looks up at her. She puts a bite of cake in her mouth, her lips red from the icing. Her long leg extends underneath the table and lays across his thighs. Lark looks down at her pale skin, his bare hand sweeping up over her calf, underneath her knee. “Don’t tickle me!”
“I’m not,” he promises softly, smiling as he uses his fork to split off another bite of cake. Instead, his palm encloses around her thigh, his thumb rubbing gently against her skin. “Uh, he liked Bingo.”
“Like any good old person.”
“And he loved talking shit about people in Japanese.”
Matilda laughs again, her leg jostling on his lap a bit. His hand closes tighter, possessive in the sudden desire for her to know she is the most beautiful woman alive, and that she is his and only his and he’ll find a way to make sure she knows. That he says it to her one day, sometime, when he finds all the correct words to piece together into a perfect sentence. He holds her, watches her eat, laugh at more ridiculous stories of an old man that had made his adolescent bearable.
They finish the cake, mostly, with two little slices left. Lark writes XAVIER & BENNY on the outside and leaves it on the table, knowing the two will find and devour the rest.
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He catches them outside the audio lab.
Two of them, swatches of black against gray brick walls. Laughing, a duo of two fucked up smudges that Lark thinks of as stains. He watches, for a minute, hands in his jacket pockets. They haven’t noticed him yet, because they’re focused on that door. AUDIO ENGINEERING it says, in big blocky letters.
There’s no reason for them to be down this way; no reason for Lark either, technically. That’s why he knows this hallway should be empty. Shouldn’t even have a guard wandering down this way for another forty minutes—do they know that too? Hunched together, discussing the door knob. How to get it open.
Lark’s tongue trails over his silver canine, thinks, well, it’s easy. These type of locks don’t even need real tools. The ol’ bobby pin works on them.
“You idiots lost?”
They look up, like they’re connected by one brain. Only, when they notice him, they relax a little. Just a shift of their shoulders, one knee holding more weight than they other. A softening of arms, not so tight and bulky in their chests. Lark’s used to that. His tongue rolls again as he steps forward.
“What you want, Tanaka?”
“Up late, yeah?”
Christ, they even talk at the same time. They’re taller than him—not rare. So, he should lean his head back to look at them better. He doesn’t. Lark tucks his chin forward, to his chest, looks at them from under his brows, keeps that stare at them. He also doesn’t answer, because he doesn’t need to. Lark keeps trying to tell Corporal that. Sometimes, when you’re quiet, it makes them antsy.
He’s not quick to anger like Baby. It doesn’t hit him the same. He’d felt the needle of it slip through the vein when he saw them, but now, it’s like the syringe is depressed. Slowly, worms through his veins. Makes him cold, cold, cold. They’re glancing between each other, looking at him.
“You got a fuckin’ problem—” So the bigger one steps forward, because he’s used to intimidating people. He’s broad across the shoulders, thick in his arms—the way mercenaries are. Lark’s hand slips out his pocket, and it doesn’t take much to catch the mercenaries dog tags with his wire cutters. The flinch, like they didn’t see that coming—didn’t, yeah, because Lark’s not violent like that.
Well. He’s not Corporal Wolffe, and they’re used to Xavier. How to prod around his flashes of heat, when to step back when he stands up. And Lark sings on comms, is the shortest of the Extraction Unit—is for running, is for climbing, infiltration.
The dog tags clink a little as he holds them with those wire cutters in his hand, his other still lazy in his jacket. And he still doesn’t lean back, doesn’t move to look up at them. Lark’s chin stays down, his eyes stay up. They have to crane their head to look at him, hunched forward slightly and their eyes flick to those cutters.
“You don’t come down this hallway again.”
“What? You gonna fight? Two on one?”
Lark smiles. It’s a small slip across his expression, but it curls, head moving to put that silver canine front facing.
“Two? I only see one of you.”
He watches the mercenaries throat bob, watches him dart eyes to the side. Crane his head around to look for his second. Ghosted, absolutely gone. Hallway empty. Lark’s fingers squeeze and the chain of the dog tag snaps, slip from his neck. They make a clink of a sound when they land on the tiled floor. Big, ugly mercenary looks down, stares at them, like he can’t fathom how quickly this got out of his control. Lark can. Not everything is solved with a fist.
“You gonna get those?” Lark snips the cutters again into the air and enjoys watching the man sink low to pick them up.
—
So the knob is easy to crack—doesn’t break it, but he likes thinking of it that way. Math equation to solve, but he’s using a pin. And when he slips into the lab, it’s all dark, except for the spot she sits at. For a moment, Lark only looks at her, back to the door like that—from this angle, he can see the way all her hair has been swept to one side. Reveals the side of her throat. Pale and exposed.
