just go in.

[Danicka Musil] The canopy over the doors of the restaurant is black, off-kilter block letters in white proclaiming it as ZEALOUS...contemporary american cuisine. There are trees sticking up out of the sidewalk, one on each side of where the doors are situated. Danicka stands between them, the branches empty of leaves but bearing strings of thin white lights. The River North neighborhood is known as friendly, and they're not far from where Danicka's apartment complex is located. Inside the restaurant is tranquil, lofty, earth-toned, and...closed. It is the perfect place for a special occasion for a couple, it's a fantastic place for an energetic dinner with a group before going out to clubs, and they are not even open until midnight. It is nearly two in the morning now, and the doors are opening, a white-sleeved arm holding it for the woman coming out.

She is laughing at something he's said, making him laugh at something she's said, and her eyes are bright from wine, her laughter easy. So is the cook's; she was not there keeping the kitchen open late with friends. For some reason, the blonde in the heels whose coat is still lying open was there for nearly three hours after their closing, drinking with the staff. The door is pulled closed behind her, the locks fastened, and she stands on the sidewalk reaching into her bag for a slim champagne-colored box. A cigarette is pulled, an engraved copper-encased lighter already at hand. Danicka puts the cigarette between her lips, lights it, and drops the lighter back into her purse.

The first drag makes her sigh.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] 2am on a weeknight is closing time for your average urban nightclub, if they bothered to open at all. Who the fuck goes out clubbing on a monday night, anyway?

Vampires and werewolves. That's who.

Well; Lukas isn't a vampire, but he is a werewolf. And anyway, he likes it better on a weeknight, when the weekend bridge&tunnel crew -- or whatever you'd call a bridge and tunnel out here in this midwestern city that has neither bridges nor tunnels of note -- doesn't descend in noisy, camera-flashy, sloppy-drunk droves to clog up the room and the bar and the dance floor and the couches. He likes it better on a weeknight, up in the dimly lit vip lounge with its sectional couches and its nameless dj spinning some downtempo shit, two or three high-alcohol cocktails swimming in his blood.

Not trawling for redheads or blondes or sex, period, and not there with friends. Not there to see and be seen. Just hanging out by himself, having a drink by himself, absorbing the ambiance, and remembering what it was like back three or four years ago when they were all in NYC, or Boston, and Ed was still in school -- a werewolf, at Harvard, that bit always made Lukas laugh -- and they used to come to places like this together, he and Ed, places like this or places with back rooms where highstakes games went down, and they'd drink and gamble and watch the girls and talk about life and the future and their plans and their visions and ...

... just hang out, just be there in one another's company, two young guys, two young wolves with their whole damn lives ahead of them, even if it was a short one.

2am is closing time, but he leaves before then, the same way he came, which is alone. A little more inebriated, but not drunk. Not even close. It's freezing cold outside and he buttons his overcoat over his distressed jeans and his close-cut vest, his rumpled woven shirt with its open collar and its shirt-tails showing under the tail of the vest. Lukas dresses with a care that borders on vanity, only it's nothing close to vanity because he doesn't need the approbation of others to know he passes inspection, and when he tugs the brim of his newsboy cap down over his eyes he's sharp.

Parking's hard to find in a nightspot like this. He parked three blocks over, the MKZ big and somber at the curb, and on his way over he passes a trendy little place called ZEALOUS, and he's not even within half a block when he sees who's standing out in front, smoking a cigarette.

He doesn't know how to approach her, really; he doesn't know how to interact with her outside of the phone calls, the prearranged meetings, the short terse sentences that are almost antagonistic when they look at each other, and the sprawling dialogues that say almost nothing about themselves when they watch fish swim in spirals. This doesn't slow him down at all. He doesn't change his pace. He comes to a stop within arm's reach, and beneath the brim of his newsboy cap his eyes are pale and alert; they look her over.

"What are you doing here?" He's curious; not antagonistic. Perhaps there should be a 'yet' at the end of that sentence.

[Danicka Musil] Danicka is wearing black ankle boots with slim heels. Black stockings that disappear underneath the hem of her dress, a slim and simple indigo number that appears to be modeled after a long-sleeved t-shirt in everything but the fact that it's made of cashmere. Around her neck and hanging almost to her navel (he could pinpoint where it is were she covered in ten more layers, has felt it under his hands, has flicked it with his tongue) is a slender chain that could be silver, could be white gold. The end of her black revere coat hits her knees, just a few inches longer than the dress.

Her hair is curlier than usual, the natural waves augmented by product and scrunching rather than ironed out with brush and hair dryer. With her eyes almost glittering, with the curl of smoke rising upward in front of her face, and with the completely unabashed and unafraid manner in which she stands in front of the restaurant now regardless of the hour, she looks untamed. Not wild; that's different. She could say a thing or two about what taming means, what it's really about, and in her current state could go on a tangent about how this is related to the goddess Hera retreating every year to take a certain bath.

In short: Danicka is a little drunk. She has been drinking wine for over three hours with cooks and waitstaff who know a thing or two about wine. It is a weeknight and most people with any sense at all are not out and about right now, when tomorrow is Tuesday and not Saturday, when they do not have Sunday to recover from a hangover. But Danicka. She does not seem in a hurry to be anywhere, even back to her car -- wherever it is. She could be waiting for a cab. In any case, she stands where the lights hung in the trees rubs gently against her slightly flushed cheeks, and smokes a Dunhill, and watches him approach because ten yards away how could she help but notice him?

