Saturday, December 13, 2014

never foresaw any of this.

Lukas

Lukas, frankly, is still thinking of his twins when his mate tells him, in no uncertain terms, what she would like. It startled a scandalized little huff of a laugh from him. The humor fades quickly enough -- like smoke in the wind. He shifts. Kisses her soft on the mouth.

"I'll drive us to Uncork It and get a bottle," he says, "if you book us a suite at the W."

--

She taps on her phone while he navigates the streets. Wholly by accident, they've ended up right next to both destinations -- a couple of blocks to one, a couple more to the other. Uncork It is near closing time when they pull up. Lukas leaves the car running, keys in the ignition. Gets out without his coat, pulls it on as he jogs for the door. He's gone for a matter of minutes. Comes back with a bottle of Luksusowa. A blast of chill air accompanies him into the car, and he hands the bottle to Danicka. "They didn't have Wyborowa," he explains.

Barely a minute more and they pull up in front of the W. They have no luggage. They don't even have a change of clothes. Lukas gives his keys to the valet; Danicka is carrying a bottle of vodka. He grins when he sees her like that; puts his arm around her to keep her warm across the ten feet to the door. The receptionist thinks maybe she recognizes them, but it's been years, and they're such different people now. He gives her his card, she gives him a keycard. They take the elevators all the way up.

Leaning against the railing, Lukas holds his hand out for the bottle. He has his gloves in his pocket. He cracks the top open, tips his head back for a generous swallow.

Danicka

In battle, Lukas prepares. And then over-prepares. And then prepares again for what might happen if he's over-prepared. His pack, while holding strength of pure brute force that cracks like the thunder of their patron, more often cuts like a surgical scalpel. This is why he leads. This is why they trust him the way they do. This is why, for some time now, he has had the renown to challenge for the fourth rank of a people who tend to tap out after the fifth if they make it that far. He is a strategist and a warrior both. Not a samurai, not a general: a wolf. And an alpha.

Danicka catches him off guard. Danicka startles him, disrupts him. Danicka undoes his footing. Because of Danicka, sometimes Lukas simply doesn't know what to do with himself.

Perhaps he just lets himself relax in her presence. But they both know better: when he was made of iron, when he refused to bend to her, it was still this way. It has always been this way.

So of course she surprises him, and he laughs, and though it only lasts for a moment or so, he is caught flat-footed by his mate's wandering attentions, wandering thoughts, wandering desires. Kisses her, because the shock of who she is only lasts a short time. Danicka knows from the first touch of his lips that he doesn't intend to eat at her mouth with this kiss. Devour her whole. Fuck her here in the car.

Truthfully, she's a little disappointed.

--

All she does when he parts from her and tells her what he does is smirk a little, and take out her phone. Texts her father first. Tells him they're going to be out late, but they'll be there in the morning, is that all right? And she never gets an answer because he has probably gone to sleep already, in the downstairs guest room, the television off and the house locked up. She calls the W next, because it's close to Christmas, and it's hard to get rooms by just walking in.

At the store, she stays in the car, watching outside, seeing him through the windows. Sees him frown at shelves, pluck something, take it to check out. Walks out carrying vodka and hands it to her. She smirks at what he says. "I'm sure it will suffice," she teases.

They get out, Danicka in her sleeveless graduation dress, Lukas carrying her coat after her because she didn't bother to put it on. She lets the bottle hang from the neck, gripping it comfortably as they walk inside. Her heels click on the floor; the receptionist is a wholly different person from the one here five years ago. Four years ago. Three. Still thinks she recognizes them, but can't understand how: something about them presses against primal memory, and everything in the poor young woman's life is built to numb her to those memories.

Danicka hangs back, opening the vodka, taking a drink right there in the lobby from the thick glass mouth. She looks around, and caps the bottle, and then heads for the elevators as Lukas is receiving his keycards. Walks ahead of him, dangling that bottle at her side, hitting the 'up' button before she even knows what floor they're going to be on.

It's late, but not terribly so. There are still people in the lobby, drinking, talking, laughing. A couple of people get off the elevator, glancing at Danicka, her bottle of crystal-colored liquid, her bright eyes. Her short dress. Lukas walks in after her, a dark wall, and the elevator doors slide closed behind them.

Danicka turns to him, he holds out his hand, she hands him the bottle, the body of it hitting his palm. He opens it, takes a swig himself. Danicka just watches him, leaning against the wall.

"Come here," she says, when he's lowering the bottle, swallowing.

Lukas

She draws stares when she does that. Cracks the bottle open, upends it there in the lobby. She's gorgeous in that dress. She's gorgeous with that hair, those eyes. Her throat moves as she swallows, and people can't decide if there's shocked or scandalized or disgusted or attracted or what.

She walks into an elevator ahead of a wolf. He's with her. They're together somehow, that much is clear. The doors are closing when she smacks the bottle solidly into his palm. He drinks and she watches him. He lowers the bottle and he's watching her, his eyes agleam.

The bottle is cool against the outside of her thigh when he comes to her. Puts his hand on her hip, slides his arm around her waist. There's a certain claim in that; or at least, an assurance. This time he does eat at her mouth. This time he presses her against the wall with the force and sudden hunger of his kiss.

Danicka

Time was, he might wonder what she wanted. Think he knew, but be wary. Now he puts his body against hers and kisses her, hungrily now, til her spine elongates against the cold interior of the elevator. Danicka sighs into his mouth, a low exhale that borders on a groan. Her arms are against the wall, too. He didn't put them there. They just are.

Their floor dings before they're done kissing. Before they've even started. The elevator doors slide open. Danicka opens her eyes, looking at him.

Lukas

Ding and the doors slide open. Lukas draws back a little; aware, always aware, of what's at his back. What's around him. What happens, who, where, how. He half-turns. She's looking at him and he's looking at the door, and neither of them are making a move to go out.

The doors shut again. He looks at her. They are close, his lips tingling with the feel of hers. He starts to smile. The elevator starts to move, going for the next guest waiting. He takes a step back, but only to hit the emergency stop. And to put down their vodka. Then he comes back, dropping his coat on the ground, unzipping his fly.

Danicka

As he turns, looking at the open door, Danicka's lips curve into a smirk. She knows. She knows before he turns back, is smiling at him as he turns back, looking at him with those limpid eyes and that scandalous mouth, her heart rate rising, her breath quickening. The doors shut and neither of them has moved, or said a word.

Her mouth opens when he steps away, though it's only for a moment -- she almost speaks, doesn't quite gasp. He hits the emergency stop. He puts the bottle down as the elevator halts. Their coats fall to the ground and his fly unzips and Danicka kisses him, ravenous, ferocious, biting his lower lip as he unfastens his pants, starts pushing them out of the way.

This isn't vodka. An ounce or two for each of them, mere moments ago, is not to blame for this.

Danicka remembers the time she jerked him off, sucked on his cock, while driving. Kept stroking him in the elevator, though not this elevator, while he panted, thrusting into her hands.

But that was before. And this is now. Her hands touch his face, then one reaches down to ruck up the hem of her dress, hiking it over her hips.

Lukas

They seem so attuned. Not a word has passed between them, and yet they have the same idea. She rucks up her dress and his hands are immediately on her skin; one palm warm, the other cool still from the bottle. When she lifts her face she finds him waiting for her, kissing her even as she kisses him. Bites him. He mutters against her mouth, grips her by the hips, lifts her: back sliding against the smooth wall of the elevator.

She hasn't bothered to take anything off, and apart from his coat, neither has he. He reaches into his pants; mutters again, and this time the words register. "Pull your panties aside," he's saying,

Mr. and Mrs. Kvasnicka-Musil, though neither of them have changed their names; Mr. and Mrs. parents-of-two-small-children, standing in an elevator with a bottle of vodka open in the corner. She moves her lingerie or he does it for her; either way he's rubbing the head of his cock against her a moment later, which makes him gasp against her mouth.

"Hold onto me," he's saying now, though he doesn't have to. Though she doesn't have to either: he'd hold her up. Maybe she makes him hold her up, deviant thing that she is. Can be. He groans when he slides into her. Grips the railing of the elevator with one hand -- other arm's wrapped tight around her. They're suspended x floors above the ground when he starts fucking her, eagerly and rather hard, semi-literally banging her against the wall.

Danicka

Danicka cries out. Not when he lifts her up or when he snarls at her to pull her panties aside. She cries out when he pushes inside of her, hard, sudden, fucking her already. Cries out and clutches her hands at his arms, her head tipped back against the wall, her lust catching in her throat.

Before that, though: he mutters wordlessly against her and lifts her up, and his hands are greedy on her thighs, and her thighs are opening to either side of him. Before she cries out he mutters, growls at her, and she shudders, says back:

"Rip them,"

and even the words fill her with lust. Loves how strong he is. Loves the sound of tearing fabric, breaking things. Gets wet for him, when he does it, her cunt clenching on nothing at all just yet, her pussy slick when he finds her with his fingers, with his cock. She doesn't hold onto him. Well: her hands do, tightening on his shoulders as he shoves himself inside of her, lifting her another half-inch on the wall, fucking her the moment he's sanctified within her.

That's when she cries out, her hands and her arms tightening around him. Her cunt tightening around him. Her legs, her thighs, her whole body holding him, holding on.

"Kurva," she snarls, digging her nails into his shoulder, through his sweater. "Kurva m ."

Lukas

She's not the only one aroused by the very words. Lukas growls to hear them. Rouses to hear them. Grabs the flimsy fabric, yanks, tears, does as he's told. She grabs his shoulders. His sweater's thick, his shirt is thermal. Even so she can feel the strength there, the hardness of his flesh,

the hardness of his cock filling her. He usually takes it a little slower. Has to: they live in a house with pups, and god knows what they're starting to overhear and remember. They keep quiet these days. Fuck under the covers, whispering, panting. It's not often now that she cries out like that. It's not often that he answers it with a low, rough sound of his own.

Then she's cursing at him. Saying the filthiest things. He kisses the words out of her mouth, and she tightens on him, body, cunt, everything, and his hands are under her thighs lifting her and opening her; he's quite frankly plowing, pounding her against that wall while the elevator hangs between floors.

How long do they have before someone comes to check on them? Ten minutes? Five? Less? Maybe they should worry about security cams, all that. Not much nudity to be seen but what they're doing is unmistakable, written on her face, his position, their interlocked bodies, that rhythm. Ten minutes, five, less it'll have to be enough.

Danicka

These days they're both slower. They're less desperate. They don't question each other's motives, don't bite and snap and circle warily. Each fuck doesn't feel like their last. And, truth be told, each fuck isn't a sudden, shocking discovery of what the other one wants, likes, gets off on.

