coming home.

[Danicka]
It is both too familiar and too new for her to tolerate comfortably.

Danicka does not spend her nights wondering if Lukas is going to call, if he's fighting the Wyrm or cleaning up a mess or if he's gotten into some challenge of dominance with a wolf who might get lucky and might not stop himself from going over the edge. She does not look up when it's a full moon and think she has to call him, she has to get him close to her, she has to keep him near when Luna is vibrant with bloodlust, as though that will preclude the worst that could happen to him. Danicka tries not to sit quietly in her chair by the window, hands folded in her lap, waiting for her mate to come home.

Oh, there are times. There are times when it scares her. She has dreams sometimes that he's died, usually when she hasn't seen or heard from him in a few weeks and sometimes when she hasn't felt his touch for even longer. She wakes with her face tight from dried saltwater and her pillow damp from the same. She trembles, and sometimes during those long separations that is when he will get a random text message. They never say had a bad dream; are you okay?

They are, instead, random snippets of her day: she saw a movie, she finished a book, she thinks he'd like this one or that, she thinks she should declare her major soon, something funny someone said in class. These are rare. Exceedingly so. Lukas does not know that as often as she is simply reaching out to him from love and longing, she is also reaching out to him to comfort herself from the fear that Something has finally Happened.

This is the first time that she has been expecting him and it has been hours since any reasonable time when he should have arrived. She can't imagine he thought she meant the Brotherhood; he would have called or messaged her phone if he'd gone to her apartment and found her absent. This is new, for them; he is supposed to be here and she didn't set a time but he was going to come, he said --

Danicka breathes deeply and clears her mind. She harvests herbs. She wanders onto beaches and lets seventeen goddamn murlocks aggro on her at once, and she just watches. It isn't her main. It's bizarrely, distantly cathartic, even if it is pixelated. She sets a time limit: she'll wait six hours. Up to eight. She won't call him before then. She won't fuss. She won't worry.

She is the daughter of Night Warder, Elder Shadow Lord Ahroun, called Summit's Lightning, called Ender of Names, called Breaks the Sky. She is the daughter of an honorable Full Moon who died pierced by seven silver lances, who fought until they took everything she had, who roared in their faces until her last breath spewed lifesblood on their cheeks and eyelashes. She is a daughter of the line of They Who Must, Carriers of the Sickle of Volos.

She is child and sister and mate of Shadow Lords, strong by nothing but merit, strong regardless of breeding, regardless of wealth, regardless of all things but what they prove, what they earn, what they claw for themselves from the world. She has been raised from birth amongst wolves and lunatics, is as savage and unpredictable as they are. She knows death. She knows the war. She knows what it means to have a werewolf in her heart, and knows the inevitability -- the certainty -- of him being torn out of it. Without warning. Without mercy.

Danicka is not ready.

She sits in the study upstairs, the doors closed to keep the heat in and the windowblinds open to let the light out. She made tea, and it fills the mug to the side of the desk, ice cold now and forgotten after the first sip. Her car is in the garage, the engine bereft of its last lingering warmth. Her shoes are under the coffee table in the living room. Her overcoat is hanging over the banister of the stairs. Her little firetruck-red cropped jacket is over the back of her desk chair. Her iPhone is docked over on the bookshelf, playing through speakers:

tell your brother to be good
tell your sister not to go
tell your mother not to wait
tell your father I was good...

[Lukas]
The last time they were alone together, they lounged together on her bed to watch a movie on her laptop. It was Coraline, some charming, vaguely spooky little ditty about girls and gardens and spider-women in empty construct-worlds. She lay in front of him, curled against his body, his arm firm and warm and strong around her waist. They made it through about a third of the movie, about as far as Coraline's first discovery of her other mother, before Danicka was rubbing back against Lukas, and Lukas was pushing down the waistband of his pajama bottoms.

The last time they were together at all, they were on the street and other wolves and kin of the Nation were about. They had to hide their true selves, their true bond; her truths were hidden deeper than his.

She said to him: I'm headed home.
He said: See you there.

That was it. That is what would have remained if morning came and Lukas did not come home. If days passed and then someone, Kate or Theron or someone, finally thought to come to Danicka and tell her

I'm so sorry.

or worse:

He died gloriously. You should be proud.

As if that could be enough. As if all the songs about her mother, all the tales of glory they tell to instruct the young Ahrouns of their tribe, of harsh honor and uncompromising strength, could ever make up for the fact that the woman who bore Danicka died not like other mothers do -- old in their beds, wasting away from illness or age, or perhaps in car crashes, train wrecks --

but roaring. Fighting. In agony.

