[Lukas] There's a little smile on Lukas's face when she draws back. He likes it when she kisses his chest like that: he's told her, perhaps more than once. Even like this, layers of cloth between them, it feels the same. Loving. Animal, somehow. Close.
"Budu," he promises. "Starting with telling Anežka to dial it down a notch."
And she's rising up on her toes. He bows his head to her. His fingers find hers and loop loosely through as she kisses his cheek; he laughs at what she whispers, a low sound in his chest.
"Come on, then."
The last time Danicka saw Jaroslav, she was nine or ten years old, and he was still young. The man in the small study is the same, but he looks different: more grey than black in his hair, the stern shape of his face craggy and lined with age. There's more of a stoop to his shoulders. No -- there's a stoop to his shoulders, period, when before he was utterly upright.
The books Lukas spoke of when he speaks of his father are there -- shelves lining the small room, many of them well-read, falling apart at the spine. There's a desk in there, the surface cluttered with papers and newspapers and magazines and books, books, books. There's a computer on the desk that looks utterly out of place, almost certainly bought and brought by Anezka. It's crowded to the corner, the small form factor tower on the floor.
Two armchairs in here, too, flanking a small, low table that one might play cards on, or perhaps checkers and chess. Jaroslav is seated in the one facing the door, and he angles a sharp, dark eye over the top of his newspaper when Lukas taps on the door, then opens it.
"Ahoj, otče," the younger Kvasnicka says to the elder. He steps aside as Jaroslav is folding his newspaper to set it aside, handing Danicka into the room. As his father rises to greet his mate, Lukas is subduing his emotions: eagerness, shyness, something a little like pride. "Tento to Danička, můj lodní důstojník."
[Danicka] Danicka shakes her head when he says he'll tell Anezka to dial it down. She doesn't outright tell him no, don't, but there is a sense of negation. She doesn't explain, because explaining what she does mean when she asks for his help might take longer than they've taken already. It has to do, more than likely, with that strong difference between them: Danicka's subtlety, Lukas's directness.
She slides her hand into his and walks with him, instead of talking further, towards the study where Jaroslav is reading. She's still carrying her purse at her side, though her coat has been shed. Pushing the ajar door open, Lukas leads her in, and a small smile is on her face when Jaroslav looks up.
It's hard to tell even for Lukas, how much of the faint sense of shyness to her is real. Or remembered. Or real, because it's remembered. Her mate's hand slips from hers as he brings her in, stepping aside as though presenting her, and there's the slightest flicker of amusement or -- something -- that flickers like a wild forest light in her eyes for a moment.
She offers the man, so much younger than her father, her hand. "Dobrý den, Pan Kvasnička." Her smile grows a little. "Vidíš? Nejsem imaginár."
[Lukas]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 5, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Danicka] [It just struck her as crazy funny that Lukas is all presenting her! Like! "EEE DADDY LOOKIT. INNIT SHE AWSUM? :] I GOTTED HER."]
[Danicka] [And she's trying not to laugh aloud at the random HAHAHAHA of it.]
[Danicka] [She's still feeling kinda awkward and a little worried about Lukas like OTAY I BE V DIREKT FOR J00 :] when she's like ACK NO NOT WHAT I MEANT but she's like AWWW HE INTRODUCING ME TO HIS DADDY.]
[Lukas] Lukas glances sideways as Danicka as she steps forward. Her hand leaves his; his fold neatly behind his back, and then he's biting back a smile, too -- somewhere between self-effacement and sheer pleasure. No matter what happened at the foyer, or on the stairs, or outside in the hall.
He's happy to be introducing his mate to his father. He's surprised, himself, at how happy this makes him.
For his part, Jaroslav rises out of his seat -- older now, certainly, than the last time he met Danicka. Still much, much younger than Danicka's father, perhaps by as much as twenty years. There's still a sturdiness in his frame, and the grey in his hair looks more like steel than snow.
But his smile is genuine. It furrows his brow and crinkles the corner of his eyes. Lukas isn't a carbon copy of his father, but the resemblance is unmistakable: something about the shape of the face, the set of the eyes under the brow, even if Jaroslav's and very dark where Lukas's are brilliantly pale. Jaroslav takes Danicka's hand in both of his, clasping it warmly.
"Danička." Where Lukas and Danicka both spoke Czech, Jaroslav, ironically enough, speaks the English that even now carries heavy hints of Czech. "I am pleased to discover you are, in fact, not imaginary. I remember when you were small. Lovely and well-mannered and a little timid. I think my wild children startled you, but you braved their silly games all the same.
"Now look at you. Welcome, moje dcera. We've all wanted to meet you for some time."
There's a sense of formality in that. It dispels when Jaroslav lets go her hand and gestures her into the other armchair. Lukas goes behind the desk to haul out the chair back there -- not a modern ergonomic office chair but an old-fashioned work of heavy hardwood. Clearly, the Ahroun intends to sit in it, but Jaroslav moves toward it instead, nodding his son toward the armchair he'd recently vacated. There's a brief moment of shuffling feet, and then Lukas relents and goes to sit in the armchair as his father takes the desk chair.
He's frowning a little now, but he says nothing. Conversation is on hold until Jaroslav seats himself again.
"Did you fly in tonight?" he asks, tugging the legs of his slacks reflexively straight. "Will you be staying a few days?"
Anezka was in a turtleneck and jeans; Dan in shirt sleeves and jeans. Jaroslav is the only one of the family thus far dressed in the sort of clothes Danicka had brought, but ultimately hadn't worn -- which is to say, nice. A little bit more formal than the jeans and sweaters everyone else has on. It's warm in the study, in the house. While Jaroslav addresses Danicka, Lukas peels out of his sweater, the thick wool weave crackling with static as he drops drapes it over the back of his chair.
[Danicka] [EMPATHY.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5 (Botch x 1 at target 6)
[Lukas] [danicka thinks lukas is upset because his father took the speshul chair; the chair that was behind the desk, and therefore the symbol of authority in the room.]
[Danicka] Jaroslav is more like what Danicka was expecting when she came to this house tonight -- a bit formal. Polite, but warm, at least on the surface. Inviting but not effusive. What would make so many others feel stiff and uncomfortable seems to relax her. This is a game she knows the rules to. This is the way people should act when they don't know each other well. This is, of course, the way a girl raised by a man a decade or two Jaroslav's senior would raise his daughter to be.
And he looks like Lukas. Anezka doesn't really look like her brother -- a similarity in eye and hair color, nothing more. She doubts Marjeta projects this same air, this strength and reserve that exudes from Jaroslav as well as Lukas. She doesn't react much as he describes his impression of her in childhood. 'A little timid' is being kind, or forgetful.
"They weren't so wild," Danicka interjects, her voice low. That may be kindness on her part, too.
Though that sense of formality blankets it, Danicka neither blushes nor smiles nor exudes warmth when Jaroslav chooses the words moje dcera. If anything, she somehow projects her resistance to it without a sudden frown or a sharp withdrawal from Jaroslav's hands on hers. It's in the air like a scent, as invisible, as unmistakable. Lukas, at least, might understand, or perhaps just not be surprised -- but it still might be hard not to feel that she's rejecting his family, one by one, by refusing to pretend that she feels like she's a part of it.
Danicka's brows do tug together a bit when Lukas goes for the desk chair, out of mere confusion rather than anything else. That faint frown twists a bit, deepens, as Jaroslav insists on taking it himself. She watches Lukas rather than his father, sees his frown and from all appearances he looks upset that his father is taking a seat of authority in ...his own study.
Which doesn't make sense, with Lukas at home. Which doesn't make sense, with the way he's told her that he's treated at home. Like -rhya, like Wyrmbreaker, their Garou son and their authority. Distant. Not close, not informal.
She hesitates to seat herself, but then lowers her body into the armchair, letting Lukas answer that.
[Lukas] There's a brief pause in the conversation before Lukas fills in, his father turning toward him instead. "We just flew in, yeah." A glance at Danicka, "I think we might stay a day or two. But if you're about to offer us my room to crash in, Mom already tried. We're just going to stay at a hotel."
Jaroslav makes a sound in his throat, thoughtful. "That's unfortunate. Your mother would have liked having the family under one roof."
"We're here now," Lukas says, just a touch strained. "And anyway, we'd crowd Anežka and Daniel -- how long has that been going on, anyway?"
"Over a year. Your mother told you when you came for your books, remember?"
It's a rare frown Jaroslav directs at Lukas. Rare these days, anyway. Last time Danicka saw him, Jaroslav was almost always frowning at Lukas. Shouting at him to slow down!, or sit down!, or you'll break something! He doesn't shout anymore. In the Nation, which is the only world Jaroslav has ever known, his son far outranks him now.
He turns back to Danicka, anyway, too courteous to leave her out of the conversation for long. He's smiling now, slight, gently kidding, "Did you enjoy those books, by the way?"
[Danicka] Lukas, glancing at Danicka when he says he thinks they'll stay a day or two, sees her nodding. He cuts his father off at the pass from offering them a place to stay. She hears the strain in Lukas's voice when he says they're here now -- she wonders, privately, if he feels an implication about how rarely he visits, how long he's kept Danicka to himself. She wonders, privately, if he feels the pressure of the word 'family' over and over, knowing now how uneasy Danicka is with...
with what, exactly? Being considered a member of his family? That must sting. That must outright hurt, feeling and hearing so much reticence from her. It must be hard for him to not hear it as rejection of his family and what they want so openly to offer her. It must be hard not to wonder what is so wrong with his family that Danicka pulls back the more they reach out.
Though if he's thinking any of that, feeling any of that, it might lead him just as effortlessly to the memory of the night she asked him if he'd ever read The Little Prince, and if he remembered the chapter about the fox.
He might finally have a firm, undeniable answer as to which character Danicka was identifying herself with.
