Saturday, June 21, 2014

a solstice, a storm.

Danicka

There is a park on 40th and Grove, and on its south side there is a little playground. A wavy bike rack stands nearby; the bike stand and the equipment are blue. There are pathways to walk and trees. It is a nice little park, and it is just as close to their house as the Jewel-Osco to the west.

Their nanny takes the girls there often. Danicka takes the girls there often, more often now that she is not in school for a few months. They are there now, after a post-nap lunch, sitting all together on a large spread-out blanket. Eliska and Tatiana are wearing little shorts and little t-shirts. Their little shoes are off to the side of the blanket, beside Danicka's. Their fair arms and chubby legs smell richly of sunblock. Their little bucket hats are plopped on their heads and though they have chin straps, those are undone.

Eliska fights with Danicka about her hat, but she is old enough to understand it when her mother says that when they play outside, they have to wear hats, and if she does not wear a hat, then they will go home and go inside. She forgets, though, and whips her hat off again a short while later, and they go through it all again. Tatiana is more content with her headwear. She bounces on her butt on the blanket, eating sliced grapes from one of the cups Danicka brought with them in the jogging stroller. She loves grapes, and her face and hands are sticky from the juices. Eliska is tired; Eliska did not nap well. Eliska falls asleep in the shade of the tree they are sitting beneath, and Tatiana gets help with her shoes and then goes toddling about on the grass nearby.

It is the summer solstice. Danicka sits at the edge of the blanket, one of her daughters sleeping as heavy as summer itself near her, the other bending her knees and lowering her butt and inspecting some ants on the sidewalk, pointing at them and babbling across the way at her mama, trying to explain to her what she is seeing. Mostly she just says ANTS, loudly, several times, until Danicka has confirmed: yes, those are ants a satisfactory number of times.

Today is the longest day. She wishes Lukas were here.

Lukas

Not so very long ago, there was another summer solstice. There was a bonfire, there were dozens of their kinsmen near and far. There were friends and there were rivals and there were near-strangers; there were fights and facedowns and,

as the night wore on, as the fires burned low,

there was a fleet-footed dash into the wilderness, there were branches snapping and foliage rustling, there was a stream they crossed and there were clothes they stripped off and strew all about. There was a small shaded copse, and there was the wet rich smell of loamy earth, and there was the way their hands grasped at the dirt and at each other, the way he put his hands under hers to cushion her from the ground,

the way they loved each other that night, ferocious and primal, a mating in every sense of the word.

Quite some time later, they were married.

And quite some time after that, they became parents.

--

This is a very different solstice, but it is still a solstice. A heavy wet warmth hangs in the air. There are clouds in the sky, large ones with grey underbellies and sharply defined, complex crowns. They sometimes blot out the sun. They sometimes rain, and sometimes pour. They sometimes part to let the sun cast down on the grass, the trees, the thick lazy air of dawning summer.

The babies are almost toddlers. One is asleep and one is fascinated by insects. It is Saturday, which is a day for outdoors and sunshine. This park is small enough, their neighborhood quiet enough, that they have it almost to themselves. There's another small family over by the swings. A young father, three children. The kids are older; they play on the equipment. Their father pushes them absentmindedly. He's on the phone, talking to a friend or a colleague. He glances over at Danicka and her twins now and then, but the kids are too far apart in age to be playmates, and anyway -- his call is important.

And then a car passing on the street suddenly brakes and pulls to the curb.

And then the passenger's door opens.

And then Lukas climbs out, bending briefly to bid farewell to someone -- Kate? -- as he gets out ahead of schedule. He has a large paper bag in his hand. It's from Jimmy John's. Summery in a light blue shirt, grey jeans, he crosses the lawn toward his family. His wife. His mate. His two daughters.

He begins to grin long before he gets there. He can't help it. Shifting the bag of sandwiches to the other hand, he calls, "You have lunch already?"

Danicka

She is remembering that night. She is remembering washing dirt from her skin, finding red weals from branches that caught on her skin. She is remembering the water in her shower soaking her hair after Lukas took her back to her apartment -- back then, it somehow seemed tolerable to love each other and then walk away, sometimes for weeks -- and thinking of that word: mate. my mate. mine. She loved him then, but she wouldn't say even now that she adored him then. Not like she came to adore him, so quickly it felt like a headlong tumbling into it.

She is thinking of that night, and she is watching the little girls with their green-blue eyes and dark hair. Eliska's head is near her thigh and her hand is on the baby's back, rubbing in gentle circles. Tatiana roams far and near, but never out of sight. She does give Jeff a nod when their eyes pass by each other; they aren't neighbors, but she's seen him here before, and met his wife, and they're nice enough.

A car stops, and someone gets out, but Danicka is looking at the pattern of leaves against the sunlight until the air is suddenly taut with expectation and tension. She lowers her chin, looks around, her eyes already hardening, her hand moving towards the nearby shoulder bag where one might find baby wipes and diapers and lip balm and rash cream and extra clothes and sunblock and snacks and a legally concealed firearm. That look melts. It shapeshifts into a smile, broad and bright. She thought of him, and here he is, summoned into existence.

In the distance, Tatiana stamps her feet back and forth, clapping, a big mostly toothless grin on her face. She looks absurd, then starts waddle-running over the grass. Lukas calls out about lunch. Danicka, eyes twinkling, puts a finger to her lips and points down at the sleeping-outside-of-her-regular-naptime Eliska. Lukas gets to the blanket faster than Tatiana gets to him, but as he's heading that way she cries out, somewhat defiant and somewhat HEY. HEY. ME. :[ She waves her arms upward at him, which imbalances her and topples her to her knees and hands on the grass, but she doesn't wail. She pushes herself back up, chubby and determined that not only will her daddy come get her, he will also pick her up.

Danicka is laughing. Despite her shushing. She does nod to Lukas, stroking Eliska's back still, while Tatiana gets back to toddling as fast as she can back to her family.

Lukas

Lukas was heading to the picnic blanket. He was going to go set the sandwiches down and take a seat and maybe lean over and kiss his wife hello. But then his daughter, one of his precious pups, starts running over and flops over but she doesn't cry, no she doesn't, and Lukas is so proud of her even though if she did cry he wouldn't blame her for it,

and anyway a moment later her father is there, holding the bag of sandwiches in his teeth like a canine. He scoops her up into the air like she's weightless, like she's a small parcel or maybe a small bundle-of-joy in truth. He tosses her up! It is a small toss, no more than a few inches of space between his big hands and her little body, and then he catches her again, very securely, and tucks her into the crook of his arm. Transfers the bag of sandwiches back to his hand, smooches her on her chubby little cheek, carries her back to the blanket, and her mother, and her sleeping sister.

The bag of sandwiches thumps down on the blanket. Lukas drops down a second later, still holding his pup, and props a hand on the ground to balance himself as he leans over to,

well,

kiss his wife hello.

Danicka

Tatiana is the one who isn't scared to be tossed in the air. Danicka is the one who doesn't want him tossing them up as high as he could. Eliska is the one who liked to be hugged close and swung around but mostly hugged tight, tight, very close to his chest, where she can sniff him and feel him. But Tatiana is scooped, and shrieks happily as she is scooped and tossed and caught and tucked close. She holds onto him, arms doing their tiny best to wrap around his chest and shoulders, and she is saying daddeeee. daddeeeeee.

They rearrange, her leaning into his side, her belly by his shoulder and her upper body beside his head, while he carries her one-armed back to the blanket in two strides that would have taken her ten. Or twenty. When he kisses her, she smells like sunblock and sunshine and also grass. Also grapes.

Eliska is stirring, because of noise and activity and rage. She rubs her face on her fist, yawning in her sleep, as Lukas drops to the blanket. Danicka is there, then, reaching to touch his face, kiss his mouth, deeper perhaps than he was expecting. Tatiana peers at them from her perch in Lukas's arm, while Danicka smooths her palm over his cheek, breathes in, parts his lips with her own, tells him very much how she missed him, how:

"I was just thinking about you," she murmurs, parting.

Lukas

True; Lukas wasn't expecting a kiss like that. He sinks into it, though: his eyes closing, his body leaning against hers for a moment. Years have passed since that night at Smartbar, when he leaned across Gabriella Bellamonte and introduced himself to Danicka. Some things don't change, though. The breadth of his shoulders, the solidity of his chest. The warm, generous way he kisses her sometimes,

though not always, because sometimes the way he kisses her is playfulness, and sometimes it is affection, and sometimes, sometimes -- it is sheer hunger.

Right now: warm and generous and deep. Falling into the moment, nevermind the babies, nevermind that they're in public. When they part, his pupils are a little more dilated. There's color in his lean cheeks, there beneath the sun-burnish he's already managed to pick up this summer. He smiles. One wonders if the kids will inherit his dimples. They'll certainly inherit the cleft in Danicka's chin. Sometimes Lukas likes to wonder how his daughters will look in ten years, in twenty.

