again.

[Sam Modine] "Sure."? He smiles. All razor blades and crooked ivory knives. His Rage still a radiator around all of the assembled. His own shot was tipped back with little ceremony and the glass deposited under the bar as to denote he'll be having no more for the time being. Another clear, clean by his own hand glass is plucked from the rack above and filled from a the carbon tap. "Here."

He slides it across the bar toward the woman whom he now makes eye contact ith for the first time tonight. "So?"

He grins. "I'd rather not take Katherine, she doesn't do well at comedies. She talks through the whole show."

[Martin] Indeed, the short fellow with the sharp tongue and, self-admittedly, inexplicably rapid-growing fan club has been putting away a considerable amount of alcohol in the short amount of time that he has been here with Danicka. It was not his idea to come here tonight, but she had to have picked up on the fact that he was antsy, or she had had business here herself, for she had interrupted his original announced plan to sit on the couch in his underwear drinking Colt 45s and watching old movies on the Powerbook.

He is not on the couch drinking malt liquor, but he is well on his way to reaching a state of alter oblivion that could be very easily mistaken for bliss.

He is not in the bathroom very long; although he touches the same lock that God knows how many filthy ingrates have touched with their gonorrhea-infused fingers to close himself in and let himself back out again, he doesn't stop to wash his hands on the way back out into the dining room, and he does not go straight back to his own stool as he comes upon a scene of shots aplenty.

Rather, Martin mounts the back of Danicka's bar stool, some act of God or Vulcan or something keeping them from toppling over as he peers at the screen of her phone.

"Who cares if he's a big lug who won't even ask an old fogey kinsman for a smoke," Martin says, "Second City sounds like prime date material."

[Danicka] [Manipulation + Subterfuge]

[Danicka] The former governess and current...friend...rubs Gabriella's back clockwise, the motions sure and purposeful. She doesn't touch her like she's a stranger who might break or jerk away if a hand is laid on her, nor is she pounding or massaging the girl's back. Danicka just rubs to help her relax after that shot that she should not have tried to take as easily as a Fenrir Ahroun, and keeps her eyes on Gabbie while the Garou-as-servant gets the requested glass of water.

No, I'm okay gets a pair of lifted eyebrows from Danicka, an Oh, are you? that is eloquently dubious with nothing more than a glance. The lovely little touch-screen phone with it's lovely little 3G capabilities and its lovely little applications that made her literally squeal when she bought it -- though in private, thank you -- is still sitting in her left hand, still opened to her calendar.

"I would suggest not drinking alcohol here, actually," she says quietly. "Gabbie, you look as young as you are, and this isn't like a club or a party; nobody seeing you cough is going to assume you're over twenty-one here. They could lose their license."

Danicka doesn't scold Sam, though, oh no. She doesn't ask him what he was thinking shoving a shot of whiskey at an eighteen year-old girl, nor what the fuck he was doing shoving one towards a goddamned fucking functioning --

-- Martin comes out of the bathroom and walks over while she is still rubbing Gabriella's back and gently counseling her. Not for Gabbie's sake, no: there's no mention that Gabbie can't hold her liquor or that she shouldn't drink at all. But the people here who are not Garou, not Kin, could see. And then there might be complaints, repercussions...that would not necessarily affect Gabriella at all. She's sliding her hand away as Martin exits, turning to watch him with no more a smile than she wore while Gabbie was coughing. She doesn't seem surprised when he climbs up onto the back of her stool and leans over her shoulder.

In fact, she smiles, warmly and with some amusement even if there's still residual concern there. "I would love to go," she says, remaining comfortably framed by Martin behind her as she turns to look at Sam, "it's just that Sunday I promised a friend I used to work with that I'd drive out to Aurora to see her."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Front door opens. Lukas comes in, his overcoat already undone. It's the first time it's been above freezing since... who knows when. He strips out of it, hangs it up at the coat check, and then -- seeing Sam at the bar, and all -- heads over.

There's a rare hint of warmth, of amusement in his eyes as he watches his packmate play the role. "Did Katherine put you up to this?" he asks, tugging his scarf loose, letting the unfringed ends fall open like the world's largest tie. "Or did Andrea actually tell you to man the bar?"

He only just arrived. He missed the offer; he missed Martin's moment of semi-epic snark, or perhaps this would have played out differently. He does not, however, miss Martin, Gabriella, and Danicka. And, settling himself on a barstool about one down from them, he nods at all three like they were a unit.

"Hey, Gabbie." For a day, Gabbie had been shut out of the family. Lukas doesn't know that. By that evening, she was back in. Lukas doesn't know that, either. Both would have changed the way he behaves toward her. As such, however, he's as he usually is: friendly, cousinly, ultimately doesn't-give-much-of-a-fuck-ly.

"Danička," then, a proper greeting and all, and if he's even remotely ashamed of snarling at her the other night, and then ignoring her all the way up the stairs, it doesn't show now. His regard goes back to Gabriella, and he nods at Martin. "Aren't you going to introduce us?"

Poor Gabriella. Always the introducer.

