mama and daddy and eliška and taťána and mikuláš and ... bob.

Danicka

In the aftermath, Danicka can hardly move. She lets Lukas undress her, and she smiles, and when he rolls half off of her he's the one that does most of the maneuvering or twisting around so that he can stay close to her, and hold her, and stay inside of her. She just smiles, eyes closed and lips curved, drowsy from lovemaking and orgasm and quite pleased about it. Her hair, pulled up messily to begin with to get it off her neck, is tousled and half-fallen now.

They lie on the floor together, the ceiling fan rotating steadily overhead as it always has been. Down the hall and through a window they can hear a dog barking, and smell the last hints of someone's grilling. Farther on down their street, the pre-teen son who is still learning plays his guitar in fits and starts, trying to get Driver 8 down correctly. Her hand moves across Lukas's arm where it rests over her and around her, brushing the hairs there. Her eyes open and she glances down at her fingernails trailing through the hair on his forearms, so dark. It makes her laugh softly.

"I would like it if they were dark like you," she murmurs, smiling to herself. "I like your hair. I like... how you always look warm." She closes her eyes again, still smiling. "We met in winter," she muses, though surely he knows that. Remembers that. Remembers driving her home while she wore that thick white wool coat over a silk green dress. Remembers standing near the waterline demanding that she say it, that he wanted to hear her say it, til she confessed that she wanted him. He was in a coat. She had that green hat. All their earliest memories happened in the dead of winter in a city blanketed for months by dark clouds. "I wonder," Danicka is saying, curling, curving her body into his arms, "if that's part of why I liked you. It was so cold, and you always looked like you were very warm."

She's teasing. She's grinning with her eyes closed. And talking: just talking, out loud, thoughtless and meandering. Then, out of nowhere, she jerks. Her hand goes instantly to her lower abdomen. Lukas, hand on her belly, can't help but feel it right when she does, a half-second after perhaps. "Oh, god," she says, laughingly. Without even thinking, she presses gently on her belly where just a moment ago, one or both of them turned over, or stretched, or something inside of her. Whoever it was presses back against her hand with a spasmic answering touch, and Danicka starts laughing outright. "Lukášek --"

But she doesn't ask can you feel that or anything of the kind. She just says his name, laughing like that. Because of course they would move now. Right when it's the most ridiculous time, right when it might embarrass or worry Lukas the most. She can't stop laughing.

Lukas

They can joke about these things now. What drew them to each other. Why they wanted each other. These things are almost beyond the need for discussion now -- they are fact, they are truth, they are amorphous and inexplicable and do not need to be quantified. They just did. They just do.

So -- they can joke about it instead. She says he always looked warm, in the middle of that first searingly cold Chicago winter, after years in the Deep South for Danicka; after the milder winters of New York City. Maybe that's why she wanted him, she says, and he laughs, sleepy and huffing.

"I knew it," he murmurs. "You were just using me for my body warmth."

And he nuzzles her, the tip of his nose, his lips, rubbing his face gently against the side of hers. I love you, he thinks; doesn't say it aloud because she must know. She must feel it, the way he touches her, the way his palm rubs over her skin

and feels that jerk against his fingers, that twitch of some tiny protopup inside her turning over or kicking or punching. Lukas's eyes startle open. Danicka, who feels this sort of thing all the time, all day every day, just laughs. Laughs and laughs and laughs, golden hair spilling, the dip of her throat sheening.

Lukas isn't embarrassed. Or mortified. Or even particularly worried. Not today, anyway. He's surprised, and then

he's laughing too, a lower, more contained sound, rubbing his palm a little more firmly against her belly as though to say hello back to the little ones.

"I guess it's only fair," he comments, laughing still. "I jostled them around for quite a while, and now they want to repay the favor." And then he lifts up on his elbow, straightens his arm; leans over her belly and kisses her there. No; he's kissing them, the twins, and she can feel the difference. She's right. He's always warm. This is a warm thing too, a warm, fond, loving kiss, but not at all the way he would kiss his mate

in private, naked, after lovemaking.

"Hello, little ones," he whispers to her belly. "Sorry about that. Downsides of a shared living situation. Believe me, I remember." Ridiculous now: he smiles, he grins, he lays his ear to her belly as though he expected to hear something back and now he's grinning up at Danicka, quite aware of his own ridiculosity.

Danicka

"Yes," she says, very seriously and deeply nodding, when he says she was just using him. For body heat. And to say this in the end of August, when even Chicago is miserably muggy and hot and rainstorms make everyone's hair turn into clouds of frizz -- yes. She just uses him for his warmth. That is why they got a house and got married and started a family. Obviously.

The proto-pups must like it too. Must be using him for his body heat, must be trying in their way to thank him for sharing it, or perhaps for doing whatever it is he does that alters their entire environment so thoroughly, if so briefly. Dr. Katz, with her inimitable bluntness and pragmaticism, is fond of reminding them that everything the mother experiences, the fetuses experience. Including what she describes as 'very relaxing muscle contractions, like a massage' and 'positively blissful washes of happy hormones'.

Surely, and reasonably, the fetuses have no awareness of anything outside of Danicka. They don't know him yet. Scientifically speaking, it's more than a bit of a stretch to suggest that they're saying hello to their father or, even more ludicrously, trying to play, too. But it's pleasant to make up stories, like it's pleasant to fantasize about hair color and eye color and argue jokingly about gender -- though Danicka is convinced she's having girls.

She moves a little to rest against Lukas's arm, leaning against him, and looks down as he rubs a circle with his palm on her abdomen. She snorts, laughing, at his definition of 'fair'. "You're not the one getting jostled, though," she points out, and grins as he kisses her belly. Two kisses. One for each of them, even though they're the size of bananas right now and it's hard to tell where they are. Danicka feels tears spring to her eyes, mingling with the laughter, and it's okay this time. She sniffs, smiling, while he says hello.

And patiently explains to them that it really can't be helped, given the situation. Then: she scoffs, loudly, laughing again. "What do you remember?"

One of them kicks him in the ear. Zpozdilý taÅ¥ka.

Lukas

That grin looks a little more like a smirk now. Lukas drops another pair of kisses on the protopups, and then he crawls back up to sprawl out beside his mate, his lower leg crossing hers, his arm over her waist. Well; where her waist used to be. Now his arm is resting sort of atop the babies, sort of across her breasts.

"I remember," he says, exaggeratedly serious, "having to put a pillow between my headboard and the wall so the entire second floor of the BroHo didn't hear us wrecking the furniture. And I definitely remember that walk of shame I had that morning with Liadin, and you were trying to get me to dance to Africa, and I was just trying not to turn completely beet red."

He leans over. He kisses her, lightly but slowly, smiling when he draws back.

"I also remember having to be quiet when Irca and Emanek were downstairs. And then in the morning they came up and nearly kicked me out of bed because they were bouncing all over you. And I was terrified that I'd forgotten to put my underwear on before falling asleep, but I did. Put them on, that is.

"Downsides, pups." He's ostensibly speaking to the tinyones again, looking down at her belly, his hand giving her a gentle pat there. "Many, many downsides."

Danicka

Her waist is, as Danicka might be quick to point out, still there. It's just a different shape. A very, very different shape. Temporarily, she would also add. She wrinkles her nose at him as he crawls back up to her, shaking her head. "The first and last I can agree with. But when you walked out and Lee was there, you were just being weird. Everyone knew we were together by then. She knew I had a boyfriend when she moved in."

Danicka breathes in and presses her hand down on her belly. "Shush," she says, insistent but patient, far softer than the tone she takes when Kandovany won't stop yowling or when she claws at something she shouldn't.

