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hauntedjpegcollection · 2 months

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outside

wc: 8596 au: valorant au ch: lark, crowley, xavier

Diana Crowley’s mother had once told her that high heels were a womans best kept weapon. Not in practicality; she had never expected her daughter would need to use one to puncture a man’s throat, or defend herself against a mugging in an alley and to Crowley’s credit, she’d just use her pistol in that case. She brought guns to knife fights—her father had given her that tidbit of life advice.

But there was some sort of credence to her mothers words and she’d ruined her arches by the time she was in her early twenties. Crowley still wore heels and they echo loudly in the prison hallway, snappy clacks that clearly annoyed the correctional officer in front of her. The tiled floor underneath every sharp staccato beat is shockingly clean. Not nearly as grimy as her playful imagination had made it on the car ride here. Crowley doesn’t visit prisons often, not that her quarry weren’t often in some sort of cell that needed unlocking.

She had people to do this for her, usually. People, she found—not from her mother or father but rather herself—were also a womans best kept weapon.

That’s why Eric King struggles to keep pace with her, as they are escorted to a secure holding room. He’s not a short man, but she’s not a short woman either. And in her heels, she’s the same height as him. Sometimes, she’s even an inch taller when he slouches, which Eric is often fond of doing. His posture’s not her concern—Eric is good protection if things were to go wrong and Crowley did not go anywhere without protection.

The officer stops in front of a plain, oak door with a small viewing window. She peers in, with a curious tilt of her chin. Two men sit inside, one of them in the obvious orange jumpsuit of an incarcerated individual and the other in the business suit of a very obvious lawyer.

“You’re coming in with us?” Eric asks, gesturing toward the correctional officer. He has a night stick on his waist, but no gun. Crowley had read in a report that Daisuke Tanaka should not be within two hundred feet of a gun—she wonders if that means he doesn’t get outside time, since the only correctional officers that have rifles are the ones patrolling perimeters. Is he allowed sanctioned, special time to meander the lonely dirt lot outside the facility? Or has he not seen the sun for a very long time?

Not for the first time does she wish she had more information. But buying Tanaka from the private prison was going to be costly enough; they were holding their cards tightly, just in case she didn’t bite. Crowley already knew she was going to, but that didn’t mean they had to know that yet.

“’Course. Dangerous, that one.” The officer indicates the door with a jerk of his head.

Crowley doesn’t mind making Tanaka and his lawyer wait, so she indulges this for a moment.

“Is he allowed in general population?” She watches the officer suck his teeth and tilt his head. He’s not much taller than her either, thanks to those heels. He glances her over, not shy in staring her down in either appreciation or disgust. Maybe both. Men that worked in prisons were not much different than police officers in the sense that they often felt very entitled to stare at a woman. And pass judgment.

“Started out in isolation for a while. Long while. Integrated a year back. We’re testing waters.”

“Because he’s dangerous?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The officer sucks his teeth again, rocks on his heels, smiles at her nice and wide. He has very white and very straight teeth that look fake. “And, you know. There was some fuss about it all. Him being what he is. If he were in gen-pop, his lawyer said he’d get jumped.”

“Because he’s a radiant,” Eric drawls with a condescending curl to his lip. “Or because he’s transgender?”

Crowley tilts her head and smiles her own very white and very fake teeth. Veneers. Weapons. Etc. The officer stares at Eric for a long moment and then looks to her, as she continues smiling. The skin at the corners of his eyes goes very tight. He does not humor Eric with a reply and instead turns to the door and thrusts it open.

—

After introductions with the lawyer—Jeremy Pool, a rather well known criminal defense attorney—there is nothing for them to do but stare at each other for a long while. Eric sits beside Crowley, the large (undoubtedly, two way) mirror to their backs. His knee moves in a steady rhythm that one might think is from nerves, but she knows is from electricity building up underneath his skin. Crowley sits the way she always does, which is with one leg crossed over the other and her hands forming a small, meditative triangle in her lap. It was a ritualistic sort of thing she did, made her shoulders look broader and her collarbone more prominent.

Tanaka is not baited by a woman in his presence. Though she’d combed his records and found no visitors, Crowley wonders if she is the first he’s seen in his three years of incarceration. She spares a thought to female correctional officers or medical staff; plain, boring or unsightly. No matter the tight skirt or her square neckline and the dainty thin gold necklace, the prisoner only stares at his own cuffed hands.

Crowley had expected him to be more intimidating. Not that it would work on her, but she expected more. A presence that would fill the room, something bordering on terrifying or wicked. Worthy of the money she would be spending. Instead, he sits there, looking average, if not a bit underwhelming. Not necessarily in size, although he is not large. Slim and short, lacking in the bulk people picture when they think of a criminal. He has a smattering of tattoos she can see on his hands, forearm, one underneath an ear. His hair is shaved down tight, more for economical reasons than looks, she thinks.

“Would you like water, Mr. Tanaka?” Crowley begins, waving a dismissive hand to Eric. He begins to stand from the chair, buttoning his suit jacket as he straightens. She’d always liked that about him, that he knew when a suit jacket was meant to be buttoned or unbuttoned. He’s barely out of the chair to move to the door, to find the vending machines they’d passed, when Tanaka speaks.

“What do you want?”

