wrong choices.

[Danicka] There had been, at one point, a list. Two items on this list have been checked off. One has been negotiated, warily agreed upon, and checked off...in pencil. One has not even been mentioned again, or thought of until sometime this morning.

It's a long time since morning, and now Danicka is going to one of the places in this city she has every reason not to go to. Nearly every time she's been to this place, something bad has happened, or at least something that has thrown her so thoroughly she has yet to regain her footing. So when she pulls up to the Brotherhood, she does not go to the door. She pulls out her phone, and sends the modern-day equivalent of pebbles against a window:

a text message.

Parking lot.

[Lukas] Lukas is not in the room when the phone chimes, though he does return a few moments later -- toweling his head off with one hand, mopping water off his face with the other. The small screen of his phone is lit where once it was dark, and 1 new message glows up at him. He flips it open, presses a few buttons, then exhales shortly under his breath, presses another button.

Danicka's phone rings. When she picks up: "What the hell?"

[Danicka] "Parking lot," Danicka says -- repeats, depending on your perspective -- calmly.

[Lukas] There's a silence. Perhaps he's about to ask her what she's vomiting.

Instead, levelly: "Is there a reason you've lost the capability to come inside and walk upstairs?"

[Danicka] It's easier, over the phone. He's not right there in the passenger seat, not within arm's reach, not standing outside her window. His Rage can't be felt out here, and she can't see him. The phone has always made a lot of people much more tolerable to be around than they are on their own. For another thing, she can continue this conversation on speaker while attending to a chip in her fingernail with a file pulled from her purse.

"I am having a very difficult time thinking of a single occasion that I've set foot in the Brotherhood of Thieves and had it go smoothly. I would much rather stay in my nice, warm car with my nice, warm koláče, and avoid any chance of being pushed down the stairs, cornered and told what a bad influence I am, or making a fool of myself."

[Lukas] There's a beat of pause. Lukas' window faces the back alley, which is not where the parking lot is. All the same he goes to it and looks out. Danicka finds it easier over the phone -- Lukas does not. Some part of Lukas is not human; requires eye contact, body language, to make proper sense of someone.

"No one is going to push you down the stairs, or tell you what a bad influence you are." A beat. "Has someone tried?"

[Danicka] She doesn't pause for as long. It's rude, and people start thinking the call has gotten cut off. So Danicka just takes a breath, which only takes a moment. "So what you're saying is, because no one has pushed me down the stairs yet -- nevermind nearly breaking my jaw or interrogating me over pastries -- that I should come up there when I don't want to because you're telling me that I'll be safe?"

[Lukas] Even across the flimsy connection of a cell phone call, Danicka can hear Lukas draw and release a breath. She cannot, however, see him press his free fist to the frame of the window, high up, and lean his weight into it.

"No. Because I won't hide my personal business with you as though it were something to be ashamed of. I won't flaunt it out of respect for Sam, my packmates, myself and you, but nor will I go to absurd lengths to pretend you and I aren't fucking." His towel is still draped half over his head, like a prayer shawl. He straightens up, pulls it down around his neck with an impatient jerk, turns from the window. "Now come up."

[Danicka] This time the pause is longer, and she doesn't care if it's rude. Still: just a few seconds. Still: a few seconds on a phone call makes each one magnified, without eye contact or anything else to augment the silence.

"That...has nothing to do with it," she says, addressing the first part of his speech, rather than the order to come up. "I don't want to come up," Danicka repeats, in a tone of voice that may as well be Did I stutter?

[Lukas] "It has nothing to do with your reluctance. It has everything to do with mine." Another pause; then it's his turn to repeat. "Come up."

[Danicka] That silence that Lukas cannot see through at the moment is her lips going together, a slow and silent breath being taken, and Danicka refusing to pinch the bridge of her nose or rub her forehead because goddammit she's dealt with an eight-year-old psychotic Fang, she is not going to wring her hands in impatience over him.

"I'll leave them on the kitchen table, then," she says finally, levelly. Calm again. Placid again. Mild. "I'll talk to you again soon," is the added politeness, to keep the fact that the phone call is ended immediately thereafter from being a complete shut-off. Danicka does not leave him time to reply to that last, though.

Sliding her phone into the pocket of her coat, she picks up the box, exits her car, and walks towards the alleyway door, the car locked and alarmed from keychain button as she goes.

[Lukas] Danicka will not hear this: "Fuck."

Nor will she hear, or see, Lukas closing the phone swiftly, setting it back down, whipping the towels from around his neck and waist, flinging them on the bed, pulling his drawstring slacks on -- the ones he always wears when he's bumming around the Brotherhood -- and opening his door.

She might hear him shutting it though. Not slamming it: shutting it. And she'll definitely hear his footsteps coming down the stairs. He doesn't run, quite, but he does walk briskly.

"This is ridiculous," he informs her, perfectly level. The kitchen tiles are cold on his bare feet. "No one's asking you to stay for hours. What the hell is the difference between leaving the koláče in the kitchen and taking them up one flight of stairs, Danička? Why would you bother driving all the way out here only to have me meet you in the goddamn parking lot?"

-- not so level, now.

[Danicka] It does not take Danicka very long at all to walk from her car to the alleyway door. She is inside the dark kitchen by the time he has his pants on, and is standing at the large table before the fireplace by the time he starts coming down the stairs. And an old, old lesson kicks in a fraction of a breath after instinct does: Don't run. Never run. This barely-momentary struggle is so refined, faster than a flash of lightning, that it does not flicker over her face as it happens.

She goes about doing exactly what she came inside to do: she sets the pastry box down on the table, and Lukas's feet hit the tiled floor, and she turns to face him as he goes from level, from steady, to swearing.

The look on her face is patient, but not in the exaggerated, eyebrows-raised, are-you-quite-finished sense. There is an attentiveness to the way she looks at him, a waiting for him to finish. It is entirely the same as the way she waits for him to say what he has to say or needs to say at waterfronts. Or aquariums. He can take it however he wants tonight, though. ...And he will.

