hide deeper.

[Lukas] In the spring and summer, mornings at 520 Kingsbury are awash in light. It is winter now, though, and the light coming through the vast unblinded windows is grey and heavy. It is not difficult at all to sleep through the dawn, through the morning, until noontide.

It's one of the rare mornings that Lukas is up before Danicka. He showers and dresses in last night's pajama bottoms, leaving his shirt where it is. He doesn't shave, because he never remembers to bring an overnight bag. He makes breakfast, though -- eggs and ham and cheese, running downstairs to buy whatever she lacks -- and he throws out a suspicious tomato that's too squishy by half.

By the time Danicka makes it out of bed, Lukas is sitting at the breakfast bar, his plate empty. He's playing some tower-building game on the iPhone she got him. When he hears her coming, he pauses, sets the phone aside, swivels on the barstool and smiles.

"Eggs on the skillet," he says.

[Danicka] When they first began sleeping to-- no. When they first started fucking each other, Lukas never saw Danicka sleep. The first time he did, he waited a little while before allowing himself to nod off in her arms. She woke before he did, slipped away from him. It was a long time before sleeping together became a regular occurence after even the most intense, soul-shaking sex. It was a long time before Danicka would stay in bed with him even after she woke, which was saying something, because she always woke before dawn. She woke without alarms, without noise or startlement.

Over time, that faded. She no longer carried with her the nine-year-old habit of waking early enough to be cognizant and prepared for the day when Yelizaveta would get up. She no longer had to be up for anyone's sake but her own. She gave herself slack, and became leisurely. She started to feel safe, being asleep in bed with a monster. It worried her, that she could feel safe doing such a thing.

When Lukas wakes this morning, though, Danicka is deep asleep. She's naked on top of the covers, breathing steadily. She stirs slightly when he moves out of the bed, but drifts back again, spent and worn from last night.

A little while later, her hand curls on the bedspread, seeking him. It's cool where he was lying. She forgets, in her sleep, that he was ever there. Another part of her, smelling him, is convinced he's still there. She sinks again, where it's darker, where it's warm.

And later: Danicka turns, and wraps herself up in the filthy comforter. She wraps her arms and legs around a pillow, burying her face in it, unaware of the cooking going on in the kitchen.

It is well into morning before she opens her eyes and knows where she is, who she is, what is going on. She remembers things: fucking, mostly. She remembers because her thighs and her cunt and her back are vaguely sore, a stiffness that will fade as soon as she gets up and moves around a little. She breathes in deeply, looking at the fuzzy rainbows cast on the ground by the prism catching cloud-diffused light. And closes her eyes again, rolling onto her back. She tangles in the covers, smiling lazily, and then sadly, as she realizes her mate is not in her den.

Danicka sits up, her expression troubled.

And her nostrils flare.

She smells eggs and ham. She blinks a few times and pushes and kicks the blankets away, crawls off her bed, and heads to her bathroom. Her robe is hanging on the back of the door. She sees herself in the mirror and blinks in surprise, pushing her hair off her face, twisting it away and laying over one shoulder. It unfurls there, but is less matted-looking when she exits her bedroom, still in the process of tying her robe around her waist.

The light is dim gray and white and yellow, but it still makes her shade her eyes for a moment. She smiles back, still groggy. Quiet. Slow. She walks towards him, coming to his barstool, and opens her arms. "Hold me," she says fuzzily, leaning towards his chest.

[Lukas] So he does.

He holds her, warmth blossoming in his chest, but not the way one might expect. Not by drawing her between his legs, against his body, but by putting his hands on her hips and lifting her, easily and smoothly as a dancer, to straddle his lap and wrap around him.

He winds his arms around her then, holds her. The robe is warming with her body heat; warms further under his palms, which stroke smooth arcs over her back.

"Hi, baby," he says quietly.

[Danicka] So she does.

She is lifted, and she puts her hands on his shoulders lightly as though for balance, opening her legs and the folds of her robe and sinking down onto his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck and letting her legs dangle -- half-bared now -- on either side of him. She lays her head on his shoulder as she settles against him, smiling softly.

"Morning," she murmurs back.

And closes her eyes. Breathes in, and out, slowly. A little while later her eyes open, and she looks at the stove. "What kind of eggs?"