--

There have been changes since the last time they were together in their den. The alterations arrived quietly, without great fuss, marks of Lukas's thoughtfulness and whimsy left for his mate to find. There are a few more lights scattered around, floorlamps in the living room and their room, a clip-on lamp on the bookshelf. There's a rug in the living room, under the coffee table, which adds a splash of color to the otherwise plain room.

There's a new towel bar in the downstairs bathroom. There are hooks on the backs of the upstairs bedroom's doors, and their bath towels have found their way there.

There's a bubbling zen fountain on the desk, though there's no sign that it's awakened. He hadn't gotten around to that yet. There's also a new chair in front of the desk. It's a nice one, ergonomic, with a million adjustable levers and a tensile supportive mesh back and seat, possibly worth more than all the rest of the furniture excepting the bed, combined. Lukas rarely sits there. It's for Danicka.

--

Quiet now, the little house out in Stickney. This isn't a rich neighborhood, but it's a safe one, and everyone sleeps by midnight; most houses are lights-out by ten or eleven.

It's long past ten or eleven now. It's closer to dawn than to midnight. They parted hours ago. He didn't stay long after she left; began to drive toward Stickney almost immediately in fact. But roughly between Lake View and Stickney is Bronzeville -- a little ways out of his path, but not very far. It was as much spontaneity as duty that caused Lukas to swing by Bellamonte Park; simple luck that led him to observe that one swing, one alone, was swinging where there was no wind.

Then there was the rest of it: black water that wasn't water, spirits that wanted heartsblood, the stuff of his will and spirit and fire drained, drained, until all that was left for him was exhaustion. The last thing he could think to do -- other than simply give up and lie there at the mercy of spirits he did not understand, to live or die by their whim -- was to vanish into the earth.

To lie there, thunder-totemed and sky-eyed he, buried and covered and safe now, safe at last, embraced by the rich, moist darkness beneath the frost and the freeze. To bide there, barely able to will himself to think, until

quite by chance

he thought of Danička, waiting.

--

The garage is detached, but the night is quiet. She might hear the BMW's tuned engine, the garage door opening. She'll certainly hear the key in the lock downstairs, clacking against the metal twice before finally fitting in; the click of the tumblers turning a moment later. Lukas's steps on the short entry staircase are weary and slow, and he doesn't try to hide it.

It takes him a long time to strip out of his outerwear, none of which he hangs up. All of which he leaves shed like skins on the sofa, stripping down in the warmth of the living room while the furnace rumbles distantly in the basement. He is unbloodied, unbruised. Even the welts and blisters on his skin have healed, though not the eye, yet. That's crudely bandaged with gauze and tape. He has only a little spirit left; he wants to save it, just in case.

There was a time when Lukas would've never allowed her, or anyone else, to see him like this. He would have sent her a brief, terse, strong message, and then he would've hidden himself in a den somewhere to recover and to heal.

It's different now. This is his den. She is his mate. She has seen him at his strongest, his wildest, his most savage. He is not afraid to let her see him

quite frankly

weak.

[Danicka]
The last time they saw each other, not counting dinner at the divinely blessed sandwich shop, was for a short amount of time after he'd made love to her again. The player on her laptop was paused, the computer itself lowered to the floor, her robe -- this time silk, thin and soft enough to transmute her body heat to him and vice versa as though it was hardly present -- pushed from her shoulders by his fingers rucking the collar back, off, down, following its progress with his lips down the back of her neck.

It was gentler. They laid on their sides, her back to his chest, his arm around her and his hand traveling between her breasts and her cunt, his mouth on her shoulder, her throat, her ear, his quiet panting almost the only thing she could hear. Gasps interwove with that's it, baby, underlined oh, god and a half-dozen other utterances in other languages the closer they got, the deeper he went into her, the harder his hips moved, the more she arched her back and squirmed back against him.

They fell asleep again, though not for as long as before, covering themselves partially with her black and green and red and gold silk robe. He left sometime after that, and they kissed lingeringly in the hallway: loathe to leave, loathe to let go.

--

She hears the garage door open and is out of her chair in a second, whipping it around, leaving her toon to die or idle.