Right now, he lifts a hand to Danicka's cheek. Rubs his thumb lightly over her cheekbone. His smile spreads a little, and then he turns and drops a kiss on his daughter's head and then lets her down to sit on his lap or wander or do whatever it is very small children do on a picnic day. For his part, Lukas props his hands behind him, leans back.

"Well," he says, still smiling, "here I am. I was heading home anyway, and I saw you from the car."

Danicka

Some things have changed, indeed. Lukas grew. He was never small but he's only grown larger, less lithe but stronger. Danicka is no longer so thin that he feels a pang when he smooths his hand up her side. The girls are completely weaned by now, no longer even suckling at bedtime. They are there, existing right against Danicka's thigh and in Lukas's arm, but they are only the most obvious changes. Some things have not changed: the heat of his body and the heat it stirs in her just to look at him. The heat it stirred in her the first time she saw him, and every time she saw him after. The gold of her hair, the green of her eyes, the piercing blue of his. The long, slow, wet, deep kisses that last for three days.

She is smiling, lopsidedly, when they part and she tells him what she does. She can see the heat, and hunger, in the way he looks at her after that kiss. She can feel it in the way he touches her and turns her face a bit, kissing the mound of his palm, closing her eyes and resting her cheek in his touch for a moment. Tatiana is already easing herself down, intending to crawl over to Eliska. But she won't wake her, and Danicka knows this: more than likely, if Eliska stays asleep, Tatiana will join her. For the time being, Tatiana just crawls over, rocking on her hands and knees a bit, watching her sister.

Danicka follows with her eyes, then turns back to Lukas, shifting her body nearer to his as though to make up in physical contact for the loss of one of his pups. "I must have summoned you," she says, and touches his chest through his shirt, adjusting the line of his buttons, looking at her hand on his body, at his body under his clothes. She sighs. "God. When was the last time I fucked you?" she whispers.

Lukas

Perhaps because Lukas is home less than Danicka is, even with her classes, he never gets tired of marveling over how his daughters are growing up day by day. How now, Tatiana knows not to wake her sister. How she walks and runs and says simple things, a word or two at a time. Daddy. Ants! Juice box.

And, perhaps because Lukas is aware that the little ones are beginning to understand more and more of what their parents say, he flicks a surreptitious glance at the twins when Danicka

says

fucked.

The look on his face is almost comical: caught between surprise and laughter and desire and just a hint of shock. He catches her hand, captures it gently in his fingers, lifts it to his mouth and kisses her palm. His grin turns a little crooked. He flops down on his back, still holding her hand.

"A very long time," he says, Very Seriously. "I'm forty-eight hours from declaring a marital emergency. Come here," and he tugs lightly on that hand.

Danicka

Danicka, ever attentive, notices that glance. She grins. She tucks two fingers in a gap between buttons, just to feel his skin. His pulse. She leans into him, smiling. Maybe it's been a week. Maybe it's been twelve hours. She doesn't care. It feels longer.

Lukas takes that hand and kisses her palm, something he does when he's hot, when he wants to lick her but can't, doesn't, or when he wants to kiss her throat, her breast, feel her pulse fluttering against his mouth. When he flops back she thinks she's going to climb onto him. Sometimes she wants him so badly it makes her heart pound, but this never shocks her. Her own longing never does.

"I can't help it," she murmurs, going as he tugs, leaning over him, then thinking better of it and laying down beside him.

Lukas

She was about to climb atop him. Lukas is quite sure of that, even if all she does is lay down beside him, intimate but not indecent. He tucks his arm around her, keeping her close to his side.

"We could pack the picnic up," he whispers. "Take the kids home and put them down for an afternoon nap. Have our way with each other."

Danicka

There have been days -- tired days, when the nanny was off and not even coming for a few hours to help Danicka out like she has been, for example -- when the fact that Lukas can't be around even as much as a normal father and is always so stunned by their growth and their ability and can't seem to remember their schedule because it changes without his input or knowledge... has just... driven... Danicka... mad. When it's made her furious and sad, and there hasn't really been anything he could do. They knew this would be hard. A long time ago, several Christmases ago, she crawled into his lap on a pile of presents and wept because back then, they thought it was too hard to even try. She gets frustrated sometimes. She gets overwhelmed.

But it's not most of the time. Most of the time she has help: family visits, or their nanny, or Lukas himself there more and more as the girls grow older and more tolerant of his presence. Right now she's not working, she's not in school, and she's frankly just enjoying doing the Mommy thing for a while before going back to classes. And right now it's the solstice, and watching Tatiana run toward her father and hug him when he picked her up drove a sweet pain through her heart that is still living there, expanding.

So right now, she just laughs. "We had lunch a while ago. Then a nap." She nuzzles his chest. "Eliska didn't sleep very well, that's why she crashed out again after playing for a while." Her hand moves on his chest, down to his stomach, roaming a little over his solar plexus. It's so obvious that she wants to run her hand down his body and under those grey jeans of his that it's almost comical. Then again, this is the woman who sometimes wakes him in the morning just to whisper in his ear: let me play with it, baby. let me touch you. And the woman who jerked him off in an elevator. And the woman who has fucked in in at least a couple of bathrooms and definitely once on top of the hood of her car.

Let's pause there for a moment: that car lives in the garage at Kingsbury these days and is used around the city. For home, including with the nanny, there is now a QX50 in 'graphite shadow'. She's talked about, one day, getting a 7-seater CX-9 or something similar, which is the first mention she's made of those four kids she wants to have since she had the first two. For now: the elegant Infiniti crossover with the creamy interior and two carseats in the back.

Moving on:

She was about to climb on top of him. She still might. She does glance over at the girls. Tatiana is kneeling still, her butt in the air, her arms folded to pillow her head while she stares at her sleeping sister. She yawns.

"They might nap again," she murmurs back to Lukas. "Or we could try and find a sitter for tonight. Go out for dinner in the city. Fuck in the car," she says, almost purring by that point, almost tugging at his clothes. She grins at him. "If we keep talking about this here I'm going to lose my mind. Tell me something boring, like what you did today."

That grin widens.

Lukas

She keeps moving like any minute she might start sliding her hands under his clothes. He keeps catching her hands, bringing them to his mouth, catching them against his chest, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. They can hardly keep their hands off each other, even if -- for now -- their touch is a languid, familiar thing.

Meanwhile, she tells him about the kids. Their day. There's a certain cognitive dissonance in this, but Lukas doesn't mind. They're both young and strong and incredibly attracted to each other. He wouldn't want to feel as though either of them had to choose between being a lover and being a parent. He wants to be both. He wants to be everything, lover and brother and father and packmate and son and son-in-law and brother-in-law and uncle and mentor and everything, everything.

He is very lucky. There are so many people who love him. There are so many people he loves,

but none more than the three with him right now.

"Let's get a sitter tonight," he decides. "Let's get a hotel room and wreak havoc. But let's go home afterward, so we can take the pups to the zoo or something tomorrow." He shifts a little; he smirks sidelong at her. "As for my day: we just got back from Wisconsin this morning. I spent some time at the Bellamonte loft, and then Kate drove me home. We stopped for Jimmy John's on the way. Very boring."

Danicka

She aches. She aches for him, from loving him and wanting him. She aches to feel him -- not later tonight, not in a hotel, but right now, wildly and impatiently. That is one of the hardest things about parenting for her: so much planning. So much considering of the needs of others more vulnerable than herself. She can't just drag Lukas into the bushes.

On the other hand, she doesn't think much of that sacrifice whenever she looks over at Tatiana and sees her asleep with her bum in the air, dozing off beside her twin. Danicka can't help but look at them every so often, just as she can't seem to help wanting to climb all over her husband.

And she aches because he mentions getting back from Wisconsin, and she... isn't sure she knew he was in Wisconsin. It causes a pang through her features, evident and visible, because she does not hide these things from him anymore. Hasn't, now, for some time. "What were you doing in Wisconsin?" she asks, trying to keep that pang, that pain, out of her voice.

Lukas

Lukas senses the pang. It echoes in him, like a stone dropped down a well. His arm tightens a little; holds her a little closer.

"There was a battle," he says softly. The humor is gone now. In its place is a certain gentleness, and a certain resolve. This is their life. These are their struggles, every single day. This -- the children, the sunshine, the two of them lying together in the grass -- is what makes it worthwhile. "The Sept up there asked for our help, so we answered.

"I was careful," he adds, quieter still. "We were never in any real danger. I would have called, but things were moving quickly. And anyway, I didn't want you to worry."

Danicka

They are at a goddamn playground in a park near their little wonky house in their little wonky suburb-of-a-suburb. Jeff is over there with his three kids. It's a glorious June day, it's the solstice. It is, in some ways, a very important day for the two of them. Her babies, who are healthy and fearless and loud and content, are falling asleep together on a picnic blanket in the shade. To say that this is idyllic is putting it mildly, actually.