[Sam Modine] ((BRB))

[Gabriella Bellamonte] Danicka didn't quite scold her, it wasn't harsh enough to be called scolding, but she did advise her that taking the shot wasn't too smart, to get through to the point that she shouldn't do so again. Not here, anyways. At a club or a party, as she'd mentioned, the scene was louder, more crowded, with a lot more interesting things going on than a fresh-faced girl coughing on liquor that she probably won't be able to handle when the next morning rolls around. Her coughing had subsided completely now, and she pressed her forearms against the counter so she could lean her weight forward against it, hair spilling over her shoulders to fall on the front of her shirt, even if it was tucked behind her ears so as to stay out of her face.

"You're right. I was just a bit..." she paused to search for the right word, then continued, "...unfocused when the toast was made. I'll be sticking to soda for the rest of the night." She smiled cheerfully enough and pulled the cold glass between both her hands to cradle it safely in front of her, like one would do a cup of coffee when their hands were freezing off.

Lukas came to join them, and the pressure of his Rage combined with Sam's sandwiched her and Danicka, with Lukas taking the available seat beside her, and Sam occupying Danicka's other side. The muscles in her lower back and along the edge of her spine tensed up, her pulse raced a little faster, but she didn't feel too strong a need to retreat. She's been in rooms with the entire pack before, and if she could handle Sam, Lukas, and Katherine all at the same time, then two of them was bearable. His greeting, the 'hey', was returned with a blink and a nod of the head. "Hey."

Then came the request for an introduction. As usual. She wasn't bothered by this, though, and gestured to the man who appeared to be somewhere in his early thirties balanced (though how he maintained this balance was a mystery) on the back of Danicka's stool. "Lukas, this is Mr. Ilari Martin. Mr. Martin, this is Lukas Kvasnièka." She didn't exactly slaughter Lukas's last name, but she didn't pronounce it perfectly either. Bless her, she tried. A thought occurred to her during the introduction, though, and she tipped her head to the side and looked up at Martin curiously when it did. "...What do you prefer to be called, anyways? I know you asked me not to call you mister, so do you prefer Ilari or Martin?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Kvasnichka," Lukas corrects, gently; but he lets the mistake on his first name stand. Could have been worse.

"Ilari, good to meet you." And he puts out his hand: and for all his casual elegance, the soft thin-knit weave of his pullover, the relaxed, familiar way he extends his hand, there's a sharpness about him. Something to the ice-blue eyes; something about his firm grip, the callouses on his palm.

He is a Garou. Martin would have to be slightly daft to not notice that.

[Martin] This time, the oncoming Rage is not out of his periphery, and it is not from the front, but out of that horrible blindness where his eyes cannot reach. He isn't afraid, necessarily, but he has only a scant few minutes before his heart rate accelerates and his normal difficulty with sitting still and quiet is only further exacerbated.

He has never seen Lukas before. He has not run into him on the street, and if the two have been in the Brotherhood at the same time in the past their paths have not crossed, Rage failing to permeate Martin's awareness and acerbic speech falling short of Lukas's ears. When Lukas, merely one down from them, opens his mouth to ask Gabriella if she is going to introduce the two of them, Martin sniffs much harsher than he tends to do during the day, and he climbs down from the back of Danicka's stool, and he plunges his hands into the pockets of his faded jeans.

Although he manages to remain still for near the entirety of Gabriella's introduction, he lifts himself up onto his toes as if to stretch while she is looking at him in that puzzled sort of way, having never figured out what it is that she was supposed to call him.

"Let me just remind you of a few things so that you might come up with the answer on your own," Martin says, and pulls his left hand out of his pocket to add anatomical bullets to his points. "We live in a country that a significant percentage of adults can't find on a map, the number one movie at the box office two weekends in a row is Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and my first name sounds suspiciously similar to the first name of the failed Democratic presidential nominee for the 2008 election."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (make that Martin, good to meet you.)

[Martin] (... adds:)

And, as if being turned by an invisible pair of hands, Martin turns toward Lukas to shake that great hand and say, "Likewise."

[Sam Modine] "Danicka," Yes he pronounces it wrong but he knows no better. He points as he explains word by word moving his index finger to each party on staff in return."Kinfolk. Kinfolk. Kinfolk. Kin. Kin. Kin. Kin. Kin." Eyes back to the youngest Bellamonte. "You won't be in trouble," he intones, "as long as you don't get into trouble." She gets a look both stern and perhaps shaded wit hthe laugh of a man who always wished he were an older brother but never was.

Danicka again though gets his full attention once she's answered. "Cool. Maybe I'll catch you in a few weeks, I actually got the tickets before, you know-" He trails off an again there's that smile, not quite real enough to be taken seriously.


"Katherine first," he replies to his packmate in a final turn. Then perhaps a bit insulted he finishes the statement. "I asked if I could keep helping." The rag over his sholder is clutched again, and he finishes the final spots on the bar tossing it at the Shadow Lord. "Give this to Rueben, tell him I'm off for the night." He bites a lip, teeth digging into his mouth only momentarily. "Later." A slight jolt of his chin up to Lukas, both brotherly and still shaded with antagonism marks his leaving from ehind the bar and back toward he kitchen.

