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Shit always went south on the easiest missions. “Just a stakeout” became a high-speed car chase all the way through downtown LA. “A simple intel gathering” led to their covers being blown and having to escape a hail of gunfire.
A quick investigation into the disappearance of an alcoholic botanist ended with a two-feet-long spike puncturing Nick’s lung, leaving him to bleed out on an abandoned parking lot behind Lowe’s Garden Center at five AM.
The gigantic cactus creature that had abruptly jumped them while they were probing about retracted its spines, jerking the projectile out of Nick’s chest. Blood cascaded down his shirt, staining his favorite jacket. He staggered back, hands clutching his torso.
On the other side of the twelve-foot tall lumbering succulent, obscured from Nick’s view, was Lark. He hadn’t yet noticed he was on his own now, snarling at his opponent with fury as he dodged another one of the creature’s spike attacks.
It hadn’t been supposed to only be the two of them—no matter how seemingly easy the job, it was standard protocol that every mission was executed by at least three people. But Sparrow had a one-month-old daughter that kept him up in the night, Terry was down with the flu, and Grant had been whisked off to Portland by some friends to distract him from the breakup he was going through.
So tonight, it was just Nick and Lark.
As a rule, Nick tried to avoid being paired up with Lark for D.A.D.D.I.E.S. missions. It was hard to focus on his surroundings when all he could see was the way Lark’s messy hair rested in front of his eyes, the way his canine bit into his lip whenever he got antsy. When Lark showed one of his rare smiles, the rest of the world might as well not exist.
Suffice to say, Nick knew he got it bad.
He allowed himself to indulge in his useless crush with stolen glances and shameful fantasies while they were working at the headquarters or during their bimonthly movie nights. Not when lives were on the line. Not when it mattered.
So of course, when one of the creature’s massive, spiked limbs had punched Lark square in the face, bringing the young man to his knees, Nick had noticed, and his throat had sealed up with worry. His attention had been momentarily divided, and—well.
A wave of nausea crashed through him. The world swayed, and Nick realized he was well and truly fucked. He propped himself up against the cold metal pole of a tall, flickering lamp post. Agony buckled his knees, and he slumped to the concrete. Faintly, through the spots of black that were dancing all around his field of vision, he saw the Doodler monster go down.
Lark snarled as he removed his knife from the heart of the succulent creature, a gooey, viscous liquid dripping off the blade. He looked like shit—coat wrinkled and torn in places, nose covered in blood and twisted at a weird angle. His eyes, dark and warm like whiskey, had a crazed look to them, like his mind hadn’t yet caught up to the fact that the fight was over and adrenaline was still rushing through his veins.
The second he turned his head and noticed Nick, that look vanished.
For a moment, their gazes lingered on each other, Nick staring at Lark like he was a breathtaking sculpture in a museum he’d never get to visit again, Lark staring at Nick with growing realization and horror. Lark’s knife slipped from his grasp and clattered to the ground.
Nick blinked sluggishly. When he opened his eyes again, Lark was already at his side. His thumb pressed against Nick’s jugular vein while his other hand applied pressure to the gaping hole on the right side of his torso. Lark had his phone pressed between his cheek and his shoulder. From his brisk, detached tone, Nick gathered he was talking to emergency services.
“Understood,” Lark said more calmly than he must have felt, seeing how his breaths came in short shudders. “Thank you.” He hung up, and Nick realized that he must have blacked out for a moment to have only caught the tail-end of that call.
“How bad?” he asked, testing his voice. His tongue was like sandpaper and his lungs flared in protest, but it was manageable. For now.
“Ambulance is here in seven minutes,” Lark said matter-of-factly, which was not an answer to his question.
Nick tried to sit up a little straighter and parted his lips to talk, but Lark gently pushed him back and hushed him with a low “take it easy”. His expression was fiercely neutral, like he was looking at an unamusing video on his phone instead of an injury that had damaged one of Nick’s vital organs.
“Hurts like a motherfucker,” Nick grunted, because the grave silence Lark enforced as he kept check of Nick’s fading pulse was almost worse than the pain. Almost.
