black friday (i)

[Lukas] It's close to 2am when Lukas wraps his arm around Danicka, snuggles up close behind her, and shadows her into sleep. His sister and his sister's boyfriend are still playing the Wii, but they've all but muted the TV now, and anyway an hour or so after that they turn it off altogether and sneak up the stairs and into bed.

Then it's quiet in the little brownstone in the Bronx. Time passes. Around six or seven a.m., Lukas's father wakes. He washes his face and his hands, he shaves carefully with a straight razor, and then he goes downstairs wrapped in a dressing robe to make coffee and eggs for breakfast. He's very quiet, and so is his wife when she wakes an hour later to join him.

Around nine a.m., Daniel wakes up. He sneaks out of the mattress he's been sharing with Anezka, rolls around once or twice on the other mattress that's supposed to be his to muss up the blankets, and then takes his laptop downstairs. He helps himself to Jaroslav's coffee and surfs black friday deals online while chatting with Anezka's parents in low voice.

Around ten-thirty, eleven o' clock, Lukas wakes. He blinks his eyes drowsily open. His hand flexes gently against his mate's body, shifts up to cover her breast again where it'd slipped down during the night, and then he kisses her shoulder as he closes his eyes again. Another ten, twenty, thirty minutes slip by. Then he yawns, his bigger, warmer body extending in a stretch so big it pops his feet off one end of the bed, bangs his fists into the wall at the other.

"Morning," he murmurs to Danicka. He looks quiet, and content, and a little serious when she turns to look at him. "Sleep well?"

[Danicka] Around six or seven in the morning, Danicka stirs. Her internal clock tells her it's earlier by an hour; too early, despite the sunlight filtering in through the shade on Lukas's window. She isn't sure if she heard something, or if Lukas moved. Listening, her eyelids cracked, she hears someone walking with soft footsteps down the hallway, down the stairs. She closes her eyes again, and sleeps.

Wakes again, a couple of hours later, perhaps closer to ten than nine. Her eyes open blearily. She's aware now that Lukas's hand has slipped from her breast, that he's breathing steady and heavy behind her. She exhales, turning her head, and can smell food and coffee downstairs, hear low voices. It feels familiar somehow -- she thinks of this past summer.

Danicka considers staying where she is. It's warm, and she's with Lukas, and the only people awake are all but strangers to her even now. But the bed is small, and the sunlight has the room brightened, and though she lays quietly and closes her eyes, she doesn't go back to sleep.

Around ten o'clock, Danicka gently, slowly, and carefully extricates herself from under the covers and the fold of Lukas's arm. If he protests, if he wakes -- and she seems to expect that he will -- Danicka just kisses his face, murmurs to him to go back to sleep, it's okay. Stay in bed, she whispers. Sleep, baby. She slips over him and lays one foot after the other silently on the floor. Finds her pajama pants again and tugs them on. Picks up her socks and pads out of the room.


Before she goes downstairs, Danicka puts socks on to keep her feet warm as the house is still morning-cool. She undoes her braid and combs her fingers through the bendy little waves left in it from being braided wet and slept in. When she enters the kitchen she's smiling, accepting a mug of coffee, asking for just a piece of toast and some jam -- enough, for Danicka, to tide her over til brunch.

She peers over Daniel's shoulder at some of the electronics. They talk about a sleek little camera that can take HD videos for awhile. Jaroslav, in particular, is in favor of this as a gift for his son. He mentions, subdued but genuine, that Anezka showed him a video a couple of years ago of Lukas wishing him a happy birthday. They talk a bit about the increase in such videos, and Danicka explains she got him an iPhone.

"I'm thinking about switching to Android, though," she mentions, sipping her coffee. Daniel heartily approves.


Whenever Lukas follows Danicka downstairs -- thirty minutes later, an hour and a half later -- that's what he walks into. Danicka is sitting with his parents and his sister's boyfriend, a crust of toast on a plate before her and her mug half-full of coffee. She is showing them -- on her iPhone -- pictures she's taken of their den.