[Lukas] Moments seem to drift by a little slower this morning. The light is grey. His mate is warm and drowsy still. They fit together, and he leans back against the bar, closing his eyes.

A little later, she speaks. He opens his eyes too, his head turning slightly against hers.

"Scrambled," he says. "With diced sausage. There was toast too but I ate it."

[Danicka] "I forgot I had sausage," she says mildly, "but you should make more toast."

Danicka slides off his lap slowly, but only after nuzzling him under his jaw, mumbling wordless, meaningless sounds of contentment. Her bare feet touch the floor and her robe falls back around her waist as she walks around the bar into the kitchen proper to get herself a plate.

Or, rather, stand at the stove plucking food out of the skillet with her fingers and eating it right there. She watches him, following him with her eyes whether he moves to make more toast or not. "Paul moved out," she says. "About two weeks ago."

In case he hadn't noticed.

[Lukas] "You didn't," Lukas replies, rising up off the barstool after she draws away. "I went and bought some."

She drifts to the skillet, eats from the pan. He doesn't tut-tut her. He goes to the breadbox, gets bread, puts it in the toaster, and then joins her to pick a piece of sausage out of the pan, then another.

His arm winds gently around her waist. Lukas nods a little, then pops another piece of sausage in his mouth.

"I know. I could smell the change. Are you advertising again?"

[Danicka] Her eyes flick up at him, their color muted and warm in this light, in this mood. A line appears between her eyebrows, just a flicker of tension, and then smooths. Behind her, Lukas moves in her kitchen while she eats from the skillet, bite by bite. The toaster works quietly and effortlessly to singe her bread, and Danicka eats cooling breakfast without bothering with a plate.

"No," she muses. "That's why I'm working. So I can keep it alone and not destroy the rest of my lifestyle."

[Lukas] A last bite of sausage, this with some egg clinging, and then Lukas steps away to grab the toast a few seconds before it pops by itself. He comes back with it, setting them on the edge of the pan. For his part, Lukas levers himself up on her counter, spine easing into a loose curve.

"What are you going to do with the extra room?"

[Danicka] If he'd let the toaster ding on its own, the bread would have burnt. As it is, it's neatly browned, golden. Danicka smiles at it and eats a few more bites of egg and sausage before picking up the slice in one hand and a knife in the other. She moves the lid of the butter dish on the counter off and scrapes a pat of it over the toast with quick, tidy motions while Lukas hauls himself onto the counter.

"I don't know," she says, putting a bite of of sausage on a corner of the buttered toast -- the butter melting into the pockets created by air, hardened by heat -- and taking a bite. Danicka chews thoughtfully, moving over to stand between his legs with her back to him, leaning against the inside of his calf.

"Maybe turning it into an office. Or a guest room."

[Lukas] Lukas touches her hair with his left hand, which is his clean hand -- the tips of his fingers on the right faintly greasy from picking at eggs and sausage. "I don't care if you turn it into a guest room," he quips, "I'm still hogging your bed."

He leans down, then, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, nuzzling her temple briefly. "I like it when I get to cook breakfast for you," he confesses. "I think it satisfies my urge to provide."

[Danicka] He makes her smile. The touch to her hair, which is far from clean. The mild joke about hogging her bed, refusing to be banished to the smaller northward room if she decides to put a bed in it, decorate it for guests that may never come. Danicka leans her head into his touch for a moment.

"You're not a guest, though, it would be inappropriate if you slept there," she says lightly, and goes back to eating her toast, crushing its crispness with her straight white teeth.

She's held again, and moves into that as well, closing her eyes and swallowing. Danicka licks butter and crumbs off her lips, turning her head to nuzzle his cheek. She has to tip her head back to do so, but she does it easily. And gladly.

Kisses his jaw. Easily. And gladly. And warmly.

"You should wake me a little when you leave," she says softly, still rubbing her face against his, toast half-forgotten, half-eaten. She sounds thoughtful. The words are dappled with a faint and inexplicable sadness. They are also held up by permission, by urging.

[Lukas] "Mmm," Lukas murmurs, eyes closing. He tilts his head to accommodate her; to allow and to accept the nuzzling, the kisses. Her lips leave a faint moisture on his jawline. He's showered already: he smells fresh, clean, and a little like her soap.

