Chapter Text
Lark sat in the window of his bedroom, carefully blowing the cigarette smoke out into the late July night. It was humid and San Dimas gave off way too much light pollution for him to be able to see the stars. He closed his eyes and was 13 again, sitting just beyond the firelight by that waterfall, looking up at all the stars he didn’t know the names of, the night cool and quiet.
It had been before Oakvale, before Walter had lost his legs, before something in the universe tore apart and left that unyielding hatred towards Henry burning inside of him. It had been a moment in those months where he had felt safe. It felt like they’d be going home at any moment. 19 year old Lark opened his eyes and took another drag from his cigarette before flicking the butt out into the night and tried not to wonder if he ever really made it back home after all.
A scoff came out from the dark and the sound of someone patting at their chest. Lark already knew who it was and was trying to climb back into the window as fast as he could. But then-
“What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Lark is littering again.” Nick looked up through the branches of the old oak, smirking. His dark hair was pulled back and he wore his usual leather jacket, the one that had been Glenn Close’s.
“What are you even doing here? It’s fucking 3 in the morning.” Lark hissed down at him, frowning.
Nick moved quickly, finding the handholds in the lattice that led up to Lark’s window like he had done a thousand times over the last six years. He was grinning even wider when he came up to the very top, finding Lark to still be in the window. Their noses were barely an inch apart and Nick made a show of glancing at Larks lips, his smile going wolfish and knowing.
“Greeting me with kisses now, Oak?” He all but purred.
Lark growled, reaching up and pushing on Nick’s face. It nearly sent him flying back to the ground but he was considerably stronger these days. He only laughed and nudged Lark aside so he could finish making his way into his best friend’s room.
“Why can’t you visit during the day like a normal person?” Lark said. He was still keeping to a whisper, glancing over at the wall across from the window, knowing it to be paper thin and his brother to be asleep just on the other side. In another week, that wouldn’t be an issue anymore. Sparrow would be in Boston. The thought made Lark flinch.
“Because you sleep then. This is the only time I can come by and not get a knife thrown at my head. Though,” he picked at the front of his band shirt, a small hole in the cloth just left of his sternum. “I got a cigarette butt this time.” He looked up then and frowned.
“Don’t start,” Lark huffed. Nick had been after him for three years to quit and sometimes it was working. Tonight, it wasn’t. He crossed back to his bed and flopped over, pulling one of the pillows over his face and groaning.
“I get it,” Nick said softly. He followed Lark to the bed and sat down on the edge, reaching over to gently pry the pillow away from his face. “Before you smother my best friend, I have an idea to pitch to you.” His face was soft too, like his understanding. It made Lark want to jump out of his own window but then again, he could never say no when Nick made that face.
He made a show of rolling his eyes and pulled the pillow back out of Nick’s hands, shoving it roughly behind him as he sat up. When Nick grinned at him he knew whatever it was, he was in.
“In six days, our little band of hooligans is gonna be scattering.” Lark only looked away. “What if we also go?” That brought Lark’s head snapping back round.
“Go where? Neither of us are exactly cut out for college life, Nicky.” his eyebrows knitted together. It was ridiculous how easily he’d follow Nick Foster anywhere but that didn’t mean he had to do it so easily.
“Back to the forgotten realms,” Nick reached into his pocket and pulled out a single gold coin.
“Are you-” Lark had started to yell but Nick was already covering his mouth with his other hand, practically giggling into his shoulder.
“Yes I’m serious. No, I am not high. What’s stopping us, songbird? We could be packed and gone in a week.” Nick’s eyes shone behind the stray hairs that had fallen into his face when he pulled back again, his hand still pressed to Lark’s mouth.
Lark reached up and pulled the hand away as he took a steadying breath. Nick was always saying and doing stupid shit, but this was something next level.
“And do what? How will we survive? Are we going to find work? Become fucking wizards? What’s the actual plan here, Foster.” His voice was ratcheting up in octaves every other word, even to his own ear.
Nick grinned only broader as he pulled out a few pieces of paper and a small bag from the inner pockets of his jacket. “I’m so glad you asked,” he started handing a few things to Lark as well as spreading other bits out onto the bed. “And no, I don’t mean forever, just for a few months, maybe a year.”
“A year? Nicky!”
Nick hushed him again as he unfolded the papers, each one covered in his weirdly neat handwriting. Some lists, others notes. There was a map that must have come from Jodi, slightly crumpled with the top edge singed. Scrawled lines about was taking plastics okay and should they ask the witch Eric O’neal for help flashed between the slips of paper.
“We already know time moves differently there. We’ll be on that side and a year will pass, but here it will only be a few days.” He upturned the small bag that he had brought with him and out tumbled a small map, a few more coins. He looked up at Lark then and smiled that way that always made Lark look away unless he wanted to get burnt up from the brightness of it. “Call it a gap year.”
The small bag from Nick’s pocket had been a bag of holding - “Don’t let TJ see that we have this,” “Mother fucker, we who?”- and there was already a stock pile of clothes, toiletries, a small tent, a guitar.
“You sure got your priorities set, huh?” Lark elbowed him gently about the instrument, watching as the contents of the bag were slowly unpacked then packed again.
“How am I supposed to serenade you if I don’t have my guitar, songbird?” Nick asked as if it was a matter of fact.
Lark only rolled his eyes and started pouring over what Nick already had planned out, realization slowly dawning on him. “Nicky,” he said, softer than he had meant to.
“Yeah…”
It was the downside to being as close as they were. Sometimes they didn’t really need to talk to one another to understand what was coming next. But there were still times that Nick just outright surprised him. Honestly, he was always surprising Lark but this was something else altogether.
“Nick, how long have you been planning this?”