Not to say they don't still learn. That afternoon he touched some of her toys, thoughtful and curious and aroused, and then spent hours watching her, exhausting her, fucking her every which way he could before he slid himself inside of her. He's learned the way she comes when he's fucking her slow and firm under the covers, learned the way she shudders and falls apart when he tells her to be quiet, shh. How that fetish of hers for fucking in cars wasn't a product of desperation or just a facet of their early relationship: on a couple of occasions, on rare drives alone, she's told him to pull over for no reason but her unfettered lust.

But tonight she cries out. And he snarls. He fucks her harder, faster, than he has in some time. She moans again, loudly, swearing whenever he's not kissing her. Keeps telling him to fuck her, fuck her. Somewhere past the walls of the elevator, out on the hotel hallway, someone can hear her and thinks it's coming from a room.

Danicka squirms between his body and the wall. Her hands roam greedily up his neck, into his hair. She leans forward, kissing him, groaning into his mouth. Fuck me, she mutters, again, grinding against his cock. Fuck that hot pussy.

Lukas

It could be coming from a room. Soon enough it will be coming from a room. Lukas has no intention of stopping with one hectic fuck in an elevator. It's not often that they're alone like this. It's not often that she graduates. They're going to go into their room, throw open the curtains, turn out the lights,

(or maybe leave them on)

and he's going to fuck her brains out. On somebody's else's thousand-dollar sheets. That's the plan; he's sticking to it.

For now, though: this. An unscripted, enthusiastic, ardent, almost-rough encounter. Her hands all over him while his mostly grab her ass, her thighs, hold her right there so he can fucking drill her. She's saying the filthiest things, and he gives her just these open-note groans back; low; they sound sort of like assent. Like he agrees: yes. Fuck that hot pussy. Fuck that sweet cunt. Fuck her, fuck her, fuck her, yes.

They shake the elevator a little. Neither of them worry about it. She's a fucking engineer; knows these things are designed to take much worse. He's a fucking werewolf; knows he'd protect her if they fell. Their kisses start to taste like bites. She can always tell when he's getting close because of the way he sounds, and the way he fucks, and the way he holds onto her and grinds into her and moans, groans,

growls her name.

Danicka

Let's call it his assent. His agreement. Yes. She likes that. She pants for it, tightening her legs around him, digging her nails into his body through his sweater. Hardly matters. He can hardly feel anything but the pressure of her body wound around his, the sweat on her thighs that makes her harder for him to hold up. All the same, there's no concer she'll slip; Danicka doesn't slow down, or stop riding him, using her shoulderblades against the wall, using his shoulders, using her own arms -- so much stronger now than when he met her -- for leverage. She kisses him somewhat savagely as she lifts herself up on him, bites almost too hard on his lower lip, groaning.

Her panting is hitched, though, uneven. Sometimes when she rides down on him and he thrusts up into her she shudders, she shakes, she threatens to fall apart.

It's not every day she graduates. It's not every day that she gets him all to herself. It's always been so. Sometimes it seems she sees him, has him to herself, even less now -- he has the pack, she has (had, will have) school, their families, the imminence of Irena's change, the girls. There have been times when he could only be home a short time, and the question is how he can possibly split that time. Give it to his children. Give it to his mate. Give it to himself, curled up and resting in his den, a few moments alone, a few moments of peace.

So there is some desperation to this. Some heedless need for one another. Danicka clutches at him, and clutches at the wall when her body clenches, when she feels herself close to orgasm, when her inner thighs almost slip against his hips, when her back arches like she's been shot through with electricity. Her face pulls, head tipping back, mouth opening silent for the first time since he started fucking her. Her hand claws at the wall, slips; she quivers around him, and that quiver rolls up through her, trembles her whole body. She stops breathing for a moment. She sees stars, not flashes of light preceding unconsciousness but stars, vast molten things in the sky erupting and burning, exploding and collapsing,

and then she sucks in air, and a sound comes out of her that is part god and part Lukas and part, simply, oh. That gasp for air is not her last, and the ones that follow are faster and sharper and coincide with the rolling, greedy thrusts of her hips as she rides the rest of her orgasm out on him.

Lukas

She goes silent; taut. She grasps at nothing, fingers slipping on slick wood. He buries his face against her throat, her shoulder. He grabs her hips, pulls her down, thrusts up into her,

she's taking that breath, she's making that sound,

he's making this sound, this groan that fairly explodes out of him. He muffles it: bites it into her shoulder, grips her in his teeth as he drives her another inch up on the wall with his sheer momentum. She rides him. He fucks her. They move on each other in these short, hard, hungry grinds. They use each other, and there's something pure about that sort of lust: consensual, unashamed.

There was a time when he wouldn't make a sound, fucking her. As though maybe that was a form of defeat or surrender. As though it would make him weak. He can hardly stop now: can't seem to stop groaning, can't seem to make the sounds turn into words. He gets there, though. Eventually she can make out a few rough-edged vowels, consonants,

so good, so hot, you're so fucking hot.

They slow. They stop. He nuzzles her shoulder, her neck, her ear. Those slow-pulsing clenches of her cunt still make him shudder; exhale. Some errant thought steals into his mind, makes him laugh softly. He sounds happy. He is.

Lukas lifts his head after some time. He kisses his mate, slowly and sweetly and deeply. Like this, he feels so close to her: together, joined, satisfied.

Danicka

For several seconds, they're just grinding together. She writhes on his cock while he holds himself deep inside of her, growling, groaning. It's only been a few minutes since the doors closed, since he pulled the emergency stop. The fact that either of them got off at all is somewhat remarkable, and a testament to how much practice they've had.

Yes: at fucking each other. At getting each other off.

It was rough. Fast, edging on brutal. Holding that edge, riding it, between what is good and what is terrible. His lower lip is livid red from her biting; all her skin is pink from the sheer heat. She holds onto him, trembling still from exertion and warmth and desire, panting against him.

Lukas regains himself a little first: kissing her, nuzzling her, making little happy, laughing sounds in response to thoughts he doesn't share with her. She's still drowsy when he lifts his head to kiss her. She's still kissing him, slow and languid and wet, when the intercom comes on and someone says hello?

Danicka freezes. She holds onto him with one arm, lays her other hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. They aren't seen in here right now; whoever just noticed that the elevator is stopped isn't even sure there's anyone inside.

Lukas

Danicka freezes. Lukas freezes too. Danicka covers her laugh -- can we call it a giggle? -- and Lukas whispers shh, shh. Swallows, clears his throat:

"Uh -- hey there -- we bumped a button in here and everything stopped. How do we get it going again?"

Says that over his shoulder. Manages to sound more or less normal. Turns back and he's got this smile spreading, turning into a grin. He leans forward, spontaneous: kisses Danicka soft and quick on the mouth. Gives her one last little grind with that half-hard cock

before he lifts her carefully off, sets her down.

Danicka

Lukas shushing her only makes Danicka bury her face against his shoulder, laughing harder. He answers. His dick is still inside of her. He nudges her up to kiss her while they're waiting for an answer. Grinds into her and she gasps quickly, bites it into his neck, squirms back against him. Not once or twice.

Like she's going to start fucking him again in here.

Intercom buzzes on again. Instructions are given. Profuse apologies! Offers to send someone up to their room to check on them. When no immediate answer comes, because Danicka is sliding her hand up his sweater and kissing him again, rather insistently, the person hesitates, then offers to send a bottle of wine up to their room.

Instantly she breaks the kiss and laughs brightly, but with a tremor of anxiety beneath the words -- a courageous, nervous-but-hiding-it laugh, which is easy enough under the circumstances: "Oh, don't worry about that, we're already here celebrating, we have a bottle,"

though not of wine, and she is interrupted eagerly:

"Oh! Congratulations! I'll ... I'll have the kitchen send up some chocolate-covered strawberries,"

from their romance package, of course,

"is there anything else I can do for you?"

Danicka licks Lukas's neck.

Lukas

"No, no, we're fine -- " this, while Danicka is sliding her hands under his sweater, touching skin still overheated from recent strenuous exercise, " -- oh, we just figured out how to get the elevator moving again. Thank you. There it goes. We're okay now."

He pushes the emergency stop back in. Also: starts looking for the button to hang up the intercom. Also: catches Danicka's wandering hands through his shirt, pinning her palms gently against his abs. Gives her this sort of mock-scolding smirk, mouthing wait.

Danicka

He has to lift her from the wall. Hold her on his body. His strength is immense; bizarrely, tenderly, even while he's inside of her, she thinks of seeing him bare-chested, bare-armed, holding both of their newborn daughters at once, looking at once awed by and terrified by their lightness, as though they would fly from his grasp at the slightest breeze. How close he held them. How carefully, all the same, as though wary of crushing them. Even then, they were hard on her arms, on her back. She could hold both girls at once if she was sitting down, if they were propped up, but Lukas more than once took up the task of plucking them up and carrying them downstairs for Danicka to nurse on the couch once she'd gotten hrself settled.

Danicka loves him for his strength. It never really mattered to her, at the beginning: it was a nice treat. His body type suited her particular preferences. She was attracted to the shape of him, to the cut of muscle across his chest, arms, abdomen, obliques. She enjoyed how vigorously and how tirelessly he could fuck her. It wasn't something that inspired tenderness or affection in her, though. Yet now it does. She's not sure when that started; it was before the girls were born, before she was pregnant, before she even decided that she wanted 'a baby' (or two, apparently) now, and not years from now. Somewhere along the line she saw glimmers of value and wonder and joy in his strength that never had mattered to her before.

She would not love him less if he withered. If some Wyrm toxin or spirit's haunting or something took him down, shrunk him, weakened him. She would not love him less. Still: she does love his strength, love him for his strength, and how thoughtlessly he expends it not in threat, or intimidation, or violence, or control. At least not with her, or the pups, or with family. He uses it to carry them. To protect. To hold

what he can keep.

So oddly, happily, she smiles as he lifts her up onto his body, ending the intercom, fiddling with knobs according to instructions while she kisses him, pants softly against him while the elevator starts moving again: "I should get off your dick."

Which she does not do. Just kisses him, her dress so rucked up it bares her ass.

Lukas

"You really should," he mutters, but let's note: he doesn't move to encourage her. He doesn't seem to be in a hurry to set her down, tuck himself away, zip, get out of the elevator.

Instead: she kisses him. And he lets himself submerge into that kiss, eyes closing. Nevermind that the elevator is moving again. Nevermind that they're descending toward the lobby --

"Shit." The thought spurs him to action. He sets his brow against Danicka's. Bumps very softly. Draws another breath, and then gives her ass a little squeeze before attempting -- again -- to lift her off. "Come on. We need to change elevators, unless you want to show back up in the lobby."

Danicka

So Danicka rolls her hips. Lazily, slowly, she circles him inside of her, nipping his lower lip. They may as well still be fucking. Fucking again. Whatever it is. The elevator is moving again and he's in her cunt to the hilt and she's starting to moan softly, breathily, into those kisses.

