tapas.

[Liadan] Líadan glances back over her shoulder one final time at the scene she and Danicka are leaving behind. It's when she finally notices Jack, whom she hasn't seen in at least a month. Her eyes aren't on Jack now, but on the man who was supposed to be a cop, the man Alex was telling everyone they needed to run away from. The man looked completely normal to Líadan, nothing out of the ordinary except that he was apparently from Phoenix. Maybe he had some kind of extension to his jurisdiction, maybe the bloody man his partner chased down was just that bad.

Danicka is heading for Tres Sueños. As Líadan steps off the curb to follow, she looks away from what will in moments become a fight. That has nothing to do with her, not now that she's chosen to run away. Not a whole lot she could do, anyway. It was pure luck that she kicked that Black Spiral as its life seeped out from the gun wounds Lonna inflicted.

Líadan tugs her hood lower over her face, protecting her glasses from the faint drizzle. She and Danicka, as usual, make for an odd pair. One beautiful blonde woman, her clothes expensive and every bit as beautiful as she is, walking with confidence in her step. One tall redhead, not terrible on the eyes, but dressed like she should be working the counter of a comic shop. Walking behind Danicka, Líadan feels like a duckling following after its mama. This thought irks her, so she puts on a burst of speed and catches up so the two women walk side by side.

She walks in silence, her thoughts turned back in the direction from which they came.

[Danicka] Hey, come with us, Lee had said to the tattooed ungentleman with a fist to his shoulder. Danicka didn't see this. Danicka is striding across the street with one hand wrapped around the handle of her umbrella, her bouncy gold locks protected from the rain and her bouncy little step deftly avoiding puddles. She doesn't look back. She doesn't pay attention to cops. Those guys are from Phoenix. They aren't the sort of young men that used to come around on days off to help clean out the gutters or chase off the groups of kids loitering around smoking and drinking stolen beers.

They're the sort of cops she learned, well past adolescence, to simply ignore unless spoken to directly. Not her problem. She was just coming out of Pottery Barn. And now she's going to go have tapas. With her roommate. Whatever is happening behind her is not. Her. Problem.

Not unless she makes it so. And she doesn't.

Under the awning over the front door she lowers her umbrella, closes it, and shakes it out slightly. She is oblivious to Lee's irritation with herself for feeling like a baby duck, at least for the time being, and smiles brightly at her roommate when she arrives. The restaurant is a mom-and-pop made good, their success coming before the recession and their client base coming from a decade or more previous. They're doing okay. Danicka gets them a booth, because it is too early for dinner and too late for lunch, and the wait is a mere minute or two before they're led to the table.

"Sometimes I miss New York," she says with a faint sigh, unfolding her napkin over her lap after they've ordered. Lee knows: Danicka just got back from New York.

[Liadan] Under the awning, when Danicka is folding up her umbrella, Líadan is throwing back her hood and unzipping her jacket. Her hair, held loosely at the nape of her neck more the the convenience of keeping it from straying from her hood and getting soaked than for any aesthetic desire, is released.

She shakes off the uneasy feeling she has about leaving Aidan behind to face whatever spooked Alex. Aidan is a grown man, and probably better able to take care of himself than Líadan can claim of herself. When she and Danicka are led to their booth, Líadan shrugs out of her jacket, shoves it an her bag roughly across the seat and against the wall before settling in.

And then Danicka, fresh off a trip to New York, says that sometimes she misses it. Líadan tips her head. “Oh?”

[Danicka] "Mm," says the blonde, shaking her hair gently off her shoulders while they wait for their wine. "Normally when people see the cops chasing some blood-splattered guy down the street they have the good sense to stay out of it. Here it's like... 'ohmigod wowee gee, a chase!'"

She rolls her eyes, leaning back on her side of the boot. She would look fantastic with a cigarette in hand right now. There's no smoking though. She doesn't look like she's craving one, at least. On a few occasions, Lee has seen Danicka smoking those Dunhills of hers out on the balcony, standing in whatever was appropriate for the weather, sometimes with her hair up in a loose, sloppy bun, sometimes down, usually barefoot. After the night they were in the crash in the woods, she did more smoking.

That was some time ago.