She couldn't. Her mouth splits into a grin. The last time he saw her she had her arm around Gabriella Bellamonte outside of Planned Parenthood. The last time he saw her she wasn't really smiling, she wasn't drunk, and this is the first sign he's ever had that she even knows what to do with a cigarette. The last time he saw her they exchanged perhaps three sentences, altogether. It is as if it never happened, though. There is no one else here, Garou or Kin, and by now they have both surely realized that it makes a difference.

"Kvasnička," Danicka says by way of greeting, each syllable of his family name born from her throat, barely engaging the lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue. "Your sister's svátek is t--...no, wait...was yesterday. I hope you sent her flowers."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker]

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (fuck.)

[Danicka Musil] [Correction: This totally isn't the first sign he's ever had that she knows what to do with a cigarette. TOTALLY MY BAD.]

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Kvasnička, she calls him, as though tonight his human family defined him. He tilts his head at her, a curiously animal form of curiosity, and then she tells him it is -- was -- his sister's name day, and there's a second, just a split-instant, where there's a flicker of ohshit in his eyes.

Then he covers, smoothly.

"I saw her just a couple days back. We had coffee." With the cap pulled over his hair, his jawline seems more defined, stubbled tonight. His eyes inspect her with something like interest, and that's a lie, because Lukas is a lot more than something-like-interested in Danicka. "Anyway, she's in New York right now." Pause. "She says hi, by the way. She had some sort of horror story regarding crayons and coloring in grey."

He looks up at the restaurant; back at her.

"They close at 2?"

[Danicka Musil] Everything he says, Danicka absorbs with the affable cheer of someone who is so drunk it's possible that she may not remember portions of this conversation. The smile on her face stays where it is as he speaks, and there isn't any flicker in her eyes suggesting that she is tracking back in her mind to when a couple of days ago was or whether or not she ever heard that Lukas's sister moved away from New York in the first place. She restrains a chuckle about the horror story, but her shoulders lift and fall with the chortling sound that never makes its way out of her body.

He glances at the restaurant, and Danicka looks over her shoulder at the doors, then turns back to him. One-handed, she starts buttoning up her coat. "They close at eleven," she informs him, glancing down to guide her fingers. It takes awhile to do this: she has only one hand, as mentioned, and she is drunk, which has also come up.

"You never answered my question," she says after a moment, still fighting with her buttons and giving a shiver that she doesn't seem to notice.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "You never answered mine," he counters, lightly.

He watches her fight with her buttons for another moment, or perhaps he's just watching her and thinking to himself: this woman is drunk off her ass. Or close, anyway. Then he takes a step closer, and both his hands are free, though encased in leather gloves. He brushes her hands aside and does up her coat for her with a deft, swift attentiveness.

"What was the question, anyway? Whether or not I sent Anežka flowers? Because I didn't."

[Danicka Musil] "I just did," she insists, as he's stepping forward.

Danicka's forehead is furrowed in a scowl at one button in particular that is proving more difficult than one drunken set of fingertips can handle. He has seen this woman pound four shots of high-quality vodka like it was water before getting up and going home without so much as a sway to her step or a roll of her eyes. Unless she was just very, very good at hiding her inebriation then, he could make a reasonable guess that she has had a ridiculous amount of alcohol, enough to make someone far larger than she is more than a bit tipsy.

This is probably why she flails loosely at his helping hands, her own moving in a scolding motion to try and bat them away, but it doesn't take more than a few seconds before she just gives up and lets him button her coat up for her to the collar. Danicka does hold her cigarette off to the side while he does this, however, rather than dropping ash on his wrists or blowing smoke into his face. No thank you, though.

"Nooo," is her elongated, mild, response. This is how she talks to a child, but not one who is getting on her last nerve, not one who is misbehaving. This is the voice used when playing a guessing game. Twenty questions. (Is it smaller than a breadbox? Yes. Is it bigger than a breadbox? Also yes.) "I asked you ages ago how your parents were, I told you my father had wondered, and then you dragged me out of the cafe by the wrist and you never told me."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] His eyes flick up at hers, an impression of pale blue.

"Didn't I?" He finishes with the last button and steps back. "How much have you had to drink?"

[Danicka Musil] The moment Lukas steps back, Danicka brings the cigarette back to her mouth and takes a drag. Exhaling, she ashes it off to the side with a flick, tipping her head towards her left shoulder and looking up at him. "They aren't dead, are they? I'd feel awful."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Of course not." He dismisses the possibility thoughtlessly, until of course he remembers her mother is dead, and then grows quiet. "They're fine," he replies. "It's my father's birthday on Thursday. How much have you had to drink?"

[Danicka Musil] Everyone knows her mother is dead. No, that's a lie. Every single Garou for miles upon miles knew when her mother died. Their Kin knew. The most important people in Danicka's life knew when the Alpha of Storm Warning was struck down, and though she never heard it, never could have heard it, the Penumbra rang with howls hour upon hour, songs mingling with grief, sorrow mingling with relief, relief with regret, regret with fury, fury with barely-concealed joy. But everyone else, the mortals she could not help but know, who knew that her mother was still 'young', mid-forties or so, and robustly healthy...what did they know?

