Two days before Christmas, and it's two measly degrees above zero. A bout of rain in the last week has washed away the snow of the week before that in the city, though out in village of Stickney the yards are still white and the edges of the sidewalks still piled high with plowed snow. The stores were hectic tonight -- last-minute shoppers snatching up whatever looked remotely promising, checkstands crowded with harried-looking consumers.
A few hours ago Lukas and Danicka were amongst those crowds. Maybe a little less harried than the rest: the vast majority of their gifts were purchased and shipped out days or weeks ago. They were just shopping for each other tonight. And not for each other's real presents, either, but: just for knickknacks. Toys, gadgets, little things they thought might please each other. When they were tired of the crowds, dinner was a simple affair: bowls of quasi-Korean beef-and-tofu stew grabbed in a mall food court.
Then it was a quick cab ride over to AMC 21 River East: a hulking structure a few blocks from the lakeshore, so large that it contained a minimall in and of its own right. They had tickets for the after-dinner feature. Spent a few hours in the darkness, reclining in their seats with the armrest raised between them so Danicka could lean against Lukas's side, and Lukas could put his arm around her shoulders. Monday night before Christmas Eve isn't a popular time for movies, and between the timing and Lukas's rage, they have the row nearly to themselves. They watch Smaug rage against hobbits, or maybe they watch Sandra Bullock try not to fly off into the black unknown reaches of space, and
when the credits roll and the lights start to come up Lukas stays where he is a little longer, pulling the 3D glasses off his face with a long, quiet sigh of satisfaction.
"We should take the girls to the movies sometime," he says. "How old do they have to be? Two? Three?"
DanickaThere are degrees of flexibility that come with owning an apartment in downtown Chicago and having one's nanny live there. You still pay said nanny very well for the extra time, more than the normal day. You still check in and communicate about when you'll be there. But if it's bedtime and the twins can go to sleep and you can slip in and cradle them up warm to take them to the car and home even if it's very late. This is what Danicka thinks sometimes about the arrangement, when Lukas mentions that they haven't just gone out in a long time, and she thinks about the past quarter of school and then the quarter before that and then the rather hectic summer they had and that one date that was cut short because reasons.
The truth is, she was not much in a mood to go shopping. Everything is bought! Everything is shipped. Hell: the tree at home is decorated and the gifts are wrapped and piled high even though it's just the four of them plus their cat. But Lukas wanted to, and Danicka -- who has only added more to her shoulders by going back to school -- does not like to deny him. She really doesn't.
They have changed a lot.
So a bit indulgently, she would look the other way or go look at some things in another store while Lukas gleefully bought more presents, small things, for her and for Eliska and Tatiana and Kando and possibly even their family members who won't possibly get them before Christmas morning. She found a few things. She would always drift back, though, sliding her arm through his, strolling through the mall or the shops with him, thinking of purchases beyond gifts. They stopped in Pottery Barn Kids for a while, even, and she mentioned toddler beds. She looked at some teenaged furniture as well, thoughtfully, but said nothing of this as they wandered out again.
They went to a movie. And Danicka
fell asleep on Lukas's chest, breathing slowly and quietly about forty minutes into the movie, her neck at a slightly strange angle but not a warping one. Sometime in there, Lukas takes her skewed 3D glasses off, and she rubs her face on his chest, going back to sleep. It's not even that they picked a boring movie. It's that she has taken to these catnaps, an efficient way to make up for whatever might be lost from studying, mothering, or her own private research. Lukas, true to form, doesn't want her to miss the movie but can't bear to wake her when she is resting peacefully, trustingly, within the curve of his arm.
She wakes because the lights are coming on and the end credits are a bit louder than normal, and the theater is coming to life around her. Blinking several times, she yawns to the back of her hand, looking at him with only the barest hint of apology since, really, they both know he wouldn't be upset and that she isn't really that sorry to begin with.
He mentions movies and 'the girls', which is what he calls them sometimes when they are not 'the twins' or when they are not 'the pups'. Danicka smiles slowly at him, sort of lazy and still sleepy., "I think I'd like to wait til they're three. Just based on research. But it may be longer."
LukasPerhaps Lukas noticed when Danicka wandered over to look at teenaged furniture. The slightly-smaller-than-adult beds and desks with their colors a little less flamboyant than kids' furniture, some of them with built-in USB ports and color-changing LED lighting and other assorted bells and whistles. Maybe he wandered over there too to fiddle with drawers and chairs and all the rest.
Neither of them really said much of it, though, nor of the girl they were both thinking of. They left Pottery Barn Kids, they went to a movie, Danicka took a nap that Lukas couldn't bear to wake her from, and now:
now she's waking up, yawning into her hand. He fields that look of her with a wry, fond smile, gathering up their outerwear as they get ready to leave.
"Three sounds good," he agrees. "I have some pretty vivid memories from when I was three, so I assume their brains will be wired together enough for them to enjoy a Pixar movie. And they'll be old enough not to cry and make everyone around them angry." He hands Danicka her scarf, her coat. "Got your gloves? It's really cold outside."
Danicka"Well, if they cry," Danicka says mildly, "and people get angry, those people can go fuck themselves."
She shrugs into her coat, flipping her hair out of the collar, smiling at Lukas. He fusses about her gloves; she raises her eyebrow at him, smirking in amusement. "Is it?" she teases, as she wraps her scarf around her throat, tucking it under her coat lapels before she buttons up. She doesn't put on her hat and gloves yet; that can wait.
