Tuesday, December 31, 2013

st. lucia.

Danicka

About a week later, but not on New Year's Eve -- the night before -- the nanny comes to the house, which isn't entirely unusual. By then, however, Danicka has told him they're going away. Neither of them have traditional jobs; his pack knows this is coming, Sinclair has been warned that she might be a little more On Call for New Year's; since becoming an Adren, she has only grown more dangerous in battle, the second-most dangerous fighter in their pack. But that's no different from ever, and the pack knows that's his anniversary, anyway, just as they know -- and Danicka knows -- that if he is needed, he will come back. That, too, is part of their life together. They share him with his mate and children, and Katherine, who saw him in the Underworld during the rite to beckon spring, knows perhaps better than any how dear it is to him, how vital. They all know that his mate and children share him just as freely with the war, a far costlier price.

They are going away. Danicka has packed his bag and refuses to let him look inside of it, which is rather presumptuous but also makes some sense: she's known him some time now. He can trust her. He sort of has to, because she's making him. They are going away, she says, for the week, returning on Friday, which gives her the whole weekend before she jumps back into the academic quarter.

But first, they are going to New York City. And it is frigid there, as it is frigid here, so on Monday afternoon when the nanny has settled in and they have run around packing the little extras and Danicka has kissed and kissed and kissed each of her girls and told them how precious and marvelous and amazing they both are about a dozen times, they pile into the cab that is waiting outside. It is the longest they will have ever been away from their children, and the longest trip they've ever taken together, too. Danicka is too excited in the cab to O'Hare to even cry.

She does cry on the plane to JFK, when they have to turn off their phones. She has to squeezes Lukas's hand as he assures her that it's okay. It's okay for them to have their own lives, Eliska and Tatiana will be okay, their nanny is amazing, they can call every day and skype if the place they're going has a good connection and it's okay. Danicka nods, and this time she isn't just crying because she misses them, she's crying because she really is worried about them being so far away, without her, without Lukas. He even tells her he'll find a moon bridge if they need him. He will get to them if they need him. And she sniffs, nodding in those coach seats -- an oddity, when traveling with Danicka -- and leaning on his shoulder as they take off.

The trip to New York is brief, and they never leave the airport. They do go into the terminal, however, to meet Jaroslav and Marjeta and Miloslav, sitting and drinking coffee and chatting and showing pictures of the granddaughters for close to an hour before Danicka says they need to head to their connecting flight: hugs and kisses then, back-patting, squeezes of arms, mentions of Happy Anniversary and Have a Good New Year sending them off.

They fly on Virgin Atlantic. And he has to know, when they go back to their gate, because it's displayed and because Danicka eventually has to give him his ticket:

for their third anniversary, she's decided to take him to the island of St. Lucia.

Which is why he wasn't allowed to pack for himself; he would have guessed something like this if she'd told him to pack for an island vacation.

--

This time they sit in first class, and Danicka sips some champagne and their flight attendant is ever so pleasant, but not very attentive. Having a werewolf of any kind in a plane is always dicey; having an ahroun of Lukas's strength and rage is risky, but Danicka, well... no one ever would say she was all that risk-aversive. So she takes him to St. Lucia, takes him from there to a hotel called the Cap Maison, to a room that is more like a home. It is the rooftop villa, the terrace boasting its own pool. The bedroom balconies provide a view of the coastline, the turquoise-colored waters. It is incredibly lavish.

And it is so warm. So warm that they are shedding their layers in the airport on the way to the hotel. So warm that most of their clothing is linen and light-colored and Danicka is going to only be wearing skirts and shorts and never a bra unless it's one to share with her husband in particular. Danicka tells him, as porters secure their language and she drapes her arms around his neck, that the terrace is completely private,

that they don't even need to wear swimsuits to sunbathe,

that they can just leave the doors to the balcony open all night.

--

Sheets of Egyptian cotton. Wireless throughout. Their own kitchen. This place, with its water and its beaches and their own private terrace, for the rest of this night, and the next one, and the first two-and-a-half days of the New Year.

Danicka

http://stlucianow.com/

http://capmaison.com/accommodation/oceanview-villa-suite-with-pool-roof-terrace/

Lukas

Despite that they rarely flaunt it, the truth is Lukas and Danicka are quite wealthy. Hers is an earned wealth, his the product of clever planning by his parents; both of theirs, one that they have nurtured and multipled through years -- decades -- of investments.

And it is a wealth that, by and large, they shepherd carefully. They do not spend frivolously. They are not wasteful. Though they do not deny themselves, and would never allow themselves or their loved ones go without, they know the value of money and of frugality. Some -- much! -- of their furniture was secondhand. Their house is small, though large enough for all of them, and their gifts to each other more thoughtful and meaningful than grandiose and expensive.

And then, something like this. Something that makes it so absolutely undeniable that they are wealthy. That they are rich. That, if they wanted to, they could have the very best, and know how to enjoy it.

--

A stopover in New York City. An hour with the parents, showing off those many, many, many pictures Danicka took; a few steaming paper cups of coffee, some coffee cakes. Catching up, seeing each other, hugging, smiling, taking a few new pictures to commemorate the occasion.

And then: goodbye hugs, kisses, back-pats. An extra-long one from Jaroslav to his daughter-in-law, and then the two parties part. Jaroslav and Marjeta, who have become quite close to Miloslav, make their way out of the airport. Lukas and Danicka go back through security,

and to the gate,

and onto that long flight into the tropics.

--

They sleep on the flight. They have their own little pods in first class, but the pods adjoin, and they lower the screen between. Lukas sleeps with his hand straying into Danicka's side, fingers uncurled. He holds her hand if she lets him.

--

When they land it is morning. It is unbelievably warm, and the air smells like the sea. The airport is small, and it feels a little resort-like in its own right. A taxi takes them to the hotel,

where Lukas has already shed his outer layers and rolled his sleeves up,

where Danicka drapes her arms around his neck and tells him all that she tells him,

where he lifts her in his arms and swings her gently around the way he used to, and sometimes still does, when he hasn't seen her for a while and misses her terribly.

--

They are not the type to frenetically perform every possible tourist activity in whatever new place they have traveled to. They spend most of the first day idle and carefree.

At lunch they stray downstairs; wind through the local streets in summery clothing. The locals speak a version of Creole French, but it's not quite the same as the one Danicka sometimes heard in New Orleans. Still, English is enough of a global language that they get by without trouble. They eat at a small brasserie by the water, open to the sky, washed by the sea breeze. On the way back to the motel they find an open market and buy some fruit, bananas and mangos and guavas and two green coconuts that they ask the fruitseller to split open for them.

And they drift back to their room, which is actually a suite; they strip to swimwear -- or perhaps nothing at all, if Danicka is bold, though Lukas is a touch more shy. They sip from their coconuts and bathe in the sun and dip in the pool and dry out again. They look over the deep blue sea, the mountains at their back, and Lukas reads a local tour guide and suggests a sailing trip, and maybe a drive to the rainforests, and definitely a drive through a volcano.

As the sun dips lower they order room service. A spread of elegant tapas; the centerpiece a rendition of the island's national dish of green banana and saltfish. Lukas is a little apprehensive, but adventerous: he tries it, and it's good, but the truth is the heartier dishes are more to his taste.

It is dark when they finish dinner. Lukas has put clothes back on by then. Linen slacks and a shirt that he leaves unbuttoned. There's no glass in the windows and doors, and there doesn't need to be. The shutters are enough to keep out the gentle breeze. The temperature, even in the coldest hours before dawn, are well over seventy degrees.

They leave the windows and doors open. They leave only a few lights on. Lukas, whimsical and romantic-minded, finds some candles and lights them over the remnants of their dinner. He puts on some music, soft enough to be unintrusive, loud enough to be heard from the terrace.

Let's dance, he murmurs,

taking his mate by the hand, leading her out under the open sky.

Danicka

They've spent all day together, and that very long flight, with its flat beds and hand-holding. But he holds her and swings her like that, like he's barely seen her. And she just smiles, and smiles, and kisses him. She does not tell him Happy Anniversary just yet. Though truth be told, it really is their anniversary. She's contacted the nanny already to let them know they've arrived; everything is fine back home, because of course it is.

And they spend it in relaxation. They stroll. They don't speak Patois, but they do okay. Danicka shops here and there, her hair up in a messy bun, large sunglasses over her pale eyes, wearing a strapless sundress and a pair of slip-on shoes that do not really match but are comfortable and she is on vacation and so there.

Back at their room she lays out naked under the sun -- naked but for shades and her wedding ring, actually. The sunblock has faded and she lets herself tan, drowsing in those sunglasses, sipping fresh coconut water every so often. When she sits up to turn over she feels Lukas staring at her, watching her move, and she smirks at him, stretching, elongating her spine like a cat. Lying on her stomach, she watches him swim, watches the muscles in his back move and ripple as his powerful arms pull him through the water. She loves his body. She doesn't say it aloud this time, but she thinks he knows. She thinks he notices, when he plants his hands on the edge of the pool and pulls himself up, that she has to take a sip of air at the sight of him.

Between the pool and dinner, they discuss plans for the week, and Danicka is amicable to just about anything but actual plans and itineraries. She will go along with anything, it seems, and let anything happen. But they do take a break then to call back home. Chicago is only two hours behind, which may or may not have been part of Danicka's planning for this trip, but she wraps herself in a silk robe and beams at her children and their nanny, talking to them with Lukas at the laptop camera until they turn it off. She seems terribly happy after this, settled in a way she wasn't, even when lazing in the sun, even when taking a dip and making out with him in the water, even when she went back to her lounger to dry in the sunshine.

She is viscerally an animal. And she is very, very far from her young. To be with them, for a moment, confirms what Lukas kept telling her on the plane: that it is okay. That they are safe. That she is still their mother, and a good mother, and that being separated from her once in a while will make them stronger and happier.

