hope.

[Danicka] If it seems like months since Danicka has seen Lukas at the den, she realizes as she drives out there, it's because it has been. She's on one of the long stretches of road between Chicago proper and Stickney that gives her time for the music in her stereo and the thoughts in her head to unwind together, and she asks herself if it's been since July, if it's been since That Night.

Of course that isn't the case. That would be too simple: that Lukas frenzied, and Danicka couldn't bear to go to their home with or without him. No: he came to her apartment and they put together a microscope like everything was fine. He joined her for a midsummer picnic while talking out the Ray and Marni drama aloud, seeking advice or a sounding board or just someone who wasn't judging him as Ahroun Elder, Shadow Lord Elder, etcetera, etcetera. She came to his room at the Brotherhood to admit that she felt a momentary twinge of attraction to someone else, because -- as she'd put it -- she couldn't not tell him something like that.

And they found each other at the den, where she'd gone one night hoping to just feel that elusive, dangerous thing called Normal. Maybe if she went there she could reach into herself and find whatever it was that seemed to be missing, which wasn't something as easy to name as Trust or Love or Hope, because she had all of those things. And Lukas made love to her in the grass, and she fell asleep in his arms,

proof enough that Danicka wasn't missing trust, or love, or hope in him.

She thinks back over the last three months while she drives, but this time she's not looking for hints that something really is wrong. She's not analyzing herself. She's not asking herself if she can trust how she acted, if she can trust the things she's said, if it was all lying to herself for the sake of holding onto something good, something real, something she never thought she wanted and now doesn't want to live without. A line plays in the song coming through her speakers that always makes her think of Lukas

we kissed like we invented it

and she sees her exit up ahead. A smile flicks over her lips.


It isn't often that Danicka calls him or texts him to ask him if he's coming home tonight. She's never been what one would call 'needy'. It's no wonder a woman like her has a cat for a pet, now. She doesn't harangue Lukas to see what his 'schedule' is. She doesn't try to wheedle five more minutes out of him when he can't. There are even days, whole days, when the most that passes between them is a text, two minutes on the phone, a voicemail... there are days when it isn't even that.

It's been said before, it will be said again: Danicka knows what this life is. Or she thought she did. So she shares him with the war, and his pack, and the sept, and if she texts him -- as she did earlier tonight -- to ask

Are you coming home tonight?

there's probably a reason for it. Even if that reason is just that she hasn't seen him in a long time. And he's known her well enough since last autumn to know this much: she doesn't call her apartment 'home', even now that it's hers. She doesn't call it theirs. Home is one singular, lovely little place, and she hasn't been there in two months. She can blame homework or classes or whatever else, but the real reason is that until tonight she was afraid to go back, as though her nameless, indescribable unease would taint it somehow if she kept trying to force it.


The house is cold when she gets there. That causes a flash of ache mingled with determination, even though it's not the first time it's been chilly upon entering. Her car is secured in the garage. Kandovany is set down and the door to her carrier let open as soon as Danicka steps barefoot into the living room, her ballet flats down by the front door. She turns up the thermostat and in moments the heater rumbles to life, cranky because not only has the thermostat not been touched in some time, it's the first time the heater has been turned on since last winter. It will have a funny smell for a little while.

She makes a note on her iPhone to go through and check the house's filters. There are a few things about housekeeper that Danicka learned, while her brother didn't. How to take care of a home in the long run. How to keep things running on your own, if need be, when 'need be' might be rather often. Check the filters. Make plans to winterize the house before the cold really hits. Prepare the garden. And so on, and so forth.

While she's waiting for Lukas, the heater runs, and she unpacks a second set of dishes for Kandovany. These ones are simple brushed metal; their mat is black and yellow and white like most other things in the kitchen. She sets up another litter box and takes the cat to it a few times. Kandovany is confused, if at least a little pleased, with all this business. She goes back to the carrier to curl up, the door open, observing her new domain through the portal, considering whether or not to make it her own.

Danicka leaves her be once Kando knows where her food and bathroom are. She makes a few more notes as the house warms up. She unpacks some warmer-weather clothes to replace the summer ones. She changes the bedding. She does some dusting. More than likely when Lukas comes home, he can hear her upstairs, shaking out the heavier, down comforter they used last winter to put it back on the bed.

And of course there's Kandovany, up on the couch where she most certainly is not supposed to be, staring at him while freezing in place, waiting to see how much trouble she gets into.

[Lukas] Lukas doesn't reply to the text immediately. He rarely does, and Danicka is not the sort of woman to fly into hysterics because of it. A few hours later, possibly when Danicka is en route, possibly after she's arrived, a text comes onto her phone:

omw now :) sry, pack

Perhaps it's a little strange every time to see the truncated, emoticon-peppered messages that somehow issue out of her large warrior mate's hands -- as though the sender of those messages should more properly be a fifteen-year-old boy who'd be punching way, way, way above his class when it came to Danicka. Nevertheless, that's the message that comes across, and little more than ten or fifteen minutes later, she can distantly hear the garage door rattling open as a second car joins the first.

Then the front door. Then the bass registers of Lukas's voice filtering through the walls and the floors, greeting her cat with a gentle rub between the ears and a kiss dropped on the top of Kando's sleek head. So much for shooing her off the furniture: apparently Lukas doesn't think he has a right to complain about fur on the furnishings.

Then he's coming up the stairs, footsteps quick and agile; rounding the corner, doubling back, coming into the bedroom in time to grab the corner of the heavy down comforter to help his mate shake it out.

Fall already. Well and truly, the temperatures dropping, the sun straying farther from these skies by the day.

"Ahoj, láska," he says -- and, in time with her, gives the comforter one mighty billow.

[Danicka] It's cute to her that Lukas uses shorthand over texts the way he does. He doesn't seem the type. It just makes her smile a little, amused. Omw. Sry. Smileys. She sets her phone back down on the desk in the study where she was dusting, and leaves it there in the dock playing her music through the speakers while she remakes the bed. It's something new, or something he hasn't heard her playing before, but it's in the same vein as most of what she listens to when she's not out clubbing or working out. The man's voice is lazy; the woman's voice is breathy.

so don't think that I'm pushing you away
when you're the one that I've kept closest

He hears that the way that she heard the elevator. Danicka doesn't come running downstairs excitedly, bopping her way to the living room to tackle him. She likes waiting like this. She likes not dropping everything to rush to him. She likes hearing his footsteps coming up to join her, even as the presence of her mate fills the house, even as her heart trips over itself once or twice with instinctive fear

which she doesn't fight. It takes effort not to try to bury it. To just let it be.

Kandovany has an accomplice. He doesn't shoo the cat off the couch, and the cat purrs as it is stroked, kissed, rubbing her head back into Lukas's palm. Perhaps it's better if Lukas is indulgent, Danicka thinks as she hears him talking softly to the cat, though she doesn't realize he really is being so with her pet. Perhaps it's better if home is someplace he doesn't have to be the disciplinarian. Perhaps it's better if, one day, his children do not associate the terror they feel at his nearness with concurrent punishment, scolding.

Perhaps that's one more sacrifice to make, to be with him.

She looks up when he enters, waits for him to grab the comforter, then laughs as his might billow snaps it right out of her grasp. "Ahoj, Lukášek," she says fondly, taking the edge back and helping him settle it down over the bed, the jersey sheets because flannel is saved for winter. She's wearing khaki slacks with a tailored waist and hipline and more casual flare down the leg. Her top is a seafoam color, scoop-necked, the front decorated with a white applique. Her hair is down, loose, the waves natural.

There's a black suit trimmed in white on a hanger, not yet put in the closet but hanging on a doorhandle. The pants are folded over the hanger, barely peeking out. The top has long sleeves that would still only reach about halfway down her forearms. Chinese collar, frog closures. Stiff fabric. It isn't for the sake of fashion.

She crawls onto the bed and comes over to him on her knees, smiling, her legs denting the comforter they just smoothed. "Are you hungry?"

[Lukas] Really, it's not that Lukas wants to pretend the conversation they had last time never happened. It's not that he wants to simply sweep it all under the rug and go back to a life they can almost pretend is normal, is mundane, is her going to class and him going to some nine-to-five, coming back together to have dinner and watch tv and fuck under the covers when the day is done.

It's not that. If nothing else, Lukas is not a liar. He doesn't lie to himself, and he tries his very best not to lie to Danicka. It's something else entirely: the awareness, bone deep and instinctive, that if he lets himself change, if he lets himself be afraid of what might be, if he lets himself behave differently around her because of what could happen, almost did happen, then everything they have may as well be lost already.

So she comes across the mattress on her knees. He wraps his arms around her and scoops her up against his front, hugging her, mmphing against shoulder, kissing her neck high up close to her ear.

"Love you," he says, and sets her knees back down on the bed. "Let's cook," he continues, "but we should talk while we cook."

Somehow, he doesn't sound like he means we should chitchat. They do that anyway; he wouldn't make a point of that.

[Danicka] She's never told him that she likes fucking under the covers. It's a silly thing. It isn't shame of her body or disgust with his or embarrassment over the act. It's more to do with how close it forces them to be. How much the heat builds up between them. How he folds over her and holds her and moves slowly into her, gasps building into pants against her shoulder, her cheek, her ear. How near the end he throws back the sheets and blankets off his body so he can move more easily, so some of their sweat can evaporate, so he can fuck her. How they fall asleep later, tangled in the covers, tangled in each other.

Of course all of that is under the surface, not something she comes right out and says, and there's no way to tell when she seems so happy while they're making love whether they're covered up or not. It's just something she likes, and like so many things that make Danicka happy, she holds it close in her heart, like the things that make her happy are better partly because they're secrets. Because they're safe.

Danicka comes into his arms and wraps her own around his waist, lays her head on his chest -- or almost does. As soon as she's in reach Lukas is lifting her up against him, hugging her tightly. She laughs softly, almost soundless, and wraps her arms around his neck instead, hugging him back, her face against the side of his neck. She smells like her soap. Like this house. Like her fabric softener and her sweat and her.

He smells the way he always does, and as perceptive as she is, Danicka's nose is human. She knows only: this is Lukas. She can't pick out the various scents that make up that one. She just knows it, instantly, though she can seldom recall it perfectly when it isn't right there with her.

When he isn't right there with her.

A pause, when he says they should talk. It isn't nervousness, just... a pause. She sets back down, resting on her heels, her hands on her lap. "We should," she says. Another beat, not as long. "I think there's some stuff in the freezer we could thaw," she says consideringly. "Or just soup." Danicka laughs, and takes herself off the bed. She passes him, her hand falling to her side, touching his and squeezing it for a moment. "You go raid the kitchen and decide what you want. I'm going to turn off the music but I'll be right behind you."

[Lukas] "Okay," he says, simple, agreeable as a child. Or an animal. He kisses her again, this time on the forehead, gently. His hands squeezes hers back, and then he steps back -- letting go her hand only a moment later, when the distance between them has made holding on impractical. He smiles then, a suddenly widening thing. "See you soon."

Back down he goes, broad back and big shoulders disappearing through the doorway, footsteps thundering down the stairs. She knows he can move quietly, with light steps, but this is his den. He can make as much noise as he likes, as long as he doesn't disturb his mate. When he's in the kitchen she can hear him banging around, looking in cupboards, opening and shutting the fridge.

When she joins him, there's a pot of water on the stove. There's a package of pasta on the counter -- just plain straight fettucine -- and he's running cold water over chicken breast cutlets to thaw them. Also, an unopened jar of some inexpensive, ungourmet white sauce. Also, a pack of frozen vegetables.

It's a dark moon outside. His rage is as low tonight as it'll ever be. She knows from experience that doesn't mean a whole lot at all. He turns when he hears her, dropping the package of chicken in the sink.

"I just realized," he says, "it's been months since we were here together."

[Danicka] It takes no time at all to step into the study beside the bedroom and turn off the music. Danicka leaves her phone there. She can't imagine anyone calling when it's already this late at night. She can't imagine it being necessary that she pick up, either. So she leaves it, and lets it charge, following Lukas downstairs.

"Ach! Dolů!" he hears her in the living room, scolding Kandovany off the couch. Kandovany meows at her, and Danicka picks her up, taking her to the cushion tucked away in a corner that's actually meant to be her bed. "Zde," she says, and strokes the feline's back over and over while murmuring fondly: "Nezbedný kočička."

A kiss on top of the cat's forehead, just as she starts to purr. Danicka gets to her feet, satisfied, and finds Lukas in the kitchen, boiling water and thawing chicken and preparing what he could find that Danicka keeps here, frozen or dried or canned or otherwise nonperishable, so that if they want to eat they don't always have to make a run to the store first. There wasn't much to choose from.

"I thought about that, too, on my way over," she answers, but doesn't comment further. She picks up the bag of frozen vegetables as she steps up beside him. Looks at him for a moment. "You do realize that these are vegetables, yes?"

[Lukas] Lukas fires Danicka a mock-dirty look over his shoulder. "Why no, Miss Musil," he retorts, "I hadn't the faintest clue until you told me. I thought they were oddly shaped, oddly colored chunks of protein matter." He wraps his arm around her, then, careful to keep his dripping hands clear of her. "Come here," he says, hugging her against his side, pressing a kiss against her temple. "Mm. I missed you."

When he lets go, he goes back to poking the chicken cutlets; bending them in his hands, encouraging the thaw. There's a brief quiet between them: nothing but the rush of water, the quiet whoosh of the gas fire on the stove. Then Lukas reaches out to turn the tap off, slapping the freshly-defrosted chicken cutlets onto the cutting board.

"So," he says quietly, "you or me first?"

[Danicka] "Oh, that explains why you got them out of the freezer," she says, playing along and stepping closer. "But they are, indeed, vegetables, and now you have to eat them." She puts the bag back down as he puts his arm around her, squeezing herself against his side. She turns her face towards his body and breathes in, exhaling slowly. A moment. He missed her, but she doesn't stop to wonder when the last time she saw him was. The last time they had a conversation that lasted more than a few minutes was weeks ago.

She slips away again. There isn't much to do all at once. The vegetables won't take long to cook up. The sauce won't take very long to heat. The main work of the meal is being done right now by Lukas, and she steps away to leave him to it, the slicing and trimming of the chicken.

"Me," she says, without hesitating, without hedging. Her back leans against the counter while she watches him with the knife. "I went and talked to Jesmond a few days ago," Danicka tells him softly. "She's the only person I know who was mated to an Ahroun, other than my father, and... I don't think it's something he and I could talk about."

Nevermind the fact that when she talks to her father these days it's under the radar, it's in secret, and it's disobedience to her brother.

[Lukas] This house is not ostentatious. Danicka did not insist on a palace, though she can afford one. Lukas can't afford one at all, but never, not once, did he feel that the den he offered was not good enough because it was orders of magnitude less expensive than her apartment. The furniture is mostly secondhand, though sturdy; most of the maintenance was performed by Lukas himself.

That's not to say they haven't spent money where it mattered, though. Their bed is thick and comfortable. The lighting around their desk is bright and eyestrain-reducing. The knives in the block are razorsharp and sturdy, german-made, flawless.

Lukas doesn't know that they aren't the first set Danicka bought. The first set she bought ended up in a dumpster somewhere because on her way home, she was waylaid by ... fomori? Vampires? -- and some other kinsman grabbed her knives and used them as weapons while she blasted away with that nine-millimeter of hers. That set was ruined. This is the replacement, and he's careful with them, slow and, in all truth, rather clumsy. There's an irony in that. He can shave himself with a straight razor, blindfolded. He can wield a sword expertly. It takes him a low time to trim chicken breasts, though, and to slice them into strips. It's a lack of practice.

Lukas pauses slightly when Danicka says she talked to Jesmond; when she tells him, indirectly, what about. He looks up, looks at her for a moment. Then down again, going back to cutting meat.

"And?" -- quiet, that.

[Danicka] When Lukas was a child, the house the Musils lived in seemed so very big, though his visit there last year showed him the difference in perception fifteen years can make. The memory of his own family's estate in Czechoslovakia was rapidly fading, replaced by the single room they all shared. Mr. Musil's house was a place you dressed up to go. You had to get your hair tamed with a wet comb, you were reminded over and over not to run inside and not to yell, use your manners, don't fight with your sister, and so on and so forth. Of course most of that went right out the window as soon as they arrived. There was, compared to what he knew then, so much room to move around, so much ground to cover. At the time, relative to where he slept every night, Danicka lived in a palace.

