i would have.

[Katherine Bellamonte] There is a small part of her that cannot help but provoke the stares, the deliberate brush of her dress hem against a stranger's leg; the brush of her bare elbow against a young man's forearm that zaps him like a small volt of electricity just raced through his system, leaving his hair on end and his body stilling for just a moment as he feels the woman in white move on past him. It's a game, it's a predator's game to play possum with the grazing herd and mingle with them, and in this case dance with them.

Idly let them feel her rage as it brushes against them like blasts of heat from a furnace the further the moon slipped toward half full.

But as partial as she may be to the taunting of the beasts, she does not dance for them at all. She is dancing with her eyes closed for a start and her arms raised above her head, rolling her body with the motion of the beat. It's not a deliberate seduction, she is not drawing any man in with coy, tossed-hair over the shoulder glances and yet there is something quite --

uninhibited.free.joyful

-- about the way she dances.

[Danicka Musil] It takes no time at all to decide, sometimes. The impulse goes through unfiltered, unhindered, unchecked, and becomes action. There are few points in her life Danicka can look back on and say that she did not recognize the moment when she could have paused and turned around, walked away instead of stepping forward. Years ago she made a choice, and it came long and quiet minutes before she guided a cold but somewhat familiar hand to the zipper of her dress. Not quite that long ago she made a choice before she even put on a certain white dress of her own, hours before she picked up Gabriella, hours before she danced with her or bought her a drink.

The decision tonight was not made before she came out, was not made at the doorway. It is made when the impulse hits her, when she has been watching Katherine for a few moments only. Danicka can get close to her. Closer than a brush, closer than a few feet away, and doesn't feel cowed. It isn't because Katherine is a woman; it's because weak as she may feel when she is around certain Garou, she is stronger still than the average mortal. She remembers this girl when she was fourteen, unChanged but still vibrant with that potential.

Then she's dancing in Katherine's space, not near her but with her. She's there when Katherine opens her eyes.

[Katherine Bellamonte] Katherine at fourteen was such a different creature.

That is not to say that this girl who is almost a woman but not quite, no matter that she can fill out her dress nicely in all the particular places to make it contoured and snug, is not that Katherine Bellamonte that Danicka had known such a long time ago but that the changes are prominent. Katherine now is like a hardened crystal. Beautiful to admire and easily desired but cold to the touch, but difficult to see for anything but a gem worth viewing from afar.

When she had last known her Katherine was still that elegant, witty daughter of Rosalie d'Albret with a rapier for a tongue and such clever, witty retorts to whatsoever people said of (or quite often to) her but there was also such an air of livery to her with her long golden hair and tall, slightly awkward frame. Such a sense of expected excellence. The world would most certainly bow before her dainty shoes, and Katherine Bellamonte would be a name remembered for many years to come. The arrogant assurance hadn't quite matured then, the death of her father hadn't splintered her family yet.

Edward was still just a boy; and their Uncle a distant figure in another city, not yet a figure of gossip, the source of a son's rage and a daughter's catalyst to change.

She laughed more, the Katherine of then.

--

The Katherine of now opens her eyes and Danicka can see in how dark they are that she is not the same girl she'd once known. This woman is sharper, more refined. Her maturity settling into the lines of her face, the curves of her body. But as does her growth as a human, her inner monster swells too. There is power to be harnessed yet.

Recognition. "Danicka." She mouths her name, a flash of teeth gleaming white and (too) sharp in the flare of roving lights.

[Danicka Musil] Comparing Katherine then to Katherine now is not unlike comparing Gabbie then to Gabbie now. Neither of them were women yet, not even young women. Danicka herself was still in her teens as well but might as well have been an adult, for all the poise she had and authority she wielded. She is the one who seems most unchanged by time. She has not lost a parent, has not been half-raised by a tyrant, as far as they know. They never knew very much about her at all, not when they were children. And by the time they got older? They wouldn't have needed to care.

She has also not become a Garou, which only matters because then Katherine would have to watch herself even more carefully around her. The Garou, see, they look to her. They look up to her. They need certain things from her that Kinfolk do not, that mortals would never think to ask. She must be a certain woman around them, and Danicka is not in that group. Danicka is Kin to her pack's Beta, was servant to Fangs, and for some reason -- maybe the martini -- her approach does not make Katherine immediately tense up.

Instead she smiles. In the dark, Katherine glows, all gold and white. Even her eyes seem to gleam. Danicka is different; no less striking, but her dress is dark and she does not slap fear into the hearts of those around her. She is not as tall as Katherine, even barefooted: at the moment she is looking up a good three inches in order to meet Katherine's eyes, but only for a moment before her gaze drops somewhat deferentially to her bared shoulder.

In that moment, though, she smiles back and mouths: Katherine.

When her eyes drop, she is dancing again. She seems to want nothing of her other than some sort of silent permission to dance there with her, and so that is all she takes: the nearness, though they are not yet touching.

[Katherine Bellamonte] She doesn't seem to want anything from Danicka either, it would seem. While she neither shies away or pushes deeper into the personal space of the Kinwoman to her Beta, she is conscience of her in a manner she was not before. When Katherine watches her dancing beside her she does not do it in a manner suggestive of desire, there is no overt sensuality in her eyes as she moves beside the woman who would be her lesser in one world and a woman perhaps her equal in mortal society in another.

