kinfolk matching system.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker]

[Danicka Musil] It is shortly after eleven in the morning on Saturday. To the north, the smaller bedroom's door is closed and possibly locked, the bathroom currently unoccupied. To the south, a tall and heavy body is taking up space on the left side of the bed. There are rainbows on the carpet and on the sheets of that bed, cast by the prism hanging in the window. Danicka never seems to draw her blinds down. In the kitchen there is the smell of brewed coffee. A skillet is sitting in the sink, bits of egg drying on the teflon surface. There's a cutting board out with a knife whose blade is growing sticky from the juice of the fruit cut up on said cutting board.

Last night, not even twenty-four hours since the last time she saw him, Danicka had called Lukas. Can I see you? Not I want to. Not Are you free? It was a request and an invitation, and at some point or another after that he had ended up at her front door. In short order they had ended up down the south hall and on top of her bed. And maybe he noticed, or maybe he didn't care, that she was a little quieter than usual. Not silent, not by a long shot, but...definitely quieter than she's needed to be in her own bedroom in the past.

At no point had it seemed pertinent to Lukas to ask about the Converse All-Stars sitting in the entryway, either because he has seen Danicka wearing sneakers just like that, or because with her arms around him and her mouth on his, it just didn't matter.

Liadan has been up to...whatever it is she's been up to since last night. Danicka hasn't seen her since she retreated into her bedroom well before she called Lukas. Danicka hasn't seen her since she got up about thirty minutes ago. And now it's around eleven-seventeen a.m., and she's standing in the living room finishing her coffee, wearing her black Fraggle Rock t-shirt and a pair of hot-pink-and-orange-and-white sleep shorts. She doesn't know her new roommate well enough yet to walk around in her underwear, though this is pretty close. She hasn't had sex with her new roommate.

Who, as far as her boyfriend is concerned, doesn't exist.

Danicka stands in front of the stereo, presses a couple of buttons, and makes sure the volume knob is set at a reasonable level. Even so, the acoustics of the living room and the quality of the speakers makes the sound resonate as the music starts, and shortly thereafter, the vocals, which gradually follow the music until the song bursts into its chorus:

It's gonna take a lot to take me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa...

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The 'boyfriend' -- who would be possibly be shocked to hear himself referred to in this manner, at least by a non-drunken Danicka -- has a habit of sleeping in past noon. Actually, Lukas has a habit of staying up all night and sleeping all day, period. Danicka has seen him clear-eyed and awake at 5 in the morning; she's seen him tousled and wet-haired at 11pm as though he'd just gotten up.

Compared to that, 11:17am is an ungodly hour to be awake. And he wouldn't be awake, one suspects, if not for the blast from the past emanating through the walls. By the first chorus he's stirring; by the second he's opened his eyes.

Lukas has not been here often enough to know it subconsciously. He has not left enough of his own presence here to recognize it even before he wakes. When his eyes open to the dazzling white walls, the blazing midday sun, the rainbows on the floor, he's briefly confused. It's only an instant, not even long enough to formulate a question in his mind: where am I?

Not enough time for that. An instant later: Here I am.

And... music. And... the faint aftertrace of Danicka's morning shower. And... the smell of her in her sheets; the smell of him in her sheets; the smell of them in her sheets, which he throws back now in a wide-flung swoop, swinging his legs out of bed in the same motion.

Bars of sunlight, narrow with noontide, bounce off his skin as he makes his way through her room. He finds his shorts, his socks, his pants, his undershirt, his shirt. He finds all these things and he bundles them up in one large heap, carries it all to the bathroom, takes a 5-minute shower. When the southern bedroom door opens, he's tugging his undershirt down over his head, and his hair is wet enough to plaster against his skull and drip.

"What is this?" Mildly puzzled, he stands over the stereo system, pushing his arms through the short sleeves, rolling the hem down his torso.

It's times like this that it becomes rather startlingly clear that Lukas did not, after all, grow up in the United States. The song is a couple of years older than Lukas himself, and Lukas himself was in an eastern-bloc country even when he did finally arrive on the planet. By the time he immigrated to New York with his parents and his sister, it was 1990; a few years after that, when he began to pay attention to American pop culture, the radios had stopped playing this song.

[Liadan Whelan] A suburban man, at my door but I don't think I'll let him in...

Liadan has been awake for hours. She's been awake for a little over five hours, to be exact, and her teeth have been brushed and her hair flipped up into a clip, and that's about it. She's still wearing her sleep clothes, which consist of a grey tank top and a pair of black cotton pajama bottoms. She's sitting at her desk, eyes intent on the screen of her laptop, legs folded under her in her chair while she scores another headshot. And suddenly her screen flashes and she's dead.

"Oh FUCK YOU, you fuckin' whore!" She doesn't exactly shout, but her voice is raised and angry, loud enough to be picked up on the mic on her desk. "Oh no. Fuck you, I'm out." As she's logging out of the game, she hears the stereo turn on, senses rather than feels the reverberation through the walls. As she pulls open her bedroom door, she says, "Is that...?" There's a smile on her face as the final chords to "Africa" fade away.

Danicka is near the stereo, the sun slanting in through the eastern facing windows turning her hair into a golden halo. Liadan's fingers twitch, mourning the lack of a camera that should at all times be held within their grasp. She's barely out of her bedroom door when the obviously 70s flavored openin chords of the next song begin. She doesn't recognize the song, the look on her face incredulous when she says, "The crap is this crap?" She sees the tall dark haired man standing near Danicka's room and stops in her tracks. "Hey," she says, awkwardly, obviously nervous in the presence of this intimidating stranger.

