indifference.

[Danicka] She never promised Martin that she would never do cocaine again. She promised to be careful, she swore to take care of herself, she told him she would not make the same mistakes he did, she told him a dozen beautiful things that he wanted to hear and that he believed because she was beautiful and he was exhausted and he was leaving her. She did not say that she would never again in her life do a line.

And yesterday, she hasn't. Yesterday, now. Yesterday was a different story. Today is a whole new book. Danicka was not doing cocaine yesterday. She was in a club on the Mile and she was on E. Tonight she is in the lady's bathroom of a dive bar in one of the worst areas of town doing a round of key bumps just like her dear old roommate used to do. He'd be wrong, if he were here, to blame himself for teaching her naughty habits.

The first time he saw her do a line she was barely twenty-two and snorted that shit like she was born to it.

She's been here for several hours. This isn't the first snort she's had tonight. When she comes out of the bathroom her pupils are blown, but it's dark and that's not all that noticable. She goes back to the dartboard, taking animatedly to three of the four people she's managed to make friends with. All of them are male. All of them may as well be sniffing her.

[Lukas] The game doesn't get very far. The men are more interested in Danicka and Danicka is ... possibly wired, very likely crunked out of her head. Darts are flying at the board from someone or someone else, most of them going awry, striking the wood walls, the floor, the empty glasses on a nearby table.

And then all of a sudden the conversation in the area drops. It's like someone grabbed the master volume dial and turned it down. Danicka can see the faces of her new friends growing drawn and wan, and some of them put on a false show of bravado, and some of them just go pale. She can see their eyes moving over her shoulder and up.

It's Lukas standing behind her. Even without seeing him, she would know this. It's the smell of his shaving cream, and the smell of him; it's the rage in the air.

He's not looking at her. He's just looking at her new friends. And he'll keep looking at them until they fuck off and go away, or do something stupid.

None of which, of course, explains why he's here at all. But the three unheard messages in her voicemail will, whenever she checks it:

Danička, it's me. We should talk. ... I'd like to see you. When you get this message, call me back. Okay?
And thirty-two hours later: Danička. Lukáš again. Call me.
And ten hours after that: Danička, co to kurva?

He didn't drive all over the city looking for her. He'd come straight here, actually. Call it luck: the Green is closer to the Caern and the Brotherhood than the Mile. Call it a hunch. Call it cosmic fucking attunement to the kin of his blood, and the (alleged) woman of his heart. Whatever the reason, there he is -- looming over her shoulder, scaring the crap out of her new friends.

[Danicka] Ephraim, Dave, and Jeff are the first to notice Mr. Tall-Dark-And-Handsome headed their way. They feign disinterest, drinking their beers and throwing their darts. It's Neil, who offered Danicka the coke to begin with, who cannot help but see him and pay attention. It's Neil who senses that there is some kind of connection between the woman in the jeans and the lace-edged white camisole and the blue-eyed man headed their way. It's Neil who takes his hand off of the strap falling down her shoulder, deciding not to go through with his plan to fix it.

Dave, the one with the shaggy hair, decides he needs to take a piss when Lukas steps up. Ephraim and Jeff just shift to the side, move out of the way, find things to do with their hands and distance themselves from the blonde, whose hair is pin-straight tonight, whose jacket is hanging over the back of the chair her feet are planted on. She is sitting on the table. Neil is pulling his hand away and looking at Lukas like he's waiting to find out, himself, what the fuck.

And Danicka's hair is brushing over that currently-bared shoulder to look at Lukas with black eyes. She doesn't look scared. She looks worse than that.

She looks indifferent.

Still, she reaches up, and adjusts the strap of her camisole back of her her shoulder, and doesn't say a word to him.

[Lukas] Lukas is wearing what he was earlier this evening, having dinner while Gabbie asked him where her siblings were, and what would become of her; while they discussed her uncle, her family ties, and ...

... Danicka, actually. Though that had been less a discussion, and more a stonewall shutdown.

And he's not happy about that conversation. And he's not happy about the shit with Sam this last week. And he's not happy about the way he parted from his (alleged.) girlfriend, either; and he's very, very not happy about finding her in a goddamn dive bar, the same dive bar she'd come to when she'd wanted to get fucked/fuck him, surrounded by men who might as well be dogs, they were so close to sniffing her crotch.

But anyway: Lukas is wearing what he was wearing earlier, which is a pair of two hundred dollar jeans, and a deliberately rumpled shirt, striped in darker and lighter blue. The lighter is something close to his eye color, though without that glittering animal clarity. The darker is something like the color of the sky at dawn, which is something he's seen in Danicka's company.