[Liadan] “Ah.” Líadan considers this, and wonders what her reaction would have been if, instead of Lonna some nameless woman had been knocked down. Instead of Aidan and Alex, strangers had gone to help the woman to her feet and collect her things. She doesn't know Lonna well, but they have the burden of shared traumatic experience between them. Lonna, after all, has seen Líadan naked. There's a folded up yellow tee atop folded red basketball shorts collecting dust on a corner of Líadan's desk at the apartment. Aidan has become important in a way Líadan can't express. And Alex gave her an excuse to leave her macbook at the studio and upgrade to something bigger, better, and faster at the apartment.

She wonders what it would be like to not care about the lives of total strangers, forgetting that she already knows. She forgets the nights walking with Henri and his crew through foreign cities, walking past alleys where bad things happened to good people, and ignoring it. Getting involved just raised the body count.

“It's weird, though. I knew most of those people. Not the cops or the bloody guy, but the rest of the crowd. I didn't think Chicago was such a small city.”

Líadan studies her roommate with the eye of a professional fashion photographer. Even with an army of stylists and hairdressers and make-up artists at her disposal, she doubts she would ever find such a perfect looking woman in her line of work. Her fingers twitch on the table, curling, wishing for the feel of a camera. She makes a mental note to get something cheap and small to keep in her caryall bag.

[Danicka] They are all strangers to Danicka. Aidan and Alex and Lonna are invisible members of the city to her. Maija is just some urchin, could be male, might be female, she didn't really look and she could not care less than she does if some miniscule shithead stabs a cop and got put in a restraint for it. She remembers quite intimately the nights in New Orleans, walking past the alleyway and hearing a whispering, and a snarling, and a sucking sound, and having Christian tighten his hand on her arm and murmur,

Don't look

and putting her hand on Yelizaveta's shoulder to move her forward faster, whispering

Keep walking.

She remembers. And nothing in her feels pity, or guilt. Those were burned out of her at some point, in situations like that. She remembers watching the girl close the bedroom door down the hall and walk out, shaking slightly and holding her shoes in her hand. She remembers standing at the doorway to her own bedroom, making eye contact briefly. She was sometimes looking at girls her own age. She was sometimes looking at girls with blonde hair and green eyes. She was sometimes looking at the bruises on their arms and the confusion in their eyes and then stepping back into her bedroom, closing the door.

Don't look, she would think to herself, long before she ever met Christian. And keep walking, she would think at the girls, long before she ever met the Sokolovs.

Don't look back.

Danicka lifts her eyebrows, miles from her childhood house, miles from New Orleans, miles and years from any of that but just ten minutes and across the street from the altercation with two Phoenix detectives. "You know them? Who?"

[Liadan] Líadan doesn't know what Danicka is thinking. These two women who have shared a living space for a few months now still know nothing more about each other than they did when they were faceless stranger-friends, guildmates in an online game. They went shopping together sometimes, for things to help Líadan get settled when she first moved to Chicago, and the buy new clothes for her when she came back from Asia with red hair and a couple of Chinese dresses.

And Líadan is reminded of the white shirt she wore that day. She makes a mental note to dig it out of the closet and wear it again. And to find a reason to wear the green halter she bought in Hong Kong, as well.

Brown eyes raise to study the overhead lamp. “Um. The chick that was knocked down, I think her name's Lonna. Jack was there, Giacomo.” Her eyes drop to meet Danicka's. “He's that creep that wrote his number on a napkin at Lavazza when we first met.” Stop. The memory of the barista still stings. Continue. “The beefy guy with the tattoos lives at the Brotherhood by now, I think. I've seen the chick that tried to grab you somewhere before, but I don't remember where. And Aidan, the redhead, he and I are,” the waitress comes to deliver their wine, and she falters, “um. Kin,” she finishes lamely.

[Danicka] They still go on raids together, of course. They have shit to do. Alliance to kill. But they do this from across the apartment, Danicka on her laptop in the bedroom or on the couch, Lee on her computer in her room. They can sometimes hear each other swear aloud. They meet in the kitchen to order pizza or Chinese, get beers or Monsters or Red Bulls. Danicka has her addiction: WoW. She needs nothing more potent.

Occasionally they go shopping.

Or get tapas.