Lark approaches, with heavy foot steps, so she knows hes coming. She would know from the way the knob had been jangling slightly for him to get it open. Even experts nearly break a door handle here and there.
“Shouldn’t sit with your back to the door,” is how he greets her. The headphones are off, sitting beside the keyboard. A tepid looking Styrofoam cup of black coffee sits, mostly untouched. Lark’s hand slides up, touches where her neck meets her shoulder. She’s in a black button up—sometimes he wonders how much color she’d wear if this wasn’t her current lifestyle.
He wants to ask her, about that. He pegs her for neutrals. But wouldn’t really know. There’s a pool of information on her that he hasn’t touched yet. Isn’t sure when—or if—he’ll be allowed to.
His hand continues sliding, down and over her collarbone.
“I can see the reflection of the door in the third monitor,” Matilda says and he can tell she’s smiling, even if he hasn’t looked at her face yet. She wears a smile in her voice; he thinks she has a beautiful one. Things like that matter to him. He’s not picky about lovers; what fucking mercenary is? But…voices. Yeah. He can’t listen to one that isn’t pretty.
Lark presses his hand forward still, sliding over her sternum, right under that black button up. He feels, momentarily, the strong beat of her heart until she’s laughing, swatting at his hand. He pulls it out, grinning himself as he slips candy from his pockets. Tosses the brightly colored packaging down, flops into the rolling chair beside her.
“Do you know how hard it is to get candy on this base?” He rolls toward her and without asking, slides one of his legs into her lap. He’s draped like that, propping an elbow onto the arm of the office chair and resting his chin in his palm. “Had to cheat at poker—might die for this one day if they find out.”
Seems worth it when she tears open a package, lit up by the glow of the monitor. He’s looking at her face now. Loves that structure to her, those sharp, dignified cheekbones, that jawline sloping to a pointed chin and her plush mouth. Wants to kiss her, immediately, just to look at them, but doesn’t. Not yet. They’ll get there eventually or…maybe they won’t.
Maybe he likes just being here.
“If you die, can I have the stereo in your room?”
Lark flattens a hand over his chest, slouching dramatically, wounded.
“All I’m good for is candy and stereo systems.”
“Mm. You’re not bad on the eyes, either, Elias.” Oh his heart skips when she says his fucking name that no one ever uses. People couldn’t figure it out—Daisuke or Elias, or did it really matter? And he’d said he didn’t care, and his callsign had come about so quickly. Because that’s what base life was like. And it stuck. Now, he felt like Lark, all the time.
Never felt like Elias, kid from Oakland, until she said his name. Never remembered he used to be human before all this mercenary work, until she said his name. Never remembered what it felt like to be so fucking insanely attracted to another person, until she said his name, breathy and soft against his lips.
She angles her chair so he can scoot himself closer, that leg still hooked over her lap, comfortably close. Matilda’s hand falls to his knee, one of her arms slung behind the chair and they talk.
They just talk. For a while and he watches her eat the candy, little pops of cherry red into her mouth occasionally. She has to pause here and there to put the headphones back on, monitor something. Take down notes on a pad, time stamps. Other things. Her slim fingers change dials, adjust. She has spreadsheets on one of the monitors.
And they do kiss, eventually, toward the end of her shift, when he’s getting too tired to stay awake, so she leans in and props her hands up on the arms of his chair and kisses him. And he slips fingers over the buttons of her black blouse and smiles—and she tells him to quit it in a snarky, pleasant voice.
“If you weren’t in this,” he asks, hooking a finger into the shirt again. “What would you be in?”
“Is this like, a clever way of asking what color my bra is?”
“I can see it, actually,” he comments, grinning wider when she rolls her eyes. “No, I meant, if you weren’t on base.”
“Weird question,” she hums. Her lips are a little pink from how much he’d kissed her—because she’d leaned in, sure, and she was hovering over him, like this yes, but he always found a way to get his hand behind her neck and kiss her harder. Sometimes, he couldn’t help how hard he wanted her. “Blue,” she settles on. “Neon blue.”
He wants to see her in it. Lark fingers a strand of her hair that’s fallen from behind her ear. His eyes burn, because she’s doing a graveyard shift and he hasn’t slept since the night before, but he won’t sleep. Not when she’s alone, in this lab, smudges outside.
“I like blue,” he tells her and she huffs a little laugh. She looks like she might ask him the same question—and his heart isn’t equipped to answer it, so he cups her chin and pulls her in for another kiss. Another hard kiss that he needs to keep himself awake.
