prom night.

Danicka

Of course everyone is still reeling. There were a few people saying they couldn't believe they were even having a prom this year, and a subset of students who have boycotted it, but they're mostly kids who wouldn't have gone to prom anyway and 9/11 is just a convenient reason. Everyone is still on high alert. AK-47s in airports. People who can avoid that part of downtown, give Ground Zero as wide a berth as they can, go to therapy, go to gravesites. The world feels like it's in shambles still, most of a year later, but most people have reached a sort of numbness about it, a fixation on anything that will make them feel like the world makes sense again, like it used to. Back in that world where something like that could never happen.

Teenagers, though. They want their prom. They don't want the world to stop because thousands of people died. Thousands of people die every day. A bit of the world dies every day. They just want to dance, or stand around and watch other people dance. They just want to hear Your Body Is A Wonderland while they sway with their date and then take a limo to some after-party or hotel or something. And no one, really, can blame them.

Danicka's prom is back in Queens, but Danicka herself is not. Her group ditched sort of early, but 'early' is still very late at night. They are the children of immigrants and working class folk, and they all chipped in for the limo, but once they got to Manhattan -- come morning they won't really remember that it was DAN-ih-kuh's suggestion -- they got out and let the driver go with his pay and they'll take the subway back home later, they can do anything. Granted, this is the group of teenagers who know that Danicka half-lives in Manhattan. They've felt her changing the last couple of years, and she's always been so different from them, her family so different from theirs, but the divide has gotten larger more recently. That feeling they get this time of year, that everything depends on tonight and right now or else everyone and everything will be gone and lost forever, every drop of potential lost to time, is only exacerbated by the sense that tomorrow morning Danicka will simply cease to exist. Poof. Gone, like she never was.

Most of them don't know how close to the truth that is.

Her date is this kid who is on the short side, with floppy blonde hair that hangs in his eyes and piercing blue eyes, a small mouth. He looks years younger than he is, just as Danicka has always looked older than she is -- and continues to look older and older, partly because she spends so much time in Manhattan. Her style has changed. Her hair is all chopped off, and ever since she and that guy Stephen stopped talking to each other and then he graduated, she hasn't been the sort of bookish, handmade-clothes-wearing girl she used to be. She looks like she belongs in Manhattan. She looks and feels like she belongs to another world. She's gotten meaner, and they don't understand her anymore.

It's actually kindness on her part that they think they ever did.

It's late now, long past midnight, but it's prom night and they aren't the only teenagers roaming Manhattan in formalwear. Danicka's date, Leo, has been passing around a flask, but it's been empty for a long time now. The girls are complaining about their heels and bowties and ties and buttons are undone and at least one guy has just gone all out and untucked his shirt entirely. Three people in the group are singing that they're all made of stars but they can't remember anything but people they come together, people they fall apart, no one can stop us now, cuz we are all made of stars, singing over the guy who is saying oh man, that video, man, you know that video, Jesus, that's such a good video. One poor kid doesn't even speak anything but broken English, constantly looking to Danicka to translate into Russian for him, and he's frustrated to hell and back because he can't even flirt with his date, who has been ignoring him as a result, but he's still so glad to be out here, to be with them, to be doing this.

They drop Danicka off at the front gates of the Sokolov's city residence, and Leo kisses her. He's a good kisser. He's had practice. She's better. She's taught him a thing or two even just tonight, and he wants her to sneak him inside and fuck him, or get a room somewhere, it's prom, they'll splurge a few hundred dollars for one night, and he's a lightweight when it comes to liquor so he's damn near willing to do anything, say anything, pay for anything, if she'll let him take that dress off of her.

The rest of the group shifts uncomfortably, wanting to get to the damn subway before they miss the last train. Danicka pushes Leo back and gives him a Look, a Look she's learned in just two years of taking care of a little girl, and then smiles and hugs and kisses her way through her female friends, and watches them all traipse off to the subway,

and when they're out of sight she walks away from the gate of some people she's never met before, some neighbors of the Sokolovs. She lifts the hem of her dress, her little drawstring purse dangling from one wrist, her corsage still clinging to the other. She likes having her hair short like this, no matter what Vladik thought about it. No matter what he did about it. She doesn't go to the Sokolovs. She goes to Bohemian Hall, because it'll be open til 3 am, and they know her, and they know her father, and they will let her stay there and no one cares what she drinks. They give the pretty girl who speaks their language and knows the stories of most of the people working there free food, they will be happy to see her on prom night.

Danicka sets off walking. It's too late for her to be doing this, but she does it anyway. She does keep her pepper spray close at hand, though.

Viharfelhő

When the planes struck the towers, Viharfelhő was fifteen years old and so far away that he didn't feel so much as a tremor in the wind. When the towers slammed to the ground, he was busy slamming other cubs to the ground one by one while his mentor and the warmaster of the Sept looked on in critical silence.

It was a very big honor, the warmaster of Stark Falls leaving his Important Duties and coming to watch a flock of cubs try to put each other down. There were six or seven of them, the boys bare to the waist, the girls in sports bras or tank tops. It didn't matter, anyway; they were all covered in mud and bleeding from broken noses, gouged eyes, clouted ears.

Viharfelhő won every fight easily, and it frustrated him. He was the only Ahroun, except for Miron who was only twelve. He wasn't the oldest of the group, but he was close. The only ones older were Rolf and Adele, both of whom changed very late. Plus he was certain Rolf was addlepated, even though Istok said he was a Theurge, was all. Viharfelhő, on the other hand, changed a very long time ago. He has followed his teacher, the Adren Istok Promised-Rain, for over three years. He has known him even longer. This was a rare thing in this day and age, and the elders of the Sept told him he should be grateful for it. Few cubs received this sort of time, this sort of attention, this sort of training, this sort of dedication. Most cubs were pushed out three months after their First Change, and a great majority of them die before they ever hit Fostern. This too was a very big honor, Viharfelhő knows, but it was growing hard to believe it. The cubs who had been here when he arrived were already long gone. One of them, Yeva Necklace-of-Skulls, was already a Fostern. And Viharfelhő has grown so tall and strong and skilled that they were pitting other cubs two or three at the time against him, and if he won then it was because he has been here so long, and if he lost it was an unbearable humiliation.

Later, walking back to the cottage where the cubs had their rooms, Istok told him the warmaster had been impressed, and spoke of taking him on as a Guardian when his Fostering was finished. When do I start? Viharfelhő asked immediately, and his mentor fixed him with a steady, dark eye.

When you are ready, he said. And you are not ready, because you have too much ego. When you fight, you are still thinking only of yourself. What you're doing. How you look. How you've performed. What others think of you.

Viharfelhő did not understand then. He would not understand what Istok really meant for another decade or so. Anyway, he hardly thought of what Istok told him that day again, because when he walked into the cottage the other cubs were already gathered around their little TV. Many of them had come from New York City, which alone amongst cities seems to engender a deep, almost fanatical devotion that had little to do with affection. Even New Yorkers who don't like New York, who curse it and its winters, its goddamn driver, its slums and its subway, still love New York; that was the paradox of it.

Most of the cubs were dead silent. Rolf was weeping openly. Benny cursed and paced and finally stormed out, snapshifted into lupus and ran into the woods. As for Viharfelhő, he wept later in the bathroom, alone, silently, crumpling toilet paper against his eyes so there wouldn't be tear-tracks in the mud on his face. Because of the deaths and the atrocity but mostly because he was hundreds of miles away and that was his city, his family, and he could not reach them.

Six months later, the autumn has passed into winter and the winter into spring. It is early June. Summer is already in every breath, and because the Shadow Lords do not keep the rituals of Christ, Viharfelhő was not home for Christmas last year. Because Viharfelhő hates the way his parents treat him now, like he is something above and beyond what they are, he was not home for the summer solstice before, which the Shadow Lords do keep.

This summer, he goes home. It's been nearly two years since he's seen his parents. He and Rolf and Hana and Benny drove down together, riding in Benny's car. They were supposed to leave by 2pm but then Istok wanted to give him a gift to bring to his parents and his sister, and Hana got in trouble for sneaking into the Grand Elder's house and got sent to work with the Keeper of the Land until dusk, and when she was finally ready to go they discovered Rolf hadn't even packed yet.

So it was almost 6pm when they left Stark Falls. Benny was impatient but Hana reminded him that at least now they'll miss rush hour, and then Hana and Benny were happy. Viharfelhő was burning up inside with impatience, but he stared out the window and didn't say much. Hana talked enough for all of them, anyway. Talked about shopping in Manhattan, talked about meeting her boyfriend again, talked about showing her mother, who was a Galliard, how good she was getting at disappearing from sight. Benny was a Galliard too, and wanted to come over to meet her mom sometime. Rolf just kept saying he hoped they'd rebuilt the towers, and Viharfelhő didn't have the heart to tell him they weren't going to. The other cubs dropped him off in front of his parent's brownstone at nearly eleven pm and he got out with his backpack, which was large for him when he packed his belongings into it and drove north with Istok three years ago. Now it was small for him, sitting awkwardly high on his back, which seems to broaden every day. He wondered if his parents would even recognize him.

They did. And they welcomed him in and there were tears in his mother's eyes and his father sat him at the head of the table and they hurried to reheat the dinner they'd prepared four hours ago, which had cooled while they waited. When they finally sat down to eat his father sat to his right and his mother to his left, and they filled his plate and his cup over and over while he ate with stiff, furious politeness. Then something stupid; he dropped something or knocked something askew and his mother all but leapt to clean it and he said,

no, he shouted: Just leave it alone!

and there was a ghastly silence over the dinner table like the silence when the towers fell, and Viharfelhő wanted to sob again. He stood up instead, so suddenly that his chair groaned backwards over the hardwood, and with the last of his dignity and restraint he excused himself from dinner. Before the front door slammed behind him he heard his mother telling him to bring an umbrella, it might rain.

He rode the subway south, burrowing beneath this massive city. He didn't know where he was going. Maybe he wanted to go south, go to Lower Manhattan, see the scar where they'd ripped a chunk of Manhattan's pride away. Maybe he just wanted to go somewhere unsafe, unpleasant, and feel strong and unafraid in his skin again. He concentrated on the little things. He barely remembered how to ride the train; where to buy the ticket and how to get in through the gate. He stood on the platform in his blue jeans and his sneakers and tried to look as apathetic and bored as the other passengers, but he was sure he stood out like a sore thumb. The other passengers stayed far away from him, anyway.

When he got on the train there was a girl sitting across from him. She was cute and he was sixteen so he smiled at her, but she couldn't meet his eyes and a little later she got up, white-faced, and changed cars. He looked at his reflection after that, looked at the sullen boy in the window with the black hair and the wide shoulders and the long arms, the bony, wiry frame that had yet to fill in. He couldn't understand what was so frightening about what she saw. He wondered how Hana's reunion with her boyfriend went; he thought for a second about the skinny Ragabash with her limbs wrapped all around the smiling blond boy whose picture was taped to the underside of her bunk; he thought about them all in a flash and it aroused him and disgusted him at once. He couldn't sit still anymore; he got off the train at the next stop. It was 86th street.

So he walked west, toward Central Park. There's a Sept in there somewhere. A very well-hidden Caern, and a lot of werewolves, and he didn't want to run into any of them, so he go to the park after all. He turns and walks down 5th instead, and there's the Guggenheim with its bizarre, sterile curves. He wants to go inside, but of course it's closed, so he stands in front of the door and tries to peek in until a security guard inside comes at him with a scowl and shoos him away, hand on the grip of his gun.

Walking out of the shadow of the overhang, Viharfelhő starts south along 5th again, and now he sees there's a girl coming up the street. She's thin and pretty and she's wearing fancy clothes, and Viharfelhő doesn't really even know what prom is so he thinks maybe she's one of the rich people who live in this part of town, maybe she came back from some glamourous gallery opening or something, something elite and decadent like that. He's sort of afraid to look at her, afraid to walk by her, and this is stupid because what he's afraid of is that she'll be afraid of him.

He thinks of crossing the street, but now it's too late because she's only a few dozen feet away and if he goes now he'll look like an absolute wimp. He thinks of talking to her, but what would he say? His mind panics; he doesn't know what to do so he just stuffs his fists under his arms, folds his arms tight across his chest, and leans suddenly against the nearest wall like it's just occurred to him to do this. Like it's perfectly natural for a teenaged boy to suddenly stop and decide to just chill against a wall, on 5th Avenue, well past midnight, by himself. He wishes he had a cigarette to light. He wishes he knew how to smoke. He glances up as the girl's heels tap-tap closer. She looks sort of familiar. He tries to sound cool:

"Hey. You got a smoke?"

Viharfelhő

[whoops, he DOESN'T go to the park after all.]

Danicka

She almost cut through Central Park tonight. It's safe for her there, even if the wolves there can't be everywhere at once. She has no bat signal, no special whistle to call them to her aid, but this is their territory, and they remember her mother. Her pack is patrolling this city even as Danicka walks it. Vladislav is in that caern somewhere tonight, she imagines. There are wolves roaming through that place, and she would be relatively safe there

and so

she avoids it, and ends up walking north on 5th. Her heels make her taller, make her seem even more slender than she is, but she's thin to the point of -- well, especially in this city, fashionable. Small breasts, and her skin lightly tanned from days spent out in the parks and sunlight with Yelizaveta as spring crested over the city, as spring turned to summer. Her hair has gone a little flat from hours and hours and hours spent out, but with her cut, it hardly matters, and someone like Lukas wouldn't notice anyway. Her heels glint like silver where she tugs the hem up so she can walk. Something around her neck glints, too.

And she walks quickly. She walks purposefully, because that is how you walk late at night in the city when you're alone. She's alert to the point of hypervigilance, and she sees the dark-haired teenager a long, long way off. Her back gets straighter and she ignores him, doesn't stare, doesn't look, though he makes spiders crawl up her back, stabbing her through the scalp with instinctive, ancestral terror. Her heart is pounding well before she gets within six feet of him.

Her face is a mask. Rich girl, he thinks, one of the people who gets to live around here, never asking himself why someone like that would be walking alone this late, why wouldn't she be in a cab or in a limo or someone's car or with someone, but he's sixteen. He only thinks so far, and most of those thoughts circle back on himself.

The girl in heels and a pretty blue dress with a flower on her wrist passes right by him, tucking a loose lock of hair behind her ear, and it's not the whiff of her perfume -- she isn't wearing any -- or sweat from dancing at the prom and walking around all night or any of that which hits him. A sense of familiarity trickles in through all the solipsistic panic, but there's something about... her hair, maybe. Or the line of her jaw. Something hard to place, but

he grew up with it. In a way, it just feels like home.

Hey. You got a smoke?

And she knows that the two worst ideas are to ignore him entirely -- he might follow her then, track after her demanding her attention, yelling at her, and no one will hear him or care about her -- or stop there on the sidewalk, with no one around, and dig a cigarette out of her little purse, then her lighter, inviting him to grab her, or his friends to come out of the dark, or something. But the truth is, everyone at school is very cool and grown up and smoking is not something the group she was with tonight does, and she doesn't really feel much desire or need to smoke most of the time, it's just

a good excuse to talk to people she finds attractive, a good excuse for talking to them, a fakeout that lets everyone pretend they're talking to each other out of necessity and attraction is secondhand. It's a guard against vulnerability, and she knows that. She's eighteen years old and she knows that, she's figured it out. She knows what cigarettes are for in her case, and what they are for people who really do need them, and she knows that a lot of the people she goes to school with prove they're grown up by not smoking, and it wasn't always like that.

She's scared and she wants to tell him yes, she has a smoke, here, have all of them, but if she tells him that and there's nothing in her purse then he'll know she lied so, even with all that,

Danicka has to tell the truth: "Sorry, man, no," in passing, barely glancing at him as she just keeps on walking. Same quick pace, steady clip, maybe a little faster, but in that barely-there glance she does see him.

And just as dozen thoughts flashed through her mind in a few seconds and a matter of feet, Danicka's mind grabs a hold of the details of his face in an instant. His eyes and the shape of him, the musculature that is 'wirey' and 'bony' when he's surrounded by full-grown Garou but which anyone in her high school would see and assume he's on the basketball team or the football team or both. She keeps on walking past him, tap tap tap, but she thinks of his face, and she thinks of the sense of terror that latched onto her lizard brain when she saw him stop and lean against the wall, and she thinks of several possible outcomes: he's familiar because they've met before, and that means he's probably not going to rape or kill her. he's familiar because he's Garou, and chances are he's not going to rape or kill her, but he's not safe. he's familiar because she likes the way his face looks, and if they've never met before then why not now?

Danicka hasn't yet realized that she's not just good at math. That she's smarter than most people. That her mind works fast, faster than almost anyone's. She doesn't realize not everyone is like this. That, in truth, most people are pretty dull-witted by comparison. She's learning. It shocks her how easily people believe her. It makes her wonder if anything they say is true, ever; if she's being fooled just as much as they are. She wonders.

And this is where we stop. This is where we say: maybe all of this already happened. An angry cub leaning against a wall asking for a smoke and a girl in a prom dress saying sorry, no. She keeps walking. He lets her go. The next time they speak he's reaching across a Silver Fang kinswoman to shake her hand, and he is -- like now -- aroused and guarded and pretending to be cool, but he's a better liar then. So is she, which is saying something, considering how effortless her masks are even now. Maybe all of this already happened, and maybe that is how it goes. And maybe:

She slows her steps just a few paces past the teenager who looks about her age but seems younger somehow -- but everyone her age seems younger to her -- and glances at him over her shoulder, her shoulderblades bared by her dress. Her brow is furrowed a little. "Do I know you?"

Viharfelhő

As the girl comes closer, Viharfelho sees that she's younger than he thought. Or maybe older. He's not sure. He has very little experience with girls, really; not merely in the sexual sense but in the sense of simply not having known very many. The cubs at Stark Falls hardly seemed to count. They were usually either furry or muddy. The kin were not his to look at. And the older Garou were well out of his sphere, mighty and remote, like demigods of old.

So: he saw her and she was dressed fancy and she was thin as a model, or what he thinks models and other Rich People like that look like, and he thought she must've been twenty-two, twenty-three, something grown up and brave enough to clip along the midnight streets like that. Then she got closer and he could see her face and she looked familiar, and so of course he thinks maybe he knows her from someplace. Maybe school, a long time ago, which would make her about his age.

But it's not that either. He can see now that she's a year or two older. Seems older than that, but not quite twenty-two. He's confused by her. He can smell her, and he's very aware of his heart beating in his chest. She tells him she has no cigarettes, of course she does, he doesn't even smoke and he wants to tell her that but he's embarrassed at the stupid way he tried to speak to her, his jaw clenching against the flush that wants to shoot instantly to his ears, and maybe she reads that as anger. She walks on. He lets her go. She's scared. She's a good liar and he's so ignorant and inexperienced, but he can smell her fear the way he can smell her

pure breeding. That's what it is: it hits him suddenly. He's seen it rarely enough that it's not yet instinct for him to understand it. He may or may not have ever seen it on a kinswoman before, and if he had, well. Not his to look at. At all.

Viharfelho is taking a breath to call after her, knowing this will probably make her run away even faster, when she slows. He holds his tongue. She looks at him over her shoulder and he straightens up a little, alert. His eyes are pale and blue, brilliant in the streetlight. She can see that even now, at this hour. He shakes his head a little.

"No," he says, and then, "maybe. I don't know."

The name tastes strange to him. He can't remember the last time he said it. His eyes flick down. There's a trail of butterflies on the left side of her dress, he sees it in an instant. His eyes want to follow them, but he pulls them back to her face. A Garou, especially an Ahroun, must always be controlled, Istok always says. It is not fair to ask of you, but it is also the only thing between you and a beast.

"My name is Lukáš. Were you... at a party or something?"

Danicka

This is the third look she's getting at him. Well, technically not the third, it's more than that, but tonight, let's say: tonight, this is the third look she's getting at him. Once from afar, the way he stopped suddenly and leaned against a wall with forced, stiff casualness. Once as she passed him, glancing to try and show just enough respect that if he was a crazy person he wouldn't get angry and chase her down. Now this, looking back at him steadily, and her regard doesn't make him grin and it doesn't make him start walking towards her, which is something worth noting when you're hyper-alert to every possible signal of danger coming your way. So she takes the opportunity to look at him.

Her lips are dark, a sort of wine color, striking against her features and coloring. If she kept walking he'd let her go, she thinks. And she's curious for a moment, more curious than afraid, though her heart is still painful in its beating. She notices the way his eyes flick to her side then snap back up to her face rather than traveling along her silhouette. She thinks about asking him where he goes to school, or if he's from around here, to figure out why he seems familiar, to figure out if he's Garou, but he speaks again. His name sounds like a lie on his lips, so she ignores it at first, becuse his question is rather ridiculous.

Danicka has turned. She lifts her eyebrows, as well as the corsage-bearing wrist, shows him the pale purple flower on a ribbon. "...Prom?" she says, like surely he had to have noticed and he's just tired or something, she's not trying to be a dick here but, um, duh.

Viharfelhő

And now those eyes go sharply to her corsage. He doesn't even know it's called a corsage. He thinks of it as a flower bracelet. He's never seen anyone wear one in his life, or if he did he didn't think about it at all. She seems so vivid, though, and had he met her later in his life -- when he meets her later in his life -- he'll think that again. That she's so vivid. She's so bright. She's like a star, a source, and everyone else mere planets, mere reflectors. Only he'll be older then and more guarded, less willing to allow his thoughts to run their course. He'll suspect so much more, then, that he doesn't suspect now.

Doesn't, for example, suspect that she's trying to be mean. Her tone stings him a little anyway. He looks from the flowers around her wrist to her face, trying to read the answer there when her words tell her nothing. It doesn't work. He has to ask:

"What's prom?"

And now there's no stopping the flush creeping up his cheek. He is terribly embarrassed by himself. He's intelligent. He reads a lot. There are piles of books under his bunk in the cub-cottage, most of them rumpled paperbacks. He read Catcher in the Rye last month and he thinks of Caulfield, who also wandered New York City alone and disconnected. Whose mind was full of the sacred and the beautiful, who couldn't open his mouth without something profane coming out. Or worse, banal and inconsequential.

Lukas is sixteen. He already knows he's going to die sooner rather than later. He can't imagine anything worse than dying without mattering. He wonders if this, too, is egocentrism. His mind dredges frantically, though his face is still. Hadn't Anezka talked about prom? Homecoming? Was it a dance?

"Is it like... a dance?"

Danicka

Her answer tells him nothing, and his reaction tells her whole worlds about him. He's disconnected. He probably doesn't go to school -- well, he looks kind of boondocky anyway. Dropout, maybe, or immigrant, or something. But Danicka is putting other things together. The way he makes her feel, the way something about him eclipses her ability to look him in the eye. She simply can't, and she doesn't. Her eyes stay on his cheek, or his jaw. His mouth. His shirt collar. His ear.

The guy is embarrassed, and she reads that like it's written across his face -- because, well, it is. Her head is tipped to the side. Kindly enough, she nods, though it isn't much. It's like a dance, but it doesn't matter, so she doesn't get all flushed and excited and tell him all about it. Nor, interestingly, does she laugh at him for not knowing, doesn't ask him how on earth he could not know about prom. It's just... one more thing about her life now. One more thing she did. And Stephen wasn't there, he graduated already, he's gone, and if he had been there he wouldn't have looked at her. Wouldn't have risked it. Not after the things she said to him. Wouldn't go back under her knife.

Her hair is all chopped off now, no sedate cut to her shoulders like she got when her mother died -- which pissed Vladik off enough -- but this 'do that barely even brushes her chin. Her hair is short and she's looking at him curiously. His name, one among dozens of Slavic names, but he's not Lukas, he's Lukáš. Black haired and blue eyed. Full of some inner turmoil that goes beyond teenage angst.

"Are you from the Park?" she asks him.

Viharfelhő

"Park Avenue?" That's where his mind goes first. He knows she was at a like-a-dance, but it's still that first impression, those first assumptions, that stick in his mind. An instant later he understands, and something about him changes in a sudden rush. A tension slides out of his shoulders. He straightens from the wall at last, turning to face the girl.

"You mean Central Park. The Sept." Just a beat of hesitation before that word, half-taboo here in public. He sounds so relieved, "You know."

Then he remembers he hasn't answered her, so he shakes his head again. "I'm from up north. Well, I grew up in the Bronx. But now I'm upstate. I'm ... home from school. Sort of." Conscious of each one he draws in a way he rarely is, Lukas takes a breath. She's in that breath, and he feels like maybe he's violating her somehow, so he tries to breathe through his mouth instead, but that's worse. "What's your name?"

Danicka

He straightens from the wall, tension leaving him, and she takes a half-step backward, unconscious and unchecked, her own spine tightening up. She watches him so closely, so constantly. It's hard to tell if she's even blinked. It doesn't go away when he mentions the sept, glad that she knows. He talks quite a lot, tells her where he's from and what he's doing and where he grew up and things are pinging against her memories from across the veil of fear.

Things like Lukáš not Lukas. Things like Bronx. She's aware of these things, hearing them and thinking about them, but she's also aware that he's kind of into her. There have been other young Garou, male cubs who sniff her breeding and watch her move and young Cliaths who do both with growing entitlement, Fosterns who she knows have spoken to her brother. She's well of age now where she could be mated. Where she could have cubs. It helps that she's so pretty. Vladislav keeps turning them down, their own family needs her for now, or the Garou's rage is too great and his sister is so very flawed, so very broken. No, no, it won't do. He spins it in such a way that these other Garou work that much harder to stay in his favor, because one day, possibly one day soon, Vladik will choose from among his friends who will get his sister.

Danicka is rarely around Garou. The ones she has been around look at her like they already own her. One of them does. Most of them look at her like they're stripping her clothes from her skin, her skin from her flesh, her flesh from her bones, staring at her like they could take the very air out of her lungs with their eyes. Sometimes they do, and she has to remember to breathe. She avoids being around them. She wonders what it would be like to fuck one of them, one of those beasts that want her so very badly, that sniff her skin and growl deep in their throats, fucking her like their entire existence has been leading up to the moment they touch her, like suddenly their entire existence is touching her.

Granted, Lukas is looking at her with a sort of raw and uncertain fascination, which is different. And he's acting like...well. Not like any sixteen year old boys she knows. His attempt at cocky and cool got his back to the wall and ended there.

She gives a nod. She knows. She doesn't tell him what he might not know: her mother, her brother, her family, all of it. Who she belongs to. But he asks her name. Danicka takes a breath, and she can't smell him, and she doesn't know he's of her tribe but his name is a hint to that, his name, which for some reason keeps sticking in her mind,

"Dani
ka." There's a beat, but he's Garou and she's Kin and so: "Dani
ka Musil." And another hesitation, but because maybe it matters: "My brother is a Theurge. Are you... a Lord?"

Danicka

[DANICKA BUT SHE SAYS HER NAME RIGHT.]

Viharfelhő

That he's kind of into her is an understatement. It could be chalked up to hormones, to biology, to the near-obsession with sex every teenage boy has around this age. It could be chalked up to what she is and what he is, Garou and kin, which are - quite without irony or exaggeration - made for each other.

But it's not just that. He keeps looking at her. He thinks he knows her. He thinks he's never seen her before. He thinks she's older than she is, younger than she is, he doesn't know what he's doing but she's still here, still talking to him, when any other girl

or in any other lifetime

she would have walked on. When she tells him her name something flares in his eyes, like now he has something he didn't have before. She's given him something he never had before.

"Danicka," he repeats, soft over the sussurance. "Hi."

And then he has to shake his head again. "I'm not a Lord," he says, when many other cubs - Benny, for one - would puff out his chest and assert that yes, yes indeed, he's a badass Shadow Lord. It's a point of pride to be one, after all. Certainly there's mistrust for their tribe, even hatred, but there's never scorn. Never pity. Oftentimes, fear. Benny was a skinny Jewish kid growing up in a bad part of town, and he thought being feared was the best thing that could possibly happen. Lukas, on the other hand, was already sick of the fear.

"I'm still a cub," he adds. "My family belongs to Thunder, but until I do my Rite and take my vows, I'm not a Shadow Lord. Hey," this is a little like the way he called out to her, but quieter, "why are you afraid of me?"

Danicka

It isn't polite for girls of her age -- or his, for that matter -- to be as obsessed with sex as they actually are. Girls may very well masturbate several times a day, look at every boy as little more than someone who might make out with them and rub against them, think about it all the time, watch movies that hint at it and read books that use words like 'member' and 'delicate flower' while their breathing gets a little heavier and the urge to touch themselves gets even more undeniable, but that isn't how people see teenage girls. Teenage boys, well. They show up and everyone in the room automatically assumes -- knows -- that the vast majority of his thoughts and motivations are sexual. Teenage girls show up and everyone tells themselves she probably likes thinking about weddings and 'boys' and romance, because none of that has anything to do with a desire for sex, oh no. Not all.

Silly.

Danicka, her name slurring around the particular consonants of a shared heritage. He stays over there after leaving the wall, doesn't walk towards her, which counts for something. She watches him all the same as she asks him what he is. If he's like her. If he's one of their tribe. There's a flicker of something in her expression, quickly suppressed, when he tells her that until he does his Rite and takes his vows -- as if he's a nun -- he won't be a Shadow Lord. But then,

Hey, he says again, and asks her the dumbest question she has ever heard.

"I don't know," she answers, her voice quiet, too. "It's late. I don't usually stop and talk to strangers like this. Especially when I'm alone."

Viharfelhő

[I AM GOING TO TRY TO READ YOU NOW. I HAVE THIS MANY DICE.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 8) ( success x 1 )

Danicka

[I AM ALREADY BETTER AT LYING THAN MOST PEOPLE IN D.C.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

Danicka

[Oh that flicker was just admiration and respect for his restraint and humility. Totally.]

Viharfelhő

That furrows his brow for a moment. There isn't even a hint of a crease between his eyebrows yet. He's young, so young, and despite the heavy-browed seriousness of his demeanor there's a churning ocean inside him. It takes a lot of effort for him to say, "You don't have to stay. I just saw you walking and wanted to talk to you. But you should go if you want."

Lukas shifts a little. He leans against the wall again, with his shoulder, not his back. The night is warm; not hot yet. Comfortable. It's a little humid. His mother thought it might rain. He thinks she's probably right. Sometimes he feels like he can feel storms coming long before clouds gather. Sometimes he thinks that's just fantasy, a delusion brought on by some imagined affinity to the storm.

"I'd like it if you stayed though," he admits.

Danicka

It isn't the truth, but it's a truth. Of course she's afraid, walking alone and being stopped by a strange young man who is taller and stronger than her in the dark, who looks at her the way he does. Of course she's afraid, he's a werewolf and he's one of the bad ones, he's one of the ones that might snap at any second. But she gives him the more general truth, the easy truth, the one that tells him nothing about her other than what he already knows: she's a young woman, and she lives in New York City, and she's walking alone after dark.

Unfortunately, he doesn't get to tell her that he'd like it if she stayed. He gets done telling her that she should go, and he's leaning against the wall, but she nods her head down the way. "I was just going to get some drinks. Maybe some food. It's... a Czech place. I know a lot of people there."

Viharfelhő

Maybe she wants him to come with her? His heart beats faster. But no; he's probably just misreading her, and if he spoke up now he'll make a fool of himself again. Scare her off, whitefaced. Maybe she just wants him to know she's going somewhere populated. And lit.

There's only silence, a cautious, waiting one. Lukas looks at her to see if she'll explain what she means.

Danicka

And he stands there. Watching her, cautious, and she's starting to realize he's as cautious as she is -- well, maybe not -- but he wears it on his sleeve. Wears almost everything on his sleeve.

She lifts her eyebrows at him, expectant. "So are you coming?"

Viharfelhő

This is something he wears on his sleeve too, which he'll learn to hide in the next four, five years: the quick smile that flies across his mouth, halfway between surprised and delighted and unsure.

"Okay," he says. "Yeah."

The young Garou, who is not yet a Shadow Lord because he has neither chosen nor been chosen by Thunder, straightens up off the wall again. He has a loose, agile way of moving. He's tall and getting taller, but he hasn't met Edward Bellamonte yet so he hasn't learned to wear tailored slacks and buttondown shirts yet. His jeans are old and scuffed at the knee, a little short already at the ankle even though his parents mailed them to him two months ago. There's mud on the bottom of his sneakers, mud from the upstate mountains that he's slowly trekking into the concrete of Manhattan.

Falling in place beside the girl, Lukas is glad she hasn't made note of the fact that he just turned one-eighty from where he was going. He's glad she didn't ask him where he was going, period. He wouldn't have known what to say. I was going to mourn the twin towers sounds so stupid, and I was hoping to find some trouble sounds ... sociopathic. They walk in silence for a little while. Then he says, smiling a little, "Do you always walk around alone after dances?"

Danicka

A part of her wants to smile, because he seems so eager and again so relieved. He reminds her for a split second of a puppy who has just learned its name, and has learned that when its name is called and it jumps up and runs toward the voice there will be a treat and possibly cuddles and either one is the best thing ever so the puppy comes joyfully, flopping along and bounding toward the call.

It takes a split second after that for Danicka to remember what he is, as he steps closer and she turns and a wave of heat slams against her side. Not the warmth of the sun, either, nor even a fever; this is almost painful, skin-prickling, and she wonders if she's going to start sweating from fear. He doesn't seem to like that she's afraid of him. She breathes carefully, and starts walking with him. A girl in formalwear. A guy in scuffed jeans and muddy sneakers.

He speaks, and she glances at him, then gives a small half-smile, shaking her head. "No. Not always. So... your family still lives in the Bronx?" A moment to wait, for a nod or some sign of assent, and then she says: "What's your family name?"

Viharfelhő

A knife's edge balances all his emotions. He's so pleased that she's asked him to come along to dinner, but it reminds him that he ran out on dinner with the parents he hasn't seen in two years. He's so uncertain of why she's asked him along at all, this girl in formalwear who looks a bit older and seems a lot older, this girl who's almost a woman when he is still very decidedly a cub. Not ready yet, Istok says. Too self-centered.

And he's frustrated, too, though he tries not to be, when his abortive little attempt at conversation and humor falls flat. No, she says, and that's the end of that. Then she's asking about his family again, which makes him look at her furrow-browed, a little defensive, or at least protective. She's a high school girl in a prom dress, and still his first instinct is to demand why she wants to know about his family.

He quashes it. And nods. "My parents live pretty close to the Gun Hill stop on the 5." He looks at her to see if that even makes sense to her. He found her walking down 5th Avenue in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He's not sure she's ever ridden the subway a day in her life. "It's not a great neighborhood but it's not too bad either. We're the Kvasnickas." And looking at her again, "Why?"

Danicka

There's not a beat of confusion when he talks about the Gun Hill stop on the 5. She just nods; she knows the area. There's actually a few Slavic families in that area. All over, really, in pockets, vaguely communal because they have to be. She's just strolling with him now, because earlier she mentioned it's right up ahead, actually before they went silent, and then he tells her his family's name.

Danicka blinks after a moment, then looks at him. "Oh," she says, and then does the oddest thing: she laughs. She laughs, and she's smiling, and then she says: "Tvá sestra je Anežka, ano? That's how I know you -- your family used to come around my family's house. When we were little. We called you Lukášek." That smile. Looking at him with, for the first time, a few seconds of no fear. Looking at him in the eyes.

Viharfelhő

Lukas frowns for a second. Then he's agape. "What?" he blurts. "Wait, no way. What. That was you? With the oak in the yard? But you were so. I mean." His eyes flick down; he pulls them back up again. Closes his mouth, starts walking, reels for a moment, turns to her.

"How's your family?" He's trying hard to remember his manners. Anyone could see that, but Danicka is already learning to read someone through and through. "You had a ... a brother, right?" He's looking at her face, trying to read the right and wrong of everything he's half-guessing at. "And your dad made really good kolaches."

That, he remembers. There's no uncertainty there.

Danicka

You were so. I mean.

He was bigger than her then, too, though she was older. And just as skinny. But no heels, no breasts, wearing some shapeless shift of a homemade dress and a pair of old shoes, her hair long and thick and falling into tangles of curls the closer it got to her waist. She'd wear little sweaters with a single button at the top, and those were passed down from relatives and friends, women they knew who knitted and knew that Danicka's mother didn't. He knew her as a timid child, hiding behind her father, eager to share her toys and books and art supplies with him, though truth be told she had few, though truth be told it was more than he had back then.

Lukas mentions the oak and her eyes spark. Close up it turns out they're not blue, and they're not hazel. He sees the green in them now. His eyes, conversely, are so very blue, as -- she realizes -- they've always been. He mentions the oak. The corner of her mouth quirks a bit, for half a moment. It isn't because he flicks his eyes down over her body again, And then he just up and starts walking a few steps away, stops himself, and asks her about her family, and he's ridiculous.

She lifts her eyebrows. "I made really good kolaches. Which you then threw up all over the kitchen floor."

Viharfelhő

"Oh." He's sure she can see how red his face just got. Truth is, she probably can't. It's way-past-midnight and the streetlights don't hit skin the same way. Still, he turns away, his shoulders tightening a little, suddenly and starkly embarrassed. "You remember that." A few steps later he has a rebuttal at last: "Well, at least I didn't fall out of the tree."

And he looks at her again, a little smile trying to show he's not serious in his vengefulness. It fades a little after a while, and then he's just looking at her.

"How come we didn't really hang out anymore?" It's possibly the second truly stupid question he's asked her tonight.

Danicka

For a few seconds she thinks she's made him angry. He all but storms forward, his voice dark even if she can't see if his face is the same. Danicka doesn't say anything. A few moments later he looks at her, and he's smiling, and he comes up with his great retort. Her eyebrows flick in a sort of oh really expression. "I fell out of the tree because you said I couldn't climb. You were a little nightmare," she adds, and realizing what she's just said, and to who, she looks forward again, silent.

They're walking. He's just looking at her. Until, of course, he asks her another question. Which isn't really as stupid as he thinks. She hesitates, looking at him. "I don't know why. I'm sure I must have asked my father, but..." she shrugs her thin shoulders once, a small and tight gesture: "You all just stopped coming around."

A moment later: "You know we passed it a few steps ago."

Viharfelhő

The lift of her shoulders is not the elegant, lovely gesture it could be. The gesture he's somehow rather sure it would be if she wanted it to be, if she wanted to play that role. The motion draws his eye anyway. He looks, and for a single mad moment he wants to put his hand on her shoulder. He wants to give her his coat, or something, even though he isn't wearing one. Lukas looks away again, drawing a breath.

"I'm sorry," he feels compelled to say. "For what it's worth, which probably isn't much, I've been up north for the last three years. So I couldn't have come around anyway."

Then he looks startled, his head whipping around. "Oh." He stops. For the second time tonight, he changes direction. "Oh, I see it."

They get to the door. He hurries to open it for her. Someone must have taught him to do that.

Danicka

She seems less scared of him now. Perhaps because the thought in the forefront of her mind was, for a moment, a little boy stuffing his face full of kolaches in the kitchen until his eyes were swimming and his body simply rejected all the sugar, spilling pastry and candied orange filling on the floor. She remembers the way he stood there, wobbly and swaying, and the way he said: jsem se pozvracel! with a tone of something like wonderment.

But Danicka also remembers him getting yelled at, washed up, then changed into some of Vladik's old clothes, then spanked, and she remembers crying. She remembers, all too vividly, how she defiantly told her brother later that night that Lukasek was not pathetic,

and what that got her.

So she doesn't think of him in terror, though she still feels the heat of his rage. She doesn't talk about Vladik, though he asked about her brother. She lets him open the door for her and slips in, and the Bohemian is still rather raucous. They hear languages other than English, and smell beer, and she is the only one of her kind here. The only girl her age, the only person in finery. Lukas fits in more here than she does, even in his youth. But it's Danicka who walks in like this is a home away from home -- he has no way of knowing how many places she enters like this -- and Danicka who sees that it's rather full of people, and noisy, so she reaches back with the hand that isn't holding her skirt from trailing the floor,

takes his hand, and pulls him after her, towards -- not the bar, too exposed, too open, too many non-regulars who will see if someone serves her alcohol -- a small table jutted against the wall, with two chairs.

Viharfelhő

By this time, Danicka has already not only fucked boys but gotten pregnant by one. Lost that baby. She has kissed boys, gone out with boys, made out with boys. Just earlier tonight she kissed one by the gate of the Sokolov's neighbors, and when she was done kissing him the boy wanted to take her to a hotel, c'mon baby, it's prom, we can splurge.

And fuck.

Lukas doesn't know this, though, and perhaps this is for the best because he probably wouldn't like it. Not that he has any right to not-like it, but then such things rarely make sense. Anyway, Lukas doesn't even know that proms probably account for more high school pregnancies than any other night of the year. He has only the vaguest sense of prom, period. His sister talked about it some, the last time they talked. That was a long time ago. He doesn't have a cell phone, and the Caern doesn't get reception anyway. There's a phone in the kin village, but he's not allowed there. The kin are not for him. So he doesn't call his family often and he sees them even less, and his idea of prom is some murky mix of birthday parties when he was little and the sweaty firelit bacchanals of the spring equinox, when the land is reawakened. He doubts either of those images are right.

The point is, though, that by this time Danicka has already gone through the first fumbles of adolescence, has already been taken to bed, has already taken people to bed. Lukas, on the other hand -- well, the last spring equinox resulted in some drunken kin girl taking him into the woods and putting his back to a tree and pulling down his jeans, and he could hear the laughter and shouts of his sept so he was nervous because the kin are not for him and the drums were beating in the distance, beating in his blood, and when she put her mouth on him he came so fast she drew back, surprised and then laughing, using the tail of his shirt to wipe her lips before kissing him on the cheek and saying --

he doesn't remember what she said. His heart was pounding and his head was light and he wanted to crawl in a hole and die and he wanted her to do it again, please do it again, and he couldn't think at all. The girl led him there by the hand, but on the way back she walked ahead, calling to her friends, and he let her go. Before that, he hadn't even been kissed.

So Danicka takes his hand now and he starts. She can feel that startle, the quick twitch of his fingertips. A beat of uncertainty. He's so damn uncertain; he has no idea how to read her, and she's not even the liar she'll become in a matter of years. He just has no idea, period. His hand closes over hers a little tighter, though. There are callouses on his palm where he would grip a sword. Istok has been teaching him to use his birthright, though the truth is Istok is always teaching him to use his birthright -- all of it.

He follows this girl that he just met, that he knew as a child but that was so long ago that might have been another lifetime, through the noisy front of the restaurant toward the back. It's a small table. There are two chairs. He's not sure how he should pull the chair out for her when she's holding his hand, but he does his best, and then he sits across from her.

There's more black in his eyes than blue now, even though they're in a brighter place. There's a menu in front of him, but he keeps looking at her.