"Oh, that guy," she mutters, when Lee mentions Giacomo. "I saw him at a club one night. He's an ass." She shuts up then, listening to Lee go on about theguy with the tattoos, tells her about Aidan. He is...um...kin."

Danicka picks up her glass of wine and takes a sip, never once looking at it. Her eyes are on her roommate. Very rarely, hers are blue, if she's out in the sunlight. Today there's not much of that, and her eyes are the same murky, indistinct green they always are indoors. "That woman is named Agnessa Malikoff. She's from the same family Lukáš and I are." That is all she says about Nessa, sipping her wine again thoughtfully. "The one with the tattoos lives at the Brotherhood now? Is he...?"

She waves a hand between herself and the redhead.

[Liadan] Alex had said his twin brother was a philowhatsit, the night she threw a cheap Dell laptop at him in her studio. She assumes this is some sort of werewolf rank, like general, or captain, or something.

She nods her head once before picking up her wine glass, studying the red liquid, bringing it to her face to sniff once before taking a sip. An odd display for a woman who looks like an ordinary college student, like someone who would rather be drinking beer from a plastic cup. Her shoulders shrug and she gently sets the glass back on the table. She's had better, but it's not bad.

[Danicka] They haven't talked about the ranks and auspices and tribes much. Danicka and Lee simply haven't had much time, or inclination, to discuss it. She knows a fair amount about the Nation, perhaps more than most kin, less than many. She forgets a lot. She knows Ahrouns. She knows Theurges. She tries not to think of Yelizaveta's father, or what he was, or what that meant. She gets Adren and Athro mixed up. She has no clue what to think of the Uktena and Wendigo, and only just met her first lupus a little while ago.

Danicka lifts her eyebrows at her roommate as she sips her wine, not because of the manner in which she does, but because she doesn't answer. "The tattooed man?" she prompts.

[Liadan] “Mm?” Apparently her nod was misinterpreted. Then, “Oh. Yeah, I don't think he's one of them.” She doesn't mention how she and Alexander fucked the night they first happened across each other. She doesn't recount the story of Taggart breaking the man's face with one blow, or how Aidan stepped in and rendered him unconscious. She doesn't say these things, not out of concern for the Veil, which she doesn't know much about. She keeps them hidden because she doesn't think her pretty and pristine roommate will be much impressed with the nocturnal activities of her roommate. Just because she spends some of her free time dungeon crawling and doing PvP in an online game doesn't mean she's interested in fights between kin and garou.

She drums her fingers on the table once in a wave, left pinky all the way to right pinky. As she glances around the room, taking in the décor, the lighting, the music, she has no idea how blissfully ignorant she is of the world she's found herself in. And if she would just speak to the woman across the table, she might have some inkling of what she's part of now.

Instead she just asks, “What'd you get at Pottery Barn?” Just because Danicka walked out without packages doesn't mean money wasn't spent. Líadan, one of the countless masses who commutes through Chicago without owning a car, knows all about delivery. She'd use it even if she did have a car.

[Danicka] If he's not one of them, then it means he's one of us. There's no way he'd be allowed to live at the Brotherhood otherwise. Danicka sips her wine, pretty and pristine, not even a drop left on her lips, until the waiter brings by plates of zamburiñas, rajo, papas arrugadas, chorizo al vino, and apple empanadas. She's quiet when the plates are being set down, unaware of everything she's missing. Conversations between her and her roommate are often just like this: they hold everything, or close to everything, back. They say little. They are polite.

"A desk," she answers, picking up her fork to get a bite of rajo. "I have this lovely computer that's been sitting in a box for nearly five months, for one thing, and it might be nice to have a place to work when school starts."

[Liadan] They are always so reserved with each other, so polite. Except when they're plugged in, when a guildmate causes a total wipe, or an Ally bastard ganks an alt. Then, at least on Líadan's side of the apartment, a cloud of profanity settles over the apartment, thick with insults and threats against a nameless player's dog.

The redhead picks up her fork, considers her options, decides to spear an apple empanada and drop it on her plate. “School? You're going in the fall?” She looks up at her roommate, surprised to find out something new about her.