In any case, he says We're here now. Danicka speaks up, mentioning: "My half-sister and her family have asked if we'd come by while we're in New York, too." A faint smile flickers across her face. "We said no to staying with her, too."
Though that might be easily called different. There are children in that house. There are children who, regardless of their own nature, don't need a full-grown Ahroun sleeping upstairs.
He adds that they'd just crowd Anezka and Daniel, ever so smoothly transitioning back to his grumpiness at being surprised by the young man's presence in his family's home. Danicka watches father and son, watches them the way she seems most comfortable -- quiet, observing without much attention paid to her outright, able to watch before she speaks, before she assumes, before she decides she knows anything.
It doesn't last. The frown passes as his gaze returns to her, and Danicka seems thoughtful now. Jaroslave is kidding a little. She answers quite seriously: "I do," she says, quietly changing tenses. "I like thinking about Lukáš reading them when he was younger."
There's a beat. She half-smiles now, a bit wry, gently kidding herself. "I think at the time he hadn't admitted yet to you that we were together," she says. Her tone is teasing, softly inviting his agreement. His humor. Like holding her hand out
as though she's not the fox, after all. "But you can't hold it too hard against him that he didn't tell you a year ago -- you knew, even if he didn't come right out and say it, didn't you?"
[Lukas] Jaroslav didn't smile so much when he was younger. Perhaps it was the fire of youth, or the authority that came with being the head of the family. Perhaps he's just mellowed as he aged. He smiles now, though, genuinely amused, genuinely -- it must be admitted -- pleased with himself and his own insight. He doesn't nod so much as he closes his eyes for a moment, a blink of affirmation so very curiously like those slow animal blinks Lukas gives sometimes, when he's lazy, when he's sleepy, when he's warm and comfortable and feeling particularly primitive.
"When Lukáš started asking about you, I don't think even he knew. His mother and I, we wondered. He doesn't ask about kinfolk often, that one. And when he does, they're usually in trouble for some reason or other. This ... was different. But we didn't know for certain, and a grown man is entitled to privacy. So his mother and I, we did not ask.
"When he sent you the books, though, I knew. Clothes, household items, anything else, he might send to a packmate, perhaps even a kin. But not his books. No. That was when I knew."
Lukas blows out a snort that's half a laugh. "All right. Okay. Congratulations on the detective work, Dad. Now -- "
-- interrupted suddenly: Anezka, shouting up the stairwell: "Lukášek! POTATOES."
Lukas's head snaps around; he bellows right back with sudden and startling volume that it's entirely possible Danicka has never heard him use, at least not when utterly incensed: "OKAY. ONE SECOND." Jaroslav is grimacing, looking like he's resisting the urge to snap: Lukas! Anezka! Klidná! Lukas gets up out of his chair, leans over to kiss Danicka quickly on the temple, the brow, saying, "You stay and talk. I'm going to go help with the potatoes. Come down and meet my mom when you're ready, okay?"
Then he's gone, thundering down the stairs in a quick two-step. They can hear him in the kitchen: "Okay, okay, I'm here, Jesus!" -- then Anezka's countersnipe. Laughter. Dan and Marjeta they don't hear at all: some people in this house have manners.
Left alone now, Jaroslav shifts a little in his seat, sitting forward. "I apologize," he says, "for my rude children. And I apologize if this is equally rude and forward of me, but -- you know Lukáš well now, yes?" A pause, confirmation. Then a longer pause -- a hesitation before the question, "How is ... what sort of man is my son?"
[Danicka] For a moment, Jaroslav speaks of Lukas the way that parents do, even well into their child's adulthood: as though the boy isn't sitting right there, being talked about. It isn't calculated, it isn't even strictly rude, but Danicka notices it, and notices it in the way of someone who worked with the prized daughter of a wealthy family for nearly a decade. She recognizes it now not as the way one would talk about a possession, as in the case of the Sokolovs, but a sort of familiarity so unconscious no formality of breed or rank has erased it.
She keeps seeing Lukas's expressions in Jaroslav's face. Not even just that slow blink, but so many other little shades and shadows of her mate's ancestry and upbringing. Once, Lukas explained to a lupus why Danicka smelled and felt the way she did by telling him that it was Night Warder that Wahya saw in her. Given that the closest Lukas ever came to the storied Ahroun was, in fact, those stories, and given that the Musil household wasn't exactly adorned with family photos or portraits of Laura Dvorak, he likely has no idea how accurate that statement was. Danicka looks a great deal like her mother. Danicka wonders if she carries Laura's expressions in her features to this day. How similar their frowns, how sharp their glances.
Her eyes flicker at something Jaroslav says, bu she doesn't interrupt, she doesn't glance at Lukas, and it doesn't invite one of those frowns onto her face. She just goes on listening, still thoughtful, still wearing that soft smile.
Anezka bellows. Danicka and Jaroslav, now, wear the same expression, as though they're both wanting to snap something about yelling through the house like hooligans. How such mannerly parents raised children like Lukas and Anezka, Danicka is still trying to figure out. She and Jaroslav may have that question in common. Lukas gets out of his chair, leaning over to kiss her, and she huffs a breath, a pleased sound. Danicka nods, and smiles at his back as he goes thundering down the hall, down the steps, to the kitchen.
She imagines him greeting his mother. And turns her eyes back to Jaroslav.
"Don't apologize," she says, shaking her head. It isn't mere politeness, dismissal, forgiveness; she means it. She didn't apologize for Lukas when he was rude to Dan. One could say it's not her job: she's not responsible for him, the way that Jaroslav might feel he's responsible. The way Lukas feels he's responsible for Danicka. But Danicka doesn't think like that. The reason she tells Jaroslav not to apologize for his rude son, however throwaway the comment itself might be, is something else entirely.
Jaroslav is speaking with pauses now, with hesitation. Consideration. Her eyes are watchful on him, patient, but probing in a way that Anezka and Lukas's aren't, even at their most serious. She cannot give him the confirmation he pauses for, a simple nod to say yes, I know him well or a waffling well, I think so. She just tips her head slightly, waiting for him to go on.
And when he does, she is quiet a moment. Then, rather gently, and knowing the truth: "Surely you know," she says. "He is no stranger to you."
That hangs for a heartbeat or two. "Maybe if you told me what it is you really want to know about him," Danicka prompts, as though his question was merely... vague.
[Lukas]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Lukas] It would be so easy to attribute Lukas's wildness to the fact that he's a Garou. He's an Ahroun, and a Shadow Lord; the only trueborn in a house of kin. Who, really, was going to tell him to simmer down?
Only -- it's not that at all. Danicka has memories: he and his sister were always little hooligans. They streaked around the house. They skidded and they slid, they climbed, they fell, they laughed, they seemed brazen and fearless in a way she did not and could not understand. Lukas the adult is far more reserved than Lukas the child. Lukas the Garou is a paragon of control, so much so that it took months for Danicka to convince him to unlock even the slightest bit. What she sees here, in flashes and glimpses as he and his sister snipe at each other, as they bellow at each other from upstairs and downstairs, seems almost a throwback. A reversion to things they did as children, immature and thoughtlessly unmannered, not because their parents ever let them get away with it as children but because --
well. Maybe that's how they were born. Wildness in their genes, like the lightning-blue in their eyes, tempered into something else by experience and environment.
At any rate, they're both downstairs now, the younger Kvasnickas. Funny that even here, the job of mashing the potatoes seems to fall inevitably to Lukas. Strong arms, strong hands: good for manual labor. Danicka imagines him greeting his mother -- a kiss on the cheek and a hug, or perhaps something more respectful, dignified. Hard to say, and far away, anyway.
Here, now: Jaroslav's dark eyes flicker when Danicka says, surely you know. He frowns a little, mouth pursing faintly as his eyes cast instinctively down, then return to hers.
"We raised our boy until he was thirteen," Jaroslav says. "I like to think we raised him well. But the Tribe raised him from then on, because kin cannot raise Garou to be Garou. And the Tribe raises strong men, but it does not always raise good men."
He thinks for a moment; surely this is difficult for him. No matter how close Danicka is meant to be now, no matter if he called her my daughter or not, this is the first time they've met -- the man who raised Lukas and the woman who loves him now. Such bonds are not forged instantaneously, and Danicka knows this. Jaroslav, it seems, knows as well. These questions are painfully naked for him --
"He seems honorable, my son. Honest. I suppose I want to know ... he treats you well? And he deals fairly with others?"
[Danicka] There was little mercy in the fact that Danicka pointed out he is no stranger. She knows that is as it should be. The way Lukas comes home and falls instantly into the bickering and hollering that marked him and his sister as mind-blowing to Danicka when she was lovely, and well-mannered, and so small for her age, so frail for a pure bred kin of Thunder. The way that Lukas's momentarily appearance of wanting the most status-ridden chair sat wrong with her. The way that he wants, so obviously and so much, for her to feel welcome here. At home, the way he feels. The way he wants to feel.
Or maybe Jaroslav is angry when he casts his eyes down. For Danicka, it is a mark of respect -- and self-control, restraint of her own terrors -- that she does not instantly look closer, trying to figure out why. She stops herself from automatically trying to understand the shadow that passes through him, and lets him hold it privately, close to himself.
our boy, he calls him, lifting his eyes.
my male, my mate, my beautiful boy, Danicka calls him so often,
mine. mine. mine. my. mine!
Imagines Jaroslav, eyes flashing, teeth bared, snapping the same thing. In his heart, over his children, if he never, ever said it aloud.
He is painfully naked with his words, painfully honest. The admission that Kin cannot raise Garou to be Garou. That the tribe raises strong men, but not necessarily good ones. She thinks of her mother. She listens, head canted, and she does not move or speak for a little while after Jaroslav has finished asking her what he really wants to know. Even then he has not quite gotten the words out. The real question. The most important one.