--

She is wearing nothing more than that silk robe, her hair down in sundrenched waves, her skin starting to show the golden glow of her tan already, when room service delivers their food. She has one shoulder off, the robe very lazily tied, while Lukas gets himself dressed. Danicka seems quite clothing-averse, in fact, but he's never seen her in such a warm climate. He had no idea. She eats fruit and licks juice from her chin, one foot propped up on another chair, silk hiding her cunt from him, and she is drinking white wine and eating with her fingers like an animal.

They leave the doors all wide open. Danicka licks mouse from a spoon while he lights candles, turns on music, smirking to herself while he sets the mood in a place that needs no mood-setting at all to be romantic, to be languid, to be soft. He wants to dance.

And they dance outside, where they can hear both the music and the waves, where he can smell the sunlight in her hair and feel it on her skin where it presses to him through her robe. She is smiling, her eyes closed, when she asks him if he wants his birthday present now.

Lukas

Through the day, there's a slow fire kindling between them. It first sparks -- well, if one is honest, perhaps it first sparked when he reached across the divide between their flatbed seats in the plane. When his fingers entwined with hers while he was aware of the first-class cabin all around; the flight attendants, the other passengers in their semiprivate carrels.

It builds, though, when they return to their room. When she sheds every last scrap of her clothes and lays herself naked in the sun, sunglasses over her eyes, her wedding ring sparking on her finger. He swims. She sips from her coconut. She smirks at him when she sees him surfacing from an underwater excursion down the length of the pool; sees him tossing water out of his hair, wiping his face clear and setting his elbows back on the edge of the pool

so he can stare at her. Eyelids half-lowered against the sun; light bouncing off the water into his irises. Licking his lips visibly as he watches her stretch.

They discuss plans for the week, which aren't really plans at all but just a loose list of things they'd like to do. She drowses, listening to him. He moves his lounger a little closer, and a little closer, and then

his dark head bent to her breast; her fingers threaded through his wet hair. He luxuriates in her like this for a while, but the sun is still high, and they are so exposed out here, and so: he ends up squeezing onto her lounger with her, his arms wrapped loosely around her, his head heavy on her shoulder and his legs intertwined with hers as he drowses.

When they wake they call the kids. And the nanny. And she is their mother, she is so their mother that Lukas's heart swells and aches. He waves through the computer screen at them, tells Tatiana to be good and Eliska not to worry. They sign off, and they turn the computer off.

--

And then dinner. And then that silk robe sliding off her shoulder. And his eyes on her, gleaming through the dark, catching the beads of juice she licks from her fingers; the shape of her nipples through that robe. He sets a mood, but really: it is a sort of game. A delaying tactic. He asks her to dance,

and this is the same thing.

She asks him if he'd like his present.

He is half-hard under those loose, lowslung pants. She can feel it where they press together, his arms loose around her waist. Then he is shrugging his shirt from his shoulders one arm at a time, as though he has little doubt of the nature of his present. Or perhaps as though he would like to give her a gift in turn; an anniversary remembrance, perhaps.

"Yes," he whispers. And her hair smells like sunlight and clear water. She smells like herself when he kisses her beneath her ear, tender-hot. "Yes, I do."

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

a quiet little christmas this year.

Lukas

They've spent every Christmas together since they found each other again in Chicago.

The first: not even a year after they'd met. A cornucopia of gift-giving laced with perhaps a hint of desperation, as though they were trying to make up for all the time they didn't know each other. All the time they spent distrusting each other. All the ways the world could pull them away from each other.

The second: a little more moderated, though still touched with ache. The magnolia he gave her. All the memberships to museums and planetariums and aquariums and the like. The way he tried to show her: I know you. I want you to learn. I want you to explore. I want you to feel safe. And the camera she gave him. The stationery, the pen; the things she gave him so he could keep in touch with his family, which he was just ever so slowly beginning to mend ties to. The note she gave him. The way his heart collapsed in on itself a little to read it.

And the third. When they invited all their family. When Lukas rented that ridiculous van and spent several days driving everyone around, so happy, so pleased to be surrounded by so much love, so many people who smelled and looked like himself, or like his mate; so much family-pack. When he, perhaps, came closer than he ever had before or ever will again to being a father-figure to Irena. When they acknowledged for the first time that they would not just accept what children came but wanted them. Not yet. But soon.

That was also the Christmas when he gave her himself, chained and bound and surrendered to her.

So there's that.

And the fourth: that was when the pups came. When their families came too. When everything was hectic and rushing and confused and new, when they didn't know how to hold those tiny pups, when they didn't know what this cry meant or that wail, when they hardly even remembered how to reconnect to each other.

--

Their four Christmases. Not a one of them mundane or simple or plain. Every last one of them memorable, wondrous, remarkable. But not ...

not just a normal Christmas. A quiet, gentle, soft holiday at home with loved ones.

--

This is their fifth Christmas. And when they wake in the morning it is Christmas Eve, and yes, Lukas's little fantasy of sleeping in until noon doesn't really happen. He does get the pups when they start to fuss, changing them and rocking them and warming them with the heat of his body as he carries them to their parents' room. They do nurse from Danicka as their parents drowse, those much larger bodies forming a protective circle around them. He does put them back in their room, unsupervised but safe, while he and their mother drowses a little longer.

But soon enough it is Morning. It is Time To Get Up. An Danicka goes to change them this time while Lukas brushes his teeth and washes his face and shaves. These days, he's switched to using a safety razor more often than not. Still refuses to use a Schick or a Gilette or, god forbid, an electric razor -- but it's a rare thing for him to have the time to break out the straight razor.

He does this morning, though. Because it's almost Christmas. Because it's a tiny little present to himself: to steam his face on a hot towel. To dab on shaving cream with a badger-hair brush. To shave with that elegant, vicious instrument, in motions as smooth and thoughtless and practiced as the kata of a martial artist.

When he comes downstairs his face is smooth and the house is bright. Danicka has happy-sounding music playing. She is feeding the twins the mushy solids they're eating these days, and Lukas stops by the kiss her on the temple before going to fry up some eggs and bacon, slice some melon.

They have breakfast. And then Lukas puts the twins down for their mid-morning nap while Danicka goes to the store, and this is a rare thing, a privilege, but one that he is still just a little afraid to shoulder.

When she comes home, he is reading in front of their door. His back to the wall; sunlight illuminating the page. Lifting his head as she comes up the stairs, straightening his spine to receive her kiss, smiling.

--

There's a prime rib roast marinating in the refrigerator. They take a bit of time to clean up the house before they throw the roast in the oven: vacuuming the floors, wiping down the counters. By afternoon the roast is roasting and Lukas is peeling potatoes over the sink and Danicka is folding kolaches together and they have a bag of cranberry-almond-salad mix ready to go.

Their family does not come for Christmas this year. Perhaps they came for Thanksgiving: a great gathering of a dozen or more people, so many that the roof almost lifted off the little house from the noise and the merriment and the sheer number of bodies. Not for Christmas, though.

For Christmas, it's just the five of them. Danicka and Lukas. Tatiana and Eliska. Kandovany. No more, no less: a perfect little unit.

And they are not fancy this year. There is a tree, but it is a simple, artificial, modernish one with snowy white boughs and preinstalled clear lights. The only ornaments on that tree are those moons of theirs, and perhaps a few others that they'd felt like putting up. Also: Kandovany's orange collar. There are a few presents under the tree. Two each for everyone, none of them enormous, none of them outlandish.

A quiet little Christmas, this year. A quiet, warm, intimate, gentle little Christmas, here in their very own den.

Danicka

This is not their first Christmas as a family. But it is their first Christmas with just their family: just the five of them. Just their chic little tree, because there will be years enough for the handmade ornaments from school and the children getting to decorate with their parents. Two stockings, two small stockings, and one tiny stocking are all hung on the stair railing: red for Lukas, green for Danicka, white with red for Tatiana, white with green for Eliska, and a teensy orange one with a fuzzy top. The lights on the tree are clear, and Danicka wanted some color so they added a bunch of small red baubles to go with the four moon-shaped ornaments.

Kando is very interested in that tree, as she has been interested in their trees every year. But Kando is rather well disciplined, and more than that, if it doesn't involve hunting, Kando is rather lazy. Climbing an artificial tree is so much work. For Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, she wears her collar with the little fruit-shaped bell, and she has learned how to walk without that bell making a sound, which is a bit frightening, but so it goes.

She wears it, soundless and tail twitching aimlessly, while she watches Danicka play in the living room with the girls, dancing together to Sweet Caroline while papa cleans up from breakfast. Maybe he dances with them: he did promise, and Danicka reminds him that he promised, when she hands him one of his one-year-olds so he can dance with her, too. Eliska loves stomping her feet when she dances, throwing her arms everywhere.

They have nowhere to be. So they all dance.

--

Naptime is much quieter. It takes the twins time to settle down after a couple of ounces in their bottles, fed by their parents in that silly double-rocker Lukas was so happy to get. The blackout curtains are pulled on their nursery window; the white noise machine is on softly. The doors are closed so Kando doesn't wander in. But it's Lukas who sits in the darkened room for a while, staying until they know they are safe, shushing them when they babble to each other, because Danicka said that they just need to be told that now it's time to sleep and they can talk when they get up.

He puts them to sleep and steps outside to read, unable or unwilling or simply not wanting to go any farther. And Danicka sits down with him and snuggles. For no reason at all, when they could be doing plenty of other things, they sit in the hallway outside of their children's nursery and she lays her head on his shoulder and they read together in silence.

--

They are alone this year. But not as alone as they were the first two years. After the girls wake up, after they all have a quick lunch, after they read some stories to the twins, after a very very very very very brief trip outside so the girls can feel the snow, after playing with some large-pieced puzzles and other toys on the nursery floor, it is miraculously time for another nap, though this one is shorter.

Danicka and Lukas cook and clean the house and prepare for Christmas Eve Dinner. She explains the presence of more presents than there should be thusly: "The girls wanted to get you presents," she says offhandedly, archly, "so we went shopping." Which she will say is the absolute truth til the day she dies: the twins each wanted to buy their daddy a present, so Danicka facilitated. And that is why Lukas has a present from Eliska and one from Tatiana and also the two birthday gifts they got him, though those aren't under the tree but hidden. That is why the gifts stacked up with unexpected quickness prior to this evening.