Danicka

Even now it feels more like spring than summer, though they're coming up so quickly on the latter. The season of new growth and new life is no longer bursting but has burst, is everywhere with its heat and its luciousness. The air isn't scorching as it will be in July and August but soon, so soon, the days will start getting longer and by then Danicka will be in a place where June feels like August and August feels like the end of the world, and she will learn to be a little bit stronger, and she will learn to be a little bit better at withdrawing into herself. The truth is, she can lie well but she has trouble lying to herself still. She can keep herself relatively safe and she has an innate curiosity about people and interest in them that makes them easy to read. She has not yet convinced herself that she is incapable of things like love, like affection, like loyalty.

Nothing really matters right now. When school lets out she'll go to New Orleans on the order of the traumatized and paranoid Sokolovs. Nothing she does here matters anymore. She could have gone to a hotel with Leo and fucked him. She could be up in the Sokolov's residence sneaking in to see Lizzy's nanny -- she is, as she has to tell people all the time, a governess, it's different -- and kissing the other girl's mouth, kissing her neck, while said nanny whispers that they shouldn't, this is really not okay. She could have done those things but she's done those things

and in a matter of days she's going to leave New York City and she doesn't know when she'll be back. She knows she won't be visiting. She doesn't know the men-at-arms that the family has hired and she doesn't know what Louisiana is going to look like, feel like. Who she'll be there.

Tonight she wanted to be places she knew. Surrounded by the language of the homeland she's never been to, but without going home to her father, without risking seeing her brother. She wanted to feel...well.

Perhaps something akin to what Lukas was looking for in dinner at home, and what he was looking for when he thought about going to ground zero, and perhaps even what he was looking for when he thought about looking for trouble. It isn't quite the thought of 'home', but finding a place where something inside of you can find equilibrium, even if you don't know what that thing inside of you is, or what that place might be, or what you'll do there.

And then she ran into him. Who she knew when she was so small. Who was her friend, of a sort, when she had almost none. Danicka takes his hand and he grips it a little tighter, even though she can feel his uncertainty. She has no idea what he has and hasn't done, she hasn't suddenly guessed that he's really only had sex kind-of done to him, there and then gone, bereft, hopeful, ashamed, confused, any number of things. He doesn't know that she lost her virginity to her best friend when she was fifteen but she'd done quite a lot up to that point with others, and he doesn't know that she got pregnant and was terrified but thought maybe she could get out, maybe she could be free, she'd go join the Fianna or something, or they could run away and not be anything, any tribe, just be people

before Vladislav did more to her than her mother ever had, more than he'd ever dared, beat her to the point of near-death, to the point that she walks through New York City at one in the morning and this scares her less than running into a Garou. Even a young one.

Danicka has been to prom. And she has kissed and danced with people at sweaty firelit bacchanals of the spring equinox, though this is with mortals -- not rural Shadow Lords. She hasn't gotten drunk and dragged some poor cub into the woods to go down on him because she doesn't know how else to feel sexual and feel safe at the same time, but she's still

this lovely kin, closer to woman than girl, and she's not for him. She can't be for him. He's not ready yet, not worthy yet. And she is so so so so so far beyond anything that could be considered his or allowable and so it's not okay, and so he keeps making himself look at her face and nothing else, nowhere else, and he hasn't touched her or intimated that he'd like to touch her except with how he looks at her and

she's glancing at him because his hand got tighter.

A few seconds later they're sitting down, and somewhere in there she let go of his hand and he took out her chair and she seemed to think this was perfectly natural and normal and expected. She sits and looks at him, because he's looking at her and because she's not looking at a menu. "Máte hlad?" she asks him, as though this is an afterthought, nevermind that they came to a restaurant (though the 'restaurant' has 'beer garden' in its name). She reaches over and puts the menu in his hands down, shaking her head like they don't need it. "Co chcete?"

Viharfelhő

God, but it's clichéd, the way something in his eyes flares when she asks him what he wants. He looks down at the menu quickly. The restaurant is brighter than the street. She can see him better here, and even as short as his hair is cut it's still thick and very, very black. His face is caught somewhere between boy and man; a different angle, a different moment, and he'll almost look like someone else. There are no lines on his forehead yet, none whatsoever, and the angle of his jaw isn't so hard. There's already a beard-shadow there, though. And his hand, the one she took, is restless on the table, opening and closing, his thumb flicking over his forefinger as he scans the offerings

three times in a row before he realizes he's not reading it at all. She's going to think he can't read, he thinks. It's important, somehow, that she knows he's not an idiot. He's not a dumb Ahroun, and he forgets she doesn't even know he's an Ahroun. He suddenly remembers to be surprised that she can speak Czech; he'd forgotten that about her. He looks at her again.

"Trochu," he admits. He doesn't tell her why. Doesn't tell her they were having dinner at ten, eleven pm, and he spilled something and his mother started cleaning up and he left because he couldn't take it anymore. "Co je dobré tady?"

Danicka

She knows the answer to both of those questions before she asks them. By now it'd be hard to miss. And right now the way his pupils are dilated, the way his hand reacted when she took it, the way he was so delighted when she asked if he was coming with her, and how badly he doesn't want her to be afraid of him.

But it's just Lukasek. Who knelt down and bent over on her bedroom carpet and explained to her that what he was coloring was his army, and this was going to be his castle, and he was going to have five -- no, ten -- dogs, and orchards full of fruit and a whole cellar just for candy, and she wasn't sure how much of this was holdover memories from when he was very tiny and wealthy and living in the Republic and how much was imagination. Somehow it doesn't even matter to her right now that he is also... Garou. Like her mother, like her brother. Like Lizzy's father. Like the ones who stare at her. He's not acting like them. She doesn't remember him acting like them when he was younger, either.

And considering he can't hide anything else, she lets herself believe, at least for tonight, that he's not pretending. So she lets him in. A little. More than she would otherwise. More than she would on another night. More than she would -- will -- in seven years' time.

The real answers to her questions are, in order: yes and

you.

Danicka knows this even if Lukas doesn't. She smiles. "Pivo," she tells him. "But order what you know. Radovan will like you, vy mluví
esky. He wants me to marry a nice Czech boy." She says this wryly. This is not uncommon. This is what every Czech chef in every borough of New York City tells her: marry some nice Czech boy. Make Czech babies. Be Czech, even though she's never been across the Atlantic, even though she is American, even though she is actually not Czech but Shadow Lord and there's not really such a thing as a nice Shadow Lord boy.

A waiter does eventually come over, and he recognizes Danicka, too. Eventually Radovan -- who is doing little cooking at this hour, is mostly sitting and watching television in back with his sous chef -- comes out and walks over, and by then Danicka and Lukas both have a tall glass of beer in front of them, somehow.

"Daniela! Jste se vrátil. A s pÅ™ítelem!" Radovan says, boisterous and noisy over the noise level in the Bohemian Hall, taking her hand and sandwiching it between his own for a moment. He pauses, and he looks at Lukas for a moment, then looks right back to Danicka, says in a faux conspiratorial whisper: "Váš pÅ™ítel není oble
en dost dobÅ™e pro vás. M li byste jíst s můj synovec."

"Ne, ne," she is laughing, slipping her hand away, taking it back. "Být hezké!"

Danicka

[Czech: Beer.

Radovan will like you, you speak Czech.

Daniela! You came back. And with a friend!

Your friend is not dressed well enough for you. You should eat with my nephew.

No, no. Be nice!]

Viharfelhő

How long has it been since he's eaten at a restaurant? Lukas can't even remember the last time. When he's at Stark Falls he is Viharfelho; that is his only name, his only life. When he's not in the bawn he's following his mentor on some mission, undertaking some quest, and they don't stop to get a burger. They don't stop to visit a beer garden, Czech or otherwise. Even that is more than most cubs get. He's been on moonbridges already, four time. He's gone to Canada by moonbridge, and New York City (if only for a few hours because Istok had been called to make judgment), and D.C., and once he even went all the way to Istok's home caern in Hungary. So many of the other cubs are stuck in the Caern from Firsting to Rite -- but then again, that period is so very short for them.

His Fostering has been very long. He is coming to the end of it, though he doesn't know it yet. Another half a year and Istok will start stepping back when they fight together. He will begin to allow the young Ahroun to take the lead in combat, watchful but uninterfering, letting the cub survive or die by his own choices. He will begin asking Lukas for his opinion on their plan, their angle, their attack, and then he will begin telling Lukas to come up with the plan and the execution.

Another year, and there will come a day when Istok takes him on a quest, and it will be very strange because he will be blindfolded on the trip out, and when they get there Istok will simply turn him loose and say,

There are three Dancers in this town. Don't come back without their hides.

and leave. And that will be his Rite of Passage, his trial by fire, and if he survives he will become Wyrmbreaker, and he'll go off to Boston and meet Edward Bellamonte and eat at restaurants all the time, learn to wear fine clothes and play expensive games, learn to talk to women and drive expensive cars, learn to fuck, learn to lead, learn to fail, learn to rise again, learn to be a Shadow Lord.

If he dies -- well. He'll become nobody. And learn nothing.

But that's still half a year, a year off. And this is the first time he's eaten at a restaurant in longer than he can remember, and it's all so exciting and overwhelming, and he's nervous in the pit of his stomach. She can tell he's nervous, but only because she reads so well.

On the surface, Lukas doesn't stutter, he doesn't stammer, his hands don't sweat. He is simply Quite Serious, and he is as polite as he can manage to be, and he laughs a little, surprised, when she says beer. He didn't think she drank beer. Champagne, maybe. She seemed so rich to him when he was little and had even less. Her house was a real house and there was a real oak. He sees her finery now, thinks maybe she always dresses like this, looks over the menu very carefully because he doesn't want to order something wrong somehow and look like a fool, and

this is when Radovan comes over. The chef means no harm. He jokes with the young people. He likes seeing them in here; he likes seeing Daniela with a nice Czech boy. He talks mostly to Danicka and fails to notice that Lukas looks uncomfortable, feels abruptly cut off, feels as different from these people in this restaurant as he did from the people on the subway platform, the girl in the subway car. He pokes a little fun at Lukas, thinking a boy of his size dining with a girl of her beauty at this hour in this city would have little to worry about,

but Lukas instantly reddens. He puts the menu down. Somewhere between unsure and humiliated and angry, and quite stiffly, he says, "Omlouvám se, že nejsem oble
ená k ve
eři."

And to Danicka: "Miss, if you'd prefer to dine with the gentleman's nephew, I won't take offense."

Viharfelhő

["I apologize for not being dressed for dinner."]

Danicka

Lukas's fosterage is a rare thing, and nothing like Vladislav's, and Danicka is not privy to either. She has no idea what he's capable of. He's... Lukasek. He yells and skids around hardwood floors on his socks and he climbs trees. He's gotten much taller, and filled out a bit -- though not nearly as much as he will one day -- and his face is very different. His mouth. Which she glances at, because he has smiled tonight, but now he's suddenly so stiff and so serious, so tense.

Radovan and Danicka are staring at him when he apologizes to the chef and then tells Danicka she can go eat with someone else if she wants. Radovan just excuses himself; he'll make them 'something'. Danicka looks at Lukas across the table and thinks that maybe if Radovan were kin or if Lukas weren't Garou, Lukas would have an apology from the chef right now for teasing him. But it's Danicka, left alone with him again, who says:

"He was only teasing, Lukáš," and this is gentle, but rather firm, perhaps even a little put off by his sudden weirdness, or at least not comprehending it. "He doesn't even have a nephew."

She waves her hand around. There are men here -- mostly men, in fact -- in jeans and t-shirts and sneakers, and workboots. Some haven't even removed their hats. She lowers her hand to the handle of her mug of beer, looking at him over the glass as she lifts it... with both hands. "Do you even have a sense of humor or are they beating that out of you?" she asks,

and maybe

just maybe

there's a thin layer of too-harsh truth in the question.

Viharfelho

Danicka's reassurance makes Lukas's eyes drop back to the menu. Humiliation veers closer to embarrassment, and anyone who's survive teenhood would know they aren't necessarily the same thing. When she goes on, though, the cub's eyes snap back up to hers, and for the first time tonight she can see a thread of anger in the blue. Anger, and want, and hope, and fear. He's so easy to read. An open book, the script writ in his eyes. Or maybe she's just getting better and better at reading people. Soon she'll be so good that she'll learn to hide herself better and better, lest someone else look into her eyes

and pry open her secrets

and read them, one and all.

"I don't ... know what to do," he admits. He's almost whispering, his voice is so quiet, and it's a challenge to hear even with the ruckus of the restaurant relatively far away from them. "With you. In New York. I don't know how to live in this city anymore, and I really don't know how to live in your world with your ... proms and your pretty dresses and stuff. I don't know how I ran into you and how I ended up here. I know I'm glad to be here, because I've never been ... here before. Not just here, this restaurant, but where I am inside. I know that makes no sense." He exhales a laugh, soundless and harsh as a pant. "And maybe I'm more glad than I should be. I keep hoping you'll be my friend again, because I have so few. I don't know if that's even possible though because looking at you twists me up into knots inside."

A beat of pause. He picks up his beer and he drinks it, and if nothing else this much is clear enough: they have beer up at Stark Falls, and they let the cubs drink it. When Lukas puts the mug down it's drained down to the halfway point.

"I'm sorry if I'm being a jerk," he says. "Or if I'm totally creeping you out. I don't -- I'm not -- I won't stalk you or be weird or anything. I just ... god, I wish you were wearing more clothes." And then he drops his face into his hands, a sort of double-handed facepalm. "I can't believe I just said that."

Danicka

In another future, one that will now never happen, cannot happen after this meeting, there is a Danicka who is all grown up who marvels at how words come out in a rush from this Shadow Lord Ahroun who seems so remote, so determined not to give in to her, not to show her anything. How occasionally she'll ask a simple question and it all comes out of him in a torrent. What he wants, what he thinks, how he feels -- about her. She doesn't have to puzzle it out. He's honest, to the point of nearly embarrassing himself, even when she can see his guardedness still lingering in his eyes. She can tell simply that it is hard for him, that he resists it, but does it anyway in an attempt to reach her. To be close to her, even when he doesn't think she'll ever open up in return.

And she'll start feeling something for him more than want. Because he doesn't pretend that he's not guarded, and he doesn't pretend that he's safe. Because he's brave, in that way, which is braver than going up against vampires or Spirals or monsters. Braver than she is. And, quite simply, because he's beautiful. Because he has this core of purity and she can't imagine where it came from, in their tribe. Because, when she meets him, she thinks there's nothing at all pure about her. Nothing innocent. Nothing good.

In this present, a present that spins off in a hundred different directions from this moment, she's staring at him from across the table as he asks him if the Shadow Lords are just beating the sense of humor out of him. She imagines he can't have been Changed for very long if he's been gone for the past three years, because every young Garou she knows is one of the ones that gets a quick Fosterage, there and gone, out into the fields. Not her brother, but her brother is different than most. She doesn't assume Lukas is, too. And she keeps on staring at him as that triggers this... wordvomit. She starts slightly when his eyes snap to her face, and she doesn't look away for a moment because she's like a deer caught in the headlights, but she does drop her eyes from his quickly.

Anger and want and hope and fear. She is looking at him through all of his speech, only thinking to drop her eyes at the very end, just before he drops his face into his palms. And all she reads is that. Anger and want, hope and fear. Uncertainty. A sense of loss and grief that seems to come out at the slightest touch from everyone these days, but something tells her it isn't just for the towers or the city's sake that she reads it in him. It's something else. She imagines he has to be -- what? Sixteen, seventeen? He was younger than her, but she doesn't remember by how much. He looks a little older than sixteen, taller. Bigger.

He says he's glad to be here, and he doesn't say it's because she's pretty, it's because... he's never been here before. Like this before. She glances at him when he says he knows that makes no sense, a flicker of a Look that is hard to read on her face, even now. She hides everything. She's been doing it since she was... well. Since she met him, the first time.

Lukas picks up his beer and all but pounds it. That makes her blink at him, the way people blink at her when she slams a shot of vodka and yells out a toast as the cup gets put back down, hard, on the table. It's good beer, but she imagines he's not tasting it right this moment. He wants her to be his friend, keeps hoping for it, and he's so lonely. But he wants her. That's what he means when he says looking at her is twisting him into knots. He wants her and apparently he's so inexperienced, so lonely, so messed up right now that he doesn't even know how to talk to her.

Danicka is twisting a fork's handle between her fingertips, her fingernails glossy and clear-coated, neatly rounded at the tips. They'll be like that when she's older, too. She doesn't paint them garish colors. It doesn't appeal to her, and she's been told too many times how tacky and childish and trashy it is that she thinks it is, too, and doesn't want to be tacky or childish or trashy. She doesn't mind being a slut, she's discreet enough that Leo thought he was offering to take her virginity tonight, and discreet enough that this is why she turned him down: he goes to her school, he knows people she knows, he wouldn't keep his mouth shut. Like Stephen did. But Danicka never wants to be tacky or trashy. She has class. She wants to have class.

She stares at him and nobody saves them with food. It takes more than five minutes to cook, after all. She wets her lips while he's not looking at her, and she twists that fork, looking at it in her hands. "I'm wearing plenty of clothes," she says diffidently, with a trace of that arch, posh tone that will become refined over the next seven years. It's not like her dress's back is low-cut or her cleavage -- not that there's really much there to start with -- exposed, her legs are covered, the dress isn't exactly painted on, but maybe he's a shoulder guy and the sight of her arms and the top of her chest is driving him batshit.

Then again, if he's up from 'the backwater', as Vladik sneers about Stark Falls, she imagines he doesn't see a lot of kin girls, or mortal girls, walking around like this. And now, really, she's quite sure he's probably a virgin. It doesn't really make a difference to her, truth be told. It's just something that makes her go ah inside, thoughtful. Noted.

Her eyes lift back to him. And this is not the first time tonight she hasn't quite answered him, or all of what he's said. She veers off again, like the prey that zig and zag as they run, swift and fleeting, fleeing. "I thought we were being friends," she says gently, with the faintest emphasis on the fourth word. Someone else might say that of course they're his friend, don't be silly. Someone else might say that it's sort of hard to be friends when they barely saw each other as children and haven't seen each other in eight years, what exactly is he expecting. But this is the truth, for Danicka, who is not afraid of him right now: she realized who he was, how she knew him, and remembered that they were friends. He played with her toys and they fell asleep in a pile on the couch, Danicka surreptitiously -- or unconsciously -- sucking on her middle and ring finger like she had when she was a toddler, because she really did that well into childhood, comforted when there was so little comfort to be found anywhere.

"Do you want to get out of here?" she asks him then, because he's a little hungry, he said, but

he wasn't like this when they were walking along outside. Her head tips. "We could go get... I don't know. Get convenience store sandwiches or something." She gives a little laugh.

Viharfelho

Anger and want, hope and fear; uncertain, loss, grief - and loneliness. The crux of it all. She sees him so clearly, sees it in an instant. It seems almost effortless for her. And it's a sad thing to be lonely when he lives in a Sept surrounded by Garou and cubs, when he has a mentor that has patiently trained him for years and years, when he has a family that loves him, never abused him or beat him or belittled him or neglected him, when he is home with them, but not home with them because he ran out on them and ran into a girl he used to know a long time ago. She used to be his friend. He can barely remember that; it's a faded impression of hardwood floors and a great oak in the backyard, a few dusty snapshots of a time when he was happier.

Right now, Lukas isn't sure he'll ever be happy again. He hates thinking like that, feels like exactly the sort of sullen, overdramatic teenager movies and books and adults worldwide mock. But he's caught and he's frustrated and he feels ready - ready for war, ready for life, ready to be a grownup, ready for something - but somehow he's not, and the few things he still has to learn can't be taught by anyone. He's caught and he's frustrated and he wants this girl he only just met, only not really, and he just vomited his secret self all over their dinner table the way he once vomited candied orange and pastries all over her kitchen floor. He's embarrassed; feels childish, messy,

but she sees to forgive him. She answers the easiest thing first, and the thing that embarrassed him most: wish you were wearing more clothes, when he knows perfectly well she's not exactly prancing around town in pasties. She answers it, and softens it, and he looks up out of his hands.

She speaks. He listens. At no point does he try to change anything he said. He doesn't try to qualify the clothes comment, or the friends comment. He listens, and in the end she really only says three things:

she's dressed.

they're friends.

does he want to get out of here?

And it's that guardedly hopeful, unsure look in his eyes again. What does she want? Where would they go? She talks about convenience store sandwiches. He has an image of gallivanting around the city with her. They met in front of the park. They grabbed a beer at a czech place she likes. They'll go to a 7-11 tucked into the corner of Times Square, then hop on the subway and go get shish kabob at some quaint little all-night persian diner in TriBeCa. Maybe they'll end up riding the train out of Manhattan, out to where the subway wasn't sub-anything anymore, but rode along the surface with the dawn slowly turning the eastern sky pink. Maybe she'll take him all over the city tonight, this city that he used to know; she'll introduce him back to it, and he'll make friends with her again and make friends with the city, and when his two weeks in New York are up he'll...

it ends there. It was a nice thought while it lasted, but he can't imagine what comes after that. So he goes back to the beginning, and he asks her:

"Where would we go?"

Danicka

Very simply, Danicka shrugs those soft shoulders of hers once. "Wherever," she says. "Wherever you want."

Viharfelho

[that was a confusingly worded sentence -- let's make it "he wants this girl he only just met, only not really because he met her a long time ago, and he just..."]

Viharfelho

That rare smile of his breaks again - surfaces and spreads and dissipates. "I just want to go somewhere with you," he says. His eyes flick to her hands for a moment, but he doesn't have the courage to touch her. He folds his hands around his beer instead and looks at her again. "Just take me somewhere you like to be."

Danicka

That smile makes her smile, but hers is softer, a little less easy. Because he wants her to take him somewhere she likes to be, and she can't think of anything. If it were a few months hence, a year hence, she could take him out into the garden in the plantation, out under the magnolia trees with their blossoms hanging heavy and low, out where she could hide from her life, and from the ghosts, where the crumbling stone walls around the untended areas could hide him, too. But it's 2002, and Danicka doesn't know where to be that would feel right to her. She can't think of places she likes to be, really and truly likes to spend her time. She seeks out places like this as a distraction, as a place to keep her from having to go back to the places she doesn't like, but even some of the places she doesn't like are escapes from the place she likes most, which is the same place she hates: home.

Danicka quirks a brow. "That's a copout," she teases. "You're the one who only gets to come back to the city for ...however long this shore leave is." She looks at her fork again, then the beer she hasn't touched, then glances over at him. Her voice is almost hard to hear over the din.

"Or we could get a room." She says that, and hopefully before his eyes dilate and he panicks, says in the same tone: "And just like... watch a movie on pay per view or something."

Viharfelho

The smile she gives him makes his heart thump hard in his chest, but the truth is he's a little disappointed when she -- he thinks -- deflects. Lukas can't lie to save his life right now. Lukas can't really read anyone, either, and in the end he can only draw on his own narrow experience to interpret the world around him. So he thinks maybe she doesn't want to show him the places she likes; he remembers suddenly that she's afraid of him. Or was. Is probably still wary -- he remembers the girl on the subway and withdraws a little into himself.

"I'm here for about two weeks," he volunteers. He doesn't know if she cares; considers asking her if maybe he could see her again, doesn't. Picks up his beer and takes a sip instead, more moderated this time.

And that's when she says: we could get a room. He doesn't choke on his drink, nothing so overt, but his eyes snap to hers and widen. She qualifies it. It doesn't change the way he's looking at her.

But then he says, "I can't ... I don't trust myself to be alone with you like that." His eyes avert; they both know why, but he's ashamed all the same. So much for control, he thinks, and hurries to add, "Plus I don't have enough money for a room, at least nowhere nice. And your parents might worry about you if you don't come home tonight."

Danicka

"My mother died a few years ago," is the first thing Danicka tells him. "My father isn't expecting me home. I work for this family in the city, the ...Sokolovs?"

She hesitates over that, more than she hesitated over telling him her mother is dead. She looks at him to see if he recognizes the name, the Sokolovs. "They're Silver Fangs," and he can read the distaste in her tone as they move past all this talk of rooms and being alone together. "I'm the governess for their daughter. I actually have the weekend off," Danicka goes on, reaching for her beer finally and taking a long, practiced drink before she sets it down. "Because of prom and... everything. They're quite good to me."

This is only half a lie. It sounds like the sort of thing you tell yourself. The way Lukas tells himself he's very lucky, he's fortunate, to have a fosterage like the one he has with Istok. The thing you've been told so many times you know you're supposed to believe it.

"But my father doesn't know that," Danicka admits, looking over at Lukas to gauge how he's taking this, all this deflection, deception, the people who don't know anything about her. "So he thinks I'm going to be there tonight, like usual, and the Sokolovs think I'll be at home, but they wouldn't be upset if in the morning I was there, ready to work. And my father wouldn't be upset if I showed up at home tonight. And... if I don't go either place, no one will even notice."

She looks steadily across the table at him then, but it only lasts a moment. She turns her eyes away and takes another drink of her beer, exhaling after she swallows. "But like I said. They're good to me. They pay me very well, and so... I have money. And no one knows where I am or who I'm with. And... maybe I want to be alone with you like that."

Danicka's eyes are on her own fingers, lightly pinched around the edge of a napkin, philosophizing over the fold it makes. "We could." Her eyes flick back to his. "I keep thinking about it."

Viharfelho

Istok keeps telling him he's self-centered. He's egocentric. Lukas doesn't really understand what he means; he thinks his mentor means he's selfish, and he's proud, which makes him angry because he is not. At least, not to a fault. Not even to the extent of your average Shadow Lord.

But Istok is right. Because what Istok means - which is lost in the translation, either from Istok's Hungarian thoughts to Istok's English words, or from Istok's near-forty years of experience and Lukas's sixteen and a half - is that Lukas is still centered in himself. He centers his entire world on what little he sees of it. He thinks first from the inside, and then out to everyone else. He imposes his own ideas, his own judgment and values and life and thoughts, without even realizing it.

It has taken him this long to realize Danicka does not have a perfect life. It has taken him this long, until she told him her mother is dead, she works for Silver Fangs, they're quite good to her, to realize she is not some prestigious, privileged daughter of the New York elite. She is not some coddled, sheltered daughter and sister of Shadow Lords.

It's possible he still hasn't realized who her mother is. It is possible his entire world is minuscule, and wholly circumscribed by what little experience he has had.

So she tells him a little. She tells him a lot. He listens, and his brow furrows of its own accord, the insides of his eyebrows drawing up. It's a sensitive gesture, a poet's brow, incongruous with his burgeoning muscles and his height and the rage that rides him like the storm he's temporarily named for. He doesn't apologize; he doesn't offer sympathy that he isn't sure she won't take as pity. Instead he meets her eyes when she looks at him, if only for a moment. When she finally drinks her beer, he can see she's had practice at this, too. It is not some secret, forbidden delight.

Neither is this, he realizes suddenly. Disappearing from the radar because both parties assume she's at the other's. Going out, roaming the city, getting food at one in the morning. Meeting a boy. Inviting him to a hotel she can afford, maybe. Lukas doesn't know how he feels about that. He's so eager and alone, bursting out of his skin with his readiness for something, anything, that he thinks his nerves might burn themselves up if she touched him. He thinks if she lets him, he might go at her like an animal, a savage. He wants her to let him. He wants her very much, but

he doesn't know how he feels when he thinks about her and then he thinks about some other boy on the street, and maybe he looks like the blond boy from Hana's picture, and maybe he looks like Benny, curly-haired and laughing-eyed, with a quick silver tongue that never gets tied in knots no matter who he talked to.

Then she says, I keep thinking about it. And every other thought flashes out of his mind. He's sitting across from her with both hands on the table and both of them are curled into loose fists. His chest is rising and falling under his thin t-shirt - it reads YANKEES - and each breath is deep enough that she can count them. One. Two. Three and then he moves, pushing his chair back and getting up.

"Okay," he says, not the first time tonight. His lips are dry so he drinks the last of his beer, gulping it. He's not sure if they're agreeing to the same thing. He thinks they might be. His hands are fumbling when he gets his wallet out; he has no idea what the beers were worth or what Radovan was cooking, so he puts down a ten and hopes it's enough.

By then she's out of her chair, and he's completely forgotten to help her up like a gentleman ought. He looks at her for a second, holding his breath. Then he holds his hand out for hers, the angle of his arm low, the turn of his palm upward almost surreptitious, as though he wants to give her the option of pretending she never notices.

Viharfelho

[dammit! "...from Istok's near-forty years of experience TO Lukas's sixteen and a half..."]

Danicka

Her mother is dead and nobody knows where she is. That should... bother someone. That should make a girl more wary, less likely to pick up some strange boy and walk around with him when she's wearing a dress and heels and so on. Someone should know where she is, even if she's only 18. The fact that nobody does -- the fact that she engineered it this way -- tells him things he never would have assumed. He doesn't even know that her dress didn't cost that much. She attached the butterflies herself. Nobody else at prom was wearing anything like it, which made her both pleased and lonely. But even now, she is so strange among her peers that she doesn't feel much embarrassment. And that makes her stranger to them, more Other. More different.

She hopes he doesn't know who her mother is. Four years later and they're writing so many songs about her, they're talking about her at moots, they're teaching Ahroun cubs about her when they aren't teaching them how to survive. Danicka doesn't know that Lukas is an Ahroun, but she suspects it. He's frightening. She thinks about being alone with him and how he said he doesn't trust himself, can't trust himself to be in control. She knows this is probably a very bad idea. He's Garou. She doesn't have sex with Garou. She doesn't even have sex with kinsmen anymore, she's decided this should be a rule,

but she knows in her heart of hearts that making rules only makes her want to break them more. He's Garou. He knows her family and he's not supposed to touch her, she's pretty sure. He's made it quite clear that he thinks he shouldn't, that either she's too good for him or he's just not supposed to do that sort of thing, or something. Lukas has it written all over his face that he wants something, wants it badly, and is restraining himself. Because of all kinds of rules.

Which makes her want to break them. Which makes her want to push him to that brink, makes her want to see him let go, makes her want to see him do the thing he thinks he shouldn't, and makes her want to see him enjoy it. Not just enjoy it because it's pleasurable but because it's forbidden. Because he shouldn't. Danicka wants Lukas to break his rules -- the ones imposed on him and the ones he's written for himself. She wants him to like it, and get away with it. In some way she knows something like that can change a person forever, if they're willing to do something other than self-flagellate for all eternity.

He doesn't seem the self-flagellating type. He's tall and he's broad and she can see the definition of his arms and his chest through his t-shirt, the lean taper of his torso, everything flexible and in progress and yet constantly, constantly worked out, used, changed. She wonders what he'll look like in five years. In three. If his mouth will still be that shape, which she imagines it will be. She wonders if his nipples are sensitive, and what it would feel like to kiss him.

Which she hadn't thought of before just now, kissing him. Fucking him, sure. She wasn't lying when she said she'd been thinking about it. But watching him, roiling with all his energy and rage and craving for the world, for experience, for life, she doesn't see that it bothers him in some strange way. She might not understand, because he doesn't understand yet what bothers him:

she doesn't belong to him. not his. not for him. and he's nothing new to her, nothing special, won't matter tomorrow night, it'll be some other boy another night, how many times has she done this? does he matter at all?

and she likely wouldn't be able to help him at all, because that isn't how she's thinking about it. It's so simple for her, so immediate. She's not afraid of him, hasn't been since she realized he was Lukasek. He's attractive, physically strong and with the type of body she likes, she think she's hot. He wants her to be his friend and he wants to touch her and she is glad she ran into him and she wants to see him naked, feel him against her. It is hard to think beyond that, of whether they matter to each other or not, of how they'll feel, because the want is burning everything else up, turning it to smoke that floats up into the air and far, far away, caught by the wind and erased.

Okay he says, fumbling for his wallet, and she doesn't stop him. She does slide her chair back and says to him, as he's dropping a ten, "Just a second. I'm going to go say goodbye to Radovan and go to the bathroom. Wait outside for me, okay?"

As though he wouldn't. She leans over, quite suddenly, and kisses his cheek. No other touch. Her body doesn't even brush his before she draws back from that peck, walking into the restaurant. Off to see the chef, to make sure he doesn't hate her and stop giving her beer and free food in the future or tattle on her. Off to go to the bathroom, to use it and wash her hands and look in the mirror and --

there's no introspection at the mirror. She thinks about fucking Lukas. She doesn't have many thoughts about it. Just the image of it, which throbs like a drumbeat through her entire body. Danicka touches up her lipstick and takes the corsage off of her wrist, dropping it in the trash.

When she comes out of the restaurant, she's carrying two carry-out boxes. Seeing Lukas, she shrugs. "He gave us dinner."

Viharfelho

Really, with how little he knows about girls and how very scanty his experience with them has been, Lukas should wonder whether or not she's having second thoughts. He should doubt she's ever going to come out of the restaurant. He should think maybe she's going to sneak out the back while he's waiting for her to say goodnight to Radovan and use the bathroom, and really, he shouldn't blame her for it. They met on the street. They're the same age but there's nothing else alike about them. If one gets specific, they aren't even that much - she's almost two years older and a lot wiser in so many ways. Wise enough to know that taking a stranger to a motel in New York City is not something you Should Do. Wise enough to know that this particular stranger, with his lightning eyes and his hard, heavy bone structure filling out day by day with ropes and cords and slabs of muscles, is dangerous above and beyond just about anything else she might meet in this city.

Except - that's not true either. He's not more dangerous than those Garou in the Park, the ones that are sniffing at her, that are staring at her, that have talked to her brother about her. He's not more dangerous than her brother, who's taken her to the very brink of death

for doing something not unlike what she's doing right now.

Lukas doesn't think of any of that, though. He doesn't know most of that. He doesn't suspect, not for an instant, that maybe she'll leave him out on the street. He stands in front of the restaurant with his hands in his pockets, unable to stand still, rocking onto the balls of his feet and then onto his heels. Every time the door opens he whips around. He doesn't know why he bothers; when Danicka comes out, he doesn't even have to turn to know it's her.

And he's happy to see her, as unabashedly so as the pup he is. His eyes widen a little when he looks at her, the pupils opening. He's happy to see the food, too, because he really is hungry. He holds his hand out to take it from her, not because he wants to be the one holding the food but because he thinks he ought to. It's something to carry; that's the man's job. That's what he was taught. Then there's a beat of pause.

In truth, if she hadn't stopped by the kitchen and the restroom, if she'd followed him out, he might have kissed her the moment they were outside. He might not have been able to help himself. The moments apart have given him time to breathe. Cool off a little. They've given him time to find a little of his awkwardness and uncertainty again. He looks away, up and down the street, blows out a breath.

"Do you know someplace we can go?"

To be alone. The thought is a brand in his mind. To be alone with her. To maybe -- but god, he knows he shouldn't even think it.

Danicka

"Yes," she says gently, with some warmth.

And when he is older, and he holds his hand out for food a kinswoman is carrying, food he wants to eat, there will be an air to it that is lacking now. And he might notice, when he is older, the fact that Danicka hands him the food automatically, doesn't dare withhold food from a wolf who reaches to take it from her. She gives it up, as one day he will give up any food, all food to her, the last morsel they have, the last heat of his body. Those instincts are confused along with all the hormones, the instincts of human teenagers, or near-human teenagers.

There's a faint smile on her lips when she tells him Yes. It almost looks shy, that may be what he reads it as, but that isn't what it is. He takes the food, and she takes away from him the thoughts that they shouldn't, he shouldn't, she belongs to another Garou, maybe in a year or two she'll be mated off and having babies and he shouldn't, he can't, this is wrong. She takes those thoughts away because she slips her hand around his upper arm like he's a gentleman, and she nods down the sidewalk. "This way," she murmurs, and on the way she tells him he should let her go in alone, because he's not of age, and she doesn't want to deal with them looking at him funny or asking for his ID or any of that. As they walk, they have to awkwardly find a pace that works with her heels and her dress and his height, the sort of stride he's used to, the fact that he has a girl holding his arm and he has two boxes of food in his other hand and it smells so fucking good,

but then, so does she. And she's surprisingly warm where her skin touches his,

and occasionally her fingers do this thing across his bicep, a slight and half-thoughtless stroke. She seems so very demure and maybe they're just going to watch some movie and eat Czech food and fall asleep, maybe make out, maybe that's all he can let himself hope for,

but she's thinking about tearing that shirt off of him and running her hands all over his upper body, thinking about how he'll look when he comes --

but she's better at hiding thoughts like that from stirring in her eyes. She doesn't tell him how much a hotel withing walking distance of this place is going to cost her, and she doesn't care. She isn't all that wealthy, she gives so much of her money to her family, but she tucks a lot away for herself. She doesn't care tonight. She's leaving soon. She's leaving and she doesn't know when she'll be back and she doesn't care, she doesn't care, she wants to be alone with him and not walking in heels anymore and they can sit on the bed and eat familiar food and watch a movie and be goddamn normal for ten seconds, and they can fuck and she doesn't care, she doesn't care, she wants this.

She wants all of this. All of it, very badly.

So they walk and walk until they're at this little inn, it's nothing trashy but it's nothing special, it's not six hundred dollars a night but it's not exactly one-fifty, either. And all the time they're walking, she's holding his arm, and he's holding the food, and she's holding the edge of her dress up, and neither of them are anywhere near drunk, but they don't need to be.

Viharfelho

They don't talk much on the way to the inn. Lukas has never been this close to a girl before, for this long, ever, and he can't think clearly enough to come up with anything to say. At least he lets her take his arm like he knows this is something you're supposed to do when a girl in a nice dress walks beside you. He knows this because six or seven years ago, long before he changed into something not-human for the first time, he went to a wedding and his parents put him in a borrowed tuxedo and when all the boring speeches and dull music and walking down an unnecessarily long aisle was over they had a dance, and they paired him with a little blonde girl

(and he thought for a moment it might have been the little blonde girl he used to play with when he was little but it wasn't, she was way too stupid and giggly)

and back then he was still barely on this side of the brink where he suddenly discovered the inexplicable beauty of the opposite sex, so it was just awkward and a little gross that he was supposed to let her put her hand through the crook of his elbow, on his forearm, and he had to carry his arm bent just so to give her fingers a place to lay. That was what he was supposed to do, and he was taught to do it.

But this is so different. He's not in a tuxedo, for one. He's in jeans and a t-shirt that he's in the process of outgrowing, and his bicep is mostly bare and her hand is on his skin. She's so warm. He starts to wonder if she's as warm under her dress, and then he stops because she is not his, she is not for him, he needs to stop, oh god what is he doing. He doesn't even have a condom on him. Maybe he should ask if she has one - but no, maybe she isn't even intending to do anything but what she said they would. Watch a movie. Hang out. She said something about thinking about it, but she never defined 'it' and maybe he's just blowing it all out of proportion,

but there's her hand on his arm, stroking the inside of his bicep in a way that makes all the blood in his head rush to his groin, and then there's nothing left for cautionary thoughts.

When they get to the inn, he trusts her again. He doesn't think for a second -- the way he would have seven and a half years from now -- that maybe she's toying with him, maybe she's bringing him here to humiliate him and control him, maybe she'll bring him all the way to the inn, burning up in his own skin, and leave him there while she slips laughing into the night. He stands patient and alert outside, holding the two boxes of food that are heavy and smell good, watching the door to see when she'll come out. When she does, he smiles, coming to her. She gives him one of the keycards. He looks at it. It says

Affinia Gardens

and no matter what happens tonight, he'll remember that name, that font, the color scheme of that keycard for the rest of his life. They go in through the side door, Lukas trying very hard to be inconspicuous, Danicka simply blending in, chameleon-like, something she'll only get better at with the years. They wait for the elevator. It seems to take forever.

Their floor is very quiet. The Upper East Side doesn't sleep as late as the younger, hipper parts of town. The carpeting is thick and the doors are all shut, and there's nothing but the hum of central air in the hall. Their room is two down from the end. He has no idea how he got here. The pieces don't fit in his mind. He's never been here before. He's glad to be here,

and the truth is he would be glad to be here even if they did nothing but watch movies all night. If they did nothing but eat good Czech food, and watch pay-per-view, and maybe talked a little about what happened in those years between when they were children, and friends, and now. Maybe talked a little about where they were going next,

because egocentric creature that he is, he doesn't think to ask. Hasn't a clue that her presence in New York City will be no more permanent than his. That very soon, perhaps even before he leaves the city, she will too, and neither of them know when she'll come back, or who she'll be then.

In their room, he sets the food down on the little table by the door. The view is nice. They can see the lights of 3rd Avenue outside, the taxicabs running the streets, ceaseless as blood in a vein. His blood is rushing through his veins so fast he's amazed he hasn't passed out. The room is nothing special; it's still better than any he's seen. He stands near the door, not sure if he should take his shoes off, but when she shuts the door behind him and starts to walk into the room

he catches her hand. "Wait." She might think he's having second thoughts of his own. Fear of whatever shadowy faceless Garou owns her. It's not that, though - he licks his lips. "Can I kiss you?"

Danicka

The room that Danicka got -- oh, they looked at her strangely, coming in with no reservation on prom night, wearing what she was wearing but all by herself and with no trace of tears on her face -- is the smallest one available, but this is a fashionable, trendy boutique hotel and every room is a suite of sorts. They can see the bed as soon as they enter, and around the corner there's a little sofa, and a large television, and the door to the little bathroom. There's a minifridge and a microwave, even. The pillows on the bed are thick and fluffy, the bedding soft and full. As soon as they walk inside she takes a few steps, and she took his arm again after checking in, but now she lets go of it for the second time, sliding away as he sets the food down.

Danicka is moving to step out of her heels when Lukas catches her hand. She startles, and he can feel it, the tremor of tension like a lightning bolt through her, all the way up from where he touches her to her shoulders, to her eyes that move to look at him over her shoulder. She's let go of her dress, because there's nothing on this pristine floor that can harm the hem.

He wants to kiss her. It's so strange, to have given him that peck on the cheek as though to reassure him she would be coming back, and then walking all this way, and how they've gotten the sort of room that other kids on prom night get to go have sex in, but all they've talked about is watching a movie. The truth is that neither of them walked all this way thinking about watching a movie, not really, but she still looks startled a bit when he asks to kiss her. This boy she brought here to undress and rub herself against and fuck, this boy she wants to corrupt, who she's only thought of kissing maybe once or twice tonight, passingly, not nearly as much as she's thought of having sex with him.

He can see the flash of her throat as she breathes, as she swallows. "I don't know," she says, a bit more guardedly than she's been since she learned who he was, a bit strangely withdrawn despite the way she was touching him all the way here, stroking his arm like that, leaning against him. "Sure, I guess," she also says, her eyes flicking downward.

Viharfelho

Earlier tonight Danicka stood at the gate of the Sokolovs' neighbors and kissed a boy who knew how to kiss. The boy-cub that stands in front of her now, who is a year or two younger than Leo but several inches taller, who has never been to a school dance, who has never even been to high school, who has lived in a Sept Danicka's brother calls a backwaters - maliciously, but not entirely unfairly - who has killed more men and monsters than some serial killers, does not.