She looks up a moment before he enters, feeling him like the hairs on the back of her neck raising. She smiles when Lukas walks in, though. "Dobré ráno, ospalec," she says.

[Lukas] When Danicka gets out of bed, Lukas isn't quite ready to let her go. He grumbles a sleepy protest, hands heavy with sleep pawing loosely at her to try to hold her, keep her, but she eludes him and soothes him, kisses him and tells him to sleep, sleep.

As if it were any weekday morning, and he didn't get in bed with her until 3am, and she's getting up for class at 7. As if she will shower now, and dress herself, and take herself off to the university of chicago while he sleeps on, warm and sound in her bed twenty-three floors above the city, the river at his feet.

This isn't Chicago, though. It's New York City, so much bigger and rougher, so much older. And when his eyes open, he sees a room at once so familiar and so unfamiliar that it's jarring. A deep inhale reminds him of where, what, when, how, why -- he slips into his pajama bottoms, finds a pair of slippers in the closet, and pads downstairs yawning, his jaw stubbled, his teeth freshly brushed.

His mother is in the kitchen, having a cup of coffee by herself, looking out over the backyard. She's quiet, and serene, and this is one little ritual she's always kept: this one, civilized cup of coffee early in the morning no matter what disasters and chaos are raining down around her. Seeing her now, Lukas wonders briefly if the spirits of the Underworld saw this memory in him. If they took it and echoed it in his projections of his own mate when she, in turn, became a mother in that half-real world: that quasi-memory he has of that one thing she still does for herself every Sunday morning, manicuring her nails at the breakfast table.

He bends to kiss his mother's cheek. The son is taller and broader than either parent, though his father still has some echo of the same powerful build. Twenty years ago, Jaroslav seemed a force to be reckoned with, quiet and stern, with a voice that sometimes -- always unexpectedly -- lashed out into startling decibels. Lukasek, quiet! Anezka, stop running! Children, time to go home -- NOW. He doesn't seem so formidable now. Not to Lukas, and likely not to Danicka, either. He seems more as he always was: a man with a great capacity for gentleness, who loved his children well.

Lukas pours himself a cup of coffee, himself. He breaks an egg into the pan, lids it, lets it fry slowly while he joins the others at the table. Danicka smiles when he walks in -- he smiles back, stroking her hair back and bending to kiss her brow.

"Morning," he replies, and pulls up a chair beside her. The morning light, wan with encroaching winter as it is, glows off his warm skin, bare shoulders. He yawns jaw-crackingly, then paws over a random newspaper ad to browse.

[Danicka] Thankfully by now, Daniel has closed the tab with the camera on it and everyone is aware that Lukas is not to be warned of his impending Christmas/birthday present. Danicka wonders what they make of the long, twisting scar crossing his midsection. She sips her coffee and moves to sit closer to him, leaning against him for a moment without verbalizing why: that he's so warm. Unspeakably, almost feverishly warm to the touch. She presses her face against his bicep, smiles, and finishes her coffee.


Later on -- not even that much later -- Anezka comes downstairs, too, and receives teasing from at least her brother on how long she slept. Not that he got up early. Not that Danicka doesn't roll her eyes, smiling, shaking her head.

It takes awhile for everyone to stop lolling about, but now that Anezka is up Marjeta is the one who gets everybody going. Up, up. Time to get ready. It's too late for brunch, now, by the time they get out the door it will be time for lunch. People are shooed upstairs to get dressed. Danicka is looking for a plug beside Lukas's bed so she can fix her hair, which she does surprisingly well for not having a mirror -- after all, the bathroom is in use and she's already showered. She manages to do her makeup with the tiny mirror on her compact, sitting atop Lukas's bookshelf while he gets dressed and then packs up all their luggage to take back down to the car.

And lo and behold it is too late for brunch, but they end up deciding on a restaurant that Anezka finds on her phone. She's plugging it into the GPS in the Massachusetts-plated car and Danicka has the map on her iPhone and Marjeta and Jaroslav are just going to ride with their daughter and her boyfriend since Danicka and Lukas have to head to her sister's after lunch.