They gather their bags to head out, though, and she slips her hand into his, asking before they head out into the frigid air: "What do you think about going and grabbing a drink?"
Lukas"It is," Lukas says, quite earnestly, setting down his own gloves and scarf so he can help Danicka button those last buttons up. When he's done he gives her coat a gentle tug, smiling down at her. "I don't want you to freeze."
He wiggles his fingers into his gloves, then, and wraps his scarf warmly around his neck. Buttons up his coat and picks up his share of their bags, the paper crinkling against his legs as he shuffles sideways out of their row of seats.
It's a grand movie theater; full of echoes of Chicago's storied theaters with the occasional touch of shopping mall and game arcade. They ride the escalators down to the lobby, and then they cross the lobby to that row of doors that will -- rather unceremoniously, all things considered -- dump them out on the freezing sidewalks of downtown Chicago.
"I think," Lukas says, wrapping his hand around hers and tucking both them hands into his warm pocket, "that is a great idea. Want to go to smartbar? Or somewhere closer?"
DanickaLukas sets down his outerwear to try and help Danicka button her coat. She gives him such an odd Look, pulling back a bit, her brow wrinkled. She thinks of teasing him a bit more, of then picking up his scarf and winding it around his neck for him and putting on his gloves for him and then making sure his shoes are tied for him. He notices. Of course he notices. Lukas has not, for years now, pretended he doesn't see, pretended that he doesn't care. More often than not, the hard part is making him understand that making Danicka frown doesn't mean that her love for him is threatened, that her belief in his love for her is suddenly fragile.
It's just a coat. It's just a gesture, and one he thinks nothing of and one she clearly finds strange and a bit off-putting, but that frown isn't angry; it's a bit befuddled, and a bit curious-tender, because she thinks: he is most like this when he is worrying about me. why is he worried?
--
But she withdraws, and before he can ask her, fallen crest and all, what he did wrong, she picks up his gloves and puts one on his hand, then the other. She tugs them secure and tucks them under his coat cuffs, and slips her arm through his, as mentioned before, to walk towards the outer doors. She asks him about a drink; he mentions smartbar. He starts to pocket their hands; she removes hers for a moment to don her gloves and hat, which she did not want to wear all the way out of the theater and hallways and escalators but puts on now.
"Smartbar is full of anxious twenty-nothings," Danicka says, with a tiny wrinkle to her nose. "Why do you think I took Gabriella there once upon a time?" She smirks, teasing again: "Why do you think you were there trolling for one night stands, once upon a time?"
One pretty eye flashes closed in a wink. "Let's go somewhere closer. Somewhere with spiked cocoa."
LukasOf course he notices. He notices, and his brow starts to furrow, and his crest starts to fall, and then:
she picks up his gloves and puts them on for him.
Which makes him laugh. Which makes him burst into head-flung-back, open-throated laughter, wiggling his fingers as she gets them into the gloves; wrapping his arms around her and giving her a hug that is one part apology, one part understanding, and eight parts warm humor.
They head out. She puts her gloves on along the way, and then -- then -- he pockets their hands. She accuses him -- rightfully, he's ashamed to admit -- of trolling for one night stands at smartbar once upon a time. He grins this lopsided, sheepish grin. "I still like it," he admits. "It reminds me of the first time I met you. Well; the first time in this city."
Somewhere closer, though. With spiked cocoa. Lukas isn't sure where to find such a place, so he pauses before they've left the building and pulls his phone out. A few taps and a few seconds later:
"Drumbar, then?" He turns the phone around so she can see. "I'm not sure why all these places are named so similarly."
DanickaFor all that she is the more fragile of the two, the one who cannot recover from near-death so easily, who cannot come back from death at all, sometimes she worries for Lukas. Sometimes she forgets that to the rest of the world, his heart is not easily broken. His heart is not easily seen, either; that is the nature of what they are, and what they must be. Few, even among their kind, have the luxuries of a mate who does not flinch at the sound of their breathing, a house that is seen often, children who occasionally 'kiss' their daddy on a new moon by essentially opening their mouths wide and sort of eating his nose.
Or a wife, who thinks nothing of it when he zips up her dress or she helps him with a cufflink but balks when he wants to button up her coat. And then puts his gloves on for him, because... well. If he's going to be weird and coddly, maybe she'll just be weird and coddly, too. And he'll see how weird it is. And she'll hopefully see what he gets out of being coddly.
Truth be told, Danicka -- as warm as she can be, as passionately as she loves him and as protective as she is of their cat and as powerfully as she adores her twin pups -- is not much for coddling. She's the one who will sternly scold Kando for mewling pitifully in her carrier when going to the vet until the cat realizes that yowling is Not Okay. She is the one who, when the twins were avid crawlers and started rolling off of their child-bed and playing with toys, would get up a few times to place them back on the mattress, putting the toys out of reach and firmly informing both girls that it was bedtime, that it is time to sleep, until they learned that they could play with their toys all they wanted when it was time to wake up.
Danicka does not coddle. At least one parenting fight ended up -- when they calmed down enough to talk rationally -- being about finding the balance between instilling boundaries, independence, and self-reliance into their daughters and making sure they know they are safe, they are protected, they are loved. She cares a lot about the girls both finding their own way, figuring themselves out, being unrepressed by protection in all the insidious forms it can take, some of them well-meaning. She also cries sometimes from spending time away from them; she adjusted her winter quarter schedule to take more night classes. It means less sleep. It even means a little less time with Lukas.