What Danicka told them. And Danicka told them lies. So Lukas calls her a liar. So what? Every Kinfolk is, at some point, and must be good at it. Danicka is just...better.

Anyway. Her mother is dead, and Lukas knows it because by the time he Changed they were spoon-feeding Ahroun cubs stories about Night Warder, setting her up as an idol, or because they are Shadow Lords, a legend to surpass, a legacy to grind to dust under the heel of their own ambition. Of course his parents aren't dead. They're Kinfolk, fragile and frail and yet likely to outlive the Garou unless they are hit by a bullet or taken by a knife or struck by a car or any number of things that can kill a human body without a finger-snap of warning. They're fine, and his father's birthday is coming up, and Danicka smiles at him when he repeats his question in a way that makes her face light up, glowing with some nameless and bizarre delight.

"Do you have any idea," she inquires, speaking slowly so that her words do not slur, "what a silly question that is? I have clearly had enough to intoxicate me beyond reason, and yet not enough that I'm going to throw up on your shoes. Or into your very dapper hat."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He stares at her for a moment, somewhere between exasperated and -- somehow, unexpectedly -- amused. And while Lukas has also been drinking, Lukas understands moderation, and Lukas has the benefit of a Garou constitution. He is not drunk. He is only a little buzzed, and even that is being slapped away by the cold and the wind.

"Come on," he says, and he puts his hand on her elbow to steer her down the sidewalk. "I'm driving you home. Where are you parked?"

[Danicka Musil] This question makes her laugh. "I...don't..." but the word 'know' doesn't make it. Because he puts his hand on her arm, to guide her as they walk, and the laughter fades off with the word as her mottled green eyes drop to his hand.

When Danicka removes her elbow from Lukas's hand, she does not do so by jerking her arm away so hard that she nearly falls over. She does not shoot a comically ferocious glare at him or snap at him not to touch her, or that she can do it by herself. No. Danicka takes a step with him as he begins steering her, turns her body towards his, and gently reaches over to take his hand away. She watches her hands as she does this, rather than him, and when her arm is freed, she shifts her cigarette to her other hand, to her right.

She slips her left arm around the crook of his elbow, as though to say: No, silly, this is how you do it. and, that done, will proceed with him. "I was going to walk," she informs him. "It's not even half a mile."

Nevermind that it's below freezing. Nevermind that it's Chicago at 2 am. Nevermind that good location or not, she is drunk enough that taking Lukas's arm is perhaps the best idea she has had in the last fifteen minutes. She was going to walk.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas looks down as she removes his hand, and his temper begins to rear its head, and then she slips her hand between his arm and his side, and his temper settles again. His hand is in his pocket, and he bends his elbow just enough to give Danicka's hand a point of contact.

He does this as though he were used to women taking his arm like this; as though he were used to escorting women like this, though the truth is, of all the women he knows and has known, it is likely he has only escorted his sister, or his mother, anywhere quite like this -- and that, possibly, at the insistence of his father. Because it's the polite, gentlemanly thing to do. Because that's how it's done if you want to grow up a good man.

Well; he didn't grow up a good man. He grew up a good garou.

She was going to walk, she says. He seems to be repeating himself a lot tonight: "Where are you parked? Did you drive here at all?"

[Danicka Musil] "I just said I don't know," Danicka says, though she didn't actually say this. She waves her right hand around slightly as she exasperatedly tells Lukas that she has no idea at the moment where her car is. "It's somewhere...around. It'll be fine. I sure as shit shouldn't be driving it; I'm drunk."

As if they haven't already covered this. Or as if they did, and Lukas just keeps forgetting. Danicka is the one communicating clearly tonight; he's probably being deliberately obtuse. He's persnickety like that.

She smokes, and sighs slightly when she breathes out. Then, out of nowhere: "You're probably the worst werewolf boyfriend I've ever had." And for some reason this makes her laugh. It's very, very close to how she laughed when she walked into the common room and found a portion of his pack hitting each other with pillows.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] I'm drunk, she informs him again, as if this were news to him. He restrains the urge to roll his eyes. That in and of itself doesn't surprise him -- what surprises him is that if he rolled his eyes, he would have done it goodnaturedly.

What surprises him is that, after running into her plastered in front of a 3-hours-closed restaurant on a monday night after she's been in there drinking god knows what with god knows whom, and while he walks her down an icy sidewalk with the wind tearing at his bones and Ms. Danicka Musil laughing and smoking and totally incapable of coherent conversation, he thinks he might actually be ...

... enjoying himself.

Right.

I'm drunk, she'd said. That was just a second or two ago. These thought processes ricochet through his mind faster than bullets, because he's not drunk, and his brain hasn't been pickled in ethanol and ethanol byproducts. He replies, levelly, with some edge of amusement underneath that she probably doesn't even hear in her state: "Good for you. I'm driving you home."

And then she says: worst werewolf boyfriend, and under her hand, his arm tenses for just a second.

A few steps later he says, deceptively light, "I wasn't aware you'd had a comparison."

[Danicka Musil] He's seen her this drunk before; she was coming up the stairs with his packmate, nearly running into the blond boy's broad back when he stopped suddenly at the doorway. Sam had been holding her hand; her dress had flashed green silk at him, and she had not looked over her shoulder at Lukas when they left the common room. Danicka had not fallen flat on her face then. In fact, she had fucked his packmate four times, and he had counted, and she hadn't even dozed off before getting into his car and letting him drive her home.