"The difference is that in the kitchen I'm closer to the door and marginally less likely to run into anyone else living up there," she says simply. Danicka gestures loosely to the box. "I made them for you, I brought them. You didn't want to come down and get them, so I carried them in. That's it."

[Lukas] His jaw clamps shut, mouth a straight, hard line. He looks from her to the pastry box. And absurdly, flips it open -- thirty degrees or so, forty-five at most -- shuts it again.

"Wait here." He plants a finger on the tabletop for emphasis. "Three minutes." And then he goes upstairs again.

[Danicka] [Willpower: Don't laugh don't laugh don't laugh]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 3 (Failure at target 6)

[Danicka] One thing he got right was that this is utterly ridiculous. On the phone it was a simple matter of vaudeville-like back and forth. Yes-but-no-but-yes. She coped with his Rage by not being in the same space with him. He barely coped with talking to her with only one sense truly engaged in the conversation. There was -- and is -- no indication that Danicka had hoped that her gift of pastries would be any better received than last time, any more appreciated. There is definitely the sense that it took less than thirty seconds for the two of them to start losing patience with one another.

However: with him all but barreling down the stairs just to snap at her and her calmly informing him that this is all much more simple than his ire is making it...not in so many words...it strikes her as incalculably funny that he stops there and checks what is in the box. Last time she brought six candied orange koláče, with the rest of the two-dozen made up of other flavors. This time there are just twenty-four gorgeous little treats sitting snugly in the box, when she knows damn well that he isn't going to stop at two or three. He's going to stuff his face, and if he hasn't learned anything about delaying his own gratification in fifteen years, he's going to make himself sick.

Danička, what's wrong?
I...I...I made Lukášek throw uuup!

But he checks the box, peeks inside, before doing anything else, and Danicka's lips start to tremble from forcible restraint of her amusement. Three minutes. She would time it, but she doesn't check a watch or look for a clock: the second his steps hit the stairs she is cracking up behind him, first giggling. And then outright bursting into peals of laughter.

[Lukas] Lukas' footsteps pause on the stairs a moment. Then he turns around and comes back down, his eyes furious now, face utter stone. He doesn't stop at the table; he comes around it, closes the distance on her, closes it to nothing.

Very low: "What the hell are you laughing about?"

[Danicka] She's trying not to laugh. She's trying. It's not helping, and in fact could be making it worse. Every time Danicka gets close, gets it down to a giggle again, some random thought sets her off, and she's gone again. But this fit of laughter only lasts a few seconds. Lukas comes back, walks over, and by the time he reaches her he is not the only one whose expression is unamused.

The laughter, the delight, could be said to melt off of her face. From hairline to brow to eyes and to the corners of her mouth turning downward, Danicka's features pause, falter, and then all trace of humor or happiness are gone. She is not wearing heels; he'll notice that because the difference between his height and hers is far more pronounced than when she is. Danicka looks up at him, with her eyes so that she does not tilt her chin and expose her throat. There is no defiance, and no attempt to look as though she's unbothered.

She swallows.

"Promiňte" Danicka murmurs, the color draining slowly out of her cheeks.

[Lukas] Even in her heels, the top of Danicka's head is around the level of Lukas' mouth. In flats, she tops out around the crest of his shoulder. He knows the measure of her body for more reasons than one. He's close enough that she would barely even need to reach out to touch him -- but there's nothing seductive about his nearness; nothing even remotely pleasant about his proximity.

She apologizes, which is, of course, the correct thing to do. Perhaps even what he expects. And for all that, there's a distinct twinge in his cheek; a belt of muscle pulling tight, releasing. He looks away. His hair is still damp and there are drops of water on his bare shoulders. She can plainly see him inhale, his chest expanding on a long pull of air.

"Ne, je moje vina." Careful, he raises his hand. He touches her cheek, very gently, and only for a moment. Then he drops his hand away and takes a step back. "Tři minuty. Oukej?"

[Danicka] She flinches.

Not when he is standing there all but staring her down, shadowing over her, looming. Not when his cheek twitches slightly, or when he looks away. Danicka flinches, the smallest jerk of her shoulders, neck, and face, radiating not from the center but from the side where his hand is coming from. It does not make it into a wince or grimace of either disgust or fear, partly because the more difficult thing for her to do right now is not remaining still so that he can touch her cheek, but letting him see that she flinched at all.

This may escape him. This likely will escape him. Danicka's motivations are tangled at best, her reasoning behind her supposedly involuntary reactions to things convoluted. In a way, she is not flinching away from Lukas's hand or his lowered tone of voice, but away from something -- someone -- else entirely. And that she does not stop herself, does not even try to stop herself from twitching like that, says more than he is liable to hear.

Three minutes, okay?

Danicka just nods.

Okay.

When he comes back downstairs, she has not moved.

[Lukas] When Lukas reappears, he's in distressed jeans, a jacket under his arm, buttoning up the front of his deliberately rumpled shirt. He wore something like this the night they met, or 'met', though this shirt is striped in white and a grey so light it was nearly silver. He finishes with the buttons and shrugs the jacket on, which is leather, but not the same one he wore the night at the Blue Chalk.

She hasn't moved. He looks at her a moment. Then he takes the koláče off the table, stuffs them in some out-of-the-way corner where passing residents won't eat them all while he's away. Straightening up, he considers her for another beat before he nods at the back door.

"Come on. Let's talk in the car." He precedes her there -- pulls the door open and then holds it until she catches up.

[Danicka] Oh, you mean what I wanted to do to start with?

That is not what Danicka has to say to him. Maybe if he had not turned around like that, if the laughter and -- let's face it -- sheer comfort had not melted off of her face the way it did, if three minutes were long enough to do more than compose herself to a perfect mask of calm, she might throw up her hands, go for the alleyway door, and mutter under her breath about how ridiculous he is.

That's what she'd called him at the aquarium, leaving with him to go to a hotel after being in the building for five minutes on the outside. She'd been laughing, albeit gently, and though it hadn't gone over perfectly, he had not stalked over to her and demanded to know what she found so funny. In a mortal man, or a generally calm man, that sort of reaction is something liable to cause even greater laughter.