[Liadan Whelan] [addendum] ...sees the dark haired man standing near Danicka and stops....[/end addendum]

[Danicka Musil] She finishes her coffee before Lukas comes out of the bedroom. She hears the shower turn on, but Liadan has not yet yelled at her computer. Her own hair is still wet, as she didn't want to chance waking him with her dryer even though she doubts it would have made much difference. She's got it in a loose braid to keep it off her face; the natural waves will be augmented and kinked when she unwinds it. In the next few minutes she sets her coffee cup down by the sink, but she doesn't start dancing in the living room.

Her bedroom door opens and she glances over her shoulder, her back to the room and her shoulders facing the grand windows. She flashes Lukas a smile but does not walk over to him to greet him as he crosses the apartment. What's this? he asks, and her grin quirks at the edges.

"That, sladké jedna, is a stereo," she says airily, her teasing followed quickly by

Oh FUCK YOU, you fuckin' whore!

Danicka claps her hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh. Before Liadan comes out, she looks at Lukas: "Meet my new roommate."

It's really not fair, what she's doing to either of them. No warning, no heads up. No explanation to Lee that this man who feels something like a serial killer in their midst is the 'boyfriend' she referenced, the one who is from Prague. No notice to Lukas that she took her ads for a new roommate down because she has one now. But there she is, in glasses and pajamas, and Danicka just starts to bob her head slightly as the song changes, and Mick Jagger lets out shrieks and grunts before pleading:

Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste...

Her hips swivel, and her arms uncross from her chest to start lifting up over her head, and Danicka, quite simply, starts to dance.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] That, she says, is a stereo. And Lukas cants her such a look, such a smirk of dry sarcasm.

"Děkujeme vám. To byla užitečná."

There's a not-quite-shout from the other end of the apartment. Lukas's head turns that way, quick as a hawk. Danicka stifles a laugh. He looks at her, eyebrows up: she explains, and his eyebrows come back down.

It's not really fair, this sort of sudden non-introduction, and if Lukas had actually considered this apartment his territory the way the laws of the Nation would dictate it to be, he might be offended. Then again, if he had considered it thus, he would've never overlooked the shoes at the door; the faint traceries of another person, a stranger, in the air.

When Liadan comes out of her room demanding what the crap this crap was, Lukas is looking right at her as though expecting her to emerge. She pulls up short. He's in his shorts. And his undershirt. And the rest of his clothes are in his hand, or over his shoulder, and at some point he'll put them on, but in the meantime -- it takes an inordinate amount of confidence to stand so easily, without even a shred of shyness or shame, as he examines Danicka's new roommate.

Because that is what those pale blue eyes are doing: examining Liadan, curiously, but without any particular attachment.

"Hm; is there some sort of kinfolk roommate-matching system I'm not aware of?"

Listening to him speak English, there's almost no way to tell Lukas is from Prague. He has no noticeable accent; none of the stiffness and over-enunciation of a school-taught speaker either. Then he offers his hand for a shake and says, "I'm Lukáš," and the name that rolls out of his mouth is so utterly foreign, and so natural on his tongue, that there's no doubt that English was not his first language.

"Sorry," he adds, and leans against the wall to get his socks on, "if I had known you were here, I would've gotten dressed first."

[Liadan Whelan] Liadan is too startled by this sudden menacing presence to hide her conflicting feelings. On the one hand, this man was more than likely the 'boyfriend' Danicka has mentioned occasionally. He should be safe, right? On the other hand...on the other hand she feels her heart racing and her blood freezing and a strong urge, not panic, just a strong feelingg that she should probably back away slowly and go back to Counter-Strike and enemies she actually stands a chance in hell of standing up to.

He holds out his hand to her, his ice blue eyes staring into her brown ones with such intensity she half expects her glasses to burst into flames and melt off her face. In the midst of the 'ohshitohshitohshit' running through her brain like a broken record she has a random burst of clear thought. He's making me go to him.

She remembers the ear buds still in her ears. "Thief" begins playing in her ears; she barely hears "I don't want to understand" before she practically rips the buds from her ears. Unrooting herself from her place in front of the kitchen she walks forward. "Líadan," she answers to his offered name, a name she's not sure she can repeat back to him. Then, her voice and manner all nervous politeness, "I'm sorry?" She clasps his hand, tries to give a firm shake but knows all too well her rip is ridiculously weak. She raises a brow in Danicka's direction, but doesn't know if the blonde, seemingly lost to the music booming from the stereo, will be of any help.

[Danicka Musil] This introduction may have been better timed if the moon were not waxing closer and closer to full. The blonde who begins dancing shortly after Liadan emerges is lost in the Rolling Stones at the moment. Neither of them have ever seen her dance before, unless Lukas caught a glimpse of her that night at the club when he was in pursuit of a random redhead and she was entertaining the youngest Bellamonte sibling.

That would have been an entirely different sort of dancing, thought: Danicka is not moving with the intent to seduce. She is dancing in her pajamas, moving because she likes to move, because she likes the music, and though she's not an inherently athletic person, she knows her body, she's comfortable with her body, and she has rhythm.

She does pause, however, when he says what he does: kinfolk roommate-matching system. She glances over her shoulder at him, her brows pulling together in confusion more than displeasure, but there's hints of that, too. What is he playing at, talking like that? Danicka plays it off, and dances on, and does not see that Liadan is almost frozen in the kitchen. She is paying more attention to Lukas...until she hears her roommate's voice.

Danicka slows down until she is just swaying slightly, and bobbing her head, and then that stops too, and she looks at the girl in glasses as her bare feet pad over the light-colored carpet, taking her to where the two others stand. "You know, last time something like this happened, there was a pillow fight."