It shows in the way he has to ask. It shows in how he doesn't know what to do with this sort-of permission he's been given. He takes a step closer and he bends his neck, lowers his head and tilts it the way he's seen it done in movies, but he's not a movie star. He's a werewolf, and that tilt of his head is unconsciously and unmistakably feral. He's still holding her hand. He's not touching any other part of her. Near enough now to catch her scent more potently than anything he's known tonight or any other night, he's breathing in deep, quick pulls, his eyes half-lidding. But he felt the way she flinched when he took her hand. He heard I don't know, and he heard I guess, and neither of them is yes, and

their lips are very close, the tips of their noses brushing, when he pauses. Whispering: "Do you want me to?"

It feels familiar somehow. It feels like an echo: you don't have to stay. i'd like it if you stayed. He never got to say that to her. That was only an hour ago, maybe two. He didn't even know her then.

Viharfelho

[EMPAFEE. TWO DICES.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 10) ( success x 1 )

Danicka

[She's uncertain, leaning more towards 'no' than 'yes', but wary of how he'll react.]

Danicka

The right answer is yes when a boy asks to kiss her, or when he comes close -- like Lukas does now -- and tilts his head to her, seeking her -- like Lukas is, tonight. She knows this. She knows that the right answer is to close her eyes and wait for his mouth, to tentatively and then more eagerly respond, but not too eager, not too soon. Let him lead, especially because he's a Shadow Lord, especially because she's already seen how badly he takes any feeling of humiliation, how badly his sense of humor and normalcy have been abused.

That Lukas wants to kiss her is written all over him. How he comes near even when she says I don't know. She wonders if he thinks she's a virgin. She wonders if he thinks this is what she needs, for him to take these steps and take this lead, to make her feel comfortable. To make her feel safe.

She didn't feel safe when he caught her hand like that. It was a shock, the first time she's remembered what he is since realizing he was the little boy who used to jump down the stairs of her house two and three at a time, skidding across the floor til his father yelled. He's not that little boy anymore. He's something else entirely, his body capable of doing horrible, horrible things. And some of those horrible things flashed through her mind when he caught her, just for a second.

Then the thought: don't say no don't say no don't run don't run don't resist. It's sickening. Stomach-churning to feel that fear again, to remember what she's gotten herself into and how powerless she is to get out of it. What the hell is she doing. What is she doing.

Danicka is tense as he leans closer to her, that tilt of his head even more reminiscent of what he truly is. Her heart is racing. He's close enough that she can almost feel his breathing, can imagine his chest expanding against her if he were to touch her. Stand against her. Lean into her. Flickers of residual arousal war with tension, with fear, with the knowledge that she has to hide that fear, she knows he doesn't like it.

She swallows again, and licks her lips, and he asks if she wants him to, and she does, but there's a sinking pit in her stomach absorbing every breath she takes, and she really only has one defense mechanism.

"Okay," she whispers back, which isn't strictly a lie.

It's submission.

Viharfelho

It's a foreshadowing of the man he'll become more than the boy he is or the wolf they're training him to be when Lukas -- given permission, or what looks like permission -- doesn't lean in to kiss her. It's not because he doesn't know how, though that is true. It's certainly not because he doesn't want to, because that is false. It's because the fear is back in her, and though he can't read anything else, can only barely read the no in her body, he can smell fear. Of course he can. He's an animal. And he knows she's not giving him permission. She's giving him submission. He recognizes that, too, and it makes him cold and sick inside.

So he stops. Because he's more than an animal, and because he's more than a monster. He stops and draws back, and then he looks down at where his hand holds hers, and lets go. Lukas looks a little miserable now, and quite alone: he pulls his shoulders in and folds his arms across his chest, self-protective, as he looks down at the rich carpet beneath their feet.

"I want you so much," he whispers. "I think you already know that. I just met you and you don't know me and I'm going back to Stark Falls in two weeks and you'll probably never be mine." It's the first time that word has come out of his mouth. It's a weight on his tongue, and he almost trips over it. "But I want still you. And I don't know why.

"I mean - I'm not saying there's no reason anyone would want you. That's just stupid. You're cool and pretty and nice and smart and I bet a hundred other guys could rattle off a hundred reasons why they want you but it's not that. It's not any of that." He looks at her at last, brow furrowed, hands tucked tight under his arms. "I just want you. I wanted you the minute I saw you."

He takes a slow breath, his chest expanding against the wrap of his arms, straining.

"But that wasn't my point. What I'm trying to say is: I want you, but it's okay if you don't want me. I didn't come here expecting anything, and you don't owe me anything. You don't have to -- I don't want you to -- Danicka, it's okay if we don't ... do anything." A little laugh, more awkwardness than humor, "It's probably better for both of us."

Then he's serious again, looking at her, aching. "If you want me to just leave," he says softly, "I will. I won't tell anyone, I won't hurt you for it, I won't do anything to bring anything down on you. I'll just go and we'll pretend it never happened. But if you want me to stay, then I'd like to. If you want to just eat the food your friend made us and watch Harry Potter and wait for the sun to come up ... I'd like that very much."

Lukas thinks for a minute, untucking one hand long enough to rub the side of his face. Retucking it. "It's up to you, okay? Just ... tell me what you want."

Danicka

In a few years, when he's a Cliath, when he's a full Shadow Lord, he won't tend to sleep with the kin of his tribe. He won't dishonor them like that. Maybe Istok hasn't spoken to him about that yet, hasn't gone into those lessons. What he knows now is that the kin are not his to look at, not his to touch, not his to hold. Certainly not his to keep, to protect, to warm in the winter and feed from his hunts. That instinct is there, though Danicka would never dream of it. That isn't what she knows of wolves. She knows protection that ends in violence. She knows about belonging to one of them one day, and giving him children.

Lukas is smart enough to know that he needs to ask permission, because he can't tell otherwise what she wants. He's smart enough, right now, to look outside of himself a little bit and not assume that she wants him as badly as he wants her, not assume that it is his right to bring her here and lay down with her and go at her like an animal. Like a savage. And because he is a savage regardless, he can smell her fear mingling with her breeding, with her presence here with him, and he can begin to see the taut lines of her form that say no, please no even if she knows that to say so aloud would be foolish, would be overly dramatic, would be inexplicable to him.

He lets her go, and Danicka doesn't move away. He does, though. Crosses his arms, hunches himself up, locks himself away.

Looking at the carpet, Lukas can't see how her eyes widen slightly and briefly when he says never be mine. Like that has anything to do with why he should want her, or why he shouldn't. As though he's not saying it because he knows that her not-being-his means he shouldn't touch her, but as though her belonging to him is inextricably twined with his lust.

cool and pretty and nice and smart, he calls her, and looking at her finally, his eyes see her eyebrows lift for a half-second. No trace of insult, of thinking that he couldn't understand why he wanted her meant there was something unwantable about her. Danicka looks like a girl who knows she's desired. Desirable. He says he doesn't know why and a part of her wants to retort because you're sixteen, maybe? but that would be mean, and she doesn't want to be mean to him. She's wary, but she doesn't want to be mean.

Then a lot of stuff about how they don't have to Do Anything, which means they don't have to Have Sex, he doesn't think she owes it to him and he's not expecting it and he'll leave if she wants and maybe it's best and all that. It's very awkward. Saying it makes him uncomfortable; hearing it makes Danicka glance away from him. Saying that he won't tell anyone makes her look back at him, suddenly, almost sharply. He won't hurt her or bring her down if she tells him to leave. She doesn't know whether or not to believe him, and her eyes are vivid as they watch him, weighing his words against a feather.

And what she comes up with is that he is no more lying in this moment than he has in any other. Given submission, he withdrew. She feels so cold right now, so calculating, so reeling from that dizzying drop from lust into fear, and she thinks she should be more emotional about it. Trust her gut. But she's not. Her gut isn't telling her anything. Her brain, however, is doing math in great leaps, and to anyone else privy to the way her mind works it would look glorious. Beautiful, in its way, like a sort of mental dance. To Danicka, who knows other teenagers are thoughtless breeding savages most of the time, it just makes her feel weird. She follows her wants so passionately when they are clear to her, but in times like the present, when she isn't sure what she wants, she hardly knows what to do.

Her expression flickers. "Harry Potter?" she says, a bit surprised -- possibly that he even knows the movie has been out long enough to be on pay-per-view, and equally surprised that he might be into it. The first book came out the year her mother died, a book about a boy with no parents who was abused and locked in closets at home, til one day someone came along and told him that his parents were actually magic, that they were warriors, that he was magic, too. And took him away to go learn how to be more like them, even if he had to come back to that awful house and put up with that abuse. He could grow. And get stronger.

Danicka reads enough to know they aren't particularly fantastic books. But when she was fourteen, there was enough in there that she could identify with to make her get a copy from the library and hide it in her locker, take it out at school but never take it home, hide with the books at school when her persona got too cool to be reading stuff like that.

To everything he says, she answers with that: Harry Potter?, vaguely incredulous, right on the edge of what he might think is mocking.

She could just go with that. Ask him if he likes Harry Potter, and if he's already seen the movie. See if it's on pay-per-view while he heats up the food, which got lukewarm on the way to the hotel. Sit on the couch together -- instead of the bed, maybe -- and eat out of those takeout containers, til the movie ends at 4 am and they might as well get some sodas from the vending machines downstairs and stay up, watch the sun rise like he said, then maybe he should go home, really. And she should go home or to the Sokolovs. Something, you know?

Instead, she exhales and says: "I don't want you to go. I thought if I told you I didn't want to kiss you, you'd leave." She doesn't say she thought he might force her, or that she only thought he might force her after he stepped close and put their faces together, that before that she was only worried he'd feel rejected and storm off, that it was his closeness that reminded her what he is and that she should be afraid. But what matters right now is not that. What matters is that he won't tell anyone. He just doesn't want to go. He wants to be with her. And she doesn't want him to leave.

She wants him to stay.

Licking her lips, Danicka pauses, looking down and stepping out of her heels, leaving them where they are. She wiggles her toes against the carpet, flexing her feet that have been stuck in those shoes for hours. The sigh she lets out is almost erotic, it's so involuntary, so pleasured, so relieved. She puts her little drawstring purse down on the nighstand, keys jangling within it softly. And goes over to him, trying to untuck his arms, taking his hand. "Come on. You go warm up the food. I'll see if it's on t.v."

Viharfelho

Harry Potter? is all she says back to everything he just told her. For a while, anyway, and in that while he looks tormented and miserable and uncertain, not sure if she heard him at all, not sure if he's said too much or not enough, not sure if she's ignoring him because he's just freaking her out at this point.

In so many ways, despite everything else he is, Lukas thinks and feels like any teenager. He's boiling over with rage, he doesn't have internet access, he doesn't go to high school and he spends all but two weeks of the year cooped up in the mountains learning to be a monster, but for all that he doesn't want to seem like a freak to Danicka. He doesn't want her to be afraid of him, or think he's weird or too intense or too pushy. He knows saying things like want you so much and never be mine within two hours of meeting someone is a very good way to seem intense, pushy, and weird.

He's not just a teenager, though. He has instincts and drives that transgress the bounds of human propriety, human dating rituals. He met her. He wanted her. He thought she wanted him to; he thought he heard that when she said i keep thinking about it, and he thought he felt it when she walked close to him, her hand stroking his arm until his hairs stood on end. He's not sure how or where he read her so wrong, or if he read her wrong at all. He thinks maybe she's balking now not because she doesn't want to but because

he's just freaking her out.

Then she tells him why she didn't tell him she didn't want to kiss him. And his clear eyes return to her face. Frowning, Lukas shakes his head a little. "That's not the only reason you didn't want to tell me," he says softly. "You didn't tell me because you thought I might hurt you for saying no. Or force you anyway."

The thought is painful to him. He turns away before she's finished stepping out of her heels, going to fumble with their food. When she comes to him, she doesn't have to untuck his arms, but if she touches his hand, he stills. Looks at her.

"I'm not like that, Danicka."

Danicka

There was a point tonight when she thought he seemed a little like a puppy -- this was foolish, and she berated herself inwardly moments after the thought itself struck her because she knew better. Still, there's that animalistic layer to it, where his eagerness makes her think of a youthful animal bounding after her in delight, where the way he looks at her and wants her is not terribly unlike a constant sniffing at her, pawing at her, trying to get at her. Something is holding Lukas back from actually doing those things, some restraint that has him locked up in knots, and Danicka doesn't know if it's because he doesn't know if she wants him back or because he knows he shouldn't act like a beast in two-legged company or because of something else. She has no idea the kind of training he's getting, the way Istok is teaching him to behave so that he will not be like so many doomed, ruined others of his kind.

He reads her right, but he can't tell that. It isn't that she doesn't want him. It's that he's freaking her out. And she doesn't want to balk, doesn't want all of this to go down the drain, doesn't want to sit around being awkward and uncertain with him for a few hours before they say well, have a good visit / yeah / see you / see you and go their separate ways. She wants something to happen, but she doesn't want it to be violent. She doesn't want it to be this, either.

When Lukas shakes his head at her and tells her why she didn't tell him, says all that, her eyes flick to his face, a vivid green in this light, with the lamps by the bed on and starlight and citylight coming through the windows and little else; the moon is only a thin crescent above. Her brother's moon. If she had been born Garou it would be her moon, too. And tonight, in this light and under her moon, her eyes are suddenly very sharp, reminiscent somehow of balefire. She drops her head, those short-shorn locks of her hair drifting across her cheek and brushing her jaw, and steps out of her shoes.

As it happens, she doesn't come over to him then to try and ease him out of his locked-arm position, doesn't urge him to go get the food, doesn't touch him. She nudges her shoes toward the wall with her toes and is turning to him when he says he's not like that.

"Do you say everything that pops into your head?" she asks, her voice strained slightly by nothing more than the tension that's thick between them. Her mouth is turned down, her brows tugged a bit together. He's miserable; she's certainly a little bummed or uncomfortable, too. He might think she's about to tell him he shouldn't, he might think she believes he really is telling her everything when he certainly is not, he might think she's about to scoff at him or dismiss him again or something, but what she says after that is pure self-explanation: "Because I don't. And sometimes I don't just because they're my thoughts and I shouldn't have to share them if I don't want to."

So much diffidence, there. So much defiance, and affront that he was telling her what she was really doing, what her motivations actually were. So much obliviousness to the sort of intrigue and inter-tribal lies and allegiances that he's going to have to be prepared for as he grows into adulthood, the attempts at mind-reading, how many gifts there are just for learning the secrets of not just your enemies, but your own allies.

"If I was really scared that you're going to hurt me or ...or whatever, then I would have left when you said I could," she says quietly, and she's standing over there, so she does what she's wanted to do since they went to Bohemian Hall and what she's wanted to do since they left: sits down. On the side of the bed, her dress sweeping the carpet, her toes not quite touching the floor. She looks at him, that brow of hers furrowed so prettily, at least partly imploring.

"Look... could you just relax? You're so freaked out and wound up that it's freaking me out and winding me up and I just want to chill out and... be around you for awhile."

Danicka pauses there, and takes a breath, a little unsteady on the exhale. She looks at some midpoint on his torso, under the arch of the word YANKEES. "I just want you to relax."

Viharfelho

That makes him laugh under his breath, sort of an incredulous sound as he turns away from the food he's getting out of the bags.

"Do you know how many times I've been alone in a hotel room with a girl?" he asks her. And then he tells her: "Once. In my whole life. This time. I don't think it's possible for me to relax even if I hadn't just screwed everything up."

Lukas opens one of the two takeout boxes. The food looks good. He's really hungry, he realizes, his stomach growling at the sight and smell of it. He steps out of his dirty sneakers at last, taking the food to the microwave atop the minifridge, popping it in and setting the timer.

"I have no idea what's going on in your head," he continues as the microwave starts to hum. "You don't have to tell me everything, but if you told me a little, it'd help a lot."

Danicka

"Do you know how many times I've gone to a hotel room with a Garou?" she snaps back, and he's not snapping at her, he's laughing, but she's on edge. Oh, she's trying to relax, but something about what he says as he's turning towards the takeout boxes sets her off so quickly that it comes out of her mouth just like that, sharp as an arrow, before she even thinks. "How often, exactly, do you think I pick up a random guy on 5th Avenue at one in the morning and take him to some really nice hotel? I'm not a slut, Lukas, I just thought we could be relaxed because we're... friends, or something. Or were."

Viharfelho

"How the hell do I know?" He's snapping now too, the turn of his head and shoulders abrupt, precise. They're cutting each other off. He doesn't know how he ended up here, either, but he likes it a whole lot less than the other places he's been with her tonight. "I met you two hours ago and here I am."

She's not a slut, she says. He closes his mouth, angry and ashamed, and walks across the room to heat up the food without looking at her.

Danicka

A second ago he was half-laughing, saying he couldn't relax even if he hadn't just ruined everything. Right now it does seem like everything is ruined. All that fluttering tension, all that coiling anticipation from the street and the restaurant, from walking here when she was thinking of how he'd look when he was naked, how warm he'd be, and now it all seems snapped. It isn't just that he grabbed her hand when she moved away and that sent aftershocks of trauma through her entire body, trauma she usually ignores simply because well, now, be a big girl, grow up, life goes on. Trauma she didn't ignore tonight because

this is Lukas. And they used to play together and though those memories are small and few, they are good ones. She wanted something with him, and she doesn't quite know what, because she doesn't have sex with Garou and she doesn't make friends with them, either. She wanted something tonight, something just hers, something away from all the people who know her here and will lie and say they'll write to her when she leaves. So when that tremor went through her she listened to it.

Now they're both thinking. Thinking about how they ended up here and whether or not it's a good idea, a bad idea, trying to justify going on when they both know it's probably the latter. She snaps at him without thinking and he snaps back, hunger informing his voice as much as annoyance, and when he looks at her Danicka has gone perfectly still, her brow unfurrowed, her posture motionless but somehow retreating.

Lukas turns away, and Danicka looks down at her lap, her shoulders rounding, while he pushes the takeout boxes in and pushes buttons. A light comes on and the electricity hums. So, too, does the air-conditioning.

Then her voice, not humming nor purring but quiet, steadier than when she lost her temper for that brief, terrifying flash. Terrifying, that is, to her.

"I brought you here because I wanted to have sex with you," she says, and it might be hard for him not to hinge all his thoughts on the past-tense of that one word, it might be impossible. "But I don't kiss a lot of people." She sounds like a whore, she thinks. That's the rule of hookers, isn't it? Anything you want but no kissing on the lips. Gotta save something for the people that matter, right? She looks miserably at her fingertips, rubbing the pad of her thumb over the opposite thumbnail in tiny circles. "Well, that's not true. I don't kiss a lot of people because I want to. I kiss a lot of people because they want me to."

Which is even worse. Which makes her sick, and makes her remember the sort of creeping despair she's felt for so long, which she tries so very hard to stave off. She just wants some agency in her own life, and most people her age don't even know what that term means, and the Nation doesn't understand why she should want something like that as long as she protected by the Garou that claim her, that is all she should ask for, should want.

"And I don't want to do anything with you just because you want me to. I know you're not 'expecting' anything, but you're just... so worked up and tense. And I feel like if I don't do something to relax you or give you what you want, we're just going to be awkward and weird all night." She looks up and over at him, even if he's not looking at her even now. "I do want you, Lukas. And I don't know why, but I ...want it to feel right. For me. And it doesn't. Not right now. But leaving doesn't feel right, either. I just..."

She takes a breath, exhales. The microwave lets out a quick trio of beeps, the light going off and the hum stopping abruptly. Danicka watches him. "I don't make friends with Garou. I don't even spend any time around them if I can avoid it. I definitely don't go to hotel rooms -- or bedrooms or back seats or anything -- with Garou, or even Kinfolk, especially not of my own tribe. It doesn't matter if they're attractive to me or if they promise to be discreet or anything, I just... don't.

"I'm here because... we played together when we were little. And I want to trust you." Her throat moves as she breathes. "What I remember about you, when we were kids, makes me happy. I just want this. With you. Whatever it turns out to be."

Viharfelho

Throughout, Lukas's back is to Danicka. She can see the way his shirt hangs on him, stretching at the shoulders where he seems to widen a little more every day, loose at the hip where he's still so narrow. His bones are growing faster than his muscles can keep up - lengthening, widening, stretching. There's almost no waste on him, no time or room for it; beneath his skin, which is summer-tanned even in early June, his tendons and musculature and bones are carved clear and hard.

She can see all that. She can't see his face, though, and in a way this is the only real shield he has. His shoulders tense when she talks about what she does because others want her to. When she talks about wanting it feel right. The implication there is clear, and troubling: that it doesn't always feel right. That sometimes she does it anyway, and he wants to ask her why, but he suspects he wouldn't understand.

Whether or not he's looking at her, he is listening. She can tell because of his silence, and the way he breathes, and the way he jumps, startled, when the microwave beeps. She tells him all the things she doesn't do, and he could tell her the same, except these aren't rules he's made for himself yet. One day -- not too long hence now -- he'll be out in the world, turned loose, independent and full-grown. One day he'll be out there fighting wars and laying plans, and by then sex will be something he does not because it feels right but because it feels good, it's a temporary release, it's something he feels like he should do lest it distracts him. Lest it, or who he might want to have it with, becomes important enough to distract him.

When that day comes, he might understand a little better what it means to take someone to bed even if it doesn't feel right. And he might understand a little better why he might not want to do this, any of this, with kin. Especially not of his own tribe.

Danicka is finished. She's silent, and he's still facing away from her, his shoulderblades shifting against his shirt as he moves. The microwave door opens with a pop. He takes the two trays of food out, lifting them up and feeling the bottoms to make sure both are heated evenly. There was plastic cutlery in the bags, and he puts a fork in each tray, and a knife. He brings the food over to the bed carefully, looking at the two trays, handing her the one with a little more food in it. He does this without thinking. "Careful," he cautions quietly, "it's hot."

Only after she's taken her tray does he look at her. And only for a little while, a quick, almost shy flick of the eyes. Then he sits beside her, the mattress dipping under his weight, near enough that they can sense one another's proximity, heat. Not quite near enough to roll into one another's gravity, or touch. And Lukas eats for a little while, quietly but rather ravenously, head down, shoulders hunkered up, one hand holding the tray close to his face and the other scooping. It tastes amazing. Other than half-a-dinner two or three hours ago, he hasn't eaten since morning.

At some point he realizes he needs to say something. He can't ask her to tell him what she's thinking, reveal something of her inner self to him, and then just take it and say nothing in return. So at some point he slows, lowering his food. He wipes his mouth, and this is an odd, thoughtlessly polite little gesture - one hand neatly utilizing the napkin, then folding it on itself.

"When I first saw you," he says quietly, then, "I thought you were ... some rich girl with a perfect life. I'm sorry that's not true. I'm sorry your life sort of sucks."

Maybe that's harsh. He hopes she doesn't think so. He hopes she understands that he's ... sympathizing, or something like that. He has nothing else to say about that anyway, and there's another small silence before he continues, "I'm sorry things got all weird and tense. I just didn't know what to expect. I thought maybe you wanted me to kiss you. And I wanted to kiss you. But then you were just ... submitting to me. And I hated that, and then everything was all ... ugh, and I was afraid I'd ruined something good and precious. I was scared, and then I got angry.

"So I'm sorry I implied you were some sort of slut too. I don't know if I really even believed that. I was just... afraid of that, too." He doesn't quite dare look at her, but his eyes flick in her direction, look at her hands, look at her wrists. Back to his food. "I know I don't really have a right to be. But I don't want to be interchangeable and insignificant to you. I want to matter to you."

And quieter still:

"Because you matter to me."

A long pause follows that. He stirs his food, his appetite suddenly muted. He thinks, and he's quiet, and quite some time later he says, "So I don't want you to do anything just because you think I want you to, okay? I just want you to be happy. When we walked out of that restaurant together I felt like the world was our playground. We could do anything we wanted, and we didn't have to be afraid of anything. I want you to be happy and feel just like that."

Danicka

In the takeout boxes that Radovan made for them is rajská and knedliky, with french fries to the side. Radovan put in some smažený sýr, with tiny lidded ramikins of tartar sauce. It is a lot of food, but most of it is what he had left over at the kitchen's closing. It is the sort of food that Lukas's mother makes, when she isn't perfecting her Very American Cooking, and it is the sort of food Danicka has grown up with, the sort of food she used to make at home because it was her job to feed her family. This, to the two of them, is not special or spectacular or strange. It is comforting. They have no beer to go with it, not even soft drinks, but after hours of dancing and hours of walking, Danicka is almost as hungry as Lukas.

He hands her the tray with more food, and she looks up at him when he does, telling her it's hot. That makes her eyebrow flick a little, but she takes the tray and the fork and wonders how on earth she's going to eat even a third of what is in this box. Normally she can put away a bit of meat, maybe two slices of knedliky, maybe a handful of fries. She usually doesn't even eat fried cheese, simply because it's so filling. By the time she's finished thinking all this to herself, Lukas has devoured roughly a quarter of his food. She glances at him as he does this, sitting near her and eating like... well, not a dog. Eating like a hungry sixteen year-old boy. A hungry sixteen year-old Garou.

Danicka licks her lips and cuts off a bite of dumpling, dips it in the rajská sauce, and eats more slowly. So slowly that it looks barely touched by the time that Lukas has enough food in him to decide to talk. She eats slowly, moving food around, because it is easier to get people to leave her and her eating habits alone if they don't notice she isn't eating much. Tension roils in her stomach as rage pushes against her side, and she doesn't understand how anyone could think that a lot of food could fit inside of her with all of that going on. She certainly doesn't want to vomit from nerves. That's what makes Vladik so very angry, after he snaps at her not to disrespect their household by refusing to eat. When she eats til he lets her stop, or until she makes herself sick, and he is angry because this reminds her of their mother and his own ill-tempered stomach, this reminds him how weak she is, how embarrassing it will be if a Garou ever takes her as his mate.

She blinks when Lukas speaks, watching him -- almost primly -- wipe his lips with a napkin. She looks down at her dress when he says he thought she was this, and that, and then back at him when he says he's sorry that her life sort of sucks.

That makes her blink again, this time in true surprise, to hear him say that. To hear anyone say that. It's as though she's never heard anyone tell her that her life sort of sucks, much less apologize to her for it. But Danicka doesn't interrupt. Partly because, when she can't stave off the despair or the sadness, she knows it's true: her life is unhappy. Her life has been horrific, and Lukas doesn't know a fraction of the truth. She hopes he never does.

Danicka doesn't eat as she's listening, her fork poised with a french fry at the end of it, dripping slightly with sauce back into the tray. Something good and precious, he says, and she aches. It falters a little when he brings up that awful moment when he implied that she does this a lot, does this all the time, with random strange boys, with anyone. Her jaw tenses a little as she looks down, reminded, even though she knows he's apologizing. She's not eating much now, either, and he's stirring his food absently.

The corner of her mouth flicks when he's done, a ghost of a smile that you only see out of the corner of your eye before it's gone. "Maybe we should just feel how we feel," she says softly, then turns and looks over at him. "That way it's harder to ruin anything."

This time the smile is faint. One could say it's forced, but it's also simply: trying. Tender. "Do you know now that you're not... interchangeable? Or insignificant?" she asks then, her voice very quiet indeed.

Viharfelho

If he had met her eight years later, Lukas would be staring at Danicka right now. Boldly, scrutinizingly - trying to read every scrap of emotion on her face. He would have caught that ghost of a smile. And the blink of surprise before it. He would have caught everything, even if he didn't quite understand it.

At sixteen, though, Lukas is sort of afraid to look at Danicka. It's a twosided fear. He's afraid he won't be able to meet her eyes. He's afraid he'll start stammering or something dreadful like that. And he's afraid if he looks at her, he'll frighten her -- or worse, he'll lose some tenuous control over himself

and try to kiss her again.

Still. When she says what she does, quiet and tender, his eyes glance to her face. He forgets not to look. He catches that last expression, that faint little smile of hers, and he stares for a little while. Then the corner of his mouth moves a little. He nods mutely. Then, "Jo."

Danicka

Yeah,, he says, in the language they grew up with. The language they've spoken a few times tonight, comfortable with each other and with that old tongue, but seemed to forget until now. Maybe it's the food in their laps, which is such a part of their lives that it hardly seems worth going out to a restaurant for, paying someone else to make. It's that familiar. But Danicka suspects that's not it, that's not why he slips back into Czech, or why he smiles. Or why she does what she does next.

Keeping both of her hands on her tray to hold it steady, she leans over to him, unhesitating but without rushing or fumbling over herself. The front of her shoulder touches the side of his arm, and she turns her head toward his, tilted gently. When she kisses him it's very soft, gently catching his lower lip between her own. She kisses like a question, or an overture, the way one of them might have shyly asked the other if they wanted to play, once upon a time. It only lasts a moment, that sweet warmth, before Danicka pulls back. She stays where she is, close to him, her breathing faintly elevated,

and lifts her eyes to look at him. He can feel her breath against his chin.

Viharfelho

Lukas is not so naive, so foolish, as to not know Danicka's intent when she leans to him. And for once, he catches himself starting to question why, why, why now, what does this mean, when he just -- stops. Enough, he tells himself. Don't question it. For once, it's enough that it's here, and he doesn't have to define it; he only has to --

accept it. Which is what he does, his heart pounding so hard in his chest he thinks it might burst through his ribs, he thinks she must be able to hear it, she must be able to feel it radiating outward through chest to shoulder to arm. He doesn't know how to kiss her, so he's very still, very stiff, trying not to breathe too hard; trying not to lean into her. She kisses him, and his eyes are closed for it, and if her kiss is a question his is simply, well. A stunned silence.

When she draws back, just a little, his eyes open. He looks at her like he's never seen her before, never had this before, never been here before. She's close enough to see the flecks of darker blue in his eyes, the flecks that are so dark they are nearly black amidst the pale, cool color of his irises. She's close enough to see how wide his eyes are, and his pupils, and how he's breathing in shallow sips through his mouth.

Then he leans toward her. Just a little, just enough to reach her again. He tries to kiss her the same way she kissed him, gently and slowly. His jaw is already a hard, clean line, but his mouth is soft, and inexpert, and frankly not very good at this. He tries anyway, and after a moment one of his hands forgets that it should be holding on to his dinner; rises to touch her cheek, very carefully, as though she might break or fade away if he were too rough.

Danicka

There's something to be said for the uncertain kisses of the inexperienced. There's a beauty in it, so long as it's given tenderly. So long as it's given --

just like this.

Lukas puts aside the questions that doubtlessly spring to his mind, twisting him up in knots all over again, and Danicka is glad of it. Glad he doesn't stop to ask her why, or why not before and why now, isn't asking her if she's sure, if she really wants this, what about what she said. She's so relieved, and if he had opened his mouth she'd have kissed him again just to stop him from trying to analyze everything, figure it all out. Just let it happen, she's whispering to him in her mind, and for once, he does.

They open their eyes, watching each other, wondering. Only for a few moments. She sees flecks of indigo in his blue; he sees hints of gold in her green. And he kisses her again then, tender and soft and slow, exploring. Curious, in a way, like stepping out far enough into the water that one's feet leave the ground. That's what it feels like. And she'd never say it aloud, never tell him this, not in eight years or ten or a million because it's silly and sentimental and ludicrous, but that's what it feels like when he reaches up and touches her cheek:

like her feet leaving the ground.

Danicka takes a sip of air, herself, and echoes her first kiss back to him like a nduge. Like this. Keeping his lips soft, keeping himself slow, easing into it. Her eyes are closed again now, kissing him just like this for awhile, their lips brushing each other, til he feels her swallow

(her mouth is watering)

and then feels her lips open a little. She slips her tongue out just once, lightly stroking the tip across his upper lip in a quick little flick before withdrawing. Her kiss after that is softer, like before, as though to seal the last one inside of him.

Viharfelho

It's not that he's patient, really. He can't possibly be patient; not when this is the first real kiss of his life, and one he's waited sixteen years for. One he's waited two hours for, and somehow those hours were longer than all the years that came before. He can't be patient with his rage licking at the chambers of his heart, with his desire -- it seems so banal to call it lust -- clawing up his ribcage from the inside.

It's not patience. It's just inexperience, complete and utter, and the very real truth that he has to wait to see where she leads because he doesn't know how to get there himself. Doesn't want to get there himself, anyway, and leave her behind somehow. She kisses him, shows him just like this, and he follows. He's slow, slow, easing into it, shivering with anticipation. She pauses to swallow and he lays his forehead against hers, shuddering a breath, and

when her mouth opens so does his. Her tongue touches his lip and he makes a sound, a half-caught half-tortured sound, mmnnph, like he didn't know such a thing was even possible. So her mouth softens, she kisses him as though to seal that sensation inside him where it can stay new forever, and now he's leaning into her, twisting at the hip to try to face her, his hand drifting down from her face

and he's too shy, or scared, or something to touch her body so his hand touches down on the mattress on the other side of her instead. The plate of food on his lap slips a little. He doesn't care.

Danicka

That Lukas is a virgin is something Danicka figured out long before he said he wasn't exactly in the habit of being alone with girls in hotel rooms. That Lukas has never even really kissed a girl is something she learned when she kissed him. And when he kissed her back. She doesn't chalk it up to how badly he wants her, how much he's wanted to kiss her since she came out of the restaurant, since getting into this room. It doesn't bother her or disappoint her to kiss him like this, gently teaching, going slowly not because she doesn't want more but because she's rather certain that if she goes any faster he's going to snap.

He lets go of her face as they're kissing, slow and soft like that, Lukas shivering and her breath getting quicker, and he's all but panting for her now, which makes her hot, even as she's trying to remind herself slow, slow, not too fast, slow.

The tray he's holding slips, and her hands aren't free. Lukas leans over her, leans into her, and any second he's going to drop that thing and red sauce will slosh all over the bed, the floor, her dress, and he'll be on her, she's relatively certain. She notices, though he doesn't care; Danicka still has control over her mental faculties. She's sitting very close to him now, but her hands are frozen on her tray, and she eases back from his mouth -- he might think he's already come on too strong, again, shit, ruined, ruined...

-- and turns away from him, moving the tray in her hand over to the table beside the bed, closing it.

Twisting back toward him, she gently takes his dinner away, too, not by grabbing it but by putting her hands on the tray -- one of her hands brushes his, there -- and waiting for him to release it before she takes it and puts it atop the other one. When Danicka turns back to Lukas then, both of their hands are empty. And it's been ten seconds, fifteen, since the last time he kissed her. It's been forever.

So she kisses him again. This time deeper, starting with one of those soft, sweet kisses of just her lips, but then they part. Then, she slips her tongue into his mouth, tasting him, tasting -- realistically -- some of their dinner, but it hardly matters, it's simple fare. Tasting him, mostly, as though there's more desire on his tongue than any other flavor. And worse, she's putting her hand on him, on the shoulder opposite her, her forearm laying lightly against his chest. Her other hand is pressed on the mattress between them, but as they kiss, that one moves, too. Comes to rest on his lower back, feeling him through his t-shirt but not moving, not caressing, because

she doesn't want him to lose his mind yet.

Viharfelho

The truth is, he was disappointed when she didn't want to kiss him. He didn't let himself hope, walking here with her, that maybe she'd let him. Kiss her. Touch her. Have sex with her, maybe, though that thought was so searing and dangerous his mind couldn't really hold it. He didn't let himself hope, but he hoped anyway, and when she didn't he was a little crushed, a lot frustrated, was wondering what went wrong and what he did wrong and what it was about him, really, that frightened people so.

It's one thing to say: it's your Rage. It's another entirely to understand what that means.

But the truth also is: he would have been happy to just kick back with her. Take their shoes and socks off, put their feet up. Watch Harry Potter, which he's neither read nor seen. Fall asleep, most likely, because let's face it: HP1 was boring. Maybe take a minute to call his parents, let them know he's okay, really, he found an old friend and they're hanging out. They're eating takeout Czech food and maybe buying something from the minibar, some Oreos or Pringles or something, they're just...

being normal teenagers, for a little while. That would have made him happy, too.

But this. This is something entirely outside his scope of experience. He's thought about it before: kissing a girl, touching a girl, what it might feel like. He's felt a girl's lips wrapped around him, but he barely even remembers because he was on fire and it was over so fast that he was left feeling more confused than anything else. Memory and imagination are nothing compared to this. That glancing encounter is nothing compared to this.

Nothing compares to this. To her, and her mouth so soft and sweet, her forearm a gentle weight against his chest. Oh, but she can feel his heart pounding under his breastbone, and under those developing layers of muscle that sheath his ribs. She can feel his breathing, quick and deep, he's almost panting already, and when she puts her hand on his lower back his spine arches, his chest rises against her arm, he's thankful she took his dinner and set it aside even if he almost died waiting for her to come back because if it was still on his lap right now it'd be falling on the ground.

His body still feels slender against her hand, the depth of him front-to-back still narrow, slim. He's in transition, changing day by day; sometimes it feels like he grows faster than he can change from one shape to another. Tomorrow his shoulders will be a little broader, his chest a little thicker, the slabs and belts of muscle around his waist and at his back and at his abdomen that much harder, that much more developed. Sometimes he looks at himself in the mirror after a shower, flexing, laughing at himself but fascinated, too, by the changes his training and the simple act of growing up have wrought on him. Sometimes he thinks to himself, this is what it's like to become a man,

and then he's frustrated, because he's still a cub.

But he's not frustrated right now. His hands are back on her cheeks. A little firmer this time, as if he's forgotten to be afraid to do this. He's kissing her and the kiss is a little more, now, a little deeper though he hardly knows to call it that. Her skin is so soft, and he can't stop running his thumbs over her cheekbone, his palm over her cheek, her jaw, her neck. He's amazed by the feel of her, the same way he's amazed by the way her mouth feels, amazed by the way her mouth mouths, amazed by the way her breathing is changing, and her hands are a little heavier on him like she wants him, too, because in all his adolescent fantasies of writhing girls and sweaty encounters he's somehow never factored in the thought that

there are always two people in a kiss. It's not just something that's done to one party, or that one party does alone. It doesn't work like that. Danicka is here too, and even if he can tell she knows what she's doing, even if he knows this isn't her first time, not by far, he can tell she feels this. He can tell she's here,

where he's never been before,

and where, maybe, she hasn't been very often herself.

Danicka

It's bittersweetly funny how happy they both would have been just to come up here and watch a movie, eat some takeout and then some food from the minibar, kicking back, being normal. Taking their sexual frustration and just sleeping with it, hiding their nakedness from each other and getting under the covers without touching, or maybe Lukas would have been all honorable and chivalrous and taken the sofabed. She's kin to his tribe. She's not for him to look at, not for him to touch, not for him. Never going to be his. So he would have ended up taking the sofabed when he realized that the movie delighting his companion, who has read every book that's come out, was putting him to sleep.

That would have been nice. That would have been fun. That would have let them both have something they simply do not have, cannot have anymore.

But this is nice, too. And new. And because it is new, and because he knows he shouldn't and she knows she doesn't usually want this, it is terrifying and thrilling as well. Danicka doesn't know -- doesn't need or want to know -- about that backwater girl whose chosen rebellion was taking Lukas out and confusing the hell out of him and making him want a hundred things he can't have. Lukas can guess at, can plainly see, that Danicka has been around the block a time or two, but he has no idea -- doesn't need to know, doesn't want to know -- that she got pregnant over two years ago, younger than he is now, and it was by the boy who took her virginity, the first person to tell her he loved her, the first person she had any real feelings for,

but to this day she doesn't know if she'd call it 'love'. But he was special. And so is this. Except: she knew Stephen for years. She all but grew up with him. They were best friends before they started to notice each other, before they started to hold each other longer when they hugged, before one thing led to another and another. Lukas is a boy she hasn't seen for eight years. She has no idea if she'll ever see him again, and the longer this night goes on the more she thinks she wants to, and it aches to think she might not. It makes no sense why she wants this to feel right, to feel good for both of them, to feel... sweet. Close.

But he's arching his back when she touches him, his breathing ragged, and she can feel how hard his chest is against her arm, how firm he is, and she thinks again of how he's going to feel in her hands when she gets that shirt off of him, and the rest of those thoughts start to escape her.

She keeps breathing faster, the longer they kiss and, frankly, the better he gets at following both her mouth and his instinct, the better he gets at kissing her. That hand on his shoulder moves up, drifting past his neck and moving to his face. The one on his back flexes, her fingers wrapping around the loose fabric. And she makes a noise, then, leaning against his side, pressing into the kiss, a noise he's never heard a girl make before, this little... gasp, this intimation of a moan, a singular burst of whispered sound into his mouth,

even as those kisses of theirs are getting hungrier, more open, harder.

Of course the next thing he knows she's leaning against him so much she's pushing him down to lie on his back, rolling herself atop him even as he's falling. She never stops kissing him, only now her hands are both on his shoulders, on the bed, holding herself not above him but to him, though her weight even now isn't very much to him. There's some mercy, still: she doesn't begin moving on top of him, isn't imitating the motions of sex with their clothed bodies, but she does gasp as she kisses him, moans softly as though she needs something very badly, something from him.

Viharfelho

Lukas is getting better at kissing. He's not sure, but he thinks he might be, and he's so delighted by this that he almost wants to stop and share it with her, wants to share this with her because he wants her to be his friend, wants her to be able to share the little things that make him happy,

and all of that is ridiculous, really, when one considers that they're doing what they're doing. Kissing each other, in a three hundred dollar hotel room, on her prom night, when he wasn't her prom date. He sort of wishes he was. He wonders if he still remembers how to dance; then he realizes kids at her school probably don't dance the way he was taught to dance when he was little, with hands placed just so and feet moving in precise patterns. He's a little ashamed then, he's so far away from her world, he remembers she's not for him, not at all, but then

then he pushes it out of his mind. It doesn't matter, and for once he wasn't going to do what Istok says, he's not going to consider the consequences of his actions, he's not going to weigh the benefit against the drawback, he was going to kiss Danicka because

he's getting better at it, he can tell, he always was a quick study. And he's turning toward her, she's turning toward him and her hand is moving up his neck. The fine hairs on his body are standing on end, electrified. He grasps thoughtlessly at her forearm, her hand; she touches his face and he stops worrying about how he's breathing while he's kissing her and whether or not he's allowed to exhale into her mouth and

god, then she makes that sound that he's never heard a girl make before, and it almost splits him open. He has her face between his hands and he's kissing her like he needs her now, smudging her lipstick in his eagerness, kissing not only her mouth but her cheek, her chin, her nose, whatever he can get his mouth on.