It means more time lolling on the floor with her baby girls, lifting them up in the air and acting surprised at how they got up there.
--
Anyway. Back to the moment.
He says he still likes it, that silly douchey place full of desperate young people. She just grins at him, and he flicks through his phone, and she muses, shaking her head at Drumbar. "Mindy's Hot Chocolate," she says, decisively. "Even if it's not spiked," she adds, smiling. "We can get dessert. And sneak in tiny bottles of vodka or rum or peppermint Schnapps."
Lukas"Mindy's, then," Lukas seconds, turning his phone off and sliding it into his pocket. And then -- finally -- he tucks her hand into his pocket, pushes open the door with his other hand, and emerges out into the frigid, frigid winter.
They drove to Kingsbury in separate cars. Danicka from school, Lukas from the Caern. They parked there and took a taxi to Michigan Avenue, and again from there to the theater. Lukas steps to the curbside now, tall, more than a little imposing in his dark winter's clothing; so much so that one might expect your average cabbie to think twice about picking him up. But then there's that lovely blonde with him, her hand in his. Warmth and spring sunshine, her. So much so that most people never realize just how much steel is in her core.
A taxicab pulls to the curb. They get in, Danicka first, then Lukas piling in after. His knees hit the back of the driver's seat, but he doesn't complain. Just pulls the door closed and tells the driver to take them to Mindy's.
On the way there, Lukas is on his phone again, looking up the menu. "They've got drinks on the menu," he observes. "I'm sure they'll slip a shot of rum into the cocoa if we ask nicely."
DanickaDanicka is not shy about snuggling right up against Lukas's side when they get in the cab. He tells them where to go. She smiles at him when he mentions 'asking nicely' for alcohol. "You're so polite," she teases him, because in a way,
it is simply politeness when Shadow Lords ask nicely for anything. It is a move.
And simply, too, because she wants to tease him tonight, has been teasing him for hours, in between all her nuzzling and cuddling and falling asleep on him. She kisses his cheek, and perhaps the driver nearly gags a bit. But they take a cab, because they can afford it. They could afford ubercars, too. Or personal drivers. They take a cab instead, because... well. They're the sort.
"I should never have gotten you that thing," she says, indicating the phone. "You need a new one anyway; that's all scratched."
LukasIt's politeness when a Shadow Lord chooses to ask nicely. It's a trap when they pretend to fight fair. Lukas does try to be polite, though, and he tries to restrict the traps to those who really deserve them. Wyrm, and assorted unsavories.
So: yes. When they get to Mindy's, he will ask politely that they pour rum and peppermint Schnapps into their hot chocolate. And here in the cab, with his mate leaning against his side, he refrains from completely gratuitous shows of affection. So: no long kisses. No inappropriate touching. Just his arm around her shoulders, his free hand clicking the phone off again as he smiles at her.
"I like this phone," he says. "It's not scratched; it's got character."
It is scratched. It's rather horrendously scratched. It's not always dedicated to his spirit. There have been times when he's shifted and it's simply dropped off his body and smacked into the ground. There have been times when one baby or the other has gotten ahold of it, grubby hands and slobbering mouth and all. There have been times when he simply lost his grip on it, fumbled with it for a comical three seconds before it struck the ground. It's a miracle the glass hasn't broken.
"Maybe I'll get a new one next year," he adds. "But it's not like I need the latest processor technology to look up places on Yelp."
DanickaLukas refrains. Danicka does not. Danicka, who -- if she glances at the cab driver even for a moment to check his attention, it does not show -- gently, tenderly moves her hand into his coat, under his shirt, warming her now-bare palm against his abdomen. She strokes his skin lightly, smiling, tilting her head to silently kiss him underneath his jawline, beneath his ear, while he is telling her that his phone has character and it does just fine looking up places on yelp.
He's going to be that dad, she thinks briefly, the one who doesn't see why they need a newfangled this or that. She thinks that warmly, while she strokes her fingertip around his nipple and licks his neck.
LukasOh, she is incorrigible. His commentary on processors and Yelp turns a little shaky, if we're honest: a little more exhale than necessary beneath the words. He tries not to be obvious about it. They're both in thick clothing. He's in his wool coat, his sweater, his shirt. It's dark back here and it's not entirely obvious what she's up to; wouldn't be, so long as he didn't do something abominable like lean his head back and moan.
Even though he sort of wants to. Which is absurd because god they have been mated and married a number of years now, have been fucking for a number of years now, and yet: the way she touches him still sends his pulse right into the red. If anything, he thinks, familiarity and practice have made her that much more devastatingly effective.
His hand catches hers briefly against his stomach as her hand is straying up toward his chest. He casts her this look, this look that wants to be a stoppit but ends up more like a ohgod. Then he relinquishes her hand after all, and she strokes her fingertip the way she does,
licks him,
makes him shiver while he tries his best to look like he's not getting touched on by his girlfriend-wife-mate.
"Have you been to Mindy's before?" Oh look: he's trying to be conversational. "I'm not sure I have."
DanickaWell, yes.
There is that spot beneath his ear that makes him elongate his entire body and shudder slightly, lifting that spot towards her mouth, his lips parted and his eyes falling closed. And the rhythm he likes when she strokes his nipple like that, how it sends blood towards his cock.