But they're going down.

Shit

"Oh, shit," she says, at the same time, or in echo -- close enough. She laughs, her mouth wide and happy, as they bump brows. He squeezes her and lifts her. She bites her lip and lets him, instantly tugging her dress back down. Nods absent-mindedly. Reaches for the bottle on the floor, lifting it up to take a swig.

Lukas

While his mate drinks, Lukas straightens himself up. He is -- quite frankly -- a bit of a mess. He doesn't have tissues. He puts his cock away wet, grinning and grimacing in the same little expression; zips up his fly and wipes his hand semi-discreetly on his pants.

Reaches out with his other hand to take hers. Bumps a random button on the panel with his knuckle, which brings the elevator to a stop halfway down.

They're on some guest floor or other. Quiet. Thick walls, thick carpeting; the slightest intimation of conversations or TV through the doors. Lukas hits the up button and they stand together, waiting for the next car up. After a while, he glances at his mate.

"Bychom meli jit znovu, kdyz se dostaneme do naseho pokoje."

Lukas

["We should go again when we get back to our room."]

Danicka

Poor Lukas. He grins, he grimaces, and Danicka picks up her torn panties and tucks them into his front pocket, smirking at him. She has vodka on her breath.

He speaks to her, as the elevator slows to a stop and the doors ding open. She reaches up, pulling him down to kiss her, an open bottle of vodka in her right hand. She's feeling tipsy, drunk on vodka, on lust, on love. They wait for a new elevator, a new rise, to whatever room they got.

That is his only answer, to what he says: her hand in his hair. Her mouth on his mouth. Her body pressed to his.

Lukas

They share that smirk, while her hand slips into his front pocket. She makes him hard again, doing that. Maybe she can tell.

Certainly she can tell moments later, standing in the hallway waiting for another elevator to come along. When she puts her hand in his hair. When she pulls him down to kiss her. When she presses against him, all slender and supple and strong, and when his hands come to anchor her hips to his. It's quite obvious, then. It's quite evident.

The elevator dings and the doors slide open. Lukas glances to make sure the car is empty. Then, with no fanfare whatsoever, he picks her up. Lifts her onto his body, reverse-piggyback, and walks her into the elevator. Where he hits the button for their floor again. Where he settles against a convenient wall, lifts his face, and kisses her again. Slowly, but hungrily. Lingeringly.

Danicka

"So hard," she murmurs, close to his mouth, as their lips part. She rubs herself against him, best as she can, standing their in the hallway. Kisses him again. "We're never going to get in the room."

Laughs softly at herself, at them both, tipping her head to the side. Lets his mouth roam. Encourages his mouth to roam. Reaches between their bodies to touch him through his jeans, his underclothes; strokes him as surreptitiously as she can. Is still touching him, thus, when the elevator doors ding open.

Lukas basically drags her in, and Danicka's laugh is bright and sudden and disruptive. She adores him. She tangles her legs with his and grins at him while he kisses her, her arms wrapped around his neck, her kisses interrupted by her smiling. They go on kissing anyway, despite such difficulties. She adores him, she adores him. She murmurs it once, her hand slipping under his sweater again. Twice, as her fingers find his nipple, stroke him.

The doors
ding open

again.


Lukas

"Of course I am," he mutters back, mock-accusingly. "What do you expect, groping around in my pockets like that?"

And later, mid-kiss:

"Of course we are." Laughing then, low -- "We're adults. We'll practice -- mmph -- self-control."

And later still, doors opening:

well. No words then. Just his eyes opening, glancing past her bright hair to the hall. Their floor. Their hall. He steps out of the elevator with her. She's rucked his sweater up. His shirt too. There's a patch of skin visible: tight obliques, warm skin. Her forearm resting against his ribcage. Anyone peeking would know she has her hands on him. Would guess she was playing with his nipple; that he was hard; that they've been up to no good in that elevator.

No one's peeking. No one watches them. He carries her down the hall, long strides, in a hurry. They get to their door and he stands there while she digs through his pockets, finds the keycard. "Go go go," he whispers, eager, and she slides the card in and the little light blinks green and then they're inside. He shuts the door. She helps him with his coat. He pulls her dress up over her head. The windows are open and the lake is black and the night is beautiful and the bed,

the bed is soft when he drops her on it. Pulls his shirt up over his head, drops his pants. Strokes himself half-absently, climbing over her, moving her up on those covers until she can reach up and touch the headboard. Until there's room for both of them.

"See," he murmurs, while the two of them work together to get her bra off, "we made it to the room."

Danicka

All she does is grin up at him. Grins up at him the way she has so many times, knowing she's doing wrong, she's getting away with it; she's breaking the rules and he likes it. He loves her for it. No wonder she loves him back so dearly. She grins like that, wicked and smug and delighted, groaning softly into his mouth when he kisses her. Squeezing his cock through his jeans as he kisses her.

By the time he tells her that they're adults, they have self control, she's forgotten the last thing she said. She's just kissing him, looping her free arm around him. By this city's standards, by this hour, it's not 'late'. But it's winter. It's not yet Christmas, it's well past Thanksgiving. It's nowhere near New Year's. They are alone. No one watches her touching his body as though it's new to her; no one sees him forcing the keycard down into the slot, cursing at it, all but shoving her through the door in his eagerness.

A few people hear her laugh, as she hops out of her heels finally and goes dancing inward. He starts taking off his coat, drops hers; she never put it back on. She wriggles as he unzips her, makes it difficult for him. The dress is pushed up and then corrected, slithering off her body, pooling at her ankles. Her panties are gone. She wears bras more often now; has to. She had twins. She nursed. Her breasts have never quite gone back to the tiny handfuls they one were. It's all right; everything is all right. The faint marks on her abdomen are all right.

Lakeside.
Sun up, Danicka in a bikini. Tatiana pats her mother's belly, looking anxious. "Mama ow? Be kiss?'
Danicka looks down and for a moment, it's ow. She does not look like she once was. She does not feel like she once did. Tatiana looks so worried that her mother is hurt, that she has an owie.
"No," she murmurs, fingers twirling dark hair that escapes from a bucket hat. "Mama tiger. Grr."
And Tatiana laughs. "Tiger," she repeats, and kisses her mama's belly anyway. Pets her. Like a tiger.
Tatiana is the quiet one. But she's not the timid one. She would pet a tiger, if granted the opportunity.
Down closer to the water, Eliska shrieks and clings to her papa, who stands at waist-height in the water, holding her on his side. The water licks her toes.
"Mama tiger," Tatiana says again, fondly, patting Danicka's stomach.

Danicka reaches behind her back and unhooks that bra, letting it fall to the ground without preamble or ceremony. She unfastens his jeans. He's urging her toward the bed, taking off his clothes as he goes. Time was, this dark hulking thing coming at her in the dark would have made her tremble with something other than lust. Now she just trembles, and she pants softly, and the sight of him stroking his cock makes her whole body clench up with longing. Danicka bites her lip. His arm slithers under her and he lifts her up, moves her up on the bed.

She's naked. He is too -- or close enough. She reaches up to pull him down again, to kiss him, to taste him. She likes tangling their linges, twining them together, the feel of her calves against his calves.

"Miluji t ," she mutters, as he's coming down over her. As she's pulling him down over her. "Strašn t miluju."








Danicka

[Czech: I love you. I love you so much.]

Lukas

It's true, Danicka's body isn't perfect anymore. It's also true that it was never perfect, no more than Lukas's is perfect. They are mere mortals. They are flesh and blood, creatures of imperfection; creatures that strive for perfection. Therein lies the nobility. But we digress: point is, Danicka's body is more imperfect now than it was before the twins. There are stretch marks. Tatiana thinks they're tiger stripes, and that's all well and good, but

there was a night, earlier on. It was late, and the twins were asleep, and they lay in bed together. She was reading. He had his head on her midriff, hands roaming absently over her skin. He found those marks. He touched them, faint as they were, with a tenderness and a gingerness that drew her attention. She was uncomfortable, self-conscious, and so he stopped. He kissed her belly and he kissed her solar plexus and he kissed her breasts, which have also changed, but not so much that his big palms can't cup them in their entirety. They grew distracted; made love. They never spoke of it again, and he never mentioned those marks,

never told her how he thinks of them as scars. Glorious things, earned in the making of life, just as his own scars were earned in the making of death. There is little difference. One lives; one's body is marked even as one's mind and soul grows. There is no difference.

--

They don't think of it much now. The differences, the changes, the process of life and living. They strip naked and she trembles with lust, and he covers her body with his hands. There is tenderness there, as much as lust. He moves her up on the bed. She pulls him down. He covers her with his body, then, smiling, their legs twining. They fit together so well, so familiarly, so naturally. Her feet behind his knees; her thighs around his hips. The underside of her breasts against the flat of his upper chest when they're like this, when he's poised to enter her, love her, fuck her senseless,

whichever it may be. He kisses her neck, kisses her mouth. Wraps his arms around her, and that fits too, his forearms under her back. His cock against her cunt: that in particular fits, fits so perfectly; the length of one sliding over the cleft of the other. He strokes himself there, and truth is they're both still rather a mess; it takes little effort to slicken his cock again. Takes little effort to reach down, slide in. Paradoxical, but he's gentler this time, takes the time to ease his way in. Moves in slow, smooth slides, liquid, like a pulse.

Buries his face against her body after a while. The side of her neck; the curve of her shoulder. "Miluji te," he echoes back to her. They're whispering. It always feels a little holy, those first few moments when they are joined.

Danicka

Her body isn't that false perfection anymore; she's allowed to have scars now. And his body never was perfect, not since she's known him, touched him. Still, all these years later, she's never asked about that raking line across his midsection. The reality of how Lukas lives, what threats to his life there are, is never far from Danicka's mind. Hearing the story might satisfy her somehow, keep her imagination from running wild -- but hearing the story might also give her mind something to chew on, to replay over and over and over and over and over. Lukas dying in her thoughts, over and over and over and over.

She doesn't ask. She doesn't think of scars the same way. She wouldn't say they are the same. His aren't glorious; hers aren't either. They're just... marks. Not proof of what she has done or what she's accomplished but in some way, who she is. How she has changed. What she has become.

And yes: the twins were new and she was still rather careful about her lingerie covering her midriff, about letting Lukas see her in full light. Self-conscious, unconsciously so, flinching away from being seen the way she always used to, though less obviously, less physically. But that night, her t-shirt had rucked up as she'd rolled over, her still somewhat-soft belly was bare, and Lukas, cuddling up behind her, touched her. Made her squirm a little, tugging her shirt down again. He relented, such as it was; later when she reached for the light he murmured to her to leave it on. Kissed her stomach as he worked her shirt slowly upward. Wrapped his mouth around her nipple and licked her, sucked at her with the infinitely soft, almost silken touch he'd learned she needed for that first almost-year after the girls were born, still nursing. Danicka melting underneath him. Danicka trembling as he entered her. Danicka forgetting.