And they are talking about a war. Which was fought last night in Wisconsin, and she didn't know that her mate was in Wisconsin.

Danicka's want has dropped just like that stone into that well, cold and sudden and rippling. She exhales, and tucks herself closer to his side, resting her brow on his chest. "Baby, I never worry that you're not careful." If he has it in him to remember his own name, he is careful. He's so careful they almost didn't find each other amidst all the early drama. She knows how careful he is. How calculated he is. How sharp his mind. Her fingers curl in the fabric of his shirt all the same. "But even if you're not in danger, if it's possible... I want to at least know where you've gone, okay?"

She kisses his bicep where his shirt ends. "If it's possible," she repeats, quietly. "I know sometimes it just won't be."

Lukas

It makes him ache: her understanding. Her hand in his shirt; her kiss on his arm. Her ache, most of all. He turns his head, he kisses her temple. He lifts his head and he kisses her, too, and this kiss is different from the last. Softer and gentler; with perhaps just a hint of apology.

"All right," he promises. "Whenever it's possible."

Lukas falls quiet, then. He has a mind to get up, eat a sandwich. Go home. Put the kids in bed and make love to his wife, never mind waiting for tonight. He has a mind to do all these things, but he doesn't stir. For now, he stays where he is, on that picnic blanket, in the shade of that tree. His chest rises and falls as he breathes, steady and quiet and calm. His mate is close. His pups are close. They are talking about war, thinking about war, and all the same he is filled with a bone-deep contentment that does not need words.

Danicka

Eventually, they go home.

But they don't leave the park right away. Even though they know that if they let the girls nap a little now, there's no way they'll be able to get them to nap again at home, there's no way they'll be able to sneak into the shower or their own bed and make love. Right now, as much as they want each other, there is something tender in them that wants to stay. To lie together on a blanket in the park, Lukas nudging off his shoes and folding one arm back behind his head, holding his wife to his side, her head pillowed on his bicep. To have their pups close, sleeping in the heavy, deep way that small ones sleep. The breeze moves over them occasionally, disrupting the mugginess of the air. The sun filters through the branches and leaves of the tree above them.

Danicka dozes off, lightly. Her pups are nearby, and they are exposed. Even with Lukas beside her, she does not sleep too deeply. But she sleeps at all: and once upon a time, she would not fall asleep with him at all. She would never fall asleep in a park. Not even a little. Not even a nap.

They do nap, though. The girls nap, flopped on their bellies in sympathetic slumber. The woman naps, her hand on her mate's chest, the tops of her feet touching his calf through his jeans. She is in shorts, herself, dove gray ones that end just above her knee. She was wearing sandals before, which were discarded at the edge of the blanket. Her tank top is unembellished but a lively color of teal. Her only jewelry is her wedding band, a pair of pearl studs in her earlobes. Her hair is twisted up in a bun, but even when Lukas arrived there were tendrils falling past her ears. Her mouth is open, slightly, when she drowses with Lukas.

Eventually, they go home. Eventually Tatiana, who wasn't that tired to begin with, rubs her face against the blanket and sneezes and starts talking: to Eliska, to mama, to daddeee, a word she always says while holding onto the ee, a sound she makes heavily and eagerly, happily, the inflection lifting. She babbles, jabbering nonsense, crawling over to her parents' legs. Eliska is waking, letting out a whine, a frustrated cry: Tatiana crawls back to her, talks to her some more, makes Eliska sniffle and rub at her face, staring intently at her sister to listen.

Danicka woke as soon as Tatiana started to move, started to rub her face, sneezed. She was rising, turning, her body moving before she was fully alert again, turning towards the sound of her other daughter fussing sleepily. Even though Tatiana has calmed her sister, Danicka picks Eliska up, drawing her into her lap as she sits cross-legged. Tatiana, of course, crawls over to Danicka's lap and leans on her thigh while Eliska sucks her fingers and lays her head on mama's shoulder. Danicka drapes her arm gently over Tatiana's shoulders. She talks to them.

"Did you wake up?" she asks, when the answer is obvious. She nuzzles Eliska. "It's no fun to wake up, is it? Waking up is the worst." Kisses her cheek, smells her, kisses her temple, nuzzles her again while her other hand strokes Tatiana's dark hair. "That was so nice of TaÅ¥ána to talk to you when you were sad, huh?" She rubs her cheek against Eliska's cheek like she can't help it, can't stop herself, just like she can't stop herself from wanting Lukas, can't stop herself from dozing off when she feels comforted, because it is so new and so lovely to feel such a thing. "Maybe we should go home and get new diapers on and read some books. TaÅ¥ána, do you want to go home and get changed?"

Tatiana, predictably, starts babbling her answer at length, but the general sense is affirmative.

Lukas

There are few things in this world more enjoyable than a nap in the grass on a warm summer's day. This is a basic truth of existence that Lukas is rediscovering at this very moment, stretched out in the dappled shade, his pups sleeping the deep undisturbed sleep of innocents; his wife warm against his body, her hand protecting his heart.

A quarter of an hour, a half-an-hour, perhaps more: this is the time that goes by unmarked and unremarked. The sun's angle changes ever so slightly. The clouds grow ever thicker. The air remains warm, but it grows heavier, wetter, thicker.

They awaken. Lukas awakens, something deep inside him stirring to the gathering storm. His eyes open; the sky is no longer blue, but grey. Low. There is a greenish tinge in the west. There is power in the air, charged, familiar, demanding and relentless, but -- not malignant. Not really dangerous. Not to them.

Danicka said it once, long ago:

We're Shadow Lords.

Yes they are.

--

Lukas lies where he is a little longer. Eventually his pup wakes, and his mate, and his other pup. He takes a long breath, his chest inflating. He sits up. He looks at his pups crawling about, fond; what little things they are, so inquisitive, so smart, so helpless and small. He puts his hand on Tatiana's back. He smiles at Danicka, wordless.

Then he pushes to his feet. He picks up that untouched bag of sandwiches, and he starts to fold the blanket. When he has their things collected, he holds out his empty arm for one of the babies.

"We better get home before it really starts to come down," he says.

Danicka

Tatiana startles when he touches her, twisting her head up and around to peer at him, pushing her mama's arm out of her way. It was the coming storm that woke her. Maybe. Perhaps. She, too, is a Shadow Lord. The half-asleep twin cradled to Danicka's shoulder is also a Shadow Lord, but she looks a little less interested in it. She just woke up, and occasionally she makes a whining noise about it, continuing her protest until Danicka shushes her, tells her that's enough. Eliska, chastened, turns her face into Danicka's shirt, trying very hard not to wake up because, yes: waking up is the worst.

Lukas is rising, and Danicka is rising. The girls are set down on the grass while Danicka re-packs a few things in her bag, slips into her sandals, while Lukas folds the blanket. They are very interested in the sandwiches Lukas has, before he picks it up again out of their reach, trading Danicka the blanket so she'll let him carry the shoulder-bag. The girls are big enough now that when he bends his knees and holds out his arm to Eliska, she knows what this means. She gets to her feet, wobbling slightly, holding up her arms while he scoops her up against his side. Tatiana bounces on her butt until Danicka picks her up as well, and they head for the jogging stroller nearby while Eliska starts talking to Lukas. She points at things. She makes a "Ba?" sound, and he tells her tree. dog. cloud. car. each time. This is Eliska's favorite game. She likes certain words better than others: he has to say 'cloud' half a dozen times, even while they're buckling the girls into the stroller side by side.

The tiny girls are given sippy cups of water, the shade pushed down to cover their heads, the diaper bag and blanket deposited into the carry-all beneath their seats, and then they set off for home. Lukas, perhaps, wants to push. Danicka just grins and tells him: "Are you kidding? This is my cardio."

And weight training, given the weight of the girls plus the stroller and all the things jammed into the carry-all. But she likes it. She likes the effort, and frankly: she likes pushing that stroller, with her twins in it, walking alongside Lukas.

They make it home. It's already raining; her tendrils of hair are wet and the girls spent the last few minutes of the trip laughing and shrieking as water hit their exposed toes, looking up through the clear plastic 'window' of the shade as rain fell on it. It's not a downpour, though: that waits until they get the stroller into the garage beside the Infiniti, when a huge roll of thunder and snap of lightning rockets through the sky. The girls shriek again, thrown into a tizzy by the weather. They are a bit anxious: they don't want to walk inside, they want to stand at the edge of the garage and watch the storm, even though sometimes the lightning and thunder makes them turn and run back to their parents, only to drift out again, delighted and terrified at once.

It takes some effort and time to get the girls actually inside the house, shoes and hats left downstairs. It takes time to get up the stairs because Danicka insists that they crawl their own way up, and it is difficult and challenging for them and slow-going, especially since Lukas stands a few steps beneath them at all times. But they get up there, happily worn out and refocused after their climb, eager to play before they are reminded firmly that they need new diapers. That does not require a changing table, though, just a trip into the downstairs bathroom. Kando is sneaking around behind the couch, coming out only to slide past Lukas's leg, rubbing against him to make sure she still owns him as one of her two-legged creatures.