"Have a good night." He calls behind him to whom in particular it's not clear and won't be. For he disappears too quickly for any of them to properly ask.

[Sam Modine] ((Stuff. out. later. thaks for having me :) ))

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (night man!)

[Danicka] It comes in waves and beats like a train. The difference is only between that first person walking out of the shadows of the dark alley and then a few others drifting out, these ones with weapons. That's what it feels like: the wave of awareness followed by a quicked slamming of one incredibly vital organ against one's ribs. That's what it feels like, when the front door opens and Lukas not only walks in but walks over, doesn't just walk over but sits down, doesn't just sit down but looks. Doesn't just look, but speaks.

Really, as if one of them weren't enough.

Gabriella doesn't seem terrified; she knows him like a cousin, one she's not close to, and his mere presence doesn't get her back up. Martin -- hell, Martin's never scared of anything. He's immunized against this and other less pleasant experiences by his historical experiences, by his current pursuits. Danicka, though, her name pronounced to perfection...Danicka has more trouble. She doesn't feel the need to scream, or break down sobbing, but there is a tiny part of her brain that unfailingly whispers Run. For the love of god, run.

She doesn't run, but she does finish the shot of Jack Daniel's that she only took a sip from earlier. Her head doesn't need to be jerked all the way back to ease its passage: she takes it quickly, but she lets herself taste it. It doesn't make her cough, gag, or sputter, but nor does she blink off its effect as Martin could do with the Jameson's: Danicka is not too proud to take a deep breath after the shot, setting the glass back down while Gabriella makes introductions between the Shadow Lord and the Silver Fang. She doesn't point out the as-of-yet unknown fact that her meeting of all three parties goes back the farthest, which is a failing of pure and strict etiquette on her part, but she'll be excused.

Danicka is being quiet until she is addressed again by the Fenrir. Kinfolk. Kinfolk. Kinfolk. he tells her. He assures Gabriella she won't be in trouble. She just gives him a small smile, in keeping with her apparent sadness that she couldn't make Second City, and he starts to make his way out. She has no water or whiskey or beer now to replace what she's downed. Have a good night, he says, and she gives a small wave before putting her phone back in her purse. She's wearing black slacks, a wine-red shirt, her hair in a loose braid hanging down her right shoulder.

They have finished their introduces, Mr. Kvasnička to Mr. Martin, and then Ms. Musil turns to look at Lukas again now that at least one werewolf is out of her immediate vicinity. "Just the man I wanted to see," she says, half-wryly.

[Gabriella Bellamonte] Martin took a simple one-worded answer and turned it into sarcasm and a half of a paragraph worth of dialogue-- Martin, call me Martin it all said to her. Sam excused himself after tossing a rag to Lukas. Danicka apologetically declined an offer to go to Second City, went stiff when Lukas sat down, and took a shot. Lukas and Martin met properly, and somewhere in the mix she was corrected, told how to properly pronounce a Czech name.

Most of this was swirled together into a mess that she would have to sort out at another time, though.

Gabriella was a pretty slim-figured girl. Not model thin, she ate her suggested intake for a healthy diet and had a healthy amount of exercise without it being drastic enough for her muscles to be overtly toned. She was an inch or so shy of five and a half feet, so a little on the petite side. And she didn't have much of an experience--.. scratch that, any experience with heavy alcohol. And she just slammed a double-shot of Jack Daniels. Her skin felt warm, her stomach did as well, as though the savage burning in her throat and nose dispersed to other areas and lessened into something more pleasant as it did so.

But this also made her a little light headed. So she sipped at her Sprite, nodded faintly to Martin since he had spoken to her directly and was the last to do so, and removed one hand from her glass so she could put her elbow on the counter and prop her hand up in it. It was easy enough to tell, just by looking at how her eyes were starting to glass over a little, that the empty shot glass left in front of her for the time being was the reason for her back muscles relaxing and her body becoming loose, even with Lukas's Rage pressing in on her from his seat beside her.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Really, he'd said the last time Danicka said something of the sort: a tone full of derision and disbelief as he slammed back another shot of Royal Lochnagar and went up the stairs.

This time: Lukas' glacial eyes holds Danicka's just for a second, which is, in the end, perhaps a second longer than she can bear. Then he nods, setting the rag Sam had tossed him down. Folds it neatly, even.

"Let's talk, then." He stands up. Everyone else is drinking; why shouldn't he? He takes down a glass; takes up a bottle from behind the bar. It's not Royal. It's some plainer, less exotic label of scotch. It'll do.

"Chairs by the fire work?" He indicates the wingback chairs with the end of the bottle.

[Martin] Martin had left half of a pint of lager sitting at the bar, operating under the assumption that when he got back that Sam would not have put lemon rinds or saliva or chlorine into his drink. It is sitting where he left it, and he takes a long step to the right so that he can snag the glass and return to his place standing between the seated kinswomen, facing Lukas.

It's hard to tell how old Martin is. He isn't dyeing his hair, and there are traces of stark white showing at his temples, and his skin is lined from what one can only assume is years of smoking and pulling faces, but he does not move with the slow creakiness of a man who is well into middle age.