Not to say it was always easy for her, after. Still moments, even when the girls started talking, when looking at her body made her sad, made her uncomfortable with the changes, the things that feel like losses when in other ways they are only gains.

But easier, yes:

Tatiana, pointing at Lukas's bared midsection on the beach, eyes wide. "Daddy tiger!" Tatiana growling at him, teeth bared, making tiger noises.
Eliska looking very confused. Lukas looking very confused. Danicka smiling, her mouth curled at the corner in a smirk.

--

She's kissing him so hard. Touches his face as she does so, her fingertips and her mouth both soft, both hungry. She's starting to moan, intermittently and softly, even before he strokes his cock against her. Only moreso, then. The way he feels makes her quiver. The way he feels, sliding into her, sets her to panting slightly, each breath long and slow but still rhythmic, still eager. "So fucking hard," she groans again, like it's still shocking, like it's still a delightful surprise every time.

It's too slow. Her cunt tries to clench on him. He's so slow. Danicka tightens her hands on his arms, her moans growing louder. His hips flex, slow, sliding, and she protests happily, deliriously. It is holy: and she is one of those wild priestesses who runs naked through the woods, who cries out and loses her mind,

when something is holy.


Lukas

She is one of those wild priestesses. She was, literally, one of those wild things running naked through the woods. He saw it once, on solstice night: carries that memory still. Danicka the maiden. Danicka the wild. Danicka, fleeing from him fleet-footed as a deer from the wolf. Danicka, luring him, ensnaring him, capturing him somehow in her presence, in her body, in her love.

He still remembers it. He'll remember it forever. Yet in spite of their memories of one another, a hundred times, a thousand times over, somehow every time this feels new. She still sounds surprised by it; the way he feels, the way he fucks. He still sounds --

overcome by it. The way she feels. The way she moves. Her hands gripping his arms; her cunt squeezing, clenching, opening. He moves into her and they both moan. She writhes. He tries to keep it slow, but she's making those sounds. She kisses him and he kisses her and somewhere between all those kisses he finds the time to laugh, to whisper something, some filthy little endearment about how wet, how hot, how sweet.

And then he pushes up to his elbows; shifts his center of mass. Slides out of her and enters her again and this time it's faster, deeper, he licks her throat as she bares it. He nips at her skin, scrapes teeth over delicate anatomy; tissues and tendons, softness of her lips. He's kissing her again, wrapping one hand, one arm over her head; grips the bedspread with the other as they pick up speed. Now he's fucking her on those sheets, that bed, long smooth hip-centered strokes, and let's be honest: they've gotten quite good with practice, they're very fucking good at fucking.

Danicka

Mated with her that night. Had fucked her several times by then, had made love. Had realized they had always been making love. Mated perhaps for the first time, both of them knowing it and not putting words to it, even now. They both know. They know, the way that souls know a home, that the other knows as well. It does not need to be said aloud. But that was the night when he was hers and she was his, not just in heart but by some primordial rite, some timeless sacrament.

These days their summer solstices have toddlers. Reclining in a park and then walking home before the rainstorm comes back. Finding each other in bed later on, sweating their love out with the windows thrown open and the moon shining through. Sometimes her hands grasp at him. Sometimes she bites into a pillow and he bites into her shoulder.

They are in each other, forever. Responsible, forever, for what they have tamed.

--

Right now she sounds so delighted to have him. She is almost laughing, the way she cries out, gasps, urges him on. Strange: he just did this. Opened her up after a long, fraught day, fucking her in a frozen elevator. Strange that she is so wet, sweat on her brow, her hand reaching into her hair to push it back, to try and give herself room to breathe while he's fucking her, giving it to her, his pace quickening until he's firmly, steadily nailing her to the bed. Fucking on someone else's thousand-dollar sheets. Strange, how much they both enjoy -- even get off on -- that little detail.

Not strange: that she is so wet, sweating from her lust, panting for air. Not strange that they enjoy, get off on, their little details. Not strange that it's so good, or that the way he grabs the bed while he fucks her, not strange how she looks down their bodies to where they seam and melt together, sees a flash of his wet cock driving into her wet pussy and she can't stand it; she looks away again, moaning.

"Roll over," she gasps, even while his strokes are speeding up again, his body knowing even before his eyes or his mind that this is good, this is what she wants, if he fucks her like this she'll come undone, she'll come for him, she'll come. Pantingly: "I want to ride you. Fuck,"

as though hearing the words out of her own mouth only turn her on more,

"I want to watch you while I'm fucking you."

Lukas

He's watching her when she looks down. Knows what she sees; sees how it hits her. When she looks away he catches her mouth, eats that moan. Eats at her mouth, too, kissing her with a hunger that edges into savagery.

She wants him to roll over. She wants to watch. He laughs, panting it out with a word: "Dirty." Scoops his arm under her back and kisses her neck, bites her shoulder, uses that as a point as contact as he rolls

her atop him. Now it's her body on his, her tits on his chest, her skin soft under his hands. Which grope, and grasp, and squeeze her ass quite firmly. She lifts up over him and she can see it, the gleam in his eyes, the way his pupils open up to see her like that. Lamplight hitting her tits, which may not be quite so perky anymore but are ever so sweet and full in his hands. Or his mouth. "Fuck," he says, and he gives her ass a final squeeze before sweeping his hands up around her waist, up over her ribcage, lifts her breasts, covers them.

The first time she lifts up, slides down, his head falls back. His eyes close. He has such an expression on his face; beatific, almost. When she does it again there's a stitch between his eyebrows, and then he opens his eyes again. Looks at her. Gives her this lazy, languid sort of smile, rubbing her nipples on his palms, scooping those tits up again in his hands. Loves the way they feel in his hands, the heft and weight, the softness.

She couldn't bear to watch earlier, but he watches. He looks down the length of his body; watches her riding him. Hard cock, wet cunt. Wet cock. Hot cunt. The words spin together in his mind, dirty, searing, and now he has his lower lip caught under his teeth; catches the groans she drives out of him too.

Danicka

If she's still shocked sometimes by how hard he is, he's still shocked sometimes by how flagrant she is about her lusts, how devious her little desires. He's known for years that watching him gets her off. But when she asks for it -- tells him blatantly, it's still dirty. It's still a delight, perhaps simply because she lets him see these twists in her.

They roll, and they kiss, and while they're kissing he gropes at her, touches her, keeps her going. When they start to find that rhythm again, that perfect beat between their bodies, she lifts up over him and --

leans over to the nightstand by the bed. Grabs the bottle of vodka they left there. Drinks a heavy mouthful, a drop or two escaping the corner of her mouth, while her other hand braces on his chest. Gasps as she swallows, putting the bottle back a little too hard, leaning over him again to kiss him, groaning in his mouth.

Both her hands on him then, after she pushes herself up again, staring down at him. Lips red, eyes gleaming. Starts fucking him in earnest, but slower than before all the same -- these savage, but controlled slides of her cunt down his cock. Rides him, while he plays with her tits, while he looks down at her pussy.

"That's it," she breathes, sliding her fingers up his chest, spreading them over his flesh like she's hungry for the touch itself. "That's my good boy, letting me fuck him like that," she almost snarls, riding down a little harder on him.

Lukas

"Fuck yes."

That: to her grabbing the vodka. Upending it. Clear liquor splashing in that clear bottle; a dribble down her chin that he catches on his tongue when she leans down. Licks his way up to her mouth, and then they're kissing, and she tastes like vodka, and she tastes like herself, and he can't get enough of that so he leans up into it.

Until she puts her hands on his chest. Until she pushes him back down, and herself back up. She looks hungry; she looks carnivorous. She fucks him like something untamed and uncivilized, heavy slides, controlled -- a hint of control there; controlling. He groans again,

"Fuck yes,"

when she calls him hers, her boy, good boy, letting her fuck him like that. Those words make their impact too. Zip down his consciousness, straight into the base and the primitive. He grabs her hips; thrusts up into her with a grunt. She rides down harder. He throws his head back, bares his teeth.

"Faster," he mutters. "Come on, ride me. Make me come."

Danicka

"You're such a slut,"

which may be the first time she's ever used that particular insult with him. She's called him bastard and fucker and son of a bitch and all manner of hair-raising things while they've fucked before, just as sometimes he calls her all manner of hair-raising things. It depends on the sex. But this may be the first time she's ever looked down at him, panting while she fucks him, and called him a slut like it's something worshipful, adoring, shocked and thrilled by him. No other word comes to her mind right now. Nothing much at all is in her mind. She looks down at him, his body tensing and rippling while he tells her to fuck him, ride him, make him come, and her eyes shine with arousal. Her voice hitches with need.

Her body grinds down on his with the word, like she needs to eke something out of him, like she has to have whatever it is -- needs it to breathe. Needs it for her heart to go on beating. She leans over him, taking his face in her hands, kissing him, moaning as her hips roll, as her pace quickens. Goes on kissing him, staying close like that, his hands on her body and her whole being centering, now, on riding this thing she needs out of his body, on his body. Til her hands are planted on the bed beside his head, her fingers grasping at sheets, her mouth open with outcries, longings, half-spoken and jumbled endearments, oaths, promises he understands even if she can't truly voice them: that she'll come, that she's coming, that she'll stay.

Lukas

She's never

called him that before.

And let's be honest, the initial, the first, the very most instantaneous reaction is startlement. A flicker in his eyes, a lift of brow.

But it's not what she says. It's how she says it. It's the tone, the sound, the need and shock and thrill and adoration; all the things he feels for her. When she tells him she wants to watch him while she fucks him. When she tells him she wants him to handcuff her, tie her up, fuck her hard, rail her on someone else's thousand dollar sheets. Or even: when she comes home unexpectedly early. When she makes him kolache for no better reason than to do so. When she is who she is, doing what she does, and he

just

can't help loving her.

That's what he hears in her voice. That's what he makes of what she calls him, and yes, he knows: it's not bad. It's not hateful. It's not derogatory or demeaning or anything like that, anything like that. She comes down to him and he's there to meet her, his hands still gripping her hips; his mouth opening to eat that kiss up. He snarls as she fucks him; snarls as he plants his feet and lifts his hips and now he's meeting her stroke for stroke for stroke, fast, wet, messy.

Turns out he lied, a bit. Turns out she rides him, but he's the one watching her come. He wants it that way. He urges her that way, muttering filthy little endearments in one language or both; puts his hand between her legs and starts fondling her, rubbing her off, playing with her while he rails her from below.