Beat. "Not that I'm suggesting that."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The last time Lukas was in a pillowfight, the night ended with Danicka leaving with a bruised face.

He doesn't say that, though. He doesn't say anything at all for a second; he's startled to realize he doesn't quite know what to say.

This is the first time he's been in the presence of both Danicka and some member of the Nation in ... he can't recall how long. The night at the Brotherhood, perhaps? But even that was different; Danicka was different. She wore her placid mask in the common room. She was silent and obedient, she submitted prettily as she can. She was just his kin, and he was a Garou, and that was easy. He knew how to behave, because he has behaved like that for the past eight or ten years of his life.

This is different; Danicka is not playing a role. Worse, it is quite abundantly clear that these two women, so utterly different superficially, so utterly similar in that they both boast the blood of wolves and monsters in their veins -- these two women do not realize what the other is.

Another man might laugh it off, play along. Dance along. Have a goddamn pillowfight and leave the women to slowly muddle their way through their shared heritage. But this is Lukas, and what he says is:

"What I meant was, it seemed an unlikely coincidence that both of Danička's" (oh, so that's how it's pronounced.) "roommates have been kinfolk."

He sets his second foot down, and both are socked now, and he steps into his jeans. Straightening up, his eyes are on the roommate again, a blue so clear and pale that they seem cold, cold.

"You do realize you're both kin?"

[Liadan Whelan] [willpower]

[Liadan Whelan] [willpower: get it together woman!]

[Liadan Whelan] Lee takes a deep breath, then another. She feels her heart slowing back to a normal pace, and with it she feels a return to her sense of self.

"Are you saying we're related or something?" Her brow scrunches with confusion. She looks to Danicka, then back to Lukas. "How can you know that? We don't like anything alike."

[Danicka Musil] She has no real or comedic intention of starting a pillowfight with a werewolf in this lifetime, much less with an Ahroun when the moon -- currently invisible -- is gibbous. She stands next to Lukas and looks at Liadan, and then at Lukas. Who is zipping up his jeans and reasonably more clothed now. Danicka and Liadan are still in their pajamas.

She blinks.

And then laughs. "Oh, that's perfect," she says, a bit drolly, and passes by Lukas into the kitchen. "You want some breakfast?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas --

well, he doesn't quite ignore Danicka. It's quite possibly not possible for him to ignore Danicka entirely. Not when he says things like I wanted her from the moment I saw her; not when her passing him by makes him want to shake his goddamn hand and growl at her.

-- doesn't quite ignore Danicka, but he doesn't follow her into the kitchen either. He's still studying Liadan, and then he asks, rather gently: "Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"

And the truth is, his level tone, this imperturbable calm that he pulls over himself so easily, means very little at all when the moon is rounding toward full. His rage speaks for itself, buffeting his immediate vicinity like an invisible wall of fire.

[Liadan Whelan] Though he hasn't moved, Liadan, who had just gotten herself under control, feels like the spacious apartment isn't quite spacious enough for three people. She looks up into those crazy blue eyes and smiles a confidence betrayed by her short, clipped answer. "Nope!" And with that she spins on her heel, ducks her head, and walks quickly back down the hall to her bedroom. The door is closed quietly behind her for no more than a handful of rapid heartbeats before it's opened just a crack. "It was nice meeting you." This was obviously a lie, a fact confirmed by the shutting of her door and the sound of a lock being turned. Liadan has the distinct impression that this door, so sturdy before and now seemingly paper thin, would pose no great barrier against Lukas should he decide to come after her. She puts her ear buds back into her ears but keeps the volume at its lowest setting as she logs back into her Steam account and pulls up Counter-Strike.

Over the mic someone says, "I thought you were too good for us?" Liadan doesn't turn on the mic, and instead types the message, "Scary man is scary." And then she headshots the arrogant bastard.

[Danicka Musil] Does he want breakfast? Well he can make his own again, if he's just going to non-answer like that. Danicka does not brew more coffee, and has already made her own meal, so when she gets to the kitchen there is not much for her to do other than...stand there. And look at Liadan, waiting to hear her answer. Gaia knows what Danicka's experience with other Kinfolk is, if she's ever met one who did not quite understand the way of the world, if Danicka was ever exposed to Kin who had not been raised by other Kin, right in the thick of the city and the thick of the sept.

Then there is the matter that she invited this woman to live with her and did not, apparently, know what she was. She watches her new roommate, thoughtful, waiting, her uncertainty well buried if it is there at all.

Liadan does not cutely inquire as to what he's talking about, batting eyelashes in wonder, speaking under her breath about stories told to her by some distant family member. No, she answers his question and bolts. Danicka blinks, following her with her eyes, but doesn't stop her. When Liadan is out of sight she turns her blinking eyes onto her 'boyfriend', looking more bemused than anything else.

"Sometimes I think I was a surrealist painter in a past life, and now the universe is fucking with me as payback." Beat. "Breakfast?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] And -- Lukas watches Liadan bolt back into her room.

Danicka asks about breakfast again. This brings Lukas's attention around again. He frowns at her for a moment, and then he walks into the kitchen. He's still frowning when he comes to her, but the frown smooths away when he closes the distance to nothing and bends his head to hers. His brow rests against hers a moment after the kiss parts, and if he were asked now what that was for, or why he kissed her, he wouldn't be able to say.

It had something to do with attraction. It had something to do with waking up in her bed and finding rainbows on the ground, and this reminded him somehow of something he has only the faintest recollections of now.

Turning away, Lukas studies the coffee press a moment, and then passes it up for the less-fancy coffee maker that was here the last time he was here. Finding a mug from wherever-the-hell he might find a mug, the Ahroun pours himself a mug, leans the small of his back against the counter while he sips it.