Her head turns and her hair is falling, falling everywhere, smelling of summertime and ginger. Her clip is tangled up somewhere in there. She's smiling. "You. Loved. Having the kids run upstairs and bound all over our bed. You loved it."

Lukas

"Maaaaybe," he sidesteps, "but that doesn't mean I wasn't almost kicked out of bed, and all while trying to remember if I had underpants on or not."

He strokes a lock of hair out of her face. He loves her hair; always has. Golden, like spring sunshine. He may have always looked warm, but she looked like spring. Jaro, she said once, when he asked her what she wanted, and he thought something so aching and true that it's a wonder he didn't realize then that he was falling in love with her.

Then the next time they met, he took her to a restaurant called Spring. And she met him in front with an umbrella that had a blue sky on the underside. And he was already in love with her.

"Do you still have that umbrella with the blue sky inside?" She's not privy to his thoughts, that process that took him from her hair to the umbrella, so this likely seems quite out of the blue. "Because I love it. We should get one for every baby we have."

Danicka

She just laughs at him. "Poor baby," she teases him, reaching over and stroking some of his hair back behind his ear. They look at each other, wordless, at least for a few moments. They have been through enough to not need to speak every single second. They have enough between them to know one another's thoughts -- or not need to know, anymore. She looks at him, thinking

of how lovely she finds his eyes. Not their piercing blue, their oh-so-Shadow-Lord intensity. She thinks she loves that they are his eyes, and that she can see so much in them. Such as his oft-hidden ridiculousness and silliness. Or the way he worries, brow furrowed, puzzling everything out like it must all have some kind of workable solution if he can just think hard enough about it. Or the way he looks at her, seeing her, and loves her. That's what she finds most indescribable.

Though in a way, she described some measure of it to Decker. When she's been gone, and she comes back, or when he's gone and he returns and sees her again, he looks at her with such joy. And she would do just about anything not to lose that. To be seen. And to be loved in truth, and not in fantasy.

He's thinking about springtime, and gold, and how long it took him to realize that his soul had been howling for her for lifetimes upon lifetimes. Abruptly, out of nowhere, he asks her about her umbrella. She laughs at him. "I do," she says. "And one with a magenta chrysanthemum on the inside, too."

Lukas says he loves it. They should get one for every baby. Danicka laughs at him all over again. "I was going to get them little raincoats when they start walking. And galoshes." She leans over, kissing his nose. "We can get them blue-sky umbrellas too. Or paint blue skies on the insides of little ones, if we can't find kid-sized umbrellas like that. Or constellations," she muses, laying her head back against him -- his arm, his shoulder, whatever's handy.

"Eliška and... TaÅ¥ána," she says thoughtfully, looking down again. "It means 'a little mountain'." She turns her face upward to look at him again to see what he thinks.

Lukas

Lukas's eyes brighten. And it's true: his love for her is right there in his eyes, and it makes even that clear, dazzling blue warm. He laughs aloud: "We can make a project of it. They can stamp around in galoshes and raincoats when they're little, but when they're old enough to have umbrellas without poking each other's eyes out, we can have an umbrella painting day."

They're fantasizing again, just like sometimes they fantasize about the eye color and gender and hair color of their unborn children. Yet on some level, Lukas knows that fantasy will be reality faster than one can believe. Today they're fetuses. In a few months they'll be here. A few more after that and they'll be walking, and then running, and talking, and playing,

going to school together, side by side, two little girls if Danicka's instincts are right. Wearing galoshes. And raincoats. Bright, happy ones. And a little after that: old enough to paint without making too big a mess. Old enough to put constellations or sunny skies or whatever else they might want on the insides of their umbrellas.

Lukas is just a little misty-eyed when Danicka looks up at him. TaÅ¥ána, she said. And he looks at her with surprise and delight, because --

"I love it, baby." He laughs; he kisses her brow. "I do. That's what we'll name them, if they're both girls. Eliška and TaÅ¥ána. If we only have one girl, we can flip a coin and save the other name for the next one."

Danicka

Stamp around, Lukas says, and instantly Danicka knows he has the same mental image that she did this spring, watching some of the neighborhood kids going to the bus stop on a rainy day. It will be a while -- though not nearly a long enough of a while -- before they are anything but wiggling, fragile bundles of life. For a while, it will be two infants in baby carriers, nestled against parental chests, while they hold their own umbrellas up to keep them warm and dry. For a while, it will be two infants in some three-wheeled double-stroller made for jogging with a special hood that zips up and keeps them from getting doused whenever it's necessary to take them out in the rain. But then, a year or so after they're born, they will be walking. Swaying on two feet, stumbling a few steps forward, and they will need decent boots for the snow and then galoshes for the rain so they can splash in the puddles with their feet securely encased in rubber.

Lukas's eyes are misted over. Danicka's are, too. She laughs at them, sniffing and wiping away a couple of tears. Truth be told, she goes from laughing to crying and back again or both at once like a swinging pendulum these days, but right now that seems okay. It feels okay.

He loves the name. She smiles, curling back into him. Her eyes close happily against the kiss to her brow. She loves talking about this like they're going to have more, because they are, because they both want more. "We'll save Mikuláš, too," she says, still quite confident that her instincts are correct. "But we should come up with another boy name, too, just in case." She breathes in, opening her eyes and looking up at him. "Let's get up, baby. My back's starting to hurt lying like this. I want to go wash up and finish dinner. Okay?"

Lukas

Stamp around, Lukas says, and instantly Danicka knows he has the same mental image that she did this spring, watching some of the neighborhood kids going to the bus stop on a rainy day. It will be a while -- though not nearly a long enough of a while -- before they are anything but wiggling, fragile bundles of life. For a while, it will be two infants in baby carriers, nestled against parental chests, while they hold their own umbrellas up to keep them warm and dry. For a while, it will be two infants in some three-wheeled double-stroller made for jogging with a special hood that zips up and keeps them from getting doused whenever it's necessary to take them out in the rain. But then, a year or so after they're born, they will be walking. Swaying on two feet, stumbling a few steps forward, and they will need decent boots for the snow and then galoshes for the rain so they can splash in the puddles with their feet securely encased in rubber.

Lukas's eyes are misted over. Danicka's are, too. She laughs at them, sniffing and wiping away a couple of tears. Truth be told, she goes from laughing to crying and back again or both at once like a swinging pendulum these days, but right now that seems okay. It feels okay.

He loves the name. She smiles, curling back into him. Her eyes close happily against the kiss to her brow. She loves talking about this like they're going to have more, because they are, because they both want more. "We'll save Mikuláš, too," she says, still quite confident that her instincts are correct. "But we should come up with another boy name, too, just in case." She breathes in, opening her eyes and looking up at him. "Let's get up, baby. My back's starting to hurt lying like this. I want to go wash up and finish dinner. Okay?"

Danicka

[aw, Lukas's back is starting to hurt. poor thing.]

Lukas

[HAHAHAHA BE SHUSH.]

Lukas

"We'll think of something," Lukas says, regarding names. "We've still got time."

And then he sits up, yawning, as though he were rising from a long nap instead of a lazy, sweet bout of lovemaking. For a moment Lukas sits there on the ground, knees drawn up, scrubbing his palms over his face. Then a hand on the ground pushes himself upright. He reaches both hands to Danicka, giving her a hand up that is -- to be frank -- growing more and more necessary as the months roll by.