When he finally looks at her, his eyes are two black holes surrounded by sleepless rings of purple. The weight behind them feels instantly like two hands around her throat, cold and gentle in their warning. A thumb grazing the column of his neck, looking for the pulse. Eric stops moving, half in his chair and half out. She catches his hands twitching. Crowley gestures for him to sit back down and though it takes a moment, he finally does. He unbuttons his suit jacket. His knee continues shaking.

“Didn’t Mr. Pool speak to you before we came?”

“He says you can reduce my sentence.”

“I said they could try,” Pool quickly interjects. He sits the way a good criminal defense attorney does; slightly tilted toward Tanaka, one hand on the table, the other on the back of his chair. He glances between all three of them several times, a roaming watchful eye. Even occasionally over the back of his shoulder to the correctional officer standing in front of the door. He wears an expensive navy suit and there is a band of paler skin around his wrist where a watch must usually sit.

“Not necessarily,” Crowley unfolds her legs, just to refold them in another direction. Tanaka stares only at her face, his eyes unwaveringly still. Three years of federal prison had made him very different from the mug shot she had studied before this meeting. He’d had more fat to his cheeks, a terrified shine over his eyes. Dents in his lips from how hard he’d bitten them, likely to keep from crying or stem the tears that had already started. There’s really no hint of that young, dumb innocence anymore.

She reaches toward Eric and he meets her halfway, with the manila folder she’d brought with them.

“You’re in prison for arson, but theft was your passion, am I correct?”

“Don’t answer that,” Pool says quickly.

“I suspect you were the reason most of those robberies went so well?” Crowley flicks open the folder. “I paid to have your juvenile records exhumed for me. Breaking and entering at age fifteen, grand theft auto at sixteen, assault with a deadly weapon at eighteen—that was your first stint in jail?”

“What,” Tanaka says quietly, leaning over the table in a way that makes the correctional officer step closer, that makes the lawyer scoot backward, that makes Eric’s twitching knee stop. “Do you want?”

“I think,” Crowley says slowly, closing the folder. “It’s not what I want, it’s what I have. Which is money—and considering this—” she taps a finger on the folder. Underneath is the mug shot, that terrified boy who died somewhere in the last three years. “It seems like you understand money very well.”

“Money is not solving Elias’ problem,” Pool laughs, condescending and snide. “A work release program—sure. I know the government is trying to collect more of those…like my client. More—what he is—We can work with that.”

“I don’t work for the government,” Crowley purrs. She lifts a hand and feels across her hair for the bobby pin keeping strays from her face. When she slides it out, strands of black and gray hair fall across her eyes. A small swipe of her hand tucks them behind her ear. Tanaka follows the movement like starved animal, the only hint that something in him is breaking. Crowley holds the bobby pin up, as if it were some sort of key. Maybe it is.

“I work for Kingdom.” Crowley puts the bobby pin on the table and slides it across. “Could you demonstrate?”

“Absolutely not,” Pool seethes, reaching for the pin. Tanaka’s hand is a blur, closing over top of it. His tattoos are fine and small, all over his knuckles, across the back of his hand and up his forearm.

“Elias, I cannot advise you enough to not do what you are thinking of doing.”

Tanaka doesn’t listen. Instead, he slides his hand to himself and turns his palm upward to look at the slim, black bobby pin. A key.

“Alright, enough,” the correctional officer drawls. He steps forward and Eric stands.

Despite all those moving parts; the lawyer, the officer, the other radiant, Crowley herself, Tanaka simply takes the pin and straightens it in his slender, pale, tattooed fingers.

“I said enough, Tanaka—” But when he reaches for the inmate, Eric moves around the table. Tanaka manipulates the pin, jabbing it into the keyhole of the silver cuffs on his wrists. There are familiar red marks on his skin from the chafe of metal. Three years of captivity and correctional officers and these white washed concrete walls. Crowley watches, with rising anticipation sliding along her spine.

Eric is fast, his hand securing at the apex of shoulder and neck. The guard grunts and then twitches all over as electricity crackles underneath Eric’s broad palm. His eyes roll back, jaw slack, his giant body folding backward like a puppet with strings severed. Jeremy Pool makes a shocked and horrified sound as the guard crumples to the floor, still trembling. Eric’s hand stays in the air, little bits of white energy raining down like sparks.

And then the cuffs make a small clinking sound and Tanaka raises his hands out of them.

“That took longer than I thought it would,” Crowley comments.

“Plenty of people pick locks,” Tanaka says quietly. “You wanted to piss off Duart. So he’d have an excuse to put him down—and so I’d know he’s dangerous.” He gestures with his chin to Eric, who finally lets his hand drop to his side. The lawyer still stares, with wide, disbelieving eyes that dart between them all. He unfortunately lives in a realm of legal and illegal. He should know better, but he doesn’t.

“You’re very clever,” Crowley comments, tilting her head in a way that makes more hair fall free. Tanaka’s eyes flicker there and then back down to his hands and then up once more. “I wouldn’t be negotiating for a sentence reduction. Or a work release program, though you will be working. For Kingdom. It wouldn’t even be a negotiation. Just a transfer of funds from our accounts to the prisons. You’ll have all the civil liberties of a free man, I can assure you.”

There is an almost imperceptible change in Tanaka’s breathing. A harsh, quick inhale through his nose.

“I’d just like another demonstration is all. Now that it’s just friends in the room.”