Now he has multiple places he could very well call his own. There's the room at the Brotherhood, though that's barely bigger than a closet, and technically owned by Kinfolk who aren't even of his tribe. There's the room he usually stays in at the Loft, and while it's a second home to his pack and while Kate is beyond generous with her wealth, it belongs in name and deed and scent to Truth's Meridian. There's the bed he shares with Danicka in Kingsbury Plaza, but even though the space his things occupy in her bathroom and closet grow every time he's there and even though their belongings mingle together more and more, it's Danicka's apartment.

The only place, the only territory that Lukas can claim completely -- other than his car (which isn't a home) or his sister's and parents' places (which aren't, either, and which he wouldn't) -- is this. The yards in front and back, the things growing that he and his mate planted, everything from basement to rooftop is utterly his.

And hers. Theirs. His and his mate's. His den, where his mate is warm and safe. His den, where spirits of glass and water and oak keep the home purified and his mate protected. Where he can come with her and prepare a meal like this, feed her, take care of the place with her. And it's not ostentatious. It's not like the Loft or like Danicka's apartment. It's worth wondering if either of them, given their relative upbringings, feel the same way they do here if it was.

Like they're home.

"And," Danicka responds, just as quiet as Lukas, "it helped." Which is vague enough, not telling him really how it helped or what they talked about, but Danicka doesn't leave it there. The knife thunk-slides across the cutting board, slow but rhythmic, careful. Lukas is rarely slapdash about anything, particularly if he's still learning it. "It helped in a way I don't think you could." She says this gently, lifting her eyes to him. "I'm glad we talked. We needed to. And that helped, too. But not in the same way that talking to Jesmond did."

Danicka turns, leaning her side against the counter so she can watch his profile, watch him as he cuts and as she talks. "I've been thinking about it since I went to see her, and... ever since we were mated I've sort of retreated into... us." This is difficult, and though she doesn't hesitate overmuch, the words are coming with some amount of effort, translating thoughts into understandable phrases. "I've never had a lot of friends. Not real ones, I mean. Close ones. And I've almost never let myself confide in anyone outside of family."

And Lukas knows how much would have to be kept from even them. Especially them, in many cases.

"But then the way it happened with Vladislav, I felt like..." Danicka takes a breath. "I felt like I'd lost my family, in a way. Which I know I didn't, not really, and not all of them, but I didn't want to talk to you about that and have you feel like I was blaming you for that." A pause. "You need to understand that this isn't stuff I realized a year ago and just now decided to talk about. I've just been figuring it out the past few days."

There's another slight moment where she considers what to say next. "Anyway... I think on the one hand, I was just so relieved to have someone I could be honest with and talk to openly that if I didn't share something with you, I didn't bother to share it with anyone. Talking to Jesmond helped me deal with everything you and I talked about after the potluck, but it also helped me realize that I... don't really have anyone else, and that's... not actually okay. Or good for me. Or for you."

It's rare that Danicka talks at length like this. It's rare that Lukas doesn't have to ask just the right question to get her to say more than the bare minimum. It's rare that he doesn't have to guess over and over at what's wrong, like he's on some kind of quest no more heroic than proving to his maiden that he cares about her, that he wants to know, that he won't beat her if he doesn't like the answer. Once upon a time, Lukas would unburden himself so fully to Danicka that it would overwhelm her. But the times when Danicka has divulged herself even this much have been few and far between, ever since he's known her.

She takes another deep breath. "Also, I'm learning shaolin kung fu. And I didn't tell you that's what I've been studying because sifu is very... severe. It isn't easy, and I do get hurt sometimes." Lukas might open his mouth to defend himself. To worry. He might just be listening, moving food around, preparing to put the noodles on, boiling water for vegetables, heating oil in a skillet for the chicken. He might stop himself from any reaction, remembering the night he suggested she drop a class just because the homework was demanding.

"It's unfair to you," Danicka says softly. "Keeping things from you because you might worry is no different from you trying to change yourself because I might be frightened. If I need you to accept that oftentimes I'm just going to be scared, then I also have to accept that oftentimes, you're just going to worry about me." Her brows are drawn together gently. "And I need to be honest anyway, and trust that you won't try to control me or lock me away from anything that might challenge me or hurt me."

Finally, she lowers her arms to her sides, giving a small shrug. Kandovany has entered the kitchen by now, lapping at water from her bowl quite thoughtfully. Water here is just as cold and refreshing as water at the other place. Interesting. Danicka, however, is watching Lukas.

"And that's all I had to say."

[Lukas] Lukas never stops working while Danicka speaks. It's not inattentiveness, and it's not him taking this discussion less seriously than he should. It's something simpler and more fundamental than that: neither of them is the sort to idle away. To waste time. As wealthy as Danicka is now, as respected as Lukas is now, they essentially come from backgrounds where hard work was prized over entitlement. Where the fruits of one's own labor was worth more than the most expensive baubles, jewels, possessions.

They think of this humble little house as their den. There are growing things out front planted by their hands, that Danicka thinks of when she thinks of readying the house for winter. When he dies, he wants the sky to have his remains, and the storm, and this land which is as inextricably his as no other is.

So: she speaks, and he works. He slices chicken when she tells him she's never had a lot of friends. That would surprise anyone else, he thinks -- any of those pseudofriends of hers who she meets and charms and abandons without warning. It doesn't surprise him. He rinses the knife and washes his hands, and then he heats oil on the skillet while she tells him she's realized it's not entirely healthy for her to shut herself away. To have him and only him. His back is to her then; she doesn't see him wince -- not out of some misbegotten jealousy or desire to keep her to himself, but because his mind runs to the inevitable:

if she only has him, then one day she'll have no one at all.

The water's starting to boil when she's telling him about shaolin kung fu. He glances over his shoulder at her, a small huff of surprise and humor escaping him, and then drops vegetables in. It dies when she says sifu is severe. That it isn't easy, that she gets hurt.

That gets anther glance -- quick, instinctive, something flaring in his eyes that he has to repress. He has to, because he doesn't want to crush her spirit.

When she's finished he's scooping blanched vegetables out of the water and setting them aside. He dropping the pasta in for a quick boil, and he's pouring sauce over the chicken to heat. These things keep him busy. The silence isn't awkward.

"I'm glad you told me," he says. He always says this when she tells him something that she didn't have to. That once upon a time she would have hid. "I think -- I'm glad for both of you. You and Jesmond, if you become friends. She would ... understand you in a way few others would, I think. And she's strong and smart, which is more than can be said for most people we seem to run into."

He has a moment to idle. He turns from the stove, letting the pasta boil uncovered while he wipes his hands on a dishrag.

"You shouldn't worry about tell me you're taking kung fu lessons. I might ... startle a bit at first. But I know you know yourself and what you can handle." The corner of his mouth tugs, "I'm not going to rush out and beat your sifu up, baby. Or. You know. Try."

Another small pause.

"I'm sorry I wanted you to come back from New York so soon. I wasn't thinking of how important that time with your family was. I was just thinking of myself."

[Danicka] That makes her laugh -- just that one thing, that big about having to 'try' to beat up the forty-odd year-old Chinese man whose forearms are rightfully called iron. It makes her face light up, laughing, even if it's just for a moment. And it is just for a moment. The conversation isn't easy. The conversation is, ultimately, serious. A lot of what she's just said could very well have hurt Lukas, put him off, made him launch into some version of a lecture or another.

The laughter is brief by nature, and fades as her eyebrows draw together a bit. "Baby... I wasn't even thinking of that. I loved having that time with them, but you met those children. They're exhausting. And even though I love them, I missed you. It hurt to get up in the morning because I was so far from you."

[Lukas] If his hands were something of a mess, he'd touch her. He'd put his hand to her cheek, or stroke her hair. Cup his fingers behind her neck. Kiss her brow.

He does the last, at least. Moves closer, nuzzles against her face, kisses her brow. Heavy, affectionate, his half-animal nature as much in the motion as in his eyes, in his rage, in his very presence filling the kitchen.

"I just want you to have your family," he says after. "And I've already made it so hard for you to connect with your father."

[Danicka] Considering what he is, it's almost laughable that Danicka resists the urge to nuzzle him when he kisses her forehead. She doesn't want to headbutt his mouth, though. She tilts her head up a bit, accepts it, half-smiles. "No, you haven't."

That's soft, but firm. No. Not you.

[Lukas] Truth be told, sometimes Lukas likes kissing her just like this. Likes showing his affection so viscerally, with nothing but the contact of mouth to skin, face to face; nothing but the strength and motion in his neck and shoulders bringing them together. Like animals. Like wolves, laying their muzzles over each other's backs, brushing sides together.

"I was actually thinking," he says, "if your family visited, I wouldn't mind if they stayed here at the den. I know we like to keep this just ours, but if you wanted them to, I'd be all right with that. They're family."

The water's beginning to boil in earnest behind him now, and Lukas presses another kiss to Danicka's temple, then turns to deal with dinner. "I was also thinking," he begins, and then breaks off. "Well -- I was going to tell you tonight that I'm going to challenge for Adren very soon. And if I passed, then your brother and I would be the same rank at least for a while. I was thinking if you wanted me to, maybe I can talk to him again. See if he'll let you see your father more regularly."

[Danicka] Dinner's cooking. Boiling. Searing. It won't take long before they have something to eat, something for Kandovany to sniff at plaintively, something for Lukas to strongly consider sharing with the cat til Danicka gives him a Look. It smells good. Danicka steps closer to him, against his side, as he kisses her temple. She huffs a small laugh. "There's certainly more room here than at my place," she agrees. "But I doubt they'll be traveling much anytime soon. Maybe I'll suggest that one or two of the children visit at a time." A beat. "I should make a guest room, if we do that."

As though decorating and furnishing one would be nothing. Which, given her current financial status, is close to the truth. She lets those thoughts go, still a bit off-kilter. She hadn't expected the conversation to go from where she began to where they are now, talking about her nieces and nephews or her half-sister visiting.

Or this: Lukas stepping away to tend to the meal, telling her he's going to challenge for Adren and then her brother and maybe she could talk to him about her father and --

"What?" Danicka says quietly, blinking, shaking something off like there's a veil over her eyes, a fog in front of her. "You're challenging?" Her brow is tight.

[Lukas] They've known each other -- really known each other -- for nearly two years now. Sometimes to feels longer than that to Lukas. In those three words, in the look on her face, he can read her tension. Her surprise. He lets the topic of her father and her family go for now; takes the pasta off the fire, too, scooping the noodles out to drain.

"I've had the renown for a long time now," he says quietly -- not as defense but as explanation. "I waited because I didn't think I was ready. And because I was wary, I suppose. I didn't want you to worry, and I didn't want to rush off half-prepared and fail. Or worse, die, and leave everyone else to suffer the consequences."

Dinner -- late and hastily thrown together as it is -- is ready. Lukas is turning off the stove, snapping one burner after another off; splitting the pasta up into plates, heaping chicken and vegetable and sauce atop. It's not until he hands her her plate, not until he can meet her eyes, that he goes on:

"I'm ready now. And to put it off any more would be cowardly and irresponsible. I'm sorry; I shouldn't have breezed past it. It's just that I was thinking about your father, and this was related, and -- it just came out."

[Danicka] Surprise. Startlement. Confusion. Whatever he sees in that blinking expression of hers, it's plain enough that he caught her off guard.

There's also the fact that when her mother challenged for Adren, Danicka was old enough to be aware of it. To remember it. There's the fact that her brother challenged for Adren just a couple of years ago. In a tribe where Theurges are as revered as they are among the Shadow Lords, in a tribe where every auspice is expected to work for whatever power or glory they seek, where challenges are just as much of an opportunity to bring down a rival as a chance to test a would-be peer --

well, nevermind all that. Lukas is an Ahroun. There are few tests in their life, formal or otherwise, that aren't dangerous somehow. He reads tension in her, the wrinkle to her brow and the tightness under her jaw, the way she fights wincing and comes off looking just... upset.

or worse, die

Danicka doesn't even flinch. But that's because she has such long practice against flinching that resisting the urge is kneejerk, an instant suppression. She doesn't even have to think about it while Lukas is filling their plates, holding hers out to her. She looks down at it, then reaches out slowly and takes it, staring at the pasta and chicken and sauce and vegetables for a few seconds, then looking up at Lukas. Her brow is still furrowed. It isn't often she looks worried. That's the only word that comes to mind to describe how she looks now, though.

Maybe 'uneasy'.

"When are you going to do it?"

[Lukas] Dinner, simple and hasty as it is, had seemed so appetizing a moment ago. Now neither of them pays it much mind. Their eyes are on each other. She looks uneasy. He looks like he's trying to understand why, his clear eyes keen and searching.

"Maybe a few days," he says. "Maybe a couple weeks. I think I should see my parents first. Let them know." A pause. "Maybe you could come with me.

"Danička, why are you so worried?"

[Danicka] They just talked about this. A couple of weeks ago, standing and sitting in her entryway. They just talked about this a few moments ago, worry and fear and so on. She takes a breath before she answers, holding her plate in both hands and not yet looking for a fork. "You're an Ahroun."

Which is as simple as it gets. It isn't something he does, not a job he can quit or take a vacation from. It's what he is. It's what he's always been, even before they knew he would ever, ever Change. Even when they all thought he was Kin.

Lukas doesn't want his sister mated to a Garou. He thinks she'd be better suited to a Kinfolk mate. He's never verbally reconciled that to the fact that he's with Danicka. That he's with a woman who is frightened of him, who can't help but be frightened of him, who can't even say that it's just 'what he might do' that scares her. It's him. It's what he is. It's what that means.

Danicka shakes her head again. "Wait... you're going away to do it?"

[Lukas] They're still standing in their kitchen. They have plates in hand. The stove is ticking quietly as it cools. He's an Ahroun, she says, which says nothing and everything all at once. His brow contracts for a moment.

"I thought I might go back to Stark Falls," he replies. "Promised-Rain was a fairly new Adren when he mentored me. Now he's almost Athro. I think it'd be ... right to show him how far I've come, and what I've done with his teachings."

[Danicka] "Oh."

It's a breathy sound, that word. Sort of 'oh, of course'. Or maybe just 'oh, that makes sense'. And it does: that for this rank in particular, the highest so many achieve these days before death in service to Gaia, he would go back to a sept that belongs to his own tribe. Harken back to history, etcetera. Danicka doesn't need to be told about where Stark Falls is or what it's like; she's never been there, but her brother visited often. Her mother even went regularly enough to be known there. Both of them taught younger Garou there, even though their primary loyalty was to the larger multi-tribal sept in Manhattan.

Somehow it's always made sense to her that Lukas was fostered at Stark Falls instead of at the Green. She wouldn't be able to explain why, exactly. It isn't that Stark Falls is Old World and the Green is New: her mother and brother weren't ever defined by how traditional or progressive they were. Lukas isn't rural as opposed to big city. It just seems right, though, that he was trained there.

"I've never been to Stark Falls," she says quietly, and takes a breath, exhaling. She blinks her eyes a few times, shakes her head, and nods her head towards the dining room. "Fall break is in a couple of weeks. It's just a four-day weekend. I don't know if the timing would work out or if it would go longer than that, but I could be there for at least some of it. Well. 'There' being that podunk town near the sept, I think there's a motel."

She sits at the head of the table, sinking down into the chair. Her eyes are on her meal still. "I forgot a fork."

[Lukas] Lukas is aware of his mate's mood. He wants to respect of it: she's worried and she's taken off-guard, surprised by it all, blindsided. So he tries not to grin when she says she'll come. He tries not to look so pleased, so happy, at the prospect of a little sojourn to a podunk little town outside the Stark Falls Sept.

"There's a little inn just a few miles from the bawn borders. We could stay there the night we get in. I don't know how long the challenge will go on. It depends on who I challenge and what he or she has in mind for me, I suppose."

He gets up as he's speaking, ducks back into the kitchen, comes back with a fork that he hands to her.

"I'm glad you're coming with me," he adds, softly, taking his seat again. He still sits where he always does: to her right, along the long side of the table. Close to her, with her at the table's head.

[Danicka] "I'll bring some books," Danicka says after a moment. That says, without further detail, what she expects, or what she's willing to prepare for: going with Lukas to Stark Falls when he challenges doesn't mean she'll be with him every night. Doesn't mean she'll be allowed into the caern at all.