“Just hold on,” Lark muttered, eyes darting around like there was something to hold out for.
The flames that perpetually burned the edges of Nick’s hair were growing dim. They’d never done that before, not unless Nick willed them so.
“Mr. Lark, I don’t feel so good,” he said, trying to make his tone sound light. Lark’s eye twitched with what Nick interpreted as exasperation, and he cut in before Lark could snap at him. “Wait, no, shit, I can do better than that. Fuck, how did—how did that one Bladerunner quote go? Rain and memories… something.”
“Stop talking.”
He forced himself to grin through the pain. “But I need my last words to be good, Lark.”
Lark glared at him. “You are not going to die. Understood?”
Nick highly doubted that. He nodded nevertheless, fixated on the way Lark’s hands were shaking. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Lark lose his composure like this.
Another minute passed, which Nick spent drinking in every minuscule detail of Lark’s face. Their faces had never been this close for this long, and Nick even had a valid excuse to stare at him. The knowledge that this man, who usually showed so little emotion outside of bottled-up anger, would worry for him like this gave Nick a little bit of peace. Lark, on the other hand, was getting more and more visibly restless with every second that ticked away. He grabbed Nick’s hand and pushed his palm onto the wound. Nick winced and hissed sharply through his teeth.
“Keep the pressure on. I’ve got a med kit on my bike, let me just—I’ll be right back.”
He looked away, to where his motorcycle was parked, on the other side of the lot. Nick’s heart skipped a beat. For the first time since he got stabbed, despair spread through his body like liquid ice.
He summoned all the strength he had left to keep holding onto Lark’s hand, yanking him back when he threatened to rise to his feet.
He couldn’t—he couldn’t be alone for this.
“Stay,” he begged, voice not feeling like it was his own.
Lark stayed.
Maybe it was the fact that Lark had listened to him, even though his obstinacy was legendary. Maybe it was that look in his eyes, like he was deaf and blind to everything outside of Nick.
Maybe it was just that Nick had lost a lot of blood and he wasn’t thinking clearly.
Whatever the reason, something in Nick’s mind decided, fuck it.
Ignoring the torment that was the straining of muscles, Nick grabbed the edge of Lark’s collar. He leaned forward and pressed their mouths together.
Lark froze at the contact at first, and for a long, terrifying second, Nick was convinced he was going to pull back. Then Nick felt the tension ebb out of him, and he carefully cradled the back of Nick’s head with a tenderness that was so unlike him.
It wasn’t even a good kiss. It couldn’t be, because Nick’s mouth was full of blood and Lark’s nose was maybe-broken and at least one of them was crying.
But Lark’s lips were soft and warm, and Nick’s heartbeat stopped pounding in his ears. The searing inferno that had erupted in his chest calmed down and the heat in his insides took on a pleasantly melty temperature; his body felt light. Distant and numb too, like the only real parts of him were the parts that were touching Lark.
He had dreamed of this, more often than he’d like to admit.
Nick broke the kiss sooner than he wanted to, rasping for breath that was in such short supply. Lark inhaled sharply, chasing after Nick’s mouth like an invisible thread pulled taut between them.
Nick collapsed back against the lamp post, drained. Lark followed, leaning over him. His eyes were clenched shut as though he couldn’t stand to look down at him.
Nick reached out and brushed his hand through Lark's hair, streaking it with red.
“I love you,” he whispered, each word its own struggle that was worth fighting for. “I know—I know you think people shouldn’t. But I do.”
Lark’s pretty eyelashes fluttered open.
There wasn’t a passionate, heartfelt ‘I’ve always loved you too’. There was barely a reaction on his face at all. His eyes had widened a fraction, and Nick could see his own dazed expression reflected in the bronze of his irises. The unveiled fear that had already been there intensified, as though Nick’s confession scared him more than his condition.
Not the greatest response to a dying love confession. But that was alright. Nick felt like he’d already reached the ceiling of how much this day could suck.
At least Lark had returned the kiss. That was nice of him.