Also, she informed him some time ago that stockings were exempt from the two-gift rule, because those are from Santa-slash-Baby-Jesus and you don't want to try imposing silly limitations on them, do you?

Lukas mashes the potatoes, roasts the prime rib. Danicka makes the house smell like pastries and warm fruit filling. The babies are allowed to sleep quite late indeed, their nap lasting well past four, and they get up and stretch and play quietly and look at board-style books on a fluffy blanket in one corner of the kitchen while their parents go on cooking. There are a couple of low drawers and cabinets they know they are allowed to get into, filled with things like plasticware and measuring cups, and they make a bit of a mess as usual, but Danicka -- and Lukas, even -- are getting quite adept at moving around without stepping on anyone.

The twins have been on solids for long enough now that they have a bit of prime rib and potatoes to go with their pureed vegetables; mushed up somewhat, but they have their own plates and spoons. They each have a parent to help them here and there, but manners at the dinner table have been strictly enforced ever since the girls could hold their heads up and sit in their high chairs. For the most part, even while helping the girls, Danicka and Lukas talk the way they always do. Kandovany eats downstairs at her own bowl, away from the noisy humans.

They are too young for a family movie night. Evening is a time for being quiet, at least when you have toddlers, so they throw some plastic sheeting down and finger-paint. It is very messy and it is wonderful and they do several sets of family handprints before Danicka gets one she wants to frame. And by the time Eliska starts yawning, Lukas and Danicka are both more than ready for them to take a bath and go to bed.

So there is a bath upstairs, which is partly to get clean and partly more play-time. There is a bit of teeth-brushing with tiny, soft-soft-soft brushes. There is Lukas, arm over the back of the double rocker, holding one of their girls while Danicka nurses the other. It is dark. It is quiet. It has been, like most days with two extra small, needy people, rather tiring. The meal, the bath, the darkness and their mother's breast do what nothing else can; Tatiana is falling asleep while she is still nursing, the hour later than she is used to. They go to sleep pretty much right away, with no idea who Santa is, or that tomorrow is their father's birthday.

It is still hours until it is actually Christmas. But as Danicka and Lukas leave the bedroom, she tells him she has a surprise.

--

The surprise is heard knocking downstairs a few moments later, and the surprise is a fifteen year-old girl who lives down the street, who was conscripted a few times over the summer to help Danicka with the girls before the nanny was hired, who has stayed alone with them for a couple of hours, who has several younger siblings of her own. And her parents are a few houses down: anything she can't handle, there will be adults to help her with right there.

So Danicka takes Lukas to a bookstore for the evening. It's not a Date Night. It's not to do Christmas shopping. It's a few evening hours where they can go stroll the shelves, flick through some magazines, and sip overpriced coffee and hot chocolate drinks. Danicka calls Lukas's father about a book he mentioned when she can't remember the title. They only stay out until ten-thirty or so; they're home by eleven to send the babysitter -- sitting on the couch, baby monitor beside her, reading her own book -- back home. It's only a few houses, but they offer to drive her anyway since it's so cold. They pay her in cash, and Danicka gives her the gift card she got at the bookstore tonight as a Christmas gift, and

frankly, after that, they just go to bed.

--

Lukas is very near asleep when Danicka moves over him, kissing silence into his mouth and running her hand down his side to his hip, to his groin, gasping softly when she finds him, murmuring that she wants him.

She's sleepy and a bit slurred and they are both warm and lazy and it is slow and under-covers and quiet, and there's no manacles or vibrators or ass-slapping. There's not even really any biting until afterward, when Danicka's back is to his chest and he is taking her shoulder gently, softly in his teeth

to sleep.

Lukas

Dancing with Danicka and the pups in the living room, Lukas is reminded suddenly, poignantly of the first time he danced with Danicka. Or well: the first time she asked him to dance. Not in Smartbar -- though they'd met in a club, they spent the entirety of that brief meeting conversing. Sparring with their words, in a way. Testing each other. Learning each other.

No. The first time she asked him to dance, she was still living with Liadin. He was coming out of her bedroom, doing the infamous walk of shame, and she was in her living room with the stereo on and Toto was singing about Africa and

come dance!

she'd called, and he was awkward and unsure of everything, of her and them and everything, and so he didn't really dance.

He dances now. Without an ounce of misgiving, joyfully: twirling Danicka, swaying one pup, tossing the other, dipping his wife, laughing.

--

Later that night, after the twins are in bed, they go to a bookstore. They pick out books and lounge in comfortable armchairs where Lukas puts his feet up on an footstool and Danicka curls sideways, and their hands link easily and loosely across the distance while they flip the pages.

Their lovemaking, later, has the same gentle warmth. The same casual familiarity. No manacles, no vibrators, no ass-slapping, no growling, no shrieking, nothing of the sort. Just movement and proximity, slow and sensual, gasps loosed into the air and hands tangling under the covers. His teeth sinking ever so lightly into her shoulder afterward, as they snuggle together to sleep,

his arm around her waist, her hand holding his to her breast.

--

And then,

it's Christmas. A day dawning cold and bright; no snow from the skies, but plenty on the ground. And in some ways it's a day like any other: awakening to the fussing over the baby monitor, padding over in bare feet, half-asleep, to lift the twins from their bed. Change the diapers. Bring them to mama. Curl around them while they nurse, drowsing, his fingers gently stroking Danicka's hip as he listens to the tiny, greedy sounds his pups make.

But then it's time to get up. It's time to wash and brush and shave (just the safety razor, today), and it's time to go downstairs, and it's time for breakfast, and then after breakfast

it is time for presents.

It is not the twins' first Christmas. But they were only four days old for their first Christmas, and barely home from the hospital yet, and everything was hectic and strange and so: it is, in a way, the twins' first Christmas. And so they are allowed to open their presents first, which is to say: they are handed their presents, and they bat at them and bounce on their butts and laugh and maybe gnaw on a corner before Lukas reaches over and helps them make that first tear in the wrapping paper.

And then: oh, then they get it. Then there's a whole lot of noisy and gleeful ripping, throwing, kicking-of-feet. And soon wrapping paper is scattered everywhere, and Kando is curled atop the couch with her eyes slitted disdainfully, watching the two-legs and their noisy offspring, and Tatiana and Eliska are discovering their Christmas presents from their daddy, which are:

toys. Of course. Stuffed animals, big and soft and huggable and reasonably durable. Tatiana gets a shark. It is a rather pretty shark, with a blue back and a soft while belly, but it also has beady black eyes and about a hundred teeth. Eliska gets a T-rex. And it is a rather pretty T-rex, green with a yellow belly, but it has glinting red eyes and about a hundred teeth. And that's when Danicka realizes,

this is what she gets,

making babies with an Ahroun. Who looks absolutely gleeful, watching his daughters glomp onto their new toys.

--

They get little things from their daddy, too. Little gifts exempt from the two-gifts rule, tucked into their stockings. Two little bucket hats, for one, with big colorful sunflowers sewn into the crown. And little chew-toys -- teething rings, if you must -- shaped like cute little sheep. Maybe he's trying to teach them something.

Kandovany gets a packet of catnip "cigars" from Lukas. And also, tucked into her very tiny stocking: a furry faux-mouse for her to bat around. A tribute, perhaps, in hopes that she'll refrain from pouncing at Lukas's heels for a while. It's questionable whether the offering will be accepted as adequate.

--

And then: Danicka.

It's not a pile of gifts this year. It's not something so precious and fragile as a magnolia tree. The gifts are smaller, and they are plainer, and perhaps laced with a touch of whimsicality and humor. Yet even in these, it is apparent: he does know her. She is his mate, and the mother of his children, and the love of his many, many lives.

There's a rectangular package, first. A picture-frame, it turns out. A picture, it turns out: or more precisely, a page from some advanced mathematics textbook. And painted over the page, drawn bold and unmistakable:

You are more beautiful than
e^ipi + 1 = 0

--

A different gift, then. A small package: a book. But not a book sold at any bookstore in the country or, in fact, the world. Something self-published, a thin volume about the size of a paperback novel, but hardbound in black. And the title, stamped in gold: tyři Vlci.

"The rest of the pack helped me with this one," Lukas says quietly. "Sinclair and I chased down the leads and gathered the information. Maddox did some proofing and editing. And Kate found a kinfolk publisher who was willing to take on a very small, very confidential order.

"It's a collection of all the songs, tales and records we could find about the pack. Our pack. From ... before. I know you probably share some of Red's memories now, but ... I thought it would be nice to have it on paper like this. Our lives, seen through history's eyes, passed down through the ages."


Lukas

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Danicka

Danicka remembers the first time she asked Lukas to dance with her, too, and how he refused, and how frustrating he was in his never-ending insistence on being serious, on being controlled, on being so locked-down it was like he could hardly stand the idea of laughing or being happy. The first time she saw him laugh, long before that, was one of the moments when she thought she might be falling for him. These days when they dance it is often foreplay, even when they don't mean it to be; she just loves to be close to him. She loves feeling him holding her, moving with her, regardless of the speed of the song.

They dance now, though, as a family. And it is very full of laughter and happiness and silliness and she feels very, very close to him indeed, even when he is dancing with one of their daughters and not with her.

Tatiana, it turns out, likes to be tossed up in the air; they are old enough for this now. Still, it's just a few inches from daddy's hands. Tatiana looks stunned every time, panting out laughter and bouncing in Lukas's arms as though to say again, again, but even when she asks for it, she looks so surprised when she's up in the air. Eliska, on the other hand, does not like tossing. She freezes in midair and then clings to Lukas when he catches her, laying her cheek on his shoulder and sucking on her fingers, calming when he rubs her back, sways with her to the music. They both like going upside-down, though. They shriek and wiggle. When they stand on their own to dance, Eliska stomps and flails her arms and turns in circles; Tatiana bounces her hips from side to side and bobs her head in time, laughing when Danicka imitates her.