“Elias—don’t—”

Crowley blinks when Tanaka disappears from in front of her. The bobby pin sits on the table, as do the cuffs. Her heart tumbles in her chest for a moment, unsteady and out of balance—and then she slowly tilts her head to the side, one eye glancing up to find him behind her.

“What do you need me to do?”

—

“We already have teleporters,” Eric comments, eyes down on his phone. His tone is bored, but his body language is severe and tight. Crowley barely spares him a glance. Her eyes are drawn forward, through the glass. It muffles all sounds, a bundle of people behind them speaking softly to one another, a phone call being made.

Daisuke—Elias?—Tanaka has barely broken a sweat, his arms and legs pumping in easy rhythm as he runs on the treadmill. A duo of nurses stand on either side, one of them with a tablet while the other monitors vitals on a desktop. She’s unsure how long he’s been running for, but it’s felt like close to half an hour.

He’s changed from the orange jumpsuit, into clothes she’d found in a training room down the hall. Ironically, despite what he is, Tanaka looks more human in the dark charcoal joggers and the black cotton shirt. Something about the movement of his body brings him alive, a flush to his face, an expression that is so close to a smile.

“Mm,” Crowley hums when she feels Eric’s eyes boring into her.

“And plenty of people that can run fast.”

“That’s true.”

“Is there a reason we just spent an entire quarters budget on this?” Eric waves a hand toward the glass. This. That. A person, or a thing?

“Did you know,” Crowley sighs, tucking an arm around her ribs, her other hand cupping her cheek. She continues to watch Tanaka as the treadmill’s incline changes. He adjusts naturally, with no decline in speed. “That your chance of being assaulted in prison goes up by seventy-five percent when you are only a week away from your release date?”

Eric says nothing to that.

“I’m lead to believe that the reason is—I’m sure you can guess. Jealousy, naturally? That is the human condition explained, in one easy word. Jealousy. So, a group of inmates that are in for life, who are free from consequences because there’s nothing that will ever be worse than a life in prison—they conspire together to assault a man a week away from freedom.

And that man has to make a choice. He will either lay down and take it so as not to risk his release date, or he will fight back. On one hand, you walk out of prison free, but probably with something broken. Maybe not even something visibly broken, but I’m sure no one’s necessarily normal after being dragged into a closet and beaten by four or five men. How do you live normally after that? Curious—but, I suppose it’s the second option we’re to consider.”

The treadmill slows as Tanaka paces himself to a cool down walk. His eyes are forward, feverish and bright.

“If you fight back, you save yourself from injury—or worse. But, time is added onto your sentence. Your week before release becomes a month. Or months. Or a year—or years. Depending on how much you fought back, maybe. How bad it all was.” Crowley tilts her head to smile at Eric. “And which option do you think Mr. Tanaka went with?”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.

“So, you’re right,” Crowley sighs, turning away from the window. Away from her investment. She leans back against it, arms crossed under her breasts. She continues smiling. “We have teleporters, or people who run fast—we have people that can light things on fire or create toxins or—whatever the fuck these people do. But, we are lacking, fundamentally, in desperation. People who are going to do what we tell them to do, because the only other option is something so horrible there aren’t any choices.”

Eric’s throat bobs as he swallows, as he swipes a hand back through his dark, curly hair.

“Jesus, Crowley. You are something.” Something so horrible, she assumes.

“I’m going to give him to Wolffe.”

“That fucking idiot?” Eric groans, eyes rolling toward the ceiling.

“Trust me.” Crowley steps forward and smooths a hand over Eric’s chest, watching his expression flit to satisfaction—and wariness. “I know what I’m doing.”

—

Xavier Wolffe is insane.

“Fuck you! I’ll kill you, asshole!” He screams, half out the window of car. “Fuck your mother! Prick!” He continues, yelling at the car that zips in front of them, that weaves around night time traffic. Xavier had been driving fairly similar, but seems to appreciate being cut off by another driver less. Lark has no idea what else to do but sit there and stare. One of his hands keeps running up and down his own thigh—the sensation of denim feels so out of place. It tingles underneath his palm, gloriously rough. He’d not been prepared for how things would feel.

The cotton shirt, the overly large jacket swallowing him up. Lark had not remembered his sizing for normal clothes, so the jeans are too tight and the tops are too loose. He was thankful for what he’d been given though; the shirt, jacket, jeans and sneakers are the only things he currently owns. And even that feels miraculous. Unearthly.

“I can’t fucking stand out-of-staters,” Xavier growls as he settles himself back into the drivers seat. Lark’s hand stills on his thigh, suddenly scared he might get caught. Doing what? What even was he doing? He tries to remember how to sit casually, but almost every muscle is tensed in a way he can’t unclench.

Xavier is big. Big. When he’d stood in front of Lark, he’d taken up so much space that a step back was necessary to see all of him. And he was so obviously dangerous it felt maddening that no one else seemed to notice. Xavier prowled when he walked them to the car, and though he’d been smiling and making off handed jokes and comments, his eyes had swept back and forth. Clean sweep of the environment. Danger assessment.

Xavier’s scary. Lark’s sense of survival makes his ears ring. He does not like being in a car with Xavier, but what else is he supposed to do? Say no? Lark’s simply not sure what he’s allowed to do and what he isn’t allowed to do. He isn’t aware of the rules outside.