His eyes open when she speaks. The bottom drops out of his chest; the space surrounding his heart seems to yawn open with ache and tenderness. "Oh, Danička. I'm sorry I left you to wake alone. I didn't think."

[Danicka] Comparatively, Danicka is filthy: she smells like Lukas, like her sweat, like their sex. She smells like her bed must, only alive and warm rather than inert and cooling. She smells like mate-in-morning, mate-who-will-give-cubs, hungry-female. She smells like whatever detergent and softener was last used on her robe, which she is making filthy by her skin's contact with it.

Her head tips to the side as he speaks, and she smiles gently, nuzzling him again almost insistently. "Don't be sad. I wasn't sad. But you should wake me," she repeats, drawing her head back enough to see him... and to take another bite of toast. Chews, swallows, and: "We have so little time together."

The smile is faint. It doesn't leave. She kisses the corner of his mouth, her own soft and leaving a single crumb on his lips. "But I probably would have done the same. I like knowing you're asleep, and nearby, and warm. So I understand."

[Lukas] "Yeah." He's a little muffled; he returns her kiss, his own lips to the corner of her mouth. "On both counts."

He doesn't mind that Danicka is, simply put, filthy. That she smells like sweat and sex and him and her. Were he nearly so civilized and polite as he pretends, he'd be shocked; possibly disgusted. But he's not, and she knows this. She knows that her mate, her male, is an animal beneath his well-groomed facade, a wolf behind the proverbial lambskin.

On a pure, instinctual level, he likes that she smells like this. That she smells well-fucked, fertile, warm, rested. That she's feeding on the food he provided. That come spring there may be cubs

though he knows there won't be.

He wraps both arms around her, drawing her against his chest, kisses her firmly on the temple. Then Lukas slides down off the counter, though only to draw her back against him again.

To rest, this time. To recline together against the tile like animals in repose.

"There's a new Shadow Lord kin in town," he says; telling her things not because he expects it to matter to her, nor because he wants some response, but because he can. And because she doesn't know. And because this is part of what she misses. "Her name is Rosanna Kardos. Strange woman. Runs a funeral home, amongst other things. Her family's as much Glass Walker mafia as it is Lord. She cleans up 'messes' though, so if you ever find that you need such services..."

and he holds her a little tighter at the thought that she might,

"...she might be someone to contact."

He doesn't stop nuzzling her. He rubs his jaw over her temple, over her hair, as he speaks. He keeps her close in the circle of his arms, against his body, his skin warm through the single layer of fabric that separates them.

"I may call the tribe together soon. It's grown. We should recognize each other. And," a quiet laugh, as his teeth tug gently at the arch of her ear, "I need to lay down the law again. So you can meet her there along with the rest of them.

"You know Theron and I. There's a woman named Park now, a Half Moon, quiet but dedicated from what I've seen. Zeke, who was in Chicago some months before, the most zealous humorless Ragabash I've ever met. Edwin, another No Moon who's a prick and a bastard who'll steal candy from babies and kick puppies, but a good wolf beneath. I think half the things he does, he does as a lesson to those weak enough to allow it. Then there's Ezra, a Theurge whom I've only met once." Lukas frowns. "There's something ...greasy about him, though."

[Danicka] Not quite in a rush, but still suddenly considering she just woke up and is finishing a piece of toast, Lukas tells her the names and identities of others of their Tribe. Most of them sound like horrible people. She stands there in her robe and bare feet --

only she doesn't. Danicka moves around the kitchen as she finishes her buttered, toasted slice of bread. She eats more egg and sausage before it turns ice cold. She reaches to open a cupboard -- Lukas pulls down a mug without pausing in his speech -- and she pours herself coffee, adds table cream from the fridge and a drizzle of hazelnut syrup from the cabinet, stirring it all together with a delicate, brushed-metal spoon from the drawer. They shuffle around together, not quite gracelessly because neither of them are remotely graceless, Lukas keeping his arms around her and nuzzling her, kissing her as they move.

