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.
DanickaThis 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.
LukasDancing 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[also!
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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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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."
DanickaWith 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.
LukasMuch 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?"
DanickaYes, 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.
DanickaShe 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.