Until she comes. Until she's grasping for purchase on those expensive sheets; crying out in mostly wordless exclamations of delight and pleasure and -- eventually -- just sounds, overcome. He's still touching her then. He's still fucking her then, but making these incoherent sounds himself. He's wrapping his arm around her and biting her shoulder the way he does; fucking up into her so swift and powerful that she becomes momentarily weightless, suspended, lifted from the pull of the earth. He comes fast and hard on the heels of her orgasm, and it's so strong, so overwhelming that it leaves him nothing. Washes him clean.

He turns her under him as he comes back down -- literally, figuratively. He gathers her up in his arms and: he can't help it. He fucks her a little more, heavy and slow, flexing into her, driving her into the bed as though to make sure she knows he means it. Means his orgasm: as though it were a sort of statement. Which it is, in the most primitive way. It means: they are mated. It means: they make cubs together. It means: he is hers, and she is his.

Danicka

Danicka was already on the verge. She was tensing up, squirming, her brow constricted and her voice disjointed, breaths ragged. She was already right on the cusp of it, and then Lukas had to reach down and start stroking her clit. Her hands grab at his shoulders, her pussy flooding with wetness, rippling with orgasm. Her mouth opens with a sound that is somehow surprisingly quiet, trembling out of her, even though pleasure goes through her like a thunderclap. The few short paces that once stood between her and climax are suddenly blurring by her, and she is in the middle of it, lost in it, tipped over the edge.

She's not fucking him anymore. He's fucking her, though, fucking her all the way through it, muttering and growling and panting at her. She's molten on top of him, and when she starts to come down -- only starts -- he's pounding her, holding her right there on his cock, til his voice catches in his throat when it hits him, too.

They aren't entirely done. Because Lukas's own orgasm is still wrapped around his spine and lighting up his brain when he rolls her under him again, their bodies askew on the bedspread. Hammering her now, these deep, hard, slow thrusts that make her moan, and then whimper, and she makes this pleading little noise because every time he slides his cock in her, her cunt quivers around him. Danicka doesn't tell him to stop. She holds tight to his back, pushes her palms down his lumbar, grabs his ass. Rolls with him, rocking on the bed, her mouth opening to his when he leans over her, kisses her.

God knows how long that goes on. The kissing. The slow fucking while they regain their breathing, their names, their minds. She's finally able to open her eyes, looking lazily up at him while he moves in her.

"That okay?" she murmurs, very softly, checking in with him. Just because he came doesn't mean he might not have been bothered. Just because she said it in love doesn't mean he's not permitted to be uncomfortable. He's said the same thing in love and she's been bothered, uncomfortable, upset. He's hurt her before from the rough way they fuck sometimes and she hasn't stopped him. They're allowed to talk about it. They're permitted to love, and to fuck, and to still be imperfect.

Lukas

It's finally over by then. The fuck. The fucking. The deep, hard flexion of his body; those war-carved muscles moving under her hands and against her body.

He is very nearly still by then, heavy and relaxed atop her. He hasn't moved off yet. She's opened his eyes but his are still closed, and they open only when she speaks. He moves again: as though she woke him, and these are the very first motions of a creature stirring from sleep.

Slides a little inside her. Kisses her softly, the corners of his mouth turning up.

"Wasn't expecting it," he admits, "but it's okay." The tip of his nose brushes hers. It is slow and tender, very affectionate. "It was good."

Danicka

Nuzzles him, then. Lifts her chin, which is just a little bit pointy, and rubs her nose, which is a little bit too round, against his cheekbones, his jawline, the face that in her mind is perfectly formed, iconic, unassailably beautiful. She kisses his cheek, her smile lazy except when he moves in her, makes her sigh.

"Good," she echoes, her legs wrapping slowly around his lower half, both to enclose him and to make him be still for a while.

Her fingertips stroke his back. She sighs again, deeper, drowsier. Her head turns, and her eyes close. She's not asleep, though.

"Let's nap her a while," she murmurs. "Get up in a few hours and go home. Sleep the rest of the night there."

He knows, because it's happened before, or because he just... knows. She wants to be there when everyone wakes up. Be there for breakfast. Even if she's bleary-eyed.

Lukas

"We're going to be such wrecks," he murmurs happily. Nuzzles her, wraps his arms around her. Flops finally to one side: lazily and heavily as some great beast going into recline. "We're going to be hungover raccoon-eyed wrecks, pouring coffee into our cereal by mistake."

His chest expands. Then he exhales. He thinks she's beautiful, beautiful, even if she has a pointy chin and a rounded nose and stretch marks and bigger boobs than she did once. He thinks she is perfectly formed, iconic, unassailably beautiful.

Or perhaps, more profoundly: he sees her imperfections. He sees those mornings, sometimes, when her hair is unpleasant because she didn't have time to wash it the night before. And perhaps her breath isn't great. And perhaps her face is puffy because she didn't get enough sleep because it's finals week, or the girls are sick, or -- he sees these things, and instead of disgust or aversion he feels fondness; tenderness. He feels love, and he thinks she is

perfektní.

"Goodnight," he murmurs, closing his eyes. They leave the vodka on the nightstand; the room as it is. They sleep -- for a few hours, at least.

Danicka

"It's cool," she mutters back, "I'm tough. I got you." Pats his back, mindlessly affectionate, while she assures him that her infinite maternal strength shall sustain them both during breakfast with two toddlers and an eldery man when they've had half the sleep everyone else got.

Lukas is already cuddling her. Sliding out of her, wrapping his arms around her, talking about how fucked-up they're going to be come sunrise in their household. Danicka is curling up, absently reaching for some bedside tissues, throwing them away just as blindly in the wastebin. Leaves the bottle of vodka open on the nightstand where it sits. She makes noises, happy little noises, as he wraps her up. They're both so hot. They probably won't sleep long enough to even bother getting under the covers.

She rubs her foot against him, softly reminds him to set an alarm on his phone or the clock on the other side of the bed, something, so they make sure to get home in the middle of the night, stumble in as quietly as they can, sleep until the girls wake up, get bored playing in their room alone, and start calling for their parents, for breakfast. Which, as they'll discover, is already on its way to the table, the coffee already brewed, because Miloslav does not sleep so well as he used to, and wakes early, and cooks.

That will be then. And this is now. Her heels and dress on the floor with his clothes, vodka on the bedside table, sweat cooling on their bodies. It's not the sort of graduation story she would have foreseen for herself. But then: she never foresaw any of this.

the sky is everywhere.

Danicka

A slow, lazy smile comes across Danicka's lips when Lukas kisses her. She rubs her thumb over his thumb where their hands interlace. She withdraws, gently, and the two of them part, encircling their little family: the toddlers are have forgotten that they do not want to wear clothes and are running over to toys, to Kando, clearly happy to be home. Home is the wild place where it does not matter if they wear shoes. No one stops them to replace a bow in their pigtails. They are free here in a way they are not anywhere else. They bring Miloslav toys they have to show him, even though they did this when he first arrived. Eliska crawls in his lap when he sits on the couch, carrying her favorite book and starting to put her thumb in her mouth as she curls up next to him. Tatiana, usually so much quieter, is taking every single toy out of the living room toy box as though she's looking for a particular one.

Danicka heads for the kitchen but Miloslav stops her, telling her in Czech to come, sit -- he says that it is her day. He says that he and Lukas will make dinner. Sit, read with your babies. So Danicka, albeit with traces of uncertainty that have not yet left her completely, comes back to the couch and sits down to read with Eliska. Tatiana abandons her toy search and, for once, is not told to go pick up the toys she got out before she crawls up on the cushions next to her mama to read books. And look at pictures.

So Miloslav makes dinner. He is comfortable in the kitchen. He taught Danicka how to prepare meals, how to make kolache. It is nothing fancy: some leftover roast, some salad, a pan of vegetables roasted in the oven. It is exceedingly cold outside, though currently not snowing. The oven warms the kitchen. Maybe Lukas helps him: slicing a loaf of bread that Miloslav made the other day, putting together the salad that he likely won't have any of, helping chop up root vegetables and toss them in oil and seasoning for the oven. Simple fare, and not much of it: everyone's portions will be small, but they snacked at the reception already. They reheat some boiled potatoes. Lukas makes up the little plates of food for Tatiana and Eliska first, so everything will cool off a bit before they eat it. This is common practice: a few bites of roast, a bit of each vegetable, tiny salads with half a cherry tomato on each. The little forks. The glasses of milk.

Danicka and the girls are late to dinner. She wants them to pick up first: books on the shelf, toys back in the box. They need bibs before they sit down to eat, because they are still in their nice dresses they wore to their mother's graduation. They eat with focus and only occasional chatter, as usual, at their own little table while the adults eat nearby. Miloslav, between bites, wants to know everything Danicka plans on doing, which currently turns out to be not that much: she wants to be home for a little while, at least a few months. She has been in talks with a few firms in and around Chicago, but she doesn't go into details. She says there are other opportunities, too.

--

Things wind down. Dinner is finished, cleaned up. Girls are excused from the table and held, their bellies full and their eyes drooping from the long day. Teeth are brushed and hair removed from pigtails, combed out gently. Dresses are removed and hung up, diapers changed, warm pajamas put on. Tatiana's have unicorns. Eliska's have rainbows. One more book is read. Girls are tucked in, brows kissed, questions about whether or not their grandpa will be there tomorrow, too answered patiently, and in the affirmative. Giggles are calmed. Hair is stroked, and more kisses pressed on soft skin.

Danicka, still in her dress and her earrings, feels her heart clench in her chest as she says goodnight. What she feels she cannot quite name: a euphoria so intense it feels almost like pain. Joy like a wound so sharp it leaves her breathless. The desire to be afraid of how quickly she could lose all this, how devastating it would be, is carefully and rather consciously pressed down by deciding, instead, to feel gratitude. Gratitude that this exists: the little room with its little bed and the little girls under their blankets, the house around them, the cat and the old man inside that house, the man she keeps this house with, the love they have that led to this house, to that cat and the man, to the little girls and their little bed and their soft, soft cheeks. The sound of their breathing. The visceral knowledge in the core of her body that they are hers, connected to her in a way not even they will ever fully understand. Mine. Mine. Mine.

She closes the door. She murmurs to her father that she and Lukas are going to take a drive for a while, if that's all right. Which it is. He is going to watch the news. It is almost nine o'clock when Danicka and Lukas get back downstairs, in his car rather than hers, the one with the carseats and the kid-friendly CDs and the detritus of her schoolwork and so forth still littering seatpockets and dash compartments. To look at their cars, you'd think he did no childrearing at all. But his car is the one that on at least one occasion had a certain midwestern blonde galliard in the passenger seat bleeding from a gut wound and digging through his glovebox for an extra healing talen. His car goes to war. Her car does not. But his car is certainly nicer for an evening drive.