The Ahroun comes up behind the woman, who does not seem frightened of him, or angry at him for scaring her friends off; she seems indifferent. And in response, or perhaps in retaliation, or perhaps in self-defense, so does he.

But he does watch Neil's hand go back to Neil's side. And then he takes a step forward, past Danicka, and it'll take a brave man not to fall back a step; not to think in a senseless, blinding flash:

he's fucking going to kill me.

Which is of course, not what Lukas does. He turns his back to Neil, more or less, and faces Danicka. He picks her jacket up off the chair, and then he shakes it out, and then he holds it out for her to put on.

The implication is clear: we're leaving.

And now the exact nature of that some-kind-of-connection between the dark-haired man and the golden-haired woman has become rather apparent to all involved. Or at least they think they know. He's the abusive boyfriend, the one that's probably left her face shades of blue and purple before. She's the promiscuous pushover, the slut that goes and attracts men like flies to honey, because secretly, perversely, she likes getting beat the fuck up.

Something like that, anyway. Something fucked up and dysfunctional, because -- just look at him. How could anyone, anything associated with that not be fucked up and dysfunctional?

[Danicka] The last thing he'd said to her the last time they met turns out to be prophecy. For all he knows, that was it. There was no 'alleged' before the word 'girlfriend' anymore, only an 'ex'. For all he knows they're hanging around her and all but sniffing her crotch because she's fucked every single one of them, if not tonight than in the stretch of time since he last saw her. For all he knows she is no longer his in any sense but that he is still her guardian in this city as far as their tribe is concerned. For all he knows, she has gotten over him in less than two weeks, she doesn't love him anymore, she never did.

The way Danicka is looking at him, her pupils explosively dark and wide enough to swallow him whole, any of it could be true. Whore. Slut. She has very little makeup on. She has very little clothing on -- even right now it's surprisingly warm outside, but this bar is roiling with heat from all the bodies packed into it, all the bodies sweating out the beer they're imbibing. The stench of humanity fills his nostrils as much as the smell of her flirts with his senses and then evades his full grasp. Their fear hovered around him like flies around rotting food as he passed through to get to the dartboards.

To get to her.

Ephraim and Jeff have long since taken their leave, separating themselves from the girl they all knew was Trouble as soon as she accepted that powder from Neil...who takes a step back when Lukas steps past Danicka. Behind him, he can hear her sigh heavily, he can imagine her rolling her eyes. Neil could see it, but he just cows. He laughs edgily, says something like Hey man, there's no problem... as though Lukas had opened his mouth.

Then he turns, and shakes out her coat, and holds it out. Danicka looks at the lining of her jacket, looks at him, and he can see the thin gold chain around her neck with the miniscule gold ring at the end, just a little over half an inch in diameter. He can see the way the cotton camisole hugs her, he can tell there's nothing underneath but there doesn't need to be because of the way the garment is constructed and because she's not a top-heavy woman. He can probably guess that as simple as it is that camisole could very well have cost almost as much as his jeans, as much as the brown leather jacket he's holding.

She reaches out and takes it from him, shrugs into it herself as she meets his eyes, almost boldly. "Where are we going?" she asks, and sniffs once.

[Lukas] "Somewhere else."

He lets her have the jacket. No problem. So long as she puts it the fuck on. And Lukas is not the jealous type (a lie.), or at least he never was before (the truth.), but let's get it straight: it makes him angry, it makes him very fucking angry, to see her in jeans that ride so low the zipper's two inches long, and a camisole that's white, that she wears nothing beneath.

For all he knows it's already over; he just hadn't gotten the memo yet. For all he knows she hasn't answered her phone in 48 hrs because she's been too busy getting fucked by Ephraim, Dave, Neil and Jeff, in that order or some permutation thereof, or all four at once, or a dozen other men in some stinking goddamn hole in the wall motel three minutes away from here.

She has the jacket on now, and he doesn't put his hand on her as they turn toward the door. He hadn't the first time they walked out of here together, either, though he might've taken her wrist. Had he taken her wrist? He can't recall -- they're passing Neil and Neil's got a nervous, shiteating grin on, and

Lukas reaches out and snatches the guy up by the hair, no fucking warning at all, bends him like a jackknife and smashes his face into the table's edge.

Which folds up like plywood, collapses on itself with a great crash. Neil does much the same, only it's less a crash there and more a soft whumpf. Now the bouncers are headed at them, because even in a place like Mr C's there are bouncers, and you can't just do that, you can't just burst into violence like that without so much as a shove, without so much as a shout, and Lukas is holding up his hands to show them his empty palms, to show them he intends no harm, was getting out of here, is finished with the facesmashing, for now, and he says, dead cool:

"Hey man. There's no problem." A beat. "I'm leaving."