Katherine can smile at Danicka here because she is not Katherine Bellamonte, daughter of Kings and sister to an Alpha, she can be Katherine in this space as much as she is capable -- the not yet legal child of a frenchwoman and an american boy. One song ends, mixing into the next and the Silver Fang, her skin glowing with exertion and touched with the spice of sweat invades Danicka's personal space directly.

Her palm warm on a wrist, her mouth bending to an ear.

"Come and take a drink with me."

That is all that she says, and the physical contact is so brief before its gone, and the golden Silver Fang is walking away, cutting a swath through the dancers toward the bar.

[Danicka Musil] In mortal society? In terms of wealth, Katherine would outclass Danicka. In other terms, she's not quite Danicka's equal. Danicka is older, but that may be the only step up she has in the eyes of human beings. They are both relatively wealthy, they live in nice places, they drive fancy cars. In the society that matters, though? Danicka's never going to be her equal. Danicka is never going to be closer to Katherine's status than a handmaid to a countess, and from all appearances, she lives quite comfortably with that fact.

She may even believe that's how it should be. It doesn't stop her from dancing.

The touch, however, does stop her. Danicka slows again, as she did when she first saw Katherine across the dancefloor, as though her body's pace needed to match her mind's in a moment of consideration. She opens her eyes slowly and in the body-heat-warmed air she doesn't feel shocked by the breath on her earlobe. Come, she says, her hand on a joint that could be snapped with the right twist, close to a pressure point that could induce pain fierce enough to punish if Danicka said No.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Danicka doesn't say no. She nods, a bit breathless, and her wrist is returned to her. She follows, though, and when she gets to the bar with Katherine all she says is: "Bottle of water, please? Thanks," as it is handed over nearly immediately. Then the cap is off, twisting with a snap, and she's chugging with all the eagerness of someone who has been dancing without a break for...quite some time.

[Katherine Bellamonte] Katherine is leaning her weight against the bar like a satiated lioness might drape herself along a thick tree-branch out on the Serengeti after she has been hunting. The white sheath of silk that the Philodox wears is blanketed against her dance-warm form and she turns to place her hand around the stem of her glass as it is placed on the bar before her; traces of liquid leaving a ring on the napkin beneath it as she picks it up and sips from it, idly surveying the dance floor.

"How often do you come to these places?" She doesn't shout to be heard, the music is not quite deafening, a pleasant rumble of bass vibrates the floor however and she can feel it through her toes all the way to the roots of her hair. Katherine's pale eyes turn on Danicka.

[Danicka Musil] What's a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?

Danicka doesn't go for a stool. She stands out of the way, leaning her back against the edge of the bar rather than her forearms, so her head doesn't have to turn quite as far or as tightly for her to look at Katherine. She can look at Katherine more easily than most Garou, ones with Rage that high; maybe it has something to do with the fact that she's familiar with her, she remembers her when she was young. Something like that. She's not quite as afraid of her because she comes from somewhere, she's not just a monster out of the dark.

She laughs and shrugs one slim, pale shoulder. "Every once in awhile. I like to dance," she offers, sharing something about herself that, in the end, is rather innocuous, not terribly significant. She can't go back on it, though, now that it's said. She can't lie later and say she doesn't like to dance. What if Katherine tells someone? What if she tells someone that she likes to dance and someone asks? The opportunity to say that she's not very into dancing is gone, far and long gone. It's more meaningful than it seems.

Her smile grows a bit more as she takes another long drink of water. "What about you? I didn't see you out there long." She steps closer, so she doesn't have to shout, or hope her lips are read.

Waiting for you, of course.

[Katherine Bellamonte] It's easy enough not to feel afraid of someone who looked the way Katherine did.

Oh, sure she was intimidating in a very human way because she was tall and elegant in stature. Because she was (let's not deny it) a beautiful woman to look at by most people's standards. She was tall and leggy and her body had curves in all the places that made men suck their breath in through their teeth and fantasize about mustering the courage to speak to her.

To fantasize about pulling her dress from her hips.
To wonder what kind of noises they could pull from between those lips.

Danicka isn't outright frightened of Katherine because she is yet to see her as anything other than a vaguely imposing woman from a highly regarded family line. A woman with wealth and power, who was more than a little domineering toward her younger sibling and seemed a little too close to her other.

She likes to dance, she laughs and Katherine merely sips from her drink, her expression neither one thing or another. She swallows, and the closer Danicka gets to Katherine, the easier it is to imagine what being afraid of her might just feel like, if the subtle emanation of her Rage were any indication, that is. Katherine turns her face, her hair falls against her cheek, artistically swept and tamed so that it lay like a curved fringe over one eye.

"Some people drive fast cars for pleasure, I come to night clubs and pretend to be someone else."

[Danicka Musil] Most Garou Danicka has been around have not shown any other form but their human one to her. She has not had to chase lupus-formed werewolves around and she has not joined in battles the way that some other Kinfolk have. It's hard to even picture her with a gun in hand, without a certain fetish for a woman in a skimpy dress holding a large firearm. Danicka has the somewhat tight, close-fitting dress right now, but no AK-47.