Danicka informs the warrior that she is looking for him, Lukas counters that he'd be inclined to talk, and Martin takes another long swallow of beer, sniffing harshly again before looking at Gabriella with eyes whose pupils are almost completely blown out.

"Did you get into the grape juice?" he asks her, leaning onto the bar to get into her line of sight.

[Andrea Locke] ooc: alright, heh, sorry guys -- I had like half a post all written, realized it absolutely sucked and did away with it. Just not feeling it tonight. So I'ma go kill some Horde instead. Night!
to cricket, Danicka, Gabriella Bellamonte, Lukas Wyrmbreaker, Martin, Sam Modine

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] awww
to Andrea Locke

[Danicka] Gabriella will learn. Enough time around Martin and she'll learn that he never uses one or two words when seven or eight could be strung together, especially when he can string them together with such relative ease as only befits a film critic gaining in popularity due in part to his sheer pithiness. She will also learn, with enough time spent around alcohol -- which she has had a surprising amount of lately, for someone who cannot legally purchase it for herself -- what she likes, what she hates, what hits her hard and what she can handle.

That may be the last shot of Jack Daniels she ever takes, or it may be the beginning of a long and beautiful relationship not unlike the one Martin has with whiskey. Maybe sort of like the one Lukas has with scotch. Danicka apparently does not have any sort of particular relationship to a particular sort of alcohol: she apparently drank a sip of the Jack Daniels to appease Sam and then drank it all because Lukas sat down. In another situation, with different people, that would look like nervousness most certainly, but more like something completely different from fear. Either Danicka doesn't believe in being wasteful, or she does believe in liquid courage.

The last time she said she had come here to see Lukas, and not Sam, he hadn't believed her either of the two times she'd said it and he had utterly ignored her flat-out plea for him to not leave her alone in the kitchen with his Fenrir packmate. Apparently the third time is the charm: she says in a roundabout way that she came here to see him, and this time he doesn't grab a bottle and stomp upstairs but meets her eyes.

A second is apparently something she can bear.

He stands, grabs scotch, and Danicka leaves her barstool, taking her coat and her purse with her. "Chairs by the fire are perfect," she answers, but is already turning to look at Gabbie and Martin, to check on them. Gabbie looks mellow, looks happy, and then Martin peers at her. Danicka internally questions whether or not this is leaving the mad to care for the drunk, or vice versa, but she's only going to be across the room.

A matter of minutes later, she's sitting in one of the wingbacks, leaning against one arm with her chin on her hand, fingers curled under her jaw. "If I could go back, I'd say: 'yes, please talk to him and tell him to leave me alone'."

[Gabriella Bellamonte] Gabriella's head turned where it rested in the cusp of her hand, watched Lukas as he got himself a drink and rose to his feet. Then her head twisted another way to look to Danicka, to see her rise as well. She would have liked to watch them, but her attention wasn't easily split at the moment, and Martin leaned into her line of sight and asked her if she'd gotten into the grape juice. Her eyebrows lifted at first, then furrowed slightly to express puzzlement. "Grape juice..?" Apparently she didn't quite understand what he meant. ...But it clicked a few seconds later, and she chuckled and shook her head. "Not intentionally, anyways."

Clear, though now somewhat glassy blue eyes focused past Martin's face to watch the Shadow Lords easing themselves down into the chairs by the fireplace, and an expression of mild disappointment flashed across her face. She liked Danicka's company, the woman was warm and friendly, with an easy and comfortable touch and a soothing voice. She liked Lukas's company just fine, too, even if his Rage was oppresive and his attitude was 'could care less'. Her dislike for their absence was expressed in a low 'mmnn' noise.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] These are his favorite chairs on the ground floor, the wingbacks by the fire, just as the one stretch of the sectionals upstairs are his favorite there. He settles into one with something like familiarity already, as though these seats were placed in his personal library; as though he belongs here.

As though 'here' belongs to him.

If Danicka has not brought her glass, Lukas doesn't bother to offer her the bottle. He pours for himself, though: two or three fingers' worth at the bottom of his tumbler, amber, resonant in firelight.

He does not shoot it. He sips it, adjusting his weight in the chair. Puts the bottle down and then the glass, beside it.

"That's what this is about?" He gives his glass a quarter-turn, releases it. Settles back. "You want me to dump my packmate on your behalf?"

[Danicka] Younger, and she might be more defensive. Stupider, and she might be more defiant. Danicka is just calm, at least on the surface, her eyes towards Lukas but not on his eyes. It's not necessarily that she doesn't want to look, that she wouldn't get more out of even a brief conversation if she did. It looks demure, it comes off as submissive, and that's what's important: she doesn't stare him in the face, in challenge or scrutiny. At the moment, her focus is sort of placed on the right side of his nose. Close to his eyes, but not into them.

She's had enough, and has no glass with her. Her hands aren't twisting and wringing at each other; it helps the appearance and perhaps bolsters the truth of her calm. Her head tips to the side. "I told him we could be friends," she says, evenly more than earnestly: it's as if she means it, but knows how it sounds. Friends. "What I am asking you to do is keep him away from me."