They switched cars once, back when she drove a BMW and he drove a different assortment of consonants. His was closer, so he gave her the keys and told her to leave, to drive to the Brotherhood. He told her to get away, and she told him to go for the thing in the alleyway's legs, the weak point. Told him to watch out for... she doesn't even remember now what she told him to watch out for, what she'd noticed that might very well be its strongest defense mechanism. When he saw her again, there was something so wrong with him that he wouldn't let her touch him, was wary of switching keys back, even, because she might graze her fingers over his palm and then she might be hurt by the toxins that his body would work out in a few days.

She'd seen him then afraid -- not of his own injuries, but of somehow passing along to her what the fight had done to him.

Once upon a time she came and sat on a chair in his room while he lounged in bed, healing from some other repulsive wounds and eating bowl after bowl of Jenny's stew to compensate for what his metabolism had become. His skin was livid, their company short-lived and mostly terse but for a few words about how she looked in that particular light, something Mrena had commented on first.

Once upon a time, he clung to her after making love to her for the first time, shuddering as he wrapped his arms around her and kept her body as close to his as he possibly could. He laid his head against her and she stroked his hair, whispered over and over

I'm here. I'm here.

in the language he knew from birth, knew first, the language that colors his earliest and haziest memories of childhood.

--

All of these things remain. Would have.

--

Danicka is down the stairs, socked feet thudding lightly on the still new-feeling carpet, hand skimming the railing to maintain balance, though she doesn't really need to. She's already looking around to the door, past the lamp near the rocking chair, the rug that extends past the edge of the coffee table, giving color and warmth to the room. Not a single pine needle remains of the Christmas tree. There are shelves now in the basement, though only one large Rubbermaid box in colors that identify it as holiday-related without need for labeling.

Most of the houses on this street have boxes like that. Here are the Halloween decorations and costumes and makeup; here are the special tablecloths for Thanksgiving. Here are the keepsakes from when you were a baby, when your father was a baby, here is the blanket you were wrapped in when we brought you home. There is the box holding we've-forgotten-and-the-label's-water-damaged-but-we-haven't-the-time-to-sort-through-it. Danicka and Lukas's house

home

has a green Rubbermaid box, not terribly large, with a red lid. There are some Christmas tree decorations inside. Nestled in a padded box in the middle are the two most precious ones, made of metal, signifying moons.

On the stove is their kettle.

--

She's there in the living room when he opens the door and steps inside, halfway across the floor when he starts to take off his overcoat. Danicka does not moan Oh, no, at the sight of him. A bandage over his head seems almost to relieve her, and she does not run over to him and throw her arms around his middle

though it's possible a part of her wants to.

She does come. And she starts helping him take off his outerwear, in silence, her breathing controlled, her expression a veritable textbook example of what it means to be unflappable. Her hands don't shake. She pretends she is not preparing herself to get down to his skin and find him covered in horrific wounds unlike anything the mortal world or human medicine can comprehend. She pretends that she won't look for a scar.

There is only one layer left on his body when her fingers tremble and she wraps her arms around his waist, buries her face in his chest, and exhales a long, shuddering breath.

"Že jste tady," she sighs, in unfettered relief.

[Lukas]
She's already there when he comes into the living room. So he pauses for a second, startled. Sluggish.

A beat. Then: "Danička."

He starts to take off his coat. She comes to him. He stops, puts his hands on her face. His hands feel cool, for once. He touches her gently, looking at her steady expression, listening to her controlled breathing.

"Je mi líto, že jdu pozdě," he explains; or at least it has the sound of explanation, though nothing was really conveyed. She helps him with his coat, which is in fact not the overcoat he wore earlier but a black-and-grey ski jacket, which whispers against itself quietly.

Under that, the sweater he was wearing earlier, which she saw over sandwiches and cokes. Shoes too, which he steps out of.

They come together, then. She wraps her arms around him. His go around her. The strength in his body is unharmed; there's no sense that he's injured significantly enough to affect the way he moves. No bloodstains. Nothing of the sort. It's the will that's sapped. It takes a moment before he asserts his grip, tightens the clasp of his arms around her.

Her breath shudders. He strokes her back. "Jsem v pořádku," he whispers.

"Jsem v pořádku, Danicka. Nebojte se. Nebyl jsem v nebezpečí. Já jsem jen ... unavená."

Lukas holds his mate tighter. Even his rage is gone. Utterly depleted. He feels ... almost human, like this.

"Je mi líto."