“Where are we going?” he finally asks, shoving his hands into the pockets of his new jacket so that he’ll stop feeling idiotically mesmerized by textures.

“Well,” Xavier drawls the word out happily. “I know they got you out a couple days ago and all—but this is like your first day out, right? I thought we could celebrate.”

“Celebrate?” The suspicion in his voice is more icy than he means it to be. Lark realizes that he isn’t sure how else to talk; if he could make his voice less harsh.

“Yeah, dude, celebrate. Like—I dunno, consider this a welcome party, alright? Welcome to Kingdom.” Xavier, despite how off putting Lark knows he is, does not seem at all daunted. In fact, he leans his head to the side, till his cheek is squished against his shoulder, giving Lark a big, dopey smile. “You should have fun, man. I’ll make sure we have fun.”

Lark does not trust Xavier at all.

—

The alley behind the club is dank and disgusting—and the smell is overwhelming. Lark has to keep the sleeve of his jacket underneath his nose because fuck, when was the last time he’d smelled this? What even was this? A dumpster nearby leaks an oozing, black liquid. A puddle just a few steps away is brown, viscous on top. There are cigarette butts everywhere and a barely flickering light.

Lark stares at Xavier with flat, annoyed eyes.

Music pours out of the building. A loud, thumping sensation that makes Lark’s heart beat feel irregular. If it’s this loud, with the barrier of walls, he can’t imagine how it sounds inside. His throat feels tight and narrow, his mouth dry at the thought of inside. He’d only just gotten out, he didn’t want to be inside anywhere anymore. He wants to stand in an open field and scream and run in circles and throw himself onto grass and roll around and cry—he mostly wanted to cry. A lot.

Instead, the door finally cracks open and just as Lark suspects, the noise is immediate.

“You,” the bouncer snarls, with an angry glare at Xavier. He’s tall, but not tall like Xavier. He fills out a tight black shirt with the word SECURITY stamped across it. Lark cannot decide if he’s good looking or not, because his entire body thrums with the sudden fear of the unknown. He does not know this man. He barely knows Xavier. He barely knows whats going on.

“You’ve so much fucking nerve, Wolffe.”

“Aw, man, c’mon.”

“Don’t ‘aw man’ me. What do you want?”

“It’s my friends birthday,” Xavier lies, stepping behind Lark. He puts big hands on his shoulders. Lark’s entire body protests the sudden intimacy of touch. He feels a broiling underneath his skin, a wave of nausea and longing and disgust and annoyance. But his face must remain placid, because the bouncer merely looks at him blankly.

“So?”

“Desmond,” Xavier’s voice turns sultry and low and makes Lark shiver at the sensation of it behind him. The night speeds along at a current he cannot grasp and it continues scaring him. He watches the giant red head slip forward, the same broad hands that had been on his shoulders now snaking their way around the bouncers hips. Lark feels invasive to witness one of Xavier’s pale thumbs encroach underneath the black shirt and touch dark skin. “You’re still mad at me?”

“If I let you in and you start a fight, I’ll kill you. Just so you know.”

“You’re so hot, you know that?”

Lark clears his throat, his cheeks painful and hot, his skin tight all over. He stares at the puddle of…whatever. His shoulders are so tense that it’s starting to hurt.

“Fine,” Desmond the bouncer finally snaps. He shoves the door open wider. “I’m serious—no fighting. I’m serious.” Xavier places a wet sounding kiss to the mans cheek, his hand wrapping around Lark’s wrist to fully tug him in. As he passes through the door frame, Desmond stares down at him, with curious eyes. Lark can’t stand being looked at like that (or at all), so a shaky hand slides the hood of his jacket up.

And then they’re inside the club.

—

Sometimes, Lark wonders if three years had felt so long just because he was inside. How much of the world could have changed in three years? How much could have happened that he’d not been part of? Would it have made any difference if he’d been there? What movies were out, what was his ex girlfriend doing, where was his sister? Was he out of touch with slang?

Was he out of touch with music?

He doesn’t recognize any of the songs, which makes him feel so oddly lost. Not that it’s Lark’s genre to begin with. This is fast tempo club music, two songs mixed into one, with too may hi hats and too much beat. It’s music for people to dance to, when dancing doesn’t matter so much as moving your body in time with another person. Lark’s still panicked, listening to the music as it shifts from one song to the next, trying desperately to find a song he remembers at all.

Lark had been allowed CD’s in prison. Not many, but a few. Good boy behavior. Sometimes, having things only invited people to want to take, though. He’d had to hide them more often than actually listen to them.

“What do you drink?” Xavier yells into his ear. “Beer? Cocktails? What’s your poison man?”

Money, Lark thinks instinctively. I don’t have any money.

“I can’t,” he yells back. Xavier tilts his head. For some reason, it’s like the motion of a curious puppy. Like all the layers of something scary had suddenly been stripped away from Xavier, underneath the clubs lights and the music. He smiles and it doesn’t look as terrifying anymore. Just white shiny teeth and big, pretty green eyes. Lark is stunned by how attractive he is, that realization sudden and dizzying. Lark’s not been attracted to anything but his own fucking hand for three years.

“I don’t have any way to pay for it,” he turns his pockets inside out, playfully. Trying for a joke, trying to smile. He isn’t sure if he actually does or not.