[Danicka] The blonde's profanity is... in Czech, usually. If her supposed boyfriend heard the shit that came out of her mouth when she was frustrated by something in-game there's no telling how he'd react, but it's rare that Danicka lets loose a stream of frustration and vulgarity in English. But out in public, they don't open up so freely. When not gaming, they don't open up that freely. And they certainly don't tell each other about little things like killing a Black Spiral, or being accosted in the park before literally escaping to another state.

Lee doesn't even know that Danicka has a brother. Danicka doesn't know that Lee is an orphan...or close enough to it. They coexist peacefully, and keep themelves to themselves, because they do not trust anyone. Almost anyone.

"University of Chicago," she says with a nod, after swallowing the bite of pork she just took. Her eyes lift, as she goes for a new potato covered in mojo sauce. "What did you go to school for?" she asks, with what seems like genuine curiosity.

[Liadan] “Photography,” Líadan answers readily. She picks up her knife and cuts into the apple filled pastry. A grown woman should be allowed to start her meal with the dessert if she so chooses. “Well, mainly. I had to take a lot of other stuff for the degree, like art history and painting and stuff. They can't really milk you for a hundred thousand to just take pictures all the time.”

She pops the cut piece of empanada into her mouth and chews thoughtfully.

[Danicka] "Where'd you go to school?" is Danicka's next question, as she intersperses bites of various dishes with sips of the rich red wine they're having with it.

[Liadan] “These are pretty good,” she says, gesturing unnecessarily at the empanada with her fork. “Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, out in Denver.” In just a few questions, Líadan is revealing more of her history to her roommate than she has of anything personal in all the time they've known each other. It's amazing what a little interest and a little common ground will do. Danicka is going to school in the fall, Líadan has already been there, done that, gotten the useless piece of paper to hang in her office. She makes a mental note to do so.

“It was the first place I found that had more art classes than lit and writing courses. Like I need to know who Dostoyevsky is to take a picture.” When the empanada is gone, she takes a sip of her wine, then starts picking at a zamburiña. “Do you have a major in mind?”

[Danicka] And Lee is one of the first people who has not batted an eyelash to hear that Danicka is going to school this fall. She may be assuming that Danicka is going back for graduate studies, that she has some degree in a box somewhere, or maybe it's hanging on her bedroom wall -- Lee has only been given a cursory tour, and the two women in general keep to their own rooms. They are not the sort of roommates that share clothes.

They really couldn't. Danicka is several inches shorter than Lee and has an utterly different body type. Lee's breasts, for instance, make Danicka slightly crazy. She consoles herself that she doesn't have to wear a bra, but it's cold comfort when they just look so pretty under her t-shirts and in those camisoles they bought at Luca Luca.

Sigh.

"Not...really," she admits after taking another bite of chorizo al vino. Her brow furrows a bit. Liadan clearly, now, doesn't assume that this is not Danicka's first go-round at college, and silently, she sort of appreciates it. "There's a lot I'm interested in."

[Liadan] Líadan could have assumed Danicka was going in for graduate studies. It wouldn't have surprised her if she had been corrected on this. But graduate studies don't always have to match the undergrad degree. There were exceptions. People changed their minds all the time about what they wanted to do with their lives.

But the Fiann is not wrong when she assumes Danicka hasn't been to college before. “That's cool. Go undeclared until you figure things out. Make sure you try everything, then. You never know, you might actually love underwater basket weaving.”

A corner of her mouth quirks in a grin, just in case Danicka couldn't tell she was joking.

[Lukas] "I think I'll sit with them. Thank you."

That's what Lukas tells the greeter when she asks him if he wanted a table for one, right after he spots Danicka and her roommate a little ways in. The greeter looks like she wants to ask if he even knew those people, but thinks better of it. The moon is still rather full. Lukas's rage beats off him in red waves, like clouds shed from a novaing star. Danicka feels it long before she recognizes who, or what, approaches; Liadan, however, having a view of the door, sees Lukas coming.

Umbrellaless, the Ahroun is damp, this shoulders of his shirt spotted with rain, droplets in his hair. It's warm outside. He looks tanned and summery in a short-sleeved button-up; linen pants, both light-colored, shades of off-white and khaki. He smiles at Liadan first, lips closed, teeth hidden, and then at Danicka.

"Hey." His tone is casual, but there's a touch of something, some je ne sais quoi that suggests familiarity; intimacy. Then he includes Liadan in the question, "May I join you two?"