[Danicka]
Sometimes she hates it when he comforts her unnecessarily, tells her things she already knows, treats her like she's... weak. Like she's frail, or like she's one of those kinswomen with constantly fluttering eyelashes and constantly pouting lips who is impertinent and defiant when it serves their ego and wilting away from terror when it's convenient. Sometimes she hates feeling like he can't see her at all, if he thinks she needs to hear

I'm okay.

Danicka holds him more tightly, unnerved at how cold his hands felt and reeling slightly from the fact that she could not laugh off Sorry I'm late. But then he says that he was in no danger and he's just tired, and she pulls her head back -- nothing else, he is holding her too tightly, pressed close to his chest. She looks up at him with a frown.

"Says the man with no depth perception," she exhales, more quietly than she means to, and reaches up to the back of his neck, pulling him down to her, closer, folding him around her upper body. "Přestaňte s řka, že jste líto," with a sort of susurrant firmness, her palm warm to his skin.

"Je to zbytečné," Danicka adds more softly, almost in a whisper.

She does not ask what happened. She holds him, though, for a little while, and then quietly asks: "Are you hungry?"

[Lukas]
For an instant he's afraid she's reaching for the bandage, that she means to peel it down and look at the damage. His hand flies up to prevent hers -- but no. She reaches up to him. She bows him to her, folds her around him.

Protects him.

Lukas nuzzles against her neck, wraps his arms around her again. She's warm, and he appreciates it. His hands aren't icy cold; they don't sear her with their chill through her clothes. The rageborne heat in him is gone, though, and what heat remains to his body is sapped by hour after hour in the cold; quite literally in the ground. Her temperature is, for once, the higher of the two.

"I only meant... jsem ne neumřel. Nebyl jsem v nebezpečí smrti, myslím."

She doesn't ask, and he doesn't tell her, what happened. Not yet, anyway. He has no idea what the fuck happened yet. When he figures something out he'll tell her. If. When. Not tonight. Later.

He has to think for a moment: is he hungry? Weariness blurs his self-perception. It's not the lack of rage; he feels this calm after a hard battle, a vicious fight. It's not the lack of spirit; he feels this empty after a bout of making talens.

But will. Lukas is nothing if he is not iron-willed. He is careful about his mental strength and resilience, careful to keep himself controlled, strong, imperturbable. He literally has not felt this weak, this unresolved, since he was a boy. A child.

He nods, then. "Stále mám půl sendvič v mém autě," he suggests. He seems loathe to let her go; unwinds slowly and lingeringly.

[Danicka]
For some reason -- she knows what reason, senses that utter depletion of his rage the way she senses it when he's perturbed, when he's aroused, when playful -- the flying of his hand to almost stop hers doesn't make Danicka have to fight the urge to flinch. Even now it's a struggle, when Lukas moves quickly in her direction, not to yelp in fear or flinch away. She has been practicing disallowing both reactions for herself since early childhood, and usually he can't even tell that she might have wanted to,

which is the point.

Tonight, though, she just continues what she's doing without feeling even the desire to jerk back or run from his reach or apologize profusely for doing something he didn't like. Danicka just holds him, bears him down to her warmth, and keeps him there. She tenses when he assures her that he didn't die, breathing carefully, but doesn't respond.

Her fingertips stroke circles into the back of his neck while he tries to figure out if he's hungry or not. His head comes up and she lets it go. He starts to unwind and she just shakes her head, smoothing her hand down his back and patting him once. "Rest awhile. I'll make you something warm."

Which she does, if he'll let her go. They don't have much in this house in terms of food, but she stopped by the store thinking about a later dinner, or lunch tomorrow, or maybe breakfast. She has some ingredients that she, at least, considers basics for a few different meals. She has some vegetables, some meat that hasn't been in the freezer long enough to actually freeze and harden. She has a hairband in a drawer that's already collecting miscellaneous odds and ends in the kitchen, which she keeps there because it is easiest to wind her long hair up in a ponytail or a loosely coiled bun when she wants to roll up her sleeves and cook.

There is a blanket on the back of the couch, a summerweight quilt in blue and yellow and green and white. It smells like winter, and distantly it smells like Danicka, from some night she came here alone and laid under it to watch television during a break from studying.

[Lukas]
Some part of Lukas wants to protest: he's not weak. He's not a child. He doesn't need her to take care of him. He can manage. He would have managed if she was not here; managed all along when she was not even in his life, not even a memory in his mind.

But -- she knows that. And he doesn't have to pretend around her, which so utter a relief sometimes that he doesn't even know how to voice it.

He touches her as she's leaving: takes her hand briefly.