He didn’t look over, feeling more than seeing the wince that had come. So long enough for it to be more than just a spur of the moment.
“Not quite a year…” Nick looked away, smoothing over the map from Jodi with self-conscious hands. He reached over then, not grabbing the list of gear exactly, but sliding it from Lark’s loose grasp the best he could. “I just thought-”
“Okay.” Lark looked then. Something that had tasted like hope now filling itself out into his limbs, his fingers, his blood. They would struggle. It wouldn’t be easy. And Lark knew that there would be times on this little adventure they were planning he was going to end up watching Nick serenade more than himself with that stupid guitar. But he’d get over it if it meant not having to spend the next year, at least his own year, here listening to Henry’s quiet irritating patience with him.
“Okay?”
“O A K, Nicky. But I have a few ideas myself.” He grinned when Nick turned to him with his brown eyes blown wide with excitement. It was his turn to hurriedly shush his friend as Nick started to whoop. “Shut the fuck up, what the fuck, Foster!” Lark tried to be actually agitated but all he could do was smile and let Nick crush him to his chest.
~
He wasn’t sure what he was going to say to his family. He knew he’d have to tell them something, but it was Sparrow who he wanted to tell first. At least he would be excited for Lark and not tell him it was a stupid dangerous idea.
“Brother, you can’t be serious. The danger aside, which will be epic I am sure, but you alone with Narkolas Foster for a whole year? Are you going to be able to handle that?” Sparrow was carefully folding his clothes from his closest into moving boxes.
“What? Handle what?” Lark scoffed. He knew exactly what part.
Sparrow looked at him incredulously with a slow raise of his eyebrows. He too knew exactly what part. “How long has it been? Six? Seven years? Brother, you either have to tell him what’s really going on with you or you have to call this off. You’re only going to get hurt. And-” he didn’t have to finish the rest of that thought. Lark didn’t exactly have the best record when he was hurting.
“Exactly, it’s been years. I haven’t done anything to tip my hand so far. Like he’d notice anyway,” he mumbled.
“That’s my point! Lark, he hasn’t noticed. Do you hope this is going to change things?” Sparrow cocked an eyebrow at him, as he shoved his last pair of jeans into the box on his bed.
“No!” Lark was too quick with the protest, even to his own ears. “Worst case, we just come back early.”
Sparrow’s mouth pinched and he looked so much like their mother it made Lark soften slightly. “How about this- I promise I will message every day my time to let you know how things are going and you stop acting like a damn mother hen.” He held out his hand in truce.
“You better.” Sparrow broke out into the same toothy grin mirrored on Lark’s face in that moment, pulling his brother to him in a jostle of limbs. “Just make sure you’re taking care of yourself. I do think that getting some time away from here might be good for you.” He was still mother henning but at this point, Lark was just glad he wasn’t being lectured at.
“You just don’t want me to go cause when I come back I’ll be older than you are,” Lark teased.
Before he knew it, Sparrow had pulled away from him and there was a pillow squishing his face. By time they were done, most of Sparrow’s clothes were on the floor again and their mother was standing at the door with a bemused sigh. Nine or nineteen, they would always be the Oak-Garcia boys, this realm or the next.
~
They met the others at the soccer field, Grant pulling up with a whole pack full of snacks, Nick with a case of beer. They made themselves comfortable under the row of trees on the far side, a send off, a last hoorah in the face of growing up.
“Has Nick told you what he’s dragging my brother into?” Sparrow sat up suddenly, looking around.
“You make it sound like he’s dragging me to hell, brother.” Lark grumbled.
“Are you two-” Grant was about to say something when TJ elbowed him sharply with a look Lark couldn’t quite read through the haze of beer.
“We’re going back to there,” Nick said brightly. He didn’t have to say where ‘there’ was. They all knew, Lark could tell by their sudden silence and the way Terry Jr’s face went pale. Grant sat up then, eyebrows knitting together so severely, Lark had to remind himself it was just lanky awkward Grant and not Mr. Wilson.
“What do you mean you’re going back there? Are you fucking insane? Just because your dads live in hell or whatever, doesn’t mean any of us would ever-”
“I want to go!” Lark snapped harder than he had intended, knowing he sounded petulant. He didn’t like how sometimes the others seemed to conveniently forget that Nick never chose his lineage but just had to deal with it, just like the rest of them. And he definitely didn’t like whatever it was Grant was implying that he wasn’t going to be able to handle it.
“Oh, I’m sure you do!” Grant turned on him but Lark wasn’t about to shrink away. “Leave it to you to do something reckless like this.”
TJ put a hand on Grant’s shoulder and stopped him. “Grant, we get it. It was dangerous but I’m sure things have changed and we’re not kids anymore.” He was always the voice of reason and Lark wanted to be grateful for him stepping in but it seemed to only make him all the more hot under the collar.
“We’re going and it’s not like any of you are going to be nearby to even notice. And if we get into trouble, we’ll call the literal king of Hell to get us out. Christ, even Mom didn’t get herself so twisted up about it, Wilson,” he scoffed, swinging back the rest of his beer before tossing it into the bag between him and Sparrow. “I’m heading home, you all have a good semester. See you when I see you.”
Lark scrambled to his feet before he stormed off, hands shoved into his pockets. He had always noticed but it never seemed so blatant how much the others felt the need to shelter him from… well he wasn’t actually sure but he was getting really sick of it. He was tired of having to pretend he wasn’t so fucking broken just to get them to stop treating him like he was.
A year away from here, them, this world, was only sounding better and better the closer it got. In a few days he and Nick would set off through a portal spell they’d borrow from Henry. Nick had everything nearly fully set.
Well. Not everything. There was the matter of wheels. It wouldn’t be a Doodlers adventure without a set of wheels, would it?