Behind him, framed by the door, the greeter is staring at his back suspiciously. She's probably ready to call the cops at the slightest hint that these women don't want to be bothered.

[Danicka] She flicks her eyebrows up. "I... don't..." And then Lee grins, and Danicka tips her head to the side, smirking in amusement. "You're a dork," she informs the bespectacled kinswoman, spearing an empanada with her fork.

"I'm thinking about... well, judging from the sheer number of viewbooks I have under my bed, you'd think there's nothing I'm not considering." She looks at her empanada, then shrugs, reaching for her wineglass. "I really have no idea what I want to do." She says this offhand, before she sips her wine, but there's a definite uneasiness under the words.

And if not uneasiness...sheer, simple uncertainty that is all the more uncomfortable to the twenty-five year old, who knows she should have experienced this six years ago. But that doesn't last. It doesn't last because the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. She takes a breath, and swallows her wine, and then glances over her shoulder as though afraid of what she'll see. What. Not who.

Lee won't see her smile. Lukas will. It's a flicker, a flash of delight, and it's gone when she turns back around to look at her roommate. "Is it all right with you?"

[Liadan] [ZOMG YOU! WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 6, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Liadan] There's a moment, when Líadan glances past Danicka's shoulder and sees the man entering the restaurant, that her fingers clench convulsively on the utensils in her hands. Her fear of Lukas is almost completely irrational, and is in no way due to anything the man has actually done. It's not his fault that the first time Líadan met a garou, he had literally been sprung on her by her roommate. It's not his fault that the next time she saw him, she had just spent several hours alone in the woods after a horrible car accident and a night pierced with shotgun fire. And it was no one's fault that the day after Líadan was very nearly savaged by a Black Spiral, Lukas had been in the common room when she finally felt up to leaving room 7.

She notices that her knuckles are white, that the edges of her fork are cutting into her fingers. He asks if he can join them. Danicka asks if that's okay.

Líadan takes a slow, steadying breath, forces her fingers to relax. Then she tips her head up to smile at the tall man. “Sure.”

[Lukas] Rage blankets the booth when Lukas sits down. The seats are leather, or at least something that looks like leather. It's still daylight out but the ambient lighting in here is close, dim. The Ahroun takes the outside of the bench beside Danicka. From Liadan's point of view, he looks roughly twice as large across the shoulders, and his eyes are glittering blue, pale as ice. He looks like he's crowding her roommate to the wall. He looks like he might eat them all alive.

Lukas is careful to keep his feet on his side of the table. He has a lot of practice at this. All the men of his pack are over six feet. One of them is -- was -- six-four, like himself; another is somewhat shorter, but nearly all his height is in the leg. Dylan, before she vanished, used to quietly jostle to get to sit across from Mrena, before she died, or Kate before she vanished, or Kat, before she vanished.

After he settles, he makes eye contact with a waitress, gesturing for an extra place setting, a menu. While he waits for their arrival, he turns his attention across the table.

No preamble: "I make you uneasy, don't I?" He doesn't sound upset, or angry. He sounds faintly curious.

[Danicka] They don't know each other very well, these two women. But Danicka knows when she sees that reaction. She knows it because it's the way she feels sometimes, when she's tired or when she's stressed... and she feels that way about the same man that is making Lee grip that fork so tightly. Lee does not have the added comfort of looking at him and remembering the way he smiles, has no sense memory associated with his voice or his smell that could keep her calm when his Rage is so intense it threatens to burn away everything else.

There is a reason why she doesn't invite Lukas over any more when she knows that Lee is down the hall. There is a reason why, waking with him on Sunday morning or afternoon, whenever Lee got home, he left so soon thereafter. Danicka looks at her roommate as she forces herself to calm down, and underneath the table her foot shifts to rest along the outside of the other woman's. It's a point of contact, but nothing more. It's hard to tell if it's even mean to be comforting.

Danicka moves to the side to make room for Lukas, finishing off what's in her glass and then reaching to pour more. The waitress will bring a third glass. The wine is red. The table is covered in food, more than these two women could eat alone comfortably, though Lukas can and probably would eat it all in a sitting.

When he speaks to Lee, she glances aside at him, her brows pulling together, but that, like her delight, is so fleeting it's barely noticable.