Which she would very much like to be stroking right now. She thinks they should get a fancy car and a driver so she can fuck him in the car. She remembers, in a brief flash, wanting to fuck him in his car one of the very first times they walked together; she called him the worst-slash-only boyfriend ever, good for him, and sooner or later they were fighting again and she was angry at him that he wasn't having sex with her and he was angry at her for reasons she doesn't remember and then she was just angry at him, period. But she wanted him to sit in the passenger seat and pull her body on top of his and just fuck her.
Like they fucked in summer, coming down from their reserved table just because they couldn't help themselves, crawling into the back seat and hiking her red dress up so they could go at it right there before having fire-grilled steak for dinner.
The thing is, Danicka just has a slight kink for fucking in cars. It's not even her strongest kink but she likes it, yes she does, and she is warm and happy and not drunk at all but she's thinking that hiring a nanny was the best idea she's ever, ever had and maybe they should just go back to the Kingsbury garage and get in Lukas's BMW and get each other off. But she doesn't suggest that. She flicks her tongue over his earlobe, closes her mouth over the skin, rakes her teeth tenderly over him.
Her fingertips give his nipple the gentlest little pinch, almost a stroke itself, really.
"I have," she says thoughtfully, sliding her hand out from under his shirt but not from under his coat, using the wool as shield as her hand moves between his legs, over his pants. "With some friends from school. Study group. My treat. We had this banana thing I think you'd like."
LukasBanana thing.
Lukas lets out this huff of a laugh, which ends up sounding a bit like a pant as Danicka's hand drifts down. No; drift implies accident, implies chance, and he's quite sure she's acting very deliberately.
"Maybe I'll tr..."
He doesn't quite finish. He closes his eyes. She touches him through his jeans, which are nice and quite expensive and thick but soft. His head does tip back, then. He does lean against the headrest, just for a moment, before he remembers where he is. Lukas opens his eyes: the driver is looking at him in the rearview mirror, suspicious, eyes flicking quickly away as Lukas meets them.
He sits up a little straighter then, her mate. He hugs her against his side and he laughs under his breath and he catches her hand again, stills it this time, turns and presses a quick soft kiss to her mouth.
"Nech toho," he whispers. "Budeme se vyhodili z taxíku."
DanickaThat half-finished phrase and that slight breathiness to Lukas's voice, no matter how controlled, has the cabbie glancing back at them, frowning, on the verge of snapping no funny business! no! at them through various language barriers. Danicka ignores the cab driver, and she ignores the amount of thick fabric between her touch and her husband's cock just as defiantly. She follows him as his head tips back, licking softly at his throat, as though urging him to forget himself, to close his eyes and pant for her, moan for her, to lift his hips into her touch. Her only concession to their company is that she is not whispering in his ear suggestions that he do exactly those things, soft utterances that he should
take it out.
let me play with you.
as she has on so, so many occasions, both in their bed and in hotel beds and in cars and in bathrooms and in stranger places than all that.
--
He sits up a little straighter, like a Boy Scout, like a decent taxpaying member of society who is not interested in getting arrested and watching them both be humiliated, thank you very much. Danicka's grin is a lazy, curling thing, lopsided and a bit drunken though she hasn't had a drop tonight. He hugs her against his side, reaching for her hand, and though he makes her be still with the pressure from his hand he doesn't remove it, and she
works her hand just a little more firmly between his jeans and his palm, squeezing him through his pants, encouraging that gentle erection she can already feel. He kisses her, small and soft and brief, and tells her to stop or they'll get kicked out.
"We can get another," she murmurs, verbally shrugging off his concern, but then there's that slashing grin again, a slide of her hand against him.
"Hey!" the cabbie says brusquely, stabbing another glare at them in the rearview. "Your woman. She drunk? You tell her no funny business in my cab."
Danicka looks at Lukas at that, catching a laugh inside of her chest, looking at him like this is the most hilarious thing she has ever, ever heard. Her eyes are alight, her mouth open with that soundless laughter.
LukasReally, it's not quite okay, what they're doing. They're in a public space, they are in the presence of a stranger, and she is feeling him up through his jeans. He is letting her, despite making valiant little gestures not to. He is a moment away from sighing his pleasure. He is a moment away from planting his feet, arching his hips,
taking it out for her.
So the cabbie is justified, really, in telling them to knock it off. Lukas doesn't fault him that. It's the way he does it. It's the your woman, it's the tell her, it's the assumption of inebriation and nonsensicality and Lukas's dominance and --
maybe, just maybe, it's that once upon a time Lukas did not think so differently himself.
The Ahroun's eyes snap open. He fires a glare straight back through the mirror. "She's not drunk," he says, "nor deaf, nor mute, nor incapable of communication."
All of which sums to: tell her yourself.
DanickaThere were days when she did not know him at all, and she could see into his soul with a glance, and those days were followed by days when he mistook her seeing for her understanding. It has taken more than a glance and more than a year and more than two, more than the winters they've spent together and their long summers, now even more than mating with him and marrying him and having children with him, for Danicka to understand Lukas.
But she understands a few of the more obvious things, she would say: like the fact that it cuts right through him, still, to think of her childhood. The terror she lived with and the pain she lived through, the loneliness she came to think of as her nature, the meanness that she wore so close to her skin that even she forgot it was only armor. She understands that when his mind drifts that way it makes him howl inside, and so sometimes when he embraces her out of nowhere -- so tight, so near -- this is the reason; he is not just trying to protect her after the fact but trying to staunch the wound in himself that thinking of her pain inflicts.