In the Brotherhood some time ago, she had watched Edward hang himself on Katherine, touch her fondly, lean on her closer than most siblings could stand, and Katherine had all but melted, all but purred, yet from at least one of them Danicka had not gotten any feeling of more than that, of worse than just a deep closeness between brother and sister not entirely in keeping with North American standards of physical affection between family members. She isn't thinking about that right now any more than she is thinking about the way she spent the earlier part of her evening, sitting in a wing-backed chair by the fire at that same pub, trying to figure out how she felt about everything she knew.

Everything she could see, that most people couldn't understand themselves.

"Who are you pretending to be?" she says with a wry smile. "A commoner?" Her eyebrows shoot up conspiratorially. "A spy?"

[Katherine Bellamonte] "Oh," Katherine Bellamonte's eyebrows shoot upward and she lifts a wrist with its delicate chain-link bracelet attached to flick so idly as if the question merited her deep and proper focus. "I could never pretend to be a commoner, Danicka."

Katherine's laugh is quiet, almost silent but for the way her lips part to reveal it.

"But I find that I," she lowers her gaze to stir the toothpick and olive around her glass. A deep, partially held sigh escapes her. "I find that the longer I play at being just a girl, the easier it is to return and be myself again. Properly.."

[Danicka Musil] "No," Danicka says slowly, thoughtfully, the word all but purring out of her lips as she tips her head thoughtfully to one side, "I don't suppose you could."

They still have to stand reasonably close in order to speak without shouting over the heavy music playing through the club. Danicka does not seem to mind the contact, the way her slightly smaller-framed body aligns with Katherine's even if they don't quite cleave or cling to one another. She leans in so that Katherine stays tall, stays composed, does not look like she is bending her ear to...one of Danicka's level.

Not only Kinfolk, but Shadow Lord Kinfolk.

Danicka drinks her water, hydrating rather than losing herself, and making no mention or question of the fact that Katherine is not quite old enough to be given martinis. Oh well. Who would say no to her? She regards her for a moment without saying anything, then takes a breath: "...Do you want to go somewhere else? Maybe where we don't have to, you know, yell?"

[Katherine Bellamonte] Katherine looks at Danicka side-long, there is a lengthy enough silence that supposes she is weighing the kinswoman's suggestion up for whatever reason her slightly inebriated brain has deigned it requires it for.

"...No." She says quite evenly after a pause, with her drink held against her chest and her lashes colored a strikingly bold black. "I don't want to leave here just yet." Was there a hint of resentment in the Silver Fang's tone, then? Some fear that Danicka would ask something of her she would be wholly incapable as Katherine in any other circumstance to refuse.

She could attempt to define it; make her response less a flat refusal and closer to something almost friendly but she doesn't -- try -- that is. She stares at Danicka for another minute with a faintly furrowed brow before turning her face away.

Some who knew her better might have suggested she was arguing with her inner voice.

[Lukas] The door to the men's room opens. Lukas comes out, stepping sideways to let a sloppy-drunk twenty-something in. His collar is undone, as well as the top two buttons of his shirt. He rebuttons one of them, rakes his fingers back through his hair, then heads for the bar.

A few minutes later a girl, pretty, darkhaired, also emerges from the men's room: hair hastily redone, makeup hastily touched-up.

[Sam Modine] The music thumps hard at him the moment he enters. He's what can only be described as completely nined out. His eyes scan the darkness, watching the bodies coalesce and split under strobe for a few moments before heading through to find somewhere he might take a drink of something, wear down those rough edges if only for a few minutes.

atherine's raving had done little to convince him on the place's merits but on a whim he's arrived. All Rage. All breeding.

All a search for something new. Or at the very least, something interesting.

[Danicka Musil] Body language is everything, when you're dealing with Garou. That's a primary form of communication when they wear the right skin, all ear-twitches and tongue-lolls and tail-wags. The sounds matter, too, but the words not as much. Tone, timbre, duration. A growl isn't a snarl, a sneer isn't a smirk, a lift of the eyebrows can say a thousand things, none of which can be accurately described in the languages mortals have been building up and using since they had to find a single set of sounds to mean fire or stone.

And Danicka is better than most human beings at reading these signals, especially when she is dealing with the monsters that have made up her life. One could say her very survival has depended on it, but that would be assuming. She doesn't look haunted, as some Kin. She doesn't have their scars.

She has, instead, a warm and easy smile for Katherine Bellamonte, accepting. She reaches out and touches her arm, the backs of her knuckles grazing the Silver Fang's bicep. "Let's dance more, then. I need..." She laughs, as though she has no idea what she was going to say there, and just shakes her head, jerking it towards the floor. "Come on."

[Katherine Bellamonte] Of course, it's at the bar (or rather one end of it) that Katherine and Danicka are both currently leaning against. One clad in a short red dress and the other in pristine white, the latter dress strapless and tight across the Silver Fang's lean thighs. Katherine perhaps pinpoints the thrum of fresh Rage in the crowded club sooner than Danicka.

She turns her head, seeking out the source of the sudden lift in tension.

That is, until Danicka touches her arm and the muscles in her shoulders tighten as though she contemplated back-handing the girl across the bar proper for that impropriety. She doesn't do anything so rash but her eyes do flick down to where the hand touched her skin and dart to scan the smile set aside for her and her alone. Something must reassure Katherine enough that she eases her hold on her martini glass, turns and sets it down.