She settles into the passenger seat behind him, in slim dark jeans tucked into a pair of supple knee-high boots with heels that are not made for Black Friday shopping. Under her coat there's a loose brown tank top with a glittering floral applique at the shoulder, a gray shawl-like sweater thrown over that. When Lukas was handing it to her he was bewildered, not sure if it was a scarf or a cardigan or what, but when she put it on he said oooh, getting it, and she laughed.

"Okay," she says now, buckling herself in, "I guess you can just follow your sister there, but if she loses you I have the map. I don't think this place even existed last time we were up here."

Danicka gets her sunglasses from the glovebox. Slides them on. Looks at him. "Let's roll," she says, affecting a gravelly voice.

[Lukas] They never did get around to asking why those plates are from Massachusetts. Lukas has a good guess, though, involving Daniel and Daniel's relatives, immediate or otherwise. He glances at Danicka as she gets in, at her legs and at her heels, and the corner of his mouth turns gently up. He wolf-whistles softly, somewhere between irony and genuine appreciation, as they buckle themselves in.

Let's roll, she growls. He reaches over, tips the sunglasses up atop her hair, and leans across to kiss her quickly and spontaneously on the lips.

Then he rolls. He pulls in behind Anezka's car easily, and it is, indeed, Anezka driving. He can tell from the silhouette in the car, but also because she adjusts her mirror so she can see it, and then sticks out her tongue at him. He laughs under his breath and follows her from one road to the next, each one busier than the last.

They're maybe three, four minutes away from his parents' brownstone when Lukas broaches the topic that Danicka knew he would sooner or later:

"What do you think of Daniel?"

[Danicka] She wrinkles her nose slightly at the kiss, smiles. Her sunglasses slide back down when he's done expression his sudden bursts of endearment, of affection, the only way he knows how: with instant, wordless physical contact. She leans back, smiling at him as he drives, and most certainly does not pull up Angry Birds to play while Lukas gets them to the restaurant.

Danicka just fiddles with the XM radio in the rental, looking for something she likes, something she thinks Lukas will like. But the volume is quiet, and after awhile Lukas takes the opportunity that their privacy givs them. She looks over, thoughtful.

"I like him," she says. "He's a little eager to please, but I think that was just when you were around. I talked to him for awhile this morning. He's smart. Humble, though. And he's got enough backbone to get pissed when you thought you were suggesting he'd dump your sister at the drop of a hat, so there's a point or two in his favor."

Danicka glances at her phone, checking how close they are to the lunch spot. "It also makes me think he loves her."

[Lukas] "I don't really doubt their affection," Lukas replies, tapping the brakes as some yellow cab cuts them off. "But I wasn't asking what-ifs last night just to be a dick either. What if some Garou female takes a liking to him? Does he have someone who can stand up for him and tell her to look elsewhere, he's spoken for? Does he even have someone who would?

"I don't think he does, or he would have answered me last night."

[Danicka] "I didn't think you were being a -- okay, well I think the timing and the fact that it was in front of everyone and so forth was kind of a dick move, but that's not the same," Danicka protests, but she's so calm, so casual about all this. It's hard to tell if she cares much. She clearly doesn't think Lukas was all that out of line or she'd actually seem frustrated at thinking about it again. She'd seem upset, and she doesn't. It's possible that what happens with Anezka and Daniel doesn't, no matter how nice they are as people or even that Anezka is Lukas's sister, matter much to her in the end. But then:

"Baby, it's pretty simple," Danicka says, glancing up from her phone and over to him. She looks sympathetic, as he finishes. Which means maybe she does care. For him, at least. "You find his closest Garou relative, or the Garou who guards him, and you challenge for the claim on him.

"It's frustrating," she goes on, "because I don't think Daniel wants to think about it that way any more than any Kinfolk who isn't completely broken and sheeped. But if you lay claim over him, then anyone else who might come along and want him for themselves has to get through you first, and if he and Anezka get married or mated and start having babies or whatever then you have every reason to just outright deny challengers from the get-go."