She understands that even now, years after he's set such things aside, he is deeply ashamed of how he used to behave, how he used to treat her, how he used to think of her or things he said to others about her. She wonders when he will forgive himself, and notices when the instances of that grief passing through his eyes grow fewer and farther between, knowing that there may never come a day when he does not, however infrequently, recall and regret. She understands that sometimes when he bares his teeth in her defense at the slightest, faintest insult or looks stricken by even a hint of self-deprecating humor on her part, he is being taken under by that regret, that guilt, even when she thinks it's misplaced.
It is exasperating and endearing. Occasionally it is even amusing. Sometimes it is frustrating. Mostly it makes her tender, makes her worry for him. But she knows this, too: much of his integrity, his honor, his care, lie in the fact that he holds himself to such a standard, that he worries over his worthiness, that he maintains the wish of going back and being better to her even if he does not let himself become obsessed with the impossible.
--
These days, when Lukas lifts his head and stares bloodlust into the back of the cabbie's head for disrespecting her, Danicka knows it isn't bluster, it isn't look how I take care of you, baby, look how I respect you, it isn't all the things she would have pegged it as a few years ago. She sees the stab into his heart, before the snap of rage in his eyes.
The cab driver seems to shrink in his seat, eyes immediately forward. His shoulders hunch and his hands tighten on the wheel. He nearly misses his turn; he forgets his blinker until the last second. "No funny business," he mutters, more to himself than anyone else.
Danicka looks at Lukas, her head tilted, and as before, she ignores the driver. She isn't groping Lukas anymore, though. Her hand is still between his legs but lighter, not stroking or cupping or gently rubbing him. The look she gives him isn't chastising. It's just understanding. She was laughing, really, at the cabbie's thinking she was drunk. Lukas wasn't, and doesn't, and doesn't need to. Danicka gently removes her hand, wrapping her arm around his waist instead.
She lays her head on his chest. She doesn't say anything, and the taxi drives on toward Mindy's.
LukasIn a way, the cabbie gets his wish. There's no more funny business after that. Lukas's icy glare haunts him a few more seconds through the rearview mirror. Then -- in the spirit of the season, or perhaps just the evening with his wife and mate -- the Ahroun relents. His hand covers Danicka's elbow as she wraps her arm around him. She lays her head on his chest and he lays his chin gently over the crown of her head for a moment, wolflike.
--
It's a short trip to Mindy's, and uneventful. The cabbie says nothing to them. They say nothing to each other, though that silence is considerably more benign. The city outside is frozen, every building a black monolith pierced by lights. Steam vents from their tops. Ice and snow glitter on the ground. When the taxi pulls to a stop, Lukas tips generously: a mute peace offering, perhaps. Then he opens the door and steps out onto the sidewalk, holding his hand out for Danicka to take as she rises from the passenger's seat.
"Merry Christmas," he wishes the cabbie as he closes the door. The taxi pulls away, tires crunching on roadside snow. Lukas's hand squeezes Danicka's gently as they walk into the swanky little dessert bar.
DanickaAll Danicka does with Lukas, for the rest of the drive, is cuddle him. She hugs his waist and nuzzles his chest and smiles as he wraps his arm around her, too. As he lays his chin over her head. She has seen every physical iteration of his feelings of protectiveness; she has seen him some nights, when the moon is heavy, laying in lupus out in the hall, guarding both her and the twins. It's easier these days for her to withstand his rage, even at its worst; but when she's worn out or when the babies are sick or there's just something in the way, it means something that they work it out. He doesn't abandon them, she doesn't reject him. They find a way to make it work, when once upon a time they thought it would be impossible.
When the moon is thin or his rage is low, though, they make sure the girls are close to him. He holds them. Sometimes he feeds them. He wraps his enormous hand over Eliska's scalp, cradling her entire head in his palm as she kicks her legs furiously. They've watched as those tiny heads have gotten larger, as those bodies have filled out with baby fat, as crawling began edging towards walking. They would smack their palms as they followed Danicka around the house, crawling under Lukas's torso and between his arms and legs like he was a human jungle gym. Then back around Thanksgiving, when the twins started pulling themselves up and stumble-walking from parent to parent, taking two or three steps and then flopping forward in exhaustion into Danicka's arms, into Lukas's.
Still, even with them walking, she finds him sometimes holding Eliska or Tatiana, putting his jaw over their heads as they loll sleepily on his shoulder, watching over them. It is a nice respite; they learned very early on not to push it when the moon is full. All the girls could do was wail in confusion and terror, and as much as it stung, both Lukas and Danicka knew the cost of pressing too hard. She promises him often that they will only get stronger, that they aren't even really scared of him, that all the time he spends with them when it's easier will pay off.
It's hard. They make it work.
--
She does feel protected, though. Right now, with him standing up for her and his arms around her and his jaw over her crown; it makes her smile. She nuzzles him under his chin when the cab stops, lifting her lips to kiss him along that soft, unguarded skin. She shivers when they get out, shifting closer to him, walking into Mindy's with him.