What she doesn't even allude to is that one of the reasons she's going is so she'll be close in case something happens. If she's there, word will come sooner that something happened. They might let her see him before he's burned, if there's anything left worth seeing. Her last words to him won't be over a phone.

Her mother survived her Adren challenge just fine. Not all of them are so potentially lethal that survival is a shock. But her stomach is queasy, even as Lukas is fighting pleasure that she'll be with him. Danicka can't even explain it, other than the way he brought it up, seguing from her family and father and brother to this.

She could feign the fast recovery that she always used to be able to. Still is 'able' to, really. Doesn't want to, with him. Doesn't have to. So he can see how in truth, Danicka is still reeling slightly from the rapid shift from one set of emotions to a completely different set. She hasn't started eating yet.

"I'm sorry," she says finally, holding the fork he handed her. "I was thinking about trust and acceptance and then we somehow got on talking about my family for some reason and then it was 'oh, by the way' and ...I'm just having trouble catching up."

She huffs a small laugh, putting her fork into the dinner he just made. "Which seems kind of lame." She turns it, spiraling noodles around and around. "I want to be happy for you, or supportive, or excited, or even curious, but you caught me off guard and it's like the first thing I feel when that happens is... panic."

[Lukas] Lukas is shaking his head as soon as I'm sorry leaves her mouth. He sets his fork down. He reaches for her, touches her face, folds his hand over hers.

"Don't apologize," he says. "It was my fault. That was clumsy of me. I didn't mean to break the news like that. I wanted to sit you down and tell you tonight, and take my time doing it. I wanted to tell you, period, because ... it is a big deal. And not because it's exciting or new or something for you to be proud of, but because it's dangerous, and it's uncertain, and I wanted you to know -- in case."

A small pause there. He doesn't say the rest: in case something happens. His thumb rubs over her knuckles for a moment. His hand squeezes hers.

"But I'll be careful, Danička. And I am prepared. More ready than most Fosterns ever are."

[Danicka] Danicka lets her fork set down against the edge of her plate when Lukas covers her hand with his. She looks over at him, and where earlier she managed not to wince, not show that words or thought had slapped her, she flinches slightly when he says in case. At that point it doesn't even matter if he doesn't say the rest.

It should be that saying it out loud should feel better, but the tension in her only goes up, even as he's touching her, touching her face, covering her hand, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles, squeezing her hand. It feels wrong to be so tense with Lukas trying so very, very hard to be tender. It feels uncomfortable to the point of a crawling sensation for his hands to be here, and then there, as though searching for some spot that will let him comfort her, make her feel at ease again. Danicka eases her hand away, slides her palm over his, squeezes his hand as though to try and tell him somehow it isn't rejection, it isn't refusal. It isn't him.

"I'm glad you told me," she says as she draws her hand back, for what that's worth. And she doesn't know what else to say then, her stomach knotted against eating now. Oh, he's ready, more than most Fosterns.

Erik Thurstan was a Fostern, Jesmond said. Just like your Lukas.

She takes a breath, having been silent for a couple of moments, then gets up out of her chair, pushing it back with her legs. Not to go get water, not to go find a bottle of wine to open up, but just to step around the corner of the table, stand by Lukas's chair til he realizes she wants him to lean back, and then stepping over his leg to sit on his lap. Because of the nearness of the tops of his legs to the bottom of the table it's a tight fit. He has to open his legs a bit and let her put hers between them, she has to shift how she sits on him, leaning her side close to his chest, and because of the way she's turned she doesn't bother to twist around completely to pull her plate over beside his.

The crawling sensation goes away. Danicka sits with Lukas, her upper body curved against his own, and lays her head beside his, temple to temple. "It's going to get cold, I think."

[Lukas] Lukas never was the master reader of emotion, intent and motive that Danicka is. He never will be. Still, perhaps he can see that unease; can sense the tension in her as he touches her to try to connect to her, try to comfort her. Maybe he can sense how perilously close it comes to revulsion, and that's why -- when she gets up -- he doesn't try to stop her, or even ask why.

His eyes go to his food. She touched his hand in return as though to tell him this isn't rejection, this isn't her pulling away, but truth be told it's hard not to read it so. He stirs his pasta with his fork, considers a strip of chicken: and then she's not going away after all. She's coming nearer.

With a soft clink, Lukas's fork taps down on his plate. The man himself -- the wolf, the Garou -- sits back, looking up at his mate. She steps over or around his leg. She sits on his lap, and his arms welcome her with a sort of subsumed relief. He nuzzles the side of her face as she lays her temple to his, and his eyes close as he breathes her in.

Cold, she says.

I could keep you warm, he thinks, and it's not some silly joke, not some sly wink at what they do to each other in bed. Or in the shower, in the kitchen, wherever else they've fucked like the animals they are.

It's simply this: animal. Instinctive. If mate is cold, then he keep warm. If mate hungry, he hunt. If mate endangered, he protect. Simple as that. Inarguable as that.

"We'll dress warm," he murmurs. "If you want, I can ask the younger Garou if their kin will board us for a few days."

[Danicka] The relief Lukas feels when Danicka comes closer, sinking onto his lap, is echoed in the relaxation of her body when it meets his. It's hideously unfair that her life left her with knowledge like this: that anything unexpected or surprising warrants a kneejerk panic, that when others seek to touch her and know her she should recoil, that the only way to hold onto happiness is to deny that there's anything threatening it. She knows better. In every case, she knows better, especially now, but the sensations still creep up on her.

And Lukas, knowing all he does, works as hard to deal with his feelings of rejection or frustration as Danicka does to deal with her feelings of fear and discomfort. She knows it's unfair that when he seeks such sudden, full contact she might bolt, but that somehow it's okay if she initiates it. Danicka perhaps has fewer controlling tendencies than most people he knows in life, so she hopes he knows it isn't that. It isn't about power. It's never been about power, between them.

Or maybe it is. Lukas has it. Greater power, greater strength. And they ignore that, pretend it's otherwise, at their peril. It takes as much patience for Lukas to be in this relationship, patience for her to be ready for him, to come to him, as it takes courage for Danicka to receive him. Go to him, and tell him everything that she does.

She exhales slowly, breathing against him, with him, as he breathes her in. It's alright now. It's okay. And she feels better, like a wave going out, and Lukas's nuzzling of her doesn't feel like pressure, his arms around her don't feel confining. She can't explain it. She doesn't need to. Her arms wrap around his neck.

And her mouth widens slowly in a smile as he thinks about keeping her warm, keeping her safe. She exhales a breath that is, itself, laughter. "I meant dinner," she says, her face against his throat, her smile opening. "But, come to mention, I think I'd prefer staying in the hotel. It'd be hard enough waiting for you without having to pretend for strangers that everything's okay."

Danicka sits up, reaching over and stroking his hair back a little. "I'll spend time with them during the days, but if you're not with me at night I'd rather be on my own."

[Lukas] "Oh." She meant dinner. He looks at it, bemused, as though he's just now noticing it. "Oh, well." The tone is mild resignation, largely uncaring. "We can always heat it up again."

She's smiling now. His arm wraps around her lower back; the other hand is warm on her thigh. This isn't the first time they've sat together like this. Not the first time she's climbed onto his lap; not the first time he's welcomed her there, kept her close, nuzzled her and been nuzzled by her.

This is the sort of closeness they almost always only display in the privacy of their own home, though. He can think of only a handful of times they've allowed themselves to express such intimacy in public, and then it was either because they were drunk, unobserved by people who Mattered, or both. He doesn't mind. He likes that this is something of their private home. Something they share, that they don't share with anyone else.

"I thought you might," he adds. "I'll make sure to introduce you to some of the locals, but I don't think they'd mind if you spent the nights in the inn."

A few more moments of pause. His hand rubs gently, thoughtlessly over her leg. Then, "Baby, don't worry too much, okay?"

[Danicka] She kisses his earlobe, her mouth soft, and nuzzles him underneath it a second later. They can always heat dinner up again, and of course the locals won't mind much if the Ahroun they fostered, who left and has come back to challenge for Adren, allows his mate to spend her nights waiting for him in one place rather than the other.

That is, after all, most of what she'll be doing. She thinks. Neither of them are discussing what that challenge of his might be, what will be asked of him. When he became Fostern it was so 'in the bag' that the Fianna he looked to just asked him a few questions and sent him on his way. It's possible this won't be any different. It's possible someone will try to make up for the ease of his last challenge by testing him twice as hard this time. They have no way of knowing if Danicka will see him one night then not again for a few hours, or see him one night

and not again. ever.

She shakes her head slightly against his neck. "I won't," she murmurs, and holds him a little tighter. Kisses him where she nuzzled him just a moment ago. "Not anymore than usual."

[Lukas] "Good," Lukas replies softly.

It would be a lie to say such thoughts never occurred to him. That Lukas has not thought, I might go away a Fostern and come back an Adren. Or a Fostern still, ashamed of my failure. Or not at all. If these thoughts never came to mind, then he wouldn't have wanted to tell her like this. Seriously. Somberly. Taking his time, apologizing for breaking the news so clumsily, giving her time to process, and digest, and come to terms.

She nuzzles him, and she kisses him. He closes his eyes. He's relaxed here, a little slouched in his chair, letting his mate rest against him. Dinner is cooling. Neither of them care overmuch. He doesn't want her to worry; she says she won't any more than usual. A faint smile crosses his face, a little sad. His chest expands against her side; he takes a breath.

He doesn't tell her, of course, that if he does indeed fall she won't be left waiting and wondering. His pack would know immediately. Would feel his presence, his weight and balance and strength, depart instantaneously from their bond. And then she would know, because he's already made arrangements.

He doesn't tell her these things because they're unnecessarily painful. They're necessary, and when the time comes these prearrangements will save her and all the rest of his loved ones untold pain -- but for now, to tell her someone will come to you would be a sort of cruelty. It's a burden to know such things: who should tell whom, who should do that, who would know what, and how. His packmate carries it already. He doesn't lay it on his mate as well.

Instead, after a while, he shifts, kisses her temple again.

"Let's eat," he says quietly, and nudges her toward food.

[Danicka] They have few secrets.

They do have things they choose not to talk about, things that talking won't help, things that talking won't change.

If Lukas dies, in his challenge or in battle, his pack will know immediately. They'll feel it, and someone will come tell her that her mate is gone and that the last thing he wanted her to know was that he'd be waiting for her. He'd go to the homelands and he'd make some kind of spiritual den to rest in, to wait through years or decades for Danicka's spirit to make it there. He'd find her when she came, and take her there to help her heal from whatever grief life left her with before she moved on. He'd see her again.

But on this earth, with him gone, to take care of the oak whose roots are embraced by earth mingled with his ashes, the land that holds a part of him. Perhaps Lukas has faith that Danicka wouldn't simply spend the rest of her days waiting for death or, worse, seeking it out. Maybe he knows that she wouldn't waste the rest of her life in agony, but it's not something they're going to talk about tonight, or perhaps ever.

Danicka doesn't need to think about whether or not she'd stay here, whether she could bear to live in this house and look at that tree and spend time in this place whose very existence is saturated with memories of her love.

Memories like Christmas, and his sunglasses perched on his face with the tag still on, a shirt she bought him pulled on but unbuttoned, his body surrounded by the big comforter she bought him for winter in the Brotherhood, gift cards and presents littering the ground around him because she had so much time to make up for, so many birthdays and so many Christmases she'd missed bringing him some kind of joy. Memories like the day he brought her here and showed her the living room and warned her not to touch the wet paint

which of course she did.

Memories like the spring equinox, and the little house of twigs she made from what was pulled out of his hair as they bathed together. The glove is still here, kept safer than it would be anywhere else, hidden away because the sight of it is, somehow, sorrowful as it is hopeful, aching as it is promising:


You can have that.

Princess, favorite from birth because it was in his nature to want to spoil her, talkative but suddenly not telling him anything when she got older, telling maminka everything because tatínek doesn't understand.

The little man, as weak-seeming as Danicka was when he met her, til one day lifting his (mother's) chin and looking Lukas right in the eyes, matching them for color and clarity and intensity, defiantly unafraid, daring his father to recognize him, cherish him, see him.

And chubby baby, shockingly peceptive, strangely wise even as a child, explaining to him while coloring or playing why Petříček is so mad (cuz he's like you, tatínek, he's a boy) and why Klárinka insists on going by Klára now (cuz I'm the baby and so she's not allowed to be, she's too big). Chubby Zlatuška, with the intuition and self-control each of her parents learned in adulthood, without the shyness or wildness of their youths.

You can have that.


Memories like tonight, bringing Kandovany here for the first time and making room in the home for the pet as well as themselves. Talking about making it not a retreat or a hideaway but a real home where one can let family come and stay, a place that doesn't have to be kept secret because it's theirs no matter what, a place whose sanctity can't be breached. Memories like this. Whatever food they had in the freezer and pantry, and new bedding for the coming autumn ready on their bed.

Danicka draws back as he nudges her, looking at him for a moment, then puts her palms lightly on his cheeks, tipping his head gently so she can kiss him. No passing thing, the way they peck at each other to say hello, or how are you, or oh, you're near me, I'll nuzzle you now. She kisses him like she always does, as though she remembers the way it felt the last time, or the first time, and as though she's not entirely sure she'll ever have the chance to kiss him again.

[Lukas] Before all the rest, before just about anything else, was that first searing kiss. There were moments between the day on the waterfront and the night at Mr. C's that Lukas wished he'd just kissed her, for god's sake, just took her face in his hands and kissed her the way he wanted to when they stood together in the bitter cold wind.

After that night at Mr. C's, that night in the motel when they came together for the first time and her arms wrapped around him strong and slender as vines and he lifted her on his body and they kissed like that, like it was the first and the last and everything in between --

he stopped wishing it was different.

Even now that kiss burns in his memory. He'll carry that to the end of his days. That one and all the ones after it. This one, too: at their dinner table in their small, quiet den, their refuge that tonight -- with very little fanfare or weight -- they decided together, mutually, could be something of a real home. A place where her family could stay if they visited. She talked about a guest room, even though they themselves are rarely here; somehow the thought was not ludicrous. Perhaps it's because their presence lingers here even when they're gone. When they come back, sometimes the house is cold, or stuffy, or something they've forgotten in the fridge has gone bad; but it doesn't matter. The place is still theirs. It's theirs, and nothing can change that.

Her hands are light on his cheeks. His hands are on her body, warm on her back, warm on her thigh, moving to open over her stomach; upward. He kisses her silently but unrestrainedly, sinking into it, falling into it. His hand on her breast is gentle but unafraid, touching her, weighing her, before moving on to cup her neck; finally, to mirror her hand on his cheek. When the kiss parts he rests his brow to hers for a second, breathing.

Then he lifts his chin again; kisses her a second time.

[Danicka] There's never been a time when Danicka wished he'd kissed her on the waterfront, after the way he took hold of her then. She might have clawed his eyes out. She might have just... gone away while he did it, waited for it to be over, tried not to shudder lest she incur more anger than he was showing her at that moment. Danicka was terrified of him when he grabbed her like that, frozen, certain he was like all of them suddenly, he was going to take what he wanted from her. She would have been, that cold day,

revolted.

There were moments, though, when she wished he'd kissed her then. Not like it was, where he was brutal and frightening and angry, colder even than the wind around them. But the way it was before, when he leaned on the railing and just wanted to talk, just wanted silence and time to sort out his thoughts, time where she was listening. The way it was when he looked at her and asked her if she would have rejected him the way she rejected Sam. The way it was when he was looking at her, watching the way she breathed, thinking of the fact that others could have her, that she wasn't his, that he wanted her in his bed. That he wanted her.

That was when she wanted him to kiss her, and the way she wanted him to kiss her, in that split instant before she admitted that she wanted him, confessed what he needed to hear more than I'm capable of caring or I don't want Sam, in that singular moment before his longing or his lust or whatever it was snapped around a corner, skidding dangerously close to his rage. Just before she thought he was going to wrap his leather-gloved hand around her throat and not caress her, not kiss her, but choke the life out of her as though it would exhaust his want for her.


But it's the kiss they did have, the first one, that really happened instead. And it's that one that she remembers, the way she wanted it to be different with him, the way she wanted to be close him. He told himself even as it happened that she wasn't kissing him first, he was kissing her, like it was a war, like it was a race, like it mattered, like it wasn't the collision of desire it was. Lukas never kissed his random fucks first. Danicka never kissed them because she wanted to. Neither of them ever kissed someone because they simply couldn't help themselves.