The sort of men who react that way to being laughed at and manage to immediately incense or subjugate whoever they are staring down are usually abusive.

Or Garou.

Danicka looks perfectly at ease when he comes back downstairs, glancing again at the nail she filed in the car. She glances up as he gets back into the kitchen, stows the box somewhere he'll find it later, and then goes to the door. Lowering her arms back to her sides, Danicka walks in sneakered feet and slips out into the alley...ahead of him. The parking lot lights and the ambient glow of the city hit her well enough to reveal well-fitting jeans under a peacoat that makes her look like a college student, and the shifting colors of a scarf around her neck. It's the one she said she knitted herself, the last time she brought koláče.

The car is disarmed, unlocked, and the passenger-side door left for Lukas to open for himself as she gets in the driver's seat. This is the first time he's been in her car. It's pretty spare: the stereo is not factory, has a USB key sticking out of the front panel, but this is one of the only remarkable features. She doesn't have anything hanging from her rearview mirror, no air fresheners stuck in the vents.

[Lukas] Chances are, he would not have talked to her in the car if not for the incident in the kitchen. Chances are, he would've dug his damn fool heels in --

-- or perhaps not. He's told her three minutes before she'd laughed, before he'd overreacted, before he'd cowed her into this silence.

Which lasts. Even after he's gotten into her car, filling up the space of her passenger seat the way another man -- or rather, the way a man, period, would not, because Lukas is in the end not a man, and not even entirely a beast. He shuts the door and now it's quiet inside the BMW, which is just a little flashy, just a little sexy, and definitely not designed for these northern winters.

With the engine off and a leather soft-top, the interior temperature has dropped in the few minutes it's been sitting out. It's not terribly cold tonight -- forty degrees, thereabouts -- but there's still a nip in the air. Even so, Lukas' rage fills the space, makes it claustrophobic.

After some moments of just sitting there, he turns to look at her.

"What are you afraid of?"

[Danicka] She's from New York City. So what on earth is she doing with a convertible like this, meant for far warmer climes. How can she even enjoy a car like this when it's barely even above freezing, when she comes from a city that really isn't any warmer or nicer year-round than this one? He doesn't ask about the car he's seen a number of times and yet never been in. He asks what she's afraid of.

"Dust mites. Bees. Global warming. E. coli. UFOs. Landslides. Clowns. Nanotech. The inevitable heat death of the universe. Supervolcanoes. Yetis. The Illumnati. Papercuts. Centaurs. Asbestos."

Danicka rattles off the list with absolutely no investment in a single syllable, and it sounds like she's reciting something. Her eyes are forward. Her keys are still in her pocket, and she has not moved to turn the car back on. Her tone of voice as she speaks is somewhat droll. A moment later, she turns and looks over at him. "You're going to have to be more specific."

[Lukas] In spite of himself and everything else, Lukas has to turn away to hide a smile. It's still in his voice, though, an undercurrent of amusement amidst the dryness: "And moray eels."

When he turns back he's serious. "I mean when you look at me like I'm going to break you. Who else are you flinching from?"

[Danicka] "And moray eels," she confirms, without a lick of a smile across her face. The woman can do deadpan like a pro; the seriousness of her intonation is almost chillingly flat. Above all, moray eels. She is looking at him, though, so she knows he has to turn away even though she doesn't have to fight a smile. If she wouldn't meet his eyes, even for a second, it would be impossible for him to tell that, yes, there is humor there.

Not a lot. Anymore.

There's more: if he had said just' who', it would be a completely different question, and she might laugh at him again and this time welcome the slap. It is the word 'else' that matters, the admission that when she looks at him like he's going to break her she is not thinking of anything impossible, or even all that unlikely.

What was it she'd said? That she likes that he doesn't lie, that he doesn't say she's safe or won't be harmed. Even if he's never struck her, she long ago guessed his moon without ever needing to be told. She knows what he is, and she knows it only gets worse from here on out.

Danicka just looks at him for a moment after his question though, so far beneath the surface now that she might as well not be within reach, within the car, within the city. She may as well be a picture sitting on a desk, and not a woman who is mere inches away from his arm, the way she looks at him. She thinks for awhile, and finds an answer, though she knows damn well it's not the one he wants:

"Why do you keep asking about who's hit me before?"

...just as she knows damn well it isn't an answer at all. But her voice has dropped slightly, is inquiring almost gently, as though this is not any more a deflection than her telling him where her name comes from was. Just a step. It's in the same direction, though it is not the leap he might have liked to take.

[Lukas] It's not the answer he wants. It's not even an answer at all, really. It's a question that holds inside itself some seedling of an answer -- or, at least, a confirmation.

They are parked in the Brotherhood's lot. This is a rough area, full of buildings like broken teeth, people that live hollowed-out lives. The Brotherhood itself is relatively safe, if only because even hardened criminals don't like coming within a quarter-mile of the place. But the lights coming through the windshield are cheap and buzzing and sodium yellow. It paints her in surreal colors, and leaves half his face in shadow when he faces her like this.

"I don't know," he says. "I just want to know."

[Danicka] For a lot of people, the worst reasoning to do or say anything is I just wanted to. The wrong answer is always I don't know, I just did. The strangest thing to see for nearly a decade was Danicka standing in the solar snapping out a demand in Russian, requiring an explanation from a small, cherub-faced Silver Fang girl with the blood of kings and heroes in her lovely veins, each one vivid blue against the insides of her wrists...and upon receiving the reply that Yelizaveta did not know why she had done it, Danicka's wrath would be placated, and they would go on with their day.

Lukas doesn't demand that she answer his goddamned question this time, his teeth set and his jaw tight. He does not sit there in sulking silence, nor does he slap her. He responds that truthfully, he doesn't know why he is interested in this topic, or what his motivation is for asking. Danicka turns her head way, looks out the windshield, and then reaches into her right pocket and takes out her keys. She has four, two of them quite small, one of them obviously for the car.