When Danicka and Lukas link hands and dance together, too, Tatiana and Eliska protest at first, trying to get their parents back, so Danicka tells them to dance with each other. And they do, only they can only manage it for a few seconds before they burst into loud peals of laughter.

--

The next morning, Danicka is still naked and protesting the daylight pouring into the cool room. Lukas -- and this is not unusual, when he is able to spend nights and mornings at home with his family -- is the one who gets out into the cold air, because he does not like Danicka to do it, because he thinks it is his job to keep all of them warm, especially when he is so strong yes he is. So he gets up and he pulls on pajama pants and he goes to pick up the girls, and he gets them out of their wet diapers and into dry ones and he carries them against his broad chest, one in each arm, to the bed. He lays their drowsy, hungry bodies on top of the big comforter next to their mama and he goes downstairs to turn up the heat a little and comes back to them and closes his eye on the pillow while one nurses and one dozes against his stomach.

Their days get started early. There's changing into play clothes and taking the twins downstairs to get started on breakfast while Danicka takes a rapid-fire shower, there's Lukas making coffee and Danicka making oatmeal and slicing fruit for the girls, there's turkey sausage and skillet potatoes and scrambled eggs, there's Kandovany rubbing against Lukas's leg and giving him a rare, delightful round of purring as she scrubs her head against his calf.

And presents.

The twins need a lot of help, even after Lukas helps them on the tears. They do like tearing and opening and peeking and flopping, then, on their very soft toys that have about a hundred teeth. Danicka takes pictures of Tatiana glomping her shark, Eliska mouthing the head of her T-rex, laughing. That is what she gets, but then: she knew what he was. And she has sharp teeth, too. She hopes their daughters do.

They shake their sheep-toys, gnaw on them, and there are more pictures with them wearing their ridiculous hats that will see no real use until springtime. Danicka is so busy photographing everyone that she forgets to open any of her own gifts for some time.

Danicka gives them rainbows. For Tatiana, a brightly-painted wooden cone puzzle made up of inner cylinders and outer rings. For Eliska, a set of wooden blocks with differently-colored 'windows' through them, filled with beads and sand and other noise-making, mobile items. There are soft-bristled, maple-wood hairbrushes in their stockings fit for their tiny hands, and little ribbon-covered hair clips that will not snag on their soft black hair, in varying pastels, and large triangular crayons.

'Tatiana' gives her father a book called 'Handy Dad', full of how-tos on building sling shots, water-balloon launchers, lava laps, tire swings, tree houses, and more. "I think she's hinting that she wants you to make her a go-cart one day," Danicka informs him. The Emergency Clown Nose -- in a prescription jar and everything -- from 'Eliska' needs no explanation at all. It only needs to be applied to Lukas's nose so that his daughters (and mate) can laugh at him. Those, however, are just stocking stuffers, even if the book barely fits in his stocking. The girls went in together on the slender, rectangular white gold cufflinks, each one etched subtly with their names: Eliška + TaÅ¥ána. There is room beneath those names for further inscription.

But from Danicka, there is a flask wrapped in black leather with a silvery circle in the center: she shows him how it pops out, how it telescopes out, turning into a little shot glass. She claims that the bottle of something called Angel's Envy is part of the gift, that they only count as one.

Last year, they gave each other two daughters. She's not sure they can ever top that, but Danicka doesn't try. She prefers to get him a multitude of gifts instead: gift cards and games and clothing and technology and watches and anything she sees that she would like him to have. This gift-limiting thing makes her nervous, because when he bestows things like that magnolia tree on her, she can't imagine being able to give him something that could be as meaningful, that could show as much understanding. Perhaps she forgets things like the anniversary gift of a trip to Prague, or things that make him laugh like the framed Lawful Good Batman poster, or how very pleased he is with anything, everything she's ever given him.

What she really wants to give him are assurances: that they'll expand the house, renovate, add that bathroom, welcome Irena. She wants him to know that she will support, in every way including financial and emotional, the fostering and mentoring of her niece, that they will make it all work as they have made everything work so far, even things they once believed impossible. She wants him to know that even wearing cufflinks with their children's names, she does not think of him just as 'A Dad' now, that she still wants to tear his clothes off every time she sees him, that she is still very, very grateful to him for how he was while she was pregnant, that she didn't think she could be this happy ever, ever, ever.

There's not really any gift she could give him that says all that. She has to just tell him.

So instead, she gives him a photo book. It is thick but not enormous, perhaps ten inches high, and the leather is red with white stitching. The window in the front cover is simply the letter D. And every matte black page is filled with photos of Danicka held in slender white photo corners: baby photos and photos-before-school and photos-at-school and Polaroids and pictures of her adolescence. It's clear as he goes through the pages that to make this, she had to have contacted people she hasn't spoken to in years, in ages, because there are pictures of her in New Orleans and Manhattan that could not have been taken by her father or by someone holding Danicka's own 35mm barely-functioning camera that she had when she was a teenager. She had to have taken deep breaths and made herself reach out to people she was afraid of talking to again. And in the result, there are pictures of her that are blurry and pictures of her that are posed against basic backdrops because it was prom or it was senior year. There are pictures of her in black and white and color and retouched and plain.

He sees her with that razor-sharp short hair, a world away from the waist-length thickness she had up until her mother died. He sees her as a baby, surprisingly chubby-cheeked, and as a little girl wearing a necklace made of large plastic strawberries. He sees that his memories of her are not mistaken: in candid photos even in early childhood, she rarely smiled. He can tell that a lot of the smiles in adolescence were false, because he's seen that false smile given to so many people. He can watch the evolution of that somewhat distant, calculating look in her eye that masquerades as contentment or thoughtfulness as she enters young adulthood. He watches her, in the photos, when there is a slightly harrowed look in those eyes and then, later on, an aloofness that he knew himself. He sees her in updos at film festivals, talking to people who are actually famous at Tribeca. He sees her in some thrift-shop Harley Davidson t-shirt and cutoff jeans, lazing on a rickety lawn chair in Louisiana. He sees her asleep on the couch in her father's house, fingers in her mouth just like Eliska.

Perhaps it says something that Danicka does not think this is really that great of a present.

--

Especially because when he gives her that framed equation, she laughs and kisses his cheek and tells him he's silly, tells him she loves it. She's going to put it on the shelf in their bedroom.

Especially because when he gives her the book, she just. Starts. Crying. And the twins look both startled and a little anxious, but before they can start working up to tears themselves, Danicka is wiping her face and smiling and trying not to visibly tremble as she wraps her arms around Lukas's neck, pulling him very very close and burying her face in his neck. Holding him, ever so tightly, trying not just dissolve. She is overcome. This year, she doesn't even try to tell him why.


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Lukas

Every one of the gifts delights Lukas. Every single one of them. Even Kandovany purring against his leg is a precious little gift to him; makes him pick the feline up and cuddle her for a rare, quiet moment.

Later on, he watches happily as the twins discover their new toys. The wooden cone puzzle and the wooden noisemakers; the soft hairbrushes; the little hair clips; the art supplies. They take a little break, then and there, for Lukas to find them some paper so they can stretch out for a while and just ... draw. Scribble, for now.

It means something, these gifts they get their daughters. Even if it's not consciously intended; even if they don't really realize what it is they mean by it, the gifts mean something.

They mean:

We want you to grow up strong.
And protected.
And smart.
And curious.
And creative.
We want you to have sharp teeth.
We want you to not be afraid to be beautiful, but we don't want you to hang your identities on that.

--

Lukas's gifts, then. Handy Dad makes his face light up. He's been toying with handymanship around the house for a while now: redoing the front yard, renovating the cabinets, residing the house. They're thinking about expanding the bathroom downstairs, maybe sorting out the basement; they're thinking about -- more distantly -- expanding the house as a whole. This is something else, though: a way for him to connect to his daughters in a way that, perhaps more than most others, suits him. A way to connect with his hands, with his strength, with what he can shape and create and knock into existence.

The Emergency Clown Nose goes on immediately. And he ducks down to make funny faces at the girls, laughing at their expressions of surprise; their explosions of glee.

The flask, then. Which he thinks is just about the coolest thing ever. He opens the Angel's Envy immediately, filling the flask from it and its included shotglass. He shares that first drink with his wife-mate, shares a soft, quick kiss on its tail, laughing when he sees his pups looking at the bottle with evident interest.

You're too young, he tells them,

and then.

--

Every one of the gifts delights Lukas. Every one of them, but this one, the last: it moves him. It touches him so deeply, and Danicka can see that in his face. The way his eyebrows tug together, the way he presses a fist to his mouth briefly, as though overcome.

He leafs through the pages. A photo book, yes, but so much more than that. A catalog of the years; a compendium of the time they did not spend together. A frank and naked look into her past, the good and the bad, the painful and the bittersweet. No attempt to filter only for the pictures where her smile was true, or her friends dear. No attempt to hide that she was not always happy, that her life was not always -- and still is not -- easy.

It's an act of generosity and honesty that she would not have been capable of five Christmases ago, and that he would not have trusted. And Lukas sees that, and understands it, and -- before he's even reached the last pages -- reaches over to embrace her. Hug her very, very, very close, whispering a thank-you in her ear.

--

Not too long later, she opens her gifts. And in a way, they've both given the other a piece of their own history. A piece of themselves, that the other might understand them better. Danicka, braver than Lukas about her emotions, starts crying.

Lukas reaches out to her again. She comes to him, he wraps his arms around her body, and she wraps hers around his neck, and they cling very, very close to each other for a while.

"Shh," he hushes her, rocking her gently as though she, too, could be comforted in this elemental way. "Shh, baby. I know."







Danicka

With the hats and brushes and hair clips, Danicka thinks: I want you to take care of yourself. I want you to feel good about yourself. I want you to protect your eyes and make yourselves look the way you want to look. I do not want things that feel pretty to hurt you, which is why the hair clips will never pinch their scalps or tear their hair. This is why, in a couple of years, they will allow Tatiana a pair of empty red glasses frames for dress-up, because her eyes are perfect but because she thinks glasses make you look smart, and she will know by then to say she wants glasses like granddad, like Jaroslav, and she will run to get them whenever it is time to read books. This is how Tatiana wants to look, and see herself, and feel.