Danicka wrapped herself around him, lifted herself onto him, and he pulled her up, pulled her around him, and this time when he put his hand on the back of her neck and looked at her, held her close to his face, there was no hatred in it, no cold wind around it, just their mouths opening, then slowing, and their kiss melting winter.

That's the first kiss they have. And they wish so many things about their first days together were different. There are so many ways they could have kept from hurting each other. But the way that kiss came in a rush, the way they held to each other and looked at each other, the way he opened to her even as he was telling her open, open for me, Danička. The way she asked him to touch her and realized even as the words left her mouth that he already had, he was already in her, and he hadn't even undressed yet. The way they kissed again after that. And the whole time they made love. And just before she left, Lukas up on his elbows, her clothed body leaning over his naked one, her eyes closing.

They have that.


She breathes in when he touches her now, and her fingers start to slide into his hair. He can feel her torso tightening up not with tension but anticipation, feels her arch slightly when his hand cups her breast, holds it, moves it gently against her body, warms it with his palm. She makes a soft, low sound into his mouth at that, seeking more even as he needs to breathe, resting his forehead to hers.

Danicka waits, patient, and her lips touch his when he's ready again, when he lifts his chin and kisses her a second time. A thousandth time, her fingers tangling in his hair.

[Lukas] Lukas has all but forgotten about dinner now. His fingers are threading into Danicka's hair, which is soft and cool to the touch; warmer at the roots where his fingers stir gently against her scalp. He thinks of the way she scritches his hair sometimes when he's falling asleep, and when he's atop her, catching his breath, his eyelids and his limbs and his head heavy. Root to tip, his fingers stroke through her hair. This kiss is deeper than the last, and he shifts, sitting up from his relaxed sprawl, his arm wrapping tighter around Danicka even as her body arches to contact his.

When it breaks again, he's a little out of breath. He kisses her over and over, little kisses now, tiny sucking touches of his lips to hers. When his eyes open they're still close; so close that he can't see her clearly, so he looks down the space between their bodies instead, his hand opened just under the curve of her breast.

No matter what else he might regret about the way they behaved toward one another in those first days, he's never regretted the first time he kissed her. Come to think of it, he's never regretted kissing her at all; not a single time.

Lukas's startling eyes close again as his chin lifts. His mouth grazes hers, gently, almost thoughtful. He whispers, "Do you want to finish eating later?"

[Danicka] Truthfully, they never started eating. Danicka wound noodles about on her fork and she speared a bit of chicken but she hasn't eaten anything yet. And she's hungry. She'll be even hungrier later. Eat heartily, the way that seems to make him so bizarrely happy. The first time he saw her eat like that was Chinese food in hotel room, and it's been a long time since they've thought they should go to a hotel to be together. Then again, once upon a time, Danicka didn't want him to come back to her place with her, and he didn't want to flaunt this woman he'd won in front of his disapproving packmates, and hotels were really their only option unless they wanted to fuck in his car all winter and spring.

Which she would have. Gladly, and often, if that's the only place he could have her, if that's the only place that was available, if that's where Lukas wanted her, Danicka would have fucked him in that car every night til its destruction.

She turns on his lap, hands on his shoulders, his chest. His hand shifts by necessity off her breast, maybe it comes back. She parts her legs over his and comes back down to him, kissing him again. They never started eating, but they can still finish later. She doesn't say a word. She kisses him again, pressing her body close to his

Well. There are these words, after all, as she pauses to breathe, rolling her hips once down against his lap. "You've never fucked me on a table before."

[Lukas] Lukas's mouth quickens into a grin against Danicka's. His laugh is quiet, little more than a huff of air. "Haven't I?" he muses. "We should fix that."

The second time he exhales, it's not a laugh. It's a sigh, because she's rubbing against him in that way he's come to know well, has come to understand means mate-in-heat, means mate-wants-to-fuck.

Which, in all honesty, Lukas has always seemed more than happy to do. Sometimes his appetite for her seems boundless; seems as easily sparked as summer's dry grass by a bolt of lightning. Even now he's moving his hands, covering her breasts, rubbing his palms over her body and down, finding the hem of her shirt. He's kissing her again, close-eyed, his smile still a lingering trace on his mouth. A discovery: he's found the edge of her shirt, made his way beneath, touches her skin, reminds himself again of how warm and softskinned his mate is; reminds himself of the growing strength under that skin, those lean muscles that are more toned now than they were a year ago. Six months ago.

Kung fu, he muses to himself, amused. Shaolin kungfu.

When he stands, his hands wrap under her ass to bring her with him. It's a big table. It's not fancy, but it is sturdy: that's how most the furniture in here is. Practical. Quality, if not brand new. Built to last. There's plenty of room away from their plates of food -- heaped with more food, in truth, than Danicka typically eats. It's all right. She's hungry now; may be hungrier later. She might actually finish. He'll be absurdly happy if she does, even if he understands intellectually that it's silly, that it's ridiculous to be so viscerally satisfied when his mate is well-fed and well-fucked.

He sets her back down at the foot of the table. Plenty of room. He steps back just enough to see her, and see what he's doing when he starts to undo her clothes. Those big hands are quick about it, deft, but his mouth comes back to hers again and again while he's undressing her. Her top falls to the table behind her. He pushes her bra up out of the way and lays her down, one hand searching for the clasp while the other cups her breast, plays with the nipple, stimulates her while he puts his mouth to the other and sucks at her, eats at her with the quick-flaring hunger she must know so well by now.

[Danicka] "You haven't," Danicka murmurs, pressing down against him again, as though she's trying to feel his cock through both their clothes, trying to get herself off on him when they're only just getting aroused. "Not a pool table, not a coffee table, not a picnic table, nothing..."

As though this is unfair. As though he should have taken care of this a long time ago. Her hands are on his chest still, moving on him with slow sweeps across his body as she rubs herself on him. Mate in heat. Mate wants to fuck.

It always excited her how quickly Lukas moved from relaxation to hunger with her. Even as she wanted him to just let go she was equally turned on by his struggle for control, by the fact that it took so much effort for him to keep himself from just putting her on the ground and mounting her. It's almost trite, but it's true, that after awhile she wanted to know -- she wanted to see, wanted to feel -- that he understood her better. That he was attuned to her moods, to when she wanted him to be gentle and when she wanted him to let his lust take over.

Once, she needed him to let his guard down with her, to let himself be the animal she always knew he was. Wanted him to know she accepted it, that she loved him, that she wanted him just like that, just as he is. Over time she needed to know he was still in there, not mindless, not driven so wild by sexual heat that he paid no attention to the woman he was so eager for, not just a beast. It's been another, slower way of knowing each other, this. And Lukas knows now how to pleasure her to screaming even when he's drunk, how to fuck her with a sort of tender roughness when she asks him to tie her down, slow and firm and muttering in her ear how she feels to him.

This is the longest sexual relationship of her life. There are times when she isn't sure if they're doing it right, if he feels like he has to restrain himself, if that's okay, if something's changed, if it's going to get boring, if feeling comfortable with him is a bad thing, if he'll still want her if she was busy all day and didn't pay him much attention, if he'll be upset if she really is just too tired even if the feel of his body is turning her on. There are times when, in the midst of beating herself up for how bad she is at all this, she reminds herself:

there's never been anyone else. There's never been a lover she wanted to be so honest with, so close to. She's never had a genuine adult relationship. And neither has he. They fly blind most of the time, searching each other out with sometimes fumbling hands, trying not to shatter what occasionally seems unbreakable and other times seems so fragile, trying not to blow it because it matters more than anything else either of them have ever had.

Danicka laughs softly against his mouth because of the way he smiles when he finds her shirt. She shivers slightly as his hands creep under it, slow and daring as a youth, til he finds the edge of soft, soft cotton over her breasts. She huffs out a breath, wrapping her arms back around him as he stands with her. The table is clean; she dusted it before he got there, wiped it off while Kandovany was staring at the house from her carrier. Danicka lies back down on it as soon as Lukas sets her on the surface, arching her back and lifting her shoulders to help him get her shirt off. It slides off the edge of the table to the floor.

And she rests her back in his hand as he flicks open the clasps, her hands going into his hair while he kisses her. Still clothed, Danicka's legs wrap around Lukas's lower body, pulling him closer. His thumb and forefinger gently pink her hardening nipple, stroke it, sending a little electric shock down her body as though he has a direct line from his touch on her breast to her cunt. She moans, her thighs tightening around him until she can feel him rubbing against her through her clothes again.

She breathes in, the air shuddering into her lungs. She takes her hands off his neck and shoulders, reaching between them to grab his belt, yanking it from the buckle. It smacks her knuckles as she reaches for the button on his fly next, but she doesn't so much as wince, unfastening his pants with the deftness that shocked and aroused him at the start of all this.

"Chci tě," she breathes, nuzzling him til he lifts his head from her breast, opening her mouth to his, lifting her own head to kiss him. "Lukáš, vezměte si kalhoty pryč. Chci na pocit, že jste." That's almost desperate, the sound of it, reaching into his pants past the fly, stroking him through his underwear. "Chci tvůj kohout."

[Lukas] It's not that Lukas was a wide-eyed innocent until Danicka took him in hand. It's not that he was a virgin, new to this sort of pleasure. Yet sometimes it's so very obvious that she's his very first serious relationship. His very first girlfriend and, as it turns out, his last. His only.

He's too confident, too sure, too certain in his own skin to fumble. But god, he's impatient sometimes. Has to restrain himself. Has to control himself so he doesn't tear at her clothes, rip them off her, go at her like a wild thing

which, in truth, he has before. Because she asked for it, or because she's indicated to him: it's okay. you can let go. you won't frighten me tonight.

Other nights, that line isn't so clear. Tonight, he knows she's a little more fragile: because of what he told her. Because of what they finally, finally brought back to the surface and began to work at. He's restraining himself, touching her carefully, leashing his eagerness. She's quicker than he is. The speed with which she undoes his belt sends a shiver down his spine, just like the way she says

you've never fucked me on a table

sets a fire in his soul. It's those words: fucked me. It's that connotation, that mental image, a flash in his mind: his mate laid out next to their dinner, the table rocking under them, her legs wrapped high around his ribs, her hair spilling over the edge as her eyes closed and her mouth opened with moans and

and he sucks at her fiercely, firmer than before, when he feels her pulling him away. His mouth leaves her breast fast enough that the seal of his lips to her skin breaks with a faint pop. He's opening his mouth blindly to hers, then, groaning into her mouth when her hand finds him hard and hot beneath his boxer briefs. Must be something of a rush, to know how easily and utterly she turns him on. To know that for all the strength in his large body, all that renown he's only ever spoken of tangentially with her, all the rank he's earned and is about to earn, he's all but at her mercy when they're like this. His hand is warm on her breast, all but forgotten. The other curls into a fist on the tabletop as she strokes him, drawing gasp after shudder from him.

"Oh, god," he's saying softly. "Oh, god, oh fuck, baby... dovolte mi mají že sladká kočička."

It's only when her hand leaves his cock that he can think straight enough to go at the fastenings of her slacks. His fingers search for the clasp: is it in front? On the side? In the back? -- there it is. There's a surprising deftness in his large hands; he finds the tiny tab on the zipper and draws it down, and then it turns out he's not so much trying to get her clothes off after all as simply gain entry, somehow, because he leaves it to her to wriggle and writhe out of her pants however she wants while he --

well, he reaches into her pants. He reaches into her panties and his fingers stroke past those soft hairs there; find her lips and part them, and his mouth parts from hers just long enough for a quick grin to flit, sudden and disarming; for him to kiss her again while he whispers, "There you are. There's that sweet little cunt."

He slides his fingers into her. When she arches, his mouth draws down her neck again; finds her breast, sucks her nipple into his mouth and flicks it with his tongue. The sound he releases against her flesh is low, a growl: pure enjoyment. He loves the way she reacts. The motile, responsive sensitivity of her -- it makes his blood pound, makes the bottom drop out of his lust, makes him pull and tug at her pants after all with his free hand, trying to get them off as fast as possible.

[Danicka] There's a distinct possibility that if Danicka didn't need him to slow down and take care of her, Lukas would turn her over and pull her clothes out of the way just enough to get to her body and fuck her with all the eagerness and lust and impatience he has inside him every single time. He might just push himself into her and grunt against the back of her shoulder as he pounded her, came in her, marked her with his teeth and his cum as his, his, only his. His mate.

Of course some part of him doesn't want to be no better than an animal. He's always been that way, at least as long as Danicka's known him. Control. Be civil. It isn't about pretending to be human. It's about a whole host of other traits he learned from his mentor back in Stark Falls, traits that have kept him and his packmates and other members of the sept alive when it counted.

With Danicka he can let go, though. Not utterly, not to the point that he becomes a mindless animal, heedless and careless of who she is and what she is to him. But he doesn't have to pretend that he's a suave, civilized, smooth young man. He doesn't have to be Wyrmbreaker. He's home.

And she's his mate, reaching for him and kissing him and laughing softly as she strokes his cock through his underwear, all but jerking him off. She gives a lazy, lopsided grin as she watches the flashes of reaction through his face, the way his brow furrows and his mouth opens, the way his hand flexes on her breast as though the motion is involuntary.

"That's it," she whispers, stroking him a little faster as he's murmuring, gasping words that dissolve from English into Czech against her jawline, her cheek. "You can have me, baby. Just take it out and fuck me."

Which makes his fist tighten, and she rubs her palm against him just a few more times before withdrawing, so he can start pulling her zipper down, get the buttons out of their eyes, tug the khakis off her lifting hips just enough so that he can reach in and find her through her panties,

then under them, finding her soft

and warm

and wet for him. Danicka's panting where she lies on the table, unable to get her slacks off because her legs are still hugging him. She lifted her hips for his hand and now is rubbing herself on his fingers, gasping as he tugged aside her panties. When he slides those two fingers inside she twists suddenly, a hard motion of reaction, her entire lower body bucking from it. She's ready to fuck. He can feel it in the way her cunt bears down on his fingers. He can feel it, see it in the way she starts to, well

fuck his hand, reaching up to grab hold of the sleeves on his shirt, tangling the fabric in her grip. Her head is turned to one side, her eyes closed, her mouth open, just the way he knew she would, just the way she always does when he's making it impossible for her to process anything visually, when she can't handle the sight of him concurrent with the way he pleasures her.

[Lukas] If Lukas really were a suave, civilized, smooth young man as concerned with his appearance and his image as he appears to be, he'd be angry if Danicka wrinkled his shirt like that. Grasped the fabric in her small fists and twisted as he touched her. If he really were a monster, a beast, a mindless rutting thing, he wouldn't touch her at all. Not like this. He wouldn't pleasure her with his fingers, with his middle and index inside her, his thumb on her clit; he wouldn't suck at her breasts and lap at her nipples, ply them with his tongue and -- so very, very gently -- the graze of his teeth.

He wouldn't do any of this. He'd just flip her on her stomach, pull her pants down and fuck her until the silverware rattled on the plates. He'd come in her, teeth locked in her shoulder and cock deep in her cunt, and then he'd drop back in his seat and finish his dinner while she put herself together again, and nevermind how she felt about any of that.

Lukas is not, though. He's not a vain young man, and he's not a rutting monster. He is who and what he is, that she knows so well, and, as improbable as it seemed at the start,

she trusts him. She's not afraid now to bare her throat to him like that. To close her eyes when he has her under him, when he's undressing her, when she's so very vulnerable. Perhaps that thought doesn't even occur to her now. It's never been about power and control between them -- not even when she hunted him in the solstice; not even when he tied her to his bed.

His mouth is on her neck when she turns her face to the side. He kisses her throat, sucks at the tender skin there; then his mouth is back on her breasts and he's pulling her slacks down as far as they'll go. At some point they get stuck: her legs are wrapped around him. At some point he has to pull back, gasping, his lips wet from sucking at her tits, her nipples wet from his tongue, pink from the suction. His fingers draw out of her. He sucks her slick off his own hand shamelessly, without a beat of hesitation, eyes gleaming.

"Get this off," he mutters, as if she had anything to do with it at this point. As if he's not the one yanking and pulling at her slacks, straightening her legs and tugging them off, off, over his head and dropped to the floor. "Take this off. Oh, god, look at you."

The panties, too. Then he's taking her by the ankles and opening her legs, his hand sliding to her knees, to her thighs. They still only have two dining chairs. He hooks his foot around his and drags it over skittering and bumping on the floor; sits himself down and parts her lips with his thumbs and, well,

faceplants between her legs, eating at her with a ferocious, growling hunger that abates only after he's made her arch off the table. Or cry out. Or smack him and tell him to slow down.