A few seconds later, the engine is purring, the doors are locked, and the vents are blowing out air that, while not frigid, is not warm yet. The radio comes on, not terribly loud, but Danicka still reaches over and turns it down a bit for the sake of conversation. It picks up where it left off when she turned the car off earlier, but the lyrics aren't so obvious that he could make them out, even if he were listening. She sits back again and turns to him.

"At the motel, you said that whoever hit me knew what he was about, because there's not a mark on me." Danicka meets his eyes, holds his gaze. "'He' is a Theurge. 'He' never had to be careful, for there to be no remainder."

[Lukas] Perhaps he should exult: that she told him. That she let even one brick of her wall come loose. That she let even one shred of herself into the air between them, for him to consider and examine and remember.

Or perhaps he shouldn't care at all. Shouldn't have asked at all. Because her question is a reasonable one, and not unlikely one he's asked himself already: why does he keep asking?

What does it matter?

But none of this signifies. He did ask. She did answer. And after that, Lukas is simply quiet, his eyes very steady. The one in light is aglitter, and there is no blue in yellow, and so there is no blue in his eyes but only pale. The one in dark is a glimmer, faceted like a jewel, clear and at once dark and bright.

He waits to see if there's any more.

[Danicka] There is no more. Danicka looks back at him, the color of her own eyes barely visible for the dilation of her pupils. The music from the stereo keeps going on, the subwoofer barely making itself known with these tracks but the sound positively crystalline. It's the only sound at all between them after she explains that bit of trivia. It is not terribly odd for a Kinfolk whose skills are domestic rather than martial to be unscarred. It is a little more unusual for her to be so pristine when he has seen, time and time again, how well she takes abuse and how ready for it she is.

But there's no more than that, not right now, not for him. The information lies where it is, unquestioned and not expounded upon, as though that is as close as she can come to full self-disclosure right now. So Danicka just watches, not waiting for a reaction, particular or general. She just looks at him, and after a few moments it may occur to him that she has not dropped her gaze away from her sparing seconds of eye contact a single time this evening. She also has started to look at him as though she is not expecting anything.

She's just looking.

[Lukas] Truthfully, Lukas had not expected anything more. Even so, he'd waited to see -- to be certain.

The silence unspools around them. At length his eyes are no longer fast on hers. He studies her instead, the bone structure under the flawless skin; the contours and planes. His eyes take a long and unhurried tour of her face and, after some time, return to hers.

"I won't pretend I've never raised my hand to kinfolk." There's no need to raise his voice in here, but one suspects that's not the only reason he's quiet. The corners of his mouth move; it's thoroughly humorless. "You already know better than that. But some instinct tells me that if I ever laid my hand on you I'd change this forever. Not only for you, but for me as well."

A pause.

"Whatever 'this' is."

Another silence -- he looks away now, turning his head forward again, looking through the windshield. Artificial lighting is nothing like daylight: it does not have the sheer magnitude and strength of the sun. It does not light up the very air, the ambient spaces. In the light of the streetlamps, Lukas is stark -- highlights and shadows, and little in between.

"That's not a promise that I won't ever strike you," he adds after a while. Turns to look at her. "But I would not do it thoughtlessly."

[Danicka] The song on the stereo has stopped, fading out into silence, replaced by a barely-heard woman's voice whispering: Seven a.m. Dusty road. I'm gonna drive until it burns my bones. before the music comes out of nowhere. Danicka watches him, while he watches her, and then as his eyes track over her face and seem to be looking at the solidity of her, rather than merely the picture. It's just a way of looking, different than the gaze used for a portrait. It's the way one looks at a sculpture. Mrena had said she was suited for marble.

Her eyes are still there waiting, unmoved, when he looks back into them again. She may as well be Galatea before she was brought to life, Danicka is so still. This is perhaps why the Theurge said she would be good for something made of cold, pale stone rather than acrylics or oils or anything two-dimensional. Smooth. Patient. Unassailable. One can imagine leaving her, for decades if necessary, only to return and find her not so much the worse for wear, still as silent and as gentle in her waiting as she ever was.

And then she speaks, her lips parting -- it's like watching a miracle happen, almost -- to take in a silent breath followed by words that are sharper in meaning than any chisel, spoken as soft as water over rock, tender as a goddess kissing something cold and unfeeling: "Well. It's nice to know that if you ever slam my head against a wall you'll have considered it carefully beforehand."

[Lukas] It should surprise no one when Lukas' mouth twists at this -- something between a snarl and a wince. He looks away a second later.

"What do you want me to do, Danička? Lie?"

[Danicka] He knows the answer to that, and so she ignores the second half of his question, the single word that has been applied to just about everything she's ever said. Danicka watches him turn away and takes the opportunity to look out the sloping glass in front of her. She can see herself in it, ghostly and indistinct. Her hands are in her lap. The car is warming up nicely now. The music is building towards some kind of crescendo, and so she reaches forward, turns a knob, and flicks it off completely.

So now it's very quiet, but Danicka does not wait to break it. She takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly, quieting whatever was stirred by the music, or the conversation, or what is still uneasy because of what happened in the kitchen. And she does not answer his first question, either, in the end. She says something completely different:

"My mother was an Ahroun, Lukáš," she says quietly, but not with any trace of the cutting gentleness of her last statement. There's a beat after that, a slight pause. "This is something you can't lie to me about, even if you tried. I know better." Another pause, a steeling of her jaw and her breathing. "The day you do hit me, carelessly, I won't be surprised. Even if you are."

[Lukas] The corner of his jaw flexes. This angers him irrationally, the calm absoluteness of her proclamation. For a second or two he fights to keep his silence -- then, all at once:

"I don't kiss either. Did you know that? I don't nearly lose my wits because some woman tells me she wants me to touch her. I don't fuck a woman four times in one night like some sort of ... rutting beast, and then wish she wouldn't leave in the morning. I don't ask her to stay.

"And I don't strike kinfolk simply because I'm angry at them and can't control my own temper. So for god's sake, Danička, leave me that one at least."