This is why, when five-year-old Eliska convinces her sister to cut her hair for her after school one day, Danicka will cry privately with Lukas not because her girls no longer look alike but because she doesn't know if Eliska thought she couldn't tell her parents that she wanted short hair, and Lukas will tell her: she just wanted to do it herself, and they will go to the salon and take pictures of Tatiana's new (long) haircut and Eliska's new (not uneven, but short) haircut and tell them how beautiful they are, and that they are never, ever, ever to play salon with the sharp scissors EVER AGAIN.

--

It is very early for bourbon. Danicka laughs but takes a sip anyway with him, because she has already nursed this morning. She rubs her nose on his, the wine cask-finished bourbon a sultry flavor and scent on her lips.

--

Danicka was not expecting her present to Lukas to overwhelm him. She is touched, watching him go through the pages while their daughters take their sunhats off and on and put the hats on their stuffed animals and brush each other's heads. She holds his hand while he looks at the years when he did not know her.

And the years he did.

The last photo in the book is one of Danicka, Lukas, and Anezka. It is a birthday party, and the girls are in frilly dresses and Lukas is in whatever nice clothes he had back then, and there is frosting on the corner of his mouth.

--

Holding onto him just minutes later, sniffing moisture out of her nostrils, she apologizes for crying and laughs at herself for crying and also for apologizing, rocking with him. "I love you so much," she whispers. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

--

There is a lot of cleaning up to do after that. The twins watch with curiosity as the paper is picked up to go into the recycling bin, and as boxes and so on are sorted as well. Danicka is gently, firmly, worriedly informing Eliska that crayons are not for chewing: nooo, baby. no mouth. they only go on the paper. Tatiana already looks ready for a nap, yawning and lolling on the floor with her shark. Kando is gnawing and batting on her little mouse.

And in fact, even sleeping a little late, the excitement of gift-opening and toy-playing wears the girls out in due time, and then it is time for their nap. It's amazing how much time they still spend asleep, but it's nothing compared to their earliest months. Most of summer just had them zonked out. Breakfast is cleaned up, gifts are put away, including the bourbon into the liquor cabinet, and Danicka and Lukas

nap on the couch, baby monitor on the coffee table, Kando dozing on the back of the couch where the warm air from the vents flows up to her first.

--

And there are little girls waking up and there is lunch and there is more playing, both upstairs and the living room. There's more napping and there's movie-watching for the grown-ups and a rather prolonged makeout session when they discover that the movie is boring and that Lukas is intoxicated by the feel of her breast in his hand while he kisses her. There are whispers of do we have time? and they are moments from going upstairs when Tatiana starts babbling upstairs, setting off the baby monitor and making Danicka pant out with both exasperation and arousal.

But that's what parenting means sometimes. So they go upstairs, but not to have each other. They go upstairs to sacrifice themselves, even in small ways but daily ways, to their children.

Dinner is lamb and roasted potatoes. Dessert is more kolache and scoops of ice cream. Danicka, thankfully, does not try to get the twins to sing anything to Lukas. She does, however, hand Lukas's presents (from the girls, of course) to the twins so they give the presents to their daddy. This is why one of them has a tear in the wrapping already and one of them has a slightly gnawed-on corner, because the girls got confused. Danicka talks to them a lot: she reminds them that they got daddy gifts, that it's daddy's birthday, nooo, presents are for giving, hand it to daddy, stop chewing. She holds them on the floor, two bouncy one year olds encircled by her legs, while Lukas gets to open

1) a box of band-aids in the shape of machetes, chainsaws, cleavers, razorblades, ninja stars, and sawblades, because manly, from Eliska,

2) a leather-bound edition of To Kill a Mockingbird from Tatiana,

and

3) a black leather messenger bag that rides the line between rugged and chic, with a laptop sleeve but mostly, as Danicka tells him:

"I wanted it to have enough room for a change of clothes, your dopp kit, extra talens, all of that." Meaning it is made for those trips that take him away from home for more than a day or a night but maybe a few days, trips like the one he was on when he got a call saying so your mate is giving birth, or even just the nights when he stays at Katherine's loft instead of with his mate and children. Trips that are inevitable, even now and only more increasing as he grows in rank. Trips that will increase, as well, when Irena comes.

But she is smiling when she gives it to him, this bag that probably cost upwards of four hundred dollars and is made of fine, supple leather with a comfortable strap. It's meant to last the rest of his life if he doesn't get it torn up by a Spiral or something. It's very nice. It's only after she gives it to him, having thought it a stylish yet practical gift, that she realizes it expresses some of the support she wanted him to know he has.

That it's okay when he has to be away. She wants him to look good when he is, though.

And she's smiling, too, because there is another box, unwrapped but sleek and black with a pull-off lid, and he knows better than to open it downstairs just by looking at it. "That may have to wait for our anniversary," she teases him, tugging it back across the floor, while the twins who kept them from yet another round of lovemaking bounce and drool in front of her. She is barely -- barely -- keeping it together instead of breaking down laughing.

Lukas

Much of the day is passed with sleep and play and more sleep and more play. It's a rare luxury for them, busy people that they are: for all of them to be home for such extended periods of time. For them to have the time simply to rest, to be around each other, to love.

In the afternoon, the girls sleep and their parents watch a movie. The movie is disappointing, and so they turn their attentions to each other, lounging together on that couch. Lukas's hand has made it under Danicka's shirt, and Danicka's hands are on their way to undoing Lukas's pants, and they are asking each other if they have the time when they discover: no. No, they do not have the time. This is hardly the first time the twins have prevented a round of lovemaking. They are both patient and exasperated and amused about it, panting out laughs as they disentangle, going upstairs hand-in-hand to see to the babies.

It's part of parenting. It's part of their lives now. They don't live solely for themselves anymore, or even solely for each other. It is a sacrifice, but like all true sacrifices,

for a good cause. Worth it.

--

Dinner is lamb and kolaches. And also some other stuff, but obviously these are the things that matter. The girls get bits of all the solid food to chew on, gnaw on, work on with their emerging baby teeth. Lukas, temporarily abandoning his better graces to eat with his hands, smiles at his pups over his meat-and-bones. Lamb, pups, he tells them, is one of the finest things on gaia's green earth.

They are too young to really understand him. But Eliska laughs, swatting the table with grubby little hands, and her sister works on masticating a tiny, mashed-up bite of potatoes.

--

After dinner, more presents. Gifts from the girls again, or so Danicka insists: the roles reversed this time. The tiny, silly gift from Eliska; the book from Tatiana. Lukas puts a chainsaw-bandaid over some tiny, inconsequential scratch on his forearm -- something earned not in battle but by scraping against the doorframe on his way in with his arms laden with boxes and bags. He flips through the books, inhaling the smell of leather and new pages. Then he leans over to hug the pups very gently, smiling.

When he leans back Danicka hands him his third gift. A lovely, durable, rugged-chic messenger bag: a worthy successor to the charcoal-and-orange thing he carried through the earlier part of the decade. The leather is supple and soft; the pockets are plentiful and thoughtfully designed, with space for a laptop, a cellphone, some pens, a wallet, the like.

The support it expresses goes unstated between them, but not unnoticed. Lukas reaches across the table and squeezes Danicka's hand gently, smiling again. "Thank you," he says, quietly.

--

And then:

the box.

There's a new twinkle in Lukas's eyes when he sees it. Unwrapped, sleek, black. A lid that almost begs to be pulled off. He takes it in his hands, weighs it in his palms, gives it a little shake. He is about to edge the lid up for a peek when

Danicka withdraws it.

"Hey," he mock-protests, "let me at least peek. I'm going to die of suspense before our anniversary." A pause; a slow-spreading grin. "Should I book us a hotel and a sitter?"

Danicka

Yes, dinner also includes other stuff. Green things. Things grown in the ground. Things that are mushy and easy for the little girls to nom on. But the lamb, the potatoes, the kolache and ice cream: this is what matters, because this is Lukas's birthday, and he has to tell the twins -- not for the first time -- that lamb is the best thing. And they grin toothily at him, not quite mannerly yet because they still have food in their mouths, and the truth is: oh, they understand him, all right. They just can't really process it, remember it, or respond to it. They just like that he is talking to them, especially Eliska. Tatiana, after all, is incredibly focused on her dinner.

Later on, each of them is hugged and thanked in turn for their very generous and sweet birthday presents. Lukas tells Tatiana how much he likes her band-aids and thanks Eliska from the bottom of his heart for the lovely book, which just happens to have the best father in all of literature in its pages.

Danicka squeezes his hand and smiles, eyes on his. The leather, one might note, matches the dopp kit his father gave him last year for his birthday. The brushed-steel monogram plate reads LWK. He can just tell people his 'middle' name is 'William' or something if they ask. His pack will understand, and Sinclair will think that's so fucking clever and Katherine will make some arch but complimentary comment about the bag's quality.

--

The box is surprisingly heavy. That, and its depth, tell him that this may be more than what he's expecting. There's the rustling of paper inside, something heavy moving around in there, but Danicka swats her hand on top of the lid when she sees temptation coiling in his eyes. She tugs it back, and he is wounded, saying maybe he should see it anyway.

She grins. "Oh, baby. I started planning our anniversary back in September." She pats his knee. "Don't you worry. It's my turn this year." Like it was two years ago, before the twins: that trip to Prague. Last year, after all, it was his turn.

Lukas

"I don't know why," Lukas replies, smiling, "I ever doubted that."

And so he relinquishes that gift-box. And so they get up off the floor, and clean up the wrapping paper, and clean up the remnants of dinner -- leftovers wrapped and put in the fridge, soiled plates rinsed and put in the dishwasher.