They get hot chocolates, spiked with liqueur. They get 'banana in three parts' and tuck together in a little corner booth. Danicka has shed her coat and gloves and hat and scarf, and the cocoa is warming, but still she sits unreasonably close to Lukas, verging on getting into his lap, kissing him in between bites here and there, as though they were newlyweds, as though they were just starting out and not on their fifth Christmas together.
"I've been thinking," she says, dipping her elegant little spoon into some banana sorbet with mocha cake or whatever it is, "about when we should have Irena come live with us." She looks at him, perfectly aware that they were both checking out the teenaged furniture earlier today. "She's turning 13 in a couple of weeks, but I don't think she'll be having a change as late as her brother did."
LukasThe twins are growing. They are still very tiny and very vulnerable, and the unconditional depth of Lukas's love -- which so often intertwines with worry -- makes them seem all the tinier and all the more vulnerable to him. Still, even he is aware that they are growing. They are developing, mind and body: there is new intellect in those bright eyes every day, and new strength in those bodies. Now they are crawling. Now they are walking, albeit stumblingly. Now their sounds are approaching syllables, phonemes. He can't wait for the day they say mama, daddy, can't wait for the day they traipse out of the house hand in hand in little flowered bucket hats, backpacks over their shoulders, a yellow bus waiting for them.
Can't wait for it. Is terrified of it. Somehow he and Danicka are on their fifth Christmas together. Somehow they have children, their children are growing up, their parents are growing old; there's no pause button on life.
--
Not even when he wants to pause it. Just for a while. Just suspend a single perfect moment for a minor eternity or so: like when she nuzzles him under his jaw, kisses him where his arteries course close to the skin. He closes his eyes. He feels protective and protected.
--
They get out of the cab. They pay and they go inside and they get spiked cocoas just like they thought they would; they sit sort of in the back the way they always do, out of the way, somewhere close and warm and private. They are both, in their own ways, private people.
He sits beside her, instead of across. His arm brushes hers sometimes through his sweater. Their coats over their chairs, their gloves tucked into their pockets: they share the banana in three parts, though Lukas is eating more mocha cake and more sorbet and less banana. He doesn't really like bananas; they talked about it one morning, laughing, because he said they taste like chemicals and she called him silly.
He looks at her now, eyes bright and keen as Irena's name is mentioned. He loves the girl; Danicka knows this. Loves her almost-sort-of-like-a-papa-but-not-quite, because his relationship with Irena is not, and never could be, quite the same as his relationship to his pups. It is not more, or less, or better, or worse. It is simply different, and must be, if she is to grow up strong. If he is to guide her well.
"Soon," Lukas says. He carves off another bite of cake, eats it thoughtfully. "Maybe after this school year is done, if she can hold out that long. In the spring, if she can't."
DanickaThe way Lukas will have to treat Irena is nothing like how he has treated her in the past. It is nothing like how he treats and will treats his daughters. And Danicka thinks, even now, that in years to come all three girls will feel somehow that they have missed out on something: the twins seeing that there are things Irena understands that they never will, because they are not his mentored cubs. Irena coping with her almost-daughterly affection for Lukas and the loss of her own father and the pain of seeing him with his own children. Danicka can see it coming and she knows there's no avoiding it, not without taking something vital away from any of them.
Irena needs Lukas. So do his twins. And his pack, and his mate, and his sister and parents and Danicka's family.
She sips her cocoa, leaning into his side, thinking. Soon. They aren't going to wait until she changes, and they can't; they both know stories of garou who killed their own parent, who left their family in bloody shreds, who were attacked by spirals and did not make it through their first change. "I think the stone you gave her is part of it," she says thoughtfully. "She's always been... a bit wilder than her siblings. Every time I see her, she's more like an animal."
LukasThat puts a touch of sadness into Lukas's thoughtfulness. He takes another bite of their shared, decadent dessert, then sets his spoon down and lifts his mug.
"Maybe it's time for her to release the wolf-spirit in that stone," he says. "I think when I gave that to her, it was good for her, and maybe she even needed it. To be able to channel her wildness like that. To be able to shunt it somewhere where it wouldn't hurt her or her loved ones. But maybe now, as she gets older, as her own Wolf grows stronger, running as a wolf every single night in her dreams is pulling her too far from the human half of her spirit.
"I'd like it if she could Change before she releases the spirit, though," Lukas adds. They are both speaking quietly; it is a necessity, but it is also the subject matter. He stirs his cocoa. He takes a small spoonful of sorbet. "So that she can release it herself, and see it herself, and thank it herself before it departs. It might even decide to stay with her, if their bond has grown deep enough."
DanickaDanicka doesn't argue. Danicka prays, and prays to the varying faces of Luna. Danicka keeps the little fountain in the twins' room to keep them healthy and all spring and summer and well into autumn took them to play in the shadow of Oak and Magnolia. Danicka polishes the glass in their den til it gleams, thanking the spirits under her breath as she does so for keeping them protected. It was Danicka who carved the symbol of Perun into the rafters of their home to deflect lightning. As the girls grow, they'll hear about Gaia, and about Perun, and Luna and Thunder.
She's not concerned about Irena's spirit overtaking her humanity, not with her so firmly grounded by her family and by school. But she does think the spirit in that stone has served for a long time now. She squeezes Lukas's leg gently, and says as much.
These days, what she thinks makes it into words far more often than it once did.
"I think she's pretty grounded," she tells him. "Her family and her school, if nothing else. When she comes out here she'll have a place to feel human as well as wolf. But I think you're right about the wolf in the stone; it's served so long already. She should be the one to release it. And thank it.