[Danicka] One would think that with copious amounts of liquor and a highly addictive, dangerous substance kicking in that makes her hyper, makes her talk faster and easier, makes the sensation of the silken lining of her coat feel pretty damn awesome on her bare arms...she would fly off the handle at this point and inform Lukas that this behavior is not to be tolerated. She might yell his name to the bouncers and tell them to call the police and give them his address, laughing hysterically as she does so. One might most easily expect her to flash him a horrified look and go running to Neil to help him. Maybe she'll cry.

Danicka just watches him destroy the table by using Neil's head as a sledgehammer, and blinks slowly. She doesn't have a purse with her, or maybe it's in her car. She wraps her arms around herself and looks at the bouncers as they approach, hair falling in her face. Suddenly she turns and all but throws herself against Lukas's chest, burying her face in him, giving a great shuddering breath as though some great terror has been relieved.

And the perception the bouncers have of the situation shifts, even as Lukas's hands are coming up, even as the pressure of Danicka's knuckles touch him through his shirt, as he feels her lying, hot breath on the fabric, as with a sudden movement and a certain sound she makes Neil the villain, and Lukas the hero, and herself the victim.

The bouncers, who do not want to deal with him anyway, are dissuaded just enough to decide to deal with Neil instead.

Danicka remains curled against Lukas until they are outside the door, several steps away. She tremors, though it's not cold, and then snickers.

[Lukas] The last time she'd curled against him like this, he lifted her and took her to bed. He held her all night. He made love to her as the sun came up, and he fell asleep with his hand to her heart.

He doesn't so much as put his arm around her this time, though he does have enough sense, if only barely, to not push her off. The bouncers deal with Neil, who needs a goddamn ambulance more than he needs a disorderly-conduct charge, and Lukas walks out of Mr. C's.

Outside, she draws herself away and he straightens his collar, which was tugged mildly awry by the sudden movements.

"Thanks." He doesn't sound like he means it. And he doesn't smoke, but times like this he rather wishes he did, if only to have something else to do. His car is parked up the block, and this is what he starts walking toward. Without looking at her, "Did you fuck them?"

[Danicka] Her response is immediate and sharp: "Jdi k čertu."

[Lukas] "Did you?"

[Danicka] She is not walking off the sidewalk with him to go to his car. She is pulling a pack of cigarettes -- Dunhills, for chrissakes, expensive, slim sticks that nobody is buying in this economy, in this area of town -- and a worn copper-encased Zippo with some sort of engraving on it.

The woman he told over and over -- more than she said it to him, more than she asked to hear it -- that he was in love with her is damn well going to head to her own car, parked behind the bar just like the first time. He repeats his question, and she just says

(she almost snarls)

"What does it matter to you?"

[Lukas] She doesn't move; fine. He turns back.

"What does it matter to me?" he repeats, incredulous, and now he hasn't merely turned back, he's walking back toward her. "Besides that I don't want you spreading your legs for every asshead that passes through Cabrini-Green?

"Well, how about: I don't want you spreading your legs for every asshead that passes through Cabrini-Green." Beat. "I don't want you spreading your legs for anyone but me."

[Danicka] "You know what I think bothers you?" Danicka shoots back, a thin white cigarette between her lips, unlit. She reaches up, plucks it out again, glares at him. "You know what I think you really hate? The fact that I am a slut. That you goddamnwell know there's absolutely nothing stopping me from getting fucked and sucking cock all night if I wanted to. If I didn't want you."

She flicks the lighter and applies it to the end of the cigarette, glaring at the flame now instead of him and then clacking it shut. "I think you hate that you fell for someone like me."

[Lukas] It's dark on the street, and the streetlights in this part of town are few and far between. They're sodium lamps, cheap, buzzing; the light they cast is so sallow that it washes everyone out, and so if Lukas flushes with anger, or blanches with rage, it's impossible to tell.

There's a poisonous silence. His hands are fists.

"All right." He's so quiet, his tone so level, that he almost sounds reasonable. "You're right. Right now, I fucking hate that I'm in love with a goddamn slut. So why don't you make it easy for the two of us, Danička, and tell me just how many guys you've fucked in the last week."

[Danicka] She would never throw her lighter at him. So she puts it in her pocket again as she puts her cigarette to her lips. If he's trying to make her angry, it's either not working or it's working only in fits and starts, like a lightbulb that's flickering out and trying to die, burning brightly only for a second or two at a time. She takes a drag, and as she's drawing the cigarette away again, Danicka holds up her left hand.

Her fingers are in the commonly known symbol for "0". She makes a pop! sound with her mouth as smoke leaves it, just to add to the effect.