Eventually they are home. The rain is really coming down outside, the thunder rattling the windows that glisten occasionally with spiritual energy of warning. Danicka does not fear lightning striking this house: they are protected. And her mate is here, and her babies clean and their toes dry again, and her cat fed, and her husband eating some sandwiches.

She flops onto the couch while the twins start to dig through their living-room toys, reaching up to unfasten her hair. She huffs a breath. "I'm almost ready for another nap," she says, half-kidding.

Half.

Lukas

Lukas tells himself that he will let his girls decide what they want to be when they grow up. If they want to build airplanes or research life-saving medications or design video games or, hell, even if they just want to marry some nice boy and raise babies. And if one or both should turn out to be Garou -- and he dreads that thought as much as he hopes for it -- he tells himself that he will let them decide what tribe to join. If they want to be daughters of Thunder or Fenris or Pegasus or Cockroach. With their bloodlines, they could even catch the shining eye of Falcon, mad as he is. He would let them go, if that's what they chose. He might mourn the loss, privately and quietly, but he would let them go.

Still: when they thrill at the rain, when they laugh and shriek and, later, when they stand anxious and delighted and terrified looking out at the storm, something deep in Lukas's heart turns over. He feels pride. He feels something like recognition. He thinks to himself,

is it you?

and thinks of that pack he met in that long voyage into the unknown; thinks of his forefathers who forged and carried and passed down his weapon; thinks of all his kinsmen and friends and elders and progeny stretching back into the ancient ages.

A little later they are inside, and it is pouring outside. The backyard is full of mist; that sort of thick fog that rises in a summer torrent, when the air is already too warm and too humid to hold more moisture. The thunder is continuous, a constant rumbling roll occasionally punctuated by a splitting crack. They are protected in here, though. Sheltered under the auspices of an aspect of the storm-god himself. And here in their warm, dry little den, they groom their pups and dress them in dry clothes and put them out to play. They have blocks and blocky non-swallow-able plastic trucks and rubber tools and, yes, squeaky toys that sometimes drive their parents insane. Lukas is sitting on the ground, absently pushing a big yellow truck back and forth while Tatiana bangs a smaller red car into it over and over. He looks up, smiling.

"If you go get the bed warmed up," he bargains, "I'll play Airplane with the girls until they're exhausted enough to sleep."

Danicka

This makes Danicka laugh. "I was kidding," she says, and gets her hair down, shaking it out, finger-combing it with graceful efficiency. "It's hours til bedtime. Plus we'll have to feed them dinner at some point."

She watches him from the couch, smiling at him sitting on the floor. Eliska is on her back, her hands and feet busy with a very large stuffed animal, examining it and twisting it around, holding it with her feet. Sometimes they are little wolves. Sometimes they have the same apelike dexterity of their human cousins. She stuffs the soft elephant's ear in her mouth. She does not seem very much like one of their ancient forebears just then, but she does seem a bit savage. As does Tatiana, when she gets tired of the red car and starts trying to wrestle the big yellow truck away from her father's hand.

"Say please," Danicka says, firmly and directly enough that though Eliska looks up, she knows from her mother's eyeline that her sister is the one being talked to. Tatiana looks upset. Danicka repeats herself, moving her palm over her chest in a clockwise circle. "Say please."

Tatiana looks up at Lukas, rubbing her chest far more awkwardly -- it is sort of a flailing pat -- and saying "Ps. Ps." She looks terribly forlorn, as though! Maybe! Her daddy will not give her the truck! How, after all, can a sign and a word convey anything that brute force cannot win her?

Whatever happens, Danicka leans back in the couch, smiling. "You should absolutely play Airplane with them, though." She glances out the window as another roll of thunder goes by. Turns back to him, thoughtful. Eliska has flung her elephant aside mindlessly, is crawling to the window, grabbing the couch to get to her feet so she can look out the glass at the rain. Danicka watches her a bit, then looks back at Lukas and Tatiana. "We're not too bad at this parenting thing," she says aloud, quietly, as though looking for... confirmation, perhaps. Agreement. As though it's a question, too, and not just a truth she feels in her heart.

Lukas

Lukas

just about

caves in on himself when his daughter demonstrates such good manners in so adorably pitiful a manner. Ps. Ps. Lukas gets this look on his face, grinning and biting his lip and furrowing his brow and caving-in-inside all at once, and naturally: he picks the big yellow truck up in his bigger-still hand, giving it to his little one.

"Here you go," he says, gently. This, too, is a kind of teaching: the reciprocality of please and here you go and thank you and you're welcome. The pups learn: they grasp language and abstract concepts; they become human.

Mostly, anyway.

His toy relinquished, Lukas turns around and scoots on his butt and his palms -- all the way across the living room to lean against the couch with his mate. It is a comfortable couch, though a little worn now. His head rests next to Danicka's knee; he wraps his arm around her legs and leans into her thigh. It is close and familiar, a pack-animal thing to do.

He watches the girls, too. He looks up at her, and then he kisses her knee.

"We're pretty good at this parenting thing," he opines. "Especially for our first try."

Danicka

"Say thank you," Danicka says, an even more gentle reminder. Tatiana manages a sound like aaah and oooh but not much else, and she forgets what's happening because SHE HAS A TRUCK and she has things to do, she had plans, she is shoving it across the floor and into the kitchen so it will roll better and she can chase it. And of course Eliska is dropping away from the window to follow her, because the wheels make such a racket on the kitchen floor. At least from where she and Lukas sit, Danicka can watch them. Keep an eye on them while they play in their house.

Make noise in their house. Go through drawers of plasticware and explore their house. Talk and laugh and belong in their house, because it is their house. They are safe here. This is their home. Their toys. Their daddeeeee and their mama, the former of whom always seems playful and big and warm and loving and protective and because he does not come home when he cannot be these things for them, the latter of whom sometimes speaks firmly but would rather bite her tongue til it bleeds than raise her voice at them, because they will know enough fear in their lives without her adding to it. Some of the only parenting advice she's taken deeply to heart were the words from some woman at the grocery store telling her

teach your children with love, or the world will teach them without it.

Her daughters play and wander and learn manners and learn to listen and learn to be safe, but they do not learn any of those things through fear. Not fear that they will be harmed by their blood-guardians. Not fear that they will lose the love or approval of the people they are so wholly vulnerable to. It makes her feel very good, to be able to do that. She didn't think she could. No one ever did gave that to her.

Danicka is determined. And that determination is in her jaw and her eyes as she watches them, as Lukas scoots over to get close to her, kissing her bare knee, covering her lap with his embrace. She strokes his hair, automatically and absently, a gesture so familiar she doesn't even realize she's doing it until she feels a drop of rain from his hair touch her palm.

What he says makes her smile down at him, a slowly burgeoning grin. "By that logic, we should be absolute experts by number four."

Lukas

Her hand in his hair sends a slow flush of delight through him. All these years, all this time, and it remains one of his favorite things ever.

"Oh," Lukas says, nonchalant, "are we still planning on four? I thought the CX-7 could seat seven."

Danicka

Her eyebrows hop. "That's including you and I. I am not having five kids unless pregnancy number three surprises us again."

The thought of it makes her pale slightly. "Oh, god," she mutters, her hand stilling. "I could have twins again."

Lukas

He turns his head. He catches her fingertips -- with his teeth, very gently. One hopes his hair was clean but it was: he showered at Kate's place. He would never come back to his pups stinking of battle and blood and vicious triumph. He would -- he has -- come back to Danicka like that. Though even then, especially at the beginning, and even when they both tried their best not to like each other, not to love each other, not to recognize each other for the soulmates they are, he was loathe to come to her like that, soiled.

She was the one that climbed into the shower with him.

But the point: he catches her fingertips, scrapes his teeth very lightly. Kisses the pads of her fingers and then smiles. "You could have triplets," he points out. "It's a remote but real possibility."

Danicka

Danicka doesn't think about his hair being clean or not. She actually looks a bit disturbed at the idea of having five children -- four is her upper limit, but she thought she was pregnant with one, didn't she. She could have another baby. She could have two. Her ovaries are not to be trusted.

Not that she would not love five. Not that she would not protect them and teach them and shelter them, nurture them, comfort them. She would. Just like Lukas hated to come to her filthy, soiled, sticky with blood of enemies, even though she never minded, she never cared, she was never put off. There was something primitive in her that understood, and honored it, and even liked it in a strange way.

Drawn to him, when he was at his most raw, his most animal. When the masks came down, and the lies he told himself about how civilized he is. When he was, no more or less, simply what and who he is.

That involves blood. Wretched things in the night. That is part of it. And she adores all of him.

