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Lark’s hands were shaking so much it took him four tries before the key to his apartment slid into the lock. With a soft click, the door creaked open. Once it fell shut behind his back, the same heavy silence as always welcomed him home.
Lark, there’s been an incident.
A single light bulb dangled from the ceiling of his empty hallway, with a simple glass shade discolored by heat. The light was still on. After his mother had called him awake this morning, he had left his house in such a rush that he’d forgotten to switch it off. The walls were blank and lifeless. No pictures, no paintings, not even a calendar. Just white drywall, chipped and dented in places where Lark had punched it in his occasional fits of black-out rage.
It’s Henry.
He took off his jacket and dropped it unceremoniously to the floor, not bothering to hang it on one of the curved hooks next to his cracked mirror. He stumbled forward, to the tiny kitchen, his body on autopilot. His hands moved on their own, automatically reaching for the alcohol cabinet, even though his mind hadn’t even yet considered the possibility of a reprieve from the emptiness inside him.
He’s… gone.
The glass he grabbed was one of the fancy whiskey glasses Terry had given him for his birthday. The lower half was set with a fractal diamond pattern, which colorfully reflected and twisted the rosy beams of late-dusk sunlight that made their way through the kitchen window. It was way too expensive a glass for the cheap bourbon that was poured into it. It felt a little like drinking diet coke from the Holy Grail, but Lark was never one for pretentiousness.
He took both bottle and now-half-empty glass with him to the living room. Staring at nothing, Lark sat down on the couch and with something akin to resignation he waited for the onslaught of feelings that was soon to come.
Four days ago, Henry and the other dads had gone on a “business trip” to the east of Tennessee. (Why everyone in his family still covertly called the D.A.D.D.I.E.S. missions “business trips” was beyond Lark. Probably the same logic at play as when his parents continued to speak pig Latin whenever they mentioned alcohol or drugs until the twins were well into their mid-teens.) Whatever they hoped to find there was supposed to be a breakthrough in their campaign to kill the Doodler, the kind they hadn’t stumbled across since the disaster that was the Church.
Henry had made sure no one told Lark about it. Understandable — last time they’d involved Lark in one of their “business trips”, things hadn’t gone so well. But it was also unfathomably, irredeemably stupid. If they’d just informed Lark of their plans, he could have warned them they were chasing a dead end.
His hands clenched into fists, nails digging crescent grooves into his skin, and for a second a sharp spike of anger managed to penetrate the shroud of numbness that enveloped him.
Lark was the only person alive who comprehended the way the Doodler’s logic worked. Their fathers wanted to go to the Oak Ridge Nuclear Facility because they believed that place to hold some kind of answer to the Doodler’s origin, and from there a way to undo its existence. But Tennessee wasn’t the place where it was born. That place was where it was first rejected, where it first failed to be a person. And the sting of that rejection and that failure was still haunting it. There was nothing their fathers would have found there except for festering memories even the Doodler would not brave to remember.
That long-abandoned military facility wasn’t its origin. Its real origin, or at least the only one that mattered, was 1114 West Tudor Street, inside a bright kitchen with yellow flower-patterned curtains and an unironic ‘live, love, laugh’ sign.
At Oakridge, they’d found Doodlerized creatures, some once-human, others more something you’d find in a Lovecraftian novel. The most dangerous of which had been a monster that disintegrated organic matter by touch. “It looked seriously fucked up”, Glenn had said over the phone, and that had been the only description they were given.
Another more detailed description that had been left out for them had been how this monster had managed to get a hold of Henry. It had been up to Lark’s imagination to picture how his father’s skin had flaked away, his body rapidly withering like a plant drained from water.
Apparently, his last words had been: “Tell my family I love them.”
Because of course they were.
And then he’d been gone. Not even a body remaining to take home.
It took twenty hours before the news got through to San Dimas. The other dads had tried to find him at first, denial urging them to believe that without the confirmation of a dead body, he could still be alive. Only when they finally gave up did they call.