Lukas is strong, absolutely. Honorable, and the Nation knows it. Honest, perhaps even to a fault. Fair -- most of the time. By his definition of fairness, which is Shadow Lord through and through. Fair, as much as he can be, when he is neither Philodox nor bereft of his own feelings, his own investment in things. And he treats her well. He does, in that respect, anything he can that she asks of him. Does much more that she doesn't ask. Does everything he can think of, to be and remain worthy of what he has.
But none of that is what his father is really asking.
"On je to dobrý člověk, Jaroslav," Danicka says quietly after awhile, lowering her voice -- though not for privacy's sake. Her voice feels so natural like this, quiet and sibilant in the native tongue of this house. "On není dokonalý," she adds, equally honest. "On je téměř Adren, ale on je ještě velmi mladý muž."
Her voice falls back into English. For a moment her eyes are inward, thinking, and perhaps that's when she's at her most open with him, a near-stranger: "He's scrutinized very closely. Judged. It's the way of the Tribe. It's the way of the whole Nation. He is always aware of how his actions may be interpreted, what the effect may be. He thinks very far ahead."
These are all traits of a Shadow Lord. Being aware is not the same as caring. Being aware is not the same as altering his behavior to suit others, meet their expectations, make them happy. But it is a part of what he is, and what he does. These are things she's never even said to Lukas, and may never. And what comes next, she would not say if he were outside the door. May never, ever tell him to his face.
"I think some part of him flourishes like that -- the respect, the recogntion. He was made for war." That aches; she walks away from it. "But I think he wants very badly to be accepted as he is without that judgement and that scrutiny. Given room to set all of it down for a little while." She pauses a moment. "Kin cannot teach Garou to be Garou, but pack is not the same as family, and the caern is not the same as home."
A beat. "Not for Lukáš, at least."
She's digressed. She knows it, and glances down at her carefully tended, always clear-polished fingernails a moment. Pauses, and looks back at Jaroslav a moment later. "He is a good man, Jaroslav," she repeats. "Honorable and honest. He is fair, but no Philodox. He's very strong. He can be short-sighted and proud and stubborn, but he does the best he can without fail, and his best is far, far better than most."
Danicka smiles. Faintly. Achingly, almost. "He is good, otec ze dne můj srdce."
The way she once called Lukas, so very long ago, bratr mé krve, before she knew him at all.
"And he's good to me. A miluji ho velmi, velmi mnoho."
[Lukas] It's no easy thing to be kin, least of all to the Shadow Lords. Thunder demands strength from his children, but the Tribe demands submission to might, and absolute obedience. The same spirit that may have commanded armies and fought wars in a previous life might find itself forced to bow to Cliaths. To its own issue, its sons and daughters.
No easy thing, either, to raise those sons and daughters to the life you live now. Or to the lives you remember dimly in glimpses and flashes in a dream; blood and war and the ever-present temptation of power. Such power. No other tribe is willing to give so much -- not only body and blood, but even the soul -- in the name of victory. But no other tribe stands to fall so easily, either, if the sacrifice is made in the name of self.
And they all know this. The Garou, the kin, the fathers, the sons. A heartbreaking thing, then, to give your son away at thirteen, watch him led away by a wolf-man you can only hope will be good to him, and good for him. To thereafter know him only from afar, only in snatches and glimpses in letters and webcam videos and the occasional visit every one, two, three years -- to thereafter know him only as Wyrmbreaker-rhya, a name that is wholly divorced from the one you gave him.
Surely he knew him once, Jaroslav and his son. But now, today? What Danicka tells him might be the most he's heard, the most genuine and honest account of his son he's heard, for longer than Jaroslav can remember. There are parts where it's hard for him to listen, not because it makes him angry or disappointed, but because it's so raw. Such truth, from the woman who used to barely be able to tell a single truth. And because it aches when she says,
I think he wants very badly to be accepted as he is without judgement and that scrutiny. Given room to set all of it down for a little while.
-- aches because, yes, in our boy is the echo of every time Danicka has thought, mine, mine, my, mine, and every time Lukas thought she's going to fall if she doesn't slow down and he's so small to need glasses and i can't hold my own child without her fearing me in that dreamlike underworld, where five years of memories blossomed in reverse down the corridors of his mind.
A father is a father, whoever the son. Love is love, whoever the beloved.
Which is why, at the end, when Danicka affirms: yes. He is good. He is good to me. I love him very, very much -- Jaroslav bows his head for a moment, lowers his eyes and rubs thumb and forefingers over the lids quickly, a swipe, against which his lined brow furrows. When he raises his head it's that furrowed smile again, sorrow and happiness in one. He reaches out his hand, takes Danicka's for a moment if she'll let him. Jaroslav's grip is still firm. It is not like Miloslav's, wasting away; not just yet.
"Děkujeme vám," he says. Because they are Shadow Lords, and because Jaroslav is who he is: nothing more or less, "Děkujeme vám velmi hodně. Jsem rád za něj. Jsem šťastný že jsi si ho vybral."
Jaroslav clears his throat. The switch back to English is easy, even if the language itself is still deeply marked by his roots.
"Perhaps you will visit us more often, Danička. Even if Lukáš cannot come, you are welcome here. And," smiling, "you are welcome to the books."
[Danicka] Lukas does not speak freely about himself, Danicka knows. What he thinks, how he feels -- not what's beneath the surface, the veneer, the persona that matches the identity of Wyrmbreaker. There has to a split there, and she doesn't worry for his sanity because of it. Danicka, of all people, understands the gap between public and private selves. That he would separate from his parents as he grew up was inevitable regardless of his nature, but the vastness of that distance became almost insurmountable in a little over ten years. She wonders, as Jaroslav says that they raised him til he was thirteen, how long it was after that before they even saw him again. And if she's right and it was years, then how much it must have felt like Lukášek,
our boy had simply died, been taken from them forever,
and that the wolf that they saw next was no longer even a shade of their child?
Of all places, it should be safe for the people in this house to know who Lukas really is, what he's really like, how he feels and what his flaws are. Danicka doesn't know this instinctively, doesn't associate the homes of our childhoods with the comfort those childhoods are supposed to be filled with. She carved out space for herself over and over as she grew up, made pockets of a feeling like home, made sanctuaries where she could be safe.
The roots of an oak in her family's yard. The darkness of nightclubs she went to on her nights off from the Sokolovs, the fake IDs, the lurid anonymity of it all. The shelter of magnolias, shared with ghosts but private from men-at-arms and wild-eyed children. Her apartment, which at first was kept so far away from those who might -- and then did -- invade it. She has come to the point where her sense of security is not so easily shattered, though.
In any case, Danicka does understand that much, if not instinctively, if not from her own memories of childhood. There have to be places where you can be yourself. There have to be places where you don't have to play one role or the other, where you can simply be known as you are, and not feel judged against some harsh standard. One place. One person. Something, or you'll never survive.
She waits for Jaroslav to absorb what she's said, knowing not all of it was easy, and for various reasons. She doesn't mercifully look away, pretend to be interested in something else; she watches him even as he swipes his fingerprints over his eyelids, a gesture that is wordless, and good to be wordless, because it is indescribable. When he reaches for her hand, she lets him take it. She's warm. Warm as spring. Were she blind, she would be able to tell the difference between Jaroslav's grip and that of anyone else, particularly her father. She feels him in it. Understands, to some degree, though she would never say it.
"I am, too," she murmurs, and her hand tightens on his before she withdraws it, the two of them both returning to English. What he goes on to say makes her smile. "I may do that," she says. "Let's go downstairs. It's silly of you to be up here alone," she adds, rising to her feet.
[Lukas] "Yes," Jaroslav agrees, "let's."
He rises out of his chair, giving himself only a small push from the arms. Lukas moved the heavy oaken chair out from behind the desk, but Jaroslav seems quite capable of replacing it. The desk itself is large and heavy and old-fashioned, with a tooled leather writing surface in hunter green, set a touch too high for modern computer usage. He clicks the lamp off as he comes back around, leaving only the dimmer floor lamp in the corner by the bookshelf.
"Come," he invites her, gesturing her ahead of him. Jaroslav leaves the door ajar as he escorts Danicka down the long, narrow flight of stairs.
Cooking and activity have warmed the ground floor even more, and the temperature difference is palpable. The volume rises as they go through the archway into the dining area, and rises again as they enter the kitchen. Most of the chatter comes from Anezka, who seems to be trying to convince Lukas of the Best Way to Mash Potatoes, though Lukas himself is hardly shying from counter-bickering. Someone's left the oven light on, either on purpose or because it was forgotten in the chaos. There's an enormous turkey inside, and beneath it, what looks like candied sweet potatoes and bananas; a large casserole dish of stuffing that didn't make it into the turkey. Crammed on top of the refrigerator, presumably waiting their turn, are a tray of kolaches and a pie.
Dan is standing in the corner of the small kitchen, looking like he's trying to help without knowing what to do. Marjeta has her back turned, seasoning the soup. Lukas has an enormous mixing bowl of potatoes cradled protectively under one arm, holding on to it even as he digs in the refrigerator.
"No one's ever heard of loaded baked potatoes with anything but cheddar cheese," he insists, digging. "You chose to live in a city where they think it's perfectly all right to put mayo and coleslaw on pastrami. You're no longer allowed to make dietary decisions."
"Jerk," Anezka says, and then spots Danicka and her father. "Danička, tell this big lout that gouda cheese tastes just fine in mashed potatoes."
Marjeta sets the lid back on the pot and turns around, wiping her hands instinctively on her apron. She's the only one in the kitchen who's wearing one, though everyone else seems to have more flour, sauce, gravy or potato on their hands and clothes. Her hair is a little awry from the bustle in the kitchen, she's plainly dressed, and the only jewelry she wears is her wedding band and two demure studs in her ears, but she still has a dignity that Anezka, for all her L.A. size 2 instinct for appearances, lacks.