[Liadan] Reddish brows raise at his abrupt question. She sets her fork down lightly, so the metal doesn't clink against the plate. Her hands go to her knees, and she rubs her suddenly nerveless fingers against the denim covering her thighs until she can feel the texture of the fabric again. She feels Danicka's foot press against her own, assumes the woman is stretching so she pulls her own legs in, crosses them at the ankles underneath her seat.

Her head tips to one side, and she makes herself meet those intensely blue eyes, forces herself to actually look at the man sitting across from her. He makes her uneasy, yes. But Líadan Whelan is not exactly the same woman she was the first morning that they met. His rage is strong, she doesn't know it's stronger now because of the light of the moon, but it's not enough to make her run screaming from the restaurant.

“You do.” The words are simple and direct as his question. Her brow furrows slightly. She's not done just yet. “You...” her eyes shift away to his shoulder, her head dips down and her right hand comes up to scratch along the side of her neck. “You're not Hatchet.” She speaks the name she would never say to the man himself, to make sure he knows who she's talking about. She glances up then, even manages a grin. “And we only ever see each other when bad things happen to me.” She can't take it anymore. Her gaze drops to the hands now resting in her lap.

[Lukas] An answering smile ghosts over his mouth, there and then gone. If ever there was a time for Lukas to offer empty assurances -- I won't hurt you. You're safe with me. -- now would be it.

Danicka's had her share of those assurances. She's heard it from half of Lukas's pack, alone. Garou note her skittishness; they see how she casts her eyes down, how she's quiet until spoken to, how panic flashes in her eyes when she sees a Garou in any form but the homid or the lupine. They do not see how half of these things are lies and masks. They do not hesitate to tell her:

I won't hurt you. You're safe with me.

And then they break that promise.

So; Lukas doesn't make Liadan any promises he might not be able to keep. Liadan doesn't know him at all. She doesn't know how hard he tries to keep his word, she doesn't know how he minds what comes out of his mouth almost constantly (...but not always.), and she doesn't know how he tries not to say anything he'll have cause to regret, or be ashamed of later.

"No, I'm not Hatchet," Lukas affirms, "but I know him, and I respect him. If you were to upset me or anger me, which I don't think you will, I'd go to him with my grievances. I wouldn't take it out on you."

It's hard to say if this will comfort Liadan, or if it'll make her feel exposed, watched, precarious. A moment later Lukas looks away -- the waitress brings an extra plate, a set of cutlery, a glass, a menu. Lukas thanks her with a smile, flips the menu open as she leaves. It's in spanish, with english explanations of each dish. Lukas has no practice with spanish, has never lived in Spain or Mexico, has never even lived in Texas or Southern California. When he orders, he'll butcher the pronunciations. He browses as though he weren't speaking of anger, grievances, addressing the elder of the tribe over matters of kin a moment ago.

"What's good here?"

[Danicka] Lee moves her foot away, so Danicka draws her own back. She pours her wine and sips it, eats a bit of potato, quietly observing the way her roommate interacts with her boyfriend. She lives with one, fucks the other. In their own ways they each know her intimately. Online, at least, Lee has known her longer, but knows less about her. Danicka is not open with Lee, and is only gradually becoming more open with Lukas.

And halfway through the conversation between the Fianna Kinfolk and the Shadow Lord Ahroun, Danicka has a small epiphany. She blinks, setting down her wine glass, and looks at Liadan. She ignores Lukas's question. That in itself is a tell: she wouldn't dare, around anyone else. If this were Nessa, or one of Lukas's packmates, she would quietly point out some of the better dishes and demurely eat her own food.

"I don't know if this will mean very much, but I trust him. He doesn't lie to me."

Him. He. As though he's not sitting right beside her.

[Liadan] Had Lukas offered her those empty assurances, she would have scoffed, startled out of her shyness. It would have been an automatic reaction, and she would have tried to apologize. She would have explained that she's heard that one before, and that it's not that she doesn't think he wouldn't try to keep the promise, but doesn't even always feel safe around Taggart. And at least Taggart made her laugh when she thought she'd never laugh at anything again. Besides, she would explain, she knows it's not his job to keep kin happy, placated, content with their lot in life. And the only person who she can rely on to protect her is herself. Well (and she will never admit this to anyone), except for a blond-haired man with silvery-blue eyes who currently visits a blue and green paradise within her dreaming mind.