And he does slow down, eventually. He slows down and takes the time to unbutton his own shirt, fingers marching down that orderly row of buttons. He strips it off, leaves it behind him; his mouth leaves her for a moment while he half-rises and pushes his pants off. Pushes his boxerbriefs down, too, taking his cock out to stroke it. To slap it up gently against his own stomach, and then to start jerking it steadily, rhythmically, while he loops his free arm around her thigh and echoes that same rhythm with his tongue on her clit.

Truth be told it doesn't go on very long. Neither of them are very interested in oral right now, it seems. After a while his hand wanders. He squeezes her breast gently. He reaches all the way up, finds her face, lets her suck her own taste off his thumb, and when she does his eyes open, blazing; he lifts his head to watch. A groan escapes him. He kisses her inner thigh. He gets up, letting her legs fall to encircle his waist again as he comes down over her.

Lukas's face is wet. His eyes are blue and black, iris and pupil. He's breathing hard, and his cock is hard in his hand, his shoulders tensed where he braces himself over her on his elbow. He kisses her open-eyed, open-mouthed.

"Jste připraveni dostat v prdeli?" The question balances itself between need and some play at dominance; between tenderness and demand. He kisses her again, and he's pushing the head of his cock against her clit, sliding the shaft over her cunt; letting her feel the weight of his cock, the heat and the length of it. "Jste připraveni vzít to, lásko?"

[Danicka] Get this off. Take that off. Give it to me.

Danicka holds onto Lukas while he folds over her, his fingers buried in her and his mouth on her throat, her tits. She starts to unbutton his shirt long before he ever gets there, wriggling her fingers between their bodies as Lukas is bending over her, kissing her neck and her her breasts, working her pants down her legs. Covering her, he warms her, but when he draws back she moans softly, resistant. Her head turns, eyes opening as she looks up at him, her fingers flexing as though she has to exert effort in order to get them to loosen from his shirt. "Baby," she whispers, more recognition than pleading, more I missed you than don't stop.

She lifts her hips one more time. He draws the khakis completely away, leaving her in soft green ankle socks. For a minute her legs are stretched up his body, and she's breathing faster, wriggling out of her panties as he drags those off, too. Drops them with the rest of her clothes, littering the dining room. The whole house is open. If they had children, if they had guests, they couldn't do this. Wouldn't. But they don't. So Lukas grabs his chair when he has her naked, and her small, socked feet go to his shoulders, and he starts eating her pussy as though he never really wanted dinner, anyway.

There's no point where she smacks him, no point when she tells him to slow down. Danicka puts her fingers in his hair and holds him there, groaning as his tongue makes her clit jump, her pussy throbbing. "Put your fingers in me," she moans at one point, arching, begging for him to fill her, fuck her. And maybe he does, and maybe he can't, because he's finishing the work she started on his buttons, stripping off his shirt and opening his broad, warm body to the air while his mate's thighs part to either side of his face and while her slick covers his lips, leaves traces of her arousal on his chin.

She does open her eyes, though, when he rises. She pushes herself up slightly on her elbows so she can watch him strip, watch him take his cock out of his clothes. Her eyes are locked on him. Her gaze has turned a dark, enigmatic green, staring at his cock and his hand while Lukas strokes himself. Danicka exhales slowly. She's reaching for him again, ready for him to come over her again, ready for him to fuck her,

but he leans forward and licks her pussy again, playing with his cock and her breast while he does so. Danicka moans, overcome, her mouth open against his thumb when he offers it to her. She licks the pad of his thumb lightly, once, flicking across his skin.

This time, when Lukas rises up from the chair, Danicka turns her eyes to find his again, waiting for him. She threads her touch through his scalp again when he kisses her, her eyes closing though his stay open to watch her. She doesn't answer him, but pulls his head forward again, pulls him back to kissing her, open and slow and deep. She holds him there, reaching between their bodies to wrap her hand around his cock.

And she doesn't wait anymore. She guides him into her, gasping even while she's kissing him, her lips falling away but sealing to his again, deepening the kiss even as Lukas moves deeper into her.

[Lukas] He's bare now, coming over her warm and total like this. They're both bare except for her little ankle socks in green, his socks in black. They might laugh about this later, picking themselves up, putting their pieces back together: that they fucked on the dinner table with their socks still on. That their clothes are all over the floor and hanging off his chair.

Later. Not now. Because now they're kissing again and again, and she doesn't answer him except to kiss him, doesn't answer him except to take him in hand and guide him home.

He groans into her mouth as she opens to him. He slides in with a flex of his hips, instinctive, almost before he can stand the feel of it. His brow falls against hers. His eyes squeeze closed, and he moans again, and his hands close on the tabletop, finding nothing but smooth surface. Nothing to hold on to. That's all right; he holds onto her instead, wrapping his arms around her then, clasping her to his chest as his mouth

finds hers again, seals to hers as he starts moving inside her.


There was something almost desperate in the way they came together. Even if there's humor there, even if there's a certain sweetness to this -- it began as a sort of desperation. As a necessity. A need to connect, to share this with each other; to make love because they were talking about his Adren challenge. Because they were talking about the possibility of his not passing. Not coming back.

Because -- and neither of them breathed a word about this, but this possibility, too, hangs in the background like a phantom -- it's another step higher for him. More power. More strength. More rage, quite possibly. More to bring him closer to those dread Shadow Lords that haunted her childhood and adolescence; more for her to overcome, to learn not to be afraid of, to reconcile with what she knows of her mate; to love.

If she can. There's always that possibility too: that maybe she won't be able to grow strong enough to bear it. Maybe they'll go back to the way it was at the beginning of their relationship, when she was so much more easily frightened by his rage.

Or farther: to that day on the waterfront, when she was so terrified she would have been revolted if he'd tried to kiss her.


She's not revolted now. She's not so afraid now. Her will matches his rage. She's strong enough to bear him, even if what happened in July rattled the very foundations of that. She can handle this; can handle it when he starts to move a little faster, a little heavier: that tender roughness they seem to fuck with so often, that deep, visceral, felt sort of lovemaking. The kiss falls apart now. His mouth to her neck, and then to her shoulder. He kisses her there, bites her gently, and then he pulls back a little.

Enough to see her face. Enough to see the movement of his body into her reflected in her eyes; enough that she can see the same pleasure flashing over his face again and again. He's breathing hard, working hard, moving over her -- wrapping his arms around her and bracing himself over her, dropping his head again after a moment to seek out her breasts.

"Ach, ty jsi tak dobrý." It's breathed out, exhaled. He pauses a moment. Pushes deep and pauses, holds himself inside her, lets himself feel the way she moves on him, the way she clenches on him, the heat and tightness of her body. His hips grind against hers. It makes him gasp. "Cítíte se tak dobře."

Then he's moving inside her again. He's fucking her, deep and slow and hard; pounding into her and driving deep on every stroke, making her feel every stroke, groaning at what she makes him feel on every stroke. There's a connection in this, inescapable and undeniable: everything they do mirrored in one another until the act, the sensations, all of it, is shared so equally it becomes a bond in and of itself.

[Danicka] Sometimes the sensation of being inside Danicka seems to be too much for Lukas, too much for him to handle without grabbing hold of something, and grabbing it tightly. Sometimes he won't even let himself hold onto her because he might hurt her with his grip, so he grabs the sheets or the bed while he fucks her, while he comes.

Tonight, though, he holds her, and she holds him, holds his face where it is while she kisses him, while he moves into her. The table it sturdy but it rocks slightly from the force of Lukas's strength. Underneath the sounds of their gasps is the sound of silverware sliding along the edges of their plates. Her legs wrap around him, crossing over the small of his back, her fingers mussing up his hair quite thoroughly.

The truth is, when she met him she could tell he wasn't entirely through growing, yet. She knew he'd get stronger. Bigger. He'd lose that svelte look to him, that youthful leanness, and though she adores this body of his, a part of her sank with the knowledge. He would only get stronger. He would only get more dangerous.

And he told her outright that his rage would grow. And that he didn't know if his will would grow along with it and make him cold and distant, but she knows that could happen, too. At her mother's most affectionate near the end she was terrifying. She was stiff. Danicka was never sure if it was loathing or just severe control in her mother's eyes. She was never sure how hard her mother had to try just to keep from killing them all.

Lukas might become like that, until the idea of 'love' is a faraway concept, an idea more than a feeling. Lukas might end up thinking of her as his mate, and so he will protect her with his life and create walls from the corpses of those who dared threaten her, look at her wrong, come too close to her. Lukas might end up with their mateship being nothing more than an animal need, an instinct he follows, a decision and committment he made with all that horrible control.

But it's possible that after awhile he won't love her anymore. He just won't be able to.

And that's what she's afraid of. She's afraid of what he'll become. She's afraid of loving someone who can't love her back. She's afraid of not loving someone she can't bear to leave. She's afraid of looking at him one day and wanting to leave, and finding that she's trapped, that he won't let her go because she's his. His. Mine.

They have these fears, and they're valid ones. What they have now most likely will not last, and one could say the smart thing to do is to cut it off, end it before it becomes truly impossible, but anyone who thinks the smart thing is the way to go doesn't put much stock in finding a little joy in life. Even if it is, when all is said and done, not nearly enough to offset the sorrow.


Danicka can't stop kissing him. She can't let go of him yet. She doesn't want to. So she kisses him, over and over, gasping into his mouth when he thrusts deeper into her, moaning and clutching at him when he fills her, stretches her out, makes her arch off the table and tighten her legs around him. "Jsi tak velký," she groans, opening her legs a little wider, putting her hand on his hip so she can feel the motion that presages the sensation of his cock sliding into her, withdrawing, pushing in again. She molds her palm over the articulation of his hip, pulls him in and holds him there, holds him as he grinds into her.

"Tvrdší, lásko. To mě poser těžší."

[Lukas] Even now, not even two years since the first time she saw him naked, inexactly lit by cheap motel-room lights, barely able to control his own want for her -- even now, he's changed since that first night. His body has changed. Become stronger, more solid. The shallow hollows that once existed just inside of his shoulder and hip joints have filled out with solid muscle, layer upon layer. He's faster, too, a sort of terrifying lightning speed that comes not from leanness but from more strength. His shoulders are vast; his back a solid wedge of strength. His waist, caught between her thighs, is an iron churn of muscle, flexing and bunching as he moves into her.

He looked strong, that first night. These days, he looks like he could run through walls. Withstand bomb blasts. He looks near-invincible

but she of all people knows the lie in that. Near the end, her mother was terrifying, godlike in power and rage. She died anyway, and it wasn't thermonuclear holocaust that ended her. Just some Wyrmlings. Just some silver lances, against which Night Warder and all those like Night Warder are so painfully vulnerable.


Danicka's seen him vulnerable too, though. There's that to be remembered: that she's seen him fighting against some nameless sorrow when he came back from the Underworld and told her of what he saw; told her

I don't even know if you were happy like that

and had to fight to keep his voice steady. She's seen him in the immediate aftermath of their lovemaking, so undone and dazed that he can't speak, can't move, can barely do anything but look at her and try to hold on to what remains of his mind. She's seen him sliding to the floor in the entryway of her apartment, which is where they seem to have and leave the worst of their fights, because he couldn't stand the thought of her half-imagined betrayal

and that, above all others, is evidence of just how easy it would be for Danicka to break him. If she wanted to try. If she wanted to, she would barely even have to try. Which is what Lukas feared in the beginning: feared that she might be one of those kin, those sons and daughters of Shadow Lords raised in families so twisted and dysfunctional that they grew twisted themselves. Those sons and daughters of Shadow Lords who were Shadow Lords themselves, Shadow Lords in blood and mind, who sought power in the only place they could find it, who satisfied their own anger and resentment by destroying every Garou they could.

She's not like that, though. Somehow, though others would have broken under far less strain, what makes Danicka herself remained intact through all her years of mistreatment and abuse. Somehow she survived; not only survived, but lived.

And she's here now. With him. And he remembers her saying not so long ago that she was grateful, and how he didn't really understand it then.

He understands it now.


Harder, she says. Harder. Sometimes Lukas is afraid to give her what she wants, and asks for. Sometimes he remembers the times he's hurt her. Remembers how much larger, stronger, more dangerous he is, and holds back.

Other times, he doesn't. Other times he's already too far lost in her, and when her hand finds his hip and pulls him in, holds him there, he only groans. He only wraps his arm around her waist as her back arches off the table, and clasps her against him, and all but snarls as they grind together.

A moment after that he's lifting her and sliding her, turning her; he's climbing up on the table himself and shoving their plates out of the way. A fork goes clattering to the floor. Neither of them care. He lays her out lengthwise on the table and comes down over her. He's still inside her, pushes deep again, fills her, groans at the feel of it, winds his arms around her and holds her against him, open, receiving him.

There's an instinctive satisfaction in fucking her like this, something that pings on the basest impulses of his primitive brain. There's something deeply, viscerally good about covering her, surrounding her, penetrating her at once: this slender, golden creature that is his mate. He's not afraid of hurting her now. He's not afraid of being hurt by her; hasn't been for some time. His mind flashes to simple things: raw pleasure, elemental comforts, warmth in winter, mate.

Time taken: one more kiss, slow and fierce and deep. Then his cheek slides alongside hers. He bends to Danicka's shoulder, wraps her close. He starts fucking her like that, hard, heavy, every thrust pounding into her echoed in the impact of their bodies together. Lukas's breathing is harsh, every exhale a groan, save when he mutters, whispers, spills incoherent phrases past her ear, tells her how she feels and what she's doing to him, tells her how good it is, tells hers

yes. that's right. just like that. take it for me, baby. take it, come for me, come on, make me come,

in one language or another, or perhaps no language at all past the harsh grunts and groans and gasps that all their words ultimately dissolve into.

[Danicka] Danicka has seen Lukas vulnerable. Early on, the way his face pulled when he had to tell her to stay back, stay away from him, because he didn't know what some Wyrmish creature in an alleyway had done to him and he didn't know if she would even survive it if she got close to him. She saw him afraid he'd infect her, hurt her with something that could only make him sick for a few short days at worst. Saw him holding a tiny, child-size glove in his hand, and thought to herself he might understand now some of how she felt about the children she'd never had, the one she wanted but could not have cared for, the one she threw away and doesn't regret terminating but still mourns, all the same, in her own way.

She's seen him vulnerable, silver around his throat. Seen him in the immediate aftermath of a frenzy, light coming back to his eyes, seen him go from sweating and shaking to casting his eyes about, searching for her, terrified that he might have --

Lukas looks like he could tear down walls. He looks so very strong, like he could hold onto the world if it was ending and keep it together by the sheer force of his will and the iron strength in his arms. He looks so big, and so tough, and to some degree that doesn't matter. She knows he has no self-control when it comes to sweets. She knows he gets so eager for her, so instantly excited, that his eyes light up and sometimes he laughs, just laughs from sheer joy at coming together with her again. She knows he worries. God, how he worries.


Danicka kisses him again, moaning as he snarls, gasping at the feel of his grinding, the sound of his pleasure. "That's it," she whispers, swirling her hips against him again. "That's what I want."

And then a fork is going clattering, leaving little drops of white sauce here and there. Oh, well.

This is a sturdy table, or Danicka would be more worried when he moves her up and climbs up, himself, still fucking her all the while. She didn't expect him to climb up here with her, to lay himself out over her the way he does, but she understands it. Oh, she understands it. Her legs and arms come around him when he comes down over her, her head lifting from the wooden surface so she can open her mouth to his again, moaning down his throat as he follows her down all these twisting paths of lust and finds her where she is, dark and secret and waiting for him.

His name fills the air, disembodied, meaningless except that it comes from her voice. Danicka has never been a passive lover, laying back and holding him and making appropriate sounds at appropriate times until he finishes in her. She told him the very first time she didn't come there to get fucked. She came there to fuck him. To have him, not just give herself to him.

And even now, she fucks him back. She's writhing under him, rolling her hips to meet him in counterthrust after counterthrust, riding him as though he were flat on his back and she were above him, gasping out her pleasure on him. Just like it was the last time, really, when he wanted to ask if she was sure and he couldn't, he couldn't get the words out because she was working her hot little pussy down onto him and he forgot what he was saying, he forgot everything but the feel of her body sliding across his palms, her breasts filling his hands.