And then his back hits the mattress. His eyes fly open; he didn't think she was so strong. Or maybe she's not strong at all. Maybe he just has no balance right now, no equilibrium, no sense of up and down. His back is on the mattress and it's soft, the comforters are down, this triggers a memory he thought he'd forgotten. He had down comforters when he was very small and living in the Republic, only it was Czechoslovakia then. He hasn't had one in years and years now, but that memory is already flaring out, because now,

now she's on top of him, oh god, he doesn't know what to do with his hands and she's kissing him and his eyes close with a surrendering sort of moan; he finds her mouth like magnets pulling together. He puts his hands on her waist. He wants to put his hand somewhere else, wants to run his hands all over her, gasps out,

can I touch --

but she's making this soft little moan in the back of her throat and his hands slide up her ribs. When he touches her breasts it's so careful, so light; he doesn't grab at her at all. He's terrified and he thinks his heart might explode. He tries to kiss her gently while he feels her in his palms, tries to reach up and touch her face to show her he's here, he's still here, it's okay, even though she's not the one that needs guidance. Or reassurance.

Or maybe she is, as much as he is. He can feel her heart beating. It's so fast, almost as fast as his, and he wonders at this. He remembers yet again: there are two people here, and remembering this, he draws back from her for a moment, lays his head back down on the covers, his dark hair already a little tousled, his pale eyes astonished, dazzled. He looks down for a second. His hand still covers her breast through her dress. He's still touching her so carefully, and he finds her eyes again and lifts his head. His eyes close after all: his mouth finds hers like he can't help but kiss her.

Danicka

But he is sharing it with her: his delight, not just in kissing her but in realizing that he's getting better, she likes it. She makes that sound into his mouth and splits him open, but now she's lying on top of him and making sounds just like that, over and over, wanting and pleading. The way she sounds, it's hard to remember that she's there with him, she's not so far gone that she's forgotten who she's with.

Thoughts are flitting through his mind, thoughts of stopping to tell her he's happy, of wishing he could have been her prom date even if he doesn't know the cultural significance of this 'prom' business, of knowing she's not for him but screw that, screw Istok's lessons, screw the consequences. He loses them all.

Danicka isn't thinking much right now. Lukas is kissing her the way another Lukas in another time one day will, almost desperate, eating at her, kissing her anywhere he can find her skin. She wants him to kiss her neck but she's hesitant to bare it to him, even now, so she

climbs on top of him, pushing him to the comforters and moaning as she covers him. Her dress is so thin, so soft, draped across their entangled legs, and her slender thigh is resting warmly against his groin. She's thinking how hard he feels through his jeans, how turned on he must be, how much that turns her on. Her thoughts are dirty enough, raw enough, that they might even scare him. Overwhelm him. But Danicka isn't talking about what's going on in her thoughts. She's kissing him, this boy who suddenly doesn't feel like a boy, doesn't feel like someone she used to play with when they were little.

Proof: he starts to gasp a question but stops, is kissing her instead of talking, his hands sliding up from her tiny waist to her small breasts, and she shudders against him, like she's collapsing inside. It makes her mouth lose his for a moment, as she turns her face away to breathe, to try and regain some kind of center. She wants to tell him that he's making her wet, but she hasn't been doing this so long that she could say so without blushing, without feeling weird or too forward in doing so. She thinks about him discovering it on his own, how he'll react when he feels her, and a firework goes off in her head. She thinks she's about to pass out just from the thought of it.

"Don't," she whispers, as he draws back and his head falls back. "Don't stop," and she's sliding up his body a little, kissing him, and his eyes are closing and he's kissing her back like he can't help it. For a moment her hands are on his cheeks, holding him there, moaning openly into his mouth while he touches her through her dress, but then hers slide down. She runs them over his sides, roughly, til she finds the hem of his shirt and tugs it upward, lifting her torso to facillitate this.

Her hands are hot, but not as hot as his skin. She's holding herself at an angle over him now, leaving room for his hand on her breast, leaving room for her hand traveling up his shirt, first on his waist, then stroking over his abdominals, slowly caressing her way upward. And they haven't stopped kissing, and now they're both panting, but she gasps away from his mouth for a spare second just to say:

"God, you are so ripped," like she's stunned by this, like she's aroused by it, and her hand is on his chest now, her fingertips finding his nipple, moaning again at the feel of him as her mouth seals to his once more.

Viharfelho

Really, Lukas hasn't even thought of reaching up Danicka's skirt yet. He hasn't even really thought of reaching into her dress, taking those small breasts of hers out of her bra to touch her, skin on skin. Well -- he's thought of it, but only in mindblowing little flickers and sears that he doesn't trust, doesn't want to think about, what if she doesn't let him, what if.

And there's also the fact that right now, he can't think ahead very far at all. His mind is in the moment. He feels like a collection of impulses and sensations; Descartes was wrong after all. Cogito does not ergo sum; sentio ergo sum comes closer to it. His mind is defined by his body, and his body is defined by where they touch. When her thigh slides between his, presses to his jeans like that, Lukas almost loses his mind. It's different, the pressure of her body to his, the alignment when she's atop him and on him. He's never felt anything like it, but he likes it, wants it, wants more; he finds himself shifting his weight to the balls of his feet so he can raise his hips and solidify that contact.

Then she's pulling his shirt up. He's gasping, he's almost nervous suddenly, he grasps at her hand as it reaches under his shirt like he's afraid of what she might find there. An animal. Lust. He knows she's no virgin, he knows it's not like she doesn't know how guys work, it's not like she doesn't know he's going to get hard and sweaty and want to be inside her, want to come inside her. And still he's afraid of her -- finding out, or something -- or maybe he's just afraid of what he wants, himself, because if she's not for him and he's barely even allowed to look at the kin, if normal people on the street don't even want to look at him, then

there must be something wrong with him, right?

But she doesn't make him feel like that. She makes him feel -- wanted. Like this body that was built for destruction is beautiful in its own way. Like she likes him, his indestructible bones and his murderous, changing flesh. She touches him and his skin shivers under her hands. She's pushing his shirt up and he falls back on the bed with a groan, panting under her hands, his own falling away for a moment as he looks down. She rucks his shirt up. His skin is tanned almost as dark there as it is on his arms; he spends so much of his time half-bare or mostly bare simply because he spends so much of his time shifting and no one knows how to dedicate talismans yet and it's either a hassle to strip out of your clothes every time or else it's really, really expensive to tear them.

Her hands look lovely on his skin, lovely and golden. He still can't believe she's touching him. He's breathing so hard his chest expands and relaxes. He's lean enough that she can see the delineation of his muscles under his skin, his bones under his muscles - the lowermost arch of the ribcage, the outermost arch of the hipbones where the obliques tuck in and his jeans hang. There's no hair on his chest yet, nothing but fuzz, but there's a line running down from his navel, disappearing under his fly. Her hands push higher, bare him, she touches his chest and it's all so slow and patient and he's losing his mind, he's so turned on, she's leaning half on him and half on her side and he puts his arm around her, his fingers in her hair,

kisses her again, moaning, as she runs her fingertips over his nipple. "Please," he pants, not quite knowing what he's asking for. "I want -- "

His body seems to know. His hips buck; he pulls her against him, pulls her thigh up and over his hip. He grinds against her and it makes him kiss her so desperately, it makes him turn against her, bury his face against her neck, her shoulder, like the very sight of her overcomes him. He reaches down, grasps a handful of her dress - crushes a butterfly in his palm - starts to tug her hem up, up along her leg. It hasn't even occurred to him yet that her dress has a zipper somewhere.

Danicka

Having never done this before, it makes sense that Lukas is on tenterhooks about what he wants versus what Danicka will let him do. Thinking of how much of an animal he knows he is, how much of a beast he feels like, how girls are this strange, forbidden thing, gatekeepers to the pleasure he wants and thinks maybe he shouldn't want, since he's discouraged from even looking at them. It's possible that the thought is only now entering his mind that some of these things he's afraid she won't let him do are things she wants, too. Things she'll like. Things that make her feel as good as doing them feels to him.

Mindblowing concept, that. And one that's only gradually, slowly slipping tendrils into his mind, as she strokes his skin and moans at the feel of him, mutters an oath about his body like it's something amazing, even to her, and she's no virgin, she's not worrying about what he'll let her do, not right now. She's not worried that he might not let her stroke his chest or lust for his body.

There are too many layers of clothing between them, and they're all thick. The heavy satin lining of her dress, the gauzy outer drape, whatever she has on underneath it, the stiff jeans he's wearing -- no fashionably cut things, these, just the heaviest, cheapest, work-readiest dungarees that will cover his legs until he goes through yet another growth spurt, then get passed on to some other cub if he hasn't ripped them too badly yet -- the underwear he has on under it, which she's thinking she'll just pull down along with the jeans, all at once, get him out of everything, get him naked.

It isn't that she's hungrier for him, hungrier for this. She's simply more experienced. She's less afraid. She knows where this is going, where she wants it to go, and she can't stop thinking about it now that she's kissed him, now that she's feeling him against her. Danicka makes a muffled answering noise when he lifts his hips to press himself harder against her; she pushes him down with her hips, but that contact never abates: she stays that close, feeling his heat radiating through all their clothes, so much so that the ridiculous notion of something catching fire flickers through her mind.

For a moment, when Lukas grasps at her hand, tension that is not lust going through him, Danicka lifts her mouth from his and looks down at him, her eyes scanning his face, silently asking why, what's wrong,

and he can't know it but her thought is that he's wounded somehow, something that hasn't healed yet because it can't, she knows cubs sometimes walk around with broken ribs and broken whatevers and she vaguely knows that Garou heal quickly but she doesn't quite know how fast, she knows that they can be hurt in ways that don't heal,

she knows that even the strongest can die, and she knows that Lukas is far from the strongest.

But that isn't it. He's shuddering under her fingers, he's letting her hand go and letting her touch him and she's moaning that he's so ripped like it's something that stirs her, caressing the lines of those tightly, brutally defined muscules like she's never felt anything like it. Which, strangely enough, is the truth. She's never seen a guy like him, never touched someone like him like this, never met a sixteen -- or seventeen or eighteen -- year old whose body was quite like his. She marvels at it. She touches him almost obsessively even as they're kissing, running her hands up under his shirt, pushing it up higher, though she doesn't stop kissing him long enough to look down at him. The feel of him is enough. For now.

Danicka is thinking -- only thinking, now -- of stroking her hands down his body and unbuttoning his fly, slipping her hands into his pants and touching him. Thinking about it, thinking to herself about whether or not he can handle it, knowing he's been worked up since they met on 5th, knowing he's probably been hard or half-hard most of the time they've been together, knowing he's a virgin, knowing all these little things, she doesn't want to overstimulate him,

solely because she doesn't want him to get embarrassed. She doesn't want him to pull away, red-faced and frustrated and angry, humiliated. She doesn't want him to feel like that. And not, strangely enough, because she's afraid if he feels like that he'll get violent. It's a reality she has to be aware of. It's something that flickers distastefully through her mind, but the truth is, that is a secondary concern. She just... doesn't want him to feel bad. She wants him to be happy.

So Danicka softens her kisses a little. She hasn't been grinding on top of him all the while, in fact has kept rather still except for the motions necessary to push up his shirt or lean to the side to touch him better. She lifts one hand from his body to touch his face, here, because he's panting Please, I want and it isn't that he doesn't know what he wants, or that she doesn't. Lukas bucks his hips, unable to take it anymore, and Danicka is about to give him a deep, slow roll of her hips that would probably drive him insane, but before she gets there

he pulls her leg up, pulls her closer, starts grinding himself against her through their clothes and then his mouth is at her neck, his face buried there, moaning. She closes her eyes as they're rolling back, shuddering at the sensation of him between her legs, finally, but her mouth brushes his temple, kisses his brow, ruffling the edges of his hair. He's pulling up her dress, quickly, probably faster even than he means to, and she lets out a heavy breath, her eyes opening.

"Shhh," she says, though he's not roaring, not yelling, not even making that much noise with his moans. She's not shh'ing his voice, anyway. She draws her face away from him, looks down at him, her fingertips stroking his hair back a little, short as it is, touching him along his scalp. The fabric of her dress is soft against his bared abdomen. She's relatively certain he can feel her heartbeat through their chests; she thinks she can feel his.

Danicka leans down to him and kisses him softly, easing her hips away from his body, withdrawing from that full-on, maddening contact as gently as she can, panting quietly, telling him what she's doing because she doesn't want him to think he did something wrong: "Let's slow down. Just for a minute." She kisses him: "It's okay," and again: "it's perfect."

Her hands run down his neck and shoulders as she moves away from him, kneeling on the bed but bent over him, touching him still, kissing him over and over like that. "You have me," which is not a lie, even if it's only for tonight, "I'm not going anywhere," which is the truth, if only -- again -- for tonight.

"Stand up," she whispers to him, in between those soft, slow, wet kisses she's giving him. "Let me undress you."

Viharfelho

Lukas really only has the vaguest idea of what he's doing. Not in the sense of - oh no, what am I doing? And not in the sense of some cheap shirking of responsibility; some excuse so that if he's caught he can't be held responsible for what he does here because, well, he didn't know what he was doing, she'd driven him mad, temporary insanity, it's all her fault. It's not that all. In that sense, he knows perfectly well what he's doing:

breaking all the rules.

It's simply that, quite simply and quite literally, he's not quite sure how this, sex, works. It's not he's spent the teenaged years of his life romping around New York City the way he might have had he not changed. It's not like formal sex ed is a part of his fosterage. And it's already been established that as far as actual, real-life experience goes, he's in the end of the pool so shallow his feet are barely wet.

Most of what Lukas knows so far comes, frankly, from fantasy and the most unreliable of sources. There were pornos snuck up to Stark Falls in some horny cub's backpack, or passed over from some pity-taking Cliath's stash; pornos passed from cub to cub, studied like the holy fucking bible until he'd all but memorized every whimper, every moan, every drop of sweat. There were rumors and hearsay: the boasting and bragging of older boys or more experienced boys, the ones who didn't spend their entire fucking adolescence cooped up in a Caern. And there were long conversations with Benny when they were both stuck on patrol and bored out of their gourds. Benny, who claims to have done everything already, who claims to have never left a single woman unsatisfied. Just ask me, he says, eager to show off, I can tell you anything you wanna know about a girl. Snickering and low voices as they talked about something that was decidedly not caern safety or spiritual contracts; coarse terminology and crude humor as shields for their fascination and obsession with something far more holy than caern safety or spiritual contracts. Benny going on and on about vags and poons and pussies, Lukas listening and trying to imagine and wondering if Benny really had any idea at all or if he was merely fantasizing, himself.

Lukas doesn't know enough. He doesn't know anything. He's operating almost entirely on instinct now, on sheer hardcoded behaviors passed down through a billion years of evolution so that all but the most stupid, all but the most deficient and useless members of the species could have a fighting chance at propagating their genes. That, and on his own natural intelligence, his ability to pick things up on the fly and use them. He listens to her, listens to her voice and her body and tries to do what she seems to like. Tries to do what feels good for him, and what feels good for her. He's pulling Danicka on top of him and pressing her to him and there's still layers of clothes between but he knows this is supposed to go there so he starts pulling at her dress, soft and flimsy in his hands, but he's only got it partly up her legs when she stop him, easing away,

so he stops, panting, eyes open and unsure when she kisses him; did he do something wrong? She shushes him. He exhales in a rush. She strokes his hair and his eyes close and he almost weeps, it feels so tender, her heart is beating against his and he tries to kiss her again, rising half off the bed in his eagerness.

Slow down, she tells him. He falls back, thumps his head against the comforters once, grasps handfuls of it. "God," he pleads, but she tells him it's okay.

It's perfect.

He looks at her again. "Is it?" he asks; he's actually asking this, because he doesn't know. He looks relieved when she says she's not going anywhere, she's staying, she's here with him, he has her. He shudders. Her kisses are so slow and he can only accept, can't think well enough to reciprocate. She tells him to stand up. He almost dies. She tells him she wants to undress him. He almost dies.

"Oh, god," is all he can say. And then he gets up so fast he nearly tumbles her off the bed, scrambles to his feet and automatically starts tearing his shirt up over his head. Stops. She said she wanted to do it. He turns around, facing her, glancing at the windows and the lights, suddenly shy; back to her.

"I'm ... " he wets his lips; there's a thin sheen of sweat on his brow, and a flush in his cheeks. He tells her this like it's a confession, like maybe she hasn't noticed yet and might be frightened if surprised with it: "I've got a hard-on."

Danicka

After another couple of weeks, when he's in upstate New York and she's so far south it seems like a world away, it's unlikely Lukas is going to go up to Benny, punch him in the face, and tell him that everything he said was totally wrong. It's unlikely he'll join in those discussions with his own personal experience. It's unthinkable that he's going to brag to anyone about who, or where, or how they ran into each other or what she was wearing. He's already promised that he won't disgrace her, though he's young enough still that he doesn't even know to use that word for what he means. She's his kin. She's not just his kin but she's the girl he used to play with when he was little and didn't know what he was. His family knows her family. She's precious. She's purebred. And he's promised her he won't dishonor her.

But even if she weren't, even if she were just some girl, something about Lukas is so private about this sort of thing, as though it's not something he learned from Istok but a natural inclination towards holding what matters close. Co je doma, to se pocítá. Neither of them would ever assign this meaning to it, would never be able to get past their adolescence in order to realize it, but this is home. This is why he wants her so badly, why he wants her to feel good, why she matters, why a part of him howls at the thought that she'll never be his, why she wants to see him again, why she wants him to be happy and not embarrassed or lonely, why she strokes his hair like she does, whispers to him that it's okay, it's perfect:

this is home.

Danicka knows enough to not just get through the act but enough to try and make it feel good for both of them. She knows enough to try and teach him not just that this goes here but touch me here and let's try this, too. He is operating on instinct and intellect; she operates with experience, and it lets her desire take so much rein, lets her realize to an extent he hasn't yet just how far they can go, how much there is to explore, how somehow they've got to find the time because there is so, so much she wants to feel with him, so much she wants him to feel, so much she wants him to know

even if on some level, she knows she's not going to be the last, even if she's the first. Even if she knows that there are going to be other girls. In a way it only makes her more tender, makes her more aching to give him something to carry with him, because

Garou don't live forever.

Of course it's hardly all this self-sacrificing, teaching moment for her. She wants to feel that body of his against hers. She wants to get off. She wants him to lose his mind when he feels how wet she is. She wants him the way she imagines he'll be afterward, limp and exhausted but still aroused, his skin too hot to bear touch, but not wanting to move away. She wants it to feel good. She wants this for herself. She wants something to carry with her, and that scares her and makes her sad, and makes her want to be close to him. Danicka kisses him to drive the thoughts away, the overthinking, the confusion of why she feels the way she feels right now. With him.

It's perfect, she whispers, and
Is it? he asks, so she smiles and touches his cheek, nodding.
"Yeah," and kisses him again, a full and deep kiss to his mouth, before she assures him
she's here
she's staying
he has her.

So: he scrambles off the bed to his feet, panting, looking uncertain and overwhelmed and intense, aggressively turned on, and Danicka moves to kneel at the end of the bed, not even coming up to his eyeline even now, and he's nowhere near as tall as he's going to get. She smiles as he drops his shirt after almost taking it off, and she puts her hands on his waist -- under his shirt, warm palms against hot skin -- to steady herself. Her dress is a blue and purple pool around her legs, shimmering. And Lukas is telling her --

Danicka's jawline tightens almost imperceptibly with the effort not to flash a grin and laugh at him. She lowers her head to his chest, to the thin cotton, to the word YANKEES, and nuzzles him through it. "Já vím," she murmurs, her hands creeping up his shirt again, rucking it up on top of her wrists, adding: "Uz se nemůzu dockat."

Which may very well make the top of his head explode. She pushes his shirt up, then, lifts it up and pulls it up over his head, off his arms, and then she's looking at him, sitting back on her heels, staring at him, because before she was touching him but she hadn't looked at him, and there's a pinkness in her cheeks, too, her pupils dilated and her lips open a little, staring, staring at him. "Oh, my god," she breathes in a rush, and leans forward, closing her mouth around his left nipple, moaning as she licks it, sucks softly on it, like she couldn't help herself, even though -- ostensibly -- she's supposed to be undressing him.

It doesn't last nearly as long as it should. Every single sensation should last at least five minutes, it feels like. Or forever. They could spend a whole night just stroking each other. Another night on each other's chests. It could be a week before they've devoured each other enough to get all the way to sex, if they really spent enough time on each other's bodies as she would like to. So she makes herself stop. Slows her mouth on him and flicks her tongue over his wet nipple, her breath curling over it and chilling it and heating it at once. Danicka forces herself back to her knees, sitting on her heels, and drops her eyes to his fly,

and her hands.

Her hands are shaking. She undoes that button quickly, goes slower with his zipper. Sees the line of hair going down into his fly and wants to lick it, wants to tickle it with her fingertips, wants to see the muscles in his abdomen twitch and jump. Lukas can barely see her draw her lower lip between her teeth when she hooks her fingers under the barely-exposed band of elastic around his hips. And, thankfully, she's experienced enough to be careful. To draw his jeans and his underwear down, tugging it out enough so nothing gets caught on his cock,

which makes her draw a quick breath inward when she starts pushing his pants down, pushing everything down his thighs. And god, he might think she's going to do what that girl in Stark Falls did, because the way she leans toward him when she's working his clothes off puts her so fucking close he can feel her breathing on him, but she doesn't yank his jeans off and blow him. Danicka pushes his clothes away as far as her arms can reach and then she steadies herself against him, hands on his hips again, and looks up at him,

slowly, drawing her eyes from his thighs to his cock, his hips, the line of his upper body all the way to his face again. Licks her lips, and swallows, and asks softly: "Do you want me to lick it?" without reservation, without shame, without wariness that he might say yes, because, as she whispers: "It's okay if you come. It doesn't mean we have to stop."

Danicka

[Czech: The first is 'What's at home counts', which is a proverb. Then: 'I know. I can't wait.']

Viharfelho

Even now, Lukas - bursting out of his skin with eagerness, with readiness, with want - understands one fundamental truth: it will never be like this again. He might never have Danicka again, period, because she might regain her wits soon and realize this is not okay, she is not for him, and the thought wrenches in him so he has to push it away - but even were that not the case, it'll still never be like this ever again.

Much is made of virginity, and much of it overblown and unnecessary, but this much is true: right now, he has no experience. He has never been inside a girl before. He has never moved into her and felt her moving with him, around him, under him or atop him. What he feels with her will be the very first time he's ever felt it. He will never, not as long as he lives, be such a blank slate again,

and he's glad, so glad, that it's her.

Even if he doesn't really even recognize that gladness right now. Even if right now all he recognizes is how overstimulated he is, how incredible she feels and sounds and tastes. He can see her trying not to laugh - it's not the tightness in her jaw, really, but the dance in her eyes - and it makes him laugh suddenly, only half-embarrassed because well duh, of course she knows already that he's got a hard-on - only half-embarrassed, and mostly just... happy. The laugh spirals away when she tells him what she does, then. The first part: he knows she knows. The second part: he makes a sound that's somewhere between gasp and pant and groan.

And she pulls his shirt off. The tight, honed musculature of his torso moves with the raising of his arms, the extension of his spine. One day he'll be five inches taller; one day he'll have packed another fifty, sixty pounds of muscle on and his body, in and of itself, will be a rarefied expression of the power and intimidation his very existence symbolizes. Not yet, though. Right now, he's simply like no other Danicka has seen: ripped, yes, hammered into shape by survival and training and war and brutality, but still such a work in progress. The next time she sees him like this again,

if she sees him like this again,

he'll look different. The span of his shoulders will have broadened. The depth of his chest will have increased. Perhaps he'll have a scar. This, too, will never be like tonight again.

She comes forward. His head falls back as she licks his nipple, sucks on it. She can feel his heart hammering against her lips; it's like kissing his heartbeat. The sensation spirals out forever, but it's over too soon. His hands are at his sides because he doesn't know what to do with them. When she reaches for his fly he takes a huge inhale of a breath, chest filling, stomach sucking in when her knuckles brush his skin. Her hands are shaking, and he's amazed to see this; he's amazed to see that even in this, even in his anticipation and need, even as beside himself as he is,

she's right here with him. He puts his hands on her face, palms to her cheeks, though both of them are still looking down. She frees his cock and his brow furrows, he sighs and when she meets his eyes he takes a step forward, a jolt going through him when his cock touches her; that same jolt still on his tongue, electric, when he kisses her.

There's a question, when that kiss is over. It makes him groan, and he doesn't even try to hide it; it makes him push his hands back over his head and through his hair as though to hold his skull together. But he shakes his head, a quick vehement shake, back and forth.

"I want to be inside you," he says. He's breathing fast and deep. Painfully honest: "I might not ... last very long."

Danicka

Never like this again. Maybe never with him again. It aches, so she doesn't think of it. She thinks of how beautiful he looks, even when the moonlight is so thin it barely touches him. She thinks of how hard he is, and, frankly and rawly, she thinks of how nice his cock looks, how she genuinely would like very much to touch it, and stroke it, and kiss it, and

he kisses her, and it's the first time he's done so when his mouth on hers doesn't feel chaotic and half-mad, when he feels like he's beginning to know what he's doing, when he kisses her not just because he can't help it but because he wants to connect with her, and that kiss is stirring. Her eyes are glinting when he he draws back from it, and she licks her lips. Again.

"I know," she tells him, when he says he wants to be inside of her. He's shaking his head, though, he doesn't want her to lick it, no, not like that, and if she knew about the girl in Stark Falls she'd likely understand better, but she's a touch bewildered that he's denying this, denying her this, but in a way,

she does get it. Because it's never been like this before. Because he's never had this before. So she doesn't argue, doesn't explain that she knows that, that's why she offered, maybe then he could last longer when he was inside of her, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't, really. She lifts herself up and puts her hands on his face, kissing him again, and his cock presses against her dress but she doesn't care. She doesn't stop kissing him for a long time, and when she does he can see how smudged her lipstick is, how it makes her silly-looking and endearing and erotic all at once, and she nods. "I know," she says, and this is the third or thousandth time. She kisses him

again. Softer this time, not as deep, not as long. "It helps if you think about something else," she whispers to him, like a secret, when their mouths part and hers has drifted past his temple to his ear. "Like... baseball or making a sandwich or something." She seals the secret to him like a kiss, with a kiss, on his cheekbone, then pulls back, her hands on his shoulders. "My zipper's in back," she tells him.

Viharfelho

She gives him a tip. It's a good one. He shakes his head, though:

"I don't want to think about anything else."

Her zipper's in the back. She wants him to undo it. Her hands are on his shoulders, so he's supposed to reach around. He takes a deep breath, and he does this - his hands are already so large on her back, covering her shoulderblades, tracing them to her spine. He finds the little tab and he pulls, and it's like a magic trick, the fabric around her magically loosening and coming down and

"Oh, you're so beautiful," he breathes as her dress slips down: like he wasn't expecting this, like he didn't know what to expect. Now her dress is past her diaphragm, past her navel. He puts his hands on her torso, smoothing his palms over her in broad, heavy strokes, feeling the softness of her skin. She feels so different from anything he's ever put his hands on before, and so different from his own body; so much narrower and slighter, the arches of her ribs so delicate, the arch of her hips swelling out from the waist. So different.

There's a hesitation before he touches her breasts, though he has already. This time there's one layer fewer between his skin and hers, and her body feels that much softer, that much more pliant. He wonders if he's allowed to take her bra off, but it seems so silly to ask, so he doesn't ask; he starts to tug it down and looks at her to see if this is okay, to see if she'll let him, to see if she'll

let him bend to her the way she bent to him, his eyes raised to her face the whole time, trying to read her expression

as he cups her breast in his hand and takes her nipple in his mouth. No; that was a lie: his eyes close now, fervently, brow furrowing. He moans into her skin, tasting her, bent to her, his free hand wrapping around her to open over the center of her back; hold her.

Danicka

Danicka smiles at that. It's okay. She knows he won't last long. She knows he doesn't want to think of anything, anything but how she feels and looks. Still, a part of her thinks dammit, it's not for your sake, and that thought makes her smile, makes her laugh gently as she wraps her arms around his neck for a moment, kissing him almost like they're a couple. Like they didn't just meet again after -- what, ten years? Like he knows her and she knows him and this is how it's supposed to be, she realizes. How it's always supposed to be. Not panting fumblings with strangers, leaving each other, ignoring that sinking feeling in their stomachs. It's supposed to feel like this. Happy.

Close.

Her arms around him make her closer, which gives decent access to her zipper, as well, and he can look down over her shoulder, see the slope of her back and the gentle rise of her ass. Lukas draws it down, stroking her shoulderblades on his way, and she shivers. The fabric parts, exposes her, exposes a hint of black here and there, across her back and over her hips. It does fall, held up not by straps but some kind of magic of girl-clothes. It shivers like she does, shimmering its way down her body, which -- once he's more experienced -- he would recognize as a little too thin for her frame, but maybe not. That is what every scrap of media he sees tells him a girl should look like, so why would it seem strange that she is so very small? Nevermind.

Beautiful, he calls her, and that is true regardless. Beneath her dress there's a strapless black bra, two soft cups and hard underwire and a thick strap around her ribs, not a bustier but close. Beneath her dress there's a pair of matching panties, all satin where it covers her cunt, lace around her hips, a tiny black bow a few inches beneath her navel, and she's golden, just like her arms, except where the light doesn't touch her and there she's pale, pale, so very fair.

Danicka's eyes close when he strokes her sides, her stomach, smooths those large hands of his all over her. She shudders, pressing closer to him as her dress pools around her knees and drapes over her calves. She's waiting for him to take her bra off and he's wondering if he's allowed and so he tugs the cups down, looking at her, and she laughs softly, reaching for his hands, guiding them to the clasps at the back. "Take it off," she whispers, and kisses him again,

his cock stroking against her stomach, which is so soft.

Viharfelho

Danicka is wearing matching lingerie, and the truth is she didn't put it on for him. That's okay; she didn't even know he really existed when she put these things on. Still, he can't let himself think of that; it hurts, because it reminds him that she's not really his. They're not really a couple.

So he thinks, instead, of how she looks with the black satin cutting across her golden skin. And her pale, pale skin, where the sun doesn't touch her. His hands are on her and he's a little bolder now, but mostly he's just amazed, touching her over and over because he can't get over how good she feels. He's thinking about her bra, wondering if he's been given permission, and she kisses him and tells him to take it off. He kisses her back, a little better at this every time, but then

her stomach brushes against him and his brow wrinkles, he lets go a tortured sound into her mouth, back bowing as he shifts away from her for once. Gasps, "I can't -- I don't want to ... you know, come."

And that's so quiet, so quick, like he wants to pretend he never said something so embarrassingly naked. He's bending already, and it makes it easier for him to just bend to her - to cup her breast in his hand and takes her nipple in his mouth. The wrinkle to his brow turns fervent, becomes a deep furrowing. He moans into her skin, tasting her, bent to her, his free hand wrapping around her to open over the center of her back; hold her to him. Sucks at her until her nipple is a hard bead against his tongue, until some instinct he didn't know he had tells him if he keeps going he's going to lose his mind and go at her too hard, hurt her inadvertently, rush this too far.

That's when he lets go, mouth open against her skin, panting, his breath drying the wetness he left at her breast. He looks at her. He rubs his face against her body, takes her other nipple in his mouth for a single, burning moment, lets go and straightens again, kissing her neck, finding her mouth, kissing her mouth while his hands rove her body again, downward, hesitate at the line of her panties, tremble for a second.

Then his thumbs hook into the elastic. He can't believe he's doing this; it's surreal, the world bends around the two of them, and the few short inches between her panties being on and off may as well be the breadth of the known universe. He whispers, "Can I?"

Viharfelho

Danicka is wearing matching lingerie, and the truth is she didn't put it on for him. That's okay; she didn't even know he really existed when she put these things on. Still, he can't let himself think of that; it hurts, because it reminds him that she's not really his. They're not really a couple.

So he thinks, instead, of how she looks with the black satin cutting across her golden skin. And her pale, pale skin, where the sun doesn't touch her. His hands are on her and he's a little bolder now, but mostly he's just amazed, touching her over and over because he can't get over how good she feels. He's thinking about her bra, wondering if he's been given permission, and she kisses him and tells him to take it off. He kisses her back, a little better at this every time, but then

her stomach brushes against him and his brow wrinkles, he lets go a tortured sound into her mouth, back bowing as he shifts away from her for once. Gasps, "I can't -- I don't want to ... you know, come."

And that's so quiet, so quick, like he wants to pretend he never said something so embarrassingly naked. It's easier to focus on the task at hand instead, so that's what he does, his hands following her bra all the way around, tugging and fumbling with the clasp. It's almost comical, the way his brow knits, the way he looks so studious, as though this were a very very important problem to solve.

Then suddenly the piece of lingerie comes free. It comes off in his hands, there are no straps to worry about - he barely notices as it slips to the floor, because his hands are on her body again. There's just a moment when his thumbs stroke the reddened marks on her skin where the wire pressed into her flesh; a moment where the knit of his brow is more tender, more pained, than puzzled. Then he closes his eyes. He cups her breast in his hand, and almost reverently, he takes her nipple in his mouth. The wrinkle to his brow turns fervent, becomes a deep furrowing. He moans into her skin, tasting her, bent to her, his free hand wrapping around her to open over the center of her back; hold her to him. Sucks at her until her nipple is a hard bead against his tongue, until some instinct he didn't know he had tells him if he keeps going he's going to lose his mind and go at her too hard, hurt her inadvertently, rush this too far.

That's when he lets go, mouth open against her skin, panting, his breath drying the wetness he left at her breast. He looks at her. He rubs his face against her body, takes her other nipple in his mouth for a single, burning moment, lets go and straightens again, kissing her neck, finding her mouth, kissing her mouth while his hands rove her body again, downward, hesitate at the line of her panties, tremble for a second.

Then his thumbs hook into the elastic. He can't believe he's doing this; it's surreal, the world bends around the two of them, and the few short inches between her panties being on and off may as well be the breadth of the known universe. He whispers, "Can I?"

Danicka

His chest is so warm against her when she leans into him to kiss him, his shoulders so smooth but so firm under her arms, his hair shockingly cool where her wrists cross behind his head, holding him there while they make out. Again. Still. When does making out become foreplay, when does all of it become simply a part of what they are doing, what all of this is, since she took his arm out on the street -- or since she leaned over to him and kissed him that first time?

The lingerie she's wearing matches, but she didn't buy them as a set -- and in fact they aren't one. They're just the same color, there's enough satin on the bra and enough satin on her panties to get away with it, but she just wanted to wear something nice, just in case. It's the same reason she has a couple of condoms in her little purse, though she never intended to have sex with her prom date -- just in case. She's already at a point in her life wher she thinks of these things when she goes out. Especially on a night like tonight, a night when she doesn't want to go home, or go to the Sokolov's, she wants to pretend she never has to go back to any of these places.

And right now she's imagining all sorts of impossible things: she could go visit him in Stark Falls. Quit the Sokolovs and ask her brother please, please can she have a boyfriend, he's a cub, he won't even be around very much, we don't have to be mates, but it would be so nice. She could be so normal. Sort of. Even if that boyfriend were a werewolf being trained like a soldier in the mud upstate. She knows this is ridicuous -- she just met this guy. He's younger than she is, at an age when two years is a long time, and she knows she's not going to have any kind of boyfriend, much less a Garou boyfriend, until she's mated. Until that Fostern or lucky Cliath does enough favors for her brother, until she belongs to someone forever.

Still. Lukas is so very warm where she holds him, and he sounds so beautiful when he makes that noise, clutching at her one moment as her belly inadvertently strokes his cock and he pulls back, bowing away from her, gasping what he does. She breathlessly, wordlessly understands, doesn't even smile because right now she wants so much, she wants him so much, and she relents. Even though it felt good -- shockingly good -- to have his cock rubbing against her belly like that. She had no idea.

Danicka arches her back a little and tips her head to the side as his hands stroke around her ribs. Gently, but so very distractingly, she kisses his neck, his shoulder, drawing some of his flesh into her mouth and suckling while he tries to figure out her bra. There are four clasps. This is because it's strapless. This is also torture. He has no idea right now that any other bra she might have worn would be simple -- one, two clasps, done, off, out of the way. She grins against his neck as his fingers fumble, but once he gets the first and then the second it makes sense, he's got to tug the fabric together just so, and it's a hook, actually not that hard, so the last two come undone quickly and -- there.

She exhales a sigh as it falls off of her, between their bodies, catching -- almost comically -- against his erection for half a second before tumbling down to the folds of her dress, then flopping to the floor, landing on the bunched-up jeans around his legs. They are that close. They are having that much trouble leaving any distance between themselves, even if he still needs to get out of his clothes completely. Even if Danicka is still partly in hers. She moans as he touches her again, his hands finding skin that's been so damnably untended, her breasts pale, her nipples soft and pink. As she draws herself back a bit and he looks down at her breasts, she sees his expression, his furrowed brow, as his fingertips graze over red marks and distortion in her skin. An answering furrow flickers across her expression, an ache she felt first when she realized she might not see him again.

"It's okay," she whispers to him, to herself, and in answer, he

leans over to her breast and takes her in his mouth, his hand as gentle on her as ever, cupping her to his lips like water. Danicka lets out a ragged, collapsing breath as he starts to suck on her, as he holds her closer. "Oh," she exhales, wanting very much for him to put his hand between her legs, touch her, but he doesn't -- not yet -- so she lets go of him with one of her own hands and reaches down with it, rubbing herself through the satin. Danicka moans again, louder this time, though it isn't the same sound she made when he parted her legs and was grinding up against her, making her shudder.

That is what Lukas sees when he draws back from her first breast, when his eyes open and he loks at her: Danicka with one nipple redder and wetter than the other, gently touching herself through her panties, looking at him as he stops. Her hand slows, uncertain, but

there he is, rubbing against her, kissing and licking and sucking on her other breast, making her squeal for a moment. Another new sound. Another sound he's never heard a girl make, not like this, not because of something he's doing, not in pleasure. Danicka puts both of her hands on his cheeks then, suddenly, as he's drawing his mouth up. She wants him to kiss her neck for an eternity, wants him to just stay like this touching her, running his hands all over her like this forever, but she wants him to kiss her mouth, and she wants him to lay down with her, and she wants him to be inside of her. Half naked now, wearing the only piece of clothing that stops them from being completely bared to each other, Danicka kisses Lukas

for a very long time. Revels in his hands moving over her, the way he strokes her back, cups his hands over her ribs, covers her breasts with those warm, warm palms of his. She whimpers softly when he finally roams downward, touches the very edge of those low, relatively skimpy panties, and she arches a little to lift her hips toward him, a wordless please,

but he's pausing, he's not kissing her for a second which is absolutely unforgivable, and startles her because he whispers what he does. Asks her if he can, and Danicka looks at him for a moment, her hands on his neck, his shoulders, his chest, anywhere. She blinks those wide green eyes of hers, panting softly. The truth is that what he's doing is both terribly wise and achingly sweet, shockingly aware for a sixteen year old boy: it's as though he knows she could change her mind, that she could and he would need to accept it, that even when she said it's okay, it's perfect, I want to, he might still scare her. Something might change and she might want him to stop, and then he would need to stop, even if it drove him insane to do so. But Danicka is eighteen, and Danicka is both amazed at how careful he is being still and stunned that he seems even a little uncertain of what she wants. She'd have thought he could smell her, could read her thoughts, must know somehow that she wants him. Very, very badly.

Danicka thinks of saying something flippant -- you'd better or what do you think we're doing? -- but she doesn't. She licks her lips, and then draws away from him, not slowly and certainly not very far at all. She twists a little, laying on her hip, wiggling her legs out of her dress. Truthfully it should be hung up or at least draped over the couch, but, well. No matter. Nothing matters right now, nothing but this. She gets it off her legs, and off the bed, and then looks back at Lukas's eyes, keeps her eyes there for the longest they've made eye contact since they met. And, moving up the bed, she lays back, half-propped up on her arms, her legs toward him, her eyes on him, her breasts moving every time she breathes,

and nods.

Viharfelho

Benny was right about one thing after all. When some hot babe's laying back on your bed, waiting for you to give it to her, he said in one memorably dirtyminded rant, and you're standing with your dick in your hand about to give that pussy a good drilling? Man, there's nothing better in the world.

Well. He was right about that, but wrong about all the whys and hows, all the details that make this single act the arguable pivot of the world. It has nothing to do with the implication of dominance and submission; power and giving in. It has nothing to do with that at all, nothing to do with how many 'panties he can drop' or 'bitches he can drill'.

Everything to do with how the whole world seems to come into focus and fall into place. Suddenly all the torture of adolescence makes sense; all the burning in his blood he sometimes wished would just go the fuck away because he couldn't imagine any reason why such urges and impulses, so often self-detrimental, would exist in the face of natural selection and evolution's pitiless march. Well, he understands the reason now, and it's not at all the empty chasing of flesh that Benny and the older cubs' bragging and the pornos made it seem like. It's because somewhere in that storm of hormones and lusts and false starts and jealousies and lies and prevarications -- somewhere in all that, there's this.

And it is worth everything.

The truth is, impossible fantasies are running through Lukas's mind, too. He watches Danicka stepping back from him, sees her wriggling the dress off her ankles, and he thinks of her pulling blue jeans and a t-shirt on in the morning. He thinks of her running around the city with him. He thinks of train rides and walks through Central Park, only in this mental world of his there are no Garou there; it's just them and the trees and the birds and the sunrise. He thinks of being her boyfriend, he thinks of her being his girlfriend, he thinks maybe he can convince Istok to let him go down to New York City a little more often if he had a good reason, he thinks maybe she'll come up to visit him

and maybe she'll even bring kolaches

and certainly she'll bring herself, her hair up in a ponytail and a backpack bouncing on her shoulders, and maybe he can make her something, a necklace or a bracelet out of the pretty stones he finds sometimes in the beds of streams and rivers. He thinks he could make this work. He knows he can't, but he thinks he can, and as he watches her slide back on the bed, her eyes on his, and he's so hard he aches and he wants her to be his so badly he breaks.

Lukas leans over Danicka when she lays herself out. His arms are long and lean, his fingers much the same. He kisses her kneecap, smiling, and then that smile fades into that look of intense concentration he wore when he figured her bra out. This is much easier, but it takes so much more willpower and courage: sliding his fingers under the waistband of her panties, drawing them down, down, his palm molding over the curvature of her ass so his fingernails don't scratch her even on accident, then down the back of her thigh as he pulls the last scrap of clothing she wears all the way off.

He's breathing so hard she can hear him in the quiet room, his quick inhales and exhales through parted lips. His eyes are fixed on her body for a moment. Those hands of his, which are already becoming dangerous weapons, are still so very gentle when he tucks them under her knees, lifts her knees and -- with a flash of a glance to her face to see if this is okay, if this is still okay -- parts them slowly, like unwrapping a gift.