"In the last week? None. In the last...eight or nine days? None. Oh, how many women have I fucked in that time?" She pauses to think, her brow furrowing in mock consternation. She snaps her fingers, shoots her shark-like eyes at him. "Right. None again. How many men in the past four months? Three. How many people in the past nine years? Like...two-fifty, three hundred, I'm ballparking here. How many times have I been pregnant? Two. How many people have been in love with me? So far as I know, two. How many people have I fallen in love with?"

Danicka has taken two drags, total. She doesn't take any more. She throws the cigarette at his feet, growling the last number she's going to give him tonight. "One."

[Lukas] He's not trying to make her angry. He's trying to protect himself. There's a difference. Also, he is angry. Quite. There's a difference there, too.

She spews numbers at him, and then she throws a cigarette at his feet, and his eyes flick down at the last, but other than that remain fast on her face.

Earlier this evening, Lukas sat across from Gabbie and listened to the girl accuse Danicka -- in her thoughtless, maliceless, ignorant way -- of being a player and a heartbreaker and, implicitly, a slut. Strictly sex. Something like that, anyway. He listened and he had to bite down on his anger, and he said, only in not so many words:

she's not. she's not. she's not what you think she is.
Danicka the liar, Danicka the slut, Danicka the untrustworthy.

Right now, he can't fathom what the fuck he was thinking. Right now, he can't begin to fathom what the fuck he was ever thinking, to have left Mr. C's with her that first time -- two months ago? Has it been that long? The intervening time seems a goddamn dream, a mirage, a delusion in which he'd managed to convince himself she isn't like that, she isn't untrustworthy, he could trust her to keep her word.

Right now, standing outside Mr. C's again with her in her skimpy goddamn camisole, which would be utterly trashy if it didn't cost three hundred dollars, and if it weren't Danicka wearing it, because --

goddammit, even now, she's beautiful.

Right now, listening to her toss numbers in his face, so fucking flippant, he can't fathom why the fuck he ever thought that he could trust her. He can't remember what she looks like in the morning, smiling at him over her shoulder. He can't remember what she looks like walking into a hotel lobby, soaking wet under her trenchcoat, smiling at him.

The reply is instantaneous; he doesn't raise his voice.

"Why the fuck should I believe you?"

[Danicka] Sternly sex, were Gabbie's words. Casual sex were Danicka's, nearly three months ago, standing at the waterfront in a lovely green hat while he made her confess that she wanted him, words that later incensed him and even longer after than inflamed him. He'd doubted her capacity for loyalty then, and he doubts it now. As he immediately asks her why he should believe her, she wishes suddenly that she hadn't tossed her cigarette down.

Wishes a lot of things, at the moment. That she'd never told him anything about herself, any of the secrets she'd given him like keys to taming her according to the rules set forth in an old children's book. She wishes that she'd never let him see her happy. Not really happy, not so happy that she was certain she was going to glow in the fucking dark.

"...Why did you come here?" she says, part annoyance, part exhaustion. "To make sure I'm not over you yet? To make sure I don't forget too fast what you think of me? I mean...is that the point?" Danicka's hands fall to her sides, her shoulders rounded. "Wouldn't it be faster if you just hit me? I think that'd be faster."

[Lukas] Lukas stares at her for a second. There's nothing human about his eyes. They're focused as lasers, intense as an animal's.

"I wish you wouldn't ask me questions I don't know how to answer," he says at last, and suddenly, and quietly.

A second.

"I came here because I was looking for you. I was looking for you because you haven't returned my calls for two days. I was calling you because I wanted to see you."

A longer pause. And then, suddenly, a burst: "And god help me, Danička, I never want to see another man with his hands on you like that again. Why the fuck would you do that, any of this, if you haven't been fucking around on me? Huh?"

[Danicka] She just stares at him for a second, her mouth open, her brow furrowed. She looks stunned. Not at how horrible the question was. At how stupid she thinks it was.

"Did I...miss the part where I grabbed his hand and said 'here, fuckface, fix my bra'? Was I unconscious for that?" She drops the sarcasm. "I told you zero. You don't believe me. That's it!" she snaps at the end, raising her voice sharply.

Danicka doesn't usually talk with her hands, but she flings hers out now, before turning on one booted heel and walking towards the alleyway that goes from the sidewalk around the black box of a building to the parking lot in back.

[Lukas] "I've had enough of you walking away."

This, the instant she begins to turn. He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't follow her. He talks at her back, if she keeps walking:

"I want an answer. I want to know why you haven't returned my calls. I want to know why I just walked into Mr. C's to find four guys all but humping your fucking leg."

[Danicka] She keeps walking. And she doesn't answer.

[Lukas] So Lukas watches her take three steps. Then he turns around and walks the other way.

[Danicka] [Dex + Drive -1 (Hey There Drunky!)]

[Danicka] [Intelligence]