“Nick…”
“All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain,” he said weakly, wanting to snap his fingers but finding that his hand wasn’t responsive to the signals from his brain. “That’s the one. ‘S a good…” His eyelids were so goddamn heavy. “Good movie.”
There was a distant wail of sirens that grew ever louder, but all Nick focused on was the soft sob that tore itself from his friend’s chest, as harrowing as the sound of a breaking bone.
The world went dark.
Nick awoke to hot air blowing on his face, a cushion under his cheek. The temperature was sweltering, but comfortable in its familiarity. He rubbed his closed eyes with his knuckles, phosphenes dancing against the black of his eyelids.
When he opened them, he saw baby-blue walls decorated with posters of bands Nick hadn’t listened to in years. A bookcase stood to his right, the shelves overflowing with Minion plushies, Call of Duty console games in blue plastic boxes, and crinkled pages of hastily-scribbled sheet music. The room smelled of sulfur and sugar mixed with AXE body spray.
It was Nick’s old bedroom at Jodie’s place. He hadn’t been here for a few months, not since he had figured out his apartment situation. To wake up here again was strangely disorienting, childhood memories running rampant.
Nick sat up with a groan. Every bone in his body ached. He was dressed in a black The Killers t-shirt and his well-worn gray sweatpants. The sheets of his bed were cool against the bare skin of his arms, and his head was killing him.
What… what had happened? He wasn’t supposed to be here, that much he knew, but the more he tried to think, the worse the headache got.
A little imp with a green Santa hat was floating in the middle of his room. When it noticed that Nick was moving, it let out a startled yelp. Before Nick could ask what was going on, it dropped its clipboard and teleported out of the room in a plumb of ash and smoke.
Nick couldn’t decide if that was weird, creepy, or worrisome. He was in hell, so probably either all three of those, or none. He buried his face in his knees, blanket tangled up around his waist, struggling for breath and memory.
Just when he threw his legs over the edge of the bed and let his bare toes run over the fluffy carpet, a pillar of flame erupted in the middle of the room. The flames extinguished as abruptly as they had appeared, revealing a man.
To most people, Jodie Foster looked like a terrifying, twelve-foot-tall demon king with horns as wide set as his shoulders. Not to Nick; he could vaguely see the outline of the fearsome form his father commanded, but Jodie chose to appear to him the same way he had for all of Nick’s childhood. Black hair with a few gray strands peppered throughout, a sharp nose, and sharper eyes. His brow was heavy with worry lines—more so than the last time Nick had seen him.
“Whoa there, hotshot. Up already?” he said.
“Hey dad,” Nick croaked.
“Sure you don’t want to lie down?” he asked with his worried dad-voice Nick hadn’t heard in years.
“I feel fine,” he shrugged, but he didn’t get to his feet yet, just to be sure. Jodie sat down next to him on the mattress.
“Glenn is picking up Morgan, they’re on their way now,” he said. He carded a calloused hand through his hair. It was sweet and affectionate, but Nick was twenty-one and he really didn’t need such reaffirmations anymore. Still, he was content to let it happen.
“Why? What happened?”
“You died, Nicky.”
...huh.
“Well. Shit,” was all he could think of to say.
“Language.”
“Dad. ”
“Sorry, you’re right, you’re an adult, and this is an appropriate situation,” he said, clearly not believing his own words.
“So… what? I got resurrected?”
The haze was slowly lifting, and he remembered a burning sensation. The memory was just a faded echo, blurred around the edges and unable to hurt him.
“No,” Jodie shook his head. “Not exactly. Every devil’s soul is tied to the Infernal Plane. When a devil dies on any other world, its soul gets shot straight back here, and its body regrows. We were worried—with you being only half-demon…” His hand stopped moving for a second, speech faltering. “But you came back. Right here. We—Glenn, Morgan, and I—kept a close eye on you the whole time. Or some of my underlings when we couldn’t.”
That explained the imp with the clipboard.
Nick blew a long raspberry. Death, and subsequent resurrection because of his heritage. That was a new one for the whole ‘how much of my humanity is left’-dilemma he’d been struggling with over the past few years. On the bright side, he and Glenn had another thing to bond over.