That was this morning. His mother had called him awake. Lark didn’t even remember how he’d gotten to the house he’d grown up in. Everything was a blur. Sparrow had been a mess, frantically muttering about true resurrections and powerful druidic magic, before his speech was more sobs than words and he had collapsed on the couch. Mercedes hadn’t been much better. All Lark had known what to do was make tea and then leave it to stand untouched on the coffee table.
Lark’s phone buzzed multiple times in quick repetition, pulling him out of his thoughts. He reached for it, wanting to hear his brother’s voice again, but then he realized it could be someone else. The thought of having to interact with anyone other than Sparrow was too much to bear, and he just let it ring until it stopped.
Lark pulled his hand back and ran it through his hair. He gathered up a handful of the bronze strands and yanked, but the pain wasn’t nearly as cathartic as it normally was.
He felt… empty. Hollowed out. There was no grief, no rage, no confusion or pain. It was as though someone had grabbed a knife and surgically removed all of those feelings that had been eating away at Lark for over a decade out of his chest. As though Henry had taken them with him, wherever he had gone.
Was the irreversible lack of his father’s presence the solution after all? Was Lark finally freed of the weight of guilt now that the person he wronged could no longer insist that no one blamed him for his mistakes?
…no.
No, if he focused, if he pressed his eyes shut until he felt the string of a headache, Lark could feel a storm of ugliness still residing within. It was just locked away. Out of reach.
For the moment.
Lark had never been very good at regulating his emotions. There were just too damn many of them. Most of the time they all bled through each other, creating an eyestrain of a distorted watercolor painting. Lark couldn’t identify them correctly when they were all muddled like that, and often the emotion he picked to surface on his face was the wrong one.
And then there were times when there were only extremes, when the world existed of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and Lark could not imagine himself anywhere outside of the latter category. He often later regretted the things he did when he was in that mindset, though in the moment, every choice felt so temptingly easy to make.
Finally, finally, an emotion broke through the wall that separated chaos from emptiness.
It was panic. Throat-grabbing, blood-freezing panic, that flared up so suddenly Lark keened forward. He covered his hand with his mouth to prevent himself from hyperventilating.
Breathe. Just breathe. Remember those stupid exercises they forced you to learn. In, hold, out.
A tremor was running through his hands. The world shifted between being hazy before returning back to focus.
It was good that this was happening now, in the safety and solitude of his own house. He couldn’t have this breakdown in front of his family. All day, while Sparrow and his mother had cried and talked about what the future would hold, Lark had been stoic, offering comfort with little touches and brief hugs. All day, he’d been a hollow vessel, unaware of his heartbeat or breathing.
Now that heart was searing inside his chest, and yet it was still like it didn’t belong to him.
It just hit him. Henry was gone. He wouldn’t smile at Lark anymore and tell him there was nothing he couldn’t overcome. His breath wouldn’t catch anytime Lark recoiled at his attempts of initiating physical touch anymore. It was over.
Lark’s hatred wasn’t strong enough to block out the grief, and now that grief was something he’d have to carry with him every day. It wasn’t fair. It wasn't fair.
Once the panic dwindled, he tried to focus on something that would start a different train of thought and distract him from the current. No such luck.
The one-bedroom apartment he lived in was supposed to be Lark’s home, and he had attempted to bar his father from making his mark on it, but it had still happened. There were no pictures of Henry, but there were still––memories. Little present reminders of the influence his father had had on his life. The holes in the wall Lark had messily fixed the way Henry had taught him to. The way the collection of books in his small bookcase was sorted by color, just like he had always done it. The shitty plastic IKEA fan his dad had left behind when Lark’s AC broke down. Lark had never paid attention to them before, but now they glared at him.
He poured himself another drink. In the glass of the bourbon bottle, he was faced with his own reflection. Funny, he thought, how striking the resemblance was between Lark and both the man he loved the most and the man he hated the most.
“I don’t forgive you,” Lark whispered, not sure who he was talking to—who he was pretending to be, even.