Danicka reaches over, giving his leg a squeeze. "Be fair, too, okay? You can be ...intense. And you were sort of in rare form in the kitchen." She says it gently, but she means it, too. "If I'd been in his shoes I would've been too flustered and freaked out to answer you, especially with the parents of the person I love standing right there. You don't know for sure that there isn't someone to speak for him. That's why I said you two should talk about it privately."

[Lukas] In reality, even as Lukas was throwing rhetorical questions out there, he had some hazy hint of the answer Danicka might give him. Who, he kept asking. Who could? Who would?

Her answer is simple enough. You. And it says something about what she thinks of him -- what trust she puts in him and his intrinsic goodness, which goes beyond merely what he feels for her and what he would do for her to encompass what sort of man she thinks he is -- that she never has to question whether he really would or not. Whether he'd put his own honor on the line not for his own sake or for hers, but for his sister's, and his sister's boyfriend's. Mate's. Whatever it is Daniel is, or might one day be.

It says something about what sort of man he really is, too, that Lukas doesn't immediately scoff at paying such a price for the sake of a sister. A sister's boyfriend. He just gets quiet for a while, and thoughtful, his hand dropping from the steering wheel to cover Danicka's almost reflexively as it comes to his leg.

"If I talk to him about it privately," he says, "then I should bring Anežka into it too. It's her life."

After a while, he gives her hand a squeeze, returns his to the wheel. "It's ironic," he says. "I'm actually happy she's with a kinsman. I don't want her to have to deal with a Garou mate, to try to find some happy medium between monsters and weaklings. But it was still a shock to find him there like part of the family, and -- it comes with its own headaches. And it's not just the fact that any given day some Garou might take a shine to either one of them. It's the fact that kin are given so much more respect if they're mated to someone with rank and title; even more so if they sire or bear a Garou."

He goes quiet then. There's no real direction to this; he's just voicing thoughts, half-frustrated, spinning his wheels. Up ahead, Anezka's car merrily takes another right, its occupants oblivious to the conversation just behind them.

[Danicka] The truth is -- and Danicka, as interested in and as curious about other people as she is, is quite aware of this -- Daniel and Anezka might be having their own conversation right now about this. No, not privately. For all they know, Marjeta and Jaroslav might have thoughts on it they're sharing, too. Daniel and Anezka might have talked about it last night. Lukas's parents have known him -- known about him, at least -- for a year or more, now. Lukas just met the man who may very well become something of a brother in law to him, just as Danicka just met the woman who is for all intents and purposes her sister in law.

Garou law, if not mortal law.

She knows the price of it, should he claim Daniel. She doesn't know if Daniel has pure blood or not, if he would be quite the prize to some female who might glance his way. They aren't Silver Fangs, the Lords, and merit counts for more than breeding, but if one starts drawing lines, Lukas was damn lucky to be all but given a pure, young, beautiful, fertile, wealthy, intelligent kinswoman who has all that and the homemaking abilities of cooking and cleaning and sewing and music and childrearing. As a Fostern. His only advantage was his strength, his even greater bloodline, and the fact that Danicka wanted him.

The luck came in the fact that what Danicka wanted mattered at all to her brother, in however warped a fashion.

Danicka doesn't know if Daniel is, in the eyes of Garou who care about such things or who desperately need a trueborn heir, as precious as Anezka might be. Danicka knows intuitively what Lukas would do to protect his sister against an unsuitable mate, knows with certainty that he has it in him to take even that protective instinct way too far and risk Anezka's trust in him and happiness if he's not careful. She knows where the boundaries of Lukas's monstrosity are. She knows how much he will relent before he hits a wall where he cannot go, cannot be weak.

But she doesn't know what's more or less fair, in the end: for Daniel to be with Anezka and risk losing her should someone come along who can claim him, or for Lukas to take guardianship of a whole new life, one that will be his to care for and protect even if Anezka and Daniel's love doesn't last, even if the worst should happen to Anezka and leave Daniel widowed and essentially up for bidding all over again, his brother in law and truth suddenly responsible for finding him a new mate or finding a reason to exempt him from that duty

both of them mourning Anezka.