"Sure." To breakfast, finally. And, "I think your roommate doesn't know a thing about Garou. Also, I think she thinks I'm an axe murderer."

[Danicka Musil] A more compassionate woman than Danicka might have already left the kitchen to go after her female friend -- or another female in general, something about solidarity -- and knock on her door, check and see if she's all right. That's not to say that Danicka has no heart, that she's not compassionate to some degree. She's actually a remarkably perceptive, empathetic, warm young woman. But that's not all she is.

She stays in the kitchen, feeling it grow smaller as Lukas enters just as Liadan felt the entire apartment grow smaller. She does not recoil, though. She doesn't frown in return to his, but lifts up her chin and kisses him, without wrapping her arms around him or even touching him. Her hands stay where they were before, which is holding onto the edge of the counter behind her.

No one asks Lukas why he kissed her. Maybe because he's been awake for ten minutes or so and hasn't yet. The stereo changes songs again (Good morning, Mister Sunshine, you brighten up my day...) and she just touches him, brow to brow, her eyes falling closed for a moment before they pull away again. It's not much, just a moment, and she doesn't need to ask Why.

She watches him pour himself the rest of the coffee, and then they're both leaning back against the granite counters. Danicka considers what he says for a moment before saying anything, then takes a breath and pushes away from the counter, turning around to the sink to start washing the skillet she used earlier. Her back is to him. It takes her a moment to do that, it always takes her a second of thought to decide that she can do this: turn her back on him. But at least her muscles don't tense up when she does so.

"Oh, she needs to give you more credit. Like you need an axe."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He's behind her now; she can't see him. She can hear the faint huff of his laugh, not wholly amused.

"She's Fianna." Danicka's said she likes his honesty, his -- honor, though she's never called it that. His sense of duty too, perhaps; though times like this, and certainly times like the times before he finally gave up the fight, threw in the towel, threw up his hands and said pffft fuck it and took her to that motel -- time like those, she might possibly hate his sense of duty as well. "I need to tell her tribe. They ought to be the ones to break the news to her."

Pause.

"I doubt you want them knocking down your door. Is there another place where they could catch her for a chat?"

[Danicka Musil] He's not all that amused, and truth be told, neither is Danicka. She is unconcerned, perhaps, or faking it very well, but she's not laughing very much, despite the sarcastic slant of her words. Then again, Danicka is not often all that sarcastic. Gently so. Thoughtfully so. Not continuously throughout a conversation.

She washes the skillet, and then turns off the water, reaching for a towel to dry it quickly. Apparently Lukas will be having eggs of some kind for breakfast. Her brow is slightly furrowed when she turns back around, hesitating, and then in a quiet rush:

"May I try talking to her first?" It's not Let me, or Maybe I should. It's not an offer, does not even carry the tone of an offer. It's a direct request, a plea, and she is uncertain about asking him this. But she explains, a half-beat later: "Not to hide her, or keep her from them. Just to find out more about what she already knows, if anything. Or to...prepare her."

Her eyes say it. Danicka doesn't. Prosím.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas is raising the mug to sip when she turns around, and when she speaks -- quiet, but a rush, as though she'd bottled it up for all the seconds in between and only now worked up the courage to say it -- his eyebrows draw together again.

He frowns, though perhaps not for the reason she might first suspect.

When she's finished he asks, quietly: "Why are you asking me as if I might deny you?"

[Danicka Musil] The question makes no sense to her. Danicka's eyebrows tug together in her own frown yet again, this time one of plain bewilderment. She would tell him that it's because he might, tell him this as though he's a idiot, but the thing is: she is not an idiot. She's actually very bright, and excellent at reading people, and even without those two facts under her currently nonexistent belt, she has this:

she has a strange and unexpected attunement to this person in particular.

Danicka sets the skillet down on the counter. "So that's a yes?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "That's a you didn't have to ask my permission." He sets the mug aside. "You could've just informed me, or asked me strictly as a courtesy." Another pause. "Why don't you give me a call after you've had a chat with her. And tell me where her tribemates can meet her."

[Danicka Musil] She huffs a mirthless laugh at the first part, at what she could have done. It's not quite as dismissive as a snort would have been, but it's not accepting. It's not believing. Danicka crosses the kitchen to get the carton of eggs out of the fridge, coming closer to him to do so. "How do you like them?" is her only question as to breakfast, before returning to the previous topic.

Which is not, it seems, asking him questions as a courtesy or informing him of what she is going to do, as though she doesn't really need to ask his permission. The topic is Liadan. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there should be a secret handshake."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] She doesn't believe him, and she doesn't even bother pretending. He can't make up his mind if that was a good thing or a bad. She asks about his eggs; he answers thoughtlessly, "Scrambled. Or easy-over."

They go back to the previous subject; or she does. He's quiet for a moment. Then, "You don't believe me." It's not an accusation; nor a question. It's a statement.

[Danicka Musil] "I believe that's how you would like for it to be," Danicka says calmly, and begins cracking eggs into a small metal mixing bowl pulled from another cupboard. She does this one-handed, as deft as a cook on a television screen. She has been cooking since before she ever met him, which is to say: since before Kindergarten. She finishes her sentence as she starts to whisk the eggs with a fork, adding in pepper and a bit of parsley from yet another cabinet, as she has no visible spice rack anywhere. "...Sometimes."