Because it is Christmas, and because it is Lukas's birthday and four-days-past-the-twins'-first-birthday, they stay up a little later tonight than they usually would. They play in the living room, sharing their new toys, rattling sound-making blocks and banging cone-puzzle pieces together, batting at their new hats, gurgling and cooing and making those sounds that are starting to come together as syllables; starting to be barely-sort-of-kind-of intelligible as words.

Eventually bedtime comes. Eventually it's time to carry the twins upstairs -- Eliska on her father's shoulder, Tatiana on her mother's -- and lay them on their uncaged little bed. They are small enough and young enough and mutually attached enough to still share a bed, and as they are tucked in and kissed goodnight they fall gently and absolutely to sleep the way children seem to.

Tonight, Lukas doesn't linger by their bedside. He wraps his arm around Danicka's waist as they leave the twins' room, the door shut gently, the baby monitor left on.

"Merry Christmas, baby," he whispers as they meander down the hall to their own room.

Danicka

She just winks at him. And he'll find out soon enough, after all: their anniversary is in less than a week. And in that week, that sleek black box will tempt him, will torture him. Which is, of course, part of the gift.

After tooth-brushing and their nighttime nursing in the rocker and changing into fresh diapers and pajamas, the twins are almost asleep already. They decide that the shark and T-rex can sleep with the twins now, and that is how their parents leave them: clutching their new soft toys, breathing steadily and in harmonic rhythms.

Danicka snuggles to Lukas as they leave them, but she resists their bedroom. She asks if he wants to dip into that Christmas present of his a bit more, and so they do, sharing sips of bourbon from his flask and his little shot-cup. They drowse and they make out a little more and it becomes clear that Danicka, tired as she is, wants to pick up where they left off. Making love three times in three nights is a fucking luxury, no pun intended, but it is one she intends to take full advantage of. Lukas is one she intends to take full advantage of. And she does, teasing him about his birthday present while they strip down right there on the couch, whispering tantalizing hints in his ear as she sinks down on him.

It's just a quickie this time, really. A fierce, heated rush towards completion, her nails digging into his shoulders and his hands guiding her hips, watching her rise and fall on his lap. They don't have to be as quiet as they do when they fuck in their bed, but they're quiet anyway. Afterwards they put themselves back together, put away the bourbon, and climb the stairs up to bed. Danicka is giggling; Lukas is shushing her, his hair askew still. They collapse into bed, and she mutters merrychristmashappybirthdaybaby to him as she zonks out on his chest.

Tomorrow everything begins again. He ends up being called away by Sarita, who Found A Thing and it's really not worth bringing the whole pack but it's definitely worth calling in the Big Guns, as she puts it, explaining that he is the Big Gun. Danicka has a bunch of laundry to do and kisses him rapidly on his way out, concealing but not really concealing the tension that always rides up her spine when he is called away. She never wants to become inured to that. She never wants to be defeated by it, either. But there is nothing she can do about the fact that Eliska and Tatiana start crying when he leaves, nothing she can do about the fact that he has to hear it as he rushes away to his packmate.

He comes back. So far, he always comes back. They don't talk about the fact that he spends some time in the middle of the night creating more talens to replace those he used, kneeling in the shadow of their winter-bare oak in the spirit world, but he doesn't hide it from her, either.

This, like interrupted makeout sessions and mushing up food for their children and grocery shopping and Danicka's homework, is part of their life together.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

lawfully wedded wife.

Lukas

Lukas scoffs a little at that. It's goodnatured. He strokes her breast as they scoot a little closer, and then a little closer still, and then his hand is coming around her side and wrapping around her back.

"At first," he echoes her. The emphasis changes the meaning. His smile is crooked.

He stretches out on the bed then, unpropping his head from his hand. He rolls onto his back as she loops her arms around his neck, rolling her atop him. They are very close together, two post-orgasmic creatures both warm and languid from it all. His hands follow her back down to the dip of her waist; lace there, his palms covering a large swath of her back as though to keep her warm.

"We should make love again," he whispers. As though this were a novel suggestion. As though it wasn't quite obvious that he would like to do that, just that, very much. "I don't think I've had my fill just yet."

Danicka

He's no innocent. He must know what it means that they've left the cuffs on. How she feels about being pressed up against that big, warm body of his. The way it makes her feel when he caresses her breast, rolling her naked body over his. Danicka hasn't had her fill. Not by a long shot. But she loves it when he asks for more. When he says, in one word or seventeen: Again.

She arches her back beneath his palms, urging his hands down to her ass without quite saying it. She pants softly against his neck. "We should fuck again," she mutters back to him, opening her legs.

Lukas

Amenably, Lukas's hands find their way down to Danicka's ass. He spreads his fingers over the curvature of her cheeks. Squeezes, rubs, gives her a light, playful little slap as she opens her legs to him.

"Should we now," he muses.

And then he turns again. Must be a side effect of those manacles on her wrists; makes him think he's allowed to move her and heave her and hoist her at his pleasure, the gorilla. He rolls her under him this time, the mattress never quite squeaking despite their excesses. Atop her now, Lukas smiles down at his mate, his hands smoothing up her sides.

And then up her arms. And then to her wrists, and to that loose chain, which he wraps

around the headboard again.

So there they are; quite where they began. The smile on his face fading to a sort of intensity, he lowers his mouth to hers. He starts to kiss her again, gently, almost tastingly; her mouth, her chin, her jawline, her neck. And all the while she can feel him reaching a hand down between their bodies; can feel him taking himself in hand and starting to stroke himself; can feel him making himself hard for her again. Getting that cock ready for her, ready to service her, ready to please her, ready to fuck her, because

that's what he's there for. That's the deal.

Danicka

She loves that. Oh, she always has. When he really wants to flirt with her, sometimes there's patting and squeezing and even pinching. When he wants to arouse her all he has to do is press his hips against the curve of her ass; she nearly bends over for him in the kitchen if she's inclined to fuck him just then. And when she's already naked, aroused, waiting for him, the feel of his hands on her body, right there, makes Danicka start trembling all over. She pants when he slaps her.

And then, he can do whatever he likes with her. Roll her over, press her underneath his body, running his hands up her body. She whimpers as his fingertips trace past her breasts, trembling as he lifts her arms up and chains her again.

"Oh, god," she mutters, turning her face into her own arm, trying to breathe. He urges her mouth away from her bicep a second later, kissing her drenchingly, consumingly. She gives herself over to it, groaning softly into his mouth. "Rub it against me," she whispers, feeling him jerking himself off, stroking his cock between her thighs. "Rub it on my tits, baby."

Lukas

He loves it when she bites her bicep like that. Loves it, even though it makes some small protective part of him howl with distress and no mate no be hurt self. It makes that kiss he distracts her with all the more thorough, all the more drenching, all the more consuming. When that kiss ends she has a request for him. He pants against her mouth to hear it. He kisses her again, quick and hard.

Then he pushes up. He climbs over her, grabbing the headboard in one hand to spring over her. The mattress absorbs the impact, but even without it the motion would have been swift and sure; the grace of strength. He kneels over her. His hands cupping her breasts, his lip caught in his teeth, he fucks her tits without the slightest hint of restraint or reserve.

Danicka

Considering that sometimes Lukas bites her much harder when he comes, or that a moment ago he was slapping his palm across her ass, it's a tad ridiculous that he might worry about her biting her bicep, even if she doesn't right that moment. He's ridiculous to think she would harm herself, especially when what they're doing feels so good.

Lukas doesn't deny her, and she knows how hard this will make him. They don't do things like this often: the way they're fucking with their mouths, the way he has her chained, even stroking himself off against her breasts. But she watches him, panting, her teeth almost on edge.

"That's right," she breathes. "You like that, don't you?"

Lukas

Her mate

who is not always a gentle wolf outside their den. Who is not always a nice man outside their home. Who does not tolerate weakness. Who never fights fair against the Wyrm, and indeed would consider such a notion ridiculous, chauvinistic and idiotic -- and yet who is, generally and to the best of his ability, a good man, a good wolf, a good Garou; someone who strives for victory, peace and fairness in the grand scheme of things; a world where the small have a chance to grow large, and the weak have a chance to grow strong,

and who is, within the confines of their small, safe den, oftentimes more tender and playful and gentle and warm and silly than many could possibly imagine:

is, right now, a beast.

He is a beast. He is panting over his mate. He is fucking her body, rubbing his hard cock on some part of her skin like it doesn't even matter where so long as it's her, so long as she's soft and welcoming, so long as it feels good. It does feel good. It feels fantastic, mindblowing, addictive. He's entranced, he's in a trance, his eyes close and his brow knits and he's biting his lip harder than she'd ever bite her bicep, panting on every breath.

She wants to know if he likes it. She already knows the answer, but he confirms it. Nods; wouldn't think of denying it. "Yeah," it's a groan, "yeah, I like it. Fuck."

Danicka

Oh, she knows he likes it. She tells him he likes it because she knows. He's so heavy atop her, so hot, caressing her tits, squeezing them as he slides his cock between them. She loves the way he breathes, the way it grates at the bottom of his throat, the way it growls through his mouth sometimes, the way it turns to a grunt, a groan.

Suddenly she remembers their wedding night. The memory is a bit of a blur after the nightclub; the MDMA, after all. But she does remember stripping for him. She remembers rubbing her entire body over his cock. She remembers fucking him while wearing her black satin garter, a color she seldom wears, usually only on sacred occasions. She remembers fireworks going off, and Lukas's face lit by them as he looked past her at the window, gasping. He was buried inside of her at the time. He was so awed.

She likes it when he rubs his cock all over her. She can't touch him now, but she wants to; she forgets she's chained and tries to, panting softly as he gets himself harder, harder for her.

"Are you going to fuck me with that nasty, hard thing?" she whispers.

Lukas

She is chained. They're both reminded when she tries to touch him and can't. When she lifts her hands and the chains snap taut and clank against the headboard; when her hands are brought short. Lukas's eyes flick to the manacles. Her wrists. Oh, something dark and hungry flares in his eyes. Something decadent and a little forbidden comes awake when they're likes this, when she's laid out like this, when he's availing himself of her body like this, when she goads him on just like this.