He needed fresh air. He needed to be somewhere else, anywhere else.
Stumbling to the tiny balcony that looked out at the neighboring building’s brick wall and a dirty alley below, Lark found the rusted fire emergency ladder that was supposed to help him down. Instead, he climbed up, freestyling the last bit to get him onto his apartment building’s roof.
He’d sat here a couple of times with Sparrow to play cards or to smoke without running the risk of having to make eye contact with other people. He glanced up. Despite everything, he still expected to see stars.
Of course it was then that his exhaustion and grief gave way to the familiar burn of anger.
The Doodler. An impossible presence as large and encompassing as Earth’s atmosphere. Lark’s unwanted partner in destruction, and now the indirect murderer of his father. His blood boiled.
With large strides, he walked to the edge of the roof, looking out over this part of the city in front of him. During the day, the street his building stood next to was fairly busy, but at this point it was around dinnertime and there were only a handful of people walking the sidewalk. He saw the snaking lights of the light rail train in the distance, its tracks laying beyond the parking lot with its leafless walnut trees.
And above it all, above gray clouds, with the goal to one day bring a stop to all this daily commute and the comfortable regularity of human life, was the Doodler. Always fucking present, unwilling to be ignored.
Well, Lark wasn’t going to ignore him today.
“HEY!” he yelled at the dark sky. Two pigeons that had been half-asleep near the turbine vent startled and flew away. He slammed his fist on his chest, right above his heart. “You know me. You know me, you know what the fuck you did. Face me!”
For the first time in his life, he desired to be acknowledged by this creature. He had brought him into this world, but so far their confrontations had been one-sided. Neither of them had ever dared tug at this connection between them.
“FUCKING FACE ME!”
His furious cries were answered. The gloomy sky split apart, revealing an eye Lark vividly remembered from his nightmares. It was impossibly large, contrasted against the darkness of the atmosphere like a vast blood moon eclipse. Its black, spiked pupils were dilated, drifting in a pool of liquid fire.
Lark’s heart skipped a beat, surprise and satisfaction churning in his chest. He pulled his shoulders back, refusing to look the part of the small mortal he was, and willed his hands to stop shaking.
People walking the streets below, nothing more than indistinguishable spots in Lark’s lower periphery, craned their necks to look up. For a fraction of a second, Lark wondered what they were seeing, before he realized he didn’t give a shit about any of them. He lifted his chin defiantly and took another step closer to the edge of the roof, as though that’d bring them closer face-to-face.
He was breathing heavily. “Good. Good.”
The eye watched him, unmoving. There was no emotion to be gleaned from it, but Lark knew exactly what it was feeling. After all, they were two sides of the same coin.
His voice quivered before the venom slipped in, harsh and broken. “You fuck-up!” he screamed, the way he had screamed at his father countless times. “This was Henry! You can hate him all you like, but you can’t—HOW COULD YOU DO THIS?!”
He pulled his hair again, and this time the pain did feel good. He was barely aware of what he was saying. He felt more of an observer than a participant in this scene.
“What did Henry ever do to you except try and understand you? If you’d lashed out at any one of them, I’d get it, but he—” His voice cracked, and Lark was all too well-aware of how pathetic he was being when tears slipped down his cheeks. “You love him. Maybe you hate him but you love him too. And now he’s gone.”
He was raving. Fuck, he was drunk. He estimated he’d only had three glasses, which he usually handled pretty well. But he hadn’t eaten a thing all day, and the dizziness was starting to get stronger. For a second, his gaze flicked down, and as a consequence there came a sense of vertigo that made his head spin.
“So yeah. Hope you’re happy. Hope this is what you wanted. Piece of shit. At least now there's no way anyone's ever gonna—”
“Lark?”
A familiar voice, although the smallness of it was strange. That voice was usually never far away in time from a bubble of joyful laughter or a cocky click of the tongue.