“How long was I out?”
“A little more than three months.”
“Shit, it’s May?”
That meant he had missed the twins’ birthdays. He’d already bought Lark’s gift ages ago, a damascus survival knife with a–
Lark.
Oh no.
Oh no, no, no.
Jodie was talking, something about how the regenerative process worked, but Nick couldn’t hear him anymore, his thoughts screaming at him.
He had kissed Lark. And as though that wasn’t bad enough, he’d said he loved him.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.
“Dad,” he said gravely, tugging on Jodie’s shirt. “The others. On Earth. They don’t know I’m alive, right?”
He still had a chance to save his pride. He would just stay in hell for the rest of his life, never to return to the Material Plane. It could work! His dads could set him up with a job—he should probably approach Glenn about that first, because Jodie would definitely assign him to a desk and a stack of dense paperwork.
Jodie looked at him strangely. “Of course they do. As soon as you got back, I let them know.”
“Nooooo,” Nick agonized, burying his face in his hands.
Welp. Shit.
Nick had one week in hell to think about his course of action before he’d have to go back to Earth to face his coworkers and friends.
Before he’d have to face Lark.
Three days out from his return, after a lot of contemplating faking his own death, he finally settled on a plan.
Retrograde amnesia.
It wasn’t perfect. It certainly wasn’t subtle. One could call it an outright lie, and they’d be right. But! There was a believable aspect to it. People lost part of their memory before a grievous injury occurred all the time. It was a medical phenomenon, the existence of which would save the remnants of Nick’s pride.
He’d just have to lie to Lark’s face and pretend he had completely forgotten the last five minutes before his death. Then the ball was in Lark’s court. Not his dilemma to deal with anymore. Problem solved. Sorta.
Save to say, he was sweating bullets by the time he opened the front door to the D.A.D.D.I.E.S. building.
Locked.
Nick rattled the door handle three more times, as if that would suddenly stop the door from being locked. It wasn’t a big deal—he had a key himself, of course—but it was strange that it wasn’t open to begin with. He peeked through the glass panels and saw that the lights were turned off in the reception area.
He sighed and fished his phone out of his pocket. He picked the first person in his text history, who happened to be Terry.
>From Nick:
Yo dude im at HQ. where are yall at??
It took Terry a minute to respond, during which Nick unlocked the door and entered the building their fathers had left them. It looked about the same as before Nick had died. Good. He was sure countless other things had changed while he was in his restorative slumber. Nice to know some things also stayed the same.
>From Terry:
Oh shit
>From Terry:
That was today??
A second after Nick received that text, Terry’s name popped up on Nick’s caller screen. Nick picked up.
“I’m so sorry Nicky,” Terry immediately said, “we wrote down in our calendar that you’d be back tomorrow. I’m not sure how this mix-up happened, man.”
“It’s all good,” Nick said, a tiny pang of disappointment clashing with the relief that came with the prospect of procrastination. “I’ll just head to my flat, we’ll do this little reunion thingie tomorrow.”
“No!” Terry said indignantly. “This is a big deal, Nicky, we missed you so fucking much. Least we could do is show up.” Before Nick could tell him that it was alright, really, Terry continued: “I’m grabbing some beers and I’ll jump on the next bus. See you at the HQ in twenty?”
“Sure!” Nick looked forward to slamming back some beers with his friend, like old times. “What, ah—what about the others?”
“I’ll text them. I don’t know what their plans are for today, I guess we’ll find out.”
Nick nodded robotically, even though Terry couldn’t see him. “Guess we will.”
“You can wait in the break room till I get there. We’ve got a new coffee machine—it’s amazing, it’s even got tomato broth.”
They said their goodbyes, and Nick headed to the elevator. Humming to himself, he swung the door to the breakroom open, switching the lights on in the same movement.
“SURPRISE!”
Confetti cannons popped off with a loud bang, and someone shot silly string at him. Nick wasn’t proud of the scream that left his throat. His hands reflexively caught fire, which he nearly hurled at the three grinning people who had just jumped up from behind the table.