Dark thoughts. Dark times. Once it was easier for Kinfolk to mate with each other, sometimes even encouraged simply because there were more of them. More Kin. More Garou, too, but to be chosen as the mate of a Garou was an honor that could not be extended to everyone. These days, with more Lost Kin than ever and even the occasional Lost Cub,

these days, when some tribes and houses wonder if they'll ever see a trueborn child again,

these days, when the chances are that no trueborn born will Change soon enough to make a difference,

these days, things are different. It's harder. Even Jaroslav and Marjeta are a rare case.

"I think you'll be lucky to get her out of the room to talk to him privately in the first place," Danicka says lightly. "So you might just want to include her from the start and avoid the drama." She looks over at him, smiling, her eyes hidden but her lips conveying a lot.

He goes on, and she settles into her seat, iPhone in her lap, leaning her head against the rest while something by Sigur Rose plays on the stereo. She doesn't seem surprised, but that's because she understands. There were times when even Vladislav would say maybe Danicka would be better off with a kinsman, but he would say it with such disgust -- disdain. For Kin, and for her weakness, and for how it reflected on their family name. Even with that negativity behind it, she understands the gist, and she can see how hard it would be to find a Garou mate that would neither bow to nor break Anezka.

She keeps her hand on his leg as she listens. "It isn't unheard of," she says thoughtfully. "Your parents had you. My mother was the first Garou born in generations on both sides of her family."

But in the end it doesn't really matter. Whether Anezka has children -- with Daniel or some other kinsman -- doesn't change much of the current situation. Danicka smiles at him. "Don't worry so much in advance," she says quietly, urging him with the same advice she's given him over and over in the past. "Later you'll talk to them, and they may have thoughts on all this you haven't even considered yet."

There's a soft smile on her lips. "We'll have a nice lunch today, and I'll go shopping with your parents while you talk to Daniel and Anne." A faint grin. "Then we'll go down to Astoria and Emánek can moo at you for speaking English at dinner."

[Lukas] In one form or another, Danicka has given Lukas that advice again and again. Don't worry so much. Don't plan ahead so much. Don't stress over every little detail, when in the end --

every plan he's ever made has fallen apart within the first two moves. And from there on out it's raw wits, it's bloody carnage, it's hot red instinct driving him to every victory he's ever had.

And yet she still has to remind him. And he still laughs under his breath when he hears it, and knows she's right, and glances at her as they pull into a parking lot behind Anezka. Lunch. She smiles at him. He smiles back, a little wryly, and then -- as he clicks the engine off -- with a quiet genuineness.

"Thank you," he says. A beat; then, "But if Emánek moos at me again, I'm putting him on timeout and he's not getting dessert. I'm your mate now. That makes me his uncle."


They assemble in the parking lot, then head into the restaurant Anezka's picked out. It turns out to be a tiny little French-Creole place, of all things, where lighter, european-style fare is dished up alongside heavier, spiced Cajun foods. They're one of the few families there the morning after Thanksgiving, and they have one of the largest tables in the back to themselves.

Even so, they're in public now, and the mood is different. Quieter, a little more -- well, polite. No one gets smashed. No one lolls, and no one spills anything, and Jaroslav and Marjeta manage to get a word in edgewise more than three times the entire meal.

At one point, Marjeta asks Danicka what she's studying at school. She can sense Lukas's hyperalertness there, as though ready to defend his mate against whatever his mother might decide to pick at, but no such nitpicking comes. Later on, Jaroslav mentions that perhaps they'll consider extending the stone facade on the den. It might even make it a little warmer in the winters, he suggests.

As lunch draws to a close, it's actually Daniel -- one hand under the table, almost certainly holding Anezka's hand -- that suggests that the three of them, Dan Anezka and Lukas, adjourn to a nearby cafe to have a talk. Danicka invites Marjeta and Jaroslav shopping, and so it's decided. At the door of the restaurant, splitting the bill with Anezka despite his parents' protests, Lukas kisses Danicka quickly on the cheek as she passes him on the way out.

"See you back here at two-thirty, threeish?" he says, and when she nods, smiles.