"Děkujeme vám," he murmurs. It doesn't sound like he's thanking her for dinner alone. As he lets go he adds, "Jdu do sprchy."

Which is what he does, his footsteps thumping up the stairs. When he passes her computer, still on, he smiles a little. Her toon is standing somewhere in Northrend, idling in wind and snow. He doesn't quit the game for her.

Five or ten minutes later Lukas comes back down the stairs, clean now, his bath towel around his waist. He lifts the blanket from the back of the couch and wraps it around his shoulders in lieu of a shirt or a robe. He smells like whatever soap and shampoo Danicka might have thought to bring to their den. His hair drips slightly. The bandage over his eye is clean and dry; he had the forethought to remove it, and then tape it back into place.

In another form, his eye would have regenerated by this time tomorrow night. In this form, it'll take longer, though the truth is Lukas will heal himself with a Bandage in the morning. After he's meditated. After he's rested. All he wants right now is to

wrap around Danicka in their bed

and be warm

and be safe

and sleep.

He follows her into the kitchen, where she's likely finishing up whatever it is she might be making. He wants to be close to her, so he stays close to her, lingering near enough that they can feel one another's body heat, close enough that she can smell her shampoo on him.

[Danicka]
It isn't quite a cloak of furs or a homespun loincloth. The quilt is warm enough, with the house heated, and the towel is thick and soft and still as new-feeling as the carpet. This is not a den made in a cave with a fire in the back and the bones of his kills arranged in artful stacks. They are sometimes primitive little beasts, the two of them. They are sometimes like this: almost docile. Almost domestic.

Never quite.

The toiletries upstairs are much like what she has at home: soap that builds a creamy lather and leaves a subtle scent. Shampoo and conditioner that are higher-end and herbal, rather than the stuff she brings home from the salon. There are razors in the medicine cabinet, a first aid kit under the sink in a white plastic box with a red cross on the lid. Bit by bit, they're adding things: a few more books on the shelves in the bedroom, that small lamp on the nightstand on the side where Danicka usually sleeps when they're here together.

Which isn't often. They manage. But 'managing' isn't the same as what it's like to have each other, to be with each other, to have found one another and wound their lives together even a little. 'Managing' is not the same as carrying the memory of one another through their lives.

Danicka knows. So does Lukas. And they don't speak of it, don't need to. He needs to shower and she needs to cook, so she's doing something, listening to the shower run while she heats oil in a pan and slices beef into strips, seasons them with salt and pepper. What he comes down to is exceedingly simple: meat over rice, a quick butter sauce, spinach. Ten minutes is not a great deal of time to do much more than throw food together that she knows will fill him up, will replenish his iron and give him enough protein, carbohydrates, and fat to let him sleep long and well, give his body something to burn through while he recovers.

He's warmed up, when he comes down clean and wrapped in the quilt and towel. Danicka has her hair up and is leaving the rice the hell alone, is sauteeing beef, is stirring sauce idly. She feels him coming and smiles over her shoulder at him, her hands still moving with an ambidexterity limited to such simple motions as stirring, turning, cooking. He comes closer and she turns back around, letting him be in her space, letting him put his hands on her if he wants, moving slowly so he can stay nearby without having to struggle to keep a hold of her.

Soon enough there's a plate full of food, there's a fork procured, and she's suggesting: "Let's just sit on the floor." Because the floor, unlike the table, is right here.

[Lukas]
Lukas does, in fact, want to put his hands on her. He doesn't hold her so tightly or so insistently that they have to shuffle around the kitchen again if she leaves the salt on the other side of the counter. He lets her go if she needs to move, but when she stands in front of the stove, he stands behind her and wraps his arms around her waist and

lays his cheek -- the cheek beneath the good eye, because he's careful about such things -- against her hair. Breathes against her back, warm again, skin faintly pinked with the heat of the shower.

He wants to help her cook. He likes it when she cooks for him; he likes it when she bakes, just as much as he likes cooking for her. But some part of him is always a little uncomfortable if Danicka does absolutely everything. Lukas does not want her to turn into a Good Little Kin, cooking and cleaning, bearing cubs and raising them.

He wants her just as she is: his Danicka, his mate, with her masks of social graces and her almost-conflicting streaks of animal tenderness and animal savagery.

In the end his help is relegated to spooning out rice onto plates, passing them over to her to pour beef and butter sauce atop. When they have food, she suggests they sit right there on the floor. He looks down, and then drops the blanket from his shoulders, laying it out like a picnic blanket.