She reaches forward -- like Jaroslav -- with both hands. They are cool and dry when they enfold Danicka's. "Danička," she greets her. Her smile is very warm, as is her voice, but Danicka recognizes this at once as politeness and courtesy, an entrained social grace. "I am so pleased you could come."
"Danička," Lukas calls from the fridge, an unnecessary formality as he's busy sorting through a diary drawer full of various cheeses and butters, "this is my mother. Maminka, this is Danička."
[Danicka] When Danicka comes downstairs with Jaroslav, she seems more settled than she did when she and Lukas first went up. It makes sense in a way that Danicka would feel more comfortable with Lukas's parents. They have a grace, dignity, and restraint that she understands -- that, for all her wildness when no one around her matters, she appreciates. Danicka herself sometimes talks as though she's far older than she is, speaks of The Old World as though she's been there. Anezka is her age but as far as Danicka can tell they have little else in common; that may also mean they are more similar than they appear.
Upstairs she makes no effort to assist or offer aid to Jaroslav -- she knows the insult that would be, the implication of weakness or frailty. It would not come across as respect. She waits for him, though, and as the light flicks off she walks just a touch ahead of him downstairs, around the corner, and into the kitchen. Danicka lingers a moment near the arch, not throwing herself into the fray.
Anezka, naturally, is the first person to call out to her, and Danicka just lifts her eyebrows a touch. "Actually, I prefer mashed potatoes without cheese." There's a pause as she sets her purse down on a handy chair or hangs it from a hook. "Gruyère is nice, though. Gouda... I'm no so sure about."
She steps over to Lukas, leaning over and kissing his cheek. "You're not a lout," she reassures him, her hand resting on his bicep a moment. Marjeta turns away from the stove and Danicka turns and takes a half-step towards her, smiling. "Děkuji vám za přivítání mě," she says, momentarily slipping into Czech for the greeting, and smiles as Lukas tries to introduce them from the fridge. "I never would have guessed."
[Lukas] Lukas pauses, one arm wrist-deep in cheese, the other still wrapped around his bowl of potatoes, as Danicka kisses his cheek. He smiles. To say he lights up when she walks in the room would be disgustingly romantic -- but there's some truth to that. For a second they may as well be alone. Then he bumps foreheads gently with her, and the smile becomes a grin, and he says, "Okay, but flattery still isn't going to sway me from my loaded mashed potatoes."
-- though later, Danicka will note three bowls of mashed potatoes on the table: one large bowl with cheddar and bacon bits and green onion; one smaller with gouda substituted; and one more plain, with nothing but butter and salt and pepper.
Then he's back to digging, introducing her to his mother. She quips back, and he laughs as he's straightening with a block of cheddar in hand. It was crowded already in the kitchen. Now it's downright packed, even if Jaroslav has wisely chosen to hover just outside.
There's a small wine rack in the corner of the dining room. Jaroslav hmms over it a while, then calls Daniel over to help him decide. Marjeta is the more social of the pair, the more attuned to the mood and needs of a social gathering, and always has been. Even so, Danicka recognizes this as what it is: a small kindness, and a small honor ceded to the member of the party who was otherwise a little bit sidelined.
"Would you like something to drink?" Marjeta asks after their hands have unclasped. "Or a bite to eat while -- "
Before she can go on, Anezka slaps her forehead. "Oh my god. Sorry! Completely forgot." -- and there's a glass of ice water being pushed in Danicka's direction.
"While I put the finishing touches on the turkey?" Marjeta continues, undeterred. "There's a sausage platter floating around somewhere."
"Dan made pierogi earlier," Anezka puts in. "I think there's still some left. They're really good, you should try some."
"It's like you're ten years old and having a sleepover for the first time," Lukas comments, grating cheddar cheese, amused.
"I'm just happy to meet your girlfriend, all right? I thought you were going to die a lonely old--"
"Anežka." Marjeta's voice is quiet, but startlingly sharp. It cuts through the air; a silence, brief but absolutely palpable, falls. Lukas looks up from the potatoes. Anezka immediately colors.
"I'm sorry," she says, significantly quieter. "I really didn't mean -- I need to watch my mouth. ...Hey, I'm just going to see if Dan knows where the pierogi went, okay?"
"Hey," Lukas nudges her on her way out. It's cool, says the gesture, though he doesn't undercut his mother's unspoken edict. "Come back and help me with the gravy when you're done."
[Danicka] [manipulation + subterfuge: I'M FINE.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2
[Lukas] [Lukas!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 7, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Lukas] [marjeta!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 6, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Lukas] [anezka!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Lukas] [jaroslav! +2diff: OTHER ROOM]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Lukas] [dan: i'm pretty clueless. +2 diff]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 5 (Failure at target 6)
[Lukas] [+1!]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3 (Failure at target 8)
[Danicka] She smiles when his forehead is against hers. It's the most unconscious, easy expression she's worn since coming in the door, and it's the first deconstructed expression she's worn at all in front of the others. Danicka's eyes almost close for that moment, but don't. He rises, and she goes to his mother, and
-- later, Danicka will see three bowls of mashed potatoes and realize that one day she is going to be standing in her own kitchen, and one child is going to be complaining that they don't like cheese in their potatoes and one child is going to be complaining that they only like cheddar and Danicka is going to be informing these children that when they are old enough to mash their own potatoes then they can dictate what goes into it, now sit down
even if Lukas tries to tell her that it's really no trouble, they can just make two or three bowls, that way everyone is happy, and she is going to wonder on what planet the Adren, Athro, what-have-you Ahroun is the more lenient parent --
Jaroslav helps Daniel feel resettled into a home he felt familiar and welcome in up until the Garou son showed up and looked fit to pin him to a wall. Danicka notices it out of the corner of her eye, but focuses on Marjeta. Who, when Anezka facepalms and interrupts, just calmly, smoothly ignores it, moving on. Danicka takes the glass of water that gets plucked from the counter, nearly sloshed, and put in her hands, giving a quiet thanks to the giver, and Lukas teases Anezka.
The answer is something that, if Marjeta were not the woman's mother, more finely and quickly attuned to reacting to her children, might have gotten a reaction from Danicka. But Marjeta snaps her name and Anezka apologizes, excusing herself. Lukas gives his sister a forgiving nudge as she leaves, invites her back to help with gravy, but if he notices his mate as she brings her cup of water to her mouth, her eyes are a bright, vivid green.
She sips her water, takes a slow drink, and it might be a signal to Lukas that something is vaguely off that she doesn't look over at him after that. Her features are placid, then a little embarrassed as she half-smiles, as though that was merely awkward, poor Anezka.
"Is it a family trait to try and feed me constantly?" she asks.
[Lukas] There's strain bracketing Marjeta's mouth as Anezka beats a quick retreat. She turns aside, giving her guest her profile for a moment as her eyes search the kitchen counters with a quick, distracted, practiced sweep. There's much of his father in Lukas, and much of her mother in Anezka, but it would be a lie to say each child did not take after the opposite parent as well. In that fine, patrician profile is, somehow, a hint of Lukas's nose, the set of the mouth.
She turns back, presses through the strain and embarrassment her elder daughter caused. "Oh, here we are," and she picks up the unwieldy tray of sliced sausages and rye hiding behind a carton of milk, a bag of flour. "And," she continues, "with these two" she doesn't even have to look at her grown children to make the example clear, "demanding food at every turn growing up, I fell into the unfortunate habit of mistaking copious food for hospitality.
"Still." The smile is a little less strained now as she hands Danicka the platter, "Help yourself." Lukas, meanwhile, is dividing the potatoes quietly into large, small, and small portions.
[Danicka] None of them can tell just how ferocious Danicka's temper is. Lukas is perhaps the only person who knows her who has an idea of how sharp it can be, how instantly she goes from baseline calm to the sort of unthinking fury that would have made her a force to be reckoned with if Gaia had not had different plans for her. But as it always has, it relaxes again soon enough. What grudges Danicka holds typically have laundry lists of reasoning behind them and last for years. Her temper, hot as it can be, settles down soon enough.
She imagines Anezka out in the hall with Dan, having the same sort of uncomfortable, awkward, aggh moment with her boyfriend as Danicka herself needed on the stairway with Lukas. She sips more of her water, setting the glass down to take the platter.
At no point did she mention being hungry yet. Or wanting food, knowing that if she snacks now she won't want much at all for dinner, and sitting around a table invites more scrutiny on your plate than what one does or doesn't eat. Danicka smiles slightly as she takes it, thanking Marjeta, and puts it down next to the water. She goes ahead and takes some food, so at least she'll have some in her hand. She might eat half of what she takes, all told, but as long as she has something at hand, she won't have to navitage here, have some over and over and over and over again.
Danicka moves closer to Lukas, observing what he's doing, offering him a bite of the sausage she just plucked up.
"I think Lukáš would be happier if I was eating constantly," she says, to Marjeta though he's right there and her tone takes on a note of teasing that's meant for him. "Eat and eat and eat until one day he realizes I'm bigger than he is. Oops."
[Danicka] [(1:43:32 AM) damon: i not mocking kai. but i v amused by this:
(1:43:34 AM) damon: "navitage"
(1:43:41 AM) damon: kai so tired she dyslexicifying!
I FIX WHEN I POST TRANSCRIPT. :D ]
[Lukas] "In that case," Lukas puts in, "I'll just eat you. Gnar." And he pretends to take a bite out of Danicka's hand, his teeth barely grazing the base of her thumb, before he rather expertly plucks the sausage out of her hands and tosses his head back -- wolflike for a flash -- to pop it into his mouth, chew it, swallow it down.
Then, perhaps because he caught that flash in Danicka's eyes, or perhaps simply because he knows what Anezka said, and he knows Danicka, and he knows how that might have made her feel: he nuzzles her again, bumping his nose against her temple in an approximation of the kiss he might've given her if he hadn't just eating a cold cut.
It's okay, this says, also.