Danicka doesn't try to get away from him, though she doesn't wait for him to finish before she goes about completing her breakfast. It doesn't bear calculating how many calories she burned last night alone, how many were lost just sleeping. She's hungry, and he knows this much: Danicka eats best when she feels safe, when she is happy, when things are calm and she's content. Which casts a new light on the memory of that night where they all but gorged themselves on Chinese food and crispy banana rolls, when he told her to suck his cock and she laid back on the bed and he went to his knees and then

they realized that it all might end soon, and he told her not to worry

and she laid back and accepted him on top of her, in her arms, held close and protected. They should have known then she would not be able to bear it ending, no matter what she said. But oh well.

Danicka eats well over a basic serving of breakfast. She eats while he talks, because she doesn't have to respond til he's done, and so she's quiet. When Lukas is done, however:

"I've met Rosanna," she says. "She's a hit woman." Simply stated, the truth as the other kinswoman put it. "A bit melodramatic about it, though I don't know if that's an act or not."

She's leaning against him now, back to his chest, sipping her coffee. It smells sweet. It is. "Why have Kinfolk at the meeting, other than to shake hands and say hello? Or is that all?"

[Lukas] "Truthfully, Danička, there's almost no reason to have the meeting at all except to let everyone shake hands, exchange a mutual hello, and bring tribe-related business up if necessary. And to reassert dominance. The kin are there so I don't have to repeat myself, primarily in Rosanna's case. And if she's there, then it'd look odd if you weren't as well."

He unloops one arm from around her, reaching for her mug. If she lets him, he steals a sip, then hands it back.

"Why? Are you uneasy about going?"

[Danicka] "Ugh."

It's all she says after that, concerning the meeting. Danicka doesn't sound particularly invested either way, neither shying away and whinnying at the idea of being led towards it, nor planning on baking a cheesecake for the little party. She just accepts it for what it is, for what he says it is, and gently hands her mug over to him. Their fingers brush partly because his hand is so much larger than hers; the ceramic smooth to their fingertips but warm in their palms.

She turns in his arms while he drinks to lay her head on his chest. She takes it back and holds it close. "I've been a couple things like it. Can you imagine me feeling at ease?"

Danicka nuzzles his chest, shrugs. "It's alright. It takes no real effort to sit quietly and look attractive and obedient," she goes on, somewhat wryly. "I'll compose my English paper in my head."

[Lukas] After she turns to face him, and after he hands the mug back, he lifts his hands to stroke his fingers through her hair. A few passes; then he takes her face between his hands and kisses her brow.

"We don't ever talk about that," he muses. "About how we're ... different in front of other people. Especially Garou and kin. Does it bother you?"

[Danicka] Her filthy hair. Danicka is awake enough now, with coffee and food and time and sunlight, to wrinkle her nose and laugh slightly at the contact, at the thought of what a mess she is. The laugh fades, softens to a sigh, as he kisses her brow. She does not want to set down her coffee, so she doesn't wrap her arms around him in the end, but she does tuck herself close to him. Closer. As if it's possible.

"I never really think about it," she confesses after a moment of thought, sounding considering. Then, after another pause to muse over it: "It's easiest. It's familiar. It keeps morons from assuming they know who we are, what we're like. The more you open up to people, the more they seem to think your life is their business."

She sips. "We both know there are certain ways it is okay for me to behave around you when others of the Nation or the tribe can see," she says carefully. "If I'm too at ease with you in public, I may get too comfortable and say or do the wrong thing. It is simpler for everyone, especially me, if I say little and do less."

[Lukas] "I understand," Lukas replies, "and I agree."

They're nestled together in her kitchen, his back to the counter and her body curled into the space between his chest and his arms. He can see her living room over her head, and the magnificent spread of glass that gives her her million-dollar view of the city. The light coming in those windows by night is multicolored and dim, sparkling like stars through raindrops. He recalls making love to her in that light, watching color play over her sheening breasts and belly, over her golden hair. He remembers her saying

I'm falling in love with you

by that lights, and why it hurt him to think of her giving up this den and all its memories, even if so many of them were painful, or hurtful, or terrifying.

Lukas's chest is broad and warm against Danicka's forearms, the backs of her fingers and her knuckles. The arch of his ribcage rises and falls slowly against her, the map of muscle and bone altering subtly, rhythmically, with every breath. He can feel the warmth of her coffee between her hands, near his solar plexus, held between them like some treasure, some flame to be protected.