[Danicka] Once, she has lost her temper with him. Even then it was barely even true anger. It was frustration, and her snapping at him had been an attempt to get him to give her some time, some space, some room to breathe in between his searching of her and her history and her thoughts. It seems that every time Lukas unburdens himself to Danicka, all she does is listen, and there's an odd warmth between them for it, unspoken and unremarked upon. When he asks her for the same, Danicka retreats.

She can force herself, with effort, to reveal small truths. She can burn through her reserves of strength to actually tell him how she feels. These things cost her dearly, though, and if she keeps asking for more afterwards she pulls back. It is not unlike luring an animal out of hiding and waiting, without making a sound, for it to nibble on the bait. And should he move too fast, or break a twig with his heel, she bolts.

But the hunting metaphor doesn't seem to fit terribly well here. Hunters don't tell their prey secrets. And somehow, shy as she is of the shadows and sharp noises that send her scurrying for the warmth and darkness of her own den, Danicka does not strike many people as 'prey'.

This is not the first time that Lukas has nearly exploded in front of her or to her directly, the intensity of his emotion -- whatever that emotion is at the time -- coming out not in balled fists or snapping jaws but a rush of words, coming up out of some usually unseen, untapped well. A lot of people would back off immediately, unable to cope with that much. A lot of people would shut down, deflect, change the subject, or ignore altogether what he's said and what it means...because they, too, are unable to cope. Danicka does not shut down, or back off. Nor does she whip her head around and snap back at him.

She does what he has seen her do so many times: she listens. Danicka turns slowly to look at him, after he says her name. She almost looks compassionate. She certainly sounds like she is. "If you need to believe that, then it doesn't matter whether or not I do."

[Lukas] "If you don't believe it," he does snap his head around to look at her, "then why the hell are you here?"

[Danicka] One of her eyebrows lifts, but slowly. It doesn't quirk up, and she does not look like she's verging on a smile. "I told you that I would make you your favorite koláče sometimes."

(your brains out. see eternity. as you are. sometimes. til we get tired of each other.)

Danicka blinks at him, once. "I accepted the day you drove me home that you'd hit me eventually. It doesn't matter why. Or whether it's because you lose your temper, or because you think it over, or because I nearly make you frenzy. It's inevitable."

Her pause is just long enough to take in a bit of air: "It doesn't make me not want you. At least for now."

[Lukas] "Jesus Christ," is what Lukas has to say about that.

And that's all he has to say for some time. He turns to the windshield again, keeps his own counsel. His forehead has wrinkled, a frown: troubled, or just angry. Or just frustrated. After a moment he shifts in the seat, props his elbow up on the edge of the window, squeezes his temples between thumb and forefinger.

"You won't even come upstairs because you don't want to get hit, shoved down the stairs, or so much as spoken to unkindly. And yet you have no problem with believing that sooner or later, I'll put my fist through your face. Can you explain that to me, Danička? Do you even realize how fucked up that sounds?"

[Danicka] "It's not," she says, using a tone he's never heard from her before: ruffled. Defensive. Not angry, not outright, but almost...well. Very nearly petulant. "Nearly every time I go into that place, something bad happens, and it's not worth it to go up there and deal with all of it just to get five minutes of conversation with you."

She takes a breath, hard enough that her chest and her shoulders heave once, together, before she exhales in a rush. "Just because I know you'll eventually snap, just because it'll change everything, doesn't mean that I think it's going to happen tonight."

[Lukas] Lukas can't even respond to that immediately. Doesn't know how. There's just silence on his end, rolling on and on, and all the while he's getting angrier. Anger is pooling into him like water into an underground reservoir, little by little, trickle by trickle, until the air around him is thick with it, electric with it.

"It's one thing to go into something expecting it to end, Danička." He manages to string these words together at last, his voice tight with the effort of keeping a level tone. "It's something else entirely to go into it expecting it to end in catastrophe."

A pause.

And then, abruptly, as though this has occurred to him in the second before he simply turns around and lays it out: "It bothers me that you don't trust me." Did you know that? -- he doesn't say it again, but the ghost of it is in the air, the sense of it: look at this and tell me you've heard it, or, look at this and tell me you didn't already know. And in the end it's an understatement, the understatement of the fucking century, or at least the night.

He amends, "I hate that you don't trust me." And a short, sharp exhale, a laugh wrung dry of all humor, "How's that for irony?"

[Danicka] She shouldn't ask. Not with feeling how angry he's getting, with sensing it as clearly as if he were painted a different color for each emotion. Danicka sees through people like glass, it seems sometimes. She understands them. She would make a scarily good therapist, an even better lawyer, a fantastic detective. If she has any talent she could be a soul-wrenching artist of some type. Danicka could do a great many things, and...she became a little better than a nanny. Not anymore.

So: to say that she can tell that Lukas is angry is like saying that she notices it's cold outside, or that the sun isn't up right now. It isn't just that she is paying some level of attention, but that she is getting better and better as time goes on at understanding him. And, it may very well be chilling -- or infuriating -- how little effort it seems to take on her part when he seems to have so much difficulty understanding her in return.

She's a better liar than he is, though.

There is a lot she could say to the bit about endings, about catastrophes. He doesn't give her the chance, so she keeps her mouth shut until he looks at her and tells her that not only does it bother him that she doesn't trust him, but that he outright hates it. This, at least, takes off the burden of figuring out why he's getting so angry. Danicka tilts her head slightly to the side, and then -- without any warning, without any question, though perhaps not without any reason -- she reaches over and takes his hand.

"Why?"

[Lukas] The instant her hand touches his, his jumps into a fist. The reaction is immediate and absolute. It may be as involuntary as the muscles of his stomach clenching when she runs her hands over them; as his breath drawing in, when she runs her hands over him.

A second or two later, the fingers open. He forces his hand to relax, and does not pull away.

Again: "I don't know."

[Danicka] This time Danicka doesn't flinch. To her credit, last time she didn't pull away, either. Her hand just rests on top of his, waiting to be batted away or taken. Lukas doesn't swat her hand off of his like a fly, and so when his fingers relax, hers are stil there to slid over the side of his hand and onto his palm. It puts her thumb on the backs of his knuckles, his thumb on the back of hers. Danicka's hand does indeed curl, but doesn't intertwine. She doesn't just touch him; she holds his hand.