He noms her fingers. She runs her fingertips over his lips while their children open up a low drawer in the kitchen and find the plasticware that they are allowed to dig through and play with. He says something totally unsympathetic and horrible, and she taps his lips to silence him. "Don't tease," she says, half-serious as earlier she was half-kidding. They are on the border of a very, very uncomfortable conversation that she doesn't want to go into, not on an afternoon like this, with a storm outside and their pups nearby. So she just repeats herself, leaning over to slide off the couch and into his lap, arms around his neck. "Don't tease," she says quietly, again.

Lukas

Naturally, some part of Lukas aches. He was teasing, this is true, but he never meant to be cruel. He is not a cruel man. He is, in spite of all the odds and despite all the first impressions and masks and fronts he tried to put up, a gentle wolf. A gentle man. A gentle mate to her.

He slides his arms around her body as she comes pooling down into his lap. He kisses her: there, on her neck. Such an act of trust, that. Her trust in him; his trust in himself -- to let the predator's teeth so close to such a tender, vulnerable spot. He doesn't nip her, or nom her. Not now. He kisses her, and then he wraps his arms warm and close around her.

"Prominte," he murmurs. "I won't."

Danicka

Her eyes drift closed when he wraps his arms around her, and her head tips subtly to the side when he kisses her. She is close to him, and there is s small shift in the way she breathes: such an act of trust, such an act of lust. For her, at least. Danicka sinks into him as he apologizes and promises, and she smiles, wrapping her arms around him in kind.

So she holds him. And after a few seconds, she squeezes him, and right about then there is a crash in the kitchen -- a soft crash, though, plasticware being tossed across the room and thunk-clattering against the fridge. Danicka knows the sound is not life-or-limb-threatening, but she squeezes Lukas and unfolds a bit and glances into the kitchen anyway, where Tatiana is clapping and Eliska is flopping forward, smacking the floor as she crawls over to the plastic storage container she just hurled around. Which she is not supposed to do, because No Throwing Inside.

"Eliška..." Danicka says, a low note of caution in her tone.

Their now-quite-rested baby looks up, eyes wide, face innocent. "Wa?"

Danicka shakes her head, stroking Lukas's hair at the nape of his neck. "No throwing inside."

Eliska considers this. "No?"

Danicka agrees. "No throwing inside."

Eliska looks around, then rolls around a bit, finally pushing herself up to her feet, toes a bit turned out til she gets her balance, choosing to walk across the kitchen to get her 'toy' now rather than crawling. Danicka smiles, tipping her head to rest against Lukas's, her hair falling around their faces. She smiles at him. "I'm thinking... we play hard for a while and wear the girls out, then you can read books with them while I throw some dinner together --" and perhaps it is worth saying that this isn't about mommies making dinner and daddies not understanding kitchens, but mama always getting to read with the babies and daddy only rarely getting to tuck one girl under each arm so they can both see the pictures while he reads to them from new books, from old books, from books passed down by Miloslav that are in Czech and books that were given by schoolmates and packmates in English and the little books that teach Lukas as much of his burgeoning Russian as they teach the girls. Lukas only sometimes gets to read with his daughters, play energetically with them, so it is special. It is always a gift.

"-- then washing up and bedtime."

She kisses his cheek, his jawline, the tender spot under his ear. Bedtime, each kiss seems to say. Bedtime, bedtime, bedtime.

Lukas

His cheek, which he smiles at; tiny crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

His jawline, which he tilts his head for, his eyes falling half-closed with sheer animal enjoyment.

His --

-- mouth, it turns out. Because he turns his head, he catches her mouth, he kisses her slow and sweet while the thunder booms overhead and the rain pours and the babies play. What was it he thought of her once?

Perfektní.

"We should just go to bed now," he murmurs. "The girls can take care of themselves," but he doesn't mean it, no. A moment later he smiles, he kisses her again, he gives her a squeeze of his arm and then -- he begins to disentangle.

"Okay, pups," he claps his hands together, "who wants to play Airplane?"

Danicka

Occasionally, the girls talk. They show each other their food as they pick it up, spearing bites on their fork, scooping potatoes with their spoons, using their fingers to meticulously edge food onto their utensils. Tatiana reaches for a bite of sausage that Eliska shows her and Eliska gives her a firm NO that makes Danicka pause, turn, check on them out of the corner of her eye to make sure they settle down. Which they do. Tatiana was just confused about the difference between here, look at my food, it is like your food, we have the same food, and I am eating this part now, look, see? and here, let's share our food, you can have some of mine, this bite, okay?

She turns back to Lukas, leaning forward as he is leaning back. She has already finished her wine, is listening to a story of battle strategies because it's only fair: Lukas just listened to a four-minute explanation of the different currents she tried the last time she went to her lab and the results of each. And the truth is: Lukas probably finds that at least moderately interesting. And emotional investment aside, Danicka actually does find his strategies interesting, too.

He makes her brow quirk. "You were borderline obsessed with politicking when you were a Cliath," she interjects to remind him, fondly amused that now, a ripe old Adren, he might actually know just what a quagmire those politics can really be. She lets him finish after that, and then she is quiet a bit, thinking. She looks at the edge of her knife, turning it over and over atop the tablecloth as she watches the light change against its surface.

"I don't care if you ever challenge," she admits finally, quietly, but not timidly. "Unless it would make you stronger, and you needed that strength, or if it would simply make you feel good to do it... I don't care."

Her eyes lift to find his, green to blue, opaque to clear. "I don't want you to die, or be maimed, and I'm not sure what difference a year would make." Still so calm, so clear, so soft but unafraid. She gives a small shrug of one shoulder. "On the other hand, I don't think you've come anywhere close yet to the level of responsibility that might really weigh down your shoulders. You have the capacity for more."

Danicka gives a faint, small smile at one corner. "That said, I don't really care about that, either. I have no problem with your shoulders remaining unbowed."

Let's get this straight and clear: Danicka is ambitious. She hid it for a long time, and now she does not. It does not rule her life, but she is ambitious. She is driven to succeed, to learn, to provide for her children, to build a life worth living with them and with her mate and with her extended family. Danicka, seeing the obstacle her brother's existence was to that life and finding a chance for true and personal vengeance, took it without hesitating. Danicka is not an easily contented woman. She only wanted to know, when Lukas challenged to become the Ahroun Alpha years ago, if he did well in his challenge, whether he won or lost. She does not mind seeing him come home covered in wretched ichor, because it means -- almost always -- that he did well.

But let's get this clear, too: he has to come home. He has to be able to smile and laugh and play Airplane and read books. And as long as Lukas is happy coming home, playing Airplane, making love to her in their bed and helping keep the house going, she does not care about the challenges, or the War, or his pack, or any of it.

Not because she is content. But because she is ambitious. She knows exactly what she wants.

Him.

Danicka

[AUGH DLP]

Danicka

She is not easily surprised. Danicka has been hyper-vigilant for most of her life, preparing for the worst, the unexpected, the unwanted lurking in every shadow, hiding behind every corner. The kindest smile has never fooled her. She thinks in layers, upon layers, upon layers. It's changing. Gradually, because it is not always gentle, it's changing. She begins to trust a little more easily, because she's not on her own in the world. She has security at her back, safety, even love. She has her house, and her mate. She has her babies and she has her sisters, her nieces and nephews. For a while longer, she has her father. She feels safer in the universe, the way she should have felt when she was young, even though she has seen horrors no human could want to live through. So she can trust. She can begin to see a kindly smile and not wait for the fangs behind it.

Lukas, however, surprises her. When he turns his head and kisses her like that, it makes her breath catch. The storm rolls on outside their window, thunder and lightning roaring and crackling in the sky, rain pattering. In the kitchen, one or both of the girls shriek and clap and dance awkwardly in response. They are not scared of storms. Or rather: their fear is not terrible or great.

Meanwhile Lukas is kissing Danicka in the living room, and she is shifting on his lap to straddle it so she can be closer to him, so she can wrap her arms around both his shoulders and sink into that long, sweet kiss. His lips are parting from hers long enough to murmur that they should go to bed, that the girls will be fiiine, and she is taking another sip of air, pressing herself to him. Tempted, even though he doesn't mean it. Tempted, even though she knows better. Rebellious as she is to the strictures of adult life and sensible behavior, Danicka would never put her pups at risk just to get laid. Never.

All the same, she kisses him again, deeper than before. If there were not tiny children waddling around the kitchen just that moment, it would be an answer. They would be on the floor. Clothes would be coming off. It is a warm, heavy kiss, her hands tightening on his back. But: she is breathing out, laughing a little, after they really stop kissing. After he is squeezing her, both knowing they need to let go and untangle and play airplane. Danicka kisses him one more time, softly, on the cheek, but getting off of his lap as he gets up, calls for his pups.

The way they say 'airplane' is roughly Ahpah! Ahpah! and it is fucking adorable.