Lukas

When he's home with his family, Lukas rarely stays up very late these days. There's something so thoroughly comforting about that little ritual of bedtime. The baths, the books, the tucking-ins, the turning out of the lights. He looks forward to it. He looks forward, too, to those moments alone with his wife: brushing their teeth over the sink. Taking turns with the shower. Shaving while Danicka lays out her clothes for the next day. Turning down the heater and climbing into bed, where they find each other under the covers; sometimes to love, and sometimes simply to wrap their arms around each other and sleep.

Conditioned to that routine as he is, there's a part of him that misses it right now. Wishes they could go upstairs and do just that. But there's another part of him, wilder, the part that stays up all night and runs through lightning-streaked umbra; the part that hunts, that goes to war -- that part, telling him nighttime is not for sleep. Nighttime is for strange and savage and wondrous things; blood and passion and

perhaps

just a drive with his mate. There is room for that, too.

His breath frosts in the night. His coat is thick and warm, the wool soft. His gloves are snug. He opens the door for Danicka, then circles around to climb in the other side. Sometimes he remembers the first time they drove together. Taking her home in the dawn, wondering what she could have seen in his pack-brother that she hadn't seen in him. It was a long time ago. It doesn't hurt anymore.

He turns the key in the ignition. Backs out of the driveway. No traffic this time of night; just that great, dark city rising out of a web of lights. They could east, west; anywhere.

Danicka

When was the first time he felt that? Not the satisfaction of it, the pleasure of tucking children in and bedding down with his mate, but the longing for it. The pang of wanting-without-name. Was it that night in his 'dorm', walking in and shaving, Danicka laying out in her t-shirt on his narrow bed, watching him? Was it earlier? When did he realize what it was that he was looking forward to?

The car is cold. She's in her coat, still in her sleek sheath dress that she wore under her graduation robes. She put heels back on, of all things, to walk out to the car. Not stilettos. Just the same ones she walked in today. Graduated in. She's in her coat, not the white one of that very very first night together -- that one has been retired, resold or given away some time ago -- but a different white one, thicker, warmer, though she didn't bother to zip it up. Lukas turns the car on, starts to warm it up. Pulls out, and

starts driving. Nowhere in particular. No where do you want to go because perhaps after this much time he knows that if she had a plan, she would be the one driving. Or she'd tell him. He knows that for Danicka, no plan is better. Just going. She's good at plans. But she thrives on the times that are unplanned, open,

wild.

After a while she shrugs out of the coat, looks at him across the empty space in the dark car.

"I don't think I'm taking any of those jobs I mentioned at dinner," she says quietly.

Lukas

Warm air huffs out of the vents. Lukas's car is not new, and not even like-new; it is rather old, because he was not wealthy when he bought it -- though he pretended to be. These days he is wealthier than he was. They both are. But they don't pretend at it, and they are frugal: they have mouths to feed, after all, and large families to care for.

Never mind all that. Point is: his car is older, but it is dependable, and it is well-made. Some luxury touches. Leather seats, heating that warms up quickly. It is soon warm enough for Danicka to shrug out of her coat. Seeing her do so, Lukas begins to as well. She helps him so he can keep a hand on the wheel. These things have become second nature as well.

When they've settled back, a quiet settles. He heads toward the city, and the lake. He thinks that would be nice; to look out across the freezing lake, moonlight sheening off the ice.

A glance her way when she speaks. Lukas processes this quietly, and solemnly. After a while, "What will you do instead?"

Danicka

Her eyes drift out to the world passing by outside. Mostly void. Lights, and the lights bouncing off of objects: another car, the ground itself. "I don't want to start some bottom-tier job with my little B.S. Tinker away on someone else's projects with no real hope for serious advancement." She shakes her head a little bit, takes a breath, and sighs it out as she looks back to him. "I think I'd like to go to graduate school." Now she's hesitant. Now she's honest, watching him though, gauging what he thinks.

"There's a very highly rated program for materials engineering at Northwestern," she says. "But it's half the size of some others I've looked into. And not the most expensive, but it's up there."

Danicka gives a little shrug. Looks at her hands. "A couple of my professors think I would do well at MIT. Or Stanford. Cornell is comparable to Northwestern, but almost half the cost." She rubs her thumb over one fingernail. "I haven't applied anywhere, so regardless I'd take a gap year, but... I wasn't sure until today that I didn't want to just take my degree and... leave it at that."

Lukas

Graduate school, she says. It makes him smile -- immediately, thoughtlessly, a quick-skating expression.

Northwestern, she says. Okay, he thinks. It's close. It's within walking distance of the downtown condo. Well; summer walking distance. Winter -- less so.

Then: MIT. Cornell. Stanford. And she's looking at her hands now, as though worried about what he'll say, and he's thinking it's so far and thinking of their little home, all its spirits. He tries to imagine moving. He thinks of Kate, and Sinclair, and Maddox, and Sarita. He thinks of moving them all.

A silence. Then, quiet still: "I think you should absolutely go on to graduate school. I think your mind would be wasted if you were someone's technician. And I think you should go where you'll get the best education. We'll work something out. Move, or spend part of the year with you and the other part here, or... something."

He reaches across the center divide. His hand covers hers, warm and secure.

"Cornell would be close to our parents. Stanford's close to Sinclair and Anezka. And MIT's in Kate's hometown. We'd have friends and family, wherever we go."

Danicka

[note to salf: IGNORE BITS BOWT COST.]

Danicka

Looking down, Danicka doesn't see that fleeting smile across his face. That flicker of golden pride that was, earlier today, literally shouted out across the crowd as he crowed THAT'S MY WIFE! She doesn't try to read his thoughts now as she's talking, to adjust where necessary. She doesn't do that so much anymore. One of the biggest decisions of their life, she just came out and told him -- sighed as she curled up with him one winter morning that she wanted a baby. Didn't wait for him to bring it up, or ask for it. Didn't circle the idea over and over, slowly getting closer to the point. Didn't manuever him into suggesting it, so that he would think it was his idea all along.

She just told him what she wanted, and she knows now: even if he wasn't ready, even if she changed her mind, it would be okay. Somehow, though, it's harder to tell him that she wants to go to graduate school. Somehow, it's harder to tell him that she --

well. She knows why. The pack he runs with here has been together for years now, no matter how scattered they are. He became a Fostern here, an Adren. This is where they met, and fell in love, and bought a house, and got married, and had their children. This house is where the oak and magnolia are planted. Thinking of it makes her want to cry, a bit.

Lukas speaks. Tells her what he thinks. Absolutely, he says. Your mind would be wasted, which is unlike so many things he's ever said to her. Danicka looks over at him. And he reaches for her, so she gives him her hand. Smiles a little, achingly, as he tells her that in all of those places, they'd already be close to people. To family, of one sort or another.

"I wonder a little if your pack would just move with you," she says, which -- truthfully -- is a bit of circling. But not coyly. Not maliciously. Not to distract him. Just because she lets her thoughts come to her, and speaks them, and because she really does think it: "Sinclair moving to the other side of the continent didn't hurt your bond. Kate's brother and sister have both left... she's restless here. As hard as she tries to be the steadfast half-moon, she's not the sort to want to stay in one place forever, unchanging.

"I don't know Maddox or Sarita as well, but Sarita's one of the traveling tribe, isn't she? She comes and goes, already, you said. Maddox seems like an Irish traveller," she adds with a small bit of laughter. She licks her lips, just a bit. "Moje láska... I zde rád náš domov." She breathes deep, and sighs: "Ale myslím, že chci se vzdálit od tohoto m sto."

Danicka

[Czech: My love... I love our home here. But I think I want to move away from this city.]

Lukas

"I think Kate would come with us," Lukas replies. "I think Sinclair would be happy if we were closer, sad if we were farther. But either way she'll adapt and be fine. And Maddox and Sarita will come and go as they do."

He glances at her -- across the span of seats, the darkness lit in waves by the tall lights flanking the freeway into the city. And then he looks back out at that city: its towers, its lights. Feels an ache. Thinks of her condo; the multicolored lights that lit her up as they made love on the floor. Thinks of their little den with its oak and its magnolia. Thinks of the storms, the thunder, the little pockets of immigrants who share an ancestry with them, a culture with their parents.

"I would miss it," he confesses quietly. "I would follow you, if you wanted to leave. But I think I would miss this city."

Danicka

It's comforting, that he agrees -- Kate, Sinclair, the rest of his pack. The look he gives the city as he drives, aimless and wandering, is... less so. Makes her ache. She looks down at her hands again. He confesses he would miss it. And she thinks -- and as she thinks, she says:

"I remember you saying the same thing when I said I wanted to get rid of my apartment," she says quietly.

Lukas

He lets out a quiet laugh. Gives her hand a gentle squeeze.

"I suppose I grow attached to things. Homes."

Danicka

"But I still have that apartment," Danicka tells him. "It's been convenient, with school and the girls and everything, but... that could have been any place. I only kept that one because you wanted me to keep that one," she confesses, her voice wincing away from it even though she doesn't. She knows it sounds like -- could sound like -- resentment. She doesn't want it to. She thinks, though, deep inside, that maybe there is some there, whether she likes it or not.

"It's not that I don't get attached. I lived in the same house from the day I was born til I graduated high school, and back again when we came back from New Orleans. In New Orleans there was even a particular corner of the garden that felt like... mine. And... I love our house," she says, the word hurting like her joy, like her euphoria, made her hurt when she stood over her daughters tonight.

The oak. The magnolia. The symbol of Perun carved into the very rafters. Her first Christmas with Lukas. Their families, coming here. Being pregnant that seemingly endless summer and fall. The girls, newly born, coming home with her. Every night. Every bathtime. Every walk home from the park. Every time she's heard Lukas on the steps, or seen his car there and felt her heart thumping. She sniffs without quite realizing it.

"I don't want to leave our home. But I don't care about Chicago itself the way you do," she admits. "My home is our house, you, the girls. Kando. Home was never that apartment, especially with all the things that happened there. And it's just... not this city."

She withdraws her hand a little. Gently, carefully, slides it away and puts it together with her own hand again. It isn't a rejection; it's anxiety. She fidgets, in this very small, silent way she has, a thing she never ever used to do. She never could show that she was anxious. Not unless she lied. Lying was how she soothed it. Even if at times it was compulsive: lies that meant nothing at all. Now she fidgets.

"A lot depends on where I even get accepted," she says very quietly. "I haven't applied anywhere," she repeats.

Lukas

"I know," he says. They are both speaking softly. He takes the next exit: doesn't have to think about it. Soars over that long curving overpass, past the Bronzeville sign, past the convention center, down to Lake Shore Drive. Dark and quiet at this hour, just a few cars now and then. Skyscrapers behind Grant Park. The lake frigid and still to the right.