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"This is a sharp disposal container.”
Xavier’s mom holds it up. The little red plastic box looks ominous, black biohazard symbol shiny, warning label text too small to read unless his nose is pressed to it. He cannot fathom what all of it says, or what it means that something he’s stabbing into his body goes into that when he’s d one. It looks overwhelming in her small, freckled hand. Lark stares at it with upturned, nervous brows. She looks back at him with a serious expression.
“When you’re done with your injection, you put your needles in this box and this box only. Okay, Elias?” He nods quickly. She pauses and slowly slides the box across the bathroom counter until it’s next to his injection supplies. He drums his fingers on it, his other arm crossed over his chest.
“Oh, sweetie, do you want me to do it for you?”
“No,” Lark answers quickly, tone unfortunately very on edge. “It’s just like—uh, very Resident Evil, you know?” Lorelai Wolffe looks at him with narrowed, confused eyes. Then she throws her hands up into the air.
“Whatever that means. You just let me know if you need me, okay? I’ve been doing shots for people since before you were born.” She points to her eyes and then to the sharp disposal container and then to him. Lark salutes, which makes her soften with a smile. “C’mere.” She tugs Lark close by his biceps, peppering kisses into his moppish black hair. He blushes immediately, stiffens at the sudden affection.
He doesn’t know where to place it—her motherly love that he isn’t even sure he’s earned. Xavier’s mother just gives it without asking. Not that he’d been given a free couch to sleep on. Lark was up on Sundays doing chores with Xavier. His class grades were monitored and like the other Wolffe children, he was nagged to brush his teeth morning and night. But, Lark could handle all of that. It was nearly reminiscent of his own mother—even if Lorelai did most of her parenting with a smile—but it was the affection that always made him skittish.
When she draws away, Xavier’s mother cups his cheeks for a moment. Lark finds it hard to meet her eye.
“Oh my God, mom.”
“Xavier Wolffe, you do not—”
“You gotta go, this is private.” Xavier starts to wedge himself between his mother and the bathroom door. He pushes softly at her shoulders. She barely—barely—comes up to his chest. Somewhere along the way Xavier had gone from incredibly scrawny and small, to six-foot-three overnight. Everyone in the house dissolved into near tears every time he accidentally smacked his long limbs into something, because he was so uncoordinated it was like living with a new born moose.
“If it’s so private, why are you here?”
“This is guy time,” Xavier replies, flapping hands. His mother raises a pointed finger and his hands immediately drop, eyebrows raised. His eyes go puppyish and Lark knows then that she will absolutely cave—because Xavier is, at the end of the day, her son. Lark fiddles with the edge of the plastic on the needle he’ll shortly be poking himself with, rather than looking up at the two. He hears the door close.
“Dude,” Xavier says softly.
Lark holds up the still plastic wrapped needle with a smile.
“Your juice.”
“Oh, come on, don’t fucking say it like that,” Lark groans as he sits on the toilet. The bathroom is a little too small for both of them. His mother had fit because she was thin and small and Lark was struggling to grow taller than five-five. But Xavier finds a way to get himself onto the edge of the tub, looking at Lark with big, excited eyes.
“Are you, like, gonna do it?”
“Obviously.”
Lark stays sitting there for a moment, just looking at Xavier. Another minute passes. And then another. He takes the needle and the little vial and looks down at them. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears, loud, roaring. The sound of the family living room outside the door is almost louder; they’re watching some T.V. show together. They’ll have dinner in an hour. It’s pizza night.
“Can you help?”
Xavier leans in, his big smile taking up all of his long, handsome face.
“Show me what to do.”
There’s a small moment where it gets awkward, as Lark shoves down his jeans. He looks at Xavier, who looks at him, with wide innocent eyes.
“The lady said to put the heel of your hand here.” He puts his palm to his thigh and lays it flat. His briefs go down a little too far so he pulls the edge back a little. “You put your hand on my knee—man, your hand might be too fucking big.” Xavier laughs as he cups Lark’s knee. The warm contact of Xavier’s palm makes goosebumps pepper along his leg. He arranges the hands better and then stares down at his pale, smooth thigh.
“Okay,” Lark says, his fingers beginning to tingle. His other knee bounces until Xavier puts his hand there too. Flattens it down with that stupid jock strength. “Thanks.” He works off the red cap of the vial, then arranges the needle. He stares at it for the longest moment, before he begins.
“This is so Resident Evil,” Xavier mumbles, wide eyed.