Wherever Danicka takes his parents, the Christmas rush is already on. Perhaps they go buy that camera for Lukas, which she'll somehow keep hidden until his birthday. Jaroslav, quite possibly one of the few men in the city who still wear hats on a regular basis, buys himself a new hat. Buys Danicka a pair of gloves, fine supple leather, but nothing that would break the bank. Nothing huge or significant. Just a small gift, spontaneous.


When Danicka returns to meet Lukas at the coffeehouse across the street from the restaurant, she finds the three of them already outside, standing around Anezka's rental car. No one looks angry, or hurt, or sulking, which is a good sign. Seeing her coming, Lukas straightens up from where he's leaning against the trunk, looping his arm around his sister's shoulders to hug her lopsidedly against his side. She says something to make him grin. Then he puts his hand out, taking Daniel's in a firm handshake. As he walks toward Danicka's car, Anezka and Dan trail behind him, and then Lukas is pulling the passenger side door open and handing his mother out.

More hugs, then -- Marjeta reaching up to embrace her tall son; Jaroslav shaking his hand first before pulling him into a brief, hard hug. Likely he won't stop by again before he leaves the city. The next time they see each other,

he'll be getting married.

None of them know that yet, though. And Marjeta's embracing Danicka with a sort of light, polite warmth; Anezka's hugging her more enthusiastically, whether she likes it or not. Daniel shakes her hand. Jaroslav takes her hand and kisses her cheek, and --

they separate themselves out, Danicka and Lukas into one car, the rest into the other. Lukas buckles himself in, turning to wave again at his parents, and then leans back with a contented sort of sigh.

"It was good seeing them all," he says quietly. Then, "My dad really wants you to visit again."

[Danicka] That was how it was when he came to New York to claim Danicka as his own -- not his ward in Chicago, but his. His mate. As permanent a bond as he can hope for, as close to family as he can choose. He had such plans. He had such thoughts of how it might be, how it could go, how he would present himself and how he'd speak to Vladislav, and as always, as ever, his strategies lasted until about twenty seconds in.

Sometimes Danicka must seem so volatile to him, so unplanned unless she's sketching out those perfect lies of hers. And even those seem off the cuff, coming to her like lightning from heaven, deception from Thunder's own black stormclouds. She must seem so hard to keep up with, to someone like him -- until, at least, he sets down his plans and just rides the wind with her. Harder to get her to come down and settle something firmly with him, truth be told. Much harder.

They sit in the car, smiling, Danicka's mood too buoyant to worry much about the conversation with Daniel and Anezka. She unbuckles her safety belt and leans across the center console to kiss the corner of Lukas's mouth when they get to the parking lot of Anezka's choice of lunch. She smiles. "I can't wait to see how that goes over," she muses, tickled somehow by the idea of her near-Adren mate attempting to stand up to her youngest relative.


Lunch goes smoothly, but is no less relaxed -- at least on Danicka's part. Marjeta and Jaroslav are a little more formal, and nobody gets so drunk they half fall out of their chair. Danicka sits between Lukas and his mother this time, across from Daniel. The other end of the table is full of Anezka and her father's debate over some book they read and Lukas's occasional interjections, occasional -- though laughing, lighthearted -- arguments because Anezka is so wrong, you're so wrong. Are we even talking about the same book?

Danicka can sense Lukas's attention come over when the matriarch asks about her studies, but it's dim on her radar. She brightens when Marjeta asks about school. She likely makes Marjeta sorry she asked, because for a few minutes even Danicka's usual social acuity falters and she quite simply blathers about her favorite professor this semester, a class she's taking next semester, a paper she just wrote, the lab that Lukas helped her set up.

And if it so happens that the professor she mentions is a programmer who just returned to teaching from maternity leave, or that she tosses in a side note that the class she's taking looks good on graduat school applications, maybe only Lukas notices. And maybe Danicka's seeming misstep ...wasn't. She makes her point the way she so often does: subtly, without seeming to be aware she's making it herself. That's not as hard to do when you know what the point you really want to make is. For Danicka, it's simply

I don't have to choose.