She can see his face change when he sees her cunt: that tension of anticipation dropping so suddenly and so wholly away. What's left behind looks something like relief, and something like rapture. Oh, he breathes, and it sounds entirely involuntary. In a flurry, he kicks his jeans all the way off his feet; his eyes never leave her as he climbs up on the bed with her, kneeling between her legs. His free hand still on her knee, he reaches for her - runs his hand so carefully along the inside of her thigh, pauses, hesitates, touches her, strokes her pussy with the ball of his thumb. Surprise darts across his face. He exhales, silent, something like a laugh, his eyes leaping to hers.

"You're wet." He sounds amazed.

Danicka

In some other world, a world where there aren't werewolves in Central Park, there's no reason why Lukas's parents or his guardian or Danicka's father wouldn't think it adorable if they were boyfriend and girlfriend. He's younger than she is, but in good time that won't make any difference. They're both from the same heritage, and Lukas is a respectful boy and Danicka is a generous girl, so why not? And maybe his sister would think Danicka annoying, but his sister is leaving for college soon enough. Maybe her brother would hate Lukas on principle, but that's sort of his job. Otherwise it would be okay. He could take walks with her. He could tell her he likes it when her hair starts to get long again, and she could say well I'm just going to wear it in a ponytail, then!, laughing, and he could grin and say beautiful.

But that's not their world. No visits back and forth between Stark Falls and New York City, not between them. She can't quit her job, and that means she can't stay in this city, even this state. He can't leave the sept more often than he does -- and frankly, these visits are grudging as it is, and there are plenty of cubs who have no family to go back to, who cannot ever tell their parents what they are, so he's lucky to have two weeks to go see his, however awkward it is. She's lucky to be so protected, by both Lords and Fangs, to be so well-positioned to gain honor for her family, wealth for her future mate and his pack, health and strength for her cubs. They're so very lucky, as it is.

No little bracelets made of tiny stones woven into cord, or carefully drilled and strung along a string. No kolaches in Stark Falls -- no candied orange ones, at least. Not for them.

Danicka is patient with him. She breathes in as he crawls up onto the bed with her, leaning over her, and she wants to draw him down and kiss him, feel him warm and close against her like before only (mostly) naked this time, but she thinks if she doesn't let him get her panties off he's going to lose his mind. So she's patient. So she flexes her fingers, clutching gently at the covers, as he kneels and takes her underwear off, carefully -- so carefully, because these things are fine and lacy and thin and she can tell he doesn't want to rip her things -- drawing them down, tugging them on her hips. She lifts herself off the bed when his hands circle around her and reach under the fabric to cover her ass,

which makes Lukas privy to the full-body shudder that touch causes, rippling through her with a quiet, aching little uhh down in her throat.

She's licking her lips as he draws them off her thighs, her head tipped back for a moment while she remembers how to breathe. And then it's at her ankles, and then he takes them off her feet, and she's naked, lifting her head to look at him again, her legs still slightly together, his eyes on that neat little triangle of hair between her legs, a golden brown, darker than her hair, so much lighter than his is. Maybe girls don't grow as much hair. Maybe she cuts it. Mindboggling stuff. And not, frankly, that important.

Seeing his eyes on her, Danicka tips her head to the side a little and she smiles, opening her legs a little. Not splayed wide, which is just about all he's ever seen in those pornos passed around, the women inside and every angle and posture of their body serving no purpose but -- well, exactly the purpose served when picked up by one of those more experienced Cliaths or those lucky cubs who snuck them into the sept. Nor is she terribly shy, looking at him with some prettily frightened expression, waiting for him to do what Benny says they're supposed to do and open her, drill her, dominate her.

Lukas's face changes when he sees her, and then suddenly he's kicking off his jeans and he's coming close to her, touching her leg, running his hand up her thigh. Truthfully, she likes this. She wants him to touch her, even if she doesn't want to be explored like new territory, learned like a map. To some degree she wants to make this good for him, let him have everything and anything he might want, think of the girls in the future, teach him how to use his hands and his mouth, but she wants him to herself. And she wants him so close to her. She can't believe he's not kissing her right now.

His thumb strokes over her pussy and she shivers, letting out a little noise when it -- wholly by accident -- brushes her clit. You're wet, he says, incredulous, and she's ignoring him, reaching down and taking his hand, pressing his thumb right there against her clit where it was a second ago, moaning aloud as she moves his hand for him, stroking her in a little circle. She hasn't reacted like this all night, not to anything, not any of her moans or her whimpers or little gasps anything like the sound she makes now,

nor did she writhe quite like that, her hips winding, pressing her cunt to his hand, wetness getting on his fingers, fresh and new and hot.

Danicka only does this for a second or two, works his hand on her, shows him that tiny nub of hyper-sensitive flesh, but even then it seems like too much for her. She lets go of him and she pants, and he can lick her taste off of his fingers if he wants, he can call her beautiful, he can catch his breath or stare at her in shock, because she's shaking as she breathes, whimpering. "Come here," she says, when she can, when she can look up at him, before he bends to her body or reaches for her cunt again. She's reaching for his arms and running them up his shoulders, pulling him towards her, to her mouth, close to her body again. "Prosím, Lukáš. NenuÅ¥ m každý
ekat už."

Danicka

[goddammit]

Danicka

In some other world, a world where there aren't werewolves in Central Park, there's no reason why Lukas's parents or his guardian or Danicka's father wouldn't think it adorable if they were boyfriend and girlfriend. He's younger than she is, but in good time that won't make any difference. They're both from the same heritage, and Lukas is a respectful boy and Danicka is a generous girl, so why not? And maybe his sister would think Danicka annoying, but his sister is leaving for college soon enough. Maybe her brother would hate Lukas on principle, but that's sort of his job. Otherwise it would be okay. He could take walks with her. He could tell her he likes it when her hair starts to get long again, and she could say well I'm just going to wear it in a ponytail, then!, laughing, and he could grin and say beautiful.

But that's not their world. No visits back and forth between Stark Falls and New York City, not between them. She can't quit her job, and that means she can't stay in this city, even this state. He can't leave the sept more often than he does -- and frankly, these visits are grudging as it is, and there are plenty of cubs who have no family to go back to, who cannot ever tell their parents what they are, so he's lucky to have two weeks to go see his, however awkward it is. She's lucky to be so protected, by both Lords and Fangs, to be so well-positioned to gain honor for her family, wealth for her future mate and his pack, health and strength for her cubs. They're so very lucky, as it is.

No little bracelets made of tiny stones woven into cord, or carefully drilled and strung along a string. No kolaches in Stark Falls -- no candied orange ones, at least. Not for them.

Danicka is patient with him. She breathes in as he crawls up onto the bed with her, leaning over her, and she wants to draw him down and kiss him, feel him warm and close against her like before only (mostly) naked this time, but she thinks if she doesn't let him get her panties off he's going to lose his mind. So she's patient. So she flexes her fingers, clutching gently at the covers, as he kneels and takes her underwear off, carefully -- so carefully, because these things are fine and lacy and thin and she can tell he doesn't want to rip her things -- drawing them down, tugging them on her hips. She lifts herself off the bed when his hands circle around her and reach under the fabric to cover her ass,

which makes Lukas privy to the full-body shudder that touch causes, rippling through her with a quiet, aching little uhh down in her throat.

She's licking her lips as he draws them off her thighs, her head tipped back for a moment while she remembers how to breathe. And then it's at her ankles, and then he takes them off her feet, and she's naked, lifting her head to look at him again, her legs still slightly together, his eyes on that neat little triangle of hair between her legs, a golden brown, darker than her hair, so much lighter than his is. Maybe girls don't grow as much hair. Maybe she cuts it. Mindboggling stuff. And not, frankly, that important.

Seeing his eyes on her, Danicka tips her head to the side a little and she smiles, opening her legs a little. Not splayed wide, which is just about all he's ever seen in those pornos passed around, the women inside and every angle and posture of their body serving no purpose but -- well, exactly the purpose served when picked up by one of those more experienced Cliaths or those lucky cubs who snuck them into the sept. Nor is she terribly shy, looking at him with some prettily frightened expression, waiting for him to do what Benny says they're supposed to do and open her, drill her, dominate her.

Lukas's face changes when he sees her, and then suddenly he's kicking off his jeans and he's coming close to her, touching her leg, running his hand up her thigh. Truthfully, she likes this. She wants him to touch her, even if she doesn't want to be explored like new territory, learned like a map. To some degree she wants to make this good for him, let him have everything and anything he might want, think of the girls in the future, teach him how to use his hands and his mouth, but she wants him to herself. And she wants him so close to her. She can't believe he's not kissing her right now.

His thumb strokes over her pussy and she shivers, letting out a little noise when it -- wholly by accident -- brushes her clit. You're wet, he says, incredulous, and she's ignoring him, reaching down and taking his hand, pressing his thumb right there against her clit where it was a second ago, moaning aloud as she moves his hand for him, stroking her in a little circle. She hasn't reacted like this all night, not to anything, not any of her moans or her whimpers or little gasps anything like the sound she makes now,

nor did she writhe quite like that, her hips winding, pressing her cunt to his hand, wetness getting on his fingers, fresh and new and hot.

Danicka only does this for a second or two, works his hand on her, shows him that tiny nub of hyper-sensitive flesh, but even then it seems like too much for her. She lets go of him and she pants, and he can lick her taste off of his fingers if he wants, he can call her beautiful, he can catch his breath or stare at her in shock, because she's shaking as she breathes, whimpering. "Come here," she says, when she can, when she can look up at him, before he bends to her body or reaches for her cunt again. She's reaching for his arms and running them up his shoulders, pulling him towards her, to her mouth, close to her body again. "Prosím, Lukáš. NenuÅ¥ m každý
ekat už."

Danicka

[Czech: Please, Lukas. Do not make me wait any longer.]

Viharfelho

Temporarily hijacked, his hand clearly doesn't know what to do. His fingers are strengthless at first - not because he's suddenly scared of her but because he doesn't want to hurt her. She feels ... indescribable, really: so different from his own body. Soft and wet and complex, with secret spots here and there, one of which she shows him, which seems to drive her wild. She makes a sound he's never heard before, not from her and not from anyone else. She writhes and he's not even sure he's doing it right but she seems like it so he puts some tension in his fingers, presses back against her,

but it's only a second or two and he's barely even getting the hang of it when she lets him go. She's panting still. He doesn't lick her taste off his fingers. He keeps touching her, fondling her the way she showed him, his eyes wide, the pupils so black, drinking the sight of her in as his hand on her clit makes her arch,

just like magic.

That's what the look in his eyes is. Like she's taught him a magic trick, a secret bit of esoteric knowledge. She's amazing and she's his, if only for tonight, and she just taught him how to make her feel good, make her feel as out of her mind as he felt when she rubbed her belly against his cock. He's so fucking delighted, he's so happy and grateful. He bets Benny didn't know that. He doesn't want to think of Benny right now.

So he doesn't. She reaches for him, her hands pull at his arms, and he all but tumbles down on her -- catches himself with his forearm against the bed, putting his mouth against her body and kissing her wherever it happens to fall: midway between her breasts and her navel, on the smoothness of her torso. His hand is still between her legs. He's touching her, and he's still so inexpert, but he's gentle, he's very careful not to hurt her and he's spreading her wet around, getting it everywhere, amazed at her heat, her slickness, coming back again and again to play with that firm little nerve-center that's her clit, only he doesn't even know to call it that yet.

His mouth is on her breast again when she says what she does. Tells him to stop making her wait. Tells him, without quite needing to tell him again, that it's okay. It's perfect like this. It's what she wants, and he doesn't have to ask again, and

he raises his head from her body, looks at her with half-dazzled eyes. She doesn't have to tell him twice. He grabs handfuls of the mattress, the comforters, and he ratchets himself up over her body. Their mouths meet. The kiss is firm, it's almost confident this time. He's had a lot of practice tonight. His body is long and hard over hers, between her thighs. His hips press firmly to hers, he slides his cock against her cunt and

(oh god it feels like nothing he's ever known)

he's moving like he's already fucking her, his hips flexing in a mindless rhythm quite literally hardcoded into his genes: stroking his cock against her again and again while he groans, shudders, moans into her mouth. And then he's wet, too, slicked up and so hard, and the truth is he knows he won't last long; he hopes she'll let him try again; he's afraid he might come the second he's inside her. He wants to be inside her. He shifts over her, reaching down to take his cock in hand, and she can feel him searching for her opening, it takes a while, he's so fucking inexperienced and she feels so fucking good he keeps forgetting what he's doing - she can feel the gasp that expands his chest against hers when he finally finds her. Right there.

His eyes find her, too. He lifts his head again and his eyes hold hers for a moment. There's sweat on his brow and sweat on his shoulders; he's shaking with anticipation; he can't wait anymore. "Nedovolte mi, abych ublížit t , v poÅ™ádku?" he whispers,

and then he's bowing his brow to hers, eyes closing, mouth opening, crying out harsh and unrestrained as he pushes into her.

[Czech: "Don't let me hurt you, okay?"]

Danicka

Thoughts about what does and doesn't happen in those pornos, what Benny does and doesn't know about girls, begin to -- thankfully -- drift off of the bed with them, onto the floor, as forgotten as their clothes. Danicka arches, lets out a cry, wriggling away from his hand when he strokes her again, like she can't stand it. She whimpers, and pulls at him, please, please, her skin covered in goosebumps and seeking his warmth as though she's cold, but she's hot to the touch. And he keeps playing with her, and she's closing her legs on his hand and squirming, a wordless no, like she finds what he's doing unbearable. Danicka is at the point of telling him again to stop making her wait when he insists on kissing her torso and her breasts,

which may be his first introduction to that damnably thin line between arousal and frustration that exists in women, how unbroken the rise to readiness seems to need to be to please them, and it has to be confusing. That she's wet and she's moaning when he plays with her but wants him to stop playing with her and isn't letting him rub her wetness around her and she seems about ready to smack him for kissing her body but at the same time she's trying to pull him up close to kiss his mouth.

He comes to her then, finally, what she's wanted since she laid back on the bed what seems like hours ago, and she moans into his mouth when he kisses her, lifts her leg to slide up his thigh and wrap around his waist, opening herself to him, giving him a space against her body to fit with hers. His cock rubs against her, bare and getting wet from her, rubbing on her like he doesn't know quite what to do next, this is so good. Danicka doesn't reach down this time, doesn't guide him into her, doesn't make him stop. She gasps, shuddering as though with relief to feel him fully against her --

the truth is, she likes a good handjob. She likes it when someone takes the time to play with her, and tease her. Danicka has been lucky enough with sexual partners. She's been disappointed, too. But she is young, and she wants to fuck, and it feels like days since the first thought of this young man's body hard and hot between her legs first flitted through her mind, and she doesn't want to wait anymore. She doesn't want to play. She wants him. She wants him inside of her, even if he can't make her come, even if he loses it three thrusts after he gets into her, even if he's embarrassed and shy afterward, she just wants him. Like this. Just like this, wrapped in her arms and her legs and pressing that hard body of his between her thighs, right up against her cunt.

-- finally. She kisses him even when their arms are tangling, as he's reaching down to get his cock, and she hasn't told him yet but he has a very nice cock, because she's quivering at how close he is. She hasn't told him yet that she's got two condoms in her purse, because she's on the pill, and life has not taught her yet that the pill is only mostly effective. She knows he's Garou, and a virgin. Danicka isn't going to stop him now for anything. Not when he's right there with her, so close. And not when he's Lukas. Her Lukas, she thinks, too wanting now to make herself stop thinking such things.

"There," she whispers, when the head of his cock finds her, when he's in that split-second of thinking maybe, is this right, but he's not entirely sure, so she says: there and opens her legs a little more, wraps them both around him, and this itself is an act of trust, a physical vulnerability he likely can't even fathom right now. Her mouth is on his again after that single word, moaning again as the way his cock slips and slides against her pussy makes her wet all over again, makes her ache inside for him. But their mouths part. And he's looking down at her, sweating, panting, shaking, and she just shakes her head, no, no, don't worry about that

though in a way it's nice, and it's sweet, and it's true, that he should.

Danicka arches a little under him as he enters her, not slow or easy or teasing but in one rough, firm stroke of his hips, eager. She lets out a cry, clutching at his shoulders, her cunt clenching down on him suddenly and involuntarily, grabbing at his cock. "Lukáš!" she lets out, but what sounds like it might be a cry for help or attention or something bad, not-good, something like that, turns out to be anything but. She trembles all around him, holding him wrapped up in her arms and her legs, panting.

"Go slow," she whispers, gasps, the exact opposite of what stupid fucking Benny said to do, but stupid fucking Benny isn't here and Danicka is, Danicka is all around him, moaning, and her cunt is holding him in these delicious slow waves, rhythmic as the tide, like her body is teaching him now, too.

Viharfelho

There's a split-second in there where he wasn't quite sure, and she said there, and he looked at her quick and grateful and then -

don't let me hurt you, okay?

and

Lukáš!, his name, the way she cries it out. He's startled, almost panicked. He thinks maybe he's hurt her after all. She can feel his immediate reaction, which is to draw back, but no: her arms and her legs are wrapped so tight around him and she holds him, keeps him, trembles for him.

Slow, she says. He pants out. He doesn't know if he can, but he will. "Okay," he manages. "I'll try." He slides his hands under her thin shoulders. Wraps his arms around her, and perhaps for the first time it begins to occur to him just how thin she is, how narrow, too fragile. But then, it's the first time he's held her like this, their bodies pressed together, sealed together. He turns his face to her neck, gasps against her skin there

as he starts moving inside her, slow like she told him. Slow, the muscles in his flank jumping and quivering with the unfamiliar strain of it all, his mind melting down every time he moves inside her; every time she moves on him.

Danicka

It goes on for a little while like that -- nothing feels like forever anymore. Every moment is new, and brief, and contains a whole rise and fall of the world within it. Every time Lukas flexes his hips and slides out, slides back in again, he dies and resurrects and Danicka soars and then plummets, and it's painful in a way, it's overwhelming. He's holding her so very close that she whimpers, and for some reason there are tears in her eyes but she blinks them away, doesn't want him to think he's hurting her, that isn't it. That isn't it at all.

So she kisses him, slowly now and soft, gentler than their bodies moving together, though there is a sway and a tenderness to that which neither of them can keep up for very long. She whispers his name when they part to breathe, and it's

Lukáš. oh, Lukáš.

like a sigh. Like a caress. Her arms are around him, fingers in his hair, running over his scalp as he presses his face against her neck, feeling the pulse in her throat jump and race despite how achingly sweet the flex of their bodies is.

Viharfelho

Nothing feels like forever anymore. Nothing lasts forever, in fact, and somewhere beyond all the half-wrought fantasies of boyfriend, girlfriend, bracelets made of hand-drilled stones and kolaches stuffed with candied oranges is the cold hard truth, which both of them are far too intelligent to deny,

that this is not the beginning of some golden age for the two of them. If they're lucky, they might meet a few more times in these two weeks before he goes north and she goes far, far south. If they're lucky, they might meet again sometime in the far-distant future that they can't even imagine right now. If they're unlucky, then this is it. This could be all they ever have, and that feels unfair, like a cheap shot from life, something like this offered and taken away all in the blink of an eye. He takes it gladly anyway. He's never known anything like this

anyone like her, before.

And she's holding him like he matters to her. She's sighing his name back to him, not the temporary not-a-name they gave him up in Stark Falls, not the name he'll earn in a year or so, but the name he was given when he was born. The name she called him by, when they were small. She names him, and holds him, and he moves inside her and dies a little every time, and there were tears in her eyes and there are small, muffled, broken sounds in his throat when he moves inside her like this,

loves her like this.

Her pulse is leaping in her throat. His heart hammers against her chest. She's so gentle with him, and he's so desperate, the way he moves into her, shaking with the effort to be slow, slow, to not rush this, to not push so far that he leaves her behind, but she's blowing his mind every time their bodies slide together, that sweet friction, that heat and tightness, he never thought it'd be like this; didn't think such a thing was possible. His panting is starting to sound strained. He's clutching her back, he's moving into her harder, it's a fucking miracle he's even lasted this long but he holds on a little longer,

gasps her name, Danicka, and something like an apology or a plea:

"Danicka, I can't -- can I -- god, I'm gonna -- "

Danicka

When she looked at him across the table and told him she kept thinking about it, the unnamed 'it' was this: sex with him, their bodies naked and moving together. It's been a very, very long time since anyone has had sex with her without using protection and it feels different, just a little. He feels so close to her and she wants to run her hands all over him and make him happy, make him feel good, make him come. But she knew at the restaurant and she knew walking along the street, knew when they got up here and knew when she first kissed him that it would be like this. She knew that making him come would happen soon, moments into it, not even a minute or two.

Danicka never cared. She told him earlier it was okay if he came, they didn't have to stop. She doesn't want to stop. Especially if tonight is it, and it really looks like that's how it's going to be, she doesn't want to let him finish and then go to sleep and say goodbye and that's it, that's it forever, just a memory.

She says his name over and over, like she can't help it, like if she names him like this again and again then he'll stay, he'll be here long after tonight, even if she knows that isn't so. Her mouth is so soft when she kisses him in the middle of this, her mouth somehow nowhere near as wet or hot as her pussy, which is so tight around him he can't think every time he gives one of those long, firm thrusts that she seems to like, that make her moan a little on each one. Even when he can't stop himself and he starts to move faster, a little harder, it only makes the sounds out of her throat a little more desperate, a little louder.

"It's okay, baby," she whispers in his ear, holding him to her chest, her cunt tightening around him then, turned on by his imminent orgasm, turned on by him, taking him. And all the while she's whispering, panting, breathing the words: "That's it. That's it, baby. Give it to me."

Viharfelho

Someday, Lukas might understand in a way he can't quite comprehend right now just how rare this is. He might understand how it's not always like this. How rare this warmth, this closeness, this purity is. How unusual it is to be held like this, and accepted like this, and - in a strange, aching way - protected like this when he's at his most vulnerable.

And quite possibly, this is what he'll look for from here on out. When he finally takes his Rite, when he finally swears himself to Thunder, he might come back to New York City and look for Danicka. If he can't find her, then one day, months or years from now, he might take some other woman to bed. And he might realize something's missing, it's not the same, it's not like this, and maybe by then he'll believe that love is a waste of time, sex is a troublesome distraction. Or maybe little by little he'll construct that flawed theory himself; convince himself that because he can't find this again that maybe,

just maybe,

he should just forget about it. Lump everything having to do with the congress between a man and a woman in the Not Worth It category; armor himself; become cold, and controlled, and iced-over. And deep in his heart he'll know, then, just how rare, how precious, this was.

Or maybe he doesn't need to go that far. Maybe the philosophers are wrong, and darkness is not necessary to see the light. Maybe true beauty is a law in and of itself: self-evident, obvious, distinct from everything around it by mere virtue of what it is. Maybe Lukas realizes,

right here, right now,

what he has. And how rare, and how precious, it is.

He loses himself in Danicka. It is the first time ever, and in this they are both, in a way, virgins. Their first time together. The first time he's inside her. The first time he gives himself over to her, and

one could dwell on the way he cries out, the way he makes sounds like he's not even aware he's making them, grunts and moans from the bottom of his chest. One could dwell on the way his hands grip her back, the way he all but crushes her to his chest, pins her between his body and the bed; the way he thrusts into her again and again, the narrow hard girdle of his hips impacting between her thighs hard enough to slap their bodies together, the pound of his cock into her hard enough to jolt her breath on every thrust.

One could dwell on how he forgets for a second that he needs to go slow, forgets for a second that he mustn't be so rough, he must be gentle, he must not hurt her; forgets everything but the pleasure imploding in his head, sucking him under. One could dwell on how he was incandescently still in the instant before his orgasm, and how hot he is sliding into her, and how he keeps moving into her now mindlessly as though to get deeper, stay deeper, imprint on her, stay with her, and how this instinct will stay with him the rest of his life. One could dwell on all that, but the truth is

Lukas is aware of none of it. All he knows is how he feels. All he knows is that she's still right there, holding him like she adores him.

He's shaking like a leaf. He buries his face against her neck, her shoulder. He buries himself inside her, and he sort of wants to apologize for his laughable stamina; he sort of wants to promise he'll make it up to her, he will, really, but all that seems so empty right now. Unnecessary, really. He doesn't think she's angry. He thinks maybe she understands. He stays where he is. His cock jerks inside her, and he shudders all over. It's too much, and it's so good, and

he lifts his head a little. When he kisses her, it's like his hunger hasn't abated at all: it's deep and it's slow and it's drenching, and while he's kissing her he's shifting his hips against her again, sliding into her and

well. Starting all over again. His mouth parts from hers for a second. He whispers, "Okay?"

Danicka

It's possible this will change her forever. It isn't the first time for her, it isn't the first time some friend of hers has gently and gratefully made love to her. Not the first time she's felt protective of someone even when she is, ironically, in a position so physically vulnerable there are women who can't stand it unless they're with a partner they truly trust. And because it isn't the first time, and because it won't be the last, it is one more thing that may stop her from believing she is simply incapable of caring. That maybe when she decides to lie to someone who loves her, she'll be able to forgive herself. She won't think herself cruel, won't quietly tear off pieces of herself and then let them go to the wind like pages torn from a diary.

Possibly, she'll wake up in a few days and laugh at herself, laugh at the fantasies she had while she was having sex with this boy, and she'll go back to her father's house and remember that she has no real escape from brutality. No escape but what lies in her own mind, in the intricately woven threads of her own will, unbreakable no matter how frail she may seem, how fragile she might feel. Possibly she will remember him fondly, but not seek out anything more, even friendship, because it would be too cold, too hard, too cruel to expose them both to that reality. Let it lie in the past. Let it be like this: pure, and perfect, and -- yes --

loving.

There is no way to know. Not right now, because right now she's holding him as he comes, gasping when he hits her a little too hard, whimpering in a way that doesn't sound like pleasure, a signal that will reach his brain too late, but truthfully: it isn't so bad. He isn't trying to hurt her, there's nothing vicious about the way his body moves, just... uncontrolled. And she is delicate enough that his lack of control hurts a little. But a little is not bad, and it doesn't last very long. She forgives him, and there is still a raw pleasure in it, one that makes her quiver around him as he spends himself in her, gasping and groaning as he does so. For a moment he is mindless as an animal with her, as wild.

Danicka runs her hands over his back, feeling his sweat, his heat, the shift of his muscles, and he's still thrusting, panting desperately for air. The full-body thrusts have become quick flexes of his hips as he exhausts himself, unable to stop, even though in these seconds just after orgasm his skin has to be so hyper-stimulated it must be mindblowing. Danicka is so very, very wet, and she is holding him so very, very close. Whispering to him, calling him by his name, calling him baby, telling him that's it and saying oh, my god because he does feel good, he does feel right.

Perfektní.

And almost as soon as he collapses, holding her and shaking and clinging to her, he lifts his head and kisses her like nothing's stopped. She wants to tell him no, good lord, just be still for a little while, be quiet, lay here with me,

but she's aroused, and he's only halfway through fucking her, and when he kisses her it inflames her all over again. Danicka groans, reaching for his hand and putting on her hip, working herself on him suddenly, fucking him back in a way she didn't dare before, riding up on him with a moan that is muffled, buried in his mouth.

Viharfelho

That muffled moan of hers is returned with one of his own. He sounds half-surprised. He hadn't expected her to react so suddenly, so enthusiastically. He thinks in retrospect that he heard something like discomfort, something like pain, please don't let it be pain, don't let it be fear, and that's why he stopped and asked, checked:

okay?

meaning: is this okay? And meaning: are you okay? - but she answers him not with words but with action, and not with action but with movement. Oh, how she moves on him, and he's gasping again almost immediately, kissing her, parting his mouth from hers to look down along their bodies, look at how beautiful she is, and how beautiful they are, together like this.

"Show me how to make it good for you," he whispers. He runs his hand down her body; he searches for her clit because, frankly, it's about all he knows right now. "I wanna make you feel good."

Danicka

Danicka won't stop fucking him. She rubs herself against him as she takes his cock and it makes him gasp while they kiss. The noise she makes is this low, pleasured laugh, catching his mouth when they part, demanding as any hungry young thing, even when he's looking at their bodies. He has to stop again, try again to get that glance, but where he's being let down from his peak she's building towards hers still, impatient and -- well -- ravenous by this point, wanting, pulling at him into her. Suddenly she's not going slow, and he's running his hand down between her legs to her clit, because the last time he touched her there she went wild.

"You are," she gasps, while he's stroking, searching, but the words fall apart into a moan when he finds it, her cunt clenching around him. "Oh," she pants. "Oh, god."

Her hands grasp at his upper arms, her body lifted from the covers and the pillows, her mouth seeking his for a brief, loose kiss. "Move like... move like this," she gasps to him, laying back down and touching his hips, lifting him towards her, raising him up a little. "So your... so your cock rubs on it when you... when you thrust, like that -- god!"

Her head falls back into the down, her back arching. "Yes," she lets out, when he does it again, that eager and encouraging word, that pleading and urging sound of it in his ears when he hits her just right, again,

and again.

"A little faster," she tells him now, holding onto his hips, still, guiding him, stopping him from too fast with the pressure of her palms, easing him into just like that, which he might have recognized on his own solely from the way she moans, writhing under him the way she did the first time he touched her pussy, arching like she can't stand it, she can't, she can't.

Viharfelho

He's a bit of a wild thing, really. They both are. The first go-round was so brief, so desperate - they clung to each other and she held him and stroked him and told him it was okay, it was okay, and he came inside her and now,

now it feels like they're just hitting their stride. He's almost afraid at first. He touches her and she reacts like she's been hit by lightning so he stops, but then she grasps at him and lifts toward him and he understands that she wants more, he recognizes the difference between a gasp of discomfort and a gasp of pleasure, and then she's saying things that make his head cave in.

Cock. Thrust. Like that. Yes. He kisses her, she's moaning into his mouth, he pushes himself up on one forearm and hits her at that angle she likes, holds her by the hip and strokes into her faster when she tells him to. It's a good thing she has her hands on his hips, the arch of bone there still prominent under her palms - a good thing because if she didn't he'd probably lose his mind again and start hammering her. He wants to. It's hard to control himself. She can feel that, too, the way he keeps lurching toward a quicker rhythm only to fall back at the pressure of her hands. He drops his brow against hers again, eyes closed. He doesn't say much. He's embarrassed, still, to use his words. He's not embarrassed to use his body, to use his cock, which she seems to like - and that's a revelation to him, too, gratifying and intoxicating. She's starting to writhe. Her moans are hitting a different pitch, her hips are moving like she can't stand it, she can't, and

he recognizes, somehow, that she can. He knows not to stop. Not to pause, not the ask her are you okay; he thinks she might slap him if he did, and the thought alone makes him laugh - loose and breathless and exhilarated. His hand firms on her hip. He holds her there, opening his eyes, watching her face now, inches away, looking at her while he figures out just how to move. How to piston his hips, the angle, the swing, the depth, all of it. Like dancing, he thinks - and this makes him happy too. It's prom night, after all. He kisses her. His hand slides heavy over her lower abdomen. His thumb finds her clit again, and he never stops kissing her. He swears he can taste the way she sounds, sweet and clear.

Danicka

They haven't even separated. They haven't even taken a breath -- haven't, it seems, since she first leaned over and planted that soft, questioning kiss on his mouth. And this much is true, though she's not a virgin and far from it: it's never been like this before. She doesn't know why. Will, at some point, come up with dozens of ideas: he's Garou, it's his rage, it's the fact that he was a virgin and desperate for it, maybe it was because it was prom night or forbidden or something, but not a single reason will quite nail it. It will come down, simply, to this:

this is how it was with them.

Danicka shudders under him as he lifts himself up and angles himself differently, holds her hip. She looks at him then, which she just now remembered she's been longing to do all night, and moans at the mere sight of him. She wants to tell him about his body, stroke her hands all over him and tell him how beautiful he is, how fucking hot, but maybe later, because right now she can't find the words. She can barely get it out to tell him how to please her, and once he follows her lead she can't talk at all.

Sweat is slick on her skin, making her gleam slightly in the light from the city that touches the inside of this hotel room. Her breasts are softly pointed, her nipples hard even when he's not sucking on them, and they bounces gently every time he thrusts, a detail he missed earlier when he was clutching her against him, coming in her. Their rhythm is uneven at first, shaky, because he keeps wanting to go faster because can't help it and she keeps pressing on his hips, trying to keep him ramping it up gradually, but they do, eventually, find that rhythm. Lukas eventually finds this pace she likes, this angle she likes, all these things that seem to settle her into this magnificent flow of their bodies together.

"God, you're so big," she whimpers at one point, in the midst of all that chaos that's building in her, her head tipped back and her throat thoughtlessly bared, her eyes closed. And not because he might think he's hurting her, though it will certainly dispel that fear again, the words trickle out of her: "You feel so good,"

which is an aching truth, because she doesn't want to let go. And she'll have to. But she's not going to think about that right now. He feels so good, his cock so full and so fucking hard still inside of her, and it's glorious. It's amazing. It never occurs to her that he might stop, he might stop suddenly to ask if she's okay, and he realizes that doing so would be a bad idea so he doesn't, and touches her pussy again instead, discovers that if he moves his body like this and lets his hand find the same rhythm of his hips then he can manage, he can please her just like that, and she yells

suddenly. It's startling, how it bursts out of her, and how she clutches at him too, opening her legs and arching her back to take him deeper, whimpering: "Faster --" finally, mindlessly, her hand covering his ass now, pulling him into her. "Fuck me, I'm gonna come. Just...oh fuck... Lukas, just like that, don't -- NepÅ™estávejte! To m poser, já jde na pÅ™ijde!"

Which she does, unless some cataclysm happens, as long as he doesn't stop, as long as he stays there with her, as long as he remembers she can stand it, she can take it, oh god,

there she is, her back arching like a bow and her leg sliding up his side, high on his waist, and the tightness of her pussy on him suddenly is unbelievable, reminiscent of those deep waves when he first entered her but god, so much faster, so hard, going on and on like they're never going to stop. And Danicka herself, holding onto him while she rides up onto him, crying out sounds that want to be words but never quite form anything coherent. One hand is on his back, her nails raking down him, her other hand holding his hip, his ass, as

those senseless, wild cries begin to settle into moans, the tightness and hard arch of her body starting to relax, even though she keeps working her cunt on him, swiveling her hips in a way that makes him see spots,

until even that begins to slow and she starts, finally, to come down, gasping for air. Her nails relax against his back, her thigh trembling like she can't hold onto him much longer. She's starting to go limp, her eyes drifting open like it's the first time she's ever seen anything. Seen the world. Seen light. Seen him. Her head lowers back to the covers as she looks up at him, her pussy quivering tenderly even now, her wetness all over him, her cheeks flushed.

"Můžete jít dál," she murmurs to him, reaching up with one hand to touch his hair, fingertips dusting over the curls right above his hairline. "Můžete pÅ™ijít ve mn znovu."

Danicka

[Czech: Don't stop! Fuck me, I'm going to come!

You can go on. You can come in me again.]

Viharfelho

Needless to say, this is also the first time Lukas has seen a woman come, and it's beyond anything he could have prepared for. He's looking at her as she comes, and it's so sudden, it's on her like a storm. She goes wilder, farther than he could have thought possible, riding up on him, grabbing him and pulling him into her, her nails leaving welts down his back. He's almost frightened for her. He can't imagine her surviving anything of this magnitude, not when she seems so slight, not when she was so wary of him to begin with, so frightened for a while, so frail in his arms.

So he tries to hold her together. She wraps all around him and he puts his hands on her breasts, covers her with his hands and his body, brings his weight over her on his elbows; weighs her hips back down into the bed with the force of his thrusts, pounds her into the mattress on every stroke even as she's pulling him in, pulling him deeper, right there. He tries to hold her together with his hands and his gravity and yet

all the while he's the one shattering her apart, and this too is something remarkable. That he did this; he helped her get here; it's him, it's her, it's them. They're both involved in this, and this amazes him. Somehow, in all his imaginings and fantasies, and even after he made this exact same realization every step of the way tonight, he's still unprepared for this. There are two of them here. There are two people making love here.

And he's watching her face, and he's watching her come, and he's fucking her, he's grinding against her and driving into her the way she showed him, he's whispering to her and maybe she doesn't even here what he's saying, it doesn't really matter what he's saying, these soft, wanting reassurances, that's it, oh, that's it, that's so beautiful, you're so beautiful, let me see you, let me see you come,

i've never seen anything so beautiful as you, coming.

Or maybe he only imagines it. Maybe he's just speechless - like he's witnessed a miracle - and now she's coming down, she's touching his face, her eyes open and there's universal wisdom and utter innocence there, both. She's quivering all around him. She feels so vulnerable right now to him. He wants to protect her, and she tells him

what she does, which makes his eyes darken and soften, which makes him lean down to kiss her, panting, his eyes closing.

When he starts moving again, he raises himself on his elbows. There's a little room between them. He finds her hand with his and holds it to his face, holds it to his chest, touch me, he doesn't have words for this anymore and his heart is pounding against her palm. His triceps are shivering under the strain of his weight, the force of his motion. He's pushed against some limit, his face drawn with intensity, his eyes on hers, and he doesn't try to hide it when he starts to pant, when he starts to moan, when he's moaning on every thrust and every thrust is faster and harder than the last until

he's coming down over her, grabbing her in his arms and holding her so close that when he starts to come, it takes no effort at all to find her mouth, kiss her hard, bury his mindless, snarling moans in her mouth while he buries his cum in her body

again, pounding it deep, shattering to pieces, falling apart. When it's over he's still inside her. His face is pressed to her neck. He's boneless over her, and every time he twitches inside her, every time she bears down around him, he makes a sound like he can't take any more pleasure.

After some length of time, he rolls his upper body off hers. Sort of. His chest presses to her shoulder, his shoulder to the bed. His hips still fit between her thighs. He lifts a hand and lays it over her breast, warm and heavy, covering her as though to replace the heat she lost when he shifted aside.

Mine, he thinks. It's not true, but it's a nice thought. A little while after that, he bends his neck to kiss her shoulder, and it's very soft. He whispers, "Did I hurt you at the end?"

Danicka

While she came, Lukas did not have to do much. Once Danicka tripped over that precipice he could have held very still and she would have come, he could have gently rubbed his thumb on her clit and she would have come, he could do exactly as he does and hold her tight, fuck her harder, and still she comes like that, perhaps setting the bar a little high for what he'll learn to expect, but they'll deal with that later. Or he will. It is a fantasy, albeit a lovely one, to imagine that she will get to be with him again, that they will even get to be friends. They'll deal with that, later, too.

Their sweat mingles between their chests. Her breasts feel somehow warmer and heavier in his hands than they did before. Her mouth is looser, less restrained, less practiced, seeking closeness more than pleasure, intimacy more than anything else. Which he gives her. More than an more experienced guy might, he gives it to her wholeheartedly, seeks the same, and she moans into his mouth because of it. The truth is, Danicka can't remember any of the things he whispered to her when she was coming. She remembers only his voice.

And she touches his face. And he closes his eyes when he leans into her, lifting himself up to move again, move into her, come into her, come again. She doesn't need encouragement to hold him -- with her arms and her legs, with her hand pushing back from his cheek into his hair, her other hand on his chest, over his heart. The effort of holding herself up to kiss her becomes too much and she lays back, fair gold skin and gold hair against the crisp white of the pillow, watching the pull of muscle in his face, listening to the cadence of his breathing more than she listened to the words he whispered in her ear when she was coming.

Already, his body is a heavy, firm thing, solid to the core, and Danicka gasps when he presses down to her, aware of him and his weight in a way she wasn't just moments ago. She holds him still, though, kisses him while he comes, their mouths open to each other, sharing breath and sound and sliding apart from each other finally, gaspingly, as Lukas falls apart. Danicka, so soon from her own orgasm, is still trembling, is still panting, her cunt is still squeezing him intermitently and involuntarily, and it feels good. It feels right on the edge of pain, too, almost too much to bear. She holds him anyway. Holds him as he comes down, as their bodies quietly torture each other with a few last bursts of pleasure.

Her mouth drifts over his temple, laying a kiss there, brushing away drops of his sweat.

The sheets feel cold against his skin when he slumps to the side, worn out and shoulders still heaving. Danicka breathes more deeply, able to now, and the air feels cold in her lungs. She closes her eyes, reveling in the air touching her again where it hasn't for what feels like a long time. Now her nipples are perked from the cold more than from sex, and her eyes are closed. She smiles when Lukas covers one of her tits with his palm, her eyes opening to slits. Turning her head against the pillow, she looks at him, blinking slowly. Twists closer to him, wrapping her leg further around his waist, all but laying on her side now.

Hi, she mouths, while he is thinking Mine, and the way her mouth forms one word almost seems like the other, but no. It's not. Can't be.

Lukas kisses her shoulder, drifting near her, and Danicka closes her eyes again, resting her brow against his. The question he asks her makes her smile, lazy and endeared. "No," she whispers, but so he knows: "It was rough, but... really good." She breathes, a sort of sigh like she's going to sleep, but her eyes open after it, close to his and dark green, gleaming. "You didn't hurt me."

Leaning over, she presses a gentle kiss to his brow, but stays there when she lays back down, forehead to forehead with him on the pillow. Her hand lifts and comes to rest on his cheek. "That was actually pretty amazing," she whispers finally, her eyes closed again, her voice barely there.

Viharfelho

Lukas looks relieved, first. Then he looks -- shy and pleased and flattered at once, like his chest should be puffing out even as his cheeks flush. In the end neither actually happens. He's too worn, too warm, too close to her to want to move at all. His eyes close when she kisses his brow. And when she settles again, hand on his face, he slides his arm over her side. Embraces her like that, loose and easy.

"I've never done that before," he whispers. "You're my first."

It's a confession, even though he's sure she already knows. That's okay, though. He's not telling her so she'll know. He's telling her because he trusts her, and because it's a small truth he can lay at her feet like a gift. After all, he thinks, he has little enough he can give her. A few moments go by, and then he covers her hand with his. Wraps her fingers into his palm, holds her hand close to his chest, between their bodies.

"It was amazing."

And a little later:

"You'll stay with me tonight, right?"

Danicka

That makes her eyelashes lift, her smile less lazy and warmer, more tender. "I know that, hlupá
ek," she says, amused and adoring, her cheeks still pink from -- well, everything.

But her eyes close again, and she just lies there then, catching her breath, worn out from this very long day, this very long night. It's still hours until dawn. It feels like they've been here tonight for so much longer than they have been. Prom seems like a distant memory, walking around the city like a dream she's quickly forgetting. Lukas wraps her loosely in his arm, which she's grateful for, though she didn't realize before he did it that she wanted it. The air cools their skin, the conditioner running silently because this is a nice hotel, and nothing rattles here, neither air nor pipes.

And in a little while he asks her if she'll stay, doesn't ask her like a request but like a confirmation, a hope, wanting reassurance. Danicka doesn't even open her eyes. She just nods, and then her thumb smooths an arc over his cheek. "Se už nemusíte starat, Lukášek," she murmurs. "Poj me se jen být na chvíli klid."