Then he's mixing grated cheddar into the hot potatoes, sprinkling bacon bits in. "She's right, though," he says to his mother. "I do try to feed her all the time. It's not my fault. The first present she gave me was half a dozen candied orange koláče. So of course now I mistake," teasing now, "copious food for affection."
"Orange koláče, like Miloslav used to make?" Marjeta has gone back to the soup. "How is your father, Danička? I feel rude that we did not invite him, but I couldn't find his address anywhere."
[Danicka] The way Lukas bites at her hand, bites at the sausage, then snaps it into his jaws is undeniably animal. Danicka doesn't startle at his teeth so close to her flesh, the way she would have two years ago. She doesn't have to suppress it the way she would have not even a few months ago, but she smiles as he chews, putting her hand on his cheek. She feels the movement of his jaw against her palm for a moment, then lets go. She wrinkles her nose slightly when he nuzzles her, his heavy head against her own cheek, her own jaw, playfully putting her hand over his face as though she might shove him away.
But she doesn't, and she wouldn't. She almost expects him to lick her fingers clean of whatever taste of meat might still be there, but he doesn't, and he wouldn't -- not, at least, in a kitchen full of his family members. Even now (after that conversation with Jaroslav) or perhaps especially now (after that comment of Anezka's) Danicka isn't sure how much of Lukas's animal self is recognized by his family. Not just recognized but accepted. Not just accepted but welcomed.
Beloved. Not because of or in spite of. But as it is. As he is.
It's okay, he told Anezka, and wants Danicka to know it's okay, too, but the truth is: it changes nothing. She called him stubborn upstairs but she's no less a Shadow Lord than he, no less adamant in her way. If her carefully -- and rather completely -- concealed lash of anger had been based on whether or not Lukas's feelings were hurt, Danicka is the sort of woman who might consider that a weaker sort of anger, an opinion held captive to his mood.
It's okay, his nuzzle means, in any case. And Danicka's attitude seems to be I'm okay, and the two aren't necessarily related.
Danicka rolls her eyes at Lukas's teasing. "That was not the first present I gave you," she insists, perhaps confusing the hell out of him, but Marjeta asks after Miloslav. Danicka's momentary quiet is so brief, such a flicker, no one unaccustomed to her usual smoothness in conversation would notice it as a hitch. "He usually made strawberry or cream cheese," she says. "He made orange because, if I remember correctly, Lukáš was given a strawberry one and tried to ask, ever-so-subtly and ever-so-politely, if there were any orange ones." Which would have been considered rude, by his parents. If she remembers him getting smacked or scolded or Looked At, Danicka doesn't mention it. "So the next time you visited, there were orange ones."
She drinks some more water. "He's well," she half-lies. "And you shouldn't feel rude. I think he, my brother, and my brother's mate are spending the holiday together, so he would have had to decline. I can give you his address before we go if you like." Another drink, and shifting slightly: "When did you start celebrating Thanksgiving?" A thoroughly American holiday, if ever there was one. She's noticed that they've even adopted the menu, as traditional as possible: the turkey, the gravy, stuffing, cranberries, potatoes. Pie. And so on.
[Lukas] So the next time you visited, Danicka concludes, there were orange ones.
Lukas smiles. It's fond; it's warm; it's just a tiny, tiny bit sad. Sorrow not for where they are but how long it took them to get there. "Like magic, huh?" he teases gently, and then sets aside the first, largest bowl of mashed potatoes as he finishes. "You didn't have anything to do with it at all."
Earlier, when her hand rested over his face, he never thought for a moment she would shove him again. His eyes had closed then, trustingly, even happily; as though even this minor contact was interpreted as what it was -- a sign of affection. A token of closeness. His family may not know or understand or recognize or even necessarily welcome that animal side of him, the instinctive and animal thing he is. Even so, even had he never told them this is my mate, they would have guessed in a heartbeat. It's in the way they behave. The way they are toward one another.
Lukas is moving on to the next, smaller bowl of potatoes, then, while Danicka asks about their traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Not merely traditional, but whole-hog, full-monty: pies and cranberries and potatoes and turkeys and yams and stuffing and gravy. Only fragments of their mother culture are tucked in here and there: the kolaches waiting for the oven; the sliced sausages; the chicken-cabbage-potato soup on the fire, which Marjeta tastes with a clean spoon before setting that spoon aside for the wash.
"About when Anežka started high school, I think," Marjeta answers. "Her friends' families invited us, and then the following year of course it was only polite to invite them, and if one holds a Thanksgiving dinner then one must have turkey, and I suppose it just escalated from there. Jaroslav," she adds, "developed quite a taste for turkey, so that helped. But on the years the children don't come home, Jaroslav and I are usually not nearly this, hm, festive. Perhaps a few friends come, perhaps we visit a few friends. I think of all of us, Anežka most enjoys the holiday. Its ... connotation of family."
Marjeta turns from the stove, then, holding out a fresh spoon. The lines at the corners of her eyes crinkle up when she smiles.
"Come taste. More salt?"
[Danicka] It's been over fifteen years since Lukas's parents or sister have seen Danicka. It's been a year since they began to suspect that Lukas had taken up somehow with Miloslav's girl. It's been -- well, who knows when he finally admitted to them that he had claimed her as his mate? And it's been moments, only, since they began to see what's unmistakable, what Lukas wanted them to know above all:
they love. It would be impossible to be in the kitchen with them right now and not tell how much they adore one another, how affectionate they are without being rude, how close they stand without clinging, how they look at each other without staring. How happy he is that she's here with him, how happy she is when she's talking to him.
Danicka may still seem a little on the aloof side, still guarded, but they have no idea how much she's letting her guard down around them as it is. The way she touches Lukas so often, and the way she teases him, the way she lets them see how much she simply likes him. As a little girl she didn't even dare that much. Even then, her odd, intermittent little friendship with Lukas was something she tried to nurture without it being obvious.
Like magic, he teases her, and Danicka smiles. There's a faint hint of color when he suggests she had nothing to do with that. She doesn't answer the tender accusation; she doesn't need to.
She remembers climbing up onto the chair beside her father's, kneeling on it and putting her hands on the flat, smooth tabletop. "Můžeme učinit oranžová koláče?" she'd asked, her attention and curiosity perked, her attempt at subtlety already surprisingly skillful.
"Ach, to je pravda," her father had answered, his piercing blue eyes looking at her, the gaze as mild as his tone of voice. "Ten malý chlapeček chtěl oranžovou koláče, ne?"
Smiling, she only nodded, her lips together and her eyes bright. She was proud that she remembered so well. That she paid attention so closely. She was proud, too, that her father also remembered.
He shrugged one shoulder, nodding. His smile was faint, looking at the girl, who looked like her mother. "Pak budeme dělat kandované pomerančové koláče ty pro něj."
Danicka nodded again, still smiling, but more serious now, giving firm confirmation: "Protože oni jsou naši přátelé. A my jsme pohostinní."
"Ano," Miloslav said, close to fond. "Jsou to naši přátelé, a my jsme z dobré rodiny."
Which they were. Are. Enough to recognize that by breeding, the Kvasnickas were their betters despite the fact that the Musils were doing better financially at first. Miloslav remembered what it was like when he first came to America. He looked at the children, dressed so neatly when they visited, so carefully presented, and the pride in Jaroslav and Marjeta's straight backs and severe features. He understood them, and knew enough people in both the communities of Czech immigration and Shadow Lord Kin to know something of their situation. It was never mentioned, nor alluded to. He never gave them charity or handed gifts to their children outside of the small, homemade things given at Christmastime. Even now, Miloslav knows something about pride.
They are a good family. A long history, full of their own ageless traditions: hospitality, family pride, home, hearth, hard work, abundance.
The next time they visited, there were orange kolache. Like magic. And it wasn't the first gift she ever gave him, those half-dozen pastries that almost made him as sick as they did when he came to the Musils house and kept sneaking them into his mouth until he threw up and had to borrow old clothes from Danicka's brother, tripling the embarrassment his parents felt over the whole ordeal. And, frankly, not minding too much, because he idolized her brother then, and because once the sugar was out of his stomach he felt right as rain and went back to tumbling around the house until he fell asleep on the couch.
Danicka notes the timing of what Marjeta says: when Anezka started high school, Lukas would have been a year or two behind. They knew what he was going to become. They knew Istok them. Already he was being drawn away from them, was soon to be gone entirely. She watches him mashing potatoes, knowing now that this wasn't a part of his childhood. This family tradition was formed without him. She doesn't know how many times he's actually had Thanksgiving with his family -- she guesses at the number of times he's spent Thanksgiving with his American-born packmates, the holidays in Boston or in Chicago.
Watches with how much gusto he mashes potatoes and eats slivers of sausage, how delighted he is that everyone is here and it's Thanksgiving and he's brought his mate home for the holiday and
wonders if some of that open glee is novelty, and even ache -- not for what is, not for what he has now and can ask for now, but for how long it took to get here.
She reaches over to him as Marjeta is tasting the soup, putting her hand on his hand and squeezing it once. It falls away, and she obediently goes to the stove to taste the soup. Danicka sweeps her hair back and takes the spoon, reaching into the pot to get a sip. Licks her lips, thinks. "No, no salt. Perfektní."
[Lukas] When Lukas was a Fosterling, he met cubs who were exceedingly proud to be the son or daughter of a Garou. He met cubs who were envious of such cubs, who went to great lengths to either ingratiate themselves or to prove they weren't inferior, weren't hampered somehow by the lack of such direct tutelage, they weren't.
Lukas was never one of them. Growing up, he felt the love of his family at every turn. When he met other cubs, other childrens and teens who could not say the same, he was grateful for it. When he met Danicka again -- when he began to know her, finally, little by little, not only by the careful little ways she tried to nurture their childhood friendship but by the ways she let him in slowly, by aching degrees -- he also began to learn, with a sort of sick horror, what kind of childhood she really had. What kind of secrets hid behind the too-quiet little girl and her gentle father, who even then seemed an old man.