"That would look beautiful," Danicka says, to Jaroslav's suggestion. "I keep thinking it would be nice to get rid of the whitewashing, restore the naked brick. A lot of the houses in that area are brick." It's the first comparison Lukas has heard her make of their home to any other, the first time she's seemed concerned whatsoever with any exterior appearance other than the garden they worked on over spring and summer. But it's planning ahead. It's... wanting to stay. For a long time.

Danicka is smiling softly when Daniel suggests they have coffee and talk. "Good," she says, when Lukas agrees with his sister's boyfriend. "That'll give your parents and I time to shop for all of you." It's hardly even an invitation at that point. And the truth is, she does end up shopping for all of them, though Lukas likely won't know about that til after Christmas, til his parents mention the lovely scarf and the new book over the phone. Won't know about it til Anezka texts one or both of them about the techno-gadgetry Danicka sent to her and Daniel. She may tease that she had no idea Lukas's mate was such a total nerd.

Of course, when he talks to them after Christmas, it's possible that none of that will even come up in the flurry of questions and reactions concerning what they'll be calling to tell their family members about in the first place.


Lukas isn't there when Jaroslav insists, despite a few protests from Danicka, on buying her the gloves. He isn't there when Marjeta tells her to put them on, it's cold, or when his mother compliments how they look. He isn't there when Danicka takes Jaroslav's hand in those gloves and gives it a squeeze, smiling warmly as she thanks him.

She tells him about it later, though. Shows him the gloves when she sees him again in the parking lot, look what your father did, like a teasing scolding, but in private, much later, she mentions -- fondly -- how fearing for her body heat seems to be a family trait as much as feeding her.

There are hugs all around. Brief, with Marjeta. Giving a quick ack! at Anezka's enthusiastic squeezing. A roll of her eyes as Daniel shakes her hand and then a small hug that is more friendly than sisterly. She kisses Jaroslav's cheek, too, and in the gestures between them Lukas might notice the sort of familiarity he might expect she shared with her own father when Vladislav wasn't around, a sort of trusting comfort.

In their rental, she waves at everyone before they pull out, and then flops backwards into her seat, exhaling. "And now to a house with four kids," she says with of a huff of wearying amusement. She smiles over at Lukas, who tells her quietly ...what he does. Her smile grows a bit, warms.

"I think this visit changed things a little," she says gently. "And I think we should both visit again." The slight difference is brought more into light as she goes on: "Your father wants to... know you now. As a man."

She reaches over, putting her hand on his leg. "And I need to take your mother somewhere privately and get her drunk enough to do karaoke, and then I think we'll be great friends."

[Lukas] Lukas is quiet a while, and not only because he's navigating streets he hasn't really been on since before he could drive. It's different now, and yet still all the same. He's thinking, though, introverted for a moment before he looks over at his mate.

"I'm glad you talked with my father," he says. He doesn't ask what about; what she told him is enough to give him a hint. An idea. "And I'm glad you seem to ... like each other. Outside of who you both are to me, I mean."

Later on, she'll show him the gloves. She'll tell him how Marjeta was worried that she would catch cold, and she'll attribute this, too, to a family tradition. He'll laugh, and then he'll affect seriousness; he'll look at her with mock gravity and ask her if she was cold. If she was hungry. If she was tired, if she wanted to sleep, and though it'll all be a joke, the truth is -- on some primitive level he does worry about these things. It was one of the first things he ever worried about, with her.

"It might take longer with my mother," he adds. "She's ... slower to trust, I think. But I think she likes you, too. And if nothing else, I think she's very, very glad you love me."

They swing onto a southbound thoroughfare. Lukas adjusts the sunvisor, then skims through the navigation to ascertain the route. Then -- "We can drop by the W if you want. Drop our things off." He glances at her again, reaches over to fold his hand over the back of her neck, to knead the slender muscle there as though concerned she might be tired already. "Were you up really early?"

[Danicka] Regardless of which one of them gets behind the wheel, the drive is going to be an interesting one. At least they're not in Manhattan, but Danicka didn't take her car with her when she lived with her sister's family over the summer and Lukas hasn't been this way before, either. The area isn't so strange that they're at a complete loss, but driving is going to take some concentration, especially on the biggest shopping day of the year.