Danicka

[Czech: 'silly'

There's no need to worry, Lukasek.

Let's just be quiet for a while.]

Viharfelho

It's hard for him to be quiet. Now that the rush of the blood is fading, his mind is full of questions, and in the silence they breed doubt. He never expected anything like this when he stormed out of his parents' house, a few short hours ago. He never expected anything like this, ever. She'll stay tonight, and that calms him some.

He doesn't know where they're going from here, though. If there's anywhere to go. He wonders if he'll see her again before he goes back to Stark Falls. He wonders if he'll see her again, period. He wonders if he can survive not seeing her again. If she'll want to not see him again. Lukas thinks Danicka must have felt something, some connection there -- though he knows so little, and for all he knows this is how it always feels, and he's nothing special after all.

But quiet, she says. Let's be quiet. And so he is, biting back the hundred questions swarming inside him. Her eyes are closed. He thinks maybe she'll sleep, and one half of him is so endeared, so gratified that she trusts him enough to do this. The other half wants to howl. He can see the clock behind her, and it reads a little after 3am. He wonders how long 'tonight' will last, for her.

In the end, he doesn't say anything after all. He reaches past her, folds the comforter up over her, cocooning her between covers and himself. And he settles again, eyes open; then closing, too.

Danicka

They're quiet for a little while. She just wants to catch her breath, to be still, to...settle. Because of all the questions she knows he must have, very few have answers -- at least, as far as she can give him. She's thinking about telling him that in the future he needs to make sure he has condoms, that she has some but he should know why she didn't stop him and tell him to use one. Remembering her own first time she knows how badly he must want to ask questions. But remembering every other guy she's been with, she's amazed he seems so wired, so awake, he's come twice and she's shocked he wasn't asleep as soon as he rolled off of her.

His second question, and the easiest to answer, was whether or not she would stay. Of course she'll stay, she wanted to tell him. She doesn't want to leave. She wants this to go on forever, and they can just laze in bed until her checking account runs dry, they don't even need clothes, they can just curl up in robes and blankets and skin and never move if they don't want to. She wants to keep that dream for a little while. For a few moments, at least. Maybe until their skins cool off and the sweat begins to dry. Danicka knows he must want to know so much, and she can't bear to answer, to face realities she's been avoiding. She can barely even breathe.

But then he is reaching past her and she stirs a little, opening her eyes to see what he's doing, and what he's doing is pulling the covers over her, which makes her laugh long before he finishes tucking her in, makes her laugh brightly and happily and then she's turning to him. Her hands are on his cheeks and she's giving him this full, warm kiss on his mouth, laughing even through that, kissing him a second time. "Jsi tak pošetilý a tak krásná," she tells him, just before her mouth presses to his a third time. She's smiling, leaning over to nuzzle him, rubbing her face against his like

something in her is an animal, too.

Danicka

[Czech: You are so silly and so beautiful.]

Viharfelho

Lukas's mouth smiles a little too when Danicka smiles. It's curving when she kisses him, but there's something a little wistful, a little sad in that arc. She nuzzles him, and he closes his eyes, leaning into her touch. Silly, she calls him, which makes him smile, which is odd because usually something like that - a characteristic so childish and simple as that - would make him defensive, make him stiff and overpolite and flushed with anger and humiliation.

Beautiful, she calls him, and he doesn't remember her calling him that at all. He looks at her, the smile fading. The wistfulness stays. He keeps touching her face, and he touches her face again, his fingertips gentle against her skin.

"I want you," he whispers, and this time he isn't talking about sex at all.

Danicka

Twice now in a row she calls him silly, which perhaps is a bit much. Maybe it's okay, at least right now, because they are still intertwined. They're still joined at the hip, Lukas laying inside of her, holding her, and she's still wrapped so warmly around him. Maybe it's okay right now because it seems to be a trait she likes, an endearment more than a mockery or poking fun. Maybe it's okay solely because it's her, and because somehow it being her matters

even though it shouldn't. Even though they are both pretending it's impossible to get your heartbroken in a single night.

Danicka is more perceptive than most teenagers. She's more perceptive than most people, period. She sees deeper, even when she isn't trying -- even when she might not want to. So she can't pretend, this close to him, that she thinks he's asking her to fuck again. Telling her that he'll understand if she's too sore or too tired but really, he'd like to have another go. She knows that isn't what he means. She could lie anyway, pretend anyway, laugh it off, push him away, and both long-ingrained defense mechanisms and a twisted sort of mercy tell her to do so. But it will be years before Danicka is the sort of woman who disbelieves so strongly in love and faith that she can force herself to push away --

well. Him.

She's laughing and she's happy but his words and his wistfulness make those glinting lights flicker and fade in her eyes. Her smile slowly melts, leaving behind nothing even as substantial as a ghost of itself. She aches again, and she didn't want to ache again. Not like this. Not so soon. "Don't."

That plea is a whisper.

Viharfelho

Through this, Lukas's hand stays on Danicka's face. He touches her cheekbone, touches her brow. Touches, now, her lips as though he might read her words and her intent from their very shape. Earlier tonight, in a moment of startling clarity, he saw that her life was not perfect. Was not even happy. He does yet not have the eloquence to say anything wiser than I'm sorry your life sucks, but he saw that much. There's an unhappiness inside her, an ache that he doesn't understand. He doesn't know what her life is like. They only met a very short while ago, and the memories he has from before that, from childhood, are fragmentary and rosetinted.

He wants to ask her why she's unhappy. He wants to ask her what's wrong, what hurts her, what can he protect her from. He doesn't ask, because young as Lukas is he knows she's not his to protect. He knows that. No starry-eyed dreamer, this young Shadow Lord-to-be, and that much is already evident. Another freshly-fucked ex-virgin with his head in the clouds might have said I'll love you forever! or You're my girlfriend now, right? What Lukas said was, I want you. The rest was only implied - there between the lines, there in the furrows of his brow:

I can't have you.

She asks him to stop, though. Please don't. She's happy here. Don't take her away from it so soon.

So: he doesn't. Because he can't protect her from her sadness; can't even understand it. The only thing he can do is let her have tonight. Which is, he's coming to realize, a sort of escape. But he can't blame her for it. In some ways, that's what he was seeking, too. He just never imagined he'd find this.

Lukas draws a breath. He lets it out. He rolls on his back, and he brings Danicka with him. He used to think this sort of thing was a fabrication of romantic comedies: the man and the woman in bed, the girl with her head on her boy's shoulder. It feels right, though. Right and close and true.

"It's okay," he murmurs. "We don't have to think about it. It's all right."

Danicka

No fabrication, this posture he draws them into. She lets out a huff, half-laughing, but only a huff and only half, but soon is settled against his chest, closing her eyes. She shifts and draws herself off of him as they move, though, no longer comfortable with twisting this way and that, no longer comfortable with him lying inside of her forever. She rubs her face on his arm as she does, though, as though to reassure him of contact, of closeness, despite the fact that he isn't inside of her anymore.

Strange, that he's so protective right now. He's younger than she is, and he's the one who walked into this hotel room a virgin, eager to fuck but willing not to, not daring to hope that maybe she'd let him touch her breasts and take off her panties and do all the things she 'let' him do tonight. She's the one who drew him down to her body, warm and protective in a way he can't know she rarely shows anyone else these days. She held him, and she stroked his hair, and she told him that it was okay, she wasn't hurt, it was amazing. He was amazing. This was. Is.

Danicka breathes close to him like that for awhile, her body slender and naked and stretched out along his, leg and arm draped over him, eyes closed against his pectoral. She still thinks he's beautiful. Tip to toes. His eyes and his hair, his body, that mouth of his. They're sweaty and sticky and cooling off, and he tells her it's okay, so they don't get up for awhile. They don't speak about his want for her or the impossibility of it. She doesn't tell him she wants him too because she doesn't want to break his heart. She doesn't want to give him hope. Telling him she wants what he wants and they both know they can't have will only twist the knife deeper.

He'll be a wise man, if he learns that as he gets older: how cruel and cold mercy can be at times.

In a little while, though, she breathes in and moves again, rolling away from him, stretching, sighing. She rolls onto her back and looks at him across the pillows, her hands limp on her belly. "I kind of want a shower," she says, her tone right on the border between just letting you know and apologetic.

Viharfelho

Lukas is, admittedly, starting to drift into sleep when Danicka rolls away from him. Consciousness comes clear and cold, though, his eyes snapping open, his head turning toward her. He looks at her questioningly. Maybe he thinks she's about to leave.

But it's not that. She wants to shower. The angles of his face relax a little. He nods. "Okay."

And he sits up, taking his time, yawning as he looks around the room. "I might call my parents. Just so they don't worry about me. I won't tell them about you, unless you want me to." He can't really imagine why she might want his parents to know, but then he doesn't want her to feel like she's some dirty secret he has to hide. "And then maybe I'll heat the food up again."

A small pause. Carefully, "When do you have to ... y'know, go?"

Danicka

When he says he might call his parents, Danicka looks a little startled. By that point she's already sitting up, gingerly scooting to the edge of the bed, feeling pretty sticky and kind of gross but not wanting to make him feel bad, make him feel like his cum is something dirty or his sweat on her skin is something she wants to scrub off, and she looks at him over her bare shoulder. Her short hair is all askew, and she is going to be mortified when she sees how badly her lipstick is smudged from all that kissing, no-smear formula her ass.

"Oh," she says, with a trace of disappointment, but briefly and under his own voice. She takes a breath and shakes her head, quickly and vehemently, when he says he won't tell them about her unless she wants him to. "No, please don't," she confirms. "It's too risky."

Then she's standing, just as ginger on her feet, bewildered as a child who has only just learned to walk. Maybe he'll heat up the food again, because they really didn't eat much before, well. That. Danicka is stretching a little, rolling her shoulders back, and looks at him again, taking her eyes off the city --

and she's just standing there in front of the windows, bold and naked, fearless, even though he knows something hurts, something is broken, something isn't right

-- and she smiles. Gently. "In the morning sometime, probably. Before checkout time, at least. But ...I have the day off, I just... I don't --"

want anyone to see us together in the daylight

"-- know if it's a good idea if we try to stay together."

The regret hangs in her tone as much as it did when she murmured that Oh. She swallows, and looks at him with her brow furrowed, aching. "Please... stop thinking about all that, or asking me about it. I don't want to think about anything outside this room. Please?"

Viharfelho

Lukas doesn't really understand the startlement he saw. Or the disappointment. He wonders if he's made some sort of faux pas; too late, he realizes it's probably so totally uncool for a guy to want to call home and tell his parents he didn't get eaten by a wyrm-monster ... right after losing his virginity. He wonders if she thinks he's some sort of mama's boy now. He's a little embarrassed, and he's wondering how to explain that it's not that he's so close to his parents that he has to call them constantly, quite the opposite actually, it's just that, well, his getting eaten by a wyrm-monster is a real possibility. And he'd like them to know he wasn't. And...

he stops thinking about that when she says it's not a good idea for them to try to stay together. His brow wrinkles up immediately. "Oh," he says. He looks --

well. For lack of a better word, he looks crushed. And it's not like he didn't see this coming. It's not like he didn't know, himself, that being seen with her was not just unwise but dangerous; that if word got out that the upstate cub was sniffing around one of the better-bred young kinswomen in the city they'd both be in for it. Still, perhaps he allowed himself to hope, just a little. Maybe right up until a minute ago, he still was still clinging to some vague fantasy of

(being hers)

being her boyfriend, her summer-crush, being the guy who gets to take her out to the movies and out to Coney Island and out for ice cream sundaes and ... everything else normal kids might do. He doesn't even know what they might do. Maybe in the end he was just hoping to see her again.

The silence has gone on too long. He takes a quick breath and nods. "Yeah. Totally. I mean, this was always just like. A one night stand, right?" He tries a quick smile, and it looks like a grimace. "What happens in Affinia stays in Affinia. And -- "

he breaks off. Looks away sharply, all but lurches out of bed, and suddenly his nakedness feels unbearable. He grabs his jeans off the floor and starts to step into them, nevermind that he's sweaty, he's covered in her slick, her scent. His eyes are burning. He's so angry at himself; he's so weak.

Danicka

What Danicka sees is his uncertainty, sudden in the wake of so much closeness and warmth. The self-doubt, the kicks he is rapidly administering to his own behind, the flush of embarrassment, and she is bewildered at first by all of it, by how quickly his emotions rush across him, like getting caught in a wave.

The thing is, she knows that getting eaten by something is a real possibility for a lone cub out in the city at night, knows he probably couldn't resist a fight if he wanted to, and she grew up in the same kind of culture he did: kids stay close to home, rankle under the yoke of family, call their parents when they're late, catch hell when they don't. But he's so upset just because she said Oh and it makes no sense to her at first because what she's thinking about is something totally different, on another planet from where his thoughts go, what is his problem?

But then he looks crushed. Looks deflated, and it twists in her chest even as she's mildly frustrated with him, his emotionality, the way he can wear all of his feelings on his sleeve like that like nobody would ever hurt him for feeling them.

Her brow is furrowed tightly, and remains so when she realizes that there's no way that's how it is for him in the sept he's being raised in. The Shadow Lords do not coddle. He has been with them for three years. She doesn't imagine he shows this face to his parents, that he's some spoiled brat, which means --

it's because it's her. And even if he doesn't mean to show her any of this, is putting on a brave face, she can see right through him. Danicka sighs, and he's talking about one night stands. She grimaces at the 'what happens in Affinia' comment, because it feels low and crass and cheap to her ears, and he's getting out of bed, grabbing his clothes, which is the point when she just bursts out:

"Hey, stop it!" like he's a peer (in the first word) and a child to be scolded (in the next two). And, all told, like he's grabbing her ball and running with it, taking her dolly and dashing away from the sandbox to throw it over the fence. She doesn't come near him, though, some deeply impressed instinct to avoid an emotional werewolf at all costs staying her hands and her feet. If not, for the moment, her voice.

"Why are you being like this?" she asks him, aching. Wounded, in a way, and worse: helpless. "That's not what I meant."

Viharfelho

The strange truth of it is, if they met each other outside of the circumstances they met under tonight - if they met each other under the Sokolovs' auspices, or up in Stark Falls - they wouldn't even recognize who they are right now. She would be demure and respectful and respectable and a good little kin. A nice little morsel for some Garou someday. A good mate, if one could overlook her cowardice. He would be stoic and brave and taciturn. A good little cub. A nice addition to the tribe someday, if he passes his tests. A good Garou, provided he survives.

They are not who they've allowed themselves to be here. He is not weak, and he is certainly not vulnerable. Or perhaps that's not quite the truth, either. Perhaps the truth is: he is who he is here. He's not who he is anywhere else.

He gets his pants up over his ass, and he starts to zip up when she says that's not what she meant. And he stops for a moment, and as he gets older and colder he'll fly into frustration when faced with a situation like this. For now, he's simply confused, hurt, wary as he turns.

"You said you didn't want us to stay together," he says. "What did you mean?"

Danicka

If they had met under other circumstances, she wouldn't even look at him. No eye contact. She would call him -- him, a cub -- rhya if she spoke to him at all, and only if he spoke to her first. More than likely her only words to him would be I'm sorry, rhya,. She shakes when Garou are around. From afar she smells so good and she looks so beautiful and her family line is so renowned on both sides, one side known for strategy and valor and cunning, the other known for honor and fertility and the pliant nature of the kin they produce. She is a prize, so young and pretty and her will so flexible. But she's already met one Garou who she knew, in her heart, wanted to claim her one day.

He never spoke to Vladik about her again. She trembled so much. She was so afraid of him, biting back yelps of terror when he so much as leaned over for a glass of wine. And as lovely as she was, his lust for her, his want for her and the cubs she'd bring, dissipated like mist. He knew there was no reason not to want her, but he also felt an instinct telling him that no cowardly kin would be a good mate. And all wolves, on some level, want a true mate.

That's who they'd be, if they'd met anywhere else. She wonders still if that's who he'll be to her if she lets on who her mother is. She doesn't even know he's an Ahroun, and she's wary of how he'll see her then.

Wary that, since he went ahead and pulled up his jeans all the way, anything else she says might just make him fly into a rage. But he asks her what she meant, and her expression is nothing short of sad. Resigned, in a way, which is worse.

"I didn't say I didn't want that," she whispers.

Viharfelho

Lukas was never intending to walk out right now. He just didn't want to be so totally naked, at least not physically, while she told him she didn't want to see him again. Or that's what he thought she told him. He's not like that, though; he wouldn't walk out of here like it really was a one night stand. Even he didn't believe it when he said it. He hopes she knows all that, but when he turns and sees her expression, Lukas thinks maybe she didn't. Doesn't.

So he crosses the room to her. He looks at her a moment, and then he crosses his arms over his chest, shoulders hunching, self-protective. He frowns at his bare feet for a while. Looks at her.

Quietly: "So ... what do you want?"

Danicka

Every word she says comes so deliberately, so painfully, while she sinks back down to sit on the edge of the bed. He stands there near her, arms crossed, and she folds her hands on her knees. "To not talk about what we want and can't have."

Danicka lifts her eyes and looks up at him. "And I wanted you to come shower with me, and then maybe we could eat and watch a movie and... fall asleep or something."

Viharfelho

The cross of his arms tightens. Strained, but no louder than he was:

"I just want to see you again after tonight. We can have that, can't we?"

Danicka

"I don't know," she tells him, because it's the truth. And she's afraid of him leaving but she's not afraid of him. "Are you really going to make that a prerequisite for just... being here with me tonight and letting it be good?" She's so naked and it doesn't seem to bother her: the words or the bare skin, the vulnerability that for her is utter and total and yet an illusion in and of itself. There is something unassailable about her, and she doesn't even seem to realize it.

"Neither of us get to have a lot of good nights," she goes on, just as quietly. "And to tell you the truth, you seem like you're trying really hard to ruin this one just because we might not be able to see each other again. I just want you to stop thinking about tomorrow. Just for a little while. Just... be happy."

Viharfelho

"I'm not trying to ruin anything, Danicka." Now he is frustrated, a flare of it underlying his words. He tries not to raise his voice, though. "But it's really hard for me to just ... bury my head in the sand and be happy if this might be the only time I ever get to see you. I didn't come here for a one night stand."

He knows he's contradicting what he said two minutes ago. He doesn't care. He was trying to put on a brave face, or a cool face, or anything other than his own face then. It wasn't the truth.

"I understand if we can't have sex again," he continues, lower. "I don't even care. I ... get it. I'm just a cub. I even get it if you can't see me again until I'm done with my Rite of Passage. But when I'm a Cliath, there's no law saying I can't at least be friends with you. That's all I need to hear. 'When you're a Cliath, we can be friends'. Something like that. Something to tell me that when tonight's over and done, you're not walking out of my life for good."

Danicka

They're both frustrated. And so much of it is under the surface, where she wanted it to stay, because the things he hasn't been telling her straightforwardly will hurt so badly, and the things she hasn't been telling him are going to devastate him. She wants to smack him for not just cuddling with her, showering with her, taking that sadness and simply letting it be. Not burying it, not forgetting it, but just... let it be. There's nothing they can do. They're eighteen and sixteen, and neither of them are even as free as a human being.

She thinks about telling him he's just a virgin afterglowing from his first fuck. She thinks about how brutally simple it could be, she even knows she could do it in one sentence: what, we fuck one time and now you're in love with me or something?

She doesn't say that. Not when he's telling her how much he could live with: it's okay if they can't do this again, it's okay if he even has to wait til he's not a cub anymore, maybe they could at least be friends, please, just tell him that. And again, it would be so simple for her to lie, so shockingly easy. She could even make him believe it. She could act shocked, like this was just a huge misunderstanding. Of course! She thought that he wanted her to be his girlfriend and they both know they can't. She could make him believe they're going to be friends when he's a Cliath, and then maybe, y'know...

Danicka could give him hope.

It will be another couple of years before she knows the depths of her ability to deceive others, but she already knows that it's easy enough if you just know what they want to hear, what they're trying on their own to believe no matter what evidence they have against it. People are stupid. People, especially young people, mold the world in their own image. Everything else becomes negative space, easy enough to overlook. And Danicka lives in those spaces, hides her truths there in plain sight.

But she doesn't tell him that, either. She doesn't give him hope, or brokenly parrot back those words to him: when you're a Cliath.... She watches him as he all but raves, and she hates him a little. They were so happy for a few minutes there. They should have just stayed silent. Gone to sleep. And she should have left before he woke up, no matter what she told him before. But right now she thinks he might have come looking for her, and then --

"I don't know if I'm ever going to see you again!" she says again, this time the words bursting out of her, snapping like twigs underfoot. This time she even lifts her hands, her fingers splayed, and they shake for a moment before she smacks them back down on the covers. She looks up at him. "Lukáš, Garou and Kin around here know me. I have a really good reputation. I work for this stupid-rich Silver Fang family. My mom was like... famous to Garou. They write songs about her. I had to sit through one, for fuck's sake."

She is still young enough that this is special, this sort of swearing. Rare. It sounds the way a bright red swish of paint across a barren canvas looks when it's applied in one slashing stroke. Exhilirating. Sudden.

"And my brother is not a nice guy," she goes on, her face paling slightly under her skin. Here is her first lie about him: "At least not to other Garou. Not to cubs who fuck his sister and dishonor his mother. You have no idea how much effort I have to put into having any time where I don't feel like I'm being watched. And even I have no idea what he might try to do to you. Or your honor, or your family's name. And you know that he would have every right."

Danicka looks away from him, looks at the floor, swallowing. "You also know that Shadow Lords and Kin aren't usually 'friends'. If you seriously think that you're going to take your Rite and anyone is going to let us just hang out and go to the movies or whatever with each other, you do have your head in the sand." There's a darkness in her eyes he hasn't really noticed before. Not til now. Not til he realizes it's been there from the start.

Was there when she was a child.

"I'll probably be mated by then anyway," she mutters, shaking her head. And she sniffs, the moisture in her sinus cavities making it audible. When she looks up at him that darkness is something else, bright and gleaming and -- to him, in particular -- so much worse than glinting anger. "And I have asked you over and over since we made love to stop doing this, because it makes me sad. But you keep backing off for like two seconds before you're gnawing at it again and I just want you to stop."

That word doesn't even get fully out of her mouth before she's dropping her eyes again, her hands tight on the edge of the bed, but she doesn't sit there to wait for a response. She hates this. Hates crying. Hates crying in front of anyone, especially. So before the first of those tears gets anywhere near her cheek she is up from the bed like a shot, going around to the bathroom to grab tissues, pressing them to her eyes before her stupid mascara runs.

Stupid, stupid fucking mascara.

Viharfelho

In the space of a few moments, Lukas learns a lot. He learns that her mother was a legend. He learns her brother is Garou, and not a nice guy. He learns that she's under scrutiny, watched and observed; he learns that she has no dewy-eyed fantasies about where her future is leading.

And he learns that this girl he just met, this girl he used to know, this girl he just lost his virginity to, and this girl that he's already, inextricably fascinated by -- lies. Because as young as he is, as opaque as she is to him, he can't help but feel that she's circling around and around some central pivot that he knows is there. That he can't quite see.

And then she's up off the bed. She's running for the bathroom, she's crying, he can tell in the pit of his stomach, and Lukas doesn't pause to think. He takes a step sideways. He puts himself in her way, and when she runs into him he puts his arms around her, he clasps her against his chest and he still smells like her, his skin is still hot with what they did to each other. He holds her, and he doesn't shush her, he doesn't tell her it's going to be okay, he doesn't do all the things you're supposed to do when a pretty girl dissolves into tears on you.

Lukas just holds her. His hands smooth slow circles over her back. He bows his head, and kisses her shoulder, and he murmurs:

"I'm not afraid of your brother. I'm not afraid for my honor. And I'm not going to be your usual Shadow Lord, afraid to love his kin. And Danicka, I don't need you to be afraid for me. I've already killed more than some Garou ever do in their entire lives. I've already been taught, and accepted, the inevitability of my own death. So... I appreciate it, but I don't need you to worry about me. Okay? Don't worry about how any of this will impact me. Just tell me...

"Just tell me this: would you be endangered or hurt if you tried to see me again?"

Danicka

The sad thing is, she's telling him the truth, and she's telling him enough. Enough to tell him to back off, enough to explain why she's about to cry. But he senses something else there, some secret. Maybe he can't help himself. Maybe he has to, as she put it, gnaw. Danicka doesn't want to tell him everything so that he'll be satisfied and all will be well. She just wants him to stop digging, stop verbalizing what they both knew when he looked at her after they --

she called it making love, didn't she?

-- and told her he wanted her. She just wants him to leave it be, and since telling him 'over and over' isn't working, since asking him to stop isn't helping, she tells him the truth. Enough of the truth to say why it bothers her, why they can't, and in her mind, it's ruined now. She's crying now, and he won't fucking let it go and all those feelings she had before, all those thoughts she had of curling up with him are, frankly, gone. Maybe not for him. But she can't bring them to mind anymore.

Lukas follows her. She's standing in front of this enormous mirror with tissues pressed to absorb tears she is rapidly sniffing and blinking away, swallowing, looking at herself as though in challenge. She sees him coming and she feels him, too, a wall of heat and fury that, right now, is banked. Banked only because he doesn't want to terrify her, only because he isn't actively enraged. And he reaches out, touching her shoulder.

She lets him. Her shoulder feels breakable under his hand, even now. Like he could close his fist and crush her, shatter bone. Already he's getting so strong. And right now, she is fragile. Precious, he called this.

He says he's not afraid of her brother and she wants to roll her eyes. All the things he says about who he is, what he's like, she wants to roll his eyes, that isn't the point, that isn't what's important. She closes her eyes and drops her shoulder from under his hand, shifting away from it, which is the most passive way she can think of to shake him off. In years to come she will learn to simply bear it. She will pull this exact trick with someone else and she will pay dearly enough for it that she'll never, ever do it again. It will take years after that for her to stop being so afraid.

Lukas says he doesn't want her to worry about him, and somewhere inside she snaps that it isn't all about him, petty and angry. Outwardly she sniffs, and she drops the wet tissues with bits of black on them in the trash. And he asks her if she'd be endangered or hurt. Danicka looks at him, her face...awful, now. Smeared mascara and smudged lipstick, cheeks flushed with emotion, eyes red-rimmed.

"Don't you realize that now you're making it so I don't even want to see you again?" she asks him, and her head shakes once, incredulous. "Maybe we could have fucking talked about this after we'd had more than ten seconds to recover from what we just did, or in the morning, maybe we could have figured something out, but you just won't let it go!" Now she's yelling, her voice rebounding off the mirror. "And all I kept telling you was that I don't know -- and I couldn't give you anything more than that! I can't give you anything more than that! I can't promise you anything! I don't want to talk about this when I'm standing here with your cum inside me, you asshole! I just wanted to fucking enjoy what just happened!"

Which is nearly a scream, and a hard smack of her hand against the counter. Someone next door can hear her, fighting with him. Yelling at him when he's still keeping his voice low, when she knows better than this, when she doesn't have the strength of will yet to stop herself, when she doesn't know better than to yell at a Garou who is not her brother. Surely there are Garou who won't hit her. Surely Lukas is one of them.

Viharfelho

Well; he doesn't hit her. He stares at her, wordless. Winces flash across his face now and then. And of all the things that she says then, so much of it brutal, it's curiously one of the last -

standing here with your cum inside me

- that makes him feel suddenly low, dirty, unworthy, rejected. Or at least, that's what seems to drive it home. Lukas's face goes blank; he turns away. He stops trying. He walks back to the main room of the suite; he stares at the bed for a little while, the place where so recently she made him feel ... he has a hard time remembering how it felt. Maybe she's right: it's ruined now. He picks up his shirt, and he finishes getting dressed.

Danicka

It's sad that he doesn't hit her.

It's sad because she knows he isn't going to, like she knew he wasn't going to grab her by the throat and push her down onto the bed, snarling at her as he yanked down her panties. It's sad that he isn't rough with her, and he isn't bouncing her off of a wall to make himself feel better, and it's sad because she's not really afraid he's going to.

Not him.

And of course you know why it's sad now. Why she looks at him after completely losing her temper and sees that rather than lashing out at her -- as though her pain would be a bandage to his wound -- and her crest falls, too. She's so angry with him. She's so frustrated. She just wanted him to be happy with her, and all he's done is tell her that being with her isn't enough. He has to have her. He has to know they can be together again -- maybe not sex. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not for years, but he has to know this isn't the end.

So he turns away, and she'd be a fool or a blind woman or just far, far less perceptive than she is if Danicka didn't notice exactly when his face went blank. Exactly what words were the barb on the whip that actually tore him. Lukas turns away a moment later, not quite long enough to look deep and see all of his thoughts and feelings laid out like they so often are when she looks at people, but she can guess.

No: she knows. Because Lukas doesn't want to let go -- can't let go -- because of what they felt when they were on that bed. They. He wasn't alone. There were two people there. She doesn't have words for it, so she can't -- couldn't have -- told him that yes, she wanted to be his and have him be hers. She wanted to spend the night with him, and see him again, and be happy. But Lukas's heart isn't broken. He keeps saying thing like 'maybe they can be friends', and he's a different kind of Shadow Lord and he's not afraid of her brother or his honor being tarnished or any of that.

All she can think of is how impossible it is. Sooner or later -- it seems right now like it will be sooner -- she'll be mated, and she doubts she'll be allowed to fraternize with cubs or Cliaths that aren't packmates of her mate. She's too precious, you see. Too valuable. Too... appealing, to use her brother's words, and her brother's gaze. All she can think of is what he did to her when he found out she was pregnant, and how it felt when she wasn't pregnant anymore. How it felt to push Stephen away so that Vladik wouldn't kill him. How when Lukas says he's not afraid, he's killed -- as though this would comfort her somehow -- she wants to tell him: my brother has friends. my brother has people whose secrets he knows. my brother has wolves who owe him favors. you're just a cub, and you'll just be a Cliath, and already you are nothing to him. expendable.

All she can think of is how he's ruined it. He's ruined everything, the stupid little shithead. All he had to do was hold her. All he had to do was come into the shower with her, run his warm hands over her wet skin, kiss her under the water. She could have taught him, patiently this time, how to get a girl off using nothing but his hand, and she knows even now that she wouldn't want him to learn how to get a girl off. Just her. Just them, together.

All he had to fucking do was love her for tonight, and leave maybe-we-cans and when-can-you-get-away-agains and promise-you'll-write-to-mes for the cold, bitter light of morning.

In years to come, Danicka's will is only going to grow stronger. She will become more prideful, but still be debased and shameless compared to the man Lukas will be -- the man he has no idea is waiting for him on the other side of his Rite. And god, the bitterness that makes her weep and makes her angry tonight will make her such a cold thing at times, ruthless in her self-protective lies, even when inside she's howling for him to let go of her wrist and hold her, please, please stop hating her, just love her, love her even though she's so scarred.

That woman doesn't exist yet. May never. The younger woman standing there by the sinks, wrapping her arms around herself and watching him reach for his clothes, feels a surge of panic that he's going to leave, he's going to walk out and all they'll have had, really, is a stupid one-night stand and an argument. All he'll have is a sense of shame as he walks away from losing his virginity. Sure, the sex was great, but what does it matter if he leaves feeling like that? All she'll have is this loneliness, again. Always. When, viciously, it was taken away for a little while before crashing back down on her.

She's crying before she realizes it, this time, just two or three tears that well up and start rolling down, hitting her chest. Her voice, when it comes, is so quiet it's almost hard to hear her.

Except he'd always hear her. If she were miles away and cried out for him, he'd hear her.

"I just didn't want to make you a promise I couldn't keep," Danicka says, so very softly. It's an echo of the maybe-future, a distorted ripple of someone else's words. "Or give you false hope." Her hand comes up and swipes at the tears on her cheeks, her lashes blinking again, refusing to stand there sobbing like a child, crying like a little girl. She isn't looking at him. She's looking at some enigmatic angle, and she can see his legs from the knees down and hints of the city outside and part of the couch and part of the carpet and part of the tile over on her side of the room.

"I don't want you to go," she says, sniffing once, hard, "and I don't want this to be over and...ruined. I don't know how it got all fucked up." Her eyes finally lift, though her chin doesn't yet. "I can't pretend I believe things are going to be happy for us after tonight," she whispers. "That's why I want so badly to just be happy with you now."

She exhales a moment after hearing herself say that, looking at the floor, her arms unfolding and her body turning. "Tell you the truth, though, right now I don't know if happiness is an option anymore. But at least we could be together."

Danicka shakes her head. She doesn't wait for him to answer, to come to her. She turns toward the bathroom door. "I... I can't stand here like this anymore. I'm want to get in the shower. If..." a hard swallow. "If you're not here when I get out I won't blame you, but... I'm not gonna watch you leave, either. I'm sorry. I'm --"

the words get cut off. She doesn't know what else to say, she can't bear to have him talk back at her. She just wants to --

run. Only she isn't rushing, isn't really running, when she walks into the bathroom, finally out of his sight for a moment. She pulls her lower lip into her mouth and bites on it when she turns the water on, hot, tears finally coming, finally unchecked.

Viharfelho

Lukas lets her go, as she perhaps knew he would. He'd followed her from bed, he'd followed her to the bathroom, but when she turns away and disappears into the shower he's already a room away, he's already putting the rest of his clothes on without looking at her.

He might leave. He wants to - or no, that's not it. He thinks maybe he should, thinks maybe she doesn't want him there at all. He thinks maybe he should, thinks maybe it'll be easier this way. He stands there with his Yankees t-shirt in his hands, his forearms through the sleeves, ready to tug it on, and he asks himself if he can stand staying. If he can stand to just have her for tonight, and perhaps not again, even. If he can bear that, and not only survive but not bring it up again tonight.

Then he asks himself if he can bear not having even this much. The door's right there; he asks himself if he wouldn't regret walking out now, with Danicka in tears, the night in ruins, more than he could ever regret not seeing her again.

In the end he walks through a door after all, and it's not the front door. The bathroom is full of steam. If she's crying, he can't hear it. There's only water in there, and it disguises the sound of him undoing his jeans again, stepping out of them. He hesitates a little before he opens the shower curtain. He knocks on the wall, feeling a little absurd, wanting not to frighten her. When he steps into the shower, the water is already warm. Her skin is warm too when he touches her, carefully and questioningly, his hand gentle on the outside of her elbow.

If she lets him, he turns her around to face him. He's as naked as she is, unashamed now, water quickly drenching him as he steps forward into her, and under the spray. He puts his arms around her and draws her against him without a word. Holds her.

Danicka

The water is good here, heating up quickly and pouring luxuriously from enormous rainlike showerheads. The tub is a wide oval, the curtain rod curving outward and supporting a soft cotton exterior curtain. Everything is made to be lightness, coolness, airy as the terraces some suites have. And Danicka is in there as soon as the water is warm enough, pulling the curtain shut and hiding. Hiding from that knot of misery in the pit of her stomach, hiding from her own emotionality, her own childishness, her own sense of loss.

She knows she'll only feel worse if he leaves. If she steps out of the shower and the room is silent, cold in the wake of his rage. She knows she'll end up sleeping on the little sofabed rather than curl up in his scent still on the bed, which will linger even after she throws the messy comforter to the ground. She'll feel alone and abandoned, angry at him, angry at herself for leaving it open for him to go. But she also knows it might help her get over it, to be angry at him. What a little dick, fucking her like he cares and then getting pissy and running off because she can't be his girlfriend. Guess she really was special, huh? Jerk.

Even if she'd know it was a lie. Danicka rarely lies to herself. Sometimes, though, she has to. She is more protective of herself than she thinks she'll ever be of anyone else,

but she hasn't yet found herself lying bloody on a streetside aiming a gun not at the frenzied wolf rushing her, but the bastard who dared try to hurt that wolf.

She washes quickly, tearing open the little paper-covered rectangle of soap and applying it first to her face, washing off mascara and lipstick and foundation and all the rest of it. She doesn't wear a lot; it comes off relatively easy, despite not having special remover. She tries to be gentle, use a washcloth, but she wants it off and she wants her face to be clean, because then she won't cry anymore. She's determined. She washes her hair just as quickly, which is one of the things she likes best about having short hair -- she can wash her hair quickly, rinse all the shampoo out in a heartbeat.

Focusing on all of this, cleaning her face and rinsing the last suds from her hair, she doesn't notice at first when Something enters the bathroom with her. She hasn't heard the door slam, but she's not listening for it. She's pretending he's already gone. She puts conditioner in her hair, just a tiny dollop in her palm, and as she's working it through,

Lukas knocks. Danicka startles -- he can see the shadow of her tiny jump, hear the intake of breath that is not a gasp. But she doesn't say anything. She goes very still, waiting to see what he does, what he says, something.

What he does is come into the shower with her, and she's staring at him as he gets his footing, closes the curtain again. Lukas doesn't actually have to touch her and turn her around to get her to face him; she already is. And he doesn't have to draw him to her -- she goes to him as soon as he looks at her, wrapping her arms around his waist, laying her head on his chest, her hair smelling of sandalwood and roses.

Viharfelho

They come together like they care. Like they've known each other longer than a few hours plus some fragmentary childhood memories. Like this is something already familiar to them, when she's still so new to this and he's still so new to everything. It's easier than he thought it would be, though. It feels more natural, more right, more incontrovertible.

She wraps her arms around him, and he wraps his around her. He closes his eyes, and his hand cups the back of her head. Encircle her shoulders. Her arms encircle his waist, thin against the solid slabs of muscle that sheath his ribs. She smells like the shampoo she's used, shampoo provided by a three hundred dollar hotel suite, and this isn't even considered that expensive for this part of town. He smells like himself, and like her. These scents begin to mingle the longer they stay like this, together, bathed in water and steam.

After a long time, his fingers begin to stroke through her hair. He cups the back of her neck, then, as he kisses her forehead. Then between her eyes. Then her mouth, very softly, sweetly. There's a certain wistfulness in that kiss. It should always be like this, he thinks. It's not fair to find this and lose this so quickly,

but it's nothing something she can promise, and it's not something he can change. His hands are both on her face, then, and he holds her like something precious and rare - that keeps coming to mind tonight, precious, and rare - as his mouth moves over hers. The air between them is still scarred with pain and tension, but he thinks maybe he can heal it

just like this.

Danicka

She's long since given up on trying to quantify this or understand it. Lukas is here, and he wasn't before, and it looks like he might not be again. For all that he's the animal, he's the simple one, she is somehow... more primitive. Sometimes she can only feel one emotion at a time. Otherwise she seems to feel hundreds, everything, all at once, and it's maddening. She can hold contradictory thoughts in her head at once, and no one has told her yet that this is the mark of a truly inspired mind. She can be sad and happy at once.

Like she is now, when Lukas comes in and touches her hair, finding it slippery with conditioner, which somehow -- somehow, despite all of this -- makes her smile a little, faltering and fading but there, real and alive for a moment. She'd suddenly tell him that she'd pay three hundred dollars for tonight all over again, fight and all, tears and everything, because he stayed. Because he came in after her and held her.

She is young, still. Forgiveness is so much easier for her. She will learn bitterness and resentment and stubbornness and pride, and it will take time to unlearn a lot of that so that she can forgive. So that she can admit wrong. So that they can stay together, even when they fight.

Kisses come to rest, and linger, on her face. She lifts hers to him and kisses him back, softly at first, because she knows he's going to kiss her softly first. By now they both have read The Little Prince many times, but he may have forgotten it in his adolescence, his mind full of war and hormones and frustration and ideals that may never come to fruition. Danicka doesn't think, tonight, to tell him that words are the sources of misunderstanding. To tell him to come at her sideways, slowly and patiently, and wait for her to creep near enough to rest her head on his lap. And he probably wouldn't be able to, anyway.

So they kiss, instead, and her head tips back into the water and it splatters a bit on his nose and brow. She doesn't try to talk right now. She just lifts her arms from his waist to wrap them around his neck, letting her body feel his body, without lust or tension or fear. Just this.

Viharfelho

Strange, but there's a certain innocence in this kiss. It doesn't seem to matter that they're naked. That her body is pressing to his, and he's reacting to her reflexively, hardening against her belly as the kiss goes on. And that kiss, itself: it remains slow, and soft. It's not chaste, but it is innocent.

After some time, his mouth parts from hers. His brow rests to hers, and he breathes in the humid space between. Their arms cross, their hands close to on another's faces. Their bodies press together, so close. Lukas thinks he can feel her gladness: that he stayed, that he didn't go. He wonders if she can feel how glad he is, too, that she didn't ask him to leave. That she forgave him, and held him, and welcomed him back here.

His arms wrap around her again. Close and warm, encircling her back, her waist. He's quite content to hold her just like this.

Danicka

As close as they feel tonight, they don't know each other very well. Danicka doesn't know, as he goes on kissing her, as his cock begins to stir against her, whether or not he wants more. If despite himself -- despite everything -- he's horny still, again, always. She wouldn't really blame him, she just simply doesn't know. But his hands never stroke up her back or down to her ass, and he doesn't bring them to cup her breasts. Those kisses are so tender, less explorative and desperate.

She wonders how she knows him so well. She feels the kisses slow, and then fade, and her eyes flicker open as they stop, as she draws her head back and looks at him for a little while, and that's all. That's all.

There's still conditioner in her hair. They should wash up. But not yet. She lays her head down on his chest again, quite warm between his body and the streaming water, letting her eyes close again.

"D kuju," she murmurs, but that is all.

Viharfelho

Lukas's chest rises and falls with a breath deeper than the rest. His arms tighten for a second, holding her a little closer. Wholly without irony, he answers: "D kuji vám, taky."

Moments go by. Minutes, spiraling down the drain as unremarked as the constant stream of hot water. Up in Stark Falls, hot water was a precious commodity. The kin village had plenty of modern plumbing. The private homes of packs and Garou, too. But the cub bunkers were more simplistic affairs, with communal showers that often ran cold. Fights have started over someone wasting too much hot water in the dead of winter. This sort of unremarked waste, this sort of constant, hot deluge, is a luxury so rare Lukas has almost forgotten what it's like.

A long while later, he stirs. Their arms loosen a little. They draw a little ways apart, and then he wraps his arms around her waist and draws her back. He kisses her mouth again, firm and gentle, and only afterward drops his arms away.

She goes to wash her hair. He picks up the bar of soap and washes his body, then scrubs shampoo into his thick hair. It hasn't occurred to him yet that lovers might wash each other in the shower. Might touch each other affectionately or massagingly or simply playfully. He shares space with her, but he's paradoxically shy about it, apologizing for bumping her and excusing himself to reach around her, now that they aren't embracing, kissing, forgiving.