"Okay," he says quietly, and sets his plate down. A detour to the fridge: he reaches not for juice or alcohol, but for milk.

[Danicka]
They slide to the floor onto the spread-out quilt, its corners rumpled and their food set down amongst the wrinkles. Danicka is eating only a token amount, the vast majority of the food placed on Lukas's plate. He helps, and she doesn't insist that he let her serve him. If he is insightful at all, if he knows her, he knows there is much intent and comfort in the way she holds out her plate to him so he can scoop some rice onto it as there is in the way she takes his hand and holds it over herself when he wraps his arm around her, rests his cheek to her hair.

Her hand is warm. He's warm again now, too.

Danicka folds herself to the floor beside Lukas's spot, leaning against the front of the cabinet doors below the sink. She moves closer to him when he sits back down, mug of milk close to hand, and she eats only a little. Mostly, she leans against his side, and she doesn't say much unless he does, first. Simply put:

she is not really hungry. She is not afraid, though the flight of fear from her has left Danicka feeling more than a little exhausted, more than a little drained. She is not panicked, nor trembling, but she is tired now where she wasn't before, simply worn out from relief itself. It's a familiar feeling. She eats so that he will not worry, so that they can share something, so that he knows he is home and his mate is fed, because she understands on some level the vital and unspeakable importance of this in place of verbal reassurances or coddling comforts.

Danicka drowses on his shoulder, her ear to his chest, while he finishes eating. She feels content. He can almost smell it, a scent combined of her and this place and the presence of food and cleanliness and warmth that his mind will perhaps one day come to associate entirely with their den.

Wordlessly as he sets his plate aside, her hand comes up and covers his opposite shoulder, her arm laid almost protectively across his front. Then, after a slow breath and an exhale of heated, humid air across his skin: "Ach, má lásko."

And that is all.

[Lukas]
Danicka knows him.

From the beginning, she knew him; sometimes better than he knew himself. She knew that under his apparent coldness and antipathy lay an aching desire that would not be quelled. She knew that every time he pushed her away, it was really to keep himself from betraying, as he saw it, all the tenets of his pack and its bonds.

And she knows him now. She knows that if she served him altogether, he would ache; he would flash to her brother at her family table, and the way he sat waiting to be served by Danicka, silent, submissive, seeing to everyone else before seeing to herself.

She knows that if she didn't eat at all, he would ache, too. He would worry. He would wonder if she was all right, if she was sad, if she was frightened, if there was something he had to battle, or fight back, or otherwise defend her from.

Which he would. Drained as he is, tired as he is: he would.

But she does eat. And so does he -- slowly at first, as though uncertain of his own hunger, though after the first bite he's suddenly ravenous. Suddenly scarfing. Manners are abandoned. His silverware doesn't merely click on the plate. It scrapes over it, clinks and clangs on it; he lifts his plate to his mouth like a bowl and shovels food in.

When he's finished, he sets the plate aside lazily. Sprawls a bit. He's sitting against the cabinets too. They're side by side on the blanket, on the kitchen floor, and she's leaning into him. His arm is around her. He closes his eyes and rests his head against the cabinets, and against the top of hers, and when she covers him with her arm, so protectively, he raises a hand to cover her forearm.

Breathes quietly.

Opens his eyes again.

"Pojďme k posteli," he murmurs, getting to his feet. She collects the plates. He collects the blanket, shaking it out, folding it over his arm. They leave the dishes.

He tosses the blanket through the archway to the couch, then comes back to wait for her. As she comes close he winds his arm around her.

This is almost hesitant: "Já možná ... spánek pro velmi dlouhou dobu. Zůstaneš tu, dokud jsem probudit?"

[Danicka]
If Lukas were to mention that dinner with Miloslav and Vladislav and how tense it had made him to see her serving Adren, Fostern, and Father before herself, Danicka would -- in truth -- not remember. She has an excellent memory, as all good liars must in order to be good liars, but she does not remember what she had for breakfast two months ago. She doesn't remember how many times she went to the bathroom last week. She does not remember things that are so commonplace, so part of her experience, that they do not strike her as worth remembering.

Most likely, the idea of Danicka being so used to what he saw that night that she doesn't even count it would only make it worse. She doesn't think that his desire to help has anything to do with that. Danicka just thinks he can't bear to be very far from her right now -- which he can't -- and that he is, like her, naturally industrious -- which he is -- and that he enjoys sharing even these small tasks with her. Which he does.