Danicka starts pulling off the gloves that Jaroslav got her, laying them across her lap for now. They're a rich, almost mossy green, slim-fitting and making her fingers look long. Say something for Jaroslav's powers of perception: he noticed her looking at them, noticed it wasn't with mere curiosity or revulsion but consideration, and now there they are, resting on her lap. Suiting her.

And she smiles. "I do like him," she confirms. "I was only scared of him when I was little," she adds, and then he's noticing the gloves and she's talking to him about the afternoon.

Are you cold?
No, baby, I'm okay.
Are you hungry?
...We just ate.
Are you tired? Do you want to sleep?
Honey, you need to stop.

But she'll laugh.

Danicka puts her gloves away, reclining her chair a bit. She arches slightly as he rubs her neck, a catlike expression of warmth and bliss coming over her expression. "Mmm," she says. There isn't much to say about Marjeta after that -- whether Danicka likes her or not, when it's so hard to tell who Marjeta is just yet. The fact that yes, she loves Lukas, and loves him so much that even around people she doesn't know well she couldn't hide it, couldn't stop herself from touching him, holding him, leaning against him, kissing him, smiling just because he was there. Her eyes open slowly and she turns her head to look at him.

"No," she says. "I got about eight hours of sleep and I was very warm and then I had breakfast and yes, we should absolutely drop our things off so that we aren't tempted to have a repeat of last night."

[Lukas] "I'd say a repeat of last night doesn't sound so very bad," Lukas replies, "except there are going to be children around. And that's just wrong."


Conversation lapses a bit after that -- mainly because Lukas's attention is on navigating New York traffic. They're passing one of the bridges, and cars are pouring off to get stuck in the gridlock because at the bottom of the bridge is some big-block store with Huge Savings, One Day Only! Last year, a store not so very far from here, on the Jersey side of the water, became notorious when shoppers were trampled. To death. Lukas, personally, is glad he never ventured into the fracas.

He likes the gloves his father bought Danicka, though. And quietly, he's pleased and proud of his father's keen eye, his good taste.


Some twenty, thirty, forty minutes later, they've made it across the bridge and into Manhattan. They've stop-and-goed their way down the long, skyscraper-lined avenues of the city, and then parking is so utterly impossible that it turns out they don't even end up checking in together. They park briefly in the loading area. They swap seats, Danicka stepping into the driver's, Lukas going around back to pop the trunk and haul their luggage out. Then she circles the block while he checks in, runs their luggage up, leaves it in a room that reminds him,

indelibly,

of the night he ate her out in that armchair in front of the vast glassy windows, right before she stood over him, so wild, so raw, and ground her pussy against him face while her fingers raked through his hair.

When Danicka pulls up at the curb and they swap back to their original places, Lukas shifts in his seat a few times to get comfortable. Then, buckling in, he casts her a crooked grin.

"It's probably good you didn't go up with me," he says. "I think I would've had to lay you out and eat your pussy again."


Off they go to Astoria, then. The traffic out of Manhattan is scarcely better than the traffic into Manhattan, but Lukas is surprisingly calm, unruffled, unfrustrated. He talks to her mildly about a book he's reading; talks to her about whether or not she was serious about fixing up the exterior of their little den, and if she is, about whether to pave it in stone or strip it down to brick.

He sort of likes the idea of brick better, too. Stone is a little more elegant, he says, but brick is homey. Home-like. Den-like, and warm. He says maybe he can get started on it when the weather warms up a little, when the worst of the winter snows have passed.

Then they're drawing close, and Lukas has never been to this particular house. It's not the one with the big oak in the back. It's not the one he and his sister tore through as children; not the one where he threw up after too many kolache, and not the one where, not so very long ago, he took Danicka away from her brother and her father forever. This one is new to him, the neighborhood without even a trace of familiarity, and he slows as he hunts down the street numbers until he finds the one.

"Here we are," he says quietly, parking.