"Yes." It's a harsh, sibilant whisper. He looks down: his cock sliding between her breasts. The give and bounce of her flesh. He looks at her eyes, her mouth; licks his own lips. "Yes, I am."

A last, hard thrust between her tits. And it is a thrust: a powerful motion, borne through by the strength of that fine-tuned, war-honed body. He rises up on his knees. Touches her face, strokes his thumb across her lips. Touches her mouth like he's thinking of her mouth on his cock again, remembering the way she took him, sucked him off, held him until he was nearly a heap on the floor.

There's lightning in his eyes, and in the air between them. His cock jumps. He puts a hand on it to still it. He moves back down the bed, deliberate and slow, one knee at a time. He lifts her legs over his thighs, around his waist, higher. He strokes himself all the while, as though he couldn't help it, as though the very sight of her, the very promise of her, has made him a slave to his own pleasure.

She's wet when he finds her. He's hard. He guides himself to her with his eyes locked on hers, and then he lets go. His hand paws heavily over her body. He plants one fist to either side of her head, holding himself up, holding himself flexed and taut over her, groaning openly, snarling, as he pushes into her in a single, slow slide.

It's the first time this entire night. Doesn't seem like it, they've been fucking so long, but it is. It's mindblowing. His pupils blow. He leans down to her, comes down to her like an animal, catches her mouth, mauls her. Ravages her. Pants into that kiss on the second thrust, faster than the first, a little rougher. Solid. Nailing her, his brow to hers, eyes opening. A third time, a fourth, a rhythm now, a coordination of muscle and bone quite literally hardwired into his body and mind.

"Is that how you like it?" he wants to know: a mutter, a murmur. "Is this how you want to get fucked?"

Danicka

Even when he stops stroking himself against her breasts, just thinking about her body, her mouth, makes Lukas's cock jump. Oh, Danicka notices that. She smile, slashingly, licking his thumb where it rests across her lips. She arches her back as though to encourage him to go on, keep fucking her, rub that cock on her tits, suck on her, play with her. But he touches himself instead, holding himself still while he looks at her. Lightning arcs between them, and it arcs between her own eyes.

And he sinks downward. Danicka shudders, closing her eyes, lifting her hips toward him even before he makes his way down her body. Her legs encircle him, and she looks at him a moment later to find out why he's not fucking her yet, only to find him kneeling there, stroking it, and she thinks she might die.

She does so love to watch him.

--

Danicka has to bite her lip to keep from crying out when he pushes into her. She moans, almost a shriek, against her sealed lips, her cunt quivering on his cock. It doesn't occur to her that it's their first time tonight, it's the first time he's fucked inside of her like this, but that is because she is trying very hard not to lose her mind completely. His kiss meets her teeth; she opens her mouth a second later and releases a moan, knowing they won't be able to get away with even this much noise in coming years.

When he starts to fuck her, to well and truly give it to her, she is beyond ready for it. Her pussy pulses in tight, wet waves around him, her ass rubbing against the bed every time he thrusts.

"Yes," she gasps, right away, biting off the end of his question before he's done asking it. "God -- fuck, yes. Just like that."

Lukas

That grin of hers was carnivorous. The way he laughs now: the same. He kisses her again, hard, rubs his cheek alongside hers rough and animal. "My sweet girl," he calls her. "My filthy, darling -- " a flash of laughter in his eyes, then, even before it touches his mouth, rumbles from his chest, " -- lawfully wedded wife."

He's ridiculous. He can be so ridiculous. And then it passes. And then he scoops her off the bed with a hand behind her head, an inch or two, enough that he can kiss her again. Enough that he can kiss her back down to the bed, press her there as he comes down on his elbows over her,

bites her lip as his mouth releases hers. He fucks her: enthusiastically, athletically, quite in earnest; pounding her against that bedspread, that comforter, those sheets, that mattress. No, they won't be able to do this in the years coming. At least not here. At least not with the twins next door, or Irca downstairs. They'll have to get used to going to hotels again, they'll have to get used to having true date nights where they don't come home, they'll have to

like all parents do

learn to let go just a bit of their pups. Let go just enough that their own lives, their own love, can thrive.

--

That's for later. Neither of them are thinking about it right now. Neither of them are thinking very much at all, nor capable of it. He atop her, he's on her, he's in her, he's with her: he's fucking her with all the strength and energy and willingness of his body and mind. It's a feverish coupling, intense and delirious. His hands grip the bedspread. Her hands would be slapping against his shoulders, clawing down her back, but oh: her hands are tied down. Her hands are tied down and that,

god help his secretly-slyly-slightly twisted little soul,

turns him on so ferociously. To hear those chains clinking softly with the ferocity of their motion. To feel her straining against the binds. To feel the chains themselves hard and cold when he reaches up and grasps them, grabs them as though to share that anchor point with her, even as his other hand slides under her waist to lift her, arch her back just a little more, angle her to take him just a little deeper --

he bites her. He forgets that sometimes when she bites herself he pangs because he's silly and he's Lukas. He forgets to worry, to pace, to howl. He forgets all but the single unalienable truth: she is his mate, this is what he's for. He bites her into shoulder, growls into her flesh, pounds into her cunt, hammers her hard against the mattress and holds her there,

and yes, this time he does roar -- this time he does bellow, muffled as it is, as his orgasm rises up and crashes over him.

--

Not done, though. Not done. A moment of electric stillness: a moment when he's pressed deep into her, flexed hard into her, coming into her. And then: a resumption, as though he'd never for a moment slacked. He starts fucking her again as furiously and feverishly as he was -- just as fast, just as firmly, grunting like a beast on every stroke, grinding against her on every stroke, his hand slipping from under her, his hand pushing its way up her body, his hand cupping her breast and squeezing, caressing, clasping her in his hot palm as he goes

right on

fucking her.

Because that's what he's for. Isn't that right? This is what he's for: for fucking her, for filling that cunt, for pleasing that pussy, for making her come, for blowing her mind, for being her devoted, unfaltering, ever-dutiful mate.

Danicka

Sweet, filthy, darling, lawful. Danicka gasps but it's not a laugh; her cunt clenches on him when he says it, calls her his filthy, darling wife. She aches, trying not to moan aloud, wetness slicking his cock anew as he fucks her. She can't even kiss him back, she's so far gone now. She is losing herself, looking down their bodies, his chest on her breasts, his beautiful body flexing and tightening as he moves himself in her. "Oh, my boy," she mutters thoughtlessly, breathing the words. "Oh, my beautiful boy."

Her head tips back; her legs wrap high and tight around him, urging him on. "My fucking gorgeous boy."

As though he were the one in chains. As though he were the one being used. And in a way he is: wasn't she the one to suggest it? Wasn't she the one who made him come because she couldn't stand it any longer, brought on his orgasm like she needed it herself somehow. Isn't this what he's for -- to be her gorgeous, beautiful boy, to fuck her pretty cunt, to send her over that edge?

The chains clink and she shushes them, him, something. She whimpers anyway, winding her hips underneath him, using him, getting off on him, gasping harsher, faster, choking a groan when he buries himself in her and comes, comes so very hard and so very hot between her thighs. She moans, a little too loud, as she comes with him, after him, and he goes still but she's working herself on his cock, holding him deep with her legs around him, coming even after he goes motionless and gasping, coming even as he picks himself up again to keep fucking her, fucking her like that, until she is almost weeping, trying so hard not to cry out over and over again,

whispering, gasping out: "Stop. Stop. Oh please, baby, stop, I can't --"

but she can. And she does take it, biting hard into her lower lip, riding out the last of god knows how many orgasms against him.

Lukas

It's true. Danicka is the one in chains, yet she is not the one who submits. Between them is a certain unspoken compact, first set long before they were wed, long before he even won her from her brother -- and, in a truer sense: from his own possessiveness, his own pride, his own need for dominance. That is the compact renewed every time she offers her wrists for him to bind, and every time he offers himself the same way.

She does not submit to him. She never has to submit to him. It does not matter that in the eyes of the Nation, he is Garou and she is kin. It does not matter that in the eyes of the Tribe, he is a warrior, he is strong, he is worthy, and she is -- not. It does not even matter that in the eyes of modern human society,

she will always be a woman, and by virtue of biological sex, always be viewed by some as inferior. Lesser. Submissive. Subhuman.

None of that matters here. In their den. In their home. Between them. Even if they sometimes have to pretend otherwise, the truth speaks for itself.

She does not submit to him, and he would never ask that of her. She does not submit to the twisted notions and preconceptions and prejudices of all their myriad societies -- and he would never ask that of her, either. When he allows her to bind him, he reminds her: he casts those notions and preconceptions and prejudices aside. He pulls them down, savages them apart, lays the shreds at her feet. He lays himself at her feet, to do with as she will.

He submits to her, when he allows her to bind him.

She trusts in him, when she allows him to bind her.

That is the difference, subtle but true.

--

And so:

and so, even bound -- or especially bound -- Danicka guides the flow of their play. She asks him to tie her up. She asks him to give her that cock. She brings him to orgasm like that, too, was an offering at her altar. She lies on her back for him, and goads him to the brink of madness, and allows him into her body,

and all but orders him to please her. Trusts him to do just that: to take her as far as she can go, and no farther. To know the difference between stop and red. To see the difference between a passionate lovemaking, an ardent encounter, a rough fuck -- and actual brutality.

To walk that line. To surrender himself to her need, and his adoration. To fuck her, keeping fucking her, keep on fucking her like that,

just like that,

until she almost weeps. Until she's trying not to cry out. Until she's telling him she can't, she can't, except she can, she can and he knows she can, he knows it, she does. She rides it out on him. He gives it to her, groaning himself, falling to ruins himself, falling apart only when she shudders to pieces one more time.

--

When they are finished.

When they are finished, he can barely catch his breath. He is all heat and laxity and heaviness over her. His hands lax on the chain. His head heavy on the pillow beside hers. His teeth lax on her shoulder; his torso heavy between her thighs.