She cannot bear for him to be out of her sight for very long right now. She knows the calming effect busy hands can have on her, though she knows the both of them equally enjoy utter and sprawling laziness, a sort of decadent observation of time passing and having no meaning. She enjoys, thoroughly, that this is her home, and that she shares it with Lukas.

In any case: they care for each other with striking reciprocity. She makes him food because he's had a long, injurious night. He helps so that she will not work alone. She eats so that he will not worry. He watches over her, so that she will be safe. And in the end, after they've eaten and their stomachs have settled while they hold each other, they get up and

Lukas shakes out the blanket

and Danicka rinses their plates

and Lukas folds it up and throws it into the room where it belongs

and Danicka puts away the leftovers

and they both leave the dishes to be washed later. Tomorrow. Whenever.

Danicka meets him in the archway, her hand reaching for his. They lace together as his other arm comes around her, and Danicka looks up at him, her expression melting fondly when he says what he says. "Lukášek," she says, achingly, as though the question pained her with tenderness, "samozřejmě jsem budu zůstat."

So they go upstairs. Danicka goes up on her own, first, to log out of World of Warcraft and shut down the computer. Lukas is turning out the lights and double-checking that the doors are all locked and turning the heat down a smidge so their throats don't turn to sandpaper while they sleep. There's a comfortable familiarity to all this, and it shouldn't exist, it shouldn't be there. They have never done this before, Lukas coming injured and exhausted to his mate, Danicka caring for him and feeding him. They don't live there, rarely even come here, and yet: he knows where she is by the light sounds coming from upstairs, can imagine her in this room or that hallway. She walks out of the study door instead of through the bathroom so that she can meet him at the top of the stairs, as he knows on the ascent that she will.

It takes him far less time to be ready for bed than it takes her. He is wearing a towel. Danicka only removed her coats and her shoes. When the door to their bedroom is closed and his towel hung on a doorknob or over a rod in the closet or even on a hook in the bathroom, Lukas is naked but for the bandage over his eye. Danicka is sitting on the edge of the bed to take off her socks, rising to remove sweater and pants and camisole and then, finally, the pair of pink panties hugging her ass. She fingercombs her hair while Lukas pulls back the comforter and the sheets, neither of which smell like them. The cotton is all cool to the touch, not yet warmed by their presence.

Danicka, for that reason -- and so many others -- moves close to him immediately upon getting under the covers that Lukas is holding open for her, pulling up over her until they eclipse her shoulder. She wiggles to the middle of the bed with him, facing him, one arm tucked between their bodies and one arm wrapping around his waist. His arm crosses it, his hand covering her back, moving up to the back of her shoulder to keep her close to his chest.

If he were not utterly drained as he is, they might talk a little. If there were something that needed saying, they might talk a little. Danicka is worn out from the relief of fear, and Lukas is bereft of his last resources of spirit and will. Before either of them know it, they are asleep. It doesn't matter, but Lukas drops off first, further tired by his very effort to stay awake long enough to make sure she gets to sleep safely and contentedly. Danicka doesn't remember it happening, doesn't watch over him for a little while. His breathing steadies and his hand goes limp from unconsciousness while her mind is so hazy that she doesn't register it before her eyelids dip closed for the last time.

They do not wake for several hours. They do not know when they wake; there are no alarm clocks in this room, her iPhone is in the study's dock still, his iPhone is in his coat pocket and his coat is downstairs. The sun is up when they wake, but the day is overcast and it's impossible to tell by the light in the room what time it is. Neither of them care.

It's hard to say who wakes first, who wakes who. Maybe it was the same moment, both of them surfacing for a little while as odd little manifestation of their connection. Maybe Lukas stirs and it makes Danicka wake a bit, lifting her eyes to his face to see why. Or maybe she shifts and he responds to that, his arm tightening involuntarily and his eyes half-opening so he can make sure she is alright. However it comes about, this is what happens:

Drowsily, feeling the beginnings of a hardon he may not even be aware of, Danicka murmurs:

"Do you wanna be inside me?" as though this could be the only reason he's waking, as though she is asking if he needs a drink of water, and something about the primal unselfconsciousness of it, the openness and warmth of it, makes him want to howl with love and longing.