The pan is heating up, and she pours the eggs into the skillet where they begin to sizzle. She gets a spatula from a drawer, closes it with her hip, moving with an ease in the kitchen that is entirely thoughtless. She doesn't look at him. "And I may technically belong to my brother, and in this city I may technically be claimed by Milo, but that doesn't mean I can do or have whatever I want if it goes against your wishes. Or Mrena's. Or any Shadow Lord's, or any Garou's."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Jesus, Danička. If you did something I didn't like, I'd tell you. It doesn't mean you have to ask my goddamn permission for everything." He watches her cook; he notes without really noticing her effortless ease in the kitchen. When she reaches for the parsley, the cabinet is over his shoulder, and he moves aside for her. He's frustrated abruptly, or not so abruptly, and it's as much because of her fatalistic attitude as because he knows on some level, she's absolutely right.

He's playing pretense with the world again. She can't.

"And you're not technically claimed by Milo," he adds, just like that. "I challenged him."

[Danicka Musil] "I don't ask your goddamn permission for everything," she says softly, with an absurd amount of calm in her voice considering that just about any other woman talking to some man she's sleeping with might snap those words. She stirs his eggs. "I asked your permission for this, you don't need to extrapo--"

And just like that, he tells her that in a very real sense, that she belongs to him. Her eyes don't flash with anger and she doesn't suddenly freeze in place, but she does blink at the yellow contents of the skillet, at the flecks of green and black on the slowly solidifying substance. Danicka doesn't look at him, and she doesn't ask why.

"When?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "A month ago." There's nothing to embellish on; he states it like that, plainly.

[Danicka Musil] A month ago, if she takes him quite literally, means before that night at the Affinia. Before the full moon, before she told him she did not want this to end. After he came into his room and found her lying there, reading on his bed. Before she asked him about The Little Prince. Well, well before she told him what she's never told another person, living or dead, in her life.

Danicka usually does not ask this question if she can avoid it. But suddenly the blood is rushing in her ears and she has to remind herself that she needs oxygen for her brain to continue functioning. She takes a deep breath and still keeps her back to him. Her voice is so quiet it's almost inaudible underneath the BeeGees playing on the stereo.

"Why?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas grimaces; the answer is more complex than he cares to explain. He could tell her about Milo's failure to protect his own sister. He could tell her how he didn't want her safety in such unreliable hands. He could tell her how the challenge was spoken in haste, in anger -- he could tell her how that alone was uncharacteristic, how he never does such things hastily, in anger --

Or he could give her the simple truth of it.

"Because I wanted to protect you." And: "Because I wanted you."

[Danicka Musil] She swallows, turns off the ceramic-topped burner, and then moves the skillet to a cool one. For a moment she seems to have forgotten what she was doing, but finds her way again by saying: "The plates are to the right, over there," without indicating where she means with so much as a gesture. Still she won't look at him, isn't turning her head over her shoulder to face him. She doesn't want him to see that she's pale.

"Did you..."

It's not often that Danicka has to pause mid-thought to figure out what it is she wants to say. At the moment, unfortunately, she doesn't even remember that Liadan is in the next room, or even how they got onto this topic. She takes another breath, tips her head back, and looks briefly at the ceiling.

"Kristus, Ani nevím, jak se zeptat to."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He doesn't move to the plates; he doesn't even look at them. He's looking at her, and he can't see that she's pale, but he can see that she isn't looking at him, hasn't looked at him for some time now, refuses to turn and look at him.

He can't read her like this. He can't read her at all, period, but especially not like this, when he can't see her eyes. So he moves -- not to circle in front of her but to move closer, nonetheless, and now he's over her shoulder, perhaps an arm's reach away.

"Danička, co to je?" he wants to know, and the way he asks it is the same as he's ever asked this question of her: as though she were injured somehow, fragile somehow; as though she might be breakable.

[Danicka Musil] After she moved to this city her father asked on a weekly basis if she had met any Shadow Lords. He wanted to know who was taking care of her, who would be responsible if something happened to her that could have been prevented, who would answer to Vladislav if she were injured or killed or taken by another tribe or impregnated or any number of things. And up until he had passed along the information that Milo Maevsky was in Chicago and outranked him, Danicka's family had rested easy because that little boy she used to share her crayons with was now all grown up, was now an Ahroun and Beta of his pack.

And since that quick phone call telling her about Milo -- and this was before he had ever fucked her in a motel, before they talked about taming, before she brought him here for the first time -- her family has rested easy knowing that she was under the guardianship of a Fostern Theurge of their tribe. She was known to the Lords in Chicago. She was protected.

For a month however, the entire Musil clan has been operating under the assumption that Milo's claim was unchallenged. Danicka included. She tenses slightly when Lukas comes nearer, but it's not quite a flinch. She hesitates, and then glances sidelong at him, only barely turning her face towards him. Her voice is very small, and inherently wary.

"What did you claim me as?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "What?" -- it's out of his mouth before he can call it back. He's baffled. And then he thinks maybe he isn't, and he answers, "As your guardian.

"Why?"

[Danicka Musil] A slow exhale leaves Danicka's mouth, not a sigh so much as a release. She nods once, and steps back from the stove finally, turning around as though to leave the kitchen. "I just needed to know."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "There's more to it than that."

[Danicka Musil] She keeps walking, not going to her bedroom to walk down the hall and close the door behind her but going to the living room to finally turn off the stereo, saying goodbye to Lonely Days, Lonely Nights. The silence left in the wake of her wrist's flick on an electronics knob is not nearly deafening, but it's striking, considering there has been music and conversation in the apartment since Lukas woke up.

"No, there's really not," she says, a bit flatly, maybe even with a trace of irritation. "I just needed to know, and I wish you'd told me a month ago."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The first thing on his mind --

Yeah, well, I wish you'd told me three Dancers chased you through Grant Park.

-- is so absurd, so petty, so small that he wouldn't dream of saying it aloud. Instead, "What difference would it make to you?"