Come on

The Shadow Lord Kinfolk says, and Katherine smiles with the condescension of a long-nagged mother to an over-eager child. "Very well." She moves after Danicka, and lo and behold if the dancers don't part like the sea for her.

[Lukas] When there's one, there's many. Trademark of this pack. And when Lukas gets to the bar, he's surprised, but only briefly, to see Sam already there.

The darkhaired ahroun comes up next to the fair. They are nearly evenly matched for height; Sam perhaps a little swifter and sturdier, Lukas a little more powerfully built. They are like a chiaroscuro, contrasting and complementing.

"Doesn't seem like your kind of place," Lukas mentions. And then, to the bartender, "I'll get an afterburn."

While the tender prepares the shooter, Lukas turns, his attention unavoidably drawn by Katherine's presence. The Ahroun looks over his shoulder a moment -- then he spots the Fang, and the corner of his mouth turns up.

"It does seem like her sort of place, though," he adds, and tips his chin up at the Philodox.

[Sam Modine] "She told me about it."

The other full moon shrugs, not managing to look at his Beta. "I was out of line the other night." His neck cranes up as he frowns his whole drink. Quickly his glass is tapped and the bartender given explicit if not vocal directions to fill it again. The nape of his neck still stands exposed, long enough the other can see it before disappearing below his collar. Fingers scratch lightly at the small goatee growing just on his chin and he finally turns his back on the bar for just a moment to lean up against it.

"How can they stand the noise?" He asks out loud to the ether. The unspoken they not being the two women on the dancefloor but the entire writhing mass of humanity in the darkness and bass beats.

[Danicka Musil] Strangely, without a drop of alcohol in her system or a taste of it on her breathe, without some strange bolstering effect, she doesn't seem afraid when Katherine looks at her like that. She watches her look around, turning her head, but doesn't follow the other woman's eyes down the bar. She senses it. Not who, not even necessarily what, but (like a child) she won't look, she won't meet its eyes.

She follows Katherine out onto the dance floor again instead, a blood and copper shadow to Katherine's pearl and gold. Her steps aren't the steps of an eager child that mommy has finally agreed to take out; she walks as she always does, long and confident strides in heels that take her up higher than where she stands naturally. She dances in three inch heels.

There is something wrong with her.

[Katherine Bellamonte] They dance now like a pair of college girls who have gone out for a good time on a Saturday night -- that being, the Silver Fang with more than a few drinks burning through her system takes the Kinfolk's hand in her own and uses it to lead her around the dance-floor proper -- Katherine drops to her knees and lets Danicka walk around her form with a slight smile curving her lips before she raises herself back upright fluidly, and turns a small circle, raising Danicka's arm up quite high considering Katherine's height was above the darker girl's.

However -- they are united so definitely this pack that as surely as Lukas and Sam's eyes track her down -- she spies them in the midst of sliding her fingers deep into her fair hair and gyrating to the rhythm of the beat. Something seems to pass through the Silver Fang then, she slows the speed of her movements, a slow blink in her pack-mate's general direction.

She does not require speech to ask it, her eyes do it quite well for her: what are you doing here?

[Lukas] I was out of line, and Lukas glances over, briefly, his eyes alert and aware, considering.

Then, gently: "It's in the past, Sam."

Simple as that. Then the bartender serves up his drink and he turns back to look at it, watching while the tender sets it alight. Lukas lets it burn for only a split-second before blowing it out and shooting it back.

After, he leaves a twenty under the emptied glass, turning his back to the bar now to watch the surging tides of dancers on the floor. Absently, he scratches an itch on his solar plexus with the side of his thumb. "They like the rhythm," he replies. "They're social animals, but their society has turned cold on them. This reminds them."

A shrug, one shoulder lifting and falling. It tugs the fresh scar on his body, the line of pale and uneven flesh that knits his skin to the muscle beneath, unmoving. It reminds him that it's there: for now, and for always. Where'd you get this? the girl had asked in the bathroom, her back to the stall door, her hands reaching beneath his opened shirt to move over his skin, trace the imperfection. Shut up and fuck, he'd said, smiling; but he'd taken her hand from his side and pinned it to the door, and there had been a flash of something cold in his eyes. He'd meant it.

"You'll get used to the music," he adds. "You might even learn to like it." A nod up. "She clearly does."

Neither of them have mentioned Danicka at all. Perhaps that's deliberate.

[Sam Modine] It's really not very hard to pick Katherine out in a crowd. She caries nearly as much of luna's touch as either of them and so really, a crowd is hard pressed to form around her. She's breathtaking to be sure, a true flame amidst Christmas lights and her insistence on white is a constant draw to exactly where she is. She speaks but her lips don't move, she barely even bothers to look.

She doesn't need to.

Maybe. Something's feathers ruffle Sam's voice across the totem link. I just came to see what the fuss was about.

"Yeah," He replies to the man standing beside him. "She does." It doesn't take quite so much for any of them to pick out the little nuances in each other. they're bound by more than oaths, more than a common benefactor. Their very essences split and fused together with a thousand thousand birds of prey.