Nobody knows that she showered in less than three minutes, then fell face-forward onto her own bed and did not even bother to unwrap from her towel before she was unconscious. She remembers everything. Danicka doesn't stumble now, though the only reason she's walking a straight line is because Lukas is, and she's holding onto Lukas if not leaning on him, dragging on his arm. The woman can hold her liquor quite well.

On another night or with another woman there is little doubt that Lukas would be annoyed. His eye-roll would be staving off jaw-clenching annoyance, or worse. Danicka, oblivious as she may seem, appears to be caught up with him in whatever surprising enjoyment there is to be had, but she is not strictly trying to entertain, or compliment, or amuse. She is, after all...drunk.

"O-kay," she agrees, settling the matter of him driving her home for all of less-than-half-a-mile. Danicka looks around as they walk, as though she's never been here before, or as if she simply likes the glass, the brick, the look of the city at two in the morning when someone is blocking a great deal of the wind from hitting her square in the side of the face. She dropped her cigarette a few steps back, and only notices this when she reaches up her right hand to tuck a few hairs back from her face, behind her ear.

Doing so, Danicka blinks, looks at her empty fingers, then shrugs and goes about tucking her hair back.

"I don't," is her honestly light reply, hand going down and then into her coat pocket, where it will be warm. "Which...if you think about it, also makes you the best!" This train of thought takes effort, takes rolling her eyes up at the sky to ask its opinion on the matter, before her gaze careens back down like the cars on a roller coaster, swooping back up to his profile with a grin. She bops her head against his bicep. "Good for you, sir!"

[Danicka Musil] [Correction: "I haven't" rather than "I don't"]

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] On another night, or with another woman, it's highly possible Lukas would have pulled out his cell phone, called a taxi, and then left her to wait for it by herself and/or walk home and/or freeze to death in the gutter as she liked. But that's not how it plays out here. He walks, she follows along, and at least she doesn't stumble, at least she doesn't slip on the icy and drag him down in a heap. There's that, at least.

He has to turn his face toward the street when she starts up again, not to hide a grimace of annoyance but to hide that he was biting his lips to hold back a smile. He controls it, and when it's under control, he's nearly at his car and the arm she's holding on to bends under her grasp as he digs his keys out, transfers them to his left hand.

"Thank you." Totally droll, and meanwhile, his mind is tucking this bit of information away, and he's thinking to himself he shouldn't be so fucking pleased by it, because honestly, what does it mean? Absolutely nothing. The woman lives with another man. Not just any man, a fucking coke possibly-ex-addict that Kate may or may not be pursuing. What a mess. He finishes, "Do I get a trophy?"

The taillights of the Lincoln flash on the quiet street, and even at this distance, five or ten yards, they can hear the locks unlocking. He puts his keys in his pocket, the left one this time, and reaches down with his free hand to pull the passenger's door open.

"Get in."

[Danicka Musil] To be the best when you are the only does not take much. To be the best when you know that the moon is, as far as they are concerned, a clock ticking down the time when he will be anything to her, means absolutely nothing. Every single night she goes to bed somewhere up in that lovely building he dropped her off at weeks ago, and Ilari Martin is next door to her or down the hall or maybe --

-- it doesn't bear thinking about. She was furious with Lukas because in her mind he mistreated the man. She was cold, she was distant, she did not want anything to do with him and certainly did not want to be loyal to him because he touched a hair on that man's head. Now he knows, and she is oblivious to his knowing, that she lives with him. And he does not know that when she called and left a voicemail telling him she wanted to see him, after that frustrating encounter at the Blue Chalk Cafe, her decision to do so was somehow connected to the fucking coke possibly ex-addict being checked into detox.

Somehow.

Danicka's head bops on his bicep and stays there while he turns away to hide the fact that he wants to smile. She hums a thoughtful, but meaningless note, looking up at the sky again and blinking slowly, somewhat drowsily. She doesn't move when jostled as he shifts his keys to his left; she only leans her head on him and not her weight; she does return her head to the anatomical position when the door is opened.

"Okay," she says again, without moving to do as he says, "but it'll cost you."

As though allowing him to drive her home is some sort of favor.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] And now he's exasperated again, and amused beneath it. He turns to face her at right angles, exhaling a faint snort.

"Is that so? And what exactly am I meant to be giving up in payment?"

[Danicka Musil] Her head lolls to the side, a smile slowly stretching her lips, brightening her face. Her mouth doesn't open; the look is almost impish, or would be. If she had a dainty turned-up nose or pursed lips or wide round eyes. She simply looks pleased. With him, or with herself, or with whatever the hell she drank tonight. "Think about it," she says, gamely.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas smirks. He leans in. He says, low: "Get in the goddamn car."

[Danicka Musil] When she laughs, usually, she laughs in full awareness of how many people are watching her and who they are. The fact that she, to put it bluntly, lost her shit because of the Unbroken Circle's pillowfight is more notable than any of them could have guessed. It isn't that Danicka smiles infrequently or comes off as humorless or generally bored with life; it's just that there's always a tension there, the knowledge that she is always under some sort of scrutiny, that someone is looking at her and if there is judgment to be found in anyone's eyes it will probably be: guilty.