Lukas doesn't understand what it's like to grow up in a world where everything must be hidden away to keep it from destruction. He can't begin to understand, and yet --
she was one thing he hid away from his family. Instinctively, out of some half-coherent fear of it not lasting. Or perhaps of it being taken away somehow. Of someone disapproving, or someone mocking, or -- something, anything, anything that might ruin it.
It took him so long to finally bring her here. To finally come here himself for Thanksgiving, when the last time he came home for this holiday was ... years ago. Perhaps when they were still in Boston, he and the Unbroken Circle -- some year when the Bellamontes were vacationing in their French estate, and he had no choice but to come here and face the awkward respect of his parents.
It's different now. Perhaps because there are more people in the house. Perhaps because he's been back two, three times in the last year. Writes more. Tries to bridge that gap that opened inexorably when his Change was foretold. Or perhaps simply because Danicka is here, and she said without saying:
I'll protect you.
Her hand on his is a sort of protection, too. A sort of adoration. He lets go the stirring spoon for a moment, turning his fingers over and gripping hers gently for a second. He smiles at her. Then he goes back to work, and over in the other room Anezka sounds like she's recovering; is talking to her father now while Daniel comes back into the kitchen with the long-promised plate of pierogi.
Taste, Marjeta requests, and perfektní, Danicka pronounces. Marjeta is too accomplished a hostess to blush with pride, but her smile widens all the same.
"My mother taught me to make this," she says, "just before I married Jaroslav. Before that I had no idea how to cook. She said a woman should know how to make at least one complete meal for her husband."
Lukas suddenly interjects, perhaps paranoid of the direction his mother seems to be veering in -- "I'm pretty sure Danička and I can throw together a complete meal or two if need be, between the two of us."
"I have no doubt," Marjeta says, sounding more like a continuation than a reply. "Danička was a talented little cook, even when she was barely tall enough to peer over the kitchen counter. I, however, must have made variations of this one meal my mother taught me for the first six months we were in America. After that, Jaroslav broke down and bought me a cookbook. You probably don't remember this, Lukáš. You were too small."
"Actually," Lukas says, putting aside a second bowl of potatoes and starting on the last, "I do remember. At least, I remember getting really, really sick of stuffed vegetables. Stuffed cabbage. Stuffed bell peppers. Stuffed eggplant."
"Stuffed pierogi?" Daniel quips, not-so-smoothly inserting himself into the conversation, earning himself only a mildly irritated glance from Lukas. He holds the plate out to Danicka. "The ones on the left are beef. The ones in the middle are potato and cheese. The ones on the right are lamb." He clears his throat, trying hard now, "Anezhka mentioned Lookash is a big fan of lamb, so."
[Danicka] It took so long for Danicka to let Lukas in. To tell him the truth of herself, and even then, many parts of it he found out by accident. When she was shot, when Evan healed her, when she stirred under the gift he used and the memory it brought to her of her brother, whose name died on her lips after a syllable. Lukas put it together, though Evan couldn't have. Lukas put it together, though she never wanted him to know. Never wanted him to feel that sick horror. Never wanted him wounded by that knowledge, as though he was still that happy, loved little boy
and wanting to protect him from those secrets of hers.
There was no real need for secrecy when she fell in love with him. Her family had known from the start, had demanded to know, who her guardian was in Chicago. Vladislav, well aware of his sister's flaws and weaknesses, never considered the possibility that an Ahroun from a well-bred and very old family would tolerate her, much less want her. Then she went to see Lukas at the W in Times Square while she was visiting her family, and Vladislav sniffed her clothes right out of the hamper, and knew.
Many Shadow Lords would have immediately begun thinking of how to use that to their advantage. How long they could make the Ahroun wait, what they could extract from him if he wanted Danicka so badly. Vladislav, in any other realm of his life, would have been thinking like this. But it was his sister. His Danka. His. All he could think, from the night he scented Lukas all over Danicka's clothes to the night Lukas came to the house to challenge for her, was that someone was taking her away, and for all the years he'd spent thinking of what sort of mate he'd eventually find for her, he wasn't prepared to let her go.
He wasn't prepared to find out that his sister wasn't whoring herself out to get his attention.
He wasn't prepared to realize with a sinking feeling at that dinner table that Danicka -- fickle, fearful, impossible to mate Danicka, who secretly he'd thought might just prefer to grow into an old spinster -- wanted Lukas.
Was in love with an Ahroun. Like their mother. Like the woman who had hurt them both so badly. That Danicka was, in the end, so much more like his father than like himself. That the gap between them created when they were old enough to understand that he was Garou and she was not
was actually a chasm. Uncrossable.
And after that night, there were no secrets at all. No way to hide Lukas away, and it had been a long time since he'd been exposed to her history and learned how to weather it, accept it, cope with his own sorrow at the reality of it. He's held onto her for so long, tried to shield her, perhaps didn't even want to bring her back here because of how strange and stilted his parent's treatment of him was, even during a holiday that is so well-liked because of it's connotation, as Marjeta put it, of family.
Danicka has no idea how much she has to do with Lukas's increased contact with his family. She remembers seeing him lying in his bed, writing a letter to his parents. She still doesn't know that on that long-ago morning when he left her in his bed at the Brotherhood to go 'meet someone' it was Anezka, and that she took a video of him to send to their father for his birthday. What she knows is that they're here now, and Lukas is happy, and she would do just about anything to protect that.
She's always loved seeing him smile.
At the stove, Marjeta is talking about being able to cook at least one meal for her husband. Danicka -- if she notices the potential for pressure -- doesn't bat an eyelash at the words. A woman should. Her husband. She's leaning on the counter, listening, half-smiling as Lukas interrupts that Danicka and I can do just fine together, thank you very much, between the two of us. It takes some effort not to laugh at how firmly he reiterates his point in a single sentence.
"Why thank you," she comments, when Marjeta mentions that she was a talented little cook even when she was standing on a chair in her family's kitchen to stir a cabbage soup very similar to the one Marjeta is making tonight. Marjeta goes on, and Danicka laughs lightly that it was Jaroslav who bought her a cookbook.
Though truth be told, the fact that Marjeta did not know how to cook until before she was married tells Danicka a great deal about the sort of life Marjeta once had. The sort of life that Lukas had when he was so young he can't even remember it except in flashes. The life that was left behind along with the orange orchard, the household staff, the wealth. The very country they were all born to.
"Musíte se naučit, jak vařit," said Miloslav, tying the apron into a firm knot at Danicka's back.
"A hrát na pi-a-no!" she added, distracted by her earlier lesson. And distracted, too, by the rickrack trim on the pocket of the apron, a birthday gift from a neighbor. It was green. It had flowers on the pocket, and little red stripes. Somehow her first two fingers ended up in her mouth. She sucked on them thoughtfully.
"Ano," Miloslav said patiently, taking her wrist in his hand and removing her fingers from her mouth. "Budete muset umýt ruce opět nyní," he sighed, then went on. "Potravin pro vaše tělo, hudbu pro vaši duši. Nemůžete krmivo jeden a hladovět dalších. Budete musíte vědět, jak poskytnout oba jak pro sami."
"Oh-kay!" Danicka said, cheerfully intoning her favorite word in her father's other language, the new one he was teaching her. She grinned.
Her legs dangled against the cabinet doors as he held her up to the sink to wash her hands again, his arms warm around her middle, the water cold, cold on her hands. He taught her how to boil water, held her hands and helped them move while they chopped a potato together.
Lukas grouses about stuffed vegetables while he mixes cheese into the potatoes, and then there's Daniel, coming back inside while Anezka talks to her father. Danicka wonders to herself if Jaroslav, in his way, serves that role often: she felt calmer and more steady here after a little bit of time talking to him alone. Maybe Anezka will feel that way, too.
Noticing the glance he gives Daniel, Danicka manages to make a brief second of eye contact with Lukas as she crosses over to the kinsman with the pierogi. The glance isn't overtly chastising, or even cautioning: it's aware. If anything, it's sympathetic. No easier for him to be surprised by the presence of some stranger in his family-pack's den than it is for her to have that pack trying to embrace her as their own too fast, too soon. She understands that.
"Did you make these?" she asks, taking one of the potato and cheese. He nods, or explains, or whatever it is; he attempts pronouncing Anezka and Lukas's names properly and Danicka smiles at him. "He also has a tendency to extol the superiority of Polish wódka to all other beverages for five minutes at a time," she says, because the pierogi only confirmed what Daniel's surname told her. "So, if you're looking for a Christmas gift," she adds, and takes a bite of the pierogi.
[Lukas] Daniel brightens, having found at least one ally in the previously-impenetrable fortress of Lunicka. "I did," he says eagerly -- and then, because perhaps it sounded too eager or too proud, hastens to add, "but it's sort of the same story as Marjeta's. I was born and raised in Sacramento. Third generation -- the most Polish thing about me is my last name. So around the time I was heading into high school, my parents starting teaching me stuff. History. Culture. Food. I even had to start speaking Polish exclusively at home, and my Polish was bad. They figured there was no way any self-respecting Shadow Lord Garou would want me as a mate if I wasn't at least reasonably aware of my own culture. They were ... pretty keen on that when I was younger."
"Getting a Garou to take notice?" Lukas abruptly speaks up, thumping the third and last bowl of potatoes aside. That seems to be it for preparations; everything else is either waiting its turn or already in process. Lukas grabs up a dishrag, wiping down the counter.
"Yeah." Dan's attention refocuses. Danicka can -- unsurprisingly -- read a bit of wariness and nervousness in the sandy-haired young man's affect.
"And did any?"