And when he nods, half-asleep and clumsy against the pillow, she rolls onto her back for him, pulls him over her with a soft, cooing sound she doesn't mean to make. Her hand reaches between his legs to stroke him but he's half-hard already, getting harder. She touches him anyway, opens her mouth to suck on his tongue and opens her legs for him to sink down against her and then time turns liquid. Each moment melts into the next like drops in a stream gone all lazy and slowmoving by summer. By the time Lukas feels Danicka guiding him to her opening, she's almost as wet as one of those summer streams, and with a single rolling thrust he plunges into her, making her groan long and low and loud.

They make love with humid panting, with sweat building between bodies and under sheets. Lukas gasps against her neck, growls softly. Danicka clutches his arms and whimpers oh, oh, oh, oh in his ear as he starts to go faster, until she comes in a breathless, trembling clench. She holds him tighter when he comes after her, as though if she does not keep him close now he'll fall into his orgasm and away from life, into some endless primordial darkness. They both reach it rather quickly. They come within moments of each other, hips squirming between fitted and top sheet, sweat and cum mingling together.

Danicka and Lukas sleep again. For hours upon hours, again. She moves onto her back again, one arm out of the blankets, her hair tickling his nose til he chuffs out a breath of hair and smooths it away from his face. He covers her breast with his hand under the linens, buries his face against the curve of her neck, half-covers her with his own body in thoughtless, instinctive protection. Danicka twitches once in her sleep, turns over, curls up in his embrace.

But meanwhile: Lukas dreams that it isn't real. He dreams that it was all a fantasy, the delusion of a weak wolf broken by a war that is coming closer to the wrong ending. He dreams that he imagined these things: a mate he met first in childhood, who remembers him as a boy with inexplicable gentleness coloring her recollections of a viciously ungentle period of her life. Who he met again in adulthood and craved instantly, who knew him deeply from the start, who loved him back despite all he is and all she's been through and all they have done to each other and tried to do to each other in the beginning.

Who loves him back.

Lukas dreams troubling dreams in his exhaustion, in his starvation of the soul, dreams that earning his rank and proving to her -- more than to her brother -- that he was utterly worthy of her were all just his imagination. Making a den for her, with her. Eating with her, being able to protect her and be nurtured by her without either of them feeling coddled or weakened by the treatment. Making love to her when neither of them ever made love before, when in that respect they may as well have been virgins on their first night together.

It is the scent that saves him, when he wakes, before even touch or vision return. He can smell Danicka's hair, smell her body. Of course. He is in their den, and it is real, and he is not weak or mad, though that makes this all the more a miracle, because he knows better than most how this world typically works. Did he actually make l--

Lukas inhales, and Danicka stirs in his arms, and he knows: he did not dream that, either. She came under him, held him close and moaned his name when her orgasm took her, arched her back and pressed herself as closely to him as she could. That was real, too. This is real. He wraps his arm more securely around her, and holds her to his chest until she wakes.

For Danicka's part, she dreams much as she always dreams. They are disjointed, and the places that seem safe make her nervous, and the things that are the most bizarre put her at ease. Lukas makes pancakes, and he can make them look like Mickey Mouse, and one of them he makes with a D in the middle, but on her plate it turns to toast with an egg making up the D, because she's suddenly craving salt. The whole time, he's waving the spatula around and saying

"...a gas in a piston-cylinder assembly. When the valves are closed, we can consider breaker breaker niner you can't even get out of the closed system. The boundary lies somewhere between the mug and the table forgot the crumbs just inside the piston and cylinder walls, as shown by the Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and lines on the figure. Since the portion of the boundary between the gas gas gas and the piston moves with the piston piston pi-- if combustion! Combustion Function what's your part of the boundary?"

Later she's at the edge of a river. It's coated with algae amidst garbage and toxic slime. There's a girl wading into it with a long stick, her pale sleeveless dress getting stained, her expression sad, the stick doing so little good to clean it all up. Danicka's pregnant in this dream, but that isn't unusual, and it doesn't bother her. There's a white house cat the size of a bear clawing up a tree on the other side, and she knows that's Katherine. Theron is down the stream, ducking his head under the filthy water every so often but coming up clean, looking confused before holding his breath and trying again to... she doesn't know what.

Someone, male and familiar, holds her hand and whistles, his other hand in his pocket. Danicka is annoyed because Lukas isn't there, or if he is, she can't turn her head around to see him, and she's almost sure he's behind her somewhere. She gets more and more frustrated.

Lukas tightens his arm around her, his heartbeat talking to hers through their respective ribcages. Slowly, Danicka's dreams become less vivid, less fantastical, less disturbing. In them, she knows there's sunlight, and she's home, and

then she's waking up.

There's sunlight.

And she's home.