"I'll come with you," he says, about washing up. Because of course he will. And of course he does: picking up their discarded clothing, following her up the stairs. The laundry goes into the hamper. They go into the shower, where they clean themselves off, wash each other's backs; where Lukas takes a moment to rub Danicka's back, all the way down those long weight-bearing muscles in her back,

and somehow his arms end up around her, and she ends up drowsing against his chest, and that's completely all right because they have a microwave downstairs.

Which, in fact, they put into use when they wander downstairs again, Danicka in a light bathrobe, Lukas in his shorts with a towel around his neck. She tries to find a comfortable position on the couch while he waits in the kitchen for the microwave to ding, and surely if he were in any other form his ears would perk and his tail would wag at the sound. He comes back with their reheated soondubu, setting the two cups down on the coffee table, sitting beside his mate.

"Noms," he announces, unnecessarily.

Danicka

In due time, sex on the floor is simply not going to be an option. Sitting on the floor will be something Danicka does very gradually and mostly only in yoga. She doesn't strictly need him to help her up right now, just past halfway done with this pregnancy, but even now, she appreciates it. It makes it easier. It makes it more graceful, certainly. She feels awkward being naked and walking around right now and is trying not to feel that way, but that's true, too: she's a little awkward. She wants to walk next to Lukas and not in front of him. She leans into his side while he carries their clothes in his other arm.

It's easier in the shower. She melts a bit, not caring that her hair gets wet, knowing it just means that it will keep her cool when they get out again. Most of the time she spends facing him, arms tucked between their bodies, head on his chest, eyes closed while the water hits her shoulders and while Lukas kneads her back. Danicka conceals nothing from him: every sigh, every groan, every molten relaxation. She nearly dozes off there, but can't, because holding herself upright is a bit much. And she's hungry. She barely ate anything before telling him to make love to her.

They go back downstairs after drying off, and after Danicka gets her skin cream that smells of cocoa butter and so forth and rubs it all over her stomach and her arms and legs and then her stomach again, smirking at Lukas affectionately when she finds him staring at her, watching her tend to the ever-stretching skin that, for the time being, is keeping their cubs covered while they grow their own. She does have a light bathrobe, cozy and summery. She finally broke down some time ago and bought clothing that would fit her temporary body, including a bathrobe carefully made so that it ties above her stomach but stays closed beneath that. It's lightweight and knee-length, dove-gray with a white sash, and the sleeves are long and the fabric is soft. She curls up on the couch and drinks her tea. Lukas shoos Kandovany away from her curious, whisker-twitching exploration of the food and takes it to the kitchen to warm it up again.

And announces, as he presents this food to his mate a second time, that he has procured noms for them. Isn't he such a good mate? He can feed his female and cubs, even if there are two. Danicka smiles at him, still looking quite drowsy. "You're such a good mate," she says fondly, leaning over to kiss his cheek. She settles in right there, then, close to him, snuggled, sipping her soondubu. The twins seem to have settled down during the shower and are no longer wrestling or hugging or dancing or whatever it is they do. Danicka idly, mindlessly strokes her stomach, something she tries not to do in public if only because it's so cliche but does anyway, without realizing it, when she's at home. If they were here she would do the same with them, grooming fingers through their hair, rubbing their backs, cuddling them just for the sake of cuddling them. But they aren't yet. They're sleeping, or resting at least, while their organs develop, while they grow nervous systems and bones and muscle.

"Do you want to be táta or tatínek?" she asks, somewhat out of the blue, looking over at him.

Lukas

"Aren't I?" Lukas replies, preening just a bit at the praise. They eat their soondubu. They eat oyster pancake and bulgogi too, and when he thinks Danicka isn't looking Lukas sneaks bits of food to their small orange feline.

He is, in fact, in the middle of doing just that when she speaks. And he looks at her surprised, a little caught-in-the-act, and then huff-laughs. Kando is busily munching on whatever little scrap of clam or beef she's been fed while Lukas leans back on the couch.

"You know," he says, "I think I'm all right with Dad or Daddy. Though tatínek is nice too. What about you?"

Danicka

"Máma," she says, without hesitation. She smiles at him. It's entirely possible she didn't even notice him feeding Kando a bit of clam or is so high on some of her happier hormones to date that she's choosing not to scold either of them. "And mama," she adds, though in truth the two words are almost identical in these two -- and in most -- languages. It makes her smile to say it, and to think of being called that. "I've never really liked maminka. It's too diminutive.

"I want them to know Czech and English," she adds. "The way that we know Czech and English, from speaking them both at home. Not something bastardized and confused. Their cousins speak Czech, and I don't want them to be left out or miss out on that when we're all together. When we visit my family and my father's family, I don't want them to feel lost, or like... outsiders."

She exhales, leaning against him and closing her eyes. She never touched the oyster pancake but had, frankly, a lion's share of soondubu and bulgogi. She has taken on the traits of an infant herself in some ways: she eats voraciously and demandingly, sleeps heavily and for long periods, and then wakes to eat again, move around a bit, and sleep once more. And right now, after lovemaking and bathing and eating, she is drowsing on Lukas's arm, beautifully sated.

"Mama and Daddy," she muses, smiling with her eyes closed, stroking that growing belly of hers with her fingernails, soft and slow. "Mama and Daddy and Eliška and TaÅ¥ána," she says to them, or to him, or just to hear it aloud. "Or Mama and Daddy and Mikuláš and... Bob."

Danicka grins.

Lukas

"Absolutely," Lukas agrees. "I want them to know English and Czech, too. So they aren't left out. And because that's part of who they are. Who we are."

And Danicka is drowsing now, sated and satiated, stroking her belly the way she never allows herself to in public because it's so ridiculously expecting of her. Lukas, who is finishing the last of his soondubu and oyster and beef, sets it all aside and reaches over to put his hand over hers, and over the cubs.

"Poor Bob," he says, pretending mournfulness. "Pups, at least one of you has to be born female so neither of you gets saddled with 'Bob,' all right?"

Danicka

Danicka is still grinning. "Are you going to keep calling them 'pups' when they're born?" she asks, genuinely curious, infinitely amused.

Lukas

"I might," Lukas replies, laughing too, now. "Why? Is it completely weird?" Then something occurs to him; he worries. She can tell that, too. "Do you think it'd make them feel bad if they were kin?"

Danicka

He worries. And the truth is, of everyone in the sprawling family they have and the little family they're building, he has the most right and reason to worry. A lot. About whether or not he's taking care of them, about whether or not he's frightening them or wearing their nerves thin, about their safety. His pack is made up primarily of Adrens and a couple of Fosterns, all strong enough to fend for themselves though partially scattered across the city and the country, but an absolute powerhouse when together. He doesn't have to worry about them all the time, but he still does.

Lukas's kin, though. His father, his mother, his sister, his sister's boyfriend who is not Lukas's own kin but still a matter of his concern, her father, her sister, her niece and nephew and the one cub who never forgets that while at Stark Falls he has a duty to stand for his family and honor Lukas's name due to the favor Lukas called in to get him up there and the other cub who will one day be his cub to train and then Danicka, and the two proto-pups that will soon enough be born and even more vulnerable than they are now.

Of course he worries. And Danicka does not want him to be weak, does not want him to be tied up in knots, and in this way her tendency toward embracing chaos balances him out. Sometimes things are going to break and shatter and erupt, and there is no preventing it, there is no fixing it. There is only riding it out. Sometimes you can even throw your head back and laugh.