“Fucking—shitballs!” he swore, heart racing so fast he thought it was gonna give out on him and he’d wake up in his childhood bedroom again.
“Yup, should have seen that coming,” Grant muttered, putting his hands on his side and nodding to himself.
Sparrow flapped his hands. “Sprinklers sprinklers sprinklers!!” he said, panicked.
Whoops. Nick quickly closed his fists, dousing the flames. “You!” he yelled, pointing at Terry with a still-smoking finger. “You sneaky, sneaky theater major!”
Terry smiled and pulled him into a hug. “Like we’d ever forget.”
Lark, notably, wasn’t there. Before his stomach could twist because of that, Sparrow and Grant joined in on the hug, the latter almost cutting off half his air supply.
When he was finally released, he could take a look around. The break room was filled with confetti and colorful balloons. Some of the balloons had text printed on them, none of which made a lot of sense in this situation. “Happy Easter”, he spotted, as well as “It’s A Boy!” and “Happy Birthday!”
“YOLMT?” Nick asked, amused, waving at a hand-painted banner above the whiteboard.
“You Only Live Multiple Times,” Terry grinned.
Nick laughed, feeling some of the tension that had knotted in his limbs melt away. “God, I missed you guys.”
“Aww, we missed you too, Nicky,” Terry said, jabbing his side.
“Though it was refreshing to have a break from the Mozart dubstep remixes for a while.”
“And we didn’t have to use the fire extinguisher for a record amount of time!” Grant added with a good-natured smile.
“I could have gone a little longer without hearing some of the most mind-numbing puns in the world every twenty minutes,” Terry said, rounding up their three-way punch.
“Now you guys are just trying to hurt my feelings,” Nick said with a fake pout. It disappeared the second Grant handed him a flute of champagne.
Soon the room was all shoulder pats and laughs. They filled him in on what he’d missed. It was a lot of the same—incursion fights, a few people on the sauce, new mind-blowing rooms that had opened up in Ryton’s Dungeon. Grant had a new boyfriend, a guy called Marco, whose name he softly sighed like he was a teenage girl scrawling hearts around a boyband member in a magazine. Sparrow proudly showed him pictures of little Hero, who had grown a lot in the months he’d been gone. Adorable kid—Nick couldn’t wait to see her again. Terry had very few updates to give, but he seemed perfectly content with that.
Once the bottom of the champagne bottle was reached, they cracked open a couple of cans of beer, and the conversation turned a little less coherent. The only ones not old enough to drink were the twins, but Sparrow had already decided to be a teetotaler and Lark had never let anything as mundane as “laws” stop him from doing what he wanted.
Ah, shit. Lark.
Right. Better to just get this over with.
While Grant and Terry were deep in a conversation about the Kirby movie that’d just been released, Nick shuffled over to Sparrow, who was leaning against the countertop. He’d stepped away from the party to call his wife and let her know when he’d be home. The second he was done, Nick slid up next to him, steeling his nerves.
“So, eh—I take it your brother couldn’t make it?” he said, fiddling with the faucet. He feared that if he used Lark’s name, he would somehow give himself away.
Sparrow glanced at his phone again before he answered. “No, he’s—he’s here. He helped set up the party. When you called, he left. I thought he’d be back by now.”
“Wait—he was here? As in, in the building?” And he left when I called. Not a great sign.
Sparrow hummed affirmatively, the end of the note rising in pitch as though asking a question. His nerves were showing, Nick ventured. “I texted him, but I think he turned his phone off. Can’t have left, though. I drove the four of us.”
“Guess I gotta go look for him. Can’t have him miss my grandiose return, eh?”
He pushed himself off the countertop, but Sparrow raised his hand, making him pause.
“Just so you know, Lark might be a bit—curt—with you. Don’t think that means he is mad at you, he’s not, he’s just as happy you’re back as all of us. It’s just that—” He bit his lip, the same way Lark always did. “He was really distressed,” he decided after a short pause. “Those first days, before Jodie contacted us… It was rough, Nicky.”
“Huh,” Nick said intelligently.
It was rough.