“You couldn’t even get through the first part of the house,” Lark reminds him, staring with concentration as the needle slowly fills with the murky yellow liquid. He swiftly safety caps it. “You needed me to help you with the dogs.”
“The dogs were fucking scary, man.”
“I don’t think I can do this, Xavier,” Lark says, staring at the spot in his thigh. He swallows and suddenly feels his chest expanding too quickly. Some strange, cold sweat breaks out across his forehead, the back of his neck. He thinks of his room, back home—back home, home—and the dresses in the closet. He thinks of his parents, who didn’t care. Didn’t care he was trans, did not care he was not a girl. He thinks of them, not caring. Not being opposed, but not—just not fucking caring. Lark inhales and then exhales in a wide gulp.
“Oh, easy,” Xavier leans forward, his knee on the tiled floor. His hand cups behind Lark’s neck, looking at him. “C’mon, Lark. You had a calendar on the wall marking the days off to get this shit. It’s just a needle.”
“It’s biohazard waste.”
“Well, because of the like, blood or whatever.”
“The lady said there shouldn’t be that much blood.” Lark’s voice goes high pitched. Xavier’s hand squeezes and makes him jump a little. Both their eyes swing to the capped needle. Xavier’s hand falls away from his neck and then gently takes it. For some reason, it looks comically different in Xavier’s hand. Smaller. Less threatening.
“On the count of three.” He uncaps it and holds it over Lark’s thigh. “And then you get a Batman bandaid.” Lark stares at him and he winces. “Sorry, dude. It’s all we had.”
“One. Two.”
The needle pokes into Lark’s thigh.
Then it comes out, clean. No blood. Xavier safety caps it again and then pokes it into the red sharp disposal container with the shiny black biohazard symbol. He takes the bandaid from the sink, splits it open, smooths it over pale skin. The entire time, Lark watches with his jaw dropped, lips in the shape of a perfect ‘o’. He blinks a few times and then Xavier slowly leans back until he’s sitting on the floor, long legs outstretched on either side of the toilet that Lark sits on.
“Whoa,” Lark says quietly. They share a smile then and Lark thinks to say thank you, but instead the door gets wrenched open. He shrieks then, hastily jerking at his jeans as Xavier’s sister, Emily, stands in the door. Her face turns a shade of red that seems neon.
“Why didn’t you knock?” Xavier snaps, scrambling to stand.
“Mom wants to know what pizza topping you want. I told her pepperoni—”
“Lark likes white pizza—”
“White pizza is boring and—”
The door closes, silencing the conversation and giving Lark a moment to stare at the little red box on the bathroom counter.
***
Matilda bends over the bathroom counter in a way that makes Lark look at the sensual curve of her spine. He flattens a hand on her lower back and slowly slides up, fingers drawing a pattern over the nape of her neck and then back down. She shivers, strands of her pretty hair falling over her bare, pale shoulder. She’d recently gone with a dark purple color, and Lark had admittedly, selfishly it was one of his favorites. Made her eyes pop. Made her stand out in a room, like she should.
“Stop teasing me,” she mumbles, tucking her chin over her shoulder and staring at him with those eyes that stand out luminescent amongst all that dark hair. Lark smiles, his fingers pinching the cup of her ass and then he takes a step back to angle the needle right. It’s a quick poke, but it takes a minute to depress all the estrogen. While he does, his eyes lift to look at her, as she stares at him.
“Taking it like a good girl,” he purrs and she rolls her eyes.
“You’re corny for that,” she comments and then he withdraws the needle. Lark pats the spot with the cotton swab, and then presses on the little dot bandaid she prefers.
Matilda’s shirtless, so when she turns around to face him, Lark gets instantly distracted. His eyes fall on the swell of her breasts, his hands making paths up her sides. He feels her shiver with the sensation, leaning in to put his mouth on one. Her hand stops him, flat on his forehead.
“Lark, be so for real, are you into med fet? You cannot be getting horny every time we do this.”
“I am into boobs,” Lark explains, brows crawling up his forehead as her hand slides from pressing against him to brushing his hair back. It’s his turn to shiver at the feel of her longer, manicured nails scratching across his scalp. Lark puts arms around her middle, tugs her just a bit close. Matilda is pouting, an expression that he never found endearing until her.
“That one hurt,” she complains. He’s sure. The needle she uses is a different gage then his. And she doesn’t have injections on the same frequent level as him—he’d discovered HRT didn’t work interchangeably for them. But it had been interesting to learn it all. Lark tries to lean in again, eyes very focused on a nipple. Instead, Matilda presses her hand on the hollow of his throat, and her sharp thumbnail points his chin up.