She doesn't laugh. She smiles at him gently. Her hand is on her belly and his hand is on her hand. She puts her other hand on top of his, sandwiched. "I think it's adorable," she tells him, first off. "But baby, you have to remember... the chances of us having four healthy children, all kin, are higher than the chances of any of them changing one day. I think that regardless of what might happen one day, their father is still a wolf. They're still his pups.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about that, too," she says quietly, rubbing his hand between the knuckles. "I don't... want to try and find a Theurge or anyone to find out when they're children if they'll change. It's tradition in Prague and that's why we knew about Milos and Irca, but here it's harder to find Garou who know those rites. I think the one who told my mother about my brother was ancient when he came, and he's dead now. And I know people knew about you, but... I don't want us to know, or them to know."

Lukas

"I don't either," Lukas says almost immediately, and really: it's lucky, it's amazing, that they're agreeing on so many of these core issues, these critical decisions, that any number of other couples -- other mated pairs -- may have argued and fought over. Names. Languages. To divine the nature of their children, or not.

"I don't want them to know," he adds, quieter, "and I don't want us to know. Maybe that's a little cruel to them if one of them does change, because ... they won't even see it coming. But I don't want us to treat them differently. I don't want them to feel different, or to treat each other differently. Not even accidentally or subconsciously."

His arm around her gives her a little squeeze. And he kisses her temple.

"They're our pups," he murmurs. "Both of them. All of them."

Danicka

Maybe they're lucky. Maybe they are made for each other. Maybe they have known each other lifetime after lifetime, and some memory of each other remains on each iteration. Maybe:

they were both raised with some small measure of foreknowledge, even if it came later in childhood. It did not make either of them happier.

Danicka leans against Lukas, turned now so that her spine is against his side or chest, her feet toward the end of the couch. She yawns, stroking his hand and then stroking her own belly. She nods. "If they start to ask." she says, closing her eyes and tipping her head to lean against his shoulder, "we'll tell them that whether they change or not has no bearing on their character. That they should be brave and honest and bright no matter what. That they should have strength and integrity and cunning no matter what their body can do."

She turns her other hand, under his, and squeezes Lukas's hand.

"All of them."

Lukas

His hand is strong and firm, covering hers. He returns that squeeze, and that too is strong and firm, his arm over her shoulder, his forearm draped down her body so that their hands rest on the swell of her abdomen.

"I love you," he says quietly. "And I think we're going to raise great kids."

Danicka

"Well," Danicka murmurs drowsily, "I'm sure they'll be all right."

Eyes still closed, she grins, nestling back into the place between the couch and his arm, his chest and... well, the rest of his arm. "I'm gonna go to sleep," she informs him then, as though she entirely plans to just settle in right there and nap.

Lukas

Lukas laughs aloud -- though softly -- as though already their home housed pups. Little, fragile things, easily awoken, in need of rest.

It doesn't, though. For a little longer, it's just the two of them. Just the three of them: Lukas and Danicka and their shy, sly little cat. His hand raises hers, drops hers; it's a gentle, playful little thump. "Right here?" he asks, smiling. "Do you want me to take you upstairs?"

Danicka

They are not used to being quiet. They never had to be at hotels. After a while, Danicka lived alone and they didn't need to be quiet in her apartment, either. And then Lukas bought them a house. Sure, when the windows are open and so forth, they tone it down. She doesn't scream while she rakes her nails down his back, he doesn't roar when he comes, yanking the sheets from their corners. And when family is visiting, Lukas worries about whether or not he put boxer-briefs back on after fucking her because the kids are coming upstairs and bounding all over them.

They are quiet now anyway, as though they're getting ready, or as though the proto-pups have finally settled down from their earlier jostling and are sleeping already. She grins and nods at his question. "I'll go upstairs if you carry me. While you still can," she adds, in a doomy tone of voice.

Lukas

Lukas scoffs. "I'll always be able to carry you, laska. That's part of my job." And he glomps her, wrapping her up in his arms, nomming at her neck, play-growling in her ear. Rather suddenly she finds herself swinging free of the couch, airborne, her bathrobe splitting to reveal her legs.

"Feed mate," Lukas intones, as though reading off a memorized list. "Fuck mate. Keep mate happy. Carry mate when necessary, or when feeling particularly romantic and/or silly and/or amorous." He stoops a little so she can pick up her tea, and then starts up the stairs. "Those are the rules."

Danicka

Part of his job. Danicka opens her eyes just to roll them at him, smiling. He squeezes her, both arms around her now, cuddling her as close as he can and basically razzling her. She laughs, then yelps. "Too fast!" she says, grabbing him around the neck and shoulders, eyes wide open as though genuinely alarmed.

Though, given she's only had about a month free from nausea brought on by sudden movement, one can understand her trepidation. He starts carrying her toward the stairs, because she waves off the tea when he starts to bend his knees, and she flips her bathrobe back over her lags and snuggles closer to his chest as he runs off the litany of his job description.

She smirks. "What are my rules?" she asks, both fond and mischevious.

Lukas

"You?" He thinks about it for a moment. "Your job is to tell me to stop worrying so much. And to not be mean, if I'm being mean. And to protect my heart. That's a very important job."

They're at the top of the stairs. The fit is close here; she has to tuck her legs in as they round the U-turn, head down the hall to their bedroom. "Want me to wake you up in a couple hours so you can brush your teeth and stuff before real bedtime?"

Danicka

He breaks hers, ever so gently. His job is to feed her and fuck her and keep her happy and carry her. Her job is to protect him.

Danicka's arms slide further around him, close. He turns and she tucks inward in a way she won't be able to much longer. She smiles at his question, head to his chest. "Oh, baby. I'll just brush them now. I'll probably wake up a couple of times anyway." To pee, usually, or to roll over and try and get comfortable again, or to scoot away from him because he's too hot, or to put her feet against him because they are ice cold.

Her hand rests on his chest, over his heart, and strokes softly. "I think my job is harder. That's really unfair, baby. You'll have to protect mine, too."

Lukas

Something in Lukas's eyes soften; aches. He bends to kiss her: a very gentle touch of his lips to her brow, then to her mouth.

"Of course, baby," he says softly. "Love you, protect you, protect your heart. Those rules go without saying."

Danicka

Her face nuzzles his chest softly. "I love you," she murmurs. She wants to tell him that she does feel safe with him, almost always, and that she knows he'll keep her and their pups safe no matter what, even if he can't live with them every day, even if he comes home missing an arm, even if he loses the wolf, even if the world ends, he'll turn his back to the dragon that devours the world so that its fangs sink into him first.

Danicka doesn't, though. She puts her palm on his chest, feeling the low, slow thudding of his heartbeat. The first time she slept beside him, she did this: covered his heart.

Protected him. Because some part of her already loved him. And always had.

late august.

Lukas

It's late August. The twins' due date -- as though they were books, or perhaps a package in the mail -- is still a good four months away. Danicka can hardly leave the house without some stranger asking her how much longer before her little bundle of joy arrives. She's probably heard all the euphemisms by now, and more times than anyone ever needs to: bundle of joy. pea in the pod. bun in the oven. She's had strangers come up to her with utterly unsolicited advice. She's had strangers asking her for advice, as though being pregnant somehow made her a font of maternal wisdom.

Lukas isn't with her on very many of those forays now. Not to the Jewel-Osco near their house; not to the public library. He wants to be, but all too often he can't. Sometimes it's because he's with his pack, doing his part, fighting the war. Sometimes -- more and more often now -- it's because she can't stand his presence. Worn thin by the stress, the hormones, the sheer physical work of carrying around not one but two gestating children, there are days when his very proximity frays her nerves. There are nights when a stray brush of his hand makes her shake.

So: there are nights he can't sleep holding her from behind, his hand wrapped around her waist or cradling her breast. There are nights he can't even sleep in the same bed. Or the same room. There are nights he has to leave the house just so she can fall asleep, and those are the nights he slips back in much later, after burning himself out, burning his rage low stalking the streets and prowling the shadows and cleansing their quiet little neighborhood of every last scrap of wyrm he can find -- those are the nights he sleeps on the couch, or curled in front of the bedroom door, a great dark warm furry pile that she trips over in the morning when she emerges.

There are nights she doesn't even come to the den. When she stays in her apartment, high above river north. He has a key, but he uses it less and less. He understands, without her having to tell him, that sometimes

she can't bear him at all.

Not tonight, though. Tonight is one of those nights -- rare now -- that he comes home early to find his mate awake, alert, smiling rather than shivering at the sight of him. "Hey," he says softly, coming up that short flight of stairs to their living room. Wherever she might be, he comes to her; leans down to kiss her gently on the lips. "I got dinner."

And so he did. It's Korean food: soondubu stew with sliced beef and tofu and tiny clams; rice on the side, along with an assortment of cold kimchee. He sets the bag down on the floor.

Danicka

To be fair to Lukas, the heat and humidity and the goddamn strangers are wearing Danicka as thin as he is. To take it one step further, it's all of the above that wears her thin, leaves her with less and less to give him, takes away the strength and the trust and the energy that used to be devoted almost solely to him. It isn't about loving him less. It isn't about wanting him less. They made a decision when they chose to be together, and they made a decision when they moved in together in their little house. Choice after choice: to marry, to agree to have children, to agree that Lukas could be a part of raising those children. Every decision they've made has been the harder one. Neither of them has ever taken the easy answer, the easy escape. They don't now. They are Shadow Lords.

Which is part of why, when that latest dotty, cooing fuckhead on the train reached toward Danicka's midsection, she leveled a stare at that woman and bit off each word like ripping open a small animal's throat: Don't. Fucking. Touch me.

It feels like she's been pregnant for a year already. Four months feels so far away that she is thinking this was all a really stupid idea. She's known for nearly two months now that she's having twins, and she keeps getting bigger and her middle is round and out there and she sometimes cries because she thinks she looks stupid. It's not even the fact that she's so heavy or 'fat' that upsets her. Somehow she conflates the way she looks with 'stupid' and this -- this! -- is the thing she finds intolerable. This is the thing that makes her cry, and Lukas sometimes has to remind her that she hand-built a laboratory in her apartment to study alien technology, which, by the way, she defeated intuitively before ever taking her first CompSci class, and they might both be dead right now if she weren't absolutely brilliant,

and then he realizes that the words 'we might both be dead right now' only cause her to start crying again. At least then she's crying because she loves him so much and she never wants to lose him, which is still sad, but it's better to have her crying and holding him and telling him she loves him than crying because I'm stupid and fat and stupid.

It's not an easy pregnancy. For either of them.

--

The windows all stay open. There's a ceiling fan in their room that whips air around over the bed, and it runs almost constantly these days. They do have air conditioning, but then Danicka says she gets too cold and it feels unnatural and so she opens windows and turns on fans and naps in tissue-thin t-shirts and underwear. Lukas comes home plenty of times to find her sleeping. Then there are times when he comes home and she's ravenous, she's woken up and she wants to eat everything but it's too hot to cook and it's too exhausting to go out so he has taken to doing exactly as he does tonight: showing up. With food. And plenty of it.

Tonight is one of those nights. The windows open, the night air turning cool but still humid, the fan in the living room and the fan upstairs both going. Danicka is lying on the couch wearing a long, flowy dress the color of milk chocolate with thin straps that tie behind her neck. Her breasts are, in fact, getting a little rounder and softer and larger. It wouldn't be noticeable if she weren't so small-breasted to begin with, but it certainly is when she wears a dress like that. Her hair, which she hasn't gotten cut more than a slight trim since April, is long and thick and glossy from all those prenatal vitamins, just like her nails are iron-hard and shine with health and need to be filed every few days. She has her hair up, messy and high and a little bit humidity-fuzzed. One hand is holding a book. The other hand idly raking across her belly, slow and lazy, as though scratching an itch that isn't there yet. She rubs a special lotion on that belly every morning and every night as it grows. It's supposed to help with all the stretching going on there. It smells like cocoa butter and mango. So: Danicka smells like cocoa butter and mango and light summery sweat and that nearly indefinable scent that he's noticed whenever he's in lupus, which he's learning is simply the way she smells when she's pregnant.

The book is not heavy reading. Not when these days she has to re-read a lot of sentences, and not when she is tired out so easily. It's some pop-science book, some new or not-so-new theories being presented in a way that's palatable to a wider public. For most of that wider public, it's a challenge to understand even that. For Danicka, it's dumbing it down a little while the twins eat her brain cells.

She hears the car and glances up, but the way their house is arranged the living room is in the back, so there's no immediate windows to the front of the house. She looks up anyway, though, listening for whether that car really is Lukas's. The garage door rattles open and she smiles, and turns back to her book. She looks down the length of her own body to her pearl-pink pedicure, which she got earlier today because it's summer and she feels gross but god dammit she isn't going to just give up, and by the time she remembers that she's in the middle of a book, Lukas is coming in the living room door and she's looking up, eyes wide and blinking and giving her a startled look.

A smile breaks across her face at the sight of him, coming home and carrying large brown paper bags of food. Her eyes catch on those bags, and he can see the faint gleam of hunter's hunger there, but she refocuses on him and smiles again. "Hey," she says back, lifting her face up as he leans over her and gives her a kiss.

Danicka kisses him back. Which isn't unexpected, or strange, or unnerving. It's just that there are kisses, soft and tender and appreciative and welcoming, and then there are kisses, which are also soft and tender and welcoming but something else, too, something undefinable and complex and... heated. Which, at least lately, is a little more unexpected.

He brought dinner. She smiles at him, their faces still close, eyes twinkling a little. "I know," she says, with undisguised and unabashed eagerness. Her book closes as she sets it down on her lap, which thankfully she can still see most of, glancing at the bag and looking at him again. There are some benefits to the advancement of her pregnancy: the mere smell of beef no longer makes her vomit. She is not subsisting on crackers and small sips of diluted juice. In fact, she eats so voraciously that they've taken to eating a lot of Asian food just to make sure that what she's eating is at least more healthful than a regular western diet. Hence: soondubu. And kimchee. And as much frozen yogurt as she wants, whenever she wants, since she seems to crave things that are tart and sour and tangy.

She beams at him. That kiss she gave him was... interested. And it was warm and inviting. And still: she's hungry and he has brought her food and she's sitting up on the couch for the food, not for him, looking pleased as a cat with a canary when she reaches over for the bags to inspect them. "Will you get me some tea?" she asks with that beaming, effervescent smile, meaning, most likely, the pitcher of white tea with honey and mint that lives in the fridge now, which she drinks all the time these days.

Lukas

Of course it's the perceived stupidity that bothers her more than anything else. Fat and ugly are in there too - no matter how many times he tells her no, stop, don't be ridiculous, those words do crop up again now and then -- but stupid: stupid is the one that makes her cry, and stupid is the one that makes Lukas actually stop and reason with her.

Lucky for them, though, that's not the topic tonight. Yet, anyway. The topic is simple, and visceral: dinner. Food. Sustenance. Or at least - that's what the topic was supposed to be. But then there was that kiss,

interested,

which is something rare enough these days as to instantly and exuberantly zing down to some primitive awareness in Lukas. However unpleasant Danicka finds her pregnant physique, Lukas is quite undeterred. It's just almost always from behind now, on their sides; and slower, less ferocious, than those sexual acrobatics they used to engage in.

His eyes have a certain glitter in them when they draw apart. But: tea, she requested. So tea she gets, her mate smiling and kissing her again, quick and light, before murmuring that he'll be back. He straightens. He heads for the kitchen, where he pours her some tea; gets himself a glass of red wine.

"That book any good?" he asks, handing her the tea. Lukas sits beside his mate, setting his wine down, reaching out to help unpack their dinner. There's some bulgogi in there too. And an oyster pancake, which Lukas helps himself to.

Danicka

When he kisses her again, smiling like that, eyes glittering like that, Danicka knows he received that message she sent him, ever so subtly. She knows he felt that. She smiles. So long between them it's been a matter of the ever-eager male and the occasionally-receptive female. There have been times it's even hurt him, as though he wondered if she wanted him, if she accepted him. Not that she was frigid, not that she was resistant -- just that she was so particular. And there have been times when she's had to ask him to please, just hold her. Just kiss her, without it turning into something more, without surrounding her in his wanting, without making her feel like she has to reject him. They've had all of those arguments and difficult conversations, with are common to the point of being almost tragically cliche, the longer two people stay together.

Right now, Lukas may very well feel something like that. Not wanting to push her. Not wanting to risk hurting her or hurting the baby -- now babies -- or any other semi-silly concerns. Not wanting to be one more drain on her patience or her energy when she seems to have very little of one and almost none of the other. He may not worry as much about feeling rejected by Danicka, but Danicka certainly concerns herself with that feeling, even if it's months and years old now, little more than a memory. But the truth is, right now she's more worried about being the one rejected.

It's nothing unusual: she doesn't know if she's actually fat and ugly and stupid or not half the time. She knows she feels tired and gross and this summer is too hot and her back aches and her joints feel weird, and she's not entirely sure that he'll want her. She's not entirely sure that it's even on his mind. She's not sure if -- and this is a bit mad and quite largely influenced by popular culture -- that's just not something they're going to have anymore. As if they can't be parents and lovers at the same time. As if you have to exchange one role for the other.

She kisses him, invitingly and with no small measure of gratitude and adoration, and his eyes glitter. He kisses her again, quick as a spark, and she breathes in. The look in her eyes is happy. That simple: just happy. Her mate likes her, and wants her, and cares for her. She smiles, and asks him for tea, and he's just such a good husband that he goes and brings her a tall iced glass of it. She starts drinking it almost instantly, sighing. She sniffs toward his wine, unashamed as an animal, leaning against his side while he takes out rice and chopsticks and spoons and stew. The bulgogi makes her mouth water, and her eyes keen. "It's all right," she says, which likely means she's already forgotten the last couple of pages. "It keeps me from watching television all day."

They unpack. She starts in on the soondubu and the rice. "I decided to start trying yoga again, now that I'm not feeling sick all the time. It was nice. The prenatal classes are a little more... fuzzy wuzzy, but I felt better afterward. I stopped by the apartment and took a nap. And got a pedicure. And went to the bookstore. And came home." She smiles at him, lifting a bite of beef towards her mouth with the chopsticks. "And now you're here. And we're having dinner." She leans over, kissing his cheek, missing it slightly and ending up kissing his jaw.

Lukas

"And now I'm here," Lukas agrees, the smile tucked into the corner of his mouth dimpling his cheek. "And we're having dinner. And your feet look very lovely."

He leans into the kiss, wordlessly accepting and soliciting attention. He hasn't bothered with his little disposable chopsticks yet -- he's eating with the oyster pancake held in his fingertips, because it's been long enough that it's no longer searingly hot. The bulgogi isn't scalding, either. The soondubu, however, being liquid-y, is still too hot to eat comfortably, so Lukas holds his pancake in his teeth while he takes the lid off his soondubu, dumps his little cup of rice in, stirs it together a bit, and lets it cool.

"Mikuláš," he says, leaning back, taking another bite of oyster pancake. "I was thinking as I was driving home that I like that name. And he can be Nicholas or Nick in school if he wants.

"I've always liked Sofie too. But everyone and their mother names their kids Sofie these days, it seems."

The piece of oyster pancake he took is finished. He starts casting about for a napkin and Danicka, with the familiarity of long acquaintance, of sharing meals with him countless times, of being married, snags up a napkin from the bag and hands it to him. He wipes his hands gratefully, then lays one on her back and kneads gently at her strained lumbar muscles. After a while the kneading turns into stroking: long, smooth pushes of his palm up the center of her back, trailing back down. He's starting to toy with the ties or the zipper or the buttons on her dress when

he stops himself, sitting up, picking up his chopsticks and snapping them apart. They're still eating, after all. He helps himself to some bulgogi, picking up his stew now that it's cooled a bit. They're sitting close enough together that their thighs are aligned; their sides and arms brush.

Danicka

There have been days when he says something like that: your feel look very lovely, some innocuous compliment, and it infuriates her beyond reason. She thinks he's patronizing her. She think she's making fun of her, or talking down to her, or -- worst of all -- growing tired of her. Tonight she beams, and wiggles her toes, because it is okay to feel happy and be silly when your husband compliments your pedicure, which is just a ridiculous sentence when she stops to think about it: husband. Pedicure.

Danicka eats hungrily but with the neat, wasteless motion of a predator. She's deft with chopsticks, having spent a grand portion of her life eating takeout more than cooking. She still isn't much of a cook. She knows how, certainly. She has no passion for it, no interest, no desire to experiment and explore. Lukas doesn't seem to mind. He wasn't looking for an able cook and seamstress when he met her. He wasn't looking for anything when he met her.

Besides: in his family, it was really his father's job to cook for the household more than his mother's. Lukas has no gender-biased illusions on that front.

Out of nowhere, Lukas mentions a name that seems like a backwarsd and flipped-around version of his own name plus a couple letters of her surname. Danicka looks up, eyebrows going up. "Oh, I like that," she says, and she means it. "It sounds like your name and my last name and ...not at all." It makes her smile.

She agrees about Sofie though. She shrugs as she thoughtlessly, automatically passes him a napkin, and that shrug is effective enough to convey a meh that she doesn't need to say aloud. "It's a nice name. I don't love it. And it is a lot m--"

Lukas is rubbing her lower back. Danicka makes a low noise and folds forward a bit, closing her eyes. She doesn't say a word, just exhales a sigh through her nostrils and warms to his touch. Even with her eyes closed she thinks she can feel him watching her as she relaxes. She sighs again as his fingers' rubbing turns into heavy, slow, smooth strokes of his palm. He passes the backline of her dress and the empty, bare space between her shoulder blades. He finds the tie behind her neck hanging down, fiddling with them idly as Kandovany with a ball of string.

He feels her inhale, feels her back press gently against the inside of his wrist with that breath. And he stops himself. He draws back. Danicka blinks to herself, then slowly sits up, blinking again, looking over at him, but he's not taking off his watch or removing his shirt. He's just... going back to dinner.

Quietly: "Why did you stop?"

Lukas

Lukas is chewing a mouthful of bulgogi. He's stirring his stew with a spoon, the chopsticks he's left in there turning round and round with the food. He glances at Danicka as she turns to look at him.

A huff of a laugh: "I didn't want to distract you from dinner. I can wait."

Danicka

He didn't want to distract her from dinner. There's a glimmer in Danicka's eyes, defensiveness, irrational and madcap, but it dies soon enough. Something about what he says: I can wait means something else to her. She breathes in, and exhales, and puts her hand on his hand, stopping his stirring.

Leaning over, Danicka kisses his jaw, and kisses the soft spot behind it, just under his earlobe. Her lips drag up to that sensitive, tender piece of flesh, stroking across it without licking, without suckling, without biting.

"I can't," she whispers.

Lukas

How long has it been? Days. Weeks. Thinking back, Lukas isn't even quite sure they've made love in the entire month of August. Then again, Lukas can barely think right now

with his mate leaning into his arm with those new, full breasts of hers; with her lips nibbling along his jaw, the fragile point behind his ear. His eyes have fallen shut, and his face is relaxed with pleasure, sensation, attention.

I can't, she says. His eyes flicker open. And just in time, because that large cup of beef-seafood-tofu stew is about to tip over onto their carpet. He catches it. He puts it down, and he has just enough sanity in him to give his fingertips a quick wipe on his napkin. Then those fingers are going to those thin little straps tied behind her neck, and this time he's not playing with the dangling ends but tugging them, pulling them loose, even as his mouth finds hers again.

It's a different sort of kiss this time. It's a logical outgrowth, an offspring of the kiss she gave him when he walked in that made his eyes spark, but it is not at all the same. That spark has matured to a burn. His free hand follows the curve of her belly, smooths up between her breasts. He cups her breast altogether as he's eating at her mouth, those ties on the back of her dress loose now, that arm wrapped around her instead.

And no. He's not, in fact, tired of her.

Danicka

Every time, now, it's like this. She brushes her hand up his arm as she passes in some way and she can't help but notice the way he looks up, poorly hiding hopefuless and sheer, abiding want. Or she strokes his chest as she lays against his arm in bed, thoughtful meanderings of her fingers that she never used to do, never for years of knowing her, like she was holding it back for some reason. Every time that she gives him some signal, some form of the yes that's in her heart, it seems to dismantle him from inside.

Danicka wonders, whispering into his ear and watching his lips part, his eyes close, if he's already hard for her, just feeling her near, just sensing her own lust. She contemplates slipping her hand between his thighs and stroking it upward, finding him there, following the curve of his cock with her palm. She decides not to, just yet. She smiles to herself as he recovers himself, placing the bowl of stew down. Chances are, Kando is going to get into the food. She's already lurking around somewhere, smelling beef and clams, licking her maw.

Lukas starts to untie the straps of that long, summery dress and she is breathing faster already, trembling every time his fingertips brush the back of her neck or stray across her skin. She's shivering like a virgin, though not a nervous one. An eager one.

She meant what she said. He can wait. She can't. How long has it been?

Days. Weeks. A month?

Danicka lays her hand on his cheeks as they kiss. As he kisses her, as she pulls his mouth to hers to kiss him. His hand is between her breasts but not on them, at first, and then he cups her like that and a shock goes up through her. Her hands go to the back of his head, pulling him nearer and kissing him harder. She's moaning in his mouth, however soft it may be, almost sighing the sounds. "Miluj m ," she pants, parting her mouth from his for a moment, pleading: "Ach bože, Lukáš, miluj m ."

Lukas

In a way they are virgins to this again. Her body changes from week to week, day to day. Her mood changes; her response changes. Today her breasts seem exquisitely sensitive. He touches them and he can feel the reaction in her, that bolt down her back, the catch in her breath. Today she's so assertive, so bold, taking him in her hands, kissing him back with a ferocity that might,

in a week's time, in a month's, whenever it is they couple again; or perhaps in just seconds, an eyeblink,

become languor. Become a lazy, lush sort of loving, as molten as late summer.

She moans into his mouth. He makes a sound in his throat, his hands going behind her to pull at her clothing, draw it down from her shoulders, down. Love me, she sighs, such a prettily wanting plea that he, no more able to resist her now than ever he was,

reaches for the buttons of his shirt. His fingers fly through them, one and another and another, that crisp grey buttondown he wears today, light and short-sleeved. It comes off his shoulders, bares the span of his chest, that scar, the ridges of his abdomen. Jeans under that. He has to pull away from her, then. He leans his weight back onto his shoulderblades, arches his hips off the couch, opens his fly and pushes down his pants, kicks them to the floor.

There's her answer, then: the solid, hard curve of his erection in his fitted boxer-briefs. He takes a moment to kick his shoes off, and then his socks, and then he's coming back to her. Perhaps she starts to lie back. Or turn over. He stops her -- his hand on her cheek, his mouth finding hers. The kiss is long and dark and deep, and he draws her hand to his cock, presses against her palm as he kisses her mouth. Lukas slips off the couch to kneel on the ground. The coffee table is in the way, so he pushes it back, sloshing a bit of soondubu out of his container, rattling his wineglass and her tea.

His hands on her knees, then. Pushing them apart, opening them to either side of his hips. His kiss presses her back to the cushions even as he wraps his hands behind her knees and draws her hips forward, right to the edge of the sofa. Her dress is a nice touch: makes it easy for him to slide his hands up and under, search out her panties, pull them down, a little scrap on the ground.

The pads of his fingers against her pussy, then. Slipping between her lips, the outer, the inner; slickening, pressing to her opening. He groans at the touch of her, leaning over her with his hand pressed to the cushions; his brow to hers, his mouth catching hers and losing hers, finding hers again.

Danicka

And he comes over her like a storm. Something tugs in her chest, aching and loving and tender, to see how readily he responds to her, how longing his kisses are. It's not like he is a teenager again -- though she never knew him in those years -- and he has no control over himself, he's so wanting. She can feel how his hands move on her breasts, how careful he is, instantly, not to pinch or stroke her her too hard, as soon as he realizes how very sensitive she is tonight. She sees how he undresses himself, he gets that shirt off and his belt and his jeans, without pulling her hands to the fastenings as though he knows that it will only frustrate her and wear her out. He undresses himself for her and comes back. And she smiles, kissing him again, kissing that smile into his mouth as though to share it.

They never used to smile and laugh. Well, they did, but it was always so fraught with tension. They were so serious about it all. And truth be told, some -- though hardly all -- of it seems a little silly now. There were things they couldn't laugh about. Things they still wouldn't. But they were so wary of each other it was like a cat with its reflection, seeing an enemy where there was only another version of the self. And now, these days, they laugh whenever they can. Danicka doesn't want her children growing up in the dark shadow of an Ahroun, afraid to laugh, afraid to smile, afraid to dare happiness because it will be wrenched away from them. She wants them to slide down banisters and she wants them to get in trouble without flinching. Without getting their bones broken.

She thinks that they have to laugh. They need to smile. And it's natural and it comes easier every day, even rough days, but some part of her still knows that she needs it. It's like finally being treated for a disease she's been living with for most of her life. The treatment isn't always easy. And sometimes it feels almost forced. And it is healing her.

Danicka touches him and there's adoration in it. Two smooth, slow strokes of her hand where he places it. Her mouth open and firm on his. She doesn't lie back. She doesn't turn over. Her dress is falling down and baring her breasts one at a time. He presses into her hand, and she strokes him again, faster, but

he gets on his knees, pushing the table out of the way and reaching for her, rucking the miles of fabric up her legs. Danicka laughs softly as he starts pushing her legs open, too, kissing her hard enough to take the wind out of that laughter, to press her back. She thinks, when he pulls her legs forward, that he's going to go down on her. She starts to shake her head, even as she's lifting her hips and letting him take her panties off, reaching for her, touching her. She gasps at that first touch, moving her mouth from his, guiding his lips to her throat.

"Lukáš," she sighs, the words gilded with pleading, "I want you close to me. Chci, abys m držet a d lat se mnou milovat."

Lukas

Lukas hesitates. She can almost see it, the thoughts that go through his head, the logistics, the geometry of it all. Perhaps she wants to laugh. Perhaps she does laugh,

because it's okay to laugh now. He wants her to laugh. They both -- though perhaps they've never said it aloud -- want their children to laugh. To feel safe laughing. To feel their home is their own, they have a place here, they have the right to feel happy or sad or angry, they have the right to make mistakes and get in trouble without being broken for it, and the right to do well without feeling obligated.

He kisses her again. He kisses her throat where she guides his mouth, sucks at her skin, nips at her and nuzzles and all the while, all that time he's touching her, reveling in her touch. There's a moment pause when he thinks about how to make it work. Then he wraps his arms around her, her belly a great turgid warmth between them that makes him laugh: he lifts her up off the couch with gratifyingly little effort

(at least: he's gratified by it. see how strong he is, how able, how capable of protecting and tending to his mate!)

and lays her down on the carpet. He comes down over her almost immediately, his hand resting over her abdomen just for a moment as though to make sure he won't be compressing her, or the proto-pups; or perhaps as though to apologize to them for the impending mechanical agitation.

Then that hand goes to Danicka's breast. He lowers his head to her, licking her nipples, sucking gently, gently, as he shifts between her thighs and guides himself to her pussy. She can feel him searching, finding, sliding, pressing: and then the flexion in his flank, his thighs, his lower back -- a slow steady entry, his mouth losing her breast to pant a groan out. When he's inside her he shifts over her again, settling on his elbows and his forearms over her, his hands cradling her head gently. He kisses her mouth. It's a sweet thing, that kiss: sweet and long.

Danicka

Danicka can most certainly see it. The way he pauses, the gears spinning in his head. She can almost imagine the various ideas that occur to him: to wrangle themselves on the couch, to carry her upstairs to the bed, to bend her over -- to love her, and to hold her, and to do so very soon.

She does laugh. She draws his mouth to her own and kisses him again. It's sweet. Sometimes he wants so badly to be a good mate, to be a good father, to take care of the den and her and the cat and everything, and it makes her ache a little. It isn't a bad ache.

Lukas comes up with his plan. Without a word, he scoops her up in his arms, laughing for no reason she can readily see other than happiness, and lays her down on the carpet. She is glad they keep a clean house. She lays back, breathing in, looking up at him --

but only for a moment, before his hand runs up her belly and his body comes down closer to hers. He has worked his way out of his boxer-briefs somewhere in there, left them elsewhere on the floor where her underwear is, and he hasn't even finished undressing her. Maybe -- and it says something that she thinks this before she thinks he doesn't even want to look at me -- he is afraid the babies will get cold. Because he is Lukas. He worries about these things. Mad things. Impossible things. He worries over them, just in case.

Danicka pulls him down to her. They kiss again, because she demands it, and because she needs it. He lowers his head to lick at her, so soft, never stiffening his tongue or rubbing his face on her. Without another word between them he's inside of her, pressing into her as slow as he can, careful, careful and needful. She exhales with him, her gasp more of a sigh, her hands running up his sides,

her body clenching around him the way it always does.

--

They make love slowly, and some of that is desire and some of that is necessity. Danicka's skin is so tender, her limbs easily fatigued, her back often aching. She is eager, though, kissing him in ways that make it hard to go slow, make it difficult not to push her down harder and just fuck her. Lukas's skin sweats under her hands. The house is warm even as summer evening turns to summer night. The fan overhead does not seem to wick away nearly enough of the heat they are building between them.

But god, she's wet. And rakes her nails over his flank and tips her head back while he's watching her, holding himself up over her, grinding the length of his cock along her clit while he's sliding into her, drawing back, flexing forward again. What's shocking is how quickly, how soon, she starts trembling, how she holds him tighter and whimpers. There's no warning -- none verbal, at least. Just her writhing, biting her lower lip to keep from groaning too loudly because the windows are open and surely some of their neighbors are out for evening strolls still.

It builds inside of her gradually at first, slow and coy and elusive. Comes at her from behind, pressing up through her spine and turning her entire body molten. She can't even clutch at him when she comes, her palms flattening on his hips, her mouth open to pant, to gasp, so that she won't scream instead. And that orgasm, like several he's seen over the past couple of months, takes its time with her. It winds up through her body lazily, unfurling, coming in wave after wave. When she can breathe again she starts making this noise, soft and light, over and over and over. It's a tender little oh, only not quite so defined, not quite so clear in its boundaries of where each letter opens into another.

She's still coming long after she stops being able to move. And even then, every few moments another ripple goes through her, the pleasure dizzying, making her hold a little tighter to Lukas to get her through it.

Lukas

What a slow, lush thing their lovemaking is. As lazy as the season, the heat, the evening itself. There's nothing rough about it, nothing ferocious and biting. It's a languid, deep-felt, intimate affair, their bodies close together as they can manage, his cock sliding into her so slow and firm and liquid.

She comes amazingly soon. It goes on forever and ever. This pregnancy has not been an easy one, not for either of them, but this much truth deserves acknowledgment: the sex, rare as it is becoming, is incredible. And as Danicka is dissolving, transcending, unfurling into that orgasm,

Lukas is still moving into her, is lifting her with a hand beneath the small of her back, is giving it to her slow and steady and deep; holding inside her as that endless long wave finally crests over her; moving again as she comes down.

Oh, she sighs, again and again, her hands pressing, catching, holding on to him. And he kisses her neck, kisses her mouth, kisses her everywhere he can reach her.

Her dress is still half on. He rolls it up, now -- slides a hand under her, lifts her, strips that thing off her head, her arms, tosses it to the floor. Now she's bare, and he's kicking his boxer-briefs off his ankles where he'd left them, and now he's bare too. He's slipped out of her; comes back to her now, finds her, enters her, bites her shoulder tenderly, so tenderly as he flexes into her. Their bodies meet; the fit is as perfect as it ever is. He kisses her where he bit her. He kisses her neck, he kisses her earlobe. His arms wrap under her, and the truth is they both have to squirm a little to make room for her belly,

the cubs,

but they make it work. He laughs softly past her ear. His teeth grip her shoulder again, and it's a signal of sorts; a sign, at least, of what's coming.

Which is: sex, plainly put. A little bit harder than before. Firm, deep thrusts, that powerful war-honed body of his stroking into hers. A rhythm carried through his spine, his loins, his hips, his cock -- moving into her again and again, a little faster now, breathing harder against her skin where he holds her. "Baby," he pants, and it doesn't mean anything, it's not a prelude to anything, he just says it and then

and then the next stroke hits her swift and deep. He locks, a quiver deep in those large muscles of the back, the flank, the shoulder. Lukas is quiet this time, because of the open windows, because of the nature and the character of their lovemaking; not because he feels like he needs to hold back, hold out on her. He's quiet, he grunts against her shoulder at the crest of his orgasm, he nuzzles her skin afterward, panting quietly but harshly, swiftly, thrusting into her again and again, fucking it into her, groaning low and strained near the end.

Afterward, he rolls a little off her. And he finds her mouth, kisses her, holds her breast in his hand a while. Moves that hand down a little later; rests it over her belly instead.

He kisses his mate again like that, hand resting protective and adoring on her body. And over what they made together: those new, rapidly-growing little things, so nearly viable now in their own right.