And who knows what Lukas' reaction to that would have been?

He doesn't offer anything, except to go to Taggart first if he has any issue with her. So she doesn't scoff, doesn't explain anything at all. She just says, “Thanks.”

He asks what's good here, but before Líadan can answer, Danicka interjects. Líadan's brows raise slightly. She doesn't say how much Danicka's opinion means to her. It might mean a lot, or it might mean nothing at all. She says, “I don't think he's.” Pause. Her eyes flick to Lukas, her face stays turned toward Danicka. “I don't think you're a bad guy. I mean, I don't know you. At all. So I guess you could be, but you didn't have to be the one who came and got me in Tekakwitha.” She frowns suddenly, and turns so that she's facing him straight on. “Did I ever thank you for that?”

[Lukas] I trust him.

Lukas is too controlled to whip his head around and stare at Danicka. He doesn't even look up from his menu. There's a flick of reaction in him though, subtle enough that it'll take a keen eye to notice it. Or just her proximity to him, their thighs aligned, he sitting near enough that she could feel the heat of him, though they don't touch.

It passes. Liadan tells him he's not a bad guy. He looks up. Faintly, a smile traces over his mouth, flickers and subsumes again. "I didn't think you thought I was a bad guy," Lukas replies. "I thought you were afraid of me. There's a difference.

"And you don't have to thank me."

Lukas goes back to the menu. Since neither of them replied, he makes his own choices. It should surprise no one that he heavily favors lamb and seafood. Duck, too. When he's made up his mind he sets the menu down, picks up the bottle of wine -- it might be noteworthy that his questioning glance is directed at Liadan. He seems to share Danicka's food and drink without much thought, topping off their glasses before pouring himself one. Then the bottle is down to the dregs, and he sets it to the edge of the table, peering over the food they've ordered.

"May I?" Again, he's checking with Liadan. Then he helps himself to the empanada, the chorizo.

[Danicka] Lukas could very well be a bad guy. He has the look of one, all swarthy skin, dark hair, and piercing eyes. He looks like he could easily be a villain, cold and calculating and vicious. Danicka looks soft around the edges, nurturing, feminine. She looks stylish and high-maintenance, not at all the sort to sit around playing a video game most of her waking hours. Liadan looks like a geek who probably does tech support to bring in cash, not a fashion photographer who lives in one of the most expensive high-rises in the city. Two of them are liars.

One of them can be. When he's not talking about, or to, the blonde woman at his right. Who tells her roommate, whether it matters or not, that she trusts him. He's not a liar. And he's never heard that word from her lips before.

V&+283;&+345;ím vám.

That's all.

And he shares Danicka's food. She makes no comment. Tapas are shared, and meant to be. Danicka goes back to eating, looking over at Lee yet again. Under the table, her left foot moves to rest alongside the outside of Lukas's right. It's minor contact, but it's there. She doesn't reach out to touch him, otherwise. "We were discussing what I should major in," she says. "And the smallness of Chicago."

[Liadan] Well of course she should thank him. If not for him she would have had to walk all the way back to town, and who knows if she would have made it? However, she doesn't press the issue.

“Of course,” she replies to his polite query regarding the food. “The empanadas are pretty good,” she adds, woefully late in answering his question.

When Danicka brings him up to speed on the conversation, Líadan just nods. She picks up the wine menu, flags down a waiter with an imperious snap of her fingers. Hopefully the new bottle won't leave such a strange aftertaste in her mouth.

[Lukas] "Small?" Lukas laughs under his breath while he stabs the chorizo on his fork, pops it in his mouth. "As compared to ... New York City? Are you from New York too?" -- that was to Liadan. He realizes he has no idea how they know each other. For all he knows Danicka placed an ad in a newspaper:

Single white female seeks roommate to live in north suite of amazing glass tower apartment. Only downside: must like axe murderers.

... or maybe not. "How did you two meet?"

[Danicka] "Small in the sense that the three or four strangers getting in the way of cops across the street all happen to be in the same boat in terms of extended family as Lee and I," Danicka responds smoothly, taking a bite of pork. She chews slowly, swallows, and sips her wine. "And...ahm."