“Very t-for-t of you to be into this,” Matilda teases. Lark’s eyes widen as she slides slowly to her knees. The sight alone is enough for something sparking white and hot to overtake his insides. The way she purses her lips, knowingly, beautifully, makes it worse.
“I will be, like, whatever you want if you’re about to do what I think you’re about—okay,” Lark exhales the word noisily as Matilda slides one of his muscular legs over her shoulder.
—
“Do you think about what you’d do if you and Benji broke up?”
Xavier looks up from the sub sandwich in confusion. A banana pepper dangles from his mouth, as well as shredded lettuce. The sub nearly falls apart in his lap so Lark leans over and tugs it further up. They sit on the stage, watching the show clean up, food supplied by the venue. Best subs in all Pennsylvania, they’d boasted and Matilda had snorted and almost argued.
“Uh,” Xavier pushes the pepper into his mouth and chews. “Only if I’m trying to make myself cry on command.” It makes Lark laugh and look back to the roadies. Benny helps carry the equipment, his hat nearly falling off. He watches Matilda lean in and correct it, tuck a strand of his white blond hair back underneath it.
“It’s like,” Lark looks down at his own food, mostly untouched. “You’re at that point where, you’re either going to do it, right? Forever. Like commit to it. Or you’re going to have the most painful break up of your life.” He pulls a black olive off the sub and contemplates eating it.
“Should I be worried that Benji is about to break up with me?” He doesn’t sound worried. Xavier bites into the end of his sub again, fillings pushing out the other side. He’d overstuffed it, because once he heard it was free, he’d asked for almost every item on the menu. Lark watches him chew, bemused expression on his freckly, pale face. Benji is only a few feet back, working on his drums.
What is that like? To feel that confident. To know everything. To not be afraid.
“No,” Lark says, using his hands to help him talk, gesture his way through it. “But if he did, you’d lose it, right?”
“Dude.” Xavier stuffs the rest of the sandwich into his mouth. He chews and swallows and dusts off his chest of the little bits and crumbles and then turns to fully look at Lark. “Why are you thinking about this?”
“That’s terrifying,” Lark comments, deciding against the olive. Against the sandwich. He puts it to the side and then slowly slides off the stage. His legs are sore from the amount of running he’d done the whole show. His throat hurts—and he should be resting his voice, but he isn’t. Because Xavier has always been the one that made decisions feel less big.
“Oh, man. I think I’m about to ask Matilda to live with me. I think, I’m going to like, ask her to never break up with me, ever.”
“Uh. Like marriage.”
“No, that’s absolutely too far. But, the thing before that, but after casual dating.” Xavier gives him a look that says, you’re so fucking hopeless.
“She’s coming over here, by the way.”
Lark yanks his hands out his hair, shoving them into his back pockets. He watches Matilda hop around the cables on the floor that Nomi is organizing. He watches her look up from under her lashes as she does and smile. Lark swallows and exhales—then inhales a giant breath of air that doesn’t seem to go anywhere. Just gets stuck in his chest. It expands so big it feels like he’s going to break open. Little fizzles of him will go everywhere.
“Count of three, Lark. One, two,—”
Xavier kicks him squarely in the back and sends him stumbling toward Matilda. And he is so scared, but when her arms drape over his shoulders, Lark looks up and thinks, this isn’t scary at all. She sighs dramatically, theatrical with her exhaustion as she puts their foreheads together. This isn’t scary, if it’s her.
“I have a question for you,” he says softly.
“I’ve got an answer,” she answers cheekily, her smile curling, pretty and all her.
I know you do, he thinks. Isn’t that funny? I know you do.
—
Lark slides the vials of estrogen into his bathroom cabinet. He looks at them, lined up, on the side that is now Matilda’s. There’s nail polish and four different kinds of lotion, and a cream she uses on her face at night. Lark moves them so the labels face outward, because that seems right. Then he feels a yank around his middle and he’s suddenly stumbling backward.
“See? I knew you were into medical shit. You are so weird, Lark.” Matilda’s voice is right against his ear. Her warm breath tickles his freshly bleached hair. He snorts and turns, shoving her flat back onto the bed that had once just been his. Bags of her stuff are in the room, ready to unpack.
And it’s not like permanent because she has her own place (a really, admittedly, nice place), but until they figure out which place is the best, it’s something shared instead. He pulls his shirt off from the back of his neck, stalking toward her on the bed.