Laughing, though, freely and without intent, is a completely different thing. She could stop herself if she wanted to. She could turn a grin into a smirk, and in fact this is one of the deceptions she is most practiced at simply by virtue of having dealt with at least one child in the past. You can't laugh at a child's antics when they are being disobedient, you have to hold it in until it won't serve as reinforcement. Danicka is extremely good at not laughing, or not smiling, when she does not want to.

But she wants to. Her smile breaks into a grin as he leans in and tells her in a low voice to get in the goddamn car. Her shoulders hunch up and her nose wrinkles and she outright giggles, her eyes squinting from what looks like sheer glee.

Yes, there is wine on her breath, and more. There is the wraith of her Dunhill. She smells like alchol and cigarettes and Danicka, who went from lying naked and slightly sweaty in his bed (smiling sleepily as he left) to showing up at Planned Parenthood with a latte (caramel) to this, kissing him quickly while he is within reach. As a kiss it is inexpert, but the fact that it is as soft and full and firm as it is even while she is smashed is just further evidence of what he already knows she is capable of even in altered states. Her lips land on his lower lip mostly, verging to the corner of his mouth, to his chin, but that's close enough.

"You get in the goddamn car," she counters, almost petulantly, not even trying to be seductive. "Much easier to get on your lap if you get in first." Beat. Then sagely, with a slow nod: "I've done research."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] She laughs, and not for the first time tonight, and without the -- if not restraint, then awareness -- that marks almost every one of her other laughs. If Lukas knew anything about children and how children grow up, which unfortunately he does not, he might recognize that sort of ginger alertness. Children from broken homes laugh like that. Children whose parents neglect and smother them by turns laugh a little like that. Children who are being abused laugh like that, or not at all. Children who are not happy, not completely whole, laugh like that, with eyes that suss out how many, who, where, if they're all laughing with, or at, and --

-- and Lukas would know nothing about all this. She giggles at him, and he should be annoyed, really, by the alcohol on her breath and the idiocy of her refusing to get into the (goddamn) car, but he's facing her, and the corners of his mouth turn up in response before he can school his expression. Then it's too late to try, so his smirk becomes a smile, and that's when she raises up those three or so inches between.

The kiss is unexpected, and he does not have time to straighten his back and bend his neck. One hand is still atop the door, the other loose at his side, and he leaves them there. It's a single kiss, a closing of their lips over one another's, but it's slow and warm, and it makes him close his eyes and angle his head, and the brim of his cap taps her forehead. When it's done he looks at her for a moment, and then she counters with something like petulance, and he grins suddenly. It's as unexpected as the kiss -- as warm, but quicker, a lightning flash of a smile.

He straightens up, and instead of readjusting his cap, just takes it off and sails it through the open door into the backseat. She starts giving him reasons for why he should be getting in the goddamn car, not her, and he realizes she's misread his intent, or maybe she's read his intent under his stated intent, but either way:

"No," he says, firmly; Lukas is not as good at suppressing his smiles to prevent reinforcement of unwanted behavior. "Get in the car, Danička. It's ten below freezing and half past two, and I'm taking you home."

He stops waiting for her to get in. Instead, he circles around the back of the car to get in the driver's side instead. The interior is dark, with touches of wood trim; nice, but entry-level-luxury, not quite in the game. The car rides a little lower after Lukas gets in, and he shuts his door, fits the key to the ignition.

[Danicka Musil] She isn't a fool, but she is currently drunk. God takes care of fools and drunks and supposedly children. Danicka is not the most stubborn person in the world. She resists everything except temptation, just like the old saying. She bends her neck to the will of others, absorbs blows to the face and the threat of her own dismemberment without tears or screaming, and sometimes it seems she lies as much for the sake of others as she does for her own. Still: she refuses to get in his car, and when he insists, she kisses him.

And it's very sweet, despite the mix of flavors behind her lips and the mingling of scents, not all of which are particularly appealing, and the fact that it seems like she was just waiting for him to get close enough for her to do so. His smile is warm, and warming, and for a moment Danicka stands there looking not pleased with herself, not petulant or impish or amused but...happy.

It's difficult, so it has to go away. Before he even gets to his No, which seems to be a struggle to say without grinning, Danicka's look of simple and unadulterated pleasure falters and then disappears, like a candle that only flickers once before it's blown out. Shouldn't have left the window open.

"Pfft. No, it's no--" she's beginning to say (argue), but then he walks around the car to get in. Danicka stands there by the open passenger door, shivers, and then decides to get in. She drops her purse to the floorboard in front of the seat she has sat in several times already now, pulls the door closed -- with some effort -- and immediately starts to unbutton her coat.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The air between has changed now, and Lukas can't rightly say if he's relieved or disappointed. Since neither really matters in the end, or should matter in the end, he merely turns the key in the ignition. The engine turns over and catches quickly enough -- the car's only two years old, thereabouts, and he was careful when he bought it. The heat is on, but the engine is too cold, and nothing comes out of the vents.

There's a little snow on the windshield. It's too cold for it to have melted and refrozen into ice, and a single bat of the wipers clears his view. He turns on the defoggers front and back, a preemptive strike, and then pulls away from the curb. When he arrived he'd had to parallel the car in, but the street is empty now, and it's a simple matter of driving forward.

He's silent for a while, consulting with himself. Then, quietly, "We could go somewhere, if you want."