[Danicka Musil] Would she have jerked her hand out of Katherine's if she were mortal, afraid of that cold beauty as though it would burn her? She doesn't. Danicka is, in terms of age, past college. She has a little more self-confidence than most sophomores, a little more self-possession than a fresh graduate, and more cynicism than anyone who has ever had a mortarboard clapped down on their skull and been told that they were going to inherit the earth. As before, it doesn't stop her from dancing, or from reaching out to people. Certain people.

She can't help it, you might say. Social animals is what Lukas says, across the room and over by the bar and out of earshot. I need... she'd said, and never finished telling her what it is she needs, or thinks she needs.

Maybe it's this; she takes the guidance Katherine gives her in stride, doesn't stop dancing when she circles her. Another pair and it might be predatory; Danicka manages to make it seem worshipful even though the Fang is the one on her knees, the Fang is the one inebriated, the Fang is the one who is not legal to be drinking but has had more than a couple of martinis tonight. Danicka is the one, though, who seems vulnerable next to her...or as vulnerable as a woman in a red dress can seem.

Her arm is lifted up, and to keep herself from resisting the extension, she steps forward and the front of her body touches the front of Katherine's, almost as if she is reaching, stretching out, even while her hips are still moving. Her eyes travel down Katherine's side, her free hand coming to rest on the other woman's waist while that woman looks beyond her, looks at the men who are bound to each other and to the Bellamonte.

And not to the woman they are each pretending isn't there.

[Lukas] I came to get laid, Lukas says, blandly. You?

There's humor in him, somewhere: sometimes droll, sometimes dry, sometimes genuine and unabashed. His packmates see it; but few others.

Then he turns his attention from the dance floor again, looks at Sam: his eyes direct and unflinching.

"What do you see in her?" he asks, and he's not talking about Katherine anymore.

[Sam Modine] It's been obvious thusfar they've both been avoiding the same subject. A subject who is currently writhing to heavy rhythms on another of their packmates. "She's beautiful, Lukas." The Modi's head tips forward as if to evidence the fact. "She's smart too, and kind of funny." He shrugs.

"She's been good to me. Makes me happy I guess." He doesn't go on any further for few seconds, his words sinking down into the second man's mind perhaps before he finishes. The next comes over the totem link, Sam's voice had been unprepared for the sheer volume of the place but he makes up for it this way, clear as a bell. I can't quite get my mind away from her.

It certainly hasn't helped one might think that they've seen each other twice today, no matter how briefly.

[Lukas] Lukas listens. He doesn't dismiss Sam's qualifications as juvenile, or over-idealistic. He doesn't dismiss Sam at all. But when Sam's finished, Lukas is quiet for a while. He looks away; he frowns at the girls on the dance floor, and then he frowns at the kin and the Garou on the dance floor.

And he turns back.

"The first time I met Danička," he says, "I asked if she was propositioning me. I wasn't serious, and I didn't even know about her and you, then. But she looked at me, Sam, like she was trying to figure out what I wanted her to say. I've seen that look in her eyes more than once since. Like she was trying to figure me out, so she could react appropriately -- and survive.

"My point is: does it occur to you that the woman you like, that's good to you, that's smart and pretty and clever, that makes you happy, is doing all these things because that's what you want of her? That all you're tumbling head over heels over is an exceptionally good act?"

[Katherine Bellamonte] It's almost amusing, or at the very least, the amusement is clear in their Philodox's mental voice as it comes back across the totem link like whiplash; only it is not quite painful as verging on playful: If you insist on discussing this, perhaps do it at a time when the subject does not have her hand on my hip?

Katherine's attention wavers; snaps back to Danicka and she offers the other women the benefit of a secretive smile; leans toward her with the slight rounding of her shoulders that speaks of their difference in height.

"We are being observed by some familiar faces."

There is, in the manner that Katherine leans back and tilts her chin upward, loosening her hands so that she can crook both arms above her head and toss her long hair from around her face.

[Sam Modine] "Maybe i'm naive." His mouth twists around in a rather familiar grimace. Maybe he likes being naive. "If she's the proof that whatI've been told all along about you and yours is true? That you can't be trusted?" The little insight is swallowed by his own silence when Sam turns back toward the bar and drains another drink, and the second the tender had been either gracious or afraid enough to set up.

"Then what should I think of you brother?"

The look on his face is nothing is not serious, concerned and all at once upon a crossroads. For the time being though he merely sits back again and watches the two women, smiling almost unconsciously at the unspoken communication from their packmate.

[Lukas] "If I couldn't be trusted," Lukas says, flatly, "I would have fucked her tonight."

[Danicka Musil] One hand is indeed on Katherine's hip. The other began sliding down a moment ago from the Half-Moon's hand, fingertips tracing over the veins in her wrist, fingernails stroking softly down the inside of her forearm before finally, mercifully, that touch falls away. Only for a moment, though. Katherine's statement to her packmates, unheard by anyone but her packmates, is only half-true shortly after she finishes it, because Danicka no longer has her hand on her hip.

She has both hands on her hips, firmly but not holding Katherine in place.

Hair and skin and warm air touch Danicka's face then, Danicka who has been feeling out Katherine and the music and her own movement through touch alone since her arm was lifted up. She opens her eyes, cocks her head to listen, then turns and looks at Katherine. She blinks once, then turns her head over her shoulder. There's tension in her body, mild as it may be, even before she sees the two men at the bar, which is better lit than the rest of the nightclub.