Though Gaia knows why.

They're looking at each other when he confesses that he doesn' t know, and her eyebrows flick up slightly. She doesn't press him, though. Perhaps this is not a good enough answer this time, like it was just minutes ago. Danicka doesn't squeeze his hand to let him know it's okay. She may as well not know what on earth her hand is doing, for all the attention she seems to be paying to it.

"Okay, honestly," she says after awhile, "what do you think would have happened if I'd come upstairs when you told me to? You were wearing pajama pants, for Christ's sake."

She may be teasing him. Maybe.

[Lukas] He has stopped looking at her in the meantime, but he looks at their hands for some time instead: her slender fingers against his broad palm, his thumb across her knuckles. And vice versa.

It's a shift of subject and, for once, Lukas doesn't mind. Though he's not amused either. His sense of humor -- what there is of it, and as far as Danicka knows, there's very little of it -- seems to have gone awol. He frowns at her and answers her seriously.

"I would've taken the koláče and offered you a drink. And then I would've put my clothes on and come out here with you. I meant what I said, Danička. I won't flaunt this and I won't hide it either."

[Danicka] What Danicka knows about Lukas's sense of humor, or lightheartedness, is that it has gone the way of his human life. It's still there: she's seen him laugh, and she's seen him engaging in a pillowfight, and she has seen almost boyishly lopsided smiles on his face that for some reason make her heart patter in her chest rather than beating steadily...but like his mother and father and sister and anything that mattered to him before he Changed, it's background. She, unlike Lukas, remembers a time very clearly when he was very happy.

And liked coloring. And blocks. And frequently made himself sick from eating too many pastries with candied-orange filling. 'Frequently', of course, being whenever he and his sister were hauled over to the two-story single-family house so his parents could play cards with Miloslav Musil and talk about relatives and friends still in Prague, or politics in America, or the state of the Nation, or whatever it was they talked about while Danicka did her best to make sure Anežka knew she was quite, quite unwelcome to share her crayons.

Lukášek could have the blue one, though, even though she was still using it.

"...So hotels."

It's some sort of conclusion.

[Lukas] He looks at her for a moment, brow still furrowed. It's nearly a lost cause for Lukas to try to read Danicka. That doesn't stop him from trying all the same, and right now, he's trying to see if there's a hint of irony, or discontent, or humor, or acceptance, or ...

Something; anything that he could understand. Not even use. Somewhere along the way, somewhere very early along the way, he's stopped looking for things he could use.

"It seems to suit our purposes."

[Danicka] "Mmm," is all she says, a vague noise of agreement, or understanding, or perhaps simply a noncommittal sound to make with her lips vibrating eversoslightly against one another. The very same sound could be a query, in another situation.

Danicka sits, looks forward a moment or two after he begins searching her, trying to read her and discovering that she may as well be written in the single language that they don't share, leaving her utterly bewildering to his eyes and his mind. She takes a breath, lips still closed, exhaling through her nostrils in a way that would be a sigh if she voiced it, if she released it.

Though that's not quite disappointment. Or humor, even. Acceptance comes most easily, it seems, whether it's a hand on her jaw or fur tearing through Lukas's skin moments after their mouths met for the first time. Danicka accepts a lot of things, and if he has seen anything tonight of who she is, he's seen that she is prepared to accept the worst, in any situation...even if this doesn't stop her from taking what she wants and enjoying what she has while it does last.

Which, perhaps, explains her hand still holding to his without reluctance or uncertainty.

"You know," she says to the windshield, "there was a point where I was thinking of just showing up, going into your room, and getting myself off in front of you because you seemed so bound and determined to not fuck me. I have this feeling you would have thrown me out a window, though."

[Lukas] Lukas' eyelids flicker. He makes some faint sound -- slight as it is, it's identifiable as amusement.

A moment later he turns toward her. "What were you laughing at, in there?"

[Danicka] "The way you peeked at the koláče before you went to go upstairs," she says calmly, and immediately, still looking through the windshield and not at him. Her face is striped with light and shadow, ill-colored light that makes her look...wrong. Not like herself. She licks her lips, and smiles a little as if to herself. "I just thought it was...cute," she finishes, the last word laughed out, her small smile broadening.

It takes her a moment to fight it back under control.

[Lukas] Cute, she calls him, or at least his act of peeking at the koláče. He shoots her a skeptical look that veers inescapably toward a laugh of his own, quiet.

"I love those things," he says. "When we lived in Czechoslovakia, we had this grove of old orange trees, the kind that would fill up with oranges in the early spring -- so many that you couldn't eat them all before they rotted. My parents would give baskets of them away to all their friends, and still there'd be enough left for our cook to make candied oranges. Then the rest of the year, every once in a while, he'd make koláče with candied orange filling. He'd never tell Anežka and I beforehand. We'd just come in, and there they'd be. I think I'd eat myself sick if someone didn't stop me, even then."

It's not really a story, and it certainly didn't have a neat end or beginning. But it's what he tells her, the way he told her about schools of fish and flocks of birds-of-prey: without expectation, without need for reply or response.

At the end of it, he falls quiet for a while. He turns his hand over some slight degree -- looks at the back of hers superimposed over his palm. Then he raises it to his mouth. This could be a cavalier gesture, or a chivalrous one; but it's neither. It's what it is: something he wants to do, and does not question.

[Danicka] As many questions as fly between the two of them during a given encounter, there is at least one answer that stills each. Once they get back to simply admitting that they wanted to do something, that they just want, most of the questions seem to taper off, if not die completely. So of course there is no question, at least on Danicka's end, of the fact that Lukas brings her hand to his mouth the way he does; she does not think of him as chivalrous, or even gentlemanly. She does not, at first, turn her head to watch him.

"Do you remember anything, from when you first moved to New York?" she asks quietly. It's a fair question, given that he's talking about a time of his life before he had even turned five. Though Danicka's voice is keyed low, she doesn't sound vulnerable, or upset: they haven't talked much about this, since he brought it up at the Blue Chalk Cafe and she did nothing more than ask how his parents are.