"Any -- what?" Daniel is briefly confused. "Any Garou take notice?" A quick flush of color in his fair cheeks. "I don't know. At least, if any did, they've never come to me or my parents about it." A pause, and then a show of pluck that must have cost something, some exertion of will or backbone: "Are you asking me if I'm going to dump your sister for the first Garou woman who crooks a finger at me?"
Lukas finishes cleaning up his work area with one last swipe of the dishrag -- a little harder than need be. He washes out the rag, wrings it bone-dry, the cords in his forearms standing out. Flinging it over the edge of the sink, he turns to face his sister's boyfriend, folding his arms across his chest.
"Maybe," he says. "Mostly, though, I'm asking you what you intend to do if one does happen to take interest."
[Danicka] Danicka's father was Czech, through and through. Her mother, however, was a quarter Polish. Lived with various grandparents for most of her early life, given almost no contact with the Czech paternity that gave her the name Dvorak. She spoke four languages by the time her own daughter was born.
She likes pierogi. Lukas and she don't eat it often -- Polish food is, for Danicka, a once-in-awhile thing. She savors the potato and cheese. Eating with Lukas is lovely, whether they go out to some hip restaurant with small bites on small plates or if they cook something at home or if they just grab a burger at a chain restaurant near the U. But Lukas is still learning how not to fuss over whether or not she gets enough meat, whether she gets enough, period. She stays close to him now, hoping he'll take a lamb pierogi, and seeing that he doesn't.
Lukas joining the conversation cuts off whatever Danicka might say about her own mother's culture, about her experience growing up with such a vastly different -- and in many ways, very secret -- side of her life. She could say something about how it's special, then, that Dan came to the house bearing a dish he learned to make for his family, for the family he might one day have -- she might take notice, gently, that he was trying. Hard.
He mentions something about his parents being keen on the sort of Garou mate he could attract, and Danicka is quiet long enough that Lukas speaks up. And roughly. His motions are something she's used to be now -- a year and a half ago every snap of the towel would have startled her. She can't gauge perfectly how Dan feels about it, or whether or not he's imagining that towel wrapping around his neck.
She straightens, having leaned against the counter, as Lukas whips the towel down and crosses his arms over his chest, a closed-off stance if there ever was one. Her eyes are dark, but her brow unfurrowed. She licks her lips, wiping her hands on a second nearby towel.
Danicka doesn't interject that maybe Lukas should back off. She isn't about to advise him publically about Garou Law, by any means. She isn't even going to offer her opinion. All she says, her eyes on her hands as she wipes them meticulously clean, is a clear:
"This seems like a conversation the two of you should have privately," she puts in calmly. "Perhaps over an after-dinner drink." Her eyes lift, drifting over to her mate. "Host do domu, Bůh do domu," she adds, echoing one of her father's proverbs. One slender shoulder lifts and falls in a shrug, as though the two men can take or leave that bit of advice as they will. For her part, Danicka turns away to Marjeta. "I'll start carrying food to the table, ne?"
[Lukas] God knows what Daniel makes of the proverb Danicka offers. Likely he can't even recognize it as a quote by her intonation, which may be part of the point. For all he knows, she told Lukas to help her bring food over. For all he knows --
well, no. Instinctively, Daniel likes Danicka; doesn't sense antipathy or ill will from her. Of course, he doesn't know her well enough yet to know that even was there any, he may very well not sense it, either.
No matter. At her calm reminder, Dan chooses not to answer; at the proverb, Lukas glances over, exhales shortly, and then picks up his three bowls of potatoes -- half cradling them to make it work -- and heads for the dinner table. Marjeta flicks the fire off for her soup, putting the lid on while the turkey finishes browning in the oven.
"Why don't you help too, Daniel?" she suggests. "I think the sweet potatoes are done. Here, let me get you oven mitts."
When he's out of the room, Marjeta reaches out to Danicka, her fingers alighting briefly on the younger woman's forearm. "Thank you," she says. It doesn't seem to be entirely because of her help moving things.
[Danicka] To Marjeta, Danicka just smiles. She has her hands full now, so she can't cover Marjeta's hand with her own, but she smiles as warmly as she might touch her. Nods slightly, but does not speak of Lukas behind his back, for good or ill. For all the time they spent apart, or distant, she imagines Marjeta knows her own son. What would she say that the woman doesn't already know, or could guess at?
One by one, dishes are carried from kitchen to dining room table. Danicka passes by Lukas as they're each going to and fro. She brushes against him half-idly, but he knows how purposeful it is that she makes that bodily contact. Not just a hand, not a look. She doesn't know if he's angry with her for interrupting, and isn't taking the time to stare into his soul and figure him out.
Danicka makes contact because she wants to. Because she has something to communicate to him. And it isn't: be nice. Still, they don't have the privacy to say anything with words. So she bumps against him, and continues setting the table.
[Lukas] Were this dinner at the Bellamontes, it would be a formal affair. They'd all be in dinner jackets and evening gowns. There would be a white tablecloth, a variety of forks and spoons, place settings decorated with flowers or elaborately folded napkins. The seating chart would be set and carefully planned out: couples separated for maximum conversational flow, the head of the table very, very carefully considered.
This is not dinner at the Bellamontes. Lukas is in jeans, and not even particularly nice jeans. Even that outfit Danicka had originally thought to wear would have been a cut above what everyone else seems to be going around in -- excepting Lukas's parents, at least, though Danicka's instinct might tell her now that they're more comfortable when they're just a little more formally attired. A little more serious than the younger generation. A little more parental.
So -- no formal place settings. The tablecloth is disposable, which Jaroslav apologizes for, and Anezka -- more or less recovered now, although still a little quieter than ten minutes ago -- takes credit for. Someone's bound to make a mess at some point, she explains, practical, and this way no one feels bad about it.
The china is nice, but not spectacular. The silverware is much the same. Lukas distributes them randomly until he notices Danicka setting them down in a far more orderly fashion, after which he straightens his knives and forks and spoons as well.
The wines Jaroslav and Daniel picked out are breathing on the table. There's two reds and a white, and Lukas's bottle of wódka. Daniel never got around to answering on the christmas present quip, but Lukas looks at the bottle now and remembers, and feels faintly abashed. Later on, when Danicka passes him, brushes against him, he turns to look after her. The next time they cross paths, he leans across the imaginary line between them and nuzzles her roughly and briefly on passing.
Soon enough the table is crowded full, and people are taking their seats. Lukas saves the head of the table for his father; he picks the chair on the right side, one seat down. Anezka sits at her father's left hand, Daniel beside her. It leaves one seat between Lukas and his father, another between Lukas and Daniel. Marjeta's still in the kitchen, sounding like she's struggling with the turkey.
"I'm going to go help Mom," Lukas says after a second, starting to get up. Jaroslav shakes his head, waving him back into his seat.
"She'll never forgive you," he says. "She's worked on day on that bird, and this is her moment of glory. She'll carry it over herself if it weighs a hundred pounds."
"Just help her set it down," Anezka adds.
[Danicka] If there's anything Lukas has noticed about Danicka when she's getting ready -- for dinner at Kate's, for dinner at his family's house, for a presentation at school, for any occasion -- is that she doesn't talk much about it. Doesn't fuss. She has, recently, asked him for his opinion on a couple of small things, perhaps while he lazes in her bed as she's getting dressed. Yes or no to this silk scarf. The gold hoops or the pearl drop earrings. The green top or the pink one. Sometimes she goes with his suggestion. Sometimes -- more often, to his amused aggravation -- she does the opposite, or chooses something else entirely.
And then she leans over, kissing him, wrapping him up with her hands on his face and the smell of her shampoo and her toothpaste and the lotion she massages into her skin when winter threatens to dry it out and he tries to fold his arms around her, drag her back down to the warm, soft covers, drag her down to his body, hold her,
keep her,
and she laughs, wriggling away like a fish escaping a net, grinning at him as she goes about her day.
She was still packing her bag when Lukas showed up at her apartment the night before their flight. He set his clothes out for the next day and she looked between the different items she was considering. There wasn't conversation about it. Just a sort of effortless, careful complementing of styles. He could see the wheels turning in her head, noticed that what she planned to wear was just a touch nicer than what he was, a feminine step up and to the left of him.
But no fretting, worrying, no handwringing over what to wear or how to act. She asked a few light questions but mostly just trusted her own rather well-trained social astuteness to guide her through the evening as they drove from the airport to his family's home. She never does worry like that, stressing over who she must impress and how she has to act in order to do so.
Though anywhere else she'd try to sit across the table and a seat or two down from Lukas, Danicka chooses to sit beside him tonight, wanting to be close. This isn't a dinner party, and it isn't dinner with friends. Lukas is her family. Marjeta and Jaroslav and Anezka are his family. Daniel seems to want to be Anezka's -- and it's possible the only person who doesn't already consider him such is Lukas, and he can't exactly be blamed for seeing Daniel in that light.
In any case: Danicka is there to Lukas's left, close enough that she can feel the warmth radiating off of him, close enough that he can smell her even through family, food, wine. Everything. To her left is the head of the household -- not in the eyes of the Garou Nation, but true all the same. Across from her is Anezka, taking it slow now. More subdued, but not sad. Not angry, Danicka hopes.
She smiles as his family members wave him back into his seat when he wants to get up, to help, to protect. It's no surprise when Lukas is up out of his chair like a shot as soon as Marjeta reaches the table, helping her set it down in the space reserved for it. Danicka just watches him, eyes bright with amusement, though Marjeta is trying to wave him off, too.
It's Jaroslav who offers a toast, once they're all seated. Glasses clink together with murmurs of Na zdravi around the table, and Danicka offering a slight shift, Na zdrowie when her glass touches Daniel's. It's Lukas who gets up to carve the turkey, Anezka who starts passing food to her father, who begins filling her plate and urging Daniel to do the same. It's Danicka asking questions about the dishes, commenting that she wishes she could have helped more with the cooking, Marjeta who dismisses this. Lukas who wants Danicka to try all three kinds of potatoes, and sweet potatoes, and stuffing, and -- his first non-scowling overture of the night -- accepts a lamb pierogi, then suggests Danicka have one, too. Because they're good.