The look only lasts a moment. She turns back to Katherine, one corner of her lips curving upward in a wry, almost mischevious smile. Danicka shakes her head a little and rolls her hips to the quickened beat the song takes, seeming amused. "Looks like they're more interested in each other," she says, leaning up on her toes to say this to the woman she's dancing with in a way that has earned them stares from unfamiliar faces, as well.

[Sam Modine] "You've got to stop doing that." His own reply is a thing of pity. He turns to one side toward the man providing their drinks, sliding another twenty across the bar, intent evidently on spending what's left of the month's food money on a single night of debauchery.

"I said keep them coming!" He booms to the target of his ire.

"You talk down to me like i'm some kind of tool you get to use and them throw into storage when you're done." He turns to face Lukas, eye to eye this time at the bar. "I'm not."

[Katherine Bellamonte] There are a great many things which separate Katherine and Gabriella Bellamonte. These do not necessary begin at species and do not finish with their ages. But in the fact of their development sexually -- they are almost identical. Both girls had suffered almost painfully sheltered upbringings with the nearest thing to outright sexual context being their parent's displays of affection.

They had been taught to be ladies of the court.

There was never a finishing school for flirtation, not where the Bellamonte girls were concerned and as outdated and unfashionable as naivety on the subject of seduction might have been -- that Danicka means more with her hands on the Silver Fang's hips than simple choreography of dance movement, that her glances and smiles are more than the intimacies of females regarding males -- is entirely misread by Katherine. She does not seek to comprehend why Danicka would lean so close to her body to speak to her, does not find the stares turned in their direction any more unusual than those she typically stirs in every nightclub she has ever visited.

Looks like they're more interested in each other, she says and Katherine cannot resist the delicious irony of the moment. She throws her head back and laughs, a throaty gurgle of genuine amusement.

[Lukas] Lukas gives Sam a look of such disgust, rising to his feet.

"I am speaking to you honestly. You, on the other hand, have accused me of untrustworthiness, disrespect, using you, and god knows what else in your mind. You better watch your words, Sam, because you're treading damn close to insubordination again. You've lost your mind over this woman, and you blame everyone around you for it.

"I'm your packmate. I'm your Beta. I would lay down my life for you. Danička -- look at her, Sam." He jabs a finger in the direction of the women. "You think she's this sweet nice girl who'll love you forever if you can just make her see how much you love her? Look at her, right now. She has no more loyalty to you than a cat in heat does to any of her toms."

He's all but looming over Sam now; catches himself, checks himself abruptly, and straightens.

"I will not vie with you over this woman. I will not argue or fight with you over this woman, or any other. I will stop you if you try to force her, but short of that, she's all yours -- if you think you can hold her. Only I'm telling you: you can't.

"That's my last word on this subject."

[Sam Modine] "Oh my did you misread tha-" He turns though as he's speaking to the other, his voice isn't raised in anger though he has had to turn the volume up over the din. "What the..?" His thick lips rise in the center, turning down simultaneously at the corners.

"Point taken." He shrugs, handing his beta one of the two refilled drinks in front of him, mash whiskey and it smells it. He is own is raised in the other's direction. It's slammed back into his gullet forcefully as though perhaps it may provie a little more clarity as to the events on the dance floor. The glass clinks back on the bar and he speaks once more on the subject.

"Not like I was looking for a mate but... ah jeez." He merely shakes his head and turns back around to point again at the empty glasses. Once the batender, now all too hurried to get ino and out of the two men's presence as quickly as he can is stopped short with a long arm on one shoulder. "What say you just leave that whole bottle?" It isn't the question it sounds through bared teeth.

[Lukas] "If you weren't looking for a mate," Lukas barely pauses to take his shot down, "then why the hell does it bother you when you think about another having her? Help me understand that and I'll worry less that this woman" now she's not Danička or even Danicka anymore, but merely 'this woman', "is turning your head around."

The shotglass clinks down a second after Sam's.

[Danicka Musil] The sad thing is, younger than she is, Gabriella had interpreted it differently. Her denial of Danicka's glancing touches and the soft, warm nuzzling she'd given her had been just as fierce, but some deeper awareness and understanding much closer to the surface than it is in her sister. She does not have Katherine's walls, Katherine's self-protections, Katherine's far more warped vulnerabilities. She has her own, and if it were her being held like this, touched like this, she would not assume the stares were as innocent as the Philodox assumes they are.

Like most Kinfolk, she's already a little more worldly than her Garou counterparts. Not necessarily wise, just...open-eyed to things that others do not want to see, can't see, or see through frosted glass.

Katherine laughs. Danicka's smile may as well have a purr behind it, even as, in that same moment, she's being compared to a cat in heat. Isn't the first time. Won't be the last. At least one person far more important to her than anyone in this room, in this city, has said almost the exact same thing. This time she doesn't have to face it, have it spat in her face or crushed into her body some way. She just smiles because she's made Katherine laugh, and people at the bar get up abruptly and leave because of the pulsing, living fury existening in the area around the two men down the way.

Her hands slide around to Katherine's lower back, she dances closer...

...and looks past Katherine's left arm at that spiraling maelstrom of Rage that so many other people are trying to get away from. If Sam were not focused on his drinking and his Beta, if Lukas were not focused on Sam, if Katherine were not laughing and dancing out of sheer joy in the movement, they might see something. But if they were looking, it probably wouldn't be there.