Beat. "If you will."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "And why should I?"

Make no mistake: Lukas can be charming. He has charisma, and he knows how to use it. But he doesn't, now. He's curt; he's on the border of rude. The way he sits -- ankle crossed over knee, hands on the arms of the chair like a throne -- it's an easy reach to his tumbler. He closes his fingers around it and doesn't drink.

"Especially," he adds, "when you won't be honest with him yourself?"

[Martin] Sniffing again, as though the winter's finest selection of colds had been offered to him and he picked the most virulent, Martin sets his beer down on the lacquered wood bar and boosts himself into the seat that Danicka had been occupying, the cushion not yet warmed through. The man, old enough to be Gabriella's father, smoothes the hair and flesh on the left side of his face with its corresponding, ring-less hand as though there is too much tension there to do much with.

His hands are turning colors again.

There is and has been little indication that this man is so much as more than mildly annoyed by the presence of their furrier cousins. Having Lukas further away has little more affect on him than would having the man at his back would, beyond the physiological that he absolutely cannot help. He was raised amongst warriors like him. He was mated to one. He would have been little good to them if he were skittish.

Then again, what good is he to them now, slugging back alcohol and shoveling shit up his nose?

For once, for a surprise, Martin does not immediately start to run off at the mouth once he has settled beside Gabriella. He picks up his beer again, and he drinks.

[Danicka] Now would be the time to play to his sympathies, to appeal to some protective instinct, to cast a coy eye and a bat of her eyelashes and suggest that there are a whole host of reasons why he should be willing to keep his very-interested packmate away from a very-disinterested Kinfolk. Now would be the time to tell him a list of horrific fantasies about what could happen to her, how frail she is in comparison to both Ahrouns. Now isn't quite the time to beg.

The thing is, he's a Shadow Lord. To the marrow.

When she speaks, she doesn't sound desperate enough to be trying to arouse his empathy. She doesn't sound small, though by comparison she damn well is. She sure as hell doesn't sound sensual. She's still quite calm, and she keeps her voice keyed low enough that it only reaches Lukas...who is the only person near enough to hear, anyway, unless she should raise her voice to a shriek or a shout

"Because I'm afraid of what he might to do me." As if he cares. That isn't all, though the rest is just as matter-of-fact. "And because he hasn't listened to me. He doesn't have to."

[Gabriella Bellamonte] Martin settled into the seat beside her, to her left, where Danicka had been sitting but no longer was. She was already facing that direction, so all her eyes did was refocus on Martin's right side, analyze the arm and shoulder of his shirt, then the frame underneath it at a pace that was best described as lazy and meandering. He said nothing, which was an oddity, but a somewhat pleasant one. Gabriella was great with conversations, but she was also good with companionable silence. And with her brain feeling murky, her body feeling warm, and everything feeling good in general, she was quite content not to make her mind work to sound intelligent.

It didn't take long for her eyes to travel the length of his shirt sleeve to his hand, which was, again, turning colors. This time, rather than simply commenting, she moved the hand that was tucked under her chin and reached out to take a hold of his hand, feeling it rather than holding it affectionately-- measuring how warm or cold it was, and squeezing to feel if it were hard or soft, judging the elasticity of the skin and the positioning and size of his knuckles as well.

"Why do your hands turn colors, Martin?"

She wasn't completely clear-minded, that could be seen in her eyes and heard in her voice, but at least she wasn't slurring.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "I'll deal with it," Lukas replies, like setting stones down on wood, "if he does something to you."

A beat.

"Again."

[Danicka] If he does something to you.

Again.

These words don't seem to cause Danicka a great amount of confusion or consternation; for some reason, she doesn't even bother to fake it with a careful furrowing of her brow and a little-girl-lost tip of her head to the side. She just regards him, momentarily meeting his eyes, and her shoulders actually round down slightly. If her eyes and the shape her face takes says anything, it speaks of a sort of sad resignation.

"Like in the coffee house?" Where anyone watching would have said that Danicka did something to Sam, not the other way around.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] A flickering, a flicker a rage -- like an echo or an aftershock of what it had been at the coffee house.

"Yes."

He picks up his tumbler then and he tosses it back, easily, without grimacing; without making a production of it. Watching him, you'd think this is the way he drinks, always.

"I talked to him about that." They talked about a lot of things, Lukas and Sam. The aftereffects of the talk is still splattered all over the common room upstairs, scrubbed out, bleached out, cleaned out to the human eye -- but not the werewolf's nose. "He won't do it again."

The Ahroun turns his emptied tumbler this way and that. Then he sets it down and looks at Danicka, levelly.

"But if you want him to leave you alone, you'll drum up the god damn courage to tell him yourself, kinwoman. It can't be that much harder than fucking him four times when you knew he wanted you for more than just that."

[Martin] Held at gunpoint, he would not admit to some deep-seated affinity for girls who were young enough to call him 'Father.' At least, not an affinity that was not one born of pure biology, of looking at a child sleeping in her room and feeling his heart swelling thinking that he would do anything to protect her if he could just keep himself sober.