As for her hand, this part is less fair: her fingers unfurl slightly, sliding over and past his lips, the same knuckles he just touched to his mouth running over one of his cheeks while the woman in the other seat wears a thoughtful expression.

[Lukas] For no reason Danicka will readily understand, Lukas' face darkens: subtly but swiftly, as though someone had drawn a shade over it. Her hand has opened and his does as well, though only to give her room to brush her fingers over his cheek.

His skin is completely smooth, without even a hint of stubble tonight. He has shaved very recently. This should be no surprise. His hair is still faintly damp; there was water on his shoulders when he first came downstairs.

"I remember plenty," he replies. He turns to look at her, and though his face has closed up, she's perceptive enough to see that she's not the direct cause of it. "Or did you mean about you?"

[Danicka] She doesn't want to think it, but she does: she thinks of the earnestness of Sam's face when he was suggesting going back to the Brotherhood of Thieves 'for a drink' when between the two of them they'd nearly finished an entire bottle of tequila. She thinks about the bright openness of his eyes and the smile he'd worn after kissing her, how she'd had to remind him to start the car if they were going to get anywhere at all. How every single thing he felt was written across his face from moment to moment, and how very, very unwilling -- or unable -- he was to see that she was not open to him, that the more clothes came off the body the more closed-off she became.

Because all of that, unbidden and unwanted as the flashes of memory are, have to be compared to this other blue-eyed, broad-shouldered Ahroun. When she touches his cheek his eyes darken. When she's on top of him, lamps on and burning or in nearly pitch-black rooms, he does not call out her name right before he comes. Her hand very lightly strokes over the incredibly soft skin of his face, her eyebrows pulling together slightly, and Danicka lets go of comparable images, leaving only the one right in front of her.

Eventually her hand comes to rest, not buried in his hair but on the back of his neck, lightly set there with no more insistence or intention than the touch to his cheek.

"Either."

[Lukas] Her hand has left the orbit of his entirely, and his drops back down to prop an elbow on the center divide. He doesn't squirm away from her touch, though he doesn't reach toward her either.

A moment's thought. Then, one of his reluctant smiles, tugging up one corner of his mouth.

"I remember climbing the oak in your backyard. It was someone's birthday. All the girls were in lacey little dresses, and you decided to follow me up the tree. Then you fell out of it and skinned both knees and an elbow. I got in a lot of trouble. My dad thrashed me in front of everyone." He reaches forward, idly adjusts the direction of the heating vent. "At least, I think it was you. It might've been one of the others.

"Why do you ask?"

[Danicka] "Because I remember you," she says easily, her hand sliding away from the back of his neck. Her right elbow goes to rest alongside his on the center armrest, a small space, but big enough for two elbows. Danicka rests her chin on the heel of her hand, fingers curled by her cheek.

She doesn't confirm or deny the story he remembers, whether there really was an oak in the backyard or if it was her birthday or if the lacy dresses are something he made up, or if she fell out or if she ever saw his father beat the shit out of him. She leans, her body twisting in the front seat so that she is not craning her neck anymore, right leg tucking somewhat under left.

"And it's just strange sometimes, when I'll be around you and suddenly...think of something that happened then." Danicka pauses, smiling a faint smile that fades quickly. "That night Sam hit me --" not the night she brought the koláče, not the night he made her admit aloud and in English that she wanted him and not the Fenrir, not the night when Mrena bore down on her, but the night that his packmate split her lip and bruised her face, "-- I went home and I thought about this time that I made koláče, and you ate them until you threw up, and I cried so hard I nearly threw up and...juxtaposed against the bag of frozen peas on my face and wishing I didn't want to go to bed with you so badly, it was...surreal."

[Lukas] It says something when this is the closest thing they've had to a normal conversation in all the time they've known each other.

Or, well. Not all the time. All the time they've known each other in this city, then: since the twenty-fifth of January, which was, in the end, a scant month and a day ago.

Still. The closest thing they've had to a normal conversation, this, when he hasn't spent the entirety of the time suspicious, or accusatory, or holding something back, or saying far too much, or --

And it says something, too, that even this conversation has been interrupted again and again. When he grows suspicious. Or accusatory. Or holds something back. Or says far too much.

Or -- simply, as now -- closes up a little. Furrows his brow, and looks away.

"I wanted to stop him. I wanted to see how you were doing, the day after." Another man would say this as an excuse of sorts; as proof that he's not a bastard, not a cold unfeeling wretch. Lukas says it as what it is: a confession. "It was an effort not to. It wouldn't have been right." And, as if this is cause and effect both, "Sam is my packmate."

[Danicka] Granted, the conversations of a six- and an eight-year-old are not particularly deep, or meaningful, or likely to have anything to do with the sort of things this Danicka and this Lukas might talk about, fully grown and miles away from who and what they were fifteen years ago. For one thing, fifteen years ago it was only beginning to come to the surface that the dark-haired boy with no ability to stop himself from eating his favorite treat til it turned on him was going to become...what he is now. A Shadow Lord. A Full Moon. Beta of his pack.

Whatever else he is now. Danicka does not and could not claim to really know. Not completely.

But yes: it says something that this conversation full of its own fits and starts, beginnings of trains of thought that go nowhere, traded confessions, growing and then dissipating anger, and neither of them able to do as they might like to or have done before and simply belay further talk with mouths opening (but saying nothing) and hands reaching (but not to strike, or push away). That is usually how they cope, after all. With conversation. Normal, adult conversation. They fuck it into oblivion.

What she is about to say could sound mocking, the slow way she lets the words out. It isn't. She is trying to understand, even though he has to suspect that she may already: "So calling me the next day to see how I was doing...asking me if I was all right...would have been a betrayal?" There's a beat, where she doesn't quite manage to make herself wait for an answer. "You know you had the right to stop him," she says, her brow furrowing as though she genuinely does not understand that.

And as though she should, somehow. Kinfolk or not.