"Lukáš," she whispers in his ear, her breath curling along the curves, following different dark and just as twisting paths to his mind, lighting up the circuits inside. "Lukáš," like that's all she has left, her fingernails digging into his back now, her gasps shuddering every time he thrusts into her, harder. Harder, like she asked for. She says his name like an answer to all the filthy things he's muttering to her, says his name like she's saying yes to all of it, saying his name like a warning. "Oh god... Lukáš!"

[Lukas] Danicka didn't expect Lukas to get up on the table with her. Perhaps she expected him to fuck her at the edge of the table. Perhaps she even expected that he'd bend her over the table, or sit her at the edge; fuck her like that, athletically, forcefully.

And another day, he might have. The next time they fuck on a table, he just might. Not this time, though. She understands: it doesn't have to be explained, and perhaps can't quite be explained. Why he doesn't want that distance right now. Why he wants to align to her like this, press their bodies together as close as possible, hold her in his arms

while he hammers her, pounds her, fucks her.

She fucks him back. Danicka's never been shy about this. She's not the sort of woman whose sole contribution to sex is a sort of coy passivity, a sort of sweet surrender. Even like this, caught under his body, she writhes, she rolls her hips, she grips him with her thighs and grasps at his back and

gasps for him, shudders, moans for him, his name spilled over and over into the air until it becomes a conduit for everything else she's saying to him.


Sturdy as it is, the table is shuddering at the end. The joints are creaking. Neither of them care or even notice because they're holding on to each other; they're moaning for each other, she's saying his name like a warning and he's too far gone for even that much. He's just pressing his mouth to her neck, groaning open-throated and tattered with every deep thrust.

Their voices tangle into a rising discord. Her fingernails score his back, and he pounds himself deep, stretches her out, fills her utterly, grinds,

and the arch of her body or the clench of her cunt or the sound of her voice or something, something, sets him off, tips him over the edge, burns him up and sets him alight. He roars against her shoulder as he crests, and there's that instant of electric, tensile stillness before he's like a thing possessed. Lukas bites his mate, grips her in his teeth, slams into her again and again as though to make sure she feels this, takes this, remembers this. Like that he pounds his lust out into her, pounds her full of his cum, until the plates are jumping on the tabletop, clattering their way across the table in tiny skittering steps.

When he can take no more he stills over her. He kisses her where he bit her. He's still enfolding her in his arms; holds her there, close, safe, warm against his body; holds himself inside her, deep, solid, pulsing with the last involuntary spasms of his orgasm.

"Ach, bože." It's a sigh. His temple slides along her jaw. He kisses her neck blindly, indistinctly. Nuzzles her. Flexes into her, gasping. Rests against her, a last shudder running down his spine. "Ach, můj bože."

[Danicka] It's been a long time now since Danicka's had a roommate. It's been a much longer time since Lukas has cared about the fact that there are other Garou and Kin in the Brotherhood near his room. It's been ages since those days when they went to a hotel just so Danicka didn't have to try and bury her moans in his shoulder or bite back the cries that Lukas elicits from her. Not even a year yet since they got this house, though. Not even a year since they found some retreat that really is a den, a sanctuary, a place that is unshared by any others.

No wonder they let themselves groan the way they do now, here even more than at Danicka's place, in her bed. Lukas growls, he snarls like the animal he is, and she cries out with the sort of helplessness that is in no way echoed by the way she moves her body with his. If she could roll him on his back here, near the end, she might. If she could think to tell him that she might want to ride her orgasm out on top of him, she would, but she's too far gone for that. They both are.

Danicka just holds him tighter: in her arms, her legs, inside her cunt, tipping her head back and letting out those gasping little moans he loves so much, her orgasm hitting her mere seconds before the searing, electric arc of it transfers into his body, setting him off. He roars, slamming her hips down as he -- well -- nails her where she lies, fucking her hard and fast now, biting down on her. There's something savage and dominant about him now, and if she were honest

(she tries. she tries so hard.)

she'd tell him that it scares her a little, it makes her heart race uncomfortably, makes her spine twist in ways entirely different than what's caused by her lust, but no less instinctive. That the way he fucks her as though he has to make her feel it, remember it is a darkness, that it isn't loving, that it isn't something he's sharing with her but something he's doing to her, and that it frightens her. That it scares her because even if she wanted to, she couldn't stop him from doing anything he wants to her.

And she can't tell him. Or doesn't want to risk telling him. Because he might think she doesn't like it. He might think she wants him to be tender and gentle and soft all the time. He might think it means he has to change, he has to hold back, he has to restrain himself. He might doubt that when she comes like this, squirming under him even as he's pounding her against the table, she doesn't really want it. He might think that because she's frightened it means she doesn't enjoy his cock in her, doesn't enjoy it when he's a little rough. He might think so many things, unable to understand that fear and lust can, sometimes, coexist.

That itself is a bit worrisome, that she can fear him and get off on him at the same. That itself is hard to understand, that it isn't the fear that makes her come, that it also doesn't stop her from coming. So Danicka doesn't push him away. She doesn't beg him to slow down, stop. Doesn't tell him he's hurting her when he isn't. Doesn't tell him to stop being so strong, to stop being so powerful, to stop being so physical, so filled with lust, so ...everything that he is. Stop being him.

She couldn't if she wanted to. She's coming, arching against him, into his arms, pressed to his chest, riding her orgasm out on his cock as she holds onto his back, moaning in his ear, aching for him. For this. Her orgasm begins a half-step before his, goes on, is still shuddering through her when Lukas is finally able to slow his thrusts, when he's finally able to recognize the limits of his own body again. She's still clenching around him, gasping in his ear, whimpering softly as her pleasure starts to let her go again. There's a mark on her shoulder where he bit her, which means he must have bit her so very hard because it's rare that he leaves bruises on her. It's rare that Danicka doesn't stop him before he gets that far.

She pants against his cheek, where their faces meet. She shudders when his cock twitches inside of her, letting out a little noise against his jawline. He mutters softly to a god they don't believe in. Danicka just trembles, quivering in the last pulses of her orgasm.

[Lukas] The truth is, if Danicka did tell him he frightened her a little at the end, that she was scared by the way he fucked her at the end, it might confuse him. It might make him uncertain and over-careful. It might frustrate him.

The way they make love hasn't really changed. He's no rougher now than he was in the past; has been far rougher in the past. It's possible he doesn't know any other way. Not with her. Not from the beginning, even when he was holding back so desperately. What's changed is not the act, after all, but everything around it. The context. The history. The aftereffects of the events of one night in July, sparking an alteration in their relationship that took months to quake to the surface: it's beginning to look increasingly fundamental, damningly permanent.

And that would frustrate him, too. And frighten him.

She doesn't tell him, though. They rest together, and he has no idea what thoughts flashed in her mind. She's trembling; but then she does that sometimes after they fuck. He rubs his face along hers, and whatever half-blasphemous prayers he's uttering trail off. He rests his brow once more against her shoulder, his back rising and falling as he breathes.

After a while his breathing steadies a little more. He shifts gently, rocking into her, kissing her shoulder, kissing her neck. He lifts his head and kisses her mouth, then, softly: as though tasting her, or sipping her. After a while his mouth curves. He laughs quietly against her lips. Kisses her again, saying, "Miluji tě. Miluji tě, můj lodní důstojník."

[Danicka] It's flashed in her mind from the beginning. Well, almost the beginning. There was a time when she wanted him so badly it didn't matter how it was, how he handled her, if he would just come to her. She didn't think it would last. She didn't think they'd stay together, that he'd give himself to her, that he'd go to her brother, that they'd end up with a house, of all things. She didn't think that two years down the line they'd both still be alive and in love and have anything worth keeping at all.

After awhile, though, there were times when he though she was pushing him away and she was just trying to get him not to treat sex as something like a weapon, like something she received from him, accepted from him, tolerated because she loved him. Or rather: not to turn sex into that. Not to forget her, even as he was losing himself in her.

The truth is, what happened that night in July is exactly what he fears: fundamental. Permanent. What illusions they might have built up around each other or their relationship were torn down, and though she doesn't have a scar on her arm like Jesmond, it changed everything.

She's still here. That hasn't changed.


Danicka kisses him softly. Sometimes she trembles after they fuck, while she's coming down from it, while she's trying to remember her own name. She's relaxed her grip on his back, is slowly opening her eyes. In the absence of being able to look into his, she turns her head towards him, nuzzling his cheek. Her gasps are gentle. She shivers when he rocks into her, smiles a small, tender smile when he kisses her, telling her he loves her with those words that are so sacred that even married couples speak them rarely to one another.

She kisses him back, moving one hand to his cheek, her palm like a blessing on his face. "I do love you," she whispers, as though he might doubt. As though he might worry, now, more than he ever did before, of losing that.

[Lukas] That makes Lukas draw back a little. His eyes open. Even like this, shaded with the light at his back, shaded with the echoes of their lovemaking, the warm weariness that follows, those eyes are clear as crystal. His brow furrows faintly. He brings one hand to hers, covers it against his face, the stubble on his jaw palpable against her palm.

"I know that," he whispers back. This kiss is unhurried. It takes its time, and his eyes close and open just as unhurriedly. The faint shadow remains on his forehead, though, knitting his eyebrows gently together. "I know that, love."

[Danicka] [doom]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2

[Lukas] [Ironically, that she said it like that: i DO love you -- made him worry a little. It makes him feel like she thought she HAD to reassure him because she'd given some sign that maybe she wasn't as certain. Which in turn makes him wonder if he missed some cue that she was wavering, and so on.

He probably also suspects this is another afterecho rippling out from the frenzy. And... I think buried rather deep is a sort of frustration, which he tries to repress because he knows it's unfair, that two months went by before the frenzy's emotional damage kinda reared its head again.]
to Danicka

[Lukas] [oh and! under all that: i think he has a fear that whatever emotional damage was caused by the frenzy will start a sort of unstoppable chain effect. like... THE BEGINNING OF THE END. i think he's afraid that this will turn into her-mother-and-her-father. or maybe worse: she'll THINK it's turning into that and cut it off without giving it a chance.

tbh i think this last one is particularly complex is deeply-buried. so even with 5 suxx, she might not get ALL the details.]
to Danicka

[Danicka] Her eyes trail over his face as she looks at him there, her hair spread out under her, perilously close to -- he can see now -- getting coated in white sauce from one of the plates. Thank god they don't eat with candles on the table, thank god they didn't have wine with dinner. That would have definitely gotten knocked over. But from where Lukas lies atop her, watching her, his brow pulling the way it does when he's worrying, he can even smell the dinner he made for her.

Tonight he cooked. Usually they just order in, or one of them picks something up. Danicka can cook, but she gets no great pleasure from it, and typically would rather spend her time doing other things rather than chopping, slicing, boiling, waiting. Lukas cooked tonight, though, and something innate in him coils up in delight at doing so. Not because cooking brings him joy. Because he is cooking for his mate, who is hungry, who is home in their den. He can feed her, even if he didn't hunt, even if he didn't risk his throat to bring her food.

It takes little more than a glance across his face for Danicka to read the emotions behind that look on his face now. It isn't delight or joy or satisfaction at having given her what she needs. It's conflict, all of it deep and tangled and nearly impossible for her to address. She knows that, now, after trying to talk to him about the frenzy and finding that in the end it was Jesmond who helped her more than he could. He had to defend himself, defend their relationship, tried telling her things she already knew, and in the end all they had was all they've ever had:

I love you. Don't doubt that.

Her fingers move into his hair, tucking back a sweaty lock. She leans up, kissing him gently. She wants to argue against the frustration she senses. She wants to tell him she couldn't help it. She didn't do it on purpose. Stop being angry that I'm not 'over it', you could have killed me, how dare you --

which is just as unfair as his frustration, in the end. Danicka exhales softly, nuzzling him now, closing her eyes. She kisses him again, the corner of his mouth this time, then his cheek, rubbing her face against his like an animal.

Then she holds him. Without a word, without explanation, she holds him against her the way that she always does when he has her like this, when she lets him come over her. She cradles him, holding her mate in arms and legs as though he's the one that might get cold. Then, after awhile, she whispers: "Maybe... maybe there's someone you could talk to, too."

Danicka pulls back a little, her brow furrowed with concern for him, or for them. She looks at him, his face in her hands, aching because, well,

he aches.

"Someone other than me."

[Lukas] Lukas's rejection of that notion is immediate and instinctive: a quick tight shake of his head, his forehead pressed to hers, his eyes still closed. He holds her a little tighter. He clasps her against his chest and shakes his head like that, saying no, no, no without saying a word.

Only moments later does he speak. "How do I talk to someone about that?" he asks, quiet. "How do I tell someone else I almost killed my mate? Who would I talk to?

"It's not even a matter of pride or shame. I'm ... appalled when I think of it. I'm mortified." A faint huff, humorless. "I don't even know how I'm going to face Jesmond again. I'm glad you talked to her, and I'm glad she helped you, but -- "

-- and a trail-off. And a silence, Lukas lowering himself over his mate, letting himself rest on her as she cradles him. Like they were in bed. Like he's just kissed her breastbone, kissed her heartbeat, and told her what she already knows from the way he holds her:

you're so precious to me.

[Danicka] She laughs.

Not right away, and not loudly. It isn't sharp, sudden amusement, but a soft thing, a huff of near-sorrowful laughter that makes her wrap herself tighter around him. The laugh dies, and she pushes her face against the side of his neck. His rejection of the idea of talking to someone about all this, that he frenzied, that he could have killed the woman he would die to protect, that now it seems to have permanently changed -- damaged -- everything they have together.

That Lukas wants so wholeheartedly to not talk to anyone, to keep it to himself, that he feels exposed now when he thinks of being around the kinswoman who helped Danicka, that he feels at least some urge to keep his secrets between he and his mate and invite no others --

she understands. She understands why he can't finish that sentence. She understands why he just rests against her now, holds her as she holds him, as they cradle each other like they both need this comfort. Which they do. Danicka understands, better than anyone, the kneejerk need not to let anyone in. To maintain that veil. To maintain that image.

Oh, I'm fine.

Everything's fine.

They are, after all, Shadow Lords. It's one thing to be vulnerable to each other. It's unthinkable to be vulnerable to anyone else. And there's also the truth of the matter: who would he talk to? What Ahroun does he know who might have done the same exact thing? The only Garou he can trust with something like this would be his packmates or a few higher-ranked others, if that. And his packmates don't have mates of their own, don't know what this feels like.

Danicka doesn't push it. She doesn't insist: find someone. Go find someone and talk to them because I can't help you with this, no matter how much I want to, no matter how much I might try. I feel too much about this. I'm too close. I can't. Help you. And you do need someone to help you.

She holds him. And after awhile, she says:

"When I talked to Jesmond, I asked her if she ever saw her mate frenzy." She wasn't going to tell him this. It's Jesmond's business. It's Jesmond's wound to bear. But Lukas is her mate. To comfort. To protect, above all others. "She has a scar on her arm from the time he did. She was pregnant when it happened." Danicka's quiet a moment, stroking Lukas's hair, trailing her fingers over the back of his neck, the way she does. "I asked her how a person's supposed to come back from that."

Closing her eyes, Danicka turns her head and lays it against the side of his face. She doesn't even care anymore about dinner getting cold, as long as Lukas is warm. As long as he's here, and warm, and with her. "She said... she wasn't sure she did. That it helped to know he wasn't really there, that there couldn't be -- and wasn't -- blame for what happened." Danicka swallows, her throat moving roughly. "But she didn't know exactly how she could manage after that. But she did. And when he touched her after that she didn't want to curl up and die, and even though sometimes she wanted to cry, or... or leave, she didn't. Something still bound her to him, and she didn't walk away."

A small kiss gets pressed to his temple, an exhale following: "Baby, hearing someone else say that they went through something they couldn't undo or forget or come back from completely but that it didn't destroy their relationship was... it made me cry, sitting there in her living room. Because it was such a relief to feel like it was okay for me to not ...be 'over' it, or something. And to love you as much as I do, and feel.. bound to you."

She pulls back so she can see him again. "After talking to Jesmond, I'm not trying to just get over it, or forget about it. I think it's changed things. So I'm just trying to accept it, and instead of running away or hiding or shutting myself off from you, I'm... adjusting. Which isn't something I've ever tried to do before. But I'm trying."