"It's just," he adds quietly, "it seems that you have to hide yourself deeper than I do."

[Danicka] She's ever so careful. The coffee mug is half full, but she doesn't want to even spill it on his clothes. She's tender towards him this morning, not in the least because she drove him so far over the edge last night. Danicka tormented him until he was all but screaming, was swearing and bucking and snarling at her, biting at her whenever he could. She pushed him until, when finally freed, he literally snapped chain in half and slammed her down, mounted her, made her his with a need that went beyond dominance or claim.

That's not saying she maintained any greater control than he did, in the end. She gave in to herself, gave in to what is really between them without resistance, gave in to how badly she wants him, how ...completely.

"I do," Danicka says quietly, in gentle agreement. "But it's partly by my choice, at least."

In this, I have some control. What to reveal. What to withhold. Whether to let on, to anyone, that there is anything withheld to begin with.

[Lukas] It's a shared and mutual tenderness; one that rises from the same root. She's tender because she drove him so far over the edge. Because she had him literally shouting at her, bucking under her, grinding himself against her however he could, shamelessly, mindlessly. Because she found a way to pit his control against itself: to force him to divert all that ironclad will toward resisting the impulse to tear himself free, and in doing so, freed every other impulse in him.

And he's tender because he lost himself so utterly. Because when she finally freed him, he all but threw her down on her back and fucked her, wildly, without a thought of tenderness. Even the second time, even when it was slower, there was still such unadulterated need there, such ravenous hunger as he drove into her body again and again and again.

And now he's careful with her. And she's careful with him. And they stay close, touching, entwined more often than not, as though they couldn't bear to be too far from one another.

"Chápu," he says again.

His arms are loosely wrapped around her, one hand looped around the other wrist. He unclasps his hands now, lifting one to wrap around her mug, borrowing another sip of her coffee. Then he hands it back. His hand returns to where it was, easily.

"Tolik tě miluji. Víte to, že?"

[Danicka] "Vím," she murmurs, smiling softly.

Danicka takes her mug back and finishes her coffee after Lukas's last sip, twisting about in his arms to set it down on the counter. She breathes in deeply, yawns, and stretches in the circle of Lukas's arms. She puts her arms over her head, the sleeves of her robe falling down around her biceps, and arches her back, and rolls her head on her neck back and forth a couple of times.

Shoulders drop first, then arms lower, and she relaxes her neck with another yawn. "I had a meeting here a few weeks ago," she tells him. "I'm trying to get the Kinfolk organized. There was some... not quite resistance, but resistance to doing it in a way that doesn't involve making every fucking decision by committee. I haven't done anything with it since the meeting to drum up insterest, but I need to start contacting others again and hopefully discourage the let's-all-hold-hands-and-make-everyone-happy way of doing things."

She turns around stepping away because she looks like she's getting ready to leave the kitchen, her hand drifting down his arm to his wrist. Danicka looks at him over her shoulder, the shawl collar of her robe. "It isn't something anyone can be involved in without the knowledge and permission of their guardians. So if you want me to stop, I need you to tell me before I go any further."

[Lukas] Let's be truthful: it turns Lukas on, vaguely and unfocusedly, when Danicka moves in his arms. When she lifts her arms over her head and stretches like that, and he can feel the tension in her slender body arched against his. It brings back muscle-memories, primitive instinct-memories, of the way she arches against him when she

comes.

He has to pull his eyes back to her face when she speaks. It's a second or two before what she says registers. Then he frowns faintly, puzzled.

"I don't want you to stop. Why would I want that?" His arms fall from around her as she steps away. It's another second before he straightens, following. "What sort of organization were you thinking of?"

[Danicka] She wraps her hand around his wrist and heads for her bedroom, the door, the little hallway, the bathroom. "A Coalition consisting of three or more teams, each one focused on a particular category of skillsets. The purpose would be primarily teaching each other how to take care of ourselves, as well as being able to be more than dead weight and liabilities to our guardians and family. Friends. Gaia."

As though she knows her, personally. She may, in fact, in her way.