[Danicka Musil] The woman beside him has not put on her safety belt. Bad. She has unbuttoned her coat all the way, undoing all her hard work and all his quick attention. It's easier when she doesn't have to stand up and hold a conversation and button her coat at the same time. Wrecking things, tearing them apart, is always easier than putting them back together. Easier to rip the clothes than to mend them, easier to break the wall than to build it, easier to open the box than to close it once all the demons and devils and pain have gotten free.

She is slouching, and she doesn't care; her posture does not really tell anyone anything true about her, any more than sitting up straight would tell them the truth. There is no 'them', though, not right now. There's Lukas, and she waited for him in his room and would have held him, just held him, until a quarter to seven if he had not slid his hand over her abdomen and lowered his mouth to her breast and made her scream into his shoulder, so really she doesn't have to worry about whether she slouches or not, he already knows that most of what she says and does is a lie and the moon becoming full won't change that.

Danicka is looking out the window as he drives. The last time, she looked at him. They haven't shared a ride since the last time he drove her home. She's always taken her own car. Last time he drove her, she watched him most of the way. This time she watches Chicago, and catches her breath as though she's been running through the streets, not walking along the sidewalk.

"Are you above fucking me in a car, then, or just worried about messing up the leather?" she asks, swiveling her head around to look at him. Her voice is, at least as far as he can tell, genuinely curious.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker]

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (HAIL MIGHTY KAHSEENO!)

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (....!!!)

[cricket] (*MOCKS*)

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He looks at her; and then he looks at her again, and then he turns his eyes forward and grips the wheel in both hands, exhales shortly. He's tense now, and she can read that easily. The reason behind it -- that's harder to read, chiefly because it's, at heart, a misunderstanding of massive scale.

There's a silence, and it's not companionable.

"I don't have to explain myself to you," he replies then, coolly.

[Danicka Musil] Were Danicka sober, she would most certainly be wearing her seatbelt. Then again, were Danicka sober, she would very likely be in her own car right now, driving herself home or following Lukas somewhere. If she were sober, she would probably not have stayed at the restaurant til nearly two in the morning, she would already be home, making sure not to wake her roommate or the friend that is staying with them for awhile. She would have changed, logged on, and spent a few hours killing Alliance Assholes before crawling into bed.

Oh, and masturbating.

Instead, she is drunk, she does not currently know where her car is, and is not aware that they will be pulling up to her building in roughly two minutes. Sober, she would potentially be annoyed with his sudden coldness. Drunk, she tips her head to the side, blinks, and then shakes her head.

"No," his Kinfolk (his passenger, his fuckbuddy or lover or Gaia-only knows) says easily, agreeing. She looks back out the window.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He's changed utterly in the last 20 seconds, sometime between that first glance and that second, her asking him if he was above fucking her in a car, or just worried about messing up the leather, and he answering her with a non-answer. He has shut down, locked up, and his profile is hard and closed up now, his attention fixed ahead.

The silence goes on. It's not very far to her building, not very far at all: he can see it already, a few blocks ahead, a spire of glass and concrete that catches the dawn light and throws it back in razored blue, but in this darkness, now, is simply black.

"I didn't want to fuck you in my car and then leave you at the curb," he says then, all of a sudden. They're about a block away now, but the streets are empty, and he stops at a stop sign and simply does not keep driving.

[Danicka Musil] There had been no judgment in the question Danicka had asked, no insinuation that he thought himself too good (for her), no irritation that she wasn't getting her way (with him), nothing. She had been, as she seemed, simply curious. Gabriella had responded almost immediately to her arrival at Planned Parenthood, seeking a momentary shelter of acceptance and understanding. Martin can act completely stupid at home and would never need to be embarrassed even if he were inclined to be so, which he isn't.

Danicka is one of the least judgmental people living in the city at this time, and Lukas doesn't realize that because he is -- for some goddamn reason -- held to a different standard. Maybe because he is Garou. Maybe because he is an Ahroun. Maybe because he is a Shadow Lord. Maybe because of who he is, which is not just the Beta of the Unbroken Circle. Who a person is becomes something core, something beyond circumstance of genetics or upbringing, but this isn't understood by anyone and the only people who come close to being able to describe it are priests and poets and most of them are mad anyway.

Regardless: what he knows is that in the past she has been disappointed in him, or disgruntled with him, and there really is no other explanation needed for why he reads plain inquisitiveness as an underhanded attack. It's understandable. And she has no comment on it, watching her street come into --

"Hey, I live near here!" she says at one point, brightly, her eyes lighting up not with surprise but with delight that she recognized it. Good for her.

It's another silent minute before Lukas says anything, stopping at the stop sign and ceasing his driving. Danicka blinks, taking her eyes off the window and looking at him. She leans forward, looks out the windshield, and then leans back and looks at him again. As uncomplicated as she seems in this state, as...almost childlike...Danicka is not actually a child, and she is not actually uncomplicated, and she is still...her.

"Mmm," she hums, a thoughtful and low sound, taking this in. She turns her head forward, looking at the dash. "But...it's not like you'd never see me again," Danicka finally says, shaking her head a little, mulling this over. Her eyes, again, follow the turn of her head to find him, but are slow to catch up. "It's not like you'd be stuffing a hundred-dollar bill in my bra and telling me to get out, or something."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] She points out that she lives near here, delighted in herself, and this time the glance he casts her is short, silent, annoyed. They drive on, and then they don't drive on, and then he speaks, and then she responds, and Lukas has already fatally misread her, and this only makes him angrier.