“You’re so not beating the allegations, acting like that after unpacking my stuff in the bathroom.” Despite what she says, Matilda’s knees widen to accept his body between them. Her hands dance up across his toned abdomen. Her eyes are dark. Pretty. The new hair is a bright yellow and orange ombre. He likes it. He just likes her.
“You know what? I’m okay with that,” Lark reasons, snarky and mean as he crawls over her on the bed and presses swift kisses to her cheek. Over and over and then on the bridge of her nose, making her giggle until it’s high pitched and she’s shoving at him. Half hearted, because she likes it. Likes him.
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“Your Japanese has gotten worse.”
Lark puts his phone down on the little table in front of him. His temple bangs into the window of the tour bus, one hand knotted up into his blond hair as he stares out of it. Gray clouds are sliding by, roiling up together in ominous patterns. He thinks, ah fuck, it’s gonna rain, because that’s easier than thinking, you mean my Japanese is worse than hers. Not like he has reason to practice. They only call when they need—and he doesn’t have Ojiisan anymore and—he closes his eyes to the sky, temple stinging with how hard he shoves his head against it. They don’t need bad weather on tour—makes setting up so much more difficult.
He can hear his father, the tinny sound of him coming from the table. He stands from the couch.
The argument starts up again as soon as he picks it back up, pacing into the long aisle of the tour bus. The clouds continue to get fat outside, but the rain doesn’t break as he seethes quietly into his phone—Lark and his father don’t share their anger in the same way. His father is yelling, is condescending, is rudely butting through every sentence Lark tries to get out. And the son whispers harshly, peppers I know, I know, I know into the conversation, because even now, he knows, he knows. He should be doing this better, he should be giving ground, he shouldn’t talk back to his father and he should do as he’s told.
When he feels a hand at the middle fo his back, Lark jumps and nearly drops the phone. He hadn’t even heard the door open. He pulls the phone from his ear—the angry sound of his father following all the way from his ear to his hip as he nearly lets it slip from his fingers again. Matilda stands there and like always, he sort of has to tilt his face up to look at her.
For a second, he forgets that he’d been cowering in the tour bus. Lark forgets that he’d even sought out privacy for this phone call (because he knew it was going to be a bad one, had been ignoring having it for a while now), because he doesn’t necessarily consider Matilda an interruption to that privacy. And looking at her usually leaves him tongue tied, empty headed, even now. So instead of saying anything, he just lifts the phone awkwardly and shrugs his shoulders. He lets his gaze skate down her shoulder, her leg to the floor of the tour bus. Its runner is dirty and needs cleaning.
“Daisuke,” his father is spitting his name, but Lark feels brave enough to hit the red end call button. He watches Matilda slowly lift her hand and take the phone from him, slide it into her back pocket wordlessly. And his heart swells with love for her over it—because his father will call back. He will call and call, endlessly, ruthlessly, to continue this argument and it’ll wear him down enough to answer again. It’ll wear him down enough to give in to what he wants.
They look at each other in momentary silence. Which, he loves her for that too; because it was nice to stand there, not hearing anything for a moment after the berating. But it lasts long enough that he swallows and brushes both his hands back through his hair.
“Akari is failing all her classes,” he says.
“All of them?”
“Every single fucking one.”
Her arms wrap slowly around his middle, pulling him closer so they’re hip to hip. His haven’t left his hair because they seem permanently fixed there now. He knows he’s shaking a little—because he can’t help it. Lark’s anger doesn’t usually sit like this. He’d always been proud of how quickly he could get rid of anger, how he could shed it, like a skin he didn’t want any longer. And it’s cold anger usually, just a creep of it across him, anger that’s easy to ignore. But he can’t any longer, can’t pretend he isn’t so fucking hurt.
“I’m not paying for her fall semester.”
“Good,” Matilda’s voice is louder than she probably means it to be, such a righteous furious note in her voice that Lark’s hands do fall then. They brush up her shoulders. One hand even slips under the strap of the pretty neon top she wears. She’s show ready, mostly, her make up done. He’d like her undone too; in sweatpants and a big t shirt and bare faced with her hair up, scrolling her phone and asking if he wants take out. “You shouldn’t have been in the first place.” Her voice is clipped then, perfunctory and authoritative.
It makes him retreat from her, pulling away and turning toward the couch.
“I don’t want to argue about this, Til,” he says and hates that the anger is still sitting there. Up inside him and not draining. Not healing. He can’t revisit this with her, because she is right. He shouldn’t have agreed to pay in the first place, he should have ignored every phone call since the first time they asked. Rent for her apartment, if he could pay her cell phone bill, if he had spare change for her textbooks, if maybe he could just pay her way entirely.