[Danicka Musil] "You're not the only Shadow Lord who has a vested interest in my well-being," she says, so professionally, so distantly, that the words 'vested interest' lose all meaning. Her well-being loses all meaning. And it says nothing of what difference it would make to her.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "You mean your brother." Ironic; but Lukas has a clearer memory of Vladislav than any memory he has of Danicka. He remembers the man from the New York Sept, already a Fostern when he was a cub; near or fully an Adren by the time he left for Boston.

Curious now, in retrospect, that his feelings toward him had been so similar both times, a sort of vague admiration, a sort of impersonal respect. Both times, Vladik had been unapproachable, out of his reach -- entire ranks above him; entire years older. Too mighty to bother with the children and the pups.

"I'll speak to him if you'd like," Lukas continues. "I'll let him know you're being watched out for and ... whatever else he needs to be assured of."

Pause.

"What difference would it have made, if I told you a month ago?"

[Danicka Musil] There was no time for talking last night. The last time they saw each other two nights in a row was in February. One night he was snapping at her and Martin to come sit down or get out, and the next night he was lying naked behind her, asking her if she was cold. After that? They hadn't seen each other or made any kind of contact for a week.

One night at the Omni, and a kiss in the morning that had Danicka leaning over the center console of his car pressing her mouth to his so firmly that she pushed him back to his headrest, and then -- not twenty-four, not even twelve hours later -- she had called him. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of game-playing about that, either: neither of them seem to be keeping a running tally of who has sought out who, how many times, with what sort of manner.

Last night he was kissing her in the entryway, and peeling off her jeans in the hall, and shrugging out of his coat to drop it on the carpet before they even got to the bedroom proper. Last night Danicka was not conversing with him about what he'd been up to since dropping her off at Kingsbury Plaza, but stripping off her shirt and his as soon as they fell onto her bed. Last night she was touching herself while he grabbed and rolled on a condom. Last night she was watching his eyes as she slid down onto his lap, her hands on his chest and her hair loose and wild around her shoulders.

And then he'd woken up in her bed to hear none other but Toto. And discovered that somewhere in the time between Martin leaving town and...now, apparently...Danicka had procured for herself a roommate. A Kinfolk roommate. It's been a rollercoaster forty-eight hours, to say the least.

Considering how rarely they see each other, most of the time, and how charged their time together is, and considering the shock of meeting Liadan when he did not know there was a Liadan to meet, and the almost stunned way Danicka is reacting to finding out that he challenged Milo for her a month ago, it's really no wonder that this morning's conversation over coffee seems jarring, even awkward, and definitely confusing.

Danicka looks at him from the living room, while he is still in the kitchen, as he offers to speak to her brother, the Garou who has a 'vested interest' in her well-being, as she puts it. All she does in response to that is shake her head: No. It's dismissive, unconcerned, and brief. She reaches up and rubs her forehead, however, when he asks what difference it would have made.

"It's not a big deal. It's just...what if someone had asked me who I was claimed by? I would have said Milo, and I'd look like a liar, and you'd look like a fool. I just think it's something I should know." She drops her hand and shrugs loosely, the muscles moving with catlike fluidity, and waves a hand. "It doesn't really matter. I just don't get why you didn't say anything."

Beat.

"Your eggs are going to get cold. And I'm not changing the subject, it's on you if you want to eat cold eggs because you can't multitask."

[Danicka Musil] [Manipulation + Subterfuge: Dismissive and Unconcerned. Totally.]
Dice Rolled: (7d10) 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] [Perception + Subterfuge]
Dice Rolled: (4d10) 10, 7, 2, 3 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] [Perception + 'Empathy']
Dice Rolled: (2d10) 5, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] If it weren't a big deal, he thinks, she wouldn't be skittering away from him every time he was near. Which is, in effect, what she's doing. He's had to chase her from the stereo to the kitchen already. Now she's out of the kitchen and back in the living room, and yes, she went to turn off the stereo, but really, that could have waited. Would have waited on another morning, when she was less ... tense.

Because that's what she is, he realizes, even as she's pretending ease with that liquid shrug of hers, that don't worry about it wave of her hand. Because when Danicka is comfortable with him, she doesn't wander around an open space; when Danicka is comfortable with him, she isn't, ironically, at her smoothest and most placid and most graceful. She's quirky; she does things that smooth, placid, graceful people would not do; she grins so unguardedly it's goofy; she wraps her arms around him for no good reason at all. She stays near.

He's considering this while she reminds him of his eggs. He glances at the pan. He gets a plate, finally, sets it beside the pan, dumps his eggs out, finds sliced bread somewhere and jams it in the toaster. While it toasts, he comes to the counter closest to the breakfast bar and looks at her over it. His forehead is furrowed, frowning.

"You're right," he says. "I should have told you earlier. I didn't because -- well, christ, Danička. A month ago none of this had happened yet. You were still on your goddamn two week trial period. I didn't think we'd last even a week, and all the same I wanted to ... "

He doesn't have a good name for what he'd wanted, even now. He skips over it.

"It wasn't even as though I'd planned it, that I'd sought out Milo and thought it all out and laid it before him. I would have told you if I had, if I'd intended to. It wasn't like that; it was just -- it just happened. How could I have explained that to you? I could barely explain it to myself."

The toast pops up behind him. He doesn't jump, though she can see it startles him from the way he blinks, once, out of place. He'd totally forgotten about his breakfast. Reminded now, he turns, he grabs the toast and his plate of cooling eggs, he follows her out of the kitchen and puts it on the breakfast bar and moves a stool over to the end so he could eat and watch her at the same time.