"Cut the passive-aggressive bullshit," he snaps, "all right?"

[Danicka Musil] Her forehead furrows, her eyebrows drawing together. "I'm not being passive-aggressive," she answers, and she does not sound dazed, or flighty, or youthful at the moment. Nor does she strictly sound angry. She sounds firm, level, and even if the last sound of that emphasized word is a bit too harsh at the tip of her tongue, rough against her teeth. "I'm trying to figure out how you went from..." the words are not coming, even-toned as she may sound, because her brain is awash in dizzying chemicals, and Danicka pinches her eyes shut for a second, "...like, good to...this. What the hell."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] How you went from-- and he cuts her off there: "How I went from this to that? One minute you're kissing me on the curb and the next you're -- slouching in my fucking car, demanding to know why I won't fuck you in it as if fucking you in it is some sort of ... test of faith, and you won't even put your goddamn seatbelt on."

[Danicka Musil] "Co to blejes?" she spits out, incredulously. "Demanding? Test of..."

Danicka lifts her right hand, presses the heel of her hand to her forehead. "I just wanted to know why. Jesus Christ."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] They're still parked at the stop sign. There's a streetlight cat-corner from them, and by its light the ice on the streets sheen and glisten. She presses her hand to her forehead and he's looking at her now, the shadow of her hand is on her face. There are shadows on his face too: in the furrow of his brow, in his glowering regard.

"Well, I told you why. Now stop digging."

[Danicka Musil] Her hand drops, and she turns to look at him. She shouldn't care about this. About arguing with him. About the fact that he's angry -- or something -- and she doesn't understand why. No misunderstanding is a one-way street. Danicka's hands are in her lap and the comment he made about her seatbelt, which was completely out of left field at the time, goes unquestioned.

All she does is stare at him now, though, her lips slightly parted because that makes it easier to breathe, her expression still rampantly confused. And frustrated. She's not immune to annoyance, to letting something like this get under her skin. She thinks she should be. She thinks that there is absolutely no reason she shouldn't just get out of his car here and walk the next few blocks to her building.

Except.

Why don't you stay til morning?

"...Oh." Suddenly it's much harder to breathe than it was a second ago. Something dawns, her brow smooths, her eyebrows separate, and she blinks twice in rapid succession, breathing in so deeply that she has to sit up a little better. Danicka can't even look at him when it hits her, so she looks way, and bites the inside corner of her lower lip, gnawing for a second. She takes another deep breath, and tries to will her heart rate back to something reasonable.

It isn't working.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] " 'Oh', what?"

Danicka has had her moment of light. Lukas is still in the dark, and not happy about it.

[Danicka Musil] She releases her lip and licks both of them before turning to look at him again. Danicka's mouth opens to speak. She closes it, frowning tightly for a moment, then opens it again: "If you took me somewhere you'd want me to stay." Again.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] This turns his head away as if she'd slapped him. He stares through the windshield now. They've been parked at the stop sign for a minute; two; three. His hands flex on the wheel.

"I want to spend some time with you," he says, roughly. "I want -- "

A break. The car's engine idles smoothly, and there's warmth coming out of the vents now, and he'd turned the defrosters on early enough that the windshield isn't fogged over, nor the back window, though there's a bit on the rear windows, in the rear seat.

"Yeah. I'd want you to stay."

[Danicka Musil] The realization that has kept coming into his head since that night at the W hasn't made it into the air between them yet. It's one of the few things on Lukas's mind that has turned over and over and somehow has managed to remain locked away, nice and tight. He does not want this to end, and Danicka doesn't know it. She isn't even guessing at it. Something like it, perhaps -- she's not blind -- but there is no telling how she would react if, at some horrifically inopportune moment he opened his mouth and it spilled out of him like a hundred other damning truths.

Like saying to his pack-brother, of the woman standing dazed with a bright red mark on her cheek, that he wanted her the moment he saw her. That he knew he wanted her and gave his permission anyway, that he knew he wanted her and that she did not want Sam and yet put it aside, that when he knew she wanted him back he could not -- as he'd hoped -- let go of it. Of her.

Danicka swallows, her lips together, and then parts them to take a breath. Rather quietly, she says: "...I wasn't testing you. I'm not that stupid." A pause, but there's more: there's got to be more, an answer to what she's realizing and what he's just said. "You wouldn't have had to just leave me at the curb, Lukáš. I would have gone with you."

She blinks, and looks straight at him now, without looking away or seeming uneasy. Her shoulder rises and falls in a shrug. "I just thought it'd be hot."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He turns to face her after the first sentences out of her mouth, and if she's still drunk, which she must be, it's harder to tell now. Neither of them are smiling now. It's hard to remember if they'd ever smiled at one another -- tonight, ever. He watches her as she speaks, though at one point his eyes lower for a moment, and then return to her face.

She's looking at him by then. They look at each other. She says she thought it'd be hot.

To fuck him. In his car. On the street. Where anyone could happen by and see. And somehow that's different from fucking in a hotel room with the window drapes wide open; different from fucking in a motel room with all the blankets on the ground and the walls thin enough for all their neighbors to hear what was going on. Different from fucking in his room at the brotherhood with a pillow behind the headboard to keep it from slamming against the wall.