It had been bad the first time Matilda had found out. Bad both because he’d not told her and that he was giving them money at all.
You don’t get it, he’d told her—and he was right about that too, the same way she was right that he shouldn’t. It didn’t make it fair to say, for either of them. But money had always been the one thing between them they couldn’t seem to puzzle piece together. Everything else had been easier. When Matilda had walked into his life, it had been easy. It had been casual at first. Just two people very attracted to one another sleeping together. No strings attached; nothing complicated.
Until the strings got a little messier and it got a little more complicated and he’d dug his hands in and sorted it all out; I love you and I want you and I need you to be mine. Mine.
The untangling hadn’t made that fight any less fucking awful. Maybe it was what made it worse—made it harder.
Because lovers before her were easy to leave, or easy to stop caring about, or easy to not listen to. Lark was well versed in romantic transience; or had been. Only when it came to that fight, Lark hadn’t just immediately raised his hands and let it go. He hadn’t walked out the door and quit. Lark hadn’t wanted to quit, had wanted to keep going, had wanted to yell back, to argue and keep arguing and keep her there, keep her in the room with him. He’d wanted to dump every single thought out on the floor even if it hurt and even if they were both wet eyed and furious.
“We’re not arguing.” Which is so very Matilda to say. He lands on the couch on his back with an arm thrown across his face. He listens to her foot steps and knows she’s close. “You’re frustrating,” is how she continues it, until his hand slides from his face and catches her hand.
“And you’re my favorite thing in the entire world,” he says, without a hint of dramatization. She softens, her fingers slowly lacing through his. “And I love fighting with you,” he continues, smiling a little, even though his heart feels small and bruised. It’s true, too. They fight nasty sometimes; little arguments that get snippy and cold and icy and she’s right, frustrating. They’re human and complex and strange and different—so, so fucking different, from such different worlds. But he does love fighting with her.
Lark loves anything to do with her.
“I just can’t do it right now, you know?” He watches her slowly come down to his level, kneeling next to the tour bus couch. Her dark roots are starting to peek through her dyed red hair and Matilda has never been one to get her make up perfect, has always sort of preferred herself a little messy. She isn’t even one to care that much about clothes. She slowly leans over with her head to his chest, tucking her upper half on top of him.
“Do you want to argue later then? I have really good arguments—like memorized lines and everything you should let me get out.” She asks and he fucking laughs, hard, because it’s so—it’s just so her. It’s always her. It’ll always be her. Lark brushes a hand back through her hair, clearing away stray strands that keep falling into her face. She doesn’t look happy, but she looks—well, she isn’t continuing the fight and he can’t think of those eyes are sad, because that sadness is for him. Lark can’t bring himself to think he has something worth being sad over.
“No—it’s—we don’t have to argue about it aymore.” The vibrating sound of his cell phone ringing is loud in her back pocket. Her eyes are gentle, probing into his. Promise me this time, she’s saying to him. Promise to stop letting someone hurt you, when I can’t make them stop hurting you. He cups her cheek and nods. “No more money.” It’s not about the money, he can practically feel her wanting to bring that up again, it’s not about the money.
It’s about how they treat him. He’s not—he’ll never be able to talk about that, he thinks. Never.
Her chest slides against his as she hovers over top of him. His hand brushes behind her head, palm cradling her as they kiss. Her lips against his, the little slip of her tongue and her arms winding around his neck and tangling him up—all of that is all he needs for now.
Until, inevitably, she has to give him his cell phone back.
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The first time Lark notices her, it’s just a flash of red hair.
Something about that sticks out in his mind. Not a lot of redheads on base but Baby; just a rare breed, he supposes. At least, not the dark haired kind, like him and whoever this new stranger is.
Shadows have been onboarding a lot of contractors lately. Something about that wiggles at the reptilian part of his brain, the fear cortex that says, something is wrong here. But he ignores it. Always had, always will. Lark did not get where he was paying any mind to the smarter side of himself.
The house is on fire again, inside his head, warming winter cold skin. It’s curling up higher and higher, dancing little sparks up into the sky. His hand, stuck in the gate, unable to get free as the sirens pull closer and closer.
Never. Lark never saves himself.
The next few times he sees her and she’s still a slip of woman with the shock of dark red. Sometimes it’s artfully tied up. Little strands that fall to the sides of her face, or the pale nape of her neck. Other times, it’s down and it swings as she walks. Purposeful strides of importance, confidence, clarity. He doubts that somehow. No civilian actually knows what they’re doing here on base; lost up in a black sea, they’re dressed the part because Graves is single minded about that.