Eventually they're both clean. And he's turning off the water, and she's stepping out of the shower, and he follows her. The mirror is fogged over. He hands her a towel before picking one up himself, scrubbing his hair into horns and spikes, toweling off his body, wrapping it around his waist. He thinks it's maybe four in the morning now. He's closing in on the twenty-four hour mark. He doesn't want to sleep, and as Danicka is reaching to open the bathroom door he wraps her up in another towel to keep her warm, wrapping his arms around her from behind atop all the layers, kissing her cheek.

"Do you still want to watch Harry Potter?" he asks, smiling a little.

Danicka

They are pretending to be grown up. They are, in a way, older than any mortal of their age, privy to secrets no child should have to know. The monsters are real, and some of them you can't see, and they are gunning for you. They might win. So as a result, Lukas and Danicka are more mature than most teenagers, because they have no choice, but they're still...children, in a way. Still young. Their minds unsettled, their hormones a nonstop wash through their systems. But tonight they're going to pretend to be a little more grown up.

Danicka kisses him softly, one last time, like a seal when he begins to let her go. She draws away and then he's pulling her back to him, kisses her firm and gentle like he does, and she smiles briefly through it, touching his face.

She rinses conditioner out of her hair. They pass the single bar of soap back and forth after he's washed his hair. They wriggle around each other to share the stream of water. Her scent leaves his skin. She washes his cum and her own slick away from her inner thighs. Danicka gets out first when they're both done, reaching for one of the big, fluffy towels hanging up to scuff through her hair first. She shakes it out, fingercombs it, and pats herself dry with the towel before wrapping it around herself. It's all habit, these motions, nothing shy about it. Lukas does the same. She looks for robes but she thinks they're out in front, in a closet, which is stupid.

Lukas suddenly wraps another towel around her, and she lets out a quick, quiet laugh. He wraps himself around her, too, and she looks at him over her shoulder. She wants to sleep. She's very tired, herself, especially after all of that, and a part of her wants to say no, I just want to crawl into bed with you and pass out. But they have so few hours. So very few. So she tips her head and nuzzles him, those razor-cut strands of her hair flicking his face wetly.

"I don't really care what we watch. Maybe A Knight's Tale or something. Whatever you want."

She imagines there's not a movie theatre up in Stark Falls.

"I am hungry, though."

Viharfelho

"I don't really wanna watch anything," he confesses, and in this they're inadvertently in tune. "I just thought maybe you wanted to see Harry Potter. I haven't seen it yet, but it kinda looks, y'know. Childish. I just wanna eat our leftovers in bed and, I don't know. Be together."

They separate as they head back into the main room. She's hungry, so he goes - finally - to reheat dinner. There's still quite a bit left, and the smell of it makes his stomach growl noisily. He claps his hand over it, embarrassed, and succeeds only in muffling it a little. The microwave starts humming again, and he comes to find her, sitting or standing beside her like he just wants to be close. Stay close.

Which is, after all, true.

"Maybe we can just talk until we fall asleep."

Danicka

Childish, he says, and she gives him a look that one day he will compare to the expression a cat wears when you put the wrong food in its bowl: somehow both affronted and incredulous at once. "I like Harry Potter," she informs him, in a very for-your-information tone of voice, but there's a sense somehow that this shouldn't -- and isn't -- going to start some new, far stupider, argument. Danicka tucks her towels around herself and nods, but walks to the closet to get out the robes.

Her towels drop with wet, heedless thumps to the floor, and she draws an enormous robe around herself instead. They don't fit. They put incredibly large robes in these places, because this is the midwest and you never know how many of your guests are going to weight 300 pounds. She wraps it around herself all the same, like a kimono or a gown, and goes to a mirror to finger-comb her hair into a style it can dry nicely into. Her eyes track over to Lukas as he reheats dinner, wearing a towel, staying with the girl he lost his virginity to, and she wonders if it would have been like this, only with clothes, if they'd never had sex at all.

She thinks it would have been. It doesn't feel... awkward.

In the end she yanks back the comforter and tosses it on the floor between bed and window, leaving only sheets and a thick, fuzzy-warm blanket beneath. It makes her smile as she climbs up onto the bed and sits, cross-legged, waiting for food. She smiles at him when he brings it, handing her tray to her with the fork still inside. She picks it up to go after those poor french fries, no longer very crispy at all, and looks at him when he speaks.

And instead of extracting a promise that yes, they can talk, so long as he doesn't bring up what happens next again --
Instead of asking him what he wants to talk about --

"What's it like up there?" asks Danicka, because in truth she's been curious about this since they met. "In Stark Falls."

Viharfelho

They change into robes, and even Lukas's is too wide for him. He waits by the microwave while Danicka strips the comforter off the bed, heaps it on the ground. When it beeps, and when food is ready, he gets their trays out and carries it over to where she's now waiting on the bed. Somehow, this act, laughably simple, makes him happy. It might be the first time Lukas realizes that he really really likes feeding Danicka. And keeping her warm. And ... all that.

He's young, though, and he's still a little shy around girls, and particularly this girl, and he tries not to show it on the surface. He thinks she might think he's weird. He hands her her tray and crawls up on the bed, sitting crosslegged next to her as he pops the lid off again and starts in on their very, very late dinner.

His glance is a little surprised when she asks about Stark Falls. He thinks a moment, and then he says, "It's cold in the winter. It can get hot in the summer, that sort of sticky heat because you're far from the ocean. It's pretty quiet, and pretty boring most the time. A Caern of Honor, so not a whole lot of warmongering or like. Y'know. Spiritual disasters. Most days I just train with the other cubs, or get lectured by Istok, my mentor. And I get taken on real hunts. More and more often these days. And sometimes I get to stand guard with the Guardians, but usually not much happens. One time all the spirits freaked out and raised an alarm and everyone thought we were under attack, but it turned out one of the cubs, Rolf, was just screwing around with his Rites and pissed them off. He's so stupid sometimes.

"There are like... twenty full-fledged Garou in the Sept. Almost all Shadow Lords. I think maybe there's a Fianna and a Bone Gnawer, plus a Red Talon. We actually have a lot of cubs. Istok, my mentor, says it's a good place to train cubs because it keeps to old traditions. Plus it's pretty safe, well-defended, and frankly not big enough to be a significant target. There are six cubs right now, plus me. Some came from the other side of the country. We all live in the Caern proper. The Guardians don't ever leave either. The other Garou kinda split their time. Most of them have houses in the kin village too, where their families live. Some of them live with their packs instead.

"The Caern's right next to a lake. Well, it's really a reservoir. But it's pretty in the fall, when the leaves start to turn. You can see all the colors reflected across the water. I like it in the fall, but I hope this is my last fall there. I've been a cub a really long time."

Danicka

There is a reason why Danicka thinks that if she could go to college in the fall, she'd like to study psychology. She likes to listen to people. At the same time, she's glad she's not going to: people whine. People are interesting but all therapists do is listen to people talk about how hard their life is and how all their problems are because of this or that. And some of them don't want to fix them. They just want to bitch. And Danicka simply can't bear that. Sometimes she just wants to claw Yelizaveta's eyes out, truth be told.

But Lukas doesn't complain. He tells her about the sept where he's living, where he's been living for years, while Danicka quietly eats. Small bits, chewed carefully, but she still avoids the fried cheese. Her father's is better, and he makes them smaller so she doesn't make herself sick on a huge slab of dairy product. But she eats her meat and her potatoes, and her dumplings, which she is fond of with sauce. She looks at him when she doesn't need her eyes to eat without dropping red sauce everywhere. He tells her about his mentor and getting lectured most days. He goes hunting and he stands guard and it sounds pretty boring.

A smile drifts over her mouth when he mentions Rolf, and how he's so stupid sometimes. He tells her what Istok tells him about the sept, what he can't know when he's in it, what takes a larger perspective that he doesn't have room to form on his own. Six cubs -- her eyebrows flick. The other Garou split their time -- the corners of her mouth fall a little, in sympathy for him, even though he's not complaining.

"So you're going to leave when you're not a cub anymore?" she asks, seeming a little surprised. "Is that what most cubs there do?"

Viharfelho

Earlier, Lukas couldn't quite understand why Danicka was so reluctant, so unable, to promise even the faintest hope of seeing one another again after tonight. He thought maybe she was afraid he would be hurt. He thought maybe she was afraid she would be hurt. He begins to understand now that it was never so simple as that. It's not just some question of some shadowy Garou in the background, someone else with the formal claim over her. She has other obligations. Other bonds, ties, claims that draw her away.

New Orleans, she says. He's never been there before. He can barely imagine it, it's so far away. And her eyes have dropped, and then so do his, and they're two teenagers sitting on a bed, they're two not-quite-humans sitting in bathrobes in a three hundred dollar hotel suite where they've just given each other themselves.

Only not really. Because they can't.

"Oh," he says quietly. And he swallows, because he wants to ask if he can visit her, but he thinks maybe she'll cry again. So instead: "When?"

Danicka

Danicka's eyes are a little blank as he talks of the caern and its strength and draining it and the totem. They glaze a bit, uncomprehending, so she eats her dinner and nods, translating in her own mind that if he and all the other cubs stay it could get 'crowded'.

"I'm going to New Orleans," she says after awhile, not really in response to anything he says but in furthering of the conversation topic. But her eyes lift and look over at him. "Not for college or whatever. The Sokolovs... they're still freaked out about 9-11. They have responsibilities here, but they're sending me, a nanny, and two men-at-arms to their estate in Louisiana with their daughter. I'm... sort of her governess."

A dumpling sweeps through the red sauce, her eyes dropping again. "They wanted to send us earlier, but I convinced Madame to let me stay and finish high school here. But after graduation, we have to leave."

Viharfelho

[IGNORE LAST POST]

Viharfelho

Lukas is talking more now than he did when he just met Danicka, and a little more freely. He's no chatterbug, though. He tells her a lot in the end, but it comes quietly, thoughtfully, between bites of his food. He tells her what he knows. He tells her what he doesn't really know, but hears from a reliable source. He doesn't gossip. Doesn't complain, except about poor Rolf being so stupid when the other cub is really probably just doing what Lukas is doing.

Learning. Training. And doing his best.

Lukas, himself, is a little surprised when Danicka asks if he's going to leave. It seemed obvious that he would; he's never for a moment thought he'd stay there forever. "Yeah," he says. "I think maybe sometimes the cubs stay on, but not really. The Caern isn't that powerful, and I think if there were too many more Garou we'd drain the Caern. I don't really understand the details," he admits, "but it has something to do with how strong the Caern totem is.

"I don't know where I'm going to go yet." A small, wry flick of a smile. "I guess it's a little like going to college. I'll look around to see what's out there and what'll have me."

Danicka

[DELETE LAST TWO POSTS]

Danicka

[OR WHATEVER]

Danicka

Danicka's eyes are a little blank as he talks of the caern and its strength and draining it and the totem. They glaze a bit, uncomprehending, so she eats her dinner and nods, translating in her own mind that if he and all the other cubs stay it could get 'crowded'.

"I'm going to New Orleans," she says after awhile, not really in response to anything he says but in furthering of the conversation topic. But her eyes lift and look over at him. "Not for college or whatever. The Sokolovs... they're still freaked out about 9-11. They have responsibilities here, but they're sending me, a nanny, and two men-at-arms to their estate in Louisiana with their daughter. I'm... sort of her governess."

A dumpling sweeps through the red sauce, her eyes dropping again. "They wanted to send us earlier, but I convinced Madame to let me stay and finish high school here. But after graduation, we have to leave."

Viharfelho

Earlier, Lukas couldn't quite understand why Danicka was so reluctant, so unable, to promise even the faintest hope of seeing one another again after tonight. He thought maybe she was afraid he would be hurt. He thought maybe she was afraid she would be hurt. He begins to understand now that it was never so simple as that. It's not just some question of some shadowy Garou in the background, someone else with the formal claim over her. She has other obligations. Other bonds, ties, claims that draw her away.

New Orleans, she says. He's never been there before. He can barely imagine it, it's so far away. And her eyes have dropped, and then so do his, and they're two teenagers sitting on a bed, they're two not-quite-humans sitting in bathrobes in a three hundred dollar hotel suite where they've just given each other themselves.

Only not really. Because they can't.

"Oh," he says quietly. And he swallows, because he wants to ask if he can visit her, but he thinks maybe she'll cry again. So instead: "When?"

Danicka

There are myths about the goddess Hera restoring her virginity by bathing in a special pool every year. It's a strange idea, why she'd do such a thing, seen from the perspective that this would only make her more vulnerable somehow to her huband Zeus, would make her childlike again. Maybe, modern folk think, it was about increasing her allure, thinking in terms of those slightly warped fantasies some have of dominating a woman by being The One, a sort of ideal where pleasure and sex and togetherness matters less than ownership, control, and self-importance. Except they all have it wrong: there was a time when to be a virgin meant only to be in a state of belonging to oneself.

Hera was reclaiming her independence, her power, every time she left her god-husband and became what she used to be.

It's hard to imagine Danicka, virgin or not, belonging to anyone she hasn't given herself to. Lukas has seen what few do inside of her: she's strong. Her frailty is both true to form and deceptive. So what he felt with her -- feels with her -- has to be of her own will. She's given herself to him, even if only for tonight, even if she can't promise him anything else or even that she'll stay his no matter who she's handed off to. He did feel that. He wasn't lying to himself, imagining it.

"After graduation," she says, nudging a french fry away. Then, remembering he has no idea when that is -- doesn't even 'get' prom -- she looks over at him. "In a couple of weeks."

Viharfelho

"Oh," again, just as quietly. He thinks a moment. He looks at the french fry she nudges; wonders in the back of his mind if she's offering it to him. He looks down at his tray. He's eaten almost everything, and he wishes suddenly and absurdly he'd left something to offer her. A token. Affection.

"I guess we're leaving around the same time," he adds a little later. "Have you ... been to New Orleans before?"

Danicka

In reality, Danicka is just performing one of the many tricks of the trade for those who do not want to eat, who either have no appetite or no love for themselves, those whose intake is being watched by friends and family. She is doing that thing where she moves her food around on the plate either to make it look like she ate more or simply to have something to do -- in this case, the latter. She is just bored, and she moves her food around as though perhaps there are tea leaves hidden underneath, secrets to her future and his that will tell her how to feel.

But she looks up at him, not knowing he wants to feed her, when she's quite full and would have to reject it -- reject him. She shakes her head. "No. I've never been out of the state. Well, technically. But Jersey doesn't count."

It really doesn't.

"It looks like a neat city, I guess. But really different. The guys they're sending us with are apparently like, avid vampire hunters or something. They've gotta be insane." She huffs a laugh, shaking her head. "Watch too much Buffy."

Viharfelho

"That's a good thing," Lukas says, very serious. "I heard New Orlean's beautiful, but overrun by vampires. You have to be careful. They're predators, but they're not always animals. Sometimes you don't even know you're looking at one. And other times they can be very alluring." A small pause. "Or so Istok tells me. I've only seen one, and it was like a rabid beast."

He falls quiet. After a moment, he closes his tray of food, twisting around to set it on the nightstand. And he smiles a little, "Thank Radovan for me when you get a chance, okay? It was really good." Then Lukas notices her box, all the food still left in it. "Aren't you hungry?"

Danicka

All she does is stare at him when he says that. Overrun by vampires, like vampires are a thing, they're this real danger and they're not members of the Cullen family or the deformed things from old movies or the bumpy-faced type from Buffy that explode into dust. She's very still, staring at him, her mouth open a little. But then she blinks, a few times in fact, and just -- absorbs it. Just like that. Doesn't resist, doesn't argue, just accepts. Vampires are a thing. And they're apparently all over New Orleans, which makes her wonder just what the hell the Sokolovs are thinking.

But given what she knows of the Sokolovs, it doesn't strike her as strange that they might just be that crazy. Stupid Fangs.

Lukas closes his tray, so Danicka takes the cue and closes hers as well, moving it over to stack on top of his. Of course he knows there's still food in it, but not exactly a ton. She gives him a weird Look when he looks at her remains as though she hasn't touched it and asks her if she's not hungry. "I said I was," she says, diffident like before. "And I ate!" which isn't loud, but a touch on the defensive side. "Not all of us are growing... Philodoxes or whatever," she goes on, waving a hand at him. "Some of us actually have to work fried cheese off on a stairmaster."

Viharfelho

When Lukas smiles, he looks a little surprised sometimes, like he's startled by his own happiness. It's like that right now as he laughs.

"I don't think you have to work anything off," he says. "But, seriously, you think I'm a Philodox?"

Danicka

She raises her eyebrows at him. No, she hasn't ever gotten on a Stairmaster. But she hardly lounges around all day -- eating as little as she does, she wouldn't be this thin. She neither starves herself nor over-exercises. She just... can't put away as much as her body needs to be as active as she is. She doesn't have the appetite for it. He looks happy, though, and she's smiling, and her eyebrows stay up.

"I don't know. You could be anything. But you're very... serious. You overthink things and you worry about, like, everything. So I figure it was that or --"

Danicka looks at him. Her smile flickers; doesn't quite die. "Oh."

Viharfelho

Oh, she says. She's already figured it out. But he says it anyway:

"I'm not a Philodox. I'm an Ahroun." He looks at her a moment, studies the flicker in her smile, the way it's almost imperceptibly smaller now. "Does it matter?"

Danicka

Galliards don't have that burden of leadership, future or present. She already knows that. They don't have to be like Ahrouns. They don't have that same glint in their eye. Ragabashes, well -- they seem to take to the role, they like being insane, nobody takes them seriously so they act like dumbshits. One of them pulled a prank on her last year, followed her down a dark street making shadows call out of her, acting like a maniac til she was running, crying, yelling for help, embarrassing herself and terrified, and

Danicka doesn't know what happened to him. She told her brother, and she never heard the rest of the story. She wonders if his punishment was simply to owe Vladislav a favor. She knows that's how it works. His mercy isn't mercy at all, because mercy is supposed to be free. Vladik's is not. His leniency and forgiving nature are simply the accural of debts. He never forgets who is in his ledger. Never lets them forget, either.

And, well. She knows all about Theurges. What they're like. She wouldn't recognize Rolf as one, though; she'd think him a Ragabash, if he's so addled.

Ahrouns, too. Danicka remembers what living with an Ahroun is like. A strong, serious one -- just like Lukas. But one much older, and far more protective, and without those flashing smiles across Lukas's face. She can see what he'll likely become in a few years. In ten. In twenty. If he lives that long, of course. She looks at him as he goes ahead and says it, and just nods -- yeah, I know -- as the words are leaving his mouth.

"No," she says softly, "not really. Just... my mom was."

Danicka

[*whistles*]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 1 )

Viharfelho

[EEE MY TWO DICES]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (6, 6) ( success x 2 )

Danicka

[That 'no' is... conflicted. She knows it shouldn't, and she doesn't want it to. It does, though.]

Viharfelho

Lukas will change as he grows up. As he becomes Shadow Lord, and as he becomes a full-fledged Garou. He'll gain a sort of quiet confidence he doesn't quite have yet. Those quick, startled smiles of his will turn into something slower, rarer, warmer. But with that, he'll grow stronger. Darker. More rageful. And if he isn't careful, he'll become harder too, more callous, more suspicious. He'll start dividing things so cleanly into worth it and not worth it piles. He might start to think of kin as liabilities, as responsibilities, not quite as people

though perhaps this single, singular night will change that course -- for better or worse, though, is hard to say.

Still. The truth is plainly there. He is Ahroun, which is one of the more dangerous subspecies of a dangerous beast. And she has known Ahrouns before. She has seen the damage they can wreak, physical and otherwise. No, she says, but no isn't quite what she means.

And he sees that. He sees that, and he hears the rest, and perhaps for the first time tonight the pieces begin to fall together - her storied mother, an Ahroun out of the Sept of the Green. He wonders - he tries to remember if all those stories he's heard about Night Warder-rhya included a daughter, who is kin. A son, who is Garou. He can't remember. It doesn't really matter. This much is true for him: it doesn't change anything.

Not quite the same on her side, though.

"I'm still me," he says quietly. "I'm not different just because you've read my label."

Danicka

Lukas was raised not with heroes, not even with Garou, but by a family of Kin. He had an annoying big sister who was -- and is -- a bit of a cheeky know it all. His father knows how to yell and scold and spank but he has a line he won't cross, has never crossed. His mother was raised so wealthy that it's been an ardurous adaptation to the poverty they lived in -- and no longer have. He has his own problems, but he can't even imagine the life Danicka has lived. Most Ahrouns do not stay at home to raise their babies. And there is a reason for that.

Danicka is a reason for that.

If he put it together than Danicka's mother was a famous Ahroun from the sept of the Green who died a few years ago, it wouldn't be because any of those songs mention a daughter. Or her mate. One mentions that she mothered a Theurge. That's about it. And she hasn't mentioned that her brother is a Theurge; she doesn't use their deed-names often.

It matters to her. She knows it doesn't matter to him who her mother or brother is, but she doesn't really believe him when he says that, when he acts like he doesn't care. He doesn't care because he doesn't really know. He doesn't care because he can't fathom how much she has been molded by these things -- which is, even in Danicka's mind, the main reason he should care. She is not, has never been, free from the influence of what her mother was, who her mother was. She never will be, no matter who she grows up to be, no matter how much she changes. It will always matter. It doesn't matter to him because...

he doesn't know. And it would be nice to keep it that way. So she doesn't tell him.

"I didn't say you were," Danicka responds, her voice quiet but level. This she says gently, so he doesn't feel pushed off, kicked away: "And I did say it doesn't matter. Okay?"

Viharfelho

And Lukas thinks about that for a moment. It's the thinking that made her think he was a Philodox: the way he'd pause sometimes - oftentimes - and simply process for a moment. Consult with himself, weigh the input, formulate an output.

"Okay."

That's the output this time. That, and a little nod, and a littler smile. It must be somewhat novel for Danicka to be believed so readily on something so sensitive. Or perhaps not. She's already becoming such a good liar. She already knows - people want to believe sometimes. And then they're easiest to fool.

And quieter: "Do you wanna get under the covers?"

Danicka

Matter as it might to Danicka that this young cub who came up here with his virginity and lost it -- as though he misplaced it somewhere in the room, check under the bed and in the cracks of the couch -- is an Ahroun, it doesn't matter in the way he might worry about. She isn't running for the door, making an excuse to leave. She doesn't begin asking him if he's going to hurt her. In fact, she pushes back again, stays close to the line she's drawn for the last hour, and doesn't want him to pry into her every thought, pick apart her every word. Let it be, she says again, thought not in so many words.

And he does. Which is why it doesn't really matter. Which is why she wasn't sure even as she said it if that no was a lie or not.

Their trays are already off the bed again, and Danicka's hair is drying, though it's still quite damp. He asks her, quietly, if she wants to get under the covers. It's nearing four in the morning. Bars closing. People leaving those bars are talking about going to some 24-hour diner, get some 'breakfast', watch the sun come up before they finally let themselves drop. And she's here. Warm and clean and safe and fed. With him.

Danicka gives him a small shake of her head, moving onto her knees. Her hands go to the belt of her robe, pulling on one end of it, the looping bow coming easily, fluidly undone. Even when the sides of her robe fall away from each other she isn't bared by much: a line of flesh, not even as broad as his hand, down from her throat and between her breasts, along her belly, her navel, that golden-brown hair between her legs, the meeting of her thighs. She reaches up and tucks her fingers under the collar of the robe, helps it slip from her shoulders, fall down her arms, which she draws up and out of the collapsing sleeves.

Watching him, all the while. But not for long. Not waiting for longer than a moment, a heartbeat and a half, as she kneels there on the bed, exposed as though for no reason but for him to look at her, see her. Danicka leans forward then, planting her hands on the bed, crawling over him --

onto him, opening her legs over his lap and sinking down against him, robe or no robe, putting her hands on his shoulders. "Soon," she whispers.

Viharfelho

She's here. With him.

And in the end that's why he stayed. Because as painful as it was to think about not having her tomorrow, not seeing her again before he leaves the city, maybe not seeing her again ever - as painful as the argument was, and as painful as it was to think that maybe she didn't even want him - she's here. With him. And even if they have nothing else, they have tonight.

He would have been happy to have just talked to her on the street. He would have been happy to have just gone to a noisy little restaurant with her, had some illicit beer, walked around the city, watched the sun come up. He would have been happy to come here and watch Harry Potter, even if her nearness on the bed drove every nerve in his body to distraction. He would have been happy, and

he has been happy.

Somehow it doesn't surprise him, though, when she shakes her head. When she rises to her knees he knows what she'll do next. He's half an animal, after all. Maybe he can scent it in the air. On her. It doesn't mean he doesn't breathe a little faster when she undoes the robe. When she slips out of it, that soft cotton slipping so silently down her body, his lips part, his heart starts hammering against his breastbone. He's reaching for her even as she's crawling over him, and when she sinks down against him she finds him hardening under his robe, which begins to slip asunder as she slides her hands under the fabric.

Soon, she promises him. A promise she can keep. And his eyes are so brilliant when they fix on her face, a color and clarity and wildness that don't quite belong in a human face. He sits up and leans up to her and he kisses her mouth; he kisses the hollow at the base of her throat. He wraps his arms around her and even now there's a sort of needful strength in it. He holds her so close, so firmly, as he bends to her breasts, takes her nipple into his mouth with a soft, unashamed moan like he's waited so long for her.

Danicka

The way that Danicka disrobes this time isn't rushed, isn't caught up in the midst of the heat that got started between them as soon as they started walking downtown together. Lukas has time now to look at her, to see her bare in a way he didn't even when they were showering, or how she was when she was under him, receiving him, accepting him. She is beautiful. Breasts small and high, skin smooth and with a tan so gentle it fades into the paleness of her breasts, her hips, her ass. Strands of semi-wet hair cross her cheeks, soften her cheekbones and the line of her jaw. Her eyes are bright green rims around enormous black pupils, looking for him in the half-light that comes through the window.

She wants him. And if he doubted that before, for a moment or for minutes on end that flayed him alive, it's hard to remember what it felt like to be so uncertain. Because the way Danicka looks at him now...

Even when she sinks down on his lap, wraps herself around him and presses herself to his warmth, she's watching him not to read his thoughts or try to gauge his emotion but simply trying to tell him, show him, that even if it does matter, the fact that he's an Ahroun doesn't make a difference. The fact that she can't promise she'll see him tomorrow or a week from now or ever again doesn't mean she doesn't wish things were different. She can't say it. Doesn't want to give him hope, she said. Then break his heart.

Already his heart matters.

She doesn't try to open his robe when she climbs atop him. She lets it be, touching his shoulders and his chest where the collar bares him in a large V, but she doesn't reach for the belt. Danicka moves her lower body as they kiss, though, and shifts til the fabric moves aside and she can feel his cock against her inner thighs. It makes her gasp a little in his mouth, feeling him go from soft to slowly hotter, slowly firmer. She could kiss him for hours, just like this, even after getting him inside of her, even after they start to move together, she could just kiss him forever.

He kisses her neck and she shivers. He kisses down to her chest and she arches for him there, lifts her breast to his mouth with the bend of her spine, watching him. Her eyes fix on his lips where they wrap around her nipple, her lips open and the air between them filled with the sound of her soft, hushed panting. Lukas's cock, stirring, rubs slightly against her cunt, feels her wetness just as it's beginning. She shudders in that hard circle of his arms.

As her eyes close, Danicka runs her hand down his arm to his wrist, and gently eases his palm over her untended breast, giving the faintest moan when his heat covers her there. "Oh," she murmurs, and rolls her hips to stroke herself across his cock.

Viharfelho

This could so easily be read as the cliche: the more experienced woman coaching her young lover, teaching him how to pleasure a woman. It's not that, though. It's not altruism that drives Danicka's gentle guidance; she's not teaching him to please a woman, other women. She doesn't really want to think of him moving on to other women. Already, his heart matters. Already, it matters that he is hers, and no other's.

So she moves his hand to her breast, and it's her breast she's showing him. Here. Like this. Oh, she murmurs, that soft sound telling him this is all right, this is right. And he's lifting his eyes without taking his mouth from her, looking at her face as he tongues her nipple in his mouth, strokes her nipple to a hard bud with his fingers. He's looking at her and the expressions that flash across her face, almost too fast to be seen, as she starts to stroke herself across his cock.

And what she's doing drives him out of his mind. She can feel it in the way his hand tightens on her back, and the way he sucks harder on her breast every time she slides her cunt over him. She's starting to get wet. He can feel the genesis of it, that first wetness slicking over his erection. It makes him make a muffled, low noise in his throat. It makes his eyes close, his mouth parting from hers just long enough to gasp a breath

before he's on her again, a little harder than before, his hand so gently squeezing her breast, rubbing it, rolling the nipple under his palm again and again in rhythm to the slow roll of her hips. There's something hypnotic and intoxicating about all this. He's so hard now, his flesh jumping and jerking as her cunt slides over him, leaving him hot, leaving him wet.

"I need to be inside you," he whispers. He lifts his head, and he catches her mouth, and the kiss is hungry. Her breast is wet from his mouth, wet against his chest when he clasps her to him,

and this is the first time, the very first, that he opens his mouth and bites her shoulder. Gently. Carefully. He doesn't know if it'll frighten her, but he can't bear not having some part of her in his mouth, gripped and held, his. Every bone in his body, every scrap of his instinct seems to demand it. His hips buck against hers; he thrusts his cock in a long smooth glide over her cunt, and moans.

Danicka

They can have this. Tonight, maybe again if the stars align and they fight for it, lie for it -- and the more she's with him, the longer he holds her, the more Danicka wants to believe she can, wants to come up with not just fantasies but practical plans for how she's going to keep him, hold him back just as tightly when she knows how weak she is -- they can have this. Not just each other. It isn't as simple as that or as basic, it isn't an exchange. It's something reached for, attained.

They were walking along at night, and somehow one of the stars appeared in the sky, despite all of New York's lights -- and Danicka will not know what she is looking at when she goes out to New Orleans, out on that dark plantation, and sees what the sky really is -- so they reached up. Maybe Lukas nudged her, pointed, asked something inane like doesn't that star look close to you? and she said yes, yes it did, and he was so happy. Because she saw it too, felt it too. Was there with him. So, unbelievably bold and childishly impudent, she reached for it, but it was stuck. So he helped. So they pulled it out, and pulled it down, and could only hold it if they kept all four of their hands cupped around it, containing its light and warmth between them.

Something like that. It's something like that. And they can have it, so long as they stay together. Hold on.

Danicka touches his face now, whimpers softly as he's sucking on her, looking at him as he looks at her. Her fingers stroke through his hair. It could be called loving, these caresses, if she loved him. She doesn't know what love looks like, feels like, if it exists. She touches him that way, though. So gentle. So close, like she can kiss him even if his mouth is... occupied.

"Switch," she breathes, drawing her breast out of his mouth, giving him her other one, too lost in this -- him, this, them -- to even laugh at herself, to care. She bites back a sound that almost escapes her when he sucks on her other nipple, touches her breast, all while she's rubbing herself on him and her slick is so very hot on his skin, so close. He's so hard now. She wants to tell him he's so hard, like somehow he might not know, like it's escaped his notice that he's hot, and hard, and ready to fuck. Like, feeling her wet and grinding on him, he might think she hasn't noticed it yet, and she wants him to know that, no, no, she knows. She knows what he wants.

But Danicka doesn't tell Lukas how fucking hard his cock is. She gasps, because he tells her that he needs to be inside of her. This is so much like what he said before, when he didn't want -- when he turned down, really -- Danicka's mouth on him, which might have been unbearable. Might still be, tell the truth. And she thought it would be nice but now, all she wants is to feel him in her, and kiss him,

complete some kind of circuit.

Danicka kisses him hard when he lifts his mouth, just before the word you is even all the way out of him, her wet nipples pressed to his chest. She's pushed his robe off his shoulders now, halfway down his arms, and she's using his body to hold herself while she works her pussy all over his cock like she's just going to do this to him, fuck him without fucking him, get herself off, because -- and this is in her mind, take note -- he is just so fucking hot, and she can't fucking help it, she just wants to come all over him and fantasies of him flipping her over and fucking her from behind are starting to ignite in her brain, circuit or no circuit, all sorts of things.

This is when he bites her. This is when he sets his teeth against her skin and holds her, and feels her startle at first, because it is unexpected more than because it is unnerving -- but who's to say if he can tell the difference, concerned as he is that he'll frighten her, or hurt her? But he puts his teeth on her like that, savage and animal, as she's thinking of him all but pounding her, and in a second that startle of surprise is melting into something else, something like need. Lukas bucks his hips and Danicka moans.

Lukas moans and Danicka twists her hips in the middle of his thrust, feels him against her opening. Lukas is there, and Danicka reaches down and guides him inside, falling over his shoulder as she takes him, which she wasn't going to do until he took his robe off all the way but oh --

she doesn't care. She doesn't fucking care about that. Only this, fucking him almost immediately, long deep rolls of her hips to work herself onto him and on him, making this maddening noise on every one.

Viharfelho

The sound he lets out when Danicka takes him inside her is utterly overcome. A long shuddering vowel muffled on her flesh as his hands grab at her back; as his teeth close on her shoulder. She's fucking him almost immediately, and it's like it's too soon for him, it's like for once he's the one that needs a moment to adjust to the feel of her. His shoulders hit the headboard, his head hits the wall, his eyes are shut and he groans every time she slides down on him.

She's falling forward to his chest. His robe is half-tangled somewhere at his elbows, off his shoulders, falling apart with every roll of her hips, every rise of his body beneath hers. His eyes open as she's coming down to him and his mouth finds hers, he kisses her open-eyes, watching her, then closing his eyes. The kiss turns ferocious. He eats at her mouth, which is something he didn't have the confidence for even two hours ago. His arms loop up under hers, his biceps hot against her sides. His hands curve over her shoulders and he pulls her against him, holds her right there as he shifts his weight somehow, the bed shifting under their bodies, and then

he's fucking her right back, meeting her stroke for stroke, a long thrust, a firm impact on each one.

Neither of them really know how to hold on to this. This moment they've caught out of the ether. This star they cup between their shared hands, brilliant and fragile and precious. Neither of them have any plans, any bright ideas, but oh, they want to keep this. Keep each other. Right now, Lukas thinks maybe that alone will be enough. Right now, Lukas isn't thinking very much at all.

Danicka

Oh, tonight it's been Lukas, over and over, who needed time. Who couldn't bear to wait any longer to be inside of her, and who, then, couldn't bear it when he was. Who is overcome, his mind melting every time her pussy slides over him, squeezes him. Danicka is not afraid or uncertain, and she wants him more than she knows what to do with. She tries to follow a certain pattern, a set of behaviors that she knows will keep her safe and unbroken, but they don't work. They feel false with him, because they are false.

She watches him fall back and leans over him, follows him, staying pressed to his body. Her breasts brush over his chest again and again, but the knot of his robe's belt lies between their stomachs. Danicka reaches down and starts yanking at it, undoing it quickly, vehemently, opening it up til all that is left are two wide loops of white across his elbows.

"Lukas," she moans, trying to fuck him quicker now, faster, but he starts kissing her so hard, and she moans into his mouth, feeds him that sound like breath. Her hands move to his face, keeping him right there, kissing him even as he's putting his arms around her like that, fucking up into her, holding her. Danicka's voice melts into a groan as she grinds down on him, circling her hips on his cock, sweat building along her lean, sloping back.

Viharfelho

Lukas --

" -- I'm here." And he's kissing her again, and she's dissolving into a groan, or her voice is - her body stays so taut, her motion so tight; she winds her hips and he nearly dies. God, he snarls; there's almost no room between them, no space between their bodies, no space between their mouths. He creates a little room when he sets his head back against the wall again. Looks down their bodies, watches her moving on him, realizes suddenly that he's not naked yet, not quite, though she's laid all the rest of the robe open,

unwrapped him like a gift. That thought seems familiar. He thought the same of her not so long ago, didn't he? He's not sure. A handful of hours may as well have been days, a lifetime. He can barely remember who he was, troubled and tumultuous, leaning against the wall to try to seem cool and calling out to this girl

who almost walked past him

who's in bed with him now

who's taken him into her body, into her life, is riding him as he sits up suddenly, strips out of the sleeves of the robe, all but throws his now-bare arms around her as though now, now, he could finally feel her the way he wants to.

"Faster," he breathes. His hands have discovered a spot on her hips where they fit. He holds her there, breathing fast, breathing hard, watching her as she moves. "Oh, god, yes. Here, let me -- "

and he's bending to her, his back a smooth muscular curve under her hands, taking her breast in his mouth again. Completing the circuit; sucking her nipple into his mouth as his hands grip her hips, plant her so fucking firmly on his cock; grinds.

Danicka

When she was in the shower with him, he wrapped her in his arms and Danicka was soft. So soft, so pliant, like any moment if he pressed her too hard she might take a different form, be someone else. He could feel her lightness there, and how slender her arms are, and even Danicka knows he'd be lying if he said he didn't want to protect her. She knows he'd be lying if he said he didn't also want her, just like that, so tender and so warm and so very delicate, something precious to be gently, gently adored.

Like this, though, she's so strong somehow, her body so tight, and she'd be lying if she claimed there weren't something -- not quite dominant but aggressive, yes, aggressive and demanding and powerful, though she would use the word dominant at this time, this year, this life -- about the way she fucks him. She wants him naked; a moment later he's naked, taking the hint and ripping the robe off his arms so that they're free and warm and around her, nothing between them but skin. She wants him, period, and he takes her in his arms and lets her come atop him and lets her rub against him.

Yet there's nothing about it that implies she would take from him anything he didn't want to give her, demand of him anything he was unable to offer. Danicka looks at him and knows that what she wants will make him feel good. What she wants will make him happy, give him pleasure, and he will want it, too. So she does it, ruthlessly, and loses herself in the way he keeps kissing her, snarling. Danicka was imagining some very rough sex indeed just before Lukas bit her, just before Lukas entered her.

Now she groans and lowers her mouth to his neck, opening her mouth and putting her teeth there, even as she's obeying, fucking him faster, following the lead of his hands on her hips, harder. More. Now.

Viharfelho

In Lukas's mind, he has been a cub forever. He has been a Garou forever, and to some degree, this is the truth. There are plenty of young Garou whose entire changing life was lived in less time than Lukas has had in training. For every one of those cubs that he saw come and go and go on to bigger and greater things during his tenure, there's at least one other cub who got out into the great wide world -- and died two months later, torn asunder by something far bigger and stronger. Compared to them, he's been a Garou for a very, very long time.

Yet in a very real sense, he is still so very young. Still so very new to it all. Right now, his experience is thin, and what he operates off is so often what someone else tells him. His mentor. His elders. His own instinct. And what they tell him is that

a bite to the neck is a show of dominance. Teeth on the throat is a threat. And neither can be tolerated.

So -- when Danicka's teeth grip his neck, Lukas startles - a sharp physical tensing, a fast harsh indraw of breath. His hands are suddenly hard on her hips. There's a sound unnervingly like a growl in his throat, but

god, she's still fucking him, faster now like he asked, groaning against his skin, and

the growl still comes, but it has a different meaning; it's a sound of raw and sudden lust, his hands on her hips are moving her again, urging her onward. Faster, faster, harder, his palm cracks against her ass, he smacks her and he'd be shocked at himself if he weren't so far gone, but as is he only snarls at her, yes, that's it, ride me, oh god you're so good. You're so good, don't stop.

Danicka

Neither of them is human. But Lukas is a monster.

Her fearlessness of him has been glimpsed so many times tonight, but nothing, not even her screaming at him in frustration, has been this vivid. That isn't why he wants her so badly. He can smell her breeding every time he takes a breath, he can taste it in her sweat, feel it in this sudden strength of hers, this mad lust, but that can't be all there is to it, either. It can't be reduced to nothing more than the fact that he is a Garou of the tribe of Thunder and she is Thunder's kin, literally made for one another. And it isn't that they were children once together, are slightly older children together now, putting aside the very last of childish things -- together.

Danicka doesn't know what it is. Why she isn't scared he's going to tear her apart for meeting his eyes, how she knows he won't grab her by the throat for daring to raise her voice at him, why she doesn't worry that he's going to throw her off of him and pin her down somehow, show her who really is dominating who, when she opens her mouth mindlessly on his throat and holds him in her teeth.

The truth is, biting her shoulder while he mates with her is dominant enough. What Danicka is doing, though --

unthinkable. Intolerable.

Making love to an Ahroun, over and over in a night, one whose family knows her family and who seems to want her badly enough to risk everything, is unthinkable. Is intolerable. Yet here she is. And here Lukas is, startling even more sharply than Danicka did when he first bit her, his hands clenching, and she doesn't stop. She doesn't even slow down, moaning against his neck, her mouth softening, suckling, moving on him til he smacks her.

Which, with any other two people, might be ridiculous brinksmanship, one-upping, each pushing the other as hard and as far as they can to see who snaps first.

But this is Danicka. And she opens her mouth and all but wails, leaning into him and clutching him in her arms and her cunt, bouncing on him now, faster, her pussy so wet now it's slippery, so wet now he can hear them sliding together, everything sweat and heat and the sound of her moaning.

Viharfelho

Those sounds she's making inflame him. He's never heard anyone make sounds like that before. Which is obvious, except - somehow he thinks he never will hear anyone else make sounds quite like these. No one else. No one but her. No one whose voice, scent, presence, heat has such a mainline right into his blood. Right down into the pit of his soul.

And - those sounds she's making crush him somehow. Make him ache, make him wild, make him want to wrap her up in his arms and turn her under, not to dominate her but to protect her. To keep her, and to keep her safe, keep her whole, hold her together.

I'm here, he keeps telling her, muttering it to her in one language and then the other, Jsem tady. He tells her this like she needs to hear it; like maybe if she hears it she can take it, she can handle what he's doing to her and what they're doing to each other. He's here, as if she couldn't feel it, as if the hard solid drive of his cock into her wasn't proof enough, as if the heat and solidity of his body under hers, flexing against hers, wasn't evidence enough. As if she needed this somehow: this assurance, his voice calling to her, grounding her,

keeping her right here.

His hands slip on her back. They just showered, but they're drenched in sweat again, they're hitting a sort of pace and stride that's nothing sort of madness. Their bodies are a percussion of their own, their breath, their moans, an erotic overlay on that. She's clutching him and he's grabbing at her back, grabbing at her hips, his hands are slipping off her body and he's reaching back to hook his hands over the top of the headboard, using this leverage to raise his hips off the bed -- his thighs tensing under her rear, his arms and shoulders and chest tensing where she holds him -- raises his hips off the bed and starts fucking her. Pounding her, biting her shoulder again, holding her in his teeth because he has nothing else to hold her with right now.

No room for words now in his mouth. Nothing but rough, panting growls, an animal after all.

Danicka

Children remember their parents' voices from hearing them while they were inside of their mothers. Voices are used as identifiers, almost as unique as fingerprints. No, Lukas won't ever hear a voice like Danicka's, he'll never hear another woman make this sort of sound, it will never be with anyone else the way it was with her. Even if they're only friends, his blood and body and mind will all remember her, may ache for her when it isn't her.