When the will to move creeps back into his limbs, Lukas feels his blind way along the chain until he finds the snap. He unsnaps it. And then he kisses the side of her neck, softly and adoringly; transported.

Danicka

1: doubly bad

evens: fine

odds: only slightly bad

10: for great success

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Danicka

Before they met, if a woman ever brought out chains to Lukas and invited him to use them on her, he might have well and truly dominated her. Or he might have turned away, some animal part of him understanding the nuances of such an offering and rejecting it: an attachment, an intimacy, not needed for his purposes. Back then, though, his purposes were to get off and move on. Wasn't that part of why he held himself back from her, would have held himself back from her even if he weren't thinking of his packmate? He didn't want to dishonor his own kinfolk like that, or at least that was one ostensible reason.

He already sensed that it might not be that easy, with her. Didn't trust that.

She never would have offered him chains back then. Never would have asked him to bind her with his silk tie. Never would have told him that easy, color-coded system of safewords. She never would have thought that she would lay on her back for him, wrap her arms and legs around him, kiss his mouth, and welcome him like that. Protect him like that.

Protect him at all.

But that's what she does. When he shrugs off all that strength, all that power, all that glory like an armor and lays it down between them. When those things are shed, he is just as vulnerable as she is -- moreso, perhaps, because who is he, if he is not his strength? Who is he, to all of them out there, if he is not Wyrmbreaker, Cold Victory, Adren and Ahroun and Alpha? What is he, without all that?

Lukas never asks himself that question. He comes to her, only and entirely himself, his strength and his names and his power not abandoned but ....set aside. Set down. Because sometimes

they are burdens. And they are walls.

And she is free, and she is wild, and she is his home.

As he is hers.

--

Danicka can barely move. She is limp under him, arms outstretched overhead, legs trembling. She thinks she cried out. She thinks she is going to hear that baby monitor go off any second now, from Lukas's guttural roaring and her near-wailing. And go off it does, the speaker giving them not just white noise but some sounds of fussing, of infantile grunts of discomfort, but truth be told, that's not uncommon even on nights when they aren't fucking each other senseless. One of the babies -- and she is pretty sure it's Tatiana -- whines a little, then quiets again.

She exhales, not realizing she'd held her breath at all. But she did. And now she lets it out, panting softly at the end, shuddering under and around him. She feels Lukas panting, feels him melting. Feels him still biting her shoulder a little, holding her in his teeth, and huffs a faint laugh at it, almost soundless.

He unsnaps the chain before he can't move at all anymore, and she draws one cuffed wrist down, loosening her joints again, draping her arm over him. She takes her other arm slower, slower, the chain dragging too-loudly but quietly for its weight from around the headboard, across the pillows. The length of it falls between the bedframe and mattress, and she feels the tug of its weight very subtly. She smiles, and ignores the weight, wrapping her other arm around him, the chain trailing down her arm, his side, their bodies.

Danicka wraps her legs and arms around him anew, just

holding him. She turns her head, resting it on his shoulder, closing her eyes.

Lukas

They both hold their breaths. For a moment there, without realizing it, instinctive tension tautens their bodies; has Danicka's breath caught in her throat, has Lukas turning his head in the vague direction

not of the baby monitor but of the door linking their room to the bathroom to the twins' room: the direction in which he can smell his pups. Their smallness. Their aliveness. Their themness, which has in it the hints of both himself and his mate.

The fussing on the monitor quiets, though. They go back to sleep. Danicka exhales, and Lukas turns back to her, and she shudders and he melts and he finds her shoulder and grips it again in his teeth. Tenderly. She laughs a little. He undoes the chain. She puts her arms around him, arms and legs; hugs him with what seems like every fiber of her being, as though to make up for all the years they spent not-together, not loving each other, not even really remembering one another's existence.

He smiles against her shoulder. She rests against his. They both close their eyes, and: oh, for a while, it is just like this. It is perfect, just like this.

--

Eventually the rush in their blood evens out. Their bodies regain equilibrium. There is warmed air huffing from the vents, but it is still winter, and it is still cool. Lukas shifts a little. Danicka's arms loosen a little. They slide apart, her mate panting softly against her neck; their legs remaining half-entwined even as he rolls to his side beside her, relaxed and warm, warm and affectionate.

His arm pillows her head again. His hand wanders her body, touching her with a sort of familiarity that only comes with time. He knows her body so very well now. Sometimes he almost feels as though they share stewardship of their bodies and souls: that harm done to her is harm done to him, and vice versa. No wonder they defend each other so viciously. No wonder they care for each other so deeply.

He smiles, his face close to hers. He kisses her mouth softly, a little playfully: like a tiny hello.

"Next time," he whispers, "I think we're going to have to do that at a hotel."

Danicka

They are large enough to walk around and they dance and they laugh and they babble and try to put on their own clothes, failing miserably, and they help choose what they wear each day. They are turning into full-blown toddlers. But they are so small to Lukas, especially. They are so vulnerable, and alive, and his, and then Danicka is wrapping him in her arms, drowsing against his shoulder, and she is his and he is hers, too. And they belong to their daughters, as their daughters belong to them.

They rest. They close their eyes, close, their body heat evaporating slowly into the air. It is dear. It is perfect. And Danicka falls asleep.

--

Then Lukas shifts and Danicka whines at him, half-groaning, protesting, he's such a jerk, he -- "Oh," she whispers, as he draws out of her. Her legs go slack. She rolls her head onto his bicep, still cuffed, though unchained. She lets him stroke her, rubbing her side and her back. The rhythm is familiar now, and nearly puts her under again instantly. She really should brush her teeth and take a quick shower before they get under the covers, but she's just so comfortable. Even with the manacles.

She isn't thinking about stewardship, of shared bodies as well as shared souls. She can't really think much at all. He kisses her hello and she smiles, even with her eyes closed. He teases that they will have to do that at a hotel next time.

"Nah," she mutters. "They didn't wake up. It's fine. But you need to shush."

Lukas

"Oh, do I," Lukas replies, infinitely amused. She feels his fingers at her wrists: gently and pragmatically and methodically, he goes about undoing those manacles. One, then the other. He tosses them out of the way -- they bounce off the mattress and roll to the floor.

"I do believe," he continues, "you were the one who first convinced me to stop holding back and get loud.

"Come on," gentle, gentle still: urging her to move, to rise. "Let's shower. And brush our teeth. And then let's get under the covers and curl up and sleep in tomorrow. I'll feed the twins in the morning. We'll loll in bed until noon."

Danicka

The chain-bearing manacle is a bit noisier when it thunks to the floor. Danicka's eyes open, briefly, and she raises her eyebrow at him. "Obviously," she says, of his need to shush or not. Her eyes close again, while he accuses her of starting it all, years ago. She can't deny it. All she can do is protest, muttering: "Well, you were such a prude about it..."

She wrinkles her nose as he tries to get her to get up. She wants to shower. She does. She wants to brush her teeth. She rolls over, flops over, then starts inching towards the edge of bed. "Nooo, I wanna feed them boobs tomorrow." She relents, half-falling, half-stepping off the edge of the bed and slowly standing. "You can help, though. Not with the boob part."

Obviously.

Lukas

She does not. Fall. Off the bed. Not even half-fall. She half-steps off the bed; the other half is Lukas catching her, laughing, pulling her to her slow feet.

"I'll bring them to you then," he promises. "And you can feed them. And then I'll put them back and come back to bed and then we'll sleep until noon." He kisses her temple, "But first we shower."

His arm around her as they head for the bathroom. His heart beating slow and quiet and full in his chest. Lukas is smiling. He is quite happy.

Danicka

Danicka bats at his hands when he is grabbing at her. She is not falling, she is flopping, because lazy. And he is always getting in the way and worrying about her doing things like biting her bicep or stretching too much and this is why he's not allowed to come to kung fu belt tests, no he's not, because he would frenzy. "Tak úzkostlivý," she slurs at him, still batting at his hands even after he's relented, though her batting is terribly gentle. "I'm doing it."

Floppily. Lazily.

She bats at him and his chest a couple more times for good measure, pats on his ample musculature that, quite frankly, gets her off, and walks past him toward the bathroom, but he comes a step after her and is glomping all over her and she gets an errant and cruel thought of blowing in his face but doesn't. She's not that mean. She walks across the short distance, stepping over clothes, yawning, dragging her husband along. And he is telling her he will bring her the babies and when they are fed he will put them back to bed and then they'll loll in bed til noon and by the time they flick the light on in the bathroom, she nuzzles her brow to his jaw, smiling.

The truth is, the babies will not go quietly back to bed, and back to sleep, after they wakeup. After they are changed out of night-wet diapers. After they snuggle in bed with their mama for a while, taking turns nursing drowsily, waking up, staring up at Danicka with alert, bright eyes. After that there will just be a tiny burp and then, if Lukas is truly intent on being lazy, they can go back to their room and the door can be shut and they can crawl around playing with their toys and babbling to each other while their parents drowse. But not til noon. Within an hour or two they will be hungry again, or wanting a change again, and Danicka will feel bad if she doesn't get up and get them dressed and give them their solid breakfast, and then the whole house will come alive, with cold December sunlight pouring in the windows and some happy-sounding folk music playing quietly in the background.

Of course, mid-morning they will take a little nap. They are still little enough to sleep twice during the day, still easily worn out just by the effort of moving their tiny bodies around. Growing. Being alive. And maybe, since it is vacation, Lukas and Danicka will nap, too, lolling in bed a bit more. Or they'll curl up on the couch and watch a few episodes of a show. Or she'll realize they need more milk for a recipe she's making for lunch and sneak out to the Jewel-Osco for a few minutes and he will feel simultaneously anxious and deeply settled and very happy to be left alone with them, which even to this day is a rare thing, and Danicka may come home

to find him sitting outside the twin's room, reading a book, smiling while he guards his sleeping pups.

And she will kiss him, feeling right then the same tender adoration she feels right now, moments after lovemaking, stepping into a hot shower with him before bed.

 
Copyright Lukáš Wyrmbreaker 2010.
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