“Oh, dude,” Xavier laughs loudly, slinging both arms around Lark’s shoulders, pulling him in so close it’s nearly a hug. Lark’s stomach twists and turns. He can’t remember the last hug he’d gotten—who had it been from? Eliza? No. He couldn’t think of her anymore. “I’ll get us free drinks, don’t worry.”

—

And he does. He gets them too many free drinks.

Lark would have been drunk off of just one; but he doesn’t stop at just one. When Xavier places a cool beer bottle into his hand, it feels like something untwists inside him. Something releases, some worry or fear finally slowly dissipates, or is replaced instead by substance. It pushes everything out and that feels glorious. That feels beautiful. Lark realizes halfway through the third one, where he is.

A club. Outside. Around people. He’s not inside. He is not going to sleep inside a cell tonight. There are no guards, there are no other prisoners, no lawyers, or judges. Mania sets in almost immediately, like a creature that’s finally chewed it’s leg free of a trap. Lark takes the next beer—and the next. He laughs, one arm around Xavier’s slim torso, letting himself be pulled into the writhing mass of bodies dancing to songs that were released and remixed during years he spent incarcerated.

He doesn’t decline the drugs when they’re offered to him, when they make their way into a small, dark corner of the club. The ground is sticky beneath their feet. His new sneakers have perfect tread; it’s such a bizarre thought to have as he stares down at them. Everything is bleary and smeared together and his head feels stuffy. His hands don’t feel attached as they hold Xavier’s waist. He holds someones waist—he touches someone, he feels the warmth of their body radiating into his palms. He glances up as Xavier takes a small baggie and squeezes it to pour a shaky line on the back of his phone.

“Only one for you,” Xavier says, his voice rich and warm and gorgeous. He has freckles all over him. Lark hadn’t even noticed them because he’d been so scared staring at him. He has freckles on his neck, even. They disappear into his fiery hairline. “Okay, put your finger—like that. And—don’t laugh. Lark, don’t laugh.”

“I’m not,” he giggles, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I’m not. I—” He is, though. He’s laughing, because it feels so good. Outside—he is outside. Not…not technically, but it’s outside the way prisoners talk about outside. Out, I’m out, I’m not in. I’m not inside. He pinches his nose shut on one side. It feels like he’s part of a movie as he leans over the phone and then inhales the little white line.

The world explodes in stars around him, the lights going brighter and brighter like a solar system turned on just for him. He slides a hand across his short, buzzed hair, feels every single one. His eyes roll for a moment—it feels so unbelievably good. Like running—oh God, it feels like the first time he ever realized he could run fast. The first time a track coach had slapped his back and told him to run, run, run and he was the best guy on the whole team—he was so good, he was so good he got a scholarship for it. And it was so free, he was so free, he was—

“Oh shit!” Xavier’s laugh brings him back into his body. Lark watches with blown out, too big pupils as he drags a wet, pink tongue over the back of his phone, cleaning it of cocaine. “Are you going to dance with me?”

“Yes,” Lark breathes.

He becomes completely unburdened then, swept into Xavier’s arms and half carried back to the throng of dancing people. Lark unzips the jacket, loses it (a part of him crying for it, because he doesn’t have anything else, just the jacket, the shirt, the shoes, the jeans and now he doesn’t even have the jacket) and he feels himself squeezed between bodies, one of them Xavier.

I love you, he thinks, staring up at that happy, freckly face under all the lights, under all waves of music he feels like he can see.

“I love you too!” Xavier yells, somehow louder than the music. Lark didn’t even realize he’d said it out loud. But it feels natural, loving Xavier feels so suddenly easy and nice and warm and comforting and safe and isn’t that what Xavier is? Hadn’t Crowley handed him over, because Xavier would keep him safe, wasn’t he going to be staying with Xavier for a while, learning what being outside meant? Wasn’t this good?

And Xavier is so big in every single way, not just height, not just in prettiness, he’s just there and holding him and they’re jumping to music he doesn’t know. Does Xavier know he burned someones house down? Does he know and not care? Could people not care? Could Lark stop caring? Oh God, he’s so high and he’s so drunk—he’s outside and—

It doesn’t take long for others to notice Xavier, either.

—

The girls names are Melonie and Isla. Lark tries very hard to not fumble over their names and he also tries to remember that the brunette is Melonie and Isla is the blond. They are both so beautiful it makes him nauseas.

All four of them dance for a minute, but it feels less special with them involved. Lark tries so hard not to think about that, to feel like something was being stolen from him in that moment, because Xavier is very clearly interested in Melonie. His hand looks big around her slender shoulder, he leans in close to her ear to speak to her instead of yelling. He brushes his knuckles across her forearm.

“Where are you from?” Isla asks to his ear. Lark blinks a few times. He thinks the cocaine might be wearing off. He isn’t sure how long cocaine even lasts.

“Oakland,” he answers and she smiles curiously. “California.”

“Wow!” The word pops out of her. Lark’s suddenly aware that he has another beer so he chugs it quickly, because he has no idea what to say to that. What to say to her. She’s so pretty; her lip gloss is shiny and her nose is slender and long and her eyes look like they’d be hazel maybe if he could look at them clearly. “Oh my God, Melonie.”