Lark quickly wiped his wet cheeks dry with the back of his hand and glanced over his shoulder. Nick Foster, in all probability Lark’s best and most genuine friend, was standing on his roof, leathery bat wings still spread and his hands carefully put out in front of him as though he felt the need to show he was unarmed. The flames of his hair were brighter than usual, shadowing the angles of his face.
“Lark, what are you doing?”
Fuck.
For years, Lark had downplayed the connection between him and the Doodler. After the Church, his friends had subtly tried to pry the information from him, but had backed off when he’d made himself clear. He didn’t want anyone to know what he knew.
When he looked back, the Doodler’s eye was gone.
“I’ve never talked to it before. I swear I don’t know shit about it.” A lie, one which he’d repeated so many times he’d almost started believing it as the truth.
Nick’s brows knitted slightly together, but his confusion was overpowered by some kind of fear that Lark did not understand.
“Lark,” he said slowly, “what are you talking about?”
“You didn’t see—?” There was no way Nick could have overlooked the giant red eye that had consumed the sky for a moment. But the demon’s gaze was entirely focused on him, impossibly unfazed by the brief appearance of the eldritch horror that had taken away their adolescence.
Maybe the Doodler hadn’t been there at all. Maybe Lark was just losing his mind. It’d only be fitting; he had never been what one would call completely sane. Why not close the gap. Why not jump the chasm. It all was so childishly predictable.
His hands were clammy. He felt shaky, and could only pray that the tremors running through his body were not as easily seen as they were felt. He steeled himself and allowed a sliver of ice to slip into his gaze. “How much of that did you hear?” he said, voice gruff.
“You thought I was listening in on you?” Nick scoffed in panicked disbelief. “Lark, I swung by to check up on you and saw you standing on the edge of your roof. You scared the shit out of me!”
“I’m fine.”
Nick took a deep breath, and with an artificially flat voice he said: “Lark. I need you to step away from the edge. Please.” There was a note of desperation in that final word, like Nick was begging him. But what—
It finally hit Lark what was going through Nick’s mind. Oh. That was… a scenario.
He glanced down. He couldn’t help it. It was a good five-story fall, but right below him the family that lived on the ground floor had planted two trees alongside their non-native grass in their twenty square feet front garden.
Obediently, Lark took a step towards his friend, and kept walking until he could discern the black of Nick’s pupils from the dark brown of his eyes. He put his hands in his pockets and shrugged.
“I wouldn’t jump.”
Nick blinked. “Uh. Great.”
“The fall wouldn’t kill me.”
“...what?”
“If I jumped, the fall wouldn’t kill me,” he repeated. “Maybe I’d break a few bones, and I’d definitely be in a significant amount of pain. But I wouldn’t be dead on impact.” Nick stared at him, his jaw slightly parted. Lark met his gaze, completely serious. “Besides, if I wanted to end my life, I wouldn’t make such a spectacle out of it. There are easier ways,” he continued.
“But you—uh—don’t want to, right?” Nick asked.
Lark faced away for a moment, suppressing a shiver. The bite of the late-evening wind left goosebumps on his bare arms. It was chillier up here than he had expected. He swallowed.
“Five years ago, Sparrow requested I not,” he answered after a pause he was well aware was too long.
“And that’s enough?”
“Apparently.”
Nick almost imperceptibly shook his head. “Lucifer fucking almighty, that’s all kinds of messed up. Let’s not get too deep into that. Instead, can I hug you?”
“Sure.”
Carefully, Nick wrapped his arms around Lark’s shoulders and pulled him close. Now that the shock had passed, Nick’s usual confidence was returning, although there was still a distinct shakiness in his grin.
“That whiskey I smell or did you finally start wearing cologne?”
Lark scoffed. If Nick couldn’t tell Lark was drunk, then he didn’t know him very well.
“Your skin is hot,” he stated, genuinely surprised by that. Hugging Nick was like being curled up next to a hearth.
“Yeah, been that way since, y’know, hell.”
“‘s nice.”
“Oh.” He chuckled. “Yeah, guess it could be. Grant once said I should follow like a massage course. I could do literal miracles on joints, according to him.”