He thought that that would be all that it would take. Every single fucking time he thought that he would get out of whatever program they had prescribed for him and he would be able to be a mate who could stand beside his Adren and make her proud, or simply be there when his soon-to-Change son had a nightmare...

... those days are over. He isn't in New York anymore, and it doesn't matter what he does now. So he's attempting to sit here, quiet and left alone, thinking that Gabriella is going to be happy to just sit here quiet and left alone too, when he becomes aware of the weight of her blue eyes on his elevated arm, when he feels her padded fingers on his dominant hand.

It's bony. The skin is soft leather battered by cold and work, by dehydration and malnourishment. His knuckles are strong, and it's possible that at one point the rest of him was, too, rather than this skinny near-forty man before her. And should she apply pressure to his skin, it blanches, and takes its sweet time returning to normal.

Why do his hands turn colors.

Martin takes a deep breath, turning toward this girl who is unafraid to study art in an economy that is rapidly crumbling, and turns his head to say, "I take a drug that makes my blood vessels close up. There's a veritable smorgasbord of side effects but you really don't want to hear any more of them than that."

[Danicka] Earlier, Sam told her with false cheer that she got him into a lot of trouble. Danicka had nearly cut through the incredibly thin skin of her palm with her fingernails, fingernails that aren't very sharp at all. She'd sensed more Rage twisting and roiling inside of him than Martin or Gabriella had at that moment, and felt all of it directed at her, and for a brief and heart-stopping second she had seen another man's face where Sam's was. Blonde and blue-eyed, even. It had taken her a second to remember how to breathe, to not brace for --

Yes. At the coffee house. That confirms what she'd wondered, what she hadn't had the time or the inclination to ask Martin about. Something had been done to her, to take her from talking about just hanging out and being friends -- an option she'd wholly believed in at that moment -- to climbing into the lap of the man across from her and kissing him as though he were a long-missing lover come back from a tour of duty.

It's incredibly hard to read Danicka in the moment after Lukas says Yes. It's entirely possible that she barely hears the part about him talking to Sam, and she doesn't even know that there are still traces of a bloody and incredibly fast 'discussion' in the common room. She sits there, still resting her hand lightly on her knuckles, watching the Shadow Lord who enjoys lamb and scotch, telling her that Sam is not going to do 'it' again, whatever 'it' was. She doesn't ask him to explain it to her.

...you'll drum up the god damn courage to tell him yourself...

Her eyebrows go up. She has never seemed particularly scared of him, even when startled in the kitchen. Not at the club -- she'd been focused on Gabriella. Not in the car -- except when his irritation flared and his hands tightened on the wheel. Not now, but there's something different in the way she regards him, which apparently gives her enough to lift her eyebrows in something akin to curiosity.

"...did you count?"

[Gabriella Bellamonte] "Is it for blood pressure?"

The drug, of course. Exactly why that question came to mind and flowed so easily out of her mouth was difficult to determine. Why would she think he had blood pressure problems? She probably didn't. It was probably just the huge dose of Jack Daniels, especially for a girl her size and level of inexperience, making her gradually less and less intelligable as it seeped further and further into her blood system.

She watched the skin under her fingers, lifting her fingertips after pressing down to watch the color, off and curious as it might be, creep back and take over the white spot left in the shape of the pad of her fingertip. Her right hand remained on her glass, lifted to her mouth to take a slow drink, and remained around it even when she set it back down. Her left hand, however, remained on his right one, and she turned it over on the counter so she could look at the palm and undersides of his fingers.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] A beat.

"Yes."

[Danicka] Oh, she knows better. The lessons came early and they came very clearly and it isn't that she's forgotten them, it's just that yesterday something happened that has not so much relaxed her guard as changed her perspective. Danicka's jaw lifts incrementally and her arm drops, and now her brow does furrow with what seems like quite open, agenda-free curiosity.

"Why?"

She knows better.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Another spike of his temper, harder than the first, abrupter. "Why do you think."

[Martin] Is it for blood pressure.

Martin doesn't do much to stop her from her exploration of his hand. It's like when his children were infants, and they would pull at his tie or his earlobe or his hair; he lets her flip his hand onto its back and take it what it has to tell him.

For a man who works a job that has to have him parked in a chair for a considerable amount of time--he is not a journalist anymore, he is not running around town interviewing people who would rather not be talking to him and walking rather than driving because the city streets of Rochester are so narrow and choked with snow nine months out of the year--and cannot do much more than type and write with a pen, his off right hand is horribly calloused. The pads of his fingers are thick and cracked, and the lines that are read by mystics and pagans are all well-defined, even deep. The pads of his fingers are stained by tobacco, and there are smaller cicatrices at the end of his middle and ring fingers, as though he had nearly lost them once.

"You could say that," he says, watching her watching his hand.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker]

[Danicka] [Perception + Empathy]

[Gabriella Bellamonte] "Mmm," was all she really had to contribute to his very vague answer to her oddly specific question. His hand was studied, the cracks on the pads of his fingers wondered about, while the markings that suggested he might have lost two of his fingers allowed half-formed stories in the form of scenes, like off a television set, to flutter through her mind. She wondered why his hands were so calloused, he didn't strike her as the type to do much manual labor, and she didn't think that a simple lack of moisturization would do that to someone's hands.