Nick had died in Lark’s arms. Of course he had been distressed. Nick felt a sharp pang of misery at even imagining a scenario in which their roles were reversed.
But for some reason, he hadn’t even considered that Lark had been affected. The other guys had seemed to cope well enough. They’d made jokes about not getting a refund for Nick’s planned funeral and expressed an alarming amount of interest in ‘testing how this whole respawning-thing works’.
Maybe that was because they knew levity was what Nick needed. But if he wanted to salvage his friendship with Lark, he couldn’t just pretend his way through a painful conversation.
Oh, he was going to be such an asshole if he didn’t own up to what he had said, wasn’t he? Goddamnit. Why couldn’t he be more of a coward.
C’mon, Nicky. Be a man, face your fears. Don’t pretend you have amnesia and conveniently forgot you confessed your love to one of your best friends. All that shit.
Fuck. This was going to be so awkward.
Nick found Lark in the training room. He had his coal-black boxing gloves on and was pummeling a poor training dummy to death. Nick lingered in the open door frame, unnoticed, and stared until he recognized a pattern in his rapid punches; a head-body-head drill, switching between short- and long-range. Bam-bam-bam. Bam-bam-bam. Excellent form, light on his feet.
It wasn’t just Lark’s athletic performance Nick took a second to admire. Lark was wearing a white sleeveless shirt, sweat forming a dark pool on his back. His cheeks were flushed dark and his hair hung in front of his eyes again. The sheen of perspiration on his tanned skin turned it a brilliant shade of bronze, made all the more vibrant for the pale scars that marred it. Nick spotted a few new ones—little pinkish marks he didn’t know the story behind. His nose looked fine; guess it hadn’t been broken after all.
Bam-bam-bam. Bam-bam-bam.
Seemed like Nick’s newly-formed body hadn’t changed much in the way chemicals inside his brain reacted to the sight of Lark. His hands felt clammy, goosebumps breaking out on his arms. His breath went shallow.
Lark circled around his target, feet never staying in the same place for long. Nick could already spot the white of his eyes.
Bam-bam—
Their eyes met.
“Whoof, what did that poor guy ever do to you?” Nick said, crossing his arm and leaning against the wall. He conjured a fake smirk with surprising ease.
BAM.
Nick flinched, feeling as though that last rear hook to the dummy’s expressionless temple was somehow meant for him.
He wanted to run away. He wanted to rush to Lark and pin him against a wall and kiss him till his lips were sore and swollen. That last urge was stronger than it had ever been before, like he’d gotten addicted after only one hit.
Lark took a step away from the dummy, pressing his sweaty hair back from his face with the crook of his arm. He dipped his head in greeting.
“Nicholas.”
“Larcus,” he said, imitating Lark’s gruff, serious voice. Oh, Jesus, he shouldn’t have downed that last can of beer before he went here.
Lark’s brows knitted closer together. He turned away, using his teeth to take off his boxing gloves. Nick left his safe spot against the wall and tentatively stepped on the foam of the cobalt-blue sparring mat.
“Couldn’t help but notice my ‘welcome home’ party missed your broody cheer.”
Lark dropped the gloves on the floor, avoiding Nick’s gaze. “I guess I lost track of time,” he said flatly. He was usually a better liar than that.
“Want a beer?”
“…I’ve already had a couple.”
Good. That meant neither of them were fully sober.
“From Happy Hour straight to the gym? How are you not throwing up right now?”
“Why are we talking about me? Aren’t you the one who—” Lark stopped himself, snapping his jaw shut. He briskly moved over to the towel rack, where he grabbed a white towel to dap his face with, and released a long sigh. “Welcome back, Nick,” he said, a practiced thing that made Nick even less certain about where they stood.
He wanted to ask for a hug, or even just a smile. Any sign that their friendship, which he’d been so careful not to ruin, hadn’t totally crumbled.
Instead he just hovered in the middle of the training room. “Glad to be back,” he said through a smile he hoped didn’t read as too pained.
“So.”
“So,” Nick echoed, smacking his lips.
If you don’t bring it up, I won’t either, he thought stubbornly. Immature? Sure! Sue him.