No one -- not even instinct -- has taught Lukas yet that he can take those women who are terrified of him on sight and make them bend to him, make them want him, make them give it up for him, fill that need for him, convince himself there is nothing wrong with this, it is just what his kind do, it is acceptable in the long run, because analyzing it beyond his own needs is in the 'Not Worth It' pile. He hasn't learned anything like that before. Maybe he won't want it like that now,

but he hasn't learned bitterness yet, not truly. Danicka never wants him to. In another lifetime she tells him lies, avoids telling him about herself, because it would make him hurt so badly, and she is so afraid of that pain turning him sour, turning him hard. Not when he is so warm now. Not when he is so good. And there is so little that's good in the world -- this, she already knows.

Danicka doesn't need him to hold her together though. Earlier he worried it was too much when she came, too much for her to contain, how could a person take it, survive it, especially one so frail and making so much noise? He tells her he's there with her but she can't answer, wouldn't answer, because of course he's with her. That's why she's like this. She closes her mouth on his to make him stop using words, stop sounding so human, as though words make any sense anymore. And all the while she's moving on him, her hand going to his chest, covering his heart without even meaning to, working herself on that cock of his until he can feel her tightening up, the noises she's loosing into him and against him getting so much louder, quicker, closer together

as they get closer together.

No: she doesn't need to hear it, doesn't need his words, doesn't even seem to want them right now. But oh, his voice, yes. The way he growls and snarls and pants, gasps at her as she gives all of it back to him, sweat beaded on her temples, warming under his palms,

"No!" Danicka pants, when he reaches for the headboard. "Hold me, hold me --"

which is all she can manage, her cunt clenching hard and tight around him, her body collapsing into his, dissolving into him. She curls up on his chest, pressing her face to his shoulder, her arms wrapped around him and her body moving, grinding, fucking him as hard as she dares, opening her mouth to release her cries right into his skin, tattoo them on his shoulder forever so they'll follow him like a conscience. If she could speak she'd tell him to hold her, and she'd call him baby or Lukas, she'd tell him she's going to come, don't stop,

but he isn't going to stop. He knows who he is and who he is to her. And he knows, moments after she cries out like that, that Danicka is going to come. So quick, so soon like before, so far beyond 'turned on' or 'horny' or 'wanting him' she doesn't know what to call it, shuddering to pieces atop him, holding him as though if she lays her whole body along his he'll feel her come, feel it like she does, know it as deeply as she does, come with her. Stay with her.

Viharfelho

Hold me, she says, and he can no more deny her than he can deny the urge to breathe. So his hands leave the headboard almost as soon as he takes hold of it; he wraps his arms around her so tightly, she curls against his chest, she presses her face to his shoulder and,

god they're so close now, they're wrapped around each other so close that their lovemaking, their fucking, is a hard grind, is a writhing of their bodies together, is him inside her so deep, barely withdrawing before they're coming together again. She's so wet and he's so hard and they're making a mess of each other all over again and she's crying out against his shoulder, etching the sound and smell and feel of her so deep into his memory he'll never forget this, he'll never forget, he'll carry this with him like a light, like a flame held in the darkest, safest corner of his heart.

Already, he knows when she's about to come. Already, he knows her like that: knows the way her hands pull at him, knows the way her body moves on his, knows those deep involuntary clenches of her body, understands the hidden code of her body. He holds her tighter, and she doesn't need to speak to say this to him. She doesn't need to name him, doesn't need to tell him or warn him -- he knows, he wraps his arms around her so tight that his arms go all the way around her, encircle her entirely,

and no, he can't understand how one person could take it, survive it; he can't understand it, but here they are, and they're living, breathing proof that it is possible.

It is possible - when her orgasm hits her - to feel himself lighting up with her, as though her pleasure is a liquid flame spilling into his veins. It is possible to feel that searing, mindblowing pleasure, to go rigid with it, to snarl and groan mindlessly with it, to arch off the bed with it, lift her on the tide of his motion like her weight is nothing, his shoulders to the headboard and his feet to the bed; to hold her and keep her and keep her right there as he thrusts into her over and over, slams into her over and over, comes into her buried so deep that he loses his mind in her even as she's falling to pieces around him,

possible to do all this, feel all this, and survive.

They survive this. They survive, and afterward it's a slow collapse, they're coming back down quite literally, he's shaking again, she's warm and limp and liquid over him, he's still holding on to her and his arms ache with how tightly he's held her to his chest. His eyes are closed. His head falls back against the headboard. He can't breathe fast enough to get oxygen in; he thinks he might pass out. He finds her mouth anyway, though he doesn't have the air to spare for this. He finds her mouth and he kisses her, blindly, moaning into her kiss like even that is too much for him to bear.

Danicka

He isn't the only one shaking. Danicka trembles just to breathe, panting against him as they fall back to the covers, ruining another blanket with their sweat, with their wetness, with their sex. She can't even whimper now, can't speak, can't moan. She shudders whenever he twitches inside of her, her hands clutching at him, her cheek on his chest, trying to keep the various parts of her body tied together, held close. She can't think. She can't move, except for those tremors going through her. Lukas kisses her and she whimpers for the first time as though in pain, as overstimulated as she might be if he reached down and touched her again. She buries her face against his chest, rubs it over his pectoral muscle, closes her eyes and shudders, holding onto him.

When she speaks, it's too soon, and the words feel and sound raw, are raw, aching, as she rushes them out of her, gets them out so she can forget words again, sink back below the surface of conscious thought:

"Can we get under the covers without you leaving me?"

Not that he's going anywhere. Not that he's going to get up and put on his dirty clothes and walk out. But don't leave her: don't leave her body. They're together. Joined.

Viharfelho

Lukas's arms are still around Danicka. He hasn't let her go, hasn't loosened his embrace at all. When she speaks, he stirs a little. His hands move over her skin, amorphous and aimless. He explores her body as though he's looking for all the parts of himself that he's sure have scattered and fused into her somehow. From her spine to her shoulderblade, the small of her back to the nape of her neck, his hands define her, and by virtue of remembering they are not, in fact, the same person, define himself.

He doesn't answer her. He doesn't laugh at her. He thinks her request is perfectly reasonable; he's never wanted so much to stay right here. So they move carefully: he lifts his body, carrying her with him, and she tugs the blankets back. He works his legs under and draws the sheets up; when he lays himself down, she comes with him. They never bothered with the lights in here. There's only the one token light on over the nightstand, which he reaches out now to click off.

Then it's dark, shadows and grey light cast through the window from the street below. The window is open a crack. They can dimly hear the sounds of the city, quieter here in this affluent neighborhood. More purposeful now, slow and rhythmic and soothing, Lukas's hand runs over Danicka's back, up and down and back again.

"Stay with me, okay?" he whispers.

Danicka

Perhaps this is the first case of serious awkwardness of the night, as they wriggle and grab at covers and tumble on the bed, trying not to lose touch with each other. Danicka even laughs at one point, breathless and exhausted, as Lukas nearly slips free and grabs her by the hip to hold her to him instead, like he was about to drop something off the edge of a cliff. She nuzzles his neck as they settle under the covers, though, and shifts her hips and her arms until she's comfortable, lying mostly on her side facing him, her leg wrapped around him, using his arm as her pillow.

She'll wake with horrific stiffness, a crick in her neck, a soreness in her lower back and her hips, probably a limb asleep. Though they might shift apart at some point, she doesn't want to yet. Lukas, meanwhile, strokes her back. The covers rustle against his knuckles as they move. Danicka drowses against his chest, her breath stirring and coiling on his skin, as she closes her eyes. She is so ready to sleep. So ready to stay.

When he asks her, waking her from some vague fantasy of being nothing more than an animal with him, if she's going to stay. Well: asks her to stay. Requests it.

She puts her hand on his waist under the covers, the place where his side slopes down just before hitting his pelvic bone. "Don't worry so much," she murmurs, and moves a little closer.

Viharfelho

In his mind Lukas can imagine the nerve endings under his skin lighting up in the wake of her fingers, like phosphorescent sea-life in the wake of a ship. It feels like that, that sort of diffuse, ghostly bioluminescence awakening under his skin, dissipating to every corner of his body. He kisses her brow softly in response, closing his eyes.

"Okay," he says. "I won't."

Danicka

"Liar," she whispers, ironic as it is. She smiles, and she knows him right now, every inch of his body and aspect of his soul, though in the morning she may forget everything, the way children are said to forget all the wisdom of the universe they were born with when they begin to learn to speak. It will be a tragic loss, but she isn't thinking of that. She knows him. How could she not know him?

Danicka falls asleep, heavily and quickly, so warm and so relaxed it's impossible not to. Not long later, not even an hour, and it's dawn, summer's light coming early still. She's facing the windows, the light blocked by Lukas's body but still enough to wake her. She has a schedule that has her waking this early most days anyway, so her body is used to it. She crushes her eyes shut and stirs, uncomfortable suddenly with his cock in her, her leg looped. Danicka eases off of him but she doesn't get up from the bed to shut the curtains.

No, she just rolls over, both their backs to the light now, Lukas's chest against her shoulderblades, and closes her eyes again, tucking her head towards the pillow, the blankets, her own hands. She is vaguely aware of the need to be out of here by noon, or eleven, one of those, and thinking of the, she falls asleep, knowing she won't sleep for eight hours, but she never does.

It will be a long time before Danicka's life allows her to sleep as long and as deep as she would like, living off of the savings from paychecks and severance given to her by the Sokolovs. If that is, in fact, the track her life takes now. No matter. She falls asleep against Lukas again, sensing his rage but still not quite sure why it isn't bothering her as much now, why she isn't as afraid.

He's a sleeping wolf. And she knows his temper might snap, but it would take so much for it to snap at her. So she sleeps easy, dead to the sunrise, to the world, to the life that keeps trying to tell her this can never be.

Viharfelho

For his part, Lukas sleeps like the well and truly exhausted. He is heavy and limp and warm, not even waking when Danicka draws herself away from him, turns around, puts her back to his chest. He does roll toward her, though. He rolls toward her, and his arm encircles her; he nuzzles against the back of her neck in his sleep, the razored strands of her hair tickling his nose and making him scrunch his nose, but he never once stirs fully to consciousness.

A little after that he's as deeply asleep as he was before, a solid mass at her back, so warm.

And the hours pass. The city awakens, because of course it does: this is New York, and Saturday is a workday like any other. Tourists pass on the street below, chattering. Taxis honk, though not as much here as on Broadway, in Times Square. A street musician sets up a block or two down, near Central Park; when the wind blows right his saxophone drifts their way. Lukas sleeps through it all, totally unaware, totally unworried and unbothered.

It is, in truth, a deeper and more peaceful sleep than he has at Stark Falls. Than he has anywhere. Perhaps when he wakes the worries will return, the fear of what comes next. For now, there's only bone-deep comfort. Trust. A sense of safety that permeates every level of his consciousness and subconsciousness, all the way down to instinct.

When Danicka stirs to wakefulness, whenever that may be, Lukas does as well. A little slower than her, truth be told, though he's up almost as early as she is most mornings. A little more reluctantly, he reaches for the surface, pulls himself up hand over hand. His eyes open a crack. His arm moves a little, as though he's trying to determine where he ends and she begins. He nuzzles her shoulder and the back of her neck, thoughtless and mindless, sighing a little.

"Mmgh," he says. And closes his eyes again.

Danicka

The sole of Danicka's foot is resting against the top of his, so warm and so close it truly is hard to tell where the boundaries between the land of Her and the kingdom of Him really are. She was dimly aware of his nuzzling, his nose-scrunching, when she moved earlier, but barely. Now she's aware of him waking, really no slower or faster than she does, no sooner or later -- in fact it's hard to tell who wakes first, if either is less reluctant to face the day.

Danicka does not open her eyes. She feels his arm move and shifts under it as though to let him know that she's slightly conscious as well, making a low sound of protest that he is discovering that boundary between them again, urging him to let it be.

He grumbles, and closes his eyes again, nuzzling her. They both go quiet for a little while longer, breathing deeply but not quite falling back asleep, til Danicka yawns, and begins to blink open her eyes. She looks at the door of the hotel, remembering where she is. And if they don't check out in time that's another three hundred dollars, which kind of matters. So she groans, behind closed lips and in her throat, as she starts to push herself up on her side, the sun hitting her back as she rises, hitting her hair as she rolls onto her belly and stretches, rolling her neck, her back arched and her hands pressing into the bed.

"Ahh," she exhales heavily, and then flops down on her stomach, her arms stretched out towards the headboard, her head turning against the mattress itself to look at him.

For awhile. Just a few moments, though.

"I have to go home soon," she says quietly. "Have to stop by the Sokolovs first and change, though."

Danicka breathes in deep, exhales slow. "You should call your mom and dad."

Viharfelho

Danicka drawing away makes Lukas grumble again, his arm tightening a little around her waist even as she rolls, stretches, flops again. She turns to look at him and he opens one eye, the iris bluer by day than it could ever be by night.

She has to go soon, she says. And his other eye opens, and just like that, his forehead wrinkles a little. It's some time before he says anything, but she can see thoughts behind his eyes, his mind moving, working; weighing whether or not he should ask. How to ask.

In the end it's a whisper: "Can I see you again before we leave New York?"

Danicka

"I don't know," and this is the only answer she could give him last night, and she told him she didn't want to talk about it last night, maybe in the morning -- but here she is, copping out. She knows it, and she lets the last word fade away quietly. Danicka's hand on the covers between them covers his hand, first her pinky and then her other fingers, til she curls them around his.

"I'm usually off on Sundays," she tells him softly, like they're conspiring -- which, in a way, they are. "But that's the day I go see my father. Vladik sometimes shows up, too." Her tongue slips out, wetting her lips, one of which she bites for a moment, watching him.

"I don't know," Danicka whispers again.

Viharfelho

Really, if Lukas were a teenager - just a normal teen, concerned largely with whether or not he made the junior varsity football team, and if he passed the trig final, and if the goddamn zit at the end of his nose was going to go away by the time his girlfriend gets back from volleyball camp, and if he was going to have to start studying for the SAT this summer - he'd say something now about how he doesn't know why this matters so much to him. Why she matters so much, and why he feels so deeply for her already.

No; really, the truth is, if he were a normal teenager, he might not even feel so deeply for her. He'd think so, because he'd be young and infatuated with the first girl he's ever fucked, and like Hana's boyfriend he'll be heartbroken when she goes away, but that'll go away in a week, and by the time she comes back he'll have all but forgotten about her. Would have broken up with her a long, long time ago in his heart, and just forgotten to inform her.

He's not, though. And what he feels for her is deep and true, even though it's so new and unexpected it frightens him a little. He doesn't question it; he doesn't bring it up and he doesn't examine it and he doesn't wonder aloud at it. It simply is. It's there, and it's almost painful. It is painful because

she doesn't know if they'll be able to see each other again. She doesn't know.

His hand opens under hers. He lets her fingers between his, and he embraces her like this: hand to hand, fingers intertwined. A moment or so in silence; and then.

Then this: "You know the aquarium in Coney Island? On the boardwalk?" When she nods, he goes on - very softly, very carefully, "I like going there. Maybe I'll go there on Sundays. If you can, then you can come find me there. If you can't ... it won't be like you promised and then didn't show up. Okay?"

Danicka

To have something so deep while still so young is more than a little frightening -- they would be fools if they weren't afraid, weren't confused by it. Were they normal, Lukas's thoughts would be about trig and football and his girlfriend, the SATs, all of it. Danicka would probably get to go to college. She would have figured out how brilliant she is by now and she'd have scholarships for math and science, she'd probably have decided a boyfriend isn't worth her time, not when she's going to get as far away as possible for college -- nothing against NYC, but her family is bonkers, and controlling, and ugh. She's going to Boston, at very least.

Instead here she is, lying alongside this teenager she's just fucked three times, showered with, ate with, slept with. Made love to -- can't get away from that now, she's the one who said it. And he didn't argue. Couldn't, or thought it might upset her if he balked at the term, but she doesn't think that's why Lukas accepted that phrase without blinking. She was there with him. He was there with her. Every time.

Is here with her now, in all this trepidation and anxiety, and he understands what she said last night. She didn't want to make a promise to him only to have to break it. So he gives her an out, but also a way.

It makes her lips quirk along with her eyebrows when he says something about the aquarium; she wants to tease him. It doesn't seem like the sort of place a young werewolf would go for fun. She thinks: "I don't have tomorrow off, though. I sort of... gave it up to have Friday and Saturday off for prom." Her brows stitch. "Maybe we'll see each other on the sixteenth?"

Her voice is quiet. "I'll try."

Viharfelho

The smile that spreads over his face then: it's a premonition of the smiles he'll grow into as he grows up. Slow-spreading, warmer, and utterly transformative. He turns his hand over, and he wraps his fingers around hers.

"Okay," he says quietly. "I'll go on the sixteenth. And again on the twenty-third. I like to hang out in the reef. And the shark building." And he thinks for a moment, too. "Can you give me your number? I don't have a cell phone right now. But when I'm a Cliath I'll get one. And maybe we can text each other."

Danicka

All this while he keeps playing with her hand, turning it over, holding it closer, and she smiles softly at him. There's an ache to it, though, a sadness. Because the sixteenth is a week away; the twenty-third is even longer. She doesn't want to think about it. She moves closer again in bed and puts her hands on his face before he speaks again, closing her eyes to kiss him.

It's long, and slow, and deep. She kisses him like his first kiss wasn't just last night, like it wasn't his first time in bed with a girl, like none of these are firsts. And they all are, for both of them -- in a way.

She breathes in and looks in his eyes when they part. The reef and the shark building. Her hands are still on his face, and she thinks, then nods. "I have the address of the estate in New Orleans, too," she says, "so I could start shipping my things, but... maybe you could write to me there."

Viharfelho

There's ache in Danicka's eyes, but Lukas looks happy. He'd offered the possibility of the aquarium, the not-really-set-in-stone meeting, so very cautiously. He'd expected she'd say no, no, it wasn't possible. He'd expected - dreaded, but expected - that he might never see her again after today. So everything she gives him is something he didn't have before. That much could be true of so much that has happened between them.

So - his eyes light up when she says maybe he can write her in New Orleans. He nods, and it's so eager it's almost comical.

"I didn't think you'd want me to write you," he says. "I thought maybe you'd be afraid someone would see, or something. I'd love that. I could even write you before I've taken my Rite. And I think if you write back you can mail it to Istok's house, and I can pick it up once in a while."

Danicka

"It'll just be me and a few other people," Danicka tells him, smiling softly. They are talking in the long term. Lukas's Rite. The future weeks and months. They are talking about not just meeting at Coney Island but staying, somehow, in each other's lives. It is thrilling, the feeling fluttering around in her heart like a bird beating its wings against the bars of its cage, refusing to stay still any longer. "It should be fine."

She leans over and she kisses him on the mouth again, her lips together but meeting his in a firm, fierce kiss. "Of course I'd write back," she tells him. "I like writing letters. No one does that anymore."

Viharfelho

Really, he should be a little shy, a little hesitant about kissing her in the morning before he's showered, before he's brushed his teeth. He's not, though. He meets her kiss as firmly, as fiercely as she gives it to him, but when she draws back he's smiling.

"Okay," he says. "I'll write you. As often as I can."

And he'll text her when he has a phone. And maybe he could even call her sometime, he thinks. Maybe he could even visit her in New Orleans, and he wants to say this to her, but he doesn't want to plan too far, he doesn't want to start making promises neither of them are sure they can keep. He keeps all this quiet, keeps it to himself, like hope in pandora's box.

"And it's okay," he adds after a while, quiet, "if it turns out you can't make it to Coney Island. I'll just write you and wait for your letters. Okay?"

Danicka

As often as he can. She knows it won't be much. She knows that when she writes she's going to use a different name on the return address, just in case, she's not going to write anything too personal, she's going to be so careful. Nothing to do with trusting Istok or Lukas -- but trusting an entire sept? No. She'll never send him a picture. Maybe a lock of hair, at most, but nothing that would identify her on sight as who she is, who she belongs to. Just in case. She has to be careful.

And yes: she thinks about when he gets a phone, and how they could talk, they'll be in the same time zone, she could stay up late and he could be the last thing she hears, thinks of when she sleeps, and oh -- this is wrong. This is going too far, this sort of thinking, so she, too, keeps silent. She kisses him again. She hasn't stopped, hasn't even hesitated before giving him full, deep kisses, either, even though they both have, well,

breath that is less than pleasant at this point. She doesn't even care.

She smiles at him. "Okay," she repeats, in a gently teasing tone, because he's said it so many times. She wraps her arms around him and hugs him then, happily, naked bodies meeting under the covers, and breathes him in. "Let's get up and... do all this stuff we have to take care of. It's going to look so bad, leaving in the same clothes we came in."

Viharfelho

This makes him laugh, and he laughs the way he won't laugh eight years from now, except with the very closest of his pack and kin --

the way he wouldn't have, anyway. Who's to say now? Their course is unutterably altered. The life they might have lived had she not paused, had she not turned, had she walked on when he called out to her on the street -- that life is gone now, just a breath of a possibility. They'll likely never shake hands across a Silver Fang kin now, the lights neon on their faces, glowing in his drink. She might not ever walk out of his packmate's bedroom, driving him as mad then as she did last night, only by then he hid it better. He might never take her down to the waterfront in the bitter cold and ask her

if she can feel. If she can love. If she can love him.

And he might never leave her crying in a hotel room the way he almost did tonight, but didn't. He might never become that cold. She might never lead him hot and wanting through the woods on solstice night --

or perhaps she will. Maybe all their possible futures are not so much divergent rays fanning out from singular points in time, but rivers running a meandering course: diverging, merging, twisting, bending, arriving in the end in the same ocean. Maybe. Lukas would like to think that, if he bothered to think of it at all -- that no matter their choices, in the end he would have found her, somewhere and somehow.

None of that matters right now. Right now, he laughs, free and easy and glad. "You can wear my clothes if you want," he offers, smiling. "And I can just, um. Streak through the Umbra."

Danicka

Possibilities, impossibilities, all spin out from every moment that passes between them. What if she hadn't turned, what if he'd followed her instead, what if they had gone to the Park instead of Affinia, what if they'd watched Harry Potter instead of eating, and kissing, what if he'd left, what if she'd told him right away that she couldn't promise anything, she couldn't ever see him again, what if she had been gone when he woke up, what if

what if

what if.

But right now they are so young and they're not thinking about any of that. Lukas lost his virginity and Danicka has let herself open up more to him than she has to anyone in years now. For no sane reason, really. She sleeps and wakes up, sees him there, and feels the same as she did. Daylight doesn't give her any more clarity or sanity than she had before, begging him to hold her as she came, kissing him as she came down.

She has a massive crush on him. That's a simple way of putting it. He's sixteen but more mature than most of the guys her age. He's an Ahroun but he's not scaring her, he's not threatening her or crushing her, he didn't even leave a mark when he bit her, and that bite was one of the most adoring things she's ever felt. He's a Shadow Lord but he doesn't care about his honor, his name, her brother, all these things, and he's both foolish and heroic in her eyes for it.

And he's so hot. She won't lie about that. She didn't hesitate to run her hands over him and tell him he was 'ripped', groaning about it and pressing herself to his thigh, her thigh to his groin, which presented some heavy evidence for Danicka finding his training-honed body appealing. His eyes are so pretty, and they are like her father's in the intensity of color and clarity, but don't remind her of her father at all. Lukas's eyes are beautiful partly for how he looks at her with them, how he looks opening them in the morning. His mouth. She really likes his mouth. She wants to trace it with her fingertips.

She wants to fall in love with him.

A grin flashes over her face, then laughter. "I am not wearing your clothes," she says. "I'm going to be smelling enough like you already. And if you haven't noticed, your clothes are kind of dirty."

Danicka's smile softens. She's touching his mouth, thoughtlessly, started somewhere a moment ago, tracing his lips, staring at him. "It's okay," she says. "I'll just take a cab to the Sokolovs and go through all the servant's areas."

And take another shower once she strips off the dress. And change into some other clothes. And then jump on the subway and go back to Queens and see her father, make him some meals for the week though he'll insist she doesn't need to. Bake him some bread with the windows wide open because there's no fucking air conditioning and the oak outside rustling. She feels bad when she goes home and finds store-bought garbage there, though she only feels bad because he's her father, and he never ate store-bought bread til he came to America, he made their bread when she was little, kneading and pounding the dough with big, strong arms that got weaker and more easily tired as she got older and began kneading, pounding the dough herself.

And she'll know that over in the Bronx, there he'll be. Maybe she can suggest to her father that he invite the Kvasnickas over again. Maybe they can be friends again. Maybe --

"You should tell your parents you remember my house," Danicka says suddenly, quietly. "Talk about it and how nice it was when we were all there together. I want to tell my father to invite your parents over again. I want them to be friends. And -- no matter what else happens we can still..."

she doesn't know what she means, doesn't have the words for it. She means this, though:

we can still be connected. we can hear news about each other. we can know our pasts are fitted together even if our futures aren't. we can have that much, no matter what.

Viharfelho

Foolish and heroic: that's a good descriptor for Lukas right now. Too young to know better. Too old not to want to do better. Be better. Be a good man, a good Garou, a good

boyfriend to this girl he really only just met. To say he has a crush on her would be an understatement. He's fascinated by her. He misses her already, and they haven't even parted yet. He can't wait to see her again, hear from her, write her -- something. Stay in touch, somehow.

So when she suddenly tells him to try to nudge his parents into friendship with hers, he understands. She doesn't have to explain; she couldn't, anyway. But he gets it. It's another way to stay connected, no matter how tenuously. A way for them to maintain a link through their loved ones. A way, too, for their loved ones to have someone other than each other, and other than these children of theirs, each so far away.

"Okay." And she's right to mock him a little. He does say that a lot, and always the same way: softly, as though each is a little promise he makes. "I will."

He takes her hand between his, then. He kisses her thumb gently, and he smiles, and then he leans over and kisses her. And when that's done, he breathes in. It emerges a sigh. He sits up at last, looking at their hotel room, sunlit. It's nearly noon.

"I guess we should get dressed," he says. There's regret in his tone. Of course there is.

Danicka

There are other things Danicka isn't saying to him because she is so very afraid of getting his hopes up, breaking a promise, breaking his heart -- which she doesn't even know for sure is in her hands or not, but she has a pretty good feeling about. She isn't telling him that maybe if their parents are friends, then when she comes back from New Orleans they can visit on one of these dinner occasions. Maybe everyone can see how well they get along, and how they come from the same culture and from such good bloodlines and how Danicka, who is frightened of her shadow, isn't frightened of Lukas. Maybe Vladislav can notice and maybe he'll let her be with Lukas, young as he is and as rage-filled. He's an Ahroun, though, he'll always be able to keep her safe, right?

Danicka doesn't know that not all of Vladik's machinations are about extracting favors from Garou who want to mate with her. She doesn't understand how lonely he is, how the Shadow Lord party line has driven him to think of Kinfolk as incapable of being equals, of being a true mate. She doesn't understand that the sick looks he gives her sometimes that she knows are wrong, that make her skin crawl and her heart pound in fear, are the product of believing that his sister is the only one who can know him, understand him, and he is panicked somewhere deep inside at the thought of losing her.

It's all warped, and twisted, and he is a wicked man because he is so corrupted by his own tribe's intrigue and lust for power, his mother's rage, his distance from his father, the fear of his sister. He is not a good man. But Danicka does not understand yet even how that badness in him works. She tries not to look too deeply at Vladislav. She is afraid of what she'll see. So for now, today, she doesn't know that he'll resist anything, anyone who might take her away, and leave him all alone,

while she goes off and finds something like happiness, like closeness, which has become incapable of.

Danicka leans over and nuzzles Lukas as he sighs, their bodies warm together under the covers. She doesn't even care that they're messy or filthy or sweaty, their muscles stiff. This time she hears his 'okay' as the promise it is and she trusts him, believes in it when she doesn't tend to believe in anyone.

"Can I ask you something first?" she says, a heartbeat or two after his mentions his greatest current regret: getting up and getting dressed, walking away from this.

Viharfelho

Lukas is sitting up in bed, his knees drawn up under the sheets. His back is a solid, tanned wedge; the tan goes as far as his boxer-line -- because in this day and age Lukas is still wearing boxers; has not yet discovered that flattering yet fitness-demanding undergarment known as a boxer brief -- and stops abruptly there.

Sunlight looks good on his skin. Brings out the ruddy undertones of sheer health, sheer strength. Refracts off the microscopic textures there, hits and delineates the curvature of his trapezius, the broad flanking muscles of his back. When he turns to look at her, the flesh and bone of his back move in flawless synchrony.

"'Course," he says.

Danicka

Danicka has not yet followed Lukas into a sitting position. She lays on her side facing him again, smiling at him, touching his face, then his chest and finally laying her arm over his abdomen. She likes even the way he says course, just like that, and she asks herself if she would like just about anything right now, as long as it's him.

"What... are we gonna do after we leave New York?" she asks, glad they're happy right now, glad they aren't fighting, aren't sad, are just... happy together. Glad because this is a topic she wanted to avoid altogether by simply not feeling anymore than than pleasure and enjoyment,

but she does. Feel more. And yet:

"I don't know when I'm coming back from New Orleans," Danicka goes on. "And it doesn't sound like you know just when you're going to become a Cliath. I don't want --"

She takes a breath. Her arm is so warm around him. Almost as warm as he is. The sun is so very bright, but his body shadows her eyes.

"I don't want you to be alone all that time."

Viharfelho

"I won't be alone," he says, puzzled. "I'll be with other cubs, and Istok. And sometimes the other -- "

he trails off there. His eyebrows come together, and he thinks for a moment, and then he thinks he understands.

"You're asking about ... other girls?"

Danicka

Danicka nods. Strangely, she doesn't look saddened to talk about it, though her eyes aren't quite as blissfully happy as they were a second ago. Just... accepting. Truthfully and gently accepting of reality, even when it refuses perfection and idealism. It is, they will -- might -- learn, a deep difference between them. Danicka does not even grasp idealism, not really. She can't present it.

"I just don't know what's going to happen," she explains softly, "and I hate the thought of you like... 'waiting' for me or something."

There's a little pause. "I'm not saying this to tell you that you should, or that I want you to tell me about this stuff in letters or whatever, just... I'm not expecting you to act like you're still a virgin when you might not see me for years." A beat, this time, a mere half-breath: "To tell you the truth, I'd be sad if you did."

So much quieter now, hesitant to use these words, because they are so very bold, so fearless, and she is neither: "But if one day you're ever... you know, mine. Then I want you to be... well. Mine."

Viharfelho

Almost in spite of himself, a little smile flickers over Lukas's face when she says she doesn't expect or want him to act like a virgin if and when they meet again. Danicka's arm slipped down his body as he sat up. It's looped across his waist down, just under his navel, and he puts his hand over her forearm. There's something comfortable about this, like he's known her longer than he has.

"You're just saying that," he teases gently, "because you're afraid I'll come in a minute again."

But then she's quieter, and so much rawer, and the smile fades away. He looks at her a moment, his eyes aching. Then he turns, stretches out alongside and half atop her again, his arm crossing her body the way hers crossed his. And he kisses her like that. He keeps kissing her. It's like he can't get enough. Or maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe he just wants to kiss her as often as he can,

before he can't.

"I don't want anyone else right now," he tells her, quiet as she is, and as nakedly honest. "I don't know that I'm not already ... yours, somehow. I don't know that it's fair to anyone else if I slept with them just so I wouldn't be alone, when my heart wasn't in it. So... I don't know how to make this promise to you. I don't want to promise to find empty companionship. And I really don't want to promise to just move on."

Danicka

"That is so not true," Danicka says, half-laughing herself, but choosing not to mention that it was also totally less than a minute. Because she didn't mind. She didn't expect him to last very long at all. She wasn't disappointed, she wasn't disgusted. She was so... fond, actually.

Danicka breathes in as Lukas lowers himself back down to the bed to stretch out alongside her, to be so very close to her. She blinks, then closes her eyes when he kisses her. Her kiss back is gentle: gentle and slow, like her hand opening over his lower back, reveling in the slope of it, the bands of muscle dipping in towards his spine. She could make love to him again. But she doesn't want to, really. She wants to lie here like this, comfortable and close and knowing she isn't driving him completely out of his mind just by touching him. Warm.

"I don't either," she says, just as honest. "But I'm not asking you for a promise. What you do is up to you. I just don't want you to think I'd judge you if I knew. I'd understand."

Leaning over, she kisses his mouth softly. "You don't have to make decisions or anything. I just... if something happens, I don't want you to feel like you have to stop and ask, or worry about me. I don't think you 'should' do one thing or another. Just... I wanted you to know how I feel about it in advance, okay?"

Viharfelho

At sixteen and some-odd months, Lukas is already a good deal taller than Danicka is, or will ever be. Stretched out alongside her like this, the sheets slipping down his body, he's long and lean and warm, in the midst of such rapid growth that his body seems to almost change before one's eyes. That's just imagination, though. If and when he changes, she'll know

and she'll be terrified.

He doesn't know that about her yet, of course. And there have been Garou in the past who have looked at her with want and greed, who stopped looking at her like that as soon as they found out. Somehow, one doubts Lukas will be the same. He's not looking at her with greed, anyway.

They share kisses, slow and soft and gentle. His eyes close for each one, reopen smiling and dark-centered. Her hand opens on his back. His opens on her side, under the curvature of her breast. They're warm and comfortable like this. He wishes this morning could last forever, just like this.

"Okay," he says softly. A moment's thought, during which he lowers his head to her breast for a moment, turns his ear against her sternum to find the beat of her heart. It's a strange whim, and one he doesn't question. When he's collected his thoughts he turns his head, kisses her skin. Smiles at her, a little wistful.

"I don't want to think of you with anyone else," he admits. "And I'd rather not know if you were. But ... I don't expect you to wait either. Not when we don't know what comes next."

Danicka

It feels right somehow, what Lukas does. When his hand moves to just under her breast she thinks he's going to caress her, lower his head and lick her, fuck her as though to drive all these sad thoughts away. She'd understand if that's what he did. She would welcome him all over again. But what he does is lay his head down on her, and she closes her eyes as the ache in her chest swells. Her arms fold softly around him, loosely, and her fingertips move into his hair, across his scalp.

"Lukasek..." she whispers, turning her head to rest it against his temple for a moment. Just a moment. He lifts up to kiss her and she smiles back at him, echoes his expression. And, frankly, his feeling.

Danicka just nods to what he says. There is nothing else they can say, really. She understands -- and he understands her. They make no promises. They expect reality, even when it makes them sad. So she just kisses him again, and lies there with him for a little longer, touching his hair, til a deep breath lifts her chest.

"Let's go," she says quietly. "Checkout time is coming up, and we need to wash up."

Viharfelho

There's a lot of ache in this parting. A lot of uncertainty, not a little pain. But the truth is it's less painful, less uncertain, less devastating than he feared. He has a little bit of hope to hold on to; something to look forward to. It's not much, but it's more than he had before, and it's enough.

So Lukas pushes himself up again, and this time she rises with him. They get out of bed, a little stiff, more than a little -- well. Gross, from their nocturnal activities. And standing together in the bathroom, they brush their teeth with the hotel's little toothbrushes, climb into the hotel's shower, wash the night off their skin with the hotel's hot water, the hotel's soap.

When they're both clean, and before they've quite reached to turn the water off, Lukas reaches for Danicka. He wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her close, kisses her slow and warm under the shower for a while. It doesn't taste like a goodbye. It doesn't taste like anything at all, except what it is.

Then they're getting out, and toweling off, and then he's climbing back into last night's clothes and so is she, and they have no luggage to pack and no drawers to check but all the same he stops for a moment as they're walking out; turns to look at the room. It looks nothing like it did last night. The comforter is on the ground. There are boxes of food in the trashcan. The bed is slept in, rumpled up, and the room is aglow with daylight.

He looks anyway. He looks, trying to remember what happened where and how, until he understands, suddenly,

that where they were would have made no difference.

Then he turns to her, smiling, and reaches for her hand, knowing he won't be able to hold it when they get out to the lobby. "Okay," he says. "Let's go."

Danicka

They leave the hotel room an utter mess. The bed is a wreck, the area around the microwave and trash smells of Czech food that has gone cold. There are wrappers for bars of soap and miniature toothbrushes on the countertop. Danicka can't help but smile at him in the mirror as they brush, her green eyes twinkling. They take turns spitting. It's ridiculous. She doesn't say it, but it seems that even for her this is strange, this waking up together, getting ready together, as though it's new to her. As though she's never done this before.

In the shower she doesn't shampoo her hair again but scrubs her scalp and washes it with water alone, conditions it. Lukas is working the soap into a lather and that's when he learns about washing a lover in the shower, because Danicka steps closer to him and smiles, almost shyly asks him if he'll wash her. They trade the soap back and forth and she washes him as well, spending far more time than is necessary on his chest, lifting up his arms and washing all of him. There's no disgust, no shyness once they begin, at least not from her. When he starts hardening from all that closeness, that heat, her touch allfuckingover him, Danicka kisses him and says maybe, um, he should wash that part.

They could do it again. It would be a lie to say that there is as much arousal in the air as there is steam, but they don't have the time. Not to fuck, not to shower again, not to get out of here before it costs Danicka another three hundred dollars. Deep breaths and a little space. Danicka kisses him softly and moves away as they're rinsing soap off of their skin, taking her turn after him, but he hasn't left the shower to dry off. He reaches for her as she's wiping water from her face and her eyes, wraps himself around her, and she sinks against him. Her arms wrap around his neck. They kiss, not softly or quickly but deeply and slowly, for longer than she thinks she can stand.

But she does stand it. She looks at him when they part, still holding each other. That look doesn't feel like goodbye, either.

Soon enough they're dressed, his hair wet and in tight, dark curls, hers dried with a dryer tucked against the wall. She looks like she did last night, only sans makeup, her hair a little thicker and less controlled without product, but...still essentially the same. Black lingerie, blue dress, silvery shoes, little drawstring handbag. And him in jeans and t-shirt and sneakers, too young to be here with anyone, much less someone who is of legal age when he is not. Danicka holds his hand when they leave, and she can't smile. He looks at the room, and while he does she's looking at him, seeing him in the light, memorizing his face. Her eyes are on him when he turns back to her.

"You should go out the stairwell to outside," she says softly, her fingers laced with his. "I checked in alone, and... I don't want either of us getting in trouble or having to answer weird questions." She reaches into her little bag and takes out a slip of paper from the pad inside the room, written with the hotel's pen, the hotel's insignia printed at the top. On it is a mailing address for Louisiana, and beneath that is her phone number, Manhattan area code and all. "For when you get your Cliath cell phone," she tells him of the latter, with a small smile. "Walk me to the elevator?"

Viharfelho

It's strange and a little haunting to see her put her clothes back on and turn into the girl he met on the street again. A little like falling backwards in time; it makes him wonder if the night happened at all. But then she looks at him, her eyes clear green by day - blue when the light hits them right - and he remembers.

They hold hands on the way out. She looks at him like she wants to remember his face, and he wants to tell her she doesn't have to, he'll see her again, he promises, but he doesn't. He can't make that promise. He doesn't know the future; he doesn't know how anything will turn out, where they will be, whether they will even survive long enough to meet again.

He doesn't want to think about that, though. It's too painful. Better, easier, more hopeful, to think of next Sunday first. And then maybe the one after. And then maybe the first time he receives a letter from Louisiana. The first time he sends a text to the 212 number she gives him,

which may be the very first time Lukas has ever gotten a girl's number, for that matter.

Lukas holds the number very tightly in his hand as he nods. Yes, he'll walk her to the elevator. And that is what they do, walking down that hall that seemed so long last night when he couldn't wait to be inside with her,

inside of her,

and seems so short now when they part at the end of it. He pushes the elevator button as soon as they're there; he doesn't want to draw out the goodbye and make it a form of torture, each waiting for the other to press the button. He hopes the elevator never comes, though, and as he hears the machinery ramping up he steps into her, wrapping his arms around her, crushing the little handsewn butterflies on her dress against his body.

"I'm really glad I met you again," he murmurs. "I can't wait to see you again."

There, he thinks. That wasn't really a promise he gave her. Nothing he could break. He doesn't ever want to break anything that's hers.

Danicka

When he woke up this morning, the sunlight was coming in the window and Danicka's eyes were blue. Soft and clear and gentler than his but bright blue, somehow. Like magic.

Her hand tingles where he touches her. It makes her marvel that he's so warm, always, and she wants to take him somewhere and take off all of his clothes and kiss every inch of him all over again. No deadlines or secrets. She wants to lay against him like he's the sun-warmed earth and fall asleep in the middle of the day, his hand moving on her back to relax her. She wants to keep him. She wants to tell him this, but she can't, just like he can't make her any promises. She knows she'll ask him for pictures when she writes to him from New Orleans, maybe something she can hide in her nightstand drawer and look at when she misses him, which she thinks right now will be all the time.

They walk to the elevator and he pushes the button, which strikes her as some kind of bizarre little gentlemanly gesture, like opening a door or standing when she enters a room. Danicka doesn't let go of his hand, willing the elevator to take longer than it will, longer than it does. They wish for the same thing, even as the machinery becomes audible. Suddenly, he's hugging her, holding her, and she leans into it, wraps him up tightly, closes her eyes against his neck. What he says makes her smile. She puts her arms around him, holding him back just as tight. "I really like you," she tells him quietly, because it is better than 'me too'. Because it is so much closer to what she really feels. Because she's been wanting to say it since last night.

The elevator arrives, and chimes patiently as the doors slide open. Danicka breathes, hoping he'll hold her all the way through, not let go, make them both wait for another car, but she doesn't. She squeezes him one more time and then moves a step back, trying to act like her eyes aren't doing what they're doing, though they seem brighter than before. "Hezký den, Lukáš," she says, and steps into the elevator, pressing the L button.

Viharfelho

Lukas holds on for just a second after Danicka starts to step back. Then he lets her go, and they separate, and her eyes are suddenly liquid and he wraps his arms around himself instead, hugging himself as she reaches for the button on the inside of the elevator car. She wishes him a good day. He doesn't say anything back, only smiles a little, the insides of his eyebrows wanting to tug up.

As the doors are closing he raises his hand to wave goodbye, and that's the image she takes away with her: a black-haired, lightning-eyed boy with hair still wet from the shower they shared, looking happy and sad and wistful all at once.

After she's gone, the hallway seems very quiet and very empty to Lukas. He stands there a moment, wishing he had a cell phone already, thinking to himself that he would text her right now just to say

everything he wanted to say to her, and didn't. A door opens down the hall a few moments later. It gets his feet moving, and he takes the fire stairs all the way out. When he leaves, he leaves through the side door, and though he looks a few times in the direction he thinks Danicka might have gone, he never sees her.