--

Of course, even with daddeeeee here, they have to pick up the plasticware they tossed around and their toys in the living room before they can start a new game. This is a process, walking the resistant girls around the kitchen, working through Tatiana trying to gear up for a minor tantrum until they show her -- for the three hundredth time -- how easy it is to pick up. They pick up the plastic tubs and lids and put them back in the drawer. They walk back out to the living room and pick up the soft toys to put them in one toy box, the hard toys to put them in another, and a couple of times the girls get distracted by something they find, til they are reminded about Airplane-Ahpah.

There is applause when they are finished! They all did it together! And this is silly and happy and the thunderstorm has become just a rainstorm now, wet and loud but not rattling the windows in the way that, once, made the girls actually cry out and run against their parents' legs to hide, to cling, til their heads were stroked and their fears assuaged. It's just a storm. This storm won't hurt, it's just very loud right now. Danicka is holding Tatiana, asking the slightly weepy toddler if the thunder hurts her ears, and Tatiana bawls the affirmative.

So it is that for the first few rounds of airplane, it is Eliska in Lukas's hands. Eliska who laughs and squeals and kicks wildly, so long as her father keeps his large hands firmly on her, does not let go, does not toss her up, does not make her fear flying or falling. And Tatiana is in Danicka's arms, sniffling a few times while they watch their other two family members, then spinning! And wanting a turn! And can daddy make them both fly at once?

Maybe.

--

There is a limit to what they can take. They are still so young, after all, and so very small. Their energy seems boundless but it's far from the truth: they have to sleep so much just to keep their bodies growing. Eventually their cheeks turn pink and their eyes are gleaming and they are at the upper peak of joy and eagerness and loudness and that, both their parents know now, is the time to wind down. To ease them back to restfulness rather than let them push themselves a little bit farther into all-out exhaustion, which brings wailing and fussing and misery that cannot be soothed. They want more, but it is time to settle down.

And get sippy cups of water.

And nestle to either side of Lukas on the big couch, or on the floor.

And read books.

Danicka stays for a while, sitting nearby, listening, watching. It is as though he's reading to her, too. She catches his eye at one point: smiles at him. She remembers when he gave her that book, with his name scrawled carefully in the front in his childlike hand.

She wants to kiss them each on the head when she gets up, but the girls are engrossed and she doesn't want to distract them. She slips away, soft and quiet, going into the kitchen. The girls are eating most of the same things their parents eat now, feeding themselves with their own spoons and soft-tipped forks and fingers. Soon enough the smell of cooking meat filters in from the kitchen, the sounds of things being chopped or water filling a pot, something sizzling on a griddle. And soon enough they are sitting down together, with the girls' plates already made up with pre-diced portions of the grilled chicken sausages their parents will be slicing into, and sliced-up servings of spinach and grilled tomatoes, helpings of oven-roasted sweet potatoes. Their servings are tiny, portioned out in the measure of tablespoons and not cups, and theirs were cut and plated first so they could have time to cool to a tolerable temperature. They have their own table for now, low to the floor in chairs they can move themselves, with their own spoons and soft-tipped forks. They aren't outcast from their parents' table, but meals are a quiet time here, particularly dinner. At their age, they focus intently on eating: their own table saves them from the distraction of their parents' conversation or attempts to get attention.

At the table, Danicka lets her foot rest close to Lukas's while they eat, sipping a bit of white wine, talking about things other than their daughters. About the Wisconsin trip in more detail. What Kate is up to. How Sinclair and Alex are doing. Even:

"Have you thought about challenging?" Danicka asks, because of some mention of an ally they met, or someone Maddox ran into, who is an Athro. She asks this openly, unshyly, but there is a waver of tension in it anyway:

at this level, at this rank, even the challenges can be life-threatening.

Lukas

It's questionable whether or not Airplane is the girls' favorite game, but it's almost certainly Lukas's favorite. He swoops Eliska up and down. He spins her around. He jogs around the living room and the dining room area, and later, when Tatiana is spinning! and wanting a turn! he picks them both up, tucks them under his arms like kicking and squealing little footballs, and fairly charges around making the most ridiculous airplane noises.

Later on, they read together. The girls only have a few words, and they can't read yet at all. They lean against him, though, one on each side, comforted by his nearness and warmth and voice. He reads to them from one of his own books -- A Wrinkle in Time, perhaps, or something of that strange, charming, haunting series. He's not sure when it was that most of his books came to live in their little house in Stickney. He thinks it must have happened gradually, one book at a time, a few at a time, a little longer each time, much the same way Lukas and Danicka themselves gradually came to live here more than anywhere else.

The smell of dinner rises. Lukas's stomach growls. Tatiana giggles and flops her chubby little arm over his side, which is the closest thing to a hug she can manage right now. Lukas turns a page. They read on.

--

Later, at dinner, the girls at are their own table working hard on the Very Difficult Task of feeding themselves. Their parents are conversing over dinner, their voices low and familiar. Lukas tells Danicka about the Wisconsin trip. The Sept, its people. Their enemy. The battle, if she wants to hear it, sketched in broad vivid terms: the sweep of their warriors, the formation, the terrain, the tactics.

He tells Danicka of his pack, too. Kate, who in recent years has at last emerged from beneath her brother's shadow and her uncle's thumb. Alex and Sinclair in San Diego. Maddox, Sarita. He mentions, offhand, that he ran into Gabriella the other day. Just passing through. Still discovering herself, or something of the sort.

His plate is most of the way empty when she asks him about challenging. He is relaxed in his seat, swirling white wine lazily in his glass. Their feet, their lower legs touch under the table. He smiles at her a little wryly.

"I have," he admits. "I have the renown for it. I just don't feel a hurry yet. There are more politics as an Athro, and more responsibilities to the Nation itself over the Sept, and sometimes even the pack. Fewer hunts. More travel. And when an Athro does take the field, it's almost always a critical battle, or a dire one.

"I've thought about waiting another year." His eyes stray to the little table; the little girls. "Until they're a little older."

Danicka

Occasionally, the girls talk. They show each other their food as they pick it up, spearing bites on their fork, scooping potatoes with their spoons, using their fingers to meticulously edge food onto their utensils. Tatiana reaches for a bite of sausage that Eliska shows her and Eliska gives her a firm NO that makes Danicka pause, turn, check on them out of the corner of her eye to make sure they settle down. Which they do. Tatiana was just confused about the difference between here, look at my food, it is like your food, we have the same food, and I am eating this part now, look, see? and here, let's share our food, you can have some of mine, this bite, okay?

She turns back to Lukas, leaning forward as he is leaning back. She has already finished her wine, is listening to a story of battle strategies because it's only fair: Lukas just listened to a four-minute explanation of the different currents she tried the last time she went to her lab and the results of each. And the truth is: Lukas probably finds that at least moderately interesting. And emotional investment aside, Danicka actually does find his strategies interesting, too.

He makes her brow quirk. "You were borderline obsessed with politicking when you were a Cliath," she interjects to remind him, fondly amused that now, a ripe old Adren, he might actually know just what a quagmire those politics can really be. She lets him finish after that, and then she is quiet a bit, thinking. She looks at the edge of her knife, turning it over and over atop the tablecloth as she watches the light change against its surface.

"I don't care if you ever challenge," she admits finally, quietly, but not timidly. "Unless it would make you stronger, and you needed that strength, or if it would simply make you feel good to do it... I don't care."

Her eyes lift to find his, green to blue, opaque to clear. "I don't want you to die, or be maimed, and I'm not sure what difference a year would make." Still so calm, so clear, so soft but unafraid. She gives a small shrug of one shoulder. "On the other hand, I don't think you've come anywhere close yet to the level of responsibility that might really weigh down your shoulders. You have the capacity for more."

Danicka gives a faint, small smile at one corner. "That said, I don't really care about that, either. I have no problem with your shoulders remaining unbowed."

Let's get this straight and clear: Danicka is ambitious. She hid it for a long time, and now she does not. It does not rule her life, but she is ambitious. She is driven to succeed, to learn, to provide for her children, to build a life worth living with them and with her mate and with her extended family. Danicka, seeing the obstacle her brother's existence was to that life and finding a chance for true and personal vengeance, took it without hesitating. Danicka is not an easily contented woman. She only wanted to know, when Lukas challenged to become the Ahroun Alpha years ago, if he did well in his challenge, whether he won or lost. She does not mind seeing him come home covered in wretched ichor, because it means -- almost always -- that he did well.

But let's get this clear, too: he has to come home. He has to be able to smile and laugh and play Airplane and read books. And as long as Lukas is happy coming home, playing Airplane, making love to her in their bed and helping keep the house going, she does not care about the challenges, or the War, or his pack, or any of it.

Not because she is content. But because she is ambitious. She knows exactly what she wants.

Him.

Lukas

They sit the way they always do, with only one corner of the table between them. Lukas leaning back, Danicka leaning forward. The both of them relaxed, warm, safe: here in the privacy of their house, with their sheltering beams and protected walls. Their pups feeding themselves nearby, snapping a little the way pups do. Remembering they are siblings, blood-kin, a moment later -- the way pups do.