"I know that's not a very good answer, but it's the best I can do. Now tell me why it bothers you so much you're pretending it doesn't."

[Danicka Musil] Body language isn't everything, but with Garou it's a lot, and with the two of them in particular it's far more trustworthy than words, which cause a hell of a lot more misunderstandings between them than any kiss. Lukas is right: on another day, the stereo would have waited, and Danicka might still be dancing. She would be touching him. Eating off of his plate.

This is why honesty is such a hassle, Danicka is thinking. Most people, when they lie and must keep lying in order to stay out of trouble, find dishonesty to be like quicksand. Every time they thrash a little to get out, they sink a bit deeper. The woman before him feels that way about the supposed Truth: once she starts speaking honestly she has to keep speaking honestly, or wants to...at least with him. It's sticky. It's frightening. She's going to suffocate any second now.

While Lukas makes toast, Danicka takes a deep breath. One arm is laid across her chest, wrapped around the opposite bicep. One hand is covering the side of her neck. She's had her arms like that before, and it's simultaneously relaxed and self-protective, innocuously thoughtful and ruthlessly calculating. Danicka falls into it without seeming to think, on mornings after in hotels, often when she's lying in bed with sheets around her legs, watching him eat, watching him get dressed.

Most of the time he doesn't see it because that is how she watches him sleep, too.

A dozen other women might have bristled, become offended, or become defensive, at any point here. When he refers to her 'trial period'. When he says he didn't think they'd last a week. When it comes out that he didn't plan that, he didn't think too much at all about it before he challenged Milo. In each case it would be an insecurity of her own coming to the fore, and that doesn't happen very often with Danicka.

Instead of seeing rejection or dismissal where there is none, or trying to argue futilely, she just makes an internal note of the fact that he didn't think it through before doing it. She thinks about what he said to her when they first got to the Omni, about wishing he could protect her. Even from things that have already happened.

Lukas walks around the kitchen to sit at the bar, and Danicka walks to the other chair, climbing into it as he is sitting down. She leans her elbows against the granite. "It doesn't bother me that you did it," she says quietly, looking at her thumbnails. "I don't even know this Milo guy."

There's no point to looking any deeper than that, though he might. She's telling the truth. Which doesn't fit, or won't fit, in his map of the situation: a moment ago there was a surge of tension in her lean frame when he offered to speak to her brother and she just shook her head no, and they'd moved on. He has no reason to assign that tension to the mention of Vladik, to the idea of Lukas speaking to him. No reason at all.

Her nostrils flare slightly as she takes another deep breath. "Did you think I would have ended it, if you'd told me at the time?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "No." She can tell by the way he looks at her, and by the way he says 'no', that this is the first time he's even considered the possibility. There's a pause. "If anything, I was afraid you'd think I took this ... more seriously than I did."

That's not the truth, is it.

"More seriously than I was willing to admit," he amends.

[Danicka Musil] Danicka made and ate and finished her breakfast long before Lukas got out of bed. She ate the same thing he's eating now, in fact, including the toast. Though in her case there was honey on it, honey that is no longer sweet and cloying in her mouth because the coffee cut through it. She isn't sitting up straight in her chair at the bar but leaning forward, elbows on the edge of the counter, shoulders slightly hunched out of relaxation, not for defense.

She looks across the kitchen at the whiteboard, which today lists only that she needs

garbage bags
dish detergent
peaches

and

ham.

And then she looks at Lukas again, with that cast to her eyes that always makes her look like she's twenty, or fifteen, or ten, and not coming up on a quarter of a century. It's a rare thing, in a face that's older than it should be, for her to look young, or innocent, or anything of the sort.

"I would have ended it," she confesses quietly.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] And you wouldn't think he'd be surprised from this when it was implied in what she said a second ago -- but he is. It's there in his eyes, flickering and gone.

They're not truly alone in this apartment anymore. They weren't last night either, but he hadn't known it then, and so it hadn't mattered. It matters now, in some subconscious, subtle way.

He's not sure why that occurs to him now, but it doesn't -- flickering and gone, as well.

This is only hypothetical now; it's pedantic. He asks anyway, "Why?"

[Danicka Musil] Her legs hang down the front of her tall chair, ankles loosely crossed. Her thumbnails flick once against each other, not hard enough to mar the incredibly plain manicure she always wears.

There's never been any color on her fingernails or toenails that he's ever seen, nothing but a clear, glossy polish. Her nails are kept reasonably short and unobtrustive. The only callouses she has are the ones that denote a woman who can walk -- and has walked -- around a large city in high heels. No one would, to look at her, think she knows the meaning of real, honest-to-god work.

Danicka observes him, watching thoughts ripple and disappear in his eyes like coins tossed into a fountain. She can't identify all of them, tell the quarters from the pennies, but it doesn't matter. Not enough to pry, or stare, or look at him in that way she does where it seems like there's nothing he can really hide from her, nothing he ever has successfully hidden from her.

"...Because I'm not ready for this."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's a shift in tense there, past to present. He still hasn't started eating, and he's unlikely to start just now -- his eyes are on her, suddenly guarded.

"And now? Are you ending this?"

[Danicka Musil] She doesn't take a deep breath, or go rigidly still. She just keeps looking at him, allowing their eyes to stay together even though this has always been something she's struggled with. It's a form of letting him in. And she's not ready for that, either.

"No."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It's only after she answers that Lukas's eyes relent. That's the only word for it. They don't turn away, nor close, nor even flicker. They simply -- soften, if only a little, in some indefinable way. The intensity of his gaze becomes just a little closer to bearable.

He thinks for a moment. Then, "I'm glad. I would've had a hard time dealing with that, I think."