Lukas is not a shy man, nor a prude, nor a puritan. But he is intensely private, and the thought is vaguely scandalous to him, vaguely unthinkable. He's jealous of his privacy, jealous of keeping his innermost thoughts and emotions his own, except, of course, when he spews it out in unstoppable avalanches of truth.

Anyway. Moment's past now. He says nothing, and there doesn't seem to be anything to say. He looks through the windshield and exhales. It's almost a sigh. He puts the car back in gear and rolls out of the 4-way stop at last.

It's only another block before they're at her building. He pulls to a stop again, double-parked with some silver Acura, looking past her at the doors to her building. This is only the second time he's been here, and the third time she's been in this car.

[Danicka Musil] Oh, she's still drunk. She holds her liquor like a champ, she hides her inebriation well if she tries, and when she takes herself out of her own perspective to shift towards looking at something through someone else's eyes. That was the Oh, the moment where she realized that it didn't really matter why Lukas was pissed off, or when it had happened, or that his reluctance to unfasten his jeans and push up her skirt and fuck her until the windows were fogged from their body heat and gasping had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that she's smashed. That was when she realized through a haze of wine that there is, and has been, something else entirely going on.

She knew. She couldn't help but know, from the moment he furrowed his brow and asked her while looking at the ceiling why she let him take her to some run-down motel to try and treat her like a whore. She couldn't help but know, when he spoke to her at the aquarium. When he kissed the inside of her knee. When he woke because the sun rose and she stirred behind him, slipping her hand out from under his covering one. A thousand moments, miniscule and unremarkable on their own, and yet as earth-shattering as the first time they kissed.

Lukas double-parks, neither of them so much as consider the option of him joining her in her apartment, and he doesn't speak but looks at the doors. Danicka does not take this as a cue that she is to leave his car and go through those doors, past the yawning doorman and up to her floor. She is still looking at Lukas, the whole time he is driving, wordless and restrained.

She lifts her eyebrows at him, waves her hand in the air between them though does not shove it in his face, and whistles a yoo-hoo. Her hands go to her sides, palms up, as questioning at her expression. "Well?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Well, she says -- this makes a flash of irritation cross his face. He misread her. She explained it. Still, anger is an unreasoning beast, and slow to slumber. The last vestiges of it are still snarling through his mind.

His pale eyes shift from the doorman to her. He frowns. "What?"

[Danicka Musil] "Okay..." Danicka's hands drop, she shakes her head, and reaches for her purse. "My bad for making it so unclear, I really need to learn how to put myself out there once in awhile, really...let people know what I want, y'know?" Purse straps going over her wrist, she reaches for the door handle.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] His right hand comes down over her hands while she's picking up her purse, putting the strap over her wrist. The span of his fingers is large enough to cover both her hands at once, and when they clench, his grip could easily be punishing.

And it is, for a second. Then he forces his fingers to relent. Merely holds her in place until she looks at him.

"I don't know how to read you, Danička," of all the truths he's told her, perhaps this one is the truest, "and I've fucked it up once already tonight. So why don't you just spell it out for me, just this once. All right?"

[Danicka Musil] The way he grips her hands for a moment is something he has to force himself to stop, and her reaction to it is something she has to force herself to hide. Neither of them do terribly well, but when she turns to look at him again there's a wall gone up where there wasn't before, but it wasn't just the clenching that started it. Brick by brick, it's been going up since he stopped the car here.

Because he wants on some level, instinct or training or otherwise, to punish her by hurting her wrists and her hands. Because he thinks he has to hold her in place with a grip, instead of a word, and because when she looks at him sometimes she isn't seeing him at all, and that is why her eyes and her expression shut down and only become harder to read.

His words don't automatically soften her. But she doesn't ignore them, or close them out. She listens. And then flexes both of her wrists, easing them out of his grasp, pulling her hands back towards her own body. It's not sudden or abrupt, but it's hard not to see it as a rejection of his hands anywhere on her at the moment.

"Well, I thought I was pretty clear about wanting to fuck you, and I did say I'd go with you if you wanted, and you're the one parking the car and just sitting there, so you spell it out, Akeelah."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] When she begins to draw back, so does he. He returns his hand to the steering wheel, fingers wrapping around leather. He looks through the windshield again for a moment, and then at her.

"I think maybe you should just go in, Danička," he says: it is quiet, but rather final.

[Danicka Musil] "All right," she says, tossing one hand in the air and letting it lower, going for the door handle again. "At least that's clear."

Maybe in the morning she'll regret this, opening the passenger side door and stepping out while he stares through the windshield. The hem of her skirt hikes up momentarily only to fall again when she stands. Maybe in the morning she'll be angry at him, whether she can explain why or not. The wind blows open her coat and she shudders just outside.

Maybe in the morning all she'll remember is laughing, over and over, and kissing him like it isn't below freezing, like seeing him show up out of nowhere on the sidewalk was exactly what she wanted, and she'll roll over in bed and bury her face in her pillow and hide her smile, kicking her legs under the blankets.

She takes hold of the edge of the door and closes it, not slamming, but harder than strictly necessary. She is drunk, though, and her proprioception is hanging on by a thread for dear life. Danicka does not kiss him again and she does not tell him good night.

Maybe in the morning she'll feel an ache in her chest and not know which of them to hate more for its existence.

For the second time since they met, she walks away from his car and towards the doorman, but the sun is nowhere near rising yet, and the world is very dark.