"When I was a Cliath," Lukas points out, smiling, "I mistook politics for leadership. It's a common rookie mistake."

And a little later, he reaches across the tabletop. Covers her hand in his, and then wraps his fingers around, turns his hand over, cradles her hand in his. He looks at their joined hands for a moment: her golden complexion; his swarthy skin.

"I know you don't care about any of that," he says quietly, and lifts his eyes to hers again. "Thank you.

"I will challenge, though," he adds, shifting, looking again at his daughter. "It's not an if but a when. And the year isn't for me. It's for them." He looks to his mate. "In a year they'll be nearly three. A little older. A little stronger, and a little more able to fend for themselves."

Danicka

Since the house was bought, the table furnished in the dining room, Danicka has sat at the head. She sits in the place of greatest security but also greatest honor: her back to the wall, facing the archway into the living room. Her mate, now her husband, has always sat at her right hand. He sits with his back to the arch into the kitchen and from there, the door to the back yard. He sits where he can see the arch into the living room, the nearest path to the front door. Nothing that comes into the room would get past him: even their daughters sit at their little child's table in the corner to Danicka's left, just behind her, tucked away from doors and windows, where not just their father but their mother would come between them and anything that might -- suicidally -- intrude.

The amount of rage that would fill Lukas if this house were trespassed against, if his mate were assaulted, if his children were breathed on in a way he didn't like. It would melt down the walls.

Danicka's brow furrows together as she looks at their joined hands. His left, her right. His ring, her bare fingers. She exhales, and looks at him again as he thanks her. "That's what I meant," she says softly, "when I said it won't really make a difference. If something happens to you --"

It doesn't matter when he challenges. It doesn't matter how able to fend for themselves they are. Or how many children that come after them. Lukas not coming home is Lukas not coming home. Even when they are too big to play Airplane, or big enough to do their own dishes, or even big enough to drive and vote and drink and learn to safely handle firearms: daddeeeeee not coming home will be the same.

She squeezes his hand. She doesn't finish her thought.

Lukas

Her unfinished sentence. The squeeze of her hand. These things fill Lukas's heart with a great, swelling tenderness. An ache; a love almost too big to encompass.

He gives her hand a little squeeze back. He supposes she would know the truth of that better than anyone. What it's like to lose a parent, no matter how old and big and grown-up you already were. What it's like to slowly, slowly, agonizingly-slowly be losing another, no matter how full your house is, how many your siblings and nephews and nieces and daughters. It doesn't matter when it happens; it still hurts.

He doesn't say any of that aloud. He knows it. She knows it. To speak it seems unnecessarily cruel; a press on a wound. So he squeezes her hand instead, and he looks past her at his daughters. His pups. His little ones, who he would protect with his strength, his life, his last breath if he could.

Though one might argue: he will. That is what being Garou, being Shadow Lord, being Ahroun means. It means you defend the ones you love with your last breath.

--

"Maybe next year," he says quietly. "Maybe sooner." His hand squeezes hers again; he smiles, and it is a smaller smile this time, just a touch sad. "We'll see."

Danicka

Even if it's not death. Even if it's just too many battles, too much politics, this or that. That seems to be the deal: he comes home when he can, and plays airplane, and reads books, and changes diapers, and in exchange, Danicka will tolerate those nights when he doesn't. She will forgive the nights when he can't, as she always has. Just so long as sometimes, when he can, he comes home. Just so long as when he comes home, he has not been gone so long that his daughters -- his pups, all of them one day -- think he is a stranger.

That's the deal. It was written in the beams of the house. It was signed with tungsten on his hand and white and rose gold on hers. It is notarized every time their families visit and they put up a Christmas tree and every time they've woken to the sound of their children crying in the middle of the night because they are wet or they rolled off the child-bed or it was loud or they are so, so hungry. This is their contract, unspoken but essential.

It is separate from the way she loves him. That, she is not sure she could stop doing even if he stopped coming home. Even if the contract burned. She loves him so much, you see. He is the only one she ever has.

For Gaia knows how many lifetimes.

--

Eliska bursts out laughing at something Tatiana does, which is a signal that they are filling their bellies, their hunger is waning, they are almost done eating. Danicka gives Lukas a squeeze back but then slips from her chair to give the girls some milk, kneeling beside their table while she teaches them to pour the milk into their cups from a tiny pitcher that -- coincidentally -- only holds enough to fill each glass. She stays nearby and helps them remember to use both hands to lift their cups to drink. She reminds them to use their napkins to clean their mouths, their milk mustaches.

Danicka is grateful for the distraction. She is -- was, or is -- on the verge of just asking him please don't.

Of saying sometimes I wish you weren't --

And the thing is, however impossible some of these feelings are, she isn't sure he would have it in him to deny her. And she doesn't really want to ask. She loves him as he is. She chose this, as it is. It is better to kneel beside her daughters while they tell her and show her what they just ate, not quite grasping that she prepared and plated it for them and ate the same thing. It is better to help their hands with the wiping motion to clean their faces, because they are still babies, still uncoordinated, still spilling and making messes because their arms and legs just don't quite listen. It is better than many things she has known, strangely enough. She is grateful for it, because they make her so happy,

and for a moment there, she was so very sad.

--

There is a round of are you done? and a duet of what passes for yes and Danicka in the orderly, polite way she has with the children informing them that they may be excused, each one separately, which means they can get up and since they can get up they are, of course, going to go crawling under the table and circling it to see their father, as though to investigate and make sure he is still there. Tatiana is on her belly under the table, exploring his ankle. Eliska is bouncing, wanting to be picked up, always more wary, always needing to be held and kissed before she quite believes he didn't sneak off while she was eating.

Danicka begins to clear their plates, their glasses, the little milk-pitcher, bussing them all to one hand, pausing at the table to kiss Lukas's temple briefly before carrying them to the kitchen.

Tatiana, whose little hands are quite ticklish, gives a yawn. Eliska, who cannot even see her, gives a much longer, louder one.

Lukas

The girls finish eating. Their mother goes to see to them. This, too, is not some backward-thinking thing; it is not woman keeps the house and the children while man waits to be waited upon. It is simply the way this dinner flows. There are many -- perhaps not quite as many, for Lukas is not always there -- in which he is the one to see to the girls. In which he is the one, later, to clear the table.

For the moment, though, he is left alone at the big table. He is left to look at his wife and his children, his mate and his pups. He is left to his thoughts,

which run inexactly and meanderingly in the direction of Danicka's; which dwell gently on contracts and bindings, bonds, matrimony, matehood. He thinks of this house, which he found and she made warm. He thinks of their little family, and then also the larger rings of their extended family. He thinks, for a moment, of the cub-to-be he will tutor soon. He thinks of coming home when he can. Whenever he can. Seeing his girls grow, and the rest of his children, when they come.

A small hand grasps his ankle. He looks down; he cannot resist a grin. Danicka is beginning to clear the table. Lukas drains the last of his wine and then he reaches down and scoops the girls up, one in each arm. "Upsy-daisy," he murmurs under his breath, which is an absurd thing for a mighty Shadow Lord Ahroun to say, but then: he is not a typical Shadow Lord Ahroun. He is not a typical anything.

"I'll start getting them ready for bed," he says to Danicka, bowing his head for that little kiss on the temple. "Do they need a bath tonight?"

Danicka

Danicka keeps leftovers. Meticulously, though it's easier not to, and she doesn't have to. They could have a maid. They could have a cook. They could live in a house eight times the size of this one. And that's on her financial solvency alone, to say nothing of Lukas's investments and dividends. She saves leftovers and has set up savings for her children's education in the future. She has saved money, quietly, for her family as well. Nothing quite as firm as the money set aside for Eliska and Tatiana so far, and not dipping into money for subsequent children, but: there is money there for Irena, Renata, Milos, Emanek, her sisters, her father. An amorphous fund for whatever they might need and will be too proud to ask for.

She scoops the remaining sweet potatoes into a plastic container and puts it in the fridge, once she gets to the kitchen. Lukas pays the mortgage on the house he bought for them. They buy the store brand at the Jewel-Osco most of the time and generic naproxen sodium for the medicine cabinet. They live absurdly beneath their means. She takes some pride in this.

--

But before the securement of leftovers, she's passing Lukas, kissing his head as he scoops Tatiana carefully out from under the table, lifts up Eliska in his other arm, holds them to his chest and against his side. Their hands and faces are not truly clean at the moment.

Danicka smiles. "They probably do. We had a pretty dirty day. Just a short one, though. They don't need an epic bathtime, or they'll be too tired to sleep."

Lukas

"A novel bathtime, then," Lukas quips,

and on that note, carries his girls upstairs.