Lark pressed his lips tightly together and sat down on the weight training bench, taking a swig of his water bottle. Nick rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, and rubbed sweat off his palms on his pants. They stayed in silence, waiting for the other to break first.
Nick broke first. Of course he did; he hated silence, couldn’t stand the way his inner monologue only seemed to have two settings; ‘fuck me running, why is Lark so hot’ and ‘create a hell portal and get out while I still can’.
He poked the expressionless dummy’s left cheek and idly said: “Y’know, I was just telling Grant, I’m way too OP now. Powerhouse of the group, plus I can’t permanently die now? You guys should just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show while I take care of the Doodler myself.” Nick didn’t hear a reaction from Lark. He forced himself not to look over, instead giving the dummy a half-hearted punch in the shoulder. “‘Nother pro is that you don’t have to suppress your murderous urges anymore when I make fun of your music taste. Full free reign!”
Nick glanced over. Lark didn’t laugh. He looked like he’d never laughed in his life, which was so untrue it hurt. His right hand was gripping the towel so tight his knuckles were getting pale.
If Nick were a sadist, it’d be fun watching Lark so obviously struggle with the fact that he wanted to talk about his feelings but not being able to admit it out loud. But Nick had a bleeding heart, and his sympathy rose to higher levels than his mortification.
Nick swallowed, then took a deep breath.
Here goes.
“I’m—” he said, faltered, then tried again. “I’m sorry, by the way. ‘Bout the whole—” He made a vague gesture that didn’t actually convey anything. “Shouldn’t have just dragged you in like that. It was a little overtheatrical.” It was gratifying how light and steady his voice was. Like it was no big deal. Just a little unfortunate mishap, that had no consequences on their relationship whatsoever.
Lark still didn’t speak.
Nick felt like he was going crazy.
Words flooded out of his mouth, faster and faster till even he wasn’t totally sure what he was saying anymore. “It’s just that I didn’t expect to be here, you know? I really thought I was about to kick the bucket, and, I dunno, I wasn’t fully in the right mind. Oh, fuck, I didn’t even ask for consent—I know your family is big on that, I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. I was just kinda doing what they did in movies, I watch too many of those, sometimes it gets a bit blurred with me, between what’s a normal thing to do in everyday life and what isn’t—not in a creepy way! I know what’s acceptable, of course, I got raised well. I mean, yeah, both my dads are demons now, but we’ve talked about how that doesn’t mean they’re inherently unethical or immoral, and neither am I, which you already know, of course, but—”
“Nick, for the love of God, stop talking.”
Nick shut up.
Lark sounded tired. Was he really that calm? Nick had read him as white-knuckling himself through a fit of fury while Nick was continuously digging a deeper grave for himself by overexplaining, but there was no trace of anger in his voice.
“Sit,” he said, patting the space next to him.
Nick sat down next to Lark. The training bench was not made to fit two people, and they were uncomfortably up in each other’s space, knees touching. Lark did not seem to mind. He had his hands clasped in his lap. His other leg bounced up and down, a nervous habit Nick had observed in Sparrow before, but never in his brother.
“It was true, wasn’t it?”
Nick’s mouth was dry. He didn’t need to ask what Lark was alluding to. “Yeah.”
Lark groaned and shut his eyes, cursing under his breath. Nick kinda-sorta wished his soul hadn’t regenerated.
“Is it… still?”
Nick meant to chuckle, but it came out as a near-hysterical laugh. “It’s only been a week for me, Lark. Not four months.”
“Right.”
“Yup.”
Silence.
“I thought about having this conversation a million times, you know,” Lark admitted. “Every time, it led somewhere different.”
“How many times did it end with you punching me?”
Lark chuckled darkly, which Nick considered a win. “A few.”
“Probably deserved.”
“Well. You’re you, after all.”
The smile that curved Lark’s lips wasn’t truly a happy one, but it did make the atmosphere between them more companionable. It was like something had been removed from Nick’s airways. It was reassuring to know they could still talk to each other without the world exploding.