The blonde clears her throat, eyebrows lifting. "Let's just say Lee got the joke on the note with the lingerie."

[Liadan] “Yeah. Bummer they didn't have anything in orange. Unfortunately, it isn't a very popular color this year.” A shoulder lifts and falls in a shrug. She doesn't know how much Lukas knows about Danicka's gaming habits. He doesn't look like the kind of person who would really get other game references, but then, Danicka doesn't look like the kind of woman to go tooling around with a level 80 undead warlock, looking for trouble online.

[Lukas] Caught unawares, Lukas lets out a short, embarrassed huff. His eyes drop to his plate; to cover it, he cuts a piece from his empanada. By the time it's in his mouth his eyes are direct and unflinching again, touched with genuine humor.

"It's an epidemic." He says, smiling, meaning World of Warcraft.

Then the waitress is coming around at last. She came a lot quicker when it was just Danicka and Lee. She was a lot friendlier, too. Lukas orders by using english translations and descriptions, and the waitress repeats it back to him in spanish. Braised lamb becomes cordero al chilindron; slow-cooked duck becomes conserva de pato; scallop fritters becomes buñuelos de vieras and the last, calamares fritos, is the only one he attempts in its native language.

The waitress leaves with his menu. He picks up his wine, swirls it effortlessly in his glass before he takes a swallow. No; Lukas does not look like the sort to play MMORPGs. Then again, neither does the woman beside him, who he's still not quite managing to think of as his girlfriend.

His, perhaps. Mine. Moje. But not his girlfriend.

They're a striking couple, starkly contrasted. There's almost nothing in common between them other than a common tongue, a shared ancestry. Across the table, Liadan is of a wholly different stock, scots-irish, all red hair and fiery temperament. So goes the stereotype, anyway; but then, Lukas's tribe is stereotyped as liars and deceivers, backstabbers, connivers. Danicka's people are stereotyped as dark haired and pale-eyed, cold, brutal.

"So what's this about cops and family?" They're already a known item; for Lukas to turn to talk to Danicka now would be unspeakably rude, would exclude Liadan completely. He faces Liadan when he speaks.

[Danicka] There is no sudden, high color in Danicka's cheeks, no blush to tell that she might be embarrassed at the mention of the lingerie -- her own damn fault -- or the fact that Lukas seems to think that her body, or sex with her, should be deemed epic...if not legendary. She is not embarrassed, at least on the surface, about talking about the fact that when that package arrived Lee was there with her, and they laughed at the note. Lee saw how pleased the book made the blonde woman, how happy she was to unwrap all of it just barely before her birthday was over.

It's an epidemic, he says, and Danicka just rolls her eyes drolly, taking a long sip of wine. She does not care about the waitress's friendliness, or at least it doesn't seem so. She is going to tip her well when the check comes, as though an extra ten percent is going to make up for the fact that coming over to that table made her skin crawl. He's not even being rude. All he's doing is existing, and for the mortals in this restaurant, that is more than enough. An extra ten percent is the greatest apology Danicka will ever make on Lukas's behalf, and it's not even an apology; it's a hope that she will not be shoved into a corner next time she comes here, with or without Lukas.

Who she thinks of as her boyfriend. It's a transient term to some, almost flippant, not important enough for Love Such As Ours. Danicka has never had a boyfriend before. She thinks of him as her boyfriend, and it makes her smile.

She doesn't smile as she works on an empanada, taking bites of everything here and there, switching it up. "Cops chasing guy across the street. Random people getting involved. One was Ms. Malikoff. The others," she flicks a glance at Lee here, "are apparently also kin. A drop-dead gorgeous redheaded man and some tattooed beefcake yammering about how we all better run shortly after the drop-dead gorgeous redhead kissed him. It was all patently ridiculous.

"So," she goes on, rather brightly, "Dai and I decided to get tapas instead!"

Danicka smiles at that, and pops a bite of apple pastry in her mouth. From there it's mostly smalltalk. Danicka and Liadan are excellent at smalltalk. Lukas fakes it well. The fare is good enough that talking is overrated by comparison, anyway. When they leave, Danicka goes home with her roommate.

Not her boyfriend.