Her hands, though...they tighten slightly.

[Sam Modine] Sam's voice is often a surprise to anyone who hears it the first time. It's in the higher baritone range, nearly a tenor it's almost too light a thing for his heavy frame. He doesn't squeak or whine, no. His is a crooking thing, something not to be raised lightly. "If I knew that it wouldn't bother me."

He shrugs and turns to pour two more shots out into the bar, trying desperately to keep up with his body's own ability to combat the drink. Another down the hatch and back to just blankly looking at the two of them. "I haven't lost my mind Luke."

[Sam Modine] ((crooking = crooning))

[Lukas] Lukas' hand comes down over the second shotglass before Sam can knock it back.

"I hope so, Sam."

And he lets go the shotglass.

[Katherine Bellamonte] Do you love me, Kitty?
Of course, how is this even a question?

Her brother pulling her onto his lap only days ago. His lips at her neck, her brow, against her lips as if he would demand more of her than was possible to give. Her arms in his hair, against his back out of loyalty, out of some long standing need to offer comfort. Their desires had not been entirely the same. That Katherine later washed her face and stared at her face in the mirror as if searching out the root of her unease. As if pressing fingers against her pink lips would discover the reason why she felt uncomfortable in her own skin that night.

Why she had dreams of her mother with bedcovers stuffed into her mouth to muffle screams of terror that her husband was dead.

That in her dreams there was always her Uncle in a corner with his hand resting on her shoulder.

I'm afraid of the storms, Edward, can I sleep in your bed?
Scaredy Cat.

That her loyalty will forever be linked to memories of her past.

Danicka tightens her grip on Katherine and moves her hands to her lower back. She can feel the heat beneath the white silk, the undeniable strength that lay buried in this woman. Katherine, her attention drawn to her pack-mates, loosely rests a hand on the other woman's shoulder. Lukas? It is concern and question, all as one.

[Sam Modine] "So what about that?" He sawys his head out toward the mass of dancing bodies, only just barely. Another wolf's gesture made so easily in this form it's innate nature to them. "If she comes on to Katherine any harder it's going to get ugly." He shrugs at that point his thoughts sluggishly reorganizing themselves.

"You know what? Let it." Uncharacteristically callous, that, but right now Samuel Modine is on the fast track to liver damage that he'll never have to deal with by twin virtue of superhuman metabolism and a mortality rate not seen in human populations for a thousand years.

The Fenrir pours two more drinks, taking one quickly and turning with the other toward the assembled group. "Pick me one Lukas. I'm going to do something stupid."

[Lukas] Lukas makes a faint sound under his breath, a laugh. "Katherine? She's the Virgin Queen herself. I'd bet she'll die a virgin if it weren't so morbidly possible."

Pick me one, Sam says, and Lukas eyes him a moment as if to determine whether or not the fellow simply wanted to prove a point. Then, abruptly, the Ahroun grins -- the first one all night, and perhaps the first one in a longass time.

"Pick her out yourself. What am I, your pimp?"

[Danicka Musil] And contrary to the possibilities, to the hopes of a few people looking out at them tonight, Danicka does not grab Katherine Bellamonte by the hair, pull her head down, and kiss her in the middle of a nightclub. She goes on dancing, her hands relaxing against the muscle again, that momentary tension unrelated to the familiar motions of hips together and bodies writhing. Well. Unrelated, in that second, to the hips of the white-clad woman, the body of the Silver Fang dancing with her.

Lukas talks like he's above it all, about the rhythm and the darkness and the closeness that the mortals are drawn to. And perhaps it is; he doesn't have look for it the way they do, so long and far removed from that primal beat that guides every heartbeat of every Garou. He has his pack. What do they have?

This.

Danicka closes her eyes for a moment as the song picks up again, as the backbeat rises, and though she hasn't pulled away from Katherine at all there's a difference in the way she's dancing with her. Not the movements, not the intensity of it...but direction. It is no longer for Katherine, the way it has been since she first saw her. She is right up against the other woman, and she is dancing again the way she was when she was alone:

to move.

[Sam Modine] "We sort of-" His eyes open and close his head convulsing back and forth violently as one of the shots finally gets past his natural reflexes. Golden hair flips wildly back and forth. "-ehem. Just went over that." The empty glass is set down and at least for now not replaced with another. "I'm very much bad at it."

His brows narrow.

"Maybe I'm just gonna stand here for a minute and pick one by myself then." Yes, it's happened, half, nearly into the bottle from where they received it. Sam is drunk, and to the point of people getting to tell the story later using clever adjectives to decribe just how drunk he was.

Once they're out of earshot. Of course.

[Lukas] Yeah? -- totemphone. Belatedly.

[Katherine Bellamonte] Danicka has lost herself again to the rhythm. Katherine, not so. She had never truly reclaimed it from the moment she sensed her pack-mates were around her. She is Katherine Bellamonte once again -- concerned not for her own freedom, but that which shackled her to obligation. To her own desire for unyielding power in the Sept.

She dances, but it is not so uninhibited.

What on earth is going on between you two?

[Lukas] Guy talk. Go back to grinding with your hot friend, please. And help Sam pick out a girl to take home tonight. I'd feel unchivalrous.