Now she kisses his brow, his third eye, the seat of insight, the seal against illusion. "You don't have to talk to anyone else if you don't want to. I just think there's things on your mind about it all that I can't help you with, even just by hearing you out. And I don't want them to tear you up inside."

[Lukas] Just like that, abruptly, he can't bear to stay like this anymore. Atop her, on the table, inside her, like they aren't talking about all this. Like none of this ever happened, he thinks, though some part of him must know that's not true.

He pushes himself up, all the same. He draws himself out of her -- carefully but quickly, brings his knees under himself, sits back on the tabletop. His hair is mussed from her fingers combing through and through. There's still a faint flush to his cheeks, his upper chest and shoulders; almost lost under the intrinsic tan of his complexion.

"I hate that it's changed what we have," he says, suddenly, almost savagely. "I hate that months went by and I thought it was okay and then it wasn't. I hate that some part of me ... resents you, almost, for bringing this up again. God, Danička, sometimes I feel like you're bringing this up because you've changed your mind about us. And other times I feel like you're on your way to convincing yourself this is bad for us after all. And maybe you should have left. And maybe you should leave.

"I know that's not fair. I know. I can't help it. And I hate that we can't seem to go back to what we had, and I'm afraid that we'll lose everything that's between us, and -- I don't want to talk to anyone about this, Danička. It's not something like what you talked about with Jesmond. It's nothing something I can talk about."

[Danicka] "Baby, don't --"

When he's pushing away, pulling out of her. She gasps, shuddering a little, the physical sensation jarring along with the emotional impact of Lukas moving the way he is. A wince flashes across her face, and even as she's moving up on her elbows, she's turning her head to the side, hiding some other expression, her brows tight together.

Danicka doesn't say anything at first. She looks back at him after awhile, while he's still talking, and her expression hasn't changed. It isn't hard to read.

Finally, though, she gives a small, tight, helpless sort of shrug. Her head shakes, her eyes dark with unexpressed emotion. Or unshed tears. Or something. "I know," she says. "That you're resenting me for feeling this way and you're scared about all these things. That it doesn't matter how many times I tell you I want to be with you now. That you say you don't doubt that I love you, but that's all I'm hearing from you."

She sits up, slowly, drawing her legs back towards herself. "Lukáš... we can't go back. And I don't want to pretend to. I'm trying to go forward with what we do have, and you seem stuck on whether or not I want to leave you." Danicka shakes her head. "You clearly can't talk to me about it, because you just get angry. You punish me for 'bringing it up'. You reject me. And nothing I'm saying seems to be getting through to you."

Danicka moves off the table. Gingerly. She doesn't go back to her seat. "I don't know how to help you without pretending everything is okay, and acting like nothing's changed, and that I'm not still dealing with it. I don't know how to convince you that I'm still your mate and I still love you. It's like the very fact that I acknowledge the possibility that what happened could have destroyed that is intolerable to you."

Standing, she looks at him, naked and red where he bit her, her nipples still pink from his mouth, her cheeks still flushed. "I know it's hard, Lukáš. But I am not able or willing to deal with it the way you are, where it's just... in the past and gone and over with. So if you don't want me to bring it up, fine. I will keep my pretty fucking mouth shut so you don't pull out of me because I'm trying to help you."

[Lukas] "I don't want that," he says, hushed but fierce, as soon as she says i will keep my pretty fucking mouth shut. "That is not what I want."

And that's all there is for a while. She gets off the table. Her slight weight barely rocks it. He stays where he is, sitting on his heels on the table -- utterly bare. If they hadn't just fucked and came and started arguing, fighting, hurting, what it is they're doing now -- if they were only starting to fool around, to kiss and touch and arouse each other, this would seem like a come-on in and of itself. An uncharacteristic sort of sexual boldness and playfulness -- as though he were offering himself up as the main course -- because as confident as Lukas is, as unafraid, the truth is between the two of them Danicka is by far the more experimental. The more adventurous.

None of that matters right now, though. Sex is not on their minds. She's naked, but all he sees is how gingerly she moves, as though he'd hurt her with how hard he fucked her at the end. All he sees is the red mark on her shoulder where he bit her, and these things make him twist inside, but they anger him as well. She told him to fuck her harder. Just like she told him to let go. To love her. To trust her. To trust that they will not become her father and mother, or her brother and his mate, or any Shadow Lord and his dominated, abused mate. She told him that. Didn't she? And now look.

-- and that's not fair, either. But those thoughts flash through his mind, make him turn away. He pushes his hands through his hair, thick and black. Lets them drop, turns back to her.

"I believe you when you say you love me," he says, as low and steady as he can. "I believe you. I do. But then you say things like you do love me, or you still love me, as if I've given you reason not to. And that you thought about leaving. And that everything changed -- for the worse, apparently -- in July. And that you're not over it, and maybe never will be. And you're afraid of me now, and there was a while in which you weren't, and --

"Christ, Danička," this is a sudden burst, a spike of frustration, "can't you see why I feel so shiftless and uncertain right now? It's not that I want to pretend things are the way they were. It's that I thought things were fine, and now they're not, and I don't know how or why or what to do about it. And then you tell me to go find someone else to talk to about it like maybe some therapy will help, when it's not even about how I feel about all this. Not for me. It's about how you feel, and how that affects me."

He's gone from wracked to frustrated to outright angry. At the end he's almost shouting. There's an old misconception that nudity leaves a person more vulnerable, less threatening. It's not true here. It's not true of those who shift their skins, who are so utterly at home in their skins, so unawkward, because they can build and rebuild them at will.

He's not at all diminished by his nudity. If anything, the starkness and savagery of his body is highlighted. There's nothing hiding the hard arcs, the tight slopes and planes. He's angry now, his muscles tight, breathing quickened. He tries to stop. There's still that. He tries to shut the fuck up, looks away, paws a hand over his face. Closes his eyes and exhales a curse.

[Danicka] When Lukas says as if I've given you reason not to, there's a flash in Danicka's eyes, a look like she might say something that she bites back because he's still talking. Maybe that flash is enough, and he knows exactly what that look in her eyes is:

You did.

She shakes her head. "No, I see why you're uncertain. And believe me, now you've made it abundantly clear that this isn't our problem, it's my problem and I'm making it yours. So I don't know what else to do about it but stop talking about it, Lukáš." There's a beat, but she isn't done. She's getting herself under control. She's trying to take the snap out of her words, the viciousness that borders on passive aggression.

She can't take out the anger, though. "I don't even know what I did to deserve how angry you at me. I used the word 'do', and now what we had a minute ago is ruined over it?"

Danicka puts her hands out, at a loss. "I know you're uncertain. I'm uncertain now. So I try to show you I love you, tell you I love you and that even with what happened I still want to be with you, and the fact that I try to reassure you or comfort you or... stay close to you, share what I'm feeling with you pisses you off? Enough that you couldn't even stand to stay inside me?"

Which is the point where the tears start coming, and she hates them. She snaps her teeth together, furious, and starts gathering up her clothes. "Fuck you, Lukáš. I don't know what to do, either, but at least I'm trying."

[Lukas] "I don't want you to try," he fires back. It's instantaneous. She starts gathering up her clothes. She looks away from him, but not before he sees the tears starting in her eyes, and that hurts, too. It's been so long since he's made her cry. He almost thought that was a thing of the past. That was before, when they were so uncertain and out of balance; this is now, when they're good now, and,

and it turns out they weren't after all. They were just lying to themselves. Just like he was lying to himself when he thought he was okay with her not being okay with it all. Okay with her needing time and space all over again. Okay with this setback, or sea change, or whatever it is that's altered the very fabric of their relationship.

"I don't want you to have to try," he says, quieter. "Danička, that's the whole point. I don't want loving me to have to be a trial. For god's sake, Danička, no matter what else we did to each other at the beginning, it was never hard for me to fall in love with you. It was trying not to that was hard."

[Danicka] She stops picking up her clothes, only long enough to look at him, her brows tight. For awhile she just looks at him, her slacks and her shirt in her hands, her underwear not yet gathered. They're both still in their socks. It's ridiculous. She still won't shed the tears in her eyes, refusing to with all the adamant will she's developed over the past two years.

"Lukáš," she finally says, very quietly, "I love you. And that's the only thing I have to hold onto sometimes. It's the only reason I have to explain why I haven't left. Loving you isn't something I have to work at. You're in my bones.

"It's living with you that's hard."

There's nothing in what she says that explains that she doesn't mean staying in the same house or apartment, cooking meals together, going to bed together. That's strangely effortless. Crawling into bed with him after a night of pubcrawling, nuzzling up against his side in the Brotherhood and falling asleep on his chest. Leaning against him on the couch while they read. Gardening, of all things. Effortless. Easy. A life together.

So:

"I know we've talked about the fact that there's no way to know if you're going to get... worse. Or if I'm going to be able to handle it. We could waste all the time we have together speculating and worrying about what our life together might be, but I don't want to do that, either." She shakes her head, unable to explain any more easily.

"I'm just... trying to deal with all this. With the fact that I'm scared of you again, when for awhile I wasn't." Her words echo his from earlier: the same frustration. The same sadness. "With the fact that I'm not over it, and I may never be. With the fact that I tried really hard for a few months to act like everything was fine and I was okay and now I have to face it every day instead.

"That's what's a trial, Lukáš. And I just wish I didn't feel now like I have to go through it by myself. Which I do, now. I didn't earlier tonight. But as soon as you snapped that it's really not something you have any feelings about, it's just about dealing with mine, I felt just as alone as I did when I thought I had to pretend to be okay the night you frenzied."

[Lukas] It's hard to hear much of that, but perhaps nothing more than that living with him is hard. Is a trial. That no matter what else he tries to do, what he tries to be, living with him will always be hard.

Because he's what he is. Because he frightens her. Because the short time they had in which she was not afraid of him may have been nothing more than a delusion -- a lie they told themselves without even realizing it. He looks away again at that, his brow tightening, his jaw tightening, but it's more pain than anger. God, her sweat is still on him. Her wetness is still on him; he still smells like her, and she's gathering her clothes now. For all he knows she means to leave, and he'll have to deal with the dinner he made, hoping to feed her. Hoping to share it with her. He'll have to shower and turn the furnace down and wash the dishes and turn down the lights and --

"I don't want you to go through this alone," he says, and his eyes lift to hers again. "But baby, I don't know how to deal with this. You said it yourself. Talking to Jesmond helped more than I possibly could. I don't even know where this came from, or how, or why. I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that you're not okay with it all when for the past two months I've been amazed and grateful that you forgave me so quickly.

"I'm sorry if I'm angry. Or resentful. Or hurt. Or if I want you to just go back to forgiving me. I just -- "

his right hand curls into a fist. He smashes his hand against his own thigh, a gesture of plain and futile frustration.

"I don't know what to do. I thought it was okay and now it's not. Tell me what I need to do to help you make it okay again."

[Danicka] The thought of losing one another is unbearable. They've done it once. They've lived through the aftermath: her lingerie on the floor of his car because she shoved it into his hands as he left. Packing up her things in the hotel room, getting dressed again as soon as she could stop crying, checking out and going back to her apartment. Skipping from club to club, dead-eyed and empty. Fucking some stranger whose eyes turned out to be blue and hating him, despising him for who he wasn't. Hating him because of the hurt another man had caused.

For all they know they won't lose each other. It won't be like her mother and father, or her brother and Emilie. For all they know they really could have something like that imaginary life he saw in the underworld. And yes: there'd be trial. Frustrations. Moments when he scared his mate or his children but it's okay to contemplate it because it's so far away.

To know that he scares her now.

To live with him even though he does.

That's now. That's today. That's in their home, like he's in her bones, like loving each other is in their lungs. That's a typhoon, threatening the very foundations of what they have. Though if what they have is or ever was built on fearlessness or perfection, it didn't deserve to last if it couldn't stand up to a storm.

Danicka watches him, not thinking right now of the aftermath, of what she planned to do once she got all her clothes together, if she was just going to get dressed and clean up and put leftovers away and go to bed because that's what you do when you're with someone, when you live with them like real couples do and you don't have your own apartment to run to when you argue. She doesn't know what she was going to do once she picked up her clothes. She didn't think that far. Now it doesn't seem to matter: she's watching him, and he's so frustrated he's smashing his fist on his thigh and he can't seem to understand that the way he feels when she's so upset she can't eat is the way she feels when he's so upset he can barely restrain himself.

It twists everything in her. And not all of it is fear, or worry of what he might do. It's just no. no, baby, please don't. please.

He doesn't seem to see how close their feelings on this are. That she doesn't know how to deal with it, either. That she doesn't know why a couple of weeks ago all of this bubbled to the surface when it did, the way it did. That she's sorry she's angry, and sorry she's scared, sorry that sometimes she thinks about what it would be like if she left, if she should leave whether she wants to or not, but she doesn't know what to do to make it okay again.

Danicka takes a breath. "It's not about forgiveness," she whispers. "It wasn't... I know it wasn't even you. It's not about blaming you or forgiving you for doing something wrong, baby. And the fact that I'm dealing with it all now instead of repressing it doesn't mean I'm... not forgiving, or that I'm trying to punish you somehow."

She looks down, at the seafoam-colored shirt in her hands, and the pale khaki trousers. Stares at them while she speaks. "I don't want you to resent me, or be scared all the time now that I'm going to leave you. I don't want me saying 'do' or 'still' to set off this domino effect of worry and self-doubt and frustration. I want you to be patient with me when I'm struggling with... how to be in this relationship, because I don't really know what I'm doing."

Now she lifts her eyes to him again, frowning faintly. "And I know that's not going to happen. I can't ask you not to feel frustrated or worried any more than you can ask me to not be uneasy or... distant." She winces when she says that; it's an acknowledgement neither of them have really made. It's why he gets so easily frightened, why it's hard to believe it when she says that she loves him, she loves him. It's also the truth:

she's been distant. Not quite present, not the way he knows she's been before, not so close to him while they're talking together or making love that he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that she's with him, she's his, she's there, touchable and knowable.

"That's the only reason I said maybe there was something you could talk to," Danicka whispers. "Because I can't ask you not to feel those things, but I don't think I'm helping you with those feelings, either. That's all I meant. And to be honest, I really don't understand what about that made you so angry that you pulled out of me like you did and started snapping at me."

[Lukas] There's a long silence before Lukas replies this time. It hurts her when he's so frustrated, so upset he can barely restrain himself -- but there's no contact between them. She looks at her shirt twisted in her hands. He looks at the tabletop between his knees, his brow contracting to furrows.

"Maybe that's the problem," he says finally, quietly. "I feel like there's something to forgive. I want your forgiveness. And every time you're close to me I feel like I have it. Then every time this comes up again, I feel like you've taken it away. That's why I got so angry, Danička. I felt like tonight, after you called me home, after the time we spent and the love we made, maybe this was it. Finally. I was forgiven, and we can start to heal.

"Then it came up again. It was there between us at the end, even if you didn't say anything. I could feel it. Then afterward you were talking like you had to make yourself love me, or something, and you were telling me to find someone else to talk to as if there was no possibility of absolution from you so I might as well seek it elsewhere, and -- "

He closes his eyes. A belt of muscle clenches in his cheek; echoes in his neck, his tricep, the straps of muscle anchoring his fingers. When Lukas opens his eyes he looks at Danicka again.

"I know none of this makes any sense. But it's how I felt. It's how I feel. I'm starting to feel like we might never recover from this. Either because we can't, or because you think we can't.

"It scared me when you told me about talking to Jesmond and asking her how she recovered and finding out she never did. It scared me when you said you were relieved instead of horrified by this, and it scared me to death when you talked about feeling bound to me. Don't you know what that sounds that? It sounds like obligation, Danička, and fear, and like you were talking yourself into complacency because you think there's no other choice if you love me. Like you've accepted turning into your father. Or Emilie.

"Christ, I am not your brother and I am not your mother. Stop treating me like I am, and stop treating what we have like it's fated to go that way. I love you more than I can say, Danička, but if the only way you can think of our relationship is in terms of permanent scars and binds, then I'd rather let you go than keep you with me like that."

[Danicka] She starts to shake her head when he says there's something to forgive, that he wants -- but Danicka stops. She doesn't want him to see her shaking her head like that as a refusal of what he's saying, particularly because in a way, it is. She doesn't want him to stop talking to her, though she isn't sure that her shaking her head would stop him. But most of all, she doesn't want him to feel that she's not even listening to him.