Danicka shares a glance with Marjeta, saying: "See?"
Daniel has the wisdom not to comment.
From across the table, Danicka strikes up conversation with Anezka, since Marjeta is working up to implications of marriage and children with her son and Jaroslav doesn't seem the conversational type and Daniel is just trying to survive. She asks about Los Angeles, about why on earth she was up in Boston. She mentions that later they should sneak off so Anezka can tell her embarrassing stories about Lukas -- which makes him perk his head up from deflecting his mother briefly -- and it comes out that Anezka still remembers Danicka hoarding her crayons as a child.
"That's just because you were so bossy!" Danicka laughs. Anezka accuses her of having a crush on Lukas even then. "Hardly," Danicka scoffs, taking a sip of wine. "He was noisy and kicked me out of a tree."
I did not! he insists again
and Danicka and Anezka both laugh, toasting each other.
[Lukas] Lukas loves watching Danicka dress in the mornings; loves lounging half-asleep in her sheets or in their shared comforters, lazy and calm and warm, watching her slip into jeans or slacks, a skirt or a dress. Loves watching her put up her hair or slip on her earrings, loves watching her elbows fold behind her as she does up the clip of her bra.
There's a sort of unspoken intimacy in that. In some sense, it's more intimate than even watching her undress. It's one thing to be there when her clothes come off, right before she steps across the space between and lets him lift her up in his arms to wrap her limbs around his body. It's another altogether to still be there in the morning, to be a part of her routine, to be a piece of her life.
Some mornings, she asks him for his opinion now. She doesn't obey his whim slavishly. Sometimes she doesn't even stick to her own whims. He doesn't mind. He laughs when he picks pink and she goes with green; he wants to know co to kurva?, laughingly, when she tosses both aside and goes for some creamy shade of gold instead.
Sometimes they dress with an eye toward one another. Even then, they rarely discuss it. So; no. No discussion of what to wear. No fretting. No half-hidden suggestion from Lukas -- you'd look nice in that red dress or my mother's favorite color is green. He leaves her to decide for herself, knowing that she'll do so anyway, knowing that she'll look appropriate, and, well, good.
Dinner, then. Lukas jumping up to help his mother with the turkey. There's brief argument over who carves; in the end it's Lukas that accepts the honor, but only after Jaroslav refuses twice. He's good with the knife, with has more to do with etiquette than any combat prowess. It helps that it's a big turkey, too - plenty of meat before the bone.
Everyone fills everyone else's plates. There are three kinds of potatoes, and Lukas insists that Danicka try all three. There's another small argument, as light and unangry as the one over who gets to carve, over whether the gouda or the cheddar was superior. In the end Marjeta is asked to judge. She chooses her own sweet potatoes. There's uproar, and then a round of toasts, and when Danicka gets to Daniel she changes it a little, lets him know subtly and -- perhaps -- welcomingly that he's not the only one who speaks Polish. His eyes light up. He answers her like for like; Danicka might notice that his Polish is, indeed, not even as good as her own. Significant American accent, there.
A little later, Danicka and Anezka toast over Lukas's misadventures. He protests the accusation, but he notices that this time, it was Danicka taking up the joke that she had rejected at the door. She catches him smiling at her a moment later, then reaching over to refill her wineglass.
When everyone's moved on to seconds, Lukas breaks out the vodka. Jaroslav is perhaps the quietest member of the party, but he has an apparently inexhaustible tolerance for alcohol, quietly matching his son shot for shot until Lukas is lolling in his chair, his fork in his right hand, his left hand fallen off the surface of the table to twine lazily and playfully with Danicka's. Jaroslav's eyes remain bright and alert. There's just the faintest hint of father-son rivalry pride there: the old man beating the youngster at his own game.
Toward the end of dinner, when a significant chunk of turkey has disappeared, along with all the sweet potatoes and most of the soup, Daniel gets up to pop the kolaches and pie into the oven. When he comes back, he hangs out for a while between Jaroslav's and Danicka's chairs, complimenting her Polish.
"Better than me," he admits, truthfully enough. "Where did you learn?"
Lukas's thumb, meanwhile, rubs thoughtfully down the side of his shotglass, which is filled again with a shot of vodka he hasn't dared to down ye. He's considering the turkey, and the cranberry sauce, and the stuffing -- weighing it against the pie and the kolaches, weighing all of it against the current fullness of his stomach. Anezka, catching him looking, nudges the platter toward him.
"Go ahead," she cajoles. "You know you want to."
"You're trying to assassinate me by turkey," he accuses, words not quite slurring, but ... slowed, a little. "I knew it. Your nefarious plan to become the only child again is finally coming to fruition."
"That's exactly it," Anezka replies, deadpan. "Damn. You found me out. Now eat up."
Lukas grins at his sister for a moment. Then, with an exaggerated groan, he pushes himself to his feet to carve off another thick slice of breast meat.
[Danicka] By now he's seen her so many mornings. The way she waffles over wearing a bra or not, the changes in mind she has as she's moving about the bedroom. The way she has, a few times, resisted a touch less when he's pulled her back into bed with him, and he knows by some flicker in her eyes or some shift in her breathing that if he puts her on his lap and rolls his hips up towards her, if he lays her on her back and kisses her neck, her bared breasts, breathes just so over her lowermost ribs as he pulls at the fastening of her jeans,
she'll stay with him. Skip her first class, or her first two classes, or a full day of classes if he's very, very persuasive and she needs the time with him more than she needs the notes from this or that lecture.
He's with her so many mornings, now. Waking up in her bed or their bed to find that she's up and she just didn't want to wake him, loves that now he's relaxed enough with her, trusting enough, that he doesn't open his eyes if she so much as moves. That sometimes he's so tired and so worn out he'll just lie there, his face half-buried in the sheets and in her scent, breathing steadily, heavily while she slips off to go make coffee.
She loves it when he's there on some Saturday or Sunday morning when she has no classes at all, and her eyes open drowsily just long enough to remember this. She loves how, when she nestles back down against him, he stirs behind her, half-waking for a moment
to press a kiss to her shoulder, or her neck, before he sleeps again, too.
The truth is, Danicka knows perhaps a smattering of phrases in Polish, as she knows a smattering of phrases in French, or Spanish, or any number of languages she heard growing up in New York, going to clubs one would be shocked to see a skinny white girl at all alone. She knows how to toast someone in Polish, knows how to ask a few vital questions, can fake a few accents. Cannot speak Polish. Cannot understand a word of it beyond those few phrases. Laughs when Daniel attempts his own faulty Polish with her, shaking her head. And Daniel laughs too, relieved that this is one less person who might look down their nose at him for failing at his own culture.
They toast each other, to their long-forgotten Polish ancestries, and they toast using Polish vodka. "We'll teach you Czech," she says firmly.
Lukas handles his liquor differently than Anezka, who gets even looser of tongue. Lukas just gets... loose. As though his limbs aren't quite so solidly attached at the joints, as though his muscles get more fluid. Danicka doesn't drink very much, though Lukas knows she can hold her own against -- well, the truth is, Fianna. She doesn't bother to try, though, sensing a bit of rivalry between father and son that is best left alone. She holds his hand loosely, smiling gently when her eyes glance at him.
Daniel wants to know where she learned even the little Polish she did. Danicka shrugs. "My mother was a quarter Polish, and her grandmother on that side taught her. She passed on a little, but mostly spoke Russian to my brother and I at home." She leaves out her mother saying firmly that Russian was the stronger language, that it was superior to Czech, as well. Her mother gave her many lessons that don't bear repeating.
Though she doesn't want to get utterly drunk her first time meeting this whole family, Danicka has had enough to make her speech a bit softer and slower, her eyes a bit glassier. She leans on the table, watching Lukas groan and go after the turkey, shaking her head.
She looks at Anezka. "You know it won't kill him." Beat. "Maybe you should tell Daniel about the time Lukáš ate so many koláče that he threw up in the middle of a game of tag."
And that story does come out, regardless of protests from everyone but Danicka, Anezka, and Daniel -- who has the survival instinct necessary to keep himself (mostly) from laughing at the bit about how pleased Lukas was with himself wearing Danicka's brother's clothes. If she feels tension in him -- at the story, at Daniel, at the mention of her brother -- Danicka holds his hand below the table, laces her fingers between his and lets him know
it's okay.
But the topics move on anyway, until the smell of pastry fills the air and people are arguing about who is going to go get the pie and kolache. It ends up being Anezka and Danicka, both of whom claim they've hardly helped serve at all tonight -- which is actually true.
Mortal etiquette would have Danicka making sure everyone else got kolache before the most voracious lover of the pastries got to the platter. They are not mortal, not a one of them, and Lukas is her mate. When she comes back, the kolache are hot, and she puts three orange ones on his plate before she hands the platter towards Jaroslav. Kisses Lukas's temple as she slides back into her seat, her hand squeezing his shoulder lightly. Anezka cuts a slice of pie. Danicka declines anything more -- she's eaten her fill, though she didn't take seconds -- but a single kolache and a small slice of pie, and it's unlikely she'll finish both of them.
They will end up taking leftovers back to the hotel.
Dessert goes slower than the first round of dinner, when everyone was hungry and eager to eat. They're slowed by drink and by what's commonly called a food coma. Danicka is leaning on the table and half-leaning against Lukas, who moved his chair over to be nearer to her, laying his arm across the back of her seat. He's slouched a bit. She's smiling lazily as she listens to Daniel and Anezka co-telling some story of theirs, her hand idly playing with Lukas's.
Things fall quieter with each passing minute, until she closes her eyes in a long, slow blink and opens them just as slowly to say: "That was a wonderful meal."
celebration.
9 years ago