"I'll give Šárka a call later this week," Danicka goes on, picking up a bite of cake. "Maybe you can talk to Irena directly. She may be able to tell you herself if she can hold on til summer. But we should start getting the downstairs room ready, nonetheless. Remodel the bathroom to add a shower, too."
Lukas"I'll talk to Irena," Lukas agrees. "Maybe after you talk to Sarka, though. She probably has more experience raising Garou and living with Garou than the both of us combined. And we can work out a tentative date together, the four of us. I liked that bed we saw today, though. The one with the purple trim?"
He's just. Putting that out there. Just mentioning it while they scoop at their triple-banana-whassit and sip their spiked cocoas.
"And at some point," he adds, "maybe we can expand the second floor for the twins. Especially if there are other siblings on the way."
DanickaDanicka just grins at him. "I saw you looking," she tells him, teases him, even though she was looking, too. "I think she likes purple, too."
He mentions expanding the second floor and she tips her head thoughtfully. "I was thinking we would just renovate the den downstairs into an actual bedroom for whenever the girls are old enough." She pauses; she's doing math. Counting years between siblings, years of fosterage. "Whenever Irena wants to move out on her own, that room could be a guest room, or another bedroom if we want to turn the nursery back into a study."
Which, as he can surely tell from her tone, would be her goal.
She smiles at him. "I like the upstairs being... mostly just ours," she tells him. "Obviously our kids won't be banned or anything, but I like having our own little apartment up there. And we have at least another year or two before any more siblings will be on the way. Unless you're telling me that you'd like to knock me up again right away. Make a New Year's tradition out of it." She grins.
LukasLukas laughs -- a quiet huff, mid-bite. He eats that mouthful. He wipes his mouth, and then he bumps his brow against her temple, sidelong, affectionate.
"As much fun as juggling two infants and a neonate sounds," and oh, there's maybe just a hint of satire here, "I think we should wait until the twins are walking and talking and maybe even in preschool before we make a sibling for them.
"We should practice, though." He's absolutely straightfaced, very solemnly stirring his spiked-cocoa. "I mean. I wouldn't want us to be out of shape and out of form when the time comes."
Danicka"Who knows," Danicka says, widening her already-large eyes to him. "I could have twins again. Triplets." She says it like she's telling a scary story around a campfire, and then leans forward to bump her forehead to his in return, the two of them openly, animalistically affectionate with each other. "And frankly, even if you got me pregnant again tomorrow, the girls would be toddlers by the time they had a baby something-or-other."
She scoots a little closer, sipping her cocoa and looking at him over the rim as he says they should practice sibling-making. She almost chokes from laughter, putting the mug down and coughing, covering her mouth, licking her lips. Danicka shakes her head at him. "Well I tried but you kept stopping me. Something about getting kicked out of the cab."
LukasLukas blurts a laugh too. They're suddenly become somewhat noisy between her coughing, his blurting. Fellow patrons cast glances, some more judgmental than others. Neither of them notice; Lukas is handing Danicka a napkin, and Lukas is picking up his mug to muffle his laughter against its rim.
"Well, some of us are shy and have stage fright," he says, recovering. "Don't judge me."
DanickaThey ignore them. They always have. They try to have good manners, particularly when the girls are with them, but sometimes you just have to give up: you can't please everyone. If fellow patrons dislike their laughter, that's the problem of those patrons for having sour moods.
Danicka blots at her lips, chuckling, and shakes her head. "You do not have stage fright. You weren't shy in the car outside of Zed a few years ago. Or in the bathroom of Spring. Or our table at Szalas..." she trails off, indicating that she could go on. And she probably could. But she relents, smiling at him.
Lukas"Sometimes my stage fright is overwhelmed by sheer lust," Lukas rationalizes,
and on that note, takes a last bite of their shared banana-three-way (what was it called, anyway?) and sets his spoon down. That arm goes around Danicka instead, wrapping heavy and warm around her shoulders, drawing her against his side. With his free hand he stirs his spiked cocoa, then lifts it for a sip.
"No triplets," he says, decisive. "Maybe more twins. But no triplets. I'm putting my foot down. Maybe yes on the purple bed too, though."
Danicka"No, no more twins, thank you very much," Danicka informs him, a genuine tightness entering her spine. She looks at him in something like bewilderment, as though he might have forgotten her pregnancy. She hasn't. "No babies at all until I lose my mind again."
LukasImmediately Lukas relents; aches. His arm tightens. He kisses her temple, pressing lips warm to her skin. "I'm kidding, baby," he murmurs. "No more twins. No more anythings until you're ready. Until we're all ready, you, me, and the girls."
Danicka"I know," and she does. She is relenting, too, bending under that kiss, closing her eyes a moment. "It was just... so much rougher than I thought it would be. Not just physically. The strain it put on you and me, too."
LukasThere's a quietness. In some way, these are things they don't speak of often. Things they don't like to speak of, perhaps. They feel a little like unpleasant secrets: the dark underside to something so joyful as children. Pups. Cubs.
"It was hard," Lukas acknowledges after a time. It, too, is quiet. "I didn't for a moment think we wouldn't pull through, but ... it was hard, and in ways I don't think either of us could have foreseen.
"I know we used to talk about having three kids or four," he adds, quieter still. "But... Danicka, if two is all we can have or can stand to have, that's completely okay by me. I wouldn't love you, or them, an ounce less."