--

The sound of the tub running. The sound of splashing, and giggling, and shrieking, and beneath it: Lukas's gentler, lower voice. It's not a long bath, but to be perfectly honest -- it's not a short one either. They're still in there after the dishwasher is running and the leftovers are put away. They're still in there when Danicka closes the curtains and checks the locks. They're just getting out when Danicka comes upstairs. The door to the girls' room is open, and her mate is tucking them in: leaning down to kiss them each on the forehead, very gently.

He loves his daughters. He loves them so much.

He gets up off the floor, turning out the light as he departs the room. They stopped using the baby monitor a while ago, but they usually leave the doors between their rooms and the bathroom cracked open so they can hear. Lukas comes to Danicka where she stands, wrapping his arms around her, kissing the top of her head and swaying gently, gently-playfully with her.

"Let's go to bed," he whispers.

Danicka

At the size they are now, Danicka can carry one girl at a time. She is desperately glad that they can crawl so well, are picking up walking so rapidly. Most of the time these days when they go upstairs for naptime or bedtime or bathtime, she walks a step or two beneath the girls as they haul themselves up the rather steep stairs, hand over hand, knee by knee. But Lukas is home, and any chance of the girls playing a chase me game are forestalled when he simply lifts them both up, one plump toddler in each arm.

Danicka rolls her eyes at his quip, shaking her head, but she's fighting a grin.

--

Bathtime is using water that feels warm to the girls but almost tepid or cool to Lukas. Not too much of it, because they tend to slip and slide around even with the non-slip mat shaped like a happy blue whale stuck to the tub. A no-tears soap from a single bottle that can be used on their hair and scalp and little bodies. There aren't a lot of toys kept in the bathroom, partly because the girls still share one with their parents and partly because Danicka keeps saying that bathtime doesn't always need to be playtime, too. Bathtime means helping the little girls undress -- they are better at this than getting dressed, because taking clothes off means NAKED TIME and that is better, yes. It means helping them climb over the side of the tub and making sure they sit down. They have two little buckets inside, lightweight plastic ones, with handles on the sides, which they use to fill up and dunk over their head. But far be it from Lukas to try and pour water over their heads: this makes them cry and wince. They laugh when they do it themselves.

There is much splashing and jabbering, which seems to amount for the girls trying to get Lukas to take a bath, too, because BATH and FUN and YAY. There is some more yawning, while he's massaging that silky soap into little scalps. Like animals -- they are animals -- they settle underneath such a touch, then set to laughing again when they dump water all over their heads to rinse. One more he has to say, to make sure they get all the soap out. But this is okay: more bucket-filling, more water-dumping.

Downstairs, Danicka clears both tables and wipes them down. She uses a floor sweeper to quickly pick up a few bits of dropped food from the area where the girls eat. She saves the leftovers and loads the dishwasher. She double-checks the door downstairs, finding Kando and lifting her up to nuzzle her a bit. Upstairs they close the curtains together, she and the cat. They check the kitchen door. She cleans a smudge off a window, the windows that are always kept so crystalline clean in service to the spirit gleaming inside them.

And then, hearing bathtime still going on upstairs, Danicka pours herself a second glass of wine, curls up on the couch with her cat, and does absolutely nothing for about eight minutes.

--

When she hears the water drain, she shoos Kando off her lap and heads upstairs, leaving her empty glass rinsed but beside the sink. He could bathe them and dress them and brush their teeth and put them to bed by himself, she knows that, but: then she wouldn't get to. So up she goes.

She gets there in time to help Lukas wrap the babies up in their big towels with the animal hoods; it's shocking how quickly they get cold when they're out of the bath, shivering. She's seen their lips turn purple in winter within seconds of exiting the warm water. So: they have big fluffy towels with hoods, and they are bundled up and held close and dried off even while the water is still circling the drain. In new diapers and summer-thin pajamas that cover their legs but have short sleeves they have their wet hair combed and their miniscule teeth brushed, one brush and one tiny mouth per parent. They are up later than usual but they know this routine. Their minds begin to unravel, their bodies begin to settle towards sleepiness.

When they rock for a bit on the loveseat-sized rocker, each girl cradled, it is still a little hard for them to accept that there is no more nursing, no more warm bottles of milk before bedtime, even though it's been months since they had that. There is whining and shushing that doesn't last; they are being held and rocked, and well: you can't have everything. Eliska is in Danicka's arms, staring up at her, fighting the closing of her own eyes because then she can't see mama. Occasionally she reaches up, her tiny fingers touching Danicka's hair while she yawns. Beside them, Tatiana is a little more alert, keeping very silent and very still while she looks up at Lukas.

By the time they are laid down on their low bed -- the discussion of getting them 'big kid' beds has been broached, and Danicka has said she doesn't want to get toddler beds in between, but it doesn't seem time yet anyway -- the girls are almost completely asleep. They go easily, gratefully to their bed, and Lukas lays a thin blanket over each of them. They are still half-awake when he leans over them, a hulking shadow in the dark, and they quiver but:

he kisses their heads, while Eliska is sucking on her fingers and re-closing her eyes. While Tatiana is looking up at him with her bright, shining eyes. Danicka smooths her palm over their scalps, cupping their heads. She kisses their cheeks and whispers to Tatiana to close her eyes, go to sleep. She whispers that she loves them so, so much before she and Lukas slip away, turning on the fan in the room that keeps the humid air moving and provides a little white noise. They leave the doors to the bathroom cracked, a dark hallway that will let them hear cries or problems, ending up in their own darkened bedroom.

It is still raining.

--

When his arms come around her, Danicka grins. She is tipsy; he is playful, kissing her head, swaying her around. She stifles a laugh. "You are ridiculously happy right now, aren't you?"

Lukas

"I'm happy," Lukas murmurs, smiling. "It's not ridiculous at all."

On that note he lets her go -- partly -- his hand finding her and holding hers. He shuts their bedroom door to the hall; leaves the door to the bathroom cracked. Hand in hand, he draws her over to the bed; sits on the edge, his side, pulling her close enough to wrap his arms around her.

Rests his brow to her sternum. Draws a long and slow breath. Even without seeing his face, she can imagine him smiling. Of course he's smiling.

"I love you more than anything," he whispers, which is something she's told him before. "You, and the pups."

Danicka

He thinks he's correcting her, but he's actually agreeing with her. Danicka is sure of it. She grins, meandering about the room with him as he closes the bedroom door. She is keeping her voice low, because she knows Tatiana was still half-awake in the other room, but she doesn't mind if they fall asleep listening to their parents' voices, talking down the hall, underneath the hum of the fan.

They come close. He rests his head against her body, and she smooths her hands over his shoulders. She marvels sometimes at how... well. How big he is. How muscular. He is, to put it simply, her type. And even fitting into that type, he is just so very broad-shouldered, so very tall, so very strong. Danicka breathes in, and sighs softly on the exhale, reaching up to stroke his hair, her fingers moving dreamily through the rich black strands.

"We love you, too," she murmurs back to him. The girls cannot say the words; they don't understand them, would need to be fed them, and it would mean less. But Danicka knows them well, and knows how they see him when the moon is thin and he comes home, walking across the grass or up the stairs. She knows the tremors of excitement that go under their skin when his heavy, dark presence enters the house, sleeps down the hall, stands at the center of their airplanes, their reading time, their meals. The way Tatiana hugs him, laying her cheek on his shoulder and wrapping her small arms as much around him as they will go. The way Eliska trusts him, when she is thrilled and afraid to be so high up in the air but daddy, daddy, daddy, he has her.

She knows they love him. Trust him. Don't always feel safe, don't always feel happy, but they know him. They know he is their father, and that he loves them, even if some nights he seems a little scary.

This makes her love him more. Which shouldn't have been possible, except that there is no bound to that capacity. One can always love more. She's learning that. She leans over him, curling over him, kissing his temple. "More than anything in this world. Or any others. You belong to us," she reminds him, and she's teasing. But only half-teasing. Because while he may be obligated to give them everything, all of himself, even his life,

they'll give it back.

Lukas

Lukas makes a low sound, a rumble of contentment and enjoyment as Danicka's hands trace his shoulders. His eyes are closed. He is hugging her to him, resting his cheek against her. He smiles as she speaks for herself, for her pups. Speaks truth, which he knows because of the way she touches him now, and because of the way little Tatiana hugs him, the way little Eliska trusts him, the way all three of them,

all four of them, together, feel like a family. A whole and complete thing.

He is kissed on his temple. It is unconsciously meaningful, these things they do. Kiss over the heart. Kiss over the mind. Kiss over pulse-points and pressure-points; all those delicate, complex networks of their bodies. Lukas turns his face to Danicka's body for a moment, rubbing his nose against her like an animal. He is an animal. They are all animals.

He lifts his head. He reaches up to take her face gently between his hands, kissing her mouth like sipping from a vessel.

"Come to bed," he whispers again; it means something different this time.

 
Copyright Lukáš Wyrmbreaker 2010.
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