When he glances over, Xavier is kissing the girl. Shock makes Lark drop the beer, which rolls away, gets kicked across the club by someone dancing to the side of them. He can’t remember what kissing is meant to look like; should it have so much tongue, should his hands be covering her whole face like that? Strangers. They’re strangers, Lark only knows they’re names. He suddenly is afraid again, a pulsing fear in his chest—what do they want?

He doesn’t remember coming with them to the private seating. The music suddenly feels too loud and heavy, a headache beginning to pulse behind his eyes. He’s sitting—Lark doesn’t even remember sitting, his knees slightly spread because a body is between them. Isla’s hands touch his thighs—the denim. The texture of jeans, foreign and strange. She touches them, her warmth making his skin buzz. The smell of her shampoo, her body, it’s sweet and cloying as she leans into him.

Her lips touch his and Lark trembles as he tries to remember the way he used to kiss before prison. Before three years of it. His hands try to find the places they used to go to. Her tongue pushes past his closed lips. She tastes like cocktail juice. Her hands rise, one of them slides along his thigh more and suddenly, he’s aware that she’s looking for something he doesn’t have.

Fuck, he’s stupid. Lark’s stupidity crashes into his skull, a car crash of it. How could he have forgotten this part? Her hand continues, squeezes, her lips pepper over his jaw and to his ear and she says something, but Lark’s eyes go dim and terrified. He doesn’t know what to do, if he should shove her off, how he can explain something so quickly, under such a stranger circumstance. His limbs are jittery and nausea rolls up his throat. Not just nausea. Oh God, not just nausea—

“Uh oh,” Xavier’s voice is loud in his ear. “I got you, man. Don’t worry, I got you.” And strong arms wrap around him and pull him away before he throws up all over the floor.

—

Lark adds to the mysterious puddle in the alley way with green looking vomit. It’s stringy and wet from his mouth, horrifyingly cold. How long had they even been in the club, that the beer in his stomach hadn’t even warmed? He heaves, his back muscles tensing and flexing. He holds onto the wall for support as one of Xavier’s broad palms flattens on him and rubs soothingly. He cannot forget Isla’s touch though, her searching hand, her breath on his ear. He shudders all over, closing his eyes.

He feels stunningly sober suddenly.

“I got that girls number, if you want it,” Xavier says, stepping back to give Lark room to unfold. He leans against the cool brick wall, temple to it. He lets himself breathe a few times, the taste of bile and alcohol on his tongue disgusting.

“I don’t have a phone,” he finally breathes quietly.

“What?”

“I don’t have a cell phone.”

Xavier blinks a few times and then his face turns cold. His eyes look glinted in the amber alleyway light. His nose curls, wrinkled at the bridge, lip lifted angrily.

“Fucking Crowley,” he snaps, pulling out his own phone. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she gets you one.”

“Why?” Lark breathes through his nose, eyes closed. When he opens them again, Xavier is staring. Assessing. He doesn’t like the sudden feeling of being cared for, even though he distantly remembers that drunken, intoxicated obsession with just that. He clears his throat, arms around his chest. “I mean, why would she get me one?”

“Pfft,” Xavier snorts, tapping away on his phone. “She’ll do it if I’m the one asking, you know what I mean? I got uh, sway.” He winks, a vulgar gesture with a fist at his hip. “You need a phone, man. Don’t worry about it.” And he tries not to, he really does. But a strange feeling reanimates his limbs and makes him move closer, away from the pool of sick.

Xavier glances at the throw up and then up to Lark, with a small smile, brows bunched together.

“When’s the last time you ate?”

“I haven’t.”

“What?”

Lark gestures to himself, to the air, to nothing.

“I didn’t eat today.”

“Dude,” Xavier breathes, slinging an arm around Lark’s shoulders. “C’mon.”

—

They walk down the street to a burger place that is, blessedly, mostly empty. A gaggle of college aged kids sit in one corner, one of them throwing curious stares their way. Lark sits at the booth with arms around his middle, trying to remember how to breathe. The lights inside are blindingly white, casting them both in horrible shadows. Xavier doesn’t look nearly as regal as he had underneath the flashing club reds and greens and yellows—he looks tired too. Exhaustion draws lines across his handsome features, but he still looks pleased.

Especially with a hamburger between his hands, eating happily.

Lark tries to tally up everything in his head, so he knows exactly how much he owes Xavier when all of this is done. He gets lost trying to count how many beers he’d had—and if Xavier had even paid for them, or just flirted haphazardly with a bartender to get them. He eats his fries slowly, half the burger gone. His stomach is tender and sensitive and trying to fit more in feels like a heruclean task.

“Are you sleeping with Crowley?”

Xavier stares with giant, moss colored eyes. There’s red around them, from the coke or the drink, or the night in general. He swallows the massive bite he’d just taken, and then his expression turns sheepish. Uncharacteristically boyish, if Lark even can think of it that way. Xavier should still be a stranger to him, but sitting there, across a diners laminated table, he feels closer than he has to anyone else in years. Three to be exact.

“Older women are good in bed,” Xavier says with an impish smile. He uses his thumb to wipe at the sauce dripping down his chin.

“Isn’t she—like. She’s the uh, boss. Of it all?”

“Not of Kingdom,” Xavier laughs. He shoves the rest of his burger into his mouth, chewing happily. He sucks nosily from his fountain soda. “She’s Commander. It’s not a big deal, man. I’ve known her for years.”