Danicka glances back at him, slipping her hand from his wrist as she walks into her bathroom, untying her robe so she can shed it to the floor. She doesn't bother to hang it up. She'll need to get it washed. "I didn't imagine you would ask me not to do it, but... I needed to ask."

[Lukas] So he catches up by a half-step or so, letting Danicka lead him by the wrist. In her bathroom, he sits on the edge of the tub while she undresses, and he doesn't bother to pretend he's not watching the fabric skim down her shoulders, fall.

"I think it's a good idea," he says. Lukas reaches out, brushing his fingertips over her stomach, touching her hip. His eyes return to hers. "Thank you for asking," he adds, meaning it, "even though you didn't have to."

[Danicka] There's a difference between I needed to and I had to, a difference Lukas intuits easily and seamlessly. Danicka lifts both eyebrows slightly as his hands trail over her now-naked form, which he hasn't seen since this morning when he woke up and left her in bed. She wasn't bruised or injured by what they'd done to each other, no more than he was, and she was sleeping peacefully.

Though her hair was wild, her body and her bedroom reeking of their lovemaking, her appearance half-savage and entirely untame despite her surroundings of clean lines, lightcolored wood, expensive electronics and tall bookshelves.

She catches his hand. "Would you like to watch a movie with me later?" she asks quietly, holding his hand where it is on her hip, her voice soft so it doesn't echo madly in the mostly-tiled bathroom.

[Lukas] Lukas nods, a few times in quick succession, as unashamedly pleased by the idea as a child. Or an animal. "On your laptop," he suggests. "In bed."

[Danicka] She laughs, a sudden flashing grin across the lower half of her face. She leans over, kissing the bridge of his nose, still holding his hand against her body. "I need to change the bedspread, love. And probably all the sheets," she says, still amused as hell, moving back only to lean over again and turn on the water behind him.

Danicka kicks her robe to wall behind the door. "That's why I should get a second bed. One can be the clean bed for cuddling and one can be the messy bed for fucking and sleeping."

[Lukas] He closes his eyes when she kisses him, a broad smile spreading slow and warm across his mouth. "No," Lukas protests, only half playing, "the same bed. I like holding you where we fuck and sleep."

He gets up, though, pulling her against him, her skin to his, his breath inhaling slow. He nuzzles her face; the curve of her neck. It doesn't matter that she's filthy. It doesn't matter that she's clean.

A moment later, he lets her go. "If you tell me where the linens are," he says, "I'll change them while you shower."

[Danicka] "Then why shower?" she laughs at him, but doesn't argue. Nor, however, does she confirm what she may very well be assuming is obvious: that she agrees. That, as she puts her hands on his jaw and his cheeks and draws him down to kiss her mouth -- to kiss his, deeply -- she is telling him

oh, fuck, yes.

Truth be told, they are neither of them human... but Danicka is, at times, closer to it. Was raised as one, mostly. Can pretend to be one more easily. Had to suffer them not just through grade school but all the way until her high school graduation, even if she mostly spent time with other kin. The taboos and mores of American hygiene are terribly set, for her.

Beyond that: she wants to wash herself. She wants the pleasure of the hot water, the free feeling of cleanliness, the soreness-healing pelt of a shower.

She pulls back, smiles. "There's another comforter in the large closet, in the black trunk. Just change that, okay? Leave the sheets."

Danicka nuzzles him once, twice, and wraps her arms around his waist, giving him a squeeze. "And pick out a movie."

[Lukas] "The same bed," he specifies, "only clean."

Then she's kissing him, and he's not arguing anymore, or even thinking much about comforters and sheets and bedding and cleanliness. Mmmph, he says, his hands on her hips and hers on his cheeks, the hinge of his jaw shifting under her palms as his mouth opens to hers.

They sway together with the force and depth of the kiss. When it ends, and she pulls back smiling, his eyes are closed a little longer as though he were reeling still.

Then they open. And he smiles. Barefoot as they both are, her face is about level with his upper chest; when she nuzzles him, she's nuzzling the flat bone between his pectoral muscles, the dip between his collarbones. His hands smooth down her back, squeeze her ass gently, pull her against him.

It takes some effort to make himself step back.

"Okay," he says. Smiles again. "I'll see you soon."