Had Lark known that before? He wore gloves a lot of the time, and he’d come out of puberty with the faintest aversion to touch. So it was very well possible he’d just never known. He tilted his head so the scruff of Nick’s chin brushed his cheek.
The sound of sirens disrupted their embrace. Two police cars were pulling up, stopping right outside Lark’s apartment complex. He heard their doors open and slam shut.
“Ah, shit.” Nick was quicker to reach the conclusion that they were probably here because someone had spotted Lark yelling things at the sky. “We should probably get inside again. I flew up here, is there some kind of ladder, or—”
“C’mon,” Lark said, guiding him to the other side of the roof and leading him down.
A minute later, they were back in Lark’s apartment. He had left the balcony door wide open, and his living room was about the same temperature as outside. His shoes tracked rooftop dirt onto his carpet, but he couldn’t give much of a shit. The bottle of bourbon was still on his couch, anchored in the groove between the two leather pillows. Lark sat down, grabbed the bottle, and slammed it back, emptying what little was still in there.
“Could’ve left some for me,” Nick joked as he watched, but then his face grew serious again. “Hey, so, I wanted to check up on you. See how you were doing. I called, but you didn’t answer.”
“You heard, then.”
“I did.” He kneeled down in front of Lark, trying to catch his gaze. “I know it’s not worth much, but I get what you’re going through right now. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Lark didn’t answer. He just inspected the faint scars on his knuckles, not looking up.
Nick nodded, understanding. “I’m gonna get you some water. You look like you need it.”
He left the living room. A minute later Lark heard water being boiled, and when Nick returned with a glass of water, he held a cup of steaming tea in his other hand.
“Made a pot of oolong if you also want some. Here’s this, for now.” He handed Lark the glass. When Lark took it from him, their fingers brushed, and Lark once again blinked at the stark difference in temperature.
He dutifully drank the water. Nick pretended not to attentively watch him as he hovered in the middle of his room. He didn’t look out of place or uncomfortable; he’d been here so many times Lark was sure he felt right at home.
Lark put the glass down and made eye contact with his friend. He was still cold, not just his skin, but his insides as well. He supposed the tea could help with that, but that wasn’t on his mind at that moment. He stood up and once again stepped into Nick’s space, this time his turn to initiate the embrace. Nick responded immediately, not asking him for his thoughts. His grip was tighter than the first time, and he stroked the back of Lark’s neck comfortingly.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he whispered, as though Lark was a weeping, hysteric child.
Lark remembered sitting in a dimly lit restaurant, bored out of his mind as his family leafed through the menu. The flickering brightness of the scented soy candle on top of the table had drawn his attention, and without truly knowing why, Lark had put the palm of his hand over the colored glass jar, about five inches above the little flame. It had been a comforting heat at first, but soon it started to burn. His nerves had shrieked in pain, but he found himself in some kind of trance, fascinated with how aware of his own body the sensation had made him feel. Sparrow had snapped him back to reality, grabbing him by the wrist and yanking his hand back, the way the fear in his eyes shone brightly similar to how Nick had looked at him on the roof just moments before.
As he was this close to Nick, that memory came to mind. The sensation of being so close to a flame the burn had started to feel good. He was experiencing that again. Nick was warm, was easy for his fingers to mold.
He wanted to move closer. Wanted to see how far this could go.
Nick had always regarded him with a softness Lark couldn’t place. On the rare days when he didn’t suspect it was partially constituted of pity, Lark liked that look, liked how he was the only one who received it even when Sparrow with his identical features and better attitude was right next to him.
Lark pulled back to watch Nick’s expression. Empathy made his reassuring smile a little sad, but that softness was still present. The warmth of his hand on Lark’s neck was nice, but it wasn’t the intrusive burn that would turn the numbness to ash.
Fuck it.