One of the first people to approach Lark, to see if he’d let them fuck him, hadn’t been a fellow prisoner. He’d been in seclusion for a long time. He’d not counted, he was still afraid to really know the details of those long stretches of time. How long they actually were. It had been a guard—not a guard, that didn’t feel specific enough. It had been the security supervisor, in charge of the cameras. He could turn them off, whenever he wanted. That’s what he’d said. That power had scared Lark, so bad that he’d slept with the makeshift shiv he’d managed to cobble together, for weeks.

Nothing had ever happened, but it had stuck with him. People in power liked fucking people. They liked owning people. Xavier didn’t seem like someone who should be owned like that. It made Lark’s insides hurt even worse, made him feel worn to the bone with the realization that maybe outside was just as bad. What had he gotten into? What was he doing?

“Are you going to eat that?” Xavier finally asks, his boyish face innocent like a fist wrapped around Lark’s heart, squeezing. Finally, for the first time maybe in the entire night, Lark smiles and slowly slides his tray of half eaten burger toward Xavier.

—

They stand outside while Xavier makes a phone call for someone to pick them up. Something about that feels so responsible; that Xavier wasn’t making them walk all the way back for his car, that he wasn’t driving. Lark isn’t sure where to place that kind of consideration. If he should even be overwhelmed by it at all. Everything is raw and bruising, though, even the casual way Xavier throws an arm over his shoulder while they wait.

And when the car—an old, but well maintained mustang—finally arrives, a white, blond man is leaning out the window.

“H-How much for a night?” He asks, in a slimy edged voice. Lark tenses from head to toe, but Xavier laughs, darting toward the car.

“More than you could fucking afford, fuck you—unlock the car. Ben, fuck you, seriously, it’s cold.” The door gets thrown open for him, the back seat entirely all his as Xavier slides into the passenger seat. The car smells like nicotine, but not in that nasty way. It doesn’t hurt the back of Lark’s sinuses, instead it’s something soft and smoky.

The driver turns fully around, staring at Lark with unimpressed eyes.

He looks a few years older than Xavier. His hair is shaggy, brushed back from his forehead. His eyes are so intensely blue they almost seem to glow. They rake over Lark slowly, appreciatively. He slowly extends his hands, but not like he’s going for a handshake. Instead, he splays his fingers, and between the webbing are little tattooed eyes. Lark realizes that Ben—Xavier’s friend, his new team mate, someone else employed by Kingdom—is completely covered in tattoos. The ones between his fingers are faded light blue.

“Me too,” is all he says, with a savage, twisted grin. “Lucky I d-didn’t get sepsis.”

“Prison boys,” Xavier laughs fondly, his hand ruffling Ben’s pale, stringy hair.

—

“You can sleep on the couch,” Xavier says, as he tosses a pillow onto it. The inside of his apartment is sparse. It’s cramped too, with walls closing in. Lark has to steady his heartbeat with a hand over his chest to not remember the cell. The four walls. The closeness constantly drawing in. He watches Xavier instead, dragging a blanket out of a closet. Lark looks around at the neat little space and it feels so oddly un-Xaver like. Not that he’s known him for longer than a night, but how can something so small and clean and white and plain belong to someone so—so like Xavier.

“I’ll help you apartment hunt, but I hope this is good enough.”

“It’s perfect,” Lark says quickly. He steps inside the little living room. His hands stay as fists by his thighs. He swallows and stares at Xavier.

“Cool, do you—”

“I don’t wanna fuck,” Lark quickly cuts him off. His voice is higher than he’s ever heard it, pitched through with anxiety that pools coldly in his veins. His hands would be shaking, if they weren’t so tightly clenched by his sides. Xavier stares, his hands still holding the blanket meant for him. He blinks a few times until dark red spreads across his cheeks, down his throat.

“Uh,” he laughs awkwardly. Clears his throat and pats the top of his head, attempting to tame the wild, club crazed red hair. “I have—I’ve made a really bad impression on you haven’t I?”

“No,” Lark breathes it quickly. “No. Fuck, sorry. It’s—sorry.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, rubs the heel of his palm into his eye, sighing heavily. He tries to collect his thoughts, sobriety really just there. He feels like he could fall onto the couch and sleep forever, he could let his exhausted body finally relax. It’s just right there, but he also—he wants to say this.

“When I was inside, I had a therapist. Dr. Wexler. He was—he was great. He uh, he was trying to help me get organized for being released.” Before it all went wrong. “And one of the things he told me. Hah—he’d said, uh. Well, he said that the first person I ended up with, I was going to want to sleep with them.”

Lark hadn’t taken it seriously, back then. He’d been so high on the idea of finally leaving, that he’d barely listened to anything, so it was funny that those words of advice were with him now. He scrubs hands back over his buzzed hair, laughing and looking at the ceiling. Because, well, yeah. He could imagine it. He could imagine following Xavier into his bedroom instead, he could imagine being kissed like that girl had been. Hands on his face, tongue in his mouth. He knows Xavier would be good at it, would be good for it. He knows it would feel good, but he knows more than anything else that he doesn’t want that.

He looks at Xavier, standing there, one hand still on the blanket, and all he wants—all he wants from this man is a friend. Please, he thinks, ashamed of the crying sound of his own voice in his skull. Just be my friend. Please.