[Katherine Bellamonte] Absolutely not, if Samuel wishes to solicit some stranger's favor, he can do it himself.

[Lukas] Tsk. Mind the Talons of Horus, Katherine: always aid your packmate in need.

[Danicka Musil] "I'm getting a drink." It's sudden. By god, it's sudden, from a woman who usually seems anything but abrupt. Not always...just usually. She's sliding her knee out from between Katherine's thighs as she says this, steadying herself briefly with her hands on the woman's hips, and walking off the dancefloor, to the opposite end of the bar. It's about as far as she can get from Lukas and Sam while still getting a bartender's attention.

Bottled water. Again.

[Sam Modine] My mom doesn't even call me that. Sam furrows his brow and unsteadily leans into the bar. Also, if you're taking her home, just know you're having sex with everyone I've had sex with.

[Katherine Bellamonte] Need is not his wanting to empty his boxers of desire. Nor yours, for that matter.

Chastises their Packmate, even as Danicka announces her desire for a drink and Katherine -- far from allowing the kinwoman to abandon her on the dance floor merely follows close on her heels as though invited to find her pack-mates to sidle up to both, deliberately wedging her body between them at the bar. Samuel, I have no idea to what you are referring but my urge to slap you stays strong.

[Lukas] You only say that because you've never had any sex, and ergo cannot miss it or need it.

On that note, Lukas straightens up, making room as Katherine sidles up.

Enough of this debauchery. I'm heading back. Sam would appreciate a ride back, Katherine, but he can also flap his arms and fly.

[Sam Modine] The Fenrir slides over at the bar, allowing the Fang to pass between the two Rage machines on either side of her. "I could just kiss you." He breaks the spiritual conversation and nudges her with an elbow. He gets upright again, the action already a little easier than perhaps a minute and a half ago. "Have a drink with me before we go."

[Katherine Bellamonte] No, I've just never yet seen a being worth the fuss you all make of it.

Lukas straightens up as she sidles up and Katherine is deliberate in pushing herself against him as he does in a deliberate action of both greeting and challenge.

[Sam Modine] It really, really is. With that he does give a passing glance to someone he's vowed on the inside not to even look at for right now. Passing though being the operative word he decides to turn his attention back to the middle Bellamonte. "Come on, either close your eyes and pick one or take me home, Kat." Lazy eyelids find her face and laugh, an almost spitting haorse thing. "Okay, just take me home."

[Danicka Musil] A drink means water, bottled water with that nice, safe, satisfying snap of the plastic ring keeping the cap sealed to it. Here they serve water in square bottles that boast of silicates and supposedly that makes it better, nicer, softer, sweeter. It's just water, keeping her from calling a cab -- she hates cabs, she likes dancing -- and keeping her from doing something far more stupid than fucking someone she hardly knows. As if that even counts as stupid.

Danicka doesn't look down the bar at Lukas and Katherine and Sam. Out on the dancefloor one look was probably more than she should have afforded herself, and it didn't help. She doesn't look now. She doesn't flirt with the bartender or go out dancing again. It's far earlier than she'd planned to go get her coat and her car, but she can't be here anymore. It was one thing when the dancing was helping, instead of making it worse, instead of bringing up --

She doesn't pass by Sam and Katherine on the way to the door, and Lukas is already gone by the time she finishes her water and is headed out into the cold, the temperatures dropping back towards the other side of freezing.

Danicka does not handle self-denial well.

[Katherine Bellamonte] "I will endeavor to do that, Samuel." Says his pack Philodox, as she has taken it upon herself to be for quite a few minutes. Even as Lukas excuses himself she is leaning a shoulder heavily against the Fenrir in (perhaps) unconscious support as if she deigned his level of inebriation. "I could never pick out a girl for you Sam," says Katherine softly, with a vaguely affectionate smile. "What good would it do for another to choose a companion for you? What you admire, what you desire can only be yours for the choosing. I could pick every intelligent woman as far as I could find in this bar and none would amount to your liking."

She brushes his hair from his cheek. "The choosing is in more than drunken desire."

[Sam Modine] He stands up to his full height, just over the six and one quarter mark. His body is lean, it's quick and it's deceptively resistant to stress and force. Katherine now finds herself eclipsed by it. He's standing close close enough even the most hardened mortal might have to plumb the very depths of their own soul to fin the courage not to run. She though isn't affected by it, not like they are. His hands take her shoulders, each in one. "That is maybe the most profound thing I've ever heard someone say." She has her affliction and he has his. Neither of them really talk on them but it's the understanding that makes each a piece of the other's refuge from the things that haunt them in the world.

"I don't think I want to drink anymore." His hands have dropped to the pockets of his slacks, the thumbs hang outside as he just gives her a dopey, lopsided grin and asks. "Can we go home?"

[Katherine Bellamonte] Can we go home?

Katherine smiles at her pack-mate as if he has spoken words she has long wished to hear from his lips. Her eyes, those pale orbs of both judgment and disdain on so many occasions are currently filled with nothing more than gentle comprehension; the barest glint of pride at one she considers her own to teach and refine deciding to harken to her wisdom.

"Oh yes, Sam," She gathers his arm to house around her slender waist and hold to. "We can do that."