..Oh well. It wasn't too important. It was just a hand, after all.

So she released it and, with a faint sight, curled her arm away from his hand, tucking it close to her paint-freckled chest on the counter so that she could lean forward and rest her head on it like it was a pillow. Her right hand continued to grasp at her half-gone glass of Sprite. She closed her eyes now, and spoke in a somewhat lower voice, a little thoughtful and a little reminiscent.

"I imagine that if Lucien had to take medicine, it would be for blood pressure. I wish he'd forget to take it, though, so I wouldn't have to worry about him."

[Danicka] Over by the fire, there's a rising temper that flares like a sunspot before being reigned back in and controlled. Danicka's calm, or whatever it is she's feeling, is far less noticable than one of the emotions that can rise up in a Garou and lead quickly to an explosion of Rage. It's coming like pulses, like a flashbulb going off.

And she takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "Well."

Another breath. "That's..."

A Manhattan and a shot of Jack Daniels. She looks at the fire and presses her tongue against her incisor, thinking. "That's just kind of weird, Lukášek."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] His face hardens. If his tumbler had still been in hand he might've squeezed it until it shattered; thrown it; done something.

Or he may simply have held it. Controlled.

Quietly: "Are you mocking me, Danička?"

[Martin] Martin drains his beer, and slides the empty glass inward so that he might be able to flag Danny's attention without pulling his own off of Gabriella. At least, not until he has the potential to be granted more alcohol.

"'Worry about him' how?" he asks, twisting in his chair so that he is facing her now.

[Danicka] She isn't looking at him when his face hardens, or she might quail. Instead, she looks at the fire and then feels his temper more than sees it in his eyes or expression. Danicka takes a moment before turning to look at him again, lowering her hands to her lap and cupping one in the other.

"No."

[Gabriella Bellamonte] "Eh," she begins, to give what she had to say next an air of dismissive uncaring. If the noise at the beginning of her sentence wasn't good enough for that, she finally let go of the glass that she seemed to be hanging on to like a railing on a rather steep staircase to wave her right hand in the air, as though batting a fat buzzing beetle away before it had a chance of diving into her ear or getting stuck in her hair.

"I wouldn't have to remember he's alive, or think about him at all really. Were he dead, I'm fairly certain the world would be a better place."

If Katherine were here, Gabriella'd probably have a hand clapped over her mouth and be dragged away from the scene. Here sat Gabriella, the young artistic prodigy of the Bellamonte family, the only kinfolk child of Christopher Bellamonte, the one expected to whelp, to carry on the bloodline, because she didn't have nearly so high a risk of dying before marriage and children came along as her siblings did... And she was badmouthing the head of her prestegious family, underage and drunk at a bar with a crack addict (but shush, that's a secret!).

The shame would be awful.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (percep/subt to check for lies!)
to Danicka

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] HAIL KAHSEENO, I SAY.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (and bloody empathy too!)

[Martin] (I WANNA ROLL SHIT TOO!

Stamina to soak the next batch o' shit.)

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's a pause now. She looks away; then she looks at him. He hasn't moved. He seems to be made of granite and frost: a glacier of a man, poised, kingly even, half-sprawled at his ease in the big wingback chair.

He does not look away. If nothing else, he will not look away from this woman, this girl, this kinfolk whose particular and peculiar sway over him he could not quite understand.

And therefore, resented.
And therefore, distrusted.

A silence rolls out. Then he raises his chin a small degree; his eyes lid over and open, a blink. Slow. Not entirely human.

"If that's all," he says, "go back to your friends."

[Martin] When Danny wanders himself back over to where the youngest kin is all but slumped at the end of the bar with her Sprite, next to one of the oldest members of the Nation's presence in Chicago, period, Martin turns to him to request another double of Jameson and another beer. While he waits for his order, he drums the fingers of his left hand on the recently wiped-down bar top, and he is breathing heavier, he is fidgeting his feet on the circular lower rung of the stool.

She can read his pulse in the sides of his neck, if she looks carefully enough.

"He sounds like a hell of a guy," Martin comments, finally, as a double of Jameson comes his way. He tosses it back as though it were some lesser form of libation, a liquer or a port. It is as if he has thoroughly numbed himself already, and the glass is pushed away when he is done with it.

[Danicka] It's amazing how much can be laid on the table without either party saying more than one-word answers, affirmations and negations in between meetings and departures from eye contact. She knows; he doesn't realize how much but he has an idea that she knows more than she's saying freely. He knows and all he can claim is that he knows because she's not doing much to hide it. She's not doing anything to hide right now, and more than likely he doesn't dare actually believe that.

Four times. He counted. And why does she think that is?
It's weird. Maybe weird that he counted. Maybe weird that he --

Danicka is hardly stony, though her eyes are something like malachite or jade. She's hardly cold, despite the land he came from, the land her father came from. There she was just minutes ago, rubbing Gabriella's back and keeping an eye on Martin and smiling so nicely at Nessa Malikoff, but she seems to have no attention for anyone over at the bar anymore, at least not right now. She's not mocking him, and she should get the goddamned courage to tell Sam to leave her alone herself, and he counted how many times she had sex with his packmate, how many times he heard her crying out in a language she knew he could understand.