After awhile Danicka comes to sit in the chair near him. It actually places her lower than he is, though that's never made much difference. Her clothes go in a pile on the seat and she rests on it, her legs tucked up against her chest, listening to him talk.

It makes her wince at the end, when he snaps that he's not like her brother or mother, and it makes her frown when he tells her to stop treating him this way, that way. Her expression went from open, even soft, to a touch harder at that. She looks away from him for a moment as he's finishing up, taking a deep breath. It takes her a few seconds to turn back. Her slender arms are wrapped around her legs, warm from summer, soon to turn pale as autumn fades to winter.

"If I were treating you like my family, I wouldn't try to talk to you about any of this," she says first, quiet. Sometimes when she keeps her voice soft it's like she's doing it on purpose, just to stop herself from yelling. Just to stop herself from sounding angry, which isn't allowed, which is not okay. And sometimes it's to keep herself from sounding angry because that isn't really what she feels, or because she just doesn't want to yell at him.

For whatever reason. Fear of him, maybe. Respect. Love. All of the above, so tangled together they are a part of her existence, a part of her relationship. A part of what they have. Which is what he's saying terrifies him, that these things may be inextricable.

"And if I really believed that what we have is doomed to misery, or that there's nothing more to it than obligations and damage, then I would leave you, Lukáš." That's softly said, too, because the words themselves are agonizing. "I wouldn't stay. I wouldn't try to accept what happened and find a way to be with you that doesn't include pretending everything is okay when it's not yet."

Danicka licks her lips slowly, watching him. "I... understand why things I've said have made you feel the way you do, but that isn't how I've meant them. I don't think you understand how much more at peace with all this I felt when I found out that it didn't have to destroy all my love for you, that I could stay with you without pretending it never happened or acting like we could go back to the way it was." She struggles a moment to get this out: "I don't want to go back. Not because it wasn't good or I wasn't happy, but because it feels like retreating. Lying to ourselves. And every time you talk about 'recovering' from this, that's what it sounds like to me."

Another deep breath, now, her shoulders rising once and falling with it. "I'm not bound to you with chains or against my will, Lukáš. I don't say it with obligation or fear or trying to talk myself into being with a monster because he might kill me if I don't act like no, no, it's fine, loving and forgiving you is the same as forgetting it all." Her brows draw together, her forehead wrinkling again. "I'm bound to you because you're my mate, Lukáš, don't you understand that? That's not... a bad thing, or a problem to surpass. It's the whole fucking point of trying to work past this. It's what I don't want to lose."

The frown on her faces softens by degrees, back to a sort of ache. "But I need you to accept that how much I love you hasn't changed, and that I genuinely do not hold you accountable for the fact that you frenzied. If you need to hear that I forgive you, then fine: I forgave you the second you returned to yourself, the instant you came to me. I've never 'taken' that away or denied it to you. When I'm frightened of you it doesn't mean I despise you.

"And if you feel it in me, whatever this is that's between us now," she finishes, almost whispering now, "I don't want you to pull away from me, or punish me for feeling it. I want you to come closer. I want you to love me more, not less."

[Lukas] There's a part of Lukas that wants to pull Danicka close. To have her close and keep her close, just like she says. There's another part that twists in its own frustration, writhes and thrashes like a serpent with its tail pinned.

He pushes his hands through his hair again. Rakes his fingers through hard, gripping at the strands, clenching his teeth, trying hard not to bare them.

"I hear you," he says, low, "but if I don't say this now it'll just fester in me: when I talk about recovery, I don't mean forgetting what happened. I don't mean pretending it never happened. I just mean getting to a point, getting a stage where you're not afraid of me. God's sake, Danička, you haven't been afraid of me since the very beginning when you didn't know me, and didn't know what I might or might not do.

"Now you do know me. And I can't stand that you're afraid of me again. You say that you know that wasn't me, when I ... lost myself on the street like that. You say that, but it's me you're afraid of. Me."

His fist strikes his chest with a dull, solid thump. He's not one to talk with his hands or to gesticulate to convey his meaning. It says something about his state of mind, how trapped and cornered he feels by his own thoughts, this entire discussion, all of it.

"I just need to know that there's some hope that you'll be able to set that aside again. That's what I mean by forgiveness. And resolution. And recovery. Because if you're just going to be afraid of me because of what I might do, or what might happen --

"I can't handle that, Danička. God, you're the one that told me I can't live in fear of what might happen."

[Danicka] Maybe it means something that she doesn't flinch away from his frustration, that tonight he isn't making her startle because he's upset. She's watching him closely, and the prevalent emotion in the hidden pathways of those summer-colored eyes of hers isn't terror or nervousness, it's what it's been almost entirely from the start: a bit of hurt. Ache. Concern.

"I don't want to be scared of you, Lukáš," she murmurs. "I know it feels like it means I don't trust you or that something's permanently broken between us, but that isn't how I feel about it."

Danicka unfolds a little, but doesn't put her feet on the floor. She tucks her arms behind her legs instead, held closer to her torso. So bizarre, her sitting at the table with him atop it. "It's you I'm scared of because you're the one that has the potential to frenzy again," she says, slowly -- carefully, really, because she knows it will sound like blame to him. Or could. "I think for awhile we both just acted like that wasn't a reality. And then it was."

She shakes her head slightly, a shoulderless shrug. "I don't know what to say, because right now I feel like everything I'm saying is meaning something completely different to you. I wouldn't be here if I didn't have hope. I'm not here because I feel like I have to be. I didn't call you home tonight because I felt like there, that's it, everything's over, I just wanted to be with you. I wanted to tell you that something helped. And... I don't know what else to tell you. I'm trying. But I'm not going to get past this overnight."

[Lukas] "I'm not asking you to get over this overnight," Lukas replies. It's slow. It's quiet. "I'm asking you to give me some hope.

"Look -- almost two years ago, I asked you if you were capable of love. I needed to know that before I'd let myself fall into you. And then I needed to know if you were capable of loyalty. I needed to know that before I ... committed myself to you.

"I need to know now if you think you're still capable of not being afraid of me. If I'm gentle with you. If I come closer when I feel you pulling away. If I love you, Danička, can you still -- maybe, someday -- love me back without fear?

"Because if that's not even a possibility anymore, then -- I don't know. I wouldn't even know what to do, then."

[Danicka] Hope, he says, and a part of her rebels. Recoils. Just as when he asked her almost two years ago if she was capable of something more than just a casual fuck. If she was capable of loyalty. The second question incensed her. The first question gave her pause, because she wasn't sure. She wasn't sure if Something More was something she wanted. More than that, though, she didn't know if it was something she could tell him she was capable of. She wondered if she would find out down the line that no. No she wasn't.

The first month she spent with him she gave herself an out, a deadline, that he essentially refused to acknowledge. She needed it, though. She needed to be able to step back when it was over and say that she never promised him that she could love him, she never swore that she was even capable of it, she never lied to him about that, at least.

Danicka looks away for another moment, taking a breath. Hope. Because she's had so much of that for herself. So much that she's overflowing with it, she has plenty to give to other people. Because hope is an easy thing to grab onto, hold onto, when so very often it turns out to be one more lie everyone tells themselves, told her. It takes effort not to hear Lukas now and tell him to stop asking her to lie to him, stop asking her to tell him whatever sounds nicest, just to make him feel better. It takes effort to hear what he's saying and not reject it, to say

no. this is how things are now. we both have to just deal with it. work with what we have.

Because in the end, she knows she wouldn't stay, and she wouldn't work, if there was no hope for anything better to come from all that struggle. So Danicka exhales slowly and turns to look back at him. "Baby, I wouldn't be here if I didn't have hope in all this, why don't you understand that? I'm not resigning myself to fear and trauma forever, I'm just... I can't talk about us in terms of how good it's going to be, or when that's going to happen. I can't tell you that we'll be back to playing tag in the living room in no time. I don't know how all of this is going to feel in a week or a month down the line, and I don't want to promise you it'll be okay or back to the way it was when that might be a lie."

She stops there, taking another breath, the words having tumbled out of her lips til she lost track of them. She looks at him, her expression worried that now she's just made him feel worse again, worried that they aren't going to get out of this, now. "Baby, please understand how I have to look at this. I wouldn't be with you still, here, talking to you and making love to you and telling you that sometimes I'm scared of you, if I thought that the rest of our life was going to be this twisted descent into sick love and terrified obligation. I don't know what else to tell you, or... or how to give you hope, or... I don't know how else to show you that I love you and want to be happy with you other than by telling you over and over that I'm here, and I'm working on it. I'm trying to work with what I have, even if right now some of what I have is nightmares. I don't want it to be like this forever. But I don't want to promise you anything when I genuinely do not know what our relationship is going to look like when we get through this.

"I don't think it's going to be bad," she says softly. "I just don't know if it's going to be the way it was, either."

[Lukas] Lukas is quiet, listening. His eyes move over her face as Danicka speaks. He looks at her eyes, her mouth; looks at her hands and her body. Now and then, his brow flickers through a frown. His mouth pulls with sadness, or sorrow, or something like ache.

When she's finished, his eyes come back to hers. It wasn't the unequivocal vote of confidence he'd hoped for; but then, if she'd given him that, she might have lied. She might have made him a promise that would, in essence, take a lifetime to keep. He understands that, at least.

There's a pause. Then he reaches out his hand.

"Pojď sem," he says softly, as though the language of their childhood, the language of their ancestors, would serve somehow to bind them closer together. "Dovolte mi, abych vás držet."

[Danicka] The truth is, she was moments away from asking for it. Not because she's trembling, desperate for comfort. Not because she knows he needs to hold her. Without looking any deeper at her own motivations Danicka knew only, sitting there looking at him, that she wanted him to hold her.

So when she reaches out and takes his hand it's without hesitation. She doesn't tell him no, you come here. Off the table, silly male in your ridiculous socks. Danicka has never wanted to be that woman, that partner, constantly staying out of reach, forcing the person she says she loves to come to her, reach out to her. She takes his hand but doesn't climb up onto the table with him, the resistance in her arm if he starts to pull her towards him ever so slight, and strangely enough,

a symbol of trust. That she would dare, even with him, to resist.

Danicka's watching his eyes, the way she does sometimes when she's fearful of punishment, or rejection, or simply needing to know what he's thinking, how he's feeling, when all of it may be impossible to communicate in words. "Mimo," she whispers. "Blízko našeho stromu."

Which is what she thought of, when she wanted to ask. Not on the table by the food or where they made love but out in the night that's growing cold from autumn. As they are, stripped down to sweat and skin, with only each other to warm them.

[Lukas] The corners of Lukas's mouth flicker. He breathes a laugh out. Then, still holding her hand, he comes off the table, lands on the floor with a thump. They have a basement. There's empty space beneath their feet, room to resonate.

It's getting cold outside. It's all right; he can keep her warm. Their dinner is cold too, but that's all right too -- with his free hand he grabs a plate, just one of them that they can share, and brings it with him.

He's still in his socks. Silly male in his ridiculous socks. Beautiful boy, who she loves so. Empty-eyed monster, that almost killed her.

When he comes alongside her, he lets her hand go. Wraps his arm around her instead, pulling her against his warm side, kissing her temple. Then he follows her out the back door, keeping the lights off, letting the kitchen light fade behind them with the closing door.

[Danicka] "No," Danicka says, almost as though it bothers her, the way he reaches for the plate. She's got her hand on the edge, pushing it away as he's picking it up. The sound of her voice is almost childish in its sudden, uncompromising refusal, in the way it mingles please in with the no.

"Jen ty."

She does unfold from her chair though, and holds his hand while she works her feet out of her socks. One less ridiculous thing. And it isn't silly, and she isn't hungry, she doesn't want to eat. She walks back through the arch between dining room and kitchen with him, walks to the back door with him, til they're on the porch and the cold air hits her bare skin, hardening her nipples and making her shiver. She moves a little closer.

There's a sapling in the middle of the garden. It's growing faster than any oak its age has a right to, and it's absorbing knowledge and memories in a way no sleeping tree possibly could. It knows the sky, and relishes the storms, reaching towards bolts of lightning as though they're sunlight, not lethal shots of electricity that could tear it apart. It's a very young tree. It's a very strong one, too.

Danicka and Lukas never seem to mind being in their back yard like this, naked and perhaps even vulnerable. Maybe they'll skirt building codes by putting up arbors inside the fence, covering them with vines and the like, making this place even more of a true sanctuary regardless of season. It would be more private. Perhaps. In the meantime it's enough work to be here, and to be together, and to accept that they've been... wounded. Danicka turns to face him when their footsteps carry them across the soon-to-die grass to the place that will one day be sheltered by oak boughs.

"Chci sedět na váš klíně. Chci, abys mě držet. Chci, abys mě držet v teple," she's whispering now, hands on his chest, stepping closer to him, tucking her arms between the two of them. She lays her head on his chest, murmuring I want, I want, I want only because she does not know how else to be transparent, how else to tell him what she needs.

[Lukas] One day, if they live so long, this young tree of theirs will be big enough that they can lean against its trunk. One day, if they have the children they both simultaneously ache for and are not ready for, a little boy with glasses might fall out of its boughs and a little girl with a mouth that never stops might go running for the back door calling mom, mom, come quick, Petr fell. Or they might have other names. Or they might wear other faces. But they would still be theirs, these children woven of their blood and bone and spirit.

Danicka comes close now, and Lukas wraps his arms around her. He has to bend to do this, his back curving, his arms enfolding. His body is so very warm, and she knows she doesn't have to ask him to keep her warm. To hold her. To keep her safe. She knows he would do this unasked, would do this even if it meant endangering himself, giving up his own well-being and his own warmth.

That's not why she asks him, though. This is the first time she's ever asked like this: keep me warm. Before, she's requested it wordlessly -- tucked her limbs under his, or moved closer to her, or conveyed her chill with a shiver. But to ask, to put it into word: it's a sort of trust, too. It's as much a statement as a request.

She still trusts him to keep her warm. She still trusts him, in essence, to protect her.

Lukas goes to his knees after a while, and then he sits crosslegged in the grass. He pulls his mate onto his lap and folds his arms around her. He lowers his brow to her shoulder, bumps gently once or twice before settling. Inhales and exhales. Holds.

"Moje láska," he whispers.

[Danicka] He was calling her love, just like that, only a handful of times before she answered him with my. My love. My. Mine. It startled him, maybe unnerved him. She didn't stop. He couldn't ask her to.

She called him her mate only in her thoughts the night she lured him into the woods, baited him while he hunted her, caught him in a thicket and bore him down to the earth. After he took her back to the place that isn't her home she washed the dirt and twigs away and thought my mate. my mate. Which he now whispers in her ear sometimes when he wraps his arms around her, whether he's crawling into bed with her after days apart or after he's fucked her, barely able to gasp the words out.

But before that: láska. And: Moje láska.

In many ways Danicka pushed for this relationship from the beginning more than Lukas. Pursued him, even as she could not commit herself to staying. Once she did, she tried to give him everything. And that will always be a struggle for her, giving so much, even when 'so much' is just the truth of how she feels, the truth of what she needs from him. It's never going to be easy, but she's worked at it from the start. Because she loves him. Because it's worth it.

But she's never asked him to keep her warm. Maybe with body language, with shivers, with acceptance when he's reached out to her. But not like this, verbally and clearly telling him that's what she wants. She knows he'd give it unasked. She'd be a fool not to know that it satisfies Lukas in some deep, inexplicable way, the way that making her a meal satisfies him, the way that watching her eat her fill pleases him, the way that making love to her gives him absolution that she didn't know til tonight that he needed so badly, was so frightened of losing.

She knows that he would give her the last heat of his body, if it kept her heart beating. Which is an aching, terrifying thought to her, that he would sacrifice so utterly just to know she was still breathing, still going, still there, even if he couldn't be with her anymore. It hurts to know that. To be loved that much, to be valued that highly. To be precious to him.

When he goes to the ground, Danicka follows him. Easily, she folds herself onto his lap, tucking her feet against his thigh, curving herself into the shape of his arm and body. She breathes. It's cold outside, not frigid but cold enough that a naked body feels it, wants shelter and warmth. She seeks it from him. It's the only way she knows, right now, to show him that she trusts him, and she has faith in him, and she --

no.

It's the only thing she wants right now. Because she trusts him. Because she has faith in him. Because she loves him.

The knuckles of her hand between them brushes aginst his pectoral, her palm opening against his chest til she feels his pulse against the heel of her hand. Danicka closes her eyes.

"Mé srdce."