"Where would you want to go?" he asks after some time. "If you could go anywhere."

Danicka

Only silence, to that. She doesn't know what he's replying to, when he says he knows. Knows that she only kept the apartment because he wanted her to, knows that she loves their home, knows that nothing is certain yet. Maybe he means all of it. She looks out the window again.

She feels lonely.

His question makes her heart sink. Not because it hurts, or because he causes pain with it. It's just an odd little sensation that she feels, so immediate that it seems physical. A vast silence opens in her thoughts. Like standing on an empty plain, a salt flat -- nothing for miles but the sound of wind. Your own breathing. Your own heartbeat.

"I don't know," she eventually says, each word distinct, cared for before being released quietly into the wild.

She exhales a moment later. Something in her breathing has shifted, almost imperceptibly. "I don't want to go too far away from New York. I don't know how long my father has left. I want Irena to be able to stay relatively close to her family while she's fostering, too. But I also want to get away from good old boys and unspoken racial segregation and how cold it gets, and fucking deep dish pizza. Plus, the drama and politics of the wolves here do not make me want to raise my daughters anywhere near this sept. I want to get away from all these memories of Martin and Sam --"

after all this time, she still spits his name,

"-- and even Lee. I don't know how much I told you when it was happening, but she was still in my guild in WoW and she went off the deep end. She kept talking about this one night with Alex, Sinclair's mate? Just... over and over and over, obsessively. She got convinced that everyone in the guild hated her and kept quitting toons and making new ones. While I was pregnant all she could do was talk about how much she hates kids. Utterly batshit. She ended up leaving, but it made me re-evaluate certain conversations we had when she lived with me. Pretty sure she was always crazy."

Danicka has gotten off track. She pauses, and sighs. "I don't know, baby. There's a lot of things I don't like about Chicago. At all. I left New York because of my brother, came here because of Martin, and I stayed because of you."

She's still for a moment. "And I don't know where I would go, if I could go anywhere. I've never gotten to think about it."

Lukas

He listens.

She speaks -- she gets a little off track -- she lets out words that sound like they've been inside her a long time, even if she's only known they were there for a few hours. She speaks and her mate listens, a large, dark, quiet warmth beside her. Eventually they turn off Lake Shore Drive. Eventually they pull to a stop -- on the back side of the Navy Pier, outside the closed shops and confectionaries and rides and ferris wheels. Just out near the end of the pier, looking out over the vast, dark lake.

The engine idles. The heat stays on. And after a while Lukas reaches out again. Takes Danicka's hand in his.

"Think about it," he says. "Apply anywhere. Apply everywhere. When you get accepted, we'll look at our options." He turns his head; his eyes glimmer in the shadows, sheer blue even here. "We'll go somewhere with a good program for you. Safe schools for the girls. Storms for me. We'll move the trees and I'll have Maddox figure out a way to bring our spirits with us.

"Budeme v poÅ™ádku, láska. Budeme šÅ¥astní."

["We'll be okay, love. We'll be happy."]

Danicka

They stop. They stay warm. She thinks that he could turn off the car and wrap himself around her, heart thumping against her chest through their clothes, and she'd feel warm still. She'd always feel warm with him. She always has. From that first car ride, when she said such light things, when she was exhausted, when her will was depleted, when there were moments when all she wanted to do was crawl onto him and tell him to fuck her. Push her dress up out of his way and fuck her. It would have been so different, she thinks, if she'd done that. If he had.

(She doubts he would have.)

They might never have gotten to where they are.

He tells her: anywhere. Everywhere. Options. We, we, we. Schools and storms and trees and our and us. And we. we.

Danicka takes a breath, her brow wrinkling. "Tell me what you want. How you feel." Squeezes his hand. "I know you don't want to hold me back. I know you said you'd miss this city, too, but... baby, I don't really know how you feel right now. You're not telling me. I don't want to end up wondering if you just... followed me.

"Like when you asked me to marry you. You didn't want me to say yes just to give you what you wanted," she reminds him, very softly.

Lukas

"I..."

He starts. He stops. He frowns, and he realizes he has no answer. A breath is drawn; he lets it out. Their hands are still linked, and he returns that squeeze now: a silent language of signs, like a morse code of the flesh.

"I don't know," he admits. "I want to be with you. And I want you to be happy. I want you to thrive. But as for where I want to live -- it'll be hard to give Chicago up. In some ways I came of age here. We all did. My pack. Me. Even you, to some degree. I feel close to the Tribe in this city; not the way I hate, with all the machinations and the backstabbings, but in the way I love. I see our kin in the streets. I feel Thunder's presence in the skies. Perun is strong here, and I feel his strength in my bones. I'm afraid he -- and the pack, and I -- will be weaker in another city.

"I don't know, láska," he repeats, softer. "It's ... sudden, to think of leaving. It seems like a big leap, and I was not prepared for it. It's too soon to ask me how I feel. I haven't even decided that for myself.."

Danicka

So rare that she sees him hesitate like that. Younger, more certain of everything and ultimately thus more foolish, he never spoke if he was not sure. He stayed silent. He never displayed any hint of weakness, especially to her. He does now, and has for some time -- she knows that these days, she is one of the few people he truly shares his hesitancy with. He shares so many things with her now.

There's that wild, disruptive part of her that looks at him in the darkness of the car and wants to kiss him. Put her hand in his hair and pull him close, breathe his breath, drink him in. She's always distracted by his mouth. The shape of his lips. The sound of his voice. She has never not been attracted to him. Just looking at him sometimes thrills her. Feeling him drives her out of her mind.

Danicka does not kiss him though. They hold hands and he breathes, thinking. Time goes on, and he confesses that he just doesn't know. Like her, he's torn. The things he wants are not all compatible with one another, and all of them -- at least in the moment -- seem equally important.

"I'm sorry I didn't bring it up earlier, when I first thought of it," she says softly, after a while. Is looking at their linked hands. "I wasn't sure until tonight. But also... when it was such a small idea, and I was so uncertain, I was afraid that if I told you, and you were unhappy, then... it would dissipate, somehow. And I'd never really know if it was what I wanted, or let myself entertain the notion." Her hand strokes his, thumb against thumb. "I'm still learning how to deal with those sorts of worries."

Breathing in deeply, she looks up at him again, and seeing his face half-shadowed and half-moonlit makes her smile. Lopsided, lazy, small, aching. Small, strange little thing, that he would make her smile. It's not as though she hasn't seen him plenty of times. Blind, she could sculpt his face from clay, she knows it so well.

"We've had such different lives in this city," she says quietly. "Even while we've been together." Her brows wince toward each other: "I don't want you and your pack to be weaker somewhere else, but I don't think you will be. The sky is everywhere."

Leaning over, the leather seats creaking a little and her clothing rustling, Danicka lays her hand on his jawline and kisses him. It's a small, tasting kiss, equal parts tender and luxurious. When she withdraws, her eyes have closed and she has to open them again, staying close enough that she can see the vivid blue rings of his irises around his wide, black pupils. Close enough that he can see green, hints of gold, circling darkness in her own eyes. Her hand stays where it is on his face.

"I'll start applying in a few months. All over the place, every good program I see. Keep thinking about it. We'll take some trips here and there, see how some of the places feel. And we might stay. I just... I think ultimately, I want you to know that I don't see myself living here forever. I don't think I want that."

She tips her head forward, resting her brow against his. "But we'll be okay. We'll be happy."

Sounds like she believes it.

Lukas

Sitting there by the frozen lake, in the warm darkness, Lukas listens to his mate. He holds her hand in his and blinks slowly, that view of the icy shore shuttering away now and then. When she tells him,

the sky is everywhere

he turns toward her: and she's right. The sky is in his eyes, too. She leans over and he closes his eyes; accepts and returns that kiss as tenderly as a gift. Her hand touches his face. When it falls, he catches it, clasps it softly with the other.

"We'll look around," he echoes -- imperfectly, but an echo all the same. "We'll find a place we can be happy."

Danicka

A sly, small smile quirks at her lips. She remembers him suddenly as he was only five years ago -- seems a lifetime ago, five years. Like it was two other people circling each other the way they did, wary and recalcitrant. Other people, strangers, who felt surges of rage and panic whenever they had to soften towards one another even a single iota. She doesn't recognize those people anymore, not when she's sitting with him in a warm car by a frozen lake. Yet somehow she recognizes him, and remembers him, all the same.

"Jsme rádi," she murmurs, staying close to him, wearing that smile. Her eyes lower for a moment, from his gaze to his cheekbones, his mouth. Lift again, meet his. "Jsem s tebou velmi spokojený."

Something about the way she says that, low but lilting, sounds almost like pleased with.

Lukas

Lukas laughs -- that open, warm sound that once was the exclusive purview of his packmates. Not even his family heard it; even with them he had to be the Shadow Lord, the master of the domain, the alpha of the pack.

Thought he did.

Didn't, really.

So: he laughs now. And he wraps his arm around her comfortably, familiarly, affectionately. "You sound so smug," he points out, amused. Tips the side of his brow to hers, exhaling. "Lake looks beautiful," he murmurs. "We should go somewhere with an ocean."

Danicka

Danicka can pinpoint with laser accuracy the moment when she felt something other than lust for Lukas -- something other than the warm, liquid desire that made her limbs weak and her blood hot, her mind undone. When she felt aching fondness, when she felt delight, when she felt her heart leap to make him look like that again, sound like that again, feel that way. She wanted to be the one to make him laugh. She wanted to be the one to make him smile.

At the time, it made her heart race with fright. At the time, it made her backpedal. Retreat.

Now she only looks back, and she feels that feeling again, and then is flooded with every time he has smiled because of her, laughed because of her. The way he looks when he laughs with their daughters. Wears a soft red clown nose to make them laugh, too.

Every sharp pain is gone. Every dark memory is soothed, at least in part, because of present happiness.

He laughs. She smirks, eyes twinkling. They are awkward in the car across the center dash, but she leans into his arm snaking around her middle. She's smug. Her eyebrows quirk. "I have reason to be," she informs him. "I got you. I kept you. And you please me."

Kisses him. They are close enough for this. Kisses him softly, but not without heat, not without some tracery of longing that house and marriage and children and the mundanity of her life now have not managed to temper in her. She could go to bed every night with him and still long for him like this. She's certain of it.

The lake. Beautiful. Ocean.

She laughs too, though more softly. "Do you remember that night you asked me what I would want, if I could have anything? And I said spring. And you said the sea." She tips her head, looking at him in the dark. "Why did you say that?"

Lukas

"Did I?" he muses, smiling. She looks at him. He has to rear back a little to see her; does so. "I don't know. I suppose..."

Lukas settles again. Leans his head back against the headrest; keeps his arm settled where it is. "I suppose I've always liked the ocean. Vast and dark and powerful as it is, I've never been frightened by it.