She takes a very deep breath this time, then looks away and reaches into her purse, pulling out a small pad of paper and a pen. She scrawls something out onto it, tears the paper off, and when pad and pen are returned to the interior, she gathers up her coat and bag and stands, walking over to stand directly between Lukas and the fire. Danicka looks down at him, holding out the slip of paper. "I would appreciate you leaving or texting your number." Beat. "In case he does something to me. Again."

[Gabriella Bellamonte] "Hell of a murderous bastard," she muttered, spitefully, and turned her head to watch Danny as he delivered Martin his order of alcohol. The red-haired kin looked at Gabriella, perhaps with a little bit of concern mingled with amusement, but didn't say anything. She may be miserable in the morning, or may not, but she'd be fine in the long run, and he wasn't the one to be taking care of her. He had a job to do, and so he turned about and went back to it.

Gabbie, in the meantime, scratched lightly at her scalp with short and well-manicured fingernails, tossuling her loose, long hair in doing so. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, she lifted her head, slapped her palms lightly on the countertop, and slid down from her stool. Apparently she felt the need to go somewhere.

However, her head swam and the floor seemed to shift three directions at once under her feet when she rose so abruptly. Due to this, she tipped over, and would likely bump her pretty little head on the countertop on her way down.

[Martin] (Athletics+Dex: What Do I Look Like, Iron Man? +1 [got enough in your system?]. Spending WP.)

[Martin] One moment Martin is sitting on his stool, slugging back his second beer and, in conventional bar measurement, eighth drink; the next moment he is watching the youngest heir to the Bellamonte line slide herself off of the stool and toward the floor.

Anyone who has been watching, anyone who is watching now, might find it strange that he is able to get off his ass to grab her so quickly, and to go an extra step to swing her up into his arms and cart her around the outskirts of the dining room, beyond where anyone eating could easily ascertain what is going on. He knows there's a couch upstairs. That's about the best he can do when his heart is thrashing against her arm.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He watches her approach, and for a second or two, he does not know her intention; she cannot quite read the look in his eyes.

But she's a perceptive woman. She's an intelligent woman, if nothing else. She can add two and two. And she can see, if nothing else, the way his jaw flexes when she says:

again.

Then his eyes flick down to the slip of paper she holds out. For a second he doesn't move, his hands at rest on the armrests, his ankle crossed over his knee. When he does, it's all at once: he sits up, both feet set on the ground now, apart. He takes the slip from her and he holds his hand out for her pen, and while she rummages for it, his cold eyes skate over the line she's written.

Then her pen is (presumably) in his hand. And he's turning the paper over with scarcely a flicker in his expression, to scrawl his own digits on the back.

And he hands both back. Pen and paper.

"Good night, Danička."

[Danicka] She's putting herself in arm's reach. She's willingly walking into the immediate sphere of influence of something like him. Not that being in the wingback chair across from his she was any safer; this just puts her close enough that he wouldn't have to move more than a limb and twist a joint to hurt her. And yet she doesn't seem terribly afraid of him. Tense, yes, but that's really not the same thing. It never has been.

The woman backlit by the fireplace -- its flames occasionally tended to by Reuben -- does indeed see that flex of the muscles in his jaw, and she interprets them as best she knows how, with the understanding that among other things he has heard her gasping Znovu in a tone of voice not much short of desperation. That is to say: there's more to it than anger, at Sam or at anyone or anything else, and while he's holding out a slip of memo-pad paper with black ink holding more than just ten numbers, there's a gravitas in her eyes that hints at just how much more she sees than his anger, or his Rage.

Which has to infuriate him.

Oh, he gets the pen, in silence. She knows what he's asking for, and simply hands it over patiently. He doesn't keep the slip; she does, without looking. It goes into her purse with the pen, and she nods. "Good night," she says, in English, without using his name or any derivation thereof. Her eyes leave the side of his neck, as she internally separates herself from the other Shadow Lord and starts to move back towards the bar.

And that's when she sees Martin heading for the kitchen doors, leading to the stairs that lead to the dormitory lounge. Danicka takes a breath and speaks, heading that direction, forgetting about Lukas behind her -- or at least, seeming to. "Marty, no," she says, a little too patiently, sounding almost exasperated as her heeled boots click on the barren floor. "You'll just fall down the stairs and crack both your skulls, let's just take her home."

She doesn't say The Loft. But she doesn't specify whose home, either.

[Danicka] [WE ONE-DAYED A GROUP SCENE, YOU GUYS! WE DID IT!]

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (it was all those 3-word posts. *nod*)

[Danicka] [IGNORE HIM]

[Martin] (*LOL*)

[Martin] (Thanks for the scene, y'all!)

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (doh. i think we're wrapping man. nightclub scene in Mag Mile is open though)

[Sebastian] (was just popping in to take a look. no worries!)
to Lukas Wyrmbreaker

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (aight! well, i'm outta this room. might go crash the other scene. LOL.)
to Sebastian