A few weeks ago -- nearly four weeks ago, really, the last time the moon was this close to full; closer -- when they were alone in a hotel room and he was already sure she was going to end it, and she told him she wasn't, he had spoken of pieces to pick up, necessities, as if he were a glass windchime twisting in the wind, and she were the string that held him together.

This morning, when the subject came up again unexpectedly, with no warning whatsoever, he says: he's glad. He says: he would've had a hard time dealing with it. As if it were an inconvenience. A fairly major one, but merely an inconvenience in the end.

This is also a coping mechanism. A survival mechanism.

A moment later he starts to eat at last, turning his attention to his food.

[Danicka Musil] [Perception + Empathy: A Hard Time, Huh?]
Dice Rolled: (6d10) 2, 7, 7, 3, 5, 6 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Danicka Musil] She's not ready for this, she says. And yet she's still not going to end it. Neither of them will even say what 'this' is, at least not with daylight streaming in the windows. Lying in bed at a hotel room they seem to be able to discuss it by way of a metaphor in a children's story. In the dark with white wine keeping her thoughts afloat and no barrier between their bodies she is able to tell him what's happening to her, but not this morning.

Not with Liadan down the hall and eggs on his plate and the day only just beginning for both of them. Not in daylight, without the comforting buffer of darkness or impending sleep or drunkenness to make the conversation safer. No, neither of them say what 'this' is that Danicka is not ready for and yet is simultaneously unwilling to pull away from.

She does not even try to reconcile this. It just is.

Once upon a time, Lukas spoke of the end of This as though it would shatter him, leaving only pieces too small to put back together, too small to glue or tie or repair. She hadn't understood that, or had pretended not to understand that. How could something that was only a few weeks old break someone who so often feels like warm stone under her hands?

His eyes soften but he feigns thoughtfulness, stoically intones that he is glad, and that he would have had a 'hard time'. Danicka lifts one eyebrow as he picks up his fork and starts to eat his eggs, the faintest Oh, really? expression. But she doesn't tease him, or question him. She just leans over the short distance between the two chairs and lays her head against his arm for a moment, her face turned slightly towards his bicep.

"I know, miláčku."

She kisses him just under the hem of his t-shirt's sleeve and pulls back again, mostly so she doesn't tip over.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He turns when she lays her head on his arm -- not all the way; not even far enough to look directly at her. He looks at her hair falling over his arm instead, golden against his skin. After a moment he lets go his fork and curls his forearm up and back. His bicep contracts against her brow. The angle is awkward; the tips of his thumb and fingers barely skim her hair, her temple. It's the faintest sort of acknowledgment, silent.

Then she's drawing back, and his skin is bearing a memory of her lips, and he looks at her as she straightens. He smiles at her, faintly; they both know what she knows is not merely the scant few words he said.

After, he turns back to his breakfast. It doesn't take him very long to finish off the rest of his eggs and toast. When he's done he dabs up the last of the yolk with the last of the toast, pops it in his mouth, gets up. He does his own dishes, though if there are more stacked in the sink, he leaves them alone. She's got a dishwasher anyway.

Drying his hands on a dishrag, or a paper towel, or on the tail of his shirt, he turns back to her.

"Thanks for breakfast," he says. A brief pause -- "Give me a call after you talk to your roommate, will you? Let me know."

[Danicka Musil] It's awkward, the bend of his arm and the placement of his hand, but it's also tender. Danicka's eyes close when he touches her, brief as it is.

It aches. Not because he's going to leave, not because she is not ready for this, but simply because it is more than she's felt for another person in years...or perhaps ever. She stays longer against his arm than she meant to, it turns out, and lets it ache. Because he was so relieved he could barely speak, when she told him a few weeks ago that she did not want this to end. Because he was so relieved he could not bear to show it, when she told him a few seconds ago that she does not want this to end.

Ready or not.

Then he turns back to his breakfast, which she made with a quiet domestic ease and absolutely no trace of the submission she would have worn like a veil for just about anyone else, and Danicka sits up straight again. They part ways as they always seem to in the end, which is without much fanfare, as though they bot have to make a conscious effort to separate and cannot do so if they linger overlong, even in glances.

She stays right where she is when he gets up to clean his plate and wash his dishes, but tips her head as he's turning off the water. "You don't have to do that," she says mildly, but he knows this, and that's really not the point of her saying it anyway.

At the end, she gives him a faint smile, nodding gently. "I'll call you."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] She tells him he doesn't have to do that -- Lukas grins suddenly.

"Are you kidding? My mother would kill me if I didn't. I'd have shamed her and everything she put into my upbringing."

He tosses the dishrag over the oven handle to air-dry. Instead of taking a right on his way out of her kitchen and, subsequently, her apartment, he circles around the breakfast bar and comes to her. He's over three-quarters of a foot taller than her when they're both standing barefoot. Depending on how tall her barstools on, she might have either gained or lost on that difference.

It doesn't matter. She's thin on the verge of skinny, and even if she weren't, he'd still be able to scoop her up just like this. His arms are wrapped around her waist and under her rear, his spine arched against her weight, and she's so warm against him that he thinks he could hold her like this forever.

He turns his face up to hers and kisses her once, and it's slow; gentle. If the kiss in front of Spring was a Hello, this is -- not a goodbye, but a See you later. When it parts he pauses, leaning his brow against her nose, her lips.

"Whatever else," he murmurs, "you do make me happy, Danička."

A moment later he lets her down, bending to set her back down on the stool he'd picked her up so effortlessly from. Some casual goodbye or other is exchanged; he finds his coat wherever she'd cleared it off to, throws it over his shoulder, and lets himself out.