"When we first came to America, my parents were still holding out hope for going back. One day we went out to Coney Island. We were quite poor, so this was a big deal. I still remember taking the subway and the bus for what seemed like hours. When we finally got there, my parents splurged on cotton candy for us. One for me and one for my sister. There was so much of it, I thought. We sat on the beach and ate our candy and my father pointed east across the ocean and said, that's where home is.

"I stopped thinking of it as home a long time ago," he finishes, "but I suppose the ocean still feels a little like that to me. A connection to home, wherever it is."

Danicka

There's a flicker of motion and emotion at the corner of her mouth that he doesn't entirely catch in the shadows. It's when he says vast and dark and powerful. Of course he was never frightened by it. No more than Eliska and Tatiana are truly frightened by the raging thunderstorms that sweep through their neighborhood. Awed, perhaps, but their cries of startlement never sound like terror to her.

She likes to think that she would know if her children ever felt terror. Know it in her bones, from their eyes or their crying. She knows terror so intimately. She knows her children so intimately. And not at all, in a way. Even now, they are their own people. It can hurt so deeply, realizing that, and feeling the knowledge have absolutely no impact on her own devotion. Even young as they are, she thinks she might need them more than they need her.

Her mind comes back to what Lukas is saying. The story he tells her. She smiles, faintly.

"I'm sure you came by after that," she murmurs. "Told me all about it. Asked me if I'd ever had cotton candy without waiting for an answer." As if she would have given him one anyway -- she was so reticent then, so simultaneously awed and unnerved by the ease and loudness he and his sister had. She doesn't remember, of course, if he told her about Coney Island. But she imagines he would have told her.

Faintly: "I don't think of it as home either, but it's different. I wasn't born there." She shakes her head. "It felt... right, when we went back. Seeing my sister, seeing everything there. But I still felt like a visitor. We'll have to go back sometime after Irena changes, anyway."

Danicka lifts from her reverie, looking at him. "Why didn't your parents ever go back? You didn't stay so poor."

Lukas

Lukas laughs, almost-soundless, a movement of his chest beneath her. "I'm sure I did," he agrees; turns his face, presses his nose briefly and intimately against her hair. The crown of her head. And then, curious: "Did you ever have cotton candy, back then?

"I think they got used to it here," he adds a moment later: a reply. "I think they learned to like it. Barely post-Communist Czechoslovakia had its drawbacks, I'm sure. And New York City had its benefits. Plus, once my sister and I started putting down roots, I don't think going back was an option anymore. I suppose in a way they stayed for us."

Danicka

"Of course," she murmurs, almost automatically, but then, more thoughtfully: "I think I went to a fair once. Or Coney. I don't remember very well." Musing to herself, she says slowly: "Blue."

Blue cotton candy.

Danicka stays where she is, leaning on the center console and leaning against him. Wishes this were some older car, a bench seat. She could be closer to him. She thinks, suddenly and half unwillingly, of a truck, and a bridge, and of Decker, and of being sixteen and having some modicum of freedom for the first time in her life. Lukas said she came of age, in a way, in Chicago. She thinks: she came of age in New Orleans, too. Different ages. Different eras. She is never separated entirely from any of them. No one is, she supposes.

It feels so good to feel him breathing. The expansion of his chest. The warmth. The comfort it gives her is deep. Elemental. Danicka sinks into it for a while, silent. Her breathing begins to match his. Her heartbeat. This happens when they sleep beside one another, their bodies within a few paces of one another's rhythms. She remembers, as she often does these days, that she has known him for a very, very long time. Not since five years ago. Not since they were children. But before that, even. Lifetimes. She's never really been alone.

"One of the hardest things I ever learned," she says quietly, after a while, "I learned with you. Or because of you, at least." Her eyes are out, through the windshield, across the dark lake. She breathes in, holding it for a moment, and then exhales slowly. "I tried so hard, all my life, to believe that my family loved me. Deep down. That's why I was so... resigned.

"But love's not just this warm, fluffy feeling of affection or... possession," she murmurs. "If it was, then I'm sure they all loved me, and just couldn't help hurting me. Allowing me to be hurt." Her hair whispers as it moves across the lapel of his coat. "That's not it, though. I think of all those times we thought that love was weakness, or surrender. Because that's how it feels, when you want to do one thing but you do something else, because it's better for the person you love. Staying when you want to go. Telling the truth when it's easier to lie. Controlling your temper instead of lashing out. Being patient even when they haven't earned it. Forgiving when you've been hurt. Protecting them even if it means you put yourself at risk. All those things feel like... submission.

"Or they did," she adds, softly, like a correction. "I don't know if it's the same for you, but it doesn't feel that way to me anymore. Like today at the reception, when the girls started throwing that little fit about the shoes. I was embarrassed. I didn't want to go home yet. I was frustrated. But I didn't want them to feel like I was ashamed of them. And they were getting so tired and overwhelmed. And I never want them to be scared of me. So we all went home. And it wasn't what I wanted or what was easiest on me, but I didn't feel weak. I felt very strong."

Her head nuzzles up under his jaw. Turns he face so that she's well and truly tucked right there, gazing instead out of the driver's-side door.

"My mother, my father, and my brother all felt... something... for me. Fuzzy warm feelings of fondness or connection. Possession. I think my father feels real love, too. But he never even tried to get us away. He never called his daughters in the Republic to try and get help. I know that my mother... broke him. I don't... blame him, really. She damaged him irreparably. I blame her for that. But his love wasn't enough to overcome his fear." She pauses. The words hurt, but don't choke her.

"Please don't think I hate my father, or that his love means nothing to me," she whispers. "I just... I have something to compare it to now. Because of what we have now. But also because of you, and your family, and how they are with you and your sister, and how you are with them. Also because of my sisters, and their families."

She breathes in again, deeply again, closing her eyes as she rests against him, blocking out most of the world but for the sound of his heartbeat, the steadiness of his breathing. "I was important for me to come to terms with the fact that they didn't love me. Or love me enough, or in the right way... however you want to put it. I know it probably hurts you to hear it, but... I needed to learn that, láska. I couldn't learn how to really love you, or let you love me, until I understood that what I'd always known had never really been love."

Lukas

Though neither of them are aware of it, they're both wishing the car didn't have bucket seats. They're both wishing it was a bench, a couch, something where she can slide over and wrap her arms around him and nestle right against his side.

She's thinking, too, of the first time she ever tasted freedom. She's thinking of the proverbial gates opening, and the way she ran, and ran, and ran; did all those things she never would have been allowed to do under her father's roof. Under her brother's eye. She's thinking of their souls entwining through the centuries, and how she has never really been alone. Just felt that way until they found each other again.

She's thinking of the way she grew up. She's thinking of that painfully, but: there is her mate, solid and dark and warm beside her, calm, steady. He is thinking his own thoughts: family and love and distance and how much a city matters, really. If it matters at all.

He is thinking of what she's saying. He is wincing through some of it. Wraps his arm closer around her. Turning his face into her hair, the two of them turning their faces to each other the way animals do.

"I don't think your brother ever knew what love was," he murmurs; heard through his chest, heard in the air. "I think your mother confused it with ownership. And your father... I think you're right. His fear was stronger than his love. It was stronger than anything else.

"I don't think he's afraid anymore, though. And I don't think it's too late, between you and him. Not yet."

Danicka

A faint smile softens the edge of Danicka's mouth, though Lukas cannot see it. Just hears a moment of hesitation, and a tenderness in her tone: "I knew you would worry over how I feel about my father anyway."

Nuzzles under his jaw with the crown of her head, her hair scuffing his chin. "I didn't say I think or feel it's too late, baby... or that there's something missing between he and I, even," she tells him, that tenderness still gentling a bit of correction, a nudge to turn away from worrying that Danicka might not feel loved, might not feel valued, in some way that erodes her or harms her... something. Whatever it is, in his heart. She eases at him to turn away from it, look this other way, back towards the rest of her words. Back to what really matters to her.

"I was just remembering asking you, a long time ago, if... if you thought they loved me. Or something like that. And you told me how you couldn't imagine ever treating your parents or sister that way, or treating me that way. Or something like that," she echoes herself, wry at her poor memory of such a turning point in her own life. "You didn't tell me whether or not I was loved, because you didn't know, and you don't lie to me."

This, more than anything for her, is a foundational truth: Lukas does not lie to her. Lukas could be the most conniving Shadow Lord in history, he could be wicked and deceitful to all others, and this would still hold her to him: he never gives her anything but his honesty. Even when it hurts.

"I don't know why I thought of that now," she muses, "other than the girls and the tantrum and... coming of age, and all of it. I just wanted you to know. I don't think I could have gotten here without accepting that truth. Painful as it was, it's part of how I... became myself. And you were with me, holding me through it."

Lukas

Holding her through it.

That's what he's doing even now. Holding her through this conversation; its turns, its shadows of a darker time. It's a two way street, though. She's holding him too. He is comforted by her nearness; made quieter and more content by it. In the darkness, he feels himself smile.

"Slysim te," he murmurs. "Jsem s tebou."

A little time passes. They rest together there in the car. It's quiet here. The city is quiet; the world is quiet. They, too, are quiet. After a while Lukas speaks again:

"I'm glad the girls will always be loved. I'm glad they'll always know it."

Danicka

"I hope so," Danicka says softly to that. "I think we're doing okay so far."

Lukas

Lukas laughs, just as soft. "For first-time parents, I'd say we deserve five stars and a pat on the back."

Danicka

"Of twins," she says. "Two of them. At once. All the time."

She sounds amused and horrified at once. Stepping outside of her life for a few moments, she sometimes is still stunned at what it is. What it has become. That she lives in a house and has a cat and right now her aging father is watching the news and half-dozing on her couch while her children sleep upstairs, one of them still with her thumb stuck in her mouth, the other drooling on the satiny corner of her blankie. She has a stroller. She just graduated college. Their nanny is currently working on researching preschools here and there, building up a spreadsheet for Danicka and Lukas.

Preschool.

Danicka would be lying if some part of her didn't balk a little at her life. The routine of it. The necessity of going home at certain times, of letting mulitple people know where she'll be and when. The mundanity of certain Sundays. The way she sometimes misses Lukas just because he's her partner in this, and he's not always around, and she goes a little batshit with all the thoughts she has that she can't share with anyone else. There is a part of her that squirms away from all of it, even if the rest of her would not give it up for... anything. Kill her first. She would never let go.

Still. She does not want five stars and a pat on the back.

"I graduated college today," she murmurs, still watching the lake, the land outside, the glittering night city. "I want you to buy me a bottle of vodka, get me expensively trashed, and fuck my brains out on someone else's thousand-dollar sheets."

 
Copyright Lukáš Wyrmbreaker 2010.
Converted To Blogger Template by Anshul .