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theladysherlock · 1 year

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Dalek Week: Day 2

Lost in the Woods

"Where are you off to?"

Alek froze, one hand mere inches away from the handle to the door of their shared apartment. "I... I can't tell you."

Alarm bells immediately went off in Dylan's head. Besides the fact that Alek was absolute rubbish at keeping secrets in the first place, it really wasn't like him to not tell him things. The boy could be a chatterbox around the right people. "What do you mean, you can't tell me?" Dylan asked. His feet hit the ground and he was by Alek's side in an instant.

"I can't tell you," Alek repeated, wincing.

"You and I promised not to keep secrets from each other," he said. "Is something wrong?"

"No!" All the color drained from Alek's face, which didn't help to ease his mind.

"If you're being threatened, you know you can tell me. We can come up with a plan-"

"No one is threatening me, Dylan." Alek rolled his eyes. "And even if they were, I'm more than capable of handling it-"

"But you would tell me about it, wouldn't you?" Dylan asked.

"Of course I would. Don't be ridiculous."

"So why can't you tell me where you're going?"

He winced again. "...Because it's a surprise?"

Dylan blinked. "What."

"I really can't tell you any more than that," he said. "But I promise you'll know everything in... a month or so."

His jaw dropped. "Abarking month?!" He cried.

"It'll be worth it, I promise." Alek gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and, while Dylan was distracted, scurried off.

"Oi! Alek!" He called after him, but the boy was gone.

Dylan groaned. Barking stupid princes.

---

It was three days before Alek once again slipped out of the apartment without telling him why, undoubtedly off to do more work on his "surprise". It was dead annoying, the way he wouldn't say anything about it, no matter how much Dylan pestered him.

But if Alek wouldn't talk, perhaps his closest confidant would. Well, closest confidant besides Dylan.

About most things.

Surprises apparently not included.

Dylan sat down cross-legged on the floor and held up a slice of fresh tomato. "Bovril," he said slowly. "If you tell me everything you know about Alek's little surprise, you get a treat."

The beastie sniffed the tomato curiously, but Dylan pulled it away before Bovril could take a bite.

"Information first, treat second."

Bovril hmphed a little, its ears flicking back. It looked up at him and said "Correspondence."

"Aye, good beastie! What else do you know?"

In Volger's voice, Bovril said "This is a Fool's Errand."

Dylan narrowed his eyes. Either Volger had said that about whatever this surprise was, or he had said that at literally any other time and Bovril was cranky that he wasn't giving it a treat. It was hard to tell- Volger wasn't very excited about most of Alek's ideas.

"One more time, beastie, and then you get the tomato."

"Vicennial," the creature said, though Dylan didn't know what in blazes that meant. Was it a place?

Still, he'd promised Bovril the treat, so he handed the tomato slice over. The creature sniffed it a few times for good measure, and then tore into the vegetable, spilling fresh tomato juice all over the tile floor.

Brilliant. Another barking mess.

---

Dylan had to admit that after nearly five years of living together, Alek had become a halfway decent cook. At least he wasn't throwing everything into a pot like he was preparing military rations anymore.

Dinner that night was a mix of roasted vegetables with an attempt at the roast meat commonly sold on sticks by street vendors. Except they didn't have sticks, so it was just tiny pieces of meat that reminded Dylan once more of military rations.

Could be worse, he supposed. Could be stew again.

Their dinner conversation was easy, familiar; telling each other about their day, making plans for the next. It was when Alek was telling a story about nearly getting run over by a horse ("yes, a real, unfabricated horse, right next to Parliament, can you believe it, Dylan?") that his ears perked up.

"I thought you were at the zoo today," Dylan said, and he saw Alek wince. Barking Spiders, here we go again. "Why in blazes were you near Parliament?"

Alek leaned back in his chair. "I can't tell you," he said, though he didn't look at all sorry about it.

"I seem to remember you promising not to keep secrets from me," Dylan said, pointing his fork at him across the table.

"And I told you that this is a surprise," Alek said, annoyingly unbothered by his accusation. "Surprises are different than secrets."

"Not that much different," he grumbled, and shoved a piece of broccoli in his mouth.

Alek crossed his arms, the expression on his face shifting from bemused to something much more serious and sincere. "I made the no secrets rule back then because I was tired of people I cared about not trusting me enough to tell me the truth," Alek said. "Surprises are different. I'm not telling you because I don't trust you with the information, I'm not telling you because I know you, and I know you'll enjoy this thing that I'm working on more if you don't know about it ahead of time."

Damn. It was a good answer, and one that it was hard to be mad at him for.

Dylan sighed and poked at his vegetables again. "I just wish you wouldn't be so smug about it, is all," he said. "It's irritating."

"I'm not trying to be smug," Alek said, cracking a small smile. "But I'll take that into consideration.

---

Alek had asked if maybe the two of them could go for a walk before getting dinner somewhere in town, and Dylan was never one to turn down a culinary adventure. But normally Alek would tell him what kind of food they were getting. It wasn't until they were fifteen minutes into their walk that Dylan realized he didn't have the faintest idea what the plan actually was.

"Where are we going?" Dylan asked.

Alek grinned. "It's a surprise."

Dylan groaned and smacked him on the shoulder. "You and your blasted surprises! We should add a clause to our agreement-"

"It's a verbal agreement, liebe, you can't add clauses to it."