Lark grabbed Nick’s face in his hands and kissed him roughly. It hurt like mad, and clicked their teeth together, but Lark didn’t care. The kiss was a mess of teeth and tongue, of gasps half pained and half surprised. Nick’s back went rigid with shock, the hand on Lark’s neck flexing while the other hand went still next to his hip, unsure of what to do.
After a few seconds, he responded, though. Enthusiastically. He kissed back, and Lark lost himself in the moment. Hesitant, then urgent hands clutched at his back, heated moans took up space between each desperate kiss, and all of Lark’s grief and anger was pushed to the back of his mind. Nick’s lips were hot, his tongue hotter.
Lark wasn’t sure how much time had passed exactly when Nick shuddered and pulled away.
“Wait,” he gasped. “Wait. Hold on.”
Lark stopped, taking in his slightly altered location. Nick’s back was pressed against the wall. Lark must have pushed him against it, though he didn’t remember moving forward. Nick was panting a little. Despite the exhaustion of today’s events, Lark’s breathing was slow and shallow — controlled. For the first time today, he was in control.
“Hey,” Lark prompted, the sudden gentleness of his own voice feeling like a lie.
“Lark,” he protested.
“I need this,” Lark whispered back. He needed it like a drunk needed alcohol, like a gambler needed dice. A distraction from what was painfully real. He just needed a moment of bliss before the darkness closed in again.
He lowered his head. Nick didn’t resist the mouth pressing kisses against his throat, but he made no move on his part either. His hands were uselessly gripping the hem of Lark’s shirt, and Lark wondered what he needed to do to get him to slip them under it.
“What if I could give you more?”
Lark paused. Now they were both just holding the other, unmoving. “That’s what I’m trying to get you to do here, Foster,” he said lightly.
“No, not— Look, I’m worried ‘bout you.”
“Then distract me.”
“You’re drunk.”
“If you don’t want this, say the word and I’ll back off.”
“I do want this,” Nick whispered, “but not like this.”
Lark clenched his jaw, turning his face away. He gave a stiff nod and let go of Nick’s shoulders. He stepped back, creating distance as quickly as he could. The loss of warmth was physical agony, but he kept his face in check.
For maybe the first time since Lark had known him, Nick looked at a loss for words. He ran an ineffectual hand through his hair. Lark had ruined it. “Shit,” he mumbled, like he already regretted his decision. “I can’t— you— maybe if it wasn’t—” He sighed, and lowered his head. “I’m sorry, Lark. Not like this.”
“Okay,” Lark said calmly. “Okay. Then leave.”
“What?”
“If you’re not here for that, you’re gonna wanna talk about emotional bullshit, and I can’t do that right now.”
“We don’t have to,” Nick said, looking like a kicked puppy trying to comfort another kicked puppy. “We can just— I don’t know, sit. Chat about fuck all. Play some video games.”
“Video games? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I think you really don’t want to be alone.”
Lark didn’t know what he wanted. Well, he did, but it looked like he wasn’t getting that.
“I’ll be fine.” He still had another bottle of scotch. That’d eventually do the trick.
Nick’s mouth was a tight line. “If it’s touch you want, can’t I just hug you again? For as long as you want.”
“You don’t want me to fuck you, but you do want to cuddle with me?”
“Yes,” Nick said, eyes so sincere it hurt.
Nick didn’t show any sign of taking his words back. Supposing that Nick’s presence was preferable to an alcohol-induced slumber, he folded. With a bone-weary sigh, Lark grabbed his hands and pulled him to the couch.
The couch was an L-shaped piece of corner furniture that had already been there before Lark moved in. Its previous owners must have had cats or something, because there were rips and claw marks all over the base of it. The pillows were scratchy, making his skin itch.
Lark adjusted his body to lay with his legs stretched out and his neck half-propped up, an itchy pillow resting between his head and the armrest. Nick joined him, his head over Lark’s chest, his weight still held up cautiously like he thought he might crush Lark. Lark wrapped an arm around his waist and gave him a light shove to make him relax. He did, the weight of his body unfamiliar and far, far more comforting than it should be. It wasn’t the heat Lark had hoped for, but it was the next best thing.