DanickaDanicka's pregnancy was not easy. Early on, she said we need to talk or something of that measure and his instant thought was that this was it, this was over, she had realized she could not raise children with an ahroun. Even as it progressed, the physical toll it took on her was unfairly heavy, and the emotional price between them was sometimes more than they thought they could handle. There were times when he snapped at her, or when she collapsed into tears, and it stunned her how awful she felt, how lonely, how much she needed him and conversely could not stand to have him near.
She leans in heavily to his side, closing her eyes as he speaks. "I want to have more babies with you," she says quietly. "I do. Even if it's hard. But I know it wouldn't make a difference to you. Even if we'd never had the girls. I never think you don't love me, or them. I'm not afraid of that."
Lukas"Good," says her mate. He wants to rest his muzzle over her again. He wants to take her gently, lovingly in his teeth; as though in this somewhat backwards way he could protect her and keep her and hold her and show her she is loved. He settles for nuzzling her temple. For kissing her hair. "You should never be afraid of that. I can't imagine a world or a lifetime where I don't love you. Or them."
Another small quiet. His arm around her, her shoulder against his side. The two of them leaning together like newlyweds, which they are not. Like soulmates, which they are. His thumb stroking gently over the outside of her shoulder. His hand wrapped around his mug.
Eventually, whispering: "Do you want to go?"
DanickaFour. She said it before, startled him a bit -- when they met, wanting children wasn't even a question so much as the absolute denial to themselves of the possibility. They thought that having children together meant losing each other. Danicka, for the longest time, thought she couldn't love anything... and then she loved something very, very much. And then he brought her to their den. And then he took her home to his family. And then he helped her reconnect with her own. And then he told her about the children he'd met in the underworld, as she had told him about the children she'd never had, and there was no mistaking the longing and loss in each of their voices.
All of that, however, came after the night they were held underground, silver around his throat, Danicka deciphering some alien programming language to get them out --
the night she kissed him before she let him go, telling him that even though she wasn't ready, she would welcome his children if they came. It's possible that even now he doesn't realize that she wasn't saying goodbye with those words; she was telling him to fight all the harder.
--
She tells him now, again, assuredly, that she wants even more children. Not right now, not when Eliska and Tatiana are barely walking and not really talking at all so much as babbling a lot. Not until after she finishes school, maybe not even until after graduate school, depending on when that happens and how long it will take. But she hasn't changed her mind about having four babies with him. She would not mind if they were all little girls. She would not really mind if she had twins again, though it would be hard. She would not mind just about anything, so long as they are her children and Lukas's children. Their children. Their pups.
In the restaurant they're in, Lukas opts not to lay his chin over her or bite her shoulder through her sweater, but some element of the desire is in his nuzzling. She smiles, tucking herself close, running her hand over the front of his shirt, wondering aimlessly and suddenly about the Homelands, where they spend their lives between lives, where they reunite with each other and their families over and over again. He mentions lifetimes and she wonders again, to no purpose at all, about Red and Silver, about Eliska and Tatiana.
They are only half-done with their dessert. Three-quarters done with their cocoa. But when he asks if she wants to go, a slow, sweet smile spreads over Danicka's lips. It's traced in wickedness, the way so many of her private smiles are, as though she is getting away with something just by grinning like this. She tips her head back to look up at him.
"Under other circumstances," she means a couple of years ago, "I would take you to a hotel or my apartment and do unspeakable things to you," she informs him. She kisses his jaw, then the corner of his mouth as an afterthought. "But what do you say to picking up the girls, driving all the way home, putting them to bed, and then doing unspeakable things to each other in our own bed like boring people?"
LukasLukas was the one who first told Danicka that those cruel lines her brother carved between man and wolf, kin and Garou, were artificial. He was the one who told her that their souls were made of the same thing; that there was a world beyond this one where they could find each other and everyone else they'd ever lost; that when this life was done they could live there, at least until they were ready to be reborn again.
He told her that. No one had told her that before, but Danicka, with her intrinsic spirituality, with her crescent-born soul, understood and accepted this as the truth she'd always subconsciously known. Yet in a way Lukas was the one who was never quite sure. Never quite certain,
until, on that remarkable night in Prague,
he saw the truth for himself. Large as life, unmistakable and real. The lifetimes that had come before. The people they used to be: he and Danicka, and Red and Silver. The four of them, souls that entwined again and again over the ages. The two of them, complementary halves of the whole, souls that were ever meant to meet and love, whether as lovers or siblings or parent-and-child, or sometimes even as rivals, enemies who hated and understood each other so deeply it was a sort of love all its own.
--
A couple of years ago they would've gone to a hotel, or her apartment. They might still do such things, but not today. Not tonight. Tonight, she smiles, she kisses his jaw, she kisses the corner of his mouth which makes his mouth curve; makes his eyes close. She proposes being boring. He laughs softly, and he turns his head, and he finds her mouth and kisses her again,
softer this time, secretly.
"I say I second that motion," he says quietly. And, sealing her mouth with a second kiss, he shifts: drains his hot cocoa, takes a last bite of banana-triple-something as he stands.
It takes them a moment to get their things together. The blessings and curses of winter, this frigid season to which his soul cleaves as thoughtlessly and naturally as hers does to spring. His gloves on, he holds his hand out to hers -- waves goodbye to their server as they make their way out into the shocking cold.