"Then we'll make a new one! No secrets, no lying, and no barking surprises!"

Alek chuckled. "Of course. Although I'd rather wait until you see what I've been working on before we start adding amendments."

He grumbled again as they trudged through town. Well, Dylan trudged. Alek seemed unbothered.

Of course he was.

It was a nice day for a walk, at least. The weather was holding up for the first time in a long while. It made it difficult for Dylan to stay grumpy, but he was too good at holding a grudge for a little sunshine and a nice breeze to stop him.

"I hope you don't mind if we make a brief stop?" Alek asked.

"Aye, why not," Dylan said with an exasperated sigh. "Even if I did mind, it's a wee bit late for that."

"Right." Alek immediately steered them both towards a hotel. It wasn't a glamorous building by any stretch of the imagination, a three-story building made of brick and plaster. The curtains behind most of the windows were drawn, and it wasn't quite dark enough outside for the lights inside to peel through.

Alek walked right in, giving the doorman a cheerful wave and receiving a friendly nod in return. Though really, Dylan had no reason to be surprised by that. People liked Alek everywhere he went. It had been an extremely useful skill to them on multiple assignments, though Alek had never figured out how to use it intentionally.

"What are we doing here?" Dylan asked. "If you say 'it's a surprise' I swear I'll gut you."

"I have a project here. I need to check on its progress," Alek said. "It's just in the ballroom though, it won't take long. Ah, here we go!"

They reached a set of double doors at the end of a hallway. Alek pushed them open slowly, carefully, as though he was trying not to let the hinges squeak.

The room was pitch black, the light from the doorway barely illuminating the floor in front of them. Dylan squinted into the darkness, trying to make out what was so blasted important about this place that they had to stop here before dinner.

"Let's get some lights on, shall we?" Alek said, and he could hear the grin in his voice. Before he had time to process what that meant, Alek flipped a switch.

There was a ballroom full of people.

"SURPRISE!!" Everyone shouted.

Dylan staggered back a step, a little bit startled, but eased up when the cheering started. The crowd was entirely made upof his friends and family. A nearby table had refreshments laid out (and, most excitingly, a massive cake). Balloons scattered around the room, and from the sheer number of them, it must have taken hours to inflate them all. A banner tacked up on the wall read "HAPPY 20TH BIRTHDAY!" in dark blue, hand-painted letters. It was still early, his birthday wasn't for another week, but Dylan realized with a start that that had been part of the secret, too. He hadn't even started thinking about his birthday yet, let alone what Alek was going to do about it.

"I hope you'll forgive my sneaking around now," Alek said, gently nudging him with his elbow. "It took all my best diplomacy skills to get everyone here."

When Alek said everyone, he meant everyone. Lilit was chatting with Dr. Barlow and the two lorises near the punch bowl. Newkirk, who had been hanging about with some of his fellow soldiers from the Leviathan, was now cornered by some of Alek and Dylan's new friends from the Zoological Society (and, given the look on his face, he was probably getting a lecture about genetics that he absolutely had not signed up for). One of Dylan's younger cousins had managed to put a party hat on Count Volger and appeared to be hounding the man for an impromptu fencing lesson.

But the biggest surprise, by far, was seeing Jaspert amongst the crowd, when he was supposed to be on board the Minotaur somewhere over Australia.

Dylan let out an excited yelp and charged him, sweeping his older brother into a hug. "What are you doing here?!" Dylan cried.

"Oh come off it," Jaspert said with a laugh, tousling his hair. "You think I'd miss my favorite brother's twentieth birthday party?"

"I'm your only brother, you ninny." Still, the hug felt nice. He hadn't seen Jaspert in ages. "How in blazes did you get here?! And why did they let you off the ship?"

Jaspert nodded over at Alek. "You'll have to ask him. He's the one who negotiated with the captain for shore leave in London."

"The Admiralty owed me a favor," Alek said simply, trying to be modest.

Dylan remembered that job. It had been incredibly dangerous and extremely top-secret. He'd called in that favor for this?

"Thank you," Dylan said, unable to find the words to say anything more.

Alek smiled. He knew how important this was to him. He always did.

---

Unsurprisingly, the party went on late into the night. By the time most of the guests had left the hotel, leaving just the two of them to make their way back to the apartment, the sun had long since set and was threatening to return in a few short hours.

"So," Alek started, trying very hard to seem casual but failing completely. "Do you still want to add 'no surprises' to our agreement?"

He was nervous. He was trying so hard not to be, but Dylan could see right through him. Even before he'd promised not to lie to Dylan, he hadn't been any good at it.

"Well. It was pure dead annoying," Dylan said slowly. "Trying to figure out what you knew that I didn't."

"You could have pretended you didn't know," Alek offered, knowing full well that Dylan could not have done that. It was their business to know things, turning that off was difficult.

"Not barking likely," he said with a laugh, taking Alek's hand as they walked.

"Ah." He relaxed at the physical contact, probably realizing that Dylan wasn't actually upset with him.

"We can keep surprises," Dylan conceded. "But you have to get much, much better at keeping me from finding out about them."

"Deal."

#dalek week 2023 #leviathan series #leviathan trilogy #prince alek #dylan sharp #this one got away from me!! but i had a good time writing it

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