Uniform. Lark smooths his own black turtleneck down. Looks at himself and the way the material clings too much around his thin frame. Shrugs on a black jacket that engulfs him. Makes him bulkier. A little bit of a bug show, that. Insect wings flicked out to appear larger than life. Threat! It yells. I am big and threatening. Lark zips it, caustically frustrated by his own inner monologue and the fact that he’s missed an opportunity to approach her again.
She doesn’t look at Shadows. Not really. She seems to dance her vision around them, find a spot where they don’t linger.
Lark wants to ask her to look at him. Notice me, he thinks. Like I’m noticing you.
When he and Benson have to carry crates across base, she’s there and he’s feeling that sensation of heat spread up his chest.
“Switch crates with me.”
“What?”
“Dude, put yours down. Take this one. I get that one.”
“Why?” Benny is looking at him like he’s half way to insane and that’s really funny, considering, they’re all insane. They’re mercenaries. But Benson had picked up that crate because it was bigger, a little more cumbersome and he’s got long arms, even if they are rail thin. He carries it easier. Not nearly as tall as the Corporal, but more inches on him than Lark.
“Man, like you wanna fucking carry it anyway—Just give me it.”
The switch and Lark almost regrets it because it pulls him forward a little. He’s strong—not self conscious about that part of himself at all. He’s built more for sprinting, long distance running. He’s built for wiggling into vents, dropping into electrical rooms, cutting wires. Mbabazi had used him, more than once, to bring an entire building into Shadow darkness, out of commission. All because Lark could worm his way in through a grate in the side of the office building.
Still. It’s a very fucking awkwardly loaded crate.
Makes Lark’s biceps strain hard against his short sleeve, Shadow black shirt. He puffs out a little breath, glad the baseball cap is keeping his hair out his face, tucked backward as it is. One strand seems to poke through but, whatever. Can’t all be perfect.
She passes them then and for a very brief moment, Lark’s looking at her and she’s looking at him. It makes him a little dizzy that she tilts her head down slightly to observe him—and on her face, those pretty lips turn into—well. It looks like a smile. But she passes too quick for him to actually memorize it. And the second she’s out of the hallway, he drops the crate.
“Jesus. What is in this shit?”
Benny is looking at him. He’s chewing gum in that annoying Benny way, where he’s open mouthed and twisting it around his tongue. He’s smiling too, big, twitchy guy smile. His big, pale blue eyes make Lark feel far too seen.
“You tryin’ to be like Baby or something?”
Lark’s heart lurches a little.
“Girls like that, don’t look at guys like us, Lark.” Then he picks up the crate (that Lark is now, woefully looking at and wishing he’d kept) and begins the long trek across the base.
They call me Lark, is what he’d planned on working courage to say. Like the bird, you get it? But he picks up the crate, has to use his knee to knock it up further. The baseball hat nearly slips off and he ignores it, because, fuck it. Doesn’t matter anyway. Shit to do, places to be, things in motion on base. No time to worry about any of it.
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Photo
n a v i g a t i o n
main blog: @day0walker
pinterest: princekid
Characters
→ Nick [primary tag] [pinterest]
Nick x Adler
Nick x Peril
→ Mouse [primary tag] [pinterest]
Mouse x König
Mouse x Dancer
Mouse x Ewan
→ Xavier [primary tag] [pinterest]
Xavier x Peril
Xavier x Benji
Xavier x Sunshine
→ Lark [primary tag] [pinterest]
Lark x Matilda
→ Nomi [primary tag] [pinterest]
Nomi x Dancer
Nomi x Peril
Friend’s Characters
Benji
Adler
Peril
Sunshine
Dancer
Ewan
Tino
Universes
Fantasy
The Band
Monsters
Evil Bastards
Professors
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Got so invested in the latest Lark x Matilda, just couldn't stop reading, that I missed my stop and came a little late to my appointment with my boss, huppie!
AHHHHH???? I HOPE YOU DIDNT GET IN TROUBLE AT WORK LOL
God I love Matilda/Lark....I know The Boys are so popular for good reason but wait till frontier and I start going in on these other ships LMAO y'all are gonna be so well fed with angst sdakfadskjg
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did you mean to tag the piece about why lark cancelled mid tour as lark x benji? or was it supposed to be lark x matilda? just curious !
lark x benji is correct!!!! i just use the 'x' tag as a capture for anytime a piece of writing specifically focuses on two characters.
so like lark/benji are not romantic, but that piece focuses specifically on lark and benji's friendship together.
coming up with an intricate tagging system would make me really lazy and forget to use it.
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