Nick waited, for the same reason why Lark had waited on him before. To hear him say it. To hear him own it.
I’m not in love with you.
Come on, Lark. Only six words. They’d shatter Nick’s heart, true, but he was certain the pain of that clean break was easier to compartmentalize than this awful hope that was eating away at him. He knew Lark didn’t owe him anything, but some kind of closure sure would be nice.
Lark didn’t say anything. He just rubbed his thumb over the back of his hand, shoulders so tense he looked like a puma about to leap. Nick glanced to the side, watching Lark’s teeth abuse his lower lip. It probably wasn’t helping the situation that he was staring so unabashedly, but he couldn’t help it.
“What are you thinking about?” Nick prompted.
The answer came belatedly. “The Third Millennium.”
Nick blinked slowly. He hadn’t expected that.
The Third Millennium was a nightclub in Pasadena they’d been to, almost a year ago. Glenn had hooked them up with fake IDs. It had been fun—too many people, but the vibrations of the bass had thrummed under his skin and Nick had been able to lose himself to the music. They’d gotten shitfaced together, and Nick had fallen asleep on Lark’s shoulder in the taxi back home.
“I was just thinking— on the dancefloor. During Let’s Get It Started. I almost kissed you, then.”
Nick nearly choked on his own spit.
“What?!”
“Just thought it’d be fun,” Lark shrugged casually. “I remember you were wearing those low jeans and that purple crop…” He shrugged again, not finishing that sentence. “Kinda glad I didn’t do it. Turns out you’re an awful kisser.”
“Hey now,” Nick protested, genuinely offended. He was still reeling from what Lark had said, but not about to let his prowess be insulted like that. “First of all, I was dying. It wasn’t about doing a great job, it was about being dramatic.”
“Succeeded at that,” Lark scoffed, clenching his hands into fists at the memory.
“Second of all,” Nick quickly pressed on, “I don’t exactly remember you being any better. Pretty sure there were some teeth involved on your part. At least I didn’t—”
In an abrupt motion, Lark cupped Nick’s face and pulled him into a kiss.
Nick gasped. His breathing faltered more than he would have liked to admit, and it stopped altogether for an oxygen-lacking moment when Lark slipped his delightfully soft tongue into Nick’s open mouth. He tasted faintly of salt and honey. Alcohol too, or maybe that was Nick’s own breath sent back at him. Lark’s hands on his jaw kept firm control of the kiss, and stretched it out from one moment, into more. Nick reciprocated without a second thought, letting their mouths work against each other in a warm scrape of lips.
He wasn’t sure who broke off first. Lark kept his hands steady on his jaw, their faces only inches apart. He quietly listened to Lark’s and his own heavy breathing.
“Better?” Lark exhaled against his lips. His husky voice sent a shiver up Nick’s spine.
“Much better.” Nick was distantly surprised he still had enough feeling in his throat to form words. He swallowed thickly, wetting his lips. “So, this mean—” he started.
“No,” Lark cut him off.
Nick didn’t completely understand what he meant with ‘no’, but it seemed safer not to ask. He was dizzy; the world felt ten shades brighter than it had been two minutes ago.
“Then why?” he managed.
Lark briefly closed his eyes. “I guess I wanted to,” he said nonchalantly. Which was both a very unsatisfying answer and the only answer he needed.
Nick grabbed onto the loose fabric of Lark’s shirt. “I love you,” he whispered. It wasn’t a confession; they were well past that. It felt more like a warning. A tentative ‘are you sure of this?’.
Lark’s gaze darkened. “You shouldn’t.”
“But I do.”
Lark huffed through his nose, gripping Nick’s collar tightly. Nick prepared himself for a counterargument, but instead Lark leaned in again. The flicks of his tongue sent sparks flying through his mouth. His right hand slid down from Nick’s hip to his ass and squeezed. Their kiss swallowed Nick’s needy whimper.
Good chance Nick was never gonna hear those three words back. Oh well. That seemed like a problem for Future Nick. Current Nick was too blissed out by the fireworks exploding in his ribcage.
They’d work it out. Probably. Maybe.
Hopefully.