[Lukas] "No," he turns to her, "seeking you out time and again was a betrayal. Telling him he had my permission so long as you were willing, when I knew damn well you were not willing, was a betrayal. Wanting you in the first place -- that was the betrayal.

"Letting him hit you: that was my reparation. Though perhaps it wasn't fair to you."

[Danicka] She moves back as if the fire in him, or the fire that he is, just flared and spat sparks on her face. Danicka's elbow leaves the center armrest, arm still bent for a moment, but it unfolds thereafter. She just looks at him. A moment ago she was warm, almost languid, quietly conversing with him as though all these difficult topics were calming, rather than upsetting. Now she is looking at him like --

-- it's gone. Whatever it is she's seeing, that might be reflected in her eyes or her manner towards him, melts away even as her shoulder and arm are relaxing and her body twisting smoothly back to its original attitude. Danicka does not look away, not because she does not want to, but because --

-- well, he wouldn't know.

"I think it's time for me to go home," she says, almost...blithely.

[Lukas] "Danička, what?"

-- and not what as in, what did you say? What, in the same intonation as what was I supposed to do, lie? -- some sort of question, some incomplete query that makes no sense as it stands now, but is one he makes anyway.

And a second later, because it makes no sense, he adds: "What are you thinking?"

[Danicka] [Willpower]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 7, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Danicka] It takes two deep breaths for Danicka to even be able to answer. To her name, to his question, to him. She is still looking at him, did not do him the courtesy or the mercy of turing her head. Or maybe she just doesn't trust him, and will not take her eyes off of him because that, more than anything else. What he gets is almost worse: her eyes on him but not on his eyes. Her eyes almost colorless, or all colors, in the strange lighting of the parking lot, refusing to show him anything.

"...Do you even realize how fucked up that sounds?" she says slowly, parroting back to him his words from earlier. "You...hate that I don't trust you, but you have no problem with letting me be the meat shield taking punishments for things you feel guilty for? You won't hit me...oh, not thoughtlessly...but it's fine if a fucking Get of Fenris Full Moon breaks my face because you couldn't just tell him that I was your Kin, you wanted me, and you were taking me?"

She wants to. She wants to hit something. The steering wheel. Lukas. Anything. And yet she doesn't. She doesn't even clench her fists.

[Lukas] This is where any other man would dredge up his excuses. I wouldn't have let him break your face. I knew he wouldn't hurt you too badly. I would have stopped him if he hit you again.

And so on, and so forth.

What Lukas does: his lips compress. He turns his face away and back -- a loose, single motion, like an exaggerated shake of his head, and on the backswing he looks her in the eye. Or as near as he can get, because she isn't looking at him.

"I had two wrong choices, Danička," he says, low and flat, "and one of them was worse than the other. To claim my tribal rights over you, to attack my own packmate for laying a hand on you, then and there, after all the shit that happened -- that would have ripped my pack apart.

"But you're right. It was a cold, fucked-up thing for me to do, and you have every right to be angry. What do you want me to do?"

[Danicka] A dozen or more different responses burst in her mind, popping and unfurling like noisemakers on New Year's. Not a one of them is forgiving. Not a single one is understanding, or accepting. Danicka's thoughts dredge up past arguments, all of them aborted, leaving them pretending they never happened. Every time she is around him, for example, she has to pretend as though they never argued about Martin, about her still-present disgust with him over it. Every time she is around him, she pretends that it means nothing and does not bother her that he is a Fullblood of her tribe, that his auspice is the same as her mother's.

God, she pretends a lot with him, lying rampantly to herself even during those rare moments when she tells him the truth. The truth, slippery and subjective as it is, and every time she starts to think that it's worth it, or safe, or anything, she ends up like this, kicking herself. Furious. Revolted. Seeing her alone, seeing the difference between how she was with Sam or his other packmates and how she is with him, Lukas has to be aware of how far she pushes herself with him. Even if he doesn't ask why.

Because I want to.

Chci tě.

Danicka does not voice any of the answers that come to mind, about being given permission to feel angry, about tribal claims, attacks, the apparent frailty of his suposedly strong pack's bonds to one another, if it could be broken so. She tells herself that it is not an apology, just an admission, and her teeth feel like ice in her mouth. She thinks her skin must be glowing nearly white, she feels so hot. Her hands are stiff in her lap, but do not become fists. She stares ahead.

The last time she saw him she opened her eyes and saw his back, relaxed in sleep, and stared at it for the better part of a minute before nuzzling his shoulderblade and dragging herself into a sitting position on the enormous bed. Her hand had uncurled sometime during sleep, til her palm had come to rest on his chest. His hand was still on top of it when she woke, holding it there, but loosely. Lukas hadn't woken til she withdrew her arm, slipping it away from his waist. When she'd said goodbye, boots on as well as her coat, she'd crawled back up onto the bed, straddled his thighs, and kissed him in a way that made her think about staying. Not til morning. All morning.

And now this.

"I want you to get out of my car and let me go home." Beat. Breath. "I don't want to be here right now."

[Lukas] Whether it is an apology, or an admission, or even shame matters little in the end. What makes the difference is: if Lukas had the chance to live his life again, all those discrete moments Danicka cannot abide, he would, if he could, do everything exactly the way he'd done them.

He would shove Martin's head in a toilet again. He would stand by and let Sam turn Danicka's face six shades of yellow and purple again. And when that's the bottom-line truth, perhaps all the assorted emotions tacked on to it really don't make any difference at all.

Get out of my car, she says. It is possible that she has set another record here. It is wholly possible that no other woman or kinwoman has spoken to Lukas like this before. His anger is immediate, a flare of it in his eyes, in the way he looks at her. He draws a breath in; in the end he says nothing. Doesn't argue, doesn't reprimand, doesn't threaten, doesn't warn; sure as hell doesn't ask her when he can see her again.

(What was it she thought last time: could always be never?)

No -- in lieu of all that, Lukas simply turns away and pulls the latch on the door. A gust of cold seeps in around him as he shoulders out of the car. He shuts the door behind him with a firm push of the palm. He does not slam it.