They lay there, and Lark thought to himself that he never would have let this happen were he sober, were he not grieving. Maybe tomorrow he’d wake up, either alone or still together like this, and he’d think the only reason he had allowed this was because he had slipped into that black-and-white mindset, when his decisions were consistently self-destructive and the regret was always sharp.
Maybe. For now, he found solace, and it had been so long since he had that, that he could not imagine ever regretting the embrace of it. He buried his fingers in Nick’s silky hair.
Neither of them seemed interested in sleeping. They stayed quiet for a while, their breaths even.
Eventually, Lark preluded the breaking of the silence with a low hum. “Nick?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever think of your body as a container?”
“...how drunk are you exactly?”
Lark didn’t answer, assuming that question to be either rhetorical or a joke to lighten the mood. He merely let silence stretch as he waited for Nick to reply, which the other man did after an awkward scrape of the throat.
“A container…” Nick repeated softly, as though tasting the words on his lips. “I used to, I think. Back when I felt it was defective. When it didn’t feel like it was mine. Just a thing that carried me around, got me to where I needed to be. Would have given a lot of shit up if I could just swap it out with another. I guess it was time that helped me figure out that it’s not one or the other, though. It’s more of a home to me now.”
A home.
Lark closed his eyes. “I ran away from home a couple of times.” His voice didn’t feel like his own when he spoke. He was aware that there was a bit of an awkward leap of logic there, but the gentle buzz of alcohol frayed the edges of his consciousness and as long as he could continue to give his jumbled thoughts shape, it did not matter to him how nonsensical he sounded. “Sometimes Sparrow was with me. But he always wanted to go back.”
“I’m glad you came back with him.”
“One time I didn’t.” Lark breathed in deeply, then slowly breathed out. “We were in the forest, and it was getting dark, and he—he didn’t want to stay. But I did. It was—the usual. We fought, and I couldn’t convince him to stay, so he left me.”
Or Lark left him. Or maybe the gaping split between them had grown so large at that point that the semantics weren’t relevant anymore.
“It got cold, the kind of cold my jacket couldn’t keep out, and I accidentally stepped with my right foot into a large puddle. It was around midnight that I gave up trying to act all tough, but by then I couldn’t trace my steps back. So I just sat with my back to a fallen tree and waited. It was almost morning when Henry found me. Said the trees had remembered me because they were concerned for me. A little boy, lost in the woods.” His back started to hurt from the position they were in. If he fell asleep like this, tomorrow he would pay the price for this temporary comfort of touch. “I didn’t want him to take me, but I hadn’t slept all night and I was so tired. He carried me home all the way.”
As he spoke, he felt himself turn more and more into the little kid that still was a part of him, because Lark could never truly get rid of the version that inadvertently determined the course of his life.
Nick quietly listened to Lark’s broken-voiced ramble. A tentative hand draped over Lark’s pelvis to rest on his hip. The weight of it was grounding and comfortable.
Lark’s exhale was shaky. “Sometimes it’s like everything I do, is still just me running away from home.”
Nick’s chin dug uncomfortably into Lark’s chest as the other man chewed his lip, choosing his words carefully. “But now you’ve got nothing to run away from anymore,” he said after a pause, his tone not accusatory. It was more like he was making a passive observation.
Lark grabbed the fabric of Nick’s shirt a little tighter, and wondered if the catharsis of being truly understood like this would always come accompanied by such aching hollowness.
“I don’t know how to make a home for myself anymore,” he admitted.
Lark wasn’t sure when Nick’s hand had found Lark’s, but he was squeezing it now.
“I could—” he started, and faltered, as if his confidence gave out on him. Lark waited a long time, but he never finished the sentence.
He rested his hand against Nick’s back and didn’t fight the sleep that encroached on him. With the combination of unconsciousness and Nick’s physical presence, the dark tempest of emotions within him temporarily found its moment of rest. It was only the eye of the storm, but Lark appreciated it nevertheless.