“I was going to ask if you wanted to watch a movie,” Xavier says, smiling. It’s curled at the edge, but it’s softer than that giant, wolfy grin he’d had in the club. “Promise to keep my hands to myself.”

“I don’t think you’re capable of that,” Lark laughs, wiping a hand under his nose. He didn’t know why it was so wet, why his cheeks hurt so much. “You’re like, a very touchy guy, Xavier.”

“It’s part of my charm!”

“It is,” Lark admits, sitting slowly on the couch. Xavier does as well, adjusts the pillow and the blanket to be more on Lark’s side, long legs kicked out in front of him. He fishes for a TV remote as Lark slips his own sneakers off and puts them beside the couch. He gets comfortable. Really comfortable. He lets his limbs relax and his head lean against the back of the couch as Xavier puts on an old comedy. One he’s seen before. That is so oddly comforting that it’s easy to fall asleep.

—

“Wolffe just checked in,” Crowley says, locking her phone and placing it down on the coffee table. She reaches for her glass of wine, sighing as she leans back. She toes her way out of her heels, rolling her neck with a hand pressed to the nape. Eric’s heavy weight settles into the couch beside her and his hand replaces hers.

“I’d like to go a night without hearing about that asshole,” he says, close to her ear.

“I didn’t peg you for jealousy,” Crowley sighs back, letting Eric’s hand enclose around her aching muscles. His thumb digs perfectly into a sensitive bundle of nerves that make her calves tighten.

“Well, technically, you haven’t done that tonight yet.”

“You think you’re funny, Eric, but you are actually very dull.”

“And you think Xavier Wolffe is any better?”

Crowley turns to face Eric, bringing her wine glass up to take a long sip. He’d discarded his tie somewhere in her room, his shirt unbuttoned at the top, revealing dark swirls of chest hair. He thinks he’s more handsome than he is, but most men are like that. His hand withdraws to find his own glass, scotch that she keeps just for him.

“You’re as much a dog with a bone as he is,” she says casually, eyebrow quirked. “He has a longer tongue.”

“You disgust me sometimes,” Eric replies just as calmly. “Why did you give the new radiant to him?” The wine is bitter on her tongue. A dark red that she’d selected from a store after much careful consideration and heavy weighing in from the owner. He was her favorite, his little shop quaint and perfect for when she needed a break from the day to day. She sighs, eyes rolling, taking another long and perfect sip.

“Remember what I said about desperation?”

“You think Xavier will do whatever you want because he’s pathetic?”

“I know Wolffe will do whatever I want,” Crowley corrects, slowly moving herself into Eric’s lap. “Because he’s even more desperate than a man trying to escape prison. And that’s my favorite thing about him.” She watches Eric’s expression turn haughty, and because she likes hurting him, she tilts her head and bats her eyelashes. “And his tongue, of course.”

Eric groans with exaggerated annoyance, but he doesn’t protest when she leans in to kiss him.

***

Nomi has to dart around people in the hall, because they somehow don’t notice her. A shoulder nearly clips her here and there, and even though she huffs under her breath or stomps a chunky heeled boot, this is an office building that thrives on not paying attention to the little things like her. This is where magic happens, after all. Where money is spent on a galactic war; Nomi, for her part, is simply carrying a USB in her hand and trying to make it to Matilda’s office before she logs off for the night.

“Excuse you,” Nomi snips as she’s nearly knocked over by a man and a woman chatting excitedly about whatever latest news is plastered all over the walls. The television screens whip scene after scene of gallant interstellar fights for radianite. Nomi knows it’s propaganda, but even she sometimes will pause to watch an interview, or scroll an article on her phone, looking for some handsome face, quoted heroically about saving the world.

Matilda has a nice office, a frosted clear door separating her from the nosier parts of the building. When Nomi pushes in, she relaxes considerably to see Matilda still there. Sitting with her headphones slung around her neck, a lazy hand typing one finger hunt-and-peck style at her keyboard.

“Do you want sushi tonight or should we do Mexican again?”

“I have footage,” Nomi says breathlessly, stomping her way to the side of Matilda’s messy desk. Half a cup of coffee sits precariously on the edge, paperwork building up, a cute little glass cat paperweight and a scattering of sketching pencils nearly rolling off the desk.

Matilda slowly removes the headphones from her neck and tosses them onto the desk. The pencils almost escape but Nomi catches them—she opens a drawer, shoves them in where she knows Matilda keeps her sketchbook and then snaps it close.

“Footage of?”

“Don’t be coy,” Nomi sighs, rolling her eyes. She slides behind the desk, yanking at Matilda’s laptop to shove the USB in.

“Is this footage illegal?”

“Of course.”

“You didn’t answer. Sushi or Mexican?”

“Sushi,” Nomi replies, before double clicking open a file and slowly straightening. She’s seen it already—this new radiant, this blitz and blur of movement. It’s short, merely a security camera’s quick snapshot of a man blinking across the street. Pausing, pulling his hood down, glancing to the side, as if looking for something. Nomi’s eyes slide to Matilda, because she’s seen the snippet already. His dark, curly hair, sharp and terrifying eyes. Nomi watches Matilda’s chest expand and contract with a deep inhale. Her chin tilting up slightly.

She watches her friend smile, eyes narrowed with immediate interest.

#writing #lt #xw #dc #valorant au #oh my god #releases this into the fuking universe

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