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.
LukasThey 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.
LukasThat 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."
DanickaHer 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."
DanickaShe 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.
LukasLukas'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."
DanickaStamp 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?"
LukasStamp 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.
DanickaIn 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?"
DanickaDanicka 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?"
DanickaHe 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."
DanickaMaybe 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."
LukasHis 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.
LukasLukas 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?"
DanickaThey 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.
LukasLukas 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."
DanickaPart 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?"
DanickaHe 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."